The Beginning of the End (Universe in Flames Book 4) (21 page)

“This Fury said his name was Miseo, and that he is even more powerful than him. If that’s true, he might have survived.”

Chase reflected upon the words of the Gaia droid. “One problem at a time. For now I need to get rid of this one.”

“We. You’ll need my help.”

“Alright then, let’s get to work.”

*   *   *

Daniel couldn’t see a damn thing in the darkness. The night-vision mask was totaled, so he threw it aside.

“Lieutenant? Are you alright?”

But there was no answer.

“Are you hurt, Lieutenant?”

Daniel used his hands to try to find his backpack in the dark. After a while he found a rifle on the ground and turned its light on.

The droid laid on the floor motionless. The fact that no sparks shot from its severed body parts told him it was finally destroyed, or at least disabled.

When the light from his rifle landed on the lieutenant, Daniel had to refrain from vomiting. His head had been severed by a piece of armor from the droid.

“I’m so sorry,” said Daniel out loud.

But now was not the time to mourn. Daniel needed to find a way out of the building without setting off the unidentified devices strategically placed in the communications tower.

He went into the room where the droid came from and looked around. He found the power control panel for the tower and cycled the power back on.

The main control room was a bloody mess. His entire away team had been wiped out by the battle droid. He looked for a first-aid kit and found one.

Time to mend his shoulder wound. He injected himself with a painkiller and was soon back in front of a control console.

He tried to access the video feeds inside the complex but was again denied access. He punched the console out of frustration.

He found the controls for the shades and activated them. They rose, and finally the light of day filled the bloody room. Outside he saw lush vegetation and large trees as far as the eyes could see. A bird landed on the nearest one. Some of its branches were only a couple of yards away from the control center’s large, angled windows.

He tried opening a channel to the
Destiny
but was unsuccessful. With both his own gear and the tower’s comms.

What the hell is going on up there?

He ran a system-wide diagnostic. It would take a few minutes to complete.

But then he felt it. Something exploded on a level below and it shook the entire complex.

Crap! Perhaps running these diagnostics wasn’t the best idea.

Shortly after the first detonation, another rocked the facility, and then another. Alarms wailed and Daniel knew he only had seconds to react. The third explosion cracked the large window in the control room. He grabbed what was left of the droid’s left arm and threw it against the cracked window, which gave out and shattered into a thousand pieces. He took a few steps back as the latest explosion caused the structural integrity of the tower to fail. The entire tower started leaning forward. He ran and jumped out of the window as far as he could, hoping to catch one of the tree branches nearby.

At the exact moment he jumped, the tower’s control room exploded and he felt a wave of heat on his back, as well as the pressure from the shockwave of the explosion.

He was thrown so far forward he missed the branch he had been aiming for and crashed against the tree’s trunk, hitting his head badly in the process.

He started his descent towards ground, grabbing the first branch that passed him by, but it didn’t hold his weight and cracked. As he fell he was stopped every now and then by other branches that slowed his descent, but not without inflicting a tremendous amount of pain. Many of his ribs broke, and by the time his body crashed near the bottom of the tree he had lost consciousness.

*   *   *

After many unsuccessful hails to try and contact Ronan, Keera decided to cloak the
Valken
and head towards the planet’s surface.

The battle between the Alliance fleet and the Zarlacks was still ongoing, and it took some pretty fancy flying to avoid being hit by stray fire. When she entered orbit of the planet her cloak failed. Fortunately, she didn’t need it anymore, at least for the time being. She headed towards the coordinates where the
Phoenix
had crashed. She really hoped Ronan had managed to escape. A new dot appeared on her scopes. It was similar to the signal Ronan had asked her to amplify before.

Could that be the receiving device of that signal?

She locked onto the area and opened a channel.

“Is anyone receiving me?”

“Identify yourself,” answered a familiar female voice.

“Ryonna?”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Keera. I’m looking for Ronan.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. How did you get here so fast?”

“That’s a long story. Can you please come and pick me up?”

“I’m adjusting course to your position.”

“I’m not gonna stay in the area for long. Chase is about to battle a Fury and we all know what that means. I’ve just secured a military ground craft but this thing is way too slow. Let’s meet at the following coordinates.”

Keera received the transmission.

“Rendezvous coordinates received. See you soon.”

Keera adjusted her vector for the new rendezvous point and flew above the city that was destroyed by the
Phoenix
.

The damage was surreal.

I doubt many people could have survived that blast.

*   *   *

Ronan arrived near the coordinates indicated on his portable scanner and was horrified to see a pod in the distance, in the middle of a large field still on fire.

He ran as fast as he could towards the pod, finding a path amongst a labyrinth of flames. The temperature around him became unbearable but he kept at it nonetheless.

He reached a large and deep crevasse that blocked his way forward.

Dammit!

The crevasse ran as far as the eye could see on both sides and he needed to make a choice. His first instinct was to try to jump over it, but that would have been a risky proposition even if he was in full possession of his abilities. With his multiple wounds and the lack of oxygen around him, it was suicide, plain and simple.

He decided to go left and hoped to find a way across.

He tried hailing his friend again but there was no response.

After ten more minutes of running it became clear that he would need to build some sort of bridge in order to pass to the other side. He looked around him for anything to help him achieve that goal. There was a tree trunk not too far away but it was on fire. He checked his survival pack and drank some water. The smoke around him made it even more difficult to advance and his eyes were burning.

He kept going for another three miles when he finally saw a tree near the edge of the crevasse. It hadn’t been unearthed or burned. He took his sidearm blaster and shot multiple times at the base of the tree, and soon it cracked and fell forward. The top of the tree landed on the other side of the crevasse, providing him with a bridge to cross. He climbed on the trunk and jumped a couple of times to test its stability. It didn’t budge.

Well, that’s good enough I guess.

He was halfway over when the ground shook and he lost balance and nearly fell to his death. He fell flat on the trunk and started slipping. Ronan grabbed on for dear life as the ground shook more, hoping the crevasse wouldn’t enlarge as a result of the tremor. After a while the tremors stopped and he got back to his feet, increasing his pace. When he was over the other side he ran in the direction of the pod. He hoped with all his heart that Arknon hadn’t been cooked alive in the meantime.

He ran as fast as he could, avoiding patches of fire on the way, and reached the pod in under seven minutes. By then he was panting heavily and his head was spinning.

The pod was not accessible. There was fire all around it so Ronan took the portable extinguisher from his backpack and got rid of just enough flames to allow him access to the pod. Then he was faced with another problem. The door of the pod was facing the ground. He tried rolling it to the side but was rewarded with first degree burns on both his hands.

Okay, dumb idea.

His feet were also burning but he ignored that and looked around for a large piece of wood. He found one he could use as lever.

With much effort and pain, he finally managed to roll the pod onto its side. He looked through the pod’s window. It was very dirty. He grabbed some leaves from the ground to provide a little heat protection and wiped dirt from the window.

His friend was unconscious, with a nasty cut on his forehead and a lot of blood on his face.

He knocked at the window three times, hoping it would trigger movement in Arknon, but it didn’t.

“Arknon! Can you hear me? Arknon!”

Ronan couldn’t see well enough to know if his friend and commanding officer was still breathing.

Hang on, buddy, I’ll get you out of here.

Ronan looked for the external door ejection system but it was located on a part of the ship still facing dirt. He had to push the pod a little more on the side before accessing the external panel. Soon the door of the pod ejected and he carefully climbed inside.

Gaia approached Chase and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt a sting.

“Ouch! What was that?”

“Sorry for the temporary discomfort. I’ve just implanted you with transmitter nanobots.”

Chase rubbed his itchy shoulder. “You could have asked me first.”

“We need to be able to communicate without him hearing us. That will give us a tactical advantage.”

“Yeah, I get that, but you could still have asked first.”

“I’m sorry. I will next time.”

Chase looked dubious. “Next time?”

“Never mind that. Our foe is returning. Please be careful. Don’t underestimate him.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ares already gave me the pep talk. But I’m pissed and I need to blow off some steam, so he might just get something extra from me today.”

“No! Do not think this fight will be easy. He destroyed almost one hundred of my battle droids in the space of a few minutes, and if you hadn’t arrived when you did I would also be scrap metal now.”

Chase preferred not telling her that at this exact moment, it wouldn’t have been the worst of things.

“The nanobots are operational. I can hear your thoughts loud and clear.”

Chase scratched his head with a dumb smile on his face. “How much of what I just thought did you hear?”

“All of it.”

“Right . . . Oops, then.”

“Let’s move on. I don’t care whether or not you think I will be of some help. Together we stand a better chance of defeating him. All I care about is that he is stopped here so he cannot replicate this level of destruction on Earth.”

“Perhaps, but you’ll let me fight him first so I can gauge him. Then if needed you’ll intervene.”

“I feel obliged to point out that this is not an efficient strategy, Chase.”

“Still, you’ll do as I ask, Gaia. I’m grateful for the training facility you provided me, but I need to gauge my own progress now as well as size up this Fury. You have my authorization to intervene the minute anything goes wrong, but I start this fight on my own.”

“I should point out I do not need your authorization, but I will abide by your wishes for as long as it doesn’t conflict with my own interests.”

“Which are?”

“To not let your bravado kill you today, even though that is only a secondary objective, in all fairness.”

Chase smiled. “And the first being?”

“Kill both Furies currently on Droxian soil.”

“You’d make great friends with Ryonna.”

Chase didn’t know why he felt so excited at the prospect of fighting another Fury, but he preferred this sensation to the fear he felt when realizing the role he had played freeing the Furies from their dimensional prison.

When Arkoolis landed in front of Chase, he looked utterly pissed.

“Sorry about that. Are you’re going to be okay, pal?” teased Chase with an unusual level of arrogance.

“So you’re the one they call Laiyos. Argos’s brother.”

“My name actually is Chase Athanatos. And let’s get one thing clear: Argos is no brother of mine!”

“Mine is General Arkoolis. Argos told us you had rejected your Fury heritage and decided instead to fight us.”

“That’s right.”

“That was a foolish decision, and today you’ll pay for that dire mistake with your life. I will make sure of that.”

Chase decided to antagonize his enemy and gauge his reactions. Perhaps he could get something out of taunting him.

“Not part of my plan for the day, I’m afraid. Let’s recap, shall we? First I’ll kick your ass . . .
General
. Then I will go kill your other pal. Miseo is it? That’s if he survived the Droxian destroyer that got rammed up his ass a few moments ago.”

The general’s features and expression darkened.

“Awwww . . . You didn’t know that, now did you?”

The general clenched both fists. “Impetuous. I’ll grant you that. You do seem overly confident for a low-class Fury.”

“Low-class?” said Chase, raising an eyebrow.

Go ahead and tell me some valuable information now.

“There are different classes of fighters on our world. Some have a few meager powers but they aren’t really any more powerful than the millions of insects whose pathetic lives we’ve mercifully ended today on Droxia. We call them drones. They are the worker class of the Furies, if you will. They build, we fight. We occasionally use them as canon-fodder in larger scale assaults when more than one or two of us are required to destroy a world’s population and infrastructure, but very few races ever called for such scenarios.”

That’s it. Keep spilling some more.

“Then there’re three distinct categories of fighters, like you and me. The low class. That would be you, by the way. The high-class. I would say Argos sits between these categories. Probably not a fully fledged high class just yet. With the right guidance and training, maybe one day. Then there’s the elite, of which I’m part. We are those sent to a world when it needs purifying.”

“Mercifully? Purifying? You know what, pal, mercifully purify the shit out of you is what I’m going to do next.”

Gaia talked inside Chase’s mind.

Is it really necessary to antagonize your adversary at this point?

I’m just making sure he’s taking me seriously. I have no intention of losing this fight and I want him to know that
, answered Chase.

“I’m sure you’re going to try,” said the general, “but I’m not Argos, as you’ll soon discover.”

“Enough with this meaningless banter,” said Chase, cracking his knuckles, shoulders and neck. “Let’s dance.”

“Let’s indeed.”

The general took a fighting stance and so did Chase.

Chase was fully aware he needed the mental distraction to avoid thinking too much about Fillio’s passing and how strongly it would impact his best friend, not to mention the fact that Yanis already blamed him and hated his guts right now. This upcoming battle was about to achieve just that, make sure his mind was focused on something else. Perhaps even channel that rising feeling of anger he felt boiling at the back of his soul ever since he failed healing her. Chase wasn’t used to failing. That simply wasn’t in his vocabulary. And every time it happened, it hurt him a little more. But who was he angry at really? He wasn’t sure he wanted to face this question right now and the universe agreed.

The general started growing his bright red aura at an exponential rate.

Looks like Gaia was right. Looks like this isn’t going to be an easy fight.

Still, Chase felt excitement nonetheless. Now was the time to see if his intense training would pay off.

He grew his own purple aura and it matched the general’s in size and power. Chase saw the look of surprise in his adversary. He decided to make the first move.

He launched himself at Arkoolis and delivered a powerful blow to Arkoolis’s face. The general’s head flew backwards and blood was thrown into the air, but his body hadn’t moved. Chase went for a second blow but found nothing but air. He sensed an incoming kick coming from behind him and dodged it by doing the splits. With both hands on the ground he inverted himself and scissor kicked his opponent. But he was ready for it and grabbed one of Chase’s legs and sent him flying in the air.

Chase quickly recovered in midair and saw no less than five fireballs approaching his position. He deflected four of them and caught the last one in his right hand. He crushed it to nothingness with a smirk on his face. He landed back in front of Arkoolis who was smiling as well.

“Impressive.”

“For a low-class Fury, you mean?” said Chase, still playfully taunting him.

“Let’s see how long you can keep it up at this level of energy, though.”

“I’m only getting started here. Let’s kick things into high gear, shall we?

The general disappeared and reappeared behind Chase. He threw his elbow at Chase, who easily blocked it. He retaliated with a kick to the general’s chin, who also blocked the blow without breaking a sweat. He took Chase by surprise by head butting him in the face, which forced him to take three steps back. Chase used in index finger to wipe blood from a cut on his chin. He rubbed it between his fingers.

Chase extended both arms out from his sides and grabbed two massive boulders in the distance with his mind. He clapped his hands together and the boulders crashed against the general, exploding into a million little, stony pieces.

It took a few seconds for the dust cloud to clear and reveal Arkoolis still standing there, not a scratch on him.

“You’ll need more than boulders to bring me down.”

Chase knew that, but he was still gauging his enemy’s reaction. He had expected the general to get out of the way of the boulders, so he could get him off guard with his next attack. That obviously didn’t happen.

“Looks like it, but we’re running out of destroyers,” said Chase, grinning.

The general growled.

“Don’t worry, General, if he survived, I promise I’ll finish off Miseo once we’re done here, so you have someone to talk to in hell.”

The general laughed hard. “You’re funny. I like that. But you’re too sure of yourself.”

“Not the first time I’ve been told that.”

“I bet. Let’s see how you handle what’s coming next.”

The general ran towards him and disappeared a millisecond before reaching Chase, who had already adopted a defensive stance. When he turned around no one was there. That’s when he felt fire rain from the heavens. Without even looking for the attacks but feeling their incoming power, Chase back flipped just in time as the first attack exploded against the ground. He continued his backflips to dodge all four attacks, but in the middle of the last one he felt Arkoolis’ knee impact with the right side of his ribcage and was sent flying into the dirt.

Before he was back up three more fireballs were on their way. He deflected them all and again, at the end of his last movement, he was taken by surprise by a very powerful uppercut that sent him traveling vertically in the air. Before he could recover, Arkoolis unleashed his next attack, an extremely fast combo of punches and kicks, and finished with a full-body, reverse flying kick that sent Chase crashing back to the ground.

Chase’s body ached all over as he got back up and dusted himself off.

Now would be a good time for me to join the fight
, heard Chase in his head.

It’s not needed, Gaia, I have things well under control.

It doesn’t look like it from where I’m standing. He is faster than you.

I want him to think that. I haven’t yet deployed my full abilities; I need to learn how he fights first.

By getting your face beaten to a pulp?

If that’s what it takes, then yeah. I need to be able to anticipate his movements if I want to defeat him.

I see. Careful, he’s coming from behind you.

“I know,” said Chase out loud as he pivoted his body and landed a powerful right kick into the general’s face.

Arkoolis lost his balance and crashed to the ground. Chase unleashed a flurry of icy-blue fireballs his way. The general dodged the incoming attacks by flying upwards. Chase jumped in pursuit and went for a kick to the general’s face but only found air. The general reappeared above of him with both hands joined and smashed them down in order to hammer Chase. But he was prepared for it and dodged the blow at the very the last moment, putting himself in a perfect position to counterattack.

He lit both his hands with blue flames and unleashed an incredibly fast combo of punches, including hooks and uppercuts. He ended it by grabbing the general’s armor with his left hand and head butting him with such strength the general flew away and impacted with a nearby mountain. It exploded upon impact.

Chase flew back towards the ground. After landing he cracked his neck. He checked his internal pool of energy. He had consumed less than two percent.

This fight was only beginning.

*   *   *

Ryonna saw the
Valken
approach her position, stopped her combat cycle and dismounted.

She experienced a strange feeling when she looked around and saw only destruction all around: her planet, her home, was literally on fire. She had never imagined she would be a witness to anything like it.

And to think only two people were responsible for this.

She was also worried about her son. She hated not having news from him, and the moment the
Valken
landed she ran into the cockpit and sat next to Keera.

“Nice to see you again, Ryonna.”

“Likewise. Let’s go. We need to find my son.”

“Roger that.” Keera brought the
Valken
high up in the sky and punched the engines to their maximum. “He’s a very resourceful kid. I’m sure he survived.”

Ryonna felt a sting in her heart. He was still an adolescent, and no matter how proud she was of him, she still felt overly protective. But Keera’s words filled her with pride. “I take it you two have met?”