The Beginning of the End (Universe in Flames Book 4) (8 page)

“None at all but I’d really like to be the one delivering the final blow.”

“If at all convenient, I will gladly grant you this honor.”

“Thank you, Miseo.”

Miseo turned his back and left Argos’ ready room as quickly and unceremoniously as he had entered it.

When Commodore Saroudis entered the admiral’s ready room, she smiled at him.

“Hello, Adonis, please take a seat.”

“Thank you, Ally.”

“So, I’ve read your report. I must say I did not see that coming. So now on top of Argos and his Zarlack army, we can expect the Furies to come knocking on our doorstep. This is a nightmare.”

Saroudis stayed silent, not sure how to answer, not even sure there was anything he could say under the circumstances.

“And this is thanks to your protégé Chase. He outdid himself this time.”

“With all due respect, I don’t think that’s fair.”

“Fair? That’s what we get from trusting a Fury I guess.”

“I’m not sure I like where this conversation is heading, Admiral.”

“So you don’t think he was in on it all along?”

“In on it? Of course not! Chase is an Earth Alliance officer. He fights on our side. There was no way he could have anticipated what has unfolded. Argos manipulated him from the very start.”

“You don’t have to protect him, Adonis. Not anymore. I think it’s time we discuss his upcoming court martial and discuss imprisonment and perhaps even execution . . .”

“You can’t be serious? He saved the
Destiny
battle group and Earth, twice over.”

“How long are you gonna use this excuse to justify this insubordinate, hothead excuse for an officer.”

Saroudis’ blood boiled. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. The lieutenant commander is the only reason we’re still breathing; we owe him our lives.”

“I disagree. We would have prevailed with or without him. In fact, I now suspect he could very well be in league with his brother and might have manipulated you from the start. Think about it, Commodore. He was at the right place at the right time at every turn. He gained our trust, but who is to say this wasn’t orchestrated from the start?”

“Admiral, Chase has served under my command for years. I know the man.”

“Then perhaps Argos brainwashed him to do his bidding. He did that with Commander Kepler, after all. Perhaps he took control of the Lieutenant Commander as well at one point.”

“I’m sorry, this is ludicrous. Chase was put in the most horrible position. We asked him to kill the love of his life to win the war, and he did it.”

“She was a clone. Perhaps he knew that.”

Saroudis felt a brooding headache building up.

“No, this is nuts. What the hell is this with you, and this personal vendetta you seem to have against the lieutenant commander? What did he ever do to you? You know what? Don’t answer that. But I want you to listen to me closely now. I’ve noticed a strange shift in your attitude lately and I’m really worried about you. I don’t recognize the woman I have admired all these years. But you need to understand one thing. Yes, the Furies are back, and soon they’ll become the most daunting enemy we have ever faced. To have a shadow of a chance of survival, we’ll need Lieutenant Commander Athanatos on our side.”

The admiral tapped her fingers on her wooden desk.

“I see. So am I supposed to just let all of this go.”

“All of what, Admiral?”

“The lieutenant commander assaulted some of my officers and put them out of commission, then he stole one of our ships, which he since lost. To make things worse, many of our officers followed him, stealing quadrinium from your ship in a clear act of mutiny. Then they helped him help Argos obtain a stone required to power a machine that actually freed the Furies from another dimension where the Olympians had locked them up during the last war. To top it
all
, an Olympian was voluntary sacrificed to make the machine work. Did I miss anything?”

Saroudis knew that from the outside it did look very bad.

“No you didn’t. Aphroditis isn’t sacrificed per se. She’s just locked in the machine at the moment.”

She shot him a seriously grave look.

“Alright, Admiral, I agree this sounds bad, but it’s done now. I need my officers to prepare to repel the enemy when the time comes.”

“And that includes the lieutenant commander?”

“Especially the lieutenant commander.”

Something blinked on her desk for half a second. The admiral looked at it for a long time, as if lost doing so.

“Admiral?” inquired Saroudis, a little worried.

She rose from her desk and walked towards the viewport, looking into space.

“You’re not making things easy for me, Commodore. But you’ve made your case. Very well, I’ll let you deal with this. But that’s the last time I give you any leeway in these matters. You’re dismissed.”

The commodore was relieved to hear her say that, but something didn’t feel right. The entire conversation made it very clear she had intended to nail Chase to the wall, and then, all of a sudden, she dropped the matter entirely.

He rose and approached the admiral near the viewport but she raised a hand which stopped him in his tracks.

Her next sentence was icy cold. “What part of dismissed don’t you understand, Commodore?”

“Very well, Admiral, thank you.”

Saroudis left her ready room, still unsure what had just happened.

*   *   *

Three weeks had passed since Chase’s return to Earth. It had been a difficult time. Sarah was still quite distant and Chase felt uneasy about how to mend the relationship. Argos’ forces had started conquering resource-rich worlds and every request Chase had made to Admiral Thassos, either directly or through Commodore Saroudis, to go stop him had been flat-out rejected.

She wanted to make sure the Alliance was ready for their next attack and preferred to have a strong defense around Earth. He had argued against her decision for more than a week upon his return but it had all been in vain. Admiral Thassos had explained what had happened while Chase went on his revengeful path: the threat of the Gaia AI presence on Earth. She also wanted this to be resolved before going on the offensive.

Yet Gaia had given no signs of life since his return, so Chase thought her argument was unfounded and sounded more like an excuse.

But it had become clear to him that whatever frail relationship he had with the admiral before was now entirely gone. The only reason Chase was still a member of Earth Alliance was thanks to Commodore Saroudis, and perhaps the occasional appearance of Ares.

His request to at least go find the Olympians or the Asgardians had also been denied point blank, and he had to fight every one of his instincts to just go do these things on his own and the admiral be damned.

But he didn’t want to leave Sarah and Chris behind. Since he had seen them in trouble in his vision, he feared that if he wasn’t there when the next battle happened, they could get killed.

Yet the stars beckoned him. He wanted to get out there and fight the enemy, not wait and give them time to build ships with which they could destroy everything and everyone.

As almost every other day since his return, he was out training. He always chose a deserted place, to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone.

Ares had been absent for a few days, and that made training much less efficient, but already Chase felt he could reach full power in much less time than before, though he didn’t manage to enter the same fury mode that allowed him to defeat Argos twice.

It seemed only utter rage helped him reach this almost unlimited power. He did feel near, though, a couple of times during training, so he would keep training until he could unlock the secret to accessing this power consciously.

Chase had chosen to train in the Death Valley desert today. It was so hot that the landscape appeared blurry and wavy. Chase closed his eyes and grew his aura. Soon he felt a tremendous amount of power burning within him. When he re-opened his eyes, sand was dancing around him like a tornado as he stood in the eye of the storm that his purple aura had created.

Purple lightning ran over his muscles. He focused on a series of huge boulders he had brought from all around his training ground. He sent them flying high in the sky with his mind until they disappeared from sight. He then released his grip and sent a whirlwind shockwave in their direction as soon as he reacquired a visual. The shockwave randomly affected their trajectory and gave them a wild spin. He flew upwards at max speed, leaving a huge sand crater at the point of departure and sending large waves of sand all around. In less than a second he was approaching the large chunks of stones heading his way in the most chaotic fashion.

Chase split the first boulder in two with a flying kick. Before completing his kick the next boulder almost crushed him and he had to use all his reflexes to dodge it. Even so, the boulder still grazed his face and cut him under the left eye. His reaction was immediate and he blew the boulder up with a well-timed fireball. The resulting shockwave altered the other boulders’ trajectory and created unexpected wind currents.

Chase destroyed the third boulder with his knee before getting rid of the fourth by exploding it from the inside out with a powerful kinetic shockwave. The last boulder, the biggest one yet, approached at impressive speed. He decided to try to block this one.

He extended his hands forward and braced for impact. The sheer velocity and giant mass of the boulder sent Chase flying with it down towards the surface, but soon he slowed its descent and was holding it with just one hand above his head. He lit up his hand with a powerful fireball and disintegrated it with little to no effort. He looked down at the debris from all the other boulders as it approached the sandy ground. He sent a rapid flurry of small fireballs and made sure to disintegrate every single chunk before it impacted with the sand. It drained a lot of his energy, and once the attack was over he was panting heavily.

He let himself drop smoothly back to the sand as more dust from the destroyed boulders was deposited on the dunes around him.

Then something fast appeared in the sky. It was flying faster than any Earth plane, and for a second Chase feared it might be a Fury.

But soon a construction droid landed in front of him, spilling sand all around him.

“Hu-Hello? What can I do for you?”

“What are you doing here?”

Chase wondered why the droid was talking to him and why on Earth it cared. Then it hit him. “Gaia, I presume?”

“Yes, I can use this droid body to communicate with you.”

“Nice to meet you, Gaia. And to answer your question, I’m training.”

“I see. As for meeting you, I wish I could say the same.”

“Oh, why’s that?”

“You are dangerous, and I’m still deciding if I want you on my planet.”

Your planet?

Then Chase remembered his conversation with Spiros, Cedric and Yanis. This did match what they had told him.

“You have nothing to fear from me, Gaia, I assure you. I’ll give my life before I let Earth fall.”

“That’s what Spiros told me, and the only reason I didn’t obliterate the shuttle you used to get down upon your return.”

“Charming. Remind me to send Spiros a fruit basket to thank him for that,” said Chase, grinning.

“I do not respond well to sarcasm.”

“What do you respond well to, Gaia? Is saving this world twice over not enough to convince you I mean no harm to this world?”

“I wasn’t born back then, but I did find evidence to support this and I thank you for it.”

Funny way of showing it.

“You’re welcome. I guess.”

“But then there was Tokyo.”

“Right, I’m not proud of myself, but—”

“You were mad, angry at the man who had forced you to kill the woman you loved. I witnessed that fight and heard everything Argos told you. I almost intervened, in fact.”

“Not sure what you could have done, really. But yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. There isn’t a single day when I don’t think of the damage and lives I might have taken during this fight. I’m not proud of myself, believe me.”

“And hence my problem trusting you. On paper you seem like a good guy, but your emotions drive you, to the point where you sometimes lose control and let your rage guide your actions. What’s to say you won’t destroy this world if something happens to Sarah or your unborn child?”

“You are well informed, I’ll grant you that.”

“I see everything, Chase. I have linked with the planet on the biological level, every animal, every plant. I know everything there is to know about Earth. I speak for this world. Even those boulders you crushed a minute ago.”

“Shouldn’t I have done that?”

“No, that’s fine, and I appreciate your diligence in training far away from any populated area. However, you did injure a hawk earlier on. You probably didn’t feel it.”

Chase closed his eyes and expanded his thoughts. He felt the bird about three miles away, its feathers warm from the contact with the burning sand.

“Be right back,” said Chase, before flying toward the injured bird so fast it looked as if he teleported there.