The Guardian (Coranite Chronicles) (26 page)

Sorren slouched on one side of the couch, eyes shut. Kite leaned against the wall, deep in thought. Rose sat in the pilot’s seat, thumbing through a magazine. Berik took the co-pilot’s seat next to Rose.

Berik quickly turned to her and said, “Hey there, beautiful, how about we fly this baby over to Chysthenes and have a nice relaxing stay there? I hear it’s absolutely gorgeous this time of year, especially at their resort on Patkoss Island. Just you and me, sipping some sweet tea, staring at the sunset with the ocean breeze.”

Rose smiled. “That sounds nice. What do you do for a living?”

“What do I—” The conversation was not quite going the way he intended. Berik cleared his throat and tried to make his voice deeper, attempting to impress with a manlier voice. “I’m an ace pilot for the Federation.” He winked.

Rose said disappointedly, “Oh…you’re a soldier. I don’t date soldiers.”

“W-what?” Berik stammered. “But why?”

“Too poor. And you’ll be dead soon enough, which is pointless if you’re broke.”

Mouth open and speechless, Berik stared at Rose.

“Now Sorren on the other hand…” Rose moved in close to Sorren. “If only you’d try harder at being an assassin and take on some good jobs—”

Sorren cut her off. “That won’t happen. I’ve already got what I wanted from the guild. I’m quitting the assassin’s guild soon.”

“Aww…” Rose frowned. “What a waste.” Rose sighed and looked dejectedly at the floor. “My only dream…will never come true…”

“Enough! Enough!” Kite spat. “Am I the only one who’s surprised the commodore turned into a freakish giant and tried to kill us? We have to get to the bottom of this! There’s something amiss here and I need to know what it is!”

Sorren said, “We didn’t get to check the evidence room. The Federation ship was destroyed. And there’s no way we’ll be able to subdue and interrogate that berserker. It’s over. We have no clues.”

“There must be something we can do…” Kite paced around in a circle and muttered, “Let’s see. Let me think. What can we do? I’m pretty sure I left the data inside the escape pod. But where’s the escape pod? They wouldn’t be so careless to just leave it on the surface. And I’m sure they wouldn’t store such a large thing in an evidence room…. If we could just pinpoint a location we could—”

“Captain?” said Berik.

“Not now, Berik,” said Kite, pacing around some more. “We need to figure this out.”

Berik insisted, “But Captain—”

Kite stopped and turned to him. “What? What? I’m busy!”

Berik pointed to the escape pod on the ground.

Kite’s eyes widened. “Oh…”
 

Berik said, “Found it in the docking bay. Figured we could sell it.”

“I never thought I’d be saying this, but great work, Berik!” Kite placed a hand on his shoulder. “I could just…I could just…”

“What?”

Kite grinned. “I could just punch you in the face!”

“
What?
That’s what you always want to do though.”

“Exactly. But this time, it’ll be a punch of love. There’s a difference.”

Kite crouched down, twisted the lever and opened the hatch to the pod. He crawled inside and looked around. Then he reached in and grabbed a small object that was tucked in at the far end. When he came back out of the pod, he had Vincent by the tail. By the looks of things, Vincent had been fried by the electrical stun. He was completely black now, burnt to a crisp.

“Oh Vincent,” Berik sung. “We hardly knew ye.”

“Look there,” said Sorren, pointing, “in its mouth. I see something.”

Kite pried open Vincent’s small mouth and extracted the disk. It too had been exposed to the electrical charge; however, it was partially shielded by Vincent and was only half burnt.

“Good job, Vincent,” said Kite. “You tried to protect the data. Your sacrifice won’t go in vain.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Vincent growled. “Done staring? Done playing around? Now put me down, ya knucklehead!” Vincent flailed his body and broke free from Kite’s grasp.

Kite knitted his brow, staring at Vincent as the Cyzom hopped around gleefully around the floor. “You’re alive?”

Vincent glared at Kite. “You want me dead, punk? Just try me! I’ll floor you!”

Berik smirked.

“You think I’m funny?” Vincent sneered. He headbutted Berik in the shin. Berik held his hurt leg and hopped around.

“Why you little—” Berik tried to step on Vincent. Vincent dodged it and slithered up his pant leg. “NO, DON’T GO—OW—WAIT, NOT IN THERE—WH-WHOA!”

Kite went to the terminal and stuck the data disk inside the port. “Stop being so loud, Berik. Be quiet while we access the data.”

The computer screen flashed red. He took the disk out and put it back in. The screen flashed red again.

“Is something wrong?” Sorren asked.

“It won’t read the disk,” Kite replied, trying to get it working. “It’s giving me a corrupted data error.” He tried it over and over. “Come on, come on.” He hit the computer. “Do something! Work!”

Vincent crawled up Kite’s back and rested on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry, old buddy. Forget that disk. I’ve got the data in my system.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Just tell me what you want to know. I’ve got all the answers,” he pointed to his head with his long tongue, “right here.”

Kite took a seat on the couch. Vincent leaped off his shoulder and sat on the table.

Sorren was the first to ask.

“What do the logs say about the encounter with the Guardians?”

Vincent replied, “The commodore ordered the crew to fire twelve Eraser missiles.”

“No, I think he means before that,” Kite told Vincent. “What happened before that? Why did the commodore fire the missiles?”

“There is nothing before it,” said Vincent.

Kite thought for a moment. “What do you mean? Are you telling me the data was lost?”

“No,” said Vincent, “according to the logs, the commodore ordered the crew to fire the missiles to test the response of the Guardian.”

Kite said, “He clearly stated that the Guardians attacked him first…”

Sorren leaned back on the couch. “So the commodore lied. Not surprising. No wonder he was so eager to kill us.”

Kite nodded. “He must not have wanted anyone to know. But that’s just something I don’t get. This leads to bigger questions. Why would he want to do this? What motive would he have?”

“The direct effect would be war. If the general public thinks that the Guardians are a dangerous threat, the Federation will have no choice but to destroy the Guardians.”

“A war with the Guardians? The Federation would never do such a reckless—”

Sorren laughed. “That’s what you think. You can’t stop it once push comes to shove. Most people don’t want war, but it’s hard to escape. No doubt the people fear that if the Federation doesn’t put an end to the Guardians, something worse will happen.”

Kite stood up. “Then we have to stop the war.”

Sorren looked up at Kite. “How do you intend to do that?”

Kite crossed his arms. “We could bring the data we have as evidence…”

“In this day and age, such evidence is unreliable, especially when we consider that the original source, the Federation ship, was already destroyed. Without the original data, we have no hard evidence.”

“Admiral Williams will believe me. He’s my uncle. He’ll listen to me. All I need to do is show him that the Guardians won’t attack the Federation.” Kite paused. “If that’s possible…”

Sorren said, “Will the support of a single admiral make a difference? That’s not going to convince the Parliament or the President.”

Kite said, “Then what if we raise support? We can convince the population the war is not necessary. The Federation is still a democracy. If the public outcry is strong enough, that might turn things in our favor.”

Berik scratched his head. “How are we going to pull that off?”

Kite said, “Propaganda.”

The idea sounded good to Sorren. “We’ll need the help of hackers. Some of them love screwing over the government. They like to be heroes—on the other side of the law. We can give them that opportunity. We’ll flood the networks with our findings. For now we’ll just have Berik get on it. Have him do the dirty work.”

Berik complained, “Why me?”

Kite said, “Because you’ve got nothing else to do. And Sorren would make a better bodyguard for when I meet with my uncle.”

Berik grumbled, “Oh, all right.”

“And I better not catch you slacking off.”

Berik gave him a suspicious smile. “Me? Slack off?”

Sorren said to Rose, “Steer this ship to Teraskai. We’ve got an admiral to meet.”

Beaming, Rose said, “Aye aye, Captain.”

CHAPTER 21

Underground

Darek and Slade traveled for days, exploring the spirit realm. Along the way, they encountered fields of black quicksand, giant rock formations resembling hideous creatures, massive thorny bushes, and thick clouds full of red lightning and hail. The more they explored, the more they came to believe that the spirit realm was a dark and dreadful place.

While they were walking, Darek gazed at the horizon full of light. He wondered if a paradise could exist in such a dreary land. If it did, perhaps the light would lead them there.

“I know we haven’t been going that fast but this is ridiculous. It feels like we’re going nowhere.” Darek lifted his wrist and looked at the ITD. “It’s not too late to give this another try.”

“And how would that help?” said Slade. “We’ll just get even more lost.”

Darek rubbed his hands together, as though a brilliant idea had popped into his head.

“Didn’t you say we could accidentally
fall
into Lacuna through teleportation?”

Slade scoffed, “The chances of that are like nine hundred trillion to one.”

“Okay, fine. But the ITD could still send us across this realm—like it did before. Who knows? Maybe we’ll end up where that light is. It’d save us some trouble.”

Slade said, “Or we could end up even farther away. And that’d be nothing but trouble.”

Darek grinned. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Slade countered, “Everything ventured, everything lost.”

Darek said, “You just made that up.”

“All sayings are made up by somebody.” Slade’s stomach grumbled. He glared at Darek. “And now look what you did.”

“I made you hungry?”

“You made me talk. And that makes me hungry. So shut up and make me some food.”

Darek whistled. “Somebody’s grumpy. I’m in charge of the ‘cooking,’ you know. You could be a little nicer—”

Slade growled, “Read my lips: I don’t care. I’m hungry. I’m pissed off. Now pass me that crap you call ‘food.’”

Darek said cheerfully, “Sure! One order of magically-cooked white crap coming right up!” He reached down and ripped some grass off the ground. He applied some energy into the grass, transforming it. The white grass became even whiter, much to Darek’s surprise.

“All right. This is concoction number 749. Might just be my finest work yet.”

Slade took the grass and stared doubtfully at it. “You said that about 504. And that one made me throw up for two days.” Then he took a bite of the grass and grimaced. “Mmm. Eh… Better than 748, I guess.”

Darek smirked. “Really?”

“Well, yeah…748 tasted like a plastic fork. This one’s not as bad—like paper coated with paste. Mostly like paper though.”

Darek raised his eyebrows. “What kind of paste? Toothpaste?”

“No, that glue junk—”

“Oh! I know what you’re talking about!” Darek clasped his hands together in excitement. “That does sound like an improvement. I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe 749 will be something to fall back on if you’re not feeling ready for some
new
flavors.”

Slade blurted out, “Aaaugggghhh…”

“Or do you have another preference?” asked Darek, grinning.

Sullen, Slade looked down at the ground. “Sadly…no. 749
is
one of the better ones.”

The days seemed to go by quickly. Of course they didn’t have a sun or moon to count the days, and so they called it a day whenever they went to sleep.

Being in the spirit realm was exhausting. With every passing hour, they felt weaker and weaker. Eventually, their progress slowed to a crawl. They could not go for a few hours at a time without napping. And even with napping and eating…they felt incredibly weak.

You can’t go on like this
, Chrovel said in Darek’s mind.
You’ve been using your powers far too much.

Darek whispered low enough so that Slade wouldn’t hear him, “So what? You’re a great Guardian, aren’t you? You’ve got plenty of energy.”

Your powers consume high levels of spiritual energy. While it is true that I do have plenty of energy left, it is impossible for me to bring out enough energy to sustain you. Our spiritual link is not strong enough.