Path of Ranger: Volume 1 (52 page)

The man looked at ranger with those terrified eyes. His throat was blocked and he could barely breathe. Hyam didn’t know for sure what was terrifying him more: that story or the narrator, who was drilling him with that inhumane look.

“And all there is to start that process is to touch one of the leaves…” JB finished.

When looking down over that one point five meter wide track, Hyam had the impression that he was already falling. There was no railing or any kind of safety barriers, just a plain path.

“Stop it!” one of the guards said.

A heavy hand laid on the ranger’s shoulder, which shined with its sandy red skin under the fake starlight. The mutant could sense the pumping blood inside the rahtiong’s veins. An inside spike was ready to burst out of that forearm any moment to go through JB’s head. Rahtiongs were the wrong kind to mess with. If there was a right time to act, it was it. The ranger got ready to take out the knife and slash both hands of that guard as a measure of counter attack prevention. Then he would push both aliens off of the path, and capture Hyam for interrogation.

Suddenly, an incredibly loud evil noise came from aside. It released JB from the current trouble. All four of them changed their focus instantly. There was a creature about one hundred meters away, running out of a torn-apart entrance. It was about four meters tall, had a massive body, a huge horned head and six limbs. All four eyes of the monster stared directly at JB. He looked at those foamy jaws, sharp teeth, and the look full of madness, and realized that it was just the beginning of the real trouble. The monster charged forwards, moving its clumsy feet along that narrow path. Yet, his speed was pretty impressive.

At first, the ranger thought that it could be a setup, to kill him in an accident. But then one of the rahtiongs pushed him behind and the firing started. Both guards were discharging hundreds of bullets in seconds, but the thunder from the monster’s steps didn’t lower a bit. JB dropped on his knees and rushed to load up an injector to inject the substance into his neck. The shooting was partially replaced by the loud scream of the dying rahtiong. In a few seconds when JB turned back to that view, he saw as the creature lifted up the second guard using its horns. It shook him over and over until the victim was dead. Then it dropped him down from the cliff.

Now it was Bridger’s turn to meet face to face with the local fowl. Not getting too deep into thinking, JB turned around and ran away as hard as he could. His doubts about such a decision vanished when he saw Hyam, who had already done the same. The guy had reached the closest elevator, which was moving along round vertical glass tunnel.

After passing those few hundreds of meters for the record time, the mutant was still late for the ride. Yet, he managed to jump inside the closing shaft itself. The capsule went up, he was straight under it, falling down the shaft. JB turned a switch on the vest to reverse its polarity. The vest became a giant magnet, which pulled him up, snapping to the elevator’s bottom. He watched as the monster charged at the shaft’s door and kept on tearing it into pieces to get in. It was clear that the door wouldn’t hold for long.

JB grabbed on to one of two handles that were under the capsule to switch off his vest. There was a hatch that led inside from the bottom. The mutant took out a knife to hit on the lock as hard as he could. The hatch opened up. As soon as the ranger got inside, he met his deadly scared companion once again.

“Well, thanks for waiting for me!” JB said threateningly. “Are you treating all of your guests this way?!”

The conversation was interrupted by a metallic clatter coming from downside. The men saw through the opened hatch as the creature went inside the shaft and went climbing up. Squeezing like a rat, it was moving up swiftly, they didn’t have much time.

“Unbelievable,” the mutant said in excitement. “Can this thing move faster?”

“It’s not necessary, we’re almost there! They don’t come outside, on the surface!” the guide shouted.

“They?! Are there more of these things?!”

That terrified look of Hyam’s was telling everything by itself. As for JB, he found himself lost in between two ways of action. To press that worm against the wall and make him talk, or to follow him, counting on this one knowing what he was doing. While his brain was going through processing, the right hand of the ranger’s went on doing its job. The next second the skinny man’s face was brutally crushed against the glass, leaving a webbing of cracks under it. The blood that came out had a pale rosy color, not human at all.

“What da fuck are you?” JB asked with anger.

“I’m a human! A human!” Hyam rushed to calm the opponent down. “It’s because of the adaptation procedure. I swear!”

“Just because of the temperature? Bullshit!”

“Not only the temperature… Stay here for a few weeks and you’ll get it.”

“No, thanks. You, Hyam, receive all the visitors, right?” JB returned to his original mission.

“Yes! Yes! I do,” suffering from the pain, he answered.

“What have you done with the government agent that was sent here?”

“What agent?”

Considering all the lies, JB wasn’t sure whether he should trust Hyam or not. So he wanted to test him for truth again. The mutant pulled him off from the wall and lifted up with the left hand. Then he fixed the guy in a position above the hole in the floor, where the climbing monster was seen through.

“I’ll give you one last chance! If you lie to me again, you’ll be talking to him!” the ranger nodded at the hatch. “Two weeks ago, a ranger came here. Edward Cody. What have you done to him?”

“That trader?” Hyam sounded scared like never before. “Yes, he was here… At first he tried to sell us some weird frogs for experiments. But when the team got rid of him, he stuffed his ship with the protvirre algae and flew away. He even had threatened us with a lawsuit before he got away… Said that he had the contacts in court or something…”

Now it sounded like the truth. JB knew Ranger Cody, and Hyam’s story was very similar to his own impression of the man. Yet, still being unsure of what to do with that disgusting person: to drop him down to the beast, or to let him live, JB stood there frozen. The process made him lose track of time and he didn’t notice at first that the capsule reached its destination. The door opened.

A familiar voice sounded around, which brought JB back to consciousness.

“Ranger, JB!” Skyman shouted. “Let the man go, ranger!”

The weakened body of the man dropped down on the floor after all. He stayed lying there, powerless.

JB walked out of the elevator. He appeared in another hallway, on the higher level. As soon as he walked forward, four rahtiong soldiers rushed to pass by him. They were armed with flamethrowers and equipped with a heavy battle suits.

The next second a rattle of destruction rolled through the hallway. The mutant looked back. The monster reached their level and attacked the capsule from the bottom. It got squashed instantly. And just as the beast started to take away parts of the wall to get out of the shaft, the soldiers used the fire against it. Soon the nearest space of the shaft turned into crematoria, which produced dust out of not only the monster but poor Hyam as well.

After giving a short cynical look at that picture, JB turned back to his old comrades. There were five persons in front of him. They wore those thermal suits which were missing from that closet.

“Skyman…” the ranger said to the colonel. “And here we have…” he looked over others. “Your posse…”

“I didn’t expect to see you here, JB,” the colonel said.

A sly smirk came out as it was ought to.

“So you’ve come here from Rigel to look at the flowers?”

The agents' team exchanged looks. The ranger checked out his communicator on the left wrist to see if there were any critical updates. He didn’t seem to be interested in those agents at all. At least, he sure made an impression of it.

“Come along, JB. Let’s have a talk,” leaving behind that fake pretense, Josh tried to start that conversation over.

“Okay,” the ranger agreed casually.

Those people JB knew once from the island had changed over the years. They were soldiers now, serving at the Galaxy Union's army. The difference in age between JB and Eugene and Fred wasn’t that obvious now. They were grown-up, virile men. And JB’s features mostly stayed the same, due to his long life ability. El and Tina were even further away from those young, naive girls that the mutant used to know. This meeting wasn’t a surprise for the big guy, but he still couldn’t see what kind of feelings it did call out inside of him. The arrival was too saturated already to look at things soberly for now.

The group led him somewhere, he went along. Not saying anything to anyone, he was silently waiting, taking the time to study them. Skyman was in the lead, along with the Chief of Security. It looked like Josh was the one giving instructions.

Those last hours’ events and the information gained from Hyam had brought some clarity into the situation. The previous impression proved itself wrong. It was time to come up with a new one. In his mind, JB went through everything from the very beginning. New details were taken into account, and the priorities were set in place. At the same time his gloved hand was playfully turning from side to side a small silver bracelet-key, which he had taken off Hyam’s wrist before getting out of the elevator.

Let’s try it one more time…

Fact 1: Edward Cody wasn’t an agent after all. I still don’t know who that agent is.

Fact 2: this place is not a reservation of any kind, not a plant garden either.

Fact 3: Skyman knows far more than I do, far more than an officer with his clearance is supposed to know.

Fact 4: they need something from me, they wouldn’t reveal themselves otherwise.

The question: should I kill the guards and then make them talk or give them a chance to tell me everything at will?

When coming to one of the station’s restrooms the guards stayed outside, leaving the agents alone with the ranger in that humble chamber. JB checked the communicator once again, nothing new there. It could mean one of two things: either there were no data servers around on his way there, or his instruments weren’t as good as he thought.

While agents were setting up their equipment, which there was quite a bit of, and taking off those thermal suits, JB walked around the room. He got to the soda machine to get a couple cans of juice and with the refreshments returned to his observation.

El and Tina set up a whole analytical center in just a few minutes. There were several digital terminals, lots of memory blocks and a few screens. The most interesting parts to the ranger were those exact memory towers. JB had recognized them from the first sight. And it completely changed his attitude towards them. The picture finally started clearing up for him.

“JB?” Skyman turned to the ranger standing alone. “Shall we?”

The colonel gestured at two armchairs inviting the pilot to sit in one of them. Now the agents were in those traditional blue-white colors of the official uniform. JB sat on the spot that he was offered. Josh took the armchair in front of him. Fred and Eugene were located right behind their chief. Skyman used the seat’s side panel to activate a chess table projection, which grew out of the floor between them. Two other separate screen projections were created for each player as well.

“Care to play?” Josh offered.

“Sure. Why not?” JB replied with half-sleepy voice.

The standard forty-two-figures chess layout appeared on the mail field. And also each player was given twelve extra figures at his personal disposal that were displayed on those individual screens of the players.

The first thing JB did was reprogram his extra screen to hide the transparency view from the opponent. That seemed quite unusual to all three of them.

“Why have you done that, JB?” Skyman asked ironically smiling. “We have equal replacement sets…”

“Well, you know what they say about old dogs…” the ranger winked.

The game began…

The first match was going on for about ninety minutes. The four of them had discussed a lot: the years that passed, the old adventures on the island, shared the view on the war and other things. Eugene and Fred didn’t stand back anymore but took seats of their own with the leaders. And the women were finishing up their work on the equipment setup. Their glances at the ranger happened more and more with the development of the conversation.

“Checkmate, JB,” Skyman said with great satisfaction when making his last move on that wide board.

The big guy displayed a congratulatory expression, but that loss wasn’t any surprising to him.

“I have to admit, though, it wasn’t an easy one,” the colonel added. “One more?”

JB checked the communicator’s screen on his left wrist casually. That action looked so natural, just like a man checking the time on his watch.

“Sure, I have time,” JB said maintaining that friendly smile.

His right-hand fingers went typing on the screen hidden from the others. A fresh layout appeared on the board. Then he started fussing around on the spot, showing how uncomfortable he was there. The mutant kept doing that until everyone in the room paid attention to him. A second after settling down, JB pulled out a device so ancient that everyone just snapped to it with their stares.