AcQuest: A Space Opera Military Technothriller (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 3) (9 page)

“There,” Burke pointed to a large asteroid a few meters away. “Put us down there.”

Q managed to pull them to the asteroid when their energy suits came off. A sphere of purple light encompassed him and Burke, protecting them from the antimatter particles all around them.

Q turned around to see Burke’s hands radiating the same shade of purple as the shield. He was putting up the spherical shield. And that could only mean one thing.

“You’re a mage?!” Q was stunned. So far, the only mage he personally knew was himself.

“Not exactly. This is a pretty weak mage attack. A strong warrior could probably create it if he trained hard enough.”

“Trained hard enough? Why would a scientist train himself in the art of Elementa?”

“Well, sometimes experimentalists need to protect themselves from their experiments.”

“Just what kind of experiments do you guys make?” Q joked.

“Well, have you heard of the incredible duck?” he asked.

“Should I have heard of it?”

“Nah. It was just like the incredible hulk, but instead of becoming stronger it mutated into a man-eating duck.”

“But why was the duck exposed to gamma rays?”

“Some guy wanted to roast the duck for dinner.”

Q waited for Burke to laugh but there wasn’t even a smile. The guy was serious.

Maybe scientists aren’t as smart as I thought
, he chuckled.

Burke walked up to him. His hands had dimmed down to their regular shade of peach. “I’ve set up the barrier,” he said. “It should last us for at least a day.”

“What do we do till then?” Q asked. Jake’s deadline was in a week. He couldn't afford to waste an entire day.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “You need to rest up and regain your energy. As powerful as I may be, you’re still the only one here with the capability of making an energy suit.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I get it,” Q said.

Burke looked at him expectantly.

“Wait, you mean right now?” he asked.

Burke nodded, “We need your strength,” he said. “You can't help it if you’ve been born with this kind of strength, can you?”

“Yeah right,” Q stretched out over the asteroid floor. “There are times when I wish I was just a regular high school kid.”

Burke kept quiet and whistled as a shooting star passed by the asteroid.

“Wishes,” he chuckled. “Theoretically impossible.”

 

***

 

Q woke up, his mind in a daze. He moved his arms around. His body seemed to have healed properly. He tried standing up, and this time he didn't feel woozy in the least.

“I see you’re awake,” Burke walked up to him, the purple barrier’s glow radiating from behind him.

“How long was I out?”

“Almost a day.”

“We’ve got to get going then,” Q said. “Haven’t any time to waste.”

“I was hoping you’d say that,” he smiled.

Q focused and flicked his wrist. A white glow enveloped them. The energy suits had been activated. Burke opened his hands out, and the purple shield dissolved into dust and disappeared.

Q lifted them up and into space. In seconds they were whizzing past the stars and planets, the stalwarts of space turning into mere specks in the face of their speed.

“Do you have a plan?” Burke asked.

“No. Should I have one?”

“It’s fine,” Burke said. “We’ll figure something out.”

They traveled in silence for the rest of the journey. It didn’t take them long to reach their destination. A pure white planet headed towards them, its size seemingly growing with every second. It seemed isolated from the rest of its solar brethren, not even a meteor in the quiet space around it.

Q and Burke descended to the surface of the planet. They shot through clouds of freezing cold vapor, the energy suit transmitting every icy touch as they passed through them.

The surface of the planet was nothing but cold, hard ice. Q tried to maintain his balance as he took a few steps on the slippery surface, crashing to the ground once too often.

Burke, on the other hand, had a more rational idea. He lifted his hands up, a blade of energy forming under his feet, and moved around happily, skating like a performer. “Time to get the Lambda Driver,” he smiled.

Q pushed Burke sideways onto the ground. The scientist slid along the ice for a few feet before he came to a stop.

“What was that for?” Burke picked himself up.

Q pointed to the ground, at a ten foot wide hole in the ice. It was filled with clear water that reflected the white of the snow, camouflaging it perfectly with the surrounding ice.

“Wait a second,” Burke said. “Use your Q-maps here.”

“Umm...Okay?” Q couldn’t see what he was getting at. He focused on the atoms around him and images instantly flowed through. Accessing Q maps in the Anti-verse was getting easier the more he used it.

He could see a large tinge of blue come from the huge planet. It was radiating a powerful energy source, and there was no doubt it was the Lambda Driver. He focused a little more on the planet and tried to pinpoint the Lambda Driver’s exact location.

“That’s funny,” he murmured.

“It’s in the center of the planet, isn’t it?” Burke guessed.

“Yeah. But how do we get there?”

Burke looked at the patch of water, its surface as clear as a mirror.

“Oh, no,” Q said. “I’m not getting in that water. Who knows how deep we’ll have to go before we find the Driver.”

“You have a better idea?”

Q sighed, “Maybe we’ll get one if we think hard enough,” he said half-heartedly.

“Well, I have the perfect solution,” Burke said. “This is payback for pushing me into a portal,” he said and pushed Q into the ice cold water.

Q sank under and waited for the immense cold to get to him, but there was nothing of the sort. He took in a big breath, rejuvenating his lungs. He couldn't believe it; he was actually breathing underwater!

“The energy suit helps act as a breathing-filter when you’re underwater,” Burke swam down to him.

“Wait a minute,” Q said. “Burke, you’re talking underwater.”

“Your suit helps with communication as well,” Burke explained. “It transmits brain waves through the water and helps us communicate. It’s like telepathy. Learn what your toy can do before you play around with it,” he winked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Q waved his hand. He was more interested in what else his energy suit could do.

“We’d better go that way,” Burke suggested, pointing to the darker parts of the trench.

“Why is the scary way the only way?” Q muttered. For once he’d like to see his mission take him to a sunny beach or a tropical island.
Maybe a water park
, he thought.

Burke and Q swam beside each other into the darkness below them. A few minutes in, Q felt a powerful aura emerge, almost as though the planet itself were awakening. Burke stopped mid stroke. He seemed to have felt it as well.

“This is not good,” he said. He turned his head left and right.

What is he looking for?
Q wondered. A giant beam of blue energy emerged from the darkness below and hit the ice above them. Q shielded his eyes from the glare. A whole section of water froze into a solid pillar of ice that stood right in front of him.

“The water froze?” Q asked.

“That isn’t the problem,” Burke said.

Q felt a low growling noise coming from below. He looked down at the darkness to see a pair of glowing eyes emerge.

“Get out of here!” Burke yelled, thrashing through the water.

Q still floated aimlessly, sucked into the human curiosity of wanting to know what it was that was down there. His animalistic protective instinct hadn't taken over yet. The eyes came closer, their mesmerizing glow becoming fiercer and brighter as every moment passed. In seconds, Q was able to see who the eyes belonged to.

Oh dear
, he thought,
I should have run
.

A huge serpent stormed out of the trench, creating a turbulent torrent in its wake. The serpent was so long that Q couldn’t even see its end coming out of the trench. Its scaly skin seemed very tough, and it was about as wide as a truck, which wasn’t exactly comforting. Its sharp teeth slashed at empty water as it rose up from the darkness.

Q desperately swam away from the beast. All that did was provoke it to notice and chase after him. It charged after him at amazing speed. For every inch Q swam, the serpent covered at least ten yards. Q realized that he had to out-power the beast rather than out-run it, but that seemed to be an even tougher task. He summoned every ounce of courage he had and turned around to face the great beast.

Bad idea. The thing was charging at him like a freight train.

Q imagined his energy build up inside of him and opened up his arms, forming a perfect ‘T’ with his body, his palms facing the beast. The beast had come out far enough from the trench for him to see the end of the serpent.

Only one problem though. It wasn’t the serpent’s end, it was another beginning. The two ends of the serpent had heads. Each head as ferocious as the other. The second head quickly joined the first one in chasing after their ‘snack’.

Contrary to what Q expected, the heads started brawling with each other, as though they were fighting over who was going to eat Q.

Don’t both of them get food even if only one of them eats me?
Q wondered. The heads shared the same body, so they should both be getting the food.

What am I thinking?
he chuckled.
I can’t already be thinking I’m their meal.

He pushed his energy into his hands and swung them out in an arc. A bolt of lightning shot through the water, and stunned the beasts, paralyzing them into live statues. He unleashed another bolt, this one larger than the first. All the beasts could do was helplessly watch as the bolts smacked into them. The attack made them fall unconscious and they sank back into the trench.

“Good work,” Burke said. “What did you do to them?”

“Used my Elementa of Lightning.”

“Pretty gutsy. You could have electrocuted every living thing in the ocean.”

“This ocean is made of pure water, not salty water. Pure water doesn’t conduct electricity very well, so it’s harder for me to electrocute everyone with just one bolt of lightning.”

“So you were aware of that,” he said. “Clever kid.”

“Just what was that thing?” Q asked.

“It’s one of the top predators on this planet,” Burke explained “I didn't think we would cross paths with it so far above the ocean floor. It’s called a Dyadrax, a two-headed underwater serpent. It corners its prey with its two heads and finishes them off. And yes, the two heads often fight about who gets the kill. That’s not a very good survival strategy, which probably explains why there aren’t too many of them.”

“You would think they would be smarter with their two brains,” Q said.

“To be fair, the size of each brain is the size of a baseball at most. That’s pretty small considering its size.”

“Fine, fine, it’s an intellectually challenged creature. Now,” Q pointed to the deepest part of the trench. “I guess we’d better go down there.”

“There are hundreds of monsters waiting for us down there,” Burke said “And they’ll all feel threatened by us because we took down the Dyadrax, an alpha predator.”

“We?” Q raised an eyebrow.

“Fine. You,” Burke smiled. “But the fact is we would have to face tons of them down there.”

“How about we take them down fifty-fifty?” Q suggested.

“Sounds good to me.”

“You better not depend on me if a Dyadrax chases after you again,” he chuckled.

Q vice gripped him playfully.

“Ouch, don’t kill me” Burke tried to squirm away.

“Don’t worry, you’ve got a bunch of monsters down there waiting to do that.”

And on that happy note they descended into the abyss.

 

***

 

Elizabeth awoke, her body teeming with pain. She felt like she had been flash frozen, still and cold. Everything around her was completely silent, not a bit of noise trickling into her ears. She opened her eyes. The walls surrounding her were broken all over, but the roof still held on even though it looked a bit rickety. She dragged herself to one of the gaps in the wall and looked out.

Her heart jumped.

She was looking at Aliea academy. But only in name.

There were no buildings in sight, no people, no anything. All she could see was pure white snow raging around like a playground bully. Aliea looked exactly like what the lady in her dream had shown her. Elizabeth had prepared herself to face something like this, but the sheer destruction was too overwhelming.

She struggled to get up, her strength leaving her body with every effort she made. She crawled around, trying to find shelter before the roof gave way. Her legs trembled as she inched on slowly, the wind pushing her back, the ice and snow stinging her face and the hard, cold rain bearing down on her like it had no mercy. She hadn't even moved a few feet away when the land under her shook violently, and the air vibrated with a piercing screech.

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