ZeQuest: A Space Opera Mystery Novella (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 2) (11 page)

“This is not fun at all,” Q squirmed in the pilot seat, his eyes locked onto the view screen in front of him.

“We’re trying to prevent a genocide,” Carlos said from the seat next to him. “If this were fun, then there would have to be something very wrong with what we’re doing.”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “Deploy manual pilot.”

The panel in front of him split open and a semicircular steering wheel, extended out. To the left of the pilot wheel was a screen that Carlos was furiously tapping on, his hands flying through the air.

“It’s bad enough that we have to get stuck in a stealth ship the size of a tin can, do you have to throw your hands around every few seconds?”

“No space to type, and also,” he paused as he typed something out. “No time to talk.”

“Ugh,” Q said and turned his attention back to the view screen. The white clouds beneath them parted and gave way to the green plains of Armorica’s capital city.

“Enable heat scans, radius two miles.”

A screen at his side shifted images, bringing up a heat scan with all the hot and cold spots. He noticed hundreds of small red spots littered around below them.

“There are a ton of civilians down there,” he said. “It won’t be good if the Getafixians attack us head on in such a spot.”

“Mmmhmm,” his brother said, his hands still blazing through the screen.

Q got that Carlos was hacking into the palace’s network, but did that mean he couldn’t even reply to any other question? First of all, Q found it really hard and frankly, weird, to accept that the Getafixians were the villains here. It’d be such a waste to have such cool hot springs and
end
up being the villain.

He didn’t get why it’d be a waste but he just agreed with himself on it. The end matter was, this was quite an insane mission for him to be carrying out. The only reason he was okay with it was because his now silent brother was confident as to what was going on in Armorica’s shadows.

“Got it,” Carlos yelled, and his screen glowed with a green dialog box.

“Force field around the palace won’t go back up for now?”

“It can’t go back up until I let it,” he grinned.

“Great. Does General Za’ad know you took it down?”

“He knows where to look to see if it’s down or not. However, right now we have a bigger mission at stake.”

“This ship has the coordinates he gave us right?”

“Yeah,” his screens shifted to the ship’s interface and he scrolled through. “Yeah, we’re on course. We’ve got to get to the Vlar mountains.”

“Where exactly…” a dark shadow ran across Q’s face. “What the hell?”

A dark cluster of clouds appeared before them, their shades nearly as dark as those on Thanos. They didn’t seem dangerous, but he didn’t want to head into them.

“The Vlar Mountains are just behind those clouds,” Carlos said.

Q let the ship head into it, and it trembled from the high speed winds it had to face.

“It’s only a little further,” Carlos said, and likewise, the trembling stopped and the clouds grew thinner.

On the other side of it all lay a sight of mystic beauty.

A vast plain ran along the ground with a crystal clear river between it and a beautiful mountain range. Green grass stretched all around the plains right up till the river banks. A tinge of mist floated over the water and flowed onto the plains, making everything look ethereal and mystic all at once.

The ship shook again, this time the disturbance coming from seemingly nowhere.

“Damn it,” Carlos spat.

“What’s wrong?”

The ship went into a barrel roll, tossing Q up and down over and over again. When it finally subsided, he wasn’t in the ship anymore. He felt cold rocks under his fingers, and he looked up dazed, at a tall figure in a white gown.

“Hello, my boy,” Idhren said. “You’re just in time.”

Screams of pain and anguish filled Q’s ears. To his right he could see Elizabeth on the verge of tears, trying desperately to not look at something behind Idhren. He picked himself up and jumped back, putting good distance between him and Idhren. And then he saw it.

Around ten metal arms were swirling around on a table behind Idhren. He could see very little except for the pale thin arms that flew around the air, as though fighting the tentacles.

Torture
, he realized.

“Ah yes, he is bearing the pain for a good cause,” Idhren said.

Q bent low and swung his arms forward. A wave of electricity materialized through the air and headed right at Idhren. The High priest lifted his staff, and the crystal orb glowed. Winds ran in from everywhere, creating a barrier against the wave. But Q’s wave smashed through it and hit the metal arms head on, electrocuting all of them and shutting them down.

“This one won’t be so lucky,” Idhren had swiftly moved over to Elizabeth, and now had his staff around her neck.

“Wind is a sharp weapon,” he said and a flick of wind shot past Q, shallowly cutting his finger.

“Stop it, Idhren,” Carlos emerged from behind the table. He had bruises on his legs and face, as though he’d taken the harder route in.

“Hello, Commander. Are you glad I teleported you here?” he smiled.

“Leave the girl alone.”

“You know I cannot do that. She’s a hostage.”

“All you need is energy for the H.U.L.K. bomb,” Carlos said. “You don’t need her.”

“Well, yes. I do need energy for my bomb. But now that you revoked my kill order. I do need her.”

“Why in the world do you need her if all you want is energy?!”

Q’s eyes went wide, his heart beat faster. He understood it all. Why Idhren wanted a kill order. Why he needed it for the bomb. What that machine was.

“You,” he glared at Idhren. “You despicable creatures.”

The High Priest smiled, as though he were amused that Q had figured it out.

“You’re planning to use life energy to fuel the bomb aren’t you?”

“My, my,” Idhren said. “Children are so much smarter these days.”

“That’s what you did to Alicia,” Elizabeth’s eyes teared up. “That’s what you did to all those people you kidnapped.”

Q stared blankly, finally realizing why Alicia had gone missing. She had been kidnapped to have her life energy harvested.

“The Getafixian special forces mistook her for a civilian and captured her,” he said. “Once she’d seen everything we knew there was no letting her go, and so we did the most obvious thing. We harvested her life energy. But I have to say, she was a mere test run for the
real
deal.”

“That kill order,” Q said. “That wasn’t to get all that land was it? You wanted use all those people who would die to harvest for life energy.”

“But sadly your brother ruined that plan,” he said. “So now I have to resort to other resources.”

Q looked at the now broken machine, then at the table. An elvish looking boy lay there, trickles of blood running down his now limp hands.

“That machine takes all that life energy and passes it through the pipes, into the bomb,” Idhren said almost proudly. “Pretty efficient architecture you know.”

“You are no longer sane, Idhren,” Carlos said.

“Sane?” Idhren laughed. “What do you know about who I am, Commander? Do not judge me against the Idhren you knew five years ago. He and I are not the same, and we will never be the same. Do you know even a single thing of what happened in those five years you never came back?”

“You’ve turned into a monster.”

“The only difference between man and monster is that with a monster, you do not know the reasons for his action.”

“Stop this nonsense. You cannot possibly think of killing all those people.”

“Oh, I am past that idea now. I was only going to harvest those meaningless civilians, but you ruined that plan, I’ve decided to act more
sane
and harvest just one, mere boy,” he pointed to the table. “Meet the Lord of Thanos, Prince Ryul.”

Oh god
, Q thought.

This wasn’t good at all. The very guy they’d sworn to protect and save was the guy who had been tortured right before their very eyes.

“You both should be thankful,” Idhren said. “My special force is so furious with you both for messing up the plan that I had to send them away just to make sure they didn’t kill you!” he laughed.

“You asked me to come to Armorica,” Q said. “Why would you want to do that?”

Idhren smiled, “I wanted a safety net in case the Thanonians did rebel against us, and so I brought you and Carlos in,” he said. “Turns out you both made what I feared a reality.”

“Why do you even want the H.U.L.K?” Carlos asked seriously. “You don’t care if Thanos lives or dies do you?”

“Thanos?” he laughed. “You think this is about Thanos? No. This is much grander. Let me give you a clue. What’s the biggest problem the Getafixians have been facing?”

“Ummm, I don’t know? They have a crazy guy for a High Priest?” Q said.

A gust of wind blew past Q again, this time cutting his cheek, “No wise cracks, boy, or the next one hits the Seraphian.”

Idhren cleared his throat, as though he were giving a lecture. “So, as I was saying,” he said. “The biggest problem is our lack of Druids, so I made a modified H.U.L.K to fix all of that.”

“What are you babbling about?” Carlos said.

“There was a young cadet I met a few years back. He saw the problem the Getafixians were having with their sudden loss of life energy. A year of research later, he came with a brilliant plan. He said ‘A bomb uses all its energy at once and explodes. What happens if you slow down its radiation and let it dissipate over time?’ Does the idea ring a bell?”

Carlos’ eyes widened.

Oh god. Please don’t let this be true
, Q hoped.

“It was your idea, Commander Carlos,” Idhren said. “It was your nineteen year old self who structured this hypothetical plan months before leaving Armorica.”

“But,” Carlos stuttered, his mind clearly torn apart by that one statement. “That was just an idea. I didn’t mean to…”

Q knew exactly what was going on in his brother’s mind. He was going to blame himself for everything that had happened, and as usual being consoled would not help.

“Well,” Idhren continued. “Now that you’ve become emotional, Carlos, I’ll just go on with my speech,” he said. “So my version of the H.U.L.K. will passively infuse everyone with energy over a period of time and a decade later, lo and behold, the Getafixians will be a proud race of Druids again.”

“A proud race of druids that caused genocide,” Q said.

“That’s it,” he flicked his wrist, and a gust of wind pushed past Q, this time coming from behind him and heading towards Elizabeth.

Q charged in, forcing himself to focus on the image of a spear forming in his hands. His energy seeped out from within, converting to the Elementa of light and solidifying into a spear. He threw it in one fluid motion, getting Idhren to move away from Elizabeth, and distracting him enough to cause his wind attack to dissipate.

Elizabeth herself was still in shock, her eyes looking down at the ground. Q realized she’d been through a lot more than she could handle, but he knew now wasn’t the time to be worrying about her psychological state. He focused on his Elementa of fire and melted her cuffs by summoning a flame.

“You’re okay now,” he said and turned around, ready to face the Getafixian High Priest.

Idhren stood next to the machine above the table, a wide smirk on his face. He swung his staff upward, and a gust of wind shot to the ceiling above him. The pipe connected to the machine cracked a bit, and something that looked like pixie dust flew out. The wind around Idhren grew stronger, collecting the continuous spill from the pipe and creating a sort of pixie dust storm.

A glow of white light started to emanate from within the vortex, and Q could feel the raw power surge from within, a power that was far beyond anything he’d felt before. He went into an attacking stance, summoning a large flame in one hand, and a spear of light in the other.

“
You shall never beat me, boy
,” thundered Idren’s now-omnipotent voice. The vortex cut off, and at the centre stood Idhren, his eyes glowing with a bright white light.

“
For I am a Druid of light
.”

***

Q watched as the air danced around Idhren. Well, it usually danced around him, but now it seemed like it was alive, as though it had its own mind. A stream of raw power emanated from Idhren, and unsettled Q.

“We need to be careful,” Elizabeth said. “He just infused himself with Prince Ryul’s life energy.”

“That’s like being on god-level performance enhancing drugs,” Carlos said, his face looking a little less emotional that it was a few seconds ago.

“Ugh,” Q said. “He’s way tougher than before, then.”

That just made his job a lot harder to pull off. He could feel his breathing become strained and difficult, as though a weight were pressing against his lungs. It took him a second to realize that Idhren was sucking the air around him, leaving him with nothing to breathe.

He threw his spear of light at the guy, and charged in, hoping to use the spear’s distraction to land a direct hit.

“I said Druid of light did I not?” Idhren said, and sliced up the spear with a light sword he materialized on his own.

“Oh no,” he said. Unlike Q, Idhren was born into a race that traditionally controlled the Elementa of light. All that he lacked was the life energy to use it, and now that he had it, he’d taken Q’s trump weapon, made it way stronger, and more importantly, made it his own.

“A Druid is not a druid till he masters the Elementa of light,” Idhren twirled his staff and ten swords materialized in the air above him, each one glowing with a heavenly aura. He thrust his staff forward, and the swords shot towards Q.

Q focused hard, tracking their paths and getting ready to dodge. The ground rumbled and a wall of stone shot up in front of him, separating him from Idhren.

“He won’t get past me this time,” Elizabeth stood next to him, wincing from the stress she’d undergone to raise that wall. All said and done, the wall still crumbled right after the swords hit it, but the swords dissipated as well.

“Your light Elementa still isn’t strong enough,” Elizabeth chuckled.

“On the contrary,” he held his hands apart and a dark glob started to grow in the middle. “That was merely a test run.”

Antimatter
, Q realized. He was converting the light he materialized into pure antimatter. If that projectile came in contact with anything else…

“Idhren, listen to yourself,” Carlos said. “You’re not okay. You’re acting like a demon.”

“I’ll tell you who the demons are,” he said as the glob kept growing in size. “All those people who laughed at us, who laughed at a race that was now powerless, who said we were all worthless to the universe, who said investing in such a race was like investing in trash.”

“No one is saying that,” Q said, desperately trying to calm him down.

An alarm blared through the cave. Idhren’ face dropped, as though he couldn’t believe this was happening right now. Nonetheless his vortex started up again, covering them in wind, and cutting off much quicker than before, probably because of his new found energy.

When the world stopped spinning, Q noticed the red lights flashing all around, with loud alarms piercing through the air. They were in some sort of cave-corridor, with a glass wall behind them, and the room on the other side of the wall.

“Prince Ryul!” A Thanonian man ran behind Q and towards the Prince, who was lying on the floor, still unconscious.

“What is going on?” Idhren thundered, and the cave rumbled.

“Sire, the H.U.L.K is out of control,” a man in a white cloak came close.

“Then try to control it.”

“It’s not possible, Sire. We recorded a wave of energy being expelled a few minutes ago from somewhere within the cave. That wave set off a chain reaction within the H.U.L.K.”

The glass wall cracked, and the cave ceiling crumbled a bit.

“It was you,” Carlos glared at Idhren. “You infused yourself with energy and caused the wave that set this off.”

Idhren completely ignored him, “How do we stop this bomb?”

“We believe a powerful enough force can reverse the polarity, or energy flow, of the bomb and let it naturally stop the chain reaction,” he said.

“Very well. We shall give it a powerful force,” Idhren said.

“I’ll help you,” Q said. “As much as I hate a certain group of people on this planet, I don’t want to see it destroyed.”

“You cannot, boy,” Idhren said. “This bomb’s containment unit cannot be reached through any physical door. Only the art of teleportation can get you inside, but the energy density in there right now is so high even that is a hard feat. As it stands, I cannot teleport the two of us.”

“You need power, and I can help you,” Q said.

Idhren swung his staff and the vortex surrounded him.

“Ryul! No!” A voice came from behind.

The elven boy ran ahead of Q, with this Avon guy hot on his heels

“What are you doing?!” Avon yelled.

Prince Ryul stopped right outside the still spinning vortex, “Idhren needs help. I cannot let the people of a planet die. It is not the Thanonian way,” he said, his eyes cold and piercing.

“He can’t take you along with him,” Q said. “He just said he couldn’t teleport two people.”

“He’s a Druid. Of course he can teleport two people. He said that only to protect you.”

Q sat down stunned.
Protect
. The guy he was fighting just protected him.

“Please don’t go,” Elizabeth looked at the Prince.

Ryul smiled, a pure melancholy on his face, “Do not stop me from entering a portal this time as well, Seraphian,” he said and jumped in.

And as though Idhren had been waiting for this all along, the vortex disappeared, reappearing on the other side of the glass wall.

Q turned to Carlos, “We can’t do anything now can we?” he asked.

His brother, who seemed to have regained his composure, shook his head. “For once, we cannot change the outcome with our hands.”

The vortex inside expanded, shrouding the room in dark winds. Q could see two shadows move about here and there, as they shifted around the dark outline of the H.U.L.K.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Q said. “I need to try to teleport,” he said and summoned his inner energy. If Idhren could teleport with wind, he could teleport with light. All he had to do was use the right sort of imagination, and summon a large amount of life energy.

At that very moment, a light sparked inside the dark shadows and the room exploded. Glass shattered, and parts of the cave wall collapsed. Q used the energy he summoned to create an overhead shield of light and protected everyone from the falling debris. The bright radiance lasted for a few seconds before completely dying down and making everything visible again.

“We’re going in!” Q yelled and jumped in, covering himself with a small skin of light just in case.

The H.U.L.K. lay dormant in the center of the room, its green metal surface now rough and corroded. Collapsed on the floor were two figures, High Priest Idhren and Prince Ryul.

“Prince!” Avon jumped in and rushed to his side, followed by his Thanonian compatriots. Elizabeth came down as well, spreading her wings and gliding down towards him.

Q looked at Idhren. The High Priest had a wide smile on his face, one of satisfaction, and his eyes were closed.

He knelt down next to the High Priest, “You’re an idiot you know. Creating a weapon that you would go to such extents to tame.”

The smile remained on his face.

“He will not reply to you,” Ryul croaked from beside him.

“Well, I’ll talk to him when he wakes up.”

“He will not wake up again.”

“Oh god,” Q’s face dropped.

He looked at the Getafixian’s eternal smile, his still and silent body. Prince Ryul was right.

Idhren had passed on. Q held the man’s wrinkled hand that was still gripping his wooden staff. The crystal orb glowed a faint shade of pink, as though it were mourning the death of its wielder.

“He was happy at the end,” Ryul smiled. “He said he finally got to do something for his people.”

Q’s heart wrenched with feelings of confusion. He did not know what to feel anymore. There were too many conflicting emotions welling up inside him.

“Ryul don’t you dare!” Elizabeth half yelled, half sobbed. “I’ve let too many people die on my watch.”

Q’s eyes shot towards the Prince.
Oh please, not another one,
he thought.

The Prince’s face started to lose color, and his hands trembled as he put them on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “You did not let me die,” he said. “I chose my fate myself.”

“You can’t,” she buried her face in his chest.

“On Thanos we have a saying,” he said quietly. “Death marks the end of a man’s destiny.”

He coughed, his voice growing hoarser with every second.

“I have fulfilled my destiny. It is my time to leave.”

Prince Ryul’s eyes looked at all of them one last time.

And then they closed for all eternity.

***