ZeQuest: A Space Opera Mystery Novella (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 2) (8 page)

Carlos looked up at the stars as he made his way out to the palace lawns. Their pure crystal light shone in all their glory. He missed being back on Aliea, he missed being back on Earth. He knew he had only been on Armorica for a few days now, but he still missed home.

He found it amusing that he didn’t know which felt more like home, Aliea Academy or the Earth. He’d spent so much of his time at Aliea as a Commander that he really didn’t think of Earth as home anymore. Rather it was just a place he’d been born.

He lay on the lawn and reminisced about his times on Armorica. He had to say he’d missed this place as well. It had been his home for the hardest years of his life, and he’d learnt more here than from anywhere else.

“
Imagine the wind to be a part of you,
” he recalled Idhren saying to him when he first started learning the Elementa of wind. The corner of his lips twitched into a smile at the fond memory, dropping just as quickly a darker one resurfaced as well. He remembered it as though it were just yesterday.

He’d been hiding behind the bushes in the palace lawn to jump out and scare Idhren. Instead he ended up eavesdropping on his conversation with someone else.

“
You must give us time, your Majesty,
” Idhren said.

“
I understand we’re your biggest sponsors, High Priest. But we cannot afford to keep funding a weak link in our allies
,” the man said. “
It is time we redirected those funds to someone more useful to us.
”

“
Just give us a few more months
,” he pleaded.

“
I’m sorry. We’ve already transferred our wealth out of your treasury. Please do not take this personally.
”

Carlos didn’t remember how long he’d stayed in the bushes after that, but when he came out he saw Idhren standing still, his eyes staring down at his feet.

“
I’ll show you
,” the High Priest had said. “
I’ll show you all
.”

“Looks like you’ve got something on your mind,” a voice interrupted Carlos’ thoughts.

He looked up and saw Q walking toward him, a jacket around his torso.

“Nah,” Carlos quickly shut off his thoughts and smiled. “I’m fine.”

“This week is going to be pretty hectic, huh?”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “When I brought you here this was the last thing I’d expected.”

“Well, at least it was on the ‘What to expect’ list,” Q laughed.

Carlos grinned, “When you’ve been in this sort of thing for a while, you start to expect everything.”

“That is true,” he said. “Same time last year I wouldn’t have believed you if told me about extraterrestrial civilizations, let alone about wave-skills and sorcerers.”

“Time does change the way we think.”

“So what were you doing out here?”

“I needed some fresh air. I spent the last few hours looking into that thing we’d talked about.”

Q seemed excited, “Did you find something?”

“I found a ton of things,” his voice went quiet. “We were right.”

His brother’s face dropped, “What should we do now?”

“Just relax,” he said. “We’ve got to plan this out carefully.”

“Fine,” he fidgeted a bit, and changed the topic. “You wanna go look at the stealth carriers? A walk might do you some good.”

“I guess,” Carlos said. “The hangar is a few miles to the south of the castle.”

“I’m dressed to walk,” Q pointed to his jacket, which seemed really attractive now in the cold winds.

Carlos talked to the security personnel and got them to shut down the force field. Soon they were on their way to the hangar. He could hear the sounds of chatter and metal clunking becoming louder as they neared the hangar.

It seemed odd to him that there would be so much work going on this late at night, but then again, there was a war looming over the planet, so it was probably justified.

Falael ran up to them just as they entered the metal fence around the hangar. The hangar was a really large flat land, with sections of metal floors and pathways in between grassy lawns with a few big workshops scattered all around.

“Ah, Commander Carlos,” Falael nodded his head. “How may I be of service?”

“Hello, Falael,” Carlos said. “We’re just here to look around.”

“The technicians are working on our ship as we speak, Commander. It should be ready by tomorrow evening.”

“Working on it?” he raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Our ship underwent a massive engine failure on its last trip, so we’re making sure nothing of the sort ever happens again.”

“Or we could just completely avoid using that ship and use something else instead,” Q said.

“That is very plausible, sir, but this ship has one of the best stealth systems in our fleet. Without it, the Thanonian defense guards will kill us anyway.”

“So it’s a matter of choosing the most statistically favorable position,” Carlos said.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “Also, the engine we’re reinstalling is our flagship model. So there’s nothing to worry about.”

Loud alarms sounded across the hangar, and the warning flashes bathed the floor in red.

“What’s going on?” Q asked.

An intense burst of sound shot through the air, it’s low bassy tone making Carlos feel like his ears were being ripped apart.

A spacecraft
, he thought and looked up.

The sky over the hangar was hazy, with dark clouds masking it, but inside all that haziness Carlos could see a shadow sift through, a shadow the size of an Olympic stadium.

“Oh god,” he said.

Q and Falael were looking up as well, and the center of the shadow started to glow with a green circle.

“HIT THE DECK!” Falael yelled.

Carlos pulled Q out of his daze and dragged him out to the fence. He looked back just in time to see a wide beam of green light from the ship hit the ground.

And then the hangar exploded.

Carlos dived to the ground, trying his best to put himself between Q and the blast. Searing heat ran all around him, and the sound of metal crunches and implosions filled the air. The loud, bassy sound called out once again, lasting a few seconds before dying down. He peeked out of his cover position and looked up. The ship’s green circle dimmed, and the ship disappeared back into the clouds.

“Sir! Are you alright?” Falael knelt next to him.

Carlos looked at Q, who was still awake, and fine.

“Yeah, we’re okay,” he said.

“Those scheming Thanonians,” Falael cursed.

“How did that ship get in?” he asked. “We should have been alerted much earlier to an intruder spacecraft
that
large. That thing was a level-A warship.”

“It’s got stealth,” he mumbled. “That’s the only way it could have gotten past all our defenses.”

“That’s impossible. A stealth ship that big would be almost future-tech. It’d be nearly impossible for the Thanonians to have it with them.”

“But the fact is they do have one, and it’s probably headed to another major city to attack.”

“I don’t think it would be that big a threat,” Carlos pointed to the parts of the hangar that were completely unaffected. “It only took out a part of the hangar.”

“Commander, those were its mini-cannons. They’re used to take down small ships and drones. The main cannon can cause nuclear explosion-like devastation.”

“Carlos,” Idhren walked up to them, “The warship is gaining altitude over the city. It believe it’s planning to unleash the main cannon. We predict the warm-up time to be almost an hour.”

“We can take it down by then,” Q said.

“We can try. But its defenses are impeccable,” the High Priest said. “We can’t penetrate it easily. That ship has not come up in my intel reports at all. None of us were aware of its existence.”

“Are we sure it’s a Thanonian ship though?” Carlos asked.

“Traces show it came from Thanos. That ship has high grade stealth built into it, and I have no clue how the Thanonians acquired that level of tech.”

“What’s our plan of action?”

“We’ve identified that another, smaller ship was deployed from the main craft, and sent to the mountain range behind the castle. We’ve sent men over to find and capture the craft. Hopefully that may give us some clues to taking the ship down.”

“Sire, if I may interject,” Falael said and Idhren nodded in approval.

“Based on typical war strategies I believe more Thanonian ships will be on their way to attack Armorica. I do not think this is an isolated attack, but a declaration of war. We would be wise to begin our mission immediately.”

“Whoa, whoa,” Carlos said. “Hold on. Do we even have a proper ship to take us there?”

“The ship that was being worked on was unharmed in the blast and the engine has been fitted into it already.”

“You said it would take until tomorrow didn’t you?”

“Yes, Commander. The test runs would have taken that long. Those are extreme safety precautions. As of now we only have a one percent fatality possibility.”

“Are you sure?”

“We can take the ship up whenever you are ready, Commander. Our six-man crew can be assembled in the next five minutes.”

Carlos looked at Idhren, then at Q, then at Falael.

“Damn it,” he sighed. “Initiate mission.”

***

Q’s back rested against the ship’s inner metal walls. This ship wasn’t like the ones he usually took. It wasn’t the regular comfy chair, nice atmosphere thing. High-tech stealth ships were easier to make in smaller sizes. Stealth tech was harder to use on a larger ship and that meant everyone was crammed into one small room that honestly looked less like a small room and more like a large prison cell.

Five other men sat opposite Q and Carlos, all of them in white military gear from head to foot. Q didn’t really get why they were using white. Seemed like a horrible camouflage color, unless of course the entire planet of Thanos was full of snow, which was probably not true.

He was quite surprised that they’d managed to take off this quickly. Falael
actually
took less than five minutes to assemble these men. Q was pretty sure he’d have taken at least an hour to get ready if he were in the same situation.

The men Falael assembled were all hardcore soldiers and were more buff and macho than the other Getafixians Q had seen. It was comforting to know his and Carlos’ backup wasn’t a group of wizard-like people. Wizards were cool, but he was pretty sure they wouldn’t much help in a high-tech infiltration mission.

“Planet is in view,” Falael’s voice came from the doorway on Q’s right.

He walked through it towards the pit. Falael was seated on the only chair in the ship with one large screen at his side. Q looked at the view screen, at the dark planet in front of them. It seemed lifeless and dull, as though it were a planet whose life forms had been exterminated a billion years ago.

“That’s Thanos?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Carlos came out from behind him. “Seems pretty dull doesn’t it?”

“It honestly looks like a wasteland.”

“Hope it doesn’t look worse close up,” he said and turned to Falael. “How long before we land?”

“Assuming all goes to plan, we’ll touchdown in another five minutes.”

“And when will we know if they’ve detected us or not?”

“Their military should have anti-spacecraft defenses. So if those are activated we’ll know they’re onto us.”

The conversation ended but Carlos stayed at the pit, and Q decided to stay with him as well. He wasn’t really comfortable being around all those men. They looked capable of breaking him like a toothpick if they wanted to, and that wasn't a thought Q wished to entertain.

“Entering atmosphere,” Falael said. “Shutting down engine.”

He heard the engine hum lower in frequency and completely cut off.

“Activating secondary and tertiary stealth systems.”

Two small distorts occurred over the windscreen, each one lasting for less than a second.

“What was that?” Q asked.

“The stealth works like this. Radars use strong radio signals to locate a target. They do so by emitting radio signals and receiving the reflections that these signals undergo when they come in contact with an object. So reflecting the signal would let them track the object accurately. Our stealth system completely absorbs the signal, so it never goes back to them, and that means they’ll never know we’re here. What you saw right now were precautionary shields of low energy we use over the actual stealth to make sure no signal ever escapes.”

“Wow,” Q said. The whole procedure seemed simple, but it actually solved a really complicated problem.

A hazy darkness settled in front of them. He felt unsettled for a second and then realized those were just black clouds. But these didn’t look like the dark storm clouds one would see on a rainy day. These looked like they were created by a God of the Underworld.

“I think the stealth is functioning perfectly,” Falael said. “We should be safe for the time-”

A crunching noise sounded, followed by the howling of wind and the screaming of men. Gusts of air pushed Q through the doorway behind him, the now blaring alarms succumbing to the louder sounds of the roaring wind.

“We’ve got a breach!” Falael yelled.

More crunching sounds encircled Q as he was tossed around. He grabbed onto one the wedges that had been ripped into the metal. He couldn’t remember when all the howling stopped but when his mind was able to focus again, all he could see around him was an empty ship that had been torn apart.

Oh god
, he thought.

He moved his arms and legs checking for injuries, and lucky for him, there were no fractures. He’d gotten through the whole attack with just a few cuts.

“Q?” Carlos stumbled out the doorway with an unconscious Falael slumping against him.

“Are you okay?” Q helped hold Falael up.

“I’m fine, just a few bruises here and there. Falael though took a knock straight on the head.”

A piece of glass crunched under his shoes as he walked around, “What happened to the ship?” he asked.

“We were attacked,” Carlos said. “The Thanonians took out the engine.”

“But that’d be an-”

“-impossible shot to make. Yes,” he said. “It would be even more so if the target ship were in fact under stealth.”

“You mean we were never under stealth?”

“This confirms what I saw in those files,” Carlos said.

Q sighed, “I think it does.”

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a voice from far off. He turned around, taking his first glance at the Thanonian world.

And he was utterly devastated.

It was a desert land, filled with black, arid sand. A large bunch of dull colored buildings lay in the distance, their higher floors disappearing into the low-floating storm clouds.

“We have to leave,” Q fumbled. “The Thanonians are here.”

Carlos stood in the same spot.

“Carlos. We have to go. Now.”

No reaction.

“CARLOS!”

Q felt something hit his back, and he fell to the ground, immobilized.

A paralyzer
, he realized.

Men in dark-armor surrounded him and lifted him onto some sort of hover-craft, which looked like a pick-up truck without wheels. The craft lifted off the ground and started moving.

Q couldn’t turn around and look, but he hoped his brother and Falael had escaped.

“The drug will wear off in time,” a man said, with what oddly seemed to be similar to a Russian accent. Q chuckled to himself, thinking of the incredibly small possibility of finding that accent billions of millions of miles away from Earth.

After a short time, like the man said, he was able to flex his fingers and arms. He didn’t give it away though. He didn’t want those men to know he’d regained his muscle control. He waited till the the craft stuttered to a stop and took instant advantage of the situation, rolling over and backflipping onto the ground.

“Bravo,” the man stood on the craft and laughed. Twenty men surrounded Q, each one with a blaster aimed right at him, a slow hum ringing through the air as they all activated their weapons.

“Step down, Q,” Carlos jumped off the craft and walked towards him,

“Carlos?” Q’s eyes widened.

That idiot never escaped
, he cursed.

“The boy shouldn’t be hurt,” Carlos pointed at him.

“Or else what?” A low, bassy voice said.

Q turned around, and instantly freaked out.

A black armored man walked to them, towering at about seven feet in height. His suit looked more like medieval armor, but it wasn’t a nice, princely one. Rather It was more of a ‘I am from the dark-side’ armor. Two bony horns grew from each shoulder blade, and bone-spikes sprang from the helmet in a sort of mohawk.

“Nice to meet you, boy,” the man said to both of them.

Carlos smiled, “Hello, General Za’ad.”

***