Young Writers Society

Chapter 22

Explosions! Mayhem! Science!

Edmund wasn’t sure what to do.

He had just returned Simon and his room, having found Simon sprawled on his bed, eyes open, vacant and empty. The Token, dark and still had fallen to the floor, and where it had been there was a small dent. Edmund had been staring at this strange scene for a couple minutes before Fori walked by.

“God! What happened?”

“I wish I knew.”

“We must move him. Take the Syv.”

Edmund looked at him in confusion. Fori gestured at The Token in exasperation. “Take it.”

Edmund bent down, tapped it, jumped back. It had quivered slightly. He glanced up at Fori, but he had his back turned. He quickly glanced away, and gently touched The Token again. It quivered, and at that very moment something stirred in Edmunds mind.

It was the faintest feeling, like the wind from an explosion a thousand miles away. There was no message, just the feeling. Like the wind, he could feel deep things afoot in that stirring.

Still troubled, he picked it up again. There was no quiver this time. It felt simply like an orb of glass, solid grey, neither reflecting nor absorbed light much light. By then Fori had gotten Simon on his shoulders, and was heaving him through the door.

Edmund helped him go through the low doorway, followed him to the storage room. Fori lower Simon onto the space he’d just cleared for him. There was barely enough room at first glance, but there were openings in the walls, into which Fori crammed even more stuff, mostly containers of water, and strange pieces of an unidentifiable material. Edmund stood awkwardly at the door, watching. He started to ask, “Why couldn’t we—” when Fori cut him off with a metallic squeal. Grunting, he pulled a strange contraption out of a pile of the strange material, unlike anything Edmund had ever seen.

For your sake, I would compare it to a fish tank of orangey liquid, with many small clusters of sensors at seemingly random spots. However, there were spots in the “tank” where the clear-material had been cut away and warped down. Strange clamps were position there, around the edge. Tiny arcs of electricity jumped from one to another, turning on and off with each jolt from Fori. There was also a long elastic arm with something like a watch at the end, with wires connecting it to the “tank”, and a small box, which had once been attached to the tank, but now lung loose. Fori placed the tank of the ground, slid Simon into it, and attached the watch-like-thing. The box had only one button, which he jabbed. The arches of energy on the tank flickered into life. The holes were so big that the electricity cut through Simons head. The box beeped, and the screen—which Edmund hadn’t noticed until then—displayed a series of meaningless numbers. There were, however, not very large. Fori frowned, and said, “Because this would be too hard to lug over there.”

Edmund nodded, not knowing why. Fori returned Simon to his bed, but Edmund learned nothing more. When he returned to his room, he found he was still holding The Token. Guiltily, he held it up in front of him and jerked it towards the wall, like he’d seen Simon do, hoping it would do something, or at least make him some pizza. He was tired of the ships confounded glop.

This was profoundly stupid, for when Simon did this, things usually got destroyed with loud bangs. Being in a spaceship, this would not have gone well. But as nothing happened, there was no real consequence. Crestfallen, Edmund placed The Token back on Simons bed, and sat down on his own. Not having anything else to do, he went back to studying.

Sometime later:

Edmund jerked awake. The ship shook again as he scrambled to his feet. He’d have called it turbulence in an airplane, but this was no airplane. Stumbling out the door and down the passage to the control room, he pondered every sci-fi book he’d ever read. His fears were soon confirmed

Foris was already there, his fingers franticly flying across the control deck. A computer was displaying flashing numbers on a series of large screens. There was a whirring and Edmund could hear a computer racing at top speed. Parts of the compartment were overheating, while globs of liquid nitrogen were pooling on the floor, cooling the other parts. The walls had somehow been damage, and metal was strewn across the floor.

On the screens were strange grey blobs, quickly getting bigger. Then something morphed out of one and went off screen. The instant it was gone the ship shook, and Edmund almost fell. The screens flickered off, then on, displaying an image of their ships’ force field, which was yellow in places. Edmund knew from the many books he’d read that they were being attacked.

Then a small blur hit the shield, the ground shook, the lights flickered again. “They’re trying to use EMPs!” Fori shouted. “The shields’—” SMASH!

Edmund was blown off his feet and back down the hall. The lights went out again, and darkness engulfed the ship. As he fell backwards, the lights went back on with a Flick!, and Edmund noticed a weird distortion in his fall; objects slowed down, then sped up. He saw a glob of liquid nitrogen break into a thousand smaller globs, then suddenly come back together and fall to the floor. The computers groaning reversed, sped up, then stopped. His body hung in midair for an indescribable amount of time. His brain slowed, then rushed ahead, understanding the strange odor wafting through the ship. Suddenly a black gap opened before Edmunds eyes, which twisted space into a knot and time into a loop. A speck of dust spun around it, elongated, then disappeared. A ripple of time passed through the ship, and the screens became solid once again. The ships came into focus, long and black, with a halo of numbers and strange inside-out shapes. Then the hole engulfed itself and everything went dark again. Edmund fell backwards and crashed into the wall of the ship.

The light was out for a long, long minute, during which the shakings grew harder and harder. Edmund crept back onto the deck, but Foris body, sprawled along the passage, stopped him. He brushed against Foris face, and felt blood. Then the lights came back on.

Edmund jerked backwards and nearly passed out. Fori had received a large gash straight across his face, and his left eyelid was jaggedly ripped. The liquid nitrogen, which had somehow avoided Edmund, had splattered his face. Part of his nose lay shattered on the ground not far off. Frozen pools of blood lay shattered all around.

There was blood on the floor, blood on the walls, blood everywhere. Edmund didn’t have time to think, so he picked the right option. He pushed Fori aside, and he took control of the deck.

There were five of them. Five long, sleek racers, piercing the night with missiles and vengeance. They were ahead of three, but quickly falling behind. Volley after volley fired straight home. The shield was almost gone, a shimmering sliver left. Then there was none. That was when Edmund started hitting buttons.

Because they were going faster than light, the five ships never saw exactly what happened. What happened was Edmund did something amazingly smart, completely accidentally. He disengaged the warp drive. With an explosion they re-entered reality, sending two ships slightly off course and into a large moon.

Suddenly the thumping stopped, and the screens changed. A radar map popped up on one, and the others depicted a barren planet and several large moons not far off, one of which had two very large holes in it. Edmund didn’t notice this new change for almost a minute, still pushing buttons. He managed to fire the only weapons the ship had, a single WarpNuc (a nuclear warhead built into a small warpship, so that it could actually hit the other ships) and a CyberBomb (which would have hacked any poorly programed ship nearby and shut it down). However, there was no such ship nearby, so the virus went randomly out into space, through a time loop, and several hundred years later, an insignificant article about hyper dimensional inflation in a local newspaper was lost, although it was never found out why.

Edmund slowly calmed down, and started figuring out how to fly the ship. Luckily, the ship wasn’t destroyed; there was a backup heat shield that still worked, and the fuel tanks were still about half full. However, they were in the absolute middle of nowhere, in an area unknown to him, and he didn’t know how to fly. And Fori was dying.

Edmund could tell this by the color of his face. It was a chalky white now, and blood was pouring for a large, jagged slash down his right arm, and a sizeable bruise on his head. Edmund saw that the edge of the control panel was broken off and bloody; although if that had already been there he could not say. Edmund also had Simon to worry about; And he quickly realized there was one more problem. They were too close to the planet.

A red light started flashing from the controls, and the screens focused on the planet. It was closer than a minute ago; they hadn’t come to a complete stop, and were going around the speed of an NASA shuttle during reentry. This spelled doom if Edmund didn’t do something.

The problem was that this ship was not designed for entering the atmosphere of a large planet. Almost every spaceport was in space, and to get to the planet, people usually got into larger, armored shuttles. This ship was also a messenger ship, meaning it wasn’t even supposed to enter an atmosphere at all. It hadn’t even been built on a planet, as it required quit a lot of explosive, rare particles. It had been designed for speed and size, and it had very simple landing technology, which would have been completely usable to an extremely well trained crew; but Edmund didn’t even known how to land a normal spaceship, let alone this one. So he was forced to attempt a crash landing.

Edmund kept his head, however. Once he realized they were about half an hour away from the atmosphere of the planet, he acted at once. From what little he had read about navigation, he knew that their biggest problem right now was landing. With the heat shield they would survive a normal entry (non-warp speeds), but if they landed on the land at this speed, he’d most likely not be able to land the ship, and they would be buried underground, as the ship was also extremely hard. Also, this ship did have an auto pilot function, which would have steered the ship through a series of complex maneuvers; but it had also been destroyed by the impacts. Edmund had a choice; either they had to try for to land at a gradual angle, or try to find another planet somewhere else. He decided to land.

If he swung around the planet for a few thousand miles, he could slow it down against the atmosphere to about half their current speed. Then, if he used the nuclear engines, he could ease the ship in a circle through the atmosphere, slowing the ship to about mark 2. If he were to hit the ocean at a 120 degree angle, they could coast until the slowed enough to stop, as the heat shield could produce a weak anti-gravity pulse, which would keep them from crashing into any body of water, if they were at a gradual angle. However, this planet, although roughly the size of earth, had a single, very thin ocean, which stretched about halfway around the planet. Edmund manually had to program the computer to enter the atmosphere after a 1,000 mile orbit around the planet, then enter over another 1,000 miles, to make sure they hit the ocean. Luckily they were already near one end of the ocean. It was defiantly the better option. This would take about two to three hours, but the closest habituated planet was thirty light years away. They didn’t have the time.

Fori was looking worse, even after Edmund had managed to bind his arm with his shirt, and his pulse was there, but barely. They were now enter the atmosphere at a 95-degree angle. Edmund fed a blood sample to the computer (or at least the functioning part) which saw that he was running out of oxygen, and Edmund quickly found a small set of metal lungs, which he strapped Fori into. He felt that maybe this would turn out all right, and he had done something right for once, if only to save himself.

Two hours later they were nearing the surface, within ten miles of the ocean. Edmund checked, and based on the ships calculations they should land near a small spaceport, but would definitely crash.

Twenty five minutes later they were two miles above the ocean, but their angle had been slowed to 105-degrees. Fori was regaining a little color, but Simon was still out cold.

Ten minutes later they were within a half mile of the ocean. They had slowed to 250 miles an hour and a 110-degree angle.

Eight minutes later they were within a quarter of a mile. Fori groaned, which gave Edmund hope; but then his heart rate tanked and he almost died. Edmund had to feed him a large electric jolt to wake him back up. He later found out that the ship had not actually been supplied with medical equipment; Fori had done it with his own money, and done not the best job.

Two minutes later they were within five hundred feet of the ocean

A minute seconds later there were two hundred feet away

Fifty seconds later they were one hundred feet away.

A spilt second later Edmund was thrown off his feet as the shield touched the water after a very fast, sharp fall.

With the force of a racing car crashing into a tub of frozen, congealed oatmeal, the ship hit the water.

They were going about the same speed as a normal NASA space shuttle, around 200 miles an hour, but the shield they used actually transferred kinetic energy from friction into potential energy, and with that energy, it hit the brakes. Using very complicated technology, which created a reverse-electromagnetic field, it pushed itself backwards and slowly came to a stop. However, because it was a backup shield, it failed just after the ship was stopped, and the energy it still held was released in a flash of light and heat. The water around them was turned to steam, and later that day the waves were slightly large than normal. The heat shield gone, they kidded for two miles before they reached land, still going one hundred twenty mile an hour; if the shield had held, they would have come to a complete stop. Bouncing and spinning, the crew were smashed brutally against the sides of the cabin.

They crash-landed about a half mile from the spaceport, and tunneled through the earth, until they hit the foundations of a large building, and finally came to a stop. The reason they didn’t simply crash was because the negative mater they used made the surrounding matter loose part of its mass and density, making it very easy to plow through. The building shook very slightly, and people screamed as chunks of metal fell from a nearby construction site; construction wires had snapped through a very strange phenomena involving negative matter, seismic waves, and steam, which no one really understood or cared much about. Then the building was still.

The ship looked virtually the same as before, except it was slowly being covered in sewage from a broken pipe. Edmund has lost consciousness when the shield had failed, and both his arms were broken. Simon had woken up momentarily just before he too had been flung against the wall. He had one broken rib and a sprained leg. Fori had gotten the least hurt because of the metal lungs, which had held him firmly in place. He had broken his right arm, and had received a minor gash to his head. But he was dying, and the metal lungs were badly damaged. All three were splattered with liquid nitrogen, but apart from that their worst injury was negative matter radiation, which had been seeping through the walls ever since Edmund had taken them out of warp drive. The missiles had damaged the tank, which took up almost all of the ship, and a very small amount of the negative matter had seeped into the ship. The effects were many and not very well understood even then, as there were very few cases of it and there were virtually no symptoms until after death. People who were exposed to negative matter would appear perfectly mine, and even when they died would not seem hurt at all. However, if one looked closely enough they would notice that the DNA in their liver cells had been scrambled, requiring more than just a transplant to fix.

A rescue squad was soon seen digging through the upturned soil, until they found the ship, half crushed against the foundations of the building, half buried inside it. They slowly cracked open the ship, and pulled out three bashed, bruised and broken bodies. They rushed Fori directly to their hospital; the other two they inspected closely; then they gave them medicine that put them into a deep sleep, and brought them along to the hospital as well.

Simon didn’t remember waking up, but he suddenly knew that he wasn’t in the ship. The last thing he remembered was a sudden loss of energy, then a searing pain and a loud smash, then nothing. He tried to move, but his muscles screamed out in pain, and he fell back onto the bed. His eyes watered, and he lay there for what felt like an eternity. Finally his muscles relaxed, and he was able to think again.

All he could see was the ceiling; there was no noise at all, nothing. This should have been comforting, but it wasn’t. The silence was unbearable. Then a door opened somewhere close by, and a face loomed over Simon. It was some seconds before Simon recognized it as human. The face was very thin and long, with large eyes sunken deep into its face. It had no beard, but there were strange strands of black hair, which started from the thin mustache and climbed upwards near the ears, and formed a double spiral on the head. There was no way for him to tell if it was a man or a woman; and when it spoke, its voice was flat and hard.

“We have saved you from impending doom, sir. I have come to inform you that both your friends are fine. We have implanted in your brain a chip, which will translate the thirty most common languages into your own. This was not or choice, although we do agree.”

Simon was stunned. That makes sense, he thought. Wait, no it doesn’t. Why did he say sir? Then it made sense.

“What language are you speaking?”

“Latin, of course.”

“Latin! Latin is spoken on Earth!”

“You mean, you speak crude Latin. There is little to no resemblance between our two Latin’s; if fact, we do not call our language Latin, but your chip is translating our name to fit whatever word has the closest meaning in your language.

“But what happens when you say something in Latin that doesn’t have a meaning in English?”

The man, for he was a man, said something very quickly and softly, which sounded like rain falling on a tarp. The noise vibrated through Simons head, and he felt a faint sensation of nothing which he could not describe.

“That is what happens,” said the man.

Simon was silent for a while. Then he asked, “What happened?”

The man seemed surprised. “Do you not know?”

“I know nothing. I was in a ship, and then I woke up here.”

“We don’t really know either. Your friends have just woken up, but they will not say what happened. From what we learned from other ships that saw you land, it appeared that you suddenly fell out of warp drive, orbited our planet for about two hours, then crash-landed in the ocean. Your ship has been completely destroyed, because of a radiation leak; however, it should have been able to land at the space port: from what we found in the wreckage, it appears that it had been blasted out of the air. However, we did not detect any ships that have passed through this area that had such weapons. Only imperial ships would have such weapons… He trailed off.

“How much longer until I’m fully healed?”

“That depends on you, really. You are healed, but for some reason your brain is undergoing a very unique recovery from some form of shock. We have never seen anything like it before. Until you are better, it will be very painful for you to do anything. You appear to be going through some sort of biological change; your reflexes are dulled, and your sense of touch has been badly damaged: but we really have no idea why. It would appear that part of your DNA is being re-written, other than the part which the radiation inflicted on you. Your good friend Fori kinly told us about the leak, which we did not know of until then.

Simon didn’t know what to say; he knew why this happened. That attempt with The Token had—The Token! Where was it?

“Yes-s, that helps me a little. Did you find anything valuable in the wreckage?”

“The ship was destroyed. We could not find anything left that was not damaged. The ship has been disposed of. Why, was there something in it you lost?”

“N-o, just wondering.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “All right then. I’ll let you rest.”

He exited the room, leaving Simon to his pondering. How was he to get back The Token?

He pondered for some time before finally fall asleep again. He woke up and someone fed him a strange pudding like substance to him. It tasted like cherries, and made him fall asleep again. This process happened several times, and although Simon didn’t feel much better, his body was healing. However, it was some weeks until he could stand, and another before he was well enough to leave. It was then that the three met up again.

After heartily congratulating Edmund for accidentally-not-killing-them, they fell to discussing what to do now, and how they would get back The Token. Fori was sullen the entire time; he had been badly hurt, and had taken longer than they had to heal. His nose still had a chunk out of it; he had requested to not have an artificial piece put back in, but he never told them why.

After several hair brain ideas, Simon finally thought of something. Laughing, he said, “Watch this.”

As Edmund watched, Simon changed slightly. His hair moved almost imperceptibly, and his eyes glazed for a brief moment. Then there was a soft “fw-wuu-uah-mp”, and The Token was suddenly resting in Simon’s palm. Simon sucked in his breath slightly, then let it out. Edmund gasped. There was an awkward silence, during which Fori quietly snapped a few pictures with an invisible camera stuck in his forehead, and strangely, the chunk taken out of his nose. Then he said, “Well, this is great! Now we can leave this filthy planet!”

Simon didn’t see it as “filthy”, but agreed that yes, they could leave now. But they would need a ship.

Fori explained that, as he was a high official, he had a special ID card he could use to get any equipment he needed while doing things for the King. Simon made a strange gesture with his hand and the Token “Fluuuuuoooooaaappped” into his pocket. That was when Simon realized something.

“Wait, so the entire galaxy is ruled by one person? How does that work? If the King makes all the laws, couldn’t there be constant war? There haven’t been kings on earth for centuries!”

Fori coughed awkwardly. “Ah, well, he isn’t exactly a King, or at least what you would call a king. He is what the rest of the galaxy calls a king; not the power-wielding monarch you think of. We do use a semi-monarchy; but if all of his or her children are not accepted by your Token, then a new king from a completely different family is chosen. To be accepted means that after they have passed a series of tests, they must place their hands on The Token you hold, and if they live without excruciating pain or going mad, they become king. No two children have ever been chosen to become king in a family. This happens about every four generations, which isn’t very long, and this keeps the all the kings fit to rule. Also, the king does not wield complete power; representatives from each solar system bring problems of state to him, and he picks several solutions. The entire galaxy then votes, and the law that gets the most votes is enforced. Voting is required and missing a vote is fined. We do not have middlemen with such power like your democracies have; those middlemen can be easily bought off, but it is very hard to buy the votes of tens of quadrillions of people. However, like your democracies, the king must pass The Test every fifty years; if he does not pass at any point, individual solar systems pick representatives who each try the test, who must compete against his or her children. If more than one pass the mental test, they are then both tested with the Token. Whoever comes out on top is the new king. And, if there is a king who passes and makes bad laws, the people can vote to have him thrown down. This happens every hundred generations of so, and the last one was so long ago, historians don’t even known if it actually happened.

Simon nodded. This made sense. Or at least, it should make sense.

“But why this Token? Why not the other one? What can be so bad about that one?”

Fori was silent for a moment, then answered, “Physically, nothing. They enable the user to do the same things, but each will only let certain kinds of people wield them. We don’t know why or how, but one will only let the type of person who would be a leader use it. That’s the one you have. Only extroverts who can lead groups of people have every been able to use it. Also, it will only picks leaders who don’t want power, ones that would rather not lead. Because of this, ever since that Token has been used for the testing of a new king, there have been no wars. None.” However, as he said this, his eyes clouded over. Simon noticed this but did not comment.

“But what about the other one?” asked Simon.

“That one tests for leaders of a different type. Only introverts who wouldn’t rule well and want power can wield it. These types of people are very rare, but when made king there were some of the most bloody wars in the history of space. Wars were entire star systems were slaughtered and entire fleets were tortured for treason. Those were dark times.”

Edmund piped up about then.

“Wait, since when are introverts tyrants?”

Fori stared at him for a second, then answered, “Have you ever thought of the fact that there are quadrillions of people out there, while there are only twenty billion in your solar system?”

That shut Edmund up.

Simon sensed the tension and decided to add some for good measure. “So what are we going to do now? Even with a new ship those people are after us. I mean, its been over a month since they attacked us. Shouldn’t they have found us by now?”

Fori frown at him, coughed slightly. “Well, yes, that is a good point; I hoped you hadn’t thought of. I’m afraid that by this point they may well have found us. That is why we are not going to the SS-rental shop, but to the Armored-Ships co. They sell very expensive fighter ships to very rich people who usually have spent tons of money figuring out how to fly them. However, as we are in a bad situation we will need to use one, if only till we get farther into the galaxy, where they can’t follow us.

“Are you sure they’re from Scien?” asked Edmund.

“Most likely. Only he would attack us so. We must be going.”

They walked out into the street and caught a shuttle. Inside were many strange looking people, not quite human, like Fori—most seemed too perfect; all were at least six feet tall, with very proportional arms and legs. They all had the same haircut the doctor had; and most had rather muscular arms and legs. The skin of the people, however, was all a very shiny grey, and their foreheads were very large, while their faces were smaller than that of Earthlings.

“This is a rich city, it appears,” said Fori. “They all seem to have had extensive surgery. Everyone looks exactly the way they want to.”

Edmund shuddered. He wished that he could afford it, but his father was too poor. For the first time he felt anger, not loss, when he thought of his father. No longer would he be so poor, in this new galaxy of people.

The AS co was so large it blocked out most of the sky. It was made of some kind of black metal which hummed slightly. There were no doors, but when Fori pressed his palm against the wall, the humming grew louder, and a split second later an opening seamlessly morphed out of the wall.

“Wait here,” said Fori. Then he walked through the door, which morphed back into a solid wall again, leaving Simon and Edmund on the outside.

Ten minutes later he returned. With him came a tall man who looked like he could have easily picked up Fori and thrown him several hundred feet into the lunatic asylum next door. Fori seemed a little worried he might do this, and quickly said, “This is one of my former colleagues. He will show us the ship we will be using.”

The man led them to a small ship about four hundred feet away that they had not noticed. The man flew them up and up and up until the ground fell away and all was left was the building, stretching above the clouds, each floor big enough to hold four football field stadiums. Finally they reached a small balcony about a mile up, where they landed. The man led them back into the building into a room so large that the far walls were barely visible. But what interested Simon and Edmund even more were the ships.

Big ships, little ships, ones with long, pointed noses and wings, ones shaped like blood cells, ones with missiles, ones with more missiles, ones with lasers, there were so many to look at. The man pointed to one a few ships down.

“This ones yours.”

Simon and Edmund stared at it. It was so much bigger than their former one that it staggered them. Larger than a house, it was made of the same black stuff the building was made of, with strange hair-thick silver lines crisscrossing the ship with squares a millimeter to a side. The ship shaped like a large potatoes with four rings of metal hovering around it, forming two intersecting Xs. On the sides were row upon row of strange shelves of missiles, and on the top and bottom of the ship were strange devices, which appeared to be lasers. The man brought them over to their ship and went over the specs.

“Top warp factor of 4.5, Nuclear missiles ranging from 100 kilotons to 100 megatons, twenty in total. They have Warp 5.8 drives in them, so they should be able to catch up to any ships in the Warp 4.6 range. They can be fired in groups of up to four, but more than that there is a chance of collision. The mini laser-towers range from 100 kilowatts to 100 megawatts, and if necessary can fire a ten second one gigawatt beam, which would drain the systems for five minutes, but will allow for the missiles to be fired at a quarter of their normal speed. There are three shields, a laser shield, a heat and radiation shield, and a missile shield. The backup shield is a combination of the three, which should hold out from direct laser fire for approximately one hour before failing, or around ten minutes under heavy missile bombardment. The ship itself should be able to keep out space radiation and low tier attacks for up to half an hour, but I would not suggest relying on that. There is one bathroom, and the ship is already full of food. The plumbing—“

“That will be enough,” said Fori. Show us the inside of the ship.”

The ships interior was much more spacious than their former ship, but not as spacious as it looked. The inside was maybe a fourth the size of the entire ship. When Simon asked about it, the man said, “the ship’s hull is ten feet thick, and the laser and missile guidance systems and housing space take up much of the rest of the space.”

The ship had one bathroom like before, but the rooms were bigger, and the control deck was much more elaborate. There was a massive supply of food, which the man grumbled about.

Then Simon thought of something. “Why can’t we just go into hibernation? It make the trip a lot faster.”

Fori stammered. “We-ll, um, you see, on that ship there wasn’t the space. On this ship there is, but as we might be attacked at any point, we need to stay conscious.”

“Oh, well, then that’s ok.”

“Right. Now we can get going after I finish this paper—“

That was when the noise started.

Simon had never heard anything so horrendous. Indescribably loud, it echoed throughout the building, a piercing hum like so many angry bees. They rushed after the man, who brought them back to the balcony. Withdrawing a small set of binoculars, he studied the sky intently for several minutes before finding what he was looking for. Hitting a button, he handed the binoculars to Fori, and told him to press the button again. The binoculars moved on a stand, which was what Fori was holding, and focused on a part of the sky that appeared to be empty. Fori gasped, then handed the binoculars to Edmund, who also gasped, then handed them to Simon. Even when the binoculars had focused on the right spot, he saw nothing. Then it zoomed in by two hundred times. Simon gasped.

Tearing through the atmosphere were ten red orbs. Based on the binoculars scale they were about the size of a truck, but size wasn’t what mattered. It was speed.

They were falling at about marc 4, which was why they were still burning. Coming up top meet them were a squadron of much larger ships, and not far behind these several large ground-based missiles. A few seconds later a beam of energy brighter than the sun hit one of the ships and was send bouncing off. It hit a building back on the ground and blasted it to ruble, then flicked off. A few miles above the speeding ships were five other of the patrol ships, and a cloud of metal which appeared to be several others.

“Is it them?” asked Simon.

“Yes! Now BACK TO THE SHIP!”

They sprinted back to their ship, climbed in and put up the shields up. The man tried to get in as well, but Fori yelled down at him, “Their coming for us! You’ll be safer here!”

Then they took off. The ship hurtled out the balcony, and without time to even start the main thrusters, was suddenly a mile and a half in the air. It was two long seconds before the engines cut in and they managed to level out, after dropping several hundred feet. By now the patrol ships had reached the enemy ships and a horrible battle had ensued.

Apparently the patrol ships were not made for actual battles, and their artillery was mainly composed of medium power lasers and solid explosive missiles, which were used to take down rogue-ships and the such. The enemy ships, however, were not joking about the whole death thing. Strangely, though, they had stopped fighting back. Moving in complicated patterns, they evaded the ships, and masterfully made them crash into each other, sending them spinning uncontrollably through the air. The ground missiles had finally reached the melee, but instead of aiming for the enemy ships, they instead targeted the patrolling ships. With a sizable explosion two patrol ships were engulfed in a large explosion, and with their shields completely stripped, they plunged out of the sky. Then the second missile missed completely and hit the building close to their ship; however, instead of exploding, the missile bounced off and came straight for them.

Fori madly messed with the controls, sending them into a backwards dive, throwing them crazily against the walls. They were all seated at the control panel; Fori controlled the steering, Edmund controlled the missiles, and Simon the two lasers. With a jerk Fori took them out of the dive and instead brought the ship straight up. Fast.

Suddenly they were pressed against their chairs, under three Gees of pressure. The missile missed and instead hit one of the patrol ships, which was close enough to their ship that they were flung towards the building, upside-down and spinning in two different directions. Edmunds head hit the panel and he was out cold. However, the button he pressed turned out to be the main missile control panel, and roughly ten seconds later ten of their missiles had been fired, all at once.

This was extremely, extremely bad. The three largest ones hit the building and punched a hole in it, and several ships fell out, one of which hit their ship and sent in plunging even faster towards the ground. With a sickening maneuver Fori got them above the falling ships, and soon they were climbing again. Two more of the patrol ships smashed together and were down. The enemy ships were now circling their ship, and had already blasted two of the remaining missiles out of the air. One of the missiles hit a ship and sent it crashing into the building, releasing more ships. The other four suddenly turned around and came straight back towards Simon and co, forcing Fori into a dive so fast that they smashed through one of the shuttles before pulling back up. Simon fired both lasers and took out one of the missiles, which in turn took out a small building. The remaining three suddenly went bizerk as the enemy ships started getting higher, as two blew a chunk out of the large building, sending debris crashing down on innocent pedestrians.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, two of the enemy ships made a kamikaze dive and came crashing into their ship, sending it plowing through a futuristic supermarket and into the pavement, as the final missile crashed directly into them, destroying much of the remaining building, but leaving their shields impact. The remaining enemy ships then focused all their lasers on their ship, partly embedded in the ground of a sizable crater, and for ten long seconds that part of the city glowed so brightly that several hundred thousand people would have gone blind, if not for the seriously protective contact lenses everyone wore. However, that was too much for the shields. With a crack of energy they were gone, and a split second later their ships hull was starting to fry.

Fori was not going to go down this easily though. He pulled a small vial out of his pocket and fed some of the substance to Edmund, who coughed and woke up. He then ate some and passed it to Simon. “Eat this! You’ll need it! Now GO!”

Simon choked it down; it tasted like sulpher and pickle juice. Instantly everything around him grew a lot more intense. He could clearly see every scratch and piece of dust on the control panel, and without even trying he could tell that each button was exactly a half of a square inch.

As he rushed outside, things got weirder. Every step he took carried him as least half again what it did normally. And the light was much brighter than normally; but he could look at everything, even the sun, without so much as blinking. From there he could see the face of a woman several hundred feet away, and count the number of freckles on her nose.

“It’s a stimulant!” Yelled Fori as they sprinted across the charred ground, the lasers having switched off. The funny thing was that the ships weren’t doing anything. Instead, ladders were descending from them, and men were coming out. But they weren’t men. They were cyborgs.

Simon screamed as they came storming towards them. However, the stimulant was starting to really kick in. They were sprinting not at fifteen miles an hour, but at seventy. The cyborgs were fast, but even their robotic parts were no match for the stimulant. Simon and co sprinted through the crumbling supermarket and almost smashed right into a small man who was running towards them. Grabbing their hands he yelled, “come with me! The empires troops are coming!”

“Wait WHAT!” Yelled Simon. “I thought—but…”

“No time! Come with me!”

The man led them through the buildings to a small yellow ship, which they were preparing to enter, when the last of the ships landed right next to them. A massive cyborg, identical to the one that took Simons father, stepped out, and fired a large gun at Fori. He fell dead right next to Simon.

Simon should have screamed. He should have moved when the blood crawled far enough to surround his feet, but he could not. His brain could not understand what he was seeing.

“Come ON!” Yelled the little man again. “They’re COMING!”

One of the interesting side effects of the stimulant was the dulling of the brain, which was not a great trade off in this situation. Others include the tendency to do exactly what you are told, and to really like violence, blood, and weapons.

This created an interesting problem for Simon. He wanted to get in the ship, but at the same time couldn’t, because there was so much violent things out there. With a jerk he turned around and ran into the ship, leaving Fori behind in a pool of his own blood. The ship took off as the cyborgs fired upwards in vain, Simon and Edmund clipped into the control panel of the new ship. The little man bringing them back up into the sky, avoiding the still falling pieces of patrol ships. He seemed slightly worried, but after a pause turned back to the boys and said, “you’re safe from the empire now. They almost tricked you. Fori was one of our agents, but it turns out he was one of their agents as well.”

“But—who are you?” asked Edmund. “What—I thought that the empire was on our side!”

“Then you are mistaken. The empire is not what Fori has led you to believe. The empire is nothing like what he has told you; and it was them that have been chasing you all this time. Based on some of our other agents they found out about his deceit. It was them that took your father.”

If Simon had not been intoxicated by the stimulant, he would have asked how the man knew this. As he was the thought didn’t pass through his mind.

“But—it was so real…”

“All a lie. The empire has corrupted to the point of treason. Three hundred years ago everything was fine; the empire and all its people were how it should have been. But then there was a horrible plague, and many of the highest populated planets near the center of the galaxy were completely wiped out. The government could have stopped the plague, but the expensive would have rendered many of the high officials’ outs of jobs, so they did nothing. The founders of our group personally found these people and slit their throats. They were never caught but the government knew it must be them, so they were banished from their homes. They fled to far reaches of the galaxy and secretly shipped angry people there, who also hated the empire. We are getting stronger and will overthrow the crown and put a new king on the thrown, one who will do good for the sake of the people.”

Then he quickly jabbed a button on the control panel, and clamps held Simon and Edmund firmly in place. He hit several more buttons and then withdrew as the boys yelled and struggled to get free. Even with their superhuman strength they could not bend the metal clamps. Then a gas was released into the air and they were out cold in seconds. Softly the computer scanned their brains and removed certain memories, and added others, some faint, and some clear as day.