Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (30 page)

In the centre of the armada's front line and flying ahead of the charge, Cortex pressed his comms button. "If I could see the look on his face now," he said, relishing the chase.

"Let's finish this!" said Spectrum, his mind full with the thoughts of every cytherean death at the hands of the Zohr and the years of dedication leading up to this one moment—the moment that told him war would soon be at an end.

"Wait!" said Cortex with a whispered damper. "Someone please tell me that my eyes are not seeing that!?" His hidden eyes filled with as much fright as the time the flames of the explosion that blinded him had burnt away his face. From behind the closest trade moon, which the Nangus was heading straight towards came a sight that no one could have thought.

"It looks like… Mercron," Menace said.

"It is Mercron!" said Spectrum, cutting to the reality.

"This fight just got interesting," Goldheart added.

A concerned voice travelled across the airwaves. "Sir, we’ll be turned into space junk if we take that thing on," said one of the Guard into Spectrum's ear.

"Slow your course men, awaiting orders," said Spectrum to all, as he listened for a transmission from Uly.

*

Seeing the red outline of the Nangus being pursued by the kobles made Jonas nervously pull at his hair knowing that the images in front of him were so much more than lights and beeps—they were lives and friends. He could soon be losing someone he had hoped he would know for a much longer time, someone he had hoped would live through all of this. The consideration of saying goodbye to Willow rushed through his mind and then quickly went again with the sorrow a goodbye would bring. Perhaps he should speak with Calyx, at least try and ask him to make the Zohr surrender. Surely Oreaus could see it was over. Aquilla was now a part of the radar's storyboard as an aqua-coloured sphere and seven surrounding moons of browns, reds and white appeared. Officer Khit's straight-set face tilted in wonder at the radar. Uly, Qotu and Jonas saw it too. A red object bleeped onto the holograph from the underside of a moon.

"Large craft approaching commander," Khit called out to the command deck.

Qotu looked in closer at the strange shape that protruded from the moon. "What is it?"

"We don't know sir," Khit replied.

Uly stood still, analysing the slow movement of the apparition which measured half the length of a moon. "It isn’t possible, it’s too big!" he dismissed.

"It's Mercron!" Jonas said with a quiet, sticky voice.

Qotu turned to Jonas and Uly. "Abort the attack!" he shouted.

"It is too late for that," said Uly, his guts sinking with the thought of giving up as long as they still had a chance to end a thousand years of misery.

"Everyone will be killed," the leader of the airq quivered.

"Now is not the time for cowardice!" the king slammed back at Qotu.

"Nor for madness," said Qotu, "I’m pulling out my fighters!"

"Qotu, you agreed to this," Uly said, not giving up so easily.

Qotu walked closer to Uly. "I agreed to a war we could win, not to killing hundreds of thousands of my men for nothing."

The truth of the matter had been overlooked by Qotu, his short-sightedness underwhelmed Uly. "An infinite number more will die if you run," said Uly, with the seriousness of his eyes spelling out the danger to Qotu.

The airqian man stood in despair, he knew it was so, it was why he was here helping the king. He had known that bitter death would come in order to breed a better life—that was the very purpose of war.

Officer Khit called out to the two men facing up to each other. "Spectrum needs orders, sir."

Qotu closed his eyes and nodded in the darkness towards Uly.

"Put me on screen," said Uly.

A petty officer set up the broadcast with a swipe and a flick of a couple of floating buttons and nodded to Khit.

"Ready, sir," Khit confirmed to Uly.

On the inside of Spectrum's windshield and every other windshield of the kobles' armada, King Uly's face appeared.

"Your orders are to take down the Nangus before it reaches Mercron, attack in staggered ranks, ten fighters high, a hundred across, concentrate your fire on the boosters. It’s our only chance."

Qotu stepped into the visual transmission. Uly moved aside. The kings words hit true with Qotu and he wished to pass the inspiration on to every man and woman who risked their life out there in those fighters. He spoke to the two hundred thousand waiting ears. "Today we change history… and tomorrow you will live on as heroes, either in flesh or in memory… you will never be forgotten." His face fizzled from the screens and the men's hearts were filled with fight. Their burners spat blue hot plasma from their boosters as they raced on towards the Nangus.

"You heard the man," Spectrum said into his radio as he and the protectors formed the start of the front row with the closest of the kobles joining up next to them and nine deep below them. The others fell in behind, row after row, forming a solid mass as they swarmed in formation. The Nangus slowed to prepare for landing inside an open bay on the approaching Mercron. The deceleration brought the koble fighters in fast on the unprotected ship.

Cortex charged ahead at the front. "I'm changing history right now!" he grinned.

"Guns away!" said Spectrum.

A wall of lasers ripped through the dark hull of the Nangus. Antiaircraft guns on the surface returned fire, sending a few unfortunate souls to a spacey grave. The enemy's guns didn't last past the next wave of blue-tinged laser fire. The rear of the Nangus burned and the boosters failed as wave after wave of plasma bolts were buried into the back of the ship, eating away with explosions flaring up across the structures metal shell.

The Zohr's wisdom played into his hands, safe in the knowledge that the destruction of the rear carriage had no impact on him reaching Mercron, he could lose several back end sections before the ship was brought to its knees. The koble pilots' hearts dropped a beat as the burning rear-end of the Nangus detached itself from the front sections and fresh boosters underneath powered up to drive them towards their city.

"They’re going to make it!" said Goldheart.

The rotational attack pattern of the allied fighters came back around to the protectors at the front row and the open landing bay on Mercron swallowed its defiant leader as the landing bay doors began to close behind the Nangus.

"Everyone slow back," Spectrum ordered, not liking the look of the gun stations all over the city.

"I’m going in!" Cortex called out, as he flew straight for the closing door.

Mercron's power exploded, and silver-white lasers pounded down Cortex's charge. His fighter melted into flame and his fight was at an end.

"Lucas!?" Menace screamed. "Spec, do something!"

Menace knew that in the event of a death of a close friend during battle, all soldiers are taught to push their feelings aside. It could mean the difference between them living or dying, and even the difference between winning and losing the battle. If you mourned there and then for every person that died in war, there would be more tears than bullets and that would only mean that the mourners would inevitably become the mourned and the weak would all die. Menace couldn't control her emotions, and she thrust forward in revenge. Spectrum and Goldheart held back while some of the other pilots flew in beside her. Mercron's gun stations swivelled and aimed, pouring out their silver-white rage into the advancing fighters. Shadow-walkers streamed out from the mothership, filling space with more darkness and energy than every life-sucking blackhole amassed into one. Spectrum banked away from Mercron. Menace kept her eyes on the approaching enemy fighters.

"He’s gone, Menace—get out of there!" Spectrum shouted through the radio.

A fast-moving torrent of shadow-walkers had Menace weaving and blasting at the engines of every red-symboled wing she had in her sights. The bravado of the fighters who followed her into the fray was as short-lived as Cortex's attempt, and soon it was her versus the entire fleet. She peeled up and out of the battle. High above the giant ship, she watched the total devastation with which Mercron hunted down and massacred the retreating koble fighters, as if pulling them back in with some overwhelming gravitational force. Space was on fire as oxygen was freed and burned away with the death of every pilot. Although she knew it existed, Menace had never seen such evil playing out its role until she'd seen the barbaric ease with which the dydrid killed these men.

The Zohr stormed with heavy feet out of the remains of the Nangus. Mutus, Willow and Calyx followed at the tail of his flailing cape. A purebred colonel welcomed the Maven at the bottom of the ramp. "All preparations have been made, my Zohr, we are ready for mass expansion," the colonel confirmed, bowing at his leader's approach.

"When we have dealt with the pests outside, then we will be ready," the Zohr said, brushing the colonel aside and walking straight on.

Two fantoms stepped in behind Calyx and whipped an energy chain around the boy's waist and hands. He didn't struggle, he didn't question, he just watched the long white hair of the Zohr wisping down the back of his cape as he walked away. Calyx already knew that he couldn't trust the Zohr, and he knew that the Zohr couldn't trust him. Whatever would happen to him, he didn't really care anymore, he had still to find his rightful place in the world, and even though he knew the answer would never have been found standing beside the Zohr, at least he could have found companionship in Willow. He was now a prisoner, and he would watch while the Zohr went from world to world using a power that belonged in his own hands and his own mind, using it to destroy and plunder innocent civilisations. He lowered his head. What had he let his life become?

The colonel hurried along beside his master. "All gun stations are manned. The best shadow pilots are dispatched. They are finished my Zohr."

"That’s the plan, colonel!" the Zohr said, leaving the deck through a dark sliding door.

Chapter XXV

Fantoms

Every cluster of blue diminishing dots that disappeared from the radar felt like a knife twisting in the stomachs of Qotu and Uly. Jonas struggled to comprehend the emotions of the inanimate beeps and reports of numbers being shouted out across the command deck on how many fighters were being destroyed in such quick succession by the increasing number of red dots. Qotu moved around the floating radar display keeping his troubled eyes locked on the depletion of his people. The look he shot to Uly questioned if he was still happy with his latest decision to send all of his men to their deaths. A transmission light flashed on. Officer Khit looked across at Qotu in a silent request to answer.

"Go ahead," said Qotu.

Menace appeared on screen, her voice projected across the command deck, "We’ve lost Cortex. Thousands are dying. We can’t hold out much longer. You must do something!" The desperation in her voice sent blood rushing through Jonas's head.

Qotu reacted with passion, walking over and close up to the king. "It is over Uly!" he said, already defeated.

"Not yet it's not!" said Jonas, taking steps backwards, keeping his eyes locked on Menace. He turned and ran, shouting as he left. "Get back to Aquilla, Father. Somewhere safe."

Uly moved to chase after his son, "Jonas, no!" he shouted.

Qotu grabbed the king by his arm. "Let him go Uly!" The king glanced at Qotu's grip around his arm. "Let him go!" Qotu finished, with a deep stare into the kings eyes.

Jonas ran onto loading deck fifty-nine and straight past the single helmet with his name on it. He jumped into a waiting glass lift, grabbing hold of a bar to steady his balance as the lift shifted up to the only ship left on the deck. Jonas slid into the cockpit, pulling the belt straps over his shoulders, securing himself to his seat. His heart felt like it was racing faster than the rapid blinking of a radvid, the sandstorm hunter. He activated the manual fighter release, and with a puff of steam and the noise of a sucking vacuum seal, he drifted out into space. The engine buzzed through his body, his heart eased into the reality of joining his men, and he thrust across space into the battle that raged in his sights.

Seeing fire surge through the dark matter as he approached, he began to reconsider his hasty decision. Amongst the fighter fire and wicked bolts of Mercron's guns, Jonas saw a trio of koble fighters locked in a dance of ups and downs, following each other, covering for each other and obliterating the attacking shadow-walkers. Jonas flew in beside them.

"Can anyone tell me why I thought this was a good idea?" Jonas said into his radio, waving a hand up to his protectors through the side window.

"Spider?" blurted Menace's shocked voice into his cockpit.

"You shouldn’t be out here," Spectrum said, as Jonas spiralled through a barrage of shadow cannons and shot two down coming out of a spin.

"But I’m sure as heck glad you are!" Spectrum beamed, fighting off some shadows of his own.

"What’s the plan?" Jonas asked, arriving with no immediate plan of his own.

"Just try not to die!" Spectrum said.

Appearing from nowhere, Jonas scraped past the black belly of a twisting shadow-walker, cannon fire crossed his kobles nose, and shot too close to his wings. "Very reassuring!" he joked, with a look that said he was already lucky to still be alive.

Mangled wings and loose burning fuselage's hurtled through a space filled with mayhem. The pilots who lasted long enough to position themselves within range of Mercron for a clear shot uselessly fired missiles and lasers into the untarnished silver of Mercron's solid carbotanium shell. The rabid guns of Mercron relentlessly tore through fighter after fighter and the advanced genetics in the dydrids cognition meant that when they shot, they killed. Their minds were bent on calculating the velocity and predicted movements of a fighter in the time it took for them to pull a trigger. What chance did the waning fleet of koble fighters have when every pilot of the dydrid army was as skilled as the best pilot amongst the Cytherean Guard. From where Qotu and Uly sat watching their men fall from the radar and from where Jonas and every allied pilot fought, this war was coming to an end.