Elementis 1: The Heir to the Stone (5 page)

Spectrum stared ahead at the red planet with only questions flowing through his mind. Who was this Jonas they were being sent for? What could the king possibly want with someone locked up on Kroyto? Whatever it was he wanted him for, he wanted him quickly. The four of them—Spectrum, Goldheart, Cortex and Menace— had been ushered to the flight bay by King Uly himself. He walked beside Calyx's protectors stressing the point that if they did not return with this Jonas Knight then they would find themselves dishonorably discharged from the service of the Guard. That would have been unacceptable to Spectrum who wore his white-trimmed armour and carried his volute-blasters with the utmost honor. Being discharged would only bring shame to his late mother and father's name. Lasro Wilk had won his battlesign, Spectrum fighting on Obitrum with all the leadership skills he possessed. He was the glue of the four protectors and since Calyx had been taken his thoughts hadn't shifted away from what the prince must be going through behind the walls of Mercron.

The green-masked Cortex sat behind Spectrum and Goldheart. He didn't much like long journeys, anything that involved sitting still for hours on end would drive him crazy. It drove the others even more crazy, he had some kind of problem with keeping quiet. Cortex was flicking one of his pulsar-blades on and off, staring at the electric current surrounding the sword and enjoying the quiet buzz each time he activated it. As annoying as it was, it was the quietest he'd been all journey—the others somehow knew it wouldn't last.

"I still don't get why we're coming to Kroyto?" Cortex thought out loud, breaking his silence and getting an unseen roll of the eyes from Goldheart.

Menace let out a low-blown laugh, "Hah! You never get anything, Lucas," she teased, with a tone of dismay.

"Why doesn't anyone ever call me Cortex?" he bellowed back.

Menace ignored the question and just stared at Cortex with her clear blue eyes. "Just do what you're told, Lucas, that's our job!" she said, being more diplomatic this time around.

Cortex turned to Menace. Her long blonde hair and long eyelashes only made him want to treat her worse. Cortex had always thought that no one that beautiful should be able to handle guns the way she could. He also thought how lucky she was to be so blessed with beauty, his own burn scars beneath his mask were not so appealing, "You know, you are such a licker!" he said.

Menace bit the bait that Cortex dangled in front of her. "Just because I follow orders it doesn't make me a licker!" she said.

Cortex smiled at her reaction and watched out of the window as Skylark sped into the sulphuric atmosphere of Kroyto, delving into the brown-red clouds of the sky.

After a moments silence, Cortex carried on. "All I want to know is, why haven't we been sent for Calyx? He's the one we're sworn to protect!"

Spectrum was tired of listening to the bickering behind him. He turned around to explain. "When the king blames us for Calyx being taken and tells us we could be thrown out of the Guard if we don't bring this Jonas home, we do whatever he tells us to, Lucas."

"Cor-tex!" he said, breaking down the syllables. "Says it right here!" He pointed out the word on his chest, annoyed that this trend of using his birth name instead of his battlesign had developed into some sort of inside joke that he wasn't in on. "Anyone would think I wasn’t the blind one!" he muttered.

Menace was fed up with Cortex playing the sympathy card ever since his flight training accident on the day of the pass-out parade at the Guard academy on Obitrum. Cortex's fighter malfunctioned that day, although to most it looked like he was just taking it too close to the edge of reason in a low-flying display when he hit the ground and spun out of control in flames. Either way, he survived the crash with burns to the top of his face and lost his sight in both eyes. Witakker had set about fixing him up a focal helmet that he called a 'Cortex mask' which allowed him to see in a form of light that made people and objects glow for a millisecond until he could focus in properly. And that's how Lucas got his battlesign, as much as he'd wanted to remain as Thorg, referring to the leader of the legendary spirit-gods. The others overruled him with Cortex and having done so they teased him further by not even using the coveted battlesign.

"You can see perfectly well now, Lucas!" Menace said to him.

"And every time I look at you I wish I still couldn’t," Cortex smirked beneath his mask. Menace scowled at his idiocy and looked out of a side window.

The ship came through the other side of yellow clouds and beneath them as far as the curved horizon stretched was an undulating surface of never ending metal towers. An entire planet for just one prison. Thousands of gun stations tracked their movements as they circled above the prison sectors that Witakker had told them was likely to hold their target.

Spectrum for once in his life looked almost worried. "Look at this place!" he whispered.

Goldheart saw a flashing light on his controls. "We’re going in, auto-docking has been connected," he announced as he let go of the controls.

The ship glided between metal towers of the prison. Gun barrels followed their flight path from every angle, and all of a sudden coming here didn't seem like that much of a good idea to any of them at all. An open docking station pulled them inside and Skylark set-down to land as gently as if Goldheart had put her down himself.

The ships ramp lowered and the four protectors edged out to a welcoming party of over a hundred, jackal-faced bhurka wardens. Lined up in rows of military formation, the bhurka were fully armed and standing to attention. Goldheart was the tallest of the protectors, a beast of a man with muscles popping out of his arms from below the shoulder pads of his gold-trimmed armour. His muscles were large enough even when he wasn't holding his 50kg nebula-blaster. The weapon was firmly in his hands and his arms tensed with the weight in unrivalled muscular beauty; but still, he didn't come close to the size of even the smallest of the bhurka who stood in front of him.

The leader of the wardens stood out in front of his officers, just meters away from the bottom of the ramp. A device he was wearing around the crown of his furred head flashed back and forth with panels of pale-blue light. The thing bleeped and the panels filled with a white light having calibrated to the language of their visitors. "Leave your weapons!" his harsh voice demanded.

The protectors stopped half-way down the ramp. Spectrum stepped forward to speak. "We are Cytherean Guard, peace keepers of Aquilla. We have no need for our weapons here, if you give us what we want."

The head warden laughed showing off his pointed teeth.

"At least he's got a sense of humour," Cortex muttered to his friends.

The warden stopped laughing and resumed a serious face, "What is it you want?" he asked without any intent to care about the answer that followed.

"We're here to release a prisoner by the name of Jonas Knight," Spectrum said.

An officer stepped forward and spoke into the ear of the head warden, he nodded along to the information fed into his pricked up ear.

"In fifty years, he is all yours!" the head warden surmised, with an arrogance that told Spectrum he wasn't joking.

"We cannot leave without him!" Spectrum pressed with all of his authority.

"Then I am sure you will enjoy your stay," the warden said, holding out a clawed hand as his fingernails extended another few inches with an overt display of aggression bleeding from his eyes.

Spectrum took a slow step backwards. Cortex made a sound of intrigue. "Ahh, that's their attack mode, I read it in the data-file!" he shared with the others.

Spectrum kept his eyes locked with the head warden and spoke with a minimal movement of his lips, "Goldheart, don't kill them, not yet," he whispered.

"Yes sir!" Goldheart said, smiling, lifting his nebula-blaster up as it buzzed with an energy moving through to the end of the gaping barrel as it charged.

Goldheart shot a blast wave into the inhospitable mass of bhurkas. It knocked them backwards, dazing them for long enough to allow the protectors to jump down from the ramp and dive for cover behind stacks of metal boxes. The bhurka opened fire. The protectors held their weapons above the boxes and laser bolts danced through the air, striking flesh and rebounding unpredictably off the angular metal walls.

"Cortex, you're up!" Spectrum called out.

Cortex smiled. "Finally, someone gets my name right! Visors down, there's a light show in town!" he rhymed with a much-practiced showmanship.

The protectors' visors slid down. Cortex stood out in the open and from a small hole in the shoulder of his armour-suit he filled the room with a prominence flare as bright as starlight. The bhurkas covered their eyes, dropping their weapons and dropping to their knees. Some wardens held onto their guns, firing aimlessly and on fearing the ricochets of their own lasers, they threw themselves to the floor, covering their heads with their hands. The protectors saw clearly through their light-sensitized visors as the bhurkas struggled to regain their bearings. The four of them ran past the eye-stung beasts with ease and out into a corridor.

Spectrum gave the order. "Let's find this Jonas and get out of here! Goldheart with me. You two—that way!"

The two pairs ran their separate ways in search of Jonas. A little way down the corridor, Menace and Cortex slid in behind a tanker as a squadron of wardens ran towards the alarm of the landing bay. Menace looked at Cortex and made a nod up to a control room across the corridor at the top of some stairs—the door was open. Without a thought Cortex ran. He tackled the stairs three steps at a time and burst into the control room with his pulsar-blades at the ready. The room was empty and Menace kicked him inside.

Cortex hurried over to the controls with no idea of how he'd work the alien system in front of him, "You keep those overfed flea balls out of here - I'll find the mark," he said, full of confidence to Menace.

"I didn't know you could read, Lucas!" Menace joked, as she picked off the bhurkas that spotted her and attempted to scale the stairs.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Reeka…" Cortex boasted, swiping through the holographic system to change what he thought might be the language settings. "And you never will!" he promised with his usual wit.

"I'll hold you to that!" Menace smiled, blasting away at the growing number of wardens shooting up at her.

Cortex swished frantically through the system, throwing images and words aside through the air and pulling new ones into view. "Where are you hiding Jonas?" he muttered to himself.

Menace slid her blasters into their holders and switched to the rifle which she grabbed from the sheath on her back, opting for accuracy over quantity. "Hurry up Lucas, I need you out here!" she shouted, without looking away from her targets.

Cortex couldn't take his eyes from the system. "You're doing a great job!" he called across to her.

Cortex activated his communications sleeve with a touch to his forearm and speaking into his wrist he said, "Spec—this Jonas, he's in block A54, cell 159."

Spectrum's voice came back through the speaker on Cortex's arm, "There are too many wardens. We'll never make it!"

Cortex knew that Spectrum was always right when it came to weighing up the odds of combat. He played on with the system, thinking there must be something he could do. Shifting through screens and navigating around the menus with hands that orchestrated the system like a musical master he finally found the something he was looking for; the option to open all cell doors. He selected "YES".

"The wardens have got more than us to worry about!" Cortex said into his transmitter.

The prison rumbled. A ruckus in the walls made the place seem alive as if the place had been dead for a century and life had been gifted back.

Spectrum's voice came back through the comms. "Cortex, never, ever make a decision by yourself, ever again! Get to block A54, now!"

Menace gave a blank look to Cortex as he ran over to help with shooting his pulsar-blades down the corridor. "You never fail to astound me!" she said, with a look that contradicted her words.

"I am pretty astounding!" Cortex mused, smiling as he blasted away.

The corridor was flooded with a gruesome selection of reptilians, insectoids, beasts, and organoids, all mixed in amongst some other strange-looking beings which couldn't possibly be classified. Claws, hands, feet and alien limbs were battling with the bhurkas as Menace and Cortex made a move, fighting through the chaos of the corridors. Cortex spun his swords and chopped his way through a pack of rodents that moved to stop him and Menace sent a flow of laser blasts into anything that was too much of a threat. Their weapons were invaluable, without them these beastly excuses for life would have ended the mission for Lucas and Reeka and sent what was left of them home in a tin can.

Lucas saw the universal symbol for fifty-four, a pair of interlocking c's and he stopped to take in the war zone around him. Yellow, blue and red bloods flowed into a stream of green and brown blood across the floor. Laser blasts bounced off of every reinforced metal surface and prisoners and wardens dropped from the higher terraces, either dead or on their way. Menace saw a humanoid through the mayhem of blasts and punches. He was smaller than most of the beings attacking him but fending them off with confidence.

"Jonas!" she called out.

He looked around, startled to hear someone calling his name. Menace ran up to him, blasting her way across. "We're here for you… Jonas!?" she said, tapering into a question as a look of confusion fell across her face.

Jonas took in her golden locks and blue eyes, "We're here? Do they all look like you?" he asked, imagining a race of symmetrically faced girls with glowing hair and enchanting eyes that had come to rescue him.

Spectrum, Goldheart and Cortex caught up with Menace. They all stared at the boy, tilting their heads to take in what they saw.

"That looks like a no!" Jonas said to Menace in disappointment.

Cortex de-energized his swords, resting the blades across his shoulders, baffled at how the boy in front of him looked exactly like Prince Calyx, only without the birthmark. The four protectors couldn't take their eyes off him.