The Rising Sun: Episode 2 (5 page)

There were only nine of them now. Qyro spun
his sword in a wild frenzy, cutting off the jets of light spewed at
him. The tiniest gaps in the flow of their shots fell, and Qyro
grabbed hold: he started forward, sent his sword slashing through
two of them ahead, and then rammed his elbow into the masked face
of a third, who was sent flying back.

Fighting to keep himself from faltering, he
rounded on the six remaining ones, blocking their shots with his
mystical speed undiminished. But he knew it was of no use … He knew
he couldn’t hold them off long.

He managed to slice apart a final of the
rebels before one of their shots slipped right past his defense and
smote him in the elbow … A red hot pain erupted and he felt every
nerve in his arm jammed, unable to move. The very next second,
another jet of blue had clipped his sword by the handle, and had
sent it twirling into the air. Qyro closed his eyes for the last
jet of blue which took him squarely by the chest…

For the meanest second, through the pain
blasting out across in his chest, Qyro sensed himself lifted off
the ground … He could feel his body soar over behind, as everything
around went fuzzy, dream like … The world had dissolved into
darkness before his body hit the ground.

Somewhere far, far away, a man in a black
cloak stood icily still, his mind attuned to a laser like focus. A
man whose eyeless, dark sockets would have made even the toughest
man’s skin crawl with horror as they gazed into them.

Zardin was now standing in a completely new
environment, one that was very different from any other place he
had been to. This new place he was now in he was now in was
scarcely illuminated by the faintest trickle of light. To any
ordinary person’s eyes, it would have been too dark to see much at
all. But to Zardin’s inner vision, which was his weapon of sensing
his surroundings despite having no eyes, the picture of the place
he was in was crafted to the finest clarity.

He had journeyed here, alone, for the one
last task they needed to get accomplished.

And this was a relatively easy task … all he
needed to do now, was to patiently wait. And everything would fall
in place by itself.

After fighting force one and Vonayz, Ion had
gotten to his hover bike and had zoomed off to the very opposite
side of the planet, aiming to place as much distance as possible
between them. The rest of the moon was almost as uninhabited as a
planet in the outer spectrum, but Ion had managed to scout out a
small city amidst the rough terrain. This city, though not entirely
like the earlier one he had been to, had portions of it left
stranded. Buildings left almost completely deserted. It was easy
for him to find a small, unused apartment waiting for him in one of
the abandoned buildings. The flat was a mere room, with nothing
more than a broken bed and a table beside it.

Lying on the broken bed, Ion gazed through
the glass door of the balcony opposite to him. Located on a higher
floor than usual, he could see the wide expanse of black that
filled the night skies out the balcony. The sky boded a tint of
green, a lingering effect of the atmosphere of this planet.

His sword lay by the table on his right,
sheathed. Ion was trying to wrench his mind from it. The heated
meeting that had fallen between him and another unexpected nemesis
of his, just minutes earlier on. Absently gazing out the balcony’s
glass door the whole time, he felt his thoughts wheel back over the
duel they had, and his deadly close escape. The old anger was still
pulsing within him, driving fresh waves of enmity through him. But
there was a different emotion, mingled with his anger and hatred
this time.

He was surprised by what he had just
learned…

Force one. Mystic hunters.

The fact that Vonayz, his deadly enemy, was
now commanding an entire army of mystics was rather intriguing.

As Ion lay on the bed, fatigue gathered over
hours pressed upon him. Hours of panicking, fighting and fleeing
took a toll on his mind, so that it drooped with a slow
drowsiness.

He relinquished everything, all worries, all
tensions, as he rolled over on the broken cot, and fell into an
unbroken, mesmeric sleep…

__________

For what could have been hours, nobody spoke.
Every voice in the room was stumped by what they had just
heard.

About fifteen suited men sat around the board
table. Some of them had their arms folded, while others kept them
over the table, their fingers flexing consciously in a display of
anxiety. All of them wore grave, intense looks. They stared emptily
for a long time before a voice cracked the stiff silence with a
question:

“They blew up an entire
cruiser
?”
asked a man in a black suit, spinning around on his chair to look
to look at their leader. Standing ahead of the table with his arms
folded in front, Evander nodded.

Another one drew in a deep breath and said,
“And exactly where did the attack happen?”

“Somewhere at the border of cluster 32.”
replied Evander, unfolding his arms and placing them on the table
before.

“And this is the
second
attack in a
row, you say?” said another of the suited men, his posture
stiffening as he looked at Evander. “Did you say the first was an
attack at the planet Tansof, to the Mech laboratory?”

Evander nodded again.

Another rigid silence fell over the room. The
Naxim’s high council sank back to their grave ponderings. They all
seemed to be quietly weighing the scale of catastrophe, their faces
mirrors of the same dread and anxiety.

Just minutes back, news had hit Evander of a
fresh attack by the same mystics responsible for the earlier one at
Tansof … But this time, it was different. This time, it was far
worse. They had blown an
entire cruiser
up.

Evander had immediately called a meeting of
the Naxim’s high council, the entity governing the entire
organization. For he had realised that the situation had soared
well beyond limits.

Their world was now under attack.

Evander heaved a silent breath, bringing
himself back to focus. “We have a picture of the mystic, from the
video conference he held with the president of Dragor.”

He walked forward and tapped a central spot
on the board table. A large sized holographic screen materialised
over it, rotating slowly for the entire boardroom to see. A face
stared out of the screen, frozen. It was the very same face Evander
had seen in the earlier picture, taken at Mech laboratory. Only
now, it was like having the face brought half to life on
screen…

The man was standing right in front of the
screen, with an evil grin upon his pale face. He seemed to be in
one of the hallways of the cruiser, and lines of sleeping - or
unconscious - passengers could be seen behind him. The man’s long
black hair parted to reveal a colourless, pale face. With eyeless,
blank sockets that gazed out. A set of razor like teeth were
exposed as he smiled.

Everything about him seemed unnatural.
Twisted.

“Do we have any idea where they are now?”
asked one of the
councillors
, after the sharp effect left by the
picture had faded.

Evander heaved a deep sigh, and then shook
his head. “We thought we did. But we’ve been proved wrong. We had
not a clue of where they were, and of where they are as of
now.”

Derigor, who sat opposite to where Evander
stood, tapped on the table gently.

“Now we know they’re after something.” he
said, looking about the room. “These attacks - the one at Mech
laboratory, and the cruiser … they are carrying these attacks with
some intention behind them. They’re after something and we need to
need to know what that is.”

“But the more important question,” said
another of the councillors, his voice heavy with foreboding. “is
what next?” He brought his gaze to the picture hovering over the
table, with the eyeless man.

“That’s very right.” Evander said quietly. “I
don’t think this is the last of what we’re going to see of them.
And we need to arm ourselves in preparation of what’s about to come
next.”

A few of them nodded, while the rest of them
continued to gaze at the picture rotating in the middle of the
table, visibly unnerved.

“The first thing we need to do,” continued
Evander. “is to tighten all security parameters in the inner
spectrum. We need Naxim ships patrolling each cluster, and
conducting checks on all as many passing ships as possible.”

“Agreed.” said Derigor. “And in addition, we
need to bring in high security protocols. In every cluster.”

“We’ll have to inform all of the planets of
this threat,” said the man sitting beside Derigor. “And we have to
get them alerted.”

Evander gave a firm nod. “Absolutely. The
entire spectrum will need to be rigged into a state of high alert.
We’ll need Naxim ships patrolling space inside each of the
clusters, conducting checks on each passing ships. They’ll need to
check every ship for mystical energy before letting them pass.”

“In that case,” said Derigor. “Every patrol
ship needs to be armed with a mystical energy detector. To conduct
checks on all passing ships.”

“That will be have to be arranged.” said
Evander, nodding. He held his gaze over the pale face on the
screen, as it rotated towards him…

This was the worst possibly situation any
Naxim leader could have asked for. And it had found him. Evander
steeled himself, shaking off the thought. Whatever happened,
Evander would not yield to self pity … he had far more important
things to weigh on his mind.

He looked about the boardroom, nodding.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with the air of
bringing a stern, impacting closure. “We are now at war. The worst
threat we have faced in centuries … possibly even
millennia
,
has risen once more, to haunt us again. And we need to arm
ourselves in preparation of whatever lies ahead. Because if we
don’t act now, nothing will ever be the same again.”

As the council disbanded, Evander and Derigor
hung back in the large room. Evander had a printed copy of the
black faced mystic produced, which he handed to Derigor.

“When you return home,” he told Derigor. “try
to pitch in a call to all the intelligence networks that we’re in
contact with. And get them working on this.”

Derigor surveyed the picture, which hadn’t
lost an inkling of the menace it held on him.

“All right,” he said, looking up at Evander
again. This was the most massive threat the spectrum had faced …
and the man standing in front of him was single handedly bearing
its weight. A silent respect for Evander welled within Derigor.
Smiling, he gave the high council’s admired leader a gentle pat on
the back.

“Don’t worry, old friend.” he assured him.
“We’ll get through this.”

Evander smiled back, and some of the tension
seemed to ebb from his face. “I sure hope we do.

__________

Derigor hover car glided serenely across the
clouded skies, passing the large towers that rose to this height.
Never in all of his days in the top ranks of the Naxim, had he
faced something that seemed so overwhelming. Something that seemed
to threaten the very order of the world itself. Since its beginning
eight thousand years back, the Naxim had striven tirelessly to
bring stability and peace to the world. By fighting off all the
enemies of peace and justice. And mystics were their foremost and
most deadly enemies in this regard. For eight thousand years, the
Naxim and the states of the spectrum had worked together to cast
out their most lethal threat, and ensure that it never arose
again…

And now, it seemed that all of their efforts
were going to come crashing down over them. They had arisen once
more. Mystics had returned once more to stir evil in the world once
more.

And the squirming Derigor felt at the pit of
his stomach told him that they hadn’t seen the worst of their
veiled enemy yet…

He felt a twinge of concern for his wife and
son. Martha and Garen. Serving the Naxim had forced him to live
away from his family, who resided in the planet Venijor, in cluster
43. It had been almost a month since he had last visited them.

The hover car neared a large residential
tower, bringing Derigor back to attention. As the car went
streaking towards the tower, Derigor gradually slowed down. This
was where he had found accommodation since working for the Naxim.
The car gently floated in through one of the balconies and landed
on the polished marble ground right outside the door to his
apartment.

Derigor exited the car and strode over to the
door, which slid open automatically to let him through. Pausing at
the room’s entrance, Derigor flicked on the light by the side of
the wall.