AcQuest: A Space Opera Military Technothriller (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 3) (10 page)

She looked out to see a large red sphere head straight towards her.
A fireball
, she realized.

Elizabeth’s mind worked fast. She crawled to one of the gaps in the broken wall and dropped into the snow outside, narrowly missing the fireball. It flew just over her head and crashed into the building, vaporizing parts of it in a flash. Other fireballs rained down from the sky, sizzling in the cold snow around her. She could feel the skin on her neck smoke from the heat, her hands feeling baked in the sudden heat wave.

Elizabeth’s mind had only one path for her to take. She opened her wings. Thankfully they didn't seem to be as tired as she was. The wind pushed her back like she was but a piece of paper. She fought against it but, with every effort she put in, the wind seemed to become stronger. It was pointless to struggle against something so dominant, so she flew with the wind instead of against it.

The gust was very violent. It toyed with her, pushing her here and there. She almost lost consciousness before she finally caught a steady updraft. It propelled her into the sky above the storm and she floated atop the misty clouds, which seemed less intimidating when they were below her. A dull light shone on her skin, and she felt her body revive. But that only lasted a few moments as the Sun set and day had turned into night.

This spot seemed a safe haven for her to stay for now. Of course, it was a given that she couldn’t float up here forever but it sure was a start. She could use the peace and rest to come up with another plan.

Elizabeth had no idea how much time had passed since Aliea had been taken over. Maybe the Academy was already done for, maybe the snow had become the graves for all her friends, maybe this last effort of hers was in vain. But even if all that were true, she wasn’t going to give up.

She looked around for a place to rest on. It was hard to do that when all she could see were clouds, but luckily for her, a solitude pillar of ice reached out above them all. Ironically, the storm that she was trying to escape had created a nice resting spot for her.

She plopped herself on the pillar and thought about what she could do next. Just how could she help Aliea? It wasn’t like Q was there for her to depend on either.

Then it struck her.
Q wasn’t able to stop this
, she realized. Whatever the problem might be, Q was the guy you could count on to solve it. Any disaster, any problem, any battle. He was your go to man. And he hadn't stopped this.

She looked down at the swirling mass of clouds below her. She was extremely afraid of them. This storm was a doomsday for them all. A huge shard of ice broke through the dark clouds and came at her. She jumped off the ice pillar just as the shard landed smack in the middle, shattering the top of pillar.

Elizabeth opened her wings but something was wrong. Her wings felt different. Instead of being light and fluffy they felt cold and heavy. She glanced over.
Oh god
, she thought.

She had sat on the ice pillar for too long. The cold ice had covered her wings and stiffened them up. She desperately tried getting the ice off but there was no time. She was falling, back into that horror of storm.

There was no way she was going to survive a fall from this height. Even if she did survive what could she do on this disaster infested land? Elizabeth looked at the stars in the sky. She could almost trace a face amongst their glowing light.

“Q,” she whispered.

Below her the storm roared with a terrifying rage. Loud claps of thunder blasted through the air and the lightning seemed to light up the world. The stars were her only solace, mesmerizing charms of hope that floated about the hopeless fate of her home.

“You look beautiful,” she said, and sank back into the swirling clouds.

***

2-2

Carlos lay half-asleep still captive in his chair. His mind was exhausted from trying to conjure up a plan. His face was pale and wrinkled from dehydration and exhaustion. He looked like a man who had come back from the dead.

“Hey, old man,” said a voice. Carlos managed to open his eyes and saw Jake standing in front of him, a wide smirk on his face. “We’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.

Carlos glimpsed around. They were at the ground floor of the Demon riser. His mind was in a state of confusion. Just when had he been brought down here?

Jake looked at his face and smiled, “Confused aren’t you?” he said. “We brought you down here a while back. You seemed to be asleep through the whole thing. Is being a hostage much too draining for you?”

Carlos glared at Jake, “What are you doing?”

“I’ll miss you, you know,” Jake feigned a sad expression.

Carlos felt a hand on his collar and the next thing he knew he was hanging in the air, his feet kicking around in an attempt to get back onto the ground. One of Jake’s goons had picked him up off the ground like he was a doll.

Carlos tried summoning his Elementa of Wind, but he was much too exhausted to even create a small breeze.

“Do it,” Jake said.

The door to the outside opened up, letting in gusts of wind that cut through Carlos. Snow entered the building at high speeds, hitting both friend and foe like mini missiles. Carlos’ half-asleep eyes shot open, adrenaline pumping into his blood. The sight that was before him was a terrifying one.

“It’s called the Zeus,” Jake chuckled.

Carlos’ eyes widened. He realized what that meant. He realized what was going on here.

Jake smiled, “Enjoy your freedom, Commander.”

The goon threw Carlos out of the Demon Riser into the world outside. The wind carried Carlos for a hundred yards before it dropped him onto the hard snow. He glanced up and saw a small whitish tinge appear in the air around the Demon Riser.

They set up a force field
, he clenched his fists.

There was no way he could get in now; if he got past the weather that is. The storm surrounded him in seconds, hiding the tower from his view. A dark, gloomy vortex was all that Carlos could see.

“The Zeus,” Carlos muttered. “I should have guessed.”

He was utterly exhausted, but he knew this was not the time to lie down and give up. He reached deep into his life energy to find something to use. He opened his palms and compressed the air around him into a temporary shield. He needed to protect his body from the icy wind.

Now that he was safe, his mind drifted to his other problems. He realized his cadets could have gotten caught in this storm as well. He had to search for survivors. He had to get them to safety before doing anything else.

Carlos walked around the snowy plains, searching for his cadets. He might as well have searched the ocean for a single fish. The area was too vast for him to make any headway. To make things worse, he had a feeling he had backtracked several times.

He sat down on the cold snow, pondering how he could find his cadets. It seemed like a lost cause in this terrifying weather. He didn’t even know how long it had been since the Zeus had been set off. If he had been knocked out for even a few days the Zeus could have potentially wiped out any survivors.

He could always send out a beacon to broadcast his location but he was pretty sure that the storm would cover it up. The only option left was to track the cadets down by foot, but so far that had been a failure.

He heard a loud blast come from his left. His ears picked up the sound like he was a canine and he charged towards the source of the blast. He had run about a hundred meters when he tripped and fell to the ground, sliding over the snow before he came to a stop. He got up and tried to make out what he had tripped over.

Carlos’ face changed to that of pure delight. He had found ten cadets, unconscious, but they were all alive and safe. He realized that the blast he had heard was just a clap of thunder that had been caused by the Zeus’ storm. It was ironic that the device that caused all this destruction had actually helped him find what he was looking for.

Now that he had found a few of his cadets, he focused on his next task. He needed to find shelter from this storm. That was when he realized the biggest problem with his rescue mission. How was he going to get to shelter while lugging around ten of his cadets? One kid might’ve been difficult, but ten was going to be utter madness.

There was only one solution left. He really didn’t want to do it but dire situations called for dire measures. He tried to summon every last bit of life energy he had. He focused on the wind blowing past him and imaged bits and pieces coming together. He imagined his life force flow out of fingertips and wrap around sections of the wind and air. The wind swirled into vaguely humanoid forms that looked like several tornadoes put together.

In front of Carlos stood ten golems of wind. “Pick those kids up and follow me,” he ordered and the golems did as they were told. They made the cadets hover over their tornado-shoulders and looked at him, anticipating his next orders.

Carlos led them into the storm, hoping to find someplace to find solitude from all the disasters. He was deep in thought, wondering where to head, when he suddenly felt himself be lifted into the air. He turned his head around to see one of the golems holding him up. Carlos looked at it quizzically. What was it trying to do?

He noticed the other golems look at a spot beneath him, and turned his attention to below him. A huge crevice lay in the surface and he had half-stepped into it in his ignorant state of mind. The golem had just prevented him from falling to his death.

The crevice got Carlos extremely excited, “There it is!” he flailed about as the golem desperately tried to keep him in the air. “We need to go inside the crevice,” he commanded, still suspended in midair.

The golems all jumped in one after the other. They grasped onto the inner walls and drove their wind-made fingers in like they were blades of steel. The tornado-beings slid smoothly all the way down to the bottom of the crevice. The last golem grabbed onto Carlos and jumped into the crevice along with the others. The drop was quite deep, around three hundred yards underground, but luckily, the floor was piled up with a thick layer of soft snow.

Carlos hardly felt the fall thanks to the golem shielding him from most of the impact. He pulled himself up and looked around.

Found it,
he smiled. This was an underground tunnel-network that had been built as a safety system in case of an emergency. To be honest, he had never thought someone would actually use it.

The tunnel was a complex set of routes, some intended for a wild goose chase and a few others with deadly traps set along the route. Since this was a safety bunker the builders had made sure that one would have to know the intricate routes to stay alive. Thankfully, Carlos had been involved in the actual building of the bunker so he knew his way around the deadly cavern.

“This way,” he said.

The golems carried the kids and followed him closely. Though Carlos was taking them on the safest route possible, the effect of the Zeus was messing with the whole network. The tunnels collapsed periodically, unstable from the tremendous force the weather was rendering on the surface. The golems spent most of their time clearing the pathways and protecting everyone from any sudden collapses.

All the unpredictability made Carlos tense. The underground network didn’t seem like a safe place after all. With these many collapses, there was no doubt that one would eventually catch them off guard.

“Just a little further,” he said and walked on.

He remembered a small cave that had been linked to the network. That was one of the only natural sources of water down here. He still didn't know what they would do for food, but that wasn't his biggest worry. The Zeus took that spot.

Carlos could see some light coming from the end of the tunnel. His mind worked overtime, and he considered all the possibilities. The tunnels weren't supposed to be illuminated. The light he was seeing meant there had to be someone else in there with them. Carlos hoped Jake hadn't sent his henchmen down the network to search for any Aliea Academy cadets.

Then another terrifying thought occurred in Carlos’ mind. Jake, being Aliea Academy’s student president, probably knew all about the underground network, which meant he could maneuver just as well as Carlos, and the last thing Carlos wanted was to face off against Jake’s henchmen.

The light came closer and closer. Carlos gestured to all the golems to stay still, and he slid up to the tunnel walls, ready to attack. A figure came into view. Carlos jumped in front and got ready to trade blows. Then he saw the face of his attacker.

“Juliana?” Carlos exclaimed.

“Commander Carlos,” the red-haired lady was just as surprised.

“Are there any others with you?” he asked.

She nodded her head, “We’ve managed to save most of them,” she said. “What about you? Were you able to find any cadets?”

Carlos moved to the side to show her the ten golems and the cadets each one of them was carrying.

She ran to them, “Are they alright?” she asked.

“They’re all freezing and unconscious but don’t seem to be harmed otherwise.”

“Let’s take them somewhere safe.”

“I know this cave,” both of them said simultaneously.

They stared at each other, “That’s interesting,” Juliana said, “I thought I was the only one who knew about the cave.”

“I found the place when the underground network was being built,” Carlos said. “But when you become a Commander you can’t exactly go around exploring underground tunnels anymore.”

“So we’ll take everyone to the cave?”

“The faster the better,” he agreed.

Juliana and Carlos led the cadets. All that went through Carlos’ mind the whole time was how Juliana knew about the cave. He was sure she hadn't been involved with the bunker’s development, and the ones who built it were the only other ones who knew the routes. Juliana knowing about the cave as well as the safe routes of the underground network made Carlos feel like he was missing something important.

He figured he would worry about that later. All he had to focus on right now was getting the cadets to safety. For the next two hours he and Juliana didn't rest for a second until every cadet was inside the cave. The golems lay the cadets on the ground and then lined up around Carlos.

“You may leave,” Carlos said. The golems slouched, their long windy hands swaying lifelessly at the floor, and their winds dissolved into the air, lost forever.

“The cave looks beautiful no matter how many times you visit it,” Juliana walked up to him.

Carlos nodded in agreement. He looked up at the cave wall, a dark shade of obsidian with patches of glittering gems, like a perfect replica of the night sky. To one side of the cave surface was a pond of crystal clear water, with a solitary pillar of black stone rising out from it.

“I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come here when I was angry,” Carlos chuckled.

“Well, I don’t see anything better to do,” Juliana smiled.

They heard loud noises coming from the tunnel that connected to mouth of the cave. A tall dark figure stood there, radiating a powerful aura that made tremors pass through everyone. Carlos could feel its presence twist his life force from inside.

Something powerful had entered the cave.

And their only way out was right through it.

***

Elizabeth saw the clear dark skies and beautiful stars above her, their mesmerizing twinkle holding her sight, her eyes distracted only by a graceful shooting star sliding across the sky. And then it changed to a violent black. Beauty and calm were replaced by the intense rage of the wind and the deafening sound of thunder.

She felt the air rush past her as she fell to the ground. She had given up on thawing her wings out of the ice that had now enveloped them completely. She looked down to the surface but she couldn’t see anything. The storm blocked her vision. She tried flapping her wings but they swung sluggishly, as if she were moving in syrup. She hoped the wind would lift her up again but the speed she was dropping ruined the chance of that happening. She went straight down, hurtling to the surface like a meteor.

A searing heat encompassed her body.
Air friction
, she thought,

She felt the cold shrivel from her body. One second her wings were ice cold, the next they were soaked in water. The ice had melted from the heat generated through friction. She opened up her damp wings and caught the wing, gliding onto the surface and tumbling into the snow.

She picked herself up and dusted the snow off. Back on the surface the weather was just as harsh. The snow and wind pierced her skin as she desperately searched for a place to stay safe.

She tried piling some snow up to create a snow fort of sorts but the high speed winds put everything into a toss. The thought of a barrier had given her new ideas though. She opened up her wings to act as a temporary barrier and chanted a spell behind the safety of her outstretched feathers.