AcQuest: A Space Opera Military Technothriller (The Quest Saga Science Fiction Adventure Series Book 3) (26 page)

“This is not good,” he muttered.

The Lambda Driver was going to explode. The explosion would take along the tower, and everything in the vicinity

Burke included.

***

5-1

Chris’ eyes shot open and she felt like she had just awakened from a dream. She sat up and looked around her.

Darkness extended as far as the eye could see.

It covered her.

It consumed her.

And then she realized, she wasn't even awake.

The darkness around her was different; more mysterious and mystical than anything she had seen. She felt drawn into the depths of this unknown entity, her mind persuading her to give into it, and so she let the black void suck her in. The scenery transformed, changing from the cold dark void into some sort of a large room.

She was surrounded by gray metal walls with metallic blue highlights infused on them. The air was silent and still, like the place was void of all life.

“
Welcome to the arena,
” a robotic voice blared, its voice echoing off the walls. “
Please brace yourself for battle, we hope you have fun.
”

The ceiling gave way and hundreds of humanoid shapes fell to the floor, crashing into the hard surface with a loud bang. Chris looked a little closer, trying to figure out what these things really were.

Androids.

Ten foot tall robots, their metal bodies gray and blue, just like the room, their eyes radiating an intense light. All of them straightened up and moved around, forming a circle around Chris. She didn't need to be a genius to know that these things were hostile.

“
Initiating attack sequence,
” they all said in monotone and their heads rotated 360 degrees, their eyes turning from a bright white to a dangerous shade of red. Chris realized she needed to find a way out of this place as soon as possible.

“
Ethosien,
” she said, and her green armor emerged around her.

The robots started their attack as soon as she had transformed, their red eyes shooting huge laser beams straight at her, and scorching the face of her suit.

She tried to feign and dodge, but there were just too many against her. The beams heated her suit up, burning her skin from outside. Fear grasped at her, dragging her within and freezing her up. She ran around blindly, trying to ram into the robots as much as possible, but all she succeeded in doing was collapsing to the floor in terrible pain. Her body didn't ache, it burned, like a house on fire, terrible and terrifying.

She closed her eyes and yelled out, letting out all her emotions in one go. She didn't know how long that one scream lasted but when she finally stopped, the whole room was silent. The robots stared at her, their bodies frozen in odd positions. She tried to seize the opportunity and run, but she had frozen too. Her body was hard and rigid, like it was coated in cement, but her mind was still working. She lay there, frozen like a statue, waiting to see what would happen.

And then it all stopped.

The room unfroze and the attack continued from where it left off, the robots unleashing their laser beams onto her leaf green suit. She tried to dodge the attacks from all around her, her mind preoccupied with figuring out what had just happened. Something weird was clearly going on, and she wanted to find out what.

A beam of light shot at her face. There was no time for her to duck, no time to dodge, no time to block. It was going to blast right through her.

And then the unthinkable happened.

The beam stopped. It literally stopped in midair, making it look like some sort of stick of light that has been magically created. Chris’ eyes darted around the room, and then, she saw it.

A series of images folded out in front of her, each one layering itself over the other like a combination of slowly fading photos. The robots around her now had dull after images along with them. But she realized these were not afterimages, rather these were images of the future, of the movements these robots were going to take, and not the movements that had been taken.

She analyzed the scenery around her, scanning every robot’s path and trajectory. She couldn't move around though, so she could only work with the things that were in her field of vision.

A few seconds later, the image pulsated with a dull white light and the room unfroze again. Now that she had ample time to react, she put all her effort into throwing herself to the side, and dodging the laser beam.

She knelt on the ground and pulled out her crossbow, letting an arrow fly with perfect accuracy, the pointed tip sinking into the metal body of an Android. She folded her crossbow in half, turning it into a temporary short spear, and gutted one of the other droids, her body staying clear of most of the laser beams that were coming at her.

Whatever this new power was, it was helping her take out these Androids quick and easy. She shifted into the frozen world countless number of times, analyzing the movements of the Androids all around her, and when she returned to reality, she had enough information to pick out all the movements of every single one. She could deal proper damage to them while blocking their attacks at the same time. Once she got the hang of this new power of hers, she shot at them with a storm of arrows, hitting them with her destructive force.

It took about ten minutes to wrap up the entire batch of Androids. The metal shards scattered around the room were the only remains of their robotic bodies. The floor beneath her tremored, shaking and convulsing more vigorously with every second.

And then it just disappeared, like the blurry mist that disappears in the warm morning light.

She fell through the now non-existent floor, leaving the gray metal room and heading into the black void in front of her, her mind willingly entering its familiar depths once more.

***

Chris sat up, her mind confused about what had just happened to her.

She put her hands to the dark walls, trying to figure out whether this was reality or just another dream. She sighed when she felt the smooth surface under her fingers, the mere presence of that wall giving her a sense of relief.

Her mind jumped over to her battle with the Androids. Just what kind of power had she used? Was it even hers? But then again, that was just a dream, which probably meant that power was just something she had imagined.

The cell wall opened up, and bright flashes of light shot into her eyes. She winced in pain and shielded her eyes from the intense light. Being in the darkness for so long had made her eyes excessively sensitive to even the dullest of light.

A man stood in the doorway, his dark silhouette standing firm in the bright light. She squinted hard, noticing that he had walked up to her. “Come along,” he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of the cell. Everyone stood outside of their cells, all of them as normal as before.

Kai looked straight at their captors, as serious as ever. Lisara yawned drowsily in a ‘what’s going on?’ fashion. Chris figured that the playful side of her had found the quietness of the cell quite comfortable enough to catch her forty winks. Everyone else just seemed tired and sleepy, which was probably from the constant worry.

“We’ll take you to the Commander now,” a cadet told them. Twenty armed cadets surrounded them in an escort.

“I thought the Commander would come see us,” Kai murmured.

A cadet grunted, “The Commander will not come to see filthy beings like you.”

Kai caught the man by his chest, “You better watch your-”

Chris heard the high pitched noise of a laser beam being fired from a blaster. And then it happened. Again.

Everything around her froze, her very body, Kai, the cadets. But her mind was still active. She let go of any questions that her mind had and focused on the scene around her.

Luckily for her, she was right in front of both Kai as well as the cadet who had fired his blaster so she had a perfect view of everything. She looked at all the images appearing in her vision, and in an instant, she knew the exact path the laser would take.

She tried to move her body along, wondering how she was supposed to deactivate this power of hers. She strained her legs, and the scene around her pulsated with a dull light.

That was the answer.

She pushed her body harder, trying to get out of her frozen state, and the scenery around pulsated with a brighter white light. And then everything unfroze.

She wasted no time in pulling out a blaster from a cadet next to her and threw it in Kai’s direction, trying to put it right between him and the incoming laser beam. The intense beam of particles hit the blaster, energizing it to the point of breakage, and caused it to explode with a small bang. The cadets stood stunned and so did everyone else, all their eyes on Chris, making her feel nervous and awkward.

“Umm...We shouldn't keep the Commander waiting should we?” she fidgeted around. Everyone still stared at her, until the man who Kai had threatened finally reacted.

“Uh yes,” he said. “We should go meet the Commander.”

He didn't seem like he held a grudge against Kai for what just happened. Maybe he was too distracted by what had just transpired in the room. So instead of dealing with Kai, he ushered everyone out of the room, giving Chris a small glare when she passed by him on her way out.

“How did you do that?” Carlos asked her.

“I don’t know,” Chris said. “I had this dream and all of a sudden I was able to use this power in it. I figured it was just a dream-exclusive thing, but then this happened.”

Carlos looked at her with an observing eye, “Did you by any chance feel any sort of fear during this dream?”

Chris stared at him, “Yeah I did,” she said. “But how do you know?”

“That’s the only possible conclusion,” he said. “That fear must have activated it.”

“Activated what?” she asked.

“You don't get it do you?” he asked. “You’ve finally got it.”

“Got what?” asked, still as confused as ever.

He smiled at her. “Your NOVA form.”

***

Chris was stunned.

The NOVA form was the highest prize for a cadet. And she’d just received it; primarily because she had been so afraid of everything that had happened to her. Seemed like kind of a weird way to get a NOVA form, but she’d take it anyway.

“What exactly does this power of yours do?” Carlos asked. “From my point of view, I saw a kind of blur and then you threw the blaster.”

“I can kind of stop the physical world around me, the people, the objects, everything. But my mind is still active and running, so I can see it all,” Chris said. “But the exciting part is I see these faded images that show me what a particular object in my field of vision is going to do. So it’s like seeing the future in a sense. I basically calculate the next movements of my target even before it makes them.”

“Oh my god,” he gasped. “That’s a high level power in the Elementa of Wind! The Wind Elementa has attacks that speed up a user and create the illusion of time slowing down. The only difference here is your mind is analyzing the past movements your target makes, and using it to accurately predict future movements.”

“Does that mean my Elementa is the Elementa of Wind?”

“Most certainly, yes,” Carlos said. He was clearly excited that she had achieved a NOVA form while possessing the very same Elementa that he did. He did calm down a few seconds later though, and everything went back to normal.

The cadets didn't turn anywhere into the branching corridors and kept urging them straight ahead until they reached a huge metal door at the end. It automatically slid open, and they pushed them through it into the room on the other side.

Chris looked around. Over the whole floor lay a red carpet with golden threads as a border. The metal wall was decorated with all sorts of weaponry; blasters, cannons, swords, and shields. Velvet furnishings were scattered around and a huge chair stood at the back of the room. A hand extended above the chair and waved at them to come forwards.

“Sit down,” the Commander said.

A couch faced the back of the chair. Carlos sat down and everyone followed suit. Chris expected the man to at least face them as he spoke but apparently he liked his identity to be a secret.

“Welcome,” he said. “You must be wondering what you’re all doing here.”

No one replied.

“So you all have an oath of silence,” the man chuckled, “Well, I just wanted you all to know why we’re doing this.”

Chris was confused. He didn't act like a Commander at all. What kind of a guy tells his enemy why he was attacking them?

“Tell us then,” Carlos replied calmly. “What was the necessity to take down Aliea? Taking down a group of young cadets is nothing but cowardice.”

“Do not worry, Commander,” he said. “What I am doing now is not exactly an invasion. It is an AcQuest.”

“A what?”

“AcQuest is an ancient word. It is the archaic way of expressing the act of acquisition,” he said. “This invasion of Aliea Academy is not for its destruction; rather it is for its acquisition. I will not be harming any of Aliea Academy’s cadets. I will simply recruit them and use them as my own. But if they don’t co-operate, then…”