The Acolytes of Crane "Updated Edition" (34 page)

‘That’s
it!’ I cried out as I pressed that button. My heart leapt as I saw the
three-dimensional image of the monarch, appearing just as he had a few minutes
ago. He was speaking, but no sound came out. This projection replaced the image
of the spinning green planet.

I
said, ‘I think I have it. Something is playing here. It is the king and someone
else. I can't make out the other person. Come over here quick. I don't know how
to turn on the sound!’

Mariah
ran over and also rapidly uttered the various gibberish displayed on the panel.
Acting upon the instant translation, she pressed another button and
accidentally made the hologram disappear.

I
groaned, ‘Whatever you just pressed took away the image. Press it again!’

She
pressed again and then I turned a green knob; the sound of two voices congruent
with the video started to play. The hologram appeared in the center of the
room. ‘That’s it!’ I exclaimed, forgetting to keep my voice down. ‘Go watch the
door, Mariah!’

Within
the hologram, King Trazuline was standing in front of a man with a hood over
his head, as his favorite guard Pritok looked on. The king said to the hooded
man, ‘Your objectives are to find Theodore and erase your target. Do you
understand? You leave tonight.’

‘Yes,
sire.’

‘I
have procured the currency you wanted, as well. It will be waiting for you here
if your mission is successful. If you fail, I wouldn't show your face around
here.’

‘Yes,
sire.’

‘Make
sure you find your point of contact first. The prophecy demands it.’

‘Yes,
sire.’

‘Now
go! I cannot be seen with you.’

That
was the end of the conversation, as the hooded figure left the scene. The
hologram continued to play. It was like a security camera following the king
and recording on an endless reel.

Mariah
grabbed my shoulders. ‘They’re coming back. Turn it off!’

I
panicked. ‘I don’t know how!’

Mariah
shrieked. ‘They are right outside of the door, Dan! Turn it off!’

Right
before the door opened, I turned off the audio, but the hologram continued to
play. The king was indulging in a badly mumbled conversation with Pritok as
they walked side by side. The hologram continued to play, and Mariah, her eyes
wide open, stood with her back to it, shielding it from the king's view. With
one last attempt I pressed the button I thought would end that damn hologram.
He walked beyond where I was standing and I trembled with fear.

‘Alright.
Where was I? Ah yes, will you join me in my fight?’ the king asked. He acted as
if he didn’t suspect a thing.

Inwardly
surprised at the lack of outrage, I turned around slowly to speak and let out a
silent sigh of relief, as I turned to see that the hologram was gone.

‘Your
Majesty,’ Mariah sang out in her best seductive voice, ‘We have carefully
considered your offer. As you know, Ted means the whole world to us. We accept
your mission.”

My
eyes bulged, but I reasoned that Mariah must have known what she was doing.
‘Yes, I concur,’ I said, in my best steady voice.

King
Trazuline looked jubilant. He appeared ready to give each of us a hug, as he
spread his arms out wide. ‘Excellent,’ he said.

‘But,’
Mariah clasped her hands behind her back, pacing around. ‘We have a confession
to make.’

The
king stared at her, concerned. ‘Hmm?’

‘We’re
not ready yet. Liam is at level five now, and he so badly wanted to be at level
six in tactical defense before we go. He said to me that he would stab himself
if anything happened to us just because he failed to train properly.’

A
note of understanding registered on the king’s face. ‘Yes, yes. I am so proud
of you. You finally understand the commitment.’

‘And,’
I spoke up, ‘Lincoln wants to achieve level eight in offensive maneuvers. He
really wanted that goal.’

‘Wow,’
the king muttered, ‘Even my best trained guards are at level nine. That is not
so far off.’

‘So,
give us one week, Your Majesty. We will be ready.’

‘Excellent.’
The king said. “Permission granted.’ He walked over to a painting on his wall
and stared at it. It was a desert landscape, obscured by the rippling heat of
the sun. At least that is how Mariah described it later. When he turned his
back, I glanced at a console to my left and saw a series of numbers on a piece
of paper. I lifted them, stuffing them into my pocket. I figured they could be
useful, a password, or maybe code for something.

‘Okay
Mariah,’ I said, urging her with my eyes to leave.

“King
Trazuline told us that he knew we loved Ted, and he wished us godspeed, and we
left.”

 
Mariah and I knew we had to act fast. We strolled up to Lincoln and Dan who
were still in the conservatory. I could tell Mariah was getting all giddy and
star-crossed as she approached the love of her life—Lincoln.

‘Now
be quiet, he might be napping, you know how crabby he is when someone wakes him
up,’ Mariah said.

I
walked toward him. Relieved, I noted that he was now awake.  He was lying on
the bench, mulling over the mission. ‘What’s up, Dan?’ he asked as Liam, also
awake, looked on.

‘Watch
out for the guards,’ Mariah snarled at us, ‘Pretend to be talking about the
paintings on the walls.’

Pretending
to point toward an enormous portrait of King Trazuline firmly seated on a
Rangier Cliguire, ferociously leading his men into battle, I fiercely whispered
to Lincoln and Liam, ‘Oh my God, you will not believe this, I saw that rotten
Karshiz King in a meeting with some Rangier, and I heard them talking about
taking out Theodore. I think.’

‘What!’
Lincoln and Liam clenched their hands into fists, but for the sake of show,
pretended nothing had happened. A guard was glancing at them, and they had to
act natural.

Lincoln
angrily strode toward Mariah. ‘What’s this?’

‘Take
it easy, honey,’ Mariah said sweetly and with a gentle tone. I could not go
beyond the fact that she was calling him,
hon
—yuck, and they were
looking at each other like there was something I didn’t know. ‘Daniel overheard
a conversation between Trazuline and an assassin, and they might have been
talking about killing Ted the first chance they had. The assassin was a
Rangier, or we think he was. Dan said he was wearing a hood.’

Lincoln
shook his head. ‘That isn’t good, not good at all. If there is a Rangier
assassin on his way to hunt down Ted, he could do it right under our noses.’
Lincoln exclaimed at another painting, walking away with a fake smile. He
whispered to Mariah, ‘Where is Ted?’

“Then
Mariah told him everything—”

“Slow
down. So someone was hired to assassinate Theodore?” the warden asks.

“Yes.
It was totally uncool of that weird king to be making up some evil plot to kill
our bro. We needed to prepare for the great Karshiz getaway. We decided to get
ready the night before by gathering all of our gear and weapons.”

The
warden looked at me confused, and said, “They allowed you to have weapons?”

“Once
we were assigned to our quarters, King Trazuline had decided to let us carry
around our assigned weapons. He was really lapping up our newfound fervor at
that point. Besides, it was like the Wild West in Karshiz. Would you abandon
four teenagers in a foreign land with nothing to protect themselves? Stranding
us there was bad enough,” I said.

“You
are right. I would not,” the warden said.

“As
for the weapons, I received something I always wanted: a hover board! It wasn’t
named as such. It was like XR-23 or something boring like that.”

It
had straps like a snowboard. I was also given a shoulder-mounted cannon. It
fired balls of plasma that could rip holes through anything I shot. I mounted
it on my back, and it was controlled with my IPU implants. All I had to do was
look at my target and just think about destruction, and the target would be
obliterated.

Liam
was given a plasma axe, and it was fitting, because there was no one in our
crew that could even lift the damn thing. It was more than just an axe. It gave
off a sonic boom whenever he slammed it on the ground.

Watching
him use it was probably the most frightening thing ever. He had a vein that
bulged from his forehead with every lashing of his axe. He showed us once what
it was capable of, and it was nothing short of amazing. It made my
tre-flips
on my skateboard down an eight-stair ramp back home look weak.

He
ordered a concrete pillar in the simulator one day. It was four feet in
diameter thick and solid. With one blow from his axe and tons of veins pumping
wildly, he cut that damn thing in half. Hell, it was the craziest damn thing I
had ever seen, but I was just beginning to see crazy.

Mariah
had a laser rifle, and it was like nothing ever made by human engineering. That
thing was half the size of a Barrett 50 caliber rifle, but had the accuracy and
range. It was scoped, but the scope wasn’t anything like the scopes I used with
my dad when we went hunting.

“Her
laser rifle, when zeroed, could destroy a nickel off a donkey’s back from a
mile away, and she loved it. Her face lit-up like a wildfire every time she hit
a bull’s eye. She had the same look when she was with Linc. Those two were so
happy when they were together. Liam and I made bets for when we thought they
might hook up. They always toyed with the idea, but neither of them made a
move. We just assumed they were together.”

“I
am happy to be recording. This is moving along quickly. Were you scared at
all?” the warden asks.

 “I
wasn’t really scared about what was going to happen, because I had done crazier
shit back then.”

When
I was eleven, the boys I skateboarded with, asked me to switch kick-flip over a
gap at a post office in Ferndale. I tried, and the board made its rotations and
spun downwards toward the ground. I landed them all the time with ease in my
runs, but that time my deck was perpendicular to the ground. Well, to put it
delicately, that board struck me right into my private parts.

Let’s
just say I was like a human corn dog for about two seconds. It hurt like hell,
and I had to get six stitches right next to my danglers. I didn’t think twice
to try it a second time. I stood up, and saw I was bleeding from my crotch. I
made the trick anyway on my next attempt. The board clapped against my feet,
and I slammed it down just right to make a smooth ride-away. I even did a
shove-it at the end to compliment the successful landing.

“My
tolerance for pain was high. It wasn’t till I was at home that my mom wanted me
to go with her to the emergency room, and she was pissed that I was getting
blood everywhere.”

The
guard taps his foot, indicating his impatience for my retelling of my glory
days on my skateboard. I might as well have been a grandfather recounting his
days of having walked two miles to school every day. “So tell me about Nilo. I
only have a little more time for this meeting,” he says.

 “So,
anyway, on my way through the castle, I ran into someone. He slammed into my
shoulder, and I felt a huge charlie horse in my arm. We both were knocked to
the ground, and I wasn’t sure what hurt worse, my butt or shoulder.”

‘Watch
where you are going, dingle-berry lips,’ I said. When the person stood up I
noticed he was a Rangier—he had a projection enhancer around his forehead.
‘Seriously, watch where you are going next time, dude.’

‘Hey!
You are not to make contact with the humans,’ my tailing guard said. His eyes
bulged as he recognized Nilo, and he brought his hand to his mouth as a sign of
deference. ‘Oh, my apologies, Nilo. Carry on.’ The guard backed off, staying a
respectful twenty feet away. Likely he couldn’t hear our conversation, so I let
my curiosity get the best of me.

‘Do
you work for the king?’ I asked the Rangier.

‘Don’t
we all?’ He grinned, and exaggerated the nod of his head, with his hands on his
hips, behaving like the older teenager that he was. ‘I don’t really look at it
that way. I am the castle’s bio-medical botanist. Wait, you are with that team
of humans that are here to guard Sephera?’

‘Yes,’
I said, fascinated that such a young-looking guy could already be entrusted
with a senior scientist role.

‘At
least, that is the rumor,’ the Rangier prattled on in a breakneck pitch, ‘I have
been telling people about how awesome you are. Wow, is that a XR-23 on your
back?’

‘Yeah,
isn’t it wicked, you should see what this thing does,’ I said, excited to see
someone was interested in me. For the past few weeks, I had just so wrapped up
in our cause. Now, it was finally time for me to give in to my natural desire
to be radical and have fun.

‘What
is your name?’ I asked.

 ‘I
am Nilo, isn’t this place a drag?’ he said, broken up with laughter. I laughed
along with him.

‘Yeah,
dude, you seem pretty cool. Would you mind coming over to our dorms to meet my
friends?’ I asked.