The Rising Sun: Episode 5 (9 page)

“Well, let’s head in for it, then.” Mantra
looked around at them all as he said it. “I’m pretty sure Zevinog
doesn’t enjoy waiting.”

Dantox nodded, his frown dissolving behind a
look of fierce fervour.

His arms folded, Nano nodded and took a step
forward beside Mantra.

“So what is the plan, if I may ask, masters?”
he asked the two Nyon masters.

His eyes steadily fixed over the tower,
Mantra smiled. “The one he never sees coming.”

__________

The man known as Zevinog sat slumped on his
chair, with his legs over the desk before him. This large, lavish
room which he used as his office was decorated with a range of
paintings over its smooth, coloured walls. The tiled floor was
polished and smooth to an almost over elegant manner.

A batch of Rash-cons lay lining the all by
his right, rigid and ice like in stillness. They would spring into
action with the meanest command from Zevinog. An emergency door lay
shut with a digitpad right beside where he sat.

The room’s main door lay across the large
room, and Zevinog’s bodyguard stood ahead of. Large, well built and
intimidating, Swoon was the perfect assistant/ bodyguard for a man
like Zevinog – a man who needed a rigid level of security around
him all the time. Controlling and running a crime empire wasn’t as
neat and clean a business as people usually thought it was.

He drew his thoughts back to focus on his
job.

Brushing the smooth material that made his
suit, Zevinog withdrew his legs from the desk and sat straight. He
tapped a spot on the desk, and a holographic screen formed above
it, hanging still on the air. He scanned the screen, reading file
after file that came along it slowly and closely before attending
to it, and passing to the next.

The serenity that robed his office was
shattered as the bell rung. Annoyed, Zevinog looked up from the
screen: someone was at the door to his office.

He looked up to see who it was.

Swoon tapped a spot on the digitpad on the
wall beside the door. The door slid open with a faint hiss and the
next moment, there was a loud thud and Swoon was sent flying
backwards.

Mantra stood at the entrance, his eyes
carrying along with the bodyguard as he slowly landed in a crumpled
heap in the centre of the room. His eyes rested over the body of
the man, whom he had punched, before slowly rising to meet a
shellshocked Zevinog, who was frozen in a half bolt to his feet
from his chair.

“There’ll be no need for that,” Mantra
announced calmly. “It’s really of no use. Not against me, at
least.”

Zevinog was stripped of all thoughts except
one: he was now facing some kind of attack.

Without turning his head, he roared,
“Rash-cons, get him!”

The space between the robots and the short
man at the entrance was suddenly streaked with jets of light.

But Mantra lazily flicked his hand, and the
seventeen or so Sparkler shots flickered and died as they hit the
shield
that shimmered to life right before him. He felt a
smile twist his lip as he saw the flabbergasted look on the crime
lord’s face when he saw this.

The Rash-cons came sprinting at him, all of
their guns spraying him with incessant lights. But Mantra had his
sword out and ignited in a flash, and he launched into action…

Zevinog felt his jaw drop lower and lower
still as he watched, stunned. If he hadn’t met and communicated
with mystics before in his life, this sight would have half killed
him with shock: the short old man had landed amidst the batch of
Rash-cons. Then, he had dissolved behind a violent swirl of orange
light as he spun his sword at lightspeed, blocking the shots they
sent at him, and cutting through them all at he same time…

Within three mere seconds, the dozen or so
Rash-cons littered the elegantly tiled floor of his office, their
chopped parts still steaming with an orange glow where the mystic’s
sword had cut it. The mystic lay bent on the ground, his white eyes
stalled on the wreckage of robot parts around the floor, his sword
held out on one hand … shining in bright orange, and leaving wisps
of a vapour like substance to fill the air around it.

Wrenching himself from the shock, Zevinog
sprang into motion…

Mantra slowly doused his blade, and let his
white eyes rise over the scene before him. He watched the target,
the crime lord, vanish behind a supposed emergency door that had
been right beside him. As he disappeared behind it, the door
instantly slid shut. Mantra leaped across the room and reached the
door. There was a digitpad by the side of the door, with a password
required to open it.

Mantra held up his left hand and summoned a
gush of his mystical energy. The wall around the door cracked and
blasted apart as the door broke and flew forward. He peered into
long corridor emerging behind, and saw that the crime lord was
faster than he appeared: he had disappeared behind a bend that came
at the far end of the corridor.

Well, good luck, where you’re heading.
thought Mantra.
You’ll probably need it.

__________

Zevinog tore down the corridor, bending and
twisting along with it. This emergency passageway led him directly
to the vehicle pod at the other end of this large floor, where his
ship awaited.

Keeping one hand steady over the Sparkler
hanging by his belt, Zevinog sailed down the corridor, running
faster than he had ever run his entire life.

That man … That mystic …

Zevinog knew who he was. He was a one of
them
. One of the fabled enemies of the Xeni …
the
Nyon
.

Deep down, after signing up to work for the
Xeni, he should have expected this. He had been too blind not
to.

He arrived at the end of the long corridor,
and burst into the large platform that hung at the edge of the
floor. A large, majestic ship sat right ahead of him, painted in a
shining dark black.

As he arrived before the ship, a large ramp
fell out from the bottom of the craft, landing right before him. He
flew up the ramp, stopping only when he reached the hull. But as
his eyes fell over the inside of the hull, he felt what was left of
the blood in his face drain it completely.

Nano and a group of ten watchmen stood
leaning by the wall inside of the hull, gazing serenely at the
crime lord they had expected to come bursting in here anytime now.
Dantox stood leaning by the wall at the very back, casually
watching the proceedings with a smile.

As Zevinog stood stiffened before them, Nano
stepped forward before the man. He had to suppress a sudden, mad
urge to throttle the inhumane, unremorseful creature before him. He
certainly would have, if not for the sad fact that they needed him
alive. To tell them where the ten bombs were, and lead them to
it.

As the crime lord stood rooted to the spot,
Nano took a final step forward upto him swung his fist across. It
smacked the man with a quiet
thud
across his face, sending
him flying back. The unconscious body hit the ramp and rolled down,
coming to a mundane stop at its foot.

As Zevinog slowly came around, he found
himself back in his office. But the atmosphere he woke up to, in
the office, was a completely different one. An atmosphere of slowly
swelling dread.

Standing coolly around the room were the
group of strange fiery creatures that had attacked him. And the
short, old mystic as well.

They had placed him on his chair, which was
pushed to the corner of the room, far away from both of his exits.
And the mystic and the strange creatures stood around in front of
him, all their eyes frozen over him.

The old man, whom Zevinog had guessed to
belong to the Nyon, stepped closer, his white eyes drilling right
through him. By his side was the Brownling with golden hair he had
seen in his ship.

Mantra cleared his throat, before crafting
the most simpering smile he could out of his features. “So,
Zevinog, is it? … Tell us what we need to know. And perhaps we’ll
let you live.”

Zevinog needed a few seconds to find his
voice, and spoke in a strained croak: “Who … are you people?”

“We believe you already know.” said Dantox
softly.

“Or rather, working for those wretched
excuses that you call as people, you
should
know.” corrected
Mantra.

Zevinog’s eyes darted between Dantox and
Mantra, before he breathed, “Nyon…”

“Yes.” Mantra nodded. “Not bad, you’re
learning to catch up.”

Zevinog’s terrified gaze roamed over the
watchmen clustering behind Mantra again, and the confusion in his
eyes deepened.

“All right,
all right
.” He held up his
hands. “I’ll give you what you want. What do you want?”

“You know what we want.” said Dantox, folding
his hands before him. “I hope you do.”

Zevinog’s breathing grew into panicked pants,
as he surveyed the scene before him. Then, slowly steadying
himself, he said, “All right. I do know why you’re here. My
organisation is the one the Xeni used to have the electro bombs
installed in the ten planets.” He looked about at them all, eyes
filled with desperacy. “I believe that’s what you want?”

“Keep going.” ordered Mantra.

Zevinog nodded, his breathing slowing. “I
know which ten planets they’ve wired.” He hesitated. “But I have no
clue exactly where the bombs are.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mantra, his voice
sharpening. “You know which planets they are, but not
where
the bombs are in those planets?”

Zevinog’s face crumpled with fear as Mantra
bored into him with his eyes. He gulped and said, “No. exactly
where each planet’s bomb is placed, I don’t know. The Xeni were the
ones who decided on that.” As Mantra continued to bear down upon
him, he hurriedly added, “Oh, all right … I can chance a guess on a
few of the locations of the bombs. But it’s purely at your risk:
I’m not sure I’ll be right.”

“Tell us the location of the one that’s about
to go off now.” commanded Dantox. “In this hour.”

“It is in the planet Agrath, in cluster 32.”
said Zevinog. His voice teetered at a hesitative edge, and then he
added, “If I know correctly - and I hope I do - the bomb is hidden
deep within one of the long abandoned gas chambers in a city known
as Hyrigor in sector 232 of the planet.”

He gave them the exact directions to reaching
the correct gas chamber in the city, and Mantra listened closely,
alongside Dantox. He knew Nano, standing beside him, was drinking
in every word, without forgetting.

The leader of the watchmen stepped forward to
face Zevinog, who seemed to shrink into himself, terror deepening
as he came face to face with this strange specimen.

“And exactly how much time do we have,” asked
Nano. “before the bomb goes off?”

Zevinog held up his hand, gesturing to wait.
Then, he pulled out his z-com from within his suit with the free
hand, and produced a holo screen. A screen displaying the time.
Then, as the screen closed, he looked from Nano to Mantra, and a
pained smile flickered on his face.

“Well, actually … the bomb’s about to go off
in three minutes.”

Mantra felt the air in his lungs sharpen like
a razor.

“
Three minutes?
” he hissed, exchanging
a glance with Dantox, whose face had turned into a mirror of his
own alarm.

Zevinog’s voice came as a weak whisper. “I
can’t- I can’t do anything. The bomb is timed. The only way to stop
it is to get there and destroy it. I’m … sorry.”

Mantra spun around at the watchmen behind
them. But they didn’t need telling twice…

“We shall proceed on it, master.” said the
foremost of the bunch.

“Take the ship parked outside.” ordered Nano,
his voice tense. “Go, hurry! You heard the location?”

“Yes we did.” they all echoed, nodding.

And then, without another second splintered
in waste, the group of seven watchmen took to their heels, racing
out of the emergency door towards the ship which Zevinog had parked
out his platform.

Mantra felt his calm and composure was now
crumble beneath a slow, building panic. He could feel the same
sense of dread from Dantox, who was standing there with slightly
wide eyes.

“Three minutes…” Dantox repeated
absently.

Nano, who had remained behind, looked between
them and gave a consoling nod.

“Let us not worry, masters … they will get
there.”

Mantra stopped and looked at Zevinog, who had
his back pressed as tightly to the chair behind as possible, as if
wishing to melt into it and disappear.

“For your sake, Zevinog … let’s hope they
do.”

__________

The bunch of watchmen who had just left
Vanirox in Zevinog’s ship blasted right across space in it. They
knew that this space jump, from this planet to the target planet
Agrath, would take about two minutes…