ConQuest (The Quest Saga) Page 16

  In a few minutes the lead ship came over and the Orion docked with it. The doors opened and Commander Griffin stood in the doorway.

  “Try anything hostile and-”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, we know,” Taylor said.

  The commander seemed a bit irritated at Taylor’s response.

  The commander was a bit surprised on seeing Ruby, especially since she was his namesake.

  They all boarded the ‘Galactica’, as their ship was called. The Orion was put inside the Galactica’s hangar; something Kai didn't exactly vote for.

  “Welcome to the Galactica,” Commander Griffin welcomed them.

  One word. Maybe two.

  AMAZING

  OUTSTANDING

  UNBELIEVABLE

  Oh wait, that’s three.

  Temple of Judgment Doom

  Only one thought came to Kai’s mind.

  ‘Better than the Star Trek’s Enterprise.’

  There were cadets everywhere, some working on computers, some barking out orders, some carrying food trays.

  Kai took a good look around.

  “Umm... pardon me general,” he said.

  “Its commander, son,” The general gestured to his badge.

  “Okay then, Commander Griffin, why does it look like you’re preparing for war?” he asked.

  Everyone else noticed it just then. The whole ship had all its weapons active.

  Taylor exclaimed.

  The others turned towards what she was looking at and exclaimed as well.

  Q looked around clueless. He had no idea what the big deal was.

  “That…that’s a Pandora Cannon!”

  “A what?” Q asked.

  “A Pandora Cannon. It shoots out huge amounts of anti-matter; disintegrating anything in its path.”

  “Well, lads. We didn’t know to what extent we had to go to get you on board,” the commander said.

  Taylor was astonished. “You were planning on using a Pandora Cannon?!”

  “Who uses a weapon like this against a gang of teenagers?!” Chris asked.

  The commander smiled awkwardly. It looked like he didn't have any good answer to that question.

  Kai slid next to Q. “So how do we get out?” he whispered.

  Q looked at him quizzically. “We don’t.” He continued, “They have the Orion in a lock mechanism that’s close to impossible to break plus they're putting us in high security quarters.”

  “We can figure something out,” Kai suggested.

  “And risk getting on their bad side? Let’s just see what they want,” Q replied.

  A cadet showed them to their room. It was awesome and it had an HDTV! Did people have cable in space? Apparently they did.

  Q jumped onto his bed. He was exhausted, but he still needed to discuss a plan with the others.

  “We’re not gonna break out of this place, that’s not an option,” Q started.

  The others just stared at him.

  “Then what did you want to talk about?” Chris asked.

  “Well, I wanted to see if any of you had any ideas on what to do once we get there,” he said.

  “With there being the Board of Security?” Kai asked.

  “Yeah, so...” Q started but Taylor interrupted him.

  “Discussion closed,” she said and all of them went off to do their own things, leaving Q to wonder what wrong he had done.

  He was still wondering when the lights went off. Kai and Q rushed out of the room to see what was wrong. Apparently it was nothing. The rest of the ship was perfectly fine. Q saw Commander Griffin at a distance. He ran up to the commander.

  “Commander Griffin,” Q called out to him.

  “Yes?” “I was wondering why the lights in our room were turned off.”

  “Oh, that!” the commander said, relieved, as if he was expecting another question. “Well it’s because it’s bedtime,” he replied.

  “Excuse me?” Q said, thinking he hadn't heard right.

  The commander held out a paper. It had a weird seal at the bottom. Q could make out that it was some sort of order.

  “We have strict orders for your bedtime,” he said.

  Q couldn’t believe it. “Bedtime in space!?”

  “What did he say?” Kai asked when Q returned to their room.

  “They’re enforcing bedtime on us,” Q announced.

  Kai burst out laughing. “Bedtime? That’s a good one. My own mom can’t get me to bed.”

  Then he looked at Q’s face.

  “I’m serious,” Q said.

  “I am too. My mom would go nuts!” Kai laughed.

  Taylor was a little more serious about the situation “No point in resisting. Might as well take a break anyway,” she said.

  Before anybody could protest she was fast asleep.

  “I guess all of us need a break,” Q agreed.

  They all went to their beds and fell asleep once they hit the mattress.

  As he drifted into sleep, Q wondered what he was going to do. His mind though had other plans for him…

  Q could see Taylor a long way from him. She was in a silver gown. He was in a hoodie and jeans. This was the worst nightmare he could possibly have.

  Taylor walked up to Q. “So, what’s new?” she said.

  Suddenly piercing pain shot through his chest. No, it wasn’t because of his emotions. Something was physically wrong.

  “Nothing. Excuse me.” He pushed her aside and ran out into the open.

  It was a freezing 20 degrees below zero and all he had on was a hoodie and jeans. To top it all, it was snowing as well. He looked at the forest next to his school.

  He walked into the forest. “Peace and quiet is all I need,” he said to himself.

  He had gone in about a hundred yards when he heard screeching sounds.

  Probably some animal, he thought.

  He kept going further and further into the forest until he reached a frozen lake.

  It was amazing. The trees around were covered in layers of snow. The ice over the lake was of a light blue shade. The starless sky was deep black. Everything was perfect until it happened.

  Q sat up straight in his sleep. He didn’t know what time it was but he didn’t want to have that dream again. It was going to drive him mad.

  He woke Taylor up.

  “What is it?” she asked, yawning in between.

  “I had that dream,” he said.

  Taylor shot up in her bed. “What happened?” she asked.

  Q told her every last detail. At the end Taylor just bit her lip.

  Q confronted her “It isn’t just a dream, is it? Tell me the truth! It feels like the incident actually happened.”

  She came closer to Q.

  “You remember the New Year’s Eve Party, right? The whole thing with your dream is because of something that happened then. You ran out of the school?”

  Q’s eyes widened. He’d always thought it was only a dream and now Taylor was telling him that it had actually happened.

  “I tried to find you but you were long gone. I searched around the school and saw a few tracks go into the woods. I followed them. They went deep into the woods. The air was like really cold.”

  “I really don’t need those details right now.”

  “Hey! I’m telling the story and I’ll say it the way I want to.”

  “Fine.” Q shrugged.

  “A few tracks joined yours; they didn’t look human. They looked like they were wolves. I ran forward. More and more tracks appeared. There were close to about twenty wolves chasing you.”

  Q was holding his breath by now.

  “I gave chase and finally found you by a lake. There was a wolf above you. Not just any wolf. A werewolf! The werewolf looked at you as though it was searching for something. Then it slashed at your chest and ran away. I heard footsteps behind me. I braced myself, but it was just Carlos.”

  “I died, didn’t I?” Q asked jokingly.

  “You would’ve. You had lost so much b
lood that Carlos and I thought you were dead. Then the water from the lake just rose in a beam and covered you. When it receded you were all healed and breathing.”

  By the end of the story, Taylor’s eyes were in tears.

  “And that’s how I became Carlos’ assistant,” she said.

  Q was too stunned to say anything. His memories were flooding back to him. His emotions mixed.

  “I told him everything I had seen that night. I’d expect a person to admit me in a hospital as a mental patient, but Carlos believed me. He told me all about the Zyxians and then he asked me to be his secretary to um... take.... care of you.”

  “Wait, why don’t I remember it in the first place?” Q asked.

  “I really don’t know. Carlos said that the water might have had that effect on you.”

  This was all too much for Q to take in. It was much too..... well it was downright scary.

  “Aren’t you forgetting one important thing?” They heard Kai say.

  They turned to face him.

  “N..no,” Taylor stammered. That pretty much gave away that she was hiding something.

  “You’re lying and it really needs a lot of work,” Kai observed.

  Then he turned to Q.

  “I don't know the story Q, but I do know about werewolves. They’re not just myths. They’re animals that mutated on the moon. That’s why they’re usually powerful during the full moon. Anyway, a werewolf doesn’t just attack someone. It attacks them to suck on their life force.”

  Taylor glared at Kai but that didn't seem to stop him.

  “This werewolf didn't seem to have done that. It had searched for something. Sometimes, there are certain configurations of energy hidden inside you. This energy gives you so much power that you couldn’t even believe it! I think that werewolf took that kind of power from you,” Kai finished.

  “That’s enough!” Taylor said.

  Suddenly the lights came on in the cabin.

  The door opened. Captain... sorry... Commander Griffin stood in the doorway.

  “Bedtime’s over,” he said.

  Then he walked up to Q.

  “I need you to come with me,” he said.

  “Who me?” Q asked.

  The commander glared at him. Q figured that the best thing to do would be to run up to him.

  “I expect all of you to be in my office in no less than an hour,” he told the others.

  “Yes, sir,” they saluted.

  Q saluted as well and tried to go back into the room when the captain... no... Commander (Boy, this commander thing is tough) Griffin caught him by the collar.

  “I’m not gonna eat you up, laddie,” he assured Q.

  “Are you sure? Because you don’t look to play the part.”

  The commander (finally got it right!) didn’t bother answering anymore and just dragged Q, literally, to a doorway.

  When Q picked himself up, he glanced at the door. It was nothing out of the ordinary. But ordinary things tend to be extraordinary.

  The commander opened the door and inside it was a huge globe! Inside it were millions of insects that Q couldn’t even recognize. It looked like one of those ant farms only that this one was huge! Almost dangerously huge.

  “Bug collector, huh?” Q asked.

  The commander just went over to the globe, which by the way, was sealed inside a glass globe, and tapped on the glass. A huge snake appeared. The commander waved his hand over the globe and an opening formed. The snake coiled around a grey tablet and brought it to the commander. It retracted the instant the commander took the tablet.

  Q was still staring at the globe when the general handed him the stone slab.

  “Um.... thanks, I guess?”

  Then he looked at the stone. It had some sort of hieroglyphics on it.

  “So, it’s an Egyptian tablet?” Q asked.

  “Don’t know how to read, eh? Here let me translate that for you,” he said, taking it from Q.

  “The Map of......”

  “Yeah?”

  “The Map of.....”

  “So you don’t know how to read either?”

  The commander’s face turned so red that he looked like a beetroot.

  “Darn it! It’s the last piece of map that you need!”

  Q just stared at him. He wondered if the general was pulling his leg and if he wasn’t, what the general was doing with the map in the first place?

  “We excavated the Temple of Judgment Doom long ago,” he said, giving the map to Q.

  “Thanks, but we still need one more.”

  “You do? We were told that you needed only one!”

  “Well you guys might be....... wait a minute! You've been following us around?”

  The commander grinned “We are in charge of universal security, you know. Spying on ships is our second nature.”

  “So why did you even capture us?”

  “Well, would you believe us if we told you that we were going to help you?”

  “Well...... no.”

  “That’s why.”

  “Maybe…..”

  “Well then.... I think we must get you this other map.”

  Taylor sat nervously in her bed. Elizabeth was right next to her. Kai was having an ice cream sundae which for some reason the patrol offered to make for them.

  “You think they’ll kill him?” Elizabeth asked nervously.

  Taylor and Kai looked at her quizzically.

  “You okay?” Taylor asked her.

  Elizabeth nodded, though her mind was just making her go crazy.

  “It’s been an hour; we’d better go to the commander.”

  They set out for the commander’s office, leaving behind a sleeping Chris who didn’t seem to be bothered by the situation at all.

  It took them only a minute to get there since literally every passageway had a sign that said ‘Commander Griffin’ with an arrow pointing in the direction of his office.

  The real surprise awaited them when they opened the door. Something beyond their wildest imaginations.

  A friendly commander!!

  VRT

  “So all we have to do now is get the map of Last Hope,” Kai confirmed.

  They had talked to the general and had headed back to their room.

  “The patrol offered us a ride till the temple.”

  “Well. I guess that’s okay,” Kai said. He wasn’t happy with the fact that someone else was giving him a ride.

  “We’re about half-a-day’s journey from there,” he said.

  “What do we do till then?” Chris asked, yawning mid- sentence. She had just woken up.

  “The commander said he’ll set up a virtual reality adventure of the temple of Last Hope for us,” Q said.

  “Cool. When do we go?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Anytime is fine,” Q replied.

  “Now?!” Taylor asked excitedly.

  “I said anytime is fine,” Q repeated.

  They walked up to the VRT (Virtual Reality Theatre). The commander was already at the site waiting for them.

  “I had a feeling you’d show up,” he said, handing them glasses.

  “What are these?” Chris asked.

  “Virtual reality glasses. Just wear them and go to the centre of the floor,” he said, pointing to a room through the glass.

  They entered the room. The inside was pure white. The only thing separating the room from everything else was a thick wall of glass. The commander gestured them to wear the glasses. They did so.

  “Activating ...Now!” the commander said.

  A voice began. “Welcome to the virtual world. Please note that getting killed in here will also result in death in the real world.”

  “What?!!” They said in unison.

  “Have a nice time,” the voice said.

  God of Death

  Images flowed through to Q. Earlier, he couldn’t see anything but darkness. That’s how dark the glasses were!

  He looked around him, virtually, of course. The
area was of pure white. At first he thought that he was still in the white room. Then he heard an eerie howl. It was only then that he realized that the whitishness was actually snow!

  He was in a blizzard, a blizzard that made any storm in the Himalayas look like a snowflake falling from the sky. He looked around for the others but he couldn’t see them. The blizzard was too ferocious.

  The wind pushed at him. He struggled just to stay on his feet. He could feel his feet giving way underneath him. It was only then that he looked at what he was wearing. It was his very own armor! It was in its traditional dark knight mode, the one that Taylor felt jealous about. He focused on his suit. He tried to modify it to his will.

  He didn’t know how many minutes had passed when he had finished. It might have taken him some time, but it was worth it. He had a snow white suit with spiked boots and a beacon lamp. It took only a few seconds after that for his friends to find him.

  The beacon lamp shone brightly through the snowstorm. Storm would be an understatement though.

  “Cool suit,” Kai said.

  The others gathered around.

  “Now that we’re all here, what do we do?” Taylor asked.

  “We have no idea where the temple is and with this weather there is the chance that we’ll never find it,” Chris said.

  “Dudette, try to be at least a little optimistic,” Kai said.

  And that was when he fell into a hole.

  Elizabeth screamed, Taylor screeched. Overall, everyone was quite scared. Kai had fallen into a hole in the ground.

  “I’m going in,” Q said.

  “Be careful,” Elizabeth told him. She still couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen to him.

  “Will do,” he said and jumped in.

  It took him forever to reach the bottom, but when he did, it was totally worth it.

  There was an entire palace below the surface of the planet!

  And that wasn't the cool part.

  It was made entirely out of ice!

  The palace was a marvel to see. It was made of different shades of ice at different places. Q wondered how ice could form like that. There seemed to be some source of illumination, for it appeared like daylight. Something that was impossible to get about a hundred feet underground.