Phoenix Reborn Page 17

  “You are a worthy antagonist. But will the Dragoon murder an innocent child?” Harruhama yelled to the man over the sound of the transport engines.

  The Dragoon lowered his weapon when he saw Connor.

  “I didn’t think so!” Harruhama yelled as the transport lifted off the deck, high into the air.

  ~ ~ ~

  William watched with a deep sense of frustration and anger as his stepson departed with the man responsible for the death of his wife. He’d wanted to kill Harruhama, wanted to rescue the boy, but even as he stood there watching the opportunity pass, the man’s head begin to whirl with ideas. He knew he would have to kill General Harruhama.

  He almost turned to go back inside of the Academy to get information on where Connor had gone, but the sound of an alarm broke his concentration. He looked back to the open doorway and saw a pretty, red-headed young girl staring back at him.

  “You didn’t stop them!” she cried from the doorway.

  “I couldn’t get there on time. But I won’t give up,” he called back.

  “You’re the Dragoon, right, the man who is setting the world free?” she asked from behind her green, teary eyes.

  “I am, but I don’t know about setting the world free,” he responded quickly, knowing that he was going to have to run soon.

  “Connor said you were. He told us that you were going to win, too.”

  Tears rimmed his dark-blue eyes. “If you know Connor, then you must be Amanda, right?”

  “How did you know that?” She took a stunned step back inside.

  “It is nice to meet you, young lady. I’m William Mercer, Connor’s stepfather.” He tipped his hat and removing his bandana for a moment.

  She was clearly shocked by this news. The sound of guards moving down the hallway broke the trance.

  “You have to run! Connor has to know that you’re alive!” she yelled as she ran back inside.

  He was smiling despite himself. He turned to run for the transport on the far side of the runway as the sound of guards neared the doorway. He reached the transport as the armed men began to burst forth, running toward him. The transport lifted off before they got anywhere close to the end of the runway. Captain Blackwell had clearly seen the events unfolding outside and had been prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.

  When William got on board, Jared turned to him and spoke.

  “Was that your son they took?” he asked, seeming to know the answer.

  William settled down into the co-pilot seat. “Yes.”

  “Who was the little girl?”

  “That was my son’s girlfriend,” he said with a smile, despite the gravity of the situation.

  Jared shared the grin for a moment before continuing, “So where to, boss?”

  “Can you follow that other transport?”

  “I don’t think so. It left in a hurry, and I don’t have that kind of tracking equipment onboard.”

  “Damn,” William growled. “Do you have any idea where they would take him?”

  “I can’t say. Someone in the OMBIcademy might know?” Blackwell offered. “But we’re not going to be able to go back that way anytime soon.”

  William could see other craft beginning to launch from the platforms and as much as it hurt to let Connor go, he was out of options.

  “Did we miss our only chance?” William asked, more to himself than to Captain Blackwell.

  “For now we did. I am getting us out of here.”

  “Where to?” William asked

  “Well, where does the revolution need the most help?”

  “Let’s scan the network and find out,” William said, putting on a headset.

  They flew in the direction that Harruhama had gone for a while, but without seeing the faster transport or having any way to track them, they eventually turned their attention to the growing number of reports of fighting all over the world. Despite wanting to look for his son, William knew that it was hopeless and, for now, his revolution needed him.

  ~ ~ ~

  Eight thousand light years away, Alex stood in front of the Cerulean Sky Café, saying his goodbyes to Lyria. Marlena had flown Tizona into the city, landing on a high rooftop with Skoll in the cargo hold. She and Alex took a lift down to the street, where she informed him that she was going to go meet with the commanders of the 3rd and 5th fleet before they departed.

  Alex had run three blocks to the café where Lyria had been serving lunch to an older couple. When she saw him in the window she ran outside and jumped into his arms.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she said whimpered, pulling herself close to him.

  “I had to. I only have a few minutes, but I had to come say goodbye.” He put his arms around her.

  “You will be gone for five weeks, right?”

  “I hope that’s all it takes. But if we beat the returning ships by too much, it may be longer. It’s hard to say just how long a slipstream will take,” he explained as he moved his hands up and down her back.

  “You know, you keep traveling that way and I am going to be a lot older than you someday,” she said with a grin.

  “Well, I shouldn’t have to do it much longer if we can find a way to stop the war,” he replied, sharing her grin.

  “I know you will. I believe in you.” Lyria kissed Alex’s cheek softly.

  His face flushed a deep crimson as he replied, “Then I guess I will have to.”

  The two shared another kiss before they parted. Alex met his mom at the base of the building and proceeded back onto the lift to the rooftop.

  “How did it go?” she asked him.

  “Good,” Alex replied, looking distant.

  “The commanders are ordering the fleets back to protect Aeris, so she should be safe until we get back,” Marlena offered.

  “Good,” he replied again, a little more enthusiastically.

  The two shared a smile as Marlena put her hand on her son’s back. As they exited the lift and boarded the Tizona, Alex paused to look back over the planet he had come to love.

  “It’s really great here,” he said to her, closing the cargo bay doors.

  “That’s why we have to protect it,” she replied, moving through the cargo bay up to the flight deck.

  “Hey, since we’re going to miss it in slipstream, happy birthday, Mom,” Alex called up to a smiling Marlena.

  ~ ~ ~

  From behind a crate in the cargo hold, Operative One heard the comment too and smiled. He knew he would have to bide his time with the dangerous boy on board, but he was trained to be patient, and so he waited quietly as the engines of the Tizona ignited, lifting them high into the sky.

  Chapter 17

  A Long Way Down

  The flight on the transport was spent in silence, Connor staring out the window at the ocean below, thinking about what he had just seen. The Dragoon was at the OMBIcademy, coming after Harruhama! The thought didn’t sit right with the boy, since Harruhama had only been on the island for a short time. Surely this man hadn’t anticipated him right to that moment.

  Then what? Connor’s mind swirled furiously, trying to come up with the answer. Was the man after him? That even made less sense to Connor.

  Harruhama was shouting orders through a communicator while Connor listened. He was trying to organize a search for the man, who had been declared dead forty-eight hours before. He listened to the old general screaming at someone on the other end of the transmission, glad he was not that person.

  The fight at the academy had made Connor wonder if his friends were okay, until he heard Harruhama yelling about how the man escaped.

  After a couple of hours, the old man seemed to settle down, speaking calmly, issuing orders to various parts of the world. Apparently there were a lot of battles going on across the globe and Connor wondered how bad it was. He figured the OMBIcademy was safe now, since the Dragoon left, and he didn’t have any friends anywhere else, so he didn’t let it affect him too much.

  “How bad i
s it?” Connor asked when Harruhama set down his headset.

  “That’s nothing that a ten-year-old boy should worry about. We have other matters to attend to,” the man said cryptically.

  “It’s just that, I have two uncles in Florida and Argentina, and I was wondering how bad the riots had gotten there.”

  “I see. Most of the damage is in the major cities; the more rural areas don’t have a lot of UEDF bases, so even if the citizens were angry, they wouldn’t have anyone to attack.”

  “Is it going to be okay though?” Connor asked seriously.

  “The lies that the Dragoon has spread have hurt us, but we will make it right,” Harruhama stated, trying to dismiss the subject.

  “What lies?” Connor asked innocently.

  Harruhama knew enough to keep his mouth shut. To even hint to the boy that he had ordered his mother to be murdered would undermine this entire operation. For a moment, he considered aborting the plan all together.

  “Never mind; we have a lot of work to do ahead, you should focus on that.” The general picked his headphones back up.

  Connor didn’t appreciate being dismissed so casually one bit. He accessed his OMBI and unlocked the Neuro-Sync option. He enjoyed the images of menus in his head that he could scroll through at the speed of thought.

  “Now why didn’t I do this a long time ago?” he asked to himself quietly.

  Connor used the device to reach into the communicator that General Harruhama was using and listened. The man was faking a transmission, meaning he was avoiding the question. He reached out through the ship and found the pilot’s cellular communicator, which he used to access the media networks inside his mind.

  He dug around until he found the now-sealed file of the Dragoon’s presentation in Central Park. He watched the entire thing while staring out the window of the transport. He listened as the presentation told him that the EMC had been responsible for his mother’s death.

  He felt a familiar heat rising in his chest as his vision turned red. Connor was so mad that he almost attacked Harruhama right in the transport. He took several deep breaths, trying to steady himself, trying to remember William’s advice on how to keep calm.

  He hadn’t followed the advice in the past very much, but sitting there facing five armed guards and the leader of the oppressive militaristic government, he thought he had better remain in control.

  Connor cooled his mind and thought about revenge. He’d learned to love that word recently. He knew that it wasn’t healthy to pursue vengeance as a manner of living, but lately he knew a lot of people who deserved a little payback.

  ~ ~ ~

  After a couple of hours of seething anger, Connor saw a small metal object out in the water. It looked like a landing pad, but with nothing around it. Slowly the transport circled and landed on the metal pad and the guards began to vacate the craft. Connor got up and followed them outside, where he watched the transport fly back into the sky, leaving them there.

  One of the guards got on his communicator and said, “Send the lift.”

  They waited for several minutes until the tubular glass lift came out of the metal pad. They boarded it and slowly descended into the ocean. Connor looked out the window at the water as the daylight faded above, wondering what sort of special mission he would be getting underwater. As the tube continued downward, Connor eventually saw the lights of a facility below.

  When they arrived at the bottom, they disembarked, walking down a long clear hallway toward one of the large domes in the facility.

  “Initiator!” Connor heard the voice like a scream in his head.

  He’d heard whispers before and knew that he had been getting feedback from his OMBI in the past, but never before had he heard anything scream to him like that.

  When the door opened, he saw it: Hati kneeling down before him like a seven-winged wolf-knight in white armor paying homage to his lord. Connor nodded toward the machine and smiled, seeing it as a sort of friend, but also as an opportunity.

  “I am going to leave you with specialist Larkin, Connor. I will check on your progress in a few days,” Harruhama said as he exited the room too quickly.

  His opportunity gone for now, Connor turned his attention back on the ship that had taken him across the galaxy.

  A man wearing a black uniform walked up and stood next to Connor while he was staring at Hati. It was all Connor could do to not board the ship and try to break the glass walls around him.

  “So you’re the kid who can pilot that, eh?” the man said in a friendly tone.

  “I guess so. Have other people tried?” Connor asked, thinking he knew the answer.

  “Yeah, we tried. But it doesn’t work for us,” Larkin said quietly.

  “It didn’t work for me right away either, I had to trick it.” Connor turned to look at the man.

  Specialist Larkin was a tall man with sandy-blond hair. He didn’t look like he was much older than Alex except that his light-blue eyes seemed tired.

  “How did you do that? With your inhibitor chips in, I mean,” Larkin asked, curious.

  “Uh, I had to sing. I don’t want to talk about it,” Connor said, embarrassed. He didn’t want Larkin to ask him to “meow” a few songs to try to get Hati to move.

  “I see. Well, that’s no problem. I’m going to remove your inhibitor chips so that you won’t have to trick it anymore.”

  “All of them?” Connor asked hopefully. He had seen what Vector was capable of and enjoyed the idea of being able to produce weapons right then.

  “No, just one for today; the first one that makes it so your OMBI only makes weapons in the OMBIcademy training rooms and arenas,” Larkin explained.

  “Then what?” Connor asked.

  “Then I am going to let you train on a simulator for a while with another student.”

  “Who?”

  “A kid named Vertigo.”

  “Oh, I know him! I thought he was dead. He was a friend of my brother!” Connor was excited to be able to get some information on Alex.

  “I know. They say you saved his life,” Larkin said as he sat Connor down on a chair in the engineering bay.

  “When?” Connor asked, confused as Larkin began taking apart the cover of his OMBI.

  “When you brought the Griswold back from the Eagle Nebula, he was on board.”

  “Oh. Then I guess he owes me one!” Connor grinned.

  His smiled was erased quickly as a wave of nausea came over him. Larkin had removed the face plate and was staring at the OMBI’s inhibitor chips intently. The man produced a pair of pliers and proceeded to gently remove the first inhibitor.

  Connor felt like he was going to vomit. Dizziness washed over him like he was spinning up through a tornado, twirling high into the sky. Then it was over. When the chip came out, Connor felt immediately better.

  As his first order of business, he manifested a Dragunov sniper rifle into his hands. The thing was glowing with a bright-blue light as he gripped it with his left hand.

  “So if I shoot someone with a virtual weapon outside the arena, will they still get stunned?” Connor asked curiously.

  “I think so; for a little while, anyway,” Larkin replied cautiously. “Don’t shoot anyone though, kid.”

  Connor let the weapon dissipate and smiled at the specialist.

  “I won’t,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Right,” Larkin replied, sounding skeptical, “Let’s get you into the simulator, if you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Yeah, I feel fine. Let’s go.” Connor’s words were filled with enthusiasm.

  They walked into the corner of the room, where a large white helmet was resting on a table near a black-and-white chair.

  Connor sat in the chair as Larkin placed the helmet over his head. It was dark inside the helmet and he could hear Larkin on the outside tapping his fingers against a datapad. Then the scene changed. He was outside on sandy beach starring at two large Battle Suit Vessels.

  “Hey, kid.
They told me you were going to be here,” the older boy said to him.

  Vertigo was sitting on a rock nearby; he looked like he had been waiting for a while.

  “You’re Austin, right?” Connor asked.

  “Call me Vertigo, kid, or Corporal if you’re into the whole ‘chain of command’ thing,” Vertigo replied with a grin.

  “Sorry. I’m Raptor. You knew my brother, right?”

  “Yeah, I did. But I can’t talk about it, so don’t ask. You ready to get to work?”

  Connor wasn’t happy with the answer he got, but he turned back toward the Battle Suits and walked over to the smaller one.

  It was vaguely the same size as Hati, but looked plain compared to the real suit’s striking features. The larger suit was huge and made Connor wonder what sort of vessel it was designed after.

  Vertigo boarded his vessel by running up the leg and rolling into the cockpit. The battle suit closed around him and stood up.

  “I’m going to pull a few maneuvers; see if you can follow.”

  “What are we preparing for anyway? I don’t know anything about the mission.”

  “Right; as I understand it, there is a Gortha convoy coming toward Earth through a slipstream, and we are going to intercept it,” Austin said as his Battle Suit Vessel leapt into the sky, firing its thrusters. After a moment it leveled out, hovering out above the water.

  Connor accessed his Neuro-sync and, in his mind, went through his menus to unlock the suit he was in. He found Hati listed on the main menu and was delighted that it was apparently free for him to use. When he unlocked it, a sub-menu came down with many different specialized weapons he could use. He opted to not spend any points on those, since they weren’t free.

  From his training in the OMBIcademy, Connor had learned that the more skilled he got with something, the cheaper it became to unlock as an ability of his OMBI. They’d told him that the device would sync to his brain, but he didn’t understand exactly how it all worked.