Chapter 11
In the arms of Love,
safety, shelter and serenity are found. Without Love, these things fade into a
mist ever fleeing and vanishing from one’s presence.
The A.R.S. Victory raced toward a place on the edge
of the Sol System called the Great Elliptical Cross. The A.R.S. Lightning was
already there; Itxaro was busy repairing it while they waited for Commander
Anver’s team to arrive. She brushed out a ton of ash from the control room so
she could see what she was doing better. Meanwhile, the Prime I was
surprisingly sleeping. Like any other person, he had to slip into that altered
state of consciousness to repair his natural functions of the body. She marveled
at how such a powerful being was still so natural, so much like everyone else.
However, Itxaro put this out of her mind as she then proceeded to realign the
targeting system that was currently off-line, also a result of Decion. That
stupid android caused so much damage to the ship she almost wondered if it
would make more sense to just harvest the supplies for a half a ship, tear this
one down, and build a new one from the combination of parts. This of course was
a joke, yet it was an easy way for her to keep her mind off of the pressing
situation that both the resistance’s flagship and the A.R.S. Lighting were
severely damaged at the moment and if it weren’t for the fact that the
assailing party had not come prepared for a ship battle, only a initial entry
and onboard attack, the resistance would have lost some of its finest ships as
a result of a single ambush. Zurui had to be stopped. He was tearing up the
resistance’s efforts in the Sol System and they simply couldn’t keep up with
him at this rate.
Zurui looked at the new charts of his long range
scans. He smiled with his haunting smirk as he realized that the ship that was
moving toward GEC had to be Oliver’s ship, since Kanda had informed him that
they were on their way to rendezvous with the Prime I. In a rapid succession of
movements, he redirected his ship so that in less than an hour Zurui would be
in perfect position to strike at the A.R.S. Victory.
Captain Lee walked down to Commander Lewis’ old
quarters. He ran his hand along the side of the doorpost just before entering.
Taking a seat in a place that used to be so familiar to him, it felt like the
room dropped fifteen degrees in the blink of an eye. Sure Captain Lee had lost
other crew members before, but never his right hand man.
They had grown up together on Terra Lapsa, worked at
the Sol System Space Station before the Arashad Regime revived its conquest to
rule the universe. Back then, things were always so peaceful and their
friendship thrived. Then as trouble arose, they had to part different ways as
Captain Lee clearly excelled in virtually all military tactics and strategies,
thus giving him a quick promotion to captain and in due time, captain on the
A.R.S. Zoelight. Yet when the regime ordered him to destroy Terra Lapsa,
Lieutenant Lewis positioned his own speeder in the way of the powerful ship so
the captain could not give the order to fire.
It was at this time that the Prime I appeared next to
him, probably using the same energy manipulation that he had used to get to
Itxaro, and then Captain Lee realized that there was a resistance, which he
should join. The next day had been so joyous as Captain Lee was reunited with
his friend after years of being separated by the regime’s evil campaign. From
there, the two of them alone secured the rest of the Sol System Space Station
and left for an adventure against the enemy that would last them nearly half a
lifetime. The captain had always dreamed of bringing his friend back to the Sol
System Space Station and thanking him for that day… But now that wish was cut
short just days before he could complete his plan. Such a deep pain filled the
captain’s heart that he knew not how he would pull through this time.
The A.R.S. Victory raced toward the Great Elliptical
Cross. Then without warning, Commander Avner ran to the helm and rapidly spun
the ship on its side, which allowed us to dodge the incoming shots none of us
had been aware of. Then with a voice of clarity he stated, “We’re under attack;
battle stations everyone!”
My post was at the helm, so while my body scrambled
to that console, David went to tactics, and Mason headed down to engineering.
Mom was surprised when she was teleported from her room directly to the
teleportation console, by her son. Oliver gave a wry smile, apologizing, “Sorry
mom, but it would appear to be Zurui, and you’re our best person against him.”
She nodded, a bit dazed still from the fact that
Oliver had breached one of the safety protocols that kinda helped with not
getting headaches from teleportation, but it would fade in a few seconds as
soon as she was working through the basic targeting algorithms. What a battle
this would be.
Zurui slammed his console as he realized he had
missed and lost his element of surprise. With a yell, he practically cursed her
name, “Kanda! You fool! Never defy me!”
Kanda however, was sleeping in her room through all
of this, yet she was behind Oliver’s sudden actions, yet she didn’t know it.
You see, when love reaches some Ies, it becomes so powerful that they can
telepathically pick things up from the person they love without a single
thought being sent between them. Reason sand science conducted by the
resistance suggests that this effect is created by the same energy that fuels
the most powerful of connections between tipirs and their wielders, like in
Tam’s case and perhaps my brother’s. Now back to the battle…
A volley of shots came from Zurui’s ship, mostly
headed for our port side. Oliver ordered me to turn away and peal over and up
so David could fire the starboard lasers at the thrusters of the enemy ship.
Oliver reasoned that if the ship couldn’t move, it would be easy enough to just
evade the enemy since they had superior teleportation abilities. In this
maneuver however, Zurui had calculated our trajectory and before any of us
could react, a pair of shots hit our ship. Fortunately, the ablative armor that
Mason had designed held through the flames and we managed to graze the enemy
with a few shots of our own. Yet Zurui was not out of tactics, because
something we were unaware of until now was that his ship possessed the ability
to break his ship into six parts and operate them in an array of patterns by
interconnected wireless relays. This was specific to Zurui’s ship, and happened
to be the way he was able to take down our fleet of ships that had been in this
area of space. We had been caught completely off-guard at the time, and news of
how exactly it works had not reached Commander Avner yet. So as Oliver
commanded me to turn the ship around for a second round, we were in shock to see
six ships in place of the one we were previously fighting. For a moment, Oliver
froze unsure of what to do, until David shouted, “Orders sir?”
Oliver shook his head and stated, “Move toward the west
wing of their formation and use the twin Ion cannons to hit anything based on
closest proximity.”
We then proceeded as told yet, Zurui was familiar
with this and countered by peeling off two ships of his formation on the east
wing. One moved to pursue the A.R.S. Victory as we inflicted damage on some of
the other mini-ships while the other of Zurui’s ships raced ahead cutting off
our ship. This resulted in us damaging the enemy ships, yet becoming surrounded
by enemy ships in a cubic formation. However, Zurui did not fire, though he was
in perfect position to leave our ship disabled or worse, instead he sent us a
transmission:
::: Commander Avner, you are being offered a solution
to your dilemma, if you should will it, I’ll accept you sending one of your
crew members over to me, and I’ll leave you alone. :::
Commander Avner needed more time to think of a way
out, so he sent back another transmission to buy time:
::: Who did you have in mind? And what would that
mean for them? :::
Zurui looked quite perplexed at that moment because he
had not expected a response, but he answered with the same cocky demeanor he
seemed to approach everything else:
::: What does it concern you? If you hand them over,
they are mine and you have nothing over them. What is one life compared to a
ship of lives? Who you send is irrelevant, just send someone if you want to
live. :::
Oliver telepathically spoke to Mom, yet none of us
had realized it. Then as my orders looked so strange, Oliver smiled while
writing a reply:
::: My final decision is to teleport myself in a
moment, just allow me to say goodbye to Kanda. :::
Zurui looked more confused than ever before, but
shrugged off the matter and sat there awaiting Oliver’s arrival.
Oliver ran over to Kanda’s room as he telepathically
gave the rest of us our final orders telepathically. Then he reached Kanda’s
room, she was staring out into the darkness of space, when he came over to her,
smiled, took her hand, kissed it, then stepped back as Mom teleported him over
to Zurui. Kanda sat there in utter shock that Oliver had gone to take her place.
He had rescued her from Zurui and now Oliver was giving himself up for her
safety. What kind of love was this?
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