Chapter 20
Love came to my rescue,
wrapped me in his grace and carried me to a place of beauty profound.
Camryn sat Cassandra down. Then with a
soft and serious tone, she spoke, “Listen to me, you can’t protect her from
everything that will happen to her, but you can give her to someone who will be
able to.”
Cassandra looked at Mom unsure of what
to say so she continued, “The love of the Prime I is strong enough to defend
her, yet if you can’t accept this, your own worry could hinder his efforts. How
can he rescue her if you do not allow it? Let him save her, stop trying to
resist what you know to be true and ask him to come to her rescue. He will
listen to the honest plead of a mother on behalf of her child.”
Cassandra sat there, biting her lip,
uncertain of what to do or say. She loved her daughter so much, but she didn’t
know how she could believe this was really happening, she weakly said, “If he
can save her, let him.”
Cheyenne fired a torrent of various slices of
energy at the android. However, they all were deflected by a powerful shield.
Then Gabriela tackled Cheyenne as Decion shot at
her and Cheyenne
didn’t know what to do. Gabriela opened a hatch and shoved Cheyenne in, telling her to crawl through as
fast as she could. Then Gabriela said, “Death will not separate us from love.”
The blue tipir formed a twister that tore
through the hallway, sweeping Decion and crashing him into the wall. However,
the android just got back up and chased after them again. Then Gabriela cried
out in pain as a shot from Decion grazed her hand while they were climbing down
a different tube. A few moments later, Decion was upon them and there was now
no way to escape him.
Captain Lee towed the supplies from
their raid back to the station. Captain Dalton was taking the inventory when
Cassandra threw up her hands in frustration and shouted, “Please save her!”
Upon hearing those very words, the
Prime I teleported from the A.R.S. Zoelight back to Gabriela’s side. Decion
froze, unable to move by the cross-frequencies of two Kentallian Orbs. Then
taking the two Ies in his arms, the Prime I teleported them off the ship back
to the A.R.S. Victory. They were now all safe, back on the resistance ship, away
from Zurui and his drones.
A few minutes later, Zurui slammed his
fist against the wall. He almost had a perfect source of energy to fuel a
Decion 3.0, but now he had to repair his Decion 2.0 and had nothing to show for
his troubles. At the very least, he had been able to download a ton of
technical data on the A.R.S. Victory, which Vidya would have to analyze when he
got back to the base. This particular group of resistance members was
particularly resilient to a point that Zurui spent the next ten hours scheming
of new way to just torture them. He hated losing… no, it wasn’t that anymore,
it was now losing to the Avners. They didn’t deserve what they had, all those
close calls, times they should have died, been captured, or otherwise be his
prize in battle. Well, his true plan wasn’t destroyed yet, he still had plenty
of cards to play and Daedalus was his best kept card yet.
The Prime I’s presence stunned me. For
a moment, everything seemed to fade, but as quickly as he had come, he
vanished, returning to the A.R.S. Zoelight no doubt. Cheyenne stood there, uncertain of how she
should react to all of this. Then she hugged me. Her head met my stomach, yet
if you had been me, you would have thought the tear on her cheek met your skin.
It was that touching. Then she looked up at me with her big brown eyes and
asked, “Was that a dream?”
Shaking my head, truth proceeded from
my lips, “No, that was love come to save us.”
From there, we all returned to our
previous agenda and awaited the A.R.S. Zoelight to get back in teleporter
range. Allow me to clarify that the Prime I can teleport himself distances
significantly farther than our current technology, but often conserves his
strength for other matters as well. Oliver and Mason worked on the shield
systems to help prevent infiltration again. Mom spent her time answering the
seemingly unending list of questions that our relatives had about what was
real. In all this time, Kanda kept thinking of Oliver while my mind began to
trail off to that moment in the park with Daedalus when he kissed me.
Kanda teleported Oliver and herself
down to Phayao, a city in northern Thailand, Mom would be pulling them
back up in about 3 hours just before the A.R.S. Victory would be out of range. When
they teleported down, Oliver nearly fell into the water because the area was
flooded more than Kanda had expected. They then rented a pair of pedal boats
and headed out onto the lake. Oliver looked out over the lake, inhaled deeply,
filling his lungs with the humid air. It was strangely refreshing and the
tropical weather felt relaxing. Oliver looked at Kanda and asked, “So is this
what you used to do to relax? Just take a pedal boat out on the lake and enjoy
the water?”
Kanda shrugged, “Well when there was
time… Thailand
is very poor and has a lot of drug dealing. As a result, more of my time was
spent practicing how to defend myself without a tipir than pedaling out on the
lake.”
Oliver nodded and then followed up,
asking, “What did you learn in order to defend yourself?”
“This country is home to Muay Thai, translated
to mean the science of eight limbs. Essentially, that’s the form of martial
arts that was taught to me whenever there was time.”
Oliver thought a moment then said,
“Mom probably knows a little bit of that.”
As they peacefully sat on the lake,
Kanda heard a loud annoying noise and asked, “What’s that sound?”
Oliver shrugged, offering, “Perhaps a
motorboat or something like it.”
“They aren’t allowed in this lake.”
With that they turned to look in the
direction of the noise to see a speed boat racing straight at them. With almost
no time to react, they both pedaled away from each other to dodge the oncoming,
illegal boat. The two Terrans driving the boat turned around and headed at
Oliver. He pedaled away, but as they were just about to run him through, he
jumped of the boat and nearly caused the speed boat to turn as he hit the
water. However, the boat turned around and came at Oliver again. With his tipir
underwater, Oliver cut the underside of the boat and the motor just sank to the
bottom. Kanda picked him up and cycled away from the swimming Terrans.
Once on the shore, Oliver leaned
against a tree and turned his tipir back to stealth. Then Kanda rested her hand
on him as they were surrounded by about forty other Terrans. As a result of
this set-up, Oliver couldn’t use his tipir if they didn’t know what was going
on, but he also didn’t have enough training to take on this many people. Oliver rose to his feet and took a horse
stance, hoping Kanda had learned enough Muay Thai to hold her own.
On the other side of the planet,
Daedalus came to pick me up from the safe house for either a late breakfast or
early brunch. Since time had eluded me, he waited for me to finish getting
ready by taking a seat in the dining room. Mom and David were still on the
other side of the planet, waiting to pick-up Kanda and Oliver. Then there was a
knock at the door. Daedalus seemed uncertain whether he should get it, so
greeting our guest fell to me. Now staring at a seven foot tall Vytor who’s
holding a disrupter pistol to my head is not what my mind was expecting when
opening the door. Uncertain of how to deal with this situation, my feet carried
me backwards, while the Vytor advanced. Turning my gaze back to the dining
room, Daedalus had apparently moved. Then when my eyes made their way back to
the Vytor, Daedalus tackled the infiltrator. He then took my hand and we ran to
his car. In all the chaos, the idea of bringing my tipir eluded me. We drove
away from the safe house, its location was clearly compromised. Mom would have
to build a new one somewhere else.
Daedalus looked behind and sped away with me riding
shotgun. The Vytor got out and chased us on a motorcycle. While my eyes were
looking back on the Vytor, Daedalus swerved sharply to the right, attempting to
loose the pursuer. After bracing against the side of the car, my neck craned
back the other way to see if we had lost him. However, we hadn’t and the Vytor
had also drawn his disruptor again…
No comments:
Post a Comment