When they arrive in Fhetat space, Frial is surprised by the swarm of activity on the monitors.
“I guess things started early,” he said to Yiel who is with him and Whadgaf in the command room of the ship along with the few other operators of the controls who are busy receiving messages and navigating the ship to the coordinates relayed by the Queen Ravileth.
Yiel looks to Frial with a blank look on his face and Frial’s friendly smile fades.
“Representative Nuren obviously showed up to win this,” Yiel says. “And quickly. If we want to be effective, we need to rendezvous with the Kings at their safe location as soon as possible so we can direct the ships behind us.”
“The reports from the front are bleak,” Whadgaf says from her command chair. They are arriving a cycle after the front of their forces from the Banned Regions. “They have four crowns already and this is only a quarter of the IP forces.”
Yiel shook his head and left the monitor to stand next to Whadgaf who looked up at him.
“It’s such a shrewd move on the Representative’s part,” he says to her. “Those crowns are magic, they make the Kings like you, and without them, she is severely handicapping the Kings and leaving them alive to deal with the consequences definitely shows how personal this is to her.”
“One of them has already killed himself,” Whadgaf says. “I don’t think anyone expected her to be so bold. And so effective.”
“What’s the plan?” Yiel asks.
“The Queen Ravileth wants to hit them hard. There aren’t a lot of ships, but there are a lot of soldiers and they’re relentless. They are very durable and they are good at killing. And then there are the weapons, Pen’s weapons. Superpowered Earthlings courtesy of the Earthling Representative, they’re the ones overpowering the Kings.”
“Who?” Giovanni asks. He is an Earthling, but not affiliated with the Earthling Representative, and he is one of the few other operators of the ship’s controls in the command room. Sevi Swite of Oin, a close friend of Whadgaf, is there as well.
“I think Maria and Eakran identified them as Kevin, Desperation, Ivan, and Clay,” Whadgaf says, struggling with the names. “Do you know them?”
Giovanni nods. “They are superpowered indeed. I know less about Desperation, but if he’s here he must pack a punch. I guarantee you that they are being manipulated by CZS science. There is a doctor on Earth who created these monsters and controls them with biological agents. I wonder if Eakran is working on a way to sever that control?”
“He hasn’t mentioned it,” Whadgaf says, “I’ll tell the Queen. If we can free the weapons, they would eagerly fight for us I would imagine.”
“They are good men, most of them. And the other would want revenge.”
Frial feels left out in all of this strategizing and he is eager to do something with his newfound hero status. But he can only listen for now.
“Eakran wants to speak with us,” Whadgaf says and puts on a large display.
“It’s good to see you again, Giovanni!” he says with real enthusiasm. “I guess we’ll be seeing you all soon, but Whadgaf mentioned the control of Kevin and the others, and you’re right. It has Worthington’s fingerprints all over it, the black smear at the base of their necks is a parasite of some sort, but we haven’t been able to get a real sample. Maria said Kevin is himself, and he tried to resist it maybe, but ultimately they are going for crowns. Without having a specimen to run tests, I can’t be sure, but I think I have something that might be able to kill the parasite, or at least break or weaken the hold on them. But I can’t make guarantees.”
They all look at one another as they contemplate this information. The addition of Pen’s weapons to their side could allow them to capture Pen and put an end to the war before it starts.
“Meet us, have someone bring it,” Yiel says. “We’ll let the Regions’ forces continue to resist on the outer ring and fortify the inner ring for the coming attack, and we’ll go in search of a weapon to test the Representative’s work.”
Whadgaf thinks it over.
“The Queen was adamant about you standing with the Kings,” Sevi says. “You don’t have to go, and it can still be done.”
“I’ll go,” Frial says eagerly.
“Shut up,” Yiel says instinctively and with more aggression than he realizes. “Sorry.”
“Really,” Frial continues, “have someone meet us before we arrive wherever it is we’re going, and I’ll go put the science to the test. I’m extremely hard to catch, you know this Whadgaf. I can annoy strong adversaries just enough to trick them, I was made for this.”
Whadgaf can’t disagree with his logic, but she doesn’t want Frial to risk himself for something he had been dragged into.
“I’ll go with him,” Yiel says reluctantly. “He’ll need supervision.”
“That’s not enough,” Giovanni says shaking his head. “These are Earthlings with powers like the crowns give the Kings.”
“Where’s Maria?” Whadgaf asks Eakran. “Can you have her bring your creation?”
“She’s eager to do something,” Eakran says. “But I’ll have to convince the Queen, she thinks Maria needs to play it safer. She was there when all of the Kings lost their crowns and she’s been fighting since this all started.”
“I wish I could let her rest,” Whadgaf says. “But send her fast. We’re just past the outer ring.”
When Maria arrives on the ship she is with Kal Qor of the Banned Regions. Whadgaf and Sevi hug her tightly. They are both very happy to see her, and they are both concerned by her demeanor.
“Is everything ok?” Whadgaf asks.
Maria takes a deep breath, and then exhales loudly.
“One of the Pen’s weapons attacked the tertiary satellite. I had to leave, the Queen made me, and he got away before we really knew what happened. He crashed in alone and ripped it up, we fled just in time, but he took one of the escape rooms, the entire room, and headed back to Pen, I guess. Maybe four, I think there were four of them. Re and Sao-Reyne are with the Queen at the satellite.”
A quiet shock fills the command room.
“You all should go. Sevi, Giovanni and I will continue to the tertiary site. Is Eakran there?”
“He’s safe on the Fhetat,” Maria says. “He was a hologram at the tertiary site.”
“Good to know,” Whadgaf says. “Well, let’s get to it everyone. We need to turn this around. Right now.”
“We don’t even have to be near them for it to work?” Frial asks with disbelief.
“Eakran said that if it works, we’ll know it’s working,” Kal explains, “but we don’t have to inject it or apply it directly. He designed it so we could set it off to disperse and be ingested when the humans breathe. I guess we could just jam it into their necks.”
They are in a small ship with four seats with a large, durable glass dome that covers them and Frial navigates. Maria sits next to him, and Kal and Yiel sit in the back. They have intel about the location of two of the Pen’s weapons, Ivan and Clay, who are helping to take over the satellites of the outer security ring, and their ship takes them fast in that direction.
“I was wondering what you were up to in all of this,” Yiel says to Kal in the back seats. “I haven’t heard from you since you took my ship. I didn’t even know if you were alive.”
“I’m touched that you care,” Kal says genuinely. “And in all this chaos I don’t know where we left your ship. Do you remember, Maria?”
“Did Eakran take it to the Fhetat?” she asks as she turns to look at him, then at Yiel. “We don’t know, I’m sorry. We’ll track it down.”
“I don’t really care about the ship,” Yiel says, “though there might have been some things stored on it on that the family will curse me for losing. Kal, I was worried about you. You went back to Wiis. What happened?”
“Are you two lovers?” Frial asks. “I would never have guessed you were so adventurous, Yiel. Good on you. I’m glad you’re not uptight all the time.”
Yiel shakes his head.
“You guys really are lovers?” Maria asks, still looking back at them with surprise on her face. “How do you know each other?”
“The Regions,” Kal says and he smiles at Yiel who tries to hide the fact that he smiles back. “He made me the dictator.”
“That’s sweet,” Frial says. “And here you are, reunited just in time for this suicide mission. Love is not dead.”
Maria laughs at what she perceives to be his sarcasm.
“Alright,” she says and turns back in her seat. “Game time boys. Ivan and Clay are a couple, they fight very well together. But I’ve seen Clay take down a King with a crown on his own, so we have to be careful. None of us are strong enough to fight him, our weapons might kill him, but we want to avoid that. I’m sure they have something in their helmets that make it impossible for me to mind control them. We want them in an enclosed space, at a safe range to deploy Eakran’s mist or whatever. And that’s the ballgame. Hopefully we’ll gain two allies and not die in the process.”
When they catch up to Ivan and Clay, the two of them are defending themselves against Fhetatian soldiers and reinforcements from the Regions; a contingent of Ointite militiamen and Druinte forces. Clay is enjoying a brawl with five Druintes who wear suits that seem to enhance their strength and allows them to dodge Clay’s powerful blows and hit him hard enough for him to feel it. Ivan floats above it all, throwing balls of green energy that cause destruction on impact, but do not set anything ablaze.
“How do we get them inside?” Kal asks as they hover nearby, hoping to avoid the attention of the weapons.
Maria radios to the secure channel of the security satellite.
“This is important, we need to draw those two inside. Surrender now and we’ll land. We’ll take them inside for negotiations.”
The Fhetatian soldier that she speaks with is completely against surrender, but after Maria calls King Cras-myne Re, explains the situation, and has him talk to the solider, the defenders of the satellite surrender as Frial lands the ship.
They all go peacefully to the command center and Ivan and Clay stand before Frial, Yiel, Maria and Kal, who they had forced to kneel.
“Since you are surrendering on behalf of the Kings” Clay says. “You must know where we can find more.”
“Truly, your brilliancy,” Frial says, speaking on behalf of the group while Kal activates the device to disperse the mist that Eakran had created. “You know what, if we were to take you on our ship, we could sneak you right onto their base.”
“You could do that,” Clay says and smiles to Ivan.
“Is that why you all came here?” Ivan asks. “To give us the Kings.”
Frial shrugs. “Could be, maybe we are tired of this fighting. We see the momentum of this conflagration and we want to cut our losses.”
Ivan shakes his head, very skeptical.
“Something is happening here, my love,” he says to Clay, who sneezes unexpectedly. Ivan looks at him with concern. “Do you have a cold?”
“No,” Clay says. “Just a tickle in my nose I guess.” He clears his throat and then he starts to cough. “It’s dry in here all of a sudden.”
Ivan sneezes and then turns his attention back to Frial.
“I think that we should be skeptical of this one,” Ivan says and he starts to approach Frial, before he and Clay begin to sneeze and cough controllably, and then collapse, still coughing.
“I hope it doesn’t kill them,” Maria says and they all stand over Ivan and Clay with concern on their faces.
After a few minutes, they both stop coughing and they seem to be asleep.
Frial approaches them first and he inspects the back of Ivan’s neck. It is free of the black slime that is gurgling and bubbling in a pile next to him.
“I think it worked,” Frial says. “They’re breathing.”
PRL Serials 