The Rising Sun: Episode 6 (9 page)

Mantra turned to Ion and Vestra. “Go get the
Xeni we’ve knocked out.”

__________

Rygar felt his heartrate zoom out of control
as the true depth of the situation slowly reached him. After slowly
hovering back out of consciousness, he had found himself lying by
the wall of their ship’s control room, the ship the Xeni had driven
to this planet. But as he processed what he was seeing, he realised
that the people in this room weren’t Xeni…

He sat up straight, his eyes darting between
the four people he saw before him. And then he remembered what had
happened before he had been knocked out.

Mantra slowly trotted forward, leaning down
over him with fury and resolve blazing in his white eyes. The other
three youngsters whose names he didn’t know stood behind their
master.

Rygar’s hand twitched, longing to reach for
his sword slung around his back, when he realised that it wasn’t
there anymore: the Nyon had disarmed him while he’d been
unconscious. And they had taken their ship from them. Rygar was the
only Xeni here. And then the true hopelessness of the situation
crashed over him.

Mantra bent lower upon him and breathed,
“Now, more for your own good than for ours … tell us
everything.”

Rygar steadied himself with all the effort
possible, as Mantra glared down upon him with a look of steel in
his eyes. As the silence between them drew on, he collected
everything, weighing his options.

After Zardin had taken the conch from Mantra,
he had informed Rygar of the plan with which they would ambush the
watchmen, the same plan which Rygar knew was now in implementation
… Dantox, the spy they were having with the Nyon for a long time
now, would be in Vorgos, a planet somewhere in the outer spectrum.
And there, he would use the conch to summon the watchmen … right
into the ambush. The trap. A trap that would have them all killed
…

It would be happening right now.

Anytime now, the watchmen would be summoned
by Dantox to the planet Vorgos. And minutes into their arrival,
they would all be dead.

Faced with no other choice, Rygar lowered his
resistance and submitted:

“The watchmen are being summoned into a trap
… it’s happening in the planet Vorgos, in the far side of the outer
spectrum.”

Silence struck the hull after his words. A
grim, tense silence…

Mantra’s face remained just as unchanged as
ever, but something in his posture had stiffened. The other three
youngsters could be seen with visible looks of shock and alarm.

“It’s happening right now.” Rygar said,
shaking his head.

Rygar had not lied: this was the plan … But,
he withheld that one crucial piece of information.

The one crucial aspect that had given the
Xeni their true edge over the Nyon all along.

“It doesn’t make sense,” mumbled Mantra,
standing straight and looking around at the other three youngsters,
one of which was the red haired boy who’d been with Mantra earlier.
“The conch can only be used by a Nyon … only an initiated member of
the brotherhood can sound it.” He turned back to Rygar. “Is there
something else you’d like to tell us, pal?”

Rygar had to summon every bit of his nerve to
keep from flinching. “I’m swearing to you … that’s all I know. I’ve
told you everything about the ambush.”
Except the fact that
Dantox is the one doing it.
Rygar thought in the private
confines of his own mind.
Nyon master Dantox, or so you think
…

Mantra’s eyes continued to remain distant for
a quiet moment, as he tried to place it all together.

“But how will they sound the conch?” he
demanded finally. “It can only be used by a Nyon master.”

Rygar held his hands before him, pulling up
as innocent a look as he could muster. “It’s no good asking me.
I’ve told you all I know.”

Mantra’s eyes narrowed slightly, as his
thoughtful gaze intensified.

Then, slowly turning to the other three, he
said, “Set the ship to the planet Vorgos, to location he’s just
mentioned … and hope that we aren’t too late to save them.”

As Mantra had his back turned, Rygar allowed
the shadow of a smirk to rub his innocent look.
Good luck with
that … because about just anytime now, the watchmen will all be
dead.

__________

Vorgos, The Outer Spectrum

Nyon master Dantox mounted to the top of a
large plateau in the middle of a deserted terrain. He held the
Grael conch in his right hand, lowered for a few seconds while he
scanned the barren land in front of him. The crimson coloured earth
was unlevelled and rough, scoured of a drop of greenery. It ran
across for miles before entering with the horizon, a massless line
separating the hard red earth and the soft blue sky.

Dantox’s mind flashed back to the time when
they had discovered the conch from Ion, and when the watchmen bad
been re enlivened. It had been a place very much like this one
where it had happened. And now, they would be facing their end in
the very same setting. It was rather fitting, thought Dantox.

Dantox heaved a final deep breath, relishing
the cool evening air as it lapped into his lungs. Then, he raised
the conch to his lips and sounded it…

It felt like a thousand earthquakes smashing
apart the silence as one … the ground and the air seemed to tremble
for a handful of seconds. The sound seemed to reverberate through
the air, making the world itself rumble like a volcano.

Dantox lowered the conch, but the echo of the
majestic noise seemed to hum over the air for many seconds…

Anytime now…

Dantox fixed his eyes on the deserted stretch
of land in front of the plateau he now stood on. The watchmen would
have all gathered there anytime now. He knew that wherever they all
were spread over the outer spectrum’s many distant planets, they
would all come rushing back here to answer the conch’s call. He
estimated a maximum of three minutes, before all of them gathered
here…

To meet their doom.

__________

They used the chains that had bound Ion and
Mantra earlier on, to bind the Xeni up and leave him at the back of
the control room. Qyro had set the ship on autopilot to Vorgos, and
the four of them were now standing with their arms folded inside of
the ship. They had no idea what was going on in Vorgos, but
whatever it was, they would be reaching it in a few minutes to find
out…

“Can we reach there to stop the ambush before
it happens?” Vestra asked Mantra, her voice strained with
anxiety.

“Let’s hope we so.” said Mantra, sounding
just as calm as always. But Ion knew that Mantra’s calm was a
painful deception to the true depth of the grave situation they
were now in. As the ship zipped through space, panic racked Ion’s
nerves, leaving his stomach writhing.

The four of them stood facing the blank abyss
of space seen through the window, and the only sounds seeping
through the silence were the rhythmic hushes of their breath and
the hum of the vessel’s engine.

Qyro leaned over the control desk, reading
one of the holo screens over it, and turned.

“We’ll be there in less than a minute
now.”

Mantra nodded, some of the tension draining
as he exhaled. “Good. Because that’s all we-”

Before he finished his sentence, an almighty
shudder shook the entire ship. The four of them inside were tossed
to the side violently. Ion felt his body faintly rise to the air
before slamming painfully onto the wall by the right. Stars popped
up before him.

He shook his head wildly, opening his eyes to
look for the others. They were all lying on the floor, groaning in
pain as he was.

A holo screen rose over the control desk,
blaring with red lights.

Ion looked into the screen, and his blood
froze like ice: the screen showed another ship tailgating them from
behind, pelleting them with orbs of light. Apparently one of the
shots had hit their ship.

Mantra jumped to his feet, his face now
stripped of the faintest shred of its usual calm.

“The Xeni…” he breathed.

The two words seemed to leave a ring of shock
and horror in the air after them. The Xeni in Jacova, whose ship
they had just stolen, had apparently acquired another one and were
now coming after them … And this was happening
now
, of all
the possible instances … Now, when they needed to reach Vorgos and
save the watchmen from the ambush.

This was the worst possible time for fate to
throw one of its cruel twists…

Qyro bounced over and stopped before the
screen. “We’ve taken heavy damage. They’ve clipped our -”

But before he finished, another almighty
rumble wrenched the peace in the world, sending the four of them
flying again. Another set of metallic
thuds
ensued as they
all slammed into the walls and the floors, harder than the first
time.

Before Ion knew what was happening, he felt
the ship’s speed plummet rapidly. And on the window in front,
enlargening like a zoom-in, came a planet…

The ship was making a crash landing.

__________

Zeliov, Outer spectrum

The night wind breezed over the desert sands
of the planet. Leaving a weak howl to play in the air behind it.
Above, starlight glinted over the black chasm that filled the
nightsky.

And then, zooming out from the black abyss,
swelling rapidly in size, came an object … it would have appeared
as any normal object, except for the fact that two of its wings
were blazing, roasted in flames. The ship’s tail had been blown
apart, and the rest of the vessel was soon to be devoured by the
infernal blaze, or wrecked in the crash landing that it was now
tearing down towards…

Its black metallic skin gleaming in the fires
from its wings, the ship rocketed downwards at a deadly speed, so
that the desert sand hundreds of metres below swum with the
buffeting wind currents it left.

The ship sailed over the air for almost three
miles, dropping slowly through the sky … And then, as its bottom
touched the ground level, the ship crashed onto the earth with the
force of a bomb, the sands around it exploding at the impact.

Then, through the fire enclosed door, four
figures came flying out, as quick as the wind.

Mantra and the other three landed on the cold
ground of the soil. Ion was carrying the unconscious body of the
chained Xeni. When the ship had begun to zoom into the planet,
heading for a crash landing, they had strapped themselves into the
seats with fastened seatbelts. That, and Mantra’s mystical
shielding ability that dulled the impact of the crash, were
responsible for the fact that they were still alive now.

As the three initiates stood by the wreckage,
Mantra sent a glance at the ship, with its flames now spreading to
engulf it whole. He yanked the three of them and roared, “It’s
gonna blow! RUN!”

Ion hoisted the man’s body higher and joined
the four of them as they dashed off. When they were a mere fifty
feet from the ship, a colossal blast blew the entire machine apart,
sending its shattered, flaming smithereens everywhere. One of the
charred scraps bonked Ion on the head, leaving a stinging pain. But
he ignored it and ran on with the three others, holding the
unconscious body over his shoulder.

They slowed to a stop when they had put a
hundred feet between them and the wrecked remains of the ship. Ion
let the body slip from his hold and hit the ground. For a few
seconds they all stood stooped, panting heavily. After shooting
them down onto this planet, the Xeni’s ship had abandoned them and
flown off.

In a few seconds, as the full impact of what
had happened hit Ion, he slowly turned to face the burning remains
of the ship far ahead.
We’re stranded…

The other three were standing speechless by
his side, with Mantra’s calm white eyes dancing with the blaze of
the devastated ship far ahead.

This can’t be happening.
Ion thought,
demolished.

There was an ambush waiting for the watchmen
at that very moment, and the four of them were the only ones who
could have warned them of it. But now, they were stranded here,
shipless and helpless.

There was no way they could now reach the
watchmen in time to warn them … And they would never reach them
again.

They were all here.

The entire army.

The watchmen stood spread in a large clutter
that went on for a hundred or so metres in front of the plateau
that Dantox was now on. The entire lot had trickled in batch by
batch over the past three or so minutes. And now, they all stood
before Dantox, giving him their unwavered attention.

The watchmen had been in the midst of forging
relations with non man beings and building alliances for their
army, when Dantox had sounded the conch … And so, they had all been
forced to abandon their attempts midway and rush to answer the
call… The thought made sadistic delight well within Dantox: Now the
Nyon were also stripped of any alliances they could have made
otherwise. The trap was so beautiful: it ensured that there was
nothing at all left for their enemies’ side. No watchmen, and no
alliances either. Powerless.