D'Mok Revival 1: Awakening (35 page)

“I’m fine, just stay covered!” he yelled back. But they’d have to do more than cower. At some point the Nukari would figure out they were defenseless and close in.

But they weren’t defenseless, were they? Mencari recalled the training back at Osuto’s asteroid base, specifically when the two of them fought that giant creature.

Then, the battle against the Renzr beasts played back in his mind.

He wasn’t defenseless at all. He, himself, was a living weapon. It’s what the Coalition wanted—no needed—him to master. It was the whole point of being with Osuto.

This is where he needed to prove what he’d learned, to show himself what he was capable of. Osuto wasn’t here to bail him out. Mencari needed to come through on his own.

Taking a deep breath, he focused. Clearing his mind, the zipping sound of laser fire and booms of explosions faded away. A warmth spread slowly across his body, as a golden aura began to radiate around him.

He looked at his hand, and made a fist. The glow appeared to coalesce into a swarming mass of white energy around it. Breaking his gaze with the beautiful light, he backed up, trying to get a better perspective farther down the corridor. The Nukari weren’t advancing yet. To get a good shot at them, he’d have to momentarily expose himself.

I’ll just have to make this quick
, he thought. Remembering the kickback from the hand phaser, his other hand grabbed his wrist to brace it. After a quick breath, he mentally counted coordinating his strike.

One.

The light around his wrist stayed strong and steady.

Two.

He gazed down the corridor, then summoned more power for the blast.

Three!

In a break in the laser fire, he leaned into the hallway, and mentally envisioned projecting the energy from around his fist down the corridor at his attackers. Enacting his vision, the blast pulsed with brilliance as it shot from his fist. The polished walls reflected the glow from the attack as it streaked towards the Nukari.

A similar chorus of yells was cut short by an awe-inspiring explosion. Then, there was silence, except for the echo of the blast throbbing in Mencari’s ears.

“Oh yeah!” Naijen cried, lunging from his hiding spot for a quick follow-up kill.

Mencari looked at his still-glowing hand. The power had yet to diminish and, in fact, looked ready for more blasts. He had succeeded! However it had happened, he had managed to get the energy to persist!

“I’m detecting a small ship in-bound!” Eyani yelled through the communicator.

They’re running
, Mencari thought.

“It’s probably the extraction ship!” Eyani added. “They may have the stolen lab-tech with them yet!”

“I’m on it!” he yelled, following Naijen, hearing the pattern of Allia and Ichini close behind him.

Small teams of soldiers broke from the retreating pack, momentarily slowing Naijen’s pursuit of the main group. As they closed on another cluster of Nukari, they noticed the cat-man in the white trench coat among the stragglers.

“We need the man in the white trench,” Eyani blurted.

With Naijen and Mencari nearly upon them, one of the Nukari charged his weapon, and shot the man in the trench coat, moments before being cut down himself by Naijen’s Skar.

Eyani cried out, as Mencari watched the cat-man fall, a massive hole in his back still sizzling.

* * * * *

“They’re getting away!” Allia yelled as the Nukari ship’s hatch closed and the vessel began to pull away from the dock.

“Rhysus, if they get away with any research…” Eyani started, but Mencari tuned her out.

He looked at the sleek lines of the ship. Familiar and haunting images from his daily nightmare pushed to the forefront of his mind. But never in his dreams did the Nukari ever run. Here they were, in the flesh, before him—a genuine Nukari ship.

“I’m going to try to contain them!” Eyani said as the doors of the bay began to close. Mencari saw his badge glow with the same green energy as before. The massive bay doors of the station began to close. Undeterred, the ship sped towards the shrinking way out.

“It’s not closing fast enough!” Allia cried.

Something inside him went cold as an icy hatred filled him. They had struck again—another entire station slaughtered at Nukari hands, and possibly experimental research stolen too. The Nukari seemed to so easily come and go, embed where ever they pleased, and do whatever they wanted.

But not today
, he thought.

He gripped both fists, commanding his power. Reaching forward, a blinding energy blazed from his outstretched arms. Two flashing arcs of raw power lashed out and surrounded the ship in a blazing, vengeful embrace.

A panel on the side of the ship exploded, causing the vessel to list heavily to the side. But it struggled defiantly forward.

He tried to summon another blast, but couldn’t. Instead, Mencari sank to his knees exhausted.

“No!” Allia yelled.

Silently he watched the vessel slip beyond the docking station into open space, moments before the bay doors closed tight.

It was gone.

Bowing his head, Mencari’s eyes stared down at the metallic, smooth floor, sightless, drained to his core. His heart pounded, his ears rang, and his chest heaved with every labored breath. How much further could he push?

Maybe they could follow the Nukari ship? Perhaps Eyani could track them and send help? Every fiber in his body resisted the thought.

Then, a thunderous explosion echoed off the hull of the station.

Allia screamed, drawing his glance. “You got them!” she cried, pointing.

Mencari looked with disbelief towards the small portals along the outer hull, and saw wreckage drifting by. Still catching his breath, he forced an exhausted smile to his team.

Eyani happily chimed in. “Whatever you did, the ship just broke up outside the station!”

So the Nukari wouldn’t get away today after all
, Mencari thought triumphantly. But there was still more to understand.

“What about the guy in the trench coat?” Mencari panted.

“Yeah, why did the soldier kill him?” Allia said confused. “Wasn’t he one of them?”

“The scared kitty wasn’t one of them—at least not a soldier,” Naijen spat.

“Go back to the body,” Eyani said. “Maybe there’s something on him to explain all this?”

The group back tracked and found the cat-man still lying face down. Mencari knelt and turned him over. Eyani gasped.

“Do you know him?” Mencari said.

“I thought so. He’s one of ours,” Eyani said, exasperated. “Professor Xabier. He went missing a while back.”

Xabier?
The name shot through Mencari. That was the name of Toriko’s professor friend who had been taken by the Nukari. What was going on here?

“What do you mean, ‘one of ours’?” Mencari said suspiciously.

“I’ll reopen the bay doors,” she said. “Please, bring his body back with you, and come back as fast as you can.”

* * * * *

“You knew about the Nukari,” Mencari said to Eyani, who they found waiting inside the landing bay of the trading post. Bob the bot stood dutifully at her side. Others wearing the uniforms with a thick black stripe across the chest approached, respectfully collecting Xabier’s body and carting him away. Eyani looked on with great sorrow.

“It’s time to explain some things to you,” she said flatly. “But not here. Please follow me.”

She quickly led them through the same passages as before, moving them from the densly populated areas, into the all-but-abandoned industrial areas. Bob closely followed, his antenna raised alert, as if constantly scanning as they continued.

Passing through the same metal gateway, they entered the same cavernous areas as before. Countless aliens still worked tirelessly at their stations, though it seemed there were even more projections of charts and scrolling data than before.

A furry hulk approached, towering over even Naijen. His short, white-and-black snout, and long gangly limbs made it look almost sloth-like.

“I’m Commander Tenrl,” the man-beast said warmly. “Eyani has told me much about you. I’d like to personally thank you for your help. Especially today.”

“What is this place?” Mencari replied.

“This way,” he said, motioning. They followed the commander down the hall and into another glass-walled conference room.

“Right now you’re standing in a place called Eden, a centralized intelligence organization comprised of the majority of worlds and races in our quadrant of space,” Tenrl said proudly. “It’s our job to keep the aligned worlds safe. Eyani is an agent who works within the common areas of the trading post.”

Mencari processed this. “So that whole thing about collecting information about the creatures—”

“Is entirely accurate,” Eyani chimed in. “But we were also able to monitor you. My apologies for not fully disclosing this sooner, but we’re very aware of the Nukari threat. We needed to make sure we could trust you.”

A chirp rang out from Bob next to Eyani.

“And Bob…” Tenrl started. “He’s the central AI for the entire station.”

Mencari suddenly felt stupid. All the times Bob had greeted him when he arrived, how it remembered all his queries, provided help from any and every system, and could detect weapons or perform environmental scans. Bob was literally in everything and knew everything.

Eyani fixed him with purple eyes. “We want to work together.”

“We understand
what
you are, Commander Mencari,” Tenrl continued. “We saw the records of the attack on the Coalition’s space station. We weren’t sure if the Coalition was going to do anything. They have been silent for quite some time now. I guess you’re our answer. And now you are searching for others with your… skills. We want to help, with the thought we could continue to work together against this threat.”

Mencari nodded. “I appreciate that. But to be honest, if I’m . . .
helping
someone, I expect to be kept a little tighter in the loop of information. For example—”

“Why was Toriko’s professor on that
research
station with the Nukari?” Allia blurted.

“Like that,” Mencari said.

Eyani hesitated, then pulled up a projection of the man. “Professor Francis Xabier,” she said. “Professor FX. You know him?”

“He’s from Tericn, right?” Mencari said.

Eyani nodded.

“Toriko, our lead tech, was close with him,” Mencari added. “When I went to get her from Tericn, she was wrapped up in a Nukari operation there. Turns out the Bansa corporation had been infiltrated by the Nukari.”

“Bansa?” Eyani gasped.

“Toriko and the professor had made a discovery that exposed them. Then he disappeared. Toriko’s sister, Maro, an employee of Bansa, found information confirming the Nukari kidnapped the professor, and took him off-world. We didn’t have any leads finding him—until now.”

“It all makes sense,” Eyani said ominously. “Why all our contacts went dark, our inability to re-establish communications there.”

“But why was the Professor on the station?” Allia questioned.

“He’s a Terconian and, more importantly, a renowned researcher in cutting-edge technology,” Eyani said. “He personally led teams creating devices to fight the Nukari. Devices being assembled on that research station.”

“They must have discovered his role, and wanted the prototypes,” Tenrl added.

“And they killed him rather than let him be rescued,” Mencari added.

“Professor FX was a long standing agent of ours,” Commander Tenrl said sadly. “And a darn good one.”

Eyani looked with concern to Tenrl.

“Agents have training, and ultimately a self-termination protocol if necessary. There must be a reason he cooperated with them,” Eyani said.

“Is the trading post in danger?” Mencari asked. “What else may they have found out from him?”

“It’s a concern,” Tenrl said flatly.

“We’ve seen how invasive the Nukari can be, they’re much more plotting and thorough,” Eyani said. “Given their own intelligence gathering, even if we were exposed, they’d know the risk of a direct attack on the trading post. It would galvanize every world in this quadrant. Something I’m certain they couldn’t afford.”

“Regardless, any useful information from those station crystals explaining what they did to the research station?”

She looked to Tenrl, who nodded.

“Yes,” she said as she pressed a few buttons dimming the lights, as the glass walls around them grew smoky then fully opaque. “The data recorder managed to capture an attack.”

A two-dimensional video recording showed an ominously large ship approaching. It unleashed a wide, glowing-red cone of energy that showered the entire station. No more than three seconds passed before an explosion ripped through the station’s lower hull.

“The secondary generator mostly likely overloaded, causing that explosion,” Eyani muttered, her voice grim.