ConQuest (The Quest Saga) (25 page)

Halfway through Taylor felt faint and crashed into Elizabeth. Elizabeth lost her grip on Q and sent him tumbling to the ground. She and Taylor managed to land a few feet away.

“Are you okay?” Elizabeth asked Taylor.

“Pandora Cannon!” she yelled in horror.

Elizabeth instantly turned towards Q.

He looked up. A huge ball of purple energy was headed straight towards him at incredible speed.

An Eki was starting to sound real friendly.

Loss

Taylor fell hard on the floor. Elizabeth fell right next to her.

You can imagine their surprise when they stood up to see the horrified faces of Kai and Chris. They had teleported to the inside of the Galactica!

Then they saw a blinding light and everything went quiet.

Chris started sobbing. Kai stood still, like the whole world had ended. Taylor didn’t understand what was going on. That was when Elizabeth pointed to her left.

When Taylor turned, the sight she saw left her breathless.

She saw the last moments of the fading body of Q. He had purple sparks emerging all around him. He slumped to his knees, and fell flat on the floor. His body started flickering and faded into thin air.

There in front of them, stood the cause; the Pandora Cannon. Taylor couldn’t believe what had happened.

Her eyes were tearing up. She was controlling herself from panicking.

Elizabeth wasn’t any different. Her hands covered her eyes and soft sobs came out of her mouth.

Kai’s eyes were wide open.  He refused to believe what had just happened.

“That should’ve been me... I should’ve died!” Kai cried, expecting some higher force to listen to him.

Elizabeth remembered something what the blue-eyed Q had said before opening the portal. He said that he was helping them. He said he wanted to take them to their friends, but had he foreseen this?

She realized that Q had just....gone. Their adventure had been topsy-turvy enough. This wasn’t how it was supposed to end.

“You won’t get away with this,” Kai said, deadly and silent.

“Kai, it’s okay,” Chris said.

“YOU WON’T GET AWAY!” he yelled so loud that a few glass windows shattered.

He thrust his hands out and then folded them as in a prayer. Then he started chanting.

He opened his eyes, a look of immense hatred in them.  

Kai had stopped chanting. Then he started moving his hands around in a frenzy.

The floor started dismantling. Kai knew perfectly well what he was doing. He wanted to destroy the ship that had killed his friend. He wasn’t going to spare anyone. They had betrayed the trust of five innocent kids.

Taylor looked to her left. She looked through the window and saw a corridor. Inside it stood Commander Griffin.

He looked at her with a face that was devoid of any emotions. Then he left.

Back on their side, Kai was pulling the ship apart at an alarming rate.

“Get inside the Orion,” he told the others in a dangerously low voice.

“What about the map?” Elizabeth asked.

“I don’t know where it is. Only.....only....Q would’ve known. But I’m gonna rip this place apart till I find it.”

Chris had a feeling that what they were doing was wrong but her inner self said otherwise. You can’t betray a gang of super teenagers, kill one of them and still try to get away with it.

With these thoughts still in her mind, she entered the Orion. After everyone had boarded, they asked Kai to get on.

“I owe Q an apology,” he said.

“Take them away, Orion,” he said.

“
Aye, Aye, boss
” the Orion replied.

The ship rose off the floor and surged forward.

“Wait!” Chris tried to run out, but it was too late. The doors had closed.

All they could do now was hope. Hope that Kai would come back to his senses.

Obliteration

Kai focused on the job at hand.

He was worried that the patrol would use the Pandora Cannon against them. After what had just happened, leaving that weapon functional would be their worst nightmare. He didn’t know how many of those were there either.

He had to find the map of Last Hope as well. He knew there was no way he could find it by himself.

“Maybe my electronic-friends might help me,” he said to himself.

He felt himself sink into the world of ones and zeros. He asked around for information. At long last, he got some. A light bulb in the commander’s room said that he’d seen him take two maps and hide one in his locker.

That was all the information Kai needed. He felt around the ship mentally, trying to grasp the info. He was able to locate the locker quite easily. He willed it to come towards him. In about five seconds, a locker the size of a desk came to him.

“Whoa,” Kai exclaimed at the size of the locker “Just how much info do you keep secret, commander?”

The safe had an electronic lock so he was able to crack it open in the blink of an eye.

Inside was a multitude of documents. All were in brown envelops that said ‘classified’.

Kai wondered why they still used paper and envelopes for documents. You’d think they had something as half cool as ‘Google drive’ by now.

He found the map. It was kept so far inside the safe that he had to literally crawl in to just reach it!

There was a document tied together with it. He opened the envelope.

‘Operation Dimensional Raze’ it said. So far, it didn’t sound too good. But what this meant was that the commander, or even the whole patrol, was on the other side. Kai wondered if they were on Apocalypse’s side or if they were just against Q.

That wasn’t exactly a good thing for him. He silently wondered if Carlos had known about these strange developments.

“Maybe, he’s a part of it,” he considered since Carlos was in charge of the patrol.

But after a moment he brushed it off. No way would Carlos betray them. He was Q’s bro after all!

Kai flipped through the documents. They had information on every one of Kai’s friends, including him. He didn’t want to go through any of them, for privacy concerns of course. If his friends had kept something from him, he believed that they would’ve had a good reason to do so.

He took the map with him, but before he left, he needed to make sure he finished this place off. He’d seen all the cadets leave, so he was sure that he wasn’t hurting anybody.

He could see the nuclear generator running. All he needed to do was overload it a tiny bit and the rest would take care of itself.

He focused on finding it. It was deep in the ship, a perfect place to set it off. He focused on its energy cycles. He imagined them getting faster and faster. He kept going at it till he could hear the nuclear warning alarms go off.

“Time to say bye,” he said and ejected himself off the ship.

Immediately bits of metal gathered up and turned into a suit. A huge explosion occurred just as the suit had finished building itself. It sent out a powerful shockwave that left Kai’s ears ringing.

He looked at the debris. What was once the mighty ‘Galactica’ had been reduced to this. It was painful. Especially for him, since he adored the ship more than anything. What’s more, according to the Orion, he had actually killed something.

“Maybe the Galactica’s consciousness still lives, exploring the universe,” he said to himself.

His suit developed a jetpack and he set off to find the Orion. He had told those guys not to go at warp speed. Even if they did, all Kai had to do was call the Orion, and he’d be here in a flash.

It took him a few minutes, but he finally reached the Orion. He got into the hangar. As soon as the air lock mechanism opened up, all the bits that made up his suit left his body and vanished into thin air.

Thanks, guys, he thought.

After becoming the God of the Dead he was starting to treat machines more and more as living beings. He realized it was ironic to be called a God of the Dead and start treating things as living.

He walked into the passenger bay. Chris ran over and gave him a hug.

“Don’t you ever scare us like that!” she said.

Kai smiled. He was hiding the fact that he wasn’t able to breathe because of her tight grip. His face must've turned purple since Chris looked at it and exclaimed and let go of him.

Taylor and Elizabeth came over as well. Their eyes were red from crying for the loss of Q.

“Why didn't he just jump out of the way?” Kai asked.

Chris turned towards him. “You may think he couldn’t have gotten out of the cannon’s path in time. Q’s a guy who could dodge a shot like that no matter how fast it comes at him. He sacrificed himself. He knew if he got out of the way, you and I would be in danger.”

Kai looked at her stunned. Q had sacrificed himself for them.

Kai stared at his feet “Is it my fault he died?” Kai wondered.

He shook his head. He had to focus on the mission at hand. They had all four maps. Now they could get to the Palace of Being, the most powerful place in the universe.

Kai just had to lead them there. He knew it. Taylor and Elizabeth were much too emotionally affected to even speak. Chris wasn’t exactly the leader type. So it all came down to his decisions.

“Let’s assemble the map,” he said

The others nodded. That was when they realized they didn’t know where the other three maps were.

“Q must've had them,” Taylor said.

He had realized it as well.

“If it’s Q’s hiding spot we’re trying to find, then we might as well forget about it. He could’ve hidden them in a pocket dimension for all we know,” he said.

“I know where they are,” Elizabeth spoke up.

They followed her to the bunker. She walked up to Q’s bunk and lifted the pillow. Under it were all the remaining maps.

Taylor turned towards Kai. “Pocket dimension, huh?” she asked.

Kai shrugged. How should he know that Q would keep something as precious as this under his
pillow
?!

He tried assembling all the maps. He’d heard that assembling the maps was as hard as getting them. He hoped that wasn’t true, because it might not be a good thing to find the maps and not be able to
assemble
it.

Hours passed…...

Kai was still trying to assemble the maps. He had tried arranging them like a jigsaw puzzle, like a panorama picture, but nothing worked. All he needed were co-ordinates. Each of the maps was a map of the individual sectors of the universe. Four maps for four sectors.

He took a break, thinking that he might catch different ideas.

“It’s hopeless,” he said realizing that he was working in a losing cause. He decided to wait till Taylor and Elizabeth came back to their senses.

“They might be able to help me,” he murmured to himself.

He piled the maps up and took them to the bunker. He put the maps on a bed and went to freshen up. He felt a searing heat when he came back to the bunker. He searched for the source of the heat. It was coming from the maps!

The maps were floating in the air. They were completely bathed in white light. Kai watched as they merged together into one map.

He looked at the new map. The galaxy and star formation created the outline of a body. It was a man. He had a long beard and hair. Not much of his face was seen with all the hair covering it.

In his right arm he held a scroll and in his left, there was a spherical object. It seemed like a planet but it had smaller circles on its surface.

Kai looked closer and understood that it was the universe. This man, the man in the picture, was what you might call God, the ultimate creator. Now many people would not believe this theory. They can figure things out themselves. As far as this map was concerned, there seemed to be a creator.

At the bottom left corner there were a few numbers inscribed. There were four numbers, not three, which Kai found odd. There were only three dimensions that
actually
mattered in space……. Or were there…?

He remembered something that Kareem had told them.

He had told them that the Palace of Being stood still in time as well. Maybe the fourth coordinate was time.

It was possible.

“Wow! You assembled the map!” squeaked a voice. Kai jumped up, startled. It was Elizabeth.

“Don’t do that!” he said.

“Sorry,” she said, smiling broadly. Even though she was smiling, Kai could see the pain of losing Q was eating her up inside.

“I’m going to go plot the course,” Kai said.

He ran over to the pit and punched in the coordinates. It plotted course.

“Five hours to target,” Kai said out loud.

Elizabeth walked up to him. “Plenty of time to rest, huh?” she yawned.

Kai laughed. He realized he hadn't laughed in a long time. It seemed like he was having fun again.

I wish Q was here right now, he thought.

Taylor was sitting in her bed, looking out of the window. She looked at all the stars out there.

You must be one among them, she thought, thinking of Q. She believed that he would come back as a ‘prana’. The life force that lay dormant in all beings.

“I’m gonna win this for you, Q” she said to herself. She would do this. She was going to finish what Q had started for them. She was his friend; no she was more than a friend.

All she regretted was not telling him about that night.

That particular night was vivid in her memory. How could she forget? She’d wiped his memory clean. The memory of a battle like that would’ve affected his brain for sure. She only wished she could’ve told him about it. In a now or never situation, now is always the better of the two.

Kai walked over to her.

“We’ve found the Palace of Being. We’ll get there in about five hours.” He was all excited.

Taylor nodded her head.

“Still thinking about Q?” he asked.

She nodded her head. He sat down next to her.

“Listen, I know he meant a lot to you. I mean, I knew the guy only for what, three days now? And I already miss him. I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like for you.”