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Authors: Alicia Howell

Star Rebellion (46 page)

BOOK: Star Rebellion
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              The medic spun around and looked in surprise at Beijing, the most recent to fall. He performed the same check, but this time to complete silence. No one spoke out about the collapse. All was deathly still.

              The medic shook his head again. Two world powers, dead in almost an instant of each other.

              “The cause?” Arctic said, hoping that someone else didn’t collapse again.

              The Italian man shrugged. “Without an autopsy, I couldn’t tell you. My best bet would be poison.”

              “But how? No drinks were served!” This was Washington, who early had been complaining about that fact.

              The medic shrugged again. “There aren’t any wounds to the eye. Unless one of you know magic, then my bet is with poison.”

              Everyone uncomfortably looked at each other, until finally the eyes came to rest on Arctic. Washington took the lead, voicing what everyone had probably been thinking. “It was him. Him and those delinquents of his!”

              Ares finally rose from his seat between Arctic and Seoul. “And what proof do you have?”

              “They had been with these two all day, the ones who collapsed. It can’t be a coincidence.”

              Ares rolled his eyes and with exaggerated patience, replied with, “And there was the time of an hour between when they had seen the leaders last before now. Anything could have happened in that hour, or even before they had left their countries. We don’t know what type of poison it was or how it worked, if poison is what it truly is.”             

              Washington bristled a moment before he came up with another argument. “Of course you would take his side! You aren’t even human, so you don’t owe to allegiance to any here. You could be working to your own motives. Why should we trust you either?”

              “Mister Washington, come to your sense man,” London said, resting a hand on Washington’s arm. The American leader shook off the Englishman’s grip.

              “No! I swear, it is this man’s fault that one of the largest enterprise countries is leaderless, along with our main source of vodka!”

              “Washington, that isn’t important right now! The vodka, I mean.” Berlin was standing now, smacking a fist against the table. “I agree, there are shifty circumstances around their death, but we cannot afford to go to war with Calsh at the moment.” The woman turned to look at Arctic. “Commander, I think it may be a wise decision to take your men and go back to Calsh for now. At least until the demon invasion is completed, then we can properly investigate the occurrence here. I do not believe it was you, but others are not of the same opinion.” Everyone looked at Washington. “But until the war is done and over, I believe it may be better for you not to be on Earth, nor any Calshians.”

              Arctic looked around, trying to find help within any of the Earthen world powers. None came to his assistance.

              “I understand. My team and I will depart at once, but I am warning you, we will not be coming back to help after this. We have our own planet to look after.” Ares followed Arctic as he made his way past the dead bodies and through the door.

DARKSTAR

              We had all gone through our stories, interrogated each other multiple times, joked about Icestar being a valiant savior, and stocked back up on weapons from some army trucks by the time that Arctic and Ares came out. Water had been bouncing a grenade from foot to foot like a soccer player would with a ball. For the first few bounces, we had all eyed her carefully, keeping well away from the possible explosion area, but after a time we started to trust her ability.

              Forest and Snowstar had come out about half an hour earlier. They too were distressed about Waterstar’s attempt to alleviate boredom. But hey, it’s Waterstar, what exactly could we do to stop her?

              Arctic and Ares were slow about walking over to us, and even though they held their backs straight and heads high, I could sense something bad about what had happened inside. Partially because no one else was leaving the building.

              “To the portals. Where is Vladimir?” Arctic said as he approached us.

              “Here.” As if by magic, Vladimir appeared out of some shadows and I had to wonder how long he had been standing there. Alvair flicked an ear from his position next to me.

              Arctic nodded once and hustled everyone in the direction of the portals, reprimanding Waterstar about her grenade stunts. We were herded like sheep until the portals were insight and I asked, “Sir, what’s the rush?”

              “Problems arose inside, now keep moving. I will explain once we are back on Calsh.”

              I looked around us, checking for eavesdroppers but couldn’t see any. What had managed to get Arctic so worked up?

              Arctic unlocked the doors and made sure everyone was inside before entering the chamber himself. The portals here didn’t look much different than the ones back on Calsh, except there were only two gates, and the room was much smaller.

              In the same messy hand writing as the portal chamber in Calsh the words “Divine” and “Calsh” were written on the ground. There was a metal door covering the glass of the Divine portal, along with a massive keyhole. I guess not just anyone could use that one.

              “Alright, this will be interesting getting the seven us through in one go, but we can manage. Everyone, link hands.” As we followed to do as Arctic instructed, I ended up holding Fire and Water’s hands. Everyone was surprisingly quiet, something that rarely occurred around Waterstar.

              As a group, we all moved toward the Calsh portal, and I braced myself for the odd sensation that was about to follow. I had decided I did not enjoy travel by portal.

 

Epilogue

FIRESTAR

              “That isn’t fair!” I shouted, thumping the table in front of me with a fist. Only Waterstar’s hand on my arm had kept me from leaping up out of my seat.

              “It is the rule. Situations require things like this to be put in place, and it would help if you could hold your temper, Firestar.” Arctic gave me one of his looks that meant I should shut up. I leaned back in my chair and glowered at the wall in front of me.

              “So… what now then?” Water asked from my right. She had been calm and collected this time around, when normally she would be supporting my outbreaks in mood swings.

              “Ares and I have been developing a plan that would suit the Rebellion quite well. You are not the only ones included in it, but we might as well tell you now instead of waking up the whole rebellion to get the rest of the members.”

              Arctic shuffled through a few papers that were scattered in front of him. He had asked to be left alone for about an hour after we arrived on Calsh, then summoned us to the conference room. None of us had been asleep, it seemed.

              Arctic rubbed one of his eyes before reading off of the paper. He had some wicked shadows appearing underneath his pale blue eyes. “Alright. Waterstar, tomorrow you will report to Metalstar for a briefing before taking on some of the new recruit training. Try not to scare them, or teach them how to blow up a building just yet.”

              “How about we blow up a car? For some practice, you know?”

              Arctic rolled his eyes, but didn’t say yes or no. I knew Waterstar would take that as permission granted. Well, if there were even any cars left to explode. The demons had done a good job of destroying them apparently.

              “Firestar and Icestar. You will head some patrols going around Calsh. Your priority is to secure the villages, but any demons that are in your way, kill. Don’t go looking for the demons though, that won’t be necessary. Not yet at least. I will give you ten men to start off with. Take them to Klieger and help any survivors. If the town is still functional, leave all of the men there and come back for more.”

              “Yessir,” Icestar said. I merely nodded my consent. I was upset that we wouldn't be helping out on Earth as much, though Calsh still needed help too.

              “Darkstar, you are to remain here with Ares and me. You will be considered an adviser because it seems like you have a mind for strategy. Plus, no one else is more influential in the rebellion, and we might need you ability to motivate the people.”

              Darkstar also only nodded, but that was kind of normal for him. Some might say it was more than most communication he had when deep in thought, such as he was now. What he was thinking about, I couldn’t tell you. Once we had arrived here, he had gone off to find Maegan. What he wanted with the NOPCW ambassador, I couldn’t imagine. Couldn't imagine it at all.

              “Foreststar, I will have you back on Earth.”

              “Sir, I thought that wasn’t permitted.” Forest looked levelly at Arctic from the back of the room where he was leaning against the wall next to the door. Like usual.

              “Technically, no. You will go through either the Russian or the Beijing portal. Your goal will be to try and get recruits for Calsh and start getting some world powers on our side, if possible. And investigate the situation with Moscow and Beijing.”

              “Gotcha.”

              Arctic looked up from his papers and gazed at all of us. We barely blinked as we waited for him to say something else. Finally, Arctic’s stare came to rest on Vladimir, who had been sitting as far away from us as possible. It was hard to manage in the cramped room. Arctic hadn’t wanted to use one of the larger conference halls to avoid attention.

              Vladimir sighed before speaking. “I’ve decided to return to the Underworld. Maybe I can find something there that can help me bring the demons back under my reign, where they should be. Maybe I won’t, but I will try. You have my word.”

              Waterstar sniffed next to me, as if in disbelief. Everyone pretended that they didn’t hear her, though I could see Icestar hiding a smile. Since when did Ice smile?

              Arctic nodded. “I couldn’t command you to do anything, even if I wanted to. Please, do your best.”

              After a few moments of silence, I stood, attracting everyone’s glances. “Alright then… so are we good to leave? There's some things that I want to do.”             

              “Like get food?” Waterstar smirked from besides me, then stood. “I second that idea!”

              More smiles broke the surface of the tired faces around us. Arctic nodded and we all left the room, save Vladimir and Ares. Alvair was still waiting in the hall and fell in step with Darkstar. I still had no clue where the giant wolf had come from, but he had taken down quite a few demons in the hour he had been on Calsh, and he definitely had an attraction to Darkstar.

              I guess it’s time for me to say my parting words to you. If you see any demons in the night, don’t run. It will only make things worse. Humanity must fight, so run down to your kitchen and pick out the sharpest knife. Stay strong, and stay alive. For the peace of my mind, I hope you don’t die. We need to band together and survive.

              Until next time.

BOOK: Star Rebellion
9.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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