PREVIOUSLY, ON "LEGEND OF AKI"...
Aki, Zack, and Dr. Veruvias venture into the mines of Barri'seti IV to locate a rare type of photon crystal, but encounter aggressive lizards infected by the Darkers.
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The camp ship returned to the Orpheus slightly ahead of schedule. Aki, Zack, and Dr. Veruvias hiked up the docking ramp, entering the familiar confines of the main lobby. Dozens of ARKS members, pilots, and various support personnel were milling around the area, carrying out their own sets of orders. To their left, a pair of Newmans were discussing the effective use of fire-based Techniques. To their right, a dock worker was pushing a hover-sled carrying supply crates. Overhead, a large display screen was replaying the highlights of a recent airboard race. The winner of the race, a man named Ryo, was being interviewed by a local reporter.
All in all, it was a typical day aboard the colony ship.
Zack turned to Aki. "Hey, I'm going to check in on Faris and Tam at the hospital. See how they're doing and all that. Look after the Doc for a bit until I get back, okay?"
"Sure," she replied.
Zack strode off towards the elevator, casually waving a hand behind him.
Dr. Veruvias raised his eyebrows. "Friends of yours?"
"Teammates," Aki corrected him. "They were injured during the recent Darker attack."
"Ah. I'm sorry to hear that."
"They'll be okay, it wasn't serious," she reassured him. Then a thought occurred to her, and she turned to look at the doctor. "Do you require medical assistance? There's a center up the steps to the right, they can fix any minor injuries you may have."
"No, no, I'm fine. I'm just not used to all this, ehm, excitement."
"In that case, perhaps you would like something to eat?"
"Now that," he exclaimed happily, taking Aki by the arm, "sounds like a
fine idea."
* * * * * * * * *
"So you're saying there's a connection between the Darkers and the growths on the lizards?"
"I believe so, yes," Aki replied. She, Zack, and the doctor were standing in Colonel Richter's office on the top floor of the ARKS Command tower.
Richter leaned back in his chair, tapping a finger against his desk. "The truth is, we don't know as much about the Darkers as we'd like. But we're learning."
Zack cleared his throat. "I'm sorry we failed to bring you the photon crystals, sir."
"So am I," the colonel responded honestly, "but the important thing is that you made it back alive. Whoever left that mine gate open put you in serious jeopardy."
Aki tilted her head slightly. "I never mentioned that the gate was unlocked, sir."
Richter looked dumbfounded for a moment, but quickly recovered. "No, I'm sure that you did."
She ran a self-diagnostic on her memory core to check for anomalies but found none. "I do not believe so, Colonel."
"W-well, I probably just assumed," he stammered. "Otherwise, the lizards couldn't have gotten into the mine."
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The gate. The lizards. The crystals. The Darkers.
A sudden realization hit Aki, and all the pieces fell into place. "It was
you."
Richter looked up at her, a defensive tone in his voice. "What?"
"You were the one who stole Dr. Veruvias' photon crystals. You released the blue band energy to lure the Darkers here."
Zack and Veruvias gaped at Aki, completely stunned.
Richter barked out a sharp laugh. "That's... ridiculous. It's absurd!"
"Aki, hey, what are you saying?" Zack whispered incredulously.
She remained focused on the man in front of her. "You sent us to Bari'setti IV to collect more crystals. What were you planning to do with them, Colonel?"
Richter scowled. "You are way out of line, soldier," he snarled. "Furthermore, you don't have any evidence to back up your claim."
"Actually, I do," she replied, holding up a small metal button. "I found this in the mine on Bari'setti IV."
Richter's eye twitched.
"You seem to be missing a button, Colonel."
Zack and Veruvias turned from Aki to Richter. Sure enough, the top button of his uniform was gone. The one Aki held in her hand was a perfect match.
"She's right," the doctor gasped.
There was no point denying it any longer.
"Those damned fools on the council wouldn't act, even though I told them repeatedly about the danger! I needed to make them understand, don't you see?!" He pounded his fist on the desk as if to emphasize his point.
Zack had finally collected himself enough to speak. "You put the entire colony ship in danger, sir. That's a major crime."
"I... I didn't know it would cause such a large reaction, I just needed a demonstration! But it was for the best, can't you understand that?! The council can't ignore the problem anymore!"
Dr. Veruvias stepped forward, his horrified expression turning to outrage. "You... you stole my photon crystals and used them for... for
this? How could you do such a thing? You promised me the crystals would only be used for scientific research! If I had known, I never would have agreed to help you. I thought you were an honorable man, but now I see you're nothing but a liar and a... a
monster!"
That last comment hit home.
"SHUT UP!! Shut your mouth right now," Richter growled angrily, waving a finger menacingly at Veruvias. His composure was gone, his face filled with rage.
The doctor continued, undaunted. "People died! People died because of those crystals. You have to answer for that, Colonel. I'll see to it that justice is done! You can't hide from this--"
His speech was interrupted by a loud bang.
The bullet was through the doctor's head before they even saw the gun in Richter's hand. Veruvias fell backward, dead before his body hit the ground.
"You son of a bitch!!" Zack screamed, reaching for his weapon.
"Don't," Richter warned, his pistol now trained in Zack's direction. He seemed in control of himself again.
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With perfect timing, four heavily armed security guards rushed into the office, their rifles pointed at Aki and Zack. Evidently Colonel Richter had pressed the silent alarm under his desk.
"Don't move!" The closest guard shouted at them.
Zack glowered back but said nothing. Aki merely stared.
Richter stood up. "Guards, arrest these two at once!"
The guards did as they were told, closing in and taking their rifles away. Their hands were magnetically cuffed behind their backs.
"You are hereby charged with conspiracy and treason against the Oracle government," Richter announced gravely. He motioned to the guards with one hand. "Take them away."
They weren't given time to protest.
* * * * * * * * *
Less than an hour later, Aki and Zack were sitting in a jail cell deep in the bowels of the Orpheus. They had been dropped off unceremoniously but kept isolated from the rest of the prisoners in the facility.
Aki drew her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "Did I do the right thing back there, confronting him?"
"We ARKS are a strange breed. Some people consider us soldiers. Others call us mercenaries. Truth is, we're somewhere in between. This war's got us all confused, twisted up. Sometimes we lose sight of ourselves, but at the end of the day we're still soldiers. We take orders from the higher-ups, and we're all expected to follow the same rules."
"Then you think I was out of line?"
Zack stared at her earnestly. "No way. You did the right thing, absolutely."
"But Dr. Veruvias--"
"Wasn't your fault," he interjected. "That was Richter's fault, and his fault alone. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
"Good. Now, the point I was trying to make is that it's our job to keep them--the higher-ups--in line when
they break the rules."
"We have to stop Colonel Richter. I believe that if we do not act, he may attempt to lure the Darkers here again. If he does, the ship will be in great danger."
"Agreed. But in case you've forgotten, we're not exactly in a position to do anything about it right now."
"That won't be a problem."
Zack laughed. "Got a plan to bust us out of the slammer?"
"Something like that. For now, we wait."
"Waiting is something I was never very good at," he sighed.
"Don't worry, I don't think they will keep us waiting very long."
They didn't.
Twenty minutes later, two guards in black uniforms came to escort them out of the cell. Aki and Zack were led down a long deserted corridor, rifles at their backs. No words were exchanged, but it was clear these men weren't the usual prison guards. They had a different air about them, their demeanor more like hired thugs than professional guards.
Garbage men, Zack thought.
Except we're the trash they've come to dispose of.
As they walked, Aki glanced at Zack and gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod. He nodded back. A second later they both spun in opposite directions, temporarily catching their escorts off guard. Aki grabbed the gun of the man directly behind her and slammed her palm into his chin, knocking him off his feet. Zack also grabbed his escort's gun and punched the man square in the face, dropping him to the floor. Both men were unconscious in less than three seconds.
"Not bad," Zack remarked. "Remind me to get locked up with you again next time I'm in jail."
Aki smiled faintly, which for Aki was about as close to an actual smile as she ever got.
Zack kneeled down to pick up the men's guns. "How'd you know they would come for us?"
"We know too much," Aki replied evenly. "Whatever Richter is up to, we're a threat to him now. It was natural to assume he would try to have us eliminated."
"Oh. Well, don't
I feel special!" Zack quipped sarcastically. He tossed a rifle to Aki. "Come on!"
The rest of the corridor was curiously abandoned. Aki wondered if Richter had arranged that, in order to silence them when no one else was around. Whatever the case, it worked to their advantage. They met no more resistance on their way to the elevator, and a few minutes later were on their way up to the city levels.
* * * * * * * * *
When the two guards in black uniforms failed to check in, it didn't take long for Richter's men to notice. A new detachment was sent to check on them and found the men still unconscious where Aki and Zack had left them.
The captain of the guards switched on his radio. "Colonel Richter, sir, it appear the prisoners have escaped from their cell."
The radio was silent for a moment. "Understood."
"How should we proceed, sir?"
"Don't worry, I know exactly where they're headed. I'll take care of them myself."
* * * * * * * * *
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The elevator doors opened at the top level of the ARKS Command tower. Zack peered his head around the corner of the door frame and peeked down the curved hallway. It was empty. "Looks clear."
He and Aki stepped out of the elevator, their rifles raised. They walked quickly but lightly, aware that trouble could arrive at any moment.
"I take back what I said earlier. Next time they try to send me to jail, I'm gonna let you take all the blame," Zack whispered.
Aki shot him a puzzled look.
"That was supposed to be a joke. You know, something to lighten the mood?"
"I wasn't programmed with a sense of humor. However, I am capable of learning."
Zack chuckled softly. "You're pretty funny sometimes already, you know that?"
They crept along the curved hallway, the tension thick enough to cut with a photon knife. There was still no one in sight. They were lucky, maybe a little too lucky. Zack didn't like it when things went this smoothly, because in his experience they rarely did.
Around the next corner they finally arrived at the door to Colonel Richter's office. Aki and Zack took up positions on opposite sides of the door. Zack put his hand on the door switch and silently counted to three with the fingers of his other hand. On three, he pressed the switch and the door whooshed open.
They rushed into the office, not sure what to expect but ready for anything. The only thing they didn't expect was what they actually found... nothing at all. The office, like the hallway, was completely empty. There was no ambush, no confrontation waiting for them. What was going on?
As if to answer that question, a voice began speaking. Colonel Richter's voice. "If you are hearing this, my door scanner detected you entering this office."
"A recording," Zack murmured, suddenly uneasy.
The recording continued: "It is unfortunate things had to come to this. You are good soldiers and I hate to lose you. However, I cannot allow you or anyone else to get in my way. I have to stop the Darkers no matter what it takes."
Zack spotted a red light flickering on the colonel's desk and went to investigate, a nagging feeling creeping up his spine.
Meanwhile, the colonel's voice kept talking: "My time is running out, you see. Whatever it was you found in the depths of Bari'setti IV, it found me first. I fear I may lose myself before it's all over, but before that I plan to strike them and strike them hard."
The flickering red light turned out to be exactly what Zack feared. "Aki," he gasped, "there's a timer on the desk. It's counting down to zero.
We have ten seconds left!"
Aki's eyes went wide. She spun towards the large floor-to-ceiling window and fired several bursts into it with her rifle. The glass was bullet resistant but couldn't withstand the close-range barrage and shattered with a loud crash.
They hardly heard the rest of Richter's speech: "Sacrifices are sometimes a necessary evil for the sake of progress--"
Aki and Zack sprinted towards their only possible escape route, the now-open window.
"--and though I don't expect you to forgive me, I hope you will at least understand--"
There was just one small problem: They were sixty floors above the ground.
"--that I didn't wish for things to end this way--"
It didn't matter; they had no other options left. They leapt out the window as hard as they could.
"--but now, at last, I must say goodbye."
For a scant moment time seemed to slow as they hung in the air, sixty floors above the ground far below. The city sprawled out in front of them, a view that would have seemed majestic if not for the imminent threat of death. The momentum from their jump carried them towards the nearest skyscraper, a building three stories shorter than the ARKS Command tower.
Halfway there, the timer hit zero. The entire top floor of the tower exploded in a brilliant flash behind them, the shockwave pushing them the extra distance they needed to clear the gap between the buildings and onto the roof of the adjacent skyscraper.
But instead of landing on the roof, they crashed through the skylight and into the top floor of the building. They hit the ground hard, rolling forward to mitigate the effects of the fall. Still, it was a tough landing and Zack winced in pain. The only things that prevented his legs from breaking on impact were the shock absorbers in his armor. Aki, whose CAST body could absorb shocks much better than a human's, was unharmed.
"Ughhh... Let's not do that again."
Aki stood up, brushing shards of glass from the broken skylight off her armor. "Agreed."
Zack grimaced as he pulled a glass splinter out of his cheek. "Where are we, anyway?"
"I believe this is the council administration building."
"Probably one of the councilor's offices, then," Zack commented, glancing around the room. It was well-furnished but currently unoccupied, except for the two of them. "You think anyone heard us come in through the ceiling?"
Aki closed her eyes and listened with her enhanced CAST audio sensors. She didn't hear anyone nearby. In all likelihood, the councilors were in a meeting on another floor and hadn't noticed their arrival. "I don't think so," she replied.
"Good," Zack said, finally standing up. "That should buy us a few minutes."
"A few minutes for what?"
"To find out where Richter ran off to." Zack motioned to the computer terminal on the desk.
Taking the hint, Aki walked over to the terminal and began accessing it. She bypassed the security measures easily and proceeded to hack into the ARKS' online database, searching for any mention of Colonel Richter. Sure enough, he had recently requested a security escort from the Command tower to the research labs downtown.
"Find him?" Zack asked.
"He's at SkyRing Labs."
"SkyRing? Isn't that where Dr. Veruvias worked?"
"Yes," Aki replied, "it is."
"The Doc said his photon crystals were stolen, the whole batch. Maybe Richter figures he might have some more stashed away somewhere?"
"It is possible," she conceded.
"Then that's where we have to go. Right now our best advantage is the element of surprise. They probably think we're dead, which means they won't be looking for us. The Colonel won't be expecting us when we show up on his doorstep."
"Before that, how are we going to get out of this building?"
Zack gave her a lopsided grin. "How about the front door?"
* * * * * * * * *
In point of fact, Colonel Richter was indeed looking for more blue band photon crystals. He didn't tell this to the four men accompanying him, of course. As far as his escorts were concerned, they were merely gathering evidence related to a suspected conspirator, Dr. Veruvias.
When he broke the lock to the storage room in the back of the facility, Richter discovered that the doctor did have an additional collection of blue crystals. They must have been left over from one of his earlier experiments. With a satisfied grin, the colonel reached down and picked up the crystals. He glanced behind him to make sure the four guards weren't looking, then stashed the crystals in his bag.
TO BE CONTINUED
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