Zein: The Homecoming Page 6

  Tyson heard Kabel’s and the other pilots’ doubts. He focused his attention on the incoming spaceship, which was trying to get in as close as possible to launch its power draining load. He focused on the turret which stuck out from the body of the ship and then cautiously reached out, immersing his thoughts into the minds of the enemy. There were ten warriors to each ship, he counted. They were laughing and discussing the attack but he didn’t understand the language. He decided that he needed help so redirected and projected the thoughts to Zebulon, who still sat patiently in his wolf shape watching Tyson with growing unease.

  What are they saying?

  They are pointing out that they can destroy us at their leisure as our useless weapons have no impact, Zebulon replied.

  Any weaknesses you can identify?

  They keep mentioning the “transmitter”, which I think is disarming the explosive devices before they hit.

  Tyson searched the exterior of the spaceship and he couldn’t see anything. Four more torpedoes were launched from two other Venings and the Elanda rocked again, causing, for the first time, sparks from the Protective Barrier, which could be seen glinting in the starlight. The barrier was weakening. The Venings turned away readying for another attack.

  ‘There!’ he shouted aloud to no one in particular. As the enemy ships turned away he saw a red pulsing light on the underbelly of the ship which was relatively small but noticeable. Tyson instinctively knew that this was the disabling transmitter. ‘Patch me into all communications, I have a solution,’ he ordered. In the Command and Control Centre, General Corder frowned. He was not used to receiving orders, but they needed help so reluctantly he gave the requested direction to patch Tyson in to the communications.

  ‘Attention everybody, there is a red light on the underbelly of the ships. It is a very small target but direct all your fire on to that area,’ said Tyson.

  ‘On it,’ said Kabel, pulling his Cobra into a vertical climb and looping behind the previously attacking Vening. He dropped the Cobra at an angle so he could see the red light. Yes he saw it and set his guns onto the belly of the Vening firing off streams of powerful pulses from the Cobra’s’ photon machine guns. The Vening began to manoeuvre itself violently to escape the intensive firing. Sean joined his co-pilot in firing at the underbelly. There was a force-field but the concentrated fire power eventually told and blasted the light to pieces; immediately Kabel ordered the Cobra’s torpedoes loose. The torpedoes sped upward into the desperately manoeuvring ship and on impact they tore the ship apart.

  Tyson heard the panic stricken alien guttural voices in the ship and the scream of death and his lips curled up in satisfaction. He sensed panic begin to ripple through the enemy and could not stop licking his lips in delight, as if he tasted the fear. Zebulon looked up at him, keeping his thoughts hidden. If Tyson had seen that look he would be concerned; it was not a look of admiration but of fear.

  Tyson turned his guns onto the incoming enemy ship, aiming for the underbelly, swiftly joined by Gemma, Belina and Bailey. The light went out and a Cobra following the ship let loose its pay load and the enemy ship exploded. Tyson felt the buzz of the battle and the magic inside him feed off the adrenalin.

  Zebulon made sure his thoughts were protected by his deep magics before he allowed his concerns to surface. The magics are turning the boy into a rogue warrior; Zebulon thought, sensing that the human’s body could or would not control the magic within the vibrant body. If he goes too far, it is not Zylar we should fear. I will need to watch him closely.

  Tyson was now in the zone and deadly. He was relentless and once he had blown the transmitter of two enemy ships he let his agile mind send photon blast after photon blast to blow each of the ships to smithereens. Within minutes the enemy were on the run. The Cobras followed until Kabel gave the order to desist and keep within the protection of the Elanda. He was concerned that the crews needed more training and he didn’t want them to overstretch their luck. Only two of the Venings survived and they retreated away from the flotilla until they disappeared off the radar.

  Cheers rang out across the decks. Tyson stared glumly at the enemy-free space. He felt cheated, he had felt the huge spike in his power coursing through his body as the adrenalin from the fight and the anguished screams of the defeated echoed through him. He uncoupled from the turret and exited, followed by a thoughtful Zebulon who padded along behind him. Along the deck the other gunners were congratulating each other and their spirits were high. Bailey hugged his sister and then caught Tyson emerging from his turret. He began to smile a greeting to his friend and then it froze on his face as he saw the Changeling’s demeanour behind him. Zebulon was walking slowly behind Tyson with his tail between his legs and his ears pinned back to his head. Bailey was aware that Zebulon exhibited the mannerisms of the animal he was transformed to and these mannerisms pointed to a high level of stress. His alarm bells were ringing and his eyes drifted to Tyson’s and what he saw chilled him to the bone.

  So much anger and scorn.

  At this point he was happy that he had the training sessions with Kabel to work on blocking his mind to Tyson’s incursions. Fortunately, Tyson was looking for Amelia and didn’t see Bailey’s expression. Zebulon looked at Bailey and the message was loud and clear…they needed to keep an eye on Tyson.

  Amelia emerged from her photon gun booth and saw the glint in Tyson’s eye and chose to ignore it, just pleased that they had fought off the deadly attack. She went to hug him and did not see the resentment directed at her by Gemma who had no Kabel to turn to as he was still sweeping the perimeter. Gemma stood with her arms folded taking in the picture of Tyson and Amelia greeting each other with hugs and kisses. Tyson seemed to access her thoughts as he looked past the relieved Amelia’s shoulders and his eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. Gemma stubbornly refused to smile back.

  There were no cheers from General Corder. The direction the Venings had taken was the exact coordinates of the planetary cluster where Zein resided. This was far from over.

  Chapter 5: Coliseum

  Belina laid her head on Bailey’s bare chest, which heaved with the recent exertion of their love making. Bailey stared at the smooth steel ceiling in deep thought. Belina ran her fingertips over his chest tracing the outline of his pectoral muscle. She looked up at his vacant expression and was immediately concerned. Their love making had been as passionate as ever but now he seemed distracted, worried about something.

  Belina remembered a phrase she had heard the humans use and thought it was perfect for this very moment. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ she said warmly.

  Bailey turned to her and kissed the top of her head. He was torn between the loyalty to his friend and his feelings for Belina. It didn’t take him long to make a decision, his uncertainty was cancelled out by the concern he felt. He needed to talk to someone about Tyson. Bailey told her of his concerns and then went on to describe his feelings towards his friend and what had happened yesterday. Belina listened with her head resting on her hand staring up at him. When he had lapsed into silence Belina raised herself until she was the same height as Bailey and face to face. The warmth of her body pressed against her boyfriend.

  ‘I think we are all intimidated a little bit by Tyson. He is very powerful but his heart is in the right place and you have to agree he loves Amelia?’ She kissed him sensually on the lips, leaving her lips barely touching but lingering.

  ‘Hmmm, you may be right. I just have never seen Zebulon so subdued,’ Bailey pressed. Belina kissed him repeatedly, slowly, softly. Bailey felt his worries begin to fall away from him under the caresses of this beautiful woman.

  Belina’s hand drifted to his chest. ‘I think I can take all your worries away,’ she teased. It wasn’t long before Bailey was in total agreement.

  Kabel was faced by four of the Malacca clan. They flanked him from each corner of the room, each carrying a weapon in front of their bodies. Kabel tossed his seckle up into the air with his left hand, catchin
g it smoothly with his right.

  ‘Come on, do your worst,’ said Kabel beckoning them forward. One of the men ran at him. He was a tough looking soldier with huge broad shoulders, knotted with substantial muscle, the same muscle that was behind the hand sweeping upwards to Kabel’s gut. Kabel sidestepped bringing the back of his hand down on the attacker’s arm and using the momentum of the run to fling the man into the side wall. Before he had completed the move two of the other men attacked. Kabel used the movement of the throw of the first man to carry him into his next offensive move.

  His seckle clashed with the second man’s weapon and he used the body of the second man as a launch pad into the third man with a two footed kick to his chest, sending the man crashing into a number of boxes stacked at the side.

  Kabel jumped to his feet as the first man came for him again. The fourth man just hung back, waiting for his moment. The first man was more cautious this time and moved in slowly looking for an opening and Kabel intentionally let his eyes wander to the second man, struggling to climb back onto his feet.

  The third man took this as his opportunity and moved fast to close the distance between him and Kabel. Too late, the man saw the error of his assumptions as Kabel whipped round, blocking the incoming blow and punching with his left hand into the solar plexus of the third man, who collapsed to the ground. Engrossed with this move he didn’t see the copper pipe come spinning through the air, thrown by the second man and though Kabel just activated his personal shield in time, the force knocked him off his feet.

  The fourth man saw his opportunity and he raced in with the second man and they both brought their seckles up to strike the telling last blow when, with a heavy grunt from Kabel, a spinning seckle traversed in a split second hitting and removing both seckles and spinning the two men around. Kabel followed up with two kicks to both the men’s chests to send them toppling backwards.

  Clapping broke out breaking Kabel’s concentration as Amelia and Gemma whooped their support from the sidelines of the training mat. Kabel wiped the sweat from his forehead and provided a flourishing bow. He then made his way across to the fourth man and offered a hand up.

  ‘Good move, Linus, using that intelligence well, you nearly had me,’ said Kabel.

  ‘Lord Blackstone, I think you give me too much credit,’ said the huge soldier rubbing his bruised chest gingerly. The other soldiers stood up, each with a rueful smile. Under strict instructions not too hold back they still came second best in the training sessions. They all saluted the Chancellor, respect clearly seen in their demeanour, and traipsed off to the showers.

  ‘Well done, bro, now are you going to stop playing with the hired help and have a real fight?’ said Tyson, with a sardonic tone whilst slowly clapping the spectacle in derision. He had entered the gymnasium just in time to see the sparring.

  ‘Tyson! There is no need for that,’ admonished Amelia as Gemma passed a towel for Kabel to dry his sweat covered upper body. Gemma handed him a drink of ice cold water from one of the many drinking fountains in the training arena.

  The training arena was a massive room covering half of the forty-eighth deck with only the main aircraft and shuttle decks below it. It had a training capacity for a thousand soldiers at a time, with state of the art technology that worked on every muscular element of the body and included a hologram simulation area, now renamed the Coliseum, after the famous Roman monument, enabling whole platoons to practice battle movements and tactics across all manner of terrains.

  The Coliseum was placed at the far end of the arena and was shielded off from the main arena by massive sliding doors. Behind the doors, members of the Tyther clan had spruced up the original environmental programmes, providing experience across desert, sea, fields and urban areas. If in single combat you were killed a bleep would trigger in an ear device and the training session would end. If a group exercise, then the programme would calculate the algorithms of the tipping point where the battle was won or lost either based on numbers slain or terrain taken. The area was amplified by the written code, which meant that once you entered it could feel like it was a particular city, country, ocean or continent and already during the last six months one exercise had gone on for days, until a senior officer called an end to the exercise.

  ‘Amelia, I am only pointing out that fighting with those foot soldiers is hardly going to improve his skills to match Zylar’s.’ His statement earned a glare from Linus as he made his way to the showers.

  ‘So what do you suggest dear brother?’ Adrenalin causing Kabel to rise to the challenge. Amelia shook her head at Tyson sensing the wildness in her partner.

  Tyson ignored her. ‘Why don’t we have a go in the Coliseum and fight the Ilsid?’

  ‘Sounds good, which programme?’ said Kabel, not backing down.

  ‘How about one of the urban ones?’ Tyson retorted and Kabel accepted without reservation.

  ‘Kabel, there is no need to do this,’ said Amelia, exasperated. She knew that nothing good would come from this bravado.

  Men and their egos.

  Amelia realised that nothing she could say or do would change their minds. People had been hurt in these realistic programmes and Amelia did not want either of her friends injured. The blades or guns wielded by the opponents had no impact when they hit a person, though the code registered a “hit” but soldiers could be thrown around and impact on the sets had left men and women bloodied and with a few broken bones. ‘Look, if you want to do this hair-brained stunt then I am not watching,’ said Amelia, stamping her foot in frustration.

  Tyson laughed and placed an arm round her as Kabel tugged on a top. ‘Don’t worry we will look after each other, won’t we, Kabel?’

  ‘Of course dear brother, of course,’ Kabel answered. Amelia didn’t like the rising tension between them. She had spent many hours teaching Tyson how to calm his mind and anger and now just as she thought she was winning, they have to resort to this macho challenge.

  ‘Gemma you coming?’ she turned for support from her friend, only to find Gemma was engrossed in the battle of wits between the boys and therefore declining Amelia’s request. Gemma’s heart was beating fast caught up with the excitement of the situation.

  ‘I would like to see how this plays out,’ she said, running a hand across Kabel’s back. Amelia just stared at her friend and seeing that she had no intention to either say anything to stop this stupidity or storm off like she had every intention of doing, vented an annoyed grunt and left the arena in disgust.

  Tyson’s eyes followed his girlfriend’s ramrod retreating back with a hint of regret. Then shrugging his shoulders in resignation he raised his hand gesturing to the Coliseum, ‘Now, shall we go and have some fun?’ he said. They both walked to the console outside the Coliseum and Kabel opened the panel and reviewed the different programmes. He selected one of the urban ones and punched in the details, setting the number of opponents at twenty. Tyson playfully asked for more by holding his palm out and bouncing it up and down. Kabel doubled it to forty and as Kabel rested his hand on the panel, Tyson nudged Kabel’s hand and it increased to four hundred.

  ‘Four hundred Ilsid!’ said a shocked Gemma, now wishing she had supported her friend to stop this nonsense. ‘No one has faced four hundred Ilsid in the Coliseum, ever.’

  ‘We are not just anybody, are we, Chancellor?’ Gemma detected the resentment in Tyson’s voice and for the first time felt a level of uncertainty. If Kabel had noted the change of tone he did a convincing act of ignoring it and turned to Gemma and took her hands in his.

  ‘We will be fine, don’t worry,’ he said, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘Remember we have our shields,’ he reminded her. Gemma understood he was trying to alleviate the tension, it didn’t help, and her heart was still racing. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek.

  He dropped her hands and pulled from his jacket one of his real seckles to replace the wooden one he had used during the earlier training session. Tyson pulled out his own weapon; he now
had his own seckles, handcrafted by skilful Tyther hands from the finest zinithium. Each picked up a photon shotgun from the rack of weapons outside the Coliseum.

  ‘Shall we go, your Excellency,’ said a smiling Tyson, cocking his shotgun and then holding his hand out directing Kabel to the doors, bowing with a mischievous look on his face. Kabel, following his gesture, laughed and took him up on his invite. The doors opened and on entering Tyson was surprised to find they were on Tower Bridge in London.

  ‘Good choice brother,’ said Tyson, ‘A little history whilst we fight.’

  ‘Thought you may like the setting as you are always going on about London,’ replied Kabel, looking carefully around them. They were on the middle of the famous bridge which was built in the late 1900s and is a combined bascule and suspension bridge crossing the River Thames. The bridge itself consisted of two towers joined together at the upper level by means of two horizontal walkways, designed to withstand the forces of gravity exerted by the suspended sections of the bridge on the land facing sides of the towers. The vertical component of the forces in the suspended sections and the presence of the two walkways are supported by two robust towers. The bascule pivots and operating machinery, housed in the base of each tower, providing the mechanism that drove one of the most impressive sights in this large city allowing the bridge to part to allow large sailing ships or other large vessels through. All this above the dirty, murky, battling currents of the River Thames which flowed under the bridge, caressing its supporting foundations.

  At this precise moment Kabel wasn’t dwelling on the history lessons he used to enjoy with Malkin, his teacher for many years before he was killed in the attack on the mast in the Eastern Quadrant, more on what was happening on the opposite side of the river to the Tower of London where a charging mass of Ilsid were running to the bridge. He paled what had he signed up for!