The Cagliostro Chronicles II: Conflagration (7 page)

E
veryone ground to a halt when they entered the medical lab. Ariel floated vertically above her bed, standing in mid-air with her long blonde hair streaming wildly about behind her as if blown in the wind. Her eyes glowed like stars.

“What the hell?” Mark blurted out.

“Mark, she just started doing this,” Troiano advised. “She won’t let me get close enough to even check her. I try and I’m pushed back telekinetically.”

“She’s a telepath, not a telekinetic
,” Mark barely whispered.

“I know
, that’s why I called you.”

Then Ariel opened her mouth and a voice
decidedly not her own reverberated from it. “You will leave my world, and you will take these others with you. You will drive them from my world, from my surface and skin, or none of you will leave this place ever again.”

With that the entire ship lost power and went dark, cold and dead.

Mark took a
step toward the floating Ariel. “Who, what are you?”

“I am Chakix, Goddess of this world. I am this world
’s spirit, its soul. I am Chakix.”

Dan quickly
took a step forward behind Mark. “Yeah, you said that already. Put Ari down. She don’t need ya runnin’ around her brain.”

The creature t
hat was possessing Ariel turned her body toward Dan, “You are the one who hurt my child.” 

Lightning seemed to burst from Ariel’s glowing eyes, and Dan was flung across the room to land hard against a wall.

“Dan!” Troiano shouted as she ran to his side.

Red whispered,
“This just took on a whole new level of weird.”

“No kidding
,” Mark replied. He turned toward Ariel. “Chakix or whoever you are, what have you done to Ariel? What have you done to my ship? I want answers now, lady, or whatever you are.”

The creature
possessing Ariel O’Connor laughed. “I am Chakix. I am this world. Your kind has come to my pleasant shores and brought devastation. This will be tolerated no longer.”

“You confuse us with our enemies, who inhabit
a hidden base somewhere on this world.”

“It does not matter if they are with you or against you. You are all the enemy of Chakix
.”

“We are not your enemy, Chakix. We
had
to land here. Our vessel was damaged from doing battle with our foes. We merely wish to repair our ship and be on our way back to our home world.”

“I do not believe you, pale skin creature
.”

Mark took another step forward. Behind him Danny was slowly getting to his feet, while Troiano and another
member of the medical staff fussed over him. He waved them off, annoyed.

“Chakix,” Mark began, “w
e mean you no harm. You are inside Ariel. Check her memories if it will do her no harm. She is special to me. Please, do not hurt her.”

“You have no say in this at all, pale skin creature. I will do as I please
.”

“Don’t become our enemy
Chakix; think on this before you go any further. Check Ari’s memories.”

Ariel’s intruder said nothing more. Its demeanor became almost blank.
Then after a few silent moments it looked down upon Mark and the others before replying, “What you say is true. You and this one, this ‘Ariel’ hold special feelings for each other. She regards you very…highly. But she is battling me even as we speak. She does not want me to know all about you.”

“Ari, let her know what she needs to
,” Mark implored, grasping her by the forearm now.

Ariel/Chakix looked at him imperiously at first
, and then her demeanor changed and softened.

“Ariel…loves you. She would do anything to protect you and she feels you
would do the same for her. Her memories, they are chaotic. These invaders, they are called the…Agalum? Is that correct hu-mon MarkJohnson?”

He nod
ded grimly in reply.

Behind Mark
, Dan forced the sliding glass doors open easily and disappeared down the darkened hallway of the great ship.

“Where is he going?
The one who hurt my child.”

“Forget him and talk to me.
What do you want?”

“I have already told you, I want you and your adversaries off of my world
.”

“Look…Chakix,
we mean you no harm and would gladly leave here now if we could. Those…adversaries damaged our ship in battle and they have a world destroyer class ship in orbit around you right now. That class of ship is no joke. They’ve been trying to get something like that to my world for over a year now, and we’ve beaten them back at every turn. But they outnumber us in bodies and in ships. We’re fighting for our very lives and existence. Our world can’t build ships fast enough to keep up with them.”

Chakix/Ariel tilted her head and asked simply,
“Then how are you still in existence?”

“We are holding our own through our design and manufacture of weaponry and ships. As a race we are builders
. We shape what we need and use it against our enemies. Never before in the history of my world have we faced a foe from beyond the stars. All our internal conflict has led to this. There is no doubt; we are a warrior race in many ways.”

“I have no
…difficulty with that. My children here are warriors as well. You are simply more…advanced than they are.”

“Yes
, we are. Again, we’d much rather repair our ship, the
Cagliostro
, and simply leave this place.”

“You cannot leave until you remove these enemies
,” she barked harshly.

“Chakix, we did not bring them here
. They outnumber us greatly we fear. That great ship in orbit can and most definitely will destroy you if they learned of your sentience.”

“I-I…” Chakix/Ariel stammered
.

“Think
, Chakix. We would rather aid you in defeating these enemies but we cannot do it alone.”

“My children
. All my children would…die?”

“
If the Agalum learned of what you truly are, then yes. They would blow you out of space killing every living creature upon you.”

She paused a moment and seemed to look inwardly, her face down toward the floor,
then her face lifted. “Why would they do this thing?”

“Because the Agalum are a petty and small minded race which attacks those different from them.
They fear those who represent something other than their way of thinking, or who in their small minds might pose a threat to them. They surreptitiously infiltrated my world for over a century weakening and sabotaging our space program.”

“Are you saying they deterred you from leaving your world mother?”

“If you mean a being like yourself, there is no such voice upon our world.”

She was silent a moment
, then began to speak again after a moment of reflection. “That is blasphemy. There are other worlds, other voices like mine throughout the beyond.”

“Not that we have encountered, Chakix
.”

“You lie. I do not believe you
.” The words were vehement this time. Ariel’s face contorted angrily.

“Uh oh
,” Eddie murmured.

The creature called Chakix floated toward
Mark who put his hands up and tried to stop her forward movement.

“There must be others like me, there must be more. I am not…alone. I cannot be
.” Her voice turned almost sorrowful.

“We’ve never encountered another like you, Chakix.
That does not mean others like you do not exist. It means simply we have not encountered them as of yet.”

Troiano and Eddie both looked at Mark and nodded
their approval almost imperceptibly. Red merely scowled, tightening his hand on his blaster pistol’s grip.

Without warning the lights flared back to life and all the electronic equipment in the ship with them.

“What?” Chakix/Ariel
was stunned.

“Dan
,” Red turned to Eddie and mouthed.

Mark held Chakix/Ariel by both arms
now, making sure her attention was focused on him and him only. “Release Ariel, Chakix. We mean you no harm. We want these adversaries removed as much as you do. From your surface as well as from this quadrant of space. Help us do so.”

“
No,” the not Ariel voice continued. “You will all leave my skin, my surface, my world. You will take those…Agalum with you, or you will all die here.”

Troiano moved surreptitiously
away from Mark with Red and Eddie knowingly blocking her from view. Red tapped his left sleeve, which pulsed a red light twice at the cuff faintly.

“We don’t want to be your adversary, Chakix
,” Mark continued, “But we cannot leave here as of yet, and you cannot stay within Ariel any longer.”

A half dozen security men burst through the med lab’s doors on each side, surrounding the possessed Ariel.

“No! You will all leave!” Chakix/Ariel shouted.

Her eyes flared brighter and the entire security detail was lifted into the air and hurled against the walls
.

But at the same time Troiano made her move, slipping up behind Ariel and injecti
ng her with a powerful sedative.

Ariel’s eyes rolled up into her head
. Her eyelids fluttered like
a butterfly’s wings. Then her body dropped toward the ground. Mark deftly caught her before she could impact the hard, gleaming floor.

“What’d you give her?”
he eyed Dr. Troiano.

“The equivalent of a horse sedative
,” She answered grimly.

“Are you serious?”

“Yes I am, Captain Johnson. She
will
be all right. If you had seen the life scans my equipment had on her you would have done the same thing,” She paused a moment and then continued with a strange look upon her face as she looked at Ariel. “Hell, after looking at the readings I’m getting on her right now I’m not certain I used enough.”

“I’m not condemning you for what you did
, Doctor. I know it had to be done. I’m just concerned for Ari, that’s all.”

“We all are
, Mark,” Troiano replied.

Simultaneously Dan Sledge thundered through the doors.
Medics were helping the security people back onto their feet all around the crew.

“Everybody all right?”
Dan asked.

“Yes
, Danny. What happened? What allowed you to get our power up and running again?”

“The ship was bein’ enveloped by this frequency from the planet itself. It was some kinda power dampening field.
Hand held scanners still worked, an’ if you noticed so did our suits’ protective qualities. I powered up a frequency jammer outta some stuff in the engineerin’ lab an’ isolated that frequency, puttin’ up a counter frequency. I used my suit’s power supply to get it started, an’ once it was in place I tagged it onta the ship’s power. She’s not gonna be able ta do that again to us. I got the ship’s systems scanning for frequency changes. We can match her just as fast as she changes ‘em, now that I know what we’re lookin’ for.”

Ma
rk patted him on the shoulder. “Good man. I always said you were the smartest guy I ever met, except for myself. Today you were smarter.”

“Naaah,
Boss. I just had my head clearer. You were worried about Ari.”

Mark turned and
watched as the medics picked Ariel up off the floor and placed her onto a gurney. She was unconscious and her eyes were closed.

H
e turned toward Dan and Troiano. “Is there any way to use that same procedure to remove this ‘Chakix’ from Ariel’s mind? Perhaps block whatever signal she’s transmitting to Ari?”

“Do you think Ariel is receiving a signal from this Chakix?” Troiano asked with wide eyes.

“It’s either that or she’s possessed by it. We won’t know until we run some tests I suppose. Danny, can you rig something up to see if Ari is being used to receive some sort of telepathic commands or something?”

“I could
, Mark, but would that explain the telekinesis?”

Mark sighed.
“I suppose not. But I want you to run that test anyway. Perhaps Ari is possessed by this thing, this world mind, or whatever the hell it is. Or perhaps she’s just being given commands from afar that are being overwritten onto her mind. It doesn’t really matter either way. I want this thing’s influence out of Ariel’s head as fast as possible.”

T
roiano looked stoically at Mark. “What if I can’t remove it?”

“Either that thing gets
out of Ari’s head on its own or we’re going to force it out of there. I’ll do whatever it takes, even if it means killing that thing.”