Ion steered his
bike closer to the fighter ship, blocking one final shot, and then
sending his blazing sword in a neat, horizontal slice through the
fighter’s body. The ship glided on in an unbroken inertial flow for
one fragmented second. And then, tearing apart in two worthless,
metallic chunks, it tumbled to the ground, spewing smithereens over
the village’s houses as it crashed.
Ion slowed
down, landing a hundred metres away from the village on the earth’s
unleveled floor. Dismounting his bike, he doused his sword and slid
it back into its sheath. His chest rose and fell as he stood by the
side of the bike, panting for a few seconds. Glancing back at the
village, he saw nothing. No more of the Naxim’s forces pursuing
him. Not yet, that was.
Wiping the
grease coating his face, he stood there for a second, feeling one
thought blare above all else within him:
How the hell
did they find me?
The Naxim
seemed to have known exactly where to find him, right in the middle
of nowhere. He felt an initial spell of panic that made him wonder
if there was some unseen aspect of this planet which could detect
and monitor mystics. But he calmed himself and carefully ran over
everything he had done since exiting Grando’s base. He had kept
moving all along, without sticking around anywhere. He hadn’t even
made contact with a civilian here, had he?
Wait a
second…
He frowned. A
rising sense of suspicion crept up inside of him. Digging his hand
into his pocket, he drew out the compass, staring at it deeply. He
shook the compass, holding it close to his ear.
Seems slightly
heavier than a normal compass should be…
Using his
powers, he dismantled the pieces of the compass, making them float
in the air before him. And then a growl broke from his throat.
This isn’t a
compass, this is a tracker!
He thought, infuriated.
So
that’s how this happened. The village headman I talked to sold me
out!
He channeled
his anger out of him in a focused, gushing stream, and the compass
disguised tracker’s dismantled pieces caught fire in mid air, and
then fell to the ground in ashes.
For a moment
Ion wondered how Novio had found him to be a mystic. But he cast
the doubt out, knowing he had a more pressing issue to tend to.
He took a
moment to gather himself and analyse the options available to him
now. He looked sideways at his bike, and felt a sliver of smug joy.
Dangerous and near fatal as it might have been, his meeting with
the Naxim had rendered him something useful after all: a vehicle.
There was no longer the need to travel to that hangar, to leave
this planet using public transport.
But Ion frowned
at the bike, sensing the hindrance in this plan.
If he wanted to
use the bike for space transport, there was something he needed for
it.
A power
drive.
And Ion was
aware that getting one right now might prove to be a problem: he
was literally in the middle of nowhere, with the Naxim on his
tail.
While full
scale ships were designed for interplanetary space transport, hover
bikes and hover ships were not designed such. In the case of hover
bikes, cars, and other simple transport vehicles, the power
required for space transport did not come inbuilt in their machine
system. An external source was used for these vehicles, to grant
them this immense power required for space transport. Known as the
power drive. Without this, hover bikes, cars and boards were
grounded to a single planet, to be used only for short distance
transport and nothing more.
Power drive or
not, Ion knew that the first thing he needed was to put as much
distance between himself and the Naxim’s forces in that village,
before they called in reinforcements.
First, I need
to get out of here alive while I still can.
Mounting the
sleek bike, he launched off again, streaking across the barren
land, away from the village.
__________
“How can I help
you?” asked Palor.
He forgot to
smile this time, as a slight ripple of disturbance passed him.
With untamed
red hair and fiery orange eyes, the boy stood tall and thin, with
what looked like a long black instrument slung around his back. He
seemed to have oil smeared by the side of his face, haphazardly
wiped off the front. His orange eyes were hardened with focus.
Something about his appearance left a note of slight
disconcertedness in Palor, who, in all his days as a provision
store owner in the semi urban town of Faoris, had never come across
someone quite so…
Strange.
“I need a power
drive.” said the boy, sounding slightly hasty. “And fast.”
Palor took a
step backwards from the counter, feeling his disconcertedness
rise.
“Err, of
course, sir.” He threw a quick glance below the counter. Where lay
the stack of small, cylindrical glass bottles that glowed with a
greenish liquid within. Power drives.
Bending down
below the counter, Palor picked one of them up and slid them over
to the table above.
He then rose
back above the counter. “That would be -”
… But he
stopped abruptly, as he realised that the boy was gone. And so was
the power drive he had placed on the counter.
It was as
though the boy had just snatched the power drive and
disappeared.
For a long
moment, Palor gaped into empty space, wondering what had just
passed.
__________
Ion stared at
the small cylindrical object, seeming to be filled with a glowing
green liquid.
He had traveled
at least a hundred or so miles on the bike before finding a decent
town, where he could get his hands on this. He felt a slight pang
of guilt for the provision store owner he had just had to steal
from. But he wasn’t going to let himself be captured by the Naxim,
tortured and killed just to adhere to a code of righteousness that
served little avail in such a twisted world.
He rammed the
small cylinder into the empty slot at the front of the bike,
fitting the power drive into the vehicle. As the engine revved to
life, Ion pressed a button and a bubble like encasing materialised
to wrap the bike and its rider. It was transparent, seeming to be
made of the thinnest layer of glass.
Known as the
Plasmon shield, this was required in all modes of open, unshielded
space travel such as this one. The Plasmon shield protected the
traveller
on the bike
from all ghastly effects of outer space travel. It rendered the air
within the shield breathable by manufacturing oxygen within for the
traveller.
All set,
then.
Ion drew out
his z-com, producing a holographic screen over it. The z-com
displayed a list of planets and moons that were nearest to him. He
placed his aim on a moon of Sacrogon, known as Hadri. Although it
came under the republic of Sacrogon, it was almost uninhabited,
making it far looser in the grip of Naxim and the Sacrogon
authorities. It would be the perfect place to hide in for now. Ion
knew that he could find shelter somewhere in the planet for time
being, before making further plans…
As the hover
bike floated just over the ground, encased in the Plasmon shield
and ready to soar, Ion punched in the co ordinates on the vehicle.
A moment of steady vibration gripped the vehicle, and then, with a
loud, sonorous
crack
, the bike blasted off into the starry
chasm stretching across the sky overhead.
__________
Millions of
miles away, in a dark cave, a man in a deep black cloak sat cross
legged on the ground. Zardin’s eyelids shielded the ghastly lack of
eyeballs beneath them as they lay half closed.
The large, dark
cave that he was now in formed a deeply peaceful place for people
like him. People who were moulded in darkness.
He slowly slid
a hand into his robe pocket, and pulled out the pen shaped device
they had acquired. He felt the familiar joy of a long awaited
victory, but instantly quelled it. He knew there was much work to
be done … This was just the beginning. There was a more important
task at hand now, on this road towards their goal.
Slowly rising
to his feet, Zardin pocketed the mineral detector, turned and
strode back deeper down the cave, where the others awaited.
It was time to
move to their next task.
Time to raise
the madness to a whole new level.
Ion dismounted
the hover bike and gazed about the scenery before him. Sprawling
before him was a mountainous terrain. There were faint markings of
people living here, and he thought he saw huts erected at the top
of a few of the mountains and by the slopes. He knew that these
people, the mountain dwellers, would be of a primitive, tribal
type. Nothing to worry of. It was the advanced, city dwelling type
that needed worrying, for they were the ones that were more likely
to spot a mystic and turn him into the Naxim.
Like the
blasted village headman.
He cursed under his breath.
If he hadn’t
managed to get hold of the bike, along with the stolen power drive,
Ion might have taken an entire day to reach this planet from
Sacrogon. The bike and the stolen power drive made his job of
getting to this planet far easier. And far quicker: the space jump
from Sacrogon to here took a mere twenty seconds.
Space travel
took place at such high speeds that it literally was a jump across
millions of miles, and hence the term. The voyage between two
planets in the same cluster took mere minutes and, in shorter cases
such as these, mere seconds. But the distance between two star
clusters was so tremendous that the voyage was took upto hours. The
space gates, the portals connecting the star clusters, took care of
that problem. As a combined result, travelling anywhere within the
inner spectrum took mere minutes. But the outer spectrum, however,
which was too far away, was a completely different story.
A faint haze
capped the top of some of the tallest of the mountains, which
seemed to rise to more than a mile above the ground. The terrain
was rugged, interspersed with feeble greenery in the form of grass
and bushes.
Parking the
hover bike by the side of a tree, Ion sank to a squatted position
beneath the tree, letting his breath calm down. It took a while
before he realised how weary he had been made by the past few
days.
He had had
little sleep in the past two days. And, he remembered with a
squirming in his stomach, the feeble sleep he had scraped in the
cruiser had been disturbed by a regular visitor … the regular,
unwelcome visitor to his dreams, whom he had been carrying for
years now.
The man with
the glowing red eyes…
“
You can’t
outrun me, Ion … I am a part of you.”
A shiver raced
through him as he remembered that creature from his dreams. That
creature who resided in the darkest depths of his memory … the
darkest depths of his past. His was a past which he wished he could
score off. As much as he knew he couldn’t. That lunatic whom he saw
in his dreams was a part of him, a blot on his memory that he knew
he would never erase.
Ion slid his
back over the back of the tree trunk and thrust his hand into the
other pocket of his robe. His fingers brushed over a hard parchment
surface. He grabbed the sheet of parchment that lay stuffed inside
his pocket, drew it out, and slowly unrolled it.
And there,
staring out of the poster with his glowing red eyes was the man.
His face was printed over most of the sheet. But beneath the face,
in small letters, lay the words:
Most wanted
criminal
Charge 54
Wanted for a
series of murders, assassinations, and unprovoked armed assaults on
various individuals.
IF SPOTTED
CALL 323 – 938 – 748 – 320 IMMEDIATELY.
THE CULPRIT IS
A DANGEROUS CRIMINAL, AND MUST BE KEPT AWAY
FROM IF
SPOTTED ANYWHERE, AT ANY COSTS.
Issued by the
interstate crime department, 42972
Series of
murders…
The lunatic
stared out of the poster with his horrible red eyes. The crease of
an evil smile lay tilted over his face. His black hair was wild and
unkempt. The twisted look of his face suddenly seemed to breathe
life to his features…
Ion felt a
visceral surge of fury and hatred like nothing else his entire
life.
He bore
enmities from his past. Grando. Vonayz. Plenty others … But none of
them matched the rage he felt at the sight of that face in the
poster. That face which he had dreaded and hated for so long. Which
had haunted him for so long … and which always would.
As the heavy
feeling passed, he felt his mind drift to a far more peaceful
region of memories … memories of his master, Jedius.
The past is
dead, only if you let it be.
Jedius’s words echoed at the back
of his head, seeming to carry across a wide chasm.
Do not dwell
on it and keep it alive, Ion. Give yourself the opportunity to move
to a better present, and to craft it into a better future.