As a prominent warlord and a leader among the
Zelgron, Carcasar was now slowly steering his race back to the
top…
He drew his hood back again, his one
remaining eye staring out from underneath it. Slowly trotting
downwards on the slope, he lay on the ground, staring at the stars
above. His one remaining eye twitched as he remembered the incident
from a night so similar to this one…
The incident that had taken his other eye,
and left a gash across his face in place of it.
And he remembered the one responsible for it.
For tearing his eye out.
You won’t get away with what you did,
boy.
A growl of fury rumbled within his throat.
Ion
will pay for what he did … I’ll make sure of it. Eye for an
eye.
His insides mashed with rage as he remembered
that red haired, orange eyed boy. Someone who had made himself a
most deadly enemy…
Two years ago
As Carcasar lunged again, the boy’s sword
flashed wildly before him … He had slashed it across the air.
And the skin on Carcasar’s face blazed with
pain as the tip of the sword scraped across it. The sword had
slashed across one of his eyes. Carcasar stumbled, erupting with a
scream of agony.
My eye!!
Pain and rage stormed him as he stood there
with a hand over his punctured eye, his other hand flailing madly.
Without wasting another second, he threw himself forth at the boy,
aiming to tear his face out.
The present
Carcasar’s remaining eye twitched once
more…
The person responsible for this … Carcasar
knew he would not, in any means, get away with it. Nobody messed
with him, the great Zelgron warlord, and got away with it.
He knew that before the end of this life, the
boy would pay. He intended to make sure he did. He had a list of
enemies who dreaded him and the rest of his kind under his command
… And he knew that this boy was one of them.
That day, two years back, would have left its
mark on him. A mark which Carcasar knew he was carrying upto this
day … and he was right in doing so.
Because when the chance came for it, Carcasar
would find the boy again and finish their meeting two years
back…
And the chance was coming
very
soon…
Meanwhile, a billion miles away, cruiser 802
had just left the planet Dragor. It ripped across space at a
mindless speed, its gigantic size seeming to hold no bounds to its
motion.
Spaceway transport was mostly public, with
the government of any planet owning the cruisers moving in and out
of it. But there were also private companies willing to offer a far
more luxurious, high priced mode of travel for passengers, and
cruiser 802 came under the ownership of one of these private
companies.
Lexion was a spaceway agency that owned a
fleet of almost a thousand or so cruisers. Its voyages were mainly
centred around the planetary system of Dragor and other nearby
ones. Cruiser 802 was the last one leaving Dragor in this day, to a
planet further off by the edge of this cluster, called Artos.
The space crew - the air hostesses and pilots
- had just boarded the cruiser from Lexion’s space tower. This
prominent space tower was where all of the company’s cruisers had
their security checks, and were then boarded by the space crew. The
cruisers would then move to the nearby ship station to collect the
awaiting passengers.
Inside of the massive cruiser, in of its
lavish halls laid sprawling over a vast area, four lines of
spacious seats were laid in the interior. The passengers belonged
to a simmering business class, most of them adorned in shiny suits
and elegant cloaks.
Air hostesses strode down the hallways
carrying trays of assortments, serving drinks and snacks to the
passengers. With expensive black suits and golden badges gleaming
on their chests, they struck an air of confidence and command.
Raf felt silently awed by the air of
dignified elegance they were entitled to in this high priced mode
of space travel. Lexion left no factor of comfort left unchecked
for them. The owner of a multi cuisine chain of restaurants, Raf
had always considered himself worthy of only the best.
Uncompromising in what he received. As he stretched back on the
cushiony first class seat, he had to admit: this time, he had
received the best.
__________
In the space tower from which cruiser 802 had
just left, a space monitoring crew sat busy behind holographic
screens, helping the giant vessel make its way through the
dangerous chasm that was space.
The tower formed the central hub of Lexion,
where all of the cruisers underwent final security scans, before
the crew of pilots and air hostesses boarded them. The cruiser was
then guided through its journey by a team of space monitors. This
was to ensure that the giant vessel, prone to meeting unseen
objects in space, waded through in a safe and unhindered path. The
hexagon shaped room was lined with four desks, with people sitting
behind each desk, busy at work.
Gronto stifled a yawn as he leaned by the
side of the wall, watching another routine day of work roll by
passively. He had spent almost thirty years as the chief security
supervisor of Lexion. He had watched them grind through this same
system everyday, before deploying their cruisers for space
travel.
Cruiser 802 was the last vessel for this
day.
Thank god for that…
Deciding to take a brief break, he headed for
the door to the hexagon shaped room, walking down the long corridor
that came beyond it.
__________
Lunch time had come sooner than expected.
An air hostess passed by Raf’s right, pushing
a large trolley, serving each passenger his lunch. He stopped by
Raf’s seat and bent down over the lunch trolley. He straightened up
holding a large tray, and carefully laid it over the desk before
Raf’s seat.
Raf turned back to the air hostess, whose
gleaming badge had the words, “My name is NARODO. How may I be of
service?”
“Thanks, Narodo.” Said Raf.
Narodo gave him a courteous bow in his thick
black suit, and then steered the lunch tray to the man in the seat
forward. Raf placed the magazine he had been reading down, and
begun with what was definitely a reasonably expensive lunch.
__________
Gronto had wandered into the dressing room.
Frowning, he bent down over a pile of robes. As he picked the set
of robes up, he wondered where they’d come from: nobody around this
agency went about wearing something that looked this ludicrous.
Whatever.
Throwing the robes down, he reached for the
room’s light on the side of the wall, and flicked it on. As the
room bloomed to light, his eyes automatically locked to the far end
of the room … And he felt his heart halt.
A group of gagged, masked figures sat at the
end of the room, rigidly tied up so that all they could do was
fidget and shift mildly.
Feeling shock explode within him, Gronto
dashed to the end of the room, pulling off the mask and gag off one
of them.
It was Narodo, the chief of the air hostess
crew of cruiser 802.
“There are imposters in the cruiser!” Narodo
exploded, the moment his gag had been wrenched off. “They took our
uniforms … and badges, and entered the ship! We’re under
attack!”
Gronto felt brain jam at what he was
hearing.
“What?!” he spluttered, confounded. Without
waiting, Gronto tore off the masks off the remaining figures, and
his world spun around him:
Sitting tied before him, was the crew of
pilots and air hostesses of cruiser 802.
Who were supposed to be
in
cruiser 802
right now.
Gronto straightened up very slowly, feeling
as though every muscle in his body had gone still.
What is this?…
__________
Jeros stretched on his seat, waiting for his
lunch to arrive. In a few moments, one of the air hostesses had
arrived next to him with a lunch trolley. A shining badge lay
pinned to the man’s chest, which said ‘Narodo’. He placed the tray
on Jeros’s desk, gave him a courteous smile, and walked off with
the trolley.
Jeros had felt, for that mini second when he
stared into Narodo’s eyes, that there was something strange
stirring within them … and whatever it was, it made something
tingle silently within him.
Shaking off the stupid feeling, Jeros began
eating his lunch.
__________
“I don’t … I don’t understand.” Gronto’s mind
had gone sluggish in the intensity of what they were facing.
“
Who
?”
The air hostesses and pilots stared at him,
all of their eyes seeming to silently scream with something that
even transcended fear…
__________
The man with the badge that said ‘NARODO’
entered the room of the air hostesses, and shoved the lunch trolley
into its rack. The room was empty, with the other air hostesses out
delivering the passengers’ lunches. Throwing one last glance at the
hallway behind him, Zardin tore off the badge on his chest,
slapping it on the desk. He peeled off the wax made facial mask and
smiled as fresh air brushed against his face. Wearing the stupid
wax mask had certainly been the most arduous part of this entire
plan, despite being the very least important.
Two more air hostesses filed into the room,
fixing Zardin with a purposed look.
“Everyone’s been given their lunch, sir.” One
of them said.
The other gave a nasty smile. “And the toxin
we’ve added will have them all out in seconds now…”
Zardin sent a swift glance back at the line
of passengers. They had all begun digging in . Not the meanest
inkling of doubt on any of their faces…
Doubts about if they were really in a safe
voyage right now. Doubts about if the food they were eating was
actually safe to eat right now. Doubts about if the air hostesses
and pilots controlling this cruiser were what they appeared to
be.
No doubts at all. Just plain, blind faith in
the established system…
The system that Zardin and the men had set
out to tear apart…
“Thank you for your faith, ladies and gents,”
said Zardin, a cruel smile twisting his lips. “Now, prepare
yourselves … for the ride of a lifetime.”
As the seconds ticked by, the rest of the air
hostesses slowly filled the room. The group waited for a minute or
two, before they saw heads lolling to the side of every seat. The
passengers were all out.
The cruiser was now all theirs.
Feeling adrenaline flare inside of him,
Zardin turned to the other suit adorned men in the small room and
leered. “It’s play time, boys.”
He drew out a small, capsule sized device
from the left pocket of his suit. He positioned his thumb over the
sole red button on the device. For the space of a second, he
relished the feel of the button as his thumb sat over it gently…
and then he pressed the button.
__________
A hundred or so metres away, a dazzling
orange flare soaked the whole engine room. The explosion ripped the
entire room apart, sending a wild, rocking shudder across the
length of the vast vessel.
The majestic vessel slowly floated to a stop
in the midst of the starry chasm of space. Its grandeur and majesty
were now complete illusions to the sad, helpless state it was now
in. Its passengers were now in a predicament that no amount of
their money would be able to bail them out of…
The cruiser’s engines were blasted off, and
its electrical and radar systems had been fried. The vessel was now
trapped. Trapped literally in the middle of no man’s land…
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
“We are at the precipice of a new age,” said
the man in the holographic screen. “The age of unravelling.”
His pale face. His razor sharp teeth. His
black hair falling on both sides of his face in frames. It was all
terrifying. But not merely as terrifying as his eyes.
Because the man
had
no eyes … just
empty, blank sockets that gazed out horrifyingly.
As he finished speaking, the silence that
followed seemed to drill into the president’s ears. Standing about
behind him were the other members of his office. All of them were
standing rigid, facing the holo screen at the front of the
office.
“The cruiser 802, of Lexion spaceway, is now
within our mercy.” the man in the screen stated. “Every one of the
passengers has been put unconscious. And if necessary, they will be
put out of consciousness … permanently.” Spreading down behind the
man was a hallway filled with four lines of seats. And the seats
were all occupied by unconscious passengers.