THREE

Chasing The Storm

I felt H.A.P.I attach himself to one of the straps on the shoulder of my jacket just after I getting my jacket on. I turned around and shifted my eyes back over to the door of my apartment and the group of officers were still huddled around the body of my assassin; with Alex signaling me to return to the group.

As I began my walk to rejoin the group Alex yelled across the room, “Urik, get over here. You’re going to want to see this!”

After no more than a few steps toward the group I noticed on my readout that the information I set to download had finished compiling; now I at least had a name to start with, Tazo Tono. A few steps later I was over the threshold and back with the group of investigators. Shortly after reaching the group I looked over to Alex and spoke, “What do you have for me Alex?”

“A tattoo, your favorite. I started looking him over for any identifying marks and I found this little guy on his rib.” Soon after speaking Alex pointed at the tattoo.

It was crude, clearly not done a professional; it seemed to depict a sword of some kind piercing what appeared to be some kind of humanoid machine. Underneath the tattoo was four lines of script in an ancient or alien language that none of us could decipher.

I looked over to Alex just after observing the tattoo and spoke, “Well, if this is what I think it is then the whole cult idea might be accurate.”

“I was just thinking the same, Urik.” Alex let loose a quick sigh before standing from his crouched position, “Do you know any linguistics guys who could figure out what this says?”

Immediately my mind turned to H.A.P.I, I mean he did tell me he’s an interpreter. I then turned to Alex and spoke, “Actually, I think I might just know a guy.” I took a quick breath before continuing, “I’m actually about to speak to the Warden; I need to travel to Lahmu Station to clear some things up.”

Alex gave me an inquisitive look and replied, “Lahmu? That’s where that Trada guy died isn’t it?”

I nodded in affirmation then spoke, “It is. There may be an important lead there so I’m leaving to check it out.”

“Alright, Urik. Just be careful; we still have no idea if these guys are still active or if this was a single day event.”

I let out a small laugh before responding, “Don’t worry about me Alex. I can handle a couple nut jobs in the street.” Right after I finished speaking Alex gave me a face that practically screamed, I’m serious, be careful, do not brush it off as a joke. “I promise, I’ll be careful Alex.” I said this for no other reason than to calm Alex down. He’s lost too many people close to him throughout his life; the last thing I wanted to do was make him fear that I was going to add myself to that list.

I shifted my attention from Alex to the tattoo so I could get a picture with my Ocular implant. After snapping the picture I looked back at Alex and spoke, “I’ll be fine Alex, you’ll see me again.”

Alex nodded his head and went back to work; I nodded back and turned to walk down the hall. My apartment was the second unit from the door to the outside so the walk to leave was relatively short.

After I took three steps passed the door, H.A.P.I excitedly detached himself from my jacket and flew in front of my face being sure to keep pace with me. A question mark replaced the face on H.A.P.I’s display and he spoke, “A-are we going to the Ward-war-warden Master?”

I looked over to my right to reply, “Yeah H.A.P.I, we’re heading out that way. It’s a bit of hike though so we’re going to take my jumper.”

We turned to the right, walking along the one of the many balconies that ran along the edges of the building until we saw a sleek and shiny pitch black vehicle with a tag on the side reading, “OPIJU-1.7” It wasn’t a complex vehicle by any means. At the front there is a set of stabilizing arms that adjust dynamically during flight to keep the user even with the horizon during flight. At the back was a series of three separate Ion Pulse Engines and in the middle a covered cockpit for the pilot and one other occupant to use.

I looked over at H.A.P.I one more time before our departure and spoke, “Are you ready H.A.P.I?”

H.A.P.I’s display changed to his smile once again and he replied enthusiastically, “Of course, Master! H.A.P.I is always ready!”

I smiled and nodded at H.A.P.I before looking over to the door of my jumper. There was an experimental form of Bio-lock visible just under the seal of the cockpit. This particular lock interfaces over a distance with a set of microchips embedded into the surface of the fingertips on my right hand. I outstretched my right arm and spread my fingers so the lock could more easily distinguish between each. Right away there was a barely audible series of digital noises then the familiar pfft noise of the the airtight seal breaking on the cockpit. The large round glass of the cockpit quickly lifted itself guided by a set of hydraulic arms.

H.A.P.I quickly flew back to my shoulder and mounted himself firmly to my jacket before speaking to me, “Master, h-how fast is this ve-vehicle?”

With a grin crawling it’s way across my face I replied, “Pretty fast H.A.P.I, pretty fast. We’ll be there before you know it.”

After a few more steps I arrived at the edge of the cockpit; I stepped in one leg before the other, planting my feet firmly on the seat before lining up with the body of the jumper. Once I was facing the nose I dropped down to sit in the seat. After I was sat down in the cockpit, a safety harness wrapped itself around my torso and the glass shell quickly lowered itself; which re-created the airtight seal broken earlier.

I looked over my shoulder at H.A.P.I after locating a few different switches on the dash and nodded; I then looked back to the controls and began activating each of the three ignition switches to start our jumps.

The first is an orange switch directly up and to the left of the operator, the second is a green switch right next to that, and lastly a blue switch in the center of the control cluster. Upon activating all three switches the engines on the jumper screamed to life with a ghostly high pitched squeal. Once the engines reached a charge of ninety-five percent an element emerged from the control cluster which had the appearance of a hand. I laid my hand down on the element and made a fist; the element wrapped around and shaped itself to my hand.

Now, I’m not going to lie to you. At this point I was incredibly nervous. Mostly because I haven’t actually operated a jumper before; done plenty of simulations with them, but thing is, computers are way different to the real thing. So, this was going to be the ultimate exercise in “Winging it.”

“Here goes nothing.” I uttered before yanking the control element up and to the left and depressing the blue trigger by my thumb.

To assist with sub-light navigation just as the operator pulls the trigger there is a display that appears above the control cluster that shows a preview of where the jump will take you; giving you a chance to plan the next one. Once the trigger bottomed out that same high pitched howl rang out followed by an instant silence. Just after the engines howling, everything went completely silent as the jumper launched to a speed barely below sub-light speed.

I was taken aback by the G-forces acting on my body from the launch; as they were much more significant than the simulators could ever emulate. My surprise from the G-forces left me distracted from the launch preview; when I did finally check the display it was almost to late. The first launch was leading us nose first into a building. I reacted as fast as my body would allow; I pulled the control cluster back towards myself as hard as I could and pulled the launch trigger. Just four meters away from seeing how flat a human can become, the engines kicked in and screamed one more time launching us straight into the sky.

After we cleared the skyscraper in from of us I pushed my feet forward into a set of pedals which activated more direct flight controls. I leveled the jumper with the horizon, locked coordinates to the Grand Warden’s office, then pulled the launch trigger a final time. This final launch caused the on-board computer to request a docking procedure with the wardens office; the computer wouldn’t let the final launch happen until docking permissions were granted. It only took a brief moment before the wardens computer responded to the docking request and our jumper blinked away with a final scream and began docking itself to the wardens landing pad.

As soon as the docking procedure began my jumpers display turned to red and the word DOCKING flashed several times. The whole ship was then rocked as the docking hooks latched on to our jumper’s docking ports and rotated us toward a door that lead to the Warden’s office. Exactly eight seconds after the docking procedure completed I noticed the silhouette of a tall broad shouldered man emerging from the doorway directly in front of us.

During our speedy trip to the other side of the city H.A.P.I got knocked around quite a bit and ended up lodged behind the rear seat of the jumper. I could just barely hear the same faint whirring I heard when I first let H.A.P.I out of his box, only this time it was a little more panicked. After only a few seconds of struggling, H.A.P.I managed to free himself from his seat cushion prison and darted his way in front of my face and spoke, “O-oh goodne-ess Master. That wa-as quite fast in-indeed-eed.” With almost no delay H.A.P.I spun around and looked out of the jumpers window and noticed the same silhouette and spoke again but much more excitedly, “Oh, M-Master, is that th-the Warden?”

H.A.P.I’s enthusiasm was making me start to crack a smile again, but I managed to hold it back before replying, “Yeah, it is H.A.P.I, just hang on to my shoulder. We should be off-world by morning and heading off to Trada’s old hangar.” While I spoke H.A.P.I latched on to my arm; I raised my right arm towards the cockpit release switch. Once my hand was finally on the switch I pressed it down as hard as I could and the seal on the cockpit broke with a very loud PFFT. Much louder than the one earlier.

As the arms of the cockpit lifted the door open the man in the doorway stepped forward from the shadows. The moment he was out of the shadows my ocular implant instantly recognized him as the Grand Warden.

As he stepped away from the shadows his short silvery hair gleamed like polished steel in the morning sun. He immediately set his gaze directly towards me, and spoke with an incredibly loud and focused voice, “Urik! What the hell is going on right now? All I’ve been hearing this morning is explosions and talk of assassins!”

At this point I had already stepped out of my jumper and walked approximately nine meters across the platform. I made sure to meet his gaze and form some type of salute before replying, “Honestly, Warden. I haven’t got a damned clue” Once my sentence concluded I took a breath before following my previous remark, “All I know is that some lunatic tried to murder me this morning and I’ve been talking to officers all morning.” It was both refreshing and upsetting to know at least one other was as clueless to what’s happening as I was. After taking my final step to get within arms reach of the warden I spoke one more time, “Listen, Warden, I need a favor.”

The Grand Warden barely gave me time to finish the word favor before he replied, “Anything you need Urik. If there’s a single person in this damn galaxy who can figure this out; it’s you.”

I bowed my head and replied to him, “Thank you, Warden. I need a ship to fly out of here as soon as possible.”

The Warden looked slightly worried before responding, “Well, I’ll do whatever I can as far as chartering a ship. We’re rather low in supply of hyperspace capable ships at the moment Urik. I can’t promise you a very good ship; I’m even more hesitant to promise you one by tonight.” The Warden’s head dropped slightly and he let out a sigh, “Where do you need to go anyway, Urik?”

I laid my right hand on his right shoulder and responded, “Warden, I appreciate whatever you can do for me. As for where I’m going...” I paused briefly as a slight look of concern took over my face, “Given the current circumstances I don’t feel comfortable saying the destination out loud.”

Even with apparent disappointment scrawled over the Warden’s face he replied, “I understand, Urik. It doesn’t mean I like it though.” He made a quick one hundred eighty degree pivot on his heel and began to walk inside, “Follow me to the hangar. We’ll try to find you something with at least a pair of wings.”

I began to follow the Grand Warden; my first few strides being far longer than usual to catch up with him. Once I was at the same walking speed as the Warden and at a comfortable distance from him I spoke, “I don’t need some incredible marvel of technology, Warden. I just need something that can get me to the next sector.”

The Warden didn’t reply with words, just a simple nod of his head and we continued inside. Eventually, we reached a corridor at our right after walking nine meters past the threshold. After taking only four steps into the corridor I realized we stepped into a lift. Moments after reaching the center of the lift platform we began a rather rapid descent and after just three seconds the wall in front of us opened up, revealing a glass wall that overlooked the entirety of the hangar. Our trip downward only took eighteen seconds; ending with us on floor b-980 where any and all hyperspace capable ships are docked. Once the lift settled and locked to the floor we heard the loud CLUNK of the door latch separating. After the door had opened completely the Warden spoke as he began leading me inside, “I just received an update to our ship inventory. I haven’t a clue if it’s in any reasonable condition; or if my men would be capable of fixing it in time.”

I nodded, even though I was just behind him and he couldn’t see. I was honestly just hoping I wouldn’t have to stay here too much longer. Usually when people attached to a cult like this act, it’s along side a very lengthy well constructed contingency plan. For all I knew there could be someone in the hangar who’s been hired to kill me. Trying to shake away any worry I continued to follow the Warden for another thirty meters. At the end of this trip we were confronted with the end of the hangar and a medium-trillan class vessel. The heads up display in my ocular implant immediately tagged this vessel as The Dragonfly.

The ship definitely looked like it had seen better days. It was battered and beaten, the three occupant cockpit looked to be cracked, and one of he rear engines appeared to be damaged and smoking. As we finished our walk, the previous crew of The Dragonfly was just departing the vessel through the drawbridge style door which sat behind and beneath the cockpit.

The first person to walk down the ramp was a man. He was definitely a bit shorter than average with dark hair and a set of glossed over hazel eyes. As his first foot made contact with the hangar floor he spoke with a seemingly weakened voice, “Warden...” The man froze mid-sentence before actually looking over to the Grand Warden, “Since when the hell does this planet have a damn asteroid field!”

An overwhelming look of fear washed over the Warden’s face as he replied to the pilot, “We don’t...”