Destination Atlantis (Ascendant Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Just do it now. God, please take me. God, please. Don’t torture me.

  Twelve seconds and a warm liquid surrounded her, as if she’d fallen into a pool. Instinctively, she opened her eyes. She was under water. It was thick and spongy, with a tinge of reddish-yellow.

  This isn’t water. What’s happening? Is this death?

  She heard a splash that wasn’t her own. It was the type of splash you heard when you were in a pool and already underwater. Hands – white gloves and white sleeves – reached for her.

  An angel. An angel has come for me. I’m going to heaven. Thank you, God! Thank you!

  Her faith ran deep and wide. She’d always known God would not abandon her. She reached for the gloved hands as they reached for her. As their fingers met, the Etheric Being’s face came into view.

  No, that wasn’t a face.

  She lurched back. She was staring at a white helmet, black visor. That was no angel. Was this a demon, a taker of souls?

  “No!” Katherine shouted, bubbles exiting her mouth, escaping to the surface. She flailed, kicking and scratching and snapping at the Demon. The thick liquid slowed her attempts, like a boxer fighting in a boxing ring of Jello.

  The Demon reached for Katherine, grabbing her arms, its grip firm. It reversed course and swam in the direction from whence it came, pulling Katherine along with it through the molasses-thick liquid. Katherine swung her hips around and kicked, landing a solid hit against its stomach.

  The demon was strong and didn’t waver, continuing to pull her in the direction he chose.

  She pulled her arms toward herself, attempting to bring the Being closer. Maybe a knee to the groin, if it had a groin, would do the trick. Again, he was unmovable except by his own accord. He was a demon and he was dragging her to her doom. She had done something so bad, so terrible, but she couldn’t remember her transgression.

  Why was she being taken to the devil? Why was she going to hell? Why would God allow this to happen?

  No. She was a good person. She had tried to stop Gentry. She tried to do good in the face of wrong. Maybe hell had been her destination all along? Even before the nuke, before Gentry destroyed his own ship, before she enlisted in the Secret Space Program.

  She closed her eyes and prayed. She’d repent, throw herself on the will of God. That’s all she had left.

  She exploded out of the liquid, as if the Being had a propeller on its back. She took a long gasp of air, coughing and spitting the viscous goo out of her mouth and nose. The Being threw her over its shoulder and carried her from the pool room to the adjacent room. Bogle was confused, disoriented, perhaps it was a sick bay or a changing room. Whatever it was, the space was warm and inviting and Bogle had to fight the urge to let go of all conscious thought and simply sleep.

  The Being bent down on one knee and gently rested Bogle on her back, then rolled her onto her side.

  Bogle vomited, all the contents of good and evil leaving her, and memories surfaced – the times she’d gone to church and embraced her Lord and Savior; the time she spent all day preparing a Thanksgiving feast for a homeless shelter, the smiles she saw, the happiness for giving, for being in service to others, for giving hope to those that thought hope was all but gone. But was it enough? A few good deeds and wham! Bam! Thank you ma’am! Heaven?

  Couldn’t be. She’d seen so much wickedness and done so little to stop it.

  And, then the evil flashbacks, memories she stuffed down, wishing them away forever, the ones she’d almost forgotten. She vomited hard and deep, remembering the time she didn’t listen to her boyfriend, wouldn’t talk to him because she was “too busy” only to find him hanging from a rope a half hour later, pale as death.

  The time she beat the ever-living shit out of her younger sister for being “in the way, all the time.”

  She vomited again and again, images sliding in and out of her awareness like a PowerPoint presentation, leaving her with no energy. No emotion.

  But breath…it left breath.

  She rolled onto her back and blinked, the stars of the galaxy twinkling through a rectangular opening in the ceiling. A gossamer-thin fog spanned the opening. Did she fall through that gap? Through that fog? How? She glanced around, coughing more. There were lights everywhere. To her left, a control panel and a view screen off in the distance. She was in a ship.

  The contents of the pool drained and the Being stepped to her side.

  Bogle expelled a quick breath and sucked as much oxygen as she could into her lungs, desperate to right herself and crawl away.

  Across the room, in letters three-feet tall, a message flashed on the viewscreen. “Call Kaden Jaxx home.” Bogle blinked. She had to be hallucinating. None of this made a lick of sense. But there it was; the message Princess Leia had been transmitting to the stars. “Captain Katherine Bogle: call Jaxx home.”

  3

  Starship Atlantis

  M-Quadrant, Solar System

  (Near Mars)

  “Aw, shit, did you feel that?” Jaxx pressed his knuckle into his solar plexus. “I’m telling you, Slade, there are forces out here that we know nothing about. Waves, particles, energy frequencies…I’m feeling them right here, in my core.”

  “Quit gawping at the stars. They’ll be here when you get back.” Colonel Slade Roberson nudged Kaden Jaxx’s chair with his boot.

  Jaxx didn’t budge. The stars were so close he could almost grab them by their tails and swing them about his head. He wanted to lie in his chair, staring, forever. The signals he was picking up were out of sight. He was a human tuning fork, newly tuned to a cosmic frequency. The songs of his childhood wouldn’t leave him alone. He was Major Tom, on a rocket ship, spinning in space. It was wild.

  “It’s time to come out of your hole, Jaxx.” Slade Roberson was not fucking around. Slade never fucked around.

  Slade had recruited him, back on Earth, to interpret the glyphs found on Callisto’s pyramids and – apart from the forced hypnotherapy, the time in the sensory-deprivation tank, being shot at by Slade’s henchman Captain Fuckface Fox, the returning memories of his time off-world, and the realization that his life in no way resembled the life he thought he’d built – the job Slade had given him was a dream-come-true. In his heart, he wanted to race down the sleek, elegant corridors of Starship Atlantis and into the ops center and take up where he left off, but Slade had been such an unrelenting asshole, he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Slade’s organization, the Global Security Administration – had treated him very shabbily. He looked from Slade to the far-off stars outside his window. “No thank you. I’ll give it a pass.”

  Slade returned in kind, dropping his eyelids like a puppy dog. “I understand.” He took a step forward, then kicked Jaxx’s chair. “Get your sad, piece of shit ass up, Jaxx!”

  Jaxx sat up alert, his heart in overdrive.

  Slade’s voice boomed. Jaxx didn’t know if it was because of thirty plus years of yelling practice in the military or if this room had a remarkable sound quality to it.

  He didn’t take his eyes from the window.

  Slade grabbed Jaxx’s arms, pulling him into a standing position. “Do you want me to kick your ass again?”

  Jaxx huffed, giving a smart-ass remark, “Aye, Colonel.” He didn’t give a rat’s ass what Slade did to him anymore. Being abducted, forced against his will on a ship that launched out of Earth’s atmosphere, and traveling to a distant moon – well, that part wasn’t so bad – along with the orders and the piss-shit attitude he had to take from Fox and Slade for not complying to every damn thing they wanted; had driven him past his breaking point. They could yell and bully all they liked; he wasn’t going to lift a damned finger until they showed him some respect.

  Slade curled his hand into a fist, then relaxed, thinking better of it. “We have someone on board who needs your help.”

  Jaxx felt it again, a deep chord being struck right in the center of his chest.

  Rivkah – the woman he’d betray
ed; the woman he’d saved; the woman who hated him with a white-hot-hate – was on the ship. He closed his eyes and let wave after wave of energy pass through him. She needed him. He didn’t know how or why or what to do about it, but she needed him. Just as he needed her. But it was bigger than that. They were both necessary. For what, he had no clue.

  ∞

  Captain Rivkah Ravenwood woke to a dimly-lit room, blinking lights around her. She was on a table and breathing heavily, her arms and legs strapped tightly, her head restrained by a heavy band around her forehead. The back of her head throbbed.

  Was she back in Underfoot Black? Wherever she was being held, didn’t sound or smell or feel like the Global Security Administration’s idiotic subterranean hideout. She’d only spent maybe a week and a half in the bowels of GSA’s underground base of operations, but she’d gotten used to the echoing footfall of guards and medics; as well as the damp odor of sweating walls and hothouse vegetables. No, she was no longer in Underfoot Black. But then where had they taken her? And how?

  The last thing she remembered was climbing out of the cabin window in West Glacier, Montana while Kaden Jaxx was fast asleep at his desk. They had escaped Underfoot Black, and stolen Special Agent Nick Cole’s Oospor Class 9 dropship. Only after Cole had tried to take her life. Small, but important detail. She was a marked woman. There were people after her. People who meant business.

  She had to leave the cabin and Jaxx. He could take care of himself. Well, he could if he remembered who the hell he was. If he kept up his doofy, “I am just an archaeologist” act, he was dead meat. But, that was his problem, not hers. A helicopter was coming in for a landing and she was pretty sure it was coming to take her. She ran, hid behind a tree, and then blackness. She had no idea how long she’d been out. She lifted her hand, to investigate the back of her head, but the band wrapped around the head of the table made it impossible.

  The throbbing was probably caused by a smack to the back of her skull. Then she remembered his face. Right before she blacked out. Slade’s ugly friggin’ mug was the last thing she’d seen.

  There was no way of escaping Slade. If he wanted you, he had you, whether you hid or not.

  Her belly raged with fire, anger shot through her veins and into her muscles. She cringed and lifted her head, stretching the straps that held her down. She may not have been good at hiding, but she was good at breaking out.

  It was pointless to lock her up.

  She strained against the strap. It broke and her head was free.

  There was a needle stuck in her arm; an IV. It was dripping a clear liquid. She kicked her leg out, breaking the restraint. She kicked her other leg out, breaking the other restraint.

  That meant that Jaxx was near. She could only do this – this power-thing – when Jaxx was in the vicinity, unless things had changed. Maybe she evolved, or the fucked-up power that Jaxx had given her was taking over.

  She closed her eyes, trying to locate Jaxx. She saw an energy trail, leading from one room into another. She followed it with her mind, her sixth sense, then hit a psychic wall and everything went white. Perhaps she wasn’t psychic enough to see that far – however far she was from him.

  “Fuck this, I’m out of here,” she mumbled.

  She strained, pulling her arms toward her head, her biceps burning. A quick snap, and she was loose. She slid the needle out of her arm and jumped off the table.

  Blinking computer displays lined one side of the room, a black window on the other, a hazy light came from above. A door without a handle stood at one side of the room. She ran toward it and to her surprise, it opened on its own, exposing a hallway with a window in clear view, revealing a star-filled night. She was out in space again. “Far friggin’ out.”

  She took a step into the hall, fists at the ready, glaring through the window. A planet that looked like Mars, giving off a brilliant yellow-tan halo, was off in the distance, stars highlighted all around it. She stopped. Could she trust her senses? They’d done so much shit to her, when they held her in Underfoot Black. They could make her hallucinate a space ship approaching Mars before they’d even had their damned breakfast. They were manipulative assholes, every last one of them.

  “Get back in your room, Ravenwood!” Captain Richard Fox, her old squad leader, her old enemy, growled. The man never spoke. He snarled, spat, barked, and glowered, but didn’t speak like a normal human being. He wasn’t capable. He was made of spite and malice, at the cellular level.

  She turned, getting into a Mui Thai stance, the angles of her feet rotated and faced Fox. He dropped his pointed finger and walked hastily toward her, his eyes cold and relentless, like the killer he was. He was accompanied by a small military team, all carrying IPR-8’s – Ion Pulse Rifles – long and bulky, though light weight. Good for close combat.

  Rivkah put her hands up in fighting position, her right elbow and forearm close to her body to protect her solar plexus, liver, and ribs, her right fist close to her cheek bone; her left arm away from her centerline, also protecting the ribcage and solar plexus; her left fist at nose level.

  She could still feel Jaxx close by. Her odd-ass powers fueled up, pumping more secret-sauce into her blood – whatever that secret-sauce was. She needed to get to him. Feed off him, tank up, drain his power source and take it into herself. She was a woman on a mission. She had to eliminate Fox, to get to Jaxx. He needed to be eliminated. The message was as clear as any idea she’d ever had in her 32 years on the planet. Kaden Jaxx needed to be eliminated. Fox was a speed bump on her road to Jaxx and Rivkah Ravenwood had no time for speed bumps. She ate fucking speed bumps for lunch.

  “Fuck you, Fox!” She spat on the ground and Fox stopped.

  He put his hand up, gesturing for the rest of his team to stop. He brought his IPR in firing position, closed one eye, aimed and smiled.

  Rivkah didn’t smile back.

  4

  Starship Atlantis

  M-Quadrant, Solar System

  The Lecturn beeped. Fleet Admiral Lon “Wolf” Varnadore of the Secret Space Program appeared on the hologram. His black hair was slicked back. He eyed Colonel Slade Roberson and President Craig Martelle, a wolf sizing up his next prey. He beamed a fake smile. “Mr. President. It’s nice to meet you. Colonel, nice to see you again.”

  Martelle adjusted his tie and nodded by way of greeting.

  “The mission has changed, gentlemen.”

  The hologram shifted from Lon’s face to a massive ship orbiting Callisto. Jupiter, its luminous reds, tans, and turquoises, hung ominously in the background – its immense bulk dwarfing everything nearby, including the Secret Space Program’s Star Carrier Star Warden.

  “This footage reached us only minutes ago.”

  The camera zoomed in on the ship, passing through the ship’s exterior armor, swiftly moving past the hanger deck and into the engine room. It zipped through the entire floor, recording crew members in their bunks, the mess hall, and at their duties, then looped through a lobby and into the launch bay. There it stopped for a nano-second, perhaps a glitch in the network, then moved to the Officer Briefing room and up into the Bridge.

  Lon’s voice came over the Lecturn, “As you know, that’s Star Warden, one of three Star Carriers in the Secret Space Program fleet. It’s impenetrable. Or, so we thought.”

  Slade leaned in to get a better look at Admiral Gentry Race, someone he knew very well, but wasn’t too fond of. “Why are you showing us this, Fleet Admiral?”

  “Let the holovid complete.”

  Star Warden’s bridge shuddered and Gentry fell to the floor. The camera view shifted to the ship’s exterior, panning from Star Warden to Callisto, then racking focus on the turrets moon-side as they blasted electric-blue fire orbs at Star Warden, hitting it with ease. Star Warden returned fire. Plumes of rock, destroyed turrets, and dust filled Callisto’s atmosphere.

  Slade sat forward in his chair, glowering.

  More turrets popped up over and over again, as if Callist
o had an unlimited supply and unlimited power. Missiles poured from Star Warden, IC’s and tracer fire followed. Still, the turrets continued to pop up and fire back, hitting the mammoth Star Warden as if it were just a few feet away.

  Slade and Martelle watched as a piece of Star Warden’s armor slid back on its starboard side, exposing a large nuclear war-head.

  A blue-light surrounded the Star Carrier, enveloping it in an energetic net, electricity flinging off the ship, like lightning grasping for something to touch.

  Callisto’s cannons let loose ion blasts, landing deep inside the war-head.

  The war-head exploded, slicing the upper portion of the ship in half, like a knife through butter.

  The President covered his mouth and looked away as the crew poured out of Star Warden. They’d taken to the stars to save mankind, not scatter them throughout space.

  Slade stayed focused, his eyes dead set on Admiral Gentry Race spinning away from Callisto, his arms and legs flailing like someone drowning, grasping for something, anything.

  Then he saw someone out of the corner of his eye enter Callisto’s atmosphere and fall away from the camera’s view. It was a woman. She was young. He knew her – Captain Katherine Bogle. He was glad he didn’t have to see her burn up in Callisto’s atmosphere.

  Lon’s face came back on the holoscreen. “Callisto fought back.”

  “So?” Martelle’s face was pale and his hands shaking, but his voice remained calm. “We take it to the next level. I am not backing down. I made a promise to the American people. I am going to bring them to that new shining city on a hill. We are going to found a New United States.” Spoken like a true politician.

  “We are not fighting against the Draconian’s Psy-bots or Pleadian Pirates, Mr. President. We are fighting against a military with technology more advanced than our own. We have spotted anomalies on Callisto that would suggest an AI – an Artificial Intelligence – runs the entire city and weapon infrastructure on that moon. That is more dangerous than any Being we’ve encountered. A computer-based system that hasn’t been touched by man or any other Being to restrain its intelligence evolution can outwit and out-build any race, even the Bulgs of Mynoria. We’d need a long plan to take Callisto. We’d need a fleet, an army, and enough nukes to blast their AI into the stratosphere.”