Shades of Justice: Page 34

The Shades appeared in the command center. Dante was carrying Sonya’s unconscious body and her abdomen was a mess of torn fabric, and dripping blood. “Spark Sonya’s hurt bad, what do we do?” Kelly shouted.

“Initiate emergency medical systems.” Spark commanded the base. A Platform rose out of the ground for Dante to set Sonya on. Once she was on the bed a holographic overlay of her physiology appeared just above her. They could see her already slowing and erratic heartbeat, getting weaker. An appendage emerged from the side of the medical platform and the metal casing opened to reveal a laser. Which aimed at Sonya’s wound and began to fire short bursts of energy. As it worked faster and faster to close her wound her heart beat got slower until it flat lined. Kelly buried her face into Warrens shoulder.

Gordon kicked the bed. “DO SOMETHING!” He shouted in futility.

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Another appendage came out of the platform, its head rose barely above Sonya’s chest and the head quickly split into two haves and gave off pulses that made the heart monitor pulse for a beat and then flat line again. After six attempts the arm closed up and returned to the platform.

Dante ran over to Lumarion’s wall. “If there’s anything you can do, do it now. One of us basically saved your life, if you can, it’s time to return the favor.” He demanded.

Spark blinked a few times. “What I can do is forbidden for my race to do, it goes against the  na -“

“I DON’T FUCKING CARE!” Dante exploded. “DO IT NOW!” He punched the already cracked wall and cracked it worse, shredding the gloves of his suit and cutting the skin of his knuckles. 

Sparks light became brighter. “Whatever you say boss.” He blinked, before exiting the wall and in near instant beam of light shot straight into Sonya’s chest.

She raised up like she was possessed. Her eyes and mouth opened and pure white light poured from them light explosive fissures. She began to claw at her stomach and Gordon grabbed her wrists to keep her from damaging her newly repaired wound. Spark shot back to the broken wall and went dark.

Dante ran over to Sonya and she hugged him with all the energy she had left and she began to bawl hysterically. Dante looked at the wall as she cried. “Thank you.” He said.

The wall lit up slowly. “Swear to me that the five of you will NEVER mention this to Lumarion when we get him back.” Spark demanded.

Blood and Profit: Page 57

The flight to the testing facility was quiet. Mew couldn’t figure out why seeing the ring work would in any way make her more capable of helping them figure out how to get either of the last two controls to work but the entire colony was depending on the ring to get away from the wave. For a split second she was worried that the whole thing may have been a trap to interrogate her privately concerning Rusty, Toll, and the lost station but she couldn’t figure out what there was to gain by pumping her for information and decided fairly quickly that they must just be really lost in relation to the ring controls.

About an hour into the flight she had gotten bored with staring out the window. “Do either of you know who I’ll be working with?” She asked.

The skinny one put the cruiser on auto pilot and turned his chair around. “Once the aliens arrived and the senate became aware of the situation they tasked the Department of Satellite Design and Maintenance with regaining access to the ring.” He explained.

Mew nodded. “If there’s an entire department working on this, what do they need me for?” She asked.

The skinny one smiled sadly. “D.S.D.M consists of three people. Cordon, the head of the department and seventy four year old brains of D.S.D.M. His recently graduated assistant Brent, and Lucy their administrative manager.” He listed them off.

Mew was a little stunned. “Three people? D.S.D.M consists of three people?” She asked in shock.

The skinny one nodded. “You’re the fourth.” He said with a smile, turning his chair back around.

The cruiser cleared the mountain range it was flying over and they were greeted to the sight of the Colony’s capitol city. Mew had seen it from space often and never got tired of it, but as a civilian pilot planeside she had never gotten permission to fly this low and enjoyed the unique view of the oldest and most spectacular city on the planet.

They moved into standard transit lanes and made their way through the city, passing everything of interest quickly. They reached the far side of the city where the grand and fashionable architecture gave way to the boring simple utility of the industrial districts.

D.S.D.M was housed in an unassuming squat windowless building with a simple black and white sign to identify that the giant warehouse was something more than a storage facility. The skinny one landed the cruiser in the parking lot and Mew’s door opened automatically.

When they had left her father’s home it had been a beautiful sunny day, the weather in the capitol was heavy dark clouds that threatened to rain at any moment. As they made their way to the only door in the nearest side of the building a crack of thunder made them scamper a little quicker to avoid the coming rain.

The fat one shoved the door open roughly, the skinny one snuck inside just behind him and he turned to hold the door open for Mew. She stepped inside to familiar music. It was a recording of a band that Toll listened to incessantly. At first she didn’t mind his obsession but as time passed she did everything in her power to try and get him to play other music, none of it worked.

The music was being played over the intercom system throughout the entire building. They reached the end of the entrance hallway and the skinny one stepped up and held the door to the actual lab open for Mew.

She stepped through in time to see an old man in a worn and grungy white lab coat coast by on his rolling office chair. “No, we have nothing new to share with the senate. We’re still trying to figure out how to get the console to interface with any equipment we have that's even remotely functional.” The old man said as he spun and then kicked himself back the way he came.

The fat one huffed in annoyance. “It doesn’t look like you’re doing much of anything.” He accused.

The old man’s chair slowed, he rotated himself and kicked off again lifting a hand in the air and pointing to a bank of computers where his two assistants were working. One of the machines chimed and a robotic voice interrupted the rock band on the site wide sound system. “Integration test one hundred and twenty six unsuccessful.” The voice finished its sentence and the music faded back in.

The Doctor stopped his chair in front of the trio and sat up straight. “Like I said, nothing new to report.” He pointed to Mew. “Who’s she?” He asked.

Lidarion: Page 29

Haruff bowed once everyone had stepped onto the dock. “As I said, my name is Haruff, and we have much to discuss and further to travel in order to reach the library.” He turned inland.

Lisa stepped forward to stop him. “How did you channel my husband’s spirit?” She asked hopefully.

Haruff turned back and smiled sadly. “Even if he could have told me I wouldn’t have been able to explain it. Madam. I may have found peace of mind when I lost my eyesight but I was a warrior by trade and matters of the soul are beyond me.” He turned back around. Lisa nodded sadly as she and the rest of the group followed Haruff in to town.

Haruff led them to a small Inn. Once they were in the building Haruff sat in a chair at the table closest to the fire place. A young elven boy ran up the stairs and after a few moments came back down with a full cloth sack. He brought it to Haruff and placed the bag on the table. Haruff reached into a pocket on his robes and unveiled a small coin that he put in the boy’s hands. The boy ran back upstairs with a smile on his face.

 “What’s in the bag?” Squints asked as Haruff felt along the bag for the sting holding the bag closed. He found and pulled the large knot.

Once the bag was opened he pulled out a large leather bound book. “This, is for Lisa.” He started.

Lisa reached out and took the book from him. “What’s in it?” She asked.

Haruff shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I’m blind, and he didn’t tell me.” He smiled, reaching back into the bag. He pulled out a piece of rolled parchment. “Squint’s here is the map of the library. You’ll need it once we get there to locate the book.” He explained.

Trent interrupted. “If your blind how are you going to guide us to the Library?” He asked.

Haruff smiled. “Another question I cannot answer. All I know is that the only person on this planet that can get you to the library is me. I’ve never been there and I have no map of my own, but Brandon sacrificed a lot to make sure the contents of this bag reached you and that I was able to meet you here, and he told me that It was my destiny to lead you to the library.” He answered.

Trent scoffed. “It’s your destiny to lead us to a place you’ve never been and don’t know the location of?” He questioned.

Lisa loudly closed her book. “Trent I don’t know how to explain it but he’s telling the truth, he’s absolutely who he says he is and I am fully convinced that Brandon sent him.” She said with complete sincerity.

Brooke looked at the cover of the book but couldn’t make sense of the symbol on the front. “Lisa what book is that?” She asked.

Lisa lovingly rand her hand down the spine of the volume. “It’s Brandon’s war journal.” He wrote it for me in the sprit realm. He gave to Haruff and it is unquestionably authentic.” She said with a determined smile. “If you cannot trust Haruff, then trust me. We’ve had a long journey and it is just beginning. I’m going to get some sleep. I suggest the rest of you do the same.” She stood up with the book under her arm. And headed for the stairs.

Melody and Harmony: Page 3

Foster hit the outer airlock door hard. It budged just enough to let him know he could force it open with some effort. Effort he was willing to give at the moment. As he shoved the outer airlock open the inner airlock was being forced open as well. He got the door open enough to slide through, it clamped shut on his bag and had to yank it roughly past the door. He turned and ran into a waiting club guest. His eyes hadn’t gotten used to the fading sunlight and he dropped his sunglasses over his eyes which reset his headphones and restarted his music. The person he had run into was the contact that he was supposed to meet in the first place. He grabbed the guy’s jacket. “Give me the package!” He shouted in his face.

The guy panicked, he looked from Foster to the outer airlock door reopening, then back to Foster just in time to catch a fist to the face. The contact hit the ground unconscious and Foster quickly fleeced him for a small brown package pulled from an inner pocket on his jacket. Yelling from inside the airlock alerted Foster to the fact that it was time for him to go.

Foster pulled his minimized board off his bag, thumbed a button on his board control and by the time his board hit the street it was full size. He hopped and pushed the drive stick forward, taking off like a shot. By the time the club’s guards made it past the door he was half a block down the street. The club guards ran after him and in midstride rollerblade wheels popped out of their shoes and they rolled up on Foster in a six man mob.

The woman in the suit emerged from the airlock and looked down at Fosters contact who was coming back to consciousness. The woman knelt down and the first thing the contact saw was her poisonous eyes glaring at him. “What was in the package?” She asked with barely contained rage in her voice.

Fosters glasses showed him a rear view of the guards catching up to him. Each was wielding carbon fiber batons that were outfitted at the tips with any number of horrible customizations, be it electrified tips, or blades that came a quarter inch out of the baton and were several inches long. He gripped a gray plaststeel handle on the bottom of his jacket and pulled, revealing a strip of inch and a half wide that went ridged as it hit the open air. Once the cloth was completely removed he had a functional short sword.

The first guard reached him and Foster turned around completely to block the guard’s baton strike with his sword. In no time at all Foster is practically surrounded by rollerblading guards trying to stop him. Unable to fight all six guards He takes his board off autopilot with another button press on his glove control and rather than trying to fight the guards he uses the terrain of the alleys they are racing through to gain distance and single out the guards as much as possible for attacks. Its tiring work, and while the guards aren’t very good skaters or very good fighters, the cramped quarters of the alley way allow the guards to get cheap shots in on Foster more often than he would have liked. When he took a baton to his temple he realized there was no way he was going to win the fight and needed to escape the guards, of which none had dropped back even though almost all of them were bleeding profusely.

Spoonerville: Page 1

Denille had been a massive fan of the Blood Night series since the first book was published over ten years ago. She had signed copies of Blood Night, Blood Night: Hunt, and Blood Night: Lust. She would have a signed copy of Blood Night: Love, but the author, Geraldine Moore had unfortunately canceled her appearance at the national fan convention, BN:SF ’15. It hadn’t bothered her at the time however because Blood Night: Spoons and Forks was where she Met Quentin Todd. While he wasn’t a fan of the series his little sister was and he had taken her to every BNSF since it began in ’07.

She and Quentin hit it off almost instantly. They lived in the same city and had a natural chemistry that made her feel good. They moved in together just after BN:SF’ 16, and she found him in bed with her best friend the first night of BN:SF’ 17. He had had a ‘cold’ which he was going to try and sleep off so he could join her and his sister for day two. She had dropped his sister at his parents place and come home early because his sister wasn’t feeling well either and discovered his highly questionable cold fighting method.

Newly single, and free of a best friend Denille decided to take a trip she had been dreaming of since the first time she read Moore’s wonderfully quaint descriptions of Spoonerville. She had plenty of vacation accrued at work and had a savings account she had been building up just for this trip, which she had fully planned out every single detail of within thirty six hours of leaving BN:SF ’11. It was her first BN:SF and while she had loved the books, she had never considered herself a super fan until that year. Her trip notebook was buried in a box she came across on the weekend that Quentin had come to collect the last of his things. She was so entranced re-reading her own plans that she hadn’t even heard him try to talk her into reconsidering ending the relationship as she shut the door in his face.

She had printed out menus of the restaurants the characters ate at, practically memorized the layout of the motel they stayed in at one point in the story when Carol’s father’s home was burned down by an aggressive lone werewolf looking to get revenge on the tribe for forcing him out. She had bought a map of the area and cut Spoonerville out and marked the real life locations of every store, every landmark, and every character home that actually existed, and in the decade since the novels were released, there were more ‘real life’ locations than there had ever been before, and she was going to visit every, single, one.

She had had it planned for years, but Denille was finally ready for the vacation she had been dreaming about, to be come the best memories of her entire life. 

Shades of Justice: Chapter 33

Tokyo was a shattered flaming mess. Technarious was firing jets of flame from his hands and turning the city into a funeral pyre. Blinding light trying to get back on its feet as it crawled awkwardly out the rubble that used to be an entire city block of sky scrapers.

Inside Blinding Light’s command center the shades were in bad shape. Technarious was facing away from them and was about let loose another jet of flame from his left hand on the as yet untouched Port of Tokyo. The four of them reacted together instantly. Blinding Light shot forward and locked Technarious up in a hold that forced his hands high into the sky. They shoved a knee up into Technarious’ back and pushed the entire weight of the mecha forward knocking Technarious off his feet and into the shallow water of the port.

They braced for Technarious’ counter attack but none came. They turned his head but the lights in his eyes were dark. Dante pushed a button on his console to check on Sonya. Kelly and The others got Blinding Light back to his feet. “Sonya, did you disable the power supply? That was great timing.” There was nothing on the line but silence. “Sonya?” He asked again.

The communication channel was taken over by Raptarus. “Oh, well done Shades! But I only see four of you. Where oh were could Grayscale be? Hopefully she gets back soon, because in ten seconds Technarious will shrink back to his normal size and she won’t want to miss that!” He laughed until the channel closed cutting him off.

Dante stood up. “Blinding Light transport me to Sonya’s location.” He commanded.

“That action is not,” The computer started.

“NOW!” Dante shouted. He teleported

The room with the power supply was filled with smoke and warped debris. He saw Sonya through the smoke and grabbed her by her shoulders. The power supply room was already starting to shrink. “Transport now!” he shouted as they disappeared just before the room crushed them.

They reappeared back in the command center and Dante set Sonya in her Chair. Kelly immediately saw the blood on Dante’s arm where he had held Sonya. They say Technarious through the viewscreen as he returned to normal size.

Blinding light reached into the water and cradled Technarious in its right hand and lifted him out of the water. Then in a flash of light Blinding Light was gone.

Blood and Profit: Chapter 56

Mew loved her mother but she was always closer to her father. Her brother had their mother’s passion for social work and activism. Mew loved her father’s stories, she had read all his books half a dozen times by the time she graduated high school.

She knew her father had high hopes that she would become a writer herself, but she didn’t have the same passion for writing that she did for reading. By the time she was two years into her post high school education she really didn’t have a passion for anything the way the rest of her family did.

It wasn’t until she took a low orbit trip for a college class where she saw her home from space for the first time with her own eyes that she knew she was going to work in space somehow. She switched majors and went straight into the flight academy, got her assignment and while she could have taken almost any job available she chose to work on the satellite repair and recycling station. So while she kept in touch, she hadn’t been home much in the last ten years.

So she and her father had a lot to catch up on, more accurately she had a lot to tell him about and he mostly talked about his most recent book, how the house was holding up, and the fact that he was thinking about getting a pet, an idea he was now very serious about considering the status of the planet. Their conversation lasted for days. They talked about her mother, her childhood, she walked her father through the night that Rusty and Toll went through the ring and everything that happened after that. They talked about his life growing up and he told her for the tenth time how he met her mother and how they fell in love. They had all the conversations they had missed over the last decade and they tried to have as many as they could before something took her away again.

That something turned out to be representatives from the senate. They arrived ten days after Eamon left. There were two of them. One short and rail thin, the other taller but equally as wide. Mew saw the insignia on the thin one’s briefcase and let them into the house.

“How can I help you gentlemen?” She asked as she led them to the dining room table.

The thin one spoke first. “The senate has voted to take all ships that wish to leave the planet through the ring.” Mew sat on the far side of the table and wave at two empty chairs for her guests. They sat and the thin one continued. “After a little investigation it appears that your friends deleted almost all the information we had on the ring and its control system.” The thin one placed the briefcase on the table and opened it. He pulled out a file folder and handed it to Mew. She found it filled with a picture of the ring control, a single picture that labeled each button on the case and four pictures that showed basic menu layouts.

She looked up from the photos. “And you’re here because?” She asked.

The wider gentlemen finally spoke. “You worked with the escapee’s for nearly a year. Did you know anything about what they were planning, or do you know if they had any backups for the information they destroyed?” He asked.

She shook her head. “If they had any backups that they didn’t take with them they would have been on the station and that’s inside their collective consciousness stuff.” She said.

The gentlemen nodded. “We have a team working on the two controls we have left, but they are both very old, and the senate formally requests that you accompany us back to the location where they are working and oversee and test their work. We need to access the ring as soon as possible and you are the last living person that has seen it work.

Mew wanted to tell them to leave but she looked up at her father who was standing in the kitchen. He was all smiles and mouthed “go” at her.

She sighed heavily and nodded her consent. “Let me pack some stuff.” She said.