Chapter Five

Earth. Home. Jimmy was going home.

The thought pinged around in his head like a Pong ball. Although being one of Earth’s Select Few meant someday he would have to return to Earth, he never really thought it would happen. No one had left the Millennium Program that he knew of. No one. And that begged the questions… Why him? Why now?

Jimmy glanced quickly at the three working quietly to get the deep space cruiser ready for launch, oblivious to, it seemed, the reason why they were there.

Trained, practiced, Jimmy had no doubt they could do whatever it was Mul-Rok had them preparing for, but Mul-Rok shared none of the reasons for their quiet, hurried activity. Mul-Rok lived by rules, survived through strict diligence and adherence to the Order. Nothing in the Order explained what Mul-Rok had them doing. Jimmy knew the verses of the Order better than the Pledge of Allegiance. Mul-Rok, for the first time in ten years, showed a kind of humanness Jimmy didn’t think possible for his Master.

A warm tingling spread across the back of his hand. He’d almost forgotten about the pain from earlier. The hangar, protected from the cooled catacomb air, provided Jimmy with an opportunity to examine his hand a little more closely, so he pulled the glove from his hand to try and determine the reason for the irritation.

As Jimmy’s hand came free of the glove, he focused on the veins beneath his pale skin. The veins moved like liquid blue ink, spreading slowly up his arm. He flexed his fingers, staring at the markings he’d only ever seen on a Terraling. When he looked up, Julz was watching him and he heard her voice in his head.

“What do you think?” The question was playful, flirty. She’d never been flirty before. And then the oddest thing happened. Jimmy could feel himself inside her mind, feel her thoughts, her fears and desires. “Say something.”

“What should I say?” He blurted the words out, startling himself and the other three in the room. He was no longer in Julz’s mind, that was certain, but why hadn’t he been able to communicate the way she did?

“You talking to yourself again, Jimbo?” Hima’s sarcastic growl brought a crooked smile to Jimmy’s face until he saw Mul-Rok watching him intently. Julz was also watching him, intently.

“Ya. Call me crazy.” Jimmy pulled the glove back on, covering the blue spreading up his arm.

Hima laughed until the hangarbay door swung open and a squad of nanotech Terra-elite soldiers filled the open doorway.

The Squad Leader stepped forward, blaster rifle held at a low ready, the red power cells fluxing like a heart and the trigger finger of his left hand indexing the weapon.

“Master Mul-Rok. You and your team are to stand down.”

“Stand down?” Hima turned to face the soldiers, every muscle in his body beginning to swell. Hima could smell a fight coming before any one else.

“Stand down and have your students return to their dwellings.”

Mul-Rok turned toward the squad, “I’m afraid, Trooper, I won’t be doing any such thing.”

“We have orders, sir.”

“Do you, now?”

Hima threw himself at the arrest squad as the energy bolts flew from their rifles. He grabbed two of the soldiers by their heads and rammed them together, taking them quickly out of the fight. The remaining soldiers scattered to other vantage points around the hangar, filling the air with the red bolts of energy that destroyed everything they touched, everything but Hima.

Bolt after bolt of the liquid energy rammed into the blue-fleshed Nevarrian. And each time a blast struck him, his body absorbed the energy, causing him to swell to three times his normal size.

Mul-Rok attacked with his bare hands, disabling soldiers one by one while his daughter shielded him from energy bolts with her psi-abilities.

More soldiers button-hooked through the doorway, laying down suppressing fire and moving tactically into the firefight. As good as his friends were, the end of this fight was not far off. Jimmy watched from under the cruiser where he’d been loading fuel cells. He didn’t have the super-skills Hima and Julz had, and hadn’t mastered the fighting arts of his instructor.

“Help us.” The plea entered Jimmy’s mind with quiet confidence. They needed his help. “You can end this now. End this.” The back of his hand burned a little. He knew what to do, knew how to do it. They trained him.

“Jimmy.”