Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller Brandon Ellis (ebook reader for comics txt) 📖

craft buffeted and turned. A door opened on the glass-like dome. The craft shot forward and through the dome then dipped and hugged the barren, dry land, and headed toward a mountain range.

It flew fast and ascended up the mountain cliffs, finally rising over the lip of a mountain where a group of pyramids came into view. Their golden apexes glowed, sending electric, lightening-like energy to a large obelisk.

Rivkah gripped the chair’s armrests.

“Let me talk,” said Bogle.

Rivkah shook her head no.

The transport veered, descending low on the wide expanse before them. It flew over a thin creek and small shrubs. Ice crystals topped spindly trees’ branches.

The craft banked and bucked into a wide, horizontal arc, mere inches from a hill. Over the hill, a statue came into view.

“Princess Leia,” said Bogle. “That’s what the crew on Star Warden had called it.”

The statue’s head gear glowed and off in the expanse, large turrets moved, aimed, pulled back, then fired electric bolt shots to the east, one after another, never stopping, never relenting.

Clouds of rock and debris puffed outward into massive clouds miles away from each continuous bolt impact. From Rivkah’s point of view, Liberty’s people were causing a smoke screen to most likely hold back a ground invasion.

Bogle pointed. “They’re holding off an attack.”

Rivkah leaned forward, her curiosity overtaking her stoicism. “Perhaps, or they’re pounding an attack.”

She touched the joystick and pulled it back. Again, the craft continued on its own trajectory, ignoring Rivkah’s efforts.

Their craft flew at the long, clouded vista that spread the entirety of the horizon. The bolts slammed into the ground and whatever was being masked behind it, they’d see soon enough.

29

Unknown

Jaxx’s eyes were closed. A warm drop of water landed on his forehead and between his eyebrows. The next drop was cold. He batted it away. Another drop; warm. He wiped his forehead and opened his eyes, seeing another drop falling from a white, translucent ceiling.

It landed between his eyes. He sat and rubbed the back of his head.

He yawned. Running his hands back and forth on his pants, Jaxx did his best to wake himself and get his bearings. He was in a dome with grass as the floor. Another man, his size, was lying on a crystal-like bed next to him.

Jaxx stood. His bed vanished and he jerked away. “Whoa!” Bending down, he inspected the area where his bed once was. He poked a hand through it and felt nothing but air. “Strange.”

Folding his arms against his chest, Jaxx eyed the wide, glowing wall. The ceiling was two stories high at the apex, and the dome’s width no bigger than a medium-sized yurt.

No exit.

How the hell did he get in here? The last thing he remembered was someone telling him they were taking over the controls of his Air Wing. Then nothing. Blackness. Sleep.

He stroked the back of his neck. The Air Wing. The frequency code. The Vesica Pisces; the bridge portal—the vortex. He smiled. The escape. His smile widened. It worked. His theory worked and it allowed him to escape.

He jumped, throwing a fist in the air. “Suck it. Yeah, I’m talking to you. I want every archaeologist that ever doubted me to suck. On. It. Or, to rephrase it better, everyone.” Not that this proved anything or that his theories were bullet proof and one-million percent correct. It’s just that his most recent idea came to fruition in a matter of seconds and worked shortly thereafter.

But, where was he? On Callisto? If so, a civilization of advanced Beings obviously lived on this moon and built the dome he was in.

He ran his hand down a wall. “Crystal?”

Callisto’s inhabitants had the ability to create crystals and build with them. Scientists on Earth could make crystals, but nothing on this scale or thickness.

He paced around the room, checking every nook and cranny for a button or a lever that would open a door. They’d placed him in here, which meant there was a way inside. So there had to be a way out.

“Hello?” Jaxx’s voice echoed off the walls. “Anyone here?”

“Help me,” came a whisper.

Jaxx froze.

A cough pierced the air. “He-lp m-me.”

It was the man in the other bed.

His lips moved. “He-hello?”

Jaxx cautiously made his way to him. He placed his hand on the guy’s shoulder. “I’m here. You’re safe.”

The guy’s face was streaked with blood, though the man looked mighty familiar. It couldn’t be. There was no way.

The man’s eyes opened. “Jaxx?”

“Shit, no. Fox?” Jaxx backed away from the injured captain and his bloodied cot. “How did you get here?”

“Jaxx,” Fox growled. He grasped Jaxx’s wrist with a strong hand, squeezing it like a vice grip.

Jaxx tried to pull away, yanking as hard as he could. The guy didn’t bat an eye.

On the other side of Fox’s bed, a striated-ebb nebula titanium exo-suit lay crumpled on the floor.

In the launch bay before Jaxx escaped Starship Atlantis, Jaxx saw a soldier in an exo-suit. The guy walked as if he was injured. Now it made sense. Fox, who was injured from a gunshot wound in his stomach, occupied that exo-suit.

And here he was, now with Jaxx, and Fox had him dead to rights.

30

Charlotte, North Carolina - Earth

Camila reached for them. Or, in truth, reached for her daughter. Her eyes escaped Drew’s, and for good reason, her daughter was the love of her life, and Drew may have just led Camila to the end of her own.

Blood soaked through the lower back of Camila’s shirt, a trail of red streaked behind her, and caked the floor as she pulled herself forward. No doubt she’d been shot and probably in the stomach, but how many times?

Why would that matter?

Drew’s mom abruptly appeared. She stood over Camila. “Get up, Drew. Pull her to safety.”

His mom disappeared when more sounds of shattering glass and machine guns penetrated every cell of Drew’s body. He pulled Mya closer, the thud of bullets sinking and punching through car doors, car hoods, and trunks, and embedding in walls