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

“Oh, I know you can.” He gripped Shaughnessy by his upper arm and pulled him down the hall.

“Where are you taking me?”

Slade seethed, spit coming out of his mouth. “You’re going to give me the coordinates to the portal that Jaxx flew through.”

Shaughnessy feverishly shook his head. “No.” His eyes darted around as they turned a corner. “I don’t remember the numbers.”

“Yes you do.”

“I—”

Slade stopped and glared at Shaughnessy, baring his teeth like a predator. “Don’t talk.”

Shaughnessy dipped his head.

“We’re here.” Slade swiped his card on the control panel next to a door. The door opened. “You first.”

Shaughnessy walked into a storage room. It was empty. No computer. No supplies. No anything. Just four gray metallic walls with a space-side wall with a large, round loading port for any ships to dock with Starship Atlantis.

Shaughnessy squirmed. “I don’t understand. I’m in a storage room.”

The door shut, leaving Shaughnessy in the room by himself. Slade stared at Shaughnessy through the door’s small circular window. He pounded the door with his fists. “What are you doing?” He pushed a button to open the door. Then pressed again and again.

Nothing.

“Let me out!”

Slade smiled, then winked. He pressed a few buttons on the control panel in the hall next to the door, then stared blankly into Shaughnessy’s eyes.

A hiss filled the room. The airlock initiated, and the docking port shuddered.

“No, no. Slade, I’ll die.”

Slade nodded.

The airlock opened and the air escaped into the vacuum of space, Shaughnessy sucked out with it. He flew like a bat out of hell, watching Starship Atlantis and the Secret Space Program’s fleet move farther away from him and him farther away from it. In seconds, his body went from warm to freezing, his arms waiving wildly, his eyes burning. He took a breath and searing pain entered instead of oxygen. His heart pumped but two more times before it gave out. His vision went dark, then a flash of light consumed his eyes, and his body stiffened.

26

Edge of M-Quadrant, Nearing Jupiter - Starship Atlantis

Slade stood in the doorway, arms crossed, bubble gum in his mouth. “Were you expecting someone else to be with me?”

Craig looked up from his desk while turning another page of the top-secret report on Kaden Jaxx. “As a matter of fact, I also summoned Jon Shaughnessy. Where is he?”

Slade lowered his eyes. “He’ll no longer be meeting with you tonight...or ever.”

Craig knew what he meant and looked around for any hidden cameras or secretly placed audio devices. Slade was truly a whack-job but you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. He liked the guy’s ideas, not the guy’s morality. He had to play it cool. But he was the president. No one screwed with that high of a ranking. Not even Slade. Playing it cool would suffice. “So, how long have you bugged my room?”

“I’ve bugged all the important official’s rooms.”

“We’re all important.”

“Some more so than others.”

“Right now, I don’t care. We have a mutiny on our hands. What troops are on our side and what troops aren’t?”

“We’ve got most of Deck 5 and some of Deck 7’s. I’ll convince the Fleet Admiral to bring his Space Marines, and I’ve contacted Kajka Okbak. They sent a special troop envoy. They’re here now, docked in the storage bays on Deck 6. I had to get them a special SSP signature so they’d seem like another SSP transport ship coming from another quadrant. It worked.”

Craig put his hands together. Slade was pulling on his last nerve. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jaxx?”

“I did.”

“You told me he was the key to opening up those alien pyramid power plants. You didn’t tell me he was alien himself.” Craig caught Loraine catching a glimpse of the conversation from the outside room. “Slade, step inside.”

Slade did and the door shut behind him.

“The last thing you need right now are more distractions, Mr. President.”

“Now, when you don’t tell me things, it becomes a distraction.” Craig flipped through some more pages. “According to this here document, Jaxx wasn’t born on our planet.”

Slade nodded. “Of course not. A man with those extraordinary powers has a different, more open DNA sequence than us. But we’re learning that can be changed and our DNA can open up just like theirs can.”

“Another secret, Slade.” It was a statement, not a question. He looked at the document, a document leaked to him by Shaughnessy via Craig’s secretary, Loraine. “It says here that you were there when these Beings from an undisclosed location within our solar system landed and gifted you Jaxx when he was a baby. You then adopted him out? Why the hell would you do that?”

Slade cracked a smile. “If you only knew. He was given to my brother. I was able to keep track of the boy the majority of his life. Then, we took him against his will and trained him in the art of combat—starfighter piloting, hand-to-hand fighting, and weapons special ops shit. That’s how we do things in the Secret Space Program. We take. We don’t ask. In return, we make people better, more disciplined, noble, loyal to the United States of America.”

“I see.” Craig looked at the document on his desk. “You knew about the Atlanteans on Callisto this entire time?”

“No. We found that recently. We’ve been trying to locate where these Beings came from for decades. We were surprised we hadn’t found them sooner than we did. Turns out they were on Callisto this whole time. I don’t know how that escaped us.”

Craig flipped another page. “And he showed incredible skills during starfighter combat, but was more or less lacking during flight training?”

Slade leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the document. “It says all of that in there? I’ve never actually looked at it.” He scratched his chin.

“He was able to figure out the pyramids so quickly and read their writings at incredible speeds, understanding exactly what they meant because he was Atlantean?” asked Craig.

Slade