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Chronicles of Arla
- Chapter 1 - Another Dream (Part 2)
The last of the vibrations shook the Pirate Base and all was quiet for Ifran except an awfully loud ringing in his ears. He felt dazed and confused, suddenly he remembered what had happened and slowly pulled himself up into a sitting position against the wall that he lay against. Smoke filled the docking bay, sparks were streaming out of a huge live cable that thrashed aroud a few feet above his Mamba.
"Marcus....?" he could only whisper, his throat was dry and hoarse from the smoke.
Pushing his hands onto the floor he tried to stand up, grabbing a nearby rail he regained his balance and stood in shock as he saw the state of the Harrier that had obviously split in half, he assumed the engines and cargo bay were floating around outside the station. Another explosion could be heard, muffled by the walls of the base. Ifran moved as quickly as he could manage towards the window opposite him, he watched as one of the Lasertowers ripped through the remaining threads of a Centaur corvette ship's hull, the two halves drifiting apart slowly and the fire flowing like liquid around it. The debris of a number of smaller craft, probably M5 class fighters, were also drifitng around after having been destroyed by the lasers.
"Ifran! Your head!" came a voice from behind him.
Ifran turned to see Marcus, his only true friend and accomplice since childhood. He too looked in bad shape, black with grease and soot from the smoke. He also had a large gash in his right shoulder but the blood flow appeared to be nothing to worry about, he always was a lucky guy.
Raising his hand to the back of his head, Ifran could feel a large cut from which blood was pouring, obviously moving hadn't helped the wound and now he began to feel very faint. Marcus rushed over as he dropped to his knees and blacked out once again.....
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Several stazuras later, Ifran awoke to the recognisable quiet hum of his ship's engines, looking up he saw that Marcus was piloting. He checked the back of his head to find a dressing covering his wound and realised he felt much better...despite the headache.
"Thanks for that...but next time i would appreciate you not leaving me here on the floor" he said with sarcasm.
"Listen, we had to get out of their FAST before any back up came, i patched you up as best i could and managed to stop the bleeding, i thought you were one dead Argon back there Ifran" Marcus spoke with tension in his voice.
"Where are we?" Ifran looked out of the cockpit. " Nopileos?" he asked in surprise.
"Indeed, we have been travelling for a long time now, you have been out for stazuras! But we can't stop, it's not safe here and i am taking a huge risk cutting through Aladna Hill as it is, i'd imagine every military and custom ship belonging to Argon will be informed of my description, it's a good job they think i'm flying my poor old Harrier..."
"Marcus! You better tell me what the hell is going on right now, i nearly died because of you....again!!" Ifran had cut off Marcus talking with great force in his voice.
Even though on the surface he may have appeared reluctant to divulge any information to Ifran, Marcus kept nothing from him and knew that he would have to explain, especially considering he had dragged him into such a dangerous situation. He programmed the autopilot to dock through the east jumpgate into Hatikvah's Faith and trurned to face his friend. Removing a small black box from a pouch on his shirt he held it up towards Ifran and let him take it from him.
"Have you been stealing again? Damn it, i thought you were attempting to invest in that mining facility over in Ore Belt?" Ifran said as he opened the box, inside was a small chip, a memory chip commonly used to store and retrieve all manner of data.
"Well i was given an opportunity through some rogue Pirates, there was supposed to be an Argon dropship heading for Argon Prime via Bala Gi's Joy delivering gold bars. It was going to be a huge job, i would have walked away with nigh on eighty million credits!" Marcus's face suddenly turned very solemn. "But when we boarded there was noone there, the ship was completely automated and had been rigged to produce a false biological signal. It appeared to be hooked up to a comms device but i couldn't trace it....it was completely scrambled. Whoever controlled this ship must have been doing it remotely but completely hidden through the scanner network that the military and customs use...we found some holding cells on board...." his voice trailed off.
"What ? What is it?" Ifran's impatience was really showing now.
"Inside them were...deformed people. I mean, seriously deformed. They were all dead and rotting..." Marcus relived the ordeal as he explained it to Ifran...
The stench of newly rotting flesh filled the dropship, on seeing the first corpse Marcus had vomited. In the central corridor there was a holding cell designed for two people, therein lay what appeared to be four dead Argon females. They were all hideously deformed, pitted skin and stumps for limbs, one only had a single eye and was completely bald except for a few strands of long grey hair. The next cell contained a Boron corpse, it too was female and it's head and face were deformed beyond belief, looking like nothing more than a mass of flesh and sinew. Mould covered food sat on tables untouched for what must have been stazuras.... it was a ghost ship.
He was horrified by what he saw, beyond the appearances of the corpses was the fact that all these bodies were cramped into such tiny places, he also noticed there were some strange metallic tubes attached to the 'arms' of a few of them, leading into sockets on the wall. Moving into the cockpit of the ship, he saw the green light of a memory chip flashing from where it sat in the slot of the ship's main computer. He heard one of the rogue pirates who had given him this job swear in disbelief at the contents of these cells. Somthing this horrible could strike anyone with digust and fear. He looked at the screen on the computer in front of him, it was scrolling the contents of the memory chip, constantly showing a revolving wire frame image of an Argon woman. As he slowed the text via the keyboard and began to read through the data he realised that he had just stumbled upon one of the most dangerous pieces of information he had ever encountered...
"So what is so important about this chip?" Ifran was beginning to realise the seriousness of this situation. Whatever data was on that chip, the Argon military didn't Marcus to have it.
"Well..."Marcus plugs the chip into the main computer and loads the data. "It is a detailed collection of records of an Argon female named Arla. According to these records, this woman is extremely powerful. It shows her being held prisoner in some kind of lab situated in Akeelah's Beacon..."
"What sort of lab?" Ifran wanted all the details, they were both in danger now.
"A Cloning lab. Specifically built and designed for the cloning of this woman, 'Arla' ". Pressing the touch screen menu Marcus brought up an image of a huge laboratory complex. "There is somthing inside her chest that makes her very deadly, a sort of gem i believe that is a part of her body but if removed will kill her and die itself. It claims that she has the ability to move asteroids with her mind and manipulate the minds of others to devastating effect".
"So is she still locked up? What other information is there?" Ifran asked.
"Apparantly no, she escaped and damage the complex severly. It also states that she appears to be aggressive, malice is beyond her....she has the power to destroy worlds. Somehow i doubt that, events like the complex attack wouldn't go unoticed, i think she may be hiding out somewhere. But regardless, we now have to escape to safer ground to plan our next move, we will be shot on site if discovered".
Marcus checked the fuel levels of the Mamba and turned away from Ifran, he felt guilty he had dragged him into this but he needed help. It was time to gain some advice and hopefully back up too. Pushing the Mamba into full throttle, the pair began a long journey towards Seizewell. It was time to visit DeLuca.
It looked like the dream of eighty million credits had been one in reality after all......
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