The last twenty-two hours were certainly interesting for Jax. He had traipsed through a desert, discovered that the Thov Rapra Spaceport was operational, almost been killed by someone that the day before he would’ve considered his sworn enemy, and now he was working with him.
It could always be worse. He was still breathing at least.
Jax wasn’t sure about Mars yet, but once he had told him about Odina, Mars’ attitude towards Jax had changed. Mars seemed to have a heightened ability for detecting lies and truth.
Jax still didn’t understand how Mars had gotten the drop on him at Thov Rapra. Jax was a premier fighter, best in his unit, and Sector 8 was Proxima’s elite. It had all happened so fast. One minute, he was trying to sabotage the retractable roof winches at the spaceport, the next he was subdued.
Mars had brought Jax, who was wearing a Nova Gnosis uniform with a hood to cover his features, to his quarters. This may be his enemy, but Jax was impressed with Mars’ quick thinking and improvisation. They both knew the brevity of what would happen if Odina found out the humans and clones were working together.
Mars gave Jax some food and water, a change of clothes, and then locked Jax in a spare room, for both of their safety. Jax just laughed and took it in stride. It gave him time to reflect.
He started thinking about his life on Proxima Borealis. It was a beautiful world, with mountains and grassland as far as the eye could see. The Izcir had brought animals of all kinds with them which mated with the native Proximan animals to create unique species; they built enormous cities of plexiglass that were powered by hydrogen fuel cells; they would shimmer in the daytime and illuminate at night with an effervescent, tranquil glow. These cities were sparse across the planet, as the Izcir implicitly demanded the landscape not to be butchered as it was on Earth; they dug deep under the planet’s surface and bored an intricate spiderweb of tunnels and underground cities called the 7Hollows where the human captives lived—the Abydonians.
Jax grew up in the capital city on Proxima Borealis, Nebula Proper, in a comfortable existence, always playing outside in Proxima’s serene beauty with his brother and sisters. Yet even in this paradise, families had their struggles.
His father had been depressed for years, but had never done anything about it, never gone to seek help because there was no help to seek; the Izcir had supposedly ridded Proxima Borealis of diseases like depression through genetic modifications, so Jax’s father couldn’t get help if he wanted to. Besides, he had thought it a weakness and he would beat it alone—as he felt he was in the universe. Everything would go wrong for him, day after day, problems simply compounding, as if the universe would rip his soul out and destroy him if he didn’t kill himself. One day, he kissed Jax on his head when Jax was fifteen and Jax never saw him again.
When his body was pulled out of the waters of Lunenburn Loch, Jax refused to look at the body. He couldn’t see his hero that way. Jax always thought that if he showed his father how much he loved him, then he would never harm himself, but he was wrong and it broke Jax. He put up mental barriers and he would force himself not to think about it, as if it wouldn’t be true if he just pretended it wasn’t true. But the scars were still there, creeping up to the surface to remind Jax of the vulnerability that killed his father—the same flaw that coursed through his veins.
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Jax was thinking about his father now, while he was locked in the small room on a strange planet with a strange man. He did what he could to push his demons down in a far place, but he liked to feel the pain occasionally. A certain part of himself dared him to kill himself, to end it all. And why not? Would the universe stop spinning without Jax in it? What’s the worst that would happen? He wouldn’t be around for any repercussions. But he always ended these thoughts coming back to the fact that he had a mission to carry out; his world depended on people like him to protect them.
Jax may be in alliance with the humans for now, but he must make contingency plans.
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After Mars locked Jax in the spare room, he set detection devices around his quarters. He had cameras set up throughout, focusing on ingress points, a magnetic trip-alarm attached to a flash-bang grenade, and a secondary, albeit archaic, tripwire attached to a smoke grenade on the main door, and another set on Jax’s door. Sometimes the old tools were the best.
He may have been overreacting, but Mars would rather be cautious than dead. He never imagined he would have to go up against the great Odina, the savior of humanity, and he didn’t quite know how to act.
He lay in his bed and tried to let the calm of sleep wash over him, while replaying scenarios from the last two days in his head of what he could have done; what he should have done.
For what seemed like hours, Mars lay there, until he finally drifted off to a fitful sleep. When he woke up, he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rolled out of bed, feeling his body ache with every movement, and yelled, “Damnit all,” at the wall. He went to Jax’s room and undid the safety measures he had set up, then unlocked it. Jax turned, looked at Mars, and said, “About bloody time, Mars.”
“Come on,” Mars said. “Let’s eat and discuss our next move.”
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Mars walked alone to Stratego Fleury’s office; both he and Jax agreed it was better for Jax to stay at Mars’ quarters instead of taking a chance on him being spotted by the AI surveillance. When he arrived, he was ushered into Ella’s office immediately.
“Mars, sit down please,” Ella said. “I talked to Consul Blake last night. He is as concerned as I am. We need to implement a new strategy.”
“Of course, Stratego. What plan did you and the Consul come up with?”
“Continue with having Jax become a member of Parabellum Scramasax V. His knowledge and skills will be invaluable to us moving forward. You and your entire unit will wear full-face masks over your faces from now on wherever you go and have new irises implanted immediately and every three months after. You will take any additional security measures that you deem necessary.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ella looked at Mars, annoyed at his “ma’am” comment, and continued, “We will hold off on attacking Proxima Borealis for now. Your main mission will be to eliminate Odina in a subtle way. I cannot emphasize subtle enough. Our new world would not hold together if it found out the truth about Odina.”
“Understood. Do we know her whereabouts at this moment?”
“We can’t be sure, but we think she is somewhere in Hyderabad Pyrἰnas.”
“How am I supposed to kill her? She’s a superbeing. She can appear and disappear at a whim. Has the Meliora lab come up with anything I can use?”
“That is for you to figure out Mars. That is your job. And no, the Meliora lab has been worthless lately. Have you found any information on the weapon used in my assassination attempt?”
“I questioned Jax about it and he said he could build me one. He said it’s clone-tech, so I am wondering how this breakaway human faction got ahold of it.”
“A very good question. Maybe after Jax builds you one, you can find a sensible way to use it for our cause.”
“Perhaps…if it comes to fruition the way Jax says it will.” Mars sensed the end of the meeting and began to stand up to depart. Before he could, Ella said, “By the way, the Consul wants to meet with you. Don’t forget what I told you about masks and iris replacements.”