War of Rage Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“99%... 100%. DEFENSIVE SHIELD IS COMPLETE,” boomed the robotic voice.

After the surprise attack, every single samurai in the Limitless was called back to the dock where their own Commanders and Lieutenants were waiting almost anxiously. As soon as a sufficient number of samurais, if not all, hurried and arrived, they were immediately given the thin space suits and lightweight space helmets, making it easier for them to fight in space, and then were given the orders.

“Samurais of Earth and Moon!” Captain Lawrence spoke into the loudspeaker from the bridge. “Limitless is powerful enough to withdraw any kind of attack. Follow your orders, as Admiral Luca instructed you to. I recently got the confirmation that the attack came from an Europan missile, which was only made for Jove, Europa’s largest spaceship…”

“Remember, your order is to fight back and to capture the Europan spaceship at any cost!” One of the lieutenants said.

“I feel bad.” Jessica crossed her arms with a pout on her sad face. “Why do they have to die just to capture the spaceship? Why can’t we just throw out the smokes and let us sneak into the Europan spaceship?”

The other Dark Fury samurais did not answer but rather, waited patiently for their order or signal. Jessica scoffed at them in frustration and muttered at herself, “Whatever.”

“We have no choice,” James spoke up after a short while. “We got attacked unexpectedly. They already know that we are here. Our mission is to get information about Europa just in case if Jove gets destroyed. If we are able to capture it, then great. But the Admiral is not willing to take that risk to lose any information or else we would have gone back to square one.”

“Something’s funny.” Kawa had been rubbing his chin in wonder for the past fifteen seconds. “If it’s Jove we are looking for, then what is it doing out here, not guarding the Asteroid Belt?”

“I think it’s odd too,” Matt said, sitting down on the floor. “Yo, Shiro. You ok there?”

“Yes.” Shiro snapped at him before rubbing the itching bandage around his head. “Alex didn’t have to tighten it way too much!”

“You deserved it, asshole.” Alex stretched out his arms in the air, making sure that it wouldn’t be cramping later in the battle. “Or rather, should I call you loonie… Loonie?”

“If the Commanders aren’t here, I would’ve fucked you up badly… So bad that nobody would recognize you anymore!” Shiro was more than eager to draw his katana right there, but decided against it.

“Guys, stop it!” James scorned. “We are about to fight the enemy, so there’s no time for us to fight each other! We are about to get the signal… anytime soon.”

Just right after saying that, they received a loud beep from their communicating wristbands. Immediately after that, they heard a rather loud order, “SMOKE ATTACK HAS BEEN RELEASED. MOVE OUT NOW.”

“Roger that, sir! Alright, we are ready!” James exclaimed both in excitement and anxiety. He was almost trembling at the thought of his first mission ever. “Make sure to turn on your oxygen supply!”

~EARTHxMARS~

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” said Matt. “How… How?”

Jessica tried to place her hand on her mouth, but her space helmet was in the way.

As they were flying through the smoke with the help of their combat boots with fire resistance, with some of the heat energy being blown out into the vast space, they were in complete shock.

There were hundreds or thousands of corpses and wounded samurais floating in space. They were only out here for the past half hour. Only one thing that struck them the most was that all of the corpses were both Earthlings and Lunans. None of them were Europans.

Somehow the Europans must have known that the enemy would send out the samurais into space. The Jove had been shooting with their own large machine guns, missiles, cannons, and so at the hundreds of them to their deaths within mere seconds.

If the samurai had been shot and had not died yet, they were in it for slow and painful deaths, watching themselves slowly bleeding out into space.

What was even worse was that they were watching other medics tending other wounded samurais while they were in oh so unbearable pain.

“We have to help them!” Jessica said into her tiny microphone that was attached to a tiny headphone. She could not look away from their comrades’ bodies that desperately needed help.

“We can’t. As much as we want to help, we have our order to obey. We have to hurry up and get into Jove.” James shook his head sadly. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can help them.”

They did not say anything any further until they got much, much closer to Jove. It was a hell lot bigger than they thought… It must have been at least five times larger than Limitless.

So, it’s the spaceship that killed my father. Kawa thought to himself. Even after so many years of loneliness and anger because of it, he was still able to keep his emotions in control. I can finally get my revenge -- this is only one part of the revenge. Mars comes next.

“Jessica, here it is.” Matt jerked his head toward the keypad next to one of millions of doors.

The female Lunan samurai did not notice it at first, all thanks to the dense smoke, until she got closer to it. She reached her hand into her tool bag. “It will only take a few seconds.”

They waited patiently - rather watched her in amazement - while Jessica was trying to connect her small touchscreen tablet to the keypad.

“Access granted.”

“Got it!” Jessica exclaimed.

They heard a loud beep just before the door automatically slid open. Wanting to get out of the space, they got into the spaceship fast.

James took off his space helmet as soon as he heard the door closing. “Alright, guys. You know what exactly to do, right?”

“Yes, sir!” They said at the same time.

“Good! Let’s go!”

They split up into three groups as previously instructed. Kawa and James were heading for the engine room while the others were looking for the server room.

“James?” Kawa asked almost nervously.

“What?”

“It’s not that I’m complaining, but… Don’t you think it’s sort of… weird that there is nobody here? That it’s too easy for us to sneak?”

While running with his partner, James looked around at the hallway. It turned out that Kawa was right. There was no one around to patrol.

“What… what the hell is going on here?” James asked worriedly.

“Well, for now, the engine room comes first.” The Earthling samurai shrugged his shoulders.

The closer they were to the engine room, the more they noticed the strange odor. It was getting stronger and stronger.

“Stop,” James said quietly. Kawa did so and gave him a questioning look. “It’s blood. Look.”

Kawa’s dark eyes followed James’s finger, which was pointing at the grey floor with stained dry blood. He looked up only to have his own guard caught off at the sight. The hallway ahead of them was full of red stains. Walls, doors, and even ceilings.

Trying to ignore it, they started running again. At least until they saw the first corpse. It was already reduced to completely dry skin, nearly skeletons. They could clearly see that they were slashed to death. They glanced ahead, finding more and more corpses.

“What… what the fuck happened here?” The Dragon Samurai asked nervously. “Who… who attacked Europans?”

“I don’t know… we know for sure that it isn’t Earthlings and Lunans, as we are the first to fly out this far here in the last decade. It must be either Venusians or Martians.”

“Must be Martians. Venus is way too far. I know they would never do that. They are the most peaceful people I had ever met. We would have noticed that they flew past Earth, but they never did, so…” Kawa clenched his fists in anger. “Martians. Fucking bastards.”

“MAIN COMPUTER IS NOW SHUTTING DOWN. EMERGENCY BACK-UP INITIATING… SAFE MODE INITIATING...”

Loud computer voice made Kawa and James jump out of their skins.

“That must be Jessica. They found the server room.” James grinned for the first time since they woke up early this morning. “Let’s hurry up!”

They were about five doors away when they spotted a unique door. It was quite a fancy looking door with the name tag: COLONEL RUSSELL SOKOLSKI. It was slightly open.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Kawa said as James slowly pushed the door all the way wide open.

This room was much cleaner than they thought; compared to the hallway just outside. All the way across from them, the man was bending over onto the table with his face down. The puddle of blood was around his head which was lying on the table.

What was even stranger about this room was that nothing had been damaged or slashed at all except the Colonel. The thick old-fashioned books were set nicely at the bookshelves. There wasn’t any sight of scratches on the table, wall, and so on. Nothing had fallen over as well.

“They even killed the Europan Colonel of Jove? Is it even possible?” James asked in confusion. “Jove was supposed to be the strongest spaceship in the solar system.”

“Maybe if Jessica can find information about what happened here, then we will know who and why they did this.” Kawa placed his hand on James’s shoulder. “Come on. Engine room, remember? How many times do we have to stop before we get there?”

“This is a hot mess.” James ran his hand through his dirty blonde hair. Surprises kept coming after another. “Ok, fine. I’m coming.”

Leaving everything as it was in the Colonel’s room, they were getting closer and closer to the Engine Room just when they were interrupted.

“WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED! WARNING! INTRUDERS DETECTED! LOCKDOWN INITIATING...”

Suddenly, the steel wall slide downward right out of the ceiling and slammed onto the floor in the front of the entrance to the engine room, halting two samurais completely.

“What the fuck?” James yelled both in panic and frustration. He slammed his fists onto the unbreakable wall. “I thought Jessica shut down the whole computer system?”

“Jessica, can you hear me?” Kawa asked, trying to speak into his tiny microphone, but he received no response. “Anybody there?”

“I will cut down this fucking wall!” James withdrew his sword and swung it hard through the air, creating a large wind gust that was heading straight for the wall. Yet, it didn’t even place a scratch on the steel wall.

“James, we don’t have time for this. We have to find another way.” The black-haired samurai turned around to start running the other way. “Hurry!”

“Tch! Fine!” James turned as well and soon caught up with Kawa. “Do you have another route in mind?”

“Yes, but we will have to go to the top and go to the other side… and then we return to this floor. And well, hopefully, we won’t be detected again.”

James scoffed at the thought of how long the suggested route was.

“Jessica, are you there?” Kawa asked once again.

“Y-yes, I can hear you,” Jessica answered, much to Kawa’s relief. “What happened? You don’t sound too good.”

“I was worried about you guys, you know!” Kawa took one more breath even while running. “What’s going on? How did we get caught by the Jove’s security system? We can’t get in the engine room at all!”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I tried to contact you but couldn’t reach you at all. I guess the closer you were to the engine room, the less signal you would receive,” said Jessica. “I turned off the safe mode and restarted everything, setting it back to default. It wasn’t getting me through anything at all. I thought it would be a piece of cake, but this whole security thing is much more complicated than I thought. This firewall is ridiculously way too powerful, so I have to disable it somehow.”

“So, that’s why the main computer came back.” Kawa nodded his head at James, letting him know that he could turn on his communication device so that James could join the conversation as well.

“What the hell, woman?! You could have gotten us killed!” James yelled angrily. “That fucking wall came crashing right in front of us!”

“You heard me, didn’t you?! I couldn’t reach you until recently!” Jessica snapped at him. “I hope you found another way by now, but there’s an opening on the other side…”

“That’s where we are going!” said Kawa.

“Good! Go there, then!”

By the time when they got to the top after many sets of stairs, what they were seeing was much worse than down there. It was mass murder.

There were more corpses than they had seen down there. Some of them looked as if they were butchered into pieces. The walls were nearly painted with their dry blood. What made it even more creepy was that the lights were flickering and sparking, as if there was a bad omen coming up soon.

As soon as the powerful odor of metallic death reached their noses, James was retching loudly, nearly throwing up what he ate for breakfast earlier today. He was leaning against the blood-stained wall, trying not to collapse.

“This is not real… this is not real…” James mumbled to himself.

“The sooner we finish the mission, the sooner we get out of here.” Kawa grabbed James’s hand. “We have to go now! It won’t be long before Europa or Mars realizes that they are not getting any answer from this spaceship!”

James allowed him to drag him through the cursed hallway. Even though he was complaining about how he did not need any of Kawa’s help, he was still grateful for what he did. If it wasn’t for Kawa, James would not have moved for who knew how long.

Jove was so huge that its size was half of the Moon’s. Kawa and James had no idea how long they had been running for. It could have been half an hour. Or hours.

Finally, they began slowing down when they reached another door with sets of stairs.

“Wait.” James grabbed Kawa’s shoulder, stopping him from touching the doorknob. “Look. The red light.”

Kawa glanced up at the flashing bright red light above the door. He widened his eyes in realization. “Red light? Does that mean…?”

“There is no air on the other side of this spaceship.” James answered Kawa’s unfinished question. He shook his head. “Who… Who could have done such a thing to everyone here?”

~TO BE CONTINUED~