War of Rage Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

After putting back on their oxygen masks, Kawa carefully and slowly opened the door, but he quickly closed it as soon as the gap started sucking air fast and hard. He wouldn’t want to get sucked suddenly into the room to his unconsciousness… or worse, death.

“Now what?” James asked.

“I… I have no idea.” Kawa shrugged his shoulders. He was still staring at the door, trying to figure out if there is any other way.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Kawa turned to James only to find him looking at one of hundreds of doors. But that certain door was not anything special, to Kawa’s confusion. “James?”

“This is… recent,” James said almost quietly, his eyes on the floor.

Kawa followed James’s eyes and almost gasped at such a horrible sight. There was a growing puddle of blood flowing under the door.

“Jessica, can you please unlock this door… It’s… room 1704,” James spoke into his microphone.

“Sure thing!”

Just a mere second after they heard a loud beep coming from the door, it slid smoothly open to reveal even more corpses in the tiny room, most likely to be around five hundred square feet. James was taking it a little better this time. At least they were not butchered into pieces.

As soon as they entered the room, the door suddenly closed by itself. Then, they heard a loud click afterward.

“Jessica!” James yelled in panic once again after trying to open the door and slamming his fist on it. “What’s going on?! Why did we get trapped here?”

“I’m so sorry! I have no idea!” Jessica said nervously. “I’m trying to override the system! Europa’s technology is much different than Earth’s and Moon’s!”

“Great. Fucking great,” James muttered angrily, leaning forward with his hands against the locked door.

“Hey, James! Look at what I found.” Kawa waved his hand, as if he was telling James to come over to the only table.

“What is this?” James asked before he took a look at what Kawa was staring at. “Is this…?”

“Touchscreen desk, yes.” Kawa grinned at him. He took a rag out of the drawer and wiped the table, getting rid of blood stains. “Maybe with this, we can get out of here.”

“Hey, Jessica! We found the computer here! Can you get access to it in room 1704 and see if you can open the door again?”

“Yes, sir! Please wake up the computer, and I’ll take it over from there.”

Kawa pressed one of his fingers on the desk, waking up the computer quickly. It was showing the login screen.

CLASSIFIED

USERNAME: JOVE4837274

PASSWORD: *****************

LOGIN

“This is classified?” James raised an eyebrow. “In such a room like this?”

“I got in!” Jessica exclaimed. Kawa and James were watching as the desktop screen with countless quantities of folders and files came up almost immediately.

“Hey, what is this?” James clicked one of the files, making Jessica shout ‘hey!’

“Holy shit,” this time it was Alex who gasped in amazement. “That is what Jessica has been looking for!”

Kawa checked the name of the file again. “Ladies of Earth and Mars? Why is it on this computer?”

“They were trying to fool us by hiding all of the classified information in that room which would have been the last place we would’ve looked.” Matt joined the conversation.

“This is…” Jessica mumbled at herself at first and then read out loud, “February 17, 3703. To Colonel Sokolski, I am the representative of one of the anti-lord system organizations. Almost ten days ago, our plan to carry out the murder of the wives of the Earth and Mars Lords has been succeeded in order to get them turn against each other. It is the perfect example of how much dictatorship the Lord system is. They have been blinded by their own hatred for each other, which is the reason why they declared war on each other. Childish, don’t you agree with me?”

“3703? That’s ten years ago,” Shiro said. “Has Europa been keeping this from us?”

“I wonder if our superiors know about it?” Alex said.

“Maybe this is what our Lords and leaders need. Maybe it’s been Europa all along.” Jessica gave a soft sigh. “But… why would Europa keep it a secret?”

“More importantly, why did someone from the outside send this email to one of Europan leaders?” Kawa asked. “Jessica, can you please find out who it is? And what organization it is?”

“Yes, sir!”

“So there are still people out there who don’t believe in how the Lords and Ladies run,” Shiro said softly, almost to himself. “That same government system has been around for nearly a thousand years. Why are they acting now?”

“Good question,” Alex said. Kawa and Jame could imagine the medic shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders.

“What else did you find?” Matt asked.

“Apparently, Europa has not been on Mars’s side for the last few years. See thousands of reports on Mars? They were only pretending to be Mars’s ally so that they could spy on them,” Jessica said. “I wonder if something happened between them?”

“Does it mean that Lord Yuki Snow of Europa has some kind of plan for the war? It’s pretty obvious to everyone in the solar system that Europa is already involved with the war, assisting Mars -- or rather pretending to,” Shiro asked.

“This is fucking gold!” James exclaimed in excitement. “We found so much information! Our Lord will be pleased with us… the Sora troops!”

Kawa and James were watching as more and more files were opening on the computer. If they were able to bring this so much evidence back to Limitless, then they would be heroes! The war would definitely end!

“Jessica, what about the outside organization? Have you found its name?” Kawa asked.

“Let’s see what exactly this organization is… I think I found it, but this file is protected with the password. I should be able to crack it in a few minutes,” Jessica said with so much excitement in her tone.

“So, that’s what the Admiral wanted… Then, we can bring it back to Lord! We can finally defeat Mars!” James exclaimed in excitement.

Kawa grinned widely at the thought of Earth’s victory. Earth might have lost many battles, but they would definitely win the war!

“Jessica? Are you there?” James asked after a few minutes of no words from her. “Matt? Shiro? Hello? Alex, can you hear us?”

“Hello?” Kawa said a little louder than usual. “What is going on there?”

“Maybe the connection has been lost?” James checked on his headphone and microphone. He started the error search on the computer inside the goggle of his helmet, but after a short while, it was telling him that everything was ok.

“What now? We are trapped in this room with the dead samurais! What if something happened to them?”

James shook his head. “It can’t be. We need to contact Captain Williams and see if they can get through to them.”

“While you’re on it, I’ll try to find a way out of this room,” Kawa said. He walked around in the small blood-stained room, which looked to be some kind of mixture of studio and technology room.

“Captain? Hellooooooo? HELLO?” James nearly screamed into his microphone.

“James, look!”

“What?” The Lunan samurai raised an eyebrow before he turned to Kawa who was pointing. “That is a window. Can you please focus on finding the way out of here?”

“Exactly. We can go through the window!”

“That small?” James placed his fists on his hips. “You must be joking.”

“We can’t stay here forever, you know! There’s no food and water here… we will die in a few days if nobody comes and rescues us.”

James sighed as he scratched the back of his head. “Fine.”

They put their oxygen masks back on and moved toward the window, drawing their swords. They both counted to three before they hit the window hard with their swords, breaking it completely.

“WARNING! LOW OXYGEN IN ROOM 1704! INITIATING REPAIR...”

Before James and Kawa could hit the broken window one more time, another steel wall came down again. It was not only the window that was blocked by the steel wall but all other walls were replaced with the steel ones as well.

“What the fuck?!” James yelled as he started pounding on the steel wall. “This is so fucking annoying!”

“Guys, can you hear me?”

“Shiro?” asked Kawa hopefully, to his relief. “What’s going on? Is everyone ok?”

“T-they are dead,” said Shiro shakily. “Th-there was a bo-bomb in the server room. It went off. It wa-was the ma-main computer.”

“Shiro, hang on! We are coming!” said James, trying not to show worry in his tone.

“K-Kawa… I’m very sorry.”

“No, Shiro. Don’t say that!” said Kawa anxiously. “Don’t you die on us!”

“Shit!” James cursed as soon as they heard a loud beep, signaling them that the connection had been cut off.

~EARTHxMARS~

“How long do you think we have been here?” asked Kawa softly. He was sitting on the floor with his back leaning against the cold steel wall.

James unconsciously shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know? Maybe ten hours? Or two days?”

Kawa glanced back up at the steel wall. They had tried everything in order to at least place a dent on the steel wall, but nothing worked. Not even their katanas could do any damage.

“This is stupid.”

“Excuse me?” Kawa asked as he turned to the Lunan samurai.

James was staring really hard at his hands. “Europa is always a step ahead of us. I should have known that they would be up to something… like this. Fucking Snow!”

“You mean Lord Yuki Snow?” Kawa asked nervously. James was not like this at all, which was scaring him a little bit.

“Of course, who else?” James snapped. “Here, we are trapped. We can’t reach out to anybody outside. Our comrades… no, our friends died for us just so that we could get information for them. They fucking died! All for the sake of Earth and Moon. Europans must be laughing at us by now.”

“What about Mars? They are part of this too.” Kawa frowned at his partner's odd behavior. “Besides, isn’t this Europa’s spaceship? All of the Europan samurais were killed. Don’t you think it’s strange that Europans would turn against each other?”

“Shut up. You’re trying to confuse me!” James shouted at him.

Kawa did not say anything any further.

“Dammit… DAMMIT!” James slammed his fist on the steel wall only to yelp in pain. “If only I was stronger!”

“James, please listen to me.” Kawa sighed lightly. He was rubbing his sword’s red handle with his rough thumb. “If they were still here, they would not like how you acted. That was not what they wanted. They would have wanted you to move on and keep going forward.”

“How the fuck should you know?! You don’t care about them! I mean, you never did!”

Kawa narrowed his eyes in anger. “Of course, I did and still do! You don’t know how I feel right now, but I can tell you that I’m familiar with how you’re going through. You want to take revenge on the one you so deeply hate. Or you want to blame someone for our friends’ deaths.”

The Wolf Samurai looked away from his friend, trying to hide his emotion that was threatening to show up on his face. “So, you lost someone important to you before?”

“Yes. My family.”

James whipped his head toward Kawa in surprise. “Your family? What happened to them?”

“My mother and sister got caught up in the battlefield and were killed by the Martian samurais. I found out a few years later. My father… He got killed by this very spaceship, Jove. At first, I was almost consumed by anger and guilt. I could have done something to prevent their deaths. I could have gone straight home and not stopped by that stupid sword shop. I could have stopped my father from leaving and waited for my mother and sister instead. There were so many possibilities that I could have done. I blamed myself at first, but the blame turned to Martians eventually.

“So, when this spaceship first showed up that morning, I was… I was more than eager to start the mission. I wanted to kill whoever was controlling Jove… I wanted to get revenge on them and the Martians for what they had done to my family.”

Kawa pulled his katana a little from his scabbard. Roaring flames were either begging or threatening to get out of scabbard. “And then, our friends died… Jessica, Shiro, Alex, and Matt. And so did other fellow samurais too. Think I don’t know how you are going through this? You don’t know anything about me.”

“I’m sorry,” James muttered.

Kawa gave him a small smile. “You don’t have to apologize. You can’t help having such horrible feelings. First time was pretty hard. I was there before.”

James nodded his head once and then found the blood-stained floor a little more interesting than anything else. Finally, he said after a few quiet minutes, “I was abandoned by my own parents when I was only a toddler. And then, I was abandoned by the orphanage when I was only 12 years old. They could not feed everyone, so… one by one they left us in the middle of nowhere. And…”

Kawa did not push James into saying anything more, which the Lunan samurai was grateful for.

“WARNING! APPROACHING CERES. CHANGE OF COURSE RECOMMENDED.”

Kawa and James stood up so fast that they almost fainted due to the sudden rush of blood leaving their brains.

“Ceres?” James asked in confusion. “We went that far? But I didn’t feel any movement…”

“It’s different than Limitless. Jove is the solar system’s largest spaceship, so we can’t feel any movement even though it is moving.”

“Well, in that case… it must have been about a day, right? We were a half day away from Mars when we discovered this spaceship.”

“Yeah, I think so, but… is this spaceship piloting by itself? Autopilot or something like that?” Kawa asked. He took one more look at the computer display on the table, but it asked for the password again.

“Do you think we will crash?” James asked nervously. “We have to get out of here!”

“Chaos pill. Do you have it?” Kawa asked.

“Yeah, plenty of Chaos pills! About thirty or so… Why?”

“Can you please give me one? I think I have an idea about how to get out of this room,” Kawa said as he reached out his hand.

“Okay, sure. What are you planning to do?” James took a pill out of his package that was attached to his belt.

“I am going to destroy the door,” Kawa flashed a big grin on his light tan face. “With my flaming sword, of course.”

“I thought you said it was an illusion?” James handed the pill to the Dragon Samurai.

“Oh, there are many ways I can do with my sword,” Kawa said, withdrawing his flaming sword. “This fire-type sword is real. The reason why I made it an illusion was because I did not want to hurt you or anybody else. I’m not too fond of drugs that make us become insanely stronger. But this…”

He tossed the pill into his mouth. “This is an emergency.”

The flames on his sword grew louder and bigger. He pointed it at the steel wall where the door was right behind. All of the flames on his sword moved all the way to the tip, making a fireball.

He pulled his sword away from the fireball, which was sitting in the air by itself. “Stay back, James! It’s going to leave a mark for sure!”

In the samurai-style way, he swung his sword gracefully through the air until it hit the fireball. As soon as it landed on the fireball, the attack was shot so fast that James could not even see it until the damage on the door appeared.

After the cliche explosion and smoke faded away into the air, they were looking at the large hole.

“Holy fuck! Why the fuck didn’t you do that earlier?” James ran to the hole out of excitement. He pulled out his own katana. “It’s my turn!”

As soon as he swung his sword, the sharp wind gust cut the door into pieces flawlessly. They jumped through another hole of the destroyed door just when they heard another loud announcement from the main computer.

“WARNING! APPROACHING CLOSER TO CERES AT FIVE THOUSAND KILOMETERS AWAY.”

“What, already?” James yelled in panic. “We have to get out of here!”

“We have to find the escape pods… that’s if Jove has them!”

“APPROACHING AT ONE THOUSAND KILOMETERS…”

“Over there!” James stopped right past one of hundreds of consistent sliding doors. Upon hearing him, Kawa halted only a few feet ahead of him.

“I think I saw the emergency exit sign!”

All of sudden, the whole spaceship started shaking violently. James and Kawa nearly yelped in surprise and collapsed to their knees.

Immediately, they got up from the floor and kept going, heading for the emergency exit sign James recently saw. Kawa slammed his fist onto the keypad, causing the door to stop sliding completely.

“Here it is!” James pointed at the large sign with flashing red words: “EMERGENCY EXIT.” Right below it, there were two escape pods sitting. They quickly jumped into the pods as soon as their doors slid smoothly open.

The countdown to launch out of Jove was the last thing they heard.

~TO BE CONTINUED~