Pop… there was a flash in the back of my mind. All I could see was white. I felt as if I was floating in an endless space, and my body went numb in a state of ecstasy. It may be nothing, but it was all white.
Then I saw the vision.
It was an island. A beautiful green island. In its center was a giant volcanic crater. Only there was the land barren; the rest of the island was a tropical paradise bathed in vivid greens.
Suddenly the vision was gone.
Color began to return to my senses, and the floating sensation disappeared. I had returned in a powerful daze. My back felt heavy. I tried to force myself to fully wake up, pumping energy into restoring my consciousness.
I opened my eyes. I was a little dizzy, but not too bad.
I was back.
At some point Thunder and Lucha had come close to where we were standing. They wore rather stiff expressions. They were probably thinking they saw something they shouldn’t have seen…
I began to draw the island I had just seen in the dirt.
“Is this island on Lamier?” Thunder asked in a flash. One of his eyebrows rose up.
“How should I know—?”
“Got it!”
I turned to Yuri. “I’ll call Arabel from a pay phone. He should know about the islands on Lamier. Just wait here!”
There was a phone box next to the entrance of the park. My call to him was late, and he was anxious for information. I explained the situation and our current position, and Arabel said he’d pick us up in fifteen minutes.
I hung up and headed back to where the other three were waiting.
Only Yuri jumped up when I got there.
“Where’s Thunder and Lucha?” I asked.
“That’s the thing…” Yuri answered, looking perplexed. “They said they were going to use the bathroom, but they haven’t come back…”
From Yuri’s side, Mugi confirmed her story with a Mgyow.
“What?!” I bit my lip. “Idiot! Snookered! We just got played—!”
“Huh?”
Yuri didn’t get what I was saying.
“Did you see how Thunder reacted to my drawing?! They know something about that island. They dumped us so they can enact their revenge!”
“You can’t actually…”
Yuri looked like she might cry. Moron! Sucker! Dummy! Why do you think they left you here?!
After twelve minutes and forty seconds, Arabel arrived.
After showing him the drawing of the island, he didn’t even have to think before speaking.
“That’s Saint Dominas Isle. It’s about 4200 kilometers south of Topaz City. It sits isolated near the equator.”
“South, 4200 kilometers!” I shouted. “That’s about how far Bayer’s jet was going and back!”
I went on to tell Arabel about what Thunder had explained about Dr. Russell.
“What do you know?” The blood rushed to Arabel’s face. “So I was right the whole time. Bayer’s, I mean, Dr. Russell’s death really wasn’t an accident…”
At that point Arabel looked as if he had suddenly unearthed an even bigger discovery. He froze, as his brow wrinkled up.
“Dr. Russell…” Arabel turned his head and spit. “Dr. Russell… I have heard that name somewhere before…”
Then he suddenly punched his fist into his hand.
“Dr. Russell!” he yelled. “I remember now! It’s Dr. Russell!”
“Who? Who is he—?!”
We braced ourselves as we asked.
“An incredible person…” said Arabel. “He’s the inventor of the Airspace Crushing Bomb!”
“The Space Smasher?!”
We literally jumped two meters straight into the air. I mean, how many shockers had we heard today? And this one was the biggest one yet. Eventually does your heart get to a point when it doesn’t stop every time you hear shocking news?
“Kei!” said Yuri. “Maybe that’s why he used an alias when he came to Lamier…”
“Right!” I said, showing my excitement in seeing the pieces fall together. “That must be it! Lamier is somehow involved in the Space Smasher case!”
“This-this is a big deal…”
Arabel’s voice cracked. He seemed upset.
“Mr. Arabel!”
I shouted.
“Ye-yes…!”
“Please take us to the space port. And after that immediately contact the United Space Troops and tip them off to what is going on.”
“Wha-what are you two going to do?”
“We are going to fly Lovely Angel to Saint Dominas Isle. Thunder and Lucha are already headed there. I don’t know what we have unleashed, yet!”
“Okay, I see…”
“If you got it, then let’s hurry and go!”
We made the forty-two-kilometer trip to Bloodstone Port, just outside Topaz City, in five minutes. I’m guessing that’s a local record. We were spotted by patrol cars along the way, but I just held my WWWA identification card out the window to let the cops see, and we ended up getting a police escort to the space port.
We hurriedly stampeded onto Lovely Angel. Maintenance servicing had been completed, and she was ready for takeoff. Reflecting the twinkling stars in the night sky, the scarlet hull of Lovely Angel was a sight to behold. Simply put, she was one stylish ship.
Nose to tail she was eighty meters. The widest point was eighteen meters thick. The front of the ship tapers to a long thin point, and the hull has a shapely, cute form, coming in where the waist would be on a girl. Along the stern are four main rockets, along with four fins of various sizes. I could get into more technical details, but those are the basics.
In the bow of the ship was the bridge. Arabel should have been just about finishing up informing the United Space Troops by now.
Yuri was positioned in the pilot’s seat, and I sat to the left in the copilot’s seat. Mugi sat in one of the two spare seats behind us. By the numbers we were just a small eighty-meter-class space ship, but we had upgraded to the cruising and battle strength of a two hundred-meter-class destroyer, and so the space on the bridge was limited to a four-person maximum. Nevertheless, for us, two of those seats were spares.
The engine wasn’t quite perfectly calibrated, and a rhythmic jostling under our feet had begun. Up on the main screen was projected a bird’s eye view of the space port. I could clearly see the vivid colors of the scores of ships of all shapes and sizes lined up for departure.
We were approved for takeoff by the space-traffic controller.
“Here we go!” Yuri called out. All right! Let’s go!
Lovely Angel lifted off.
Our rockets scorched the takeoff pad, and cut through the atmosphere with a terrific roar. All the real-time image screens were blacked out. Lovely Angel only has emergency use windows. We can normally see what’s going on with the dozens of panel screens inlaid in the walls. Consequently, we are at the mercy of the computer-generated images to see what is happening outside the ship.
The images of the stratosphere were restored. Lovely Angel gained more and more altitude, and briefly entered orbit around Lamier before we would re-enter the atmosphere in order to descend on her intended target of Saint Dominas Isle. Less than six hundred seconds to destination. What a fast trip!
We reentered successfully. We were at an altitude of eight thousand meters. The screens started flickering to life. The sun was just beginning to crack the horizon. Between the white clouds we could see the gorgeous ocean spread out below us. In the center of it all was Saint Dominas Isle.
“Altitude six thousand…”
Yuri began a count. I read a screen that gave me a real-time scale. It was eighty-six kilometers to Saint Dominas.
“So what should we do?” asked Yuri. She had lost the drawl. “Should we just head straight on to the airspace above the island?”
“Let’s do this…” I started. “About thirty kilos out it might not be a bad idea to take a swing around so we can check out the situation…”
“Sure. That’s probably the best plan, I guess…”
Yuri didn’t sound as confident as her words. It was then that it happened.
From a corner of the island we could see two, no, three bright flashes.
The computer started flashing warnings.
“Kei!” Yuri screamed in a painfully high octave. “Missiles!”