“What are you guys doing here… ?” Yuri asked, stunned. Lucha answered Yuri’s question, briskly stepping close to Yuri and flipping up her collar. There was a tiny oscillator pinned to her shirt there.
“Back in the park in Topaz City… when you two were seeing the vision, I pinned this on you,” Lucha said.
“You must be kidding me!”
Yuri was frustrated. Removing the oscillator she pushed it onto Lucha.
“Not to change the subject…” Thunder said turning to me. “Do you know where Isabella could be?”
“I am not sure if it’s working or not, but I did bring along an energy detector,” I answered. “If Isabella is really the boss here, then this should help us find her.”
“Then let’s go!” said Thunder. “Show me the way!”
“But, if…”
The corners of my mouth moved down.
“What’s wrong?” Thunder wondered aloud.
“I can show you, and since you helped us out, I can’t say this strongly, but…” I said in a disappointed tone. “You two lied to us, didn’t you?”
“Uh…” Thunder’s eyes immediately dropped to the floor, and a sad look came over his face. Don’t give me that look! He looked like I had scolded him in front of the entire class.
“Sorry…” Thunder’s head drooped. “We knew about the Space Smashers and what Dr. Russell was trying to do here…”
“What do you mean, what he was trying to do here?” I asked Thunder.
“We don’t have time—” Yuri interrupted. “I have the detector, so let’s talk and walk at the same time.”
Yuri was right. We climbed over the rubble in the corridor and started heading deeper into the castle.
Soon after we started walking, Thunder voluntarily started speaking. “What us guys knew came after Dr. Russell died… It was written in the Doc’s will.”
“…”
“When the Doc found out that his invention, the Space Smasher, was being used by terrorists, and that it hurt so many people, he felt just terrible—I mean, he had only invented it, but the Doc’s heart was just tom to bits.
“You know, it was being used as a weapon of mass destruction. The Doc just got more and more down… and us guys could tell he was hurtin’ then…”
Thunder paused, and for just a brief moment he remained silent.
As if fate timed itself, waiting for a break in Thunder’s story, we heard Ka-boom!… the sound of an explosion from far off. Up in front, Yuri frantically looked left and right so fast I thought her head might become unglued.
“The United Space Force!” said Yuri. “It must be! They’ve begun their strike on the island!”
If it was true, then this was good news. The Space Force would keep the bad guys busy. However, if this got in our way of moving forward, like what had just happened, then it would be better if they were attacking far off.
Realizing we should pick up the pace, we began half-running. Our steps echoed in the corridor.
“Say, Thunder…” I said, doing my best to keep up with him. “Real simple, can you tell me about what the doctor’s will said? That’s the fastest way.”
“Oh…”
Thunder nodded. He was quiet in thought for two or three seconds. He then began to speak about Dr. Russell’s will. This is what he told me.
Once Dr. Russell found out that someone else was manufacturing Space Smashers, he immediately jumped to action. He did everything he could to research how a Space Smasher could be made again. The specs on building Space Smashers was erased from the memory banks of the Central Computer, so at that time, the one person in the galaxy who could make one should have been the doctor, and only the doctor. He made a request to a private investigation agency, and movement of parts, electronics devices, and radioactive materials that could be used in a Space Smasher construction were researched completely. In the end, all paths led to Lamier. It took the doctor over five months of hard investigation to piece together how the shipping lines of phantom trading companies, unregistered transport vessels, contraband movers, and the like crossed over here. During that time there were more Space Smasher strikes, three new capital cities had been annihilated, and the death toll was over ten million. Yet, despite all that, somehow the doctor was able to root out the source of the underground plans.
Dr. Russell took off to Lamier almost immediately. He had sent his new invention, the Space Smasher nullifying device, the “Anti-Smasher,” as well as special barrier equipment and a submarine jet to Lamier special delivery. You reap what you sow. That was the doctor’s policy. And so, the doctor shed his well-known given name for an alias, and borrowed the name Bayer from a long-time missing acquaintance.
“This is…” Thunder continued, “…what the doctor wrote in his final will papers. ‘I ask this of Thunder, who reads these words. I only finished half of my mission. But this is a mission that can’t go uncompleted. If not, the future of humanity will be left in the hands of demons.
‘“Thunder, go to Lamier. Destroy the Space Smasher plant! The only person who can complete this mission, which I couldn’t if you are reading this, is you. The police and United Space Force will be of no use. If they are involved, the secrets behind the Space Smasher are sure to be made public. If that happens, the human race is doomed.
“‘Thunder, take the Anti-Smasher I left behind, and finish what I have started.
“‘I can’t ask you to complete this task for the sake of humanity, I ask you to take on this dangerous task for me. Thunder, pick up where I have fallen… please. This is my final request.
“‘To my beloved children, Thunder and Lucha—Fon Russell’”
Thunder finished his story in a weakened voice, and then fell quiet. Biting his lip, he looked straight ahead, silently his legs carried him. His eyes welled with tears, and his tanned face was as stolid as an unpolished stone. It was the form of a man not willing to allow his body to succumb to the whims of emotion. I-I wish I could do that…
With a deep exhale, Thunder continued.
“Us guys, we never read anything so, well, so sad in our whole lives…”
Naturally. That must have been true.
“Thunder… ?” I called out. “What I am trying to figure out is why would Dr. Russell throw away an enviable position like the Union Director General of the Science and Technology Agency, and go into seclusion in a remote star system like Maleenay? I mean, almost nobody knew he was living there.”
Thunder’s tear-soaked eyes turned to me. Oh! My spine… getting weak!
“The father of the Space Smasher couldn’t stand his demon child, and wanted to shed his old self, to be around beautiful nature and simple folks—to live like a normal person, and so he chose Maleenay,” said Thunder. “Maleenay is rural country. Us guys that are from there are country folks. But now us country folks got somethin’ to be proud of. We got us a backbone. Dr. Russell pointed that out to us guys.
“Carrying an unbearable burden, just by coincidence Dr. Russell found the true meaning of humanity on a far away plot of land—the remote star cluster, Maleenay.”
I let out a deep breath.
“Kei!” Yuri called out. As we were engrossed in the Dr. Russell conversation, I hadn’t noticed that Yuri had gotten about ten meters ahead of us. The corridor remained occupied by our party only. Frankly, it didn’t really feel like an enemy hideout.
Getting a little time alone with Thunder was all I wanted, but I picked up the pace to catch up to Yuri’s location. She was holding the energy detector high over her head.
“What’re you doin’?” I asked. Oop, ouch. I had picked up Maleenay dialect. How the hell did that happen?
“Over there—”
She pointed her left index finger at a door positioned diagonally across from us. The corridor we were in branched into three hallways. Where the wall split, a very normal-looking door stood.
“Show me the detector—”
Yuri handed me the energy detector. I wanted to check the meter reading. Looking at the needle, there was no mistake. Without question, it was telling us that beyond that door lay a very big source of energy.
However…
I felt a sense of dread. Maybe this room just held some kind of generator. It may not have been a control room. I mean, shouldn’t there have been guards patrolling in front of a control room? We should have at least run into someone around here. We had gone the wrong way.
“So now what?”
Yuri looked me in the eyes and asked, Now what? That’s funny, you asking me…
“We’re here, so let’s go in and take a look,” I said. “If it is just a power room, let’s blow it up, and cut the enemy off from that much power.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Thunder agreed. On this action, we all shared the same opinion.
We stood on either side of the exceptionally large door.
Without a sound, I cracked it open.
We advanced inside.
The door shut behind us.
I took a look around the room. It was a fairly large space. More than twenty meters to the back wall. It was even wider than it was deep. And it was completely empty. There was one desk, one sofa, and that was it. With its stark white walls, the room was rather bright. The walls to the left and right were exactly the same. The only thing different was the back wall. This wall wasn’t made of the same white plastic material. It looked like panels covering some gigantic piece of equipment. There were meters and levers and dials lighting up all over. It had an ominous-looking, shiny black face.
But what captured our attention more was the slim woman in a khaki military uniform.
“So, you finally made it…” the woman said quietly, with a complicated look on her face.
This was Isabella.