Chapter 18 - Escapes

Jude held his hands in the air and dropped his guns. He looked back over at the commander of the squad.

“You have one more chance to answer me, human. What are you here for?”

The kryons turned their guns slightly, aiming them straight at Jude.

Jude looked defiantly at the man. “I am here seeking the answers of the destruction of my home and village. I did not know of your presence here, and will leave should you desire it.”

The man motioned to the kryons, who lowered their weapons.

“Nay, you do not need to leave. We shall not shoot you.”

He approached Jude and reached out his hand. Jude hesitantly shook it.

“My name is Jude,” he said, looking at the strange man. “What is it, exactly, that you want?”

“Greetings, Jude,” he responded, his silver eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. “My name is Lukäski. My desire is simple. I wish to dominate the human race, as you are of.”

Jude stepped backwards slightly, hoping that he could make a run for it. The decision was a bad one. The kryons obviously had much faster reflexes than he thought, and in a split seconds, all guns were facing him again.

“Ah, Jude, you are a foolish man. You obviously have no sense of the skill of kryon warriors. Their reflexes are so highly tuned, you wouldn’t even know that I had moved and they would have shot me thirty times each.

“I am afraid that you are here to stay with us until I give you free passage. Or until you die.”

Jude looked around at the guns facing him.

“What exactly is it that you want from me?”

“We need your weaponry. All three of those guns, we need them. If we get them, we will grant you passage. If not, we will kill you. The choice is yours.”

Jude needed to make his decision quickly and decisively. He began to pull forward his gun so that he could give it Lukäski. At that moment he acted. He pulled the trigger.

Simultaneously, he flicked his eyes and felt the path of an aurora shaping across his mind. Time slowed.

He saw the kryons lifting up their weapons with which to shoot him. His own beam had struck Lukäski, exploding him instantly.

Shots were fired. Looking around himself, Jude saw an advancing labyrinth of beams and rays, all bent on his destruction. He knew that even if he somehow escaped the rays, the combined explosion would easily annihilate him.

The aurora spread. Jude felt as though his mind were spinning inside of his skull, and suddenly, he was in the air. He was not flying, but rather jumping extraordinarily high.

Time was still acting slowly, and the kryons had changed their ray’s trajectories to better suit Jude’s jump. Still, they were unable to react fast enough.

Jude began falling back to Earth. He looked desperately for a place to land, as he suddenly realized that being high in the air was not an especially safe place when gravity takes hold of you.

Fortunately, he found a caved-in house in which a mattress was still intact. He landed on it, and heard the breaking of springs. He fell to the ground, and his pack fell off of his back.

A single book fell out of the pack, though not the Kryonomicon or Survivor’s journal. It was one he had forgotten about, the children’s book of human spacecraft. It opened to a random page.

That page had an illustration of a mothership used by the humans during the invasion period.

The ship was an enormous wasp.



The day of the revolution was nearly here. All of the prisoners had their doubts about whether or not their plan would succeed, but they were all reasonably confident in their abilities.

The revolt had been set to take place in three days, but already tension was high. Hylik, who turned out to be rather difficult to keep a secret, nearly cost them their lives on several occasions. However, he never let out enough information to make their plan obvious to their captors.

The next few days passed peacefully and without incident, save Torture’s lashings of people at the end-of-day work checks.

The day that they would revolt had finally arrived. Pulse sat aside, in the shade, so that the hot afternoon sun would hopefully make him sweat little, if at all. The others worked harder than ever in the hopes that they could work up a greater sweat to make Pulse’s lack of work more obvious.

The sun was beginning to set, and soon Torture and his men had come. The men brandished guns as always, though they seemed to have their whips more readily at hand.

Torture made his rounds. He whipped Krynn once (he hadn’t liked him since he first laid eyes on him), and then walked to Pulse.

“What in humanity? You haven’t worked!” He whipped Pulse across the face. The whip lashed around and hit him in the neck.

Blood poured out. Pulse collapsed to the ground, falling quickly into unconsciousness. Shouts of anguish came from the others, who charged Torture immediately.

They managed to quickly bring him to the ground, pounding him with their fists. The others began beating the guards, and trying their hardest to wrestle the guns out of their hands.

Explosions occurred left and right as shots were fired into the air. Screams of pain came from both sides, and blood soon ran like water on the ground.

Tyra was wrestling one of the guards alone. In what seemed like an eternity, they were locked, unable to push the gun far enough to slay each other. Finally, Kysandra, who had just killed another guard, came over and pushed the gun down. Tyra pressed the trigger, and the guard exploded.

The battle was over. The slaves, successful in their revolt, looked around at the body count. Pulse lay dead, his blood leaking from his neck. Three other slaves also lay dead, after attempting to wrestle Torture. Torture himself was dead, as were all of the guards.

The slaves looked at each other, and thought about what they had just done. They took the guns from the dead guards, and made their way down into the subway system.