Havok Bringer

Chapter 32. Are We There Yet?

Tiff and CJ were standing over me while I was passed out. There was mounting concern about my mental state, and rightfully so. Tiff knew it would be an uphill battle even with the prosthetics that Elvis was currently fabricating for me, and time was not on our side with the Level 1 dungeon starting in a little less than 7 days.

As they both stood there watching Elvis tend to me, CJ suddenly shouted and pointed at my now mutilated arms, “What the hell are those?!”

“There are…things…coming out of his wounds!”

“Oh God….I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Tiff lifted up my right stub of an arm and inspected it as the black, thread-like tendrils began snaking out of the wound. “Elvis, what is happening? Are you doing this?”

“Elvis not doing anything, Elvis only hydrating and stabilizing Captain,” Elvis responded.

As they both watched, the tendrils began to form what looked like a forearm, then a wrist, then a hand and eventually five fingers on both hands.

The formation was crude at first, but eventually formed into a perfect representation of what appeared to be my lost lower arms. Other than the fact that they were black and appeared to be made out of a similar material to my armor, they were perfect.

Tiff and CJ were completely taken aback. Tiff had never heard of spontaneous reproduction of limbs in a humanoid. Sure, there were some beings that were capable of it, but even then, it would take time and an increased intake of resources to facilitate the regrowth. This was unheard of.

As they both looked down in shock, my eyes opened and I shot up in the bed. I raised my hands to inspect them.

“I…I thought it was a dream,” I said as I turned my hands, inspecting them front and back. I flexed my fingers and rolled them testing the dexterity of the new hands.

“This…How did…” I looked at Tiff, “how did this happen?”

Tiff reached out tentatively placing her fingers against my open palm, “Andrew, this shouldn’t be possible. How is this possible?”

“I went to sleep...and...” I started to say.

“Went to sleep, my ass. You almost killed yourself you asshole!” CJ shouted, anger and disappointment evident in his tone.

“I what? I mean I took a couple extra of the sleeping pills, but I didn’t mean to do that. I swear, I just wanted to sleep longer,” I said.

“Captain was told to take no more than two. Elvis was very clear on the maximum dose. That medicine was modified from a medication created for the Havokium. The dose you took would have been lethal had Elvis not been monitoring your vital signs,” Elvis said.

“I’m sorry, guys. I didn’t think, I didn’t know. You need to all know that I wouldn’t do that ever. It was a mistake. One I won’t make again,” I said.

Tiff and CJ looked at each other, as if they agreed that the situation was not intentional on my part.

“Look, something happened while I was asleep, something I don’t fully understand. We need to talk about it.”

As I was speaking, I turned and dropped my feet off the side of the bed. As I braced myself with my new hands, I squeezed the frame of the bed and it crumpled under my grasp.

“Jesus bro, you just broke the damn bed!” CJ shouted. “Are you some sort of cyborg now or something?!”

I quickly pulled by hands away from the bed frame, “Sorry Elvis, I will have to get used to these new hands.”

“It is nothing! Elvis will have A-ganger repair bed…Captain is strong, Captain is mighty!” Elvis shouted, seemingly relieved that I was whole and healthy once again.

As I got up, Red and Loren entered the med bay. I had honestly forgotten about their entire group. They had come back to the Bloodhound with us when Princess Denae brought us back.

I looked over at Tiff and CJ as the two newcomers walked up, surprise evident on their faces, “We need to have an officer's meeting ASAP on the bridge,” I said.

“Now?” Tiff asked.

“Now. You will need to contact Princess Denae. Is the Retribution still tailing us?” I asked.

“Yes, they planned on following us to Alcara to see if they could be of assistance."

“Five minutes, on the bridge. Red, Loren, I need your group to hang out on the lower deck for now. We can discuss you joining the crew permanently later. Is that okay?"

Red and Loren looked at each other, obviously caught off guard by the whole situation.

“Sure, but we do need to talk. Elvis ate our entire ship, so we don’t really have many options,” Red said.

I stopped and turned to face him, “What do you mean he ate your ship?!” I looked at Tiff and CJ.

“Uhhh, yeah, you missed some things, man. Elvis eats ships,” CJ looked back at me and shrugged.

“Elvis is mighty destroyer of puny vessels…” Elvis grumbled.

I took a deep breath as I tried to take in what I had just heard. I was in and out of consciousness for several days and had been wallowing in self-doubt for the last couple when I finally came through the worst of it. They were right, I did have some catching up to do, but it could wait a little while longer.

“We need to have this meeting first. When that is done, I will meet with your entire team so we can discuss options, Red.” I looked up at the ceiling, “After that, you and I are going to have a discussion, Elvis, understood?”

“Elvis did nothing wrong; Elvis simply did what comes natural…Destroy!” Elvis replied.

“Okay, simmer down there buddy, we will talk soon. Until then, try not to destroy anything without my approval.”

“Understood, Captain.”

A few minutes later, me, Tiff, and CJ were gathered on the bridge as Princess Denae appeared on the main bridge display.

I sat in my chair and addressed her directly, "Hello Princess Denae. I didn’t get the chance to do it after our escape, but I wanted to personally thank you for your assistance. Without you and your team I never would have made it off that detention facility. I am sorry about your men; they were brave and didn’t deserve to die the way that they did.”

Denae visibly cringed at the mention of her men and shifted in her seat, “Thank you, Captain Dawes, that is very kind of you. I hope you understand now that we will not abandon you and your crew in its time of need. There will be opportunity in the future for you to repay us in time.”

As she finished speaking, she noticed my arms. I hadn’t had time to get a new uniform top and just wore a white t-shirt, so my arms were fully visible.

“Captain Dawes, would you care to explain what has happened to your arms?” Denae asked.

“What I’m about to share with you is highly sensitive and I would request that it be for your ears only for now, Princess. Is that acceptable?” I asked.

“I am in my personal quarters on a private channel. There is no need for concern, Captain,” she said.

“Okay, you may all want to sit down for this…”

I went through the entirety of my dream, or vision, or whatever it was. I explained the entity I spoke with and told them the gritty details of what it said to me. When I explained that the entity claimed to be the Coeus, Tiff and Denae both looked shocked and perplexed.

I explained what the entity said about my armor being a gift, and that it showed me, at least in part, how to more properly use it.

“And that is where my new arms came from,” I said as I finished. “I was able to use the gift to form new arms for myself. Apparently, it isn’t a suit of armor; that was just a cover for what it really is.”

Denae stood up from her chair and was now pacing in her quarters talking to herself. Tiff was leaning over, holding her head in her hands, deep in thought. CJ, like me, was pretty clueless about what all this meant and just sat in silence.

Denae finally sat back down and spoke up first, “The Coeus don’t communicate with beings outside of their galaxy. They have communications relays setup to communicate with the Council just so they don’t have to communicate directly. This doesn’t make any sense. If what you’re saying is true, then that means the Coeus were secretly allied with the Havokium before the fall of Havok Prime. They weren’t only allied; they were supplying weapons.”

Tiff sat up, “What does it mean that everything will change after the Red Moon of Alcara? What are the Coeus planning on doing?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping that you two would have some insight. All I know is that I have their gift, they want me to use it, and they want me to get stronger. The Coeus are fed up with the Council just like we are, and they are ready to do something about it,” I said.

“This gift is tied to the Coeus. They were able to contact me directly, in my subconscious at that. I was ready to give up but now I have hope. Now we can strike a blow and bring hope to others.”

“I still don’t know how we’re going to do that; I get the feeling that we need to continue on to Alcara and just try to survive that nightmare for now. I have a feeling that we will have a better idea of what to do next once that is done," I said. “We still have a lot of work to do, but we hopefully have more members in our crew now that can help. Princess, can we count on your assistance once we arrive to the moon?”

Denae shook her head, “Unfortunately not. The dungeons will be closed to everyone that isn’t a drafted participant of the seeded world, or anyone that didn’t register in advance. My presence here is still unknown to the Council and I will need to keep it that way. The Retribution will stay in a deep orbit until you complete the level. We can assist with an escape if it comes to that.”

I turned and looked at Tiff and CJ trying to appear confident, “Okay, it’s just us then. We need to get to the moon and get ready to fight with everything we have. I know we lost some time when the Bloodhound detoured to save me, but hopefully we can make it in time to prepare in advance.”

CJ perked up in his chair, “Uhhh, you don’t know?”

“Know what?” I asked.

“When Elvis ate that other team's ship, he got a bunch of upgrades. One of them was an upgraded warp capacitor thingy. I don’t know the technical term but basically, we can jump a lot further, and a lot more often,” CJ said.

“We're already here, bro. We're at the Red Moon of Alcara.”