THEMAKEROFLIGHT: hello one and all, I dearly apologise for the length of my last chapter and I assure you this one will be longer. I got another review thank god, and will the rest of you please tell me what you think just like this guy, I need some self esteem here people, I review every story I read, and I know you're out there, I can see you on the hit count.
CHAPTER 3: ANOTHER ENEMY
The flaming wreck of the port was all that was left after the ferocious attack by the demon, the bomb itself had knocked out several of the security and maintenance systems in the shield walls around the water. Every one of the boats motors had been short-circuited by the blast. And those who were on what was now being called the "gunship", had been stranded for several hours until a team could be sent out, unfortunately these included Maealan, Torn, Ashelin, Keira, and Jak, who were the only people qualified to sort out such a mess, the smaller commanders had made a real mess of it. Leaving fires burning next to eco tankers, concentrating on themselves first before the helpless civilians trapped on the islands where the bridges had been destroyed, and worst of all, making their first priority clearing what was left of the demon out of the water.
Jak and Keira strode into the room at the top of the freedom tower, looking around at the familiar faces, there was Sig, Torn, Ashelin, the young man who had taken over Illian, the king of Shassa, and other leaders from countries in the alliance. The meeting had been called to discuss a serious threat to the peace, but not even Jak knew what it was.
Torn was first to speak, as commander of the armies he was higher ranking than kings in a time of war. "Well ladies, gentlemen and others. I know none of you know why you're here so I'll tell you. We've received word from spies in Durancas city that their armies are mobilising, readying for war. Six thousand terror troopers marched onto a cruiser at three o'clock this morning, heading for Shorrelle, at 4;:05, we lost contact with Shorrelle city, nothing but static for hours now."
"So you think Durancas will rise up?" Said the prime minister of Morien, which was Shorrelle's closest neighbour, though the two had never got on well.
"We think exactly that, and much more. Durancas has always been an outsider working for money and eco, and whatever else they could get their grubby little hands on, we believe they may have been contracted by Gol and Maia."
Jak took this opportunity to speak, sitting down in a comfy swirl chair. "I don't think the twins would be that interested in that sort of thing, even when they used lurkers as labour they still hated doing it, since the lurkers were good at heart, but easily seduced to evil. They may have something else up their sleeve."
The large leader of Damas stood up, as one of Haven's closest allies, he was ready to stand for his king. "I think Lord Jak is right." He boomed, his huge voice making most of the world leaders jump. "From what I've heard of these characters, they sem to hate humans, I don't think they would be willing to even see them without some urge to rip the men to shreds."
All this time the man who really mattered, the king of Nissen had been sitting quietly, mulling over all the possible options. Nissen was one of the most powerful countries in the alliance, with an army of over 3, 000, 000, and almost 200, 000 Unken riders( A kind of ice-bear) his army was never invaded by any country, not the marauders, not the metal-heads, and none of the other leaders were on the same level as his tactical mind except Jak. He spoke in a small but intimidating voice, that somehow drew everyone's attention to him, turning heads all round.
"I think I may have an idea, your soldiers say they saw terror troopers leave Durancas, six thousand of them, yet our own sources say that they only had three in reserve, how did they double their numbers in less than a week, it takes days to inject the yellow eco that creates terror troopers."
"That is odd, perhaps we are looking at some other plot, not even illustrated by Durancas." That was the Damas leader again. Stroking his goatee that looked suspiciously like Jak's and strangely fake.
I don't think it was even Durancas we saw leaving, from the old texts we know that all creatures of jungle creature and above have the ability to shape shift, maybe Durancas fell, and we are now seeing an attack by Gol and Maia."
Jak spoke again, talking more to Sig, the king of Nissen, and the Damas leader than to the other, weaker leaders. "I don't think so, Gol and Maia don't go in for all that covert stuff, they barely kept it up with just themselves, they couldn't do it with six thousand men. We also know that dark makers can change too, because of the dark eco exposure." The room lit up with frantic whispers and gasps, as the few present figured out what he was implying.
"But the ship was destroyed long ago" Said the Chairen leader, trying to catch the attention of the four main kings and leaders.
"Not all of it, Jak here says that part of it may have got down safely." Sig finally entered into the conversation, and no one was gonna interrupt this mountain of a man.
The room was silent, no one had been told of the surviving ship, and they all remembered the ship, it's dark, cold stare at them from space, the destruction it reigned on each of their countries, and the animals, the hated, murderous animals that descended from the ship, pillaging and burning across the land, they said Chairen palace was a beauty to look at before the attack, now it was smoking rubble.
Jak stood up, he had heard all he needed to hear, he signalled that the meeting was over, no one spoke a word as the group split up, they were all preoccupied with planning the defence of their land, and panicking in intense frantic madness. Jak watched the shivering leaders go and chuckled, he was barely fazed by the news, he had faced every scary thing in the entire universe for years, and never been nervous, unlike Torn, who had almost collapsed into a seizure on the floor, hyperventilating and bulging eyes all rolled up in a ball.
Jak yanked him up off the metal floor and tried to console him, the commander eventually pulled himself together and tried to calm down.
"So what's the plan Jak?" He asked the surprisingly steady king.
Jak smiled at the commander, amused by his sudden outburst of fear. "There's nothing to worry about Torn, we've got the precursors on hand this time, they can summon a 'cursor fleet to counteract the dark makers long before they reach here." Torn finally got the gist, and relaxed, he then, after a moment to recover, walked off the platform and into the power elevator.
As soon as he was gone Jak dropped the smile. He turned to Keira, who was loking sceptical. "Is there really a chance of a precursor fleet?"
"Not one bit we're totally screwed." He replied, and Keira just turned and walked away to the 'vator, pushing the button for the ground floor and barely letting Jak through before the steel doors shut. He understood how angry she was at lying to almost the entire planet through Torn, but she didn't have to get that mad inside the metal box, she almost broke something.
Riding into the square at the bottom of the tower on and oversized leaper lizard was Daxter, looking very pleased with himself and flaunting his pride to every 'commoner' he passed. He approached Jak, barely in control of his mount, and put on his best smug face.
"Guess what Jak." He said, blowing on his fingernails and cleaning nonexistent dirt from under them. "I just saw Tess, she wanted me back after all, and I didn't need any help from you. Orange Lightening makes his own life, he doesn't need any help from lowly peasants, he is all powerful with ladies." Jak couldn't help sniggering behind his hand and had to turn away.
He had called Tess earlier and told her to get back together with Daxter, making up some reason or other for his behaviour, and he had told her not to tell Dax it was him. Now Daxter stopped his monologue and looked at the two giggling elves in front of him, and the truth, or at least part of it, dawned on him.
"Hey, you didn't by any chance call her did you?"
Jak's silence was enough.
"Damnit Jak can't you let me do something for myself for once?"
"But then you'd just screw it up, it's much better if I do it for you, besides, this way you get Tess without doing any work."
Daxter thought, weighing up his two favourite things, pride, or laziness, in the end laziness won out and he stamped his foot. Climbing back onto his leaper and kicking it's sides, making the lizard speed off towards his new house, with him swaying precariously on the back.
Jak and Keira also decided it was time to leave, the locals didn't take kindly to seeing their king and queen not qorking in a time of war. They made their own way to the Naughty Ottsel where Sig, Maealan, Karena, and a few other familiar faces were seated, including the precursors, slumped out on the counter with several bottles of something beside them.
Jak took a seat in front of the bar, and knocked the surfer precursor off the table to make way for a long line of booze, Keira sat beside them and swept the other two off as well, making a large pile of orange fur behind the counter, they still didn't wake up.
"Hey Jak. "Called an annoying voice behind him, and Jak winced and braced himself for another conversation with the most annoying man on the planet, Jinx. "How you doin' Jakey boy? No new adventures started without me I hope."
"Hello Jinx." Said Keira drily, not looking at the demolition expert.
"Hey Keira." He passed over her, this was surprising because he usually was all over her, he instead turned to Jak and paid close attention to what kind of mood he was in
"Jak, I've been wanting to ask you somethin'. It's quite delicate so we might like to talk somewhere private." Jak shook his head. "Very well then, it's about this new law that says no fireworks in large built p areas such as the slums of new Haven district, that's only for the normal people right?"
Jak looked threateningly at him, not even daring himself to speak as there were children in the small cavers in the walls.
"Are you suggesting to me, that I should let you use highly dangerous explosives, in a small enclosed space, with civilians all around, during a war where we would like to remain anonymous?"
"Ummm, yeah, that's about the gist of it."
Jak stopped breathing for a second, then exhaled. "Yeah alright then." As soon as the words were out of his mouth Jinx pulled a roll of firecrackers out from somewhere under the chair and sped out of the door to a group of grinning cohorts of his, who all ran round the corner out of sight, lighting fireworks as they went.
Jak smiled and looked away. He didn't have time to enjoy the trick he had just paid on Jinx, knowing he would be arrested at any minute, because a deep rumbling in the ground suddenly shook the entire barhouse , making chairs and bottles topple left right and centre, Jak struggled out from under and overturned stool and rushed out of the bar, looking for the cause of the commotion, he didn't have far to look.
The walls seemed to be crumbling, falling apart at the seems and cracking up, something on the other side was making it break up. He could just see the tip of a snake-like head on a long neck poking over the top, a terror former, the same thing jak fought against during his battle with Errol, it seemed he was wrong, one had been woken up b the crash, and it wasn't happy.
The thing finally broke through the solid stone wall, scattering boulders the size of houses everywhere, and letting a tide of smaller creatures swarm in from the other side. The little dark makers killed anything in their way, the tiny amount of guards who had managed to organize them selves were no match, and the rest were wiped out just as quickly.
Jak and some others like Maealan and Eiun had pulled them selves together in time to help, they pulled weapons from nowhere and started blasting, helping struggling guards as the went, the creatures were coming from the left side of the port, and had already spread over most of the rebuilt bridges in a matter of seconds, Jak figured out what to do and ran to one side of one of the bridges , grabbing the peace maker off his back and letting rip, the blue-white balls of energy tearing into the dark makers bodies and instantly disintegrating them.
Maealan ran to the other bridge a little slower, and had a hard time in close combat with the things, but eventually sorted the closer ones out, and turned his attention to keeping the further away ones from reaching the end. Karena just stood there, in awe of the massive terror former, it truly was magnificent, in a destroy your home and house kind of way. The huge powerful legs of the machine came crashing down on the concrete right in front of the entrance to the gardens, where a small group of guards shot unsuccessfully at the giant before them, it simply trod on them with one foot, bringing instant death.
By now some people up at the tower had realised what to do, and had sent down the racers, Jak had brought it down in a sand shark, so they thought it would work again, unfortunately no one in the entire armada of cars was as good as Jak, so most of the were crushed or destroyed by the spinning weapons sent down from the underside of the beast. The flame-red cars with go-faster stripes were no match for the army of smaller black monsters that sprang from above onto their vehicles.
Jak saw the only way, a series of spikes on the leg, leading up and up into the deep inside of the main body. A sort of staircase to the control centre, but he couldn't see a way to it, the thing was now lifting it's feet more regularly, as it's legs recovered from years of being dormant in the ship, it sped up, now reaching the very arch of the gardens, and crashing right into it, destroying the last piece of evidence that the metal-heads had ever been there.
But hope was at hand, round the corner from the other side of the canal from the terror former, was a lone, but powerful, bomb bot. Wedged against the side in case fell in the water, the bot made it's way round the bend in the river, and onto the side where most of the machine's legs were, going steadily towards to back leg, Hoping the explosion would knock the machine off balance, and it would topple, where it could be easily destroyed, and thankfully, it hadn't seemed to notice the walking bomb coming towards it. The bot edged closer and closer, it was now only metres away from the limb it was aiming for, only one more step…
But it never made it.
The terror former had spotted it long ago, it's intended leg rose up high, and the bot didn't know what to do, obviously the one controlling it was inexperienced, it just stood there, waiting for it's doom, and it came swiftly, the huge bulk of the former's foot coming crashing down on the bot, the blast being muffled by the grippers, and doing no damage at all to the dark machine. If the thing couls have laughed, then it would have then.
Jak lost hope then, falling to his knees and despairing for the first time since his father died, their last hope was gone, and there was no one else to take up the cause. After all the hardship, all the war, they were to be brought down, finally.
At least, that was what went through his mind.
There was an explosion. Someone chanting in the precursor tongue. Then light.
The warriors had come.
Light beings reigned down on the terror former, from no where in the sky they fell, landing with precision on the vital weak points of the machine. And using their light powered swords to penetrate the hard armour. Dark lightning spread across the body as the circuits inside were shut down one by one.
On the bridges too the came, smashing the smaller creatures into eco floating on the wind with nothing but their arms. Three dark makers came at a warrior at once, and he just stood the, drawing his sword and waiting, waiting for them to come to him, he wasn't disappointed. The three charged at once, claws lengthened and teeth bared, but he leapt up, flying at least two metres in the air, and landed behind the thrashing creatures, who had become tangled in each other. He jumped at the nearest one, dancing between it's talons and driving his blade up through the beat's chest, making it shatter into nothing, then he turned his attention to the other two, putting his hand on one of their heads and using it to propel himself over it and stab it through the back in mid-air. The third took one look at his fallen comrades and decided there would be no surrender, it charged at the warrior, drawing it's own rusted, dark eco coated dagger, but it made no difference, the light eco powered soldier side stepped and let the creatures momentum carry it past him, then he brought his sword down on the onyx monster's head, and shattered it.
Jak could see the warriors on the terror former begin to gain the upper hand, the huge head firing lazers at them becoming overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, more and more were creeping up it's neck to the control pit, the dark maker inside couldn't keep up with the amount of targets, a few went flying off the side, blown off by the gun, but three more took each of their places. Finally one made it up, cracking the glass on the head the making the creature inside look up, to see it's death coming towards it, in the shape of a sword.
The former fell fast after that, the small number of dark makers inside it being destroyed easily. Soon it came down in the water of the port, tumbling backwards into the water from all the way at the entrance to the gardens. Jak stared around at the destruction, pipes that had been mended just days ago had been blown open again, the fires from the demon's attack had been re-lit, and civilian's dead bodies lay crumpled on the ground, war had once again reared it's ugly head upon innocent people. But the city was safe, for now.
THEMAKEROFLIGHT: well there we are, I'm slowly but surely eliminating the main threats to Haven's safety, just one to go now, but I'm will play this out for some time, stay tuned for lots of chapters filled with a lot of battle.