Supreme Leader of Anstractor: A Sci-Fantasy Space Adventure (The New Phase Book 3) Read Free Page B

this battle has seen what we can do.”
    “What are you suggesting, Rafian?” Marian asked as she took his hand and turned him to face her.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t allow the citizens to return here after what they’ve seen. The rumors they will spread will make things hard for us, so I propose that they be made to live with us in Zallus. I want the marines to be made into Phasers. The Vestalian military cannot be allowed to know anything about the crystals. The survivors are to be considered dead from that explosion, dead to their contacts on the various battleships, and dead to their commanding officers.
    “Once they have been given the dark education of our order, I want the books closed on all recruiting. We are at a time where we need to develop elite Phasers. We can’t afford to keep Tayden Lark on the ground, training newbies instead of running missions. We are to go back into the shadows, striking at the targets that the general military cannot reach. Look, Geral is under attack now by the concert effort of the entire galaxy of Anstractor. They don’t need us to play soldier with them; they need us to stop schtill like this from ever happening again.”
    “We fully understand, Commander,” the two Phasers said to him and he opened a portal back to Zallus.

03 | A New Threat
    A RI GROATRATH held up the tiny crystal and examined it with a mixture of fear and admiration. It was the Phaser’s power, an item of mysterious properties that allowed the humans to teleport, live multiple lives, and access new technologies. But what he held in front of him looked no different than a piece of glass. He had tried everything to make it do its magic but nothing had happened.
    “Siern!” he screamed across the command room to his main aide. The bent, dark-green Geralos ran over to him, pulling up at the last minute before colliding into him.
    “High Minister!” Siern addressed him, but in a voice that seemed to be stuck in a whisper, and Ari regarded him through the corner of his eye while he still examined the crystal.
    “Remind me, how did you come by this thing?” Ari asked the grinning man. He tried to squeeze it to see if that would produce any results.
    “Virulia, Minister. There was an explosion and we were sent in to investigate what caused it. General Krylat Par wanted to know if the Alliance had destroyed one of our satellites, but what we found were the ruins of some sort of structure.”
    “What kind of structure?”
    “An old temple, built up to worship something that we couldn’t figure out. The area was clear of any other buildings, and it looked as if the temple sat alone, deep in the valley of the Virulian wilderness. The planet is unfriendly to the humans and Meluvians, so we assumed that it was not an Alliance setup.”
    “You assumed wrong,” Ari said flatly. He stood up quickly while tucking the crystal away in one of his pockets. “What you describe is very similar to the target that we’ve found on Vestalia. Tucked away, recessed in the wilderness. Remote from the prying eyes of any of their own people and almost invisible to the likes of us. Were it not for the genius of Maes Van Senthyn, their base would still be invisible to us, Siern. How long was that temple on Virulia? Long enough to let us know that we need to be taking this seriously.”
    Siern backed away from the minister and seemed to think. Then his face lit up and he clapped his hands. “Minister. The temple. I brought you back a number of items. That piece of glass and the wall of markings. Were we able to get anything from my find?”
    Ari Groatrath looked over at him and nodded his head. “I want to see these ruins myself. The wall was gibberish. Human writing about gods and chosen ones. The same dogmatic religion that primitive races look to in order to make their miserable lives seem reasonable. It looked as if that piece had been one of many that decorated this temple. The humans went there to