Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

then dropped his hand by his side. “It’s for me to better serve Kajka Okbak, the prime chieftain of the Kelhoon Liberation Force.”

Jaxx shuddered when hearing Fox’s last comment. “So, that’s what they’re calling it? Is this Kelhoon Liberation Force liberating Atlanteans on Callisto from…the Atlanteans on Callisto?”

Fox continued to pace. “Liberating the galaxy of senseless, un-needed pests, like you and these measly Atlantean scum.”

“The Kelhoon farm us, you know? They eat us, remember? They also enslave us for their own bidding. Or, has that device behind your ear erased those truths?”

“You’ll soon be wearing one, brother.”

The door opened. A Kelhoon stood at the entrance, shadowed from Jupiter’s pink hues beaming through the doorway.

A loud voice boomed, “Kajka Okbak, zanja shakanka.”

Jaxx bowed. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Prime Chieftain.”

Okbak gathered himself, shaking his shoulders as he entered Jaxx’s prison cell. The door slammed behind him. He snapped his fingers and the walls of the dome shot out in all directions, expanding to fill the hall beyond. He waved his hand over a panel and the ceiling exploded in a hail of bright white light, banishing the darkness. He grinned, dug into a satchel clipped to his belt, and pulled out an oval device. He held it up between his finger and thumb. It was identical to the device behind Fox’s ear.

Okbak relaxed his fingers around it, stepped back, and watched it hover between the bars and move toward Jaxx.

“I don’t think so, Okbak.” Jaxx went to light it on fire with his Chi, but grunted in pain instead. He fell to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head, shaking from the electricity slicing into his arms.

The cuffs had gripped his wrists like a snake wrapping around its victim.

Jaxx brought up his Chi, set his intention on shorting out the cuffs, and sent the powerful universal energy toward his hands. The cuffs fizzled and electricity sparked outward. He threw his hands away from each other, breaking the link between his wrists. He heaved a few deep breaths, then slowly brought his eyes to Okbak. He took several steps forward, his nose only a few inches from an energetic bar. “You can either hear what I have to say, or die in the process of ignoring me. It’s your choice. If you force me to turn this energy on you, I will not hesitate.”

Okbak narrowed his eyes, his pupil slits contracted and expanded a few times. He dropped his hand on the hilt of his gun holstered at his side. The device hovering next to Jaxx dropped and split in two.

Okbak walked around the cage and sat in Fox’s seat. Fox stood next to him. “Oomja kanjaj.”

“He says to enlighten him,” said Fox.

Jaxx closed his eyes, projecting a thought packet to Okbak’s mind.

Okbak jerked, and his scaly eyelids shut. He twitched and leaned forward as if watching an intense ball game—or whatever entertainment a Kelhoon might enjoy.

Jaxx sent a moving picture, much like a movie, of a thunderous ship coming through the atmosphere. It was the Agadon race, the race that had already made its way to Callisto’s surface. The atmosphere and the desert-like planet that Jaxx was showing Okbak, however, was from one of Okbak’s planets occupied by his Kelhoon race.

Then, crafts in the thousands entered his world.

Okbak gasped. He reared back in his seat, almost as if catching his breath. “Gooja bakjama.” He stood, grunted, and stomped to the door. He put his green, lizard fingers on the door’s handle and glanced at Jaxx. “Agadon, myfanka janja.” He opened the door and walked out. The door slammed shut, shaking the floors and walls as they shrunk back to their original size.

“Don’t worry, brother. He won’t kill you just yet,” said Fox. “He knows you’re lying about the Agadon. He knows they won’t be as much of a headache as you think.”

“That’s what he said to me?”

Fox shook his head. “No, he said you’re lying.”

“And what did he say when he was at the door?”

Fox gave a hearty laugh. “Okbak said he is going to convince the Agadon to join his side.”

“That’s not what he said,” responded Jaxx. Fox’s string of words was too long for Okbak’s two to three-word sentence.

“It was what he said. And from one brother to another, he has already set up a formal meeting with the Agadon. The Kelhoon and the Agadon will soon be running the galaxy together.” He walked to the door.

Jaxx pursed his lips and slammed his fist into his palm. “Look at me, Fox.”

Fox stopped and gazed into his brother’s eyes.

Jaxx reached out, throwing a wave of energy at Fox. This wave, however, was something special, a strike filled with Jaxx’s own consciousness, his own mind.

Fox put up his palm, easily stopping the Chi sent to him. “You’ve lost your touch, and so quickly.”

“Not really. It’s going through you now.”

“What’s going—” Fox put his hands over his ears and spun in a circle, his mouth open and eyes wide. The veins on his forehead and neck popped out. He yelped in pain and fell to his knees, and then to his back. He rolled on the ground, rocking back and forth. “What are you doing?”

“Just getting that device off your body.” He closed his eyes and rushed through Fox’s body, up his arm, to his shoulder, then to the area behind Fox’s ear. He merged with Fox, sharing his feelings, his thoughts, his skin.

Jaxx ran Fox’s fingertips together, and the sensation of skin against skin felt like his own, as if he was doing this inside his own body and not in Fox’s.

He went deeper into Fox’s psyche, pushing out the Kelhoon-induced fear throbbing from the oval device, and cleared the electro-magnetic impulse blocking Fox’s neural synapses.

He cleared it all out. Fox yelled in pain. Jaxx felt the stinging too, like hundreds of bees poking and prodding Fox’s brain.

Jaxx pushed onward, visualizing the prongs from the oval device sticking through Fox’s flesh. He pushed on the ends of the prongs