Zengus said, “She had plans to break free; she figured that she could’ve. The Valkyrie gave her hope, and especially, having Cataclysm, it was a clear option that she could shut them down forever.”

  Kado asked, “What made her think they’d just let her go like that?”

  Zengus said, “Can’t say. People have so much power they forget who they are or where they came from. What I know is she’s still hell-bent on using Cataclysm and believe me, she’ll bring fire down on us all.”

  I asked, “And what are the Omegans bringing?”

  Zengus said, “Don’t matter what they’re bringing. They’re coming to shut all of this down. We’ve lived on their graces for generations at the cost of giving them everything this planet has. What would you have expected?”

  “I don’t know, Zengus. Can’t see what you could expect from them other than to be their dog,” Kado said.

  Zengus said, “Better a live dog than a dead duck. You’re going into the mill. Least I’m making my plans to get away somehow. Now let’s move.”

  With Zengus and Reilly watching, we formed a detail and hauled the Cataclysm device out of the cave. The box was more bulky than heavy, and I kept an eye on Zengus and Reilly, who both trained their guns on us.

  I was next to Kado, and we stood across from Norg. Norg’s eyes still had the glazed bluish glow to them, and he said nothing other than a few grunts when the box got stuck against a wall of the tunnel.

  Our trip out of the cave was a lot bumpier and quieter than the way in, of course. Reilly walked ahead while Zengus watched us from the rear. I heard Zengus open up his comm. “Cataclysm retrieved transport. Give ETA.”

  The comm crackled for a few seconds; then came a response. “ETA ten minutes.”

  Zengus replied, “Good work. How about the others?”

  After a few seconds the comm crackled again. “Crucinal and Firebreed? Lost contact with their transport but we saw the blast. No one walking away from that.”

  My knees weakened.

  No, it couldn’t have been.

  She’d have fought back, right? Wouldn’t she have figured out there was a problem? Ana was too smart for that, just to have been locked up and killed.

  By the time we made it outside, the transport ships had landed. Their slender black crafts were lined up as if on a showroom floor somewhere. They’d been over our vehicle already, and from the mess of wiring and pieces thrown around, it was a safe bet we were stranded.

  Some of the Lebabolis gray bands approached. Zengus motioned them to the Cataclysm device. While others grabbed Kado and me, Norg loaded the device onto one of the transports. They brought us close to our craft.

  “On your knees,” Zengus commanded.

  “Zengus, what’s the point now? You’ve got Cataclysm, Charista has it. Why even waste time on us when you can destroy whoever you want?” I asked.

  Zengus said, “Because this was part of the deal. Charista doesn’t want anyone around who could get in the way. Which is why she had Ana killed as well.”

  He watched us as the words sank in. I eyed Kado; he just watched Zengus with eyes so wide and his mouth halfway open. “You unbelievable bastards.”

  “That’s enough from you two.” Zengus swung his rifle to my chest. “I think I’ll take away the prophet here, since he started all this.”

  My eyes were blurred with tears and I choked a few sobs out. Was this it for me? Was this how it was going to end? Dying alone here centuries in the future, and what did I have to show for it? Not a whole hell of a lot.

  Zengus closed one eye and took aim, but Reilly stopped him. “We got trouble.”

  Zengus still held his aim. “Who, Omegans?”

  “No, something else—you’ve got to see this.” Reilly pointed at something over our shoulders.

  Zengus flung his rifle across his back and leaned close. His stale breath had me gag a bit. “Stay right here; I’ll be back to finish the job in a second.”

  I craned my neck for a look at whatever they saw, but the Hell Hawk and the transports blocked my view. But then I heard a noise.

  At first it sounded like rolls of thunder. As it got louder, it cleared up—it wasn’t thunder but a lot of yelling. A group approached from hills off to the left of the cave across a clearing. None of them looked familiar, and they weren’t even Omegans. In fact there were no distinguishing colors or anything. All of them had scraggly manes of hair. In the front of them was a man with a Hell Hawk pilot uniform. I chuckled when I noticed the mane of blonde hair on the man ahead of the group and the crazy look in his eyes.

  “I’ll be damned,” Kado muttered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s Jacobs.”

  “How can you tell this far away?”

  Kado chuckled. “I’d know that mop of hair anywhere.”

  There he was, his uniform more ragged from when I’d last seen him at the crater, but it was the guy, his eyes wild, but the group he was with I hadn’t seen. I scanned the crowd for any hint of Ana, but she wasn’t there.

  Who were these new friends? Had he lost his mind and hooked up with renegade savages? Whoever they were I just hoped they were on our side. The other soldiers were pretty haggard, but their shoulders were broad and they carried weapons. Some were pulse rifles, some just sticks, but they looked menacing.

  Zengus waved the Lebabolis detail, and they loaded up onto the ships. Before long, the night air erupted in pulse fire.

  Jacob’s group kept their charge up and just broke off into multiple units. They peppered the Transports with pulse fire in random short bursts. The Lebabolis troops hunkered down and laid down fire. The ground shook from the explosions and weapons blasts.

  Zengus, rifle held up against his side, dashed back to us.

  “On second thought, we may need some help with Cataclysm once it gets going.” He clutched Kado by the scruff of his neck. Kado yelled out and fumbled until he was upright. Zengus dragged him off to the ship. I watched him pass Norg, and he swung his rifle into the side of Norg’s head. Norg collapsed onto the ground.

  Zengus and his group fired up their ships and after return fire from the group with Jacobs, they were up and soared out of sight in a few seconds.

  The troops made it to the Hell Hawk, and when they saw me some of them growled in response. But Jacobs waved the others down. He walked close to me, the rest of them close behind. They’d have all been shoo-ins for extras on an episode of The Walking Dead.

  “The hell are y’all doin here?” Jacobs lifted me to my feet.

  “I was thinking the same thing about you,” I responded.

  He shrugged and laughed. “We got hit after the Crater. Omegan bastards shot my bird up good, had to ditch inside Lebabolis territory.

  “You landed?” I asked.

  “Hell, yeah, I did. Who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to?”

  “What about Ana?”

  “She’s fine, least since we landed. We parted ways on our next move. Ana and Dawn took off with Treg for the Capital, rest of us wanted back in the fight.”

  I felt a lump form in my throat. “They said they killed her.”

  “Who?”

  “Zengus.”

  “What happened to him?” Jacobs asked.

  “Went traitor,” I said. “Turned this guy into a drone, at least for a while.” I motioned to Norg. He stood up straight, like a machine that waited for its next command.

  Jacobs eyed Norg. “Ehh, yeah, well, some of these Guard been working around tech things. I’ll have them take a look. Long as Norg ain’t trying to take us down for now. So back up a bit. You said Zengus turned?”

  “Yep. We’d gotten our hands on Cataclysm and he overpowered us. Took off on those craft you shot at with Kado.”

  Jacobs rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I just don’t know. If Charista gets that thing and can get it to work, I just…” He stared off in thought about what the rest of his comment would’ve meant, and I had an idea it was something pretty horrific on a global scale. He seemed to also be processing the fact that Cataclysm even existed, as if he’d been an agnostic suddenly shown how wrong they were about the beyond.

  His eyes cleared a bit, and then they showed pain as he said, “Ana, gone?” His eyes got misty and he bowed his head for a second. “She was our link; she pulled us together.”

  His body softened a bit and I felt more tears come down. There had to be a mistake. Zengus just wanted us as broken and defeated as possible. I had to think this was just some mind game of his.

  “Who are these people?”

  “The Guard.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You bet your ass. They been tearing it up in the Outlands. They’re scattered but in groups large enough to cause some serious hell, I’m here to tell ya. We been giving Omegans plenty of crap to deal with.”

  “That’s great but there’s more. They struck a deal.”

  “What?”

  “Something about a package exchange. Kado intercepted a transmission,” I said.

  Jacobs wiped his brow and cast a look around toward the Guard troops. “Package? What, the Valentium?”

  I grabbed his arm. “No, you don’t understand. The package isn’t Valentium at all. It’s us.”

  His face twisted a bit. “Come again?”

  “That’s right, Jacobs. The Coalition wasn’t ever being sent to the Range to fight the Omegans. We’re being delivered to them.”

  “By who?” Jacobs asked.

  “Charista.”

  Jacobs shook his head and took a few uneasy steps around. He looked over the Guard troops. They looked pretty eager for some action, one way or the other.

  Sweat glistened his already filthy brow. He swiped at his eyes a bit. “So they get their weapon and they get to turn us loose. For what, I haven’t a clue. I- I told Ana she shouldn’t have trusted Charista. I tried stopping her, Nelson. I did.”

  “I know. Tell you the truth, I don’t believe that story about her being dead. Just seems too simple for them to try that. They’d do anything to shake us up,” I said.

  In an instant, Jacobs shook his head and reared up, as if he’d gotten some kind of electric shock. His eyes steeled a bit and his brow uncreased. “Hmm, well, we can’t sit here thinking about what might be while there’s something pretty big we can do something about.”

  “The Range,” I said.

  He nodded. “Something else too, and this lines up with what you said about us being delivered to the Omegans. We’ve been tracking a large group of Omegans, hitting them when we could, but they ain’t stopping for shit, and my best guess on where they’re headin’ is smack dab where Llewyn is. If we’ve been sold out, I’m circling back and protecting who I care about that I’m sure’s still here. Our people need us; I’m going there. Y’all coming?”

  “Hell, yeah. So Llewyn made it to the Range?”

  Jacobs nodded. “Yep, well, he best get tucked in quick because there’s Omegan patrols all over the place. They’re gonna hit the Range hard, and he better be locked in.”

  “How’d you get in with this group?”

  “When I left Ana and the rest at the crash site, I headed for the nearest Storehouse I could think of. It took a while, but then I ran into these guys. It took some convincing but not too much to get them to realize I was no friend of Omegans and definitely not Lebabolis. They brought me to one of their encampments and showed me their setup.”

  “How many are there out there?”

  “This group’s five hundred strong right now, but they tell me there’s over a thousand, spread around the Outlands. They live apart though; they forage for whatever they can find in the wild and the Outlands.”

  “Who’s their leader?”

  “Some guy named Duncan. He ain’t interested in getting involved in any combat. They want to keep themselves fed.”

  “If they got word, if Llewyn called a distress alert, they’d already known about it.”

  “Maybe but we’ve got a package out there, Valentium.”

  “Yeah? That’s his big plan? Don’t add up at all, man. They’re corralling us in. And now we’re going to the Range, a dead end. They’ve got us penned in. What if it wasn’t about the Valentium after all?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “This whole exchange is bullshit. The package they want to trade isn’t the Valentium, it’s a hostage exchange. They’re trading us.”

  “But for what?”

  “We need to get in the open on this. Let’s circle around the Range. If the Omegans are gonna hit that, we need to be where they wouldn’t expect us. That’s what Ana’d want anyway.”

  Chapter 16 (Ana)

  C harista walked me over to Harkson’s private quarters where he met me. He was the biggest mystery to me of all the upper echelon of Lebabolis, even more than the Coursons. At least the Coursons were known in the Sectors, and every now and then they showed up in different places, but Harkson was out of sight most of the time. The updates on MODOSNet pretty much all featured Charista with the status of Lebabolis, and Harkson was a ghost in the wind who ran things from some distant place or even another planet.

  He sat at his desk slouched as if a king who’d held his reign too long and had gotten fat and bored. His cold eyes examined me inside and out like he was some kind of judge who decreed a verdict on a crime he also determined I committed.

  Everything was bathed in dark colors. A wall of monitors filled one side; each screen showed activity from a different Sector. Most of them had Omegan Patrols at one point or another. I couldn’t believe how they were so comfortable with this; at least they never said anything about it to me. We were supposed to be in this pact together, but it was clear how much they withheld the longer I stayed over here.

  The terminal at Harkson’s desk was pushed to the side, and he clutched a glass. His steel grey eyes looked like they’d seen the world and then some. He looked tired but also like he’d just read the book about my life and was ready to quiz me on it.

  “I trust Charista told you about the Valkyrie?” He said the word ‘Valkyrie’ like it was a piece of sour fruit in his mouth or a bacterial infection. His brow drew in a line.

  “She showed me the clips.”

  His eyes still locked on me, he sipped from his glass. “I never liked the Valkyrie. That much power in one person’s hands is a recipe for disaster. But these aren’t normal times, and people having a focal point drives them more than anything else. People are easy to sway if you’ve got their emotions. I can’t deny the Valkyrie did that quite well. She convinced them freedom was better than security, in fact.”

  He reached back and tapped the terminal at his desk, and up sprung a holo image of the Valkyrie symbol. He shook his head at the crossed dagger and bolt as if it were an insect he wanted killed.

  “Isn’t that contraband here?”

  Harkson studied the image a little more, then returned my glance with more of his icy gaze. “It was, during peacetime. Symbols are very powerful, Ms. Crucinal, as you may have realized by now. They rally people, give them something to fight for.” His lips curved up just a little as he added, “Against unbeatable odds.”

  I pulled the knife and turned it over and around in my hands. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

  His brow raised and he chuckled a little. He looked uneasy about having laughed. I figured there weren’t many laughs around here, ever. “So she didn’t tell you everything?”

  I sighed and slapped the knife on his desk. His eyes jumped to it, then back to me. I leaned closer. “No. How about you do before I raid your supplies and leave with my brother?”

  It felt like I was back with Baudricort. There wasn’t a word for how done I was with all this mystery and secrets. “I want to know about—”

  “Ana, the woman Petra you’ve seen... the Valkyrie... she’s your mother.”

  I froze in place. My gut was burning, and I heard almost nothing except the ringing in my ears. “What? No, m-my dad was taken as a Deviant and sent for Realignment and my mother was a Worker Product killed in a raid.”

  Harkson shook his head. “The people you lived with as your parents were in fact taken as part of the Deviant uprising, and yes they were sent for Realignment. We pieced together records in MODOSNet after Baudricort wiped all he did from the system and formed the Action. He covered a lot of tracks; I guess he was worried we’d target any offspring of Deviants and do away with them.”

  “Wonder how he got that idea.”

  He ignored my glare. “As I said earlier, the symbol of the Valkyrie was very important at one time. She saved Lebabolis from being overrun, and a lot of people remembered those days. But once it came time to reestablish order and preserve the peace, the Valkyrie was at odds with the plans of the Coursons.”

  “I’ve heard this story. She tried to take control back and ended up killing Products, then she disappeared once she went to face a group of Omegans who attacked Lebabolis.”

  “That’s not all of it. The Valkyrie is a wartime leader and we were at peace, but she wouldn’t stand down, and she had enough people on her side to be a problem. Ana, that’s not all. She killed people. Among them, your mother. Instead of a discussion, she opted for a takeover. It threatened our security. We had to stop her for the safety of it all.”

  The video showed scenes of Sector Five, a fabrication plant. The one my mom worked at.

  “Sector Five produced window tech. This is security footage from when the Valkyrie assaulted the complex. She called it liberation, but this; look, Ana. Look at those people. Terrified, running and being slaughtered.”

  I watched an army, led by the Valkyrie, proceed through the plants, firing on security and other soldiers. People were laid down in her wake. She regarded the scene with a smug smirk on her face.

  He took a sip of his drink. “Ana, you know what’s happening out there now. You’re closer to it than anyone here. You’ve seen the bodies and destruction. Not even our best Radomet can hold off this invasion forever.”

  “Why didn’t he just tell me? I was with him for so long, he had every opportunity to, but he never said anything about this.” A tear stung my eye when I painfully recalled how slow he even was to reveal he was my father.

 

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