Old World (The Survivors Book Eleven)

by Nathan Hystad

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright © 2019

  Books By Nathan Hystad

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  New Discovery (The Survivors Book 12)

  Confrontation (Baldwin's Legacy Book 1)

  Copyright © 2019 Nathan Hystad

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover art: Tom Edwards Design

  Edited by: Scarlett R Algee

  Proofed and Formatted by: BZ Hercules

  Books By Nathan Hystad

  Keep up to date with his new releases by signing up for his Newsletter at www.nathanhystad.com

  Nathan’s books are also available on Audible!

  The Survivors Series

  The Event

  New Threat

  New World

  The Ancients

  The Theos

  Old Enemy

  New Alliance

  The Gatekeepers

  New Horizon

  The Academy

  Old World

  New Discovery

  Baldwin’s Legacy

  Confrontation

  Unification

  The Resistance Series

  Rift

  Revenge

  Return

  Lights Over Cloud Lake

  The Manuscript

  Red Creek

  Return to Red Creek

  One

  The hovertrain raced above the lavender fields at over four hundred kilometers an hour, making the crops appear as an indistinct blend of green and purple.

  “Look, Hugo,” Mary said, pointing out the window.

  “Is it a cool spaceship?” he asked, looking through the glass.

  “No. It’s lavender,” she told him. “Dean, do you think someone is tending these?”

  Judging by the large buildings to the west of the immense field, I guessed they were. “It appears so.”

  “I wish we could stop. What’s the point of touring the colonies if we can’t pause and see some nature along the way?” Mary told me.

  I glanced at Hugo, who was face-first into a handheld video game. I’d been lucky enough to have one kid disinterested in technology of that nature, but Hugo was another can of worms. All he wanted to do was watch TV shows and play games. He’d be enrolled in the Academy in another two years when he turned ten, and I was hoping that would snap him out of his obsession.

  Jules had started school much earlier, but her aptitude levels were quite a bit higher. Hugo was, by all accounts, an average little boy, and we were happy about it.

  “Maybe next time,” I told her.

  “Right, the next time we’re traveling around as a family on Earth, in Europe,” she said, making me cringe. She was right. We weren’t going to be here again, and if we were, it would be another quick trip between colony cities.

  “Paul!” I called from my seat. The hovertrain car was mostly empty; only a few people were heading from Nouveau Paris to Nuevo Madrid with us. Paul was one of them, along with his wife Sammy and their now teenage daughter, Brittany. His girl was a few years older than Jules, almost seventeen, if my memory served.

  “What’s up, Dean?” Paul asked from the front of the car. He was reading something on a tablet. Probably a Shimmali mystery thriller. I’d gotten him hooked after Sarlun had lent me his favorite.

  “Can you have them stop here for a few minutes?” I asked, and Mary smiled at me.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Mary said, but her eyes told another story.

  Paul disappeared through the car doors leading to the pilot, and I saw the landscape already slowing through the window.

  He returned a second later, giving me a thumbs-up. “Looks like they were stopping for maintenance anyway. Something about the central thrusters. He says it shouldn’t be too long.”

  “How often does this kind of issue occur?” Mary asked Paul, trying to be loud enough for him to hear without shouting.

  “Not very often, but it happens. Like I said, it shouldn’t take long. We’ll come for a walk with you,” Paul said, urging his daughter Brittany from her seat.

  “Then it’s settled. We can stretch our legs,” I said, grabbing Hugo’s game and turning it off. I swore his eyes were going to go crossed if he kept playing these things.

  “Dad, I was about to finish the level,” he pouted.

  “You can vanquish the overlords when we’re done seeing one of Earth’s most beautiful landscapes. How does that sound?” I asked.

  “Lame.” He was only eight, and already prone to one-word conversations.

  Mary didn’t seem to notice as she stood up, heading for the exit. She looked great in a pair of jeans and an emerald-green blouse, dressing more casually than we had for the last week or so as we’d visited the colonies in the United Kingdom, then in Germany.

  Hugo ran for his mother as the hovertrain lowered to the ground, eventually coming to a stop.

  The train itself was reminiscent of a luxury train designed in Europe. The hovertrains from various worlds each served different purposes. Some were used by races like the Inlor to transport goods between cities. We also had those types on New Spero between our Terran sites, as well as passenger cars like the one we were currently in.

  This one was equipped with rich finishings: mahogany wood and silver trimmings. It was a far cry from the old lines I used to ride from upstate New York into the big city.

  The exit opened wide as the ship powered off, and Mary stepped out first, Hugo running past her into the edge of the lavender fields. The sun was high in the near-cloudless sky, and I basked in it a moment as my shoes found the grass.

  The smell was overwhelming; a blast to the senses. Mary beamed as she glanced at me, reaching to take my hand as she led me from the train.

  “Sammy, have you seen these before?” Mary asked Paul’s wife, and she shook her head.

  “Never. Only from above, at a few hundred kilometers an hour, or in pictures. It’s wonderful,” she added.

  Even Brittany appeared to be enjoying it, and I saw her aiming her tablet toward the vast rows of deep purple flowers, likely filming the excursion.

  “Hugo, don’t go too far!” I shouted at my boy, but he was never one to heed my advice. He kept running in the grass between the thick lavender rows. I was just happy he was playing outside for once.

  I peered at the hovertrain behind us, wondering where the issue was. This train was only three cars long and used for shipping dignitaries and colony leaders around between cities. While the interior looked like a classic luxury train, the outs
ide was far different. The windows were actually screens on the inside, projecting the views from externally-mounted cameras, meaning you could take the train into orbit if necessary. The hull was designed to stop radiation, and it was shielded from attack. The outer edge was made from a dense black material found on a world discovered by the Keppe during an exploratory mission.

  The thought reminded me of Magnus and Natalia, and I decided we needed to have a visit with them. It had been too long, at least half a year.

  The landscape rolled like waves, and from the top of a hill, I saw a lake in the distance, cypress trees lining the rear of the lavender field. It was so picturesque. No matter how many planets I’d had the luxury of visiting, I always found Earth to be the most beautiful, and I was thrilled that the Empress had returned it to our race. The odd Bhlat remained near the portals, but more as a protective force against intruders than anything else.

  The Empress was gone, returned home with her daughter. Rumor was that she’d found a new general, and they were a couple. That would be interesting.

  “How are things going in Spain?” I asked Paul as he slowed, allowing me to catch up.

  “Madrid’s new expansion has struggled. I know we’ve been discussing the Restorers a lot recently. They’re becoming a real issue, especially in the Mediterranean nations,” Paul said.

  “I thought they were more like rogue groups, stealing resources for their non-sanctioned colonies,” I said, seeing I apparently didn’t have the right impression.

  Paul ran a hand through his hair and paused. Mary and I turned to him with interest.

  “Paul, what are you leaving out?” Mary asked.

  “They… we’ve had a few issues in the States with them. Mostly in the south, since they seem to have set up base in places like New Mexico and Arizona. Which makes sense, because we don’t have a strong foothold there,” Paul said.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘a few issues’?” I asked.

  “Look, the Restorers are globalizing. At first, we thought they were each their own rogue colonies, but the further along we go, the more similarities we find between our encounters with them. Their rhetoric is the same, like they’re reading from a Restorer handbook or something,” Paul said.

  I searched for Hugo and saw him walking beside Brittany, and I was glad someone was watching him.

  “What’s their endgame?” Mary asked.

  “We don’t know. The name holds a purpose: the Restorers. The little we have on them indicates they want the world to return to the way it was,” Paul said.

  “That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, Dean, it’s not. They want it to be better than before the Event. Before technology and the Industrial Revolution.”

  I laughed at this. “Oh, so they can get the plague or die from a hangnail? Okay, well, good for them. Can’t they do this on their own time?”

  “That’s what we thought. We haven’t been able to learn enough about them. We don’t know why, but our drones black out over their main colonies. They go in filming, end up dark, and return with no footage,” Paul said.

  I was surprised by the information, and by the fact that it was the first Mary and I were hearing about this. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “You have enough going on, and until recently, there hasn’t been a lot of reason to worry anyone.” Paul waved at his wife, who was heading over to our standing spot.

  “Wow, looks like a maintenance crew arrived here quickly,” Sammy said, pointing to the west. I had to squint to block the sun, and saw a vessel approaching us.

  “There’s no way a ship could have arrived that quickly, even if we did call one in,” Paul said quietly.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I comprehended what was happening. “Hugo, over here now!”

  I saw his head bobbing up and down over the row of lavender beside us, and Brittany was grinning at him.

  “Dean, what do we do?” Mary asked.

  “Do we have weapons?” I asked Paul, who shrugged.

  “I guess we have a pulse rifle or two inside,” he said, but we were out of time. The incoming vessel lowered over the field. It was an old Bhlat dropship, heavily modified. It reminded me of Lom of Pleva’s robopirates, with the rough welds and mismatched hull sheets.

  The doors spread wide, and I pushed Hugo behind me as soon as he arrived, staring up at the newcomers.

  A man stood in the doorway wearing patchy leather armor, holding an old rifle, and smiling with a cigar between his teeth.

  “Look what we have here,” he said, grinning like he knew a secret we didn’t. Their ship was hovering five feet over the fields, and he hopped out, landing with ease a short distance from us. A woman appeared in the ship’s cargo ramp door, and she jumped beside him, followed by another and then another, until we were faced with a dozen or so menacing armed opponents.

  I’d been foolish to not wear a weapon. There hadn’t been a reason to go equipped, but in our new world, it was always imperative to be ready. Complacency ended with people killed, as we’d experienced with the Kold. I wondered if any of these people might be our look-alike enemies, but that was impossible. With Jules’ help, we’d captured them all years ago.

  The cigar man stepped closer, and I could smell him from far away, a mixture of tobacco and leather. He sported a short beard, his pants and vest were made from animal hide, and his face held a grimace even while smiling. It was unnerving. His long hair was slicked back and tied into a ponytail.

  “What do you want?” I asked, placing the leadership of our group on myself rather than Paul or Mary.

  “Want?” he asked, his voice higher pitched than it should have been.

  “That’s what I asked. Is there something we can help you with?” I asked him, stepping forward.

  “I’m sure there are a few things we can avail ourselves of on this here train. Ain’t that right, Belle?” he asked the woman next to him. She was thin, with long pale arms jutting from her matching vest. Her hair was long and dark, pulled into four ponytails placed around her head.

  “Oui. J’imagine qu’il y a beaucoup de friandises a bord,” she said in smooth flowing French.

  “I don’t suppose you parles français?” he asked, his accent terrible.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” I told them. “But I get the gist of it. You want our train.”

  “You’re a quick one. What did you say your name was?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say.” The last thing I wanted was this man knowing I was Dean Parker. “I’m Cliff. Cliff Jones.”

  There were at least five guns aimed directly at me, and we had no choice but to cooperate with the gang. It grated on me.

  “Pleased to meet you, Cliff. I’m Frasier, and I’ll be your tour guide today.”

  “What’s going on out here?” a voice asked from inside the train. It was our pilot, and his eyes sprang wide at seeing the situation.

  “We’re here to take your train, good sir, and all the supplies on board. Now, if you’d kindly step off and raise your hands,” Frasier said.

  The pilot obeyed, lifting his arms high in the air. “It won’t do you any good. The coupler is fried. This train isn’t going anywhere.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Frasier said. “Louis, if you would.”

  A short kid walked from around the armed group, hefting a plug-in device in his hand. He tossed it up in the air and caught it with ease. “You mean like this coupler?” the kid asked with an attitude.

  “Yes, like that,” the pilot said, defeated.

  It was clear we’d been had from the start. They’d sabotaged our ship in Paris and were ambushing us.

  “Are you with them?” I asked.

  “Of whom are we speaking?” Frasier asked, puffing on his cigar. He was an enigma.

  “Don’t string me along. The Restorers,” I told him, the word sounding dirty on my tongue.

  His eyebrows rose in surprise. “S
o you’ve heard of us. How interesting.”

  “What’s the point? Why don’t you live the way you want to and let the colonies do as they choose?” I asked him.

  He laughed, and eventually, the rest of his group did too, a maniacal sound if ever I’d heard one. “And that’s the problem right there… Cliff. Do you recall what the world was like before the Event?”

  “Sure I do,” I said.

  “Then you know how terrible it was. How segregated we were, how dangerous. We were a tinder box, ready to go off. The Kraski saved us, gave us another chance to start over. And we aren’t going to stand by while you all destroy the opportunity,” he said.

  “You’re using technology now,” I told him. “This ship. Those weapons. Isn’t that a little hypocritical?” I asked, and Mary set a hand on my arm, urging me to be quiet. She was right. There was no need in agitating the group. I cast my stare aside, looking at my feet.

  “These are but a means to an end. It won’t be long, Cliff. Don’t you worry,” Frasier said, walking directly up to me.

  It was clear the conversation was over, and I kept my lips closed. Hugo hugged his mom tightly, and Paul draped his arm protectively over his daughter’s shoulders. The remaining five passengers were ushered out of the train at gunpoint, and I cringed as a young child cried while his mother clutched him to her chest.

  The young man with the replacement coupler sauntered to the front of the train, which was nestled onto the ground at the edge of the fields. He clambered up the nose of the vessel, using the metal footholds built into the side. We watched as he tossed the faulty device to the grass, and soon he was returning, wiping his hands in the air, indicating the job was completed. He winked at me as he strolled past and onto the train.

  “We’re taking the pilot with us,” Frasier told us, aiming his gun at the man.

  “No… I’m supposed to be home with my family tomorrow,” our pilot said, his cheeks going red.

  “Isn’t there another way?” Paul asked the group.

  “Sure. Can you fly a hovertrain?” Frasier asked, and Paul shook his head. “Then he comes with us. It’s settled.”