Ruined Terra (Book 11 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Lily confirmed that fear when she shook her head. “We have to find my spare medical kit—the one I left at the pinnaces—if we’re to have any chance of doing that. I don’t dare open up anybody’s skull without it. Admiral, we need to recover that as badly as we do the Imperial Scepter. Hell, anything at all that we can get back is going to increase our chances of success. We need to do what we can to make that happen.”

  Jared rubbed his face as his horse moved forward in the darkness. “So, what you’re saying is that we’re going to have to sneak into an enemy city right under their noses, find where they’ve stashed all of the gear they’re taken from us, all without them raising the alarm? Then we’ll need to get out of the city and somehow escape what is probably the seat of their power. That doesn’t sound difficult at all.”

  Difficult or not, they really didn’t have a choice. If they were going to succeed in their mission, they had to have the scepter. They’d find a way to sneak into the horde city without raising the alarm, steal what they needed, and then somehow escape again without being noticed.

  And that was only the first step. From what he knew, the horde city was actually farther away from the Imperial Palace than the campsite where they’d crashed the pinnaces.

  They had no advanced weaponry, were down to just over a dozen people, and Terra was a hostile world that seemed determined to kill them. He just didn’t know if they could make it.

  Still, he wasn’t going to give up. This wasn’t his kind of fight, but he was going to make it work. The New Terran Empire was counting on them, and he wouldn’t let them down.

  No matter the cost, they’d do what needed to be done. And that started with getting into the horde city without being captured.

  27

  After five days of riding, Julia was exhausted. They’d traveled mostly by night, terrified that one of the horde search groups would catch them. To help mitigate that, they’d chosen not to head toward the horde city directly.

  Instead, they’d slipped away from the direct line between Captain Beauchamp’s outpost and the city, looping far off to one side and only turning toward the latter two nights ago.

  The first day she’d been terrified that the horde would come down on them, but they didn’t see a single rider. Beauchamp seemed to believe that the direction they’d taken might have fooled them. She believed that there were so many riders out there, that their tracks were being confused with the rest of the search groups.

  It probably helped that the grass fire Kelsey had started had cut a huge slash behind them and the smoke filled half the sky. That had to be distracting. They’d caught a break that none of them had had any reason to expect.

  Beauchamp had worked with her to make some modifications to her armor that she’d said would make it blend in more seamlessly with the horde, should they be spotted. Julia didn’t really understand the significance of the changes, as they all seemed cosmetic, but anything that kept her from blowing their cover was a good thing.

  As she worked, Beauchamp had told her stories about the man who’d once worn the armor that was now hers. He’d been a practical joker, but fierce in battle. A loyal friend that would trade his life for his comrades without a moment’s hesitation.

  A truth the local knew firsthand as he’d done exactly that during the fight, saving her life at the cost of his own.

  She couldn’t understand how the other woman was just calmly talking about her man. She seemed reflective and at peace. Not unhurt, but not as if she’d just lost so many people she’d known and commanded.

  Julia was a wreck in comparison. The pain of losing Scott squeezed Julia’s heart tight in her chest. She couldn’t stop replaying the last fight over and over again in her mind. What could she have done differently? What actions would’ve allowed them both to have survived?

  Her brain knew that he’d already been dying and nothing she’d done would’ve changed that, but her heart still wailed at her failure to save him. His death would always lie heavy on her soul, a stain that she would never fully wash away.

  Though she intended to try. The blood of their enemies would make for a satisfying start. If it would ease her pain, she’d bathe in it.

  They’d entered a light forest early yesterday, which had slowed them down, but also served to conceal them from any pursuers. That gave her hope that they might finally be in the clear from the most immediate threats.

  She certainly hoped so, because as tired as she was, the rest of them were infinitely more exhausted. None of them were trained riders except for Kelsey, Elise, Olivia, Carl, and herself. Oh, and Beauchamp. So almost half of their number. Yet the other half desperately needed some rest. They also needed to plan.

  By the best of Beauchamp’s estimates, the horde city was just over twenty kilometers away. The other woman thought that they’d start seeing the tallest of the buildings in the megacity in the morning, if they found a suitably clearing.

  “Why not just live in the megacity?” she asked Beauchamp as they drank water and ate cold rations in the chill dawn the next morning. “If they’re going to build their city right next to it, why not just go ahead and take the extra step to move into the larger accommodations? I understand that they wouldn’t have power, but something could probably still be done to make it work.”

  “The ruined megacities have their own inhabitants,” the local woman said. “To journey into one is to risk being captured by those people, and they’re significantly more paranoid of outsiders than the rest of us, which is saying something. They don’t want contact with others. In fact, they’ll use force to drive others out of the megacities. Those that they don’t kill outright.

  “Yet the megacities are such rich sources of salvage that other groups can’t help but go into them. They don’t go in unarmed or in small numbers, though. It doesn’t take long for the inhabitants to start shadowing them. No one else could possibly know a megacity like its inhabitants. So, such excursions are brief and heavily armed. Those that aren’t are never heard from again.”

  Well, didn’t that just sound peachy?

  It was probably best that they didn’t make any plans to go into the megacity, then. There really wasn’t any reason to do so, but knowing their luck, something would come up and force them to retreat there.

  That might be negative thinking, but they had to plan for the worst-case scenarios. If their raid inside the horde city went off without a hitch, they could ride away. If it didn’t, they were going to need a handy place to retreat to because the horde city would become an anthill of people searching for them. They had to do everything in their power to avoid being recaptured because nobody wanted to be tortured and then burned to death.

  If that meant retreating into the megacity and hoping that they could evade the inhabitants long enough to find a way to escape again, that’s what they needed to plan for.

  Going inside the megacity would likely be the worst of all worlds. None of the technology would work, and the inhabitants would be hostile. They’d know every square centimeter of the city they lived in, and it would be impossible to find where they lived without capturing some of them, which would enrage the rest.

  Based on what she’d heard, it sounded as if anyone captured there was dealt with harshly. Perhaps as harshly as the horde dealt with their prisoners. Though it was possible that the captured invaders were kept alive as labor, or worse, it would be best to consider how the horde treated their prisoners.

  Though, to be fair, she wasn’t sure that held for run-of-the-mill captives. Those might just be enslaved. Which, on reflection, might be a worse fate than even a painful death.

  This could easily be a “from the frying pan into the fire” sort of moment. Yet another catchy phrase that Kelsey had shared with her. Considering that the form of execution the horde favored was immolation, it had an ironically grim meaning as well.

  Julia took a few moments to look over the rest of the party, many of whom were still asleep. They’d travel again today
and make it close to the horde city by dark. Tomorrow, they’d have to figure out how they were going to sneak inside the damned place.

  One thing was for sure, the horde would never expect them to come wandering right up to their seat of power looking to sneak in. That kind of behavior was insane.

  She wasn’t exactly happy that that’s what they had to do either. They’d have to observe the horde city before they could make any decision about how to get inside it. Once they did get inside, they’d have to find out where all their gear was being kept, which she was sure would be under heavy guard. Then they’d need to get access to it without the horde knowing, and finally slip away unseen.

  At any point, they could make a critical mistake and their goose was cooked. Yet another catchy phrase with a double meaning from her doppelgänger that involved fire. She was just a font of gruesome sayings.

  Julia sighed. It was no use complaining. Their situation was what it was. She really hoped they could get Doctor Stone’s medical supplies—maybe even the spare medical kit that had been left at the pinnaces—because she’d love to have her augmentation back online. That would make escaping the city at least possible.

  If they could scrounge up their gear and find a place inside the city to hide while they recovered, then they could come up with a plan to escape completely. Perhaps once they’d left horde territory, the rest of the trip would be easier.

  That overly optimistic thought made her mentally laugh. It was almost guaranteed that the trip was going to get harder with every single step.

  Thankfully, figuring all this out wasn’t her problem. She could give Kelsey and Mertz—Jared—advice and opinion, but in the end, those decisions rested with them.

  As she chewed the last of her meal, she wondered what they’d decide to do. Would it be a straightforward plan that she’d never have considered, or would it be some kind of crazy mission that was bound to get them all killed?

  Knowing her doppelgänger, Julia was betting on the latter.

  Well, it was time to get the rest of them up and start that planning. They had some more riding to do and then someone would have to scout the city. Probably Talbot, since marines had that skill set.

  It was crunch time, and everything needed to go just right, or they’d all be dead, just like Scott and the rest.

  The next morning, ten minutes after her husband had left to scout the area toward the horde city, Kelsey forced herself to stop worrying about him and what he might find on his search. She couldn’t afford the distraction. They needed to have a plan of action once they found a way into the city.

  Which they would, one way or another.

  The information that Talbot brought back would certainly help them figure out the details of what needed to be done, but they’d need to have a plan already firmly in mind before then. They were only going to get one chance at this.

  Their newest hideaway in the woods was well concealed, and they’d stashed the horses in a thicket where they’d likely not be discovered. Kelsey was well aware of how much noise a horse made as it went about its life, but these seemed preternaturally quiet. It had to be part of their warhorse training.

  If they hadn’t been quiet, they’d have had to stash the horses much farther away from themselves and hope that no one came along to discover them.

  With only a dozen of her friends left alive, she felt empty inside. She couldn’t stop thinking about all the people she’d known or was responsible for that the horde had killed. So many people.

  Yet here they were, about to give the horde another chance to kill them. Worse, this wasn’t for revenge. It was only to get their equipment back before trying to slip away undiscovered.

  A big part of her wanted to see these bastards bleed. To make them pay for all the pain and suffering they’d caused. But revenge wasn’t something that they could afford to dish out right now. The cruel sons of bitches were going to get away with everything they’d done while she and her friends fought the AIs to save humanity, including their sorry butts.

  “Once we get inside the city, we’ll need to get under cover quickly,” Beauchamp said. “Every interaction we have with one of them is an opportunity for them to figure out that we don’t belong. It will only take one person sounding the alarm for us all to die.

  “One thing going for us is that we’re going to look like warriors from inside their own society, so I’m hopeful that we can make our way deeper into the city without the regular populace disturbing us. The horde has a terrible reputation about how it treats its people—almost as bad as they treat everyone else—so the average man or woman on the street is unlikely to interact with a horde warrior, much less a dozen of them.”

  Jared nodded his head slowly at that. “I’d imagine they have a seat of government of some kind. Probably a palace. Right?” At her nod, he continued. “They’re going to have people in charge that want to see everything that’s been captured. That means everything being brought in on pack horses will be taken to some kind of central repository to be sorted and identified.

  “That location is going to be heavily guarded, and we’re going to have to get inside without raising the alarm, take what we need, and then get away without them being any the wiser. If anyone has any ideas about how to make that happen, I’m all ears.”

  Before anyone could respond, the sound of horses riding sounded in the distance. The noise was faint, but it was clear that they had visitors. Thankfully, they didn’t have a fire burning or anything else that might give away their position.

  Kelsey rose from where she was sitting, picked up her bow from where she’d set it beside her, and headed for the trees in the direction the noise had come from. If they were going to have to fight, she was going to be ready.

  Of course, if they had to fight, they were all dead anyway. They couldn’t allow a single person to get away with word of where they were. Even missing people would raise the alarm sooner or later. Any sign at all that something unusual was happening would give them away eventually.

  She made her way through the trees using a path that she’d discovered early this morning. It brought her to the exterior strip of this stretch of forest and allowed her to observe what was going on out on the plain.

  About two hundred meters away, a group of horsemen rode along the edge of the forest. At her rough count, there seemed to be about three dozen riders and about twice that many pack horses.

  One of the pieces of equipment strapped on the outside of one of the packs was a computer that the science team had brought with them. It looked as if she’d spotted one of the groups that had ambushed them heading back to the city.

  The good news was that they weren’t in immediate danger, so she relaxed a little. Once they’d safely passed, she wormed her way back to the clearing and told the others what she’d seen.

  “We might have made a mistake in sending Talbot off alone,” she ventured while they digested her words. “We’re a little exposed out here. It might make more sense to follow along behind him.

  “All we’re abandoning are the horses, and they can pull themselves free because I made certain the knots in their reins would give way with any kind of determined tugging. If something happened to us, I didn’t want them to starve to death.”

  “We’re going to need the horses to escape the area,” Beauchamp said. “We can’t afford to have them discovered while we’re gone. Still, I agree with you doing that.”

  “With any luck at all, we’ll be in and out of the city before they have a chance to be discovered. If we lose the horses, that hurts our chances of survival. If we get captured, we’re dead.”

  “Neither of those options is very appealing,” Jared said. “Do you think we should just head down the path after him? He’s not going to be expecting us, and we really don’t want to surprise him.”

  “We also don’t want to be spotted out here,” Kelsey countered. “We’re committed to this, Jared. We need to follow him so that we can take advantage of whatever he
finds. Honestly, we should never have let him go alone. Time is not on our side.”

  Her brother sighed and rubbed his face. “You’re probably right. Let’s pack our gear and make it look as if no one was ever here. We’ll follow along behind Talbot and see what we can find. Hopefully, he won’t run into any trouble and we can make contact without any fuss.

  “If we miss one another, we’ll need to leave a note here telling him that we decided to follow him. Put it under some stones in a pattern so that he’ll know it wasn’t here when he left.”

  Kelsey hoped her husband wouldn’t run into anyone, that they’d get close to the city and find some way to make this damned plan work. This was a make-or-break moment. They had to get the scepter and get away again, and the clock was ticking.

  28

  Talbot moved slowly through the forest, keeping an eye out for any sign that the horde had been there before him. Any path leading toward the city was likely to be either observed or possibly trapped. He absolutely didn’t want to be a victim of something he could’ve spotted long before he chanced upon it.

  He was approaching both the horde city and the ruined megacity, as they were seated next to one other and both perpendicular to his position. The ruined megacity was significantly larger and taller. Even in its present condition, many of the buildings still stretched an unimaginable height into the sky, and he caught glimpses of the towers through the closely set trees and the leafy canopy.

  The horde city was significantly more primitive, though much newer in construction. If he had to make a guess, it was probably only fifty or sixty years old. It would’ve been constructed after the AIs had crushed Terra. No one would have been comfortable building a city so close to the dead megacity if some time hadn’t passed to make them feel safe in doing so.