Ashfall Legacy

by Pittacus Lore

  “Stop this!” H’Jossu bellowed.

  He charged at Darcy with his furry arms open, trying to wrap her up in a hug.

  Darcy punched into his chest—one, two, three quick jabs—each impact crunching like dead leaves as she broke into H’Jossu’s torso. He wheezed and collapsed at her feet.

  She looked down at her hands. “Look what they made me do.”

  With a shout, I jumped to my feet and tried to tackle Darcy around the waist. She dug her heels into the floor and fought back, pounding elbows down between my shoulder blades.

  I caught a glimpse of Reno, smiling with amusement as she pulled my uncle to his feet. She held him by the back of the head, forcing him to watch the fight.

  “They’re killing each other, Reno,” Tycius said. “Is that what you want?”

  “Oh, they’re just playing,” Reno replied.

  Yeah, I was having so much fun. My guts shivered with each blow that Darcy delivered to my back. She could hit hard enough to hurt me, that much was clear. I tried to lift her off her feet, but she was a better grappler than me. I really should’ve signed up for Hiram’s judo class.

  Darcy wrestled her arms under mine, spun me once, and then flung me. My head clipped the altar, tearing a chunk of obsidian loose. My rib cage felt like it was filled with broken glass. I turned my head and realized I’d landed right next to Vanceval.

  “You’re in trouble,” the old Denzan said, barely clinging to life himself. The dark stain on his side had spread farther, blood pooling underneath him.

  “Thanks,” I grunted.

  Bolts of plasma energy sizzled into Darcy’s back. I’d been shot by one of those guns earlier. It was like getting blasted with a hair dryer.

  Darcy spun in Zara’s direction. “Stupid,” she said.

  “Maybe,” Zara replied, tossing the blaster aside. She dipped her hand into her shelf of fur, the place where she kept her blade hidden. “Come on, then. Pick on someone who knows how to fight.”

  While Zara danced around Darcy, keeping her distance, I knelt beside Vanceval. I opened his coat, reaching inside. He tried to swat my hands away.

  “Stop it, Sydneycius,” he said. “Save yourself and the others.”

  “No offense,” I replied, my fingers closing around the vial of serum I’d remembered him getting from Nyxie. “But that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  Darcy nearly had Zara cornered. “I wish Hiram were here to see this.”

  “Me too,” Zara replied. “He would see how pathetically easy you are to distract.”

  I leaped onto Darcy’s back and hooked one arm under her chin. With my free hand, I flicked off the top of the tube that I’d taken from inside Arkell’s coat and splashed the gel-like paralytic onto Darcy’s hair, careful not to get any on myself.

  Darcy flipped me over her shoulder with ease, and I landed on the floor in front of her, immediately rolling to the side as she tried to stomp on my head. She pushed her fingers through her hair to examine what I’d done, but that only helped spread the toxin around.

  “What is this shit?” she asked.

  “It’s just temporary,” I said. “Maybe you’ll chill out when you can move again.”

  Darcy let loose a frustrated shout and clumsily lunged for me.

  With a roar, H’Jossu slammed his thick shoulder into Darcy, putting her on the floor. He raised his clawed hands above his head, ready to rake down on her, but Darcy couldn’t get her feet under her. Her legs scrabbled around for purchase on the ground. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out. She glared at me, unreasoning hatred in her eyes, and then fell backward—paralyzed.

  “Man,” H’Jossu said, touching his chest, where a thin lattice of mold slowly worked to cover the holes Darcy had made in him. He looked like a teddy bear with the stuffing coming out. “She really jacked up my fuzzy belly.”

  I put a hand on H’Jossu’s shoulder and took a breath. “Thanks for the help.”

  “What do we do now?” H’Jossu said. “This is—this is a cluster, Syd.”

  I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have any good answers for Darcy’s questions. All I knew, in that moment, was that I didn’t like the way Captain Reno was squeezing the back of my uncle’s head. He writhed in her grip, but she barely seemed aware she was holding him.

  I edged toward Reno, knowing she’d hit a lot harder than Darcy. “Captain? Let my uncle go, please.”

  “We were gods,” Reno repeated. She looked at Tycius, considering him. His legs kicked as he struggled to breathe. “They trapped us. Murdered us.”

  “Seems like humanity kind of had it coming,” I said, moving a little closer. “Come on, Captain. We all saw the same thing. It was eons ago. No one alive now had anything to do with it. Look at what you did.”

  Reno looked down at my dad’s headless body and blinked her eyes. She shook her head, like she was trying to clear herself of some nasty thought, and her expression softened. She loosened her grip on Tycius and let him drop to the floor. Gasping for breath, he crawled over to me and the others.

  “I’m sorry, Syd. He was one of the good ones,” Reno said. “But you have to understand. The Denzans used us to fight their war, all while we were trapped on a planet designed to make us less.”

  “They didn’t know,” I said.

  “And now that they do, do you think they’ll just give us a new world? That they’ll let our billions of brothers and sisters off Earth?” Reno snorted. “Your grandfather was a bleeding heart too, Syd, but I know your mother raised you to be smart. Practical. You know what happens next. You know—”

  She looked up. We all did.

  From the ceiling, the Ossho cloud appeared again. Black and magenta tendrils of gas curled down toward us. But no one had hit the button on the damaged altar.

  “No, not again,” Zara moaned, clapping her hands over her snout. “I don’t want to see it again.”

  The Ossho moved with purpose, but not in our direction. Their entirety funneled into Aela’s empty exo-suit until it was filled, and then the faceplate clapped shut. The exo-suit did what looked like a full-body shiver and then cocked their head in our direction.

  I was the first one to speak. “Aela?”

  “Syd,” they said. “Hi.” The faceplate scanned the room. “Wow. Not good.”

  The familiar magenta cloud behind the glass was changed, the lightning streaks within dimmed by an infusion of the smog.

  “Are you . . . ?” It felt like a really dumb question to ask. “Are you okay?”

  “Well,” Aela responded. “I just learned that my entire species is nothing more than a sentient communication device. So I am not great. No.”

  At the altar, Vanceval convulsed. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing. “A message in a bottle, Sydneycius! You were right!”

  Reno stepped over Vanceval and punched the button on the altar. Nothing happened. The temple refused to activate. There was no Ossho left inside to spur it into action.

  “What have you done?” Reno asked.

  “It was suffering,” Aela said, touching their head. “Trapped here for so long, forced to tell the same story. It’s part of me now.”

  “That was the proof of what they did to us,” Reno said, taking a step toward Aela. “You had no right.”

  “Think, Reno,” Ty said. “Think what would happen if that got out. The damage it would do to our cultures.”

  I took a protective step in front of Aela and was relieved when H’Jossu closed ranks beside me. At the same time, Zara slipped to the side so that she was standing behind Reno.

  “Humanity deserves to know about their place in the galaxy,” Reno said.

  “That can never happen,” Tycius responded. “You know what they would do.”

  “What?” Reno countered. “Exist? Be strong and healthy on a planet that’s not designed to kill them? You Denzans don’t get to decide that for us.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Aela. “What do you want to do?”

  They
hesitated. “I want to go home, Syd.”

  “Absolutely not,” Reno said. “Step aside, Cadets. I won’t tell you twice.”

  “No,” I said, with all the firmness I could manage.

  Reno snatched me up by the front of my uniform. “I’m taking the wisp back to Denza. To Little Earth. We’re going to show our people what’s been done to them. You cadets can either assist with that mission, or you can stay here.”

  “We won’t let you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I tried to shake loose from her grip, but Reno was too strong. When H’Jossu lurched toward the captain, she struck him with her open palm, knocking him ten yards backward like he weighed nothing. We’d barely survived a fight with Darcy, and she was only half as powerful as Reno.

  The captain glared at all of us. “Try to stop me,” she said.

  “Is that an order?” Zara asked.

  Her hand slipped into her fur. Her dagger.

  I grasped Reno’s arm with both of my hands, squeezing, so that she couldn’t turn around.

  Not all Vulpin were thieves, only the ones who practiced at it.

  Zara had been up in Ool’Vinn’s arsenal with Reno and Tycius. Of course she’d swiped something.

  Her blade was coated with the black oil. She went low, one precise cut across Reno’s hamstring. The knife sliced through her muscle like—well, like she was human. At the same time, I pushed with all my might, knocking Reno backward as Zara danced out of the way.

  Reno howled like a woman who’d forgotten what pain felt like. Blood pooled beneath her, spewing from her ruined leg. She tried to regain her feet but couldn’t. Her eyes flashed with rage. She suddenly very much reminded me of the Tytons of the universe gone by.

  She wouldn’t stay down for long.

  “Run!” I shouted. “To the Eastwood!”

  We fled the temple, Reno’s banshee-like screams chasing after us. We sprinted through the dead streets of Ashfall, a planet ruined because of the deadly secrets now wholly contained within Aela. The wisp ran at my side, their mechanical legs more than capable of keeping pace with me.

  “I’ll protect you,” I said, breathless. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “I know you’ll try,” the wisp replied. “You will try to protect them all. But we’ve both seen what you choose to do.”

  I was on the run again.

  36

  Tycius stood at the controls. With Reno abandoned on Ashfall, I guessed that made him captain. On our screens, the gray planet receded behind us. I’d been awake for the call she’d put in to Rafe Butler, feeding him the planet’s coordinates. Someone would eventually come to pick up Reno and Darcy. They’d be after us soon enough.

  “I’m setting a course for . . .” Tycius paused. “I don’t know where.”

  Aela stood in front of a screen, watching the dead planet get smaller and smaller. They hadn’t said anything since we’d boarded. The black streaks of forbidden memories swept through the magenta cloud, corrupting it. I wondered if Aela could possibly be the same after that.

  I wondered if any of us would be.

  “Wherever we’re going, we can’t go there fast,” H’Jossu reported from his station. “We used most of our sedatives on the way here.”

  Meanwhile, at a table behind him, Zara laid out a few vials of oil, what she’d managed to sneak away from Ool’Vinn’s arsenal. I think that’s all it was. Crude oil, a poison to humanity, planted on Earth by Denzans millennia ago to let us slowly weaken ourselves.

  Zara shook her head. “I should’ve taken more,” she growled.

  My mom was back there, in Australia, weaker than she should be, like all the rest of humanity. She told me there were predictions that in less than ten years Earth would be in irreversible environmental collapse. She’d thought that she could save our people from themselves. She didn’t know that ruining planets had been humanity’s favorite pastime for millennia.

  I could help her. I should help them all.

  My mom had been plotting an invasion of Earth, hoping to use humans who’d been cured of the Wasting. But there was no cure. And now that Earth wasn’t an option, where would they turn?

  I didn’t know what to do. I still didn’t know who I was supposed to be, or what role I was expected to play in this cosmic conflict. I couldn’t think about that now. I collapsed into a seat, my body hurting all over from the beating I’d taken back in the temple. There would be time to figure out this existential bullshit later. For now, we did what I was best at.

  We ran away.

  Batzian came to crouch next to my chair. With our shorthanded crew, he’d been busy making sure that the entire ship was operational. This was the first chance we’d had to talk since the temple.

  “What happened down there?” he asked quietly.

  I shook my head. “Bad,” I mumbled.

  He pulled on his ponytail. “What are we going to tell—?”

  The door to the bridge slid open.

  Oh fuck. I forgot.

  Melian came in first. Her eyes widened as she took in our sorry and bloody state, and then she sprang into her brother’s arms, hugging him.

  Hiram hobbled onto the bridge behind her, a crutch under one arm.

  “Okay,” he said. “Is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on? Where’s the captain? Where’s Darcy?”

  He was deathly pale, and his shoulders slumped, the bio-tape around the gaping wound in his thigh sopping with a rust-colored stain. But even in his diminished state, he was human. A full human.

  Quietly, Zara slipped the vials of oil back into her fur. She looked at me. No one else said anything, an uneasy silence settling over the bridge.

  I stood up to meet Hiram. “We—”

  A shrill beep. An open comm channel, crackling with static as the voice came across an expanding distance.

  “Hiram—zzt zzt—Hiram—zzt—are you there?”

  Reno’s voice.

  Hiram’s brow furrowed in confusion. I balled my fists.

  “They—zzzt—left—zzt zzt! Betray—zzzt!”

  Tycius smashed the button on his console to shut down comms, but it was too late. Reno’s last word came through crystal clear.

  “Mutiny.”

  About the Author

  PITTACUS LORE finished recounting the story of the invasion of Earth in the I Am Number Four series and is now ready to tell another story. His whereabouts are unknown.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Pittacus Lore

  THE LORIEN LEGACIES

  NOVELS

  I AM NUMBER FOUR

  THE POWER OF SIX

  THE RISE OF NINE

  THE FALL OF FIVE

  THE REVENGE OF SEVEN

  THE FATE OF TEN

  UNITED AS ONE

  THE LOST FILES NOVELLAS

  #1: SIX’S LEGACY

  #2: NINE’S LEGACY

  #3: THE FALLEN LEGACIES

  #4: THE SEARCH FOR SAM

  #5: THE LAST DAYS OF LORIEN

  #6: THE FORGOTTEN ONES

  #7: FIVE’S LEGACY

  #8: RETURN TO PARADISE

  #9: FIVE’S BETRAYAL

  #10: THE FUGITIVE

  #11: THE NAVIGATOR

  #12: THE GUARD

  #13: LEGACIES REBORN

  #14: LAST DEFENSE

  #15: HUNT FOR THE GARDE

  THE LOST FILES NOVELLA COLLECTIONS

  THE FALLEN LEGACIES (Contains novellas #1–#3)

  SECRET HISTORIES (Contains novellas #4–#6)

  HIDDEN ENEMY (Contains novellas #7–#9)

  REBEL ALLIES (Contains novellas #10–#12)

  ZERO HOUR (Contains novellas #13–#15)

  THE LORIEN LEGACIES REBORN

  NOVELS

  GENERATION ONE

  FUGITIVE SIX

  RETURN TO ZERO

  THE LEGACY CHRONICLES NOVELLAS

  #1: OUT OF THE ASHES

  #2: INTO THE FIRE

&nbs
p; #3: UP IN SMOKE

  #4: CHASING GHOSTS

  #5: RAISING MONSTERS

  #6: KILLING GIANTS

  THE LEGACY CHRONICLES NOVELLA COLLECTIONS

  TRIAL BY FIRE (Contains novellas #1–#3)

  OUT OF THE SHADOWS (Contains novellas #4–#6)

  ASHFALL LEGACY

  Ashfall Legacy

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  Copyright

  ASHFALL LEGACY. Copyright © 2021 by Pittacus Lore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Cover art © 2021 by JADE MERIEN

  Cover design by CHRIS KWON

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lore, Pittacus, author.

  Title: Ashfall legacy / Pittacus Lore.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021] | Audience: Ages 13 up. | Audience: Grades 10-12.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020032660 | ISBN 978-0-06-284536-8 (hardcover)

  Subjects: CYAC: Sixteen-year-old half-alien Sydney Chambers leaves Earth to seek his long-missing father, and unearths a devastating, centuries-old secret about humanity. | Extraterrestrial beings--Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers--Fiction. | Missing persons--Fiction. | Science fiction.