Lunara: The Original Trilogy

by Wyatt Davenport

  Chloe stopped and whirled around. "What do you want?"

  "You haven’t killed him yet," Dakota Lars said. "It is why you came, isn’t it?"

  "I came to find my husband," Chloe replied.

  "Come on, Celeste. We have to get out of here," Lola pleaded. "Forget about Hans."

  "You can’t run from the MSA," Dakota replied. "I should know. I have been a part of it since the beginning."

  Chloe raised her gun toward Dakota. "And you were part of my torture."

  "The firefight is over," Dakota said. "I attacked the MSA because I am a part of your Alliance. I am from Castor and Pollux."

  "Your hair," Chloe said, looking at the blond hair that draped her shoulders. "You married Hans Bauer."

  "I am committed to bringing glory to Castor and Pollux. He was my assignment. My colony has tracked the activities of the MSA for over ten years."

  Chloe sharpened her tone. "You did nothing to stop them. You didn’t warn Mars?"

  Dakota came up to Chloe. "A miscalculation, I can assure you. We thought that Aethpis and Minister Cortez could be a big enough deterrent to stop them from moving forward with their plan. At least, less quickly than they did."

  "So many have died because of your miscalculation."

  "Put your gun down," Dakota said, reaching her hand up and putting her palm over the muzzle. "I can get you to your husband."

  "How will you do that? Gwen Arwell is still in control of him."

  "Gwen Arwell isn’t in control of anything anymore. Samantha Burns runs Mars, and she trusts me."

  "Hans is a part of Castor and Pollux?"

  "No, he is what he appears to be: a crooked scientist who cares for nothing but himself and the admiration of others."

  Chloe looked at Hans. He was cowering against the wall, nursing the fresh bruise on his temple. Chloe raised her gun toward him, edging her finger tighter and tighter on the trigger.

  Bang!

  Smoke wisped from Dakota’s gun. The red strain of Hans’s brain matter spattered across the wall and began to ooze toward the floor.

  Chloe, partly shocked, partly in disbelief, but mostly in relief, looked to Dakota.

  "If you had to sleep with him for the past ten years," Dakota said, "you would want him dead more than anyone in the solar system, and you wouldn’t let someone steal the kill from you."

  Chloe holstered her gun and hugged Dakota, who was reluctant to accept the gesture. "I can never thank you for killing him." She pulled away. "And you deserved the shot."

  Dakota smiled.

  Unable to contain herself, Chloe smirked back. Euphoria surged into her mind as she stared at Hans Bauer’s wife. The happiness radiating from Dakota was so raw and pure, a feeling Chloe hadn’t felt personally in over two years.

  Still smiling, Dakota said, "I will show you where to find Seth." Then her face turned serious. "But I should warn you, he has done something terrible. You are the only person who can stop him now."

  Chapter 36

  Chloe would be upset.

  And Seth could think of no argument to explain the massacring of everyone within the Alliance stronghold. Guilt had set in. It was bad enough he had caused the deaths of so many, but the guilt he was feeling was not due to the deaths. They were a necessity. It was the prospect of Chloe knowing what he had done. But he had acted to ensure their paradise. She didn’t understand what needed to be done.

  This was a prime example of how the MSA needed to respond to the Alliance. He didn’t want to think like Chloe’s Alliance anymore, not if he wanted to rule the MSA the absolute way. And he would. He was on his way to Zephyria now to report to Samantha Burns, which wasn’t something he was looking forward to, either.

  Samantha was many things to Seth: cold, callous, vindictive, but she was smart. And he knew she would attempt kill him when she had the chance—just as he would her. Perhaps that is what he knew more than anything. He would kill Samantha. He only needed to figure out when. The timing of it was everything to the Martian people. If he killed her too early, Gwen would take complete control of the MSA, and if he waited too long, his opportunity would pass, and her grip around the planet would be supreme.

  But he was worried about Samantha’s plan to kill him. If she attempted it too early, he would have to kill her too early. He would survive the attempt. He knew he was too strong for her. His power was controllable and more powerful than he imagined it, as was the rage he felt when he took control. He had perfected himself.

  He spun his skimmer around, extended the retrorockets, and lowered it toward the landing pad. The wind cut along his aft as he touched down and bobbled to a rest.

  He opened his canopy, slipped down the ladder, and walked to the back of his ship to do one last check of his systems, shielding his eyes from the torrent of dust in his eyes.

  Looking back, he had felt his skimmer idling oddly. He suspected a power converter was dumping power too quickly to the capacitors. A blockage in the engine exhaust was normally the cause, but when he looked, he saw nothing.

  He stepped back toward the ladder, fighting the wind the entire way, and slipped his helmet off—

  WHAM!

  Seth felt a jolt against his chest like ten horses kicking him. Air whizzed by his ears, and by the time he slowed time to a manageable level, he realized a fireball was licking at his face. He sprung his legs and flew through the air, landing with a resounding thud on the pad and skidding along the concrete. Even with his might, he couldn’t slow his self-created momentum, and he plunged over the edge.

  The ground, dozens of meters below, came rushing toward him.

  THUMP!

  As he lay on the ground, he tried to raise his swimming head. He tried to blink a few times to focus, but his head continued to spin, causing him to lean back against the rocks under him.

  After a few minutes of extreme nausea, he finally submitted to the sickness and vomited over himself. The bile wrinkled his nose, sobering him slightly, but not nearly enough.

  As he tried to lift his body and stand, the ground came rushing back to him. His brain pinched the front of his head—he realized too late that his mind was protecting itself—and the next thing he knew, everything went dim.

  "My lady, the explosion has killed Seth Smith," newly appointed Admiral Jackman replied.

  "Excellent," Chancellor Gwen Arwell replied as she looked down from the Majestic Tower toward the fiery landing pad below. Seth’s skimmer was an overturned, charred wreckage. There was little hope for his survival. "Bring me his body. I want certainty."

  "Yes, my lady," the admiral said, and then opened his mouth to speak again but decided it was better to remain quiet.

  "You have a question?"

  "Yes," the admiral said. "His power is so great, why would you kill such a weapon for the MSA?"

  "He is a sympathizer of Samantha Burns, and his failure to capture Eamonn Dalton before the Battle of Phobos is the reason we lost the battle," Gwen said. "Don’t look so surprised. We did lose the battle, contrary to published reports. Samantha and Seth are no longer part of the MSA, so they must die. It is a part of our new decree. Don’t you agree?"

  "Yes, my lady." He clicked his heals in attention.

  Then, with a flick of her finger, she signaled. "Hold on, Admiral."

  The admiral stopped; the tension in his shoulders pulled his jacket upward. He turned slowly toward his supreme chancellor, trying to hide his eyes from her gaze. "Yes, my lady."

  "I want you to conduct a search of Zephyria for Chloe Jones. If my hunch is correct—and I have no doubt it is—she will be hiding within the colony." Perhaps she needs to be close to Seth.

  "Where should I concentrate my efforts?"

  "Everywhere. Sweep the colony from east to west and from top to bottom. There are no restrictions to your access. She is a fugitive within the MSA."

  "I understand. But what about the private quarters?"

  Gwen tasted a bitterness pool under her tongue—another questioning
of her supreme power. "We are under martial law, Admiral. There are no private quarters with the Alliance revolts terrorizing MSA citizens."

  "Understood. We will have the colony swept by the end of the day."

  "Make sure you find her. She is here." Gwen waved the back of her hand toward the admiral, dismissing him from the room.

  The admiral hurried from the room before Gwen had a chance to stop him again.

  "They just blew up Seth," Shannon said with an eagerness in her tone that resonated farther out along the surface of Mars than Parker cared for.

  "Quiet," he said softly but harshly. "He isn’t dead, if that is what you are hoping for."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because he flew across the close side of the platform to us and down the Zephyrian Chasma that lies beneath it. He will be hurt, but…" He paused to turn his eyes toward Shannon. "He will be alive. He has a way of escaping those situations. I believe he was able to jump and escape the hailstorm of the explosion."

  "Pluto’s moon!" Shannon whispered. "If he is that powerful, how can we hope to stop him?"

  "We can’t," he said. He stowed his binoculars and raised himself up from his reclining position. "Only Chloe can stop him now. She is the key."

  "She has turned to the seedier side of Martian society. There may be no way of convincing her that he needs to be stopped."

  "You have to have hope," Parker said. He bit his lower lip. "That is all I have left." He extended his hand, and she grabbed it, pulling herself to her feet.

  "I hope you are right."

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he affixed his gaze toward the smoking shell of Seth’s ship. A part of him wished that he killed Seth because he wasn’t entirely positive that Chloe could help them. Not if she had turned to the life of a scarlet woman, in which case all hope was lost.

  "Come on," Shannon said, breaking his concentration. "This is the way into the colony. After that, we can look for Chloe in the lower levels. She should be easy to find if her caretaker hasn’t bugged out. They know where their women are at all times."

  "I know," Parker replied without thinking. He followed Shannon toward Zephyria. His mind raced, thinking about Seth and how he had survived the explosion. His power was strengthening, just as Chloe was nearing the end of her life. If she was gone and Seth was alone…

  He shook his head of the thought. He continued to follow Shannon, quickening his pace behind her.

  Chapter 37

  "You hesitated," Dakota said. "You had the shot to kill him."

  Chloe balked at Dakota’s insinuation, and resisting the temptation to show her frustration and anger, she controlled her tone as tactfully as possible. "It isn’t as easy for me to kill people as you might think. I felt torment when I killed those men at Trivium and those two unfortunately opportune guards from this facility."

  "But you still did it," Dakota said, leaning against the door to the transport vehicle zooming its way toward the Zephyrian Domes.

  Dakota had chosen to stand since the trip began, and Chloe didn’t expect it to be a long trip into Zephyria, but given the endlessness of her day, she felt far too exhausted to stand for another moment. She hoisted her legs across the benched seat with her back against the wall of the transport.

  Lola sat several benches down from Chloe with her knees against her chest and her back against the wall. She rocked back and forth in a stunned silence, terrified. Chloe wasn’t a stranger to the fear within Lola. As Chloe had once been, Lola was a young woman thrown into the middle of a revolution on Mars. And as long as she tagged along with Chloe and Dakota, she was a target along with the rest of the people on the transport: the guards, the soldiers, and a few medical nurses.

  In common with each other, the people on the transport had been able to maintain their secrecy through two wars. Like the rest of the network of Castorians and Pollans, they had infiltrated the Zephyrian government and seeded themselves in several key positions. Chloe wondered if it was enough for them to overtake what Samantha Burns and Gwen had established with their Martian Supremacy Authority. From what Dakota Lars had described, the MSA was unraveling from within. Its grip on the solar system had diminished to a point where Dakota boasted the MSA would fall within days. Conjecture; wishful thinking; pure lunacy; whatever it was going to be labeled in her mind, Chloe found it hard to believe it was possible. The MSA was too powerful and too influential.

  Her goal was to rid Seth of his power lusts, bring him back to Alexandria, and hopefully, on the first shuttle to Lunara, where she wanted them to live. If that was even possible anymore, since Seth had murdered over three hundred citizens of the Alliance. No doubt, his validation was justice. He wanted the MSA for himself. She knew that from the day he left her.

  Yet she had waited this long to try to stop him. Perhaps she was as guilty as he had been. She could stop him. She had no doubt about that—but she hadn’t because she wanted him to realize his love for her was greater than his constant search for paradise. She had mothered him too much. She saw that now. She couldn’t turn back the clock on what he had done, but it wasn’t too late for her to bring him back to his family for one last time.

  That was why she had hesitated with Hans Bauer.

  She looked up at Dakota Lars with sadness across her face. "I thought his claims of finding a cure for me might be true. There have been so many promises made to me about it by him and Seth. I wanted to kill him, but the allure of a cure for me caused the hesitation. Because when I die, my family will be destroyed."

  "Unless you find Seth and turn him back," Dakota said. She shook her head and pushed herself erect. "Hans Bauer was a horrible man who did horrible things. I am sorry, but he had to die."

  "I don’t blame you," Chloe replied sluggishly. She moved her feet to the floor, sat up, and looked up at Dakota.

  Dakota spoke: "I didn’t ruin your chance at survival. Your disease is incurable."

  "I had hope from Hans, but I knew it was nonexistent." She looked away and out the window toward the tunnel wall rushing past them. "It is so hard to know the exact time of your own death."

  "Exact time?" Dakota stepped toward her.

  "Forget it. I’m just lamenting. It is not the time to speak about my troubles," she said. "I need to know what Hans and Seth have been doing while I was away. I need to understand the pain he has been in."

  "Pain is something he has endured a lot of. Since the beginning, Hans aimed his experiments at manipulating the people to be stronger, physically and mentally. He succeeded in the psychical portion of his experiments. Seth was the find of a lifetime for him. Seth’s hardships over the last two years are commendable, in a morbid sort of way.

  "Regrettably, it has also corrupted his conscience. He formed a callus over his heart. I saw it in his eyes the other week. He started to enjoy the pain because it made him stronger."

  "And what did the pain do for Hans? What was he looking for?"

  "Seth’s uniqueness, which we discovered was nonexistent," Dakota said. She pointed her index finger up against her nose and smiled. "It didn’t matter though. Hans had already started the genetic engineering of the people of Mars. The MSA uses the crops in the terrariums to engineer the population and strengthen both their immune systems and muscular growth. Just like Seth, to a lesser extent. Have you noticed the hospital wards on most of the colonies beginning to empty? The results of the food everyone has been eating. It changes your immune system, energizes your muscles, and helps you convert oxygen with greater efficiency, although"—she fingered her lower lip—"that part of the experiment was still in its infancy."

  "I can breathe on the surface. I did it at the pole."

  "Higher concentration of oxygen there. It is more likely to happen there than anywhere. And from you, I would expect it first. Sadly, Mrs. Smith, you were the ultimate specimen for scientists like Hans and me. I would love to study you further. Voluntarily of course."

  "No thanks," Chloe replied. "I don’t expect I will have time fo
r such things. Even with your mission. How could you work with Hans for all these years?"

  "For a long time, I was isolated. I slipped into this comfort with the terror Hans Bauer had me living in. The fear consumed me. I did horrible things to protect the MSA because my allegiances were murky."

  "I think I understand. You were under a tremendous amount of pressure to keep your secret from the MSA and balance that with the ideals of Castor and Pollux."

  "Exactly. I didn’t realize until lately that I had been hurting so many people."

  There was silence for a moment. "You ate the crops that Hans grew?"

  "Yes, I was his principal designer of most of the crops. They are beneficial to the body."

  Chloe scoffed. "But you were too scared to tell the population of their benefits. Typical government logic. You see why Seth is so jaded about Mars."

  Dakota’s shoulders went rigid. "He knows nothing of being jaded. I didn’t kill Hans Bauer because he treated me poorly during our marriage. It was part of my assignment going in." She turned away from Chloe and faced the window of the transport. "I killed him because he ordered the death of my family at the end of the revolution. He didn’t know my family, but he turned my life to stopping him when he mutilated them. Beyond the scientists of the time, no one knows this."

  She paused, beating the memories of her past into submission. She tightened her jaw and continued. "During the revolution, the Raiders that were captured, they weren’t sent to a rehabilitation center as Damon Arwell announced. The MSA used them as guinea pigs as part of Hans’s experiments. Hans didn’t start with Seth. Chancellor Damon Arwell ordered him to improve the human body to conform to Martian life. My parents and my brother were labeled as Raiders, rounded up, and shipped to Hans. That is when I dedicated my life to stopping the MSA. Eventually, thanks to my intelligence, I came to be Hans Bauer’s top aide, and after months of seduction on my part, I became his wife."

  Dakota saw Chloe’s face wash over with horror. "I know what you are thinking—how could I continue with his experiments? I could do nothing. The Assembly on Castor and Pollux had me under strict orders to do whatever it took to get close to Hans Bauer and infiltrate the MSA. I have been informing them for years. Until today, no one knew I was an agent."