The Oldest War (To Brave The Crumbling Sky Book 2)

by Matt Snee

  There was one blemish to the cell, a simple vent through which air pumped in and out. It was too small for her to escape. The dream ship wasn't alive like Venusian ships, nor was it like the space-hopper. It was rather human in its way, but Jennifer could feel that black magic was a definite part of it too. The Dunleavys had always embraced such dark arts. The family had always betrayed anyone or anything unlucky enough to cross its path, for power, for lust, or simply for the sheer thrill of it.

  Jennifer knocked on the metal door.

  “Hello?” She raised her voice.

  “Is there anybody out there? Hello?” They had, of course, confiscated her laser.

  She slumped down to the floor. Nothing. She had been at it for hours now.

  “Help!” she shouted. “Is there anybody out there?”

  Her racket disturbed someone because the door slid open and Jon Jason's major-domo, Mrs. Elizabeth, came in, shadowed by two volunteers.

  “I see that you are still alive,” Mrs. Elizabeth's voice dripped.

  “Surprising. I can also see that arrogance still in you, that pride. I can see you laughing at me, beneath your frown. Well, you won't be laughing for long. You will be hung after the race.”

  “Hung?” Jennifer asked.

  The major-domo smiled with unconcealed pleasure. “You're to be an example. A righting of an old crime.”

  “What crime?”

  “Your assumption that Jon Jason could love you, and worse, your toying with his heart.”

  Jennifer was puzzled. Who was this woman? She was too old to be a lover of Jon Jason. Or was she? Jennifer clearly underestimated this woman. She neglected the danger that Mrs. Elizabeth was not who she thought she was.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  The woman laughed. “Pray that you never find out, Jennifer Pichon. For that would mean a terrible death. No – instead you'll be hung, after the race. Almost as pathetic a death as those of your parents…”

  Jennifer lifted her hand up and lunged at the major-domo. The volunteers intervened and struck her with the butts of their rifles, knocking her to the floor.

  “Hung after the race,” the major-domo finished. She swirled and left the room, followed by the volunteers, chuckling. The door slid locked behind them.

  * * *

  Jennifer was exhausted and slept as best she could. Although she felt rested, she regretted spending so much time asleep when her death was scheduled for the morning. Jon Jason would have her hung. He was a man of his word.

  Seconds and minutes passed slowly. Jennifer filled them by taking stock of her life. Her thoughts turned to her impending death. What would it feel like to be hung? Would her neck crack or would she suffocate? She hoped for the second scenario; it would be like drowning again… but just not coming back up for air.

  When they came for her, the volunteers came alone. They hurried through the cell's door, carrying their rifles and stoic grins as they pushed her out into the hall. One of them threw her against the bulkhead and pulled her arms behind her back to be handcuffed. The volunteer took pleasure in delivering as much pain as allowed.

  “If you don't like it, you can write a letter to our corporate headquarters.” They said.

  She cried out in pain as she was grabbed by the hair. “Ain't so proud now,” one of the volunteers teased.

  They pulled her down the hallway. She could hear the crowd outside and see Jupiter's light coming in through the windows. They were on Ganymede; Jon Jason was going to hang her between the competition and the trophy ceremony! Even through the dream ship's iron hull, she could hear the automobile engines throttling and cars spinning around the track.

  The volunteers led her down a long hallway before coming to an open hovering elevator. Floors passed them by. Suddenly, daylight. The elevator carried them out of the ship and into the air of Ganymede, down to a huge stage in the middle of the filled stadium, shaking with energy.

  There Jon Jason stood. A dignified smile crept across his face like a spider. Next to him stood his nephew, the new heir, dressed in blue school boy's clothes. For this ceremony, instead of holding a knife, the boy held the long rope attached to the bull structure.

  Cars raced around the course in a frenzy; the contest was over. They celebrated by burning rubber recklessly and whistling as they curved down the track. Up above, the sky was filled with spectators in floating cars, in hovering ships, dangling from balloons, and perched upon rafts. The noise was agitated demanding, thirsty for something.

  Jon Jason raised his hand, all voices in the crowd quieted. The only sound was from the race cars, which were lost in their own hysterics.

  “People! People!” Jon Jason lifted a microphone and spoke into the crowd.

  “Racers! Stop!” With a screeching of tires, they stopped. A hush fell over the stadium. All who were present turned to listen to Jon Jason, lord of Jupiter.

  “Here is a criminal! An enemy to all of us!” He points to Jennifer as she stands bound with her arms behind her back.

  The crowd roared for a brief second and then silenced.

  “She was going to steal from us the greatest power in the Solar System—this!” He lifted the Shard into the air. The crowd flinched. In the light, it was bizarre—the sunlight reflected in fractals of its surface and as he held it a low whistling could be heard in the air.

  “A key! A key to the Triborg!” Jon Jason announced. “True power! Power to free ourselves from the Shadows!”

  The crowd broke into a thunderous reply. Sirens went off. Guns were fired into the air.

  “This belongs not to me,” Jon Jason told them. “It belongs to you. Haven't I always shared the wealth of this planet with you?” he incites.

  “YES!” the crowd wailed.

  Jennifer looked before her, to the people out in the stands. Throngs swelled around the stage. Time seemed to slow down and distorted the sound of Jon Jason's voice. He continued to rattle on about freedom and unity, to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. He spouted his putrid rhetoric and walked over to Jennifer, spitting at her feet. At this the people erupted in delight.

  The volunteers shoved Jennifer out to where the hangman's knot spun, eagerly awaiting her neck. Jon Jason turned off his microphone and bent to Jennifer's ear. “That which can be taken doesn't belong to anyone,” he scoffed at her.

  “Let me go, Jon Jason!”

  “Still so proud. Too proud to beg from me? I guess you'd rather die. And you will.” He motioned to the volunteers and they pulled a hood over her face. Jon Jason himself slipped the noose around Jennifer's neck.

  And then—the strangest thing: a sudden torrent of wind knocked all the sound out of the air. It pushed Jennifer back off her feet. The rope slacked around her neck. In the darkness under the hood she heard something explode from above her head, followed by screams. She could see nothing.

  The volunteers' grips disappeared from her arms. She felt all alone. She could feel fire falling around her. Her arms were still bound and the rope still clutched at her neck, but they were not the threat they were a moment ago.

  * * *

  Above the clouds, the Phantom Ray emerged shooting missiles at Jon Jason's dream ship. The ship was ruined.

  On the bridge of the Phantom Ray, the Captain watched out the window as Delphiniums swept through the crowd below, incapacitating the volunteers and other Jon Jason loyalists. The volunteers fought back and bloody violence ensued.

  The Captain could see Jennifer sitting blindly on the gallows.

  “I need to get down there, now!” He looked at Plerrxx and Tess. They both nodded. The three of them rushed down the hover-elevator.

  The Phantom Ray descended to the stage. A group of volunteers now defended themselves behind Jennifer. Bullets and energy whips tore through the air.

  The Delphiniums filtered through the crowd. Some rode horses through the raceway, throwing firebombs at the race cars and attacking the volunteers with savage abandon. The volunteers became desperate. They took
prisoners and gathered at the back of the stage, where Jon Jason was hiding.

  “Forward!” Tess yelled. She took control of an errant horse and rode around the stage with other Delphiniums in a rousing parade.

  The Captain and Plerrxx crept across the platform, dodging fire until they came to Jennifer. With a swipe of his claws, Plerrxx cut Jennifer from the rope, and she fell into the Captain's arms.

  “Jennifer!” he gasped, pulling off her hood and revealing the world to her eyes. She caught sight of the ruins of Jon Jason's dream ship above them.

  “Where's Jon Jason?” she shouted at them all. “Where is he?”

  “Here,” said a voice behind them. Jon Jason emerged from the wreckage of the stage holding Matthew Mark Dunleavy in front of him with a revolver pointed into his neck.

  “You'd kill your own heir?” Tess asked, vicious.

  “I'd kill everyone in the Solar System if I had to,” he replied.

  “We just want the Shard, not you, Jon Jason!” Jennifer told him.

  “You want what I have! It's the same thing!” Jon Jason took a step back, drawing back the hammer of the gun. He turned his head to the side of the stage, where the major-domo appeared with a heavy tachyon grenade. “Zarana!”

  The major-domo walked towards them slowly, a sinister smile on her lips.

  “That… thing is not human,” Plerrxx told the Captain and Jennifer. “I cannot read her mind. There is nothing there.”

  The woman laughed. “I am Zarana,” she said. “I am your doom.” Her form vanished in a wisp of purple smoke, revealing a humanoid figure violet-skinned, blind, and covered with fanged mouths. It was horrid.

  “Shapeshifter!” One of the Delphiniums cried in shock, followed by murmurs of the sparse volunteers and the crowd.

  The thing laughed. The major-domo revealed herself to be a Neptunian shapeshifter, spoken of only in spacer myths and children's bed time stories.

  She held the tachyon grenade.

  “This is Zarana,” Jon Jason instructed them. “She is my ace.”

  “And he is mine,” said the shapeshifter.

  “Jon Jason…” Jennifer whispered. “What have you done?”

  “I am leaving this place alive,” he said.

  “But not with the Shard,” Tess told him. She motioned to her Delphiniums to prepare to attack.

  He pondered her determination. “Perhaps not. But one day soon, it will be mine again.” He reached into his pocket and tossed the Shard to Jennifer.

  The whole world stopped as it flew through the air.

  “Now, Zarana!” Jon Jason yelled as Jennifer reached to catch the artifact. He pulled the trigger on the gun, casting Matthew Mark dead on the ground.

  The grenade went off.

  * * *

  After the dust settled, they surveyed the damage and collected their wounded among the dead and the wreckage. It seems they had won. All of their plans had coalesced, and the Shard was theirs. Jon Jason had been unseated.

  But Jennifer wept. She had loved Jon Jason once, and despite what he had become, she loved him still.

  * * *

  During the stadium coup, the Delphiniums, with the Shadow's protection, made coordinated attacks on Jon Jason's infrastructure. They controlled seventy percent of the colony with more being gained by the minute.

  The Captain, Jennifer, and their companions retreated back to the Phantom Ray. Tess was watching the invasion from the bridge. Plerrxx frowned at the reports of violence that gushed in.

  “What will happen now?” the cat-man wondered aloud.

  “We win,” Tess responded. “And there's peace.”

  “There was peace,” the Mmrowwr argued.

  “Not the right kind of peace,” Tess countered.

  “And what is the right kind?”

  “The kind where everyone is free. Free to live. Free to trade.”

  Plerrxx shrugged. Tess tilted her neck, thinking she had achieved victory not only on the battlefield, but between her and the Mmrowwr's dueling philosophies.

  The Captain and Jennifer paid no notice to the two's skirmishes. Jennifer stared at news feeds. The Captain reassured her it would be okay. She worried about the civilians. “In a war of ideas, it's people who get killed,” she quoted Victor Hugo.

  “It's for the best,” the Captain told her, trying to convince himself as well. He couldn't understand why the Shadows had to be tolerated. He did not elaborate.

  “I know it's for the best,” Jennifer said. “I just hate the act of it, the teeth of it. If there had been a way to avoid this, I would have thought of it.”

  “I know you would have,” he told her. He wanted to take her hand in his, but didn't. Instead he watched as the smallest strands of Jennifer's hair brushed against her forehead, pushed by the recycled air that flowed through the ship. He realized that Jennifer wasn't invincible, that she was vulnerable and fragile, and could be hurt at any time. He knew in that moment he would give his life to protect her.

  * * *

  The Phantom Ray left Ganymede to hide among the clouds of the Death Dream. Reports came in that the Delphiniums had not found Jon Jason. He escaped through the access tunnels beneath the track. This news did not lift their spirits. Jon Jason was a great enemy.

  The Delphiniums took control of all but the most inconsequential pockets of resistance, including deep undersea in the Dunleavy mansion where the rest of the family had taken shelter during the rebellion. None of them were hurt.

  The boy, Matthew Mark was dead; there was no longer an heir. When the boy's mother, Sarah Sloan, visited with Jennifer after the battle, her face was pale and her shoulders were weighted down by the loss of her son. Jennifer tried to assure her that they would find Jon Jason, that he would pay for his actions.

  Sarah Sloan could not be soothed.

  “I'll have my own revenge on Jon Jason,” she said. “But I'll have my revenge on you too, Jennifer Pichon.”

  * * *

  Douglas Daniel was the only suitable leader for who was left of the Dunleavys, and strangely he accepted his new diminished role with quiet enthusiasm.

  The casualties were high on both sides. The Captain felt bad sitting in the elegant comforts of the Phantom Ray while the Delphiniums and the volunteers battled on the moons above.

  The exhaustion of the battle caught up with them all. Rest was the only remedy if they were going to be strong enough to continue on with their mission. The Captain and Jennifer were the first to retire. Tess nodded and went back to her screens of the battles.

  They chose separate rooms and said goodnight to each other.

  “Good night, Jennifer,” the Captain said. “I'm glad you're safe.”

  “I'm glad too,” she smiled. “We have the first Shard now. We're succeeding.”

  “I know it,” he said. “We'll do it; I can feel it.”

  “The next is on Saturn.”

  “I know,” he repeated, trying to sound strong. “Do you think we'll see Jon Jason again?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “I do.”

  * * *

  The next morning Jennifer met with Douglas Daniel on the main viewing deck of the Phantom. The atmosphere was thin enough for them not to need masks. They smiled at each other reticently.

  “This will take a long time to clean up,” Douglas Daniel told her.

  “I know,” she said. “I'm sorry to have been the cause of all this, Mr. Dunleavy.”

  “No, I'm happy you caused it,” he said. “But, I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm just worried about my son.”

  “I'm sure they'll find him,” Jennifer said.

  “They won't find him,” Douglas Daniel said. “And neither will we. He's too smart. He'll find us when he is ready.”

  Jennifer agreed saying nothing.

  “So—what do you think of your ship.”

  “My ship?” Jenifer is confused.

  “I'm giving you the Phantom Ray, so you can find the rest of the Shards.”

  “I—can't
take it,” she said.

  “You have to. Don't you think it's fate, like the rest of this?”

  “Why is everyone on Jupiter so concerned with fate?” she asked.

  Douglas Daniel shook his head. “You should be more worried about why fate is concerned with you.” He smiled, like a distant uncle to her.

  She smiled back. “I guess I can borrow it and bring it back.”

  “Sure,” said Douglas Daniel. “Take it for a spin. It is yours.”

  * * *

  That afternoon they all assembled for lunch in the Phantom Ray's dining area: The Captain, Jennifer, Plerrxx, Tess, Douglas Daniel, and the Shadow Puppet.

  A Delphinium named Mara was assigned to cook and look after the domestic concerns of the vessel. Another Delphinium, Takiro, would manage the engines and the other machines. A final Delphinium would provide security; her name was Alicia.

  Mara brought out a meal on steaming glass plates. Thy ate brazed sea plants from Ganymede, common to the Delphinium's diet. Captain's and Jennifer looked skeptically but dug in. Plerrxx, who needed to eat meat to survive, was delivered a plate of beef thick with juices and fat. Tess grimaced and pretended to retch. In their frivolity, they almost forgot they were dining with the enemy.

  The Shadow Puppet did not eat but just sat. It was an ancient habit of the Shadows. They met and supped with mankind over the long millennia many times, and appreciated the community of the tradition.

  The Puppet sat. Its golden metal body pressed firmly into a chair. Its black cloak was drawn back; its hands were encased in plated gloves. The only thing remotely alive about the creature were its eyes, which were borrowed from its master and colored a bloody red. The Puppet was a spell, a confection of magic that defied logic and science.

  “So—the Shard. What happens now?” The Shadow Puppet's voice was deep and resonant with contempt. It knew it was despised and feared here.

  “It stays with us,” Jennifer responded quickly. “It and the others need to be together.”

  “Wouldn't it be safer… on Earth?”

  “They need to be together,” Jennifer repeated. “We made a deal.”