Shadows of Empyriad (The Empyriad Series Book 1)

by Josi Russell

  Zyn’dri felt the ground shake as the distant sound of big guns ripped the air. A little child next to her moaned, and the baby began to cry, wriggling in his hupta. The other children remained quiet, but when Zyn’dri looked around at them, she saw that their eyes were wide and scared.

  Zyn’dri thought of Walt. What did he say about being scared? That you could use it. You could use your fear as fuel to keep you going. She spoke boldly.

  “We have to go back to the Park.”

  She could see that the others were in shock. Even Pyrsha’s parents, whose demeanor was stable and silent, looked at her for guidance. They would go wherever she told them to. She remembered Sylvia’s words and turned her eyes to the North.

  52

  It was an hour past noon, and the Cascadian attacks had been constant for the last four hours. Sol’s unit had spread out and fallen back two checkpoints, joining with other groups there. But there were still not enough of them left to hold off the Cascadians. They were being driven down the road, ever closer to town. The sergeants had ordered them to spread out and use the big drainage pipes and the dense forest for cover. Most of Sol’s unit was out there somewhere, engaging with the Cascadian infantry that pushed ahead of their artillery. The infantry was vital, clearing the way for the artillery to follow.

  He knew that the strafers depended on the infantry. If they didn’t clear out the BlueSky field generators and keep new ones from being laid, the fields would fry the strafers just like they had in Uncle Carl’s early fighting days. He remembered again how many friends Uncle Carl had lost and wondered if he would ever see the soldiers of his unit again.

  Sol was huddled in another drainage pipe with Tavish, Juice, and two Bluesky Field Specialists named Gutierrez and Savoy. They were moving along the road, planting the portable field generators to take out the strafers that were pelting their troops with burstbeads.

  It was early afternoon, but it was dim inside the big pipe. Beside Sol, Juice was shaking. There was no telling whether it was from cold or fear, but Sol guessed it didn’t matter which one. He reached out and put a hand on Juice’s shoulder, and Juice shot him a grateful look.

  The Cascadians would be here again any minute. He could hear the growl of their crawlers and the ground shook as they approached.

  Nervously, Sol reached down and checked that the dial on his convulsion gun. It was still turned all the way up to 10. Cascadian armor was thick and padded with fibers that insulated against the blasts of the convulsion guns. A lethal shot required a direct hit at full power.

  Mezina’s voice had been with them the entire campaign. It came through now, bold and clear. “Company One, what is your location?”

  “We are at Checkpoint Three,” Tavish responded.

  “Are the generators planted at your location?”

  “Not yet, but we’re moving in now.”

  “Hold your ground.” She said, and Sol remembered that they had heard that twice before, at Checkpoints One and Two, when their unit was twice as big and half as scared. He didn’t think they’d be able to hold it here, either.

  There seemed an endless supply of Cascadians. And when the infantry did their job and took out the BlueSky fields, the Cascadian air strikes were brutally efficient. Sol had seen, in the last several hours, Milguard soldiers burned beyond recognition by the burst beads, which, when applied in enough quantity, began to melt the Milguard soldiers’ armor directly onto their bodies.

  Tavish’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Gutierrez goes left out of this pipe, Savoy, goes right. Get those generators planted and drop back toward Checkpoint Four. Hastings, Brooks, move out with me and prepare to engage on the road.” Sol found the sergeant’s face in the dim light. “Keep the Cascadians distracted and give these specialists time to do their work,” Tavish told him. “We have to get these field generators planted up there. The enemy is pushing through with the infantry, and that’s plenty bad, but the artillery and the air force are following them, and if we can’t bring down those strafers, our guys don’t have a chance.”

  “Where are our strafers?” Sol asked, then regretted it as Tavish spoke with derision. “Haven’t you seen, kid? They’re falling like flies. The Cascadian infantry is frying them with fields left and right.” As they moved out of the pipe, Tavish gestured at the surrounding woods, and Sol noticed, for the first time, the eerie flicker of far-off fires burning around them. The already dreary air was filled with smoke filling the space between the trees.

  As they crawled up to the edge of the road, Sol kept his eyes out for Cascadians in the woods behind them as they had forgotten to do at Checkpoint Two.

  Tavish peered up over the bank and ducked back down. “Listen,” he said, and there was urgency in his voice. “We’re in deeper than I thought.” Sol heard Tavish breathing over the comms line. Though his voice was firm, his breath was coming quick and shaky. “This is not just any infantry.” He said. “This is the Disclosure Squad.”

  Sol blinked. He remembered all those months ago, talking to Sonny at that armory. He remembered Sonny telling him about the Disclosure Squad, hinting at their cruelty.

  Tavish spoke again. “These guys aren’t only trying to kill you. They’re going to try to take you alive.” His voice wavered slightly. “I don’t know everything they use, but they’ll have percussion guns. Your armor will hold up under some fire from them, but if they get your helmets off they can knock you out with one hit.” He turned toward Sol. “You hear that, Brooks? Keep your helmet on. And don’t let them catch you, understood?”

  Bright lights swept over the bank and Sol jumped. He heard Tavish say, “Steady.” Sol wanted to pull out, to fall back. He didn’t want to face them. But the fields had to be placed. He tried to think of his mom back on the ranch and wanted more than anything to keep the strafers away from her.

  Savoy’s voice cut into their helmets. “First field laid, Sir.”

  As Sol watched Savoy working on powering the field up, he heard the scuff of a boot above him, and then a shout. A Cascadian soldier was looking directly at him. Sol staggered to his feet and raised his gun. He took two steps, trying to set up for a direct hit.

  Tavish stood and fired, taking the soldier down, and then the Cascadians were everywhere. Tavish fired again, and two more dropped. Sol saw them fall and saw their mouths open in agony, but their screams were lost in the rush of blood through his ears. His heart was hammering, and he couldn’t think what to do.

  He shifted his terrified eyes to Tavish, who ran to the middle of the road, firing. Juice was there too, yelling at Sol and gesturing for him to follow.

  A flash of color in the hazy woods beyond Juice caught Sol’s attention. It was the bright little group of Stracahn that had fled earlier. They were scrambling farther North, back into the wild woods. So many of them were children, and their presence in this cruel place took Sol’s breath away. He wanted to call out to Tavish, to the Cascadians, wanted to tell them to stop fighting, to wait until the children were out of the way and safe. But the horrors of the day flashed before him, and he knew there was no stopping this now, not until it had played out to the end.

  A mortar full of burstbeads hit the bank behind him, and he prepared himself for the burning. But the beads didn’t sear. These only popped as they hit him and a sour taste filled his mask. Somehow, his mask wasn’t stopping them. Whatever was in them was seeping through his armor. Suddenly he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. It was a stun gas. The Disclosure Squad was immobilizing them. Sol felt a rising panic. He hadn’t experienced such an intense rush of fear since that summer afternoon at the Park gate when the percussion of the explosion had echoed around him and changed everything.

  Sol couldn’t see Juice anywhere. He tried to call to Tavish, tried to tell him that he was frozen, but Tavish was turning, loping down opposite bank into the trees, and the Cascadians were the only ones coming.

  Sol knew they would hurt him, saw it in their eyes as they came. He tried to swing his
gun toward them, tried to pull the trigger, but he could do nothing. A round of convulsion fire took some of them down, and Sol knew that Tavish was somewhere giving him cover.

  A weight around his shoulders drew his attention. With great effort, he turned his head to see Juice beside him, arm around his shoulders.

  Juice pulled Sol’s head down until their foreheads touched, forcing Sol to look at him. He reached up to Sol’s helmet and switched the mask off. “Breathe out.” Juice commanded, and Sol pushed the air from his lungs as fast as he could. Juice turned the mask back on. “Now in!”

  Sol took a deep gulp of fresh oxygen. He felt the weight on his limbs begin to ease.

  Sol heard Juice’s voice, tinny and strange, through the commline in his helmet. “Come on, Shoreline. Let’s get out of here.”

  The kid was calm. The hint of a smile played around his mouth. Though he was significantly smaller than Sol, when he tugged there was enough power in it that Sol began to move.

  The muzzle of Sol’s gun dropped and dragged across the frozen ground as they stumbled together toward the edge of the road.

  But they weren’t fast enough. The Cascadians were upon them. Sol felt the thumping of their percussion guns against his body armor. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck crackle with the excess energy that his armor didn’t absorb. He heard them shouting, and he smelled the hot, sour scent of the stun beads still falling around him.

  The squad was close enough to grab him. Hands were reaching for him, trying to get a grip on his suit somewhere.

  Sol was pulling himself out of the paralysis. He thought back to his induction. A deep fear gripped him, and he writhed, pulling Juice with him as he tried to get away. But the Cascadians were strong, and many. The enemy wrenched him away from Juice and knocked them both to the ground.

  Sol covered his head as a rain of fire from their percussion guns descended on him. His suit crackled, and he felt the inner plating heating up. It wouldn’t last much longer. Through the fingers of his gloves, he saw the forms around him. He saw Juice, just a few lengths away, on his knees, blocking every blow and striking out at every chance. He was amazing. One of the Cascadians reached down and wrestled Juice’s helmet off. His straggly brown hair fell around his temples.

  Sol saw Juice reach for the ring on his suit.

  Sol pushed back at the gun barrels around him. Even with his gloves, the charges shot through his palms like fire, but he barely felt them as he lunged to his feet. He heard his own voice, panicked and high, “NO! Juice, no!”

  Juice looked at him. Sol saw a Cascadian soldier deliver a blow to his friend’s temple. When Juice raised his head again, he looked directly at Sol. Blood was streaming into his eyes. His voice was strong, and that characteristic hint of a smile played at his mouth.

  “Sol, run!”

  Juice pulled the ring.

  Sol barely had time to fall to the ground as the silent flash radiated from his friend. The Cascadians around him jerked, caught in the wave, and those closest to Juice flew backward. Juice fell and lay still. Sol ran.

  It was as if he were invisible. In the aftermath of the flash, the Disclosure Squad was scrambling to retreat. Nobody seemed to notice the scared kid running for the trees. When he reached the edge of the road, Sol dove down the embankment and crawled, at the bottom, into the deserted Checkpoint Three, the pipe where they had hidden a lifetime ago.

  His chinstrap was slick against his neck, and Sol realized that he was crying. He clawed at the clasp and pulled the helmet off. It fell with a hollow thud as he dropped his face into his hands and wept.

  ***

  When Sol found his way out of the pipe, the late afternoon sun was still shrouded in clouds and the battle had moved away, down the road toward town. Cascadians were sweeping the woods on either side of him. Their dark gray uniforms, with the deep green pines stitched on them, provided them with amazing camouflage in the smoky shadows of the late-afternoon forest.

  Sol ducked low as they passed him, moving up toward the line. He saw them stop near a fallen Milguard soldier to finish him off.

  Sol’s breath came hard. He looked away and slowly, carefully, began to flee. Something had changed in him. As he looked around at the fallen soldiers, Libertyites and Cascadians alike, he felt sick and strange.

  Juice was gone. His half-smile stilled, his life over. Sol didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to get home.

  And then he would go back to the sea. He would leave for Shoreline, whose tiny borders and sandy shores no one wanted. He would take his mother with him, away from this war-torn place. Maybe there they could find some peace.

  Sol felt his hands shaking as he crouched and shuffled along. He was moving away from the battle, but directly through its aftermath. Black uniformed Milguard soldiers were everywhere, their bodies still. There were far fewer Cascadians.

  He walked through the darkening woods for a long time. Sol’s gun was secured to his hip, and when he crouched, the tip of it dragged in the snow and dirt and pine needles of the forest floor. He stopped, fumbling with the catch on his side, trying to release it so he could abandon the gun.

  Before he could release it, he heard a chilling sound.

  A thin warbling was coming from one of the Cascadian soldiers. Sol couldn’t tell if he was crying, or just struggling to breathe. He moved backward, into the shadow of a tree, but the soldier had spotted him.

  The soldier, lying on his left side, reached forward. Sol saw the man’s gloves and gun several feet away. He saw from the flared barrel of the weapon that it was a burstbead gun. Looking closer, Sol saw the beads scattered around it. The Cascadian must have been reloading when he was hit.

  Sol backed away. He could easily be out of range before the wounded soldier got to the gun. As he moved, the man’s wailing increased. Suddenly, Sol realized that the man was saying a word, repeating it over and over in that high whine.

  “Please.”

  Sol glanced at the dark woods behind him. In seconds he would be away from here.

  But what would happen if he left this man? How much suffering would he have to endure, laying on the ground alone?

  “Please, please.” The man kept crying, reaching a bare hand toward Sol.

  Sol’s better judgment screamed at him as he walked forward. It was as if the man’s suffering was drawing him. He had to help, had to try at least.

  Sol kicked the gun farther away as he passed it. He took the man’s outstretched hand and knelt beside him. The soldier clawed at his own helmet with his other hand, and Sol reached up and unbuckled it, sliding it off gently.

  The man had startling blue eyes, which he fixed on Sol for just a moment before closing them. His breathing came irregularly, and with great effort. He rested his head on his other arm, outstretched above him in the dirt.

  Sol tried to move away, but the man didn’t want him to go, and he held on. “Please.” He said again.

  “Okay. Okay. Easy,” Sol said, trying to think of something that would comfort him. The man’s body twitched violently, then stilled, then twitched again.

  Sol remembered the injections. He reached up to his chest pocket and pulled one out. He found the right place, and just as the man seized again, Sol plunged the needle into his shoulder.

  He watched as the medicine flowed through the soldier’s body. He heard the man’s breath come more easily, but it was still a jagged sound. He saw the tension ease from the soldier’s limbs and saw him relax against the ground. His eyes were closed.

  Sol looked down at their clasped hands. His was still gloved, and it looked huge compared to the soldier’s. The man’s nails were neat and trimmed. There was a long, thin scar across the back of his knuckles.

  But something wasn’t right. Sol tried to figure out what was bothering him. Something about this wasn’t making sense. He looked up, into the woods. Had he heard something?

  But the woods were still, and they were alone. He glanced back down at t
heir hands. And then he realized it: the tips of this man’s fingers were as clean as his own. There was no sign of the characteristic purple staining on them.

  Sol had met few Cascadians, he admitted, but all that he had met had the stains in common.

  The man moaned. Sol glanced at the soldier’s other hand. Nothing. He sought for answers. Could the man be like him? Could he have moved in from another region and found himself in the middle of the local conflict? Could he be a supervisor, not working closely with the fruit? Could he be somehow immune to the staining?

  “Please.” The soldier’s voice came again, weak and thready.

  Sol abandoned the mystery. It was more important to keep the man comfortable. “Don’t try to talk.” He said. “Just rest a minute.” Sol saw that the injection had made the man more comfortable, but he also saw that it had come too late. His breath came more and more slowly. At least the man was suffering less now.

  Sol waited for him to speak again, and it was several heartbeats before he realized that the man had stopped breathing. He sat back. The forest was dense here, and the early snows had not yet stuck. A soft layer of long pine needles made a carpet on the ground, and Sol released the man’s hand and laid it gently atop them.

  Sol looked at the grey-clad bodies of the Cascadian soldiers scattered around him. He rose and walked near a soldier to his left.

  For a long moment, he stood over the man. Sol couldn’t stop himself from reaching down. Under the dappled light of the forest, in the last rays of the day, he lifted the heavy weight of the dead soldier’s arm and slid the glove off his hand.

  Pale skin, no staining. Sol laid the hand down and mechanically went to the next body. Ebony skin, no staining. The next, and the next—all of them the same. These men, though clothed in Cascadian uniforms and fighting the Cascadian battle, were not from Cascadia.

  Sol stumbled away from the carnage. Who would pretend to be Cascadian? Who would fight their battles for them? The precision of the attack began to make more sense, as did the skill of the soldiers and the new weapons. Maybe Cascadia’s General Taylor had hired professional troops to come in for defense. But bringing new people in was not one of the priorities for these regions. In fact, the opposite was true. Most people in this part of the world had a substantial distrust for outsiders, due to decades of interference. And Cascadia was not rich. Especially now, people were scraping to get by. No, it didn’t seem likely that Cascadia had brought them in.