The Cumerian Unraveling Trilogy (Scars of Ambition, Vendetta Clause, Cycles of Power)

by Jason Letts

  As she went on she gained more confidence, almost striding normally on her way to the staircases that would take her to the plant’s above-ground levels. Nobody was around and the combustor turning water and gas into electricity churned predictably across the cavern, lights flashing here and there in a vacant control room up ahead.

  Just shy of the staircase, she heard the sound of doors screeching open from the top and saw bright beams of light hit the floor ahead. Sierra nearly slipped trying to backpedal into an adjoining passageway as footsteps clattered down the steps and the sound of hushed voices rippled through the air.

  “This way,” a deep voice said. “We’re almost there.”

  She’d heard that voice not long ago in her office. After ducking into another corridor, she peeked back through the dim light to see if her suspicions were confirmed. Her eyes widened when she spotted Carlisle Empry and three of his four personal guards descending to the suspended walkway and moving toward the control room.

  Sierra’s anger over everything he’d done gave way to puzzlement about what he was doing here and how he’d made it without running into any of Keize’s men. Sure, there were a half-dozen ways someone could get down here from the ground floor, but was Carlisle really planning to make a stand to defend the plant right beside the reactor’s controls?

  There was only one way to find out, and Sierra took the long way around through the tunnels to get a better vantage point of the control room. The sound of footsteps regularly accompanied the humming machinery as she approached the outer ring of the tunnels.

  In an instant, she turned the corner and bumped into someone with a light, and she immediately pulled her gas gun’s trigger.

  Someone moaned, collapsing to the ground. Sierra felt like her heart might explode. Faint light from a nearby bulb illuminated the dying figure, allowing her to see that the black uniform was neither that of a Bracken security guard or one of Keize’s soldiers.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” Sierra demanded as softly as she could, but the young man had it in mind to die without answering. Perplexed and paranoid, she had no choice but to continue to the control room.

  She pressed on until she realized she’d gone too far, making it to the better-lit main artery of the underground pathways that stretched behind the control room all the way around to the combustor. Looking out, Carlisle and his men were nowhere to be found, and she assumed they were all in the control room until footsteps came from the other side of the platform. Quickly, Sierra crammed herself behind some gas tanks stored near the end of her tunnel.

  Through the space between the tanks, she spied a lengthy section of the pathway, holding her breath in the hope that whoever it was would quickly pass. Arnold Keize and a few of his men marched into view.

  “Hold it right there,” Carlisle’s deep voice echoed. He and his guards stepped into her line of sight on the left side. In an instant all of their guns were raised and the two leaders were staring each other down. A flicker of hope sprung up in Sierra that they’d find a way to take each other out, but the staring of the two stony-faced men continued.

  “I’ve held up my end of the deal,” Keize said at last. “How about you?”

  Sierra’s jaw dropped. They had a deal. Carlisle had cut a deal with Keize while having her father investigated for betraying the company’s interests. The irony had a thick coating of antipathy.

  “Of course I have. The Brackens are finished, either the farmers or the miners will end the old man’s feeble crusade, and then we can secure an empire of energy dominance in Cumeria that’ll last in perpetuity,” Carlisle boasted.

  Suddenly Carlisle’s moral crusade over his family history seemed like another cheap trick. The only thing he wanted to do was increase his power and fill his pockets. Bracken origins were just a convenient justification for the power grab, if Carlisle hadn’t fabricated his family’s involvement to begin with.

  Keize’s grim visage broke into a grin and a chuckle. The guards lowered their guns.

  “Then I think we just became the most powerful men in the world. Cheers.”

  The two leaders came forward and embraced, both of them exuberant. Sierra felt like she was losing her mind, and the trigger on the gas gun in her hand couldn’t have begged harder to be pulled if it had a mouth on it.

  CHAPTER 23

  Taylor saw the sky raining fire and knew he hadn’t been fast enough.

  After crossing the Magadrian River, he pushed the van so hard along winding country roads he thought he’d blow the engine. But he discovered he hadn’t been fast enough when he zoomed over the top of a hill and saw his hometown for the first time. The Illiams’ stragglers raced to catch up to a few dozen catapults that were sending red streaks across the sky and over a vicious melee playing out on the expansive field.

  Worse, some giant heap Taylor didn’t remember on the west side of town roared in a colossal blaze that lit up the entire area like the rising sun. A few of the townhouses had caught, too, and the flames were spreading. Taylor was awestruck. Beside him, Nissa was giddy, bouncing in the passenger’s seat with her feet against the dashboard.

  “What are the Ma Ha’dere going to do?” he shouted at Nissa for the tenth time, but she gave the same vague answer.

  “We’re going to wipe this place clean,” she said.

  Taylor peered at her before returning his eyes to the dirt path ahead. He was the only one who knew the Ma Ha’dere were involved here, and their penchant for utter destruction seemed a greater threat to the ClawLands than the fire or the attacking armies.

  Taking a deep breath, Taylor held the wheel tight and ignored the right turn in the road. The van’s shocks buckled against the uneven terrain, rattling, shaking, and nearly tipping over once or twice on the way to the conflict. He briefly considered slowing down and trying to pose as one of the Illiams, stealthily taking out the catapults one by one, but there was no time for finesse. The pedal against the floor, the engine roared.

  “You’re crazy!” Nissa said to him when it became obvious he intended to ram one of the vehicles supporting the catapults. Taylor found it rich that she was calling him crazy. It burned that he’d had an attraction to her, and with any luck she’d go down with the rest of her horde of loons.

  The van fishtailed in soft dirt as Taylor struggled to keep it steady. It glanced off an Illiam soldier, who wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon. The nearest catapult was dead ahead, its next payload getting the torch. Taylor checked to make sure his knife wouldn’t cut him upon impact. The man lighting the torch looked back just in time to see the oncoming vehicle.

  The man screamed so loud Taylor could hear it above the engine.

  The van crashed into the catapult, breaking like an egg against a wall. Taylor collapsed against the steering wheel. Nissa launched forward, breaking through the windshield and spilling onto the ground beside the collision point. The catapult man had been crushed between the two vehicles, and a mix of blood and flaming vegetables were scattered around.

  Despite being rattled, Taylor wasted no time elbowing the door open, drawing his knife, and rushing into the fight. The next closest catapult was to the right, so he raced around the van for it, looking over his shoulder at Nissa, who was bleeding from the skull and slumped on the ground. He hoped she was gone until her eyes opened and the manic grin returned to her lips.

  The operator of the next catapult, a stringy farmhand who waved a torch, prevented him from doing anything about Nissa. Taylor avoided the swinging torch and eventually gutted the man, slicing straight through his stomach. When he looked back for Nissa, she was gone.

  Grabbing the torch before it lit the grass on fire, he tossed it at the machine’s controls, inadvertently launching a pile of melons that had yet to be ignited.

  Taylor’s next target took him closer to the fray, where more hardened soldiers manned the catapults and fended off stray attacks from Bracken men who’d broken away from the pack. The danger increased, but so di
d the thrill. The constant motion, the pumping heart in his chest, and the pure chaos of the situation seemed alarmingly beautiful. It felt like he was meant for this and never wanted it to stop.

  A trio of the Illiams’ men blocked him from the next catapult, firelight illuminating their devious faces. They were reveling in this almost as much as he was, but it didn’t stay that way for long. To even the odds, Taylor threw his knife into the chest of one man, whose feeble attempt to block it with a thin pike whacked the head of the man next to him. That left only one man standing, and Taylor rushed him, feeling the sting of the spear graze his side, and twisted the man’s neck while his hands were still on the spear.

  The other two were easy to dispatch, but the sudden retort of gunfire urged him to duck behind the catapult. He peeked around until another shot and a ding against the metal exterior urged him back.

  Taylor’s breath pulled in and out of his lungs like a saw. He’d be able to take countless cuts like the one on his arm, but it would only take one bullet to end his run. The challenge of a man with a gun roused something inside of him, giving his hands a blue tint that went to his wrists. It was dangerous giving in to this power, but the allure was irresistible.

  Ignoring every lesson he’d learned from the Youth Guard, Taylor rolled into the open and pursued the gunman unarmed. The boldness of his move must’ve disturbed the man, because one shot and then another went wide. As the soldier prepared to fire a third time, Taylor chopped at his elbow and forced his forearm back and the gun under his chin. It happened so fast and the soldier was so panicked that he pulled the trigger.

  There were still plenty of catapults left, but Taylor sensed he’d garnered more attention than was good for him. About a dozen soldiers closed in on him, the closest of whom wielded a hefty sword. Plucking the knife from his previous victim, Taylor savored the disadvantage as the man with the sword stared him down. But a shadow with whirling shiny black hair somewhere in the fray distracted him, and he barely dodged the soldier’s first swing.

  Nissa was out there, no doubt homing in on the rest of her crew, and Taylor needed to stop her, but he had his hands full avoiding crisp slices. If he didn’t do something quickly, the others approaching might get him.

  As his energy bubbled to the surface, time seemed to slow, making it easier to anticipate the steel blur flashing across him. He swung the knife as if it were a broadsword, putting such force into the motion it knocked the sword out of the other man’s hands. Taylor traded the knife for the fallen sword, twirling and sending the blade clear through the soldier’s neck.

  Although there were plenty of men coming to try their luck, the allure of the open battle sparked Taylor’s jealousy. There was no way he could pass that up, not when it was so close and so unwieldy.

  He dashed for it, newly acquired sword at the ready. There were still a few hundred fighters battling it out in a thick cluster, but many were gravitating closer to the town, which seemed likely to become the epicenter of the battle. Explosions rattled on the west side over all conceivably sounds of bravery and cowardice.

  Discerning the ClawLands fighters from the Illiam fighters wasn’t tricky, but Taylor’s unusual black attire made it difficult to tell which side he was on. More than once he had to fend off someone from his hometown while trying to convince them he was on their side. When he could he took down the enemy’s front-line men, the ones who had been given melee weapons rather than scarce guns. Some skilled soldiers on both sides roamed the field, making this more of an even fight.

  Taylor took on one hulking farm soldier who looked like he was stashing tree trunks under his sleeves. Between the man’s reach, agility, and brute force, they battled to a stalemate. To his surprise, Taylor was actually relieved when someone came up and stabbed the guy in the back. Bad form and an opportunity lost, but the situation required it.

  Sensing someone coming up behind him, Taylor twisted and raised his sword, blocking another that had been directed right at his face. The metal clanged and Taylor stared down his new opponent, a man with a chiseled face, graying hair, and stubble, who was maybe a couple inches taller than him and had on a steel-fibered outfit.

  All at once the sensation of pleasure drained from Taylor, who remembered why he was fighting and who he was striving to protect.

  “Dad?”

  CHAPTER 24

  “Taylor?”

  Lowell gawked at his youngest son, freezing in the midst of a raging battlefield. He could scarcely believe his eyes, especially since he’d suspected, as Sierra had, that Taylor would abandon them like his mother had.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, afraid he’d discover Taylor had arrived to see the Bracken Empire fall. The two shared an intense glare, fraught with emotion.

  “I came home,” Taylor said, confidence and resolve in his eyes. Lowell’s heart sang. Taylor was here now and fighting by his side, ushering in that warm fatherly feeling that Lowell couldn’t get enough of. Taylor was truer than his mother had been, a man of integrity who honored the Bracken name.

  Lowell struggled to control his labored breathing, not wanting to seem like a sluggish old fool playing at swords. His son had the instincts, training, and build of a real fighter, and at least he got to see that his old man wasn’t above standing up for his hometown himself.

  Their moment ended when a berserk swordsman raced in to take them both on. The man had green and brown paint on his face, the Illiams’ colors, and a swing that could slice through solid stone. Together Lowell and Taylor fended off his attacks, trying to create an opening for the other.

  “I have to tell you something,” Taylor spoke up after parrying another attack. “We’re in trouble.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Lowell replied, lunging in for a stiff stab that the berserker blocked and followed with a shoulder to his chest. It knocked Lowell back, but Taylor leapt to his defense, stopping a sharp downward swipe. Lowell spotted a strange blue tint to his son’s hands, as if they were made of ice.

  “That’s not what I mean. It’s the Ma Ha’dere,” Taylor said, taking an instant to glance at him before knocking back another swift swing and moving in to drive his sword right into the man’s chest. Lowell puzzled at the strange name he’d heard before and the glow, similar to the one that had given him a heart attack, which his son seemed to possess. Taylor withdrew his sword from their fallen opponent, who dropped to the ground.

  “What?” Lowell gasped, confused.

  “I found a group of them at Lynxstra,” he said. “They think they’re fighting oppression by attacking those in power, but really they just have a hunger for destruction. And they’re here now. I know because I joined them, and that’s what I was doing when the Illiams’ statue fell. I was getting in deep so I could get back at them for you, but it kills me that it led to this.”

  Lowell was barely able to keep his bearings as he deflected another attacker, who continued racing past, taking swings at people. There wasn’t enough time to sort out what it all meant, but Lowell understood his son had tried to defend him.

  “And what are they going to do?” Lowell asked, already gravitating back toward the stone wall and the town, where most of the fighting had moved. It seemed both sides had won; the Illiams had broken through into town, and the Clawmen had disabled the catapults. But there were already more buildings on fire than Lowell could count.

  “I don’t know. Whatever you could imagine that would cause the most destruction, that’s what they’re trying to do,” he said, taking a deep breath.

  “Bolt & Keize are at the power plant. I think they’re trying to blow it up and ignite the Claws!”

  “They might not be alone,” Taylor grimaced.

  Without another word, they broke from the battle and ran for town. It was a slog racing up the slope in armored clothes, especially when Lowell couldn’t get to the power plant fast enough. It had been too long since he’d heard anything from Sierra about the situation there. Perhaps it might’v
e been foolish to get her involved when she was alone against the soldiers in those helicopters, but with the Ma Ha’dere there too, it may have been beyond reckless.

  Emerging onto the town streets, Lowell marveled at the utter chaos. Fighters roamed in packs like wild dogs, hacking and slaughtering each other. To the west the Wozniaks were streaming in around the barricade, where they’d eventually overwhelm the town’s defenses. The command center was in pieces in front of him. Not ten feet away was somebody trying to put out a house fire.

  “Put down the bucket and pick up a weapon. Defend yourself first!” Lowell shouted at him. Whole neighborhoods might go up in smoke, but that wouldn’t matter if none of their occupants survived.

  “This way!” Taylor hollered, taking off toward the east where the towers and the plant’s smoke stacks reflected enough light to stand out from the dark sky. Gunfire rang out, making Lowell duck as he ran. But he couldn’t move fast enough to keep up with his son.

  From Lowell’s right, one of the councilors intercepted him.

  “What do we do, Mr. Bracken?” the town councilor asked, on the verge of tears. He’d been hurt badly, a deep gash in his arm, which would probably have to be amputated.

  “Hold yourself together. Get a squad together and defend from the top row of the amphitheater. We can’t let anyone else get through to the power plant!”

  A moment later the councilor was behind him. Lowell didn’t have much faith that his orders would get carried out, but something more promising roared up behind him in a rickshaw. Glickon, a sword in one hand and the wheel in the other, settled in beside him. To Lowell’s surprise, he had a basket of fire balloons in the back.

  “Need a lift?” he asked.

  Lowell didn’t need a second invitation to get on. Together they caught up to Taylor, who climbed aboard as well. The rickshaw sputtered along the streets, and Lowell and Taylor tossed a few fire balloons at Illiam soldiers roaming the town.