The Revered

by Terrance Mulloy

  “Dad.”

  “I’m not leaving this ship!”

  “Dad, look at me.”

  Chest heaving while he grappled with the device on his arm, Matt glanced up at her, his eyes streaming tears.

  “We don’t have much time. You need to get down to that payload bay. The gravity shell inside the ship will allow you to remain upright. I’ll make sure it reaches the capital before it comes apart.”

  “No, I can’t—I can’t do it.”

  “There’s no other way.”

  “There is. I can alter the future. I can fix this.”

  “It won’t mean a thing if we can’t release those missiles. Dad, I know you wish there were some other way to do this, but there isn’t.”

  “Ally, stop.”

  “There’s no good option, only a less shitty one. I have to finish this.”

  “Ally, I don’t want to hear that crap anymore. We are getting out of this.”

  Ally lifted her blood-stained shirt. The wound was blackening. “Take a look at me. We’re light-years from home, I’ve lost a lot of blood, and the temperature inside this ship is dropping. I won’t last much longer. So, you need to let me go. You need to let me finish this. Let me do this for you. Let me do this for everyone we’ve both lost.”

  Matt’s legs buckled and he collapsed to his knees right there in front of her, his head slumped into his chest, shoulders rising and falling as he sobbed heavy tears.

  Ally hopped out of her piloting brace and knelt before him, gently lifting his chin to meet her gaze. She then took hold of the device on his arm, her fingers moving down the smooth, jet-black surface of his forearm to eventually find his open hand. She formed a tight grip and put his hand against her heart. “We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

  Matt slung his other arm around her neck, and they embraced for what would be the final time. Then, she repeated the words he had whispered to her the night he left to join the Emissary program. “Today, tomorrow, and forever.”

  Before letting her father go, she gave him one last smile. It was a peaceful smile. A smile that indicated she had accepted her destiny in this war. Perhaps there was even a part of her that was looking forward to the eternal rest. She had certainly earned it.

  Matt could barely contain himself as he watched her hop back into the piloting brace. He stood and peered out the bridge’s damaged canopy. She was right. He had to get down there and release those missiles. He looked out to see the sky was now churning with yellow sludge, made up of clouds that frothed and leaked a mustard-yellow light. Below, jagged mountain tops punctured the cloud canopy like pus-filled welts. The tips of mile-high towers and power plants could be also seen on the far horizon, the planet’s curvature warping them into black smears.

  He gave Ally one last look then turned and took off through the airlock, headed for the payload delivery bay.

  Ally was already strapped back into her piloting console, ready to ride this flaming heap into the ground. As the ship crossed the planet’s terminator line, the outside view suddenly darkened into night. Below her, she could see a massive electrical storm raging upon a strange urban sprawl that seemed to be thousands of smaller triangles encased into a much larger one.

  Ignoring the flames that were burning her fingers, and the fritzing sparks that kept showering her face, she plunged nose-down into the storm, the clouds consuming her view like a suffocating mist. When she emerged from underneath the cloud blanket, lightning was spitting from the sky like the constant flicker of snake tongues.

  The capital awaited her.

  This alien city was unlike anything she had ever seen or imagined. There was an eerie uniformity to it. Lightning flickers revealed a featureless approach to the architecture, where every structure appeared completely black and windowless. This was a sprawling metropolis built to shield its occupants from the outside world – many of them military and government officials. Some triangular structures had towers looming out of them. They grasped at the night sky like arthritic fingers. Others appeared to be stretched and molded out of cooled magma, their blackened, smooth walls buttressed with enormous columns of ribbed stone.

  Suddenly, hundreds of small, bloodred eyes lit up the city streets below. It took Ally a second to realize they were ground defenses firing on her. As a thick volley of tracers streaked towards her, she dived deeper toward a huge triangular intersection below that was attached to a mechanically constructed tributary. Ally thought she could see some type of liquid reflecting through the middle of it. A lake or river perhaps. It was hard to tell. Whatever it was, it spanned many miles, eventually leading to a vast open square. Centered in the middle was a gigantic statue of some kind. A great military leader of old perhaps. Maybe it was Cromwell. Maybe he had returned to his homeworld sometime in the past to ensure his image was immortalized in stone. She would never know. Even if she did, she would never care. She had now become death, the destroyer of worlds.

  Gaining ground, a handful of the Ponies still on her tail attacked with desperation, several of them sacrificing themselves by ramming into the battered hull, creating a hailstorm of incendiary projectiles. Ally cranked back on the steering horn and the ship seemed to bounce against a cushion of fire, arcs of plasma overflow washing the bridge’s scuffed canopy. Once the ship had spat through another peppering of tracer fire, it nose-dived straight down like a Japanese kamikaze pilot, pitching into a shuddering vertical spiral, headed to the center of the Wraith capital.

  She plowed into the face of an attacking Death Pony who came at her from below, unable to hear anything as she calmed her mind over the roar of the explosion. Outside, a deluge of more Death Ponies poured over the ship. The thundering crackle of their weapons whiting out her view as they cleaved the ship’s hull. “Come on, dad. Don’t let me down now,” she muttered to herself. “I know you can do it.” Everything seemed to be vibrating under the immense strain of gravity now like the bridge could burst open at any moment. Acrid smoke was also oozing from the lower pits, filling the interior with a terrible chemical stench. “Almost there,” she said, closing her eyes. “Almost there…”

  Fires roared and steam hissed as Matt raced through the heavily cabled passageways of the ship’s lower deck. Just above him, strings of electricity slithered along the ceiling like eels. The heat was almost unbearable, and he could hardly see a few feet ahead from the choking smoke. He also had no real idea of where to go, except down, so he continued doing that until he stumbled through a series of damaged hatches, eventually coming to a much larger hatch.

  The hatch opened and Matt entered a small engineering well. Fixed between two giant engine nacelles was a thin ladder. He climbed down it and entered the payload bay.

  Buffeted by powerful, howling winds, he could see the missiles in their stowage brackets and the bay doors, blocked by a crush of debris. Parts of the bay had been so severely damaged; he was amazed the ship was still holding together. The humid, sulfurous air of Epsilon flooded his nostrils, conjuring painful memories of his time here. He had to mentally will himself stop dwelling on it to stay on task.

  Spotting a manual console nearby that was flashing, he bolted to it and got to work. Through windblown tears, he began searching the endlessly shifting river of information. Bizarre code and equations flowed across the face of the console. Nothing made sense. He randomly tapped a series of glyphs to no avail. Some blinkered on-and-off before disappearing from the console. Others ignited to life and gently floated there as if waiting for further interaction.

  He swiped through to another series of glyphs. Unlike the others, these were arranged neatly like apps on a phone screen. One glyph immediately struck him as familiar. He tapped it and a heavy mechanical jolt rumbled in front of him. He tapped it again and the bay door’s turbines began to whine like a dying animal. A hard-clacking sound above caused him to look up to the ceiling.

  The missiles were being loaded into a massive spooling device, readying themselves to be deployed.
>
  Matt knew what he had to do.

  He leaped over a safety barrier and shimmied along a narrow ledge to where the jammed bay door was. The yawn below was disorientating as Epsilon’s horizon rushed past at an almost vertical angle, veins of lightning streaking sideways instead of from above. Matt knew the weird view meant Ally had pitched into a straight dive to the surface. He had seconds left to act.

  He saw the debris that was jamming the bay door. There were clumps of black alloyed skin, along with sinewy coils and thick feeder cables. It had all been ejected from a nearby blast crater in the hull. Dark smoke plumed from the crater, and exposed mechanical innards flapped wildly, threatening to lash him like a whip.

  Holding onto an overhead beam, he ducked underneath it and began furiously kicking at the debris with the heel of his boot. With each strike, he could feel some of it loosening, mindful that he needed to retract his leg quickly once the bay door began to open. He gave it another hard kick and the bay door began to fold open. Matt retracted his leg and stood, watching the black urns filled with Rossiter’s pathogen begin to drop from above, cascading out of the payload bay and down into the dark city below.

  It was then, with a heavy heart, Matt blinked out of existence.

  He had made his final jump.

  With a planet-shaking crack, the missiles began detonating above the capital like a battery of anti-aircraft fire. It was nothing but shock and awe as the Scourge exploded like black napalm, atomizing into ferocious, fast-moving clouds that drizzled down onto the city. The citizens of the Capital never stood a chance.

  Still gripping the steering horn, fighting the teeth-rattling turbulence to keep the ship steady, Ally kept her eyes closed and began counting down. “Five… four… three… two…”

  Contact.

  Thirty-Two

  Matt startled awake, his eyes squinting from a harsh and unknown source of light. He could feel cold sweat beaded across his face, and his arms and legs felt shaky like he was in the throes of some horrible fever. He allowed his eyes to peel open some more and was met with a wonderful burst of color. The brilliance stung his eyes, so he closed them again and rested.

  That’s when his surroundings began to focus audibly. There was a high-pitched droning noise that seemed to surround him. After a while, it became obvious it was the familiar and comforting sound of cicadas. Growing up in rural Kentucky, hearing cicadas at the beginning of May each year meant summer was not far away. That thought made him realize the air he was breathing felt warm and summery, but not overly humid. Quite pleasant. There was also a gentle breeze in the air that carried the strong aroma of freshly cut grass. Hearing the distant roar of what sounded like a large truck blow past his right ear, he decided it was time to move.

  Matt willed himself to open his eyes and sit up. As he did so, an unbelievably beautiful sunset vista presented itself to him. Extraordinary vibrant colors streaked across the sky with the joy and ardor of a child’s finger-painting. He could not remember when he had seen such beauty.

  When something caused him to look down, he noticed the time band on his forearm was no longer there. He massaged his naked arm while taking in more of his surroundings. He was sitting in a field of grass, and in the distance sat a familiar white farmhouse. He wearily stood, found his balance, and began to wander in a trance-like state towards it, unsure if the house was real or a mirage.

  As he exited the field and climbed over a small wire fence, he saw his father, Jacob, crouched over his old Chevy Tahoe in the gravel driveway, tinkering under the hood. When Matt drew closer a dog inside the house started barking excitedly. Matt could see his old hound, Clyde, wagging his tail furiously from behind the screen door.

  The barking caused Jacob to turn around and glance at his son before going back to work. “You’re home early.” When the cap he was attempting to fasten snapped, he growled with frustration. “Oh, you piece of… damn it!” He wiped the sweat from his greasy brow, then tossed the hydro-spanner he was using into an enormous chrome toolbox and started fishing for another tool to use. “Mind giving me a hand with this?”

  When there was no reply, he turned back around to see Matt still standing there, slack-jawed and in a daze. Jacob stood, now slightly concerned at his son’s disheveled appearance. Not only was he wearing different clothes that were military-looking and stained with grime, he also looked to have aged since he last saw him – which was only a few hours ago. “Jesus, you look like shit. What happened?”

  Matt could only respond by pulling his father into a huge bear hug.

  Jacob was slightly taken back by the sudden burst of affection but was certainly not going to turn away a hug from his son. However, while this was not entirely out of character for Matt, it seemed odd he was acting as if they had not seen each other in a long time. With his concern and confusion growing, Jacob pulled away from the embrace and studied his son’s bleary eyes. “Are you OK?”

  Matt smiled, sighing with absolute exhaustion and relief. “Yeah… I think so. Where’s Mom and Al?”

  “Inside the house. Ally came off her bike this morning and grazed her knee. You’re gonna have to say something to her about the way she races down that hill. She won’t listen to me.”

  Matt had to stop himself from chuckling. He patted Jacob’s shoulder and began walking off towards the front porch, looking like he’d just crawled out of a car accident.

  Jacob watched him with concern. “Matt.”

  Matt turned to his father with a settled peace now washed across his filthy face. “Yeah.”

  “I’m serious, son. Are you OK?”

  Matt nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine, dad. I’ll be out soon to give you a hand.” With that, he turned and headed up the rickety porch steps. As the screen door creaked open, Clyde exploded onto the porch to greet him, sniffing him all over, his tail wagging vigorously. Clyde continued to follow Matt as he walked through the house, staring at furniture and family photos as if he were in a dream, smiling at the ghosts of memory they evoked.

  When Matt reached Ally’s room, the door was slightly ajar. He opened it slowly, a part of him terrified at what he might find in there. But to his delight, Lynette and Ally were sitting at the end of the bed. Ally was slouched against her grandmother’s chest, holding her leg up as Lynette gently dabbed her grazed knee with tiny cobweb balls, her trusty basket of tricks resting beside her.

  “Hey, dad,” Ally said, seemingly proud of her new battle scar. “Check out my knee.”

  Matt felt the brightness in his ten-year-old daughter’s voice was something he had forgotten a long time ago. He stood there by the door, a familiar stranger, completely taken by her.

  Lynette frowned playfully as she began to apply a band-aid to Ally’s knee. “It appears we’ve got a little rev head living among us who thinks they’re the next Evel Knievel.”

  Ally looked up and smiled at him mischievously.

  Matt just stood there staring at them, tears of joy running from his kind, wounded eyes.

  He was home.

  - THE END -

  Thank you for reading

  I really hope you enjoyed The Revered. While this concludes main storyline of The Earth Epsilon Wars, you can read the stand-alone prequel with Book 4, The Soldier, which is coming very soon. In the meantime, I’d love it if you could leave a short review on Amazon or Goodreads. Aside from purchasing my books, it’s the best way to support my work. Thanks again.

  Until next time, happy reading.

  Terrance

  Also by Terrance Mulloy

  The Earth Epsilon Wars

  Book 0: The Invasion

  Book 1: The Emissary

  Book 2: The Defector

  Book 3: The Revered

  Book 4: The Soldier (Coming Soon)

  Audiobooks by Podium:

  The Invasion

  The Earth Epsilon Wars: Books 1-2

  The Earth Epsilon Wars: Books 3-4 (Coming Soon)

  Stand-Alones/Short Stories

 
Alien Prison Ship

  Enigma

  Upcoming Book Series

  The Solar Warden Saga

  The Halfworld Chronicles

  The Ryan Novak Series

  About the Author

  Terrance resides in Queensland, Australia, with his wife and two dogs. When he's not busy fending off hordes of radioactive Kangaroos and flesh-eating Wombats, he can usually be found lurking around his office, conjuring his next book idea.

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