Blaze (The High-Born Epic)

by Jason Woodham

  When the tree was about thirty feet away, Harold leapt towards it, while Gabby kept running full speed at it. Harold flipped and hit the tree squarely with both feet, absorbing all of his speed and sprang back towards camp. Gabby ran just by the oak, snagging a young tree about the size of her leg. She was running so fast that both of her feet came off the ground as she spun around the tree, slingshotting herself back the way she had come.

  While Harold came to a complete stop when he hit the tree, Gabby redirected her momentum and she sped by Harold who was still accelerating. Harold let out a surprised yelp as Gabby’s beautiful, blonde hair trailed behind her, just about three steps ahead of him. They darted left and right, cutting back and forth to avoid trees and small bushes as they sped like two bullets through the forest.

  The downed tree came up fast, and Gabby made a skillful leap over it, never losing a stride. Harold leapt before he got to it, and sprang forward off it. His legs ran in mid-air and he kicked off another tree, hitting it just perfectly to give him a boost. He sailed through the air, surging by Gabby, and his feet hit the ground running. However, he did not hit the ground perfectly and had to stutter step to reign in his momentum. Though he was able to keep her from leaving him behind, he was also unable to maintain the momentary lead that kicking off the tree had given him.

  As the end neared, they glanced at each other, and noticed that they were exactly in sync, stride for stride. And they both jetted across the finish line at practically the same moment. They ran many more steps just slowing themselves to the point that they could stop. Harold put his hands on top of his head and Gabby put her hands on her hips and held her head to the sky. Then they both just breathed.

  After about five or six long breaths, they were refreshed and they looked at each other.

  “Tie?” Harold asked.

  Gabby nodded.

  “You had enough?” Harold asked.

  “I found out what I wanted to know,” Gabby smiled.

  “Think it’ll be enough to face down the High-Born?” Harold asked.

  “When we add our powers to that,” she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t see how we can lose.”

  Harold nodded as he walked to the water to fill his canteen.

  Chapter 39

  Gabby and Harold looked out across the horizon at the distant city of Cyrene. He was still too far away, even with his enhanced vision, to see if any patrols surrounded it. Harold looked off to his right at a wheel-shaped community, and everything seemed to be normal. At the moment, there were no High-Born anywhere to be found around it.

  “They haven’t started moving in the villages yet,” Harold said.

  “They’re too busy fortifying important positions for that right now,” Gabby answered. “We probably have a week or so before they start doing that, if they do that at all.”

  “I have a nagging feeling that they will,” Harold replied. “They may try to root us out that way.”

  “Hopefully, they’ll mistake us for some sort of advanced A.I.,” Gabby said. “And not take it out on the villages.”

  “Maybe so,” Harold answered. “They thought I was one before.”

  In a few more minutes, Harold pulled his fire into his eyes, and studied the air surrounding Cyrene. There were about a dozen ripples of gunships spinning around the city. The High-Born would not be caught off guard so easily again.

  It did not take them long to reach the ruins surrounding the city and Gabby began flying them around it so they could get a better idea of what they might find there. Cyrene was almost identical to New Pylos in size and shape. Even the billboards that flashed advertisements were in roughly the same spots throughout the city. After the end of the second pass, Gabby found them a safe spot in which to camp. She lowered the gunship into a gap in the canopy and she pulled on the controls at just the right moment. Harold did not even feel a shudder as they touched down.

  “You’re getting better at that,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “Now, let’s go scout our next target.”

  He smiled at her and touched her on the shoulder and flames whirled...

  ...then they were standing atop one of the ruined buildings.

  “I wonder why there is a ring of these old ruins around every city we’ve seen?” Gabby asked.

  “I don’t know,” Harold pondered while Gabby pulled her air-camouflage around them. “I guess they like looking at what they did.”

  “Let’s go down here,” she said as she walked towards and pointed at a staircase. “It’ll be easier to hide in the daylight.”

  They walked down the grime-covered stairs through a myriad of spider webs to the level below. As they rounded the corner to the level below, mold permeated the air. Harold pushed another spider web out of his way and looked across the wreckage before him. Large wooden desks littered the floor. Some of them were still mostly intact, but many of them had been shot to pieces. Harold and Gabby scanned the floor and could see many human skeletons strewn throughout the complex. Some were laid across the desks, and others littered the floor in a variety of positions.

  “A fine mess those people way back when made, huh?” Harold asked.

  “It’s very impressive,” Gabby replied.

  Harold walked to the left and Gabby to the right, looking over various items. They both stopped and looked at one another when a loud clicked popped from the outside. They gingerly walked to one of the windows, and gazed out of it. Far in the distance, they saw the billboards throughout the city all showing advertisements suddenly go black. The number 10 appeared followed by 9... 8... 7... and all the way down to 0.

  Harold and Gabby both pulled on their powers to enhance their vision and hearing and they watched as all the billboards played in unison the same clip. In the top left of the screen were the letters HBNN.

  The images of Blaze and Aireon tearing down the billboard flashed over and over against the backdrop of dark music. Then, it showed them raising their hands in defiance, and you could hear Blaze’s voice thundering all over the city. Harold had to admit that his voice was incredibly intimidating. The angle of the images rapidly changed and Harold realized that it was showing the various angles from which the High-Born crowd had filmed them. There were words scrolling across the bottom of the screens and they said:

  The time has come once again for all High-Born to remember the power of our birthright!

  Against the backdrop of armed High-Born soldiers marching in formation, powerful music blared. It showed various soldiers in battle gear with tinted visors loading and cocking their rifles. After a moment, a fully-armed High-Born squad was rushing a target, each grunt firing and covering each other as they advanced. The screen suddenly flickered to that of a hover tank lifting slightly off the ground. It spun quickly and fired a large rail cannon on a distant target that erupted into flames. Gunships with rail cannons blazing and rockets flaring zoomed across the billboards flying in circles around targets that were being decimated.

  Next, it showed two lines of High-Born grunts who stepped together and raised their hands high, creating a corridor between them. Raucous cheers echoed from the speakers as three High-Born dressed in shiny black suits with sophisticated black helmets walked down the center of the two lines. The film swung to show three sleek black fighter jets on a patch of asphalt. The pilots climbed up the sides of their respective jets and the canopies closed around them. Ports on the bottom of the jets began rapidly venting air and the jets quickly rose off the ground while their rear engines began burning red.

  Suddenly, the engines turned to near white and Harold was surprised by how fast they accelerated out of the screen, rocketing away in formation. After a few seconds, a massive puff of air shot out from them and a loud boom came from the speakers. They began looping in and around one another, barrel-rolling as they did so, and jetted in an ever-tightening circle. Just when it seemed that they could not get the circle any tighter, they sped away again. Their engines burned brightly and their sp
eed increased.

  Suddenly, the lead plane seemed to lose control, and then the second, followed by the third. The jets were spinning around like tops, and it took Harold and Gabby a moment to notice that it had apparently been planned, because the noses of every other plane were in perfect sync with each other almost like a set of gears.

  Applause and cheers echoed and the music hastened its beat.

  Then, bursts of miniature engines blasted from all over the lead jet and it suddenly came out of the seemingly uncontrollable spin, only to jet away rolling and twisting into the sun.

  The other jets quickly followed suit, and they rapidly reformed into a V formation that sped away with con-trails spraying behind them. The cameras seemed to spin all around the formation and then viewed them from the front as the music built in a crescendo, and the contrails disappeared. And the jets suddenly faded from sight and became nothing more than a faint, transparent outline on the horizon as the cameras flashed to an angle behind them.

  “And the Dragon Corps itself has been reactivated! And as THEY did all of those years ago, so shall THEY ascend once more! And all High-Born will follow in their path to glory! For we are the High-Born, and we were born to overcome!”

  “Well,” Harold said. “We’ve really stirred up a hornet’s nest now.”

  “Soldiers are one thing, but all of that equipment scares me,” Gabby said. “How can we deal with all of that?”

  “We’ll figure it out,” Harold answered. “I can always get us out of there quickly, if we need it.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Gabby replied.

  Harold looked across the city, picturing in his mind how a battle there would all play out. He could use basically the same route he used in New Pylos to get to the military compound in the center of the city. However, all across the building tops were armed High-Born snipers, and in most cases those snipers had heavily-armed mechanoids as backups.

  He walked around for a moment and found a vantage point from which he could see the middle of Cyrene, and he studied the central compound. The streets leading up to it were filled with concrete barriers staggered all around. Dozens of mechanoids, maybe even more than a hundred stood behind the barricades, and both he Gabby saw that they had guns instead of hands. Interspersed amongst those mechs were about two-hundred armed High-Born grunts, many of whom were walking in between them carrying various machines that Harold did not recognize, but they could only be weapons of some kind.

  There were three tanks that Harold could see, one on the southern, eastern, and western ends, and he assumed there was another one on the northern end, but he could not see it. He heard an ever so faint buzzing coming from his left and he quickly squatted. Gabby did as well, and they were still as what could only be a gunship passed overhead on its patrol of Cyrene’s perimeter. It faded from hearing quickly and Harold resumed his reconnaissance of the central compound.

  “Well,” Harold said to Gabby. “I think they’re ready for us this time.”

  “You think?” Gabby replied.

  They studied the city for another couple of hours and then returned to the gunship just as the sun set. They both found something to eat and began nibbling on their rations as they sat in their respective beds across the gunship from each other. Harold found the history book and began thumbing through it.

  “Hey, Gabby,” Harold said. “We’ve been so busy we haven’t really had a chance to look at this thing yet. You want to read it with me?”

  “What is it?” Gabby asked.

  “It says that it is a 9th grade history book,” Harold answered.

  “Sure,” she said and walked over to him and sat down.

  As Harold opened the front cover, he noticed that it seemed to have been saved from a fire because its edges were slightly blackened.

  “Published in 2006,” he read.

  “In the United States of America,” Gabby read on.

  Harold opened it to chapter one and they began reading. As they read, they learned many interesting things. They realized how extensive history had actually been before the High-Born. They read about ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and many of the countries from somewhere once known as Europe. They also read about the Orient and the countries contained within it. They even read about the country called the United States of America. With their respective abilities, they covered many chapters in just a couple of hours and rapidly devoured the knowledge within its pages. However, it had nothing about the rise of the High-Born.

  “How did things get to be this way?” Gabby asked. “So much has been lost and forgotten.”

  “The High-Born did it,” Harold said. “They rewrote history as they saw fit.”

  “Hmmm...” Gabby pondered. “Maybe we can change that.”

  “I think we can,” Harold answered.

  Then they sat there for a few minutes just snacking on their food.

  Harold could see Gabby staring intently at him, and he smiled at her. She returned his smile, but there was something almost sad or perhaps thoughtful in it, like she was choosing her next words very carefully.

  “Do you think that there are people who were made for each other?” she asked and took a sip of water as her eyes locked on his.

  Harold raised his eyebrows as he regarded Gabby’s beautiful eyes, and said, “Maybe.”

  “Well,” Gabby said as she peered deeper into Harold’s eyes. “I certainly do.”

  Harold stared back at her questioningly as she pushed her hair behind her ears, but she never took her eyes from his. Harold’s heart quickened as he looked at her face, and allowed himself a quick look at the lines of her body before his eyes flitted back to her face. Her smile had faded, and now she had a look of seriousness in her expression that made Harold feel like he was on fire. Harold took a bite of ham and then cornbread, followed by a sip of water, neither of them taking their eyes from the other.

  Harold put down the canteen, and said, “I sure am glad that Sarah packed this food for me.”

  Gabby puffed and looked at the front of the gunship, and turned back to him, “Yes, it was awfully nice of everyone to help us out like they have.”

  “Do you really think we can win?” Harold asked.

  Gabby did not look at him, but answered, “We have a better chance than anyone else I’ve ever known.”

  Harold nodded and lay down, pulling his own blankets over him, “I’m going to take it in early tonight. We attack just after first light?”

  Gabby sat up straight and slightly shook her head, “Yes, I agree with that, sleep tight.”

  “You too,” Harold said as he turned away from her.

  Gabby turned and looked out of the windshield at the wall of darkened greenery there. After about an hour, she lay down as well and was soon asleep too.

  Chapter 40

  Harold sat up from his blanket, and looked around. He did not know what had caused him to wake, but something had made the gunship shake slightly. But now he felt nothing; however, after a moment he felt another ever so slight rattle. It was almost so slight that it could have been considered a very faint noise rather than a movement.

  “What was that?” Gabby asked as she sat up from her bed.

  “I don’t know,” Harold answered.

  They both sat in silence for a moment, and they heard it again.

  Gabby walked to the pilot’s seat and began going through her pre-flight checklist and Harold sat down in the co-pilot’s chair and buckled himself in. After about ten seconds, Gabby had the gunship in the air, and she focused her powers to render it completely invisible. Then they rose above the tree tops and ascended high into the sky.

  They looked around with their enhanced vision and Gabby ran through a series of detection devices aboard the gunship. But they could not find anything amiss. She tugged on the controls and the gunship began pivoting. Harold caught a glimpse of a cloaked gunship and noticed that it was flying to the west, but before he could call Gabby’s attention to it, she was already turning the
aircraft in that direction.

  She pushed the gunship after the High-Born, and off to Harold’s right, he could see about a dozen gunships in formation flying westerly. He looked out in the distance, and saw a small pinprick of light appear, followed by another, and then a third one.

  “What is that?” Harold asked as Gabby furiously worked the control panel.

  Harold looked at the ground around the sparsely appearing pinpricks, and noticed that there were other flashes appearing on the ground too.

  “Maybe this will help,” Gabby said. “It’s the best I can do right now.”

  An image appeared on the monitor and Harold could see that the pinpricks were actually the explosions of gunships, but he could not tell what was causing them to detonate. Harold watched on the screen as the gunships wavered back and forth, firing on something on the ground that was obscured from his vision because of the treeline.

  “Gabby,” Harold said. “We better stop here. We don’t want to get any clo – ”

  Just then, something above the distant battle exploded in a bright flash of white light, and Harold and Gabby shielded their eyes, but just as soon as the flash appeared, it quickly faded. Emanating from the small point of light came flashes of bright green, then red, blue, and finally the distant sky faded into an orangish hue.

  “What’s going on?” Gabby pulled back on the control stick, and they slowed.

  “Look,” Harold said, pointing at the orange light.

  As the gunship came to a complete stop, they could see many High-Born aircraft coming into view beneath the seeming dome of orange light. They saw something glitter from the ground and strike a gunship, it lurched and spun out of control. Something else glittered up from the ground and another gunship exploded. However, there were at least a dozen more gunships that were buzzing around, apparently firing at something that was moving and fighting beneath them.