The Redwood Trilogy Box Set

by Jaxon Reed

  Finally we arrived at the largest building in the compound, the main administration and communications center. Ranger Jones held the door open for me and I walked into the large meeting hall where my fate had been decided by Professor Cruz and others back when I first came to the station. It seemed like ages had passed, even though I knew in reality it wasn’t very long ago.

  From there we walked into the communications room. Leesa Jones turned around and stood up from her seat at the controls. She walked over and hugged me, her dark arms squeezing me tight.

  “We were so worried about you, Marcus. Lonestar One had a good view of the battle up there, and we saw you ramming the ship into the GP’s cruiser. We knew your pod got knocked off course, and were so relieved when we picked up the tracking beacon. I’m going to relay the good news that you’re okay to Redwood City.”

  She turned back to the communications console and went to work.

  Lonestar One was a clandestine satellite that New Texas A&M had placed in orbit around Redwood. It allowed the researchers who remained at the Ranger station to stay in touch with folks back home on New Texas. The university also had one circling Orange, which is how we found out Janus 30 had been hooked up with Janus 0, giving the State on Old Earth a back door and opening us up to the current threat.

  “Yes. Yes, he’s okay. He’s standing here now. No, he has no signs of injury or trauma.”

  Ranger Jones smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “How are the kids?”

  The Joneses had four children, ranging in age from four to ten.

  “Raymond and the girls are doing okay. Hunter’s taking it hard, though.”

  I nodded. Little Hunter Jones was the youngest. I remembered him crying when we left Ranger Station Alpha to attack Redwood City the year before. The older Patel girls had stayed behind to take care of the kids and monitor communications.

  Leesa turned around from the console again.

  “We’re still using encrypted communications, although it’s probably not as big a deal since you took out their mother ship. Still, you never know. They have higher technology than we do.”

  “So, where are they? What are they doing?”

  “Oh, they’re here. In the forest. We’re pretty sure they’re looking for Fred or any other hematophagous monkeys they can find.”

  I grimaced. I knew intellectually that the reason for the GPs to descend on Redwood was to transform their soldiers into vampires, like me and Dee Dee. But to know it was actually happening sent chills down my spine.

  “Are we going to do anything about that? If they get Fred or one of the other vampire monkeys, they’ll become invincible.”

  Ranger Jones and his wife both smiled, showing big wide grins.

  “What? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Mrs. Jones spoke first.

  “When we found out the Old Earth troopers were coming, and what they were looking for, Professor Cruz developed a plan and put it in action. We went through the forest and found every hematophagous monkey, tranquilized them, and took them out.”

  Ranger Jones nodded, and joined in.

  “The team comprised of us and the Jenkins. I’m happy to say we managed to capture them all without anybody getting bit or clawed or otherwise injured.”

  “We learned a lot from our previous experiences with Fred. Essentially, we knew that while the other monkeys are very shy and tend to avoid contact with humans, the vampires are aggressive and like to attack. We went to each monkey ‘city’ and attracted attention to ourselves. Sure enough, soon the resident vampire would attack. But we set out sensors and were ready for them. When they got close enough, we tranquilized them with dart guns.”

  “So there are no more vampires in the woods. Those guys from Old Earth can look all they want, but it’s an exercise in futility.”

  I said, “That’s great! So, what’d you do with them?”

  Their smiles faltered.

  “What? Come on, what’d you do with the bodies?”

  “That’s on a need to know basis, Marcus,” Mrs. Jones said.

  Her husband nodded in agreement.

  “And you don’t need to know.”

  “Well that’s fine. It’s not important. I just hate he had to take them out, you know? I mean, from what I remember, Professor Cruz thought the vampires served as an important part of their bio system. They have no known predators, and most of the monkeys the vampires killed were old or lame or something. ‘Culling the herd.’”

  They both nodded, then seemed intent on finding something else to do in an obvious effort to avoid the subject. I gave up. They did not look like they were willing to discuss the matter further.

  Mrs. Jones’s console pinged.

  “What is that, sweetheart?”

  She swiveled in her seat and adjusted some dials. A familiar grid appeared on the screen, with some lights flashing.

  “A foreign presence has entered the space around our nearest colony. Human-size.”

  “Can you get it on cam?”

  She nodded and made some more adjustments. A moment later, the screen switched to a view of the forest from a cam miles away, pointed toward the primate settlement.

  “Should be coming into view any moment.”

  Tension filled the room while we waited. Finally, we saw something in the corner of the screen. A man clad in a bulky black suit landed on a branch and seemed to be scanning the area with his right forearm.

  He jumped from the branch and floated over to another one and scanned again. This time he seemed to be focusing on Monkey City.

  Mrs. Jones said, “Looking for hematophages, no doubt. A bio scanner must be built into the arm of his suit.”

  “Those are some suits,” Ranger Jones said. “I presume they’re the same ones they wore exiting the spacecraft.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “That’s impressive. They can be used in space and they can move around on the planet’s surface, too.”

  “Probably bulletproof as well,” Jones said, a note of worry creeping into his voice.

  The GP gave up on the city, evidently finding no Fred there or anywhere nearby. He turned toward the cam and floated over in its general direction.

  “Is the cam camouflaged?” I asked, nervously.

  Ranger Jones shook his head.

  “No, the monkeys never paid much attention to it. We never needed to camouflage things.”

  “I’m transmitting the feed back to Redwood City,” Mrs. Jones said. “This is the first close up we’ve had of these guys.”

  The GP stood close to the cam now. He turned in a wide arc, holding his forearm in front of his chest, looking down at what we could now see was a small hologram screen.

  He stopped, facing the cam, and we got a good look. The suit was all black, made out of some kind of material that looked like a cross between plastic and metal. I had never seen anything quite like it. It bulked him up, showing bulges around articulated joints, including shoulders, elbows, and knees.

  A tinted visor hid his face, and a black skin-tight helmet covered the rest of his head. I figured from the pack on his back he was still breathing air from back home.

  “They’re worried about contamination,” I said, making a guess.

  At that moment, as if he could hear me, his head lifted up and it looked like he must be staring right at us, even though the visor hid his eyes.

  He reached out a hand toward the cam, and as it drew closer I noticed bulges around his finger joints, too. The image shook as he pulled the cam off its mount. We saw the edges of his fingers wrapping around the screen.

  “What’s he doing, squeezing it?”

  A crack appeared, then a whole web of cracks. Then we lost the signal.

  “He crushed it with his hand!” Mrs. Jones said.

  Ranger Jones nodded.

  “His suit must provide extra strength or something.”

  The screen shifted back to the grid, a flashing red dot marking the GP’s l
ocation. We watched as the dot moved away from Monkey City. Soon it left the grid.

  The screen shifted to a new location, farther from the city. We watched the dot move steadily, weaving here and there. He was no doubt flying, going around giant tree trunks, limbs, and leaves.

  “He’s headed toward us!” Mrs. Jones said. “He must be using his sensors to follow the grid trail.”

  The screen changed to a view of Professor Cruz, wearing a serious expression on his face.

  “Professor, are you watching this? It looks like he’s coming this way.”

  “I am, Leesa. He is. I want you and Brad to get out of there now. Get back to the cube as soon as possible. Bring Marcus with you. Hurry, you need to be long gone before he gets there!”

  They both acknowledged him, and agreed to leave as quickly as possible.

  “One more thing. You need to destroy this communications console. Brad knows where the explosives are stored.”

  We signed off and they sprang into action. Mrs. Jones ran to their living quarters and grabbed a backpack filled with personal belongings. Ranger Jones ran to fetch some explosives. I didn’t have anything to do, so I wandered around outside for a moment, soaking up the sights of my old home. I didn’t know when I’d get to see it again, if ever.

  Up above at the highest point in the station stood the little house I used to share with the triplets, Jason, Jacob, and Jeremy O’Donnell. Zip lines still ran down in all directions from it, and I felt another pang of nostalgia while remembering some of the happiest moments of my life up there.

  Then Ranger Jones came running up, holding a brick of plastic explosives, a detonator and a timer. I followed him back into the communications room and watched him position the brick in the center, squeeze the detonator into it, then attached the timer to the detonator. He set it for five minutes.

  “Is the whole place going to burn down?” I said.

  Ranger Jones shook his head and pointed up at a sprinkler system in the room.

  “Come on, let’s get back to the bird.”

  I glanced over my shoulder as we ran out, and the last I ever saw of the communications room was the screen showing a flashing red light drawing ever closer to our position, and the timer counting down on top of the explosives.

  Out at the landing platform, Mrs. Jones was already on the bird, sitting in the control seat, her backpack strapped on tight along with a couple of rifles she had picked up on the way.

  We scurried up the side of the bird, using handholds that would disappear in flight.

  She turned her head to look back at us. Ranger Jones nodded and she gave the bird a verbal command. It whuffed its wings and we were airborne.

  “Follow the line of the trees for a few miles, Leesa! Maybe we can avoid his sensors!”

  She nodded and adjusted course. We flew swiftly out alongside the giant trunks.

  I looked back one last time at Ranger Station Alpha, and heard a distant boom! as the explosives went off. Then the landing platform faded in the distance. Soon, I couldn’t see anything of my old home at all.

  Chapter Three

  Ordinarily it’s a day’s flight from Ranger Station Alpha to Redwood City. This time it took longer thank to our circuitous route.

  Ranger Jones picked me up from the escape pod in the afternoon. It was almost evening when we left the station. We skimmed along the edge of the forest until nightfall before he suggested to his wife that it might be safe to head for the city.

  As we crossed over the shorter trees and wide open grasslands, the last rays of the sun sank deep in the west, and the stars came out. We flew all night.

  We slumped over on each other, grabbing some restless sleep. When dawn broke, I woke up not quite knowing where I was at first. The wind rushing in my face helped clear my head.

  I straightened, and watched the first few rays of sunshine peek over the horizon. Dawns on Redwood are awesome sights, and for a moment while watching this one in all its orange and red splendor, I forgot about our current predicament.

  The Joneses woke up and stretched. I felt the bird’s skin shift as it readjusted to their new positions. Its computer was programmed to reshape the bird’s back as needed in order to help prevent us from falling off. Sometimes it practically wrapped around our legs and hips, especially when going into steep curves or banks. On this overnight flight, it had held us tight while we slept.

  Looking down, I noticed the ground changing gradually from green to brown, as lush grassland gave way to sandy desert. I looked over the Ranger’s shoulder and could make out a distant blue cube on the horizon, quickly growing in size as we approached.

  Soon we left the green far behind. Different shades of brown dominated the landscape, as sand and rock raced underneath us. The blue cube of Redwood City, that self-contained one square kilometer man-made behemoth, dominated our horizon.

  It had been deliberately built way out in the desert, strategically placed as far from the primates’ ecosystem as possible. While I suppose somebody could walk through the heat of the desert to get there, flying was really the only practical means of arrival. The planet’s giant arboreal monkeys would have a tough time getting to the city on their own, even if they were so inclined.

  It occurred to me as we flew in that the geographical barrier worked the other way, too. It was extraordinarily difficult for people inside Redwood City to reach the forest and the monkeys.

  We approached the center of the cube and the bird angled downward. Part of the wall a few levels above the surface lifted up for us, and I realized we’d be landing in the quadcopter bay.

  The bird flew in fast, but controlled, and neatly landed inside. My first thoughts reflected on how crowded QC Bay felt. Besides the quadcopters, several other synthetic birds stood at attention, ready to fly out on a moment’s notice.

  We climbed down and Mrs. Jones gave a final command for our bird to park itself near the others. It hopped over and placed its feet in formation, lining up with the closest one.

  The large outer door closed as we walked toward the smaller one on the far wall. A dark-haired servant manning the outer office looked up as we came in. He was about my age. His brown eyes grew wide when he saw me.

  “Oh! Hi, Marc. Uh, welcome back.”

  I nodded politely, and followed the Joneses as they continued inside the city. I felt embarrassed. I couldn’t remember the guy’s name.

  -+-

  Even though settlement on Redwood had initially started under an American charter, and the planet had officially adopted American standard measurements, Redwood City was built using the metric system. That’s because a construction company on Asiana had been contracted to deliver the city in pieces and assemble it at the chosen location. Its basic specs are one cubic kilometer, one level every 20 meters, comprising a grand total of 50 levels.

  So, roughly 50 square kilometers of living space. It’s not that exact amount of space because of walls and open floor areas for atriums and parks throughout the city. Regardless, it’s impressive, especially for first time visitors. You can literally live your entire life within the walls of that cubic city. In fact, that’s exactly what many of us assigned to Redwood ended up doing.

  For me, it all felt very bland. It also made me a little claustrophobic. I preferred being outside the city, and the times I spent in the agricultural research stations and the Ranger station were among the happiest of my life.

  I was even willing to endure a month-long ride in a cramped spaceship for the opportunity to see other worlds, and I had felt fortunate to be rated as a pilot and receive opportunities to leave Redwood City from time to time while I was a Servant.

  The many floors and hallways we walked through still felt deserted as ever. Travel to the planet had been heavily restricted after “vampire monkeys” were discovered. The state allowed a few tourists in, who paid handsomely for the privilege of visiting every planet in the string, but for the most part just a few men, comparatively speaking, were stationed on R
edwood. When we left for New Texas, only about 1,100 or so had been in the cube.

  So, essentially, Redwood City was a giant human habitation center that always felt empty.

  I noted the cams along our way, some visible and some hidden. Before the University Revolution, Agents of the State always kept an eye on people. Even with all the available space in the city, there were few places left unmonitored. I wondered if our people paid as much attention to the cams these days.

  We walked down several long halls and corridors, past dozens of doorways, and didn’t see anyone until we neared the center of the level and reached the main elevator bank.

  A couple of Technicians walked by, wearing their standard blue overalls. They nodded at us as we waited. I didn’t recognize them, and they gave us no other notice. I guess they figured we wouldn’t be there if we weren’t supposed to be.

  We rode an elevator up to the cube’s middle, and made our way to The Old Man’s office complex, the nerve center for the entire planet.

  -+-

  I felt surprised to find so many people waiting for us. Dee Dee ran up to hug and kiss me. It seemed a little awkward in front of everybody, but she didn’t care so I didn’t either. I kissed her back.

  Jacob and Jason slapped me on the back. Andrea and Charlie hugged me. Several other people came up to say hello. Everybody commented about my ramming procedure and offered congratulations for returning safely.

  The crowd parted and Professor and Mrs. Cruz came up. He shook my hand while she hugged me, crying softly.

  I smiled at her.

  “Those are tears of joy, I hope.”

  She nodded, smiled, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

  Professor Cruz said, “Glad you were able to make it, Marcus.”

  “Glad to be here.”

  I scanned the crowd.

  “Where’s Connie?”

  His smile dropped.

  “She’s in her quarters. I’m sure you’ll get to say hello to her later.”

  Connie had been cordial to me my first day at Ranger Station Alpha, but quickly turned cold when she found out I was a “bloodsucker.” When Dee Dee, her adoptive sister, turned into one, Connie distanced herself from Dee Dee as well.