by Ashanti Luke
Dusk
Published by Kiaju Publishing
Copyright 2010 Ashanti Luke
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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contents
• • • • •
prologue
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
twenty-five
twenty-six
twenty-seven
twenty-eight
twenty-nine
thirty
thirty-one
prologue
• • • • •
They should have shot him where he stood. If he died here, there would still be hope—and hope was what had brought him from very different beginnings to this point. But if he surrendered, every gram of that hope would be lost.
Dr. Cyrus Chamberlain held the pistol in his right hand over his head with his fingers clearly off the trigger. Four elite soldiers settled in a modified phalanx and trained their assault rifles on him.
He should have been wracked with anxiety, should have been disabled by erratic breathing, high blood pressure, slowed reactions. But he was calm, his breathing in perfect sync with his heart rate. It was remarkable how losing a son could move the mind to places you could never have imagined when life went as planned.
“Drop your weapon and kick it over or we will finish you!” The noise of the battle behind Cyrus muffled the voice of the soldier at the head of the phalanx, but his words could not have been clearer. Cyrus should have been dead or dying by now, and the soldier who was now repeating his threat was standing too far from the men in his formation.
Cyrus pressed the clip release on his automatic pistol, but held the gun so the clip stayed inside the handle. He slowly lowered his right hand and then let the pistol fall to the ground. As it fell, he shifted his weight slightly forward, expecting to get launched backward by a hail of automatic weapon fire. But the men before him were convinced they had the situation under control even as he lifted his right foot to kick the falling pistol toward them.
Cyrus should not have been this fast, this strong, this agile, and that had been what had kept him from dying the moment he had reached the door, because these elite soldiers were reacting to him as if he were a regular human being—even though from his reputation they should have known better.
A sharp pain numbed his foot and sent a shock coursing up his shin as his foot launched the gun toward the soldier in front. The clip and pistol separated in the air and the soldier fired, but Cyrus was already launching himself forward with his left foot. He prayed his training had been enough as he vaulted forward, covering much more distance in a much shorter time than the soldier could have expected. The gun and clip sailed on opposite sides of the man’s face, missing, but the soldier’s dodge gave Cyrus enough time to cover the distance between them. Cyrus felt the air next to his left ear crackle as a bullet passed through it and the other rounds of the volley missed him. The other soldiers had fired, but their bullets found their marks where Cyrus had stood, while now, he was under the lead soldier’s firing arm, twisting the rifle and tensing the shoulder strap around the soldier’s neck. What felt like an elbow hit the right side of Cyrus’s neck, but Cyrus used the momentum from the strike to shift his own weight and flip the rifle from the soldier’s hand. He lifted the soldier’s body from the ground slightly as the loop of the strap tightened even more around the soldier’s neck. Cyrus did not have a good grip on the rifle, but he fired anyway. He could not aim, but he only needed to fill the space the other three men occupied with rounds. The gun jumped, vibrating the grip against the palm of his left hand as the stock slammed against his chest with each report. The stock aggravated the bruise that was already forming on his neck. One of the men flipped backward, and one went straight down. The third collapsed on one knee, but managed to steady himself with his off-hand and keep his rifle up.
Cyrus yanked the rifle strap to flip the soldier over his shoulder and the man’s neck must have snapped because his body twitched and fell awkwardly, snatching the rifle from Cyrus’s hands.
As the last soldier lifted his gun, Cyrus launched himself forward again, this time pulling his feet in front of him as he made another extraordinary leap.
An explosion rocked the hangar floor as Cyrus landed on his butt and slid. He could not tell if the man had fired or not, which seemed strange because he could hear the snap of the tendons in the man’s knee as Cyrus slid into him and kicked. The soldier collapsed over Cyrus screaming, and Cyrus elbowed him aside. He fell next to Cyrus, clutching his awkwardly twisted leg.
Another soldier moved out from behind a loading lev with a set of nondescript canisters in the loading clamps. The assault on the hangar had left everything in its normal operational state. Technicians and non-military staff scurried about hysterically and took refuge. The pilot of the lev had left it running and floating above the hangar floor, and soldiers were forming up now on the other side. Cyrus saw three sets of feet visible beneath it even as he brought his elbow down across the throat of the soldier he had slide-tackled. He smashed his elbow down again and felt something in the man’s throat collapse with a sickening gurgle.
As he saw the barrel of the assault rifle peek from behind the canisters, Cyrus realized he himself had pulled too far ahead of his own van, but the only chance any of them stood was him taking advantage of the chaos his own friends were causing behind him.
Chaos.
That was not the right word. Chaos was what was going to happen in seven minutes if he did not make it to the ominous grey ship that was more than two hundred meters away. Chaos and the bloody destruction of everything Cyrus had fought for up to this point.
Cyrus deftly unhooked a grenade from the belt of the man sputtering and clutching his damaged throat beneath him. Cyrus lifted his shoulder, pressed the activation button on the side of the grenade, and then rolled to his left. He counted three beats, rolled again, and released the grenade on the fourth beat. The grenade left his hand, hit the ground between him and the loading lev, and spun awkwardly as it slid beneath the floating vehicle. The soldiers on the other side recoiled, but the explosion sent the lev flipping, toppling the canisters in various directions as the vehicle spun and landed on its side.
Cyrus gambled on the soldiers being shaken by the explosion and was already up and running again. The lev smashed against the ground with canisters boggling around it.
Over his shoulder he heard more gunfire and glanced to see Dr. Marcus Tanner and Commander Azariah Uzziah run from behind the massive ship that was behind him. They provided cover fire as Cyrus continued to sprint.
Someone grabbed Cyrus from behind, locking his arms in front of him. Cyrus felt himself being lifted and pulled away from the destination that lay only meters in front of him. His breathing, erratic from the last attack, now failed him. For a moment he felt his eyes glaze, his head lighten, and in the haze he saw his son. Not as the man he would be now, but as a boy. The promising eight year-old he had
left too many years ago.
He bit down against the pain, ignored the complaints of his oxygen-deprived brain, and gripped his captors thumb with his left hand. Cyrus pulled, and as the man resisted, he twisted his own body and dug the back of his arm into his captor’s throat. The man tried to adjust and shift Cyrus’s weight to get a better grip, but Cyrus had gained enough leverage to thrust his left hand over his own shoulder. His thumb, held rigid in a martial claw, struck cheek bone and then slid into what must have been the man’s eye socket. Cyrus felt something gooey and warm, and then his feet were on the ground again.
Cyrus kicked the man backward as a nearby explosion tumbled the man to the ground. Three more men rounded the edge of the ship. The one on point fired as he cleared the edge, but Cyrus was already diving toward a rifle on the ground. Bullets tore into the ground where he had leapt from, and he heard someone on his side fire a cover volley at the three men. The first fell as Cyrus scooped up the rifle, rolled, and fired back at the two now taking cover behind the nose of the ship.
Before he had left Earth, life had been so different. It wasn’t so long ago that he been just a pudgy scientist, trying to rebuild his body and condition his mind to survive long enough to stake a claim on a barren wasteland. How did I get here? he wondered. It was a strange thought to have in the midst of a gunfight. Cyrus knew how he had gotten there didn’t matter as he angled toward the entrance to the ship, pulling the electronic key Dr. Taewook Jang had programmed to defeat the security system. All that mattered was getting onto the ship. The men who had come with him covered the front of the ship with suppression fire. The hull would hold under the assault of the small munitions, but if one lucky shot from any of those soldiers found his flesh, their entire plan could be for naught.
Cyrus fired another volley of his own with his left hand as the key, now magnetically attached to the door, decrypted the security code. Someone squeezed off a burst at Cyrus and bullets sparked as they hit the ship just in front of him. Then something caught him low on his left shoulder. He reeled backward and to his right, but he continued with the momentum and pressed himself against the rounded edge of the ship. He steadied the rifle with the side of the ship and fired again, one-handed. The rifle jumped violently, but it was enough to make his attackers use their cover. Cyrus’s right arm began to throb with pain. Something might have been broken, but the shear Comptex suit had stopped the shell from penetrating his flesh. It was not the first time he had been shot. It was not the first time Comptex protected him. And now, Cyrus prayed once he got this ship out of this god-forsaken hangar, it would be the last time for both.
Then there was a gush of air as the seal broke on the giant cargo door, and Cyrus ducked inside as Commander Uzziah ducked in behind him, still firing even as he cleared the threshold.
“Five minutes and this whole place turns into a chimp rodeo!” Uzziah yelled, already moving toward the bridge.
That meant they had a little more than two minutes to get the ship started, with only a rushed training and a little bit of luck to help them. But that was what had to be done. The sun was setting them all, and that ship was the only way he, or anyone else he had grown to love in this forsaken place, would ever see the sun again.
one
• • • • •
—Tell me a story before I go to bed, Dada.
—What story do you want to hear?
—The story about Aryal and the Unicorn.
—You always want to hear that story. This will be the 50th time.
—No, just the 47th time.
—You counted? I can’t believe you want to hear it again.
—Come on Dada, I like hearing you tell the story.
—Okay, Okay, for the 47th time. Here goes… A long, long time ago, before the world was as complicated as it is now, in a time when people appreciated their lives and the world around them, there was a growing village bordered by a raging river on one side and a dense forest on all the others.
—How dense was the forest, Dada?
—It was so dense that even during the day the forest was as dark as the darkest midnight, and whenever anyone ventured too far outside the village, they became hopelessly lost. They not so creatively named this no-man’s land ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread.’ Well just on the edge of ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread,’ there lived a beautiful black Unicorn with a golden horn. For as long as anyone in the village could remember, the Unicorn had always lived there, and whenever anyone became lost in the wilderness, the Unicorn would always show up and lead them back to the village. There was a myth in the village—or it was a long passed rumor anyway—that if anyone could speak the name of the Unicorn, he would stay with them forever and lead them to a magnificent treasure. Many people ventured into the forest just to see the Unicorn and all marveled over his beauty and his power. Everyone except Cellius Wormheart.
—Tell me about Cellius. I like the way you talk about Cellius.
—Cellius Wormheart was a blacksmith and owned the largest and toughest safe in the village. Everyone loved him because he kept their gold safe, even though he wasn’t a very nice person.
—Why wasn’t Cellius very nice?
—Well, no one was sure, but some of the elders said it was because his parents spent so much time building the village that they didn’t pay very much attention to him, so he took his anger out on the village. But I think he was bitter because no matter how much he built, or how much money he made, it didn’t make him happy.
—Maybe it was a little of both things, huh, Dada?
—You may have a point there. Either way, Cellius was determined to find the Unicorn’s treasure, so he built an elaborate trap and captured the Unicorn. He then prepared a large pen and kept the Unicorn in the center of the village and charged people to look at him. He made a good deal of money, but it wasn’t enough, so he began to starve the Unicorn and treat him poorly to try and discover the location of the treasure. Meanwhile, the people of the village would accost the Unicorn every day, screaming any name they could imagine at him in hopes one of them would be his real name.
—What happened to the Unicorn, Dada? What happened?
—The bitterness and spite around him, coming from people he had never shown anything but kindness to, changed him. Slowly, he became more beastlike, more hideous, until he was completely unrecognizable as the Unicorn. He began to snarl and snap at people and he tugged at his reigns each day until his legs bled and he collapsed into a bellowing, exhausted heap. People began to question what they should do with the Beast that had once been the Unicorn. No one paid to see him anymore and Cellius had grown weary of him and wanted to kill him.
—He wanted to put him to sleep?
—No, Darius, kill him. People who can’t own up to their own actions ‘put animals to sleep.’ Cellius was many terrible things, but he was no coward. He could not get what he wanted, so he wanted the Beast dead. The village folk would not have it though, until one day, a young boy paid to see the Beast and threw a tomato at him. And while he had turned to his friends to taunt and jeer, the Beast bit down on the boys arm and dragged him through the bars where he devoured him.
—Ouch.
—Ouch indeed. Well, the town was outraged, so they barred anyone from entering the tent where the Beast was kept, and the Commissary of the town ordered the Beast summarily destroyed.
—Summarily means in public right, in front of everybody.
—Well, it means without delay, but is usually for all to see. The people were so angry they made preparations to make a fancy ceremony of the whole event. Someone even painted ‘Where even fools fear to tread’ on the outside of the tent, thinking it was a clever thing to write.
—But it was their fault, Dada. Why couldn’t they see that? Why didn’t they just leave the poor Unicorn alone?
—I don’t know Dari. I’ve been trying to figure that one for years. Must take a wiser man than me. So, one day, this little girl wanders near the cage.
—Aryal.
—Yes, Aryal. Aryal wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the village, and she didn’t score in the highest percentiles in her school, but she had a kind heart, and she always looked at things for what they were, not what she wanted them to be.
—Why did she think that way when the others didn’t?
—Maybe it was because she wasn’t beautiful. Because she wasn’t smart. Maybe she needed to see things differently just to survive—to know she was more than people saw her as. Well, Aryal wandered to the cage for the first time ever because she was poor, and before the execution, her parents could not afford to take her to see the Unicorn. Not that they would have anyway, for they were angry and spiteful people, and resented having such an unspectacular daughter they couldn’t brag about to their friends. So she went to see the Beast before the execution, and instead of a snarling, angry beast, she saw a sad, wounded creature that was wounded to his very soul by treachery, by ingratitude.
—Maybe she saw a little bit of herself in the Unicorn Beast.
—Quite possibly. Either way, the next day, the day of the execution, Cellius found the cage unlocked and empty. Both Aryal and the Unicorn had disappeared, never to be heard from again.
—What happened? Where did they go?
—Most think Aryal spoke the Creature’s name and he took her away to the treasure and they lived there until the end of time.
—And how did she guess the Unicorn’s name?
—She didn’t guess. She just did what no one else bothered to do. What no one thought to do.
—She just asked.
—Exactly.
—So Dada, what do you think the treasure was?
—You tell me Dari.
—I don’t know. Before I guessed gold, money, candy but I’m pretty sure now it wasn’t any of that stuff. I’m beginning to think there was no treasure. Maybe it was anyone who actually could do what they needed to find it, actually had it already.