“You will never see that happen, though.” He unsheathed his blade. It was spotted, dark brown smeared all over. Clearly, this wasn’t the first time he’d used it. Although frightened, she felt sorry for her old friend. Something must have snapped, and though they had disagreed before, this was something else. Insanity. She could only imagine what had happened to him, how he must have fought to get this far. First, surrounded by the Chinzhoi, then walking through an inhospitable environment all the way through the Rockies, before he ended up here, on the riverbank north of the Stronghold, facing the one he held responsible for all his misery.
“Look, Henry, you can still…” Something made her stop. Footsteps, coming closer, quickly. She noticed the leaves rustle nearby, and there was movement in the brush. Henry turned around, clutching his knife and muttering something incomprehensible, just in time to meet the attacker. Something came at them, incredibly fast. She dove for safety, expecting a balder to slash at them with long claws and a fearsome jaw with more teeth than an alligator.
Ben. She almost didn’t recognize him, as he was covered in mud; but even unarmed, he looked ferocious, like a predator. Though Henry had the knife, the speed and surprise was enough to give Ben the upper hand. Tina grabbed her rifle, but with no way to get a shot in, she just had to watch the two men wrestle. Henry was a seasoned warrior, but Ben was so much stronger, and besides, she had to admit, with a sting of sadness, he was as much a combat veteran as Henry.
Ben finally got his hands in between Henry’s. With a wild roar, he grabbed Henry’s throat and squeezed. She could see the untamed instincts in the young boy she had once saved, and the transformation frightened her. As Henry’s resistance faded, and his face turned blue, she watched Ben dig his fingers through her former friend’s skin, blood spattering his hands and face. When he ripped out Henry’s larynx, the limp form fell to the ground, twitching as life ebbed out of him.
A few seconds that felt like minutes passed, while Tina struggled to make sense of what had just happened. Ben stood over Henry’s dead body, breathing heavily. Tina thought he looked like he was calming down, taking in what he had done, and at the same time regaining control. Then she noticed the blood seeping through his shirt. No, not seeping. It was pumping. And she saw the knife on the ground. Henry’s knife, covered in fresh blood.
Ben slumped to the ground. The wild look in his eyes had already faded completely, and Tina once again saw the frightened young boy who’d been forced to take charge, to take care of the younger kids that had been put on the New Discovery and hurled into space. Tina hurried over and knelt next to him, assessing the injury. It was bad, really bad. An arterial bleed would have been nasty anywhere, but in the stomach, there was only so much to do. Which wasn’t much.
“I’m sorry… Oh God, I’m so… sorry…” Ben stuttered. Tina felt her eyes water, and forced a smile.
“Hush, don’t speak. Save it for later. Just hang in there, Ben.” She grabbed her multi-purpose healing pad from her left breast pocket and slapped it on, knowing the futility.
“He was gonna hurt me. You have nothing to be sorry about,” she said. Ben shook his head, but weakly. Weaker with every spurt of blood leaving his body.
“No… Not him. I’m sorry… Sorry about Lisa… and Drew. I killed them. I killed my best friends.” He looked at her, as if pleading with his eyes for her forgiveness. “Look at what I’ve become…”
“It’s okay, Ben. Lisa is fine, and Drew will be, too.” She felt awful lying to him. Lisa would survive, although it was too early to say how she’d turn out. Drew though… Last she heard, he was still hanging on by a thread. But Ben was a good kid. He deserved some sort of redemption. It wasn’t his fault he’d been messed up from being thrust into war still in his teens. It wasn’t his fault a damn parasite had taken control of his brain.
Ben smiled. Then he coughed, spitting blood.
“I had to… stop him. He was trying to hurt you. I’ve been watching… Watching over you…” Tina tried to stop him from talking, but he was adamant.
“You saved us all. All of us, from the New Disco…” He couldn’t finish, choking on blood, and Tina nodded at him.
“And you saved me, Ben. You did it.” A tear left her eye, and she added, “Thank you, Ben.”
Ever since she had taken it upon herself to find a way to save the kids from the New Discovery from being sent back to Earth, she had felt a bond with each of them. And for her, that bond had been strongest between her and Benjamin Waters. This kid had been through so much, and still, he always cared more for others than for himself. That was a rare trait. She loved him for it, no matter what had happened after he and Lisa and Drew took off their masks and breathed Aurora air.
There was no way to stop the tears anymore, and no point. She cried while she used one hand to carefully stroke his hair back from his face, while holding his hand with the other. His mouth moved, but no words came out. His chest was barely heaving, and his breaths were short.
Then he exhaled, and she felt his hand go limp. His eyes became glassy and lifeless. And as Cancri’s lone moon Rotane rose toward the sky, she sat there alone, mourning.
Chapter 14
Kenneth taylor
Kenneth felt warm and cold at the same time and worried that he was developing a fever. He didn’t have time to get sick, though; there was too much to do. Always too much to do and too little time. But he had to go see Doc Bowers soon, or he’d surely be knocked out for a week or two by whatever it was. Kenneth shook his head while he digested what Tina had written in her message. Though the comms were unreliable at best, they still had the means of getting a message across if deemed important enough. The most effective was to send packets of data in short bursts that lasted milliseconds. It was a gamble, since these packets were sometimes intercepted, so they had to be careful with what they sent. Tina’s message wasn’t military secrets or anything like that, though. It was a short description, neutral in tone, although Kenneth could only imagine the emotions that lay hidden beneath the words. Henry, Tina’s friend from back on Earth, had tried to kill her, only to be killed by young Benjamin Waters. Ben had died from his wounds, but not before redeeming himself by protecting the woman who had once saved his life and those of all the kids on the New Discovery, the last shuttle to leave Earth. Looking at the message again, the words blurred together, and he felt the dizziness coming. Damn, he really didn’t have time for this.
A noise from outside the door disturbed his thoughts, and he looked up. He put the tablet down and walked over to the door. When he opened it, all hell broke loose. A woman nearby screamed, and the ground shook as one of the cabins over by the greenhouses blew up.
“Air raid!” someone shouted, and then Kenneth saw them. Four sleek planes in formation in the eastern sky, spewing rockets, death raining upon the Stronghold as one after another of the cabins blew up. A greenhouse exploded, spreading a deadly hail of glass in every direction. Kenneth saw a man being hit by a shard the size of his palm, its point boring into his eye.
“Move!” Kenneth heard, and stepped aside, just as one of the quads from Fort Andrews raced past him. A girl with long blonde hair that flew wildly in every direction stood balancing with broad legs, one hand on the railing and the other on a rocket launcher aimed steady at the approaching planes. She seemed to handle her weapon well, and Kenneth thought he’d seen her before. One of the recruits from Andrews, he thought.
She steadied herself as the rocket left the launcher in a blaze of fire. The smoke trail made it difficult to see if the missile found its target, and Kenneth began to think she must have missed, when an explosion made it obvious she hadn’t.
One down.
The girl was already long gone when another quad exploded just after launching a homing missile. The missile kept flying toward its target, though. Kenneth thought he could see the plane trying to evade, but it was too far away to be sure.
Another explosion. Another hit.
Two of thei
r planes down. Kenneth looked around and saw people cheering. Grimy faces, bloody and torn clothes, tear-streaked cheeks, but also determined smiles, hands cradling weapons, and eyes that cried defiance. Two more planes to shoot down. The soldiers in their quads had shown it could be done.
“They’re turning away!” someone shouted, and after a moment’s hesitation, more cheers broke loose.
Kenneth stepped through the rubble, taking in the information flowing around.
“The greenhouses are all gone.”
“All of the eastern side of town is burning.”
“The bridge is wrecked.”
“More than twenty dead, and many more injured.”
Kenneth found he had a hard time cheering with the others. The destruction was too massive.
“Hey, you all right?” a voice said from behind him. He turned and saw the girl from the quad. Ash and dirt having turned her hair more gray than blonde, and her face grimy with soot and streaked with mud. She smiled though, and right there that smile made him think. They had fought back a surprise attack and shot down two of the enemy planes. Those would be hard to replace. And no matter what, when the enemy had attacked them, they had stood together, north and south united against the invaders. Maybe there was reason to cheer after all? Kenneth nodded to the girl, and his lips curled slightly.
“Yes…” he said. Today they had been one. And they had won.
“We’ll be all right,” he said.
Shefania
Shefania smiled as she followed the Akhab elders from their counsel meeting, toward the murals depicting recent events. The Akhab were just as amiable as she had expected, and though she had given them no notice of her coming, they hadn’t seemed the least surprised as she approached their cave. As soon as she had reached the cave mouth, several of them had streamed out to greet her. Although no one from Sanctuary had ever set foot here, their collective memory was strong it seemed. Even with no written language, their entire history on this planet was painted on their walls, just as they did elsewhere. She knew the place humans held in Akhab history, and she was amazed at how their star sentience gave them knowledge of, and awareness of the other tribes, light-years away.
The Akhab had welcomed her as a friend. They had been so eager when they learned she knew their language that it was hard to even begin to take part in the conversation. The Akhab on Sanctuary were more reclusive, preferring to tend to their preserve lands, and seldom took part in human affairs. This tribe obviously had different experiences, which made them more approachable and open to contact with humans. And according to their elders, some of the other tribes on this planet were so eager to meet the humans that it had been difficult to enforce the decision to restrict contact with them until the human conflict was resolved. She agreed with the decision, though. The southernmost of the Verdi tribes had almost let themselves be discovered about a year ago, and only the strictest of commandments by the elder council to have patience and let the humans get to know them slowly at first had made them reluctantly comply, and go into hiding again.
The ark that came here so long ago had obviously been one of those that carried both humans and Akhab, and from what she had gathered, the two races had parted ways thousands of years ago. She still didn’t know what had happened to the humans, but she guessed something on this planet had led them to leave in search of a different home world. It could be the parasite that seemed to permeate the atmosphere; it would be hard to avoid its effect. The arks might not have had the technology to avoid its infestation. She was glad Sanctuary medicine was more advanced; she had seen some of the parasite’s effects on those who had removed their facemasks, and she shuddered at the thought of not being in control of her own body and mind. Thankfully, the vaccines enabled her body to reject the parasite. Otherwise, she’d have to wear a mask, as well. And sooner or later, when you relied on physical protection such as that, it would fail.
There could be other reasons, as well, but one thing was clear: the Akhab and the humans, then and now, were on friendly terms. Jujjj, one of the more prominent Akhab, had told her of their contact with humans in recent time, which was the reason she had come here in the first place. She had been disappointed to learn the woman they called Mariaa had left just a few days ago. She wasn’t hard to describe, and the Akhab knew her well. They had told her she was a remarkably good-hearted person, and they seemed to trust her without reservations. The more Shefania learned of the woman she had come searching for, the more certain she felt that her decision was the right one. She would stay another day, to learn more and to simply enjoy their company, and then she would have to leave the Akhab and go find her.
The more she spoke to the Akhab, the more she liked them. Her sister knew them well, being a ranger and living among them for long periods of time, but Shefania had only briefly seen Akhab before, and then only emissaries to the Life Dome. Being here made her feel she had missed a great deal, and she gradually came to understand her sister’s fascination with and respect for them. Some humans on Sanctuary thought of the Akhab as primitive, less intelligent than humans, not quite animals, but something in between. She suspected it was because they were different. The fact that they had no written language, and their reliance on what they called the star sentience, which seemed like magic to humans, made them seem simple-minded to humans, who had nothing even remotely similar in their own culture to help bind them together. Also, their choice to stick with simple technology, their peaceful and reclusive way of life, and what humans interpreted as a lack of ambition, all made for a lot of prejudice toward these beings that had lived in the shadow of humans for so long.
Of course, it was probably the fact that the remaining records from Lifebringer specifically stated that it was human scientists who had originally enhanced the genes of the Akhab brought onto the arks that gave the humans another reason for feelings of superiority.
Luckily, centuries ago, lawmakers on Sanctuary who saw through the prejudices wrote laws that protected the Akhab, and they had been given rights to the great preserves, so that they would keep and protect their cultural heritage.
The group of elders accompanying her stopped in front of the most recent painting. She saw a beautiful young woman, dark of hair and olive skin, eyes sparkling. Next to her stood an older woman, just as beautiful, with similar features. That had to be the mother, Isabellaa. She approached the final image, paint not even dry and the painter beaming with pride as she moved closer to get a better look. She smiled as she realized the Akhab had already deemed her presence worthy of preserving for future generations.
“I wish I could stay with you longer,” she said as she stared at her image and smiled at the painter. She promised herself that she would return, once she had met the young woman she was seeking. The humans had all gone south to the place they called the Stronghold. And from what she had learned, she knew there wasn’t much time. If she didn’t leave soon, not even the gift of knowledge could save them.
Thomas dunn
Thomas stood watching the builders. Just four days ago, the Chinzhoi planes had leveled more than fifteen cabins; most of the greenhouses and several other buildings, not to mention all the tents, had burned to the ground. And yet, people were already rebuilding. He was impressed with the courage of these people, and deep within his heart, he knew that whatever hardships this world threw at them, they would never give up.
The air raid had caused massive destruction, and though Thomas was moved by how people were recovering, he knew it was a matter of time before the enemy returned. This time, it had been four attack planes. Imagine what would happen if they came in force, with everything they had: airborne attacks, ground forces, maybe even space-based weapons? He had no idea how to prepare for something like that, but the longer they waited to do something, the more likely that kind of attack would be.
Maria, Isabella, and Tina had returned from the north. Thomas hadn’t had time to go see Maria yet, but he was looking forward to it. He would see
her mother, as well, which frightened him, but in a good way. First though, he needed to speak to Tina. Word had already reached the Stronghold of what had happened on her way north. She could have easily been killed during her encounter with Henry Carroll. In the end though, Ben Waters had saved her. The kid had been on the run since killing one of their own a while back. From what Thomas had learned, it seemed the parasite had taken over his mind completely, leading him into a frenzy of blood lust, in which he’d even tried to kill his friends, Lisa and Drew. Still, he’d been a good kid deep down, and it was the parasite along with some pretty tough circumstances that had messed him up. In the end, Ben had sacrificed himself to protect the one person he looked up to. Thomas knew how much Tina had cared for the kids from the New Discovery, and he could only imagine how it felt to have one of them killed by someone who had once been her best friend.
“Impressive, eh?” Kenneth said. Thomas turned around. He hadn’t heard anyone approaching. He guessed that had to be a good sign; that he was able to relax enough not to be constantly on his guard. He saw Tina, Isabella Solis, and George Havelar trailing behind.
“It’s just… Yes, it is impressive. But unless we can do something… I don’t know what, though…” The president nodded gravely.
“It’ll all be for nothing. I know.”
“What if we got the nukes back? There’s still two, and if we had them, we’d have leverage.” Thomas suddenly saw an opportunity. Havelar still controlled the access codes, so the enemy wouldn’t be able to use them. If the Stronghold controlled them, though, they would be able to make demands. Of course, that wouldn’t be a complete victory, but who cared? Aurora would be big enough for all of them, if they could agree on certain ground rules.
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