Mira picked up one of the batteries. She had never seen one that looked like this. It was just a blackened, charred mass, but Mira didn’t think it had anything to do with the fire. Artifacts were supposed to be indestructible outside the Strange Lands, yet these were completely ruined.
Mira was a Freebooter, an expert in such things, and she guessed these had been assembled into a Dynamo, what was essentially a generator, in this case used to power a whole host of tools from the World Before. Air drills, saws, cutting torches. What was strange was that it seemed as if the combination had exploded, and that should have been impossible. Combinations lost power and died, but unless their design included the need for some kind of combustion, they didn’t blow up.
Guardian …
Mira heard the sounds of shuffling behind her. Two Hunters stood on either side of her, no more than a foot away, their red, blue, and green three-optic eyes staring into her. Behind them were two Mantises, staring at her in the same way.
Mira sighed. Sometimes they were more like Max than killer alien invaders.
“Yes?” she asked out loud, with impatience.
We tried to contain.
That word again, “contain.” Mira stared back at the wreckage of the walker and the smoking debris and an idea of what had happened here formed. A dozen or more feet away, the argument and the standoff continued.
“It wasn’t them,” Mira announced, looking back at the group. No one seemed to hear her, they were too busy yelling. “It wasn’t them!”
The accusations stopped. Everyone turned to her.
“It wasn’t who?” Christian asked. “The Helix or the Assembly?”
“Either.” She held up one of the blackened coins. “It was your Dynamo, it exploded.”
“Artifact combinations don’t explode,” another Wind Trader engineer stated.
Mira shrugged. “This one did. And this walker,” she motioned to the wrecked body of the machine, “absorbed the explosion. It must have sensed the combination was about to overload and—”
“Used its shield,” Christian replied, thinking it through. Assembly Brutes were the only walkers Mira had seen with energy shields for defense. “Explains why the ground’s charred in an almost perfect circle.”
Mira stood up. Where there had been two Hunters around her, now there were six, with two Brutes behind them. The Assembly always tried to get as close to her as they could, and it could be annoying. The machines moved apart as she walked through them, and Mira could see the distrustful looks from the kids ahead of her. Could she blame them? The Assembly, the great invaders of the planet, following her around like lost puppies?
“I think you owe them an apology, Dasha,” a new voice said. Two other Helix were moving toward the discontent, and Mira knew them well. One was Dane, tall and handsome, with wavy hair and lithe muscles and the easy, assured gait that all Helix seemed to share. The other was Avril, the current leader of the White Helix, though that wasn’t going to last much longer.
The eyes of every White Helix dropped instantly in apprehension. Only the girl, Dasha, kept hers raised. “Apologize … to them?” She meant the Assembly.
“Dishonored yourself, haven’t you?” Avril asked back as she and Dane pushed into the crowd. “You’ve raised your masks when there was no call, and you have accused an ally of treachery.”
“They’re not my allies,” the girl retorted. The other Helix seemed nervous. “And you are not my Doyen.”
Avril touched all three of the glowing rings on her middle fingers. Her body flashed in hot, white light. Her movements were lightning quick as she struck outward, and two rapid punches sent Dasha crashing to the ground, staring up in pain and shock.
Avril glared down at her. “You’re right. I’m not your Doyen. I am Shuhan. And you will respect my words.”
“Gideon was my—”
“Avril’s achievements grant her the title of Shuhan now,” Dane cut her off. “And you will obey her as I do, if only because you took the same oaths. What is the second Keystone?”
Dasha said nothing, just glared.
“What is the second Keystone?” Dane repeated.
“Honor above all.” The girl’s voice was a whisper. The other Helix in the yard echoed the statement out loud.
“Apologize,” Avril spoke again. “For your hostility and your insults.”
Guardian. Mira flinched at the projections. It is unnecessary.
She looked at Ambassador, its triangular eye boring into hers, and raised a hand, signaling it to do nothing.
Dasha lay there a few moments more … then stood up and looked to Christian. “I apologize for my actions.” And with that, she pushed through the crowd, back toward the White Helix camp.
“Dasha!” Avril shouted after her.
“I will not apologize to them!” the girl yelled as she stormed off.
Avril sighed, watching her go. “The rest of you, return to camp, prepare for meditation.”
The Helix obeyed, leaping and dashing back toward their tents in the distance, as if the conflict had never existed at all.
Mira looked at Ambassador. You should go too.
You are safe? Ambassador projected back, and she almost smiled. Explaining to the entity the concept of “blowing off steam” would have been tough.
I’m fine, she thought. Go.
The Assembly turned and pounded away in the opposite direction. When they were gone, only Mira, Avril, Dane, and Christian were left.
“This is starting to get more and more common,” Christian observed. “I’d say I’ll be glad when you guys leave, but since you’re taking the fleet with you, means I’ll probably be going too, so…”
“The flare-up started with the explosion?” Mira asked him.
“I guess.” Christian shrugged and started to move back toward the Forge. “Personally, I think you guys are just itching for a fight. I get it, you’re big, tough ninjas, you want to use the skills, I just think discipline might be starting to go by the wayside.”
“He isn’t wrong,” Dane admitted to Avril when he was gone. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep them in line.”
“Holt’s finalizing the deal with the Cooperative,” Mira reminded them. “Once it’s done, we’ll be leaving again, this time with the fleet. I have a feeling the road to the Citadel will give them plenty of action to focus on.”
Avril shook her head. “It’s not just that. The Strange Lands kept us on our toes, made us vigilant and mindful. If you weren’t, you died, it was that simple. Here…” Avril frowned, looking at the bright, sunny landscape, the rolling hills, the gentle breeze. The tranquility was the opposite of the Strange Lands, that was for sure. There was no question it would be an adjustment for the Helix.
“They need a focus,” Dane said. “They’re drifting. We all are. All we have is the one thing Gideon left us, the quest to save the Prime, his word on how important she was.”
“Gideon is gone,” Avril told him. “Now there’s only us.”
“And soon … not even that,” Dane replied soberly.
Avril and Dane stared at each other, emotions and thoughts passing between them in the silence of the evening air. Dane and Avril meant a great deal to the White Helix, they had become its de facto leaders with the death of Gideon, but they meant even more to each other. Mira knew what they were feeling, because she was facing the same reality herself. Avril was leaving just like Holt, headed to the same place, Faust, the seat of power of the Menagerie. Her father was Tiberius Marseilles, the Menagerie leader, and he had gone to great lengths to get her back. The Reflection Box nearby was the price he’d paid, one of the most powerful artifacts on the planet, and he’d traded it for her. Avril may have been honor bound to oblige, but she wasn’t required to look forward to it.
“You two should go,” Mira said. “Tomorrow … will be here before you know it.”
Avril looked at her, the two girls feeling the same things. They had a lot in common now. Then she and D
ane turned and headed back for the swaying tents of the White Helix camp in the distance.
Mira looked at the old power plant yearningly. Her own room was there, at the top, and she saw the windows of the old office they’d given her for quarters. They were dark, but that didn’t mean Holt wasn’t there. And if he wasn’t, surely he was on his way. Surely by the time she got there—
Guardian, the projection came. Then three more. A dozen. Two dozen. The feelings resurfaced—fear, loneliness—and Mira grabbed hold of the side of an old bus to steady herself.
Guardian. Come.
Mira sighed. Even being this close to them wasn’t enough. They wanted all of her. Maybe Holt would be delayed, she thought. If she just went to them for a few minutes …
Guardian. Come.
Mira took a step in the direction of the Assembly camp, and the moment she did, she felt relief, the anxiety began to lift, quieting their fear and transferring their relief, in turn, to her.
Just a few minutes, Mira thought, as she walked toward them. Just a few …
3. PROMISES
IT HAD BEEN AN HOUR before Mira was able to pull away from the Assembly and their thoughts, to find her way back to her room at the top of the Shipyards. If she looked out the window, Mira knew she would see them even now. The machines and their eyes, gathered below in the junkyard, staring up at her once again.
Guardian, the projections came. Come close.
But resisting them was easier now, because she was in one of the few places that gave her strength. Lying in bed, in Holt’s arms, her head resting on his chest. She linked her legs in his and relaxed as his warmth blended with hers. If only she could stay like this, with him, and forget the world … but while the world could probably be forgotten, their other responsibilities couldn’t.
“I dreamed about her last night,” Mira said, absently tracing the curve of his chest with a finger.
“You dream about her every night,” Holt answered softly in her ear. “This was different?”
“She was … somewhere black, I think. I was there and she was in pain. And she stared up at me, and I tried to get to her but … I just couldn’t move. It felt like I was frozen, and I just had to sit there and watch her.”
Holt sighed. “It was a dream.”
“I wasn’t there for her when she needed me.”
“I’m tired of hearing that.”
“It’s true.”
“It isn’t. There’s nothing you could have done to stop her from being taken.”
He was probably right. Zoey had told Mira she’d made a deal with the Severed Tower, and with something as powerful as that, you were basically making a deal with fate itself, but still, it didn’t make it any easier. Anytime she thought of Zoey, she saw the little girl screaming and being ripped into the sky by the Vulture claw.
Guardian … the Assembly projected from outside. Come closer.
“A month ago would you have ever thought this was possible?” Holt’s question drowned out the projections. “Everything we’ve done?”
No, she wouldn’t have. Building a coalition between the White Helix and Assembly rebels, orchestrating the first Grand Bargain with the Wind Traders in years, laying the groundwork for deals with the Menagerie and other resistance groups, but there was still so much left to do. “Sometimes it just all seems like too much. How do we keep going when we know … it’s probably all for nothing?” It was another grim truth, and a good question. Even if they did reach San Francisco, even if they did have an army with them, they still had to fight the Assembly on its home turf, and that wasn’t a scenario either of them were likely to survive.
Holt’s fingers moved through her hair. “Faust isn’t as self-sufficient as most people think. It has the oil refinery and its machine shops and it can generate power, which sounds like a lot, until you factor in what else people need to survive in the Barren. Water. Lots of water. Food. Medicine. All of that the Menagerie has to get on their own.”
Mira wasn’t sure what Holt’s point was, but she didn’t really care. The sound of his voice helped push away the thoughts of Zoey and the incessant emotions from the Assembly outside.
“One way they get it is through treasure hunting,” Holt continued. “It’s what Ravan and I used to do, go into dangerous places, overrun by Assembly or Fallout Swarms, and bring out salvage. One time we went as far north as Portland. There’s a building there, skyscraper, got all messed up in the invasion, knocked loose of its supports. It was leaning bad, the top third of it or so had caved in on the rest, but somehow, it was still standing. It was perfect, because it was probably full of useful stuff no one in their right mind would go in there to get. Thing looked like if you blew on it, it would all come down.”
“Let me guess,” Mira said softly. “You blew on it?”
“We went in, started climbing, using the stairwells where we could, and where we couldn’t, we slung up ropes. Took hours … but it was worth it. We found lots of loot, medicine mainly, batteries, dried coffee, filled up our packs, probably the best haul we’d ever had. We started back and that’s when I noticed it. Little trails of dust raining down between the cracks in the floors and the walls. Pretty at first, way the streams caught the light, but then I figured it out. The only reason you’d see that is if the building was moving. When it happened, it hit like an earthquake. We were both hanging from our ropes, between a gap in about four floors. Ravan just looked at me and laughed … and then everything came down. Worst part was the sound, it’s all I really remember; this awful, deep roar that shook your insides.”
Mira knew that sound. She’d heard it less than a month ago, when Polestar fell in on itself after the Gravity Well died. It was something she would never forget.
“When I came to, it was black,” Holt said. “Totally silent. If it hadn’t been for the pain, I wouldn’t have known if I was alive, but it was pretty clear I’d broken my leg. I heard Ravan stir a little next to me, but she wasn’t conscious. I couldn’t see a foot in front of me, much less any way out. Then I saw … something. Just above and to the right. A light, like someone flipped a switch, and when it came on it lit up where we were. We’d been lucky, hanging on our ropes in the bubble between those ruined floors, and when everything fell, so did it. When we hit, the stuff above us got all caught up in itself and didn’t come crushing down. End result was we were trapped in a shell of shattered concrete. There were crawlways, though. Little tunnels, formed out of jagged stuff that hadn’t been totally flattened. It looked impossible, getting through that, but it was still a way out. And it had all been shown to me by that light.”
“The moon,” Mira guessed.
Holt nodded. “Every few minutes it disappeared, clouds probably, and the world went black again. I only had clear line of sight for a couple of seconds.”
“What did you do?”
“I grabbed Ravan and started dragging both of us through the tunnels. Problem was, without the moon, I wasn’t always sure where I was headed. Sometimes I was moving the right way. I kept going. Sometimes I wasn’t. I backtracked. Either way I kept crawling.”
Mira smiled and ran her fingers through the hair on his chest. “I sense the coming of a moral.”
“The moral is, beautiful, with big things like that, things that seem impossible, you don’t focus on the goal. You focus on what’s in front of you. Then what’s in front of you after that. You just keep going.”
She looked up at him. “One step at a time.”
Holt nodded.
Mira looked at the half-finished tattoo on his right wrist, the partially complete shape of a bird. Ravan had an identical one, only hers was finished. In the Menagerie, the pirates took the same tattoo to pledge devotion to one another. It was called a Troth, and Holt had been having his done the night he chose to leave, a tattoo that would have joined him in a very special way to Ravan. Stories like the one Holt just shared always gave her a glimpse into what used to exist between them, and she was never sure how she really
felt about it. “You two were very close…”
Holt nodded. “She saved me. I saved her. More than once.”
Mira just stared at the tattoo, thinking of where Holt was going tomorrow, and who with.
“Mira, you know—” Holt began, but she raised up and kissed him before he could finish. It was a nice kiss, long and soft, with that mix of passion and tenderness only people who are truly comfortable with each other can share. When she pulled away, he was silent. There was nothing to say, really. They both had their own paths to walk now.
“Have you figured out where you’re going to meet the Regiment?” Holt asked.
“Dresden’s arranged it,” she told him. “Someplace east of the ruins.”
“You ever meet a resistance group?”
Mira had to think about it. Resistance groups were just what they sounded like. Freedom fighters that had dedicated themselves to fighting the Assembly, setting up shop in one of the city ruins where the Presidiums had landed. They couldn’t do much real damage, of course; their guerrilla tactics were only really useful for distracting them, but still, it was something. In spite of it, the numbers of resistance fighters continually grew, and there was an interesting reason why. The closer you were to one of the Assembly Presidiums, the less effect the Tone seemed to have. There was no explanation, but the survivors could sometimes last as much as an extra year before they Succumbed.
The rebels in San Francisco called themselves the Phantom Regiment, and they were well-known, only because they fought where the Assembly Citadel had been constructed, the seat of power for the aliens in North America, and where Ambassador claimed Zoey was being held.
The Assembly presence there was far stronger than in any other city. If they were going to have any chance of rescuing Zoey, they needed the Phantom Regiment’s support. No one knew those ruins like they did, and they were one of the toughest fighting forces on the planet. That’s why enlisting their help was Mira’s next task.
Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) Page 3