by Fox, Jaide
“I can only hope that their torment and sacrifice in that place at least gave them some sense of peace--some sense of righting a terrible wrong. Sometimes, that is the best we can hope for when we have done something for which we can never begin to make amends.”
She closed her eyes.
“You are quite right, Ebony, that I remain torn between living and dying. The only reason I have not ended my own life is because I could not bring myself to abandon all these men who still remain--my own men and the medical doctors and the workers and the miners--who chose to escape the City of Anetahr, come here to this abandoned mine, and follow my leadership, follow my cause, no matter what. They never turned away from it, even when they thought that I and my nine most loyal men were all long dead out in the Desert of Fire. And now, I have the obligation of making sure that those who followed me with such loyalty are safe before I choose my own fate.”
Ebony felt a rising frustration, and got to her feet. “You clearly don’t want to die. And neither does Damon. If you did, you would not have bothered to build a small town here at this mine or kidnap a bunch of young females to be your mates. What is it that you really want to do, Fallon?”
He stopped his pacing and glanced at her. She was puzzled to see that he looked almost hopeful, in a desperate kind of way. “You will get your answer tomorrow.”
When she started to speak again, he held up one hand. “No. Don’t ask me anything further tonight. Sleep, now. In the morning, you will know.”
***
The next morning, Ebony was suddenly and harshly awakened by a loud pounding at her door. She sat upright in bed, blinking and looking around, and jumped a little at the voice she heard out in the corridor.
“Wake up! All of you! Everyone assemble in the main corridor! Immediately!”
She wasn’t sure, but she thought the voice sounded like Damon’s. She was alone in the room and it certainly could have been him. She could not imagine what the urgency was. As fast as she could, she pulled on her blue scrubs and leather ankle boots and hurried out of the room.
Ebony saw a large gathering of men out in the corridor beneath the lines of small white lights--more men than she had ever seen here before. Fallon’s men were there, along with Damon, who came striding down towards them from the far end and had almost certainly been the one beating on the doors.
So, the two of them are in on it together--whatever this is, Ebony thought.
The miners and the other working men and even the doctor were all here, too. She guessed that there were maybe two hundred fifty to three hundred men in the corridors, as well as herself and the other seven women from the harem. Ebony joined the other women, and they were a colorful little nest within the gathering of very tall and mostly black-clad men. She noticed that they were all surrounded by Fallon’s eight men, including Damon, who stood nearest to her.
He was handsome in a hard rock sort of way. On Earth, he had the kind of looks that could carry him into a metal band, she noted with a little hitch in her chest. Today, he had his long silvery black hair tied back off his face and dark stubble marked the line of his jaw.
Fallon looked like he hadn’t had much sleep. Stubble also marked his face, and his short dark hair hung around his face as if he’d been running his fingers through it all night and morning. The hard set of his jaw made a tension creep up her neck.
Then Fallon stepped onto some sort of platform on one side of the enormous corridor, and everyone fell silent as they turned to look at him.
“The time has come for all of you to know exactly where we go from here,” he said, his strong voice echoing off the very high roof of the corridor. “And to know exactly why we took these eight women from the royal harem and brought them here.”
Ebony tensed, and all of the women glanced at each other, but kept silent.
He looked directly at the little group of females. “None of you will be returned to the harem. There is no ransom offer, and we knew all along that there would never be any such offer made. The king would never bargain with me--with any of us. If any of the women had been with child, then perhaps an exception might have been made by the king; but our physician here has examined each of the women and such is not the case.”
The other women looked down in embarrassment, and Ebony sighed. “Why don’t you post up pictures, too?” she muttered.
But then Fallon’s words began to sink in. Never a ransom plan? Then why--
“Then why did you take us?” called out Jane, with dark blonde hair and pink scrubs.
Ebony had to smile. Wish I’d had the nerve to do that!
Fallon continued to look straight at the women. “None of us men can ever go back to the City of Anetahr,” he said. “We would be killed on sight. Our plan all along has been to start a new city, a new life, on the other side of the planet--a city called New Chalcydon.”
The women all looked at each other.
“A new city?”
“A new life?”
“New--Chalcydon?”
“Oh, kids, I think something just changed for us in a big way,” Ebony whispered, hugging herself tight.
“I am telling this to all of you women, right here, right now, out in the open, in front of everyone,” Fallon said. “That way, there will be no gossip heard nor rumor spread. There will be no doubt of what the truth is. My men and I took you from King Kore’s harem because without you, there will be no new life--not in our new city or anywhere else.”
At last, Ebony spoke up. “So--we’re just goin’ from one harem to another?” Her temper was beginning to rise, as was the fear and uncertainty among all of the women.
“You are going to no harem,” Fallon said. “You will be married to the man--or men--of your choosing. You will be wives, not slaves. But once we arrive at New Chalcydon, you will be expected to produce as many children as possible--and by as many different men as possible.”
All of the women gasped. Their jaws dropped open. “What do you mean?” demanded Jane. “That still sounds like slavery to me!”
“We are a very small group with very few women,” Fallon said, unwavering. “With such a small gene pool, we must maintain as much diversity as possible in our offspring. The breeding can be done artificially if you wish, but all of you will bear children by different men. Your husbands have already agreed to this.”
The women began to murmur and talk among themselves, and some of them began to wail at the thought of yet another extreme change in their lives--but Fallon stomped his booted foot on the metal platform. The sound rolled and echoed throughout the corridor, and everyone fell silent. Even the weeping women quieted down and simply clung to each other.
“You women are not captives. You will have a free life the same as anyone else once we arrive at the new settlement. But there can be no new life without you, and so you must come with us. You are needed. There is no future without you.
“I allowed the men to choose the women they wanted during the hike to get here, which allowed both you and them to start bonding. And it worked far better than even I had hoped--all of you women seem quite content with your mates. Aren’t you?”
Ebony saw all of the girls glance around at the tall, strong men who stood with them, and none of the women seemed at all distressed. She herself glanced at Fallon, and then at Damon, but neither of them reacted in the slightest.
Finally, Ebony spoke up. “Well, now,” she said, pitching her voice so that it echoed slightly off the walls of the vast corridor. “You say we’re not captives. You say we’re going to have husbands and not be part of a harem. And you say we’re all going to go off and live in a brand new city--a city where everyone is free to live the kind of life they want.
“But I’ve just got one question: Where is this place?”
Fallon looked straight at her. “It is far enough away to be safe,” he said, “so far away that even the Zhala riders could not make the trip.” He glanced out over the crowd, as if he were trying to make eye conta
ct with everyone listening. “It is on the opposite side of the planet from where we stand now. It is in the middle of the desert. It is the same place that King Kore’s fighters abandoned me and my men and left us to die.”
More astonished talk from the crowd, both the women and the men. “The Desert of Fire? You cannot mean that! No one can live there! The heat, the monsters, the complete lack of water--there is nothing there at all but scorching sand--surely you do not mean to take us to the Desert of Fire!”
“I do mean to take us all there,” Fallon said, “and it will not be a desert much longer. It has been undergoing a great transformation for many months now. A small city has already arisen and is awaiting our arrival--the city of New Chalcydon.”
“A new city?” one of the miners said at last. “How could you and a handful of men build an entire new city?”
“He’s joking with us!” cried another miner.
Fallon stared at them. “I am not joking,” he said. “And as to how I and a few men could build an entire city--the answer is, we didn’t. The Nexus Lamians did. We paid them with the chalcedonite that you have worked so hard to dig out of this mountain, and they have built us a small but very beautiful city. There is even a stand of trees and a very deep well to feed both the trees and all of us with sweet water.”
“And how will we get there?” cried Ebony.
Another of the miners joined in. “That’s right. Even if this is true, Fallon, and you and your men have paid the Grays, the Nexus Lamians, to build us a city out in that furnace of a desert that covers so much of this planet--how will we get there?”
“Yes,” said another miner. “There’s an ocean in one direction and that hideous desert in the other. Do you have a boat? Or a flock of trained Zhala? Or do we have to walk the whole way?”
“And if we do try to travel there, what’s to stop King Kore and his men and his Zhala riders from scorching us into ash once we leave the safety of this mountain?”
Fallon smiled a little, even as the noise level rose around him as everyone started talking at once. “Listen to me,” he said, raising both hands towards the crowd. “I know you have all had the same thoughts that our dark beauty, Ebony, and several of the miners have just voiced. Yet you have trusted me all this time and never questioned my judgment--and now I will show you that your trust was not misplaced.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Fallon stepped back a few paces on the metal platform. “Bring them up!” he shouted, and then Ebony--and everyone else in the corridor--looked up and caught their collective breath.
In the dark shadows of the deepest part of the corridor, from the direction of the cold black lake where Fallon had taken her and where she’d nearly lost her life, Ebony saw an enormous, silvery, floating metal vehicle move slowly into view. It was as though someone had taken a city bus and reshaped it into a flattened cube. She saw a couple of small square windows on the side nearest to them, and what looked like the silhouettes of men standing at those windows to operate the flying device.
And close behind the first device came a second one, identical to the first.
Both of the shining silver vehicles hovered in the air, well above the floor of the cavern. Ebony thought she felt, more than heard, a very low vibration in the air, but other than that there was no sound from either vehicle. And then she became aware that both of the huge vehicles were wet and gleaming in the rows of lights inside the mine, so wet that drops slid off of their silvery surfaces and fell like rain onto the cavern floor below.
She looked closely at them. When she’d fallen into that hideous black water, she remembered her feet touching some surface--but it had been so slick that she’d slid right off and nearly drowned…
“You hid them in the lake!” Ebony cried. “You hid two great big square flying saucers inside that coal-black lake!”
Fallon looked down at her, and smiled. “You are right, Ebony Raines,” he said. “We could find no better place to hide something so valuable than inside a vast mountain and under a lake as black as night.”
Then Fallon looked up and began pacing across the metal platform. “Each flyer carries two pilots and as many as thirty-three passengers, if they do not bring too much with them.”
“But--where did you get them?” cried Michelle, the tall redhead in the green scrubs.
Ebony grinned. Girls are gettin’ brave today, speakin’ out!
Fallon stopped and looked at Michelle, though his words were for the entire gathering. “We got them from the Nexus Lamians. They are not difficult to operate. Two men can work together to get a flyer where they want it to go. The vehicles practically fly themselves. And as you have seen, they can go almost anywhere. They can hover while traveling over land, they can fly anywhere you wish, and they can travel underwater as easily as they can go anywhere else.”
He looked out at the crowd again. “Yes. You are right. I can hear your questions. This is what happened to all the chalcedonite you have been pulling out of this mine for the last few years. It has bought us a city and it has bought us a way to get there.”
This time it was one of the miners who stepped forward. He was a tall, broad-shouldered, aged man with solid white hair and dark eyes that had seen far too much. “You have a city. You have a pair of flyers,” the old man said. “And what is to stop that brother of yours and all his men from shooting down the flyers and taking over the city?”
Fallon grinned at the man. “I’m glad you asked me that, Rolf. But you only spoke of two things we obtained from the Lamians. Yes, we got a city. Yes, we got two flyers. But we also got this.”
He stepped back on the platform, and nodded towards the first flyer. “Show them.”
The low vibration increased in pitch for just a few seconds, and then a tremendous flash filled the corridor. It was followed in an instant by the sound of an explosion far away, outside the entrance to the mountain. “Go and see for yourselves,” Fallon said to the breathless crowd, and after just a moment’s hesitation the miners and the other workers all turned and ran towards the entrance.
Ebony and the women followed them. The rest of the women stopped near the back of the crowd, but Ebony pushed her way through to the front and got a good look.
“Oh!” was all she could say.
A great tall column of smoke and dust boiled up out of the valley far below. As it began to clear, Ebony could see that a section of forest the size of a large house had simply been obliterated. “Well,” she murmured, turning around with the others to walk back inside the mine. “I guess we might be safe enough after all, with something like that lying around.”
The crowd gathered in front of the platform and the two flyers again, and Ebony could see Fallon’s look of pride and hope. “We were not so foolish as to think the king and his warriors would leave us alone out of kindness and good will,” he said. “The third thing we bought from the Lamians was the very best system of defense that we could get. It’s on the flyers and it’s on the city walls. And it will keep all of us safe.”
The men in the crowd all looked at each other, and seemed to be nodding in approval.
“And neither will this mine be abandoned,” Fallon continued. “Once we are settled, men can be brought out here for three-day shifts to make certain we have all the chalcedonite we will ever need. And if we need more weapons to keep this mine safe, we can easily get them just the way we got these.”
He paused, and looked out over the assembly one last time. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
After a brief silence, only one man spoke up. “When do we leave?” asked the man, and the rest of the crowd started cheering.
Fallon grinned, and actually looked happy and excited. “There are five hundred twenty-one of us in this place,” he said, “and each flyer can take thirty-three passengers in addition to the two pilots. Each flight takes five hours to reach our city of New Chalcydon.”
Ebony frowned. “Yeah--but when do we leave?”
The cr
owd laughed, and so did Fallon. “One hour after darkness,” he said, with a chuckle. “The first flights will leave one hour after darkness tonight. Everyone go back to your rooms and pack up only what fits in two duffel bags--bags that you can carry on your own. There is no space for anything else. Go, now. We leave an hour after darkness tonight!”
The men turned away and began walking back to their rooms or to their work assignments, and the air inside the cavern was filled with hope and anticipation. Ebony watched as the two flyers settled down to rest on the cavern floor. The low vibrations stopped, and in the silence she watched doors slide open near the bottom of each vehicle. After a few moments the pilots stepped out. Ebony could only stare at the open doors, wondering where this new and unexpected voyage was going to land her this time.
***