by Daniel Young
Jackson took hold of one of Woolzi’s arms. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You go. You meet at Underground.”
“You aren’t staying here!” Jackson countered. “Are you nuts?”
“Quort and Woolzi handle. You run.”
Quort moved forward without being asked. He set his crumpled face in a mask of ferocious determination and his arms strained, pulling his cannon into position.
“Forget it, Woolzi!” Jackson snapped. “We aren’t running off and leaving you to—”
“Distract soldiers,” Woolzi interrupted. “Cover you. You go!”
“You’re cracked!” Roy cut in. “They almost killed you at the bar. What do you think they’ll do if they recapture you?”
“Woolzi handle. Go!” Woolzi shoved him away, pushing both Jackson and Roy behind Quort. “Distract. Cover. Go!”
The soldiers’ tramping boots inched closer. Even now, Jackson could hear the Legion officers calling orders. “Fall back to the Guard Post. We’ll regroup, and the Fourth Watch can make another sweep to the Southern Junction.” He could even hear individual soldiers talking to each other in an undertone. They’d be on top of them in seconds.
Woolzi gave Jackson one last shove. Before Jackson could stop him, Quort dove into the street in plain view of all those soldiers. He leveled his cannon, and a devastating blast split the night.
Woolzi jostled hard against Jackson and knocked him away. “Meet at Underground!”
Jackson had half a second to bellow back, “Where?” The next instant, the building next to his head detonated with the force of a dozen earthquakes. The sidewalk jumped under Jackson’s feet, and then the concussion pounded flying debris in his face.
He staggered away, and someone grabbed him. The next thing he knew, he was running. Roy dragged him back the way they’d come as the whole building imploded in a catastrophic rumble.
By the time the noise died enough for Jackson to hear anything, the gunfire and cannon blasts sounded too far away to bother him. He cast one desperate glance over his shoulder. The soldiers, the battle, and Quort and Woolzi were all too far behind him to see what had happened to them. Were Quort and Woolzi dead? Jackson wouldn’t be surprised.
Now he and Roy were on the run again through this strange city. “Where are going?” Roy panted.
Jackson scanned one street after another as he stumbled through them. “A ship. We need a ship. That’s the only way we’re getting off this planet.”
“Yeah, but where are we gonna find one?” Roy asked. “The Keter Legion wouldn’t just leave any running ship lying around for us to steal.”
“I should have asked Woolzi about that when we had the chance. If anyone knows a way off this planet, it’s the Silden.”
Roy smacked his lips. “That Woolzi probably has his dirty little paws in every black market pie on the block. The Silden always do. They go anywhere they want.”
“The first job is to stay out of jail. If we can find this mysterious Underground, we can meet up with Woolzi there. Maybe the Underground will be able to find us a ship.”
“If we can stay out of jail until morning, we could just go back to Woolzi’s bar and find him there.”
“You’re right,” Jackson replied. “That would be the way to do it.”
Roy shot him a sidelong glance. “Don’t tell me you trust that Woolzi.”
“Not exactly. No one can really trust the Silden, but I’d rather put my fate in Woolzi’s hands than in some Underground no one ever heard of.”
Roy squinted from right to left as they ran. “Where do you suppose we are? I couldn’t find my way back to Woolzi’s bar if I tried.”
Jackson ignored the question. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he really didn’t have the first clue where he was. “We gotta stay away from that Keter Legion no matter what. They don’t make it easy by showing up in any random place and bombing it to holy hell.”
“Dawn’s coming,” Roy muttered to himself. “This city looks completely different in daylight.”
Something in his voice made Jackson look over at him. Roy’s gaze skimmed the neighborhood. His head turned right and left. As Jackson watched, Roy’s toe hit a pebble on the ground and he stumbled. His knees almost folded under him. He was dead on his feet.
Jackson allowed himself to slow to a walk. For the first time since he’d left Zenith to join the convoy, his heartbeat started to return to normal. Exhaustion, hunger, dehydration, and stress threatened to crush him to the ground. He and Roy couldn’t go on like this much longer.
Jackson cast an appraising look around. He didn’t see any haven in which to take refuge, but now that he wasn’t running for his life anymore, he felt his legs trembling. The constant burn of adrenaline in his chest drained him of every scrap of energy.
He tugged Roy’s sleeve. “Over here, man.”
Roy staggered after him. He followed Jackson blindly without responding, trusting entirely to Jackson’s leadership. Jackson led him into an alley between two buildings. At the far end, a pile of broken rubble made a narrow, enclosed place hidden from the main street.
The walls cut off the growing daylight from the rising sun. Jackson leaned against the wall, sank down into a sitting position, and pulled Roy down next to him. Roy collapsed, and his shoulders slouched.
Jackson shut his eyes, and rested his back and head against the rough brick. He’d never felt the weight of responsibility more than now. What if he made a wrong decision and got Roy killed along with the rest of the Severance crew? He must be really tired if he was letting fears like that get the better of him.
Roy startled him by straightening up and leaning against the wall, too. His shoulder touched Jackson’s, and Roy coughed. “Do you remember that little bistro across the street from the Militia Metroplex?”
Jackson didn’t open his eyes. “They make good raki there.” He laughed in spite of himself. “I wouldn’t mind a glass of that about now.”
Jackson expected Roy to start talking about the bistro’s food, or even its other drinks. Instead, Roy lowered his voice to a barely audible murmur. “My girl works there as a baker. I used to go over there on hiatus from target practice and have lunch with her.”
Jackson’s chest tightened. He didn’t expect to hear Roy talk about his personal life at a time like this. He didn’t even know Roy had a girl back home.
Now he really felt responsible. He had to get Roy out of here in one piece. At all costs, he had to find a way to get himself and Roy back to Zenith. No other alternative would do.
5
Jackson woke up and blinked the glue out of his eyes. When he’d first brought Roy in here, the sun had just been touching the building tops. Now it grazed the rooftops from the opposite direction. It must be afternoon now.
Roy lay curled up on the bare ground at Jackson’s side. He was sound asleep. Jackson hesitated to wake him up, but that gnawing sensation in his gut wouldn’t go away. He should have asked Woolzi for some food, or at least some water.
He didn’t feel like leaving this hiding place, though, not even to find this mythical Underground. He didn’t care how safe Woolzi thought the fugitives would be there. The Underground was unknown, and Jackson didn’t need any more of that than he already had.
From everything Jackson had seen on this planet so far, he and Roy wouldn’t be safe even if the Keter Legion stopped looking for them. So far as Jackson could tell, the Legion made its living going around the city attacking anyone who happened into their path, and sometimes not even that. They might as well be going around blowing up buildings willy-nilly.
Roy solved the problem for him by starting awake and sitting up. He scowled in all directions. “I’m hungry.” He got to his feet and stalked to the end of the alley, then paused there and scowled at something outside that Jackson couldn’t see. When Jackson still didn’t move, Roy jerked around and barked over his shoulder. “You coming?”
Jackson hauled himself to his feet
. Why the hell not? What did he have to lose, anyway?
The two men returned to the street. They stood there, checking one way and then the other. “So?” Jackson began. “Where do you want to look for something to eat? I can’t guarantee we’ll find a bistro on this nugget, but I can guarantee they won’t have one with your girl working in it.”
Roy burst out laughing. He opened his mouth to shoot back some smart-ass remark when a bunch of soldiers strode around the corner. Jackson didn’t hear their footsteps. They materialized out of nowhere.
They took one look at Jackson and Roy through their impenetrable masks and someone shouted, “There they are! Kill or capture!”
Jackson wheeled to make a break for it, bumped into Roy, and they both scrambled to flee. A few soldiers gave chase, but in half a second, those fast little racing craft screamed overhead, unloading their guns in all directions.
Jackson darted right and left and left and right. He dodged into side streets and alleys to get away. Every time he changed direction, the racers overtook him.
The soldiers flooded the streets behind him. They cut off any chance of retreat, and anyway, Jackson had nowhere to retreat to. The Severance was gone. He had no way off this rock.
He skidded into a wider avenue. Three racers drove him and Roy from behind, while another five rotated in front. They pinned the two men between them, and the racers didn’t adjust their fire this time. They shot straight for the fleeing men. Their charges smashed into buildings and ripped up pavement.
Jackson bolted for the end of the street, only to come face to face with another sheer wall. He sprang to the right at the same time Roy dove left. They both realized they were parting and swerved together again, almost colliding when another racer whistled overhead.
It came from directly in front of the two men and fired. It would have flattened them in a second, but the shot smashed into the wall and decimated it to powder. Jackson somersaulted out of the way with Roy right on his heels.
The two men scuttled into another alley, and Jackson hunkered behind a corner with hardly any cover at all. Roy kept bumping into him, but Jackson didn’t care. He was too glad that Roy was still alive.
They scooted around another corner and crouched, panting and dusty, while they searched the area and wheezed for breath. “Ship,” Jackson croaked. “Gotta find a ship.”
“Forget a ship! How do we work these weapons?”
Roy fiddled with one of the weapons he’d collected from the bar. Jackson chanced a quick glance outside. Pops and explosions sounded out of sight. “They’re gone.”
“They’re never gone,” Roy snarled. “If they aren’t shooting at us, they’re shooting someone else.”
“The question is who.”
“It could be anybody.”
Jackson thought fast. “The Keter Legion is trying to capture us for invading their planet.”
“Congratulations,” Roy sneered. “You’re now current with the rest of the class.”
“Listen, man,” Jackson told him. “They’re trying to capture us, and they’re fighting someone else at the same time. They’re distracted. Maybe we can find a ship while they’re preoccupied with whatever battle they were fighting when we showed up.”
Roy bared his teeth and threw the weapon on the ground. “This is hopeless. I can’t figure it out.”
Jackson picked it up. “Come on. I have an idea.”
He peeked out for any sign of the soldiers or the racers. Rubble from the broken wall dotted the street. No one was in sight, but while he watched, soldiers and random vehicles passed a few streets away. Another seven-by-seven squadron spread through the neighborhood, searching for something.
“What are they looking for?” Roy whispered in his ear. “They can’t be searching for us.”
Jackson watched them advance into a square and halt. The vehicles pivoted into position and parked. More soldiers deployed from inside them. “Looks like they’re setting up shop,” he remarked.
“Marvelous,” Roy muttered. “They had to do it right here where we’re trying to walk.”
The soldiers and vehicles started firing to the left. Jackson couldn’t see who they were shooting at, but in a minute, return fire belched from out of sight. Someone was shooting back.
Jackson nudged Roy, and they sneaked out to get a better look. A few streets away, they found a covered place with a full view of the battle. Across the square, another group shot similar weapons at the Legion. They wore no uniforms, but they did wear complete head coverings that concealed their features.
Jackson signaled Roy again, and they crept away. Whoever the Legion was fighting, they weren’t looking for him and Roy—not right now, anyway. They were too busy trying to destroy their own people.
Jackson clambered over rubble and darted away. He and Roy ran for over a mile, but every time Jackson listened, the gunshots didn’t sound any farther away. No matter where he went, it always sounded right on top of him. Would he ever get away from it?
Roy pointed to the right. “What about over there?”
Not far away, a breached wall opened into the other neighborhood. Both men veered toward it. They dove through and huddled behind a different building to catch their breath.
The explosions and crashes sounded even louder here, but when Jackson paid attention, he realized they were coming from in front, not behind. The building walls reflected the sound, and made it near impossible to tell where the shooting was coming from.
Roy inched after him as Jackson passed to another building. No one saw. No one chased them, but this couldn’t last. Pretty soon, the soldiers would finish shooting at their fellow Keterans. The battle would end, and then the soldiers would remember they’d been searching for the intruders from another planet. Whatever genius plan Jackson was going to come up with, he’d better come up with it quick.
He halted at the next intersection. When he scanned the area to make sure it was safe to cross, he found what he was looking for. A single armored vehicle sat in the middle of the street. Three soldiers stood behind it and fired their little handheld weapons at another vehicle parked fifty yards away. Its wheels held it off the pavement, and Jackson saw feet behind it.
The target machine was much smaller, and not armored at all. The soldiers’ shots blasted through the front windshield and smashed it to dust. The soldiers cheered their own cleverness and slapped each other on the back.
While they celebrated, two hooded figures peeked out from behind the target vehicle. Their face coverings made them look alien and almost insectoid. The Keterans could have been any species under there.
One of the resistors was tall and thin, with a green ribbon trailing from his hood. The other was short and sturdy-looking, with another green ribbon. Other than that, they looked the same and wore the same clothes.
The three soldiers straightened up and propped their weapons on their vehicle. One soldier said to his comrade, “Shoot under it this time. See if you can hit one of the renegades.”
This was the chance Jackson had been looking for. He waved to Roy, whose eyes lit up. Roy understood only too well what he had to do. The soldiers got so engrossed in their project, they didn’t see the fugitives sneaking up on them.
Jackson huddled right behind them until all three soldiers extended their weapons, ready to fire. “Now!” one of them called.
Jackson shot off his feet. He lunged for the middle soldier, who was the one doing all the ordering. Jackson rushed up behind him, stretched his arm over the man’s shoulder, and plucked the weapon from his grasp. The man stared at his empty hand for a second before he realized what had happened.
Roy grabbed the second soldier’s weapon just as fast. That left one man still armed. He fired at the car, but the instant he pressed the firing mechanism, Jackson elbow-jabbed him in the temple. The shot zinged away and smashed into a building.
All three soldiers whipped around to confront their attackers. Jackson didn’t know how to use these weapons, but
the soldiers didn’t know that. Jackson and Roy pointed their guns at them, and the soldiers froze.
Roy sneered in their faces. “Evenin’, gents. Many blessings on you.”
Jackson nodded toward the armored vehicle. “Is anyone inside?”
The first soldier fidgeted. Jackson couldn’t read his expression with the hood covering his features. Before anyone could move, a door in the vehicle’s armor popped open from the inside. Another soldier stuck his head out. “Hey, what are you…?”
Roy shot out a beefy hand and grabbed the guy. He hauled the hapless driver to the ground and downed the guy with one brutal punch. Jackson frowned at the crumpled body. “Did you have to do that?”
Roy’s brows jumped together in the middle. “Uh…yeah.”
Jackson cast a fleeting glance toward the other machine. The two renegades stood up straight, watching the exchange from a safe distance. Jackson was just about to say something when a sizzle set his hair on end. Something crackled through the air, and a powerful thump struck the vehicle right next to Roy’s head.
Both men ducked. The soldiers ducked. The vehicle rocked on its small wheels as another squad of soldiers barreled around the corner. They fired on the pair, and more armored vehicles trundled into view.
Roy plunged away and almost ran. Jackson fumbled to get hold of him, shoved him through the open door, and both men scrambled into the armored vehicle. “Get inside!”
“What for?” Roy thundered. “They’re all over the place!”
“Drive!”
Roy gaped at him with huge eyes. “Drive? I’m a gunner, man! I don’t drive.”
Jackson kicked him out of the way. “Then take a back seat and watch.”
Roy scrambled away from the dashboard and bumped into…a giant gun sticking out of the back of the driver’s compartment. Curiously enough, no part of it showed on the outside, but the console covering the back wall couldn’t be anything but a firing station.
Jackson didn’t have time to figure it out. He got too engrossed trying to get the armored tank moving. That turned out to be a project all its own. Buttons, switches, dials, and controls covered the dash, and Jackson didn’t understand one of them. Twenty years in the Zenith Militia did him no good at all right now.