Escape (Blackout Book 2), page 2
“You have to be crazy to belong to the New Cooperative,” Lana replied. “Only the looniest become members.”
“That sounds right up your alley,” Roy teased. “You two must be card-carrying officers, right? Maybe you two are the Lord High Magician’s two apprentices.”
Lana leveled him with a long stare. He looked away under her gaze, and Jackson stepped in. “How likely are they to help us? Can we get fuel and parts from them, if they’re that unstable?”
“They’ll help us,” Lana replied. “We can get everything we need from them.”
“Why do I not like the sound of this?” Quort grumbled.
“You see?” Roy crowed. “You are one of them. Why else would they help you?”
“Because we’re lost and crashed and stranded in the desert.” Lana clicked her weapon closed, stood up, and shoved it into her jacket. She still wore the Keter Legion uniform she’d had on when she and Liri rescued Jackson and Roy from the Keter Legion Guard Post.
She and Liri headed for the door. “You better finish eating and arm up so we can get going. These deserts rise to well over a hundred degrees during the day. Without life support, this ship won’t protect anyone from the heat. We have to make it to the foothills before it gets too hot.”
Roy furrowed his brow at the door after they left. “You don’t trust those crazy witches to get us to safety, do you? They could be planning to sell us to these lunatic New Cooperative freaks.”
Jackson chuckled to himself. “They have to get themselves to safety first. I trust them enough to follow them.”
“The New Cooperative isn’t dangerous,” Quort told him, “except to themselves. They welcome visitors, although they don’t get many. Most people avoid them, but they won’t deliberately harm anyone who does come to them. Their religion prohibits it.”
Jackson swiveled around on his bench. “How do you know about the New Cooperative?”
“Everyone knows about the New Cooperative,” Quort replied. “It’s a global movement.”
Jackson left it at that. He finished his soup and went down to the weapons storage stock with Roy and the others. They armed up, and found the twins waiting for them on the discharge ramp.
Lana handed each of them a filled waterskin. “Take these. If, for some reason, we get separated, head for those hills there. The second from the left is the New Cooperative’s territory. If you get anywhere on that hill, they’ll find you and take you back to their base. We’ll meet up there.”
Jackson scanned the dusty flats already baking in the rising sun. “None of us should get separated. It’s a straight shot from here to there. Get in a single-file line. Liri and Lana, you go in front. Quort, you take the rear.”
The friends took their places and set off. Liri and Lana pulled their hooded masks over their translucent skin. In a matter of minutes, Jackson wished he had something similar to protect him from the sun.
He removed his jacket and tied it around his waist. Then he took off his long-sleeved uniform shirt and tied it over his head as a kind of veil. It let in a cooling breeze and deflected most of the sunlight.
Roy contrived a similar shade, but Quort and Woolzi didn’t bother. The party trooped along with Woolzi, Jackson, and Roy in the middle. In no time at all, the sun grew so fierce and bright that Jackson kept his eyes squinted and downcast most of the time. He made sure he followed Liri and Lana. Other than that, he didn’t look at his surroundings.
The trek proved much more straightforward than he expected. The group walked for about two hours. By then, they’d gotten close enough to the foothills that the baking heat on the plane didn’t fry them as badly. Refreshing breezes puffed down the mountains and billowed onto the plane.
Jackson called a halt in the shade of the first trees. He pulled out his water skin. “We made it. How far into the mountains is the base?”
“The base is thirty miles,” Lana replied, “but the New Cooperative will come out to meet us long before we get near it. I’d be surprised if we don’t see them in the next hour, if that.”
This news cheered everyone up, and they started hiking again. They kept their positions on a long, steady climb into the foothills. Jackson searched everywhere for the New Cooperative, but he didn’t see any people.
These mountains were the strangest he’d ever encountered. The only animals looked more like plants. They sat on the ground, with vines winding around the tree trunks. Each tendril ended in a barb stabbed into the trunk.
When he came near one, he noticed eyes following the party past each tree. The vines sucked and pumped juice from the trees to the body resting on the ground. Only once, a racer swerved overhead, coming from where Jackson thought the city was.
In a flash of blinding movement, one of these sucker creatures detached its vine from the trunk and shot thousands of feet into the sky. It struck the racer’s underside and smacked the craft out of the sky. The racer rotated, stalled, and then plummeted into the mountains.
Liri and Lana both looked up to follow its fall. “That’s another reason the Legion doesn’t come out here.”
“Do these things ever attack people?”
“No attack people,” Woolzi added. “These cursed-tongued zoots. They pets. Pets of New Cooperative.”
“That!” Roy curled his lip at the things. “Those are the New Cooperative’s pets?”
“Plant at trees. Drink sap from trees for nourishment. Protect New Cooperative territory from Legion attack.”
Jackson shook his head in wonder. “Amazing. No wonder it’s so safe.”
“It isn’t completely safe,” Lana replied. “The zoots get rid of the racers. They don’t work on anything on the ground.”
“What does that mean?” Roy asked. “Could the Legion still invade the New Cooperative’s territory?”
“Anything’s possible,” Liri chimed in, “but they never have before. They have enough to do securing the cities and stations all over the planet, and they don’t even manage to do that.”
The party fell silent. Roy inched to Jackson’s side as they wound higher into the mountains. He muttered in Jackson’s ear so the others wouldn’t hear. “The twins don’t paint a very flattering picture of these forest dwellers, do they?”
Jackson scanned each hill for any sign of the New Cooperative. “It isn’t an ideal scenario, but if they have fuel and hopefully some spare parts, they’re our best bet for getting the Blackout off the ground.”
“These zoots are disgusting!” Roy made a face. “I couldn’t walk back and forth to work seeing those things.”
“You’re in luck. It looks like they’re thinning out. The terrain ahead doesn’t have them. They must act as some kind of perimeter around the New Cooperative’s heartland. The zoots kept the racers away, so the New Cooperative doesn’t need to farm them everywhere else.”
Roy squinted up the hills rising into the distance. The Asibi Mountains loomed large and impenetrable before them. “How far do we have to walk before they find these people?”
“If the twins are right, the New Cooperative should be making their appearance right about…”
Jackson didn’t finish his sentence. Two hooded figures launched out of the trees and barreled at the group. The undergrowth didn’t look thick enough to hide one person, but in a split second, hooded Keterans emerged from all over. They must have been lying in ambush to attack the group.
They collided with Liri and Lana. They flattened the twins to the ground, and the rest of the assailants plowed into Jackson and Roy. Jackson’s hand flew to his belt. He fumbled for his weapon, but two attackers tackled him to the ground.
Quort bellowed in rage as five more surrounded him with weapons drawn. Two of them fired at him, but their shots only infuriated him all the more. He flailed his long arms, snatched a man off his feet, and flung the unhappy invader into a nearby tree.
Shouts and bellows broke the stillness. Roy jerked a hand weapon from his pocket and lunged to his left. He stabbed the weapon at his closest attacker and fired into the man’s sternum.
The attacker rocketed backward. Smoke billowed from the burned hole in his jacket, and he landed flat on his back twenty feet away. Lightning quick, Roy danced to the right and jabbed his weapon at another intruder. The enemy caught his arm and grappled it in mid-air, but Roy fired again and blasted the attacker’s head clean off.
Jackson caught a fleeting glimpse of Liri and Lana struggling against their own masked assailants. The next minute, Jackson’s enemies seized him and slammed him down.
Both of them dropped and pinned his arms so he couldn’t use a weapon at all. One raised a weapon to blast him in the face. He froze, staring up at the object in his enemy’s hand.
Liri’s and Lana’s yells punctuated Quort’s roars. So many attackers crowded the area that Jackson couldn’t see them all. What he did see was Woolzi. The creature bent his head toward the twins. His antennae pricked up, and they started to whir.
They spun faster and faster until they lifted Woolzi off the ground. The creature whizzed past Jackson to where the twins lay buried under their attackers.
One intruder straddled Lana’s chest. The enemy wound back his fist, ready to smash her head in. A few feet off, Liri struggled to break free from four more hooded strangers who showered her with blows.
The sisters stretched their arms toward each other. They strained and kicked and clawed, trying to reach each other, but they were too far away. The attackers stopped them from fighting back or rendering aid to each other.
Woolzi buzzed in front of Jackson’s eyes. The creature’s antennae levitated Woolzi off the ground, and he flew straight to Lana. He landed by her head and bent down to take hold of her hood.
He barely got hold of it when her attacker reared back and turned his weapon on Woolzi instead. The stranger fired and the pulse thumped into Woolzi’s thorax. The creature shot backward with a frightful screech.
Lana tried to grab him. “Woolzi!”
It was too late. Woolzi’s hand ripped her hood off so everyone could see her face. The attacker who’d shot Woolzi and tried to shoot her turned his weapon downward to finish the job. He took one look at her face and froze.
The strangers laying into Liri stopped, too. They stared at Lana. She held up her hands to the man straddling her. “It’s us, Tollin! Don’t shoot! It’s me, Lana. Take your mask off, Liri. Show yourself.”
With her assailants hesitating, Liri ripped her hood off, too. Her attackers stared at her through their shielded masks.
Lana’s opponent lifted his face shield to reveal his countenance. “What are you two doing running around out here in Legion uniforms? We could have killed you!”
She waved to her lapel. “We tore off the insignia. Did you think real Legion soldiers would do that?”
The guy blinked down at her jacket where the insignia used to be. His shoulders slumped, but he didn’t climb off her. “Well, what do you expect?”
Lana waited, but when still didn’t move, she squirmed. “Do you mind getting the hell off me? Our ship crashed on the plane. We need help.”
The guy woke from his trance and straightened up. The others left Liri, but the rest took a few more minutes before they turned Roy, Jackson, and Quort loose.
The instant they released Jackson, he rushed over to Woolzi. “Woolzi…is it fatal?”
Woolzi’s antennae fluttered in the breeze. He rotated his head from side to side and his large, shiny eyes stared past Jackson’s shoulder. “Beautiful sky!”
Jackson searched the creature’s body, but the exoskeleton where Tollin had shot him showed no sign of damage. “He doesn’t look hurt. He must have hit his head.”
“He’s stunned. He’ll be fine.” Lana barged over, took hold of Woolzi’s arm, and heaved. “Get up, Woolzi. The fight’s over.”
Woolzi kept looking around like he didn’t recognize anyone, but Lana was right. He was undamaged.
Jackson turned around to find Tollin scrutinizing him with a disgusted expression on his face. “What’s wrong with them? They don’t look human.”
“They’re Zenith,” Lana told him. “They’re as human as we are. They just have a different pigment in their skin. Captain Jackson Keogh, this is Tollin, Grand Votek of the New Cooperative.”
Tollin inclined his head to Jackson without breaking eye contact. “Grand Votek of all Keter, actually.”
“Grand what?” Roy cut in.
“Like I said,” Lana interrupted, “we crashed on the plane. These four want to refuel and make repairs so they can get back to their own worlds. What do you say, Tollin? Will you help them out?”
He shrugged. “I might.”
He tossed his mask down to conceal his features and strode off into the trees. Liri and Lana cast another look around the group and then put their hoods back on, too. They fell in line behind their attacker friends.
Jackson and Roy held back. “Grand Royal Pain in My Ass. That’s what you are,” Roy grumbled after them.
Jackson checked on Woolzi again. “Are you sure you’re okay, Woolzi? You took a hard hit.”
“Hard hit, sure. Hit harder than that to hurt Woolzi.”
Jackson scanned him up and down. “I don’t know much about Silden physiology, but if you’re…”
“Let me take a look at him.” Quort shouldered Jackson and Roy out of the way.
Quort approached Woolzi. He prodded Woolzi’s middle where the weapon had hit him. Quort probed between the armored sections of Woolzi’s abdomen until Woolzi twittered and wiggled with laughter.
“He’s fine,” Quort announced. “There are only a few places on a Silden’s body where they can take internal damage. As long as those are intact, the organs will all be undamaged, too.”
“What about the brain?” Jackson asked. “He landed hard on his head.”
“Brain?” Roy interjected. “What brain?”
Quort ignored the jab and shook his head. “The Silden’s central nervous system is a series of nerve bundles along the dorsal ridge—here.” He pointed to a line running down Woolzi’s back. “The portion that makes decisions and controls speech and higher thinking is distributed to five different nodes. Someone would have to damage all five to affect his thinking ability. That’s why Silden have such small heads.”
“That explains a lot,” Roy muttered.
“We better catch up.”
Jackson started away when Quort held him back. “This Tollin has a reputation. You want to watch him.”
“What did he mean when he said he’s Grand Votek of all Keter?”
“I have no idea,” Quort replied, “but I can assure you he’s nothing of the kind. If he doesn’t spend most of his time stopping his own Cooperative from killing him in his sleep, I would be very surprised.”
3
Jackson spotted Liri and Lana up ahead, but Roy stopped him from catching up. Roy leaned in and whispered in Jackson’s ear. “What do you think we should call these New Cooperative…whatevers? What are they? Are they fighters? Are they freaks? I’ve always been partial to the term ‘crackpot’. What do you think? It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Crackpot. It’s so descriptive.”
Jackson bit back laughter. Now wouldn’t be the time to let the New Cooperative members hear Roy making fun of them. “Let’s be diplomatic and call them people.”
Roy rolled his eyes. “You ruin everything, you know that?”
Now Jackson really did laugh. “I didn’t get to be a captain in the Zenith Militia by making people mad. You should try it sometime.”
Roy screwed up his lips and griped in a high-pitched whine. “New Cooperative people. It has no zip to it at all. It’s boring. It sounds like something a nursemaid came up with.”
Quort interjected from behind. “What is this ‘crackpot’ you speak of?”
“Just what it sounds like. It’s a pot with a crack in it, so it isn’t good for anything. It’s a skull with a giant crack, so the brain leaks out,” Jackson told him.
Roy nodded. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“It sounds perfect for the New Cooperative.” Quort barged past them both. “All cracked pots and no brains.”
Roy hurried to catch up. “I’m sticking with crackpot. New Cooperative crackpots. I don’t care what you say. You’re the one who keeps pointing out that we aren’t in the Militia anymore, and no one around here besides you and me even knows what a crackpot is.”
“Lucky them.”
“I know what it is,” Quort chimed in. “You just told me.”
“I’m calling ‘em crackpots and you can’t stop me.”
“Fine,” Jackson said. “Call ‘em crackpots. I don’t care.”
“You may want to end this erudite conversation and look ahead,” Quort muttered. “We’re nearly there.”
Jackson and Roy spun around at the same time. “How can we be nearly there? Lana said the base was thirty miles away.”
Jackson didn’t have to ask. This might not be the base Lana meant, but it was as good as a base. A smooth, rounded dome occupied most of a large valley before him. It must have been hundreds of miles wide.
The twins and the New Cooperative people were already far ahead. Jackson and his companions had to hurry to close the gap. They came upon the leaders only a few hundred yards from the dome.
Iron legs held the dome twenty feet off the ground. The gaps in its sides let air blow through from every side, protecting the whole area from the sun. Underneath it, Keterans went about their daily lives with their hoods off. They operated street stalls and shops. Houses, small buildings, and even parks covered the valley under the dome’s protection.
Jackson spotted mothers leading their children, teachers instructing groups of older students under trees growing beneath the dome, and stallholders haggling with potential customers.
To one side, a group wearing curious clothes danced in wild gyrations, while others played musical instruments and beat on small hand drums. They sang a wild, disorganized jumble of gibberish. They smeared together incomprehensible sounds, unintelligible vocalizations, and disconnected words.
