Escape (Blackout Book 2), page 7
“We don’t know they’ll choose Arlyane and not one of the other pretenders. The only way we can ensure the Zenith ally with the right Votek is to make sure Jackson and Roy survive the war. They’ll tell the Zenith who it was that saved them. That’s the only way we can be certain the Zenith will help Arlyane take power.”
Lana narrowed her eyes at Liri. “Are you sure this doesn’t have something to do with some misguided sense of loyalty for those bumbling scarecrows?”
Liri’s shoulders relaxed, and she let out a shaky breath. “Maybe it does. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m going out there to get them. If you want to go repair the Blackout, I’ll meet up with you later, but we aren’t taking it on the run. With just the two of us at the helm, it would be more likely to fall into the wrong hands again.”
Lana compressed her lips. “Fine, but if you get yourself killed on this crusade, don’t blame me.”
8
Jackson peered closely at Woolzi in their dim hiding place. “Any ideas where in creation we are?”
Woolzi twirled his antennae around. “Fifty degrees south, forty degrees west.”
“Very funny. I mean, where are we in relation to the New Cooperative camp and this base they were taking us to?”
Woolzi inclined his head the other way and rolled his glossy eyes. “Base southeast five degrees. Thirty-five feet elevation to mountaintop, seventy feet descent to valley. Base there.”
“And the camp? Are we closer to the base or the camp?”
“Base. Four miles to base. Eight miles to camp.”
“Damn!” Jackson peered outside. After hiding in this hole all night, daylight started to spread through the mountains once again.
“The base is out of the question,” Quort rumbled. “That fiend Tollin tried to execute us, and he wanted to send us to the base. No doubt he has more executioners waiting for us there.”
“I don’t care about the base,” Jackson replied. “I’m worried about Roy. He’s still back at the camp.”
“Woolzi not return to camp.”
“I don’t want to return to the camp, either,” Jackson replied. “I just want to save my friend. If Tollin really planned to kill us, he probably tried to kill Roy, too—if he hasn’t already succeeded.”
“If he already succeeded, then returning to the camp would be foolish and futile,” Quort pointed out.
Jackson chopped the air. “Yeah, I get that, but there’s also a chance that Roy could still be alive. He could be in trouble.”
“We in trouble,” Woolzi added.
Jackson didn’t answer. They certainly were. They’d been hiding in this damp cavern all night, and no other options offered any safety at all. Tollin’s henchmen could be searching these mountains for the friends right now.
Jackson stood up and migrated to the opening. The sun blinded him, but he was tired of hiding. Whatever he was going to do, he wanted to hurry up and do it.
“What are you going to do?” Quort asked.
“I’m going to go to the base and get some weapons. Then I’m going back to the camp to find Roy. I can’t leave without him. If you two feel like it, you can go back to the Blackout, and we’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”
“We not return,” Woolzi replied. “No fuel, no parts, no fly.”
“I understand, but I can’t think of any safer place right now. I won’t tell you to stay here, and I won’t tell you to come with me or go back to the camp, either.” He shrugged. “What the hell do I know? You two can make up your own minds. You’ve been through enough for us. I don’t blame you for taking off.”
Quort slumped and looked at the wall. “The quickest way to get the Blackout repaired and refueled will be to come with you. This base will have fuel and parts, I expect.”
“Craft, maybe,” Woolzi added. “Fly parts and fuel to Blackout.”
Jackson glanced over at these two creatures he now considered friends. Quort looked up at him. “I saw the Zenith Militia fighting the Krakzid around your homeworld.”
Jackson looked away. “Yeah. I saw, too.”
“If you truly saw what they did, and not what you wished to see, you know the Zenith Militia cannot defeat the Krakzid alone.”
Jackson didn’t turn around. The sunshine on his face felt too good. “I know.”
“Instead of taking the Blackout to Zenith to fight the Krakzid, you would be better to go to Urval.”
Jackson spun around. “What for? I’m not hiding in Urval while the Krakzid overrun my homeworld.”
“You would do better to drive the Krakzid out of Urval first. Then the Urval will reciprocate by helping you drive the Krakzid out of Zenith. It is the only way. Neither of our peoples can defeat the Krakzid alone.” Quort looked down at the ground. “As we have already seen in Urval.”
Jackson stared at him. Part of him wanted to reject this plan. It presented yet another obstacle preventing him from returning to his own world, even if that world was either under siege or already utterly destroyed.
On the other hand, Quort offered him a lifeline he’d never thought of before. If the Urval really rallied to help Zenith, an alliance could be both people’s best chance at victory. Neither system stood a chance on its own.
Jackson turned back to the sunshine. He could think better with the light in his eyes. “The quickest way to make that happen is to repair the Blackout, and to do that, we have to go to the base.”
Quort and Woolzi got to their feet and approached him from behind. All three stepped outside and began hiking through the mountains. Woolzi led the way. He kept pivoting his antennae in all directions. He followed one path after another. Under Woolzi’s direction, they climbed to the hilltop.
The base lay below them, but something about it didn’t look right. Jackson would have expected a bustling hotbed of military precision—or at least semi-military. He couldn’t expect full military protocol from an outfit of fanatics like the New Cooperative.
The base didn’t have any personnel, craft, equipment, or supplies coming and going. In fact, he didn’t see any personnel—not anyone. A few racers occupied parking spaces around the perimeter of the landing strip.
The place looked like it had been recently attacked. An enormous crater darkened one end of the landing strip. The surrounding grounds and some buildings showed unmistakable signs of bombardment.
“At least we won’t have to fight our way in,” Quort remarked.
“Let’s get down there and see what’s going on.”
“What will we tell them about our escort?”
“We’ll tell them we got separated from our guides and made it here on our own. We’ll tell them we knew Tollin wanted us to come here, and when we couldn’t find our way back to the camp, we came here instead.” Jackson grinned over his shoulder. “We’ll tell them that our friend Woolzi directed us here—which is true. We’ll tell them we just can’t wait to carry out Tollin’s order to help restore his reign.”
Quort snorted, and Woolzi twittered. The friends started down the hill. The smell of scorched metal and fuel smoke drifted to Jackson’s nose. The closer he came to the base, the more certain he became that something was seriously out of whack here. Tollin had sent them here to fight in some army. He wouldn’t send the friends to a base he knew was abandoned and destroyed.
The friends descended into a meadow leading to the landing strip. The sun shone from behind the hills and lit up the whole scene. The crater covered the landing strip with a blackened ring a hundred yards across.
Jackson hesitated. “Hold up. Let’s rethink this. Let’s divert to those trees over there. We can make an approach by stealth and see what’s wrong. If anyone is in there or an enemy has taken over, we can reevaluate our—”
“Captain!” A voice boomed across the field. Jackson whipped around to see two tiny figures racing out of a nearby building. “Captain! Captain Keogh! It’s me—Roy!”
Jackson’s heart leaped into his throat as Roy charged across the field to his side. Roy carried a huge weapon, and a strange kid ran after him. The boy carried an equally sizeable weapon, but the pair ran side by side, and Jackson could never mistake that grin on Roy’s face. This kid was a friend of Roy’s. Anyone could see that
Roy stopped short of throwing his arms around Jackson. He couldn’t, with that giant gun in his left hand. Roy gripped Jackson’s shoulder. He looked half ready to cry. “Captain! Thank God you’re here! I thought you were lost.”
“Shit, man,” Jackson croaked. “I thought the same thing about you.”
Roy tugged at Jackson’s uniform. “Come inside. We got rations out the ass, and they even have booze here. There’s a whole warehouse of parts, fuel, and supplies we can use for the Blackout. Come on! Don’t stand on the doorstep.”
Jackson was only too glad to follow Roy toward the base. “What the hell happened to you? Who’s…?” He glanced toward the kid, but he didn’t like to ask point-blank what this obvious New Cooperative member was doing here.
Roy burst out laughing. He removed his hand from Jackson’s shoulder and slammed it down on the kid’s shoulder. “This is Yajak, the greatest strategist on the planet. This kid is the reason I’m alive right now, and he’s also the reason we have this base.”
The party set off across the field. Jackson wanted to laugh himself, he was so happy to find Roy alive and well—not to mention armed. “How did you two get out here? This place looks like a bomb went off.”
Roy guffawed loudly, and his voice echoed off the mountains. “It did! We were on approach when we—”
A queer sound set Jackson’s hair on end, and he stopped on a dime. That sound called up bad memories of the not-so-distant past. A whoosh shot over the mountains beyond the base, and in half a second, a flock of racers descended on the party.
The small craft flocked over the mountains in front of the friends. They unloaded shots across the landing strip, and at the same time, they dropped dozens of hooded soldiers onto the base.
The soldiers released parachutes, hit the ground, and charged the friends. They opened fire. Jackson, Roy, and Yajak spun around, but Jackson didn’t have a weapon to fight them.
Yajak and Roy hefted their guns and returned fire, but in a matter of seconds, the racers streaked overhead and laid down a thick carpet of charges. With so many soldiers and racers attacking at once, the party had no choice but to turn tail.
Jackson towed Quort and Woolzi away from the fray. “To the trees! Get under cover!”
Jackson and Yajak backed off under the attackers’ onslaught. Jackson couldn’t tell who they were. None of the racers or soldiers’ uniforms carried the Keter Legion’s insignia. They wore drab, sandy-brown uniforms.
“They aren’t Keter Legion!” Roy yelled over the noise.
“They’re New Cooperative!” Yajak called back.
“What?” Jackson roared. “Why are they attacking their own base?”
No one could hear a word in the bombardment that followed. Explosions ruptured the landing strip and crawled steadily closer to the friends. Jackson herded Quort and Woolzi toward the trees, but the farther they went, the more obvious it became that these attackers weren’t after the base.
The enemy wheeled to match the friends’ retreat. The soldiers formed ranks across the landing strip and pivoted to drive the friends into the undergrowth. The racers targeted the strip well in front of their soldiers. They didn’t come anywhere close to hitting their own people.
Jackson glanced behind him. He had a clear shot into the woods. “Where are we going?” Roy shouted.
Jackson nodded toward the shadows. “In there!”
“And then what?” Quort asked. “Tell me we aren’t going back to huddling in mountain caves.”
“I don’t like it any better than you do, but—”
The racers’ engines whined even louder as they descended over the landing strip. “One minute, I’m living in the lap of luxury sipping exotic cocktails, and the next…” Roy unloaded another shot at the soldiers. It exploded into their ranks and flung ten out of line, but the rest kept up their relentless advance.
Jackson rotated backward to make his last dive for the bushes when, out of nowhere, two hooded warriors sprang out of the grass, one on either side of him. They rose on their knees out of the field and flanked the soldiers on both sides. One held two hand weapons, while the other hoisted a huge cannon almost bigger than himself.
Wait a minute. Jackson took a second look and realized the two strangers were both female.
Holy shit! It was the twins.
Liri sprayed gunfire into the soldiers’ ranks, while Lana released charges at the racers. She destroyed three in rapid succession before the enemy knew what hit them. The soldiers whirled sideways to counter the twins’ assault. At the same time, Lana pulled a hand weapon from her jacket and pounded them from the other side.
The surprise gave Roy and Yajak enough leeway to retaliate. Roy angled his weapon upward and hammered the racers with one shot after another. He blew five more, and Yajak blasted four.
Between the friends’ combined effort, they drove the enemy back onto the landing strip. The New Cooperative retreated under the assault, with the friends advancing.
Jackson, Quort, and Woolzi followed. The twins got to their feet and pushed forward to force the enemy off the base when another resounding thump echoed from beyond the horizon.
A cloud of racers vaulted over the mountaintop, but they didn’t descend. They hovered there as a dozen Radical Class vessels floated among them. At the same time, hundreds more soldiers swarmed over the hills. They swallowed the measly group that Jackson’s party had just fought. In an instant, they ringed the friends with countless weapons.
The twins fired a few times, but their weapons couldn’t make a dent in a force this size. A few soldiers fell, and left the rest to surround the friends. There was no escape.
9
Liri straightened up and raised her arms to reveal her weapons. Lana laid her cannon on the ground. The soldiers charged in and disarmed everyone, including Roy and Yajak. One of the victors tried to pull Roy’s weapon out of his hands, but he held on and snarled at the stranger through gritted teeth.
For a second, they struggled over the weapon. Roy tried to tug it back, and bared his teeth in his adversary’s face. The soldier hung on and swung up a hand weapon to shoot Roy then and there.
“Roy!” Jackson snapped.
Roy let go of the weapon immediately, but he didn’t stop glaring at the enemy. The soldiers went from one person to the next, collecting every weapon. Then they stepped back and left the friends defenseless.
Liri scrutinized her crewmates. Would they know enough to get out of this with their heads still attached to their necks? She caught Lana looking at her, too, but with their hoods up, Liri couldn’t read her sister’s expression. If anyone knew how to handle this, Lana would.
The soldiers shoved the party onto the landing strip. They marched toward the blasted remains of the warehouse. The Radicals descended, and one lowered its hatch.
Liri checked the soldiers one after another. She didn’t recognize anyone with their hoods on. The only Keteran here without his head covered was Yajak.
The soldiers shepherded the group onto the Radical’s discharge ramp, but they didn’t go to the cockpit. Tollin and his entourage met the friends there, and he waved to the twins. “You can take your hoods off. You aren’t in any danger here.”
Liri and Lana both pulled off their hoods. What was the sense in hiding? Tollin would find out one way or the other that the twins had turned their fire on the New Cooperative. With their masks removed, Liri could see her sister’s face. The twins exchanged glances. Was Lana thinking the same thing Liri was?
Tollin sniffed. “I always knew you two were traitors. Did Arlyane send you to infiltrate the New Cooperative? Is that why you’ve been passing yourselves off as true believers all these months? You don’t have to answer. You can expect the same fate as all traitors to our cause. At least these aliens can claim ignorance, but you—”
“We aren’t traitors, Tollin,” Liri blurted out. “We thought you were the enemy. The Community of Hinn attacked this base last night. They were going to steal all our Smiasmiam and use it to annihilate the camp. Didn’t you know that? These two stopped them.”
“They stopped them by destroying our Smiasmiam,” Tollin returned. “They left us defenseless against our enemies.”
“We all know that’s nonsense,” Lana cut in. “You have plenty of Smiasmiam at the other bases, and even if you didn’t, you can always get more from the mines. You should be thanking these two instead of threatening them.”
Tollin’s expression hardened. “That doesn’t change the fact that you just killed our people and would have robbed us of our best chance to—”
“I told you,” Liri interrupted. “We thought you were the Hinn coming back. How could we possibly know it was you, with those unidentifiable uniforms and no markings on your ships? How were we to know the Community of Hinn wasn’t coming back to finish the job?”
“You should be thanking us, too,” Lana cut in. “You should be rewarding us instead of threatening us with a traitor’s death.”
Tollin pursed his lips. Was he buying it? Jackson and the others exchanged glances, too. They were catching on. “I told you to go repair the Blackout, not—”
Liri followed up her victory by turning to Yajak. “Didn’t you destroy the warehouse to prevent the Hinn from seizing our Smiasmiam? Isn’t that what happened?”
“That’s right!” Yajak panted. “When we got here, the place was crawling with Hinn, and their freighter was descending through the atmosphere to lift off the fuel.”
Tollin rounded on him. “You! You were supposed to be on the repair crew. The Blackout will be a thousand times more valuable to us than ten warehouses full of Smiasmiam, but it’s worthless if we can’t get it off the ground. What were you thinking—trekking over hill and dale to come here when you should have been fixing the ship?”
