Retribution

by T. R. Harris

  He turned away and laughed again. “And you were discovered in the sub-levels, apparently lost as you searched for me in the Temple. Humans are pitiful creatures. And I will begin my reign with the crowning achievement of eliminating your evil race from the Grid and the Order. The advantage is now ours; your time is—”

  An Antaere military officer rushed into the room, interrupting Kallen’s speech.

  “My Lord, an important message. You must see.” He held a datapad in his hand.

  “This interruption is not to be tolerated!” Kallen yelled at the officer. He looked to his guards, scolding them with his eyes for letting the officer barge in as he had.

  “But my Lord! This is important!”

  The officer shoved the datapad into the Rowin’s hands.

  Flush with anger, Kallen glanced down at the screen. Then he frowned and looked closer. He began to scroll through the screens.

  “Is this confirmed?”

  “Yes, my Lord,” answered the vindicated First Insir.

  “I must … I must …” Kallen rushed off toward the door.

  “My Lord,” said the lead guard. “What of the prisoners?”

  Kallen stopped briefly at the door, his forehead deeply furrowed. He waved a hand at the guard. “Take them to a secure cell. I will deal with them later.” And then he was gone, out the door with his advisors following.

  As the team was hustled from the room, Zac looked over at Joanie and raised his eyebrows.

  “You don’t suppose, do you?” he whispered.

  “Amber, are you monitoring communications?” Ashley whispered.

  In the ambient noise of the team being shuffled out and led back to the elevator, the AI’s voice was still heard.

  “I’m monitoring both security channels, as well as those of local broadcasts. All have been focused on the Coronation, but now other news is coming in. There is mass panic at the Andorium. The guests are fleeing, most heading back to the spaceport. Workers here are growing desperate; I have had to employ anti-boarder protocols to keep the Zanzibar from being taken. Wait, please. Yes, an information block is being placed on the general broadcasts by order of the government. I would have to surmise from this activity that our mission has been a success. I will endeavor to find other sources of information.”

  Zac didn’t need Amber’s report for verification. As the elevator opened on the main level, he could see beyond the huge open doors to the outside of the Temple. People were scrambling, along with those inside the structure. There was pandemonium, and the high-class society of Antara was looking for a way out.

  The lead guard hesitated for a moment, looking out at what was happening outside before deciding to take the team down a side corridor and into the main security offices for the Temple. He had originally intended to take them to the south side of the Andorium, to the main security headquarters. But he would have to fight through the panicking crowd to get there. Instead, he herded the team into a holding cell within the Temple.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Joanie said as the door was locked. The guards had worried looks on their faces as well. The panic was infectious. “Even if the Ha’curn fleet was destroyed, it’s still several months—maybe even a year—before we attack Antara.”

  “But the bigwigs aren’t waiting around,” Ashley said. “They know the inevitable, and they’re going to get a jump on things. Everyone with a starship will be gone in a matter of hours. And that’s making everyone else nervous.”

  “So, it looks like we did it,” Zac stated. “Mission accomplished.”

  Angus grunted. “I’ll only say mission accomplished over a pint at Jack’s back at Groom Lake. Until we get out of here and back home, the mission is still active.”

  Zac grinned. “Right as always, Lt. Price. Fortunately, the four of us have a little bag of tricks up our sleeves—and coursing through our bodies—at the moment. I suppose it’s time we use all this confusion as cover to get out of here. Amber, get the Zanzibar prepped for a fast getaway. We’re heading your way.”

  “Prepped and ready, Major Murphy. But be advised, you will encounter a lot of traffic heading this way on the main road out of the Andorium.”

  “It can’t be worse than rush hour on the 405. See you in a few minutes.”

  Joanie took hold of Zac’s arm. “Let me do it, please!” Her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “You’re really getting into this whole REV thing, aren’t you?” He waved his hand toward the locked cell door. “Be my guest.”

  Joanie stepped up to the metal bars near the locking box. Although General Cross said female REVs didn’t max out strength-wise as did the men, they were proving to be strong enough when it counts. Joanie gripped the bars and began to groan, pulling at the section where the lock was installed. The metal bent, not as fast as it would have if Zac were doing it, but enough. The lock broke and separated from the door.

  The guards were otherwise occupied, attempting to maintain some sense of order in the Temple while also trying to find out what the panic was about. From the looks on their faces, some already knew, but as professionals, they were doing their best to stand their posts.

  The team slipped out of the cell and moved down the narrow corridor to the main office. About a dozen security personnel were in the room, many armed with energy rifles, all with pistols. Zac was tired of playing it cautious. He and Angus rushed into the room, their fists flying and bodies barreling. Antaere were thrown helter-skelter, while Joanie and Ashley brought up the rear, gathering up discarded weapons as they ran.

  The two male REVs had weapons of their own by now and were blasting any alien they saw, be they guards, military or frantic guests. As they bolted into the Grand Hall, the small army of security personnel noticed them and began to fire. Both Zac and Angus took hits, as did Ashley. But they kept running. With a savage grin on his face, Zac waded into a surging column of Antaere, firing his weapon with one hand while flailing away with the other. He looked over at Angus on his right. He was doing the same.

  Zac glanced back at Joanie and yelled, “This is what it’s like to be on an old REV Run at ground level!”

  “I know,” she yelled back. “I’ve seen the video.”

  It was both stimulating and disturbing at the same time. Zac was having flashbacks to his NT-4 days and the thrill of cutting through a horde of aliens and watching the bodies fall.

  The team burst out into the night of Antara. A sea of light still covered the area, as this was about the time the Coronation was set to begin, although Zac figured the festivities for the evening had been cancelled by now. Fancy-dressed Antaere were running everywhere, and a disorganized parade of the black limos were jockeying their way out from the underground parking garages, many forcing their way past fellow drivers with no regard for anyone but themselves.

  With most of the opposition behind them—or dead—Zac and his team ran to the line of limos. One close to them smashed into the back of another and came to a stop. Ashley was at the driver’s door, which she promptly ripped from its hinges and tossed it aside. She reached in and pulled the Antaere driver from his seat, throwing him away as she had the door. She climbed in.

  Following her clue, Zac ripped off the back door to the limo and jumped in. On the other side of the vehicle, he kicked out this door, as well. Then with Joanie sitting in a forward seat, Zac and Angus stationed themselves at the open doors and blasted any security guards they saw until their weapons ran dry.

  Ashley had the limo untangled from the bumper of the other and was careening through traffic as fast as possible. Unlike the other drivers, she had no regard for the pedestrians in her way, and many of the slower ones paid the ultimate price for their sloth. As Amber warned, the bridge leaving the Andorium was gridlocked with vehicles and fleeing guests. Beyond the wide mote around the island, thousands of confused and frightened civilians crowded the shoreline, wondering what was happening within the walls of the Antaere’s most sacred grounds.

 
Ashley muscled her way through the traffic, at times gunning the limo so much that the rear tires spun, squealed and smoked while she shoved another of the limos through the brick rampart lining the bridge and into the waters below. This would momentarily clear her for another run at the back of another vehicle, and soon she was over the bridge and onto the wider expanse of the main avenue.

  All lanes were now taken by vehicles moving away from the Andorium. Ashley weaved between traffic and onto the shoulder. At one point, she veered onto the sloped side of a grassy embankment before steering back onto the road, t-boning another limo.

  After a few minutes of this, traffic began to thin out. They were close to the spaceport, and as the limos and other vehicles barreled out onto the tarmac, they had more room to spread out. Ashley steered for the Zanzibar and skidded to a stop only ten feet away.

  As the team scrambled from the limo, they noticed a dozen bodies lying inert on the concrete, the consequence of the high electrical charge Amber could pass through the hull to discourage boarders and hijackers. The main hatchway opened for them and the REVs shot through. Even as the door was closing, an enormous blast of lifting fire lashed out from under the starship. A moment later, the Zanzibar was angled up at eighty-degrees, heading almost straight up into space.

  17

  Without worrying about what energy-signature the ship gave out, Amber set the Zanzibar on a direct course for the Valhalla and at maximum drive. The massive battle-carrier had moved closer to Antara by now, so the rendezvous would take place only eight days later, rather than the nine it took them to originally reach the planet.

  Zac and Joanie, and Angus and Ashley, fell back into their regular routines, although more relaxed and satisfied then they had been on the trip to Antara. Occasionally, the lustful couples would see each other in the galley, but mostly they remained locked away behind the doors to their staterooms, celebrating the mission’s success.

  REVs seldom became exhausted, but by the time the Zanzibar docked with the Valhalla, everyone aboard was ready for a break. They got it when Admiral Armitage called them to her underway cabin for a mission debrief.

  The team took comfortable seats on couches and chairs, rather than the sterile table. Drinks were offered and accepted, and after a celebratory toast, the admiral got down to business.

  “Here’s the latest,” she began. “From what we can tell—and of course, this information is sketchy—all forty-eight weapons exploded within the Ha’curn fleet. It turns out that about two-thirds of the ships were warships, while another third where massive troop carriers, with over ten thousand Ha’curn in each one. These troops were to be used to stock the garrisons on the Colony Worlds to enforce order. All except ten of the warships were destroyed, while fourteen of the troop carriers survived, a consequence of the spread of the fleet at the time of detonation.” She smiled and lifted her glass to her lips. “And although the Ha’curn hadn’t rendezvoused with the main Antaere fleet by this time, there were already twenty-two Antaere ships operating with the Ha’curn. That takes the number of remaining Antaere warships down to below two hundred and with no substantial additions coming before we launch our attack on Antara.”

  “And when will that be, admiral?” Zac asked.

  Armitage shrugged. “That’s still up in the air. In fact, we may not make a full-scale assault of the planet.”

  “Why not, ma’am?” Joanie asked.

  “That’s the other part of the news. It seems Kallen Zaphin and his family have left Antara. Not only that, but as he left, he took all the contents of the Hall of Records with him.”

  “Where did he go?” Joanie followed up.

  Armitage shook her head. “We don’t know, but there are still a lot of planets in the Grid for him to hide. Hell, he may have left the Grid, for that matter. But the bottom line is most of the rest of the government has fled, as well. And now, anyone with a microphone is calling us trying to negotiate a peace.”

  “Peace?” Zac said. “Excuse me, ma’am, but bullshit. Look what they intended to do to us.”

  “Relax, Mr. Murphy, no one’s going to let the Antaere off scot-free. It’s just that it won’t take an invasion to subdue the population. They’re inviting us in.” The admiral looked at the faces of the four REVs, slowly, one at a time. “Ladies and gentlemen, the war’s over. We won!”

  Epilogue

  A few hours later, the team met up at the MedLab at the request of General David Cross. He was still aboard the Valhalla, not wanting to leave until he knew if the mission was a success, and how his female REVs fared. He wanted to do a quick exam of them, to see how operating at such a high level of natural Rev production affected them.

  Zac and Angus were in an anteroom, looking at the women through a large glass window covered in open blinds. Cross was with them, going over the results of the tests.

  “So, what happens to us now?” Angus asked. “No wars to fight; no need for REVs.”

  “I’m fine with that,” Zac said. “Although I understand there are over two hundred Alpha REVs on Crious. That’s a lot of supermen to control, especially when they’ve just discovered they’re supermen. Cross has his work cut out for him. He’s stuck between real-world Humans and his REVs.”

  “It’s of his own making, Zac,” Angus said. “He should have thought of that before he started messing with Human evolution.”

  Zac nodded, then frowned as he looked through the window at the dumbfounded looks on the faces of both Ashley and Joanie. Although the men couldn’t hear what was said, Cross had just told them something the women found shocking.

  A minute later, the door to the inner office open and the two female REVs walked out, their faces blank, skin pale and looking like zombies.

  “What’s wrong?” Angus asked. “Did the Rev do something to your bodies?”

  Joanie looked at Zac. “No. The Rev didn’t do anything to our bodies. But you did.”

  “What do you mean?” Zac asked.

  “We’re pregnant.”

  Angus looked at Ashley. “Both of you?”

  She nodded.

  Instantly, a thousand things ran through Zac’s mind, and nearly all of them focused on Dr. David Cross.

  “This sounds like something Cross would do,” he said.

  “Eh, excuse me, Zac,” Joanie began. “But David didn’t do this to me. You did.”

  “But he’s been trying to make a female REV just so he can breed her with a male natural. It’s all part of his plan to create the master race.”

  “That may be true, but this is us we’re talking about and not some master race.”

  “And us,” Ashley said, looking at Angus.

  The men were silent for a moment, each afraid to ask the next question. It was Zac who eventually built up the courage.

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?” Joanie asked, aghast. “David told us about the babies, about how our DNA has changed, and that the children will be REVs, natural REVs. He says this is a momentous moment in the history of mankind. I’m certainly not going to do anything impulsive. And aren’t you curious, Zac? Don’t you want to know what your son or daughter will be like?”

  “Of course, I am,” he answered honestly. “It’s just that I can’t get past the feeling that Cross set this up; that he arranged for the two of you to go on the mission to Antara, and that the days alone on the Zanzibar was his way of making sure we did what he wanted us to do.”

  “As I recall, no one was twisting your arm. You were a willing participant.”

  Zac forced out a thin grin while scooping Joanie up in his arms. Angus did the with Ashley. Everyone hugged and tears flowed.

  “Of course, you’re right,” Zac said after a moment. “It will certainly be interesting to see how all this works out.” Then he smiled even more broadly.

  “So, here we are at the crossroads in evolution, with Joanie Hollis and Ashley Hunter, the mothers of a new breed of Human. Who would have thunk it?”<
br />
  And with that, the four REVs looked to the window where the general had been watching.

  Then with a sly grin, Dr. David Cross reached over and slowly closed the blinds.

  The End

  Coming Next:

  REV: Revelations

  Knowing the truth is not always a good thing. And now that the word is out regarding the Alphas, the majority of the population is up in arms. This new kind of REV isn’t like Zac Murphy’s Deltas, so rare that they’re more a curiosity than a threat. Yet the Alphas are invisible supermen walking among the ‘normals,’ a new kind of Human set to replace the old with the new. And this is not the only revelation that has Humanity spooked. Now that the Grid is unified and ruled by the Humans, it’s time to expand outward, into a vast, unexplored galaxy with a variety of lifeforms so unlike Humans that common ground is impossible to find. And who will protect Humanity from the coming threats? Naturally, the duty falls to the REVs. And what do the REVs get in return? Whatever they want…

  Author Notes and FREE BOOK OFFER

  I want to thank you for reading this latest edition in the REV universe. It was fun getting back to writing about Zac and his friends, and all the challenges facing the REVs and Humanity. Life is complicated … and then you become a REV.

  The series will continue with the next book—REV: Revelations—as we begin to explore more of the impact this new breed of man is having on the rest of the species. The new REVs are a quantum leap in evolution, which in the opinion of some, makes normal Humans obsolete. But will Humanity go quietly into the night, to be replaced by a race of supermen—and women? Or will they fight for their existence? I think you know the answer.

  And yet, as Humanity expands beyond the Grid into an unexplored galaxy filled with countless threats, who do we want out there protecting us? Who do we want to be the sharp end of the stick, representatives of the Human race? A race of supermen can be a formidable deterrent. Let them do what they do best – fight and win.