Ruined Terra (Book 11 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  “They’ll do their best to extract what information they can from us first. That’s where the torture will come in. They’ll want to know everything they can about you, what you can do, and where you came from. For me, they’re going to want to know everything I can tell them about my people’s defenses. They’ll want to know how to destroy us utterly.

  “That’s why they’ve got our arms and legs tied, to make certain that we can’t somehow kill ourselves. The strapping held you in the saddle while you were unconscious, but they’re not going to remove it until we stop for the evening, and then they’ll secure us again once we’ve taken care of our necessary business. They’ll take no chances with us being able to get away or take our own lives.”

  The news made Jared feel hollow inside. Not only had he failed his people, everyone he cared about was going to die in the most horrible manner imaginable. He had failed the Empire utterly.

  “Where’s everybody else?” Talbot asked. “There have to have been a lot more of them than this.”

  “Gathering everything that we salvaged and chasing down all the horses that got away,” she said. “They’re also burning their dead. They’ll leave ours where they fell.

  “No doubt there are groups of pack animals somewhere around us. That will have the majority of their forces acting as guards because they don’t want anyone to take all their new toys. They’ll also have people back at your camp breaking into your crashed ships and securing everything for their own use.”

  “That had to be some kind of EMP weapon,” Talbot said slowly. “My implants are offline, and so is my augmentation. I’m not sure if it’s fried or if it simply needs to be reset in some fashion. I had a manual that explained how it all worked, but it was stored in my implant memory. Maybe Kelsey knows more. I’m a little worried that she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  “One of the invaders took special pleasure in making sure that she was unconscious once they removed her from her armor,” Beauchamp said. “He kicked her in the head several times. She was still alive, obviously, or they wouldn’t have strapped her to the horse, but she may be gravely injured.

  “I was warned that we can talk amongst ourselves when we wake but that we are not allowed to approach anyone that is unconscious. I know you want to check on her, but we’re going to have to wait and see if she wakes up on her own. If you try to violate their rules, they’ll hurt you badly. They only need a few of you alive to talk.

  “I hesitate to mention this, but gelding is a favorite torture of theirs, so I would be very careful not to get on their bad side any more than you already are.”

  “We have to assume that Julia and the other marines were killed after the bomb went off,” Jared said, wanting to go to his sister in spite of the risk, but not daring. “The only people that could help us are right here. I doubt that any of your people will be coming for us. Is that right?”

  Captain Beauchamp nodded. “They’ll find the bodies left on the field once all the fighters are gone, but they’re not going to send anyone after us. The horde is too strong. The only help that we can count on now is right here, so we’re as good as dead.”

  Julia froze in place. Without her augmentation, she didn’t have a chance against a trained warrior. His spear had reach on her knife, and she didn’t have even a third of his strength without her artificial musculature. She had no speed advantage, and she couldn’t even turn her combat over to the implants in her head. She was outclassed in every way imaginable.

  There was no way she could win this fight.

  He’d obviously come to the same conclusion, because his grin only widened as he advanced toward her. He casually twitched his spear with nimble fingers so that she couldn’t be sure from which way a jab or strike might come from. His movements definitely left the impression of a predator playing with its food.

  “I’m not certain how the outriders missed you, but I’m glad they did,” he said with a dark chuckle. “You’re a luscious piece of fruit just waiting to be plucked and savored. What secrets do you know? How does one as pretty as you serve the monsters in the sky? The ones who killed our world.”

  His playful tone had vanished by the time he’d finished his little speech, replaced by a cold sneer. Obviously, he didn’t like the Rebel Empire any more than she did. Perhaps Julia could use that to her advantage.

  Though she didn’t drop her knife, she raised her empty hand. “I don’t serve those monsters. None of us do. We’re fighting them, trying to stop them. There’s been a terrible misunderstanding.”

  The man laughed without the slightest bit of humor. “I’d say so, because you should never have come here. Your kind is not welcome. You might not think you serve those things, but you do. They have things in your heads that control your every move. We know.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure and cut it out so that they don’t ever have the chance to do that again. We might even let you live once we’ve finished, if you’re very cooperative.

  “I hope that you yield completely, because you’d make an excellent addition to my household as a comfort slave. You don’t look like the kind that would survive as a drudge, so if I were you, I’d start learning how to please me right now.”

  Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. She might as well die right here and now. She’d never give herself over to someone like this. Better to bleed out than to be a sex slave. Or worse.

  She was just about to throw herself at him and take her chances when a cry from just off to her right captured both their attentions.

  Staggering up out of the grass, Scott Roche rushed toward the man, a flechette pistol in his hand. “Die!” he screamed as he raised the weapon.

  Julia knew damned well that the pistol had to have been fried. There was no way it was going to work as anything better than a rock.

  Deep down, her attacker had to have realized the same thing, but his trained reactions betrayed him. No warrior would allow a charging enemy to get to him with a weapon that he knew was deadly, even if subconsciously he knew the weapon was useless.

  With one smooth motion, her attacker turned to face Scott and met his charge with the tip of his spear. The primitive weapon easily knocked the flechette pistol away before plunging through her friend’s chest.

  “No!” she screamed as she charged forward. She held the knife in her hand low and used her short stature to come in at a lower angle than the man might expect.

  He immediately tugged on the spear and made to turn toward her. Unfortunately for him, Scott had his hands wrapped tightly around the spear and wasn’t letting go. The man’s weapon was hopelessly tangled and couldn’t possibly stop her charge.

  The warrior released his spear and drew his sword, using that motion to slash it toward her head, but she was already rolling on the ground at his feet.

  She came up blade first, and the wickedly sharp knife cut through his armor and flesh both, opening him from groin to sternum.

  The stench of blood and offal was almost a physical blow to her senses as she threw herself back from the fatally wounded man, watching for him to collapse in death.

  Only he wasn’t done yet. Holding his guts in with one hand, he staggered after her, seemingly determined to kill her before he fell.

  If she could keep him at arm’s length until his wound dragged him down, she’d survive. If he caught her, she was dead.

  Even though her attention was fully on her attacker, she saw Scott Roche do the impossible out of the corner of her eye. He pulled the spear from his chest, turned it so that the point was facing toward her attacker, and hurled it with his remaining strength, even as he collapsed to his knees.

  His aim was off, but the spear still struck the man in the back of his head with its shaft, once again distracting him at a critical moment. Julia took advantage of his distraction to race inside his sword’s reach until the two of them were almost touching.

  He grabbed her with his free hand, yanking her hair back painfully, but it didn’t stop her from plu
nging her knife through his chin and into his brain. Hot blood spattered across her face as he quivered. Moments later, he collapsed and she let him go.

  Certain that the man was dead, Julia raced to Scott’s side just in time to catch him as he slumped. A quick look showed her that he had two arrows buried in his chest, as well as the horrific wound that the spear had caused. Without modern medical facilities, her friend was dying.

  Already he was coughing blood and had trouble breathing. She wasn’t sure how he’d survived as long as he had.

  “You shouldn’t have,” she whispered as she stroked his upturned face.

  “It’s my duty… and privilege… to trade my life… for yours,” he gasped out between coughing fits. “They took… Mertz and… the others… alive. Save them. Make them… save our people.”

  With a final gasp, he went still and stopped breathing. She sat with her dead friend’s head in her lap and cried until she had no tears left inside her.

  She wasn’t a warrior, but she’d track the horde down and kill as many of them as she could. She’d save her new companions, no matter the price. Then she’d do whatever it took to save her people. Scott’s sacrifice demanded no less.

  The horde had chosen the wrong person to make an enemy of. She’d make them pay for what they’d done. Terra would run red with their blood. She swore it.

  24

  When Kelsey woke, her head hurt terribly, and her face felt almost as bad. A glance around revealed that her greatest fear had come true. Somehow, she’d been captured. There’d been some kind of weapon, she remembered foggily. She’d tried to stop them from setting it off but had failed.

  It only took her a few moments to realize it must’ve been some type of electromagnetic pulse weapon. Her implants were offline, and her augmentation wasn’t working either. That was patently obvious because her face still hurt. If her medical nanites had been functional, they’d have already taken care of the cuts and bruises, and her pharmacology unit would’ve stopped the pain.

  A look around her revealed most of her friends scattered around her, but they were all prisoners. She didn’t see Julia, which might be very good or very bad. There was also no sign of Commander Roche either. She hoped they were okay and had gotten away.

  Everyone else seemed to be in just as bad a shape as she was, but they were all awake. She was obviously the last one to wake up, which was an unusual state of affairs for her. She felt as if someone had beaten her, and that might not be far from the truth.

  With as many people as she’d killed, it was entirely possible that they’d taken out some of their wrath on her. It felt as if her ribs might be cracked, although that was impossible. The Graphene coating would’ve kept the bones from breaking, but she was certainly bruised in all the wrong places.

  As soon as it was obvious that she was awake, her husband made his way up to her. Since his hands were tied to the saddle horn and his legs were secured to the stirrups, his pace was slow. The warriors guarding them seemed to be okay with him getting close to her, but had their bows prominently displayed. She was certain that if anyone made a break for it, they’d catch several arrows in their back and would be dead before they got outside bow range.

  Hell, the horsemen probably could ride faster than any of them under the circumstances. They might just cut them down with swords. She and her friends were helpless to resist at this point.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she asked Talbot when he got beside her.

  He nodded grimly. “I’m not going to hide this from you. That EMP weapon took everyone with implants out. The horde then overwhelmed Captain Beauchamp’s people, started figuring out who the important people left alive were, and executed everyone else. We’re all that’s left.”

  His words were like a sledgehammer to her gut. She almost whimpered in the pain of knowing that so many of the people she was responsible for had died. All because they’d inserted themselves into someone else’s business.

  “We should’ve just kept going,” she said softly. “We should’ve ignored the group heading toward where the pinnaces were and run. We stuck our noses where they didn’t need to be, and now they’ve chopped them off for us. Where are we going now?”

  Her husband took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “From what I understand, Captain Beauchamp seems to think that they’re taking us to their capital city. It’s built next to one of the ruined megacities.

  “Once we get there, they’re going to torture us for whatever information we have and then execute us. Apparently, this isn’t something that even cooperation is going to change. Unless we figure out how to get away, we’re going to be put through some of the most horrific things you can imagine and then they’re going to burn us alive. That’s their form of execution, just in case you need extra motivation to come up with a brilliant escape plan.”

  Kelsey’s stomach roiled. She had to figure out a way out of this. She was a damned Marine Raider and the Crown Princess of the New Terran Empire. There was no way in hell that she’d let these barbarians kill her and her friends.

  She looked around at the guards shepherding them. “It looks like we’ve got about fifty guards. We’re tied up, but they have to stop sometime. We need to at least try and escape. Even if we fail, what’s the worst that can happen? We get a clean death in battle. That’s a hell of a lot better than torture and immolation.”

  Kelsey looked up at where the sun sat in the sky and tried to guess the time. It wasn’t easy without her implants, but it seemed like evening. They probably only had another hour before the sun set.

  She had no doubts that the guards would keep them tied up for as long as they could, but they had to cut them loose to use the bathroom and eat, if they wanted to get them back to their city so that they could be questioned.

  Kelsey knew that they’d be under heavy guard, but surely they could do something. Maybe not tonight. Maybe it would be tomorrow night. She had to figure out what the horde’s patterns were before she could find a way to subvert them.

  “Are we sure that Julia and Scott are dead?” she asked.

  “Scott is,” he said. “Captain Beauchamp saw him with a couple of arrows in his chest. I’m sorry, Kelsey, but he’s gone. As for Julia, she was off with the ready response team. None of them were seen or heard from again, so I can’t imagine that any of them escaped.”

  His words infuriated her. How could they have misjudged the situation so badly? How could she have misjudged the situation so badly?

  She cast a glance over at where Jared was talking with Captain Beauchamp. Since none of the woman’s people were with her, the horde had butchered her entire command.

  What would they do if they escaped? There had to be more horsemen scattered around than those she could currently see. These people were doing things that she didn’t know about, and that put every plan that she came up with at risk.

  If they broke out of this camp, they’d have to somehow evade the other horsemen, figure out how to get clear of this entire area, and still make the fifteen-hundred-kilometer journey to the Imperial Palace. All by themselves with no advanced gear or even basic supplies. On foot while evading horsemen who would no doubt be determined to capture and kill them all.

  Simple, right?

  The thought of all that made her frown. The EMP had probably fried the Imperial Scepter. It was the physical key to get into the vaults. They also didn’t have possession of it anymore. Could they even access the Imperial Vault without it?

  There was probably a way in without it, but they didn’t have their implants, so how could she activate computers to try to bypass the security system?

  The odds stacked against them seemed overwhelming. They had no outside help, and even if they managed to resist the people holding them captive, they could expect extermination in the ensuing fight.

  Maybe one or two of them could get away from this, if the rest gave up all hope of escape and fought, but that was probably wishful thinking.

  It cert
ainly seemed as if everything they’d fought so hard to accomplish was for nothing. The artificial intelligences would win. They’d eventually bring the Omega Plague back to Terra and exterminate every living being on the planet, which she supposed was a kind of pyric revenge on the horde, but that wouldn’t help the New Terran Empire.

  Humanity’s best hope of beating the AIs was lost, and she had no idea how they could possibly survive, much less win.

  It took every bit of her strength, but Julia managed to drag Scott’s body to where the horde had been burning their dead. It broke her heart to heave him onto the smoldering flames in the hastily dug pit, but she did it. She wasn’t going to leave him out for the animals to eat. He’d been her friend and loyal supporter for years, and he deserved the final care she now showed him.

  The stench of burning flesh made her stomach heave, and she threw up as soon as she’d accomplished the task and staggered away from the hellish scene. Then she sat on the ground and wept.

  When she finally regained control over herself, she set about searching the remaining dead for clothes she could wear. Her skinsuit wasn’t going to be helpful in what she needed to do. Her pack horse was gone. Probably taken by the raiders as a matter of course, so none of her own belongings were available.

  She gathered some marine uniforms and some boots that she could use with several layers of socks to take up the extra space her small feet would leave, but that wouldn’t do for the first part of what she needed to do. She had to blend in, and that meant she needed local clothes, armor, and weapons.

  It took a while, but she managed to find one of the warriors who was almost as small as she was. The man was thin and wiry, and it looked as if he’d specialized in the bow.

  In fact, his weapon was exquisite. Its polished wood looked strong and its bowstring was taut, but that hardly began to tell the story of this weapon.