The two walked more than a hundred yards to a suspended bridge that led from the island they were on to another land mass about an eighth of a mile away. Star commented, “So much water. We’re lucky the sky is clear. The logbook entry said torrential rains come without warning.”
“This land shortage must present huge challenges,” Bach said.
As they neared the end of the bridge, a large sign overhead read MEN ONLY and a security device mounted in a turret continuously scanned the island.
Bach sighed. “A difficult start already.”
Star sat on a concrete wall under the turret. “I’ll wait here.”
Looking around, Bach muttered, “I’m confused.” He stepped onto the island where rolling ripples of water lapped at the eroded shoreline. “The journal said that the residents are separated by gender. If men and women never share the same area, do they live apart forever? How would there be children?”
Star shrugged and shook her head.
Wondering where to begin his search, Bach noticed a medical facility, command posts, and a park-like recreation area. The park was the logical starting point. An event of some kind was in progress and several hundred men wearing yellow, hospital-like uniforms with numbers on the front and back of the left shoulder, had gathered around tables where others were seated in groups of six. Bach walked among the spectators, but not one man spoke to him. A gaming tournament of skill and intellect held their attention. Moving from table to table he noticed identical circular game boards with playing pieces of different shapes and colors. The boards, divided into four pie-shaped sections, looked like the symbol. Can’t be. There are hundreds of them. Face scrunched up in dismay, he walked on.
After he’d searched for more than an hour and found nothing resembling a symbol other than the game boards, Bach headed back to the bridge. Star was still sitting under the turret where he’d left her. “The men are having some kind of contest and nobody’s talking,” he reported. “But the odd thing is, their game boards are round with a design that looks like the symbol. But it can’t be—there are hundreds of them.”
She pointed to a connecting bridge running from the bridge they were on to an adjacent island. “Let’s cross over there and have a look.”
The second bridge hung just inches above the water and as they walked across, their weight took it below the surface. Wet to the ankles, they reached the next island’s sandy shore. There, another security system scanned an area designated WOMEN ONLY. In the distance were several office-like buildings and a women’s medical center. But closer, in an area the size of a soccer field, hundreds of female spectators rooted for participants hovering over dozens of waist-high platforms. Several women monitored the event from a large stage, and all were dressed alike in numbered gray uniforms.
Bach sat at the foot of the bridge and motioned Star on. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Star headed toward the closest platform where a group of twelve women, spaced two feet apart, awaited a given signal. At the sound of a buzzer, each woman set a gyroscope into motion within a marked-off area. The tops spun for minutes on end and the contestants watched intently. A digital readout suspended above the platform displayed elapsed time. As the gyroscopes slowed and stopped one after another, Star moved closer, noting a crossed-bar formation inside the spheres that looked like the symbol. She pondered the discovery while moving farther through the crowd and among the platforms, watching for anyone or anything displaying the sacred icon. But after covering the entire event and finding nothing among the spectators or participants, she returned to Bach. “Something strange is going on,” she said. “They’re competing with identical gyroscopes and each has inside what looks like the symbol. But as you said about all the game boards on the men’s island, all the participants couldn’t have a symbol.”
Bach ran his hand through his hair with a sigh and looked out over the crowd. “Maybe the Rooks got here first and foiled our search.”
“But Rooks wouldn’t know about the symbol.”
A cheer broke from one group and the winner rushed to the stage holding her gyroscope above her head. The crowd applauded her victory and readied for the next match.
“What now?” Star asked.
Bach shrugged. “Maybe we should separate and check the housing areas. You check the women’s while we’re here, and I’ll go back and check the men’s area.”
“Separating is a bad idea.”
“But we can’t go together here,” he complained as he looked back at the group of women. “Maybe we’re supposed to take the game winners.” All of a sudden his mouth dropped open and all the air shot from his lungs. “Oh, oh, my God!” He started forward.
Star grabbed his arm. “Bach, what’s wrong?”
He didn’t explain, but tightened his arm around hers and pulled her into the crowded park. Pushing and shoving through the women and platforms, he lost his grip on her arm the last few yards and sprinted red-faced and yelling, “Kaz! Deni!” But the loud gaming buzzer for the upcoming round drowned out his words. Bach reached his crewmates and pulled Kaz back from a platform. Staring at her face, he said through gasps for breath, “Kaz? I can’t believe it!”
Her expression was one of shock mixed with fear. “Bach?”
Star caught up. “You know them?”
“It’s Kaz, my fiancée, and Deni, my crewmate.”
Deni stepped back from the platform, eyes nervously flashing around the area before nodding acknowledgment.
Without thinking, Kaz embraced Bach.
Deni grabbed her away. “Stop it! Do you want the labor camp? Don’t touch him.”
“Oh, Bach, it’s a nightmare!” Kaz trembled, trying to hold back tears. “I can’t believe you’re here. We’re prisoners, sent here as the Specter’s revenge.”
Bach’s heart sank as he looked into those familiar Hispanic eyes. He cupped his long-lost fiancée’s face in his hands and whispered, “Have you been hurt?”
“No, but it’s torture here. We’re restricted and punished for everything.”
Deni pulled Kaz back. “Stay away from him, Kaz!” She shook her head as she spoke. “Bach, your being here is going to bring trouble.”
He inched backwards. “Are Lynch and G.R. here too?”
“No, just us. The male Rooks were fascinated by Kaz and me—women from the blue planet. The Specter feared we’d manipulate his men, influence them, maybe escape, so he shipped us here.”
“Did you ever see him?” Bach asked.
“Just his face—the apparition.” Deni took a deep breath and tried to speak without visibly mouthing the words. “He extracted samples: blood, small bits of flesh, body fluids, DNA. He’s working on genetically superior supersoldiers. Our diverse genes could either add to that effort or spawn a peasant race to do the hard labor. Could be he’s gone too far with experimentation and needs fresh DNA to correct his mistakes.”
Sniffling, with voice shaking, Kaz whispered, “Bach, we gotta get out of here; everything’s under microscopic control.”
The sight of his fiancée in drab, gray, prison-like clothing ripped at Bach’s emotions. He could barely speak and wasn’t ready to leave. “I’ve missed you terribly.”
Kaz moved to within inches of his face, tears spilling from her eyes. “Please, take us back to Dura.”
“Kaz, I can’t, not now. We’re on a special mission. But I’ll come back for you … and Deni.”
She stopped crying and glared at him. “What mission? What’s more important than rescuing us? You don’t understand what we’ve been through.”
Star moved closer. “We have a critical time limit—the enemy may bring harm to all. Please understand.”
Kaz looked at Star, then Bach, then dropped to her knees, closed her eyes and whispered, “Please help us, God.”
Deni latched onto the neckline of Kaz’s jumpsuit and lifted her from her knees. “Get up!”
Kaz stepped back, straightening her clothes. A necklace now hung outs
ide her gray uniform.
Bach stared at the pendant. A crossed circle—a symbol of hope. He moved as close to Kaz as he dared. “Where did you get that pendant?”
“G.R. made them for all of us from scrap metal when we were confined together at Ulwor. It’s the scientific symbol for planet Earth. We wear them to keep hope and memories of home close to our hearts.”
Scientific symbol for planet Earth? Bach remembered the planetary identifiers from an early science lesson.
Suddenly, a platoon of male guards plowed through the crowd. The contestants and spectators scattered like ants on a stirred mound, and as the women rushed across a bridge to their living quarters, Bach knew that he, Deni, Kaz, and Star were in trouble.
The ten sentries carried heavy firearms and bayonets at their sides and wore menacing black body armor, fashioned of micro-thin chain mail, emblazoned with bold white x’s on the chest and helmet. The tall lead guard stepped forward and shoved his blade to Bach’s throat as the other nine surrounded the helpless four. The lead’s booming voice rocked the air from behind his face shield. “You ignored the segregation statute!” He pointed his bayonet at Kaz. “And you dishonored our directives with your public display of devotion.”
“I didn’t display anything,” she said in a snotty tone, eyes flashing. “I dropped something and knelt to look for it.”
“Start walkin’,” he commanded.
“Everybody move!” shouted an impatient muscular guard.
The guard squad marched Bach, Star, Deni, and Kaz to a third suspension bridge leading to the labor camps on the next island. Desperate to avoid punishment, Kaz stopped short, causing several guards to stumble into each other. While the grumbling guards regrouped, she pled like a scared child. “Don’t take us away. It’s not our fault a man is here. Let me and Deni go back with the women.”
Bach joined in, “Star and I didn’t mean to infringe. Let us return to our ship, and let the other two go back.”
The tall guard’s voice boomed, “Labor camps are the penalty for commingling.”
“It was an accident,” Bach said. “We just got here and we didn’t understand the rules. It won’t happen again.”
The lead pushed him with his bayonet. “Shut up and keep walkin’.”
The four prisoners reluctantly trudged along the bridge, prodded by the guards when they moved too slowly. Bach grew more defensive by the second at thinking of incarceration and further delay. As the two labor camps came into view, the sight of rigid steel buildings surrounded by a deep, wide moat and surveillance structures like airport control towers only heightened his determination to avoid punishment. While the gravity of the situation sank in, something out of place offshore to the right caught his eye. He looked again to be sure he’d really seen a mermaid atop a rocky ledge protruding from the sea about ten yards out. Three feet of silky golden hair cascaded down her half-human body, and her iridescent blue-green fish tail dangled just far enough to stir the seawater with a teasing swish. She looked to shore from glowing green eyes.
“Holy cow!” he said louder than intended. “A mermaid! Look, a mermaid!”
“Quiet!” roared the brawny, broad-shouldered guard.
The mermaid, startled by the shout, slithered into the lagoon’s midnight blue waters.
Star spoke to herself, “Half-fish and half-woman?”
“Do not speak!” commanded the tall lead guard. “Stop here.” He shoved the hostages by the shoulders and lined them up side by side. Then, like an executioner walking with one hand behind his back, he examined them one by one from behind his face shield. Arrogant and stiff, he stopped in front of Bach, raised his bayonet to his captive’s neck, then looked back at his platoon and announced, “They’re mine!” He singled out the burly guard and a short guard as assistants and said to the remaining seven, “We’ll take over. We’ll serve them their proper punishment. You all are dismissed.”
As the surplus sentries marched away, the tall lead motioned to his two assistants to corral Deni, Kaz, and Star with their bayonets. Then he hovered over Bach from behind and shoved him along, repeatedly pushing him as they walked.
Bach short-circuited. He turned around and glared past the eye space of the tall guard’s helmet. Beady blue eyes looked back. He thought about his earlier discovery of his crewmates. This is a trick. Kaz and Deni said they were the only ones here. It can’t be Lynch. Before either made a move, the short guard stepped forward and pushed Bach over with the women.
The lead guard commanded the prisoners to proceed. As they clipped off yardage and neared the labor camps, Bach’s mind ran on overtime. Those are Lynch’s beady eyes and his wiry frame. Is he one of them or one of us? He slowed for another peek at the tall guard’s eyes, but the muscular guard pushed him along.
Standing at the gate of a massive iron fence enclosing the moat, the short guard separated the ladies from Bach by poking him in the ribs with his bayonet. He said, “Here’s where I separate the man from the women. Women, come with me.”
In a near panic, Kaz flailed her arms and shrieked, “I’m not going in there.” She pounded the short guard’s chest. “I don’t care if you kill me, I’m not going.”
The brawny guard pulled Kaz back and restrained her while he spoke to his short counterpart. “Roman, they’re too rebellious. Labor camp would be too easy. In my opinion, they should all be placed in isolation—spend a little time all alone in maximum.”
In my opinion? That familiar phrase caused Bach’s mind to stop, and got the attention of all the captives, except Star. In the doomsday setting, the words were like a father’s voice. Bach, Deni, and Kaz looked beyond the broad-shouldered guard’s headgear and saw G.R.’s Neanderthal brows and dark eyes looking back. He winked.
Intuition hit Kaz and Deni at the same time and they scrutinized the tall, lanky guard on the sly. He had Lynch’s close-set blue eyes.
Kaz whispered, “Lynch?”
He cleared his throat and moved away.
The shorter guard, Roman, sensed something strange and paced around the prisoners. “What’s going on?”
Nobody spoke, but Bach clamped his hand around the back of Kaz’s arm.
Roman strutted back and forth like a peacock in heat. “Yes, I think the isolation jail is the place for you wise guys.”
With the artful dodge of Br’er Rabbit, Bach said, “Oh, please, Roman, don’t send us to isolation. Anything but that.”
Kaz didn’t get the ploy at first and stared at Bach as if he were deranged. Then she got it. “I’ll kill myself if you put me in isolation,” she declared. “I’ve been there before. I’ll kill myself. I mean it!”
“Oh, that would be my pleasure,” Roman said with a snarl as he pricked at her with his bayonet.
She slapped the air. “Stop it.”
“Silence,” he growled.
Star didn’t know that two of the guards were also Bach’s crewmates, but the waste of time annoyed her. She looked at Roman with resolve in her eyes. “An alert will go out in Dura if we don’t return at a scheduled time, and Altemus will eliminate you from the co-op exchanges. You won’t exist long on just seafood.”
He smirked. “You have no leverage with your words.”
Lynch’s familiar southern drawl came from behind his faceplate. “Roman’s right. You whiners deserve isolation for gettin’ outta line.”
G.R. corralled Kaz and Deni, and Lynch pushed Bach and Star toward a prison shuttle boat visible in the distance. While the detainees played their defiant roles to the hilt, Lynch spoke to the short guard. “Good job, Roman. Now you’re dismissed. We’ll handle this. We’ll take ’em to the facility.”
Roman complained. “There are four prisoners—you’re outnumbered.”
Lynch hovered over him. “There are three women and one man. We can handle it. I’m the lead, and I’m tellin’ you, you’re dismissed!”
Roman stormed off in a huff as Lynch and G.R. shoved the “prisoners” toward the boat.
Bac
h whispered to Star that they were safe—in the hands of his former crewmates.
G.R. monitored Roman’s departure. As soon as Roman crossed the bridge, G.R. quietly said, “Okay guys, we have to make it look official, so keep movin’. I can’t believe we’re all together.”
Lynch’s lanky, uniformed body paced from behind with an authoritative cadence. He spoke in a hush, “As soon as we’re on the boat we gotta think fast. If anyone out there puts two and two together, they’ll be here by the hundreds and I guarantee we’ll never see each other again.”
G.R. contained his excitement, whispering as he walked, “Lynch and I never thought we’d see you again, Bach. We heard you were alive in Dura, but we didn’t trust the word of those in the Ultimate World. We worried that we’d lost Deni and Kaz forever.”
Lynch stepped close to Bach and whispered from the side of his mouth. “They keep us separated here—men and women. Overpopulation, rain, and no land created a crisis. Physical contact between genders is forbidden. Birth is by scientific methods—test tubes. One can’t be born until someone dies.” He waited for a moment then shared another troubling fact. “And the dead aren’t buried or cremated; their tissues ’n’ organs are used in research or converted to usable materials.”
G.R. added, “There’s no feeling between the sexes. Intimate contact is dead.”
With the prison shuttle boat in sight at a small pier ahead, Lynch quickened his pace to Kaz’s side. “I couldn’t wait to find you, honey,” his voice wavered. “I’ve been tryin’ to get to you ever since me ’n’ G.R. got here, that’s why I trained as a guard, thinkin’ maybe somehow I’d find you.”
Alpha Rising Page 27
