The Ravagers Box Set: Episodes 1-3

by Alex Albrinck

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  OSWALD SILVER

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  …without the ability to view the shorelines from above, mapmaking remains to this day an imprecise science, though the craft improves each year…

  The History of the Western Alliance, page 2222

  OSWALD SILVER SPOKE WITH HIS counterpart on the satellite-based telephone aboard his flying craft. “Everything is on schedule and running according to plan. The Select were out of harm’s way when Activation occurred.” He paused at the concern noted, and then nodded. “Yes, the most troublesome elements used to reach the completion of this stage are now stranded. If they aren’t dead already, they’ll be dust soon.” He nodded at the phone. “I’ll see you soon.”

  He replaced the headset and stood, stretching. The plan was on schedule without delay. He’d worried Deirdre would ruin everything with her last minute gallivanting about trying to save her lover, but the man was not of the Select. Thankfully, he’d overreacted. Roddy told him that Deirdre had struggled to sleep the night before and had gone on a late night job and pushed through an early morning workout, and the fatigue had caught her. She slept in her cabin aboard the ship, and had asked not to be disturbed for several hours.

  He glanced down at the map. Pulses of light fired where the caches of Ravagers were buried and now active. The land-based enclaves surrounded by protective walls of Diasteel were populated by the Select. The Elite—him, Deirdre, Roddy, and a few others—had more elaborate and comfortable accommodations awaiting while the plan unfolded. Deirdre’s ruthlessness had surprised him, but his daughter had proved as adept at laying out the initial plan as she’d been in seducing Light to join them, though the man had yet to realize what was happening. He still thought they were off on a business trip.

  “A trip like no other,” Silver said to himself.

  He walked to the bar and poured himself a drink, raising a mock toast to the map. “To a plan carried out to perfection.”

  He finished the drink in one gulp and put the glass down before heading to the cockpit.

  It was time to let Roddy know their destination.

  He couldn’t wait to see the look on the man’s face.

  Episode 2

  Detonate

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  SHEILA CLARKE

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  SHEILA'S MIND WAS IN OVERDRIVE, piecing together every bit of data thrust at it over the past hour. Most prevalent in her mind was the revelation of the Ravagers, tiny machines--too small to see unless paired with other such machines in quantities she couldn't fathom--which worked together to dissolve matter into component dust and use that dust as a means of replicating. She'd seen the size of the container holding them inside the tank deep below the Bunker where she'd worked. When the dark ooze seeped through the thick metal walls like a hot knife through butter, leaving nothing but an empty hole behind, she realized the numbers had grown. A lot. With the sheer volume of matter comprising the Bunker, it didn't take a series of detailed computations to tell her they'd soon burst from the Bunker, dissolving and repurposing everything.

  Her last vision before exiting the secret staircase had confirmed that. Dark ooze slithering across the concrete floor, loosening the metal staircase they'd climbed, swarming at a methodical pace up the stairs toward the surface, the size of the dark mass growing as she watched.

  As her boots thundered down the concrete road, though, as the sweat poured down her brow and back, Sheila feared the terror she'd seen in the Ravagers less than the man she ran from.

  She ran toward the Ravagers and the certain death they represented because they frightened her far less at the moment than Micah Jamison.

  The general had been her supervisor, but he'd been more than that. He'd been a friend and a protector as well. She'd found him to be trustworthy, and learned that following his recommendations as well as his orders a wise move. He'd proven that he knew what he was doing, and even when the orders made little sense, they'd proved to be correct in the end. His motives in issuing the orders were never in question.

  That had all changed today. The images flashed through her mind as she continued running from Jamison, toward the horror he'd helped unleash inside the place they'd both worked.

  Her day began with Jamison's summons to the office. He'd taken ample time to explain that someone had broken in to his personal office, that someone had stolen the identification badge required to enter that greater-than-top-secret tank room below even the underground Bunker. He'd indicated she should join him as they moved once more to that heavily secured room with the tank, and together they'd sought evidence of just what the infiltrator had done. They'd located the device--what she now knew to be a bomb--and as they'd raced away with the device primed and activated, she'd eventually realized the truth.

  The bomb wouldn't destroy the deadly Ravagers.

  It would release them, activate them, turn them loose upon the world.

  And Micah Jamison had known all along.

  That trust built over the years she'd known him meant she'd not questioned why he'd insisted they bring the box back to the Bunker after discovering it at the site of an Eastern Alliance building not far outside the Lakeplex. It meant she didn't ask how it was he felt such certainty that the box left there was a container of some horrific new Eastern Alliance weapon, rather than materials left behind from the outpost's construction. And it meant she'd not questioned the fact that, upon his discovery of the forced entry into his office, he'd summoned her for her insights rather than referring the matter to Bunker security.

  It wasn't until he'd seized her hand with a vice-like grip and dragged her away from the tank of Ravagers that she'd wondered if she'd misjudged him. It wasn't until he'd bypassed the chance to sound an evacuation alarm to give his people a chance to live that she doubted him. And it wasn't until he'd summoned the impossible flying bombs--flying bombs--that she realized the awful truth, that his actions could mean only one thing.

  He'd been in on it from the start and had meant them all to die as a result of the deadly swarm of destructive machines.

  She ran from him, ran toward certain death, because death seemed a better fate than life lived at the mercy of a man who'd misled her and allowed so many to die.

  Her boots thundered on the concrete, and she saw the shell of the old Jamison & Associates building. Best to get inside and be among the first to--

  The thunderous crack of a gunshot sounded, startling her out of her inner monologue.

  The bastard had changed his mind and was going to kill her after all.

  She fell to the ground, an instinctive move honed by the self-defense classes she'd taken during her term of employment. She felt the jarring impact as she struck the hard surface, felt the warm, rough surface scrape at her skin. It didn't matter. She waited, tensing, primed in awareness as she waited for the fiery pain of a searing hot bullet to tear through her. She waited to shriek in pain, waited for her life to blink to a merciful end.

  She felt nothing, save for the rumbling gravel of the pavement beneath her as ground cars rumbled on the road a hundred yards away from her.

  Sheila heard the sound of boots rushing toward her, crunching underfoot the same gravel she'd just rolled on, and knew what the sound meant. Jamison had come to finish her off.

  She rolled to her back and looked up at him, willing the burning hate in her eyes to wound him, wanting to see the malice and scorn in his eyes to reveal his murderous and unexplained motives. “No, General. I won't let you shoot me in the back. Not after you already stabbed me.” She paused. “Since when can you not hit a target at such close range?”

  His eyes remained impassive, sad even, and he shoved the gun back into its holster. “I wasn't trying to hit you.”

  Before she could react and call him out on that lie, Jamison bent down, slid his arms beneath her, and scooped her easily off the ground. She froze, shocked at the gesture. Jamison threw her over his shoulder, balancing h
er waist there, which left her legs in front of him. He then began running, sprinting at a rapid pace as they moved away from the Bunker.

  Her waist ached, jarred with each boot-pounding against the pavement, and she grunted. While she couldn't prove it--and circumstances being what they were, she doubted it--it seemed that Jamison altered his landing technique to produce less jarring impacts, which helped. As she pondered if he'd actually adjusted his movement to reduce the pain it caused her, she noticed something else, a low rumbling sound. She wondered if it was her imagination, wondered if it was the flying bombs detonating deep underground, wondered if it might be the number of Ravagers growing, swarming over the Bunker below and destabilizing the ground in the process. Perhaps it was a combination of factors.

  Given those potential causes, she couldn't help but feel a chill of terror down her spine. If any of those were causing the rumble, what might the surface impact eventually be? She looked around at the handful of people walking along, noting the stares of confusion. Some were looking at her, of course, no doubt wondering why a man was sprinting down the street carrying a woman over his shoulder, probably shrugging it away as some new exercise regimen. But others looked at the ground with those looks of confusion, and she saw a woman stumble slightly as another rumble sounded.

  She'd not yet figured out the cause. But she knew the rumbling sounds and sensations were real. And she knew that, whether it be a massive swarm of Ravagers bursting from the ground or the street caving in as the flying bombs wreaked their havoc in the Bunker, she didn't want to be in such a helpless position.

  Especially not with Micah Jamison carrying her.

  She beat on any part of him that she could reach, but she might as well have been hitting a ground car for the good it did. Her hands ached at each solid contact, as if she'd hit metal. Painful as the contact was for her, it did nothing to her captor. Jamison didn't slow his effortless, high speed sprint.

  She tried a different tactic. “Put me down, you son of bitch!”

  She thought she felt and heard him snort at her words, and the reaction stung. Did he think her that incapable of freeing herself from the situation. “Not yet.” His voice flowed by like the wind, sounding much further away than a few feet. But she detected something odd in the tone, a hint of concern. Perhaps he was more concerned she'd thwart his escape from the consequences of his actions than he'd let on.

  She twisted as best she could to adjust her view of what was happening. They were hurtling along a sidewalk on the southern side of the wide spur road. She could see the thick walls beyond each office building, restaurant and shopping complex, walls that protected them from the horrors roaming the Hinterlands. She could make out one of the multilevel parking garages spaced along the spur road. Most businesses--Jamison and Associates being an exception, given the need to conceal the Bunker--operating along the spur road didn't want to waste the prime, expensive real estate on parking, and instead joined forces to construct the standalone parking structures. She doubted Jamison planned to carry her far enough to free himself from the Ravagers. He'd either duck into an alley and kill her there, sneak into an office building concealing still another secretive operation he managed and inflict his punishment there, or he'd locate a suitable ground transportation option parked in the garage located ahead.

  Whatever his destination, she knew she needed to get down. The new contorted angle added to her discomfort, but she saw something else ahead of him as she observed potential destinations. Her legs. Weapons. She bent her left leg back at the hip as far she could while bending the same leg at the knee, bringing her heavy boot into contact with Jamison's face.

  The ground rushed up as Jamison dropped her. He shouted words she didn't understand. She landed on her shoulder with a grunt and lay there, momentarily stunned, before putting her hands upon the warm concrete and bracing herself up to her knees and bringing the triumphant left foot forward to push herself to a standing--and running--position.

  His steely hands grabbed her around the waist before she could flee, and he lifted her easily off the ground. She flailed her legs and threw her elbows into his forearms, then raked her fingernails across his skin.

  He didn't let go. “Sheila, we need to get away from here. You saw what they're capable of, what they can do. Your actions aren't helping.”

  “You killed them, you bastard!” she screamed, still flailing as she tried to free herself once more from his iron grip. “All of them! You had the chance to stop and save them and you kept going and let them die! Why didn't you stop and sound the alarm?”

  He'd often corrected her, reminding her of his office and the need to remember his title. She might not be an official member of the military, but her contract required her to observe the basic niceties. He started moving again, away from the Bunker and the growing sounds of underground rumbling. “It was the only way to escape certain death, Sheila.”

  She stopped flailing for an instant. Micah Jamison, afraid of death? And at the expense of others? “It would have been worth it to know you'd given the others as much of a chance at survival.”

  She heard no sound of regret in his voice. “They couldn't be saved, Sheila. The entrances and exits for the Bunker aren't meant to handle mass entries and exits. They'd have crushed themselves to death in the stampede to escape. Stopping would have meant only that we'd die, too.”

  She tried to twist around to look at him. She wanted to see the damage she'd inflicted on his face with her well-placed kick, but the position he maintained for her with his steely arms made that impossible. “You knew it was coming, General. I could tell in the way you acted and the way you talked. You had the chance to warn them long before, or send them all home early. But instead you took your time showing me everything in excruciating detail. That's what put us in the position of having to make that choice.” She tried to wriggle free again. “You killed them long before today.”

  He slowed, just a bit. “They were going to die no matter what we did, Sheila. There's too much coordination of this event out there. If this batch didn't get them, another would. I sent in the self-destruct missiles to save them a great deal of pain.”

  His excuse, if anything, made her angrier. Her fingers found some exposed flesh, and she dug her nails into his skin, trying to tear and rip it away to force him to set her free once more. “You're trying to turn the murders you've committed into an act of mercy?”

  He showed no contrition. “Sheila, we can debate the morality of my decisions and the circumstances surrounding them later. If we don't keep moving, though, we'll lose the opportunity to hold that debate.” He stopped and twisted her around so she could see the intensity in his face. “You saw what those machines did to those massive concrete walls and doors below the Bunker. With each second, with each bit of destruction, there are more of them. Eventually, the math demands they reach you. What do you think the Ravagers will do when they fall upon you in a swarm a foot thick?”

  She held back the quick retort. Dying at the hands of the Ravagers would prevent her from killing Jamison directly. And that was something she'd decided she wanted to do very badly. “Fine, General. Where to next?”

  “I need your word you won't run away.”

  She harrumphed. “Fine. You have my word. I won't run away.”

  He stopped moving and set her down. “Top floor of the parking garage. Move.”

  He was running away before she could turn around, leaving her little choice but to follow, and less time to wonder why, exactly, she'd seen no damage from her boot strike against his face. Jamison entered the outer staircase and she raced after him, pausing to turn and look back toward the Bunker as she entered the door. The rumbling sound crescendoed, and she watched in horror as a ten-foot section of the spur road near her former workplace dipped into the ground as if it had been suctioned down by a massive vacuum.

  She gulped in a huge breath as a survival instinct kicked in. Jamison was right. She had no interest in trying to deal with that.


  Not when she had a murdering asshole General to kill. Survive, then murder. Plan set.

  She slipped inside the door, making the futile gesture to shut the door behind her to prevent the Ravagers from following. She raced up the stairs two at a time, gripping the cool metal bannisters with both hands to pull herself up the steps more quickly. She emerged a minute later on the upper floor and peered around the dimly lit space, breathing the cool air inside the garage deeply.

  Where was he? “General Jamison?” She stepped out into the driving space between the parallel rows of parked cars, looking around, keenly aware that a man who'd ordered the deaths of hundreds of his own people might not have gone to the same place he'd told her. Had he exited the stairwell on a different floor?

  She heard the sound of squealing tires and turned around in time to see a strangely shaped ground car barreling towards her at top speed. She screamed at the sight of Jamison in the cabin, his face calm and focused, and knew that she'd finally learned exactly how it was he'd meant to kill her... seconds before her life would end.

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  WESLEY CARDINAL

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  WESLEY CLIMBED TOWARD THE DOOR at the top of the staircase, his frantic heart pounding against his ribcage. The metal staircase, loosened from its lower moorings by the surging and growing swarm of Ravagers, careened wildly around, and it took all of Wesley's adrenaline fueled strength to maintain his grip. The effort made the final few feet of his arduous climb seem eternal, but he finally reached the flat landing and pulled himself up. The landing, also formed of metal, attached to the outer walls with massive metal bolts. The dangling weight of the staircase below hadn't loosened it, and Wesley, sweat dripping down his body, welcomed the return of solid footing. He grabbed the handle and pushed the unlocked door open, stepping out into blinding sunlight compared to the dimly lit stairwell. A gentle breeze washed over him, cooling his overheated body, the fresh scent a sharp contrast to the fear and destruction maneuvering its way up the dangling stairwell he'd left behind.