by Jason Letts
“If only Carlisle could see you now,” Grent said. The parting shot managed to inflame Sierra’s anger, and she instinctively rose to her feet.
“Carlisle was a deceitful murderer who made a misguided play for power and got killed for it, and you’re following right in his footsteps,” Sierra said. The words seemed to come out of their own volition with all the malice Sierra could muster, but they only amused Grent.
“On the contrary, I’m an elected official charged with leading the ClawLands out of the worst disaster in its history,” Grent argued.
“No one appointed you for that,” Sierra snapped.
“Haven’t they?” Grent’s coat happened to flap open to reveal the Bracken family sword that her father had given her the last time she saw him. Sierra felt the impulse to check inside the house where she’d put it after carrying it all the way from Madora, but it was unmistakably right in front of her. He must have stolen it while she was sleeping. Grent noticed her eyeing it and playfully massaged its handle as if he were discovering it there for the first time as well.
“What gives you the right to carry that sword? Give it back,” Sierra said, spilling off the steps between Razi and Maglum. Grent drew the sword from its loop and pointed it at Sierra, causing the two Madorans to stand up.
“This sword belongs to the one who will lead the people of this land, and you made it more than clear today you are not that person,” Grent said.
“It belongs to the heir of the Bracken family, and you will regret ever laying a hand on it!” Sierra said. Grent was an older man with a white and gray beard who Sierra could easily pummel if not for the sword. With Razi at her side, he didn’t have a chance, and Grent seemed to know it.
“One yell from me and the entire town will tear you limb from limb. You forget they are on my side.”
“No, they’re not. They have not forgotten the Brackens,” Sierra shouted, nearly breathless. Her face was flushed and her heart pounded. Legacy had been given to her alone, and along with it came the responsibility of fighting to the end.
“Once our arsenal is complete we’ll go after our first targets in the FarmFields. If you’re still here by that time, you may find yourself used for target practice.”
Grent elbowed his cart on down the hill, keeping an eye and the point of the sword fixed on Sierra. The people in the center square might’ve wondered what was going on, and Sierra was sure Grent would have a good story to tell them.
“You’re wrong,” she whispered when he finally turned his back on them. The Brackens had done far more for the people of the ClawLands than anyone could ask for, and the time had come to remind them. She turned to the house feeling energized and determined. “There’s something that’ll make them rethink their plans.”
“What’s that?” Tommack asked, descending from the steps.
“Let’s get the electricity running again,” she said, glancing farther up the hill to the remnants of the power plant. The last time she’d ventured up there to attempt to reconnect the power, they’d met stiff resistance from Velo Wozniak, and the memory of it had kept her from a second attempt, but now she had no choice but to give the people remaining in the ClawLands a reason not to throw their lives away in a senseless raid on the Illiams.
“Now you’re talking,” Tommack said, producing a grin. But getting the power on was going to require more than just walking up the hill and opening the door to the nearest substation. There was no telling how it might’ve been affected by the blast and the debris.
But all four of them set off to find out anyway. Although the scenery was much different than it had been when they trekked together across Plagrass in search of the dragons’ home, the element of the unknown still loomed in front of them.
When they reached the top of the hill and came to the spot before the plant where the helicopters had landed, Sierra clenched her jaw at the sour memory of what happened to her mother.
“I wonder what they did with her,” she said.
The dust on the ground had formed rings after the helicopters departed, leaving a perfect reminder of exactly where they’d been. Tommack kneeled down and ran his fingers through it.
“I’m not sure, but it can’t be good,” he said.
“They said they wanted her for something that would save them time. I don’t know what they think she could do for them.”
Leaving questions that couldn’t be answered aside, they pushed on into the vicinity of the plant, where the full measure of the wreckage presented itself. The Bracken Towers were now only a few stories high, snapped off abruptly with rubble all around. Shattered glass, bits of cement, and wooden paneling were strewn about everywhere.
There was enough sizable debris jumbled together that it made passage difficult, but the area around the power plant was even more treacherous.
“Careful,” Tommack said, steadying himself as he came to the apex of a large cement slab. They looked over at the plant’s main facility to find most of it straddling an enlarged fissure. The claw releasing the gas had grown tremendously, leaving a long scar on the planet that seemed to stretch on for miles in either direction.
“The explosion at the plant was too high for it to do the kind of damage to the entire continent we feared, but it still ripped open the claw here and made the entire area unstable. The substation is on the other side in a bunker below the hill,” Sierra explained.
“How are we going to get there?” Tommack asked.
Sierra glanced over at Razi and Maglum, who had no trouble putting the situation together after a little bit of pointing. Although Sierra was concerned that walking around the claw might waste precious hours, she had a hunch Razi had another rationale in mind when she went straight for the power plant. Sierra trusted Razi with her life, but Razi never thought twice about risking it.
“All right then. Through the busted building sitting over gaping hole it is,” Tommack said, pressing on.
“You’re not scared, are you?” Sierra asked him. She couldn’t admit it, but the building looked like the weight of one extra person would make the whole thing collapse into the fissure.
“Scared? I’ve danced with more sauruses than you can count,” he said, looking a bit anxious all the same.
As they got closer, they saw that the building’s front door now hung in the air near the middle of the fissure. They looked down to see much of the subterranean walkway apparatus still hanging below, threatening to pull the entire building down.
Without a door, the only entry point on their side was a paneless window. Sierra reluctantly allowed Razi to help her inside first, and when she climbed through and gingerly put her feet on the ground, she sighed her relief when nothing happened. Soon the others squeezed through as well, and they started along the corridors taking light, careful steps.
Evidence of the disaster was everywhere. Burn marks, holes in the walls, and unnerving creaking noises that echoed through the halls were all unsettling. They came to the lobby, where sunlight shone down through a section of the roof that had been blown off. They weren’t in position to see it before, but the entire back half of the building had broken off, leaving a wide view of the dirt and stone lining the fissure.
The remaining floor space became narrower and didn’t appear well supported at all. Tiles just stopped a short distance to Sierra’s left, with nothing beyond but wide-open space and a long drop. There were two floors below the lobby, but what condition they were in was a mystery. Sierra glanced over at Razi, the heaviest among them. She struggled with the decision, then closed her eyes and marched across the lobby. Maglum and Tommack went next and had no difficulty making it across.
Sierra took one step and felt the floor crack beneath her feet. The next step was even worse, setting off alarm bells in her head. When she pushed off, the floor buckled and snapped.
“Help!” she yelled.
“Jump!” Tommack called back, stepping closer and extending an arm.
But the floor collapsed too quic
kly and Sierra felt herself sliding down. She dropped to the floor below and barely got to her feet fast enough before a large slab dropped from above and plunged through the lower level and into the fissure. Sierra, her back against the wall and breathing heavily, stared at the hole in the floor.
“Are you all right?” Tommack called from above.
“I’ve been better,” Sierra admitted. “I don’t see a way up here. I’ll have to keep moving along to the other side from below.”
Although she was able to duck into another hallway, Sierra discovered much of the lower part of the building had been blown off, leaving loose chunks of concrete around the building’s skeleton. Breathing deeply, she straddled along a bare iron beam with nothing below her but a bunch of steel poles. Kicking away bits of cement, she kept her mind on Grent and her family’s sword. If this was what she had to get through to get it back, she would do it.
More than once she had to leap and wrap her arms around a beam to keep herself upright. Farther ahead near the edge of the fissure, the floor was in better shape, but looking ahead caused her to slip off the side of the iron beam, which she barely grabbed with her hands. Pulling herself up sapped most of her remaining strength. Just as she surveyed a gap that would require a monumental jump, something above her caught her attention.
“Need a hand,” Tommack said through a hole in the ceiling. He lifted her onto the ground floor, which proved much sturdier. They even found a door leading out of the building’s north side. Sierra put her hands on her knees and looked back at the massive pit.
“On the way back we’re walking around.”
Although there were more damaged buildings ahead, they had no problem circumventing them and making it to the substation. A number of wires sprouted out of a dirt mound, some of them running toward the east where they’d meet up with main lines parallel to the train tracks. The brittle, dusty door had a lock on it that required more of Razi’s handiwork. With one kick she broke a hole in the door large enough for Sierra to fit through.
While they watched from the entrance, Sierra squeezed into the dark, cramped space. Enough light filtered in through the porous door that she could find a switch. When a bare lightbulb came on overhead, Sierra smiled. It was a good sign.
“Although the main plant is out, there are still pods and backup generators in the hills producing electricity. The lines to the town must’ve been torn out in the explosion and the widening of the fissure. I’ll have to see if there is an intact path I can use to reroute power,” she explained.
The substation was composed of a single long room leading into the hillside. Panels lined the sides, some of them with switches and blinking lights marking points on the power grid. The red lights all around the ClawLands marked outtages. There didn’t appear to be a clear way in.
Not easily deterred, Sierra went to the substation’s modest computer terminal set against the back wall. When she pressed the power button and it came to life, a familiar thrill came over her from her programming days.
“When I was over in the WasteLands, it seemed like madness that I had ever spent any time with a computer. Everything was a life and death struggle over there, and this seemed so far from it, but if I can’t figure this out there very well may be lives that hang in the balance.”
The monitor came to life and Sierra sat down on a dusty wooden stool to get to work. Accessing the program that controlled the dissemination of electricity presented much the same information as the wall panel did. The primary lines into the town were cut off and couldn’t be repaired easily.
“Have you got it?” Tommack called from the door.
“Not yet!”
A sense of frustration bloomed as she fought to find a working pathway, but no amount of rerouting did the trick. She leaned back and threw her hands up, wondering how long it would take to connect a new line and drag it around the fissure, until she glanced back at the wall panel and noticed one of the lights was a duller shade of red. The strength of the lights corresponded to the severity of the obstruction, meaning one line wasn’t completely ruined.
“Ah ha!”
By turning down the voltage to a level commensurate with what the power line could handle, she was able to reroute power to the town without overloading it. Considering the sparse population currently residing there, even a meager amount of electricity would be more than enough.
“I can’t wait to see the look on Grent’s face when the lights come on,” she whispered, thinking of how some water pumps and other essentials would become operational as well.
Satisfied with her victory, she lingered over the computer for a moment. The machine could access the wire, which could possibly tell her about her mother or brothers.
But getting onto the wire immediately produced an eerie sensation. No sooner had she tried to get into the Wozniak’s system than she found changes to the code in her wake. It was like she was being followed, and there was nowhere to hide because so few people were using it. But who else would be watching the Wozniak’s back doors on the off chance someone would come snooping around?
After a few more screens, she began to find schematics of a giant machine that couldn’t be used for mining. It must’ve been thirty or forty feet tall, ran on massive treads, and had Bolt & Keize solar panels on the top to provide power in case the coal engine failed. The schematics were labeled “The Leveler,” and as soon as she saw that she was booted off of the wire and her machine went dead.
“What?” Sierra asked, feeling confused and exposed. Although the computer had been disabled, she checked and found the electricity was still running through the local grid according to her routing. But more worrisome was that she’d been thrown off the wire. Someone with a lot of skill must’ve caught her and traced her back to her machine.
Exiting the bunker, she rejoined Tommack, Razi, and Maglum.
“No luck?” Tommack asked.
“Actually, the town should have enough power to tide them over, but I went on the wire and crossed paths with someone watching the Wozniak’s system. I got thrown off before I could find out what was really going on, but they seem to be planning something big. And there’s someone helping them keep it a secret too.”
“Shit,” Tommack said. “What do you think they’re up to?”
“Like I said, I’m not sure what they’re doing or how my mother plays into it, but with any of the premier families you have to suspect they’re eyeing a chance to take over the capital. Let’s start with getting back to town and dealing with Grent.”
The sun had been setting for a while, and by the time they made it back to town it was nearly dark. Although Sierra was sure the electricity was running, the only lights around were from torches that the villagers carried. As her group descended into town toward the main intersection, she could tell that something was afoot. Even more people were out than at Grent’s demonstration, and for every torch there was at least one freshly made firearm.
The difference between now and earlier was that Sierra was not at all shy about approaching the new town hall and the smithy, both of which had intact power lines running from them.
In the middle of the crowd, councilor Grent was again whipping the townsfolk into a furor. The people carried packs full of supplies they’d need to trek for days to the FarmFields.
“Setting off at nightfall? Doesn’t that seem unwise to anyone else?” Sierra said. Grent’s hoarse laughter quieted down the crowd, which parted to take a look at Sierra.
“How nice of the Brackens to see us off,” he said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Typical that they wouldn’t do anything to help even the score.”
“You’re a disgrace to this town and its history, Grent. The people of the ClawLands have never earned their livelihood by theft and pillaging, and they’re not about to start now.”
“Forgive me, but do you see any other options here. We have the tools now to fight back,” he said, waving a gun in the air. Sierra continued around and climbed the steps of
the town hall’s porch.
“We can rebuild at home, start a new company, and we can once again become the envy of the entire nation,” Sierra said.
“And what do you propose this new company sell? Rocks and rubble?” Grent asked to chuckles from the audience.
Sierra turned her back for a moment, opened the town hall’s door, and reached around for the switch. When the porch light came on, there were gasps from the crowd. Other lights inside and around the intersection came on as well once the electricity started running, casting a pale light over everything.
“The ClawLands will once again be a leader in energy, but we’ll also strive for a safer and more equitable country. Cumeria has endured untold devastation and has more peril in store, but if we can be the rock of stability at its center then others will follow suit.”
There was something about her words or the conviction behind them that resonated with the crowd. The lights had long been a symbol of prosperity in the ClawLands, and no doubt the townsfolk were more eager to reclaim that than a dicey revenge.
Grent appeared dismayed by the sudden change in the crowd’s mood.
“You won’t lead us astray again!” he howled, producing a pistol and pointing it at Sierra on the porch. Some of the nearby townsfolk grabbed Grent, who fired an errant shot that made Sierra duck. They had him restrained in moments, holding his arms behind his back.
Sierra descended the steps, took a long look at him, and then reached for Legacy in the loop on his belt. She drew it out and held it up to the light.
“If you think the wealth of the ClawLands was a result of the Brackens, you’ve been blind. It’s always been because of the industriousness of the people. Now let’s find a way to build something that will counter these grave threats to our nation, and take them to Toine where they will have the most impact.”
CHAPTER 7
Taylor waited until darkness set in before making his escape. His fingers wrapped around the indentations in the old window, which clattered as he pulled it open. He stuck his head outside to see what was waiting for him. When he looked down from the top of the Vault’s mansion where the remaining Hockleys had been locked while the Illiams raided everything below, he couldn’t see anything but blackness. It was going to be a long way down.
