From the Ashes (Conquest Book 1)

by Jeff Taylor

  She glared at Zyn. In a flash of speed and agility that she would never repeat, Eve rose to her feet, reached for the handle of the makeshift firearm tucked securely in the back of her pants, brought the weapon to bear on her target and fired before she was fully erect. Reacting to her movements, Zyn simultaneously cocked her arm to propel her shimmering projectiles. The look of surprise on Zyn’s face as the gun sounded could not have been more pronounced as Eve’s bullet ripped through her chest. The trio of barbed discs clanged to the floor only just before their owner followed them with a thud. Eve watched with morbid satisfaction at the corpse of the woman who’d killed her husband. She then brought the weapon up to do the same to Con, but he’d vanished back into the shadows behind the cracking pillars.

  Eve kept her arms outstretched, the pistol locked in her hands in a military grip. Her eyes darted from the escape pods to the darkened columns encircling the hangar. Slowly, she backed toward the three launch pads behind her, careful to keep the bulk of the hangar in her periphery. Stones were randomly scattered all around the room casting odd shadows in the recesses darkened by failing lights.

  “Get out here so I can shoot you too,” she shrieked.

  Suddenly, an S-curved blade hurtled out of the darkness. She did not react in time and the blade impacted on the side of her gun, slicing it in half. Eve flung the now useless weapon to the ground, keeping watch for the next attack. She reached up beneath her tank top to her improvised mag suit and removed a pair of fourteen-inch ninjato swords without any guards at the hilt. She gripped the black leather handles firmly. So, he wants to do it this way?

  To her left she heard the shrill scraping of metal on concrete. Her body tensed as she poised herself in a fighting stance in the direction of the sound. She heard it again. Another blade came flinging out of the shadow, but this time she was ready for it and easily deflected it away with one of her own.

  “Please tell me you’re going to do better than that,” she shouted, her impatience augmenting her already seething anger.

  The ground shook again and the blaring wail of the oxygen alarm pierced her ears. She looked harder into the blackest recesses of the hangar and thought she saw the glint of polished metal shimmering in the distance. Sure enough, Con’s dark silhouette gradually emerged from the darkness, his right hand obscured by his midnight-colored robe. Deliberately, he unclasped the robe draping his left shoulder and let it slip to the floor. To her astonishment, a pair of doors spanning of his leg from hip to ankle, parted. His hand entered the cavity and retrieved a menacing blade, hinged where his knee had been. The sword consisted of two blades; one curved and serrated the other straight and razor-edged. He flicked the blade at the floor and the hinge locked both blades into place. Con let its tip clang on the floor then stalked toward her, the tip scraping the cold concrete with a horrible grinding sound.

  Eve smiled at him. “Now that’s more like it.”

  Without hesitation, she charged the helmeted man, closing the distance to him at full speed. Their blades repeatedly collided in a flash of light and steel. She had nothing left to lose and the pain screaming in her heart made her a dangerous adversary.

  Strinnger raced through the carnage and destruction back toward the administrator’s residence. His heart pounded in his chest as he ran. Julia’s pale, traumatized face begging him to stay flashed in his mind as he ran. Over and over again, he tried to communicate with the team guarding the women, but their comms were still down. He feared they were either being jammed or the team was dead. The fear of finding Julia’s corpse propelled him forward. The quaking had now stopped but the flashing amber lights and warning claxons signaled the danger was not over.

  He pushed on, dodging debris and panicked residents streaming toward the lone gate out of the city. He was still a block away from the residence when he caught sight of Julia and her sister fleeing with the masses near the administration building.

  “Move!” Strinnger demanded as he pushed against the flow of the mass exodus.

  No one paid him any attention, focusing instead on their own survival, trampling any person, male or female, in the way. Strinnger pressed his way forward anyway, trying not to be swept away in the tide, when suddenly he heard a familiar voice cry out his name.

  “Daeman!”

  He looked ahead and saw a battered and frail Julia with her older sister, Tina, waving to him atop a pile of collapsed obsidian panels from the exterior of the LAB. Strinnger forced his way to them. When he reached them, Julia wrapped her bruised and bleeding arms around his neck. The warmth of her body as they met enlivened him, but there was no time to deal with his feelings. His eyes quickly scanned over her.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head. “Just a few scratches, nothing to be worried about. Oh, Daeman, the Quincy is gone! It caved in just as we got out.”

  “Where’s your mother?” he asked looking up, searching the faces of the crowd.

  Julia’s eyes were awash with anxious tears. “She’s, she’s gone.”

  Her full lips puckered and the tears burst from their well. He caressed her hair as she buried her face into his chest and sobbed. His eyes rose to Tina for further explanation but she only shook her head.

  She was as battered as her sister, maybe even slightly more, yet her eyes showed none of the desperation Julia’s did. “A large rock,” she flatly, “crashed through the roof.”

  Strinnger didn’t need to hear the rest. He knew perfectly well what had happened. Both girls were in shock, but he had to get them moving.

  “Are you okay, Tina,” he asked.

  She merely nodded, suppressing a raspy cough.

  “Where’s my dad?” Julia asked, her voice cracking as her eyes searched the sea of retreating faces.

  Inhaling, he looked her straight in the eyes. No time to sugarcoat it.

  “He didn’t make it. I’m sorry, but we need to keep going. He made me promise to get you out of here and told me how to do it, but we’ll have to get into the LAB. Do you think you can make it?”

  Tina sensed his urgency and she straightened her slumped shoulders, their proper poise restored, and nodded firmly that she was ready. Julia’s face was scrunched as she held back the tears for her father, but she nodded weakly. She would follow him.

  Strinnger then pried Julia from his dusty tunic and looked her in the eyes. “We’ve gotta move. I need you to stay right with me, okay? This is going to be rough and we’ve got to run. Julia shook her head affirmatively. Her robin’s egg, over-the-shoulder robe was subsequently torn at her thighs to free her legs to run and her incredibly impractical shoes were tossed like week old garbage into the debris. Tina followed suit and they were off to the belly of the LAB.

  Waves of people streamed out of the administration building, desperately trying to escape its collapse. After multiple attempts to get in, Strinnger finally hurled a rock through a partially broken office window and the three of them climbed inside. The trio went as fast as they could, which proved much more difficult than Strinnger had anticipated with building fragments and furniture strewn about as if they had been thrown by a super-powered toddler on a tirade.

  Soon they found the staircase leading down to the sublevels of the LAB. After three levels of stairs they could go no further. The amber warning lights of the oxygen alarm intermittently flashed on the walls of a narrow, concrete corridor. Strinnger cast his eyes around looking for any doors or access panels. All he could see were the mass of pipes and cables bundled together above him running the length of the passageway.

  “This must be a maintenance tunnel,” he mumbled aloud. Not knowing for sure if he was in the right place, they ran forward. Large cracks in the floor and walls betrayed the amount of stress the quakes had caused on the building’s foundation. The whole building felt as if it might come tumbling down any second. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  He blindly led the two women down the dark tunnel. Up ahead he heard a slight hissing sound and s
topped short.

  “Wait,” he said.

  Tina halted, placing a hand on his back. He inhaled a deep breath through his nose and then let it out.

  “It’s really humid down here,” Tina offered. “I think a hot water pipe burst.”

  Not detecting any noxious odors, Strinnger had to agree with her.

  “Maybe we should turn back. I’m not even sure . . .”

  He was about to express his doubt about continuing down the tunnel when his eye caught sight of the pipes running along the ceiling. In the conglomeration of tubing and wires, he recognized that the pipes were color-coded. There were yellow, red, and white tubes of various sizes and widths. But the one that caught his attention was a lone green pipe. Every other pipe snaked in and out of the foundation walls, branching out like roots of a great tree, but this solitary pipe, roughly four inches in diameter and a dark shade of forest green, followed a true path forward.

  “Follow the green pipe,” he mumbled.

  “What?” Tina asked.

  Strinnger glanced at her, then her sister. “Your father told me to follow the green pipe to the escape pods. I didn’t understand at the time but it makes sense now. Come on.”

  He took them each by the hand and they trio sprinted ahead.

  “It can’t be much further.”

  A section of wall only a handful of meters behind them collapsed, blocking any chance to turn around. Julia shrieked and Tina jumped closer to him. An immediate sense of danger tugged at his gut.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Eve’s blades crashed against Con’s in broad, wild strokes. With each deadly blow, she poured every ounce of strength her body could generate into attacking the chrome-plated murderer. All technique, all skill had vanished. All the years of training, of painstakingly honing her talents to triumph over emotion and distraction, were forgotten. She flung her blades at the helmeted man with all the anger she’d ever felt. It was with the full passion in her heart that she hurled herself at the mysterious Con.

  The battle knew no boundaries. She attacked him between the concrete columns, across the rounded central launch pad, and even into the open cockpit of the pod readily awaiting her departure with Nelsonn. But neither combatant gave any ground or allowed the other to have any advantage. It was winner take all.

  Her heart pumped furiously within her breast and with each blow she struck she grunted, almost screaming, releasing the pain she knew would be there when the battle was over. Con ably met her attacks, deflecting then advancing, driving her back then retreating when she seemed on the edge of control. She was beyond thinking. Her thrusts were clumsy, her technique flawed, yet the strength of her furor compensated for any lack of strategy. Only after several minutes of intense fighting did her mind calm enough to let her analyze his style more thoroughly.

  She had driven him back toward the pillars on the far left of the hangar when she finally found a weakness in his defense. His heavy, dual-blade sword forced him to remain grounded, keeping a wide stance so he could stay balanced in his attack, whereas her light, slender twin blades allowed her much more freedom of movement. She was free to bound in the Moon’s reduced gravity like a rabbit on steroids.

  Deactivating her magnetic suit, she deflected a glancing strike by Con then leaped to his right, barrel-rolled, then twisted end-over-end so that her feet struck the pillar just opposite him parallel to the ground. Con swung at her but only caught concrete as she immediately pushed off the instant her feet touched the pillar, angling slightly up and behind.

  As he swung at her, her short swords lashed out, one deflecting the straight blade of his sword while the butt of her other crushed against the lower front of Con’s helmet. A sickening crack echoed in the hangar as part of the chrome helmet clattered to the floor.

  Eve’s trajectory allowed her to somersault into a roll and land in a defensive stance. She was as poised as a mongoose waiting for the cobra to strike.

  Dazed, Con staggered back until he was on the edge of the shadows. In stunned silence, he looked down at the fragments of his mask scattered on the hard pavement like chrome confetti. His hand pressed against his exposed cheek and examined the stain of blood on his fingertips. Setting his jaw, Con reached up with both hands and pressed his fingers to the small holes just over his ears. Several panels on the helmet, seamlessly connected, separated with a hiss and the silvery protection was lifted from Con’s head.

  Eve watched his reaction in cold anticipation. This was how she wanted it. She wanted him not only beaten but broken. She wanted him to see the pain in her eyes and she wanted to see the fear in his when she finished him off.

  The shadows parted as if to expel Con from their midst. With a rush of ferocity, he charged at her, a guttural yell bursting from his lung as his sword lunged at her heart.

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right, come on,” Eve taunted.

  Her hips swiveled into an attack stance. Her blades were raised just above her right shoulder waiting until just the right moment to unleash her attack.

  When he was within a meter of her, she deactivated her gravity controls again and bounded into the air. Her takeoff lifted her above his blade as it swung where she’d stood. The carbon blade in her left hand sailed down and struck her assailant’s sword, deflecting it harmlessly away as the blade in her right followed the path of its twin, severing Con’s gloved left hand with a sickening squelch of metal on flesh and bone. The downward thrust left her parallel to the floor and spinning so that her momentum carried her legs behind him. Her boot caught him square in the back, sending him careening forward into a concrete pillar.

  Eve landed hard on her side but rolled quickly onto her feet, blades still poised for a counterattack. There was no pity in her deadened heart at the sight of the powerful Con writhing on the concrete, clutching his dismembered stub to his chest. He wrapped it in the thick cloth of his tunic and scanned the floor for his missing appendage.

  Her boot slid his abandoned sword across the hangar where it came to rest underneath the nearest pod. The contest was over. Her heels crunched on the brittle pavement as she sauntered up to him, her blades at the ready. Defiantly, Con rose to his knees and glared at her.

  “Do it,” he growled.

  She formed a tight triangle with her blades then pressed them to his throat like a giant pair of scissors set to close.

  “With pleasure,” she spat.

  Suddenly, the door to the hangar flew open and a large man in a light blue security tunic burst through aiming a gun squarely in her direction.

  “Hold it right there!” the man shouted.

  Eve sighed, exasperated. She looked down at Con.

  “Does everyone on this station have a weapon?” she shouted.

  Keeping her swords on Con’s exposed neck, she chanced a look at the man. He was holding a standard security pistol, nothing she couldn’t handle. The company behind this officer though was very curious. Two young women, one clearly pale and frightened the other forcing herself to appear stronger than she was, peering out from behind the steel doors leading into the hangar. Instantly, Eve recognized them: The Kratin sisters. Naturally, they of all people would be using these secret pods to escape.

  “Might as well make it a family deal,” she grunted. “Already took out Daddy, may as well get the girlies too. But first thing’s first.”

  Turning her back to the officer, she refocused her attention on Con. The crisscrossed blades in her hands slowly scissored, slicing into his skin with agonizing deliberateness, rivulets of blood creeping toward his collarbone.

  The officer extended his right hand, opening it as if his will would force her to stop. “Put it down! No one else needs to die today.”

  “You’re right about that,” she agreed. “Take your precious princesses and I won’t kill you.”

  Slowly, the officer crept closer. “I can’t do that,” he said. “Just put down your weapons and get on your knees! Now!”

 
In reply, she cinched her blades closer. Her muscles tensed and her grip on the leather wrappings around the hilt tightened. She was done waiting. It was time for Con to die.

  She inhaled sharply to deliver the fatal blow when she suddenly felt a sharp pain in her leg. The hangar began to spin, melding colors and shadows into one smeared tapestry making her nauseas and disoriented. She staggered backward, supporting herself against a concrete pillar as she blinked rapidly, trying to focus her eyes but the world continued to blur around her. Con’s neck bled profusely but she had no strength to finish the job. A searing pain radiated from her left thigh and she looked down to see a throwing knife, like the one that had claimed Klindon’s life, stuck in her flesh.

  Con chuckled with the cold, joyless laugh of a deranged psychopath as she gazed in disbelief at the wound. The poison coating the edge of the dagger was quickly taking effect. At last, she felt her knees buckle and the cold floor shot up quickly as she surrendered to the blackness, unprepared for the oblivion that awaited her.

  Strinnger lowered his sidearm and quick-stepped over toward the unconscious woman. Kneeling beside her, he pressed his index and middle fingers to her neck, cautiously keeping his weapon fixed on her abdomen. She was still alive, but only barely. Now he faced a dilemma. Volkor Con looked to be in bad shape. She was dying. Did he have time to treat them or should he leave them to survive on their own while he got the Kratin sisters to safety? His answer would soon manifest itself.

  The ground shook once more rattling the pebbles on the floor like ping pong balls in a hopper. A residual moonquake had triggered under the city. The Kratins shrieked behind him and he turned in time to see them dart inside the hangar onto the central launch pad. A massive beam just outside the thick doors collapsed blocking any hope of escape. Without the beam’s support, the concrete ceiling immediately began to crack and splinter under the weight of the city above. There was no time to hesitate after that. He knew the woman with the red hair was the assassin he’d been hunting for the last seven months, but he had no time to save her. The heartless killer would have to die alone.