The conscious adults moved to the spacious control panels, their footfalls on the metallic floor seeming louder as they feared waking the sleeping trio. John found the controls for the engines, noted that the tanks combined remained about half full, and started the engines in the sequence documented on the panel. Roddy found a button near the engine section for the pair of anchors holding the massive vessel in place and tapped the button to raise them. He felt, more than heard, the massive winches turn, pulling the lengths of chain into the ship’s frame.
Mary found the navigation system, an intuitive, map driven touch screen, and traced a primarily southern route that kept them well away from mainland shores and steered well west of the Enclave island. The ship lurched momentarily and then smoothly accelerated as it moved north and east—the direction it had faced under anchor—and gradually arced to their left, west, away from the mainland. The ship would continue turning around before accelerating to its maximum speed and head in a primarily southern direction, with just enough of a westerly angle to get them further and further away from the mainland.
Roddy stood before the panoramic window inside the bridge and watched the scene to his right—he couldn’t remember if that was port or starboard but thought the latter—watching as the Ravagers made their presence felt. The thick tree lines that had developed over a thousand years thinned, falling with thunder-like booms that triggered an overwhelming silence as they were dissolved to dust, the latest victims of the ever-growing swarm curdling its way toward the shore. That unending and stoppable destruction would end only because of code that forbade the destruction of water; Roddy shuddered at what might happen if even the planet’s primary surface coating were to be within the limits of the code.
He didn’t hear the footsteps until he was knocked to the ground, grunting as much in surprise as pain as he landed on his back. He grunted again as the form of Wesley Cardinal, apparently healed quite well by the twins, leaped atop him and straddled him, raising a fist to take advantage of the surprise.
The fist connected with his cheek. Roddy felt the pain, but made no effort to defend himself. He simply looked deeply in his assailant’s eyes, seeking not to deliver pain, but to find and, perhaps, eliminate it.
Wesley’s fist rose once more, ready to repeat the blow, but he realized Roddy wasn’t defending himself. Too honorable to fight a man who wouldn’t fight back, he hesitated, then lowered his fist, pushing off to stand once more. He glowered down at the larger man. “You tried to kill me.” He moved away, gingerly, as if trying to loosen muscles grown stiff from too long a period of inactivity.
Roddy rolled to his side and crawled to his knees, then sat back on his feet, keeping his size advantage minimized to limit Wesley’s ongoing fear of attack. “You aren’t innocent of that charge either, Wesley.”
“You tackled me first.”
“I thought you were threatening my family.”
“Family?” Wesley offered a mocking, half-hearted laugh. “Is that what you call people you abandoned for the better part of a decade to go off and live a life of luxury with her? And work for him?” He nearly spat the words out.
Roddy felt his pulse rise and his breathing quicken. Instinct demanded he argue, counter, and attack, physically if possible. But that wasn’t what they needed right now, any of them. It helped that, at a logical level, he agreed. “They deserve far better than the man I became.”
Wesley’s face, so tight with rage, softened. Slightly. “And why should any of us believe that what we saw paraded around on view screens isn’t the real you? That your work with that lunatic Oswald Silver isn’t the real you?”
“Ask yourself what that man would do right now, Wesley,” Roddy replied, straining to keep the tremor from his voice. “And then ask yourself why I haven’t done what the man you’re describing would have done.”
Wesley took a step back, startled, letting his mouth fall open. But Roddy could feel him processing the words, see the expression on his face, as he realized that he would have been left for dead.
“Maybe you’re just doing this to get back in Mary’s good graces,” Wesley finally stammered in reply.
“To what end?” Roddy shrugged. He nodded at Mary who’d been following the conversation with interest. “She remembers me, sees that in me. The man you described would have felt fully justified in fighting back just now, perhaps with enough force that he might ‘accidentally’ level a deadly blow.” He glanced at Mary, who nodded at him. “She knows the real me, Wesley. She knows that I’m aware of my strength, that I know I could hit you hard enough to kill you… and that is why I don’t hit you at all.”
Wesley looked at Mary, his eyes trusting after the bond the two had formed, asking the question. She simply nodded at him. “Ask the twins when they wake if you must, Wesley. But I hear in him the words my husband would speak, and I know that man to be kind, a fierce defender of friends and family, but unwilling to hurt anyone who has never wronged him.” She flipped her gaze to Roddy. “The scenes you describe, Wesley… they cut deep, hurt me in ways I didn’t know I could be hurt. It will take time for me, not to forget, but to understand that man is a mirage. The real Roddy, the man here now… this is real. Trust him, Wesley. Or at least be willing to try.”
Wesley stared at her, then at him. He shook his head. “It’s not in my nature to trust, not after what I’ve been through, after what I’ve learned.”
“You’re the one who did that podcast, aren’t you?” Roddy asked. “The one talking about the Silvers and all the impossible technology they employed in secret and kept hidden from the masses.”
Wesley looked startled. “You… listened?” He swallowed. “Did… Oswald Silver?”
“He did.” Roddy chuckled. “He always wondered where you got your info. Everyone who listened to you did so because you were so crazy and your stories and conspiracies were so outlandish that they were entertained… except Oswald. He wondered who your sources were, because everything you talked about was completely true, but carefully hidden. He figured it must be someone working in his inner circle and did everything he could to figure out who it was; hell, at one point, he thought it was me and grounded me from pilot duty for a month. You had two more shows and talked about material at meetings he attended without me, so even if I was telling you, I was getting it from someone else.” He offered a shrug and a wry smile. “He never figured out who it was. Personally? I liked the podcast. Nodded a lot, learned a lot. But… I also never liked Oswald Silver. Part of the appeal was watching him listen to it and get completely rattled. So… thanks for that.” He offered a mischievous grin to Wesley.
Wesley offered a brief smile. Very brief. “Thanks. But none of that clears you. I still don’t trust that you aren’t here on his orders; maybe he figured out my identity and sent you to assassinate me, or maybe he even sent you to track us all down and kill us because Phoenix said we should be dead—”
“Wesley!” Mary’s tone was sharp.
Roddy took a step toward Wesley and shook a finger at his face. “Let me tell you about Oswald Silver, Wesley. He had me fly his ship to the space station—which I hadn’t known existed until we docked—and then had me arrested because he found his lover’s body aboard the ship instead of his daughter. He mentally tortured me, Wesley—I think you’re familiar with that process?” Wesley’s face paled, and he cowered as the memories of the pain returned. “He thought I knew something critical to his post-Ravager plans, thought I knew where Deirdre was, and when he found nothing… well, he shackled me, put me back on his ship with a man who hated me more than Oswald—”
“Who was that?” John asked.
“Guy named Delaney. Knew him in Special Forces. Long story.” Roddy waved his hand and looked back at Wesley. “Delaney made clear he’d kill me; Oswald didn’t care. Told me to help Delaney find Deirdre and bring her home, or he’d turn up the mental pressure until I actually died from it.” Wesley looked like he might faint. “I didn’t find Deirdre. I ma
naged to get Delaney to crash the ship, which left Delaney and his team dead, and I survived only and ironically because they bound me in a way that redirected the crash forces so I was only very badly injured. I found a Ravager-proof metal suit that was two sizes too small for me and got into it as the ship and everything in it was pulverized by Ravagers. I walked in that suit until I found one of Phoenix’s secret fortresses—I think you talked about those at one point, right?”
“Yeah,” Wesley murmured.
“And I only survived that because—surprise!—my memory had been wiped clean and the people running that place were actually my parents. They restored my memories—which left me primarily wanting to kill myself because I realized what I’d unknowingly done to my wife and kids—and when they snuck me aboard this ship, I’ve flown around the world until I found you.” He stared Wesley down. “Now, Wesley… am I on your side? Or Oswald Silver’s?”
Wesley looked at him, trying to read the intent behind the words rather than the words themselves. His eyes flicked to Mary, to the eyes that pleaded with him to accept Roddy. He looked at John, but the man seemed neutral, unwilling to accept the idea of Roddy as a committed member of the resistance, but willing to work with him as an ally of convenience.
He heard footsteps and saw the twins trundling over, bodies wearied from the post-healing fatigue and the too-short nap, saw their eyes light up at the sight of the man before them, their long-absent father. They wanted to go to him, but seemed to sense the conflict in the room, recognized that the adults had some quarrel that had to be settled first.
Wesley’s face softened, as if realizing he was blocking a family reunion a decade or more in the making.
He only knew this man from his association with the evil Silvers, did not know the “real” Roddy… but realized he trusted the instincts of Mary and her children.
He moved cautiously in Roddy’s direction… and held out his hand.
Roddy took it. Their grips tightened, their knuckles turned white with the strain, veins rose from their skin. Their eyes locked in their own form of deadly combat, as if each threatened with a glance to terminate the other should harm befall Mary, or the children, or…
“If you two lunkheads can stop your little alpha male bonding ceremony at some point, we do need to figure out how we’re going to survive the ongoing threats to our existence,” Mary said, her voice silky, a mixture of annoyance and amusement.
Both men laughed. Each released the handshake, but not before tightening the grip just a bit more, sending the message that he’d been holding back.
“We good now?” Mary asked.
Roddy and Wesley exchanged a glance. “Yeah,” Roddy said. “We’re good.”
“And we’ll each make sure the other is on his best behavior,” Wesley added.
Mary rolled her eyes. “Right, you do that. Now, we need to discuss—”
The twins rushed forward, throwing their arms around their father, trying to cram a decade’s worth of hugs into a single moment, trying to weave in updates about their lives around Roddy’s comments about how big they’d gotten (“Dad, you’re crazy, we weren’t even born when you left!” “Exactly my point!”). Wesley caught Mary’s eye, and nodded his head in their direction. Roddy held up his hand and waved her over. She sighed, grinned, then joined in the group hug. Wesley glanced at John, and after about thirty seconds, he cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to interrupt the ongoing and long overdue family reunion, but Mary’s right. We have to figure out what we’re doing next.”
The family separated, faces beaming.
Wesley sensed that Mary’s well-rehearsed speech had been lost in the joy of the moment. He turned to face Roddy. “Our original plan was to hit the mainland and try to tap into the mobile communication towers of the East, with the theory that they’d have the ability to sync up with anything still active in the West. While ordinary citizens wouldn’t likely want to chat with anyone in the West, members of Phoenix would talk to counterparts around the world. We figured any comms towers well outside cityplex range would be the most likely to have that extra feature.”
“Makes sense,” Roddy replied. “But given the widespread devastation in the West, I don’t know that there would be any towers left to broadcast your signal to any allies still alive after the Ravagers finished up.”
“It’s a moot point, anyway,” Mary added. “Our goal was to contact someone like Micah Jamison or Roddy’s parents—or both, if possible—about reconnecting and getting everyone in the same place. Since Roddy’s already here… we accomplished that goal.”
“And I came after consultation with my parents and Micah,” Roddy added. “All three are still alive—at least as of my last communication to them prior to our little… scuffle back there—”
“Scuffle?” Wesley asked.
“Intense physical confrontation commencing after a serious misunderstanding?”
“Better.”
“Knock it off, you two,” John said. “We’re on the same team. When it’s all over we’ll give the both of you suits of armor and swords so you can fight it out, but for now… let’s focus on the critical points, please.”
Roddy nodded. Wesley did as well. “So all of us know the General in some fashion,” Wesley noted. “That seems like a good thing. That’s a man I’d trust with my life… because he’s saved it at great risk to his own.”
“Same,” Mary and John replied simultaneously.
“Speaking of saving lives…” Wesley paused. “I was pretty sure I was wrestling for control of a gun with Roddy when I started to black out and heard a loud explosion from nearby. I’m still alive.” He glanced at the twins. “You repaired what should have been a fatal gunshot wound?”
“Nobody shot you,” Roddy told him.
“I shot a gun off into the air,” John said. “Had to get Roddy’s mind back to reality. That’s probably what you heard. We convinced him that all of us dying in a Ravagers attack wasn’t a great idea.”
“Appreciate that,” Wesley murmured. Then: “But how did I get here?”
“Roddy carried you,” Mary told him.
Wesley blinked. He glanced at the giant man. “Wasn’t too much trouble I hope?”
“Most of the trouble came from keeping tree branches from scratching up your ugly mug, but—”
“Enough, Roddy,” Mary snapped, but Wesley laughed. Roddy winked at Mary. Mary sighed and pointed out the windows to the dock. “Roddy brought with him a flying… well, see for yourself. It flew to us as we ran and got us out of harm’s way.”
Wesley turned and looked in the direction of her pointing nod. His jaw dropped open and he let loose a long, low whistle as he stared at the silvery sphere hovering a few feet above the deck’s surface. “Damn. Oswald Silver would kill somebody to get a ship like that.”
“Let’s not give him any ideas,” Roddy said. “We’re running from machines that killed millions so the man could build a home where he wanted and not be surrounded by people he despised. He’d shoot his own daughter in the back for something like that ship.”
Wesley glanced at the sphere and then around the captain’s bridge room. “How far can that thing fly?”
“Range is unlimited.”
“Not possible.”
“It doesn’t use fuel in the traditional sense, so it’s quite possible.”
“Still not possible.”
“I just flew from a fortress near the LakePlex… scratch that. I flew from near that part of the world to this one without ever adding fuel or checking a fuel gauge. Happy to show you.”
“But—”
“I’d suggest we continue this enticing debate in theoretical physics and thermodynamics aboard the highly intelligent flying machine that rescued us from the mainland.” John managed to murmur at a decibel level more commonly associated with shouting. “We can reach our allies—Roddy’s parents and Micah Jamison—at a far more rapid clip aboard the flying sphere than aboard this floating variety.”
/> “Comms will let us talk to New Venice—that’s the Phoenix outpost my parents have infiltrated and lead—as well as General Jamison,” Roddy said. “We’ll want to get airborne and get in touch with them to figure out our plan of attack as we fly.”
“New Venice?” Wesley asked.
“Your source didn’t fill you in on that one?”
“Probably too easy for someone to track down and verify,” Wesley said, bristling.
“Hmm… guess so.” Roddy shrugged. “Phoenix built a number of fortresses in both the east and the west. They’d long expected the… purge… to be accomplished with a different sort of machine. Robots with guns and armor basically killing off those left behind. They’d need terrestrial storage areas for them. They’d also need places to store some of the initial supplies for the terraforming efforts.”
“Terra—?”
“They planned to kill as many with traditional means as possible and then set a series of massive fires going to choke out and kill off any who survived the initial onslaught,” John explained. “It would leave the planet’s surface basically scraped clean of arable soil, grasses, trees, agricultural plants… basically the stuff needed for survival. They knew they’d need to rebuild soil with nutrients and begin sowing seeds to replenish plant life prior to building out the palatial estates they planned out. It would be a small-scale version of what those in the Golden Ages called terraforming, which would be a process for taking another planet or a moon and altering it so that humans could live there without issue. So… that term got borrowed.”
Roddy nodded. “Plenty of seed and such stored aboard the space station, but they wanted to be sure they had enough on the surface. Between that and the original robot army… they needed fortresses. Close enough to existing population centers to release the robot armies on them, far enough away to not be spotted easily, and armored to withstand whatever calamities might happen. New Venice is one of those fortresses, probably a few hundred miles east from the LakePlex.”
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