“You mean… some of them are already dead. Right?” Mary asked.
“Two thus far, and apparently another near death. Delilah Silver, wife of Oswald and mother of Deirdre, was killed in the explosion that nearly took Sheila’s life. Another of the Thirty, a man named Clyde, suffered grievous injuries. He’s technically alive, but chatter suggests that’s a technicality.”
“Hope he’s suffering in his final few hours,” John muttered.
“I suspect he’s not feeling much of anything,” Micah replied. “There’s a third person missing from the list, and it’s a big name. Damien Howell, per chatter, was a vicious monster by all accounts. He’d spent quite a bit of time on the space station but departed quite some time ago for an extended vacation on the island most of you recently visited. There’s been no sign of him since the Ravager attack there.”
Wesley snorted, then laughed out loud. “Bastard got dissolved by his own creation? Talk about perfect justice.”
“There’s apparently a lot more chaos among the ranks of the chosen few without his authoritative hand driving things, which is to our advantage. People are likely to act a bit more irrationally, and we can exploit that.”
Sheila raised a hand. “We have names, images, lists of behavioral quirks and other minutiae about the survivors?”
“We do, in fact. Some of that comes from our own intel. Some comes from sharing of knowledge with the other pack of immortals surviving from the era of the Golden Ages.”
“Good grief, how many of them are there?” Wesley asked.
“Too many,” John muttered.
“They aren’t all bad,” Roddy said, wincing.
“True enough, John and Roddy,” Micah said. “The batch I recently found and contacted is of the not bad variety. They’ve stayed hidden, disinterested in general human affairs and the political games and shenanigans employed by Phoenix. They’d be happy to continue living in isolation. But the Ravagers made them realize that they’ll always be at risk from a widely destructive weapon like the Ravagers. The Ravagers’ launch was their Pearl Harbor, and the sleeping giant is now awake.”
“What’s Pearl Harbor?” Mary asked, tiling her head in curiosity.
“The key point here is that our immortals know all about their immortals,” Sheila said. “They’ve given us all types of personal details, which will help us in our final attacks. We’re in agreement on one key point: the power of that private communication network means that the deaths we inflict must be done as nearly at the same time as possible, and must look like accidents where at all practical. Once survivors suspect there’s a clandestine attack launched, they’ll become far too wary to be caught off guard, and may employ means to mask their identities that we can’t crack.”
Wesley raised his hand. “General Jamison, sir—” He paused at the glare and winced slightly. “Sorry. Sir. Er. Micah—that sounds weird—Micah, do we have any idea where all of them are? Or, to put it another way, how do we sneak up on them and kill them unless we know where they are?”
“Excellent question. Most of them, being cowardly sorts, are safely above the Ravager-wrought chaos and carnage, dwelling in the space station until such time as the surface is cleansed to their satisfaction. Some of them will come back early for a closer look at that so-called cleansing… we know this from the chatter on their internal network and from intel shared with us by what I call the Old Guard.”
“Sick bastards,” Roddy muttered. Then: “The Phoenix elites, not the Old Guard.”
Mary smiled at him. “We knew what you meant.”
“The Old Guard has recently learned that four of the Thirty are expected at a facility called New Phoenix and has dispatched one of their number to that location. They recommend that we meet, do a final comparison of notes, and then likely move to the space station as quietly as we can for a final assault.”
Roddy coughed. “What about New Venice?”
“Oh, good point,” John said.
“On our last call with Roddy’s parents it seemed that some of the Elites might have arrived there,” Mary explained.
“Right,” Micah said, frowning. “The trick is that if we send a lot of people there, and it’s some of the lower order folks like James Delaney—”
“Delaney’s already dead, and even if he wasn’t, someone like him won’t make my parents nervous,” Roddy argued. “It’s at least one of the big time folks, probably more.”
Wesley turned to Roddy. “Then that’s my job.”
“What?”
Wesley waved a hand back and forth between Micah and Roddy. “Both of you have said that the clues suggest I’m specially trained for covert assassinations. Kill people without anyone suspecting or noticing. Right? So you send me to New Venice. I sneak in, figure out who the bad guys are, and eliminate them. One person means there’s no need to have communications that could be monitored, no verbal conversations to overhear, no actions to coordinate. Just me.”
“But—” Mary frowned, her face pale. “Won’t you be in danger?”
“We’re all in danger,” John said.
Roddy nodded. “They’re both right. I’d go, but there’s no chance I’d be able to sneak around. Wesley’s the man for the job.”
“But—”
“You’re more concerned that the nice man you’ve come to know is a trained killer, aren’t you?” Sheila asked.
Mary looked surprised, then nodded. “I… I guess that’s true. He’s such a kind and gentle man, so good with the twins…”
“I can do this, Mary,” Wesley said. “And I’ll do it for those kids. And the rest of you.”
She looked down, but nodded.
“I have a request of you, then,” Roddy said, his voice quiet, strained. “If my parents… if they’re badly hurt, if they’re being tortured by these members of the Thirty to give up the most valuable information they possess, if they’re in danger of doing anything they wouldn’t want to do…” His voice trailed off. He looked at Wesley, helpless, unwilling and unable to say the words.
Wesley understood. “I will do everything I can to preserve their lives and… their honor. Even if it means… making difficult choices.”
Roddy nodded. “Thank you. And it’s not really about honor. They possess information that… cannot fall into the wrong hands.”
“Understood. I think. Understood well enough.”
“Then we will fly the sphere to the outskirts of New Venice and drop Wesley off,” Micah said. “Roddy, you’ll need to go with me to meet with the Old Guard. They’re going to fight, but I promised them something that I think only you, or your parents, could provide.”
“Which is…?”
“The power that the elites of the time before the Golden Ages was lost in the aftermath of the war which saw the bad guys defeated. More accurately, it was suppressed. But some from that era have figured out how to unlock that power once more, here on the surface.”
Roddy scowled. “You told them I’d teach them how? Micah, you had no right to do that.”
“They were hesitant to help; that is the only thing they don’t have which my original allies could offer. I would ask your parents, Roddy, but they won’t be available. I could not ask permission, because I could not risk Phoenix learning that your parents have similarly overcome the suppression and know how to repeat that success in others. I had to make that promise to gain more allies, allies who will be fully empowered regardless of the field of battle, once you teach them.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then the people in this room must go to the space station alone and fight twenty people who will be operating outside the effects of the suppression device. They will have powers like you, Roddy. But much stronger. It will be a slaughter.”
Roddy’s face tensed. He finally nodded. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
Wesley glanced back and forth between Roddy and Micah. “That’s why you want me to… to prevent that information from getting to Phoenix?”
“Yes,” Roddy said. “Those people… we cannot let them learn what we’ve learned.”
“And that’s why you don’t want to tell the Old Guard, either?”
“I don’t know them well enough to trust them. So… yes. I fear telling them greatly increases the odds that someone from that elite group will find out.”
“Yeah, that’s brutal,” Wesley said. “I understand the reluctance, but I guess you have to give something valuable to get something valuable.”
“Precisely,” Micah replied.
Wesley glanced around the room before returning his gaze to Roddy and Micah. “So it’s the three of us heading out, then?” Wesley asked.
“Like you’re letting me sit this one out,” Mary snapped. “I spent two years aboard that space station, counting my time in the brig. I’m coming.”
“Same, for the same reasons,” John added. “I can add my technical expertise to the fight as well.”
“I have a few more explosions I’d like to trigger there,” Sheila said.
“What about the children?” Micah asked softly.
“No chance they’re fighting,” Roddy said.
“But we can’t leave them alone. They’re too young!” Mary replied.
“You want them to fight?” Roddy asked, surprised.
“No. Do you want them left alone?”
“No, but—”
“If I may…” Micah said, coughing lightly to gather their attention. “I sent the children out with my robots not just to keep them out of this conversation.”
There was silence. Then: “You want us to leave them here in the care of the robots?” Mary asked.
“Nobody will find them here. The robots are programmed to handle their every need. Not unlike the one you met on my island in the lake.”
John raised his hand. “What if… someone suffers a grievous injury during the fight to come? Won’t we want the children nearby to assist?”
“I’m okay with dying of injuries if it keeps the children and their secret power away from Phoenix,” Wesley said without hesitation.
“Agreed,” Mary and Roddy said at the same time. They shared a brief glance.
Sheila glanced at Micah, then back at John. “I agree. The twins stay here.”
John glanced around the room, realizing that it was an argument he couldn’t win. “Fair enough.”
Wesley chewed his lip for a moment. “General? Er, Micah?”
“Yes?”
“Roddy found one of the robots from the lake island during his trip there to look for all of us. I tried to repair him, but… it’s beyond my understanding.”
“And?”
“The children… well, they consider him to be a friend. They call him Whiskey. We all called him Whiskey. If you could repair him… I think that will make selling this arrangement with the kids a bit easier.”
Micah stood. “Show me where he is.”
When they left the island in the sphere an hour later, they watched as the friendly robot raised its arm—whiskey bottle in its claw—while other robots patrolled the area, monitoring the human children in the manner they knew best, tracking any sign of outside invasion or the slightest scrape suffered by their young charges. The robots would keep them apprised of any major happenings on Eden, which was to say that they’d be keeping communication silence. No one knew where Eden was who hadn’t already found it.
Once they left sight of the island, en route to the Old Guard by way of New Venice, those who expected to invade the space station discussed the small detail they’d thus far ignored.
There was no landing dock for a ship, no means to move from the ship into the safe air pressure and breathable air of the space station.
The compression bomb Micah had used to wrest his ship free, the one that had injured Sheila and killed Delilah Silver, had demolished the entire docking zone.
Chapter 13
New Phoenix
Deirdre watched the passing scenery for the first hour, less interested in the redundant scenery and more in the ability of the vehicle to maneuver its way along the plotted path. As the vehicle accelerated to speeds she found unnerving without loss of control, and with a subtle touch of the wheel that avoided the bumpiest terrain, she found her mind wandering.
She dug around inside the car and found a portable view screen, preloaded with entertainment that apparently came from the times before the Golden Ages. She found the depiction of life in those ancient centuries fascinating. There were similarities to life in the present—people used ground cars to move from place to place, people still suffered from bad relationships, and criminal behavior still necessitated professionals dedicated to finding and imprisoning the evildoers—but it was the differences she found more interesting. They showed her life as it was back in the day. Flying machines routinely transported people between locations. There were no walls around the cities, and people lived in spaces that in her time would be the rumored hunting grounds of Hinterlands beasts. Trees were commonplace in homes that generally provided a small plot of land as part of the residence. She stared as people would sit out on this land and socialize with neighbors outdoors, enjoying sunlight that seemed a bit more orange than reality, probably an effect of the camera lenses used. People allowed animals to live in their homes, feeding and grooming them, a practice she found highly unsanitary. The lands were divided not just into East and West, and further into the various cityplexes; instead, there were geographic units called countries, which were often divided into “states” or “provinces,” and further into cities. Such organization suggested massive populations of humans, numbers she found staggering.
She dozed off watching a show about a man who used a car that could drive itself and talk to solve crimes, which she supposed was commonplace back in the day.
After six hours, her mind decided that rest was more critical than watching the man and the car put a seemingly unending stream of criminals into prison. She drifted off to sleep, marveling as her eyes fluttered shut that she’d so easily accepted the car’s ability to transport her without any help on her part.
She woke to bright morning sunshine, suggesting she’d slept a dozen hours or more. She yawned, stretched, and asked the car for her current location before realizing that she was not transported via the talking vehicle in the show she’d watched. She glanced at the map and found that she was, at most, thirty minutes away from New Phoenix.
She found a switch that disengaged the automated driving system, preferring to drive herself the rest of the way. If nothing else, she didn’t want to advertise the fact that she had a ground car with self-driving capabilities, as someone would ask how she’d come to have a vehicle with that feature.
Before she traversed the final distance, she pulled out the pages featuring faces she’d known since childhood, who’d alternatively amazed and inspired, chilled and disgusted her. At present she felt only loathing as she stared at the images, as she took in the words that described habits, tendencies, weaknesses, and known allies. She felt no remorse, which seemed… odd. She wasn’t by nature prone to violence; hell, a few weeks earlier she’d felt guilty killing a beast that had every intent of taking her life and making a meal of her. Now, she could look at the face of someone she’d known for decades and imagine poisoning them without a hint of guilt. Why was it so easy now? Had the Ravager swarm, the sheer vastness of the devastation wrought, the uncountable numbers of dead… had all of that hardened her to the point where a few more deaths, even at her hand, were no longer of concern?
It didn’t make sense, but she had no better explanation. And it didn’t matter, did it? She’d promised to do her part, and do her part she would. It didn’t matter if she saw them as good or evil. It didn’t matter… if she saw them as peers and equals of her father, if the evil she saw in them she had to recognize in the man she’d long thought a role model and hero. It didn’t matter… if in recognizing the evil in them… she had to recognize the evil she’d manifested in the form of the ideas t
hat had spawned the very devastation she’d experienced firsthand.
Maybe it was easy to kill them, to put her life at risk, to sacrifice herself… because it seemed like a way to atone for the evil deep inside the essence of what made her who she was. It was a far more effective approach than her original resistance, which was to bed a man not her husband and try to guilt her father into saving him.
She could not change the past, go back in time and shake her old self, tell herself to work hard—even if it cost her her life—to stop the devastation of the Ravagers. She could not stop more people from dying, some of them by her direct action. But she could do her part to ensure that those who did survive it all would live without the unseen tyranny that launched the Ravagers and would do it again if the right circumstances came. She would help weed out that deep evil at the root.
She took a final look at the images of the weeds she’d been sent to eradicate before driving the rest of the way to the New Phoenix fortress.
She stopped a few hundred yards outside the fortress, taking time to assess the grounds and the structure itself. As expected, it looked similar to New Venice, including the parking garage she’d try to avoid if at all possible. Water flowed over the roof and down the walls, filling shallow moats around the circumference. The Ravager attacks had stopped, but those in charge here either didn’t know, didn’t trust those tasked with halting the attacks, or just liked the sound of the running water.
She noted with interest that, here at least, there were clues of awareness that the Ravager threat had ended. In the place of the dry, dusty ground she’d ridden across—all that remained after the Ravagers did their work and moved on—she noticed dirt that looked darker, richer. Tilled. Energized with proper nutrients and biological material necessary for regrowing plant life. And… yes, as she looked closely, she saw a few nascent stubs of green bursting forth from that primordial soil. Life was beginning its comeback.
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