by Drew Avera
Laurel made a pouting face when she looked at me and I wasn't sure if it was a joke or if it was an honest reaction to the situation. Either way I thought it was cute.
"Oh, come on, Harris. Let's go home and leave them to their mission," Gena said, as she tried pulling him away. Their hands were locked together, but Harris didn't budge an inch.
"Will you come back?" He asked. I could hear the desperation in his voice.
Kara looked at me and I nodded. "Of course we will," she said as she walked backwards up the cargo bay door, tearing away from the man she loved. Despite the grip Gena had on him, he refused to move until we were out of sight.
Once we were inside, we could see Harris and Gena standing in the grassy field, the sun beating down upon them. Inside the transport the lighting was dim, and I doubted they could see us, but as the bay door lifted I watched them wave goodbye and we couldn't help but return the gesture, whether they could see it or not.
I couldn't believe it, but I was actually going to miss Earth, now that I was thinking about it. I kind of hoped Kara's promise to Harris would in fact come to pass. We could sure use a new start, one not tainted by a life in service to The Syndicate. Maybe, when all was said and done, I could lay down my gauntlet and live the life I had always wanted. Maybe sounded better and better each time I thought about it.
Chapter 24
Within a few moments of the cargo bay door closing, a voice came over the transport’s intercom system. "This is Captain Fillon, and we are ready for launch. I need everyone to find a secure place to sit until we are out of the Earth's atmosphere. We may experience a large amount of turbulence during the launch. Captain out."
The intercom system went quiet, and I could feel a rumbling under our feet just like we had experienced when we left Mars. Kara, Laurel, and I took some seats along one of the bulkheads near the aft end of the transport. I began to wish we had time to make it to our stateroom before the launch sequence began, but it was already too late.
As the craft lifted from the ground, I could feel the vibrations of straining engines and it sometimes felt like one part of the transport would drop lower than the other side, which made me feel a bit nauseous. Eventually I had to close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing in order to steady myself. The now brightened lights in the cargo bay made the backs of my eyelids take on a reddish tint, but other than that I felt a bit more normal.
"Are you all right, Serus?" Laurel asked. I felt her hand on my arm and her hot breath on the side of my neck.
"I'll be fine. I'm just not a fan of flying I guess."
She tightened her grip on my arm reassuringly. "It gets better over time. Eventually you get used to it. How are you, Kara?" she asked over the sound of the rumbling transport.
I didn't hear Kara respond at first, so I opened my eyes enough to look at her and noticed she was in a similar position as I was, hunched over with her eyes closed.
"Fine, I just want it to be over," Kara replied.
If I wasn't so nervous I would have laughed, but as it stood I was probably just as afraid as she was.
"Do you want some Serum?" I asked. It was a safe assumption it would calm her nerves if nothing else.
"Ugh, no! I'll be fine," she said.
I could hear Laurel laugh next to me and I smiled. The rumbling of the transport finally slowed after several minutes and I assumed we were finally out of the Earth's atmosphere. A few moments later I felt comfortable enough to sit up and open my eyes.
"This is Captain Fillon. We are now in space. Feel free to move about the transport as needed."
The generally hospitable voice of a tour guide captain was a thing of the past. It was obvious that this transport was not on route to some exotic vacation spot, but instead was on a mission to save lives. On our way back to Mars, I started thinking of how much I had changed. I didn't identify myself as a policeman anymore. I was just Serus Blackwell, a man trying to find himself and do the right thing. I wondered how much home might have changed without the influence of The Syndicate controlling everything. It made me nervous the more I thought about it.
My thoughts drifted to Pontiff White and how hard it must have been to let us go and stay behind to handle the ensuing chaos. I knew The Agency had been left in place, so maybe the policemen were maintaining peace. If they were, I knew it was at the end of a gauntlet. The thought made me sick; all the death and destruction was for nothing.
"What are you thinking about?" Laurel asked me. Her hand still rested on my arm and the other sat in her lap.
I looked at her and kissed her. The sweet smell of strawberries filled my nose and the taste of her lips was warm and inviting. When I pulled away, I answered her question with only two words. "The future."
Chapter 25
Six months later:
It was amazing to see our home planet as we approached it in the transport. Mars had once been called the red planet, but now it looked very similar to Earth, albeit a smaller version with only three continents. I could see the land mass where the city of Archea was located. It was a coastal city with its eastern shore on the Archean Sea. From our vantage point of over five thousand miles away, the world as we knew it looked just as alive as it was when we left it. That was a good sign at least.
"Only seventy more hours and we can land," Captain Fillon said as he punched calculations onto a computer screen. The holographic display illuminated from the desk and touched the ceiling five feet above it. On the display I could see a map of Mars and several lines of data surrounding it.
"Still no radio communications?" I asked. It was becoming a daily ritual that didn't do much to lift our spirits.
I was standing a few feet away on the other side of the display when Captain Fillon answered. His face was lit up in shades of blue and red as he spoke. "No, but I do think we have reason to believe the atmosphere is still intact. On the dark side of the planet we can see a bit of a glow reflecting off the atmospheric gases. If the artificial atmosphere had collapsed, the light would not be refracting like that. All of the gas would have escaped." He stepped around the display and pointed out what he was talking about.
"I hope you're right," I said.
The door to the cabin opened and Kara walked in with a stack of papers. Her hair was half-fallen from a ponytail, and she looked fairly tired. "All right, I have everything in place so I can get to work as soon as we touch down," she said.
I went to sit next to her as she tossed a few items onto the desk in the cabin. "We still have a few days. How do you plan to fix the atmosphere?" I asked.
She scratched the back of her head and smiled. "Believe it or not, we can bypass the nuclear power generators and use the seawater to create steam. It won't be as powerful, but it should give us time to enrich the uranium we have in storage and not have to sacrifice too much of the world's power grid." She fumbled through the pages, taking some kind of mental inventory of them.
"Sounds . . . complicated," I said. I smiled at her to show that I was only kidding, sort of.
"Well, the good news is we have clever scientists who can do most of the work and you won't have to hurt your little head with all the math," she joked.
I laughed and said, "That’s good."
Together we looked out the windscreen of the transport at the world we had grown up on. There was so much about our past I wished we could change, but those experiences had made us who we were. Fortunately, it looked like we finally had the chance to create a new future for ourselves. We just had one more mission, and then we could focus on living the lives we deserved.
Kara took my hand in hers and whispered something I didn't quite catch. "What was that?" I asked as I looked over at her. Her eyes were moist as she looked out at Mars and she didn't say anything, but I thought I understood the tiny voice she used to utter words so silently. They were words she never would have spoken before meeting Harris. It was a prayer.
I held her hand tighter in my own and thought about that for a moment. W
e had gone our entire lives without knowing anything of religion other than what our teachers had said. The fall of society was because of religion. The wars that tore our ancestors from Earth were the result of religion. We were indoctrinated to hate it, but somewhere in the words Harris had told me, there was a peace. And if only for that reason I craved to know more than just what our history books told us about it. Maybe, if we made it back to Earth, I would be able to find answers to some of my questions, but for now I had to be content with saving the only home I had ever known.
Epilogue
The dust from the explosion settled around me. I twitched my fingers and toes to see if I was paralyzed, and the pain coursing through my body let me know I was still alive. I strained to open my eyes and could see the entire wall was now just rubble in front of me. I struggled to gain my footing in the chaos swarming around me. I couldn't hear the explosions I could see were happening around me. At that moment I noticed the ringing in my ears. I cupped them in my hand and felt a warm, moist sensation that felt sticky to my fingers. I pulled my hands away and could see they were painted with my blood. I had no way to determine the extent of my injuries, but one thing was for sure: Midican was falling all around me.
Every instinctual facet of my body screamed for me to lie down and play dead. I was a deaf moving target; anything coming for me I would not hear. Why was I still moving around a war zone? I could barely maintain my balance, and I could feel the ground quake beneath me as a flash of fire and flying earth erupted all around me. It was hopeless. I would never find my way to safety.
There were bodies strewn all around me, lifeless and betrayed by my leadership. I retched into the dirt under me. My failures had eventuated in the loss of my people. Midican was dead. My entire family has been slaughtered! I sobbed as I sucked in dirty air. I could taste the bile on my tongue, but I didn't care anymore. I had lost everything I held dear. If only I could see Kara one last time to let her know how I felt, to let her know I've loved her since I first met her. I was a coward for not saying it before, now she would never know.
I lunged forward and tried to run towards the tree line. I knew that resisting Treston's army was futile, but that didn't matter. I would resist his influence over me with my dying breath. I tripped again, this time over the charred remains of one of my people. His face was indistinguishable and I turned away and fled from the blistered sneer on his face. Another pile of debris exploded in front of me and sent me flying backwards. I was suspended in the air for several seconds before striking the remains of a wall with my back. Chunks of dirt, bricks, and mortar fell onto me and I choked as the breath was knocked out of my lungs.
I could feel the end coming for me before I could see it. At first there were only a few masked men in uniforms surrounding me. I could see their vile gestures, but I still could not hear what they were or were not saying. The number of troops grew into a solid mass before my eyes. Soon, the ranks broke open to allow another person to come forward. He too was wearing a mask but I could tell by his build that I knew this man. He knelt down in front of me and grabbed my head. I could feel him shove some kind of instrument into my ear, the pain I felt increased by this action. When he was done with the device he released his grip and pressed a button on the device he still held in his hand. At first there was nothing, but the silence was soon broken by the sound of static.
"Harris, can you hear me?" the man asked.
I choked on the putrid air of burning bodies and gunpowder. "Yes, I can hear you," I fought to get those few words out.
"They are all dead," I could hear him say the words in a kind of mechanical, robotic voice. The device he shoved into my ear had a slight glitch that warped his voice.
"All of them?" I asked, I knew the answer, but I had to hear it. My punishment for failing would be the affirmation that I had lost everything. My heart pounded in my chest, and nausea loomed as he stood over me.
"Yes," he said without remorse.
I retched onto the ground by my side and when I finished I looked back into the familiar man's face. I could see my reflection in the eyepiece of his mask. Blood was caked on my face and hair along with dirt and grime. I looked like death warmed over. "Who are you?" I asked. The man just knelt there unflinching. "I asked you a question. Who the hell are you?" I screamed. The force of my voice reintroduced the taste of bile into my mouth.
The man reached up and grabbed his mask. I knew this man. He was a fellow soldier from my past. I knew it. I watched as he unlatched the mask from his face and carefully pulled it away. Our eyes met and it took me a moment to recognize the man who knelt before me.
"Nathanial, I thought you were dead," I said as he sneered with a wicked smile. He turned to give an order to the men behind him without saying a word. Several men descended upon me at once and placed a shroud over my face. "I watched you die," I said as the shroud tightened around my neck.
I felt hot breath fall over me as a silhouette of the man stood in front of me. After all this time, he had only six words to say to me. "It's time to return the favor."
I hope you enjoyed reading The Dead Planet Series so far! If you liked this book then I would really appreciate a review of it and others you may have read. Thank you for taking the time to join—and fight—a future controlled by The Syndicate! Will Serus and Kara save Mars and stop their enemies? Stay tuned for the third, and final, book in The Dead Planet Series and find out.
ENDGAME is coming soon!
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