Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series)

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Dane had been a fool, and people, friends of his, were dying because of it.

  He had to salvage this, he told himself. He wasn’t going to lose the first battle of the war. “Spread out!” he yelled, and his Arc and the others around him obeyed instantly. Right now they were clumped up, easy targets. More explosions flared. “Agility!” Dane touched the rings on his index and middle fingers together, calling the power, and felt the world slow around him, the comforting sensation of near weightlessness as everything colored in a hue of yellow.

  He and the rest of the Helix dashed forward. More leapt from their ships and followed, weaving in and out of the plasma fire.

  Ahead, Dane finally saw the enemy with clarity. The Spider walkers, painted a brilliant shade of crimson, their giant legs moving them forward in lines that stretched from one edge of the horizon to another. The sight was sobering. How could anyone expect to survive against that? But he didn’t have to survive, did he? He just had to last long enough to let the others escape … to let her escape.

  From behind, he heard dozens of loud percussive pings. Above his head, streaks of color, red, blue, and green, arced forward through the air. It was the Landships. They were firing back.

  Cheers erupted as the first of the spear points found their marks. In the distance, colorful explosions blossomed into the sky as they punched through the red Spiders’ armor. He watched those machines crash to the ground in flames, and felt a glimmer of hope.

  Still, there were more. Many more.

  Behind him, another Landship exploded, tearing itself into the earth.

  “Keep moving!” he shouted, running through the yellowish, slow-motion world of the Agility power. He and the others were almost there, and when they reached the Assembly, debts would be paid.

  Dane couldn’t see the other ships, the unarmed ones, and he didn’t have time to look. He only hoped that Avril had escaped.

  * * *

  HOLT BARELY MANAGED TO keep from falling as the Wind Rift darted around another Landship at breakneck speed. The fleet was moving, which was good. The problem was, every ship here was headed southwest, while the Wind Rift was trying to go due south. It meant they had to cross through a massive wave of traffic before they could get clear, and that was proving tough.

  The crew scrambled frantically to adjust the sails and rigging as Olive barked orders. Yet again, Holt was impressed by their discipline, their ability to not lose their heads in all the panic. Then again, maybe it had something to do with the knowledge that one slip by any of them probably meant their end.

  Explosions rocked the ground. Raptors roared past, their cannons screaming. Holt watched three wheels on the side of a nearby Landship separate from the hull and send the entire ship listing into the ground.

  The Wind Rift banked hard left, claiming the gap left by the disintegrated ship, desperately trying to get away from the buzzing gunships above.

  Very little of the chaos around Holt registered. He just looked north, to where the other Landships moved to intercept the approaching army, and the sky above them was absolutely full of Raptors, firing down a constant hailstorm of yellow bolts. Two more ships incinerated and fell apart, their Barriers unable to hold.

  Holt’s eyes found the massive Wind Star, Mira’s ship, watching it desperately. Its Barriers were holding, but it was the biggest target out there.

  And there was something else now. Something huge. Behind the line of Spiders. Something that filled the horizon with its girth. A single, massive object, the source of those terrifying footfalls. A giant walker. Something no one had ever seen, and if it was real, it towered hundreds of feet above the ground, and it was headed right toward Mira.

  Holt gripped the railing, looking down to the ground racing by below. He could jump, run as fast as he could, but he wouldn’t last ten seconds and he’d never reach her in time.

  Antimatter crystals shot into the air from the deck behind him. Two Raptors exploded as they banked past, caught by Masyn’s and Castor’s spear points. The Helix fired again and another Raptor crashed in flames.

  “Light ’em up or not, boss?” one of Ravan’s men asked, his rifle drawn. The Menagerie looked eager to join in.

  “Sure,” Ravan replied, grabbing her own weapon. “Why the hell not?” Gunfire echoed as they shot into the sky.

  “Captain!” The first mate shouted down from the crow’s nest at the top of the ship’s central mast. “I don’t see any way out of this, traffic’s just too—”

  “Well, find a way!” Olive shouted back. She was at the front, where the helmsman spun the ship’s huge wheel, trying to keep from running into the vessels on either side of it. “If we don’t, we’re going to end up—”

  Two nearby Landships crashed directly into one another, the front of one’s hull tearing loose as both ships disintegrated.

  “Pull starboard!” Olive shouted. “Pull—”

  Her voice was lost amid the screaming of Raptor engines. Holt felt the ship shift under him as it turned hard, barely avoiding the spinning, flaming debris.

  In spite of it, his attention was still on the Wind Star in the distance. It had accelerated past the other ships, only about seven of them now, leading the charge toward the Assembly walkers.

  Holt knew what was coming. It was only a matter of time.

  From the giant shape in the distance, the machine that towered over the others, a single, bright beam of energy erupted. A massive column of heated death that streaked through the air … and slammed into the Wind Star.

  “No,” Holt moaned.

  Holt could see the Barriers along the front of the Landship flare to life and absorb the massive blast, but they couldn’t displace the momentum. The huge vessel rocked violently backward, its front wheels came off the ground and then slammed back down in a cloud of dust. Still, it kept going.

  Gasps echoed from the crew as they watched the same thing Holt did. Another beam of energy erupted from the huge walker. The energy slammed into the Wind Star again.

  Once more the Barriers flashed. The ship listed, losing its forward momentum, beginning to spin.

  “No…”

  Another beam. Another strike. And this time … the Barriers did not hold.

  Holt felt his insides contort as he watched the energy split the huge ship almost down the middle, watching the hull burst into flame, two huge lengths of fire that spun out of control and disintegrated into the ground, spraying metal and debris into the superheated air. No one could have survived it.

  Holt heard a gut-wrenching cry that only a part of him recognized as his own.

  In the distance, Raptors strafed what was left of the Wind Star, covering it in plasma fire, incinerating what little remained.

  There was no question. Mira was gone.

  He felt his legs move, felt his body shift as he made to leap over the railing, to get to her, to save her …

  … and then hands yanked him back. The world moved in slow motion, upending as he fell to the deck.

  He saw Ravan above him, pinning him, yelling something, but he didn’t hear it. More explosions flared, Raptors roared past. The helmsman lost his grip on the wheel and crashed to the deck as the ship listed and Olive ran to take it.

  The world was fire. And death. And he didn’t care. He kept trying to get up, ignoring Ravan’s shouts, ignoring everything but the giant plume of black smoke in the distance where the Wind Star had gone down. There was nothing there but flames now, nothing but fire.

  A dim part of him knew that the last of the light Mira had brought into his life would die with those flames. When they had finished burning, there would be nothing left, not even ash.

  6. ALLAY

  ZOEY FELT THE POD SHAKE as it came to a stop, settling in place along the rack system. Unpleasant as the thing was, there was one blessing to being inside. There were no voices or projections in her mind, somehow it sealed away the Assembly’s thoughts, and it made for a blissful silence she hadn’t known for a long time.
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  The pod vibrated a strange, electronic humming sound, and Zoey braced herself for whatever was to come, to try and be brave. Light flooded in as the pod split into two pieces around her, each sliding back out of the way, and Zoey winced against the brightness. With the pod open, sensations flooded into her mind again.

  Scion.

  Welcome.

  You are safe.

  Scion …

  You are home.

  One after the other, hundreds of them, blending together into a stream of thought and emotion, and it took a second to remember to push it all back.

  When her eyes adjusted, she could see the room beyond the chamber, its walls made of strange black metallic plates formed into wavelike shapes that circled her and stretched upward out of sight. Instinctively, her eyes followed the walls, and she saw there was no ceiling. Far above her, impossibly far, she could see the flickering, golden light from more of the golden entities, moving back and forth, thousands of them.

  It was familiar, this room, and it took a moment for her to realize why. It was like the one the Oracle had shown her in Midnight City, from her repressed memories. She remembered the vision, being tied to a table in the center, one of the crystalline entities descending and burning itself into her body. She remembered the pain, most of all, how she’d screamed …

  Come, the projections intoned.

  In the black room, a dozen or so of the glowing entities hovered in the air. Most of them pulsed in golden light, but two were made of blue and white, their forms casting flickering hues of cobalt and snow.

  It was from one of those entities, Zoey could tell, that the projections came.

  Come …

  It was neither warm nor threatening, merely a request. They wanted her to step into the room, and it was then that Zoey studied the only object that rested there.

  It was another pod, like her own, only it was lying flat on the floor. Its doors were opened too, but she couldn’t see inside, not from this vantage point.

  Come, the entities asked again.

  Zoey didn’t move. As much as she disliked the pod and its claustrophobic confines, she had no desire to step from its relative safety.

  The pod vibrated again, and as it did, its walls began to reform. The various shelves and cables and flashing instruments all smoothed and disappeared, like they had been absorbed into some kind of thick gelatin. The whole thing began to flatten, the back of it moving outward, filling the interior, and pushing Zoey forward.

  She fell onto the floor with a gasp, spun around, and saw the pod had lost most of its form. It looked like a black cylindrical shape of clay.

  No fear, the projections stated encouragingly. You are honored.

  The two blue and white crystalline entities floated above her. The others, the more golden ones, stayed back. She could feel their emotions and thoughts, though, swirling around her, trying to push into her consciousness, and it was more than just the ones in the room, she realized. It was many more. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe, all inhabiting the massive, black structure that stretched out of sight above.

  Come. See.

  Zoey tried to hide her shaking hands. They wanted her to look into the other pod, the one that had been laid before her. She supposed she really had no choice. Besides, this was her bargain, wasn’t it? It was her choice to come here, because it was only here where the answers she needed could be found. She had to find a way to make it right, to fix all that she was responsible for, and this was the only way.

  She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it, but slowly, Zoey peered over the edge of the container.

  Inside lay a man. An adult man. His black hair was just beginning to gray, and his skin was eerily white from what had been years of existence without the sun, if you could count life in one of these pods as an existence.

  Black tubes and wires of all sorts ran around his body and into his mouth, but as unsettling as it looked, he didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. The answer to why was clearly evident.

  His eyes stared blankly upward, and they were completely filled in with oily black. He was one of the Succumbed, those whose minds had been taken over by the Tone, and his current state, a blank, mindless existence inside one of these chambers, Zoey realized, must be the fate of everyone who gave into the Tone and disappeared inside one of the Assembly Presidiums.

  One of the brilliant blue and white crystalline entities slowly drifted up until it hovered directly over the body of the man in the chamber.

  Guide. The projections came. Ease. Allay.

  In confusion, Zoey looked up at the entity … and watched as it began to slowly sink downward toward the man.

  Guide. Ease. Allay.

  She felt her heart beat, felt a wave of sickness as she realized what was happening. The same thing that had happened to her. The energetic being was going to sink into this man … and it wanted her, somehow, to help the process, to guide and aid the action.

  Guide. Ease. Allay, the projections came again.

  “No!” Zoey shouted, refusing to project back. She wouldn’t help these things do to someone else what they had done to her. She wouldn’t, no matter what answers she might receive or what she might learn.

  Guide. Ease. Allay. The entity kept sinking, closer and closer. Zoey could feel the heat coming from the thing, and the closer it got, the more her head filled with a kind of horrible static.

  Zoey stepped back, shaking her head. “No.”

  And then the crystalline shape sank into the man’s body. Even though he was Succumbed, he gasped as the energy absorbed into him. More and more of it pushed in, and, as it did, his skin began to glow incandescently, lighting up the strange, black room even brighter.

  Then something awful happened.

  The man’s shape flashed. Something like flames burst from his skin, and before Zoey could shut her eyes to block out the sight, she saw his body disintegrate into chalky white ash that billowed into the air like a milky cloud.

  Zoey fell to her knees in stunned, horrified shock.

  She kept her eyes shut tight, refusing to look back up at the open chamber, not wanting to see it empty now.

  “No, no, no, no…” she moaned, but it did little good. The man was gone. Just like that, and she, however unwittingly, had played a role. Her refusal to help had led to his death.

  All around her she felt new projections, and the emotion was almost a singular one. Disappointment.

  She had not performed as the aliens hoped. It was the one consolation she had.

  Why? The sensation entered her mind. She opened her eyes and glared back up at the crystalline shape. She hated them, she realized, and a part of her didn’t like the feeling. She hated the Assembly for everything they had put her through. She would destroy them, if she could.

  And that was exactly what she was going to do, she promised herself. Somehow …

  The empty pod shuddered as it lifted off the floor, closing and drifting away on the rack system. Almost immediately, another pod appeared, rumbling downward and settling in the same position and slowly opening.

  Zoey could just see another human shape inside. Her stomach churned as she realized it was all going to happen again.

  “Please, don’t…” Zoey begged, watching the blue and white entity float back into position. “Please.”

  Guide. Ease. Allay. The same projections again.

  Without thinking, Zoey stood and looked.

  Inside was a woman this time. With blond hair that glowed like honey. She was beautiful, and the sight of her took Zoey’s breath away. Not just because she was so pretty … but because Zoey recognized her, and the realization hit her like a lightning bolt.

  “Wait…” Zoey cried, but the entity began to sink again.

  Guide. Ease. Allay.

  “Wait!” It didn’t stop, it kept descending. Zoey’s eyes moved back and forth between the entity and the woman underneath. Most of her face was hidden under the tubes and wires, but it was her, and
there was no way it was a coincidence.

  It had been Zoey’s plan to resist the aliens’ wishes, whatever their agenda. She was here to save Mira and Holt and the Max. Even if they had put a hundred bodies in front of her and made her responsible for their deaths, she would still have resisted, because something inside her told her it was the lesser of two evils.

  But … now …

  The woman in the chamber. How could it be?

  Guide. Ease. Allay.

  The entity continued to descend, burning toward the female body.

  Zoey watched a second longer … then made her choice. They had forced her hand.

  She reached out with her mind and found the presence of the descending entity. Next, she reached out for the eerily silent blankness of the woman in the chamber.

  She wasn’t sure exactly how to do it, to help the entity descend into the woman, and she only had seconds to figure it out. Zoey reached out for something she had come to depend on. The Feelings rose within her, and Zoey listened, studying the paths they showed her, adopting their suggestions.

  She shut her eyes as violent static filled her mind, but she held on, holding onto both the entity and the woman under it, guiding them into each other, helping them to merge, and as she did, it all became clear. She knew what to do, and … it felt amazing, she discovered: wielding the power. Zoey adjusted the radiance and the vibrations of the entity and the woman, absorbing some of the heat and energy as the conversion occurred, redirecting it, slowly allowing the two consciousnesses to blend and burn into one unified whole …

  And then it was over. Zoey collapsed onto the floor, her head full of pain and static.

  When she opened her eyes, the blue and white entity was gone. As she watched, the woman in the chamber slowly rose, pulling tubes and wires from her body, sitting up weakly. Her eyes were no longer black. Instead, for one brief moment, they flashed in a kind of golden color … then it washed away, as quickly as it had appeared.

  The woman looked down at Zoey on the floor … and smiled.