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

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Just because it was slowed, though, in no way meant it hit gently.

  The world rocked cataclysmically as the Crux slammed into the Machine Works Pinnacle’s main platform, spraying splinters in a torrent as it plowed through it. It was all Holt could do to hold on, and he groaned as the impact sent tremors of pain through his body.

  Everything was a confused, distorted blur after that.

  He felt someone lift him up and onto the deck of the Pinnacle platform. He saw Castor and Masyn, Ravan too, all pulling themselves slowly out of what was left of the Crux. And shapes, dozens of them, pouring out of the Machine Works, carrying guns. In seconds, they were surrounded, those weapons aiming down.

  Next to him, Ravan looked up at the rebels. “Hate to be dramatic,” she said, breathing heavy, “but take us to your leader.”

  The rebels looked down at her with surreal surprise, stunned by the sudden damage and violence that had engulfed the city. Holt exhaled. Ravan had actually pulled it off. Barely.

  And it was all for nothing …

  20. ROGAN WEST

  HOLT, RAVAN, CASTOR, and Masyn walked forward in a clustered group, their hands bound, which, in Holt’s injured condition, made for a very uncomfortable walk. It had taken awhile to convince Masyn to give up her Lancet and rings—it was seen as a great failing for any Helix to lose them, but eventually she’d relented. Castor hovered over her protectively, though she looked completely fierce and unintimidated.

  The Machine Works Pinnacle was what it sounded like: a giant garage for fixing, modifying, and in some cases, building the Menagerie’s large host of machines. Dune buggies, Hummers, Jeeps, gyrocopters, and ultralights. Holt had always liked the Machine Works, there was something encouraging about the way the Menagerie kept the old world running. He liked the sparks from the welding guns, and the whining of power wrenches. In spite of all the noise, he was always able to think better here.

  As he moved, studying the collection of vehicles, it was impossible not to think about how powerful a force they could be in San Francisco. Of course, that would never happen now. Tiberius had no interest in cooperation, and he had been their best hope. These rebels were a temporary insurrection at best. Still, by denying Tiberius two key Pinnacles, they had dealt him a serious blow. Not only had he lost the vehicles stored in the Machine Works, he no longer had the ability to repair and rearm the ones he still had.

  They were all ushered into the central area of the platform, reserved for Menagerie aircraft, and pushed toward a particular gyrocopter. The Menagerie had more than a hundred of the strange flying crafts, most outfitted with small-caliber machine guns, though some had been configured to carry bombs. All the gyrocopters looked basically the same: cigar shaped, one- or two-seated fuselages, with a propeller at the rear end and a larger blade up top, like a helicopter. There were no wings on the main body, just two small, thin ones that branched off the vertical stabilizer at the rear.

  As they got closer, Holt noticed a pair of legs sticking out from under the gyro, welding sparks spraying from the opposite end. They stopped in front of it, the guards waiting. Whoever was underneath was who they had been brought to meet.

  Another few seconds and the figure rolled out from under and sat up. It was Rogan West, the same kid Holt had met on the Commerce Pinnacle before. His long, blond hair was tied back now, and he wore grease-stained overalls and a tool belt that had definitely seen better days.

  Rogan took off his welding glasses and studied each of the four in turn, and when his eyes got to Holt, he noticed that they were almost completely filled in with the Tone’s blackness. West stood up and took off his gloves, shoving them in a pocket on his overalls, revealing a purple tarantula on his right wrist and a Menagerie star with four points on his left. He pulled his eyes away from Holt and nodded to the gyrocopter.

  “I love gyros,” he said. “Look like choppers, but they’re way different. Top blade isn’t actually powered, did you know that? Only the rear propeller is, and all it does is push the thing. It’s the wind and the momentum that turns the top blade, and that’s what gives it lift. Moving forward is what lets it fly, and the faster it goes, the higher it can climb. Something I always liked about that, something philosophical, but I could never really say what. Not much of a poet, I guess.”

  Rogan studied Masyn and Castor. “I don’t know either of you.” Then his gaze moved back to Holt and Ravan. “But you two … you are what I call ‘known quantities.’ Ravan Parkes and Holt Hawkins. Wherever you guys go, it’s like you bring a damn wrecking ball with you.”

  Ravan seemed unimpressed. “Thought you’d be happier to see us. You should be.”

  “Happy? You just demolished one of the two Pinnacles I control. You have any idea what it’s going to take to fix that?”

  “Fix it?” Ravan asked, confused.

  Rogan smiled at the question and shook his head. “Ah. So. That’s what you think of me. Crazy anarchist looking to destroy everything. I don’t want to destroy anything, I fix things, it’s what I do, and it’s the whole point, really. Faust is broken and no one seems to wanna fix it.”

  Ravan paused. “What if I said we wanted to fix it?”

  “I’d say what you really mean is you’re looking for my protection from Tiberius, who will surely try and recapture this one.” He nodded to Holt. “In fact, the only reason I don’t think this is some elaborate ruse by Tiberius is because Hawkins is here with you.” Rogan studied him oddly, like some piece of machinery that needed an upgrade. Holt supposed the analogy wasn’t that far off. “When I saw you step into that gunfire with those grenades, I thought to myself, now there’s a dead man walking. Funny thing is, you see the same thing, don’t you? You just don’t care. Guess I was right all along, it is about you after all.”

  Holt felt Ravan’s stare, but he didn’t look at her. “I didn’t ask for this, and Ravan shouldn’t be—”

  Holt cut off as she elbowed him in one of his broken ribs. The pain was sharp.

  “No,” Rogan agreed. “She definitely shouldn’t, but she has, so what now?”

  “The answer’s obvious,” Ravan stated impatiently. “You bring us in, we help you take Tiberius down. More than that, we have them.” She motioned to Castor and Masyn. “Which means we have the deal they were here to offer Tiberius. Make it with us, and he will fall. You have no idea what these weapons are—”

  “They punch straight through solid steel from what I’ve heard.” Rogan cut her off. “And they’re reusable. Idea was to make them into bullets, I guess.”

  Holt stared at Rogan in surprise. What he’d just said implied more than a passing knowledge of Antimatter crystals.

  “You think I could have a revolution on this scale without my own people inside?” Rogan looked back to the gyrocopter. “I’m a mechanic, I have a good eye for things. Half the spare parts you find have hidden flaws, you have to be able to tell which have any value. I see value in you, Ravan. I see value in the White Helix deal. Hawkins, though…”

  Holt stiffened, he didn’t like that this was becoming about him.

  “Holt escaped Tiberius twice,” Ravan answered. “It made him look less powerful, and Holt joining you can inspire others to do the same.”

  Rogan shook his head. “I don’t see a whole lot that’s particularly ‘inspiring’ about him.”

  Holt didn’t argue, he didn’t care. This was all a hopeless undertaking anyway, they were just waiting for the inevitable now.

  “The promise of weapons, powerful ones,” Rogan continued, “that’s an offer for the future, when my current problems have been fixed, but it doesn’t do me much good now, does it? Believe it or not, I’m not interested in destroying the Menagerie, I want to change and profit it. I want to fix it. Tiberius’s time has come. You said it yourself, he turned down the White Helix deal. Why? Because power is never bargained for? Were those his exact words? He’s a mechanical genius, I respect that. A visionary too, but … why couldn’t we bargain with the White H
elix? Isn’t that a more direct route to power than war? We have tremendous resources and trade goods, but most of them just sit in a stockpile we could never possibly use on our own. What’s weak about bartering them? Power can be increased through all kinds of means, that’s what Tiberius doesn’t get.”

  “So, you’re a capitalist, then?” Ravan asked.

  “Oh, I’m no Wind Trader, I’m a pirate. I’m just the only one who sees the world’s changing.”

  “More than you know…” Holt said quietly. Rogan looked back to him.

  “If you want this to work, I need two things from you,” Rogan told him. “Something to help me overthrow Tiberius, first off. If that doesn’t happen, then anything else we agree on isn’t particularly useful.”

  Holt had thoughts on that. He’d spent years in Faust, he knew parts of it very well. Provided they hadn’t changed, he could definitely think of ways to hurt Tiberius, maybe even take another Pinnacle.

  “What’s the second?” Holt asked.

  “Trust,” Rogan answered. “Something that shows me you’re really in this. I look in your eyes and I don’t see anything. Maybe what Ravan thinks of you is true, maybe you were someone once, but whatever that part of you was, I don’t see it, and I don’t trust you because of it. I need you to make me believe.”

  Holt had had enough. “I really don’t care what you believe, Rogan.”

  Rogan grinned and nodded. “Pretty much the answer I expected.” He looked back at Ravan, Masyn, and Castor behind her. “You three can stay, your value’s obvious, but Hawkins leaves. Tomorrow we’ll slip him outside in a buggie, he can head wherever he wants, but I don’t want him here.”

  Ravan shook her head. “Holt stays or we all go.”

  “Then you all go,” Rogan answered without hesitation, slipping his gloves back on and kneeling down to the gyro again. “Take tonight to think about it, if you want. Of course, careful deliberation doesn’t really seem to be your strong suit, does it?”

  He slid back under the gyrocopter and resumed his work. Holt felt his bonds cut with a knife, and saw Rogan’s men doing the same to the others. They were led away, toward one of the walkways that wound up the side of the tower, and eventually to one of the Pinnacle’s residential platforms about halfway up. Masyn and Castor were led to one room, Ravan and Holt to another.

  The room was furnished with a mismatched set of end tables, a desk, a dresser, and two small beds. Right then, nothing had ever looked more appealing than that bed and its mattress and—

  Ravan slammed him against the wall, and pain arced through his back.

  “Which is it?” she demanded. “You don’t see you’re ruining everything? Or you just don’t give a damn?”

  “I’ve said it a hundred times, Ravan, you should have left me there, forgotten about me, but you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Like always.”

  “You’re right, I have a real problem doing the smart thing when it comes to you.” Ravan’s hand gripped the collar of his shirt tightly. In his condition, Holt wasn’t sure he could break away if he wanted. “It pisses me off, you know? I hate weakness. I. Don’t. Make. Sacrifices. Not for other people, not for anything … except when it’s you.”

  “I never asked you to,” he told her, his voice rising as his anger and frustration built. “I don’t want anything, don’t you see? I was happy where I was, everything was over and done with, and then you dragged me back into it all again. What is it going to take for you to understand, I don’t want you!”

  Ravan’s eyes filled with more emotion than he’d ever seen from her. He wanted her away from him, he wanted her gone, it was best for her, safer, best for both of them really. He had to make her stop sacrificing things for him; he wasn’t worth it, because he couldn’t give her what she wanted. He would never be able to give that to anyone again.

  Her grip on him loosened. When she spoke, her voice was a torn whisper. “You’re right. You didn’t ask for this. You’ve never asked me for anything, have you? Because you don’t care about me, not really, you never have, and I just keep putting myself in your crosshairs over and over again.”

  “Rae…” Holt started.

  “No,” she told him. “I’m done. It’s done. For what that’s worth. Whatever debts I owed you, they’re paid, now you take yourself and your things and you leave. You leave and you never come back.”

  She held him against the wall another moment … then pushed away, slamming the door behind her.

  Holt shut his eyes, strange sensations overpowering the pain, things he hadn’t felt much lately. Emotions. Bad ones. Guilt, shame, anger.

  He lashed out and knocked a lamp off one of the end tables and watched it shatter on the wooden floor. It didn’t make him feel any better.

  Leave, Ravan had said, but where would he go? There was no place left for him now.

  21. NEXUS

  ZOEY LAY ON A WHITE, shaggy carpet near the fireplace, staring up at Aunt Rose as she read from a book in her lap. Try as she might, Zoey couldn’t make out the words Rose was reading, even though something told her they were important.

  You are my sunshine, my only sunshine … The song echoed everywhere, drowning out Rose’s voice. She thought she could make out one word as the woman spoke it, but she wasn’t sure.

  It looked like … “dragon.”

  Then the dream flashed away.

  * * *

  ZOEY WOKE IN THE strange, black room with its wavy walls. Rose, or the woman who had once been her, sat on the couch, holding her head in her hands. Zoey had an idea why.

  “It’s not the way you thought it would be, is it?” Zoey asked. “The memories and the dreams.”

  Rose startled at the little girl’s voice. When she looked up, her eyes had a wildness to them, and, for just a moment, Zoey felt a glimmer of emotion. It was fear.

  “I don’t like them,” Rose said quietly. “They are … disturbing.”

  “When I was with the Mas’Erinhah, they showed me things I know now were memories of the Feelings. It was strange and scary, because they felt like my memories, but they weren’t. It’s probably the same for you. They’re getting harder to hold back, aren’t they? It’s getting harder to know whose they are.”

  “I don’t understand. My personality should be dominant.”

  “It’s not that easy, Aunt Rose,” Zoey said, and the woman’s eyes thinned.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said.

  “It’s only going to get harder if you fight it,” Zoey told her. “You were fighting it before, that’s why the dream ended. You were having the same one I was, weren’t you? You reading the book to me, in the past. What did the book say, Aunt Rose?”

  “Stop calling me that!” the woman shouted. “I won’t experience the memories. I refuse to. They are weakness, and I am not weak, I am Mas’Shinra.”

  Zoey shook her head. “You said it yourself, you’re more than that now. You’re both her and you. Don’t you see? It’ll be the same for every Assembly that inhabits any one of them.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “They’ll have this same struggle, this same pain, the other mind will never let you destroy their memories, because memories are too important.”

  “This is not the way it was prophesied,” Rose said, confused.

  “Maybe you just don’t understand the prophecy,” Zoey told her. She felt emotion pour from Rose, more fear, but doubt now too. She felt other things, could see them, like thousands of threads that pushed out from the woman’s glowing consciousness. Each thread was a memory, Zoey could tell, memories that involved her. She wondered if she could pull one of those threads, if she could bring them to the surface somehow and …

  The emotions vanished, so did the strings. The woman stared at her sternly. “It takes strength to overcome, and so we will. You will help us.”

  Zoey shook her head. “I told you, I won’t. Never again.”

  “You have no choice,” Rose said. “You are the Scion. You will be
our Ascension.”

  To Zoey it seemed liked the woman studied her with two different looks. One full of compassion, the other of menace.

  * * *

  ZOEY LAY ON A black, metallic table in another lab, arrayed with mechanical arms. Each held a wrist or ankle, keeping her pinned against the hard gurney. Inside stood four of the smaller Centurion walkers, as she was now calling them, their three-optic “eyes” studying her inquisitively. Rose was there too, watching from a corner, and she still seemed torn by their previous conversation.

  “What is this for?” Zoey asked. “What are they doing?”

  Pieces of the walls on either side of Zoey morphed into perfect, circular holes, and two long, actuated mechanical arms slid out. At the end of each was a strange, triangular device, made of brilliant silver metal. They looked like giant antennae, and lights flashed all over them.

  “Aunt Rose,” Zoey moaned, watching the arms floating toward her. She was frightened, not just by the arms, but because something about it all was very familiar. “Aunt Rose, please. What are they going to do?”

  “Shh, child,” the woman told her. “It will be over soon … and you won’t remember a thing.”

  Something about that bothered her. You won’t remember a thing.

  The arms slid closer. An audible hum filled her ears. The Feelings welled up then, coming to the surface of their own accord, whispering and suggesting things. She followed where they led, toward the woman who had been Rose. There was emotion there now, just perceptible, under the surface.

  Apprehension. Doubt.

  The Feelings turned her attention to Rose’s memories, and with their help, she saw the threads again. Zoey reached out with her mind and took hold of the thread the Feelings seemed to indicate … and then she pulled on it.

  Rose gasped, feeling what Zoey was doing. “Wait…”

  But it was too late. Zoey pulled harder, loosening the walls around those memories, letting them come to the surface, and when they did, they washed over her.