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

by J. Barton Mitchell

  Before, she had been connecting to the dreams of the personality of Aunt Rose, and the entity inside had managed to block Zoey from them. Now, however, Zoey remembered that moment herself, she didn’t need to share in Rose’s dream of it. It meant the tables had been turned. Where before the entity inside Rose had to keep Zoey from seeing its human memories, now it was struggling not to experience Zoey’s.

  “I do not want this…” the woman muttered.

  “Why do they scare you so much?” Zoey asked.

  “I don’t like how they feel.”

  Zoey studied the woman across the room, and felt the doubt that poured out of her.

  “No,” Zoey said. “They scare you because you do like how they feel. It’s not like anything you feel normally, is it?”

  The woman said nothing. Zoey closed her eyes, recalling the memory she had been dreaming a moment more, no longer closed to her.

  So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises up before you, larger than any you have ever seen …

  They were the next words from Rose’s book. Zoey fanned the memory’s flames, moved it from her consciousness to the woman’s.

  The reaction was immediate and violent. “Don’t!”

  If an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do.

  The woman who had been Rose stood up, her eyes were on fire. She looked pained and enraptured at the same moment. “I will kill you.”

  Zoey just pushed the memories further, harder.

  You must think that something is happening to you. That life has not forgotten you. That it holds you in its hand … and it will not let you fall.

  “Stop!” Rose yelled, falling to her knees. Then, softer, she breathed, “Sunshine, please…”

  Zoey cut the stream off, studying the woman now, watching her shudder on the floor, dealing with what was a normal amount of human emotion, but for the entity inside, it was a torrent. The more Zoey forced the feelings, the more the woman’s personalities seem to waver, the more of her aunt emerged.

  “What is … this called?” the woman asked. Zoey knew she meant the feeling Rose had been experiencing, reading to her, her niece. They had been very close once.

  “Love,” Zoey said. She got up and moved to Rose. Gently, she ran her fingers through the woman’s hair. It was as soft as she remembered. “And you are burying it. If you do what you say you want to, it will be lost forever, no one will ever feel these things again.”

  Rose looked at her with red, swollen eyes. “There is nothing to be done. We must be Ascended, and you will do it.”

  “How?”

  “They will take you to where the Tone for this part of the world is broadcast. You will tap into it, and then use the power of the Nexus to force each of us into each of them.”

  Zoey nodded. “Because the Tone is the Whole, and it touches your minds as much as it touches theirs.”

  “The Nexus will be consumed,” Rose told her, “and only we will remain.”

  “You’d use up the Nexus?”

  “So that we would always be free.”

  Zoey studied her. “There’s another way.” The woman who had been Rose looked at her curiously.

  Zoey projected the details into her mind, sharing with her what the Nexus had told her. As she did, the Feelings swirled to life, and they were worried, they didn’t like sharing the information, but Zoey pushed them back. There was nothing any of the Assembly could do now to stop her, and Rose, the real Rose, the one she had loved, was coming back. Zoey knew it …

  The woman absorbed it all, and as she did, Zoey could feel her shock.

  “But, that is … so unlike what we believe,” the woman breathed.

  “That doesn’t make it wrong. You have to trust me, Rose, because I need your help.” Zoey noticed that the woman no longer objected to being called her human name. “We can bring these feelings to them all. It’s what you’ve denied yourselves all this time. Help me, and you’ll never need to be scared again, I promise.”

  Rose stared back at her, on the verge of speaking, and Zoey could feel the doubt welling up inside the woman …

  The back wall reformed itself into an opening. Through it entered three Centurions, their armor colored blue and white, their tentacled arms hanging at their sides. Then the opposite wall shifted, making an even larger opening. As it did, two of the pod containers rumbled to a stop outside, hanging from the giant rack system there, and Zoey could see again into the massive interior of the Citadel.

  “It is time,” Rose said.

  Zoey looked back down at Rose. The emotions from before were gone. So was the torn expression on her face, the confusion in her eyes. She was stoic again, the mask had returned.

  They entered their separate pods. The doors closed and Zoey felt hers shake and begin to rise, straight up, farther than she had ever been, then vibrate slightly as it came to a stop. Pieces in front of her morphed out of the way, making a door for her to step through, and when she did her eyes widened at an amazing sight.

  She was on some kind of balcony, perched near the top of the Citadel. Rose was there too, so were several Centurions, and a group of Ephemera. They were each perfect mixtures of blue and white, and she could feel their satisfaction as she stepped onto the balcony.

  The ruins of San Francisco stretched out before her, giant buildings connected through a grid work of old streets, and eerily, it was all perfectly devoid of debris and old cars, like the Assembly had just swept the city clean.

  While it may have been empty, it was not dead. There was movement everywhere, far below. The walkers, from this height, were just tiny dots on the ground, but there were thousands upon thousands of them, massed everywhere. Swarms of gunships and other aircraft, their lights flashing, flew through the air.

  It was an uncountable number of Assembly, and Zoey could feel the emotions blasting up at her. Victory, lust, but also adoration and pride, and all of it directed at her.

  “You see?” Rose asked. “Nothing can stop it now.”

  “I never said I wanted to stop it,” Zoey said back. “Just that it won’t be like you think.”

  “Everything relies on your friends making it here, and there’s little chance they will. Look at what waits for them.” She motioned to the multitude, the insurmountable army.

  Zoey shook her head. “They always make it.”

  “Even so,” Rose said, “they will be changed. They will not be who they were.”

  Zoey looked past her, to the east, back into the interior of the land, to where Holt and Mira and the Max were fighting to get to her.

  “I know,” Zoey said, and her voice held great sadness.

  36. SORCERER

  AS SHE MOVED PAST the train cars one at a time, Mira smiled. They’d done it, and it had only taken a week. Sixteen cars had been scavenged from all over the yard and hooked together behind the locomotives she’d found. Technically, they could pull more than thirty cars, but Mira didn’t want to risk it. Sparks sprayed up and down the line as Smitty’s men put the final touches on welding in the armor plating, which meant each boxcar was probably twice as heavy now. Large slits had been cut out of the plates, and she could see the barrels from salvaged Antimatter cannons.

  Mira noticed something else new: names were painted on the armor that now covered the cars. Mira knew them, many she’d committed to memory herself.

  They were the names of fallen Wind Traders and White Helix and of lost Landships. They blanketed the sides of the train, up and down its entire length. Mira tried not to focus on them, the smile fading away at yet another sign of all that had been lost.

  “Got him pretty fine-tuned at this point,” Smitty said, following along behind her. He, along with Caspira, Dresden, Conner, and some of the Doyen were walking with her, studying the train. “Took awhile to figure out the engineering, just getting the damn thing started was like a calculus problem. Idles pretty smoothly, though, or at least as smooth as you’d expect from the
biggest diesel engine ever made.”

  “What about fuel?” Mira asked.

  “Tanks are full. Got my guys barreling up extra diesel, should have enough for the trip, if I’m right about MPG for this thing. Then again, who the hell knows? I never even drove a car before the Assembly showed up.”

  “What do you think the top speed is?” Conner asked. His demeanor had improved over the last few days. Mira guessed he’d come to accept that this was probably the last option open to them, and even though he likely didn’t believe in the furor around Zoey, he was committed nonetheless.

  “I bet he could do one-twenty easy,” Smitty replied, “the manuals said these engines are rated for up to two hundred, but with the weight we’re carrying…”

  “No way the ships can keep up with that,” Dresden said, “even if we burn the Zephyrs.”

  “We’ll take it slower then,” Mira assured him. “All that matters is we get there in one piece. Which leads us to you, Caspira.”

  The White Helix Adzer, her brownish hair in its long, tight braid, nodded back. “We pulled cannons from the scrapped Landships, actuated them up and down, left and right. They’re on both sides of the cars, the ones that are armed at least. We wanted to arm all the cars but there just weren’t enough spare cannons. As it is, we’ve armed twelve out of sixteen, so more than half.”

  “Either way, makes the thing a rolling gun platform,” Smitty said, staring at the giant machine with pride. “I’d hate to mess with him. Plus we welded on every last scrap piece of metal we could find in this dump. He’ll take a pounding, that’s for damn sure, and then there’s your Barriers.”

  Mira and the Landship artifact handlers had spent the week assembling Barrier artifacts and other combinations, installing them up and down the train, all of it from components from the Wind Shear, Dresden and Conner’s retirement haul that was depreciating by the day. Conner hadn’t liked them using it, no matter how committed he might be. Every time she or one of the handlers went into the Wind Shear’s hold he grimaced.

  The truth was, though, more than half those components were dead, their powers gone, and the rest would follow. As long as the Barriers held, the train was pretty well protected, but there were no guarantees anymore.

  “What are you going to do with the Helix?” Conner asked, and the Doyen in the group stared at him heatedly. The question could have been phrased a little more delicately. The White Helix may have been taking their cues from Mira, but she was a long way from replacing Dane. No one did anything with the Helix.

  Mira looked to a tall female Doyen amid the others. “Dasha, what did you decide?”

  It was the same girl who had challenged the Assembly what seemed like ages ago, back in the Currency shipyards. She still had her almost-white, razored hair, and all of the fire she’d exhibited that day, but events had focused and tempered it. Mira noticed lately that Dasha was always the first Doyen to speak up among the others and with the strongest voice. There was strength in her, like in Dane, but if she felt any of his secret apprehension about leadership, she didn’t show it.

  “Your idea sounds good,” Dasha said. “Divide the Arcs between the train cars. If we run into trouble, they can take position on the roof or deploy around the train. The remainder can go on the ships. There’s something to be said for having the ability to drop troops away from the train.”

  Mira nodded in agreement. The White Helix had come to accept Mira, almost as one of their own now. Where before any non-Helix would have been excluded from their campfires, Mira was welcomed. They even let Max come, if he was with her, which he inevitably was these days. Nemo had been a constant annoyance the dog was happy to leave on the Wind Shear.

  She wasn’t sure if it was Dane’s last words or simply a gesture of respect, but she was glad for their acceptance. Not just because her own actions had cost them so much, but because she truly felt they would be with her until the very end, and there was comfort in that. It was like Dane had said: Zoey belonged to them too.

  In her mind, Mira ran through their assets. The train now, of course. There were almost a thousand Helix, and eleven Landships, a number that stung every time she heard it. She could still see the glorious image of the full Wind Trader fleet moving through the Barren before they’d gotten to the train yard and everything had gone the way it had.

  The Assembly count stood at eighty-eight, not including dropships. They were going to be the weakest link until they got to San Francisco, if only because of their speed. Even if they slowed the train down for the Landships, it would still be too fast for the walkers to keep up.

  Mira and Ambassador had worked out a plan to deal with it. They would just utilize the Ospreys more: the dropships could keep up with the train and the fleet, even carrying Spiders. If they ran into trouble, they could deploy as needed, and the Brutes, even though they would be lagging behind, could teleport in additional forces. Mira had sworn that they would not get caught like they had before, and she meant to keep her word.

  Mira stopped as she reached the front of the train, where the two giant locomotives stood, the rest of the cars snaking out behind them. Along the side of the engines, something had been painted in huge, red letters.

  A name. SORCERER.

  Mira stared at the words in surprise.

  “Just a little name the boys gave him, hope you don’t mind,” the engineer said, studying the engines. “Thought of calling him Rolling Thunder, but it sounded too much like a seventies movie.”

  “Her, you mean,” Caspira injected patiently. “All ships are female.”

  “Well this is a train, isn’t it?” Smitty replied gruffly. “Not a ship.”

  “It’s bad luck to—”

  “Sorcerer,” Mira said, cutting them off before they got going. They’d managed to work well together the last few weeks, but they still had their moments. “I like it.”

  “Yes,” Dasha said approvingly. “A strong name.” The Helix all around her nodded.

  Mira looked back down the train, mixing in and out of all the ruined boxcars and the charred remains of Landships. Even though it was all covered in rust, seeing it—this thing that everyone had come together to make, where they had collectively placed what was left of their hopes—it seemed to sparkle in the sun. Mira smiled again, then turned back to the business at hand.

  “You have the map?” she asked.

  Dresden rolled out the huge map from the office wall they’d studied previously, and everyone closed in to look at it.

  “Where is it we’re meeting them?”

  Dresden pointed to a small town about fifty miles west. “Burleson,” he said. “We can pick up the Western Terminus for San Francisco there too.”

  Mira studied the dot on the map. The Phantom Regiment, the famous resistance group which fought in the San Francisco ruins, were waiting for them there. If they could find them, they just might make up for all their losses so far.

  “And we know how to switch tracks?” Mira looked at Smitty. It was maybe the biggest part of this whole plan. If they couldn’t figure out how to switch tracks at the old junctions, the train, no matter how fancy and powerful it was, wasn’t going anywhere near San Francisco.

  Smitty nodded. “Think so, yeah. Deal is, we’ll have to stop and do it manually. In the World Before it was automatic, trains never even slowed down, but no one’s running those controls anymore. It’ll cost us time.”

  “And we’ll be vulnerable while we wait,” Conner finished for him, pointing out the obvious.

  “I’d think vulnerability, by this point, we should be used to,” Mira remarked. She looked up from the map and studied them all in turn, the Wind Traders, the Helix, all people who she’d come to care about, and who, once more, she was about to put in harm’s way.

  “I’m proud of all of you,” she said. “This is … really something. Now let’s get this big bastard rolling.”

  No one hesitated, they all moved off, heading to finish whatever needed finishing, getting
ready to move.

  When they were gone, and it was just her, Mira peered into the distance, over the flatlands to where the hills of the coast began to form. She could see the giant, faded black form of the Citadel, a menacing shape covered in haze.

  “We’re coming, Zoey,” she said. “Just hold on.”

  37. PHANTOM REGIMENT

  THE WIND SHEAR RUMBLED forward under the bright sun, bouncing on the rocky terrain near the train tracks, and as it did, Mira couldn’t stop staring at the giant machine to their right. Sorcerer in motion was a sight to see.

  It thundered westward, pulling its detachment of sixteen armored cars, each painted with angry, wicked-looking figures. Demons and snakes and crude pictures of Mantis walkers with Xs marking them out. The names stood out prominently too. So did the gun ports in the armor which had replaced the cars’ doors.

  Eight Landships escorted Sorcerer, each with two full Arcs of Helix on board in case of trouble. The three remaining ships ran a few miles ahead, scouting for obstructions or signs of Assembly. At the rear followed a dozen Osprey dropships, each carrying either a collection of Mantises or a Spider walker. She could feel the sensations coming off them, the joy that came with movement, the anticipation of approaching conflict.

  “Didn’t wanna ride on your new toy?” Dresden asked behind her, near the wheel with Parker and Jennifer. They were on the helm deck, and everyone watched the giant train cutting a path through the landscape. Max and Nemo were both asleep nearby, the cat curled up against the dog. Max may not have transitioned to outright affection for the feline, but at least he was tolerating him.

  “Kinda got used to this one,” Mira answered.

  “It suits you,” he said back. “You’re good on a ship.”

  “You tried to recruit me once.”

  “I did?” Dresden asked dubiously.

  “Months ago, back at that trading post, during that Assembly assault.” It had been a harrowing escape, and the first time she or Holt had witnessed Zoey’s true powers. In a way, many things had begun that day.