Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (8 page)

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.

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.

“Mom…?” Zoey asked in disbelief.

Then the exertion and the pain finally overtook her. She passed out amid hundreds of thousands of projections of joy and elation that echoed up and down the massive structure she was in, bouncing inside her head until everything went mercifully dark.

7.
FLAGS

RAVAN WALKED ALONG THE DECK
of the
Wind Rift,
trying to hide just how hard it was to balance on top of the giant, accursed ship. Why would anyone build something so silly and huge, nothing but a giant moving target? She missed her old dune buggy, a Boston-Murphy style she’d restored herself, something reliable that ran on real things like gas and sweat, not artifacts and giant sails made of parachutes.

The
Wind Rift
had branched off to the south and left the rest of the fleet to deal with the buzzing Raptors and the giant Assembly army a day ago. Most likely Currency had been flattened and the rest of the Landships were all destroyed now, burning like the
Wind Star,
the ship the Freebooter had been on.

It would have been easy to say the idiots got what they deserved, but Ravan’s thoughts were conflicted. She could still hear Holt’s mournful wail as she pushed him to the deck and kept him from leaping off. That was more than a day ago, and she hadn’t seen him since. He’d retreated down to the lower decks, to a cabin Olive cleared for him, which was probably a good thing. Holt had lost everything once. Ravan had been, at the time, the only person he’d ever told that story to, but, she thought with a slight sense of bitterness, it had been Mira and that little girl who had brought him back, made him believe in something again.