Vanquish (Blackout Book 9), page 1
Blackout: Vanquish
Book 9
Daniel Young
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
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1
“This is hopeless,” Quort growled. “He’s a vegetable.”
“I don’t know why you keep trying to get through to him,” Lana added. “He’ll never respond. He just sits there and stares into space.”
“That’s my friend you’re talking about,” Roy snapped. “He might be under a cloud right now, but he’s still my captain and my commanding officer. I won’t give up on him.”
“I hate to break it to you, sonny,” Lana told him, “but he’s neither a captain nor your commanding officer anymore. He isn’t even Jackson Keogh anymore. He’s barely alive.”
“I realize he might be facing a few challenges, but—”
“He’s facing more than challenges,” Quort interjected. “He might as well be dead.”
Liri stuck her face in front of Jackson’s eyes. “Jackson! Can you hear me?”
“What’s the point in trying?” Lana asked again. “We’ve tried everything for days, and he never responds. He’s finished. Just ignore him.”
“I won’t ignore him,” Roy repeated. “There has to be a way to get through to him.”
“I’d love to hear how you plan to do that. The highest trained medical experts on the planet have tried. He doesn’t do anything but sit there and blink. We might as well move him to a safe location where he can live out the rest of his life in peace and quiet. He’s done his part, and now it’s up to us to finish the job. We have way too much work left to do to waste any more time on a hopeless case like him.”
Roy, Quort, Liri, and Lana stood in a ring around Jackson’s chair. They all stared down at him with hard, flinty glares. Arlyane came over in his wheelchair and he scrutinized Jackson, too.
“I hate to say this,” he breathed, “but I think Lana is right. We lost Jackson the same way we lost Woolzi and Hitori and Ned and Ugor. He’s gone, and he isn’t coming back.”
Roy hung his head, and his shoulders sagged. He let out a broken sigh and turned away. “All right. Move him out. He can’t help us, and we can’t help him. I guess he never will make it back to Zenith.”
“He did more than anyone to win this war for us,” Arlyane went on. “If we all get to live without the Krakzid enslaving us and stripping our planets of their resources, we have him to thank for it.”
“You have to make it back to Zenith, Roy,” Liri murmured. “You’re the only one who can tell your people what he did to save them from the Krakzid.”
Roy made a choking noise in his throat. He retreated to a corner and disappeared behind Benedict’s bulk. She turned away from the room to shield him from the others.
Arlyane wheeled his chair back to the long trestle table. Piles of equipment, paperwork, and devices covered it. “We need to rally the Barbarians, the Black Congregation, the Order of Magna, the Bedots, and the Prophet’s Creed. We need to get all the remaining factions on board helping us find the real Grand Votek. The stadium is the only location big enough to house them all while we explain what we need them to do.”
“What do we need them to do?” Liri asked. “We don’t even know where to begin to look for clues to find the Votek. We’re as in the dark as the factions are.”
“How are you going to gather them together without setting off a bloodbath?” Lana asked. “They’re all out there arming for civil war.”
“We have to,” Arlyane insisted. “Finding the Votek is the only way to stop them attacking each other.”
“Bringing them together in one place could trigger the same war you’re trying to avoid,” Quort pointed out.
“What do you suggest?” Arlyane asked. “If we don’t find the Votek soon, Keter will fall into a dark age a hundred times worse than the Krakzid occupation.”
Jackson heard their voices rising and falling. He only half-understood what they were talking about. A confused jumble of ideas and thoughts struggled to come together in his mind.
He didn’t fully understand what they’d said about him, either. Organizing his thoughts into some coherent sense took all his concentration. Forget about saying anything.
The Votek. Keter. The factions. Zenith.
Zenith was the one concept to penetrate this fog. He wanted to go home to Zenith. He wasn’t quite sure where he was or how he’d gotten here, but he knew where home was, and he wasn’t there. He had to get there. He had to get back to the place he knew, the place where he belonged.
The others all turned their backs on him. They talked about a lot of stuff he didn’t understand. They talked too fast, and their voices rose with agitation and tension. Whatever was going on had them worried.
The discussion went on for some time. Jackson let his mind drift, trying to put the pieces together. He didn’t remember much from before right now. Each time he became aware of where he was, he didn’t remember more than impressions from anything that happened before that moment.
He could remember three or four times when he regained awareness. Strangers put their faces in front of him, shone lights into his eyes, and prodded him. They even stuck their fingers in his eyes to make him blink, but he sat numb and befuddled through it all.
He recognized his friends, though. He recognized Roy, Benedict, Quort, Liri, Lana, and Arlyane. He didn’t see anyone else he knew. Someone was missing. In fact, a few someones were missing, but remembering who they were demanded more brainpower than he could muster.
Zenith. He wanted Zenith. He wanted to go home, but something was stopping him…something the others called Votek. What was it? Why was it so important? It was important, and he had to figure it out. He couldn’t go home until he remembered.
Without really meaning to, he swiveled on his stool, stood up, and started walking. He walked out of the room, down a hall, and outside.
He stopped on a street. It looked familiar, even if it was a mess. Tall buildings lined both sidewalks, but most of them had been bombed to rubble. Wreckage, craters, and trash dotted the pavement. He had to focus hard on his feet not to stumble and fall over.
Jackson set off in no particular direction. He didn’t know where he was or where he was going, but something inside him compelled him to keep walking, no matter what. Maybe if he walked long enough, he would make it back to Zenith.
The farther he walked, the more he recognized the city around him. He had been here before, but he couldn’t remember when. Emotions flooded back, but no pictures came with them.
He’d been scared the last time he visited this place—scared and hurt and running for his life. He didn’t like thinking about it, and he didn’t want to remember. Whatever had happened to destroy this once-grand city, it wasn’t pretty.
He walked until he couldn’t walk anymore. He felt unbelievably tired and old. He wanted to shut his eyes and stop thinking. If he could just stop thinking, he would escape this horrible feeling that he needed to get home. He could stop trying to figure out what was so wrong with everything around him.
Jackson got so engrossed in trying to figure out his own thoughts that he forgot to watch where he was putting his feet. He tripped over a broken piece of concrete, staggered, and banged into a brick wall on his right.
He leaned against it to regain his balance. More and more devastated buildings, cracked streets, and ruins surrounded him everywhere he turned.
A few hooded people scurried from one building to the next. He couldn’t remember why they all had to wear hoods. He wished he could see their faces. Maybe they wouldn’t look like such terrible creatures if he could only see a normal human face.
He sank down on the curb and rested his elbows on his knees. Exhaustion and confusion sapped his energy. He stared at the ground. If he could only think clearly enough, he would find a way to shut himself down so he never had to think again. Then all his problems would be over.
Now that he’d sat still and got his breath, his brain caught up with him at last. He recognized something lying on the ground in front of him. Chunks of metal, brick, and stone lay in heaps all over the place. Clouds of smoke drifted up the street from somewhere.
He saw something half-buried in the scattered trash. A circular metal shape peeked out from under a mound of gravel, concrete, and broken glass. Dots, grooves, and something that looked like holes formed a ring around the circle. From here, the object looked like some kind of disc or wheel.
He frowned at it. He recognized it, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen it before. Whatever it was, it was important. He couldn’t explain how, but he wanted it. He wanted to keep it and…do something with it.
The idea of getting up, walking over there, and picking it up required a massive effort of concentration. He had to think about it for at least twenty minutes before he worked up the brainpower just to make the decision to go get it.
Then he had to remember how to stand up. The link between his mind and his body didn’t seem to work.
Jackson looked down at his feet. They weren’t in the right p
He eased forward and put his weight on them. He balanced his hands on the pavement while he straightened his knees. He almost toppled when he stood up straight. How did he even get this far without keeling over?
He tottered over to the object and scowled down at it. It definitely looked familiar. It meant something to him, something important. Another rush of emotion came to his mind when he looked at it. In fact, those emotions came to his body—grief, love, admiration, hope, friendship, fear, confusion.
He bent over and pushed some of the debris out of the way. He scraped out the object and picked it up. It felt familiar, too. He knew the touch and sensation of putting his hands on it. More feelings came up now that he’d gotten it into his hands.
He struggled to return to the curb, and sat down in the same place. He placed the thing on his lap and studied it for a long time. This was it. He had no clue how he’d found it, but whatever it was, it was important. It was crucial to his journey home. He just had to figure out how.
2
Roy spun around and frowned. “Where’s the captain?”
Liri pointed at a map of Lulin spread out in front of Arlyane. “The Prophet’s Creed controls this whole side of the city. Don’t ask me where they’re getting supplies, but they’re bringing in more weapons and equipment by the hour.”
“Do they have ships?” Arlyane asked.
“Not yet, but I think we should assume they’ll get them. They have everything else, and they’re using laser weapons, which means they’ll be able to overpower any other faction.”
“The Black Congregation is setting up at the Forward Station,” Quort informed everyone.
“The Order of Magna is still holding out in their neighborhoods,” Lana added. “They’re all preparing for war against each other.”
“Where are the Barbarians?” Arlyane asked.
“Hey!” Roy thundered. “Where is the captain?”
Liri opened her mouth and turned her head to say something over her shoulder when she saw the empty stool against the wall. She turned the rest of the way around and frowned. “Where is he?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Roy countered.
“He couldn’t just vanish.” Liri waved toward the door. “He’s your friend. Go find him.”
Roy clenched his teeth in annoyance. He wasn’t Jackson’s only friend in this disaster, but he didn’t say that. He waved for Benedict to follow him, and they left the room.
A long corridor ran the length of this building’s ground floor. The friends had set it up as a makeshift headquarters. What was left of Arlyane’s faction occupied rooms covering the whole ground floor. They’d set up logistics centers to find, scavenge, and gather rations, medical gear, blankets, clothing—anything they could lay their hands on.
No one would have thought Keter could run short of supplies, but as soon as the factions had agreed not to annihilate each other at the Forward Station, they’d all started scrambling to hoard as much of the available goods as possible.
With the civilians doing the same thing, anything of value suddenly became impossible to locate. Everything Arlyane had said about Keter falling into darkness was already happening. It escalated by the day.
The only way the situation could possibly get worse was for open war to break out between the factions. That outcome looked more likely the longer the planet went without one clear, undisputed leader.
Roy stormed through the building, checking every room. His gaze skipped from face to face just long enough to recognize if a person was Keteran. He didn’t want a Keteran. He wanted another Zenith like himself, but he didn’t see a single one anywhere.
This faction, if he could even call it one, consisted of a few hundred people in no better condition than the rest of the population. Mothers with children, old people, and a few teenagers huddled in the many rooms. They cooked over tiny stoves that ran on the same EM pulse energy that powered the Keter Legion’s weapons. These stoves heated their food, but they wouldn’t heat a room.
They went everywhere wrapped in blankets, when they bothered to go anywhere at all. Most of the time, they stayed in their rooms, wrapped in as many layers as they could get hold of. They cuddled together for warmth from the night air coming through the shattered windows. They never ventured outside, if they could possibly avoid it.
Whatever Arlyane and the twins said about the other factions, Roy didn’t see how they could possibly be in any better condition than Arlyane’s people. The Order of Magna might have squirreled away vast quantities of supplies in case of an emergency. Roy might even imagine that Oberon Dao had done the same thing with the Black Congregation.
If they had, that explained why they didn’t execute a preemptive strike against the other factions. Roy could only think of one reason none of the factions struck the first blow. None of them possessed any definitively overwhelming force. None of them felt confident enough in their numbers or stock supply to guarantee victory.
That thought gave Roy some comfort. If they were smart enough to wait for someone else to strike the first blow, maybe they’d be smart enough not to start a war that would ruin everyone, including themselves. Maybe the whole planet would get off easy with a standoff instead of the wholesale slaughter of millions.
Roy covered the whole ground floor and came to the open door leading to the street. Captain Keogh wouldn’t go out there, would he? He’d never budged from his stool in the past two weeks. He had to be led everywhere, and moving him took ages. He shuffled slowly, and never gave any sign that he even realized he was moving.
Roy scowled at the devastation outside. This war was supposed to herald a new era for Keter, but it had ended up costing the planet dearly. It would take the Keterans decades or even generations to rebuild, and only if they found the new Grand Votek soon.
Smoke rose from the Forward Station a few blocks away. A massive fire burned on the landing strip day and night. Plumes of choking smoke had drifted across Lulin for the last three days, and other fires in other parts of the city did the same thing. No one could get away from them.
Explosions and weapons fire sounded in the distance. Lulin was worse than a war zone. If Captain Keogh had gone out there, he wouldn’t be able to take care of himself.
Roy turned on his heel and almost collided with Benedict, standing behind him. He sliced one finger at the big Grocit. “Stay here. I’ll be right back. If the captain shows up, stop him from leaving the building. Understand?”
Benedict grunted under her breath. The last remaining Grocit and Urvals had established themselves in another building down the block from Arlyane’s headquarters. They concerned themselves almost exclusively with scavenging food. Roy didn’t want to think about how they were feeding their giant appetites.
Benedict disappeared a few times a day and went off by herself. Roy made a special effort not to find out or even think about what she might be doing behind his back. If she went back to her people or went out plundering and marauding, he was better off not knowing.
He burst back into the room where Quort, Arlyane, and the twins discussed the fate of the world. Roy stormed past them to a stack of weapons crates near the table.
He threw back the lid and started filling his pockets with handhelds. He found a cannon in the cache underneath and checked the fuel cell.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Quort rumbled. “We need you here.”
“The captain is gone,” Roy replied over his shoulder. “I’m going to find him. You don’t need me here. Talking about whatever’s going on out there and what might happen won’t help anything.”
Lana turned around, and her eyebrows flew up. “He’s gone? How did that happen?”
“How should I know? I guess he walked out while we weren’t looking.”
