“I’m going to kill them,” I answered, rising from my seat. “If I have the opportunity, I’m going to make them pay.”

  Twenty-Four

  True to his word, Wesley Cage arrived in an all-black Immortal Corp dropship before dinner.

  By that time, we had the Voy bodies quarantined to a section of the settlement. Those Voy who made it into the walls were mostly burned, but the ones who died outside the walls were still usable specimens. I imagined Immortal Corp would be eager to get their hands on them.

  After the events of the night, those who survived opted to take our advice and head back to the city. The supply ship was emptied and followers of the Way as well as the freed prisoners piled in.

  Angel and Jax went to greet Wesley Cage while I said my goodbyes to Enoch, Sister Monroe, Eli, and Cryx.

  “You were sent to us when we needed you the most,” Sister Monroe said, catching me off guard in a hug.

  I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I hugged someone back. I tried not to make the act awkward now, but it was an act in futility.

  I wrapped my arms around her and patted her on the back before letting go.

  “Well, it was kill or be killed,” I said, trying to brush off her praise.

  “It was more than that.” Sister Monroe planted a kiss on my cheek. “If you ever want a different path, the Way is waiting for you.”

  Lucky for me, Eli saved me from having to give an answer.

  “You were the right man for the job,” Eli said, pumping my hand. “Thank you.”

  Eli stepped back and Enoch limped over to me. He was hunched with the cane in his right hand. His face looked a shade paler, but his smile never wavered.

  “Whatever you do or do not believe, I know you were sent to us when we needed you the most.” Enoch looked over his shoulder to where Angel and Jax stood on the opposite side of the settlement. “You all were.”

  “Don’t want to burst your bubble,” I said. “But maybe it wasn’t meant to be at all. Maybe you being out here just cost a lot of people their lives.”

  “Maybe we were always meant to be here to provide shelter for you and the freed prisoners,” Enoch answered. “To not have your voice, but all of our voices traveling back to the cities to raise awareness. To have multiple alien bodies as proof of what happened here.”

  “How can you take so much on faith?” I asked.

  “If we lose faith and hope, we have nothing,” Enoch said. His eyes never left mine. “This is how it was always meant to be. How it could have only ever have been. Looking into the past hoping things would be different is an act of insanity and will drive you mad as such.”

  “Not everyone believes that,” I said, not sure what I believed at the moment.

  “Then it is good for you and I that the Lord of the Way does not change on what some people or others do or do not believe.” Enoch nodded as if he were content he had said enough. He extended his free hand. “Thank you.”

  “What will you do now?” I asked, accepting his hand.

  “Our path is clear,” Enoch answered. “We travel back to the cities and warn those there of the evil that is coming for them. If we can even get a few to listen, it will be worth it.”

  “Good luck,” I said, releasing Enoch’s hand.

  “Luck has never been anything but an illusion,” Enoch said with a grin before he turned and made his way to the waiting ship.

  “So you gonna check out that chip Rose gave you or what?” Cryx asked, coming up to me. “She gave it to both of us, you know.”

  “You still tripping from your stim high?” I asked her sideways. “I’m pretty sure she gave it to me.”

  “What’s on it?” Cryx asked.

  “X?” I asked. “There a way you can access the information on this?”

  “Yes,” X answered. “I’ll display the content in a holographic image in front of you.”

  “You’d be lost without her,” Cryx said, eyeing X’s chip behind my right ear.

  “I tell her that all the time,” I answered.

  “Here we go,” X said, ignoring the exchange.

  A series of light blue numbers popped to life in front of me, followed by another list of what looked like addresses, company names, and listings.

  “What are we looking at?” Cryx asked. “What is all of this?”

  My eyes widened as I remembered what the old woman had told me. She was wealthy, wanting to explore, when she accidentally stumbled on the Voy base.

  Rose had been putting it lightly. She wasn’t just wealthy, she was among the one percent on Mars. The listings were of bank accounts, balances, companies owned and assets.

  There were bank accounts with more zeros in them than I cared to count.

  “Holy crip,” Cryx blurted as she also put the pieces of the puzzle together. “Are those bank accounts?”

  “Yeah,” I answered. “X, you can close it.”

  X turned off the information scrolling in front of us.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cryx said, looking at me like I was crazy. “I didn’t get to read all of that. Turn it back on. Half of that should be mine.”

  “Not a chance,” I answered. “Rose didn’t die for you to blow her money on drugs and partying.”

  The memory of Rose’s death seemed to take the wind out of Cryx’s sails. I knew it was harsh, but that was what she needed to hear at the moment.

  “And you understand none of these credits matter in the slightest if we aren’t around to use them,” I said. “I’ll give it to Enoch to look after. His people will need a place to stay once they’re back in the city. You should go with them. Trade in your Hessian title for the Way maybe.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Cryx rolled her eyes. “What in the history of our relationship would make you think I’d do that?”

  “They’re good people,” I said, walking over to the ship that acted more as a human transport than supply craft now carrying everyone back to the cities.

  Cryx followed.

  “A place, funds to help you and your people get back on their feet,” I told Enoch as I pressed the chip into his hand. “Look out for Cryx.”

  “Thank you,” Enoch said, eyeing the chip in his hand with obvious wonder. “We will. She has a place with us. We will take care of your home until you return.”

  I just nodded. I didn’t feel like going into the story of how it wasn’t really my home, where it came from, or whose blood was still dried on the data chip.

  “Hey,” Cryx shouted as the sounds of the ship’s thrusters fired up.

  I turned around to look at her.

  “Thanks” she said.

  I nodded as I watched the ship make a giant U-turn inside the settlement walls then leave out the front gates.

  Wesley Cage along with Angel and Jax were speaking outside of the open dropship’s rear doors. A team of Immortal Corp scientists worked in excited glee as they went through the settlement collecting the bodies of the fallen Voy aliens.

  I made my way over, wondering what I would say. A simple hello seemed much too out of place at this point.

  “Daniel,” Cage said with a nod. “I’m glad to see you whole.”

  “Good to be whole,” I answered. I wasn’t much for small talk. “Preacher, we need to get him back.”

  “And we will,” Cage said. He pulled his signature cigar from his mouth after taking a long puff. Heck, I wasn’t sure if it was the same one he always had or another identical smoke. I guess it didn’t really matter. “We’re sending in a scouting party tonight to watch the area where the Voy have set up shop. We’ll go in as soon as we have a plan and an opening. In the meantime, we need to get you back to base and debrief. Anything you know might help us see Preacher safe again and end this war before it gets started.”

  “Where’s this base?” I asked.

  “We have our headquarters in Athens,” Cage supplied. “We’ll go there now. You know, even with you back, we’re a bit short handed. With Echo, we’d stand a better chance.”

  “I’m not back and you know as much as I do about Echo,” I told him. “You know more than I did. You knew he was sent to kill Amber.”

  Cage took another long puff of his cigar. The bright orange ember glowed against the light of the day.

  “I found out once it had already happened,” Cage said with a hard stare not directed at me but rather at the events of the past. “Not that it helps at all. I should have seen it coming. I was her handler in the field. I’m as much to blame for it as anyone.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Jax said softly. “None of us did.”

  “You want Echo, you can go and grab him,” I said with a shrug.

  “No, I don’t think Immortal Corp has the resources to fight a war on two fronts at the moment,” Cage said. “We concentrate on getting Preacher back and stopping this alien invasion, then we’ll see about freeing Echo.”

  That was fine with me. I had no love for Echo nor felt the need to offer info or details about Phoenix. As far as I was concerned, I was a free man allowed to set his own alliances. At the moment, I was only with Immortal Corp to free Preacher, see that the known galaxy didn’t get overrun by aliens, and kill the founding members of Immortal Corp.

  While the scientists did their sweep of the area, we followed Wesley Cage inside the dropship. The craft looked like all the others before with a cargo area in the rear and seats in the second half of the ship.

  A tall woman with a pale complexion spoke with Wesley briefly, stealing glances in my direction. She wore a tight button-up suit that lined up on the left side of her body. Wesley told her something then came over to us.

  “Doctor Bishop would like to begin the debriefing with you now,” Cage asked, looking at each of us in turn. “If you’re feeling up to it, feel free to recharge on food while we do so. I know the healing process for each of you takes a lot of calories to complete.”

  “Fine by me,” Jax answered. “The faster we debrief, the faster we get back to Preacher.”

  “Count me in,” Angel added.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Wesley Cage waved the doctor over.

  I wasn’t sure how the doctor could even move. Her black suit was tight on her body, not leaving much to the imagination. She smiled at me, fidgeting with her datapad as she began in an accent I couldn’t place, maybe Russian from the old world.

  “Daniel Hunt, I have heard so much about you,” Doctor Bishop began. She extended a gloved hand. “Doctor Chloe Bishop. I head the science department for Immortal Corp.”

  “Of course you do,” I said, shaking her hand.

  “I took over as head of the department in the time since you left. I had very much wanted to meet you after going over your reports and files but feared you wouldn’t come back,” the doctor said, releasing my hand and offering me a seat in the dropship. “Imagine my surprise and excitement when the fastest healing member of the infamous Pack Protocol had been found and was willing to come in.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, going over to a seat and looking around for something to eat.

  “Do you require something?” Doctor Bishop asked.

  “You have anything to snack on around here?” I asked.

  “Thomas!” the doctor screamed.

  A short, balding man with glasses and similar black suit that buttoned up on the left side of the jacket appeared from the cockpit area of the ship.

  “Mr. Hunt would like some victuals” Doctor Bishop ordered.

  “At once,” Thomas said. He moved to stand on top of one of the seats and began rummaging through the overhead compartment.

  “Thomas will see to it that you are well taken care of,” Doctor Bishop took a seat right next to me.

  Out of the many seats across and alongside me, she had to choose the one immediately next to me.

  “Now please start at the beginning of what happened to you, the first thing that you remember once you woke up on the moon,” Doctor Bishop asked. “We have time. It’s a long ride to Athens.”

  I started from the beginning, telling her everything from my time as a gladiator throwing people out of bars to journeying to Earth and now here on Mars.

  I glossed over some details, like seeing Sam and where she was. I had a sneaking suspicion Immortal Corp knew where she was hiding out, but I wasn’t going to be the one to confirm that.

  Things like the Voy took a lot longer and I made sure to divulge every little bit of information I could remember. X popped in and out of the conversation providing details.

  We were at it for almost an hour.

  The entire time, I ate protein bars and pre-made meal packs, replenishing the calories my body had lost healing itself.

  The whole time, Doctor Bishop made notes, nodding encouragingly. She spoke up only a few times, asking for clarification.

  Immortal Corp scientists came in and out of the rear of the dropship loaded down with large zippered bags I knew held Voy bodies. They were really cleaning up out there. Anything not burned was bagged and tagged.

  “And now I’m here waiting for this bird to take off so we can regroup and go get Preacher,” I told the doctor. “That’s about it.”

  “Very interesting,” Doctor Bishop said, adjusting her glasses. “I wonder if—”

  “Get down, hands in the air!”

  Shouts from outside the dropship reached our ears. Wesley Cage was outside the dropship like a fire had been started under him. We all followed close behind.

  What now? I asked myself. Did we not kill one of them? Had one of the Voy somehow managed to stay alive?

  Twenty-Five

  “It just appeared a few seconds ago, sir,” one of the armored Immortal Corp soldiers told Cage as we arrived at the settlement’s main gates. “It came out of nowhere.”

  We stood at the front entrance to the settlement. The gates were still open from when the supply craft had exited with the survivors.

  A few hundred meters in front of us, some kind of cloaked ship had taken shape. Well, not the craft at all, but rather, a hatch was opened on the cloaked ship. We could see inside the invisible ship like a door had opened out of thin air.

  The alien vessel had to be smaller than a dropship. From it exited a handful of Voy soldiers, Dall, and Preacher.

  All around me, Immortal Corp soldiers tensed. I heard Doctor Bishop suck in a long draw of breath as they saw live aliens for the first time.

  Dall dragged Preacher toward us over the sand. Preacher was bloody. He didn’t move at all.

  “I have come to return your animal,” Dall shouted at us. He threw Preacher in front of him. “Before you insist on doing anything rash, know that the cloaked ship behind me is one of our smaller fighter vessels. My pilot has the heavy weapons aimed at you now. A move against us would result in the death of all of you right now.”

  I felt the flow of adrenaline hit me. I was ready to go right then, despite the warning.

  “Why tell us that at all?” Cage asked, removing the ever present cigar from his mouth. “Why not just kill us? You took us by surprise. You know that.”

  “Mmm, a clever human,” Dall said with a crooked grin. “I need you to deliver a message for me.”

  “And that would be?” Cage asked.

  “Your race is ordered to submit to Voy rule,” Dall answered. “You have seven days to comply. If you have not done so in seven days, three-quarters of your population will be destroyed. The rest will be taken by force and employed by the Voy empire as we see fit.”

  “You say employ and I think you really mean enslaved,” I retorted. I couldn’t help myself. “Seven days isn’t enough time to get an entire species on the same page.”

  “Not my concern,” Dall said, looking down at the heap in front of him that was Preacher’s body. “I’ve also brought back your friend as proof that we are not scared of your kind. Not even the strongest among you will be able to stand against us now.”

  The wicked smile on his lips told me something was very wrong. The way Preacher didn’t move at all confirmed it.

  Dall moved forward, kicking Preacher over on his back. The Voy placed a foot on Preacher’s neck.

  Angel stepped forward, her free hand going to the blaster at her side.

  Cage lifted a hand in her direction to stop her.

  “You’ve made your point,” Cage called out to Dall. “We’ll deliver your message.”

  “May this image serve as a reminder to you,” Dall said, grinning down at the helpless form of Preacher. “In seven days, we will stand on the necks of humanity. One way or the other.”

  With that, Dall turned and walked back into the ship. The contingent of Voy soldiers followed him into the doorway that seemed to appear out of thin air. The door closed, and a second later, a low whine of thrusters filled the air. Sand was whipped about and they were gone.

  I sprinted to Preacher’s side, reaching him at the same time as Jax and Angel.

  “Oh, what did they do to you?” Angel said, skidding to her knees. “What did they do to you?”

  Preacher was a mess. That meant a lot coming from me. They had taken off his eye patch, leaving his empty eye socket to stare up at the sky. His one good eye was swollen shut. They had worked him over pretty well. His body was a mass of cuts and bruises that as far as I could tell weren’t healing.

  He moved his mouth to try to say something, but only a grimace twisted his bloody lips.

  “There’s something wrong,” Jax said, leaning over his body. “He should be healing. These wounds look older. Infection is already starting to set in.”

  Cage finally caught up to us.

  His eyes were hard. If he had been shocked to see the aliens, he didn’t show it.

  “Let’s get him on the dropship,” Cage said, looking over at Doctor Bishop, who also arrived, panting for breath. “Can you help him?”

  Doctor Bishop tapped a few buttons on her datapad. A dark blue light came from her pad, scanning the unmoving Preacher.

  “Internal bleeding, broken bones, bruising, and lacerations across his body.” Doctor Bishop shook her head. “I don’t understand. He should be able to have healed from most if not all of these wounds. I mean, at least be in the process of healing. I need to take a closer look.”

 

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