Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (28 page)

There was nothing of her left … and it was glorious.

No words could describe the Nexus, the pure serenity, but that wasn’t what was most striking. Every sensation, from every Assembly entity outside that was trying to force its way into her mind, to plead with her, suddenly vanished … except from one singular, powerful source.

The Nexus itself.

With shock, Zoey sensed feeling and emotion from it. She felt it welcome her, felt it embrace her in its own way. She felt an outpouring of something she had only felt in a few instances, mostly from Mira and Holt, something she could only describe as …
love.

The Nexus was more than an energy field that produced life. It was,
itself,
life. Zoey could feel its consciousness, and that consciousness, without question, was completely, undeniably gentle and benevolent. It spoke to her. Showed her things: solutions, ideas. It had waited for her coming a very long time. Zoey listened, considered what it had to say, felt the Feelings underneath it all agree. At last, the children of the Nexus could be whole and free, if only she would agree …

Zoey’s mind raced, struggling with the new reality that had just been thrust on her. Destroying the Assembly meant destroying the Nexus, and knowing what she knew now, that was completely impossible. The Nexus was wondrously alive. The idea of killing it was horrific to even consider.

She thought of what it had shown her, and she knew what it meant, it all seemed to fit, like the final piece of some giant, cosmic puzzle. Then again she had known the truth since the Tower, hadn’t she? Just not the form her actions would take. There was a strange calm that came with knowing now, with the end of the long road being so near.

She knew, finally, what she had to do.

Reluctantly, Zoey pulled her mind away from the Nexus. The world snapped back into focus. She was on the bridge, dozens of Raptors in the air all around her, guns primed. Behind her, more Spiders and Mantises waited … and Rose stood there, staring in desperation.

The whole experience had probably lasted seconds, but it had changed everything.

Zoey looked at Rose. Rose looked back.

“Now you see,” the woman said.

“Yes.” Zoey nodded. “I
am
the Scion. Your Ascension.”

An outpouring of emotion flowed over her from every Assembly entity in the Citadel and outside, hundreds of thousands, all at once, and the feelings: relief, joy, anticipation.

“Sunshine…” the woman who had been Rose said, opening her arms to the little girl. Zoey moved to her and let herself be held, trying not to think about what was to come. There was only one real solution, because she couldn’t do it alone. It was amazing, when she thought about it. How everything had lined up. Had the Tower arranged this too? Or was it simply fate?

Either way, she would know soon enough. She just hoped Mira and Holt found her soon.

22.
PINCHER

GUARDIAN,
THE PROJECTION
came to her over the distance.
Wait for us.

“Ambassador thinks we should wait,” Mira informed the others.

“Lucky for me I don’t take orders from Assembly,” Conner replied.

“But you do take them from
me,
” she said pointedly, looking down at the giant grid work of rails and old trains below them. They were at the crest of a hill, and at the bottom lay what remained of the West Platte Railroad Classification Yard. Once it was the largest rail yard in the Southwest, a busy hub hosting trains from all over the continent, conjoined here for repairs, reloading, and rerouting to their destinations.

Now it was a rusting junkyard. The tracks were still visible, but the desert sands were slowly overtaking them. There were probably close to a hundred locomotives, falling apart where they stood, most with their rotting lines of cars still attached.

Interesting as it was, though, it wasn’t why they were here. At the far end, seven huge railway bridges stretched over the same river that had daunted them at Rio Vista, each wide enough to support a Landship. Only five of them were usable, though. Two were crammed with the charred, blackened remains of freight trains, probably strafed by Assembly Raptors long ago.

“Why didn’t we come here in the first place?” Mira asked. “Rio Vista only had
one
bridge.”

“Yeah, but it’s a smoother ride,” Dresden, standing next to her, replied. “You ever ridden over railroad tracks in a Landship? It’s not fun, you have to take it slow or you’ll bust an axle or a locking cap.”

“Not if we sit here and wait,” Conner said impatiently. “We should do this now, while we can.”

Mira wasn’t so sure. What bothered her about the situation was the complete lack of Assembly, especially after the welcome that had been waiting for them in Rio Vista. The aliens had accurately deduced where they were going that time, why not now? There were only so many routes over the river for a Landship.

“Where
are
they?” Mira asked with concern.

“You complain about really weird stuff,” Conner said. “Wherever the Assembly are, it isn’t
here,
and we should cross right now before that changes. We’ve got the wind for it. Besides, Smitty and that White Helix tinkerer have gotten over forty ships armed.”

That was all true, but what really bothered her was not having Ambassador and the silvers with them. Even Mas’Erinhah Hunters couldn’t keep up with the fleet at full Chinook, and they had been left behind this afternoon. It was just the fleet and the White Helix here now.

She looked down at Max, lying on the ground next to her. He rested his head on his paws and closed his eyes. At least
he
didn’t seem concerned.

Behind them was the Wind Trader fleet. Conner had ordered them lined up in five groups that would snake carefully through the rail yard and the maze of busted trains, each toward a separate bridge, and then cross one after the other. Most of the Captains knew this yard, had used the bridges before, so they wouldn’t be bogged down with pathfinding. All told, Conner said, the entire thing should only take a few hours.

Mira looked at Dane, standing in front of the hundred or so White Helix Doyen, and she could see in their eyes they were just as impatient as Conner. The only difference was they were probably hoping it
was
a trap.

“I think we should go for it,” Dane said. “You see how tight and cramped it is, with all the machinery? Any walkers that show up won’t be able to maneuver down there; we’ll swarm them before they get a shot off. It’s probably why they aren’t there, they know this position isn’t defensible for them.”

Guardian, wait …

Mira pushed Ambassador and the others away. If Dane was confident, shouldn’t she be too? Was it just her fear at attending more funerals like she had last night? Dane was right, she had to get over the desperate desire not to lose any more people, to not feel the guilt weigh on her, because it would happen, over and over again. That was her path now.

Everyone waited for her answer. Mira nodded. “Do it.”

Dane turned to the Doyen, began giving orders. Dresden and Conner and the other captains nearby radioed their crews. Flags of different colors waved in patterns in the crow’s nests of the Landships, sending the signal to the ships behind them.

Mira nudged Max with her foot. He woke up with an annoyed look, but followed after her as she walked with Dresden back toward the
Wind Shear.
The vessel sat sixth in a line of eleven, squarely in the middle. Mira wasn’t sure if that was a good place to be or not.

“You’re worried,” Dresden observed.

“It’s too easy.”

He didn’t say anything to indicate whether he agreed. Nemo sat lounging on the rail of the
Wind Shear,
waiting for them to return, and Max barked and shot up the gangplank toward the orange cat, but Nemo barely budged. He knew the dog couldn’t reach him there, and Mira was convinced he enjoyed taunting Max. She liked that cat more every day.

Within twenty minutes the entire fleet was moving toward the rail yard, each line of a dozen or more ships snaking off toward its entry point into the labyrinth of old trains and tracks. Mira was on the helm deck with Dresden, watching as the artifact handler, Jennifer, and the helmsman, Hamilton, as well as Parker coordinated the movement of the ship. It seemed to take a lot more work to move a Landship slowly rather than fast, more critical balancing of the Chinook, the crew constantly alternating the sails between slack and tight, and all the while, Hamilton had to keep an eye on the ships in the line with them, while he maneuvered through the trains and the tracks toward their bridge.

They were making good time, though. All five lines were now in the middle of the yard, about halfway to their bridges. It was starting to look like everything was going to be okay, which, as usual, was the time when everything went wrong.

From one end of the yard, Mira heard a strange, high-pitched whirring sound.

When she looked, she saw a small, spherical-shaped object whiz upward into the air. It was too far away to make out any detail, but by the strange sounds it made and its perfect trajectory into the sky, it could only be one thing: something technological. Mira felt her heart sink.

“Dane,” Dresden shouted to the Helix leader, whose eyes were already following the object. “That something of yours?”

Dane just shook his head.

From the end of the yard came a brief strobe of light as the object exploded in a harsh flash.

Lightning crackled in the sky, so bright, even in the daylight, Mira winced. A sound, like a thunderclap, echoed around them, and then the air ripped apart. That was the only way she could describe it. A huge hole of pure light shuddered into existence and everyone on the ship gasped.

“Focus!” Parker yelled. “No matter
what
happens!”

Hamilton guided the
Wind Shear
slowly forward while the crew kept working, but everyone kept their eyes on that hole. Mira knew what it had to be almost immediately. She’d made holes like that before, but she’d done it with artifact combinations called Portals. She was pretty sure what she was looking at was the same thing. Gateways, from some other place to this one.

Seconds later, Mira’s suspicions were confirmed.

A large, cigar-shaped craft began to slowly push through the gateway, streaks of lightning crackling around it. As more and more of it was revealed, Mira could see it was some kind of large aircraft—and, most striking, it was painted in a color pattern she had never seen before, bold combinations of yellow and black that flared down its thick, metallic fuselage.

Ambassador had been right. The other clans had come to support the blue and whites.

Guardian,
Ambassador projected to her, miles away.
What transpires?

Instinctively, Mira opened her mind to the alien as she watched the ship push completely out of the gateway, hovering in place at the end of the rail yard. It just sat there, unmoving.

Mas’Rousha,
Ambassador answered, and there was a notable sense of disgust in its projection.

“Doesn’t look that tough, really,” Dresden observed unconvincingly. “I mean … there’s only one of them.”

A mass of blackness erupted out of the sides of the ship, streaming into the sky. The sounds of electronic buzzing filled the air.

As they watched, the swarming cloud divided into two, one moving toward the front of the lines of Landships, while the other moved for the rear. The buzzing intensified, and Mira could see the clouds were each comprised of thousands of smaller objects. Max growled low.

“What are they doing?” Mira asked.

“It’s a Pincher move,” Dane said grimly from behind her. His eyes were following the swarms darting toward the Landships. “They’ll destroy the ships on either end of the lines, and then—”

“We’ll be trapped in the middle,” Dresden finished for him. He, Mira, and Dane shared pretty much the same look. All the weaknesses Dane had pointed out earlier, the lack of mobility, a susceptibility to being swarmed, all of it suddenly now applied to
them.

“What do we do?” Parker asked.

“We
fight,
” Mira said without hesitation, not because of any bravado, but because it was the only real answer. She looked at Dane and Dresden. They nodded back.

Dane tapped the radio on his belt and talked into his headset, “All Arcs deploy, spread out and cover as many ships as…” His voice faded away as he moved off, his Arc raising the masks up and over their mouths and noses.

We come,
Ambassador projected.

Clearly, it intended to teleport in, but Mira shook her head.
No! It’s too tight for walkers. They have the advantage.
She felt a great deal of guilt at the realization. It
had
been a trap. And she had given the order to walk right into it.

“Signal all stop, all ships, fire at will!” Dresden yelled to the flagman in the crow’s nest, and he started waving the colored flags in patterns. Mira watched the action spread and the giant crafts came to a stop, surrounded by the rusting hulks of old freight trains.

Then explosions flared up at the front of their line of Landships.

The swarm of strange objects completely enveloped the front of each line. Their sails shredded and fell to the decks, she saw kids falling from the topmasts, others leaping off in droves. Antimatter crystals shot upward into the sky, both from Lancets and Landship cannons, and they left trails of flame as they burst through the cloud of machines, but there were just too many.

More explosions from behind as two more ships shuddered and collapsed. Mira wasn’t sure exactly what those machines were doing; they weren’t firing any weapons she could see, but regardless, they were doing just as Dane said they would. In seconds, every Landship at the front and back of the five lines was burning.

The
Wind Shear
shuddered to a stop. They were trapped.

The White Helix on the
Wind Shear
leapt into the air in flashes of yellow, spreading out on the tops of the old trains. The other Arcs were doing the same. Loud harmonic pings burst to life as the cannons on the ships opened fire. The swarms buzzed toward one another now, sweeping up and down the lines.