Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (49 page)

Holt studied Isaac. At first glance, he certainly wasn’t what you expected, but the others all looked at him with respect and crowded protectively around him.

In the World Before, Isaac had been something of a celebrity, Holt discovered. A child chess prodigy that had beaten grand masters and computer programs back-to-back, all at the age of nine. Apparently, it had been those skills that eventually endeared him to the Regiment. Their reaction to his arrival in the first days after the invasion had been predictable: skepticism and scorn. A boy that couldn’t walk, much less lift a weapon—but then they had begun listening to his advice and his unorthodox ideas. The Regiment went from being a force that lost most encounters with the Assembly to one that increased its survivability and kill count significantly.

Isaac, right then, however, was trying to hold back a seething anger. He stared at the groups in front of him with hostility. The deaths of his men had left a deep scar.

“We can push forward,” Mira said. “
Sorcerer
can repel the Assembly for now, but I don’t know how much—”

“Push forward for
what
?” Isaac cut her off. “You got here too late.”

“We got here as soon as we could,” Mira told him.

“That’s not what I mean, I mean you got here
ten years
too late. You show up with the Menagerie and your army with their glowing sticks and I’m supposed to be grateful? This fight’s been going on since the
beginning
! We’ve been living it the entire time, dying for
you
! And for what? What have you been doing out there? Running around some theme park with colored lightning or trying to earn points on a stupid wall.
This
is where you should have been the entire time. This is where
everyone
should have been!”

Silence gripped the group, no one said anything, because there wasn’t anything to say. He was right.

“And I’ll tell you something else,” Isaac continued, “and it goes for all the Regiment, I don’t have to ask them. We won’t fight with those Assembly you brought. We’ve lost too many people to their kind, and so have
you.
Frankly, I find it disgusting.”

Mira looked back at Isaac, not with impatience or hostility, but with understanding. As much as his words might sting, she held the crippled boy’s gaze.

“Since the invasion, we’ve done incredible things,” she said. “The Landships outside. Midnight City. The rings on a White Helix’s fingers. There’s an artifact combination out there, maybe the most complicated I ever built, and I thought it was something horrible, but it’s keeping us all alive right this second. All of them are amazing in their own ways, but … if we had put all that energy and creativity into
fighting
the way you have, maybe the world would be different right now. We’re all guilty. You’re right, we weren’t here. But we’re here
now
.”

The words seemed to calm Isaac, allowed the rational side to reemerge. He sighed wearily. “Push forward for
what
?”

Mira looked at Holt. She shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of what was coming, she’d done more than her share already. So Holt was the one who told Isaac the whole story. About finding Zoey, the way the Assembly hunted her, her powers, what she had done at the Severed Tower, what the Librarian and Gideon believed, that she was the key to both the Assembly’s agenda on the planet and to stopping them.

With every word he spoke, the Phantom Regiment looked more and more skeptical. Isaac, however, just listened, thinking it through. When Holt was done, Isaac was silent a long time.

“Boss, you can’t be buying this,” Shue said. “A little girl?”

“Would a little girl be any less strange a savior than all the things the Freebooter just rattled off the top of her head? She’s right, the world’s a strange place now, and a lot of it fits, if you think about it. All the new Assembly that are here? If what they’re saying is true, they showed up the same time this Zoey did. The blue and whites are consolidating power, they moved all their pieces to protect the Citadel. It means two things. One, they’re worried. Two … we’re in the endgame.”

“What are we supposed to do, then? Make a suicide run for the Citadel?”

“In the end, what does it matter?” It was Dresden. He stood with the other Landship Captains, near Mira and Olive. He’d changed too, Holt could tell. The mischievous glint was still in his eye, but it was muted now. Whatever had happened along the way, he’d become a believer, and that was no small feat. “You’re in the same boat we all are. The lives we used to know are gone, there’s no going back. Most people here have been to hell and back for this, done the kinds of things you don’t do if you’re not sure about them. You don’t strike me much different. Maybe it
is
a suicide run … but at least we get to stick it to those bastards for real. No guerrilla tactics, no hitting and running. We take it straight at them.”

The words seemed to resonate with the Regiment, the idea of really
hurting
the Assembly for a change. Even Shue smiled slightly. Clearly, they had a lot of payback coming.

“There’s moves we could make, with all the assets you’ve got,” Isaac stated. “But all it’s going to do is get you guys to the Citadel. After that … the clock starts ticking.”

“To what?” Mira asked.

Isaac and Shue studied her intently. “You haven’t seen, have you? I keep forgetting, it was dark when you got here. Come on.”

The kid wheeled his buggy around and headed for the other end of the factory. Everyone followed, until he reached the homemade lift attached to the old smokestack. Holt, Mira, Dresden, Avril, and a few other Doyen climbed on board with him, and it rattled as it started to climb, shaking and moving upward, passing through the metal ceiling into the early morning air outside.

The sun was rising in the east, casting its rays over the giant ruins that stretched to the ocean. Urban streets sat eerily clean of debris, buildings stood empty, crumbling and falling apart. Holt could see the Assembly Presidium across the bay, near the warped remains of the Golden Gate Bridge, where it had landed years ago. And he could see something else too, something much more massive.

The giant, twisting, black monolith of the Citadel. It climbed so high into the sky, clouds circled around the top, and a giant beam of swirling energy shot from it into the air. Surrounding it, in the streets, was movement. Thousands upon thousands of Assembly walkers of all kinds, aircraft swirling through the air in groups so thick they darkened the sky. Holt understood now what Isaac had meant.

“
That
’s where you’re headed,” Isaac said once everyone had absorbed the sight. “Like I said, once you get there, the clock starts ticking. No one going there’s coming back.”

Everyone stared, stunned, at the opposition ahead of them.

“The truth is, we may not be going anywhere,” a voice said from below. Smitty and Caspira stood on a walkway that wound up the smokestack, independent of the lift. They were both bloodied and exhausted, and they both looked very worried.

43.
SACRIFICE

SOUNDS OF BATTLE
echoed around them, just blocks away now. Most of the silver Assembly were fighting at the perimeter with the Helix and Menagerie. The Osprey dropships were nearby, next to the Landships, and there were a few Mantises there as well, standing guard.

Move back,
Mira projected as they approached. Isaac and the other Regiment were following, there wasn’t a need to antagonize them, or force the issue, at least not yet.

Guardian …
The Mantises stepped toward the Ospreys, farther out of sight. As usual, Mira felt no hostility or insult from them, it didn’t seem to bother them one way or another.

When Mira saw the train, however, all thoughts of Assembly and battles vanished. Everyone stared at
Sorcerer
’s locomotives. The lead one had a blackened hole bored completely through it, and debris littered the ground where the engine had exploded. The second had detached from the first, completely off the tracks, its engine just as blackened and charred.

Mira shut her eyes tight. It was clear, even to her, that
Sorcerer
would never move from this spot, and the entire endeavor had just died. Without the train, they couldn’t move forward, because the effect from Mira’s artifact couldn’t be amplified. She remembered the sight of all those walkers and gunships, the impossible numbers of them. There was no way to reach the Citadel now.

“So much for the suicide run,” Isaac stated.

“There has to be a way,” Holt said behind her. Mira could hear the desperation in his voice. Like her, he’d come a long way. “We could use the tunnels.”

Isaac shook his head. “That’s for a small force, not something like what you have, thousands of pieces on the board.”

“There’s still the Landships,” Dresden said. “We could load everyone on—”

“You’ll be cut down in seconds,” Shue replied, “then it’s gonna be a slog through the streets with whoever survives, building to building. Be lucky if you made it there with a tenth of—”

“Well, we have to do something!” Holt yelled at him. “I’ll head there myself if no one else has the guts for it.”

The comment stirred indignation in everyone, and it all disintegrated into argument, people yelling, some for giving up, some for moving forward, no one agreeing on any one thing.

Mira pushed past the crowd, ignoring all of it, her eyes on the train, the names written up and down its length. Each was a reminder to her. Before, there was a chance their loss could mean something. Not anymore.

Tears formed and she made no attempt to stop them, just moved down the cars, reading each name.

Guardian …
On the other side of the train came a blast of static as Ambassador teleported in. She could see it standing there, through the gap between two cars, and she stepped over the train connections toward it. Everyone behind her was still arguing.

Ambassador’s armor was dented and burned, it had taken hits, and given many of its own. Still, the presence inside the machine seemed … dimmer. Its colors less vibrant. It didn’t have much time left, but, then again, neither did any of them now.

The contrivance. Unusable?
Ambassador asked. It meant
Sorcerer.

Yes,
she projected.

Mira looked back to the train, to the names. She could almost feel the eyes of their owners staring at her.

There was a piece of pipe on the ground. Mira grabbed it, feeling the emotions building. She swung it like a bat into the side of the train. It hit hard and bounced off. The Mantises stepped forward, next to Ambassador, curious. The anger that had been building, one defeat after another, finally boiled over. She swung again. Again. Trying to knock the names off the side, to make them disappear, but they stayed right where they were.

She thought of everything she’d lost. She saw Dane leaping up into the drone ship. Saw Landships disintegrating. Saw the pyres of fallen Helix burning in the night. Saw the tattoo on Holt’s wrist, fully formed and completed now.

Mira looked through two of the cars, to where the crowd argued. Holt was there, yelling at Dasha, desperate, angry. God, she was weak. Right then, she just wanted him to hold her. Wanted it to be like it had been, all that time ago. With Holt, with Zoey, even with the stupid, smelly—

There was a whine next to her. Mira looked down. Max stared up at her, head cocked.

The sight disarmed everything. She almost laughed at the sight of him, then wiped the tears away and reached out to pet the dog’s ears. He didn’t stop her. “So what do
you
think, huh?”

Max had no comment, but if he did, Mira knew what it would be, and she agreed. She would go on alone, like Holt had said. She looked west, to where the Citadel towered over the ruins, could see the thousands of gunships swarming around it. It was so close.

They would never make it, of course, but they would have tried. They knew, back in Bismarck, after the Tower, that this was a one-way trip. Holt said as much, and she accepted it.

From behind her, the sensations from the Mantises and Ambassador washed over her. They felt her pain. Her desire to sacrifice everything for the Scion, and indirectly or not, for
them.
She felt stirrings of emotion she had never felt from Assembly before, and she turned to face them.

Guardian …
the Mantises projected.
We believe.

She studied them quizzically. “What is there to believe in now?”

All is not lost,
Ambassador told her.

Mira jolted as three more Brutes teleported back into the factory ground, their armor just as dented. They came from the battle, summoned here. But why?

The Mantises moved toward her and the train, and as they did, images and thoughts filled her mind. She saw what they intended, felt what they felt, and she understood, grimly, what it meant.

Hope filled her … and so did guilt, for so quickly being relieved at their intentions.

“I can’t ask you to…”

You say … sacrifice?
Ambassador asked, and Mira nodded.
It was foreign. To us. Before you.

Her stare moved from Ambassador to the two Mantises, staring into their colorful eyes. Tenderly, she reached out and touched each machine, felt their fading presences fill her with light.

We believe,
they told her.

Mira felt more tears forming, but these she pushed back. “You need my help?”

As a conduit.

Mira understood. The entities were too far gone now, they couldn’t exist outside their machines. If they were going to do what they meant to, the only choice was go through
her,
and it would be their very last gesture.

Mira studied the Mantises. They had no names to memorize, so she tried to remember their colors in her mind. She turned and moved to the gap between the two locomotives, placing one hand on each.