Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (5 page)

The Assembly presence there was far stronger than in any other city. If they were going to have any chance of rescuing Zoey, they needed the Phantom Regiment’s support. No one knew those ruins like they did, and they were one of the toughest fighting forces on the planet. That’s why enlisting their help was Mira’s next task.

“Just be careful,” Holt said.

Of course, she wasn’t the only one heading to dangerous places. “Are you sure you can trust Tiberius?”

“I can trust him to hear me out,” Holt said, and leaned forward. His mouth started to slowly drift down the side of her neck. She could feel his hands gliding over the arch of her back. It had been an hour since they’d last given in, and she could feel the heat rising once more. She wiggled up and around and lay across him, listening to the rumble of his voice below her. “The only thing Tiberius respects is power, and that’s what we’re offering. Plus, when he hears the Wind Traders already accepted, he’ll have to find a way to retip the scales. ‘Power lost, must be retaken,’ the Menagerie say.”

Mira gently bit the side of his neck and then his lips found hers again. She twisted her legs around his, trying to get closer. She pulled up long enough to look into his eyes. “Just promise me, if you feel it going south, you’ll run. You’ll get free and run and you won’t stop. Promise me.”

Holt smiled. “I thought we said no more promises.”

It was true, they’d made that deal weeks ago, but before she could argue, he kissed her again. God, she loved his taste. His hands reached down and under her, slowly sliding toward her warmth and she pulled her mouth free to sigh …

… and then it all stopped.

Guardian …
The projections were particularly intense this time, and they ripped past the pleasure and the sensations.
Come close.

Mira rolled away, pushing them back, retaking control. When they finally receded, she felt Holt’s hands on her, but differently this time, now it was with concern.

“Breathe.” His voice cut through what was left of the projections, helping her focus and center. When it was just her again she opened her eyes. Holt’s face was that usual mix of concern and anger. He hated what she was going through, she knew it made him want to rip Ambassador apart with his bare hands. “Promise it isn’t getting worse.”

It
was
getting worse. Much worse, and more Assembly were showing up every day, but Holt had enough to worry about. She needed him focused and as clearheaded as he could be, if he was going to survive, if she was going to get him back.

“No more promises,” she reminded him.

Holt frowned at the response, studying her skeptically. He knew her very well now, maybe better than anyone ever had, and it was a source of great comfort. Holt had become her rock over the last few months, her one constant, and the thought of leaving him wasn’t something she could bear to think about. Thinking about it, however, would soon be the least of her problems, and they both knew it. It was in their eyes whenever they looked at the other.

Whatever Holt was thinking, however, was lost at the sudden opening of their door.

One of the White Helix girls stood in the doorway, a daredevil, even more than the others, named Masyn, and she paused as she saw them, watching them with barely contained amusement. Mira pulled the covers sharply over them.

“Yes?” Holt asked in exasperation.

“Sorry, but … you need to come downstairs. Right now.” Masyn gave them one last conspiratorial look, then darted out of sight. There was a note in the girl’s voice that Mira didn’t like, something that seemed out of place for a four o’clock wake-up call. Excitement. For a White Helix, that emotion usually only meant one thing.

Holt studied Mira knowingly. “And so it goes,” he said.

Mira kissed him one last time, and then they were both up and getting dressed.

4.
WINDS GUIDE US

“
HOW
BIG, AGAIN?”
Conner asked, staring down at a map on one of Smitty’s worktables. A crowd of people surrounded the map: White Helix, Wind Traders, Mira and Holt, Ravan and two of her men, several dozen altogether, staring at where a female Captain had drawn lines to indicate what she’d seen and where.

Holt stared at a circle drawn about thirty miles west of Currency, where the rolling hills began their transformation into the flatlands that would become the Barren. He felt a hollowness in his stomach, and Mira’s hand slipped into his instinctively. They were thinking the same thing. The time had come.

“A hundred walkers, maybe more,” said the dark-haired Captain, eighteen or so. “That’s how many I counted, at least, before I got the hell out of there. I couldn’t make them out, but they were all Spider size I’d say, but there was something else. Something …
bigger
. Thought it was just haze at first, a mirage maybe, but then I could see the lights flashing on it, and I knew it was real.” The girl’s voice held a tangible note of fear, and Holt didn’t blame her. It was an Assembly army she was describing, and if those numbers were right, it was twice the size of the one that had attacked Midnight City, even without the mysterious larger object that was moving within it.

Mira’s eyes shut suddenly, she swayed, and Holt caught her before she fell. It was
them,
he knew, inside her head again. He saw Ravan’s eyes study Mira pityingly across the room. To her, what Zoey had done was a curse, and Holt had a hard time disagreeing.

“It’s…” she started, trying to make sense of all the voices in her head. “There are two hundred and seven walkers.”

The room went silent, everyone looked at her in shock. “
What
did she say?” one of the Captains asked, stunned. “
Two
hundred and—”

“The silvers told you this?” Ravan asked and Mira nodded. “Then I’d say that intel isn’t particularly trustworthy.”

“They have just as much invested in this as we do,” Mira said sternly. “The numbers are
right.
It’s the reds. They’re marching on orders from the blue and whites.”

Up until a few months ago, before they found Zoey, the only Assembly colors they’d ever seen were blue and white. The colors, they now knew, represented different Assembly clans, each with their own territory throughout the world. Zoey, for reasons still unknown, was vital to some agenda of the aliens and these clans had converged on North America in an attempt to claim her for their own.

Holt and Mira had encountered two clans, so far, other than the blue and whites. The green and orange Hunters, who relied on stealth and speed. And the reds, who relied mainly on heavy walkers, like Spiders. If the reds and the blue and whites, as it now seemed, were working together, it meant things had truly changed.

“Ambassador says it’s because they have Zoey now. The other clans acknowledge their dominance.”

“Lovely…” Ravan said.

“Why attack now?” one of the Landship Captains asked. “Why here?”

“We’re a threat.” It was Avril this time, standing next to Dane amid the other White Helix. “We’ve been marshaling our forces here for almost a month, they were bound to notice, and it’s clear where we’re headed and why. They mean to stomp us out before we get started.”

“
You
brought this down on us.” The bitter voice was directed at Conner, and Holt recognized the British female Captain from yesterday. “You and your bargain! These things are headed for Currency!”

Angry and fearful murmurs swept through the crowd of Wind Traders.

“What’s done is done, it was always going to be a hard road,” Conner told them. “We’re just starting it sooner, and the sooner you start something, the quicker you finish it. I say let them come.”

“And if Currency is destroyed in the process?”

“It won’t be,” Dane said, across the table from Holt, standing with Avril and the other White Helix, all of them Doyen, leaders of their own Arcs. Their reactions were altogether different from the Wind Traders. Excitement and eagerness played on their faces as Dane pointed to a spot in between the army’s current location and Currency, a valley between two rocky outcrops. “A small force can engage the reds
here,
buy time for the fleet to escape. We can deploy from the attack ships, use the hills for cover if we need to retreat.” The way he said it implied he had very little interest in retreating.

“Smitty, how many ships are armed?” Conner asked.

“Eleven,” the engineer said. “Should be fifteen by now, but getting a dependable crystal size from that infernal magic box isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“The Reflection Box creates an
identical
version of whatever you place in it,” Caspira replied icily.

“Yeah?” Smitty shot back. “Then why isn’t the muzzle velocity or the inertia consistent from weapon to weapon?”

“Probably because your cannon construction is faulty.”

“This isn’t the time!” Conner yelled, rubbing his eyes. Smitty and Caspira glared at each other across the table, but said nothing else. “Eleven ships out of ninety-three,” Conner said to himself, shaking his head.

“Aye,” Smitty said soberly. “But it’s better than nothing, and the
Wind Star
is fully armed and tested, she’s got almost as many cannons as two normal ships.” The
Wind Star
was the largest Landship in the Wind Trader fleet, the flagship and the greatest creation of Smitty and his engineers. Designed like one of the old Ironclads, it was a hulking vessel with a hull of almost pure aluminum, salvaged from barns and roofs and pieces of old cars, all welded and formed into the wedge-shaped craft. Its wheels were from giant construction vehicles, ten of them, almost eleven feet high by themselves. It wasn’t fast, nothing that heavy could be, even with five sails, but there wasn’t any landscape it couldn’t tackle. The thing took a crew of thirty to operate and was the only Landship in the world that needed two Chinooks to drive it, the Strange Lands artifacts that focused existing wind into streams powerful enough to propel the huge ships over the ground. Mira had personally helped redesign the vessel for combat, adding more than a dozen Barrier artifact combinations, which acted like deflector shields. The goal, of course, was to have the entire fleet outfitted with White Helix weaponry and Barriers … but that was a long ways off.

“Dresden, what do you think?” Conner asked, motioning to the map. “The Landships make a frontal assault here, deploying Helix as they go. The Barriers should hold long enough to deflect fire from the Assembly, and when we’re in range, we let ’em have it.”

For as much as they argued or seemed to dislike one another, the two brothers respected each other’s abilities and minds. They always consulted on important matters. Dresden, however, wasn’t even looking at the map, he was staring out one of the windows of the power station, into the landscape beyond.

“What do I think?” he repeated. “I think whoever participates in this attack isn’t coming back, and if my ship were one of these eleven, I wouldn’t be taking it anywhere near that battle.” Then he finally looked at Conner. “Oh wait, it
is
one of the eleven ships. Well, there goes that.”

“You’re going to lose people and ships, no way around that.” Ravan spoke up from the back of the line. The Wind Traders stared at her and her men distrustfully. She was Menagerie after all, a group who spent their time hunting them and their ships, and there was no love lost between them. “But if you do it as a diversion with the goal of letting the rest escape, it might work. Get in, hit them, get out, don’t prolong it. That’s too many walkers for anyone to stand against long.”

“We haven’t decided where Ambassador’s forces will attack,” Mira said, looking at the map herself. “They could circle the outcrops, the Hunters are fast, and—”

“No.” Dane’s voice was firm and insistent. “Those things aren’t needed here.” The majority of the White Helix nodded in agreement. Mira stared at Dane in shock. Even Holt was surprised.

“Much as I dislike the aliens,” Holt spoke up, “there are almost
sixty
combat walkers out there. Not using them seems pretty foolish.”

“You trust them a lot more than I do,” Conner replied, nodding at Dane. “I agree with him, we don’t need them for this. Hopefully once the Helix and the fleet are gone, these reds will leave Currency alone. The threat will have been removed.”

“Pray that’s the case, Consul,” the British-accented girl said again, her stare dark. “Or it all hangs on your name.”

Conner stared back at her. “So be it. We don’t have much time. Prepare your ships. If they’ve been retrofitted with Helix weaponry, your staging area is west of the Shipyards. Everyone else will unberth and assemble south of Currency. Winds guide us.”

“Winds guide us,” the other Captains chanted. The White Helix gathered around Dane while he gave orders to the Doyens, choosing which Arcs would participate in the diversionary attack and which would load onto the ships. As expected, every Doyen there wanted their Arc in the battle. This was going to be the first contact in the war Gideon had prepared them for their entire lives. There was a lot of honor to be gained today.

Avril stood nearby, but apart, allowing Dane to assume command. She was headed in a different direction from the others, and quite possibly might never see any of them again. It was Dane’s place to lead, not hers. He was Shuhan, now, but it wasn’t an easy realization.

Holt watched Conner pull Dresden away, arguing amongst themselves. He caught Ravan’s eye as she moved off with her men. She shook her head disapprovingly, and he didn’t blame her.

“I have a real bad feeling about this,” Mira said next to him, watching the different groups planning their moves. None of them were talking to the others. No one was working together.

“You and me both,” Holt replied.

*   *   *

GUARDIAN …
THE PROJECTIONS FORCED
their way into her mind again.
Come closer …

Mira ignored them as she moved through the crowds of Currency. Word of the impending attack had spread quickly, and the populace grabbed everything they could carry, leaving their homes behind. The ones lucky enough to be part of a Landship crew were headed to their berths. Everyone else was forced to go on foot, because there was no room on the ships. They were tasked with transporting White Helix and supplies, and even if there had been room, the ships were headed west, right toward the coming army.