Anthem's Fall (34 page)

Vengelis stood his ground, but when she took him by the arm he allowed her to lead him through a back hallway stacked with old rusty kegs. Madison pushed past a creaking steel door and they were engulfed by gusty autumn air and midday sunlight. They hurried past a dumpster and a tremendous pile of stagnant trash bags in the alleyway.

“So what’s your story?” Madison said, looking even more stunning now that the sunlight shone on her face. Her eyes were emerald green, luminous against her dark skin. “Who are you?”

“It’s Madison, right?” Vengelis said, halting their walking.

“Yes.”

Vengelis suddenly felt a surprising degree of angst. He found himself not wanting to involve her. Beyond that, the mortification that would claim the faces of his departed family and high councillors if they knew he asked for the aid of a woman such as this was beyond words. Eve would likely slap him in the face.

“I have to go. Good luck,” he said flatly and began to walk away from her.

“Hey!” Madison looked affronted, as if this was the first time in her life a man had walked away from her. She stormed after him. “Why did you risk your life for me?”

“I risked nothing,” Vengelis said, still walking away from her. Though he knew it was a lie. He had risked too much, for a gain of nothing.

“At least tell me who you are. Call it a courtesy to ease my mind. I don’t like being indebted to someone I don’t know.”

“You’re not indebted to me. Forget about it.”

As Vengelis turned out of the alley, he saw two police officers standing watch over the rear of the building. He recognized their uniforms; they were similar to the ones worn by the two men on the mountain far to the north. One of the officers held a hand up as Vengelis approached and eyed his armor uncertainly. “The building’s been locked down. Crime scene—no one can leave until we sort it out.”

Vengelis opened his mouth with the intention of giving the man a singular verbal warning, but Madison was too quick.

“Officer!” Madison grabbed Vengelis’s arm and leaned against it as though she had an injury. “Some sicko just groped me in the dressing room. Ugh, he was so creepy! I barely got away from him. He’s still in there—with the other girls. He said he has a gun.”

“Uh, okay. Okay. We will take it from here, miss,” the police officer stuttered. Both of the uniformed men gawked at her gorgeousness.

“Well, hurry then!”

Holding their gazes sidelong at her, they ran into the building by the side entrance, shouting into their radios and clutching their holsters with heavy steps.

Madison pulled her weight off Vengelis at once.

“Well, I would say it was nice meeting you, but I guess we didn’t really meet,” she said. “So, uh, thanks, I guess. I’ll see you around, hotshot.”

Madison gave him a bewildered expression and turned without another word, taking off down the street. Vengelis watched her walk away without the slightest lingering hesitation in her step. He tried to decipher what he was thinking. She was a human, a pitiful shadow of his own people. Though he had to admit that, provided with Royal attire, she could easily have passed for a daughter of even the most prestigious of Royal lines. Madison did not let that rabble of men get the better of her for the slightest instant. Vengelis’s face unconsciously broke into a smirk as he considered the look of burning intensity that had taken hold of her as she fought them off. Even now as she walked away, Madison had a dignified kind of swagger. Vengelis sighed with uncertainty, knowing she was soon going to be caught up in the obliteration that was about to claim her world. His very own hand could unknowingly kill her.

“Wait,” he called out.

T
he two stoic Imperial First Class soldiers soundlessly traversed the skies over an expansive countryside. They were making their way steadily westward. A pair of massive birds of prey, Hoff held position a few body lengths ahead of Darien. They moved high over broad stretches of forest and narrow lakes nestled between humble hills. Here and there a highway or gathering of shingled rooftops would gleam up at them.

They were unwelcome strangers in a land blind to their malevolent presence, and they had no minds for leisurely sightseeing as they embraced the wooded country below. On the contrary, the lush carpet of vibrant foliage that fell away beneath them only stirred up feelings of anger and resentment. If the two soldiers possessed a greater ability to express their tangled emotions, they would have identified their shared sentiments as envy. Envy of the lands the people below called home. In their terse exchanges, Hoff and Darien agreed that an untested and unproven race did not deserve such a flourishing sanctuary.

The pale blue skies of the coastal east gradually gave way to cold blustering clouds that brooded tumultuously around them as they moved west. A cold drizzle touched their armor and the skin of their arms as they examined the lands. After some time soaring through the cold rain, Hoff held up his hand and came to a stop. The Lord General floated still in the dark sky, and Darien came to a stop at his side. The ground beneath them had noticeably shifted topographically; the hills had smoothed into level flatlands, and the broad gray mass of an immense lake extended across the vista to the north and commanded the horizon. The gigantic lake’s dreary surface was that of an ocean, flecked with white caps and shadowy menacing swells. A number of rather unimpressive towns were scattered across the bank, and the infinitesimal movement of cars could be seen on the wet highways. Here and there a few buildings reached into the sky from the most prominent hub, perhaps a city. Aside from the several tall steel structures, the coast was cluttered with low rises and parking lots between stands of woods.

“What do you think?” Darien asked as he looked at the sodden roads and rooftops.

Hoff wiped cold precipitation from his brow. “I’m looking down at this world and these people and seeing nothing. I see a civilization that can barely hold back the wilderness that presses in around it. I see people that don’t deserve even a shadow of our likeness. This mission is not going to get us anywhere. There’s nothing of help to us here. Why Vengelis wants us to hold back at all is lost on me. It’s shameful, staying out of sight of these people in this reverent manner. We’re hiding from sheep.”

“We’re not hiding out of respect, Hoff. We’re laying low so Vengelis can reach the scientists,” Darien called over the growing wind as he squinted below. “But we only need to stay concealed for a little while longer. For now we just have to play our part.”

“These…towns…won’t serve for a spectacle. There aren’t enough buildings down there to draw attention even if they were to fall.” Hoff called and spat into the air. He watched his spittle fall far into the swirling rain. “We need to find a more populated city before we make contact with Vengelis.”

“Yes,” Darien said.

Hoff turned and eyed each horizon. In the north, the slate gray lake stretched beyond sight. To their south, rows of orderly neighborhoods and wet treetops encompassed everywhere the eye could see, which was not very far through the obscuring downpour.

“Do you think such a city exists?” Darien asked.

The Lord General shook his head uncertainly and took out his
Harbinger I
remote. He brought up a simple map of the North American continent. The screen of the remote glowed in the dreariness, and the Lord General held a forearm up to shield if from the pelting rain.

“According to this map, there’s a population of about three million to the west of us. Only a few hundred miles.”

“Are they densely concentrated?” Darien called over the growing vehemence of wind.

Hoff raised his gaze, heavy eyebrows dripping as he nodded dispassionately and turned to the west. The two giants continued their expedition, flying underneath the cathedral of churning storm clouds that loomed overhead. It was frigid at their altitude, but the two seemed unaware of the temperature or the worsening rain. Below, the rainstorm was falling heavily on grids of flat fields and endless acres of crops. A thick fog enclosed the region in a drab gloom. Looking down upon the pastoral lands passing them by, Darien felt a sharp despairing sentiment toward their situation. The glory of his race was being forced to seek salvation among farmers. He drew his gaze away from the lands and pulled in close to the Lord General. “Do you think they have any defenses?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose not.”

“Their most advanced defenses should at the very least shed some light on their advancement of technology. We’ll see the pinnacle of their power. In that sense I really hope we’re not left underwhelmed,” Hoff said, squinting through the rain.

“I’ve never been on a planet other than Anthem,” Darien said. “This place feels so surreal. I feel like we’ve traveled in time, not place.”

“You’ve never been off Anthem?”

Darien shook his head.

“I’m surprised you weren’t recruited for the Orion campaign. Most of the top soldiers were sent there.”

“I was too young.” Darien’s face darkened, the memories still souring him. “Missed the Imperial Army cut off by three months.”

“Well, at least you went on to make the Royal Guard. If it’s any consolation, the Orion campaign was tedium.”

“Wasn’t there intelligent life there?” Darien asked with surprise.

Hoff weighed out the question uncertainly. “Technically, yes, I suppose. You’re thinking of the Yarbu, or Yabu or something like that. They were little more than docile animals. It was . . . 
excessive
 . . . to call in the top ranks of the Imperial First Class on that one. A couple blundering low-ranks armed with a gun or two could have secured Orion.”

“Either way, I wish I had been there.” Darien shook his head wistfully. “It’s always been a goal of mine to fight on foreign soil.”

“Well you’re getting that chance now, aren’t you?”

Darien shrugged. “I suppose.”

“Trust me kid, Orion was grunt work. They were a bunch of cave people and savages. You didn’t miss much.”

“You were there?”

“Well . . . not for the initial expeditions. I was general of the Royal Guard at the time. They sent for us when one of the soldiers broke rank. The whole thing was hushed up big-time.” Hoff paused and considered something for a moment. “But what do classified secrets matter now?”

“There was dissention on Orion?” Darien asked. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“To call it dissention would be to put it lightly.”

“What happened?”

Hoff hesitated. “Let me preface this by asking you not to tell Vengelis what I’m about to tell you. Okay?”

Darien gave him a questioning look. “Why?”

“Because he’ll be mad that he was never made aware of it. But the truth of the ordeal was kept from everyone—generals and Royalty included. Everybody involved was forced to swear under penalty of execution that they would never speak of it. Emperor Faris himself ordered the cover up.”

Darien stared at Hoff with a look of fierce anticipation. “By all means continue.”

“Do you promise not to tell Vengelis? He won’t see the excuse that I took an oath on my life directly to his father as justifiable. He’ll only see it as me having withheld the truth from him. You know how he can get with things like this.”

“Yes, yes. I won’t tell Vengelis. Please just go on,” Darien said.

“Okay. Do you remember the media coverage of the space transport accident that happened on the return journey to Anthem after the Orion campaign?”

Darien had to think back for a moment. He remembered it vividly, mainly because he was thankful not to have been involved. Had he not been too young during the recruitment trials, Darien easily could have been on board himself. The story had stayed in the news for weeks in the aftermath. A number of high-ranking military officials in the Imperial Army had been killed in a transport accident. Several famous soldiers had been lost.

“The accident with the generals, right?” Darien asked.

“Correct.”

“Sure I remember.” Darien nodded. “One of the transports lost contact in space. Worst accident in modern Imperial First Class history.”

“But it wasn’t any bunch of generals.” Hoff pointed out. “The Lord General Bronson Vikkor himself was killed.”

“Vikkor, yes.” Darien said. “We lost the commander of the Imperial First Class because of some defective engine. I remember watching his fights in the Grand Arena when I was a kid. He was fierce.”

“Yes, he was,” Hoff said. “I was appointed to the open position of Lord General after his death. Bronson Vikkor was an old friend. I guess you could say I was a protégé of his.”

Darien nodded slowly, rivulets of rain spilling off his broad chin. “I’m sorry to hear that. But what does any of this have to do with soldiers breaking rank?”

“Well, in short it has everything to do with it. The entire story of the space transport lost in space, from start to finish, was a fabrication.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the whole transport accident was a cover story.” Hoff veered closer to Darien and took a long dramatic breath. “Lord General Vikkor didn’t perish because of some engine failure on the return journey. He was slain on Orion.”

Darien immediately stopped his forward flight and halted in place, his head inclined skeptically. Hoff came to a stop as well, basking in his younger partner’s reaction to this groundbreaking revelation. They floated separate from their surroundings as the unmentioned downpour gusted in sheets around them.

“
What
?” Darien demanded, his tone skeptical.

“It’s true. Bronson Vikkor was assassinated in the command bridge of the transport,” Hoff said with an expression of significance. “And three Royal Guards were hospitalized with wounds when they came to his aid. It was all done by one person.”

Darien shook his head. “That’s not possible. No one in the Imperial Army could have bested Vikkor and three Royal Guards.
Maybe
an Epsilon, but even then I would have to see it to believe it.”

“I thought the same thing at first.” Hoff nodded. “Until I saw the security footage myself.”