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Authors: Sharon Lynn Fisher

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BOOK: The Ophelia Prophecy
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A shrill cry knifed through the air, and Iris burst out of Nefertiti, propelled along by four more of the newcomers.

“Watch those stabbers, lads!” cried one of them. “She’s got a wicked bite, too.” An oval of red beads marked the forearm of the woman who’d spoken.

“Hold your weapons on her!” shouted the man who’d spoken to Asha, as they struggled to control their livid captive. “Their ship is making threats.”

“What’s going on?” demanded Asha. “Who
are
you?”

The man winked at her. His blond hair was closely cropped. He had a trace of a beard and eyes that laughed.

“Humanity’s last stand, love. Out checking our honeytrap for flies.”

*   *   *

Pax’s cheek ground into the dirt as he wrenched his chin so he could see the rectangle of false ground that had sheltered his enemy. A frame made of wood and some kind of mesh, with blocks of turf fixed to it. The turf on the frame was dryer and lighter in color than the turf on the surrounding ground—it was subtle, but something he should have noticed.

How had the patrols missed these people? The Scarab detail was responsible for containing the known human survivors. Sanctuary was the largest group, and the only one that still possessed anything close to a pre-holocaust level of technology. The rest of them were mudgrubbers like these. The British Isles had succumbed to the microbial onslaught faster than other regions due in part to the densely populated urban centers, but there
were
isolated rural areas in Wales and Scotland—and here in Ireland.

The Scarabs had documented—or in the early days, destroyed—all known pockets of survivors. This one had obviously escaped notice.

“How many of you are there?” Asha asked their leader—a broad-chested man with a deep voice and penetrating gaze.

“Questions all around, I’ll wager,” he replied, glancing at the low clouds. “Morning’s gone chill. Our base is not far from here. We can talk there.”

The man held out his hand to Asha. “Welcome to Connemara, love. I’m Beck.”

Her small hand disappeared in his. “Asha.”

“Yank, by the sound of it.” He shook his head grimly. “Long way from home.”

Beck approached Pax, and one of the men pinning him down jerked his head back by the hair. The leader stooped to look into his face.

“That female important to you?”

Pax’s jaw fell open—not the question he’d been expecting. “Listen, there’s still time for you to stay alive. Let us go now, and—”

“Don’t waste my time, bugman. Answer the fucking question.”

Pax grunted with pain as his hair was yanked again. “I don’t know her. We picked her up yesterday.”

Beck snorted. “Not
that
female. I mean the one that came out of somebody’s bloody nightmare.”

Pax pressed his lips together and glared.

“I take that as a yes. Here’s the situation. I’m going to slice her open right in front of you if you don’t order that beast to camouflage itself like the other one, and power all the way down. Full stop, all systems. Understand?”

Nothing in Beck’s demeanor suggested he was bluffing. In fact, every bit of information Pax’s senses had gathered about the man confirmed he had it in him to do it.

“It won’t help you,” replied Pax. “Banshee’s already sent out a distress call.”

“Bring her,” Beck shouted over his shoulder. “Captain, we don’t know each other at all, and I can excuse you once for assuming I’m an idiot. There’s no satellite reception here. That thing could send out a hundred distress calls and it will make no difference if there’s no one in range to receive it.”

Apparently Pax’s
mudgrubber
assessment had been premature.

Beck stood up and walked over to Iris. He reached down and took hold of one of her wings, gently extending the veined, leaf-like appendage while Iris strained against her captors, jets of fury shooting from her eyes.

“Shall we start here?” He positioned the blade of his knife at the point where wing joined frame.

“Beck, stop!” cried Asha.

The leader’s head pivoted her direction.

“Please don’t.” Her eyes moved between Iris and Pax. “It’s cruel.”

“So are
they
,” he grunted. “But there’s no need for it, if our captain will do as I’ve asked.”

“Just
do
it,” Asha urged, fixing her gaze on Pax.

He had no intention of letting them dissect his sister; he needed to get a better understanding of his enemy. He’d gotten that, and then some, but this round had gone about as far as it could.

“All right. Take your hands off her.”

“Order your ship to camouflage and power down completely—no more words than that if you want me to put away the knife.”

Pax complied, and Banshee acknowledged and powered down. He took back everything he’d said about Banshee’s recent autonomous impulses and prayed the ship would watch for an opportunity and take initiative.

“Bind their hands,” ordered Beck, “and let’s get going.”

A man with a ragged scar down one cheek took hold of Asha’s arm, and Pax felt a sudden and confusing urge to hurt him. He bit back an angry challenge that made no sense even to him, and fixed a black look on the leader.

“Hey!” protested Asha.

Beck, who was helping to bind Iris, glanced up. “No, Finn, leave her be. She’s one of us.”

The scarred man eyed Asha doubtfully. “You sure?”

“Don’t be an idiot. You see any bug parts?”

“No, sir, I don’t. But I don’t see any on
him
, neither.”

Tugging another length of cord from his belt, Beck took a couple steps toward Pax. “True enough, but some don’t have them.”

Finn released Asha. By the frowning and head scratching that followed, Pax knew the man had picked up on the circular logic. “If that’s so, how do you know she—”

“Stop thinking and get over here and help me,” grumbled Beck. “You too, Father. Why are you watching the rest of us work?”

“Sorry,” muttered a tall man with shoulder-length, dark hair. His gaze moved from Iris to the leader.

“Not like you is all,” said Beck.

The man was too young to be Beck’s father—no more than forty—and Pax deduced “father” meant holy man.

He and Finn strode over and jerked Pax’s arms into position while another man looped the cord in a figure eight. When his wrists were tightly bound, they dragged him over next to Iris, whose face was flushed with rage. She was afraid, too, but no one but Pax would know it.

Beck and the priest conferred in low voices, while Finn aimed an awkward smile at Asha. Cleary uncomfortable, she glanced away, and the man took the opportunity to rake her body with his eyes. Pax’s blood warmed from simmer to boil.

In Sanctuary Asha would have led a relatively sheltered and civilized existence. She would have had instilled in her from birth all her notions of friends and enemies, and in fleeing Banshee she had made a choice consistent with those lessons.

She probably had only academic knowledge of what men could become when they had to struggle for survival—when every day was life or death. The education she might be in for sucked the anger right out of him, replacing it with a cold, creeping dread.

*   *   *

The initial relief Asha felt at escaping the Manti—and especially at the discovery of other human survivors—had been churned into apprehension by the violent threats against Iris. What kind of men were these? She eyed the one woman in their company, and found her even harder looking than the others.

Feeling the burn of Finn’s gaze on her, Asha moved closer to Beck and the dark-haired man. Fierce as he looked with his almost-black eyes and corded, ax-wielding forearms, the leader had called him “father,” and she thought he might be a priest. He’d be the first she’d ever met.

“Where are you taking us?” she asked, interrupting their low conversation.

“We’ve a shelter nearby,” replied Beck. “Kylemore Abbey, not much more than a kilometer away by the old road. It’s an easy walk.”

Asha glanced down at the flimsy slippers she’d borrowed from Iris.

Following her gaze, Beck laughed. “Not quite proper footwear for the bog. No worries, love. You’re a tiny thing—I’ll take you on my back.”

Her eyes widened, and she took a step back.

“No need to be afraid of me. But as you like.” He winked and returned his attention to the priest.

She contemplated the rough-looking plants that carpeted the ground around the ship. The numerous pools of still, opaque water—very likely cold and heaven knew how deep. A fat raindrop pelted the tip of her nose, and she hugged her arms around her chest, gazing at the leaden sky.

“Ready to set out, then?” Beck asked as the priest moved away.

She took a deep breath and nodded.

The big man knelt with his back to her. She climbed on like a child, and he rose with her easily, like she weighed no more than one.

She gripped his shoulders, feeling the hard muscles working beneath a shirt that had been mended in at least a dozen places. Her nostrils registered his strongly male presence. Not unwashed, exactly, but there was the sharp, oniony scent of sweat, combined with an herbal smell that she recognized from required rotations in the greenhouse back home.

His arms tucked under her legs, Beck hoisted her higher and walked—not onto the bog as she’d expected—but into the hole that had concealed his party.

“Hey—wait—”

As he splashed into knee-deep water she saw it wasn’t a hole, but a tunnel. Light streamed into the opening at the opposite end. He waded toward it, and the others began dropping into the tunnel behind them.

“How did you tunnel under all this wet ground?” she asked, squinting into the darkness of the tight enclosure.

“It’s not an honest tunnel. More like a ditch.” He waved at one wall. “This is an old turf cutting—the peat bricks for our fires come from here. It was started generations ago. We just connected it up to this dry stretch, and covered it so it wouldn’t be visible from the air.”

“Looks like it was a huge amount of work.”

“That it was.”

“Why did you do it? You couldn’t have known the Manti were coming.”

“Ah, but we did. When the first ship came down we figured eventually someone would come along looking for it. Did you notice that old cottage at the edge of the bog, next to the thicket?”

“Yes, I saw it.”

“We’ve had rotating watches there for weeks, keeping an eye on this ship.”

“Do you know what happened? Why it came down, I mean?”

“Mmm. She came down in a storm. We picked up her crew the next morning, trying to cross the bog.”

This was an interesting new concept for Asha—the idea of luring and ambushing the enemy. In Sanctuary they tried to ignore the enemy flyovers, and hoped the enemy would return the favor.

“Where is the crew?”

Beck’s body stiffened under her. “Dead.”

She stiffened too, thinking about Iris and the knife. “Did you kill them?”

She yelped as Beck lost his footing, and water splashed up her legs and back. But he managed to right himself before they slid into the water.

“We gave them a choice,” he replied, bumping her back into position. She clutched at his shoulders to keep her balance. “They could have taught us to fly that ship.”

“What did you want with the ship?”

“To find other survivors. We have to band together if we’re going to fight them.”

Asha lifted her eyebrows. “You’re serious?”

He chuckled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, it’s just that—” Indeed,
why
?

She considered a moment and continued, “Where I come from, we talk about that all the time. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything
but
talk. Not since right after the war. I never knew there were other survivors.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Where
do
you come from, love?”

“Sanctuary. It’s in Utah, in the desert.”

“How many there?”

“Nearly a thousand.”

Beck whistled. “That’s very good news.”

“There are many more of
them
though,” she pointed out. “I mean we assume so, based on their numbers before the war.” Multiple births were common among the Manti, and reproduction was almost a religion for them at the time negotiations collapsed. Just like it was a civic obligation back home.

“What you’re telling me is you don’t think one ship will be enough for a resistance.” She could hear the grin in Beck’s voice.

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Good thing we have two, then.” He laughed, and his laughter was contagious.

“Serious now though,” he continued, “that’s a useful bit of information. You have more like that?”

She bit her lip. “Quite a lot, actually.”

He gave a decisive nod. “Let’s get you someplace warm and dry. Then the two of us will have a long chat.”

Though still wary of Finn and the others, Asha was beginning to trust their leader. Gradually she was distancing herself mentally from the pair who’d brought her here. Paxton was her enemy. Beck and the others were her
people
. Until now she’d believed the whole of humanity consisted of the thousand souls at Sanctuary.

Yet she was also conscious of a sense of uneasiness about Paxton—uneasiness that had nothing to do with the threat he represented. She had flinched at the rough way they’d treated him and Iris, and the information about the other crew made her worry about what Beck had in mind for them.

“Do you know anything about the bugman who captured you?” asked Beck. “Or the woman?”

Asha had all but forgotten what she’d learned about Paxton in the moments before they’d discovered the Nefertiti. It now dawned on her that, considering what Beck had told her about his plans, it was a very powerful piece of information.

Wait
, a voice inside her warned.
Not yet
.

“I know they’re brother and sister,” she said. “And their ship is familiar to everyone in Sanctuary. The Manti have watched our city since the end of the war.”

Nodding, Beck said, “The ships pass over here as well. We assume they’re looking for survivors. As far as I know, we’ve kept off their radar.”

BOOK: The Ophelia Prophecy
6.33Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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