Colony 41: Volume 1 (The Era Rae Series) Read online

  Swallowing in a throat that was suddenly very dry, I marked the movements of the troops and vehicles around me again, saw my chance, and sprinted. Then I was into the trees again and moving away from the camp and the sentries and all of it. I had to get back to Refuge.

  Wait. What was that sound?

  Pushing up against the tough bark of a thick tree, I peered around it, listening harder, trying to see into the darkness outside of the basecamp’s lights.

  “Don’t move.”

  The voice was close, distorted through an Enforcer’s helmet speaker. I’d been caught. Lifting my hands up over my head, I turned around, slowly.

  The lights from the basecamp back behind us fell on a man in a gray uniform with black protective pads on his chest and knees and forearms. His helmet gleamed. He held a weapon in his hands, pointed at me. It was hard to tell what it was in the gloom, but it wasn’t a MAR. This weapon would be lethal.

  And here I stood with my big knife and my stiletto tube. Not exactly a fair fight.

  “On your knees,” the Enforcer ordered me. Then he reached up to the radio controls on the side of his helmet.

  He was calling for reinforcements to this position.

  I couldn’t let him do that.

  Taking a step forward, I angled the stiletto’s barrel up, at the helmet, knowing the spikes wouldn’t go through the protective face plate but hoping I could get him in the arm or the shoulder…

  “Era Rae?”

  His hand hesitated, inches from the helmet controls, and every instinct in me screamed to fire the spike needles and take out the threat. Now. Before he called in more Enforcers and I was forced to fight against overwhelming odds.

  But I hesitated. I pushed my instincts down, and I waited to see what he would do next. Guess maybe I really am more than what the Restored Society made me.

  “Is that you?” he said, voice still distorted. “Era?”

  My thumb moved away from the stiletto’s trigger. The way he said my name was familiar.

  I took another step closer.

  His hand moved, away from the side of his helmet, down to the chin straps.

  As he took the helmet off, the back glow from the visor’s heads-up display cast a blue glow on his face.

  I knew him. Those eyes. That nose, bent at a hard angle from where I’d broken it. Twice.

  Verne.

  He was one of my own classmates from Colony 41. One of my fellow 26ers.

  “How are you here?” I asked him. It’s impossible not to. “Verne, you can’t be an Enforcer yet! We had two more years of Eccoliculum training at the Academy before we became full Enforcers.”

  Tilting his head to one side, he studied me with unblinking eyes.

  “I do not understand the request,” he said in a halting, buzzing voice. “Please advise.”

  Oh. Hellfire.

  That was what Saskia kept saying after they… after they…

  With another step closer to him I saw it. At the side of his neck there was an X shaped scar. Black wires lead out from the center of that scar, snaking down to the inside of his helmet. His hair had been buzzed close to his head and I could see other red lines tracing along through his scalp there, too. Surgical marks. Verne had been operated on.

  Just like Saskia.

  “Era.” He spoke my name like he was trying to remember something, and I realized his voice wasn’t distorted because of the helmet. Not entirely. Whatever they did to him made his voice hum and vibrate like it’s being produced electronically.

  Parts of him have been replaced. They made him into something less than human.

  This is the Restored Society’s idea of an ideal soldier.

  Not mine.

  “Verne, listen to me—”

  “Stay back,” he warned me, lifting his weapon higher, pointing it at my chest. “You are Era Rae. You are a deserter to the cause. You are to be arrested and brought back to stand trial for your sins. You will be made whole again.”

  “Verne, stop it. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You will submit to the Restored Society. To the rule of law.” He rattled off each phrase as if it had been programmed into him. “You will submit, because you are weak.”

  I drew in a sudden breath. That’s what he had said to me, back in Colony 41, right before he betrayed me to First Marshall Blake and nearly got me sent to quarantine.

  He told me I was weak.

  With everything that’s happened to me there is one thing I know for certain.

  I am not weak.

  On the exhale my left hand came up, holding the machete, swinging it in an arc that connected with the barrel of his weapon and sent it looping skyward. It went off, its ballistic charge vaporizing a gaping hole through the canopy of leaves over our heads.

  At the same time I drove my knee up and into his groin, a move that would take down even the strongest man.

  My knee connected with something hard and metallic, and I hope to God it was a protective cup of some kind.

  Wincing, swearing, I pulled back from Verne and bladed my body to him as he brought the rifle back around at me again. This time I side-striked his knee, planting my heavy boot hard at the joint and putting all of my weight behind it. I don’t care what parts of him might have been replaced with machinery. A knee isn’t meant to bend this way.

  Bone crunched with a wet snapping noise and I saw his eyes go wide as he dropped his helmet and the rifle and opened his mouth to scream in pain.

  Spinning around I swung my right arm out behind him and then in hard, ramming the butt end of the stiletto tube into the back of his skull.

  The impact is harsh, and I felt bone crunching there, too.

  Swaying in place, his wounded leg bent at an impossible angle, Verne collapsed over backward into the dirt.

  “No,” I squeaked. “Oh, no, no, no, no!”

  A strike to the back of the skull can cause temporary loss of consciousness. It can also kill a person. Enough force in that location can crack bone, severe the spine, cause massive internal bleeding…

  I might have just killed Verne.

  Fisting my hands together I slammed them over and over against my legs, then my knees, then the ground as I slid further and further down to the ground. I cursed the Restored Society for what they had made me. Cursed them with everything in me.

  And then I cursed myself, because I enjoyed it.

  I liked how it felt. That was the honest truth that I tried to keep even from myself. I liked how I could move, to strike like I do, to take out a man in full battle gear with just my bare hands. It was exciting. It was deadly.

  It was both.

  I forced myself to take a breath and calm myself down long enough to check Verne for a pulse. My fears and self-doubts weren’t helping, and I couldn’t stay here. With two fingers I felt to the right side of his throat for the carotid artery. I pressed there, and bit my lip, until I felt the weak pulse that meant he was still alive.

  A long sigh shook my body.

  My relief didn’t last long. One of the sentries was down. It wouldn’t be long before he was discovered missing. What would that do to their timetable? Move it up, that’s what. That was just basic strategy

  Now I had even less time than I had before.

  I didn’t know how Verne had become a full-fledged Enforcer. Obviously things had changed after I left Colony 41. Maybe with the First Marshall dead they decided to fill out the ranks more. Maybe they called up some of the Academy students who showed promise, then turned them into… this. I followed the line of the wires from Verne’s helmet all the way up to the side of his neck. What had they done to him?

  I shivered to think about it. I would never let them do this to me. Ever.

  Oh no… his gun went off before didn’t it? The whole camp must have heard it! I have to leave. Now.

  Turning away from Verne. I pushed myself to my feet and took off in the direction of Refuge.

  Then I stopped, a thought comin
g to me. I quickly returned to Verne’s unmoving body and took his rifle with me. I put the stiletto into my bag, hung the machete from the rope belt around my waist. The gun was a ballistic laser rifle, and I was lucky the single shot Verne had gotten off had hit the trees, and not me.

  It was heavy in my hands.

  It felt good.

  Era Rae’s journal, Entry #2999

  In a lot of ways, the Academy was always home.

  I remember being with my parents when I was a little girl. Before the Event. But their faces have faded with time until all I have left of their memory is blurry faces and snatches of feelings. I remember how it felt to have my mother hug me. I remember how my father’s smile made me happy. Emotions. Good, sad, happy. It’s what I have left of the people who raised me.

  Of course, now I know they weren’t really my parents. I was grown, not born. Created in an experiment that I still don’t fully understand. What kind of monsters do that to a person?

  Anyway. At the tender age of six, I ended up in Colony 41. The Event had devastated the planet, and at the time all of us were told that rogue nation states had committed that atrocity as an act of terrorism. We would be trained to fight those terrorists and bring order back to the world. That’s the sort of thing that gives a young, impressionable mind a sense of purpose.

  None of us had any idea that in reality, we were living with the terrorists.

  The Restored Society bombed the planet. In their effort to remake the world in their own image, they burned it down to the ground first.

  But in the Academy, my group felt safe. We felt like we mattered. This was the family I got adopted into. I found a place there. Acceptance, support, even love, although I didn’t know that part until it was too late.

  I’m getting way off topic. The Academy taught me what I needed to know to survive. I think that was my point. This night, as I’m racing back to Refuge to warn them about the Enforcers and their HoverHawks and the Third Marshall and all of it, I’m using everything the Academy gave me.

  I just hope it’s enough.

  I was panting for breath by the time I made it back. Thankfully the night air had turned cooler. It would have been a beautiful night if I hadn’t been running for my own life and the life of everyone in the village right there in front of me.

  Torches burned on long poles all along the walkways, at regular spaces, lighting up the night with a bright, orangey glow. Very few people were out. I’m pretty sure everyone goes to sleep at sundown here.

  Like I said, it’s not my kind of place.

  The Elders. I needed to find the Elders. In the middle of the village square I brought myself up short, looking left, then right, trying to make one of the simple houses all around me seem more important than the others. Wouldn’t the Venerate at least live in the nicest house?

  A man walked past, strolling down the path, and the way he looked at me seemed odd until I realized he was staring at my rifle. Right. Big scary gun in a place that was all about peace.

  Well it isn’t like I can hide it in my pants.

  “Where’s the Venerate?” I asked him. I even smiled.

  He picked up his pace and hurried away.

  Great. I could always knock on every door until I find the Elders…

  Then I saw someone else, someone I recognized, stalking up the pathway right at me.

  “You are nothing but trouble, Era Rae,” she snarled at me, her pretty face red in the torchlight. The gold of her hair shone like a fiery halo. “You dare bring a weapon here? Why won’t you just leave!”

  “I can’t,” I told her, not knowing why it mattered so much to me what she thought. “I’m trying to help you, can’t you understand that? Laria, I need to talk to the Venerate. To the Elders. Where are they?”

  “All I understand,” Laria snapped, her fists on her hips, “is that the only one in Jadran’s heart was me, until you arrived. Now here you are, and everything is wrong. You are trouble! For me, for Jadran, for all of us!”

  She jabbed a finger at the gun. I so did not have time for this.

  “Just listen to me, Laria. I didn’t do this.”

  “Yes, you did. Our life together was perfect before you.”

  Their life together? Hers and… Jadran’s? “Laria, I’m not interested in—”

  She screamed at me, a wordless sound of fury and frustration, and grabbed the front of my shirt. It surprised me. I wasn’t ready for it, and when I went to react she was already off balance and I was about to put her down…

  Just like I did to Verne. I nearly killed him, but that had been self-defense.

  What was my excuse here?

  Lowering my center of gravity I shoved with my rifle and pushed her back from me. I wouldn’t hurt her, but I couldn’t just stand here and argue with her, either.

  “What is this?” I heard a man’s voice raised over the roar of the blood in my ears.

  Elder Tray was rushing over to us. His robes were flowing behind him as his eyes darted from me to Laria. “What is this?” he repeated. “There will be no fighting in the streets. Common thugs, is not what we are!”

  His eyes slid back to me as he said that, and I got the impression he was implying some of us actually were common thugs.

  “You have to get your people out of here,” I blurted out, feeling the minutes stacking up. How long had it been? How much longer before the Enforcers arrived? “Elder, please. Listen to me. I was just at the Enforcer basecamp.”

  “You were what!” Laria shouted, her eyes wild.

  “I went to find out what they were going to do,” I tried to explain to Tray. “They were never going to let Refuge be. It was only a question of time. I heard their plans. They are coming, and they are coming right now!”

  He was silent for a long moment. “Era Rae. This is… disturbing news. Has anyone else heard about this?”

  I dropped my head toward Laria. “Just her.”

  “This is good. Come with me, please.”

  “Why? Elder, please, we need to get everyone out of here.”

  “First, we must talk to the Venerate.” He held his hand out in the direction of one of the paths. “This way, please.”

  I didn’t want to go with him. I wanted to run through the streets shouting that everyone had to get out, get out, get out. But I knew, without the help of the Elders, it would be hopeless. No one would listen to just me.

  So I followed Tray down a path, and then down another smaller row, to a little building that didn’t look like a house so much as it just looked like a barn. Square, windowless, with just the one door that I could see. No chimney stuck up over its roof. None of the little homey touches that I had seen on the houses around the village square.

  My nerves were already on edge. They practically lit up when Tray went inside long enough to light a lantern hanging from a metal hook just inside the door, then waved a hand for me to enter.

  I’d been right. This wasn’t a home. As Tray lit three other lanterns, more of the place came into view, and my hands tightened on my rifle in frustration. Poles supported a high roof over several stacks of square bales of dry grass, sacks that held fruits or vegetables, bolts of dyed cloth. Piles of cut tree trunks with their bark stripped off lay against the side wall waiting to be made into logs. It was just a storage barn.

  “Where is the Venerate?” I demanded, wheeling on Tray. I’m not sure if my rifle was pointed at his chest, but I know my finger slipped onto the trigger.

  “He’s not here, of course.” Tray smiled, turning to lock the door behind him. “There is no need to worry him about this, don’t you think?”

  “Worry him? Elder, do you understand what’s coming for Refuge? They’ll tear this place apart!”

  “I know who is coming. The Restored Society will come.” The smile on his face seemed so out of place. The idea of the murderous bastards tromping through Refuge actually made him happy. Lantern in hand, he lifted his arms up high. “They will save us. The Restored Society shall redee
m Refuge. They will create in us the shining society that the Venerate has never achieved.”

  He twisted the Venerate’s title around in his mouth until it was something vile. Dirty.

  “You see, Era Rae? There is no reason to run. There is no reason to be afraid. The Restored Society will save us.” He leaned in closer to me, and his eyes were cold. “They will save us, from you.”

  I blinked. Sudden understanding filtered into my crowded thoughts. “What did you do?” I stepped back from him, clutching my rifle closer to my chest. “What did you do!”

  “Why, I invited them here, of course. I’m not a fool. I know my fellow villagers are soft. Weak. There is no way they could stand against the might of the Enforcers. Especially not the force that is gathered here. There is no way we could stand and fight. The caves are an ancient warren of tunnels under our nearest mountain, but even there, we would be found out. There is no escape from the Restored Society. We have only one choice. One hope. That choice, I have taken.”

  He was so sure of himself. A convert, wearing the smile of a true believer, and I had to wonder how the Restored Society had brought him over to their way of thinking. What had they promised? What had they told him? Was he going to be a king? A general? He’d made his choice, he said.

  I knew what choice Tray had made. Instead of running from the Restored Society, instead of fighting them…

  “You’re going to give Refuge to the Enforcers,” I finished my own thought. “Like a present all wrapped up in a bow.”

  “Well, something more than that, I’m certain. The Restored Society was already interested in our village. Strategic to their goals, they said. The caves, you see. So they had already approached me. Me! Not that fool who plays at being our leader. Me. I will be the one to bring Refuge into the fold.”

  There wasn’t going to be any reasoning with the man. I could see that clearly enough. Tray had given himself over, completely, to the Restored Society. They didn’t have to put any wiring or computer parts in his brain to do it, either.

  “Let me go,” I all but whispered.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” He stepped closer, the lantern waving in his hand.