Blood of the Scarecrow: Book 3: Solstice 31 Saga Read online

  “But what of Sue and Ren?”

  “They will find their way back, or not. Either way, it’s on you,” Ronan said, and walked away.

  ***

  Wes Hagan woke up not knowing where he was, at first. His neck was seriously aching. He was still in his pressure suit, without the helmet. The collar felt hard beneath his jawline. His mouth was very dry.

  “Echo, status,” he said, groggily, as he sat up on the cot that was folded down from the wall.

  “You have been asleep for seventeen hours. The combat rations kept you going and effective for about thirty hours. You fell asleep at the console and later you barely made it to this cot. I have been trying to gently wake you for an hour.”

  A small spider-like maintenance-bot, the size of a shoe, walked up and handed Wes an energy drink.

  He took it, raising an eyebrow.

  He noticed Echo's avatar sitting tailor fashion, on an equipment case across from the cot.

  Wes pointed at the small spider-bot.

  “I did that?”

  “Yes. That and a few hundred other things. You get a lot done when you put your mind to it.”

  Looking back into the boat, he saw that four of the suits were missing. He raised an eyebrow and looked at Echo.

  “That was your idea as well. You figured out how to bypass enough protocols on the suits to allow me to remote control them all. You stationed four of them outside, in case we needed to do something fast and easy.”

  “I am remembering.”

  He chugged the entire bottle, then handed it back to the spider-bot, who walked it away.

  “You made another directional transmission back to Earth,” Echo continued.

  It was all coming back to him.

  “I need food. Bad. Real food.”

  He stood and somehow knew where to go. The compartment was unmarked.

  “Galley, open. Coffee, now.”

  A small mini-kitchen emerged from the wall just behind the pilot’s seat, like magic. The stainless coffee carafe was already steaming by the time he reached for it, after retrieving a cup.

  “Thanks, Echo.” He sipped the coffee and sighed. “I need to get out of this pressure suit and take a shower, so I can think.”

  “Eat this, first. It will help.”

  There was a small chime and a standard sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich dispensed from the automat.

  “I loved these as a kid.”

  Hagan took the perfectly square sandwich and his coffee and stood in the space between the pilot seats, looking at the moon’s stark vista. He ate his meal in silence. He knew crumbs were falling into the collar of his pressure suit, but he didn't care.

  Wes heard the clicking footfalls of the spider-bot. And when his coffee was gone, he tossed the reusable, light plastic cup over his shoulder; and he heard the spider-bot catch it, before it touched the floor. When he turned, the spider-bot, the cup, as well as the mini-kitchen, were all gone.

  ***

  Ronan, Cass, and Lor staggered across the Citadel Bridge, singing a filthy tavern song about a wench with full lips and wanton desires. Ronan drank empty the hand-blown wineglass and tossed it over the side of the bridge into the chasm. When the crash was heard, Cass threw her glass, forgetting it was still half full. Lor went to the edge and dropped hers straight down.

  Then, Ronan threw the bottle, hard. A bit of his anger bled through in the throw. The girls slid under each arm and dragged him to the carriage. Avis made sure they all got inside and then signaled to the drivers.

  Avis sat across from the three of them and opened a case that contained hot water and washcloths. Each of them gladly accepted a large, wet cloth and began wiping their faces and necks; the girls also wiped their arms, sticky from spilled wine.

  Just after the second switchback in the road, the carriage stopped. The girls got out and forced themselves to vomit a dramatic amount of wine. They got back in, where more wet cloths were waiting for them, as well as cold flasks of water.

  “I will never get used to eating and drinking so much and still being hungry and sober,” Cass said.

  “The key is to drink without getting it in your mouth much. At least then, you can taste things. Straight to the throat,” Lor added.

  “Someone invented the foul stuff so Noble Houses could feast and never get fat. Or avoid poison…” Ronan’s voice faded away as the door closed.

  “Why did it happen?” Cass asked, now with a tremble in her voice. “Sheep shearing schedules? What matters there so much? Why?”

  “It wasn’t about sheep; they were there to be punished and humiliated. I knew it as soon as I saw that it was Esau and Donner.”

  Ronan wiped his face, again, with a dry towel.

  “And I was there to be tested, to see how I would react. To see if I would defend them.”

  ***

  It took Hagan a few minutes to get out of the pressure suit. It was the half-zipper version. He wondered why they still called them zippers. There were no teeth with this kind of thing, just a double set of continuous seals from his neck to about his navel. The layers of Velcro seemed loud, and the space seemed small to him today.

  With practiced ease, he lifted the collar and slid though the opening, as the suit collected around his calves. The whole thing smelled of sweat and urine. The inner suit was next and, in less than a minute, Wes stood naked in the center of the ship, stuffing the inner suit into the laundry unit and then hanging the pressure suit in the standard locker, where it would be cleaned and tested.

  The floor was warm under his bare feet, as he moved to the shower that was on the port side, just beyond the center hatch. The shower stall was bigger than the one he had on the Ventura. It was bigger than the typical shower in a standard lifeboat. It had been made for bigger men. Men like Sergeant Ferris. They were all dead now.

  He was soon clean, and the water was replaced with the wind, to dry him. He liked the wind to be cool after his shower, so he adjusted the temp down. His mind emptied as the air dried him.

  Hagan emerged clean and dry. The ship had coveralls in many sizes and colors, including engineering blues, which he selected out of force of habit. He didn't put on any shoes but rolled the pant legs up his calves halfway.

  “Why are you barefoot?” Echo asked, as he settled into the pilot’s seat and began to strap in.

  “My feet can feel the ship through the deck plating. It can tell me a lot.”

  He looked over as Echo settled into the co-pilot’s seat.

  “I can already tell that the power plant is not standard on this thing. The hum of it feels like a small, dark-matter reactor. Not a conventional reactor.

  “Echo, I want to test the grave-foil repairs. I want to also recon the area. Let's do a thousand meters straight up, with gentle rotation. Up and down. Should we collect DS-01 through -04 before we ascend?” Hagan asked, looking over to her.

  “DS-01, -02, -03, and -04. Secure to skids for a short hop,” Echo ordered, out loud, for Hagan's benefit. She was driving them all. They were an extension of her.

  Wes watched in the display, as two of them placed a foot on the massive front skid plate and grasped a handhold that was there for this very purpose. DS-03 and -04 secured to each of the rear skids in the same way.

  “Here we go,” Echo said, as Wes began to have the feeling of falling up. The rise was smooth and symmetrical. The boat performed a smooth barrel roll, and the one-G fall into the sky felt good to Wes. He felt natural for the first time in days.

  As the ship ascended, it spiraled, giving Wes a slow-moving change of view.

  “Echo. Is this boat equipped with any additional hardware or scanners we could use?”

  Wes had learned to use direct command questions with this Artificial Intelligence system. He had also come to recognize the pause that was caused by her assessing contradictory orders.

  “The decking on this lifeboat is equipped with grave-plates.”

  Wes felt the gravity adjust to a comfortabl
e one-G as they flew.

  “There are enhanced optical sensors and more powerful secure communications. There is also a large data repository onboard. I believe it is a backup of the Ventura's survey data from this tour. All of it,” Echo said, adding emphasis to the word all.

  “You have already guessed that the conventional power plant was replaced with dual, dark-matter reactors,” Echo said.

  “I don't suppose you have a couple FLT drives back there, somewhere?”

  “We had the Memphis,” Echo said, with a tinge of regret in her voice.

  “Please prepare a report of all the out of spec modifications that have been made to this boat.

  “We need to name her now. My boat…my home…my tomb.”

  ***

  “Scanning in progress now. Are we looking for anything specific?” Echo asked, from her seat.

  “Yes. High ground. I want to launch the second drone, later today, in the opposite direction. I want maximum coverage.” Wes stopped talking.

  He thought he saw movement on a ridge below. The spiral of the rotation took the view away too quickly for him to focus.

  “Wes, what's wrong?”

  Echo sounded concerned.

  “I saw something, down on that ridge. It looked like a woman, cresting the ridge...”

  His words fell away, as he waited for the ridge to come back into view.

  “She was wearing a gray cloak and had red hair.”

  He looked at Echo.

  “She wasn't wearing a pressure suit.”

  Echo slowed the rotation and let Hagan visually scan the ridge, for thirty minutes, before he gave up looking. He violated his own rules about staying strapped in while moving, by getting up for another cup of coffee.

  When he sat again, he not only had a cup of coffee, he had another military ration bar.

  “Are you sure you want another iron ration?” Echo asked.

  “Iron ration?” Wes asked, as he opened one end and slid it out.

  “That's what the Black Badgers called them,” Echo replied.

  “Black Badgers?” Wes asked.

  “Sorry. That was their nickname. They were a very closely held and compartmented military squad, and they all wore lanyards with their security badges. Their badges were black, with their photo and their unit logo on them. Black Badges evolved into Black Badgers,” Echo explained.

  Wes just shook his head.

  “I'm going to try something different this time, Echo. I want you to monitor me closely and report to me any significant changes in my behavior. I need to be sharp.”

  With that, Hagan took one bite, wrapped up the rest of the bar, and slid it into his breast pocket.

  “Let's move the boat to that peak we can see on the horizon. If we can park there, we can cover a lot of ground fast. If the Memphis crashed, it would have been in that general area.”

  The lifeboat moved in that direction, as Wes discussed naming the ship with Echo. By the time they reached the new landing spot, they decided to call the ship Sariska.

  “Why do you want to call the lifeboat Sariska?” Echo asked.

  “Well, you made me think of it. There is a wildlife sanctuary in India called Sariska. You remind me of a woman I met there.”

  This made Echo smile.

  ***

  Eyes watched the ship go from the shadows on the ridge, gliding toward the peak on the far horizon. Lips moved, cursing silently in the vacuum.

  CHAPTER FOUR: Scarecrows

  “We didn't know he was one of them. We didn't know he was not human, not in the beginning anyway. We didn't know. He was hiding. He was patient. He was playing the long game the whole time.”

  --Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: General Patricia Chase, senior member of the Earth Defense Coalition.

  <<<>>>

  The cells lined the hall on both sides. It had the feel of complete emptiness. The silence of dust. There were not even rats here. There was no dripping water, no shuffling of prisoners in their loneliness and discomfort, no rattling of chains. This deep underground, the ventilation system was perfectly silent.

  The small, bare feet moving through the darkness was the loudest sound. The prisoner heard her fingers as they drifted along the wall. He knew she was counting cells in the blackness. His cell was two meters deep and two meters wide. One entire wall of bars, a fist width apart.

  She didn't know he saw her in the absolute dark.

  He sat on the bare, foamcrete shelf and watched her slowly tiptoe down the hall in the darkness. She felt the bars of his cell and stopped. Impossibly quiet now, she reached both of her arms through the bars, pressing her face to them. Her hands silently searched the black within.

  He gently took her hands in his and squeezed them. Her face crumbled into tears as he advanced into her arms, but she didn't make a sound. He lightly kissed her forehead as they held each other through the bars. The girl was naked and filthy. He was in rags, at least.

  In the darkness, with the ease of practice, he moved to the wall and sat on the floor, right next to the bars. She sat on the other side of the bars. His right arm extended through the bars as both her legs came through to rest on his lap. He held her as her forehead rested on his arm.

  Her soft whisper seemed loud in his ear.

  “You were right, again. There are demons in the north, above the gorge. They have killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of the High Keeper’s men. He just keeps sending more. He is killing everyone above the gorge, no matter the cost. Just as you said.”

  “Hmmm...”

  He felt her cling to him, almost desperately, as she continued.

  “They say. I mean they rumor, that the demon is...just one man.” She trembled. “They say...he is a Man from Earth.”

  He felt her fear at just saying the words out loud. She had been taught to say it was to summon the monster.

  “Yes. He is.”

  The voice, like gravel, whispered. Her trembling increased.

  “Soon, he will find you here. This demon, this monster, this Man from Earth. You will tend his wounds. You will eat his food, because in his kindness and fury he won't eat while you starve...and you will give him a message.”

  “What message?”

  It was the quietest whisper yet.

  “Kill them all...”

  The words had weight. She nodded her head; she'd do it.

  “Then, you and I shall escape together. Just as I told you. Because he will bring down the Citadel to its foundations, soon after.”

  She began to cry again.

  “Now tell me what the guards say.”

  He soothed her with his words as well as his gentle touch.

  “How did you know they would all be drunk and asleep tonight?”

  She asked, knowing he would not tell her.

  “Because it was the truth,” he whispered.

  “What about all the other things. They think I'm a soothsayer.”

  She started to tell him everything. Facts, gossip, or simply things she had seen or heard. She knew it wasn't much, but she also knew that he was starved for anything different. Weeks and years of darkness would have driven her mad by now.

  “Why do they call you the Scarecrow? They are all afraid of you, still. Even though they say it's been over a decade since you killed one of them.”

  “Have you never seen me in the light? Scarecrow is about right.”

  He laughed, a little.

  “That's not it,” she said.

  “They call me that because your language has no real word for who and what I am, my role in the world, my title. It is all held in my true name. Milesian Baytirus Esso Doa roughly translates to protector of this garden. They thought it was another way to say Scarecrow.”

  “Hummm...” was her only quiet reply.

  “Call me Miles, if need be. Why do you ask now, after all this time?” he asked, already knowing why.

  “She came down here, a few days ago, just as you said she would. She b
rought me fresh bread and cheese.”

  She trembled again.

  “She said, 'Tell Miles I said good-bye.' And I knew she meant you. I never needed your name before.”

  She cried again.

  He combed her knotted hair with his fingers.

  “What will happen to me?”

  She somehow felt his smile on her forehead as he replied, and she heard it in a whisper.

  “Everything.”

  ***

  It was only a few weeks before one of Hagan's drones found signs of the reactor core that had been jettisoned by the Memphis. At first, he thought the crash site would be near and easy to find. The crater analysis gave him a general direction to look for a debris field, but there was none.

  “Echo, I need some possible theories that could fit the data we have,” Wes asked, looking at the high-def feed on the main display as if the Sariska was flying over the crater.

  “We know that when we separated, the Memphis was in an un-powered tumble along this trajectory.”

  A tactical map opened to a display of the moon.

  “That means the Memphis must have had some kind of recovery to be flying over this area.”

  The map showed a potential track that the ship could have taken to that spot.

  “Let's speculate that they got some kind of control of the ship. Why the hell would they be here?”

  The image shifted to drone two. It was moving at a high altitude over the area.

  “They were fleeing,” Echo said. “Retreating to an area where they would be safe. Look at the surface, here. Chunks of the Ventura were still impacting the surface then, but at a much higher angle.”

  “They either went to the far side of the moon or off into deep space,” Hagan stated. “Echo, please task the drones to search patterns on this vector, moving on this track. We have just eliminated half the surface.”

  There was a long pause. Very unusual for Echo.

  “Sir, do you see this?” Echo said, highlighting a spot on the horizon.

  “Zoom in, optical and digital,” Hagan ordered.