Sixth Cycle Read online

  A groan came from Jake’s left. He dropped to one knee and swept his rifle across the settlement.

  A groan again. It came from behind the closest ruin.

  He crossed the square, keeping his steps light, and edged around the building’s mossy stone wall.

  A man coughed and spat.

  This could be an opportunity to talk to an individual, although he sounded in serious strife. Better than negotiating with an armed force in blue jumpsuits.

  Jake twisted around the corner and aimed at four bodies.

  A man propped against a tree stared to one side with lifeless eyes. He dressed the smartest of the four, in a gray jumpsuit with a diagonal zip across the chest. Another, in a strange mix of leather and thickly woven cloth, had a stab wound under his bushy chin and must have quickly bled out. The filthy-faced third, in similar attire, had a gunshot wound in his forehead. The only one left alive was dressed like the previous two and had a spear in his back.

  Jake quickly checked the immediate vicinity and returned to the man.

  He stopped two yards short and crouched. “Who are you?”

  The man grimaced. “You die.”

  “That’s far more likely to happen to you. What country are we in?”

  “North.”

  “North what?”

  “North people die.”

  The man gurgled and rolled onto his front. His speech suggested English wasn’t his native tongue. For a person on his last legs, Jake also found his behavior chilling. Rather than ask for help, he issued a death threat to a stranger.

  If Epsilon contained North people, maybe the warning the guard shouted about it being dangerous out there meant the three people here who looked like they’d never seen a bath or razor. The one left alive must be confusing him for one of his tourists.

  Something moved in Jake's peripheral vision. He snapped his head to the right. A bearded man, dressed like the three next to him, charged with an axe raised over his head. When Jake locked eyes with him, he roared and threw his weapon.

  The axe spun through the air. Jake dodged to his left. It whistled over his shoulder and slammed into the tree next to him.

  Jake curled his finger around the trigger. The man continued to advance and drew a knife from a leather scabbard on his belt. He reached within ten yards.

  He aimed at the man’s torso and fired twice. The man grunted and collapsed to the ground. Jake’s shots echoed through the forest.

  In the distance he heard a collective scream, like a wild battle cry.

  “Holy shit.”

  He turned and ran, vaulting over weeds and rotten logs, veering between trees.

  The cries sounded closer every second. They weren’t giving up the chase and were gaining on him.

  A gravel road appeared on the right, cutting through the forest. The river curved away to the left. He could see another stone wall through the trees straight ahead.

  A high-pitched siren began wailing ahead.

  Jake glanced back. Figures advanced through the trees. Perhaps civilization was a good idea after all. He sprinted for the wall.

  Chapter Four

  Skye broke out of the tree line toward the wall, exhausted after spending the last hour running through the forest. Sweat dripped from her face, and her heart pounded against her chest. If those savages were an advance party, Omega needed to prepare.

  She headed straight for the main guard post. The miserable borderland station that had become her home.

  The twenty-foot-high wall, built with large blocks of cut stone, wrapped around the two square miles of the stronghold. Governor Finch upgraded it to be ominous for anyone attempting to access the central town without permission. We are powerful. Try if you dare was its intended message.

  A roughly cut staircase, made from discarded construction blocks, provided the only external way into Omega apart from the cast-iron main gates. It climbed both sides of the wall at a forty-five-degree angle and met on the internal rampart. Forces needed a way to deploy other than the main gates, but it created a weak point.

  Finch addressed this by building two concrete pillboxes either side of the steps on top of the wall, twenty feet apart. Eight rifles bristled out of the thin slits. Four men patrolled between them on the rampart.

  Skye raised her hand to the left pillbox and trudged up the steps.

  Sam Bennett waited at the top. He tucked his rifle over his shoulder, brushed his sandy hair to the side and smiled. Skye loved his sparkling green eyes. He took his duties seriously, unlike most others who treated the wall as a chore.

  “You’re in deep shit this time, Skye.”

  She stepped onto the rampart and sighed. “Don’t tell me. Ross?”

  “He sent out an order for you to report to the tower three hours ago.”

  “I’ve been out doing some real work. We’ve got wastelanders in the area.”

  Sam shrugged. “There’s always one or two.”

  “I came across three, carrying out received orders. They killed Jai.”

  “You’re kidding me?” Sam said and unslung his rifle. “Are they close?”

  “An hour north. You don’t need to worry about them, but stay alert.”

  Sam gave her a single firm nod. Skye knew him well enough to understand that he would take her words seriously. “I’ll send word along the rampart. Did you recover Jai’s tags?”

  “Yep. Ross in his office?”

  “Did you need to ask?”

  Skye didn’t respond. The coward would be in the captain’s tower. She decided a few years ago to push the thoughts of him running from their settlement to one side, until she had proof. Regardless of her feelings toward him, they still had a job to do.

  She hurried down the steps on the other side. Two guards stood at the bottom. One nodded at her. The other retrieved a hip flask from inside his jacket and drank. Skye smelled alcohol as she passed. It wasn’t even lunchtime. Attitudes had to change if they wanted a robust defense.

  A pillbox team of four walked out of the windowless concrete barrack block and headed to relieve the current shift. Finch had the barracks built behind the stairs to ensure they could be quickly reinforced if required. Skye had a bunk in the building, but tried to avoid it. The place stank of sweat. The plastic corrugated roof made it feel like a greenhouse in the summer, although the solar panel heating system kept it warm in winter. Nobody complained about that trade.

  A well-beaten path led across a grass field to a wooden mess hall and the hexagonal five-story captain’s tower. Ross deployed a sniper on the tower roof, providing further protection for the steps.

  It would take a small army of organized wastelanders to overrun this area. Most thought they were too crazy to coordinate anything outside of their own small groups. Skye knew differently.

  Wheat and barley gently swayed in the small fields surrounding a central area, where the main population lived in tightly clustered wooden houses. The inner ring, a six-foot wall, marked the old perimeter until Finch expanded out to include crops and livestock to boost the stronghold’s economy. The Omega Force patrolled the buffer as well as the ramparts.

  Two new recruits, male and female in their late teens, stood guard outside the tower’s thick wooden door. They were easy to spot because they still had smart uniforms and hadn’t slipped into downtrodden complacency just yet. It wouldn’t be long. Ross was an expert at sapping morale. Members of the force nicknamed his office the ivory tower.

  Both eyed Skye’s officer epaulets and stiffly saluted in turn.

  “The captain’s in a meeting,” the woman said.

  “He asked not to be disturbed,” the man added.

  “Stand aside, please. I need to speak to him immediately.”

  “The captain told us—” the woman said.

  “I’m not gonna start ordering you about, but trust me, it’s in all our interests that he hears what I have to say.”

  They looked at each other. The man fidgeted with his rifle. Skye realize
d they were in an awkward situation, worried about annoying their new commanding officer by disobeying his request.

  “I’ll tell him I commanded you. Now please …”

  The pair seemed to relax, and the woman opened the door.

  She bounded up the spiral stone staircase to Ross’ office on the fifth floor and paused for a moment outside the entrance. Even looking at his brass nameplate, screwed to the hardwood door, managed to raise her blood pressure a few notches.

  Skye considered knocking, but only briefly.

  Ross bolted upright when she walked into his cramped semi-circular office. A woman sitting on his knee closed her brown satin robe and looked away, no doubt embarrassed about being caught in a trade with the hero. He placed a whiskey bottle down on his solid hand-carved desk, scowled and jabbed a finger at Skye. “Who gave you permission to enter?”

  “I’ve got important information to report, sir.”

  He encouraged the woman off his knee and closed his purple bathrobe, hiding his rolls of flab. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “An hour north. What I have to tell you isn’t for civilian ears.”

  Ross rolled his eyes and held the woman’s hand. “Until tomorrow?”

  She mumbled a positive acknowledgment, turned her back on him, and dressed in a light blue uniform of the laundromat in town. Skye knew exactly who she was. The only woman in Omega that carried out this type of historical and creepy transaction.

  Five crates sat to Ross’ left, no doubt stuffed with luxury items to pay for his personal service. It made Skye’s skin crawl.

  While Skye waited for the woman to leave, she gazed at the paintings hanging on the curved wall. Most dated from before the Great War. A nineteenth-century navy ship in rough seas, a silhouetted skyline of one of the former great cities, and a family scene with a working television. Only Governor Finch had an office with more decorations.

  Skye realized she stood on one of the five full animal skins stretched around his office floor, and stepped to one side. The woman shuffled past.

  As soon as the door closed, Ross folded his arms. “You’ve gone too far this time. Finch won’t defend you for this. How dare you go out again without permission?”

  He glared at her. She maintained eye contact but thought it best not to mention Sky Man at this stage, and try to reason with him first. Ross would immediately dismiss it. He went out of his way to discredit her story ten years ago to preserve his hero status.

  She took a deep breath and composed herself. “I found a dead citizen. Three wastelanders killed him, under orders.”

  “Lying is not gonna get you out of this—”

  She fished the bloodstained dog tags out of her pocket and threw them across the desk. “See for yourself.”

  Ross turned the metallic tags in his hands, licked his finger, and wiped away the dried blood. “Ensign Jai. Tell me again how you got these?”

  “Three wastelanders abducted him. I’m not sure when. I picked up their trail and tracked them north. They were planning to blame it on Epsilon, or so they said. Sounds like they’re trying to cause unrest.”

  “Sounds like total nonsense. They don’t have the mental capacity.”

  “I can assure you they do, and more might be coming,” Skye said and placed her pistol on the table. “We need to order a full weapons test. This one jammed after the first shot. I’ll use my crossbow until I find a reliable gun.”

  “The hell you will. You’re an officer and need to lead by example. Those pistols are standard issue and high quality. The Trader assured us of their expert craftsmanship.”

  “If this is his idea of expert craftsmanship, I’d hate to use his poor quality stock.”

  Ross rubbed his eyes and groaned. “What are we going to do with you, Skye? Why can’t you just fall into line like everyone else on the force?”

  Skye looked through the window behind Ross. A road ran from the main gates of the stronghold to the inner ring, through its modest cluttered houses to Governor Finch’s stone villa.

  “If an attack comes and we’re unprepared, do you want them knocking on Finch’s front door?”

  “Governor Finch to you.”

  “Whatever. The wastelanders said …”

  Skye trailed off. Ross wasn’t listening. She had to tell him the truth. Anything to shake him out of his arrogant malaise. It didn’t just risk her life, it risked the lives of everyone in Omega.

  “They said what?” he said.

  She pressed her hands on the desk and leaned toward him. “They said they worked for Sky Man.”

  His eyes widened, just a little, but enough for Skye to notice.

  Ross drank from the whiskey bottle, slammed it on the table, and shook his head. “Not this again. Your mysterious Sky Man has come back to kill us all? I’m having you put away for good this time.”

  “I’m being serious, Ross.”

  “Captain Ross or sir to—”

  The attack siren warbled.

  * * *

  Skye spun and rushed out the door. She clambered up the metal ladder that led to the sniper’s nest on top of the captain’s tower.

  The circular metal hatch at the top squeaked open, and she crawled onto the roof. A guard lay in the prone position and peered down his telescopic sight. The gun cracked and he pulled back the bolt handle to eject the shell case.

  “Damn it,” he said. “It’s impossible from here.”

  Hitting from a range of three hundred yards in a gentle breeze should be easy for a trained sniper with a decent rifle, but Ross kept a slack force, and the Epsilon weapons were questionable.

  “What’s going on down there?” Skye asked.

  “Wastelanders attacked the stairs. Twenty of them. Largest group I’ve ever seen.”

  “Did any make it to the rampart?”

  “They retreated for cover after we opened fire. Looks like they’re testing our defenses.”

  Rifle fire echoed from the pillboxes. Figures moved between the trees outside the wall. The guard wiped sweat from the brow of his bald head, reloaded, and planted his eye against the rubber eyepiece of the scope.

  “Hey, do we have any scouts out today?” he said.

  “Don’t think so, why?”

  “They’re attacking somebody near the road. He’s shot three of them.”

  “Let me see.”

  He leaned over and passed Skye his rifle. She noticed a pair of spectacles poking out from his right top pocket and wondered if he traded with Ross to land a position on the tower instead of the cramped confines of a pillbox.

  She knelt on her right knee, adjusted the scope, and scanned the area outside the wall.

  The remaining wastelanders were being distracted away from the stairs by a man dressed in dark green. He crouched behind a large rock and fired as they approached him, taking single aimed shots. Cool under pressure, she thought.

  He didn’t wear a stronghold uniform she recognized, but she knew it. His light brown hair and clean-shaved face joined the pieces in her mind. Her parents had taken her to see him on three occasions as a child.

  Captain Jake Phillips, the oldest man in the world.

  She couldn’t figure out why one of Epsilon’s former prized assets was fighting on his own outside Omega’s walls. Whatever the reason, he needed help as the remaining wastelanders rounded on his position.

  Skye handed the rifle back. “I’m going out there. Whatever you do, don’t shoot after I go over the wall.”

  He frowned. “It’s my job.”

  “It’s my life.”

  She gripped the ladder rails and slid eight feet to the stone floor below. Ran down the spiral staircase, running her hand along the metal rail to keep her balance, and burst through the door at the bottom.

  “I need to borrow your rifle,” she said to the female guard.

  “Are you sure? I was taught to always keep my personal weapon—”

  “We haven’t got time for debate,” Skye said with firm sincerity.
“Your weapon, please?”

  She pulled her sling over her head and held out the rifle. Skye put a round in the chamber and sprinted for the wall.

  Sam knelt at the rampart and turned as she bounded up the steps. “We pushed them back, but it looks like they’re heading for the main gate.”

  Skye took a moment to catch her breath. “They’re after Phillips. He’s on the edge of the forest, a hundred yards to our left.”

  “Phillips?”

  “You ever been to Epsilon?”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “The guy in the ship? I didn’t even think he was alive. What the hell’s he doing here?”

  “No idea, but he’s being surrounded. Are you coming?”

  Sam turned to the two other guards on the rampart. “We’re going out. Give us some covering fire.”

  Rounds whizzed into the forest, ripping through leaves and smacking into trunks. Skye shouldered her rifle and descended the outer steps. Thunder rumbled overhead.

  She could hear Sam’s footsteps behind as she kept close to the wall and quickly moved toward Phillips' location.

  Five wastelanders ducked behind trees around him, only about twenty yards away. Phillips dropped one who made a run for him. He must’ve run out of ammunition because he grabbed his rifle by the muzzle and held it like a club. She had to draw attention away from him.

  Skye reached within thirty yards and fired at the closest wastelander. The round hit him in the small of the back. He dropped to the ground with a twist.

  A spear sliced through the air and whistled between Skye and Sam. It clanked against the stronghold’s wall. Sam returned fire and hit two wastelanders who broke from the trees and charged with axes raised.

  The remaining two circling Phillips watched their comrades fall, looked at each other, and took flight to a deeper part of the forest.

  “Captain Phillips. Get over here. Now!” Skye said.

  He turned from watching the wastelanders flee. “Who are you? Who are they?”

  “I’ll explain after we’re back behind the wall.”

  Or at least explain to the best of her ability. Phillips probably had a thousand questions. Who wouldn’t after being woken up centuries after going to sleep? Skye knew she wouldn’t have all of his answers, but at least they could take him to safe ground.