Collision of Worlds - Chapter 8

The little ship touched down inside the hangar bay in Delphi with a gentle thud. Vivian wasn’t the greatest pilot, but she knew enough about flying to do a half-decent job, and she was pleased she managed to land without breaking anything.

It didn’t help that the ship she was flying was one she didn’t have a lot of experience with. The Cudgel was her old vessel, one she’d spent much of her life with, but she’d given it up a few years earlier to get water purification supplies to the people of Mali.

So now she was flying a junker that Argus had sent her, the sort of vessel that wasn’t worthy of getting a name. Except maybe Junker, she decided. Maybe she should rechristen it sometime in the near future.

She would have greatly preferred to have Jack take care of piloting, but she’d left him back on Jaril a few days earlier. It had taken her a little longer to make it out to Eldun than she wanted, but she was confident the delay wouldn’t throw her timetable off too much.

Traq was sitting in the copilot’s chair, watching everything she did with childlike curiosity. He was a really smart kid, picking most things up after only a few tries. She had explained to him how the flight controls worked, and with only a little bit a training, she was certain he would have no problem flying on his own.

But that was an agenda for another day. Right now she wanted to teach him how the world worked and show him how to survive in all conditions. The Ministry didn’t know about him yet, nor the Union, but she doubted she could keep him hidden forever. When they were forced to flee and live on the run, she wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be a burden.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“Uh huh,” Traq replied, unbuckling his safety belt and hopping down from the seat.

She followed him to the loading ramp and took a few moments to lower it down. It let them out into a huge hangar bay. It was massive, enough to hold a small city, and mostly unoccupied.

This was a military complex, and the city of Delphi was currently under military law. They had only just won a war against their neighboring city of Briden’s Ward and the peace was tentative at best.

Soldiers were waiting for them at the bottom of the ramp, but she wasn’t concerned. She’d already gotten clearance to land weeks earlier, and checking in was merely a formality. Argus had pulled some strings on behalf of the Ministry, and after a few well-placed donations, he’d turned her into a regional diplomat on behalf of the Republic. It gave her immunity on most planets and let her travel anywhere with impunity.

She was confident that even in a time of war, they would honor her immunity. After all, no one wanted to piss off the Republic.

In the center of the soldiers stood a well-dressed man with a short black beard and a lot of medals on his uniform. He looked to be important, at least in his own mind; probably a commander of some sort.

He gestured with his hand toward a series of offices on the other side of the hangar.

“Please, follow me this way for processing.”

“I was told we were already cleared.”

“You are,” the man said. “This is merely a formality. Your delay in arrival will need to be noted in the system and cleared. I have confidence we can have you out of here in only a few minutes.”

Vivian and Traq followed him to the rooms, and the rest of the soldiers fell into line around them. They all looked grim and hardened, the sort of soldiers who grew up around battle and strife and knew nothing else. They looked as though all of the joy had been stripped from their lives.

She was like them, she knew, having grown up in the Ministry and served as a Shield. Life had never been easy, and it had taken a toll on her, just like it had all of these people. The civilians would be no different, she knew: war took the joy out of everything.

They stepped into the offices and the general turned to face her once more. She saw from a name plate on his chest that his family name was ‘Coley.’ It didn’t list a first name.

Another soldier stepped behind a terminal and began swiping and inputting data, registering their arrival and making notes for future use.

“No weapons will be allowed in the city,” the general said.

“Of course.”

“You will have our full protection while you are inside of Delphi, but as soon as you leave, you will be on your own. The outlying territories are dangerous.”

“I understand.”

“Are you certain you wish to be dropped off in the wilds? Things can get rather dangerous out there, and we don’t have full control. Banditry is a problem.”

She nodded. “Yes. I sent coordinates this morning. We will make our own way back to Delphi.”

The general nodded at her. “Very well. I have a ground vehicle standing by and a driver to take you to your listed coordinates. I wish you well, and trust that we will be able to count on your support in future endeavors?”

She had no idea what endeavors he might be referring to, but assumed it was something he’d run across Argus before allowing her to land. Probably elections or something she didn’t need to be a part of.

In any case, it didn’t really concern her. “Absolutely.”

He nodded at her, and again at Traq, and then headed off. She decided she didn’t like him. He seemed entirely too patriotic for his own good.

At least he was short and punctual.

The rest of the soldiers followed him, except for one, who stayed behind with her. It was the one who had been inputting her information.

“Ma’am, if you will please follow me,” he said, heading outside of the hangar bay.

She followed, holding Traq’s hand, to a wheeled vehicle parked around the corner. It looked armored and old, with a lot of dents and bullet holes. She doubted they had anything else to work with.

“Do we need to grab some supplies?”

“Already handled, ma’am. Compliments of the general.”

“Is General Coley in charge of the city?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the soldier said, climbing into the vehicle and turning it on.

She and Traq climbed in as well, and they sped off down the road toward one of the exits.

“How long has General Coley been serving?”

“His entire life,” the soldier replied. “He retired some years back to be with his family, but when Briden’s Ward attacked us, he came back to lead.”

“His family lives in the city?”

“Yes, ma’am, except for his son, who left years ago. He was supposed to join up and follow in his father’s footsteps, but he left. Couldn’t stomach the thought of war, I suppose. It had a deep impact on the general, and he’s never really forgiven his son.”

“You think his son is a coward?”

“I don’t have an opinion on the matter, ma’am.”

The soldier fell quiet, just driving. They passed broken-down buildings and exhausted people going about their lives. It looked like they’d been hit with mortars or bombs sometime in the past.

No one smiled or even acknowledged their passing. A tall fence with barbed wire at the top surrounded the city, making it look more like an enormous prison than a city. Guards patrolled and protected all of the gates and entrances.

It was raining, turning the ground muddy and casting everything in gray shadow, making the city feel desperate and worried. Vivian had been to places like this; she had seen the frail existence war leaves behind. Fear consumed everyone and everything.

It was having an effect on Traq. He watched people walk along the streets, bent over and broken by the weight of their lives. There was a concerned look on his face, and he didn’t seem to know how to react.

“Is this what the entire city is like?” he asked.

The guard glanced at him in the rearview mirror and frowned. “This is what the entire planet is like.”

“Wow. That…why doesn’t everyone just leave?”

“We don’t all have that luxury,” the man said, an edge of resentment in his voice. He didn’t look at Vivian when he spoke, but she could tell what he thought of them: rich tourists who got their way in anything.

Luckily, Traq didn’t notice his resentment. He kept staring out the window, watching the city fly past and turn into open country. The city was built alongside thick copses of woods and forested territory. It was a beautiful planet, but every once in a while, they saw signs of old battles and destruction.

Vivian thought to ask the driver if he could drive them past the evacuated city she’d searched out along the way, but she changed her mind. He didn’t seem to think this was a productive use of his time, and she didn’t want to push her luck with them and end up stranded away from the coordinates she’d picked.

They would be hiking back this way anyway, so she wasn’t too worried about missing the demolished city on the way out. Traq would experience it in time.

The driver was silent the entire rest of the way, which was fine with Vivian. She didn’t particularly want to converse with him.

They drove for several hours before finally stopping in a clearing. It was the middle of the night, and Traq had fallen asleep several hours earlier in the backseat.

“These are the coordinates,” the man said. “Will you be requiring anything else?”

“No,” she said.

The man nodded at her. Vivian helped Traq out of the vehicle, but he didn’t even wake up. She set him gently on the ground and then started grabbing their gear.

The soldier helped unload the supplies the general had procured for them, climbed back into his vehicle, and drove off. He didn’t look back.

Vivian watched him disappear, listening to the sounds of nature around them. They were in the middle of nowhere, about halfway between Briden’s Ward and Delphi, and there was no sign of any other people being nearby.

She unrolled a blanket and laid it overtop Traq and then settled back and relaxed herself. Part of her motives for coming out here were exactly what she told Jack: she wanted to expose Traq to every facet of life, even the bad things, to make sure he was prepared for anything life threw at him.

But part of her desire for this was something else. She hoped it would be one of those bonding experiences her books told her about. Traq had a strong connection with Jack, and if she was going to send Jack away and train Traq on her own, she needed him to develop a similar bond with her.

The only problem was, she didn’t know how.

The books said to do what she loved to do with children. She loved the wilderness and hiking, and she was excited that this would be a relaxing vacation for the both of them. She promised herself she would go easy on him and make him like her.

2

God, she had never really expected children to be so frail.

Traq tried hard. He really did. He did everything that she asked of him and always gave it his all, but he was never quite able to live up to her expectations. If one thing wasn’t going wrong, it was something else.

The problem was, so many of the general day-to-day things she’d assumed Traq could do for himself, she found out Jack had been doing for him. It was even worse than she’d imagined. He couldn’t really prepare himself breakfast or pack his bags or any of the other simple things she took for granted that he knew how to do.

She would need to have a talk with Jack when they got back about responsibilities because if Traq wasn’t expected to take care of himself, then he never would.

She’d managed to fix a lot of those problems early on because Traq was a bright kid. She taught him how to pack his bags properly—not just shoving items in—and prepare a meal, and after the second day of hiking, he was doing it perfectly. They quickly fell into a comfortable routine.

She would take him out running in the morning before they had breakfast to limber up their bodies for the day of hiking. He wasn’t able to jog very far yet, but that was fine. They could take breaks and relax whenever they needed to because they weren’t in a hurry.

The entire hike was a little over a week long if they pushed themselves, but right now, they were just setting a leisurely pace and enjoying the outdoors. She was loving it, the purity of the air, the simplicity of life. Growing up, excursions like this had been a luxury, and it was one of the few pieces of her childhood she looked back on fondly.

Occasionally, though, she did wish she could push Traq just a little bit harder. He needed a lot of breaks for water or to rest his feet. He didn’t really whine or complain, but she could tell by the looks on his face and his breathing that this was difficult on him.

At first, it had frustrated her, though over time she’d come to understand that it was her failing, and not his, that put them in the position of diminished expectations. The fact of the matter was that she simply did not understand what it was like being a child.

Her childhood had been horrible and filled with pain and despair at the Ministry, and she’d blocked most of it out. She didn’t remember much before her fifteenth birthday when she was chosen to train as a Shield for the First Citizen.

That was the moment she thought of as the beginning of her life. It was the day she was told she would be allowed to leave the Ministry and achieve something better than just being a test subject. She was destined for greatness, unstoppable out in the real world.

That was before her injury.

Now she was just damaged goods.

Right now, they were on their third day of hiking and had stopped for a while to rest and take care of some other tasks. They hadn’t made a lot of progress yet on the actual journey, and she’d decided they could take a day to rest and relax before continuing.

The General had overstocked their supplies by a good amount, and if they stretched them out, they could survive out here for three or four weeks. Jack would be frantic if they took that long, but she wasn’t terribly worried about that right now.

The other reason for moving slow was to make sure they didn’t accidentally stumble into danger. Eldun was technically a part of the Indeil Kingdom but only by loose affiliation. There were six warring factions on the planet, and regional animosity made it a dangerous and empty place to live. 

The problem was that Eldun was always bordering on war, and when the various factions weren’t warring, they were looting and fighting over the scraps they hadn’t managed to destroy. Bandits were something she had to keep her eye out for and avoid.

She spent some of their time training Traq in fighting. Jack wasn’t around, which meant she didn’t have to worry about him berating her about teaching him how to protect himself. It was another one of those things he felt Traq was too young for. Jack just didn’t understand that what Traq needed was discipline, not a friend.

“Keep your leg up,” Vivian said, walking slowly around Traq.

He stood in front of her, arms out to the sides and his left knee up in the air. He was balancing on his right foot and had been for the last forty minutes. He was starting to wobble to and fro, which meant he wouldn’t last much longer.

“I’m trying,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. “But you were letting your knee slip down. There’s no sense in doing the exercise if you aren’t going to do it right.”

“My legs are tired.”

“They should be,” she said. “You’re almost done.”

She continued walking around him, checking his positioning to make sure he wasn’t cutting any corners. That was what this lesson was really about. She needed to make sure he understood that there was a right way to do things, and a wrong way, and it was never acceptable to do it the wrong way just because he was tired.

The wrong way was how someone ended up dead.

“Time,” Vivian said. “You can relax.”

Traq almost fell to the ground he was so tired, and the look of relief on his face was almost comically exaggerated.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“Okay,” she said. “You can take a short nap, but then we’re going to have to get moving. We have another twelve kilometers to hike today before we can stop for the night.”

He staggered over to his bedroll, but didn’t even manage to get it unrolled before falling asleep. It was early in the afternoon and she’d been working him since just before dawn. Vivian watched him sleep for a moment and then finished unrolling his bedroll. She tucked him inside of it and then set off to scout the surrounding area.

She would let him sleep for about an hour or so, but then they really did need to get moving. They could afford to be a few days late in reaching the city and contacting Jack, but any longer than that and he might start to worry and come looking for them.

Or worse, he might get Argus involved in trying to locate her.

Up to this point, she’d kept her contact with Argus Wade to a minimum, and things seemed to be safe and under control on his end. But if something happened and the Ministry came hunting for her, she wanted to make sure they wouldn’t have any easy time of finding her.

Jack didn’t know about that side of her life though, and telling him about the Ordo Mens Rea would put them all at risk. She couldn’t take the chance of him making a mistake and jeopardizing everything. She hoped it never came to that, but she knew what the Ministry and the Republic were capable of and wasn’t willing to take any chances.

She hiked through the woods, enjoying the seclusion and trying to clear her mind. They were only a few days away from the broken city she’d come here in search of, and she was wondering if maybe she should just skip it.

The problem was, it was an embodiment of devastation and death, and even though she felt Traq should experience it, she was having second thoughts and doubts about whether this was the right time. Maybe Jack was right and he was too young. She’d been wrong about how much strain he could handle, so maybe she was wrong about this too?

Maybe it was better to just leave Traq be and not expose him to the previous incarnation of Delphi. He was a bright kid, and he knew right from wrong, so maybe this gesture wasn’t such a great idea.

They could just turn this into a woodland hike and forget about the war. After all, a huge part of why they were out here was a bonding experience. That would be the best outcome, when she really got down to it.

Maybe she was getting better at this parenting thing…

3

She hiked around for about half an hour before she found signs that someone else was in the area. Boot prints in the dirt, and fresh ones at that.

At first she thought it might be from a group of Bandits or civilians, but after only a little bit more searching in the surrounding forest, she found a lot more boot prints as well as the tracks of ground vehicles.

A lot of them.

She started to get a sick feeling in her stomach as she scanned over the tracks. A force had come through here in the last few days, and not a small band but rather hundreds of soldiers with a lot of supplies.

It meant one of two things: either this was a small group of soldiers patrolling the area, or—much more likely—this was an advance group leading a much larger force that would be trailing a few days behind.

Either way, it was not something she had planned for, and it changed everything.

She needed to get Traq moving and get them back to safety as soon as possible. If this was a sign that the wars were about to start back up between Briden’s Ward and Delphi, then she needed to get off world before something bad happened.

No more lollygagging. They needed to hike faster and get off planet before they ran out of time. Her priority was to keep Traq safe and get back to the ship.

4

It only took her a few minutes of heading back to her camp to realize that she had even less time than she’d anticipated. She found more tracks in the area of small bands of soldiers moving around behind her. They had managed to cut her off from Traq, and she cursed herself for straying so far away from her young charge.

They were very well organized, scouting the area in a pattern. Her worse fears were realized, and she knew that this was definitely part of an army: these were likely the advance scouts of an assembled army which was marching its way toward Delphi.

She had papers that gave her immunity in the region, but that meant nothing in the face of an advance army. They wouldn’t care about any deals she’d made with Delphi for protection. They might even assume that since she had landed in Delphi, she was a spy working for them.

She couldn’t afford to have any conflicts with this army, which meant they would need to change course and make a beeline directly back to Delphi. They would need to get off of Eldun before the army from Briden’s Ward showed up.

She rushed back to their little camp, intending to wake Traq up and get moving, but when she got there, she realized she was already too late to avoid the scouts: they had found Traq.

Three uniformed soldiers were in their camp, two men and a woman. They were all facing away from her and wearing heavy armor. Each of them carried a heavy rifle. Two were rifling through their supplies, and the third was kneeling down in front of an exhausted-looking Traq, grilling him for information.

Traq looked bewildered and confused, keeping his mouth closed and looking around for her. Vivian let out a sigh and shook her head, preparing herself mentally for what she had to do. She tapped into the part of her mind linked to her implant and strode into her campground.

The two guards searching through her gear quickly stood up and raised their rifles as she walked calmly toward them.

“Halt!” the woman called.

Vivian stopped moving about three meters away, folding her arms in front of her chest.

“This is my camp,” she explained.

“This is territory belonging to the city of Briden’s Ward. You aren’t locals.”

“No, we are not,” Vivian said.

“Do you have any authorizations that allow you to be here?”

Vivian hesitated. She didn’t think the immunity Wade had gotten her would do any good right now, and it might actually be worse to give up their names and identities than to keep them to herself.

“We do not.”

“Then you are trespassing,” the woman said. “We will need to bring you in.”

“No. I’m afraid you won’t be doing that.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at Vivian. “We will arrest you if necessary. I trust that it won’t be?”

Vivian took a steadying breath. “You’re welcome to try.”

 She lashed out through her implant, mentally seizing the barrel of the woman’s rifle and jerking it sideways. She aimed it at the soldier standing next to her.

It had the expected effect: shock from both the woman and her partner. The man stumbled back, eyes going wide, and Vivian rushed forward. She closed the distance to the soldiers in a heartbeat, scooping a rock up along the way.

She kicked the man in the stomach, hitting him right in the abdomen under the ribs. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and she followed through by smashing the rock against his jaw.

He fell heavily to the ground, dropping his rifle. Vivian mentally felt the woman struggling to push the barrel of her rifle back toward Vivian. She released her grip on the gun and the woman overcompensated, swinging the barrel past Vivian in the other direction. She pulled the trigger, but too late, and her shot went wide.

Vivian waded in with a series of attacks, punching the woman twice in the jaw and once in the neck, blocking her airway. She grabbed the gun—this time with her hand—and yanked the woman forward and off balance.

The woman collapsed onto her knees and Vivian kicked her in the face, knocking her unconscious.

The first man was struggling back to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. He had a huge red mark on his face where she’d hit him and was bleeding. Vivian walked past, kicking him in the face and knocking him out as well.

The third guard was raising his rifle and turning to face her. She lashed out mentally, knocking his barrel straight up in the air. He fired, but the bullet went well above her head.

She ran forward, closing the distance. Traq was behind the man now, and he dove forward into the back of his knees, tackling him. The man stumbled, pulling the trigger again and firing off a spray of rounds into the air.

Vivian closed the distance and kneed the man in the face. He fell backward and she bashed him in the temple with the rock, knocking him unconscious. Traq scrambled free from the man’s legs and looked up at her, confused and scared.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

“I stepped out for a minute,” she said. “Pack your things. We need to leave.”

“They have guns,” Traq mumbled. “They tried to shoot you.”

“I know,” she said. “Which is why we need to get moving. Everyone in a five-kilometer radius knows we are here now.”

Traq looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but he read the look on her face well enough to know it wasn’t a good idea. Without another word, he packed his bags. It only took five minutes before they were moving again.

As they walked, Vivian had to wonder just how bad of a situation she had gotten them into.