Colliding Worlds Trilogy 03 - Explosion Read online

  It looked like a war zone, but they were alive, proof enough that Roden’s incoming support had successfully blown the bombs out of the sky before they could detonate.

  The stench of jet fuel and burned explosives scraped at his nose and throat. Crackling fire blended with the cries and moans of the injured. Names were shouted, and he blocked out the noise to focus. At least three of Roden’s small aggressor ships circled above. A transporter was already on the ground, ready to take on passengers. One transporter would never be enough. Each transporter held twenty, maybe thirty passengers. They’d need a hundred transporters to clear out the Etzee in time, and Jax suspected Roden didn’t have the fleet for that kind of extraction.

  Roden’s attack would not go unnoticed. The Etzee stood smack-dab in the middle of a MOA (Military Operations Area). It was just a matter of time before they’d be swamped with troops. Those who survived the falling debris would not escape quietly.

  Talla tugged on his grip. “Laze!” she shouted.

  Jax turned just as she yanked free and ran toward the truck where all the children were. For the first time today, he felt fear. Shrapnel and debris had pelted the truck. Metal was blackened. Fire shredded the oiled canvas tarp covering the back, leaving flaming tatters swinging across the entrance.

  He looked around for anything he could use. But the Etzee had been kept intentionally bare in order to prevent common items from being turned into weapons. A backpack lay near a Sephian woman sitting cross-legged, rocking back and forth, her head clasped in her hands.

  He rushed over and grabbed the bag and ran back to Talla’s side where she was dragging out a Draeken man holding a crying baby. More coughing and cries came from the truck. Talla gave him a quick nod and stepped back. He took the bag and swung it against the tarp, knocking the flaming tatters to the side. With one more swing, he was able to pin the burning tarp against the side of the truck, using the bag to hold the flames away from the entrance.

  Several lunged out of the truck immediately, nearly knocking Jax over on their way to safety. After a couple more staggered out, coughing, no others came. Talla jumped onto the truck. “Laze!”

  No response. She stepped into the darkness. “Talla, no!” Jax yelled, but she disappeared. At least twice as many had entered the truck than had come out, and a knot formed in Jax’s gut. He peered into the smoky blackness but could make out nothing but a tangle of unmoving limbs. He glanced up at the tarp. Flames had nearly engulfed what was left of the cover. The nylon bag was melting. Charred, liquefied pieces were breaking off. “I can’t hold it much longer,” he shouted into the truck.

  She emerged then, soot on her face, dragging two bodies, one coughing, with her. Laze emerged next, his arms full, one of his wingtip spurs snapped off.

  “Are there others?” Jax asked as Laze went by, but the Draeken didn’t even look his way. His lips thinning, Jax dropped the bag and moved away, careful to avoid the burning sections of the dock that looked about to collapse.

  On the ground, Talla had left the coughing pair she’d rescued and now stood at Laze’s back. He was crouched, still holding those he’d carried from the truck. Flowing over his arm was long brown hair with black streaks that had been smooth and straight minutes early, only now was now singed and curled. The woman’s legs sprawled carelessly on the ground. In Laze’s other arm, Jax made out a much smaller figure, the glimpse of tiny wings hanging slack.

  Silent, Talla placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  Laze didn’t say anything. He didn’t move, didn’t shake, nothing. He just continued to clutch the lifeless bodies of his wife and son to his chest.

  Above the sounds of shouts, cries, and coughs, Jax heard something else. More so, he felt it first. A vibration below his feet. He jogged over to fence and saw dots on the road in the distance. “We’ve got company!” he shouted over his shoulder.

  Talla jerked up and frowned. He scanned the area, but Roden and Nalea were nowhere to be seen. He went straight for Talla. “We have to get out of here,” he said, looking from her to the top of Laze’s head and back to her again. “They’ll have orders to finish off anyone left.”

  The whoomp-whoomp of helicopters added to the echoing drone of far-off engines, but Jax wasn’t worried about them. As long as Roden’s aggressors were in the skies, no aircraft could get close to the Etzee. Ground troops would be another story altogether. Roden’s air support was feeble compared to the size of the army driving toward them. Despite their superior firepower, they simply didn’t have nearly enough ships to hold at bay the fleet of heavy artillery heading their way.

  Talla gripped Laze’s shoulder. “You have to leave them.” Her words were quiet and commanding.

  Laze looked up then. Looked at Talla, then at Jax, then down the road. As though not to awake them, he laid his wife and son carefully on the ground. He straightened Sarah’s figure, then bent down and kissed her lips. Ever so gently, he rolled Jacen onto his stomach. With a roar that clenched Jax’s heart, Laze tore the wings from his son’s back.

  Jax winced at the alien custom. He’d never seen it done before, only heard rumors about it. A human would see it as desecration, but to a Draeken, it was ritual. To memorialize loved ones, they preserved the wings of their loved ones, displaying them proudly in their homes.

  Laze came to his feet, and tucked the tiny, bloody wings into his belt. He stood before them. Jax knew that flat, deadpan stare. It was a torturous place from where few returned. He knew because he’d been there before. He wanted to say something meaningful, something epic. Instead, he blurted, “We have to run.”

  Laze pulled out a long shiv instead, and turned to face the approaching trucks.

  Talla watched Laze before giving Jax a tight, almost sad, look. She strode over and pulled Jax into a hard, deep, penetrating kiss, then pushed away. He stood, shell-shocked, as she, too, pulled out a much smaller shiv and went to stand at her brother’s side. “I’m not leaving Laze behind,” she said.

  “Like hell I’ll let you both kill yourselves.” Furious, Jax stomped forward to grab her. Hanging around was suicide, plain and simple. But Laze struck first. He swung out and punched Talla, and she collapsed instantly. Jax barely caught her before she hit the ground.

  “Keep her safe,” Laze said, staring straight ahead. “I’ll get you the time you need to get her away.” With that, Laze ran toward the truck with its cargo bed in flames, not ever looking back.

  There was no time for Jax to respond, let alone convince Laze to come with them. Knowing he’d need every second that Laze could buy, Jax lifted Talla’s unconscious form and jogged down the fence. He was clumsy with her. She was nearly his height and that made her body hard to manage without risk of injury to her wings.

  He stopped at the next gate, the one nearest to the offices. This gate was small, no more than a steel door between the Etzee and the rest of the world. He moved Talla to his shoulder so he could use his hands. He pulled out his badge and swiped it over the black pad next to the door. The lock clicked, and he shoved the heavy door open. His Jeep sat a few feet away, exactly where he’d left it this morning, still in one piece. With no time for gentleness, he dumped Talla into the cargo area of the Jeep and jumped into the driver’s seat.

  Jax had the Jeep in reverse by the time the engine caught. Pebbles kicked against the fence as he backed up. He slammed it into gear and twisted the wheel, tearing across the gravel parking lot and onto the road, turning the opposite direction of the approaching trucks. The bat-bat-bat sounds of heavy gunfire came at him from his six, but he kept the pedal on the floor, expecting any second to get a fifty-cal through his skull.

  He risked a glance at the rearview mirror to see an honest-to-God truck of flames barrel between Jax and the .50s. It was a beautiful miracle.

  Jax didn’t slow down as Laze drove the deathtrap toward the trucks. But Jax did send a quick prayer, begging the powers that be to save Talla’s brother if there was any way possible. Laze was a hard-headed
fucker who’d always butted heads with Jax, but he’d fight alongside the guy any day of the week.

  It should’ve been Jax in the truck and Laze with Talla. But, Laze had always been the better man. That’s why Laze was playing hero and Jax was running. Jax kept driving, refusing to look back until the tremendous crash of the head-on collision snapped his eyes to the rearview mirror. Trucks were already making way through the ditches, but Laze’s barricade slowed them down enough to buy an extra mile for Jax and Talla.

  “Damn you for being a hero,” Jax muttered. Laze was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die. But war wasn’t about what people deserved. War was violent and brutal, and it didn’t care who died. War was exactly what his government had started today.

  Gripping the wheel, he scanned for side roads. They were on the northern outskirts of the Ozarks, a good area to hide. He whipped the Jeep into a small driveway and parked. Leaving the engine running, he pulled out his knife and glanced back at Talla. She was just beginning to stir. He needed to move quick.

  Crawling to the back, he nudged her to her side to better expose her neck. Running his fingers over her smooth skin, it took him several seconds to find the rice-sized tracer implanted near her spine. He pinched her skin around the tracer, brought up the blade, and made a narrow cut, just deep enough to pop the tracer out. A small groan escaped her lips but she hadn’t yet fully awakened, no doubt having a full-out concussion, thanks to her brother.

  Laze could’ve killed her with that punch. As it stood, Laze had saved her. Jax set the tracer on the metal side of the Jeep and smashed it with the flat end of his tanto. After knocking it to the ground, he sheathed his blade and hurried back to the driver’s seat. Even though the trucks had all turned into the Etzee, he made no mistake in thinking that no one would come after them eventually. They didn’t have much time. He pulled back onto the road and stepped on the gas.

  The trucks likely had orders to go for the bigger payoff, assuming they could track any survivors one by one afterward. But they hadn’t reckoned on the cunning of Etzee’s inhabitants. Some would survive. Sephians would align with Draeken. And those survivors would come back at Earth with everything they had.

  Chapter Seven

  Consciousness tugged slowly at Talla’s mind, coupled with an entire fleet of core ships blasting away in her head. The entire left side of her face throbbed, and her thoughts swirled. Fortunately for Laze, nothing felt broken. Damn, that lunatic brother of hers was going to get it good this time.

  Her wings were pinched against an unsmooth surface. It took many long seconds before her mushy thoughts firmed up. The last she remembered was Laze’s fist coming at her just as the troops were bearing down on them fast.

  Why am I still alive?

  She opened her eyes to find herself squinting into bright sunlight. She was on her back in a small open cargo area of a Jeep Jax was driving. The wind blanketed the rumble of engine noise, but otherwise the world around her seemed deceptively quiet. The road was of typical Earthside variety, filled with potholes and cracks, and the Jeep jumped and swayed. Pulling herself up, she climbed off the gear and bags and into the passenger seat, snagging her wings clumsily on her way to the front.

  It took her awhile to position her wings comfortably enough around her to sit upright. Her neck was cramping, and she rubbed it with her hand. Pulling it away, she frowned as she noticed fresh blood on her fingers.

  Jax had been busy while she’d been out. At least the tracer was one less thing to worry about. “Thanks,” she said to the man at her left.

  His brows furrowed. “For what?”

  “For cutting out the tracer.”

  “Oh. No problem.”

  “It’s good to no longer feel like I’m being watched and tracked everywhere I go,” she said before wincing, tentatively touching her throbbing temple. Laze had always had an impressive right hook. She’d participated in hand-to-hand combat before, many of those times with her brother. The swelling would be down within the day, but it would take at least a week for the bruising to fade. She rolled her neck from shoulder to shoulder, her neck cracking with each motion.

  Jax looked her direction and winced. “Christ, that’s a shiner,” he blurted out.

  Since she could hardly see out of her eye, she could only imagine what she looked like. Still, she gave him a once-over. “Not looking so great yourself,” she said, but that was a lie. Even covered with soot and wearing a torn shirt, he looked sexier than ever. She could only imagine how devastating he’d look with powerful, marked wings.

  He stammered in a rough mumble. “I didn’t mean — ”

  “I know. I’m just playing with you.”

  She’d already discovered that his lips were as delicious as she’d envisioned. She’d kissed him without thinking, assuming she was about to die, charging against insurmountable odds with her brother. Then she frowned, a sudden tension creeping through her body. “Where’s Laze?”

  Jax’s lips tightened.

  “Where’s my brother, Jax.” An order, not a question.

  The steering wheel creaked as he clenched his hands around it. He replied quietly after a long pause. “He’s not coming.”

  “That’s impossible. He — he … ” She sat for a moment, unable to focus. “What happened?” she whispered.

  “He bought us time to get away.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Ta deiti. “He wouldn’t do anything that stupid.”

  “You are the only thing he had left worth fighting for.”

  “That’s not true,” she said as a surge of numbness spiked with intense emotions took control. She couldn’t stop the tears. They just came. “I should’ve been there with him. He shouldn’t have had to die alone.”

  Jax’s hand squeezed her knee. The movement was awkward, clumsy. And meant all the more for it. First her hands, then her entire body, shook. Talla sobbed, clutching the dashboard for support. The tears burned her swollen eye. She liked the pain. It made Laze feel real. He was her older brother. He’d taken care of her since she could walk. He was brilliant and strong and good. He couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t.

  She wept, long after her thoughts were no longer focused, long after she could rationalize Laze’s actions. She wept for Laze and Sarah and Jacen and all the others lost to senseless violence at the Etzee this morning. She just couldn’t stop the tears. Whenever she’d cried before, Laze would be there. But he wasn’t there now, so she kept on crying.

  She let her tears end on their own accord. Leaning back in the seat, she stared in numbness at trees flashing by as the Jeep sped down the road. She let her wings spread just enough to catch the cool breeze, though the fresh air did little to soothe her soul.

  Still feeling outside herself, she vacantly noticed that the sun had not yet reached its highest point, which meant that they couldn’t have been on the road more than an hour, two at most. The attack, Laze … everything felt like an eternity ago. With each minute, she reclaimed a bit of herself again. Sensations returned to her skin. The clouds lumbering in her mind dissipated, replaced by a newfound sense of duty.

  Laze had given up everything for her to survive. She’d never let him down before, and she wasn’t about to start now.

  The Jeep slowed, and Jax turned off the road into a driveway overgrown with weeds. He parked behind the cover of several shrubs and trees and cut the engine. He reached behind him and pulled out a folded paper and bottle of water. He handed the bottle to her. The water was warm; it had a slight plastic taste to it, but it was refreshing. Her throat felt raw, mostly from smoke inhalation, but some from her earlier sobbing. After another drink, she passed it back to Jax, who took a long swig. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and handed the bottle back to her.

  He unfolded the paper and started scanning the green layout. “We should be safe here for an hour or two until we figure out our next step.”

  “Is that a map?” she asked, her mouth opening.

  “Yeah, I need to
get a fix on our location. I had to ditch my phone so they couldn’t track it,” he replied without looking up.

  “But it’s paper.”

  “And your point?”

  “It doesn’t have GPS. It doesn’t show where you are or where you’re going. What good does it do?”

  He cocked his head and watched her for a moment. A smirk curled his lips. “You don’t always need technology.” Then he pulled out a small compass and laid the map over the emergency brake that separated them. “Here. I’ll show you.”

  Talla should have noticed its approach. She was off-balance, distracted, until the sound wouldn’t be denied. Two pairs of eyes widened at each other when they recognized the unmistakable small engine sound above them at the same time. Without even looking up, Jax and Talla shot from the Jeep in opposite directions, the instant the pzoosh of a small shell firing erupted from the drone overhead.

  The shell whistled through the air and slammed into the engine of the Jeep. Talla ducked behind a tree, covering her head with her arms and wings. An explosion shook the ground and sent a wave of hot wind past her, and she braced herself with a hand. A storm of leaves tumbled down upon her back.

  Coming to her feet, her ears ringing, she chanced a quick look at the drone. It now hovered just above the tree line, scanning the ground. A narrow red laser-line crossed over the wreckage and spanned a good ten feet on either side. After a second scan, the tiny camera disappeared with a whir inside the drone. Another, larger slot opened and something shot out and into the ground several feet from the wreckage.

  The drone moved off, and Jax jumped out. “Talla!”

  She was already running toward him. “I’m okay. You?”

  He nodded, and then glowered at the object the drone left behind. It reminded her of a chaos-charge connected to several arrows. The top round portion had several lights and indentations. It was attached to metal sticks stabilizing it above the ground. “What is it?” she asked.