Slavemakers (18 page)

JASON STOOD AT
the top of the fort's stone staircase, clutching the hilt of his machete in his right hand and watching events unfold. It was all happening exactly as he'd predicted, as if he'd imagined the worst case, the nightmare scenario, then made it happen. Like he was some malign god making his helpless subjects dance.

There
was
one unexpected thing, something he doubted even a trickster god would have thought up. The visitors were wearing regular clothes, not wasp-proof hazmat suits. Clothes that were neat and well cared for compared to the slaves' rags, but still merely regular shirts and pants.

And yet the strangers lived. All that exposed skin meant that they should have long since been stung to death. Gouged and eyeless. But they weren't.
Something
—some kind of invisible armor, a force field—was protecting them from the thieves.

But what? What was it?

Not that it mattered, not really. It wasn't going to do them any good in the end. Because their armor protected them only from thieves, not the slaves who were overwhelming them. More and more slaves were coming down the steps, and Jason saw among them the most ferocious and unstoppable of all: the last-stage hosts. Someone had opened their cells and set them free, and now they were leading the attack.

Despite their weapons and their bravery, the visitors stood no chance. They weren't even going to make it to the top of the stairs. Already one of them, a thickset middle-aged man, was mortally wounded with a broken neck, sprawled limply across the steps as a ridden slave tore at him.

That left just four, three in a tight knot, their backs against the stone banister. A woman in her sixties with wild gray hair and a fierce, fearless gaze, wielding a rifle. And, flanking her, two younger ones, a man and a woman, so similar in build and features that they must have been siblings. These two had come only with knives, and even though they each succeeded in killing a ridden slave—no easy task—Jason knew that they would soon be overwhelmed.

Even as he had that thought, Jason saw the older woman pause to reach into the pocket of her tunic for fresh ammunition. At this, the slaves surged forward again, and a ridden one grabbed the barrel of her rifle.

The barrel was so hot that Jason could hear the slave's skin sizzle. But of course that didn't matter. With a twist of its arms, it wrenched the gun away and threw it over the stone banister and out of sight.

The woman went for a knife she wore on her belt, but Jason knew that was a last, hopeless gesture.

A pair of shotgun blasts brought the slaves to a momentary halt and took Jason's gaze to the final member of the group, the shooter, a tall, lanky man with high cheekbones, fierce blue eyes, and a mop of gray-blond hair. A familiar face, even though Jason knew he'd never seen it before in life.

The arcs of blood that erupted as each shell from the man's gun found its target were impressive, but meant nothing. Two fewer slaves? Inconsequential.

Jason felt paralyzed by sorrow. No more than five minutes after the explorers' arrival, the great attack on the slave camp at Lamu Fort would be history. Soon enough, forgotten, with Jason left as the only witness to remember, or to care.

Except . . . that's not what happened. As a human slave—it was Kenny—struck the older man in the head with a rock, sending him to the ground, Jason recognized the man. He knew who it was.

The realization was like a door opening far too late, and Jason understood everything. Who these brave, foolhardy explorers were, and why, at long last, they'd come here.

Chloe, locked in the cells below, if she even still lived, would have laughed at him. “Jesus, Jase, took you long enough,” she would have said. “I told you all about it. So where were you? Thinking about the sports scores?”

No. Jason had been listening to her. Only now, however, did he realize he'd never truly believed in it, in the
vine or the vaccine. It had sounded like a fairy story to him, as surreal as a wooden sailing ship coming up the channel. And his and Chloe's planned flight nothing more than a suicide run.

But it
had
been true, her story. However worthless it was against the slaves, the vaccine actually existed and worked against the thieves. Even at the height of the battle, the wasps spinning and darting around showed every sign of agitation and distress, yet not a single one ever came within a foot of the visitors.

The vaccine existed. It worked. And that man being dragged toward the cells by two ridden slaves was Chloe's father.

And Jason, awake at last, knew that it was time—long past time—for him to stop being a mere witness, and finally, for the first time in decades, in forever, to
act
.

*   *   *

HE HURTLED DOWN
the steps toward the clot of slaves surrounding the surviving humans. Thieves spun around his face, but he saw that the hive mind could not yet read his thoughts or his intentions. To the mind, he was still just another slave.

He swung his blade with all his strength, seeing it glint in the sun on the downstroke and reappear smeared with blood and fragments of shining white bone. A moment later, one slave's blood mingled with another's, then a third. The third was Kenny.

Each stroke severing the spinal column of its target, so one stroke was all he needed. Bodies, slave bodies, fell
around him as he fought forward. Drenched in blood, gasping for air, his lungs and eyes burning, he cut through the wall of flesh toward the besieged visitors.

Every moment he expected a slave to wrench away his weapon, to turn on him. Or to feel the agony of a thief's stinger entering his body.

But he didn't, and then he was there. Standing in front of the older woman, meeting her fierce gaze with his own. Seeing her eyes widen and spark with something that looked like . . . curiosity.

He turned back to face the slaves, who had fallen back in the face of his unexpected assault. As he put his body between them and her, the woman, holding her own blood-smeared knife in her right hand, stepped forward and pressed her left side against him.

At first Jason didn't understand why. But then he did.

The force field,
he thought. The vaccine. However the hell it works, she's using it to protect me.

And, in fact, the thieves now gave him the same berth that they'd been giving the visitors. But already the slaves were regrouping, surging forward once again.

Jason raised his machete, but now the crowd was too close for him to take a proper swing. His next slash cut into the solid bone of a slave's shoulder, and when it twisted away it wrenched the blade's hilt out of his hand.

As the closest slaves reached for his throat, he heard from behind him, the sound of voices. Two voices together. The brother and sister, praying.

Jason closed his eyes. He didn't pray, but sent out his thoughts. If humans did share some connection, if there
was
some kind of hive mind in them as well, maybe Chloe could hear him.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

*   *   *

THE SLAVES' HANDS
were already on him when he heard the sound of the thieves' wingbeats change. It rose in pitch and intensity, accompanied by the chattering sound he'd heard only a few times before.

The sounds of fear.

Jason opened his eyes. The two slaves before him, ridden ones, were standing so close that he was staring into their faces. Seeing not a trace of recognition there, even though Jason had lived beside them for years.

No recognition, but something else, something he'd never before seen in a ridden slave's face: confusion. As if their brains were filled with noise, with the meaningless whir of wings.

Jason saw their riders leave them then and fly upward. He tilted his head, his gaze following them. The two joining the many, the uncountable swarm.

About twenty feet over his head, the swarm had come together in a tight, churning knot, a kind of knotted vortex. It was astonishing—after all these years, he was seeing yet another new thief behavior.

And yet this behavior
was
familiar in some way.

It took him a moment to realize why. It was something he'd seen only once, on a dive off the Maldive Islands: a feeding frenzy involving bluefish, sharks, giant
tuna, and finally even a whale, predators all drawn to that one spot by the prospect of feasting on a massive school of anchovies.

And the anchovies, in their terror and as a last hopeless defense against the ferocious assault, had drawn themselves into a spinning knot just like this one. The hive mind in extremis, with the survival of a few depending on the death of almost all.

A bait ball. That's what it was called.

The thieves had formed themselves into a bait ball.

They were acting like . . .
bait
.

*   *   *

AND THEN JASON
saw why.

A girl, moving up the steps toward them. Moving with a loping, long-limbed stride like a cheetah's.

No. Not a girl. A young woman, perhaps twenty, tall but so slightly built and skinny that she could have passed for twelve. Dressed, if anything, even more raggedly than Jason was, and with a filthy wrap on her left hand that didn't conceal the infection spreading across her palm and up her forearm.

She was Caucasian, though darkly tanned, with tangled, unevenly cut blondish hair over a sharp-jawed face that seemed almost as expressionless as the slaves'. Expressionless except for her eyes, which Jason could see even from a distance were a strange, milky blue-violet. Her gaze was alive with interest as she approached.

And she was singing. Jason couldn't believe it. She was singing some wordless melody in a fine, strong alto.

Her gaze settled on Jason for a moment, and she fell
silent as she tilted her head and looked directly into his face. Next she scanned the motionless slaves, the ridden and born ones struck still and the human ones filled with sudden doubt and fear. Then, finally, she shifted her gaze to the spinning mass of thieves above.

Only then did she show any expression on her face, a tiny frown. But what was in her eyes was something else, something shockingly dark and predatory.

As if responding to the force of her gaze, the mass knotted together more tightly, spun more frenetically. The sound of the thieves' wings rose further in pitch, and the ball rose higher, as if seeking to escape, to flee, but unable to break free.

Without lowering her eyes, she stepped closer to Jason. He saw her mouth move, as if she were trying to speak to him, as if she were trying to find the right words to say.

Before she could, the first of the thieves began to fall from the sky. Plummeting helplessly, stunned or dead, just as they had in Jason's dream of rescue. Soon the stairs were carpeted in them, not even their mandibles twitching or their stingers seeking someone to take with them to the grave.

Jason heard the girl make a quiet sound, a tiny moan of ultimate exhaustion, of surrender. He looked just in time to see her fall to the ground among the thieves she had knocked from the sky.

THE ATTACKERS CAME
from the south, out of the forest. Mariama never discovered whether Rodrigo and Marie, the sentries on duty in the towers on the southwest and southeast corners, had seen anything, whether they'd had any warning at all.

Or maybe they'd been asleep. The predawn hours were hard for everyone, and the sentries had been nearing the end of their shift. The end of just another shift after countless hundreds during which absolutely nothing important had happened.

No one ever learned what had taken place in those last few moments, and how much Rodrigo and Marie might have prevented. All that mattered was that they died before they had the chance to ring the alarm.

The first wartime deaths in the Next World, as lacking in detail as countless millions that had preceded them in the Last.

*   *   *

THE ASSAULT ON
Refugia came in three waves. The first was an advance force that climbed the towers and killed the sentries. The second followed almost immediately, as the southern and eastern walls were set afire, an act not designed to burn them down—the walls were too solid to go up in flames—but to spread billows of smoke and sow confusion and panic.

But not as much panic as the third wave provoked: the attackers that erupted from the tunnels connecting Refugia to the forest. The passageways designed to provide the colonists with secret escape routes in case of attack instead gave the invaders access to the very heart of the colony.

In retrospect, Mariama thought, perhaps this kind of attack had been inevitable. But only in retrospect, because in designing the tunnels she—all of them—had made a mistake both simple and profound. The kind that can't ever be repaired.

Mariama and Malcolm had built Refugia, with its high walls and its sentries, in anticipation of an attack by humans. In their imaginations, they'd visualized a disorganized horde of survivors who, upon discovering a colony that could feed and clothe itself—and protect itself against the thieves—would try to overwhelm it.

But neither of them had guessed that the attackers would be guided, directed, by the hive mind. The mind that saw everything and left the colony's inhabitants with few secrets to keep and nowhere to hide.

That was the part they'd missed. The part that ended the war for Refugia nearly as soon as it began.

*   *   *

MARIAMA EMERGED FROM
sleep to find two men coming through the door of her cabin.

Two unfamiliar men.

For an instant, caught in transition between dreaming and waking, Mariama lay still. She heard her voice, still muzzy, say, “Who are you?”

Coming clearer, she saw that at least one of the two understood her words. But he did not respond. Nor did either of them hesitate as they took three strides across the floor to her.

Finally, almost too late, Mariama rolled away. As one of the two came across the bed—she could smell his rank breath, and the odor of thief as well—she twisted back around, and in her right hand she held a knife.

The M9 bayonet with the seven-inch blade that she had kept well sharpened, hanging from a hook in the wall beside her bed these twenty years.

By now she was fully awake, and she'd always been good with a knife. And she was still strong. As always, stronger than anyone—any man, any creature—ever seemed to expect.

The first attacker, dark-eyed and blank-faced, had his hands on her as she got her feet under her and pushed upward with all her strength. Her sudden movement knocked him off balance as she thrust upward with her right hand.

She felt the blade scrape against his rib before cutting through the flesh of his chest and into his heart.

Pulling the blade out, she felt his hands lose their strength, saw them drop, clenching and unclenching, to his sides. But even then, as his blood flooded out through the gaping wound she'd made, he stayed upright, allowing her to see the thief riding on the back of his neck.

Finally, he fell to the floor in a graceless collapse. As he went down, the thief rose and hovered at Mariama's eye level. She saw that it was struggling to fly, its wings damp with the man's blood. A moment later, after she'd snatched it out of the air and smashed it against the wall, it was dead as well.

If the other man had intended to attack, this would have been the moment. But he hesitated. And now, as she leaped off the bed, she saw a familiar expression on his face.

A human expression. Fear.

Before she could reach him, he'd turned and fled. Out of reach of her blade and her rage.

Leaving the door open behind him, which allowed Mariama to hear for the first time the shouts and screams echoing outside.

*   *   *

PULLING ON A
T-shirt and cotton pants, she went out the door and ran through the earliest gray light of dawn to the edge of the plaza. There she stood still, half-hidden behind a bush, and witnessed the ruin of the colony she'd always considered her own responsibility.

Smoke billowed across the plaza, mixing with the rising morning mist and the twisting skeins of thieves. Figures ran here and there, some recognizable—people
she knew, had known for the only part of her life that still seemed real—and others strangers.

Human strangers, some of them, and some not. Some being ridden by thieves, and others that Mariama saw—with a long-buried jolt of recognition—were last-stage hosts. Dozens overall, inexorable, unstoppable as they swarmed the plaza, entered the cabins, captured the Fugians who did not react as quickly as Mariama had.

Some of their captives were naked, the rest clad only in nightclothes. None seemed to be armed or in any condition to fight, and already some were cowering on the ground, awaiting imprisonment or death.

Some, but not all. As she watched, Nick Albright came around a corner and into the plaza. He was carrying a handgun, a semiautomatic .9mm SIG that Mariama had often seen him practicing with on the target range.

But even before he appeared, some of the last-stage hosts were moving in his direction. So, regardless of his gun's ability to spray its bullets around, he only managed to get off three shots—all at close range, none of which would have required target practice—before he was overwhelmed.

He gave a single hoarse shout as he went down under the onslaught.

Mariama felt a great anger rise up in her, a red anger that filled her skull. She wanted nothing more than to rush into the crowd of invaders, to take them all on, to spill as much of their blood as she could before she died.

But she knew she had to restrain herself. It would be a useless gesture to die for the other Fugians, as Nick had.

Maybe, by holding back now, she could save some of them.

Beginning with one.

She turned away from the carnage and began to run.

*   *   *

TWO ATTACKERS WERE
dragging Sheila, still in her nightgown, from her isolated cabin. Two . . . humans, Mariama thought. Too alert and fast-moving to be last-stage hosts, and she could see no riders.

Two humans attacking her oldest, closest friend.

For just a few seconds more. Then they were merely two humans thrashing on the ground, blood spewing from their slashed throats.

Humans were easy.

*   *   *

SHEILA WAS STARING
at the dying—dead—men. Mariama grabbed her by the arm and yanked her away.

For a moment Sheila, eyes and mouth both wide with terror, fought to escape Mariama's grasp. Then she seemed to come back to awareness, at least enough to stop struggling and draw in a big, ragged breath.

“Sheila,” Mariama said, “
move
.”

Finally, Sheila came with her, and they headed away from the plaza and the cabins, away from the shouts and screams, which were already dwindling. The battle for Refugia—if it could even be called that—was coming to an end, half an hour after it had begun.

“Move where?” Sheila managed to say.

But Mariama, leading her forward, was silent. Either her instincts—or maybe they were just hopes—would prove correct, or they wouldn't. The two of them would live a little longer, or they'd die now.

In either case, there was no need for her to explain.