“Valentine,” he replied. “I’m not sure I do.”

  “This is war, Card, and we have a lot of enemies. More than any of us thought.”

  “That doesn’t forgive you for bringing a colony of innocent civilians here. I assume you were here, hiding somewhere nearby. I assume you heard what it said. You did the same damn thing. You made the same mistake. But it seems like neither one of you wants to learn anything from it.”

  “I wasn’t the one who told it we have an energy unit.”

  “If there were anyone here to court-martial me, I’d tell them to do it. I know I screwed up. I admit it and take responsibility. What about you?”

  “I screwed up too, Caleb. I went too far with what I was trying to achieve. But maybe it will make you feel better to know I’m paying the price.” She put her hand near one of the blemishes on her face. “It told me it gave me a cure. It lied to me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m changing. Becoming more like the Reapers. I can feel it. I’m losing my humanity. I’m losing everything. Is this the revenge you’re looking for, Caleb?”

  “I don’t care about revenge. I care about the people of Metro. We have to help them.”

  “We can’t even help ourselves.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  She smiled. “Because you still don’t get it. The way I see it, we have one chance. We have to go to the Inarhi and convince them we’re on their side.”

  “Do you think they care about us or anything we have to say?”

  “We have something they want.”

  “Something they’ll take.”

  “Why do I suddenly feel like our roles have reversed?” Valentine asked.

  “Why are you suddenly angling for peace?”

  She held out the weapon, tossing it to him. He caught it, looking down at the gun. Its exterior was simple. A long rectangular shape with a trigger at the bottom. He doubted the technology inside was simple.

  “I found a few of these in the city. Left behind or dropped by the dead. I don’t know. Judging by how well they fit a human hand, I’m guessing they’re Inarhi design. They were made to kill the Intellects. From what I can gather, they carry a waveform frequency within the energy strike that causes them to overload and fall apart. You can see what it did to these two.”

  “So you think we have no chance against their tech?” Caleb said.

  “I know we have no chance against their tech.”

  “I don’t want to fight them. I want to get the people of Metro and the energy unit here before the Inarhi can make it to the Deliverance. It doesn’t sound like they’re living too close by. Going to them will only tell them we’re here and we have something they want.”

  “They have starships, genius. I’m sure they have atmospheric transports too.”

  “Then where are they? It seems like most of their resources were lost here in the city-ships.”

  “Possibly. We can’t be sure.”

  “No. But I think the fight we can win is the one we don’t get into. We go back to Metro, we warn the colony, and we get them packed and coming this way. I’m sure Joe and Carol can figure out how this place works.”

  “And then what?”

  “We worry about that when we get there.”

  “Spoken like a true Raider,” Riley said. “It’s not a good plan, Sergeant.”

  “And finding the Inarhi and telling them we have an energy unit and we want to bargain is? Even if they’re receptive, then what? They let us join them when they attack the Axon? They’re pissed about being used. I get it. We’re all in the same club, thanks to you. My way, we have some control over our destiny. Your way? We’re giving the control away. I’d rather be in charge of my own life. I think the colonists would agree.”

  “I agree,” Dante said.

  “Me too,” Paige said.

  Riley glared at them. Then she smiled. There was a rawness to it. A wildness Caleb didn’t like.

  “Well then, Sergeant. I guess we’re at an impasse. You do it your way. I’m going to do it mine. We’ll see which one works out for the better.”

  “You can’t do that,” Dante said. “You’ll get the Inarhi on our asses long before they would have arrived.”

  “Your mistake is thinking I care about the colony or any of you. You just can’t see past these people, can you Caleb? You aren’t thinking like a warrior. The Inarhi might be able to stop the Relyeh. If we give them what they want, they might be able to help us save Earth.”

  “Twenty-thousand lives for the possibility that they might help us out? It isn’t worth it.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Caleb turned the Inarhi weapon toward Riley. “I can’t let you go.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  Caleb didn’t hesitate to fire. The weapon spat out a blue ball of energy. It hit Riley square in the chest.

  And did nothing.

  “It only works on Intellects,” she said. “I could kill you all, but I’m starting to enjoy myself. Good luck even figuring out how to get out of here.”

  She sprinted toward the exit, moving faster than Caleb could believe. Within seconds, she was gone.

  “That went well,” Dante said.

  “We’re still alive,” Paige replied.

  “She’s right. We need to figure out how to get out of here,” Caleb said. “And we need to do it now. We have no idea how much time we have before the Inarhi arrive.”

  Washington stomped his foot on the floor, getting Caleb’s attention. The big Marine pointed out the window. There was something in the distance.

  Something coming their way.

  “Or if we have any time at all,” Caleb said.

  Chapter 60

  “Are you sure you want to come?” Governor Jackson Stone asked.

  “I’m sure,” his wife replied. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t wait to get away from the memories.”

  “I know,” Jackson said.

  He was eager to get away from them too. Ever since Orla’s death and the discovery of the massive weapons cache tucked beneath Metro, the inside of the Deliverance felt more like a prison than a safehouse. It was a constant reminder of a past he didn’t want to admit to and the lies he had told to protect what was left of his family.

  He didn’t regret it. Not at all. As Governor, it was his job to make the hard decisions. It was his job to guide the citizens as best he could. He was uniquely qualified to bring them into this new situation, one which he had never expected to experience in his lifetime. Even though he had known the truth about the Deliverance, he figured that after two hundred years the ship was lost in space and would never land. It would be on Orla’s grandchildren to worry about what would happen when they ran out of power. He would have been long-recycled by then.

  But that wasn’t what happened. Not at all. He should never have outlived his daughter. He should never have seen these days. But here he was, he and Beth both. He wasn’t giving up his role as Governor to the same military that had put them into space and gotten them lost in the first place. He was damn well never going to cede power to the bitch who had planned to use them as bodies to experiment on and then turn the citizens of Metro into monsters to fight the monsters that had destroyed their homes on Earth.

  It was a shame he had to do what he did to Sergeant Card and the others. They weren’t bad people. Just the wrong people in the wrong place at the right time. That’s how it went sometimes. That’s how it was for him too.

  Sheriff Dante? She had crossed him, betrayed him, and then acted innocent. He could see right through her. He knew she and Card were conspiring against him. He had given her an impossible choice and put her between a rock and a hard place. The Marshals hadn’t returned, and he didn’t expect them back. The colonists he had picked were all inferior in one way or another. They were going to die out there. Card was going to kill them, and if he were lucky, Card would die too.

  But where the hell was he headed? What was his endgame? He had been trying to figure that one out for the last four days. What was the nature of the enemy, and why would Card team up with it? He didn’t really believe they had been conspiring for years. Theirs was a marriage of convenience. How would they consummate it?

  With one or both sides dead, he was sure. That might have scared him before. He was terrified when they first landed, though he would only barely admit it to himself. The guns and drones and artillery had taken that fear away. It had precipitated their freedom.

  After fifty-four years, he was ready to get the hell out of Metro.

  He left the Governor’s Mansion with Beth in tow, along with an entourage of his new DDF soldiers. They were all volunteers from his original militia, fiercely loyal and the most skilled and fearless people he had. His effects would come along shortly after, but he couldn’t wait for the mansion to be broken down and reconstructed before he went outside. All he had left to do inside the hull of the Deliverance was suffocate.

  They reached the ground floor, exiting onto the streets. They had decided to make a show of the departure, and hundreds of colonists were lined up on either side of the block, cheering as he and Beth emerged. He waved to them with a big smile on his face. There was nothing to be afraid of on this world. Nobody had come. There was nothing out there to hurt them. The drones had confirmed as much, covering a two hundred kilometer perimeter that turned up even more nothing.

  They were safe.

  They were free.

  They walked over to the rear of the flat-backed transport he normally used to address the crowd. He helped Beth onto it and approached the microphone.

  “To our new home!” he shouted.

  “To our new home!” the crowd shouted back.

  “To fresh air!”

  “To fresh air!”

  “To freedom!”

  “To freedom!”

  Jackson smiled and waved again. Beth waved beside him. On their right, one of the massive loaders was put into gear, and a team of engineers rushed into the building. The blocks were designed to be taken apart cube-by-cube with no damage to any of the property inside and reassembled in whatever pattern made the most sense. Jackson requested for the mansion to be set apart from the rest of the colony, right along the banks of what he had named Stone River.

  He had never imagined he would own waterfront property.

  The people cheered as the loader’s massive crane began to rise. Jackson only saw it in the rear-view, the transport starting to roll away.

  Colonists lined the strands as he traveled south, cheering him on. They would be joining him outside in fits and starts depending on how the cubes were broken down. The DDF would use the emptied hold as their base of operations, as a barracks and training center. The long-term plan was for the DDF to be disbanded and the Deliverance broken down for raw materials to expand their new city.

  The transport carried them across South Park and through the massive blast doors, out into a cavernous passageway that connected them to the enormous main hangar. The vehicles there were reorganized and prepared for use, while the lift to get them from the ship to the ground was once more fully-functional, thanks to Joe King. The man was a wizard.

  “Not long now,” Jackson said to his wife.

  “This is so exciting,” she replied. She was smiling. It was the first real smile he had seen from her since he told her about Orla. She had gotten a lot of peace from believing Card was dead, and her happiness was all he needed to be happy himself.

  “It’s going to get more exciting,” he said. “Wait until you see the river.”

  He hadn’t seen the river in person yet, but he had watched the drone footage. He couldn’t wait to watch the jumpfishers or see a mograt, names he had bestowed on a couple of the animals they had discovered there. It was fun naming everything. Orla would have loved it.

  The transport reached the main hangar. The blast doors were open, and Jackson could see the jungle in the distance—the thick canopy hiding its contents from view—and the mountains beyond. Sheriff Zane had cautioned him that there could be anything hiding in the jungle, but there was no sign of danger. Nothing had come out of it, and besides, there was an entire platoon of DDF already down there, armed and armored and ready to defend the colony with their lives.

  He wasn’t worried, he told himself, ignoring the slight catch of anxiety in the pit of his stomach. It meant nothing, yet he couldn’t quite forget Card’s words of warning. No, he thought, mentally shaking his head, he wouldn’t let himself go there. Card was wrong and that was that.

  The transport slowed to a stop on the lift. They waited there for a few minutes while a pair of engineers in Strongman suits walked over to the lift and joined them. Then the huge metal platform started to descend.

  “Do you think it’s this hot all the time?” Beth asked, noting the humidity. Jackson was already sweating in his long coat, but he refused to take it off. It was part of his look, a symbol of his status. He wasn’t ready to lose that either.

  “Probably not,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll see snow again for a while though.”

  “I can live with that. It’s a fair trade.” She drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air, turning to look east and west off the sides of the lift as it ducked beneath the Deliverance’s hull. “Jackson dear,” she said, her voice curious. “What do you suppose that is?”

  Jackson turned to look where Beth was pointing. They had landed in a valley, and the east river flowed through a series of rolling hills toward a plain that would be perfect for farming, before twisting into another series of mountains and trees. There was an incline beside the river, and now he could see a row of shapes silhouetted along the slope.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Lieutenant Hind…” He jerked his chin at the shapes. “...what do you see there?”

  “One moment, Governor,” Hind said, stepping past him in his combat armor and using the helmet’s optics to zoom in on the top of the hill.

  Jackson couldn’t see Hind’s face, but he could hear the tremble in his voice when he spoke.

  “They’re… They’re people, Governor.”

  “Sergeant Card?” Jackson demanded, instantly angry. Not only was Card alive, but he had shown up just in time to ruin the moment?

  “N-n-n-no, Governor,” Hind said. “Oh. Oh my.”

  “What is it?” Jackson demanded.

  He didn’t need a verbal response. He could see it. A red ball of energy had launched from the hill and was arcing toward them. It was going to fall short of their position, but its purpose was abundantly clear.

  “Jackson?” Beth asked breathlessly.

  The ball hit the ground a hundred meters ahead of them, where the platoon of soldiers was arranged. It detonated with a rumble that shook everything around it. A wave of heat and energy flared out from the impact point, killing everyone on the ground in an instant.

  “Up!” he tried to shout, barely able to breathe. This couldn’t be happening. “We need to go back up!”

  The people on top of the hill started moving, beginning their charge down the hill and across the gap between them.

  Maybe they weren’t safe after all.

  Thank you for reading Desperation

  You’ve read the first two books, and you’re on this page, so thank you, thank you, thank you for reading!

  Since this is you’re third time around, you know what to do. Show your support for the series by leaving a review (mrforbes.com/desperation) and telling potential readers how great you think these books are.

  After that, wait (im)patiently for the fourth book in the series: Destruction. Do you want to know when it’s out? mrforbes.com/destruction

  If this is your first foray into the Forgotten books and you’re looking for something else to read before Destruction drops, I recommend picking up Forgotten (mrforbes.com/forgotten). It’s the book that started it all, ties in especially well with this one and feeds into Earth Unknown (mrforbes.com/earthunknown), another bestselling Forgotten universe series.

  If you’re already caught up in the Forgotten universe or you’re interested in any of my other books - there’s a more complete description in the next section of this book, or even better you can check out my backlist at mrforbes.com/books.

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  Cheers,

  Michael.

  Other Books By M.R Forbes

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  mrforbes.com/books

  Forgotten (The Forgotten)

  mrforbes.com/theforgotten

  Some things are better off FORGOTTEN.

  Sheriff Hayden Duke was born on the Pilgrim, and he expects to die on the Pilgrim, like his father, and his father before him.

  That's the way things are on a generation starship centuries from home. He's never questioned it. Never thought about it. And why bother? Access points to the ship's controls are sealed, the systems that guide her automated and out of reach. It isn't perfect, but he has all he needs to be content.

  Until a malfunction forces his Engineer wife to the edge of the habitable zone to inspect the damage.

  Until she contacts him, breathless and terrified, to tell him she found a body, and it doesn't belong to anyone on board.

  Until he arrives at the scene and discovers both his wife and the body are gone.

  The only clue? A bloody handprint beneath a hatch that hasn't opened in hundreds of years.

  Until now.

  Earth Unknown (Forgotten Earth)

  mrforbes.com/earthunknown

  A terrible discovery.

  A secret that could destroy human civilization.

  A desperate escape to the most dangerous planet in the universe... Earth.

  Two hundred years ago, a fleet of colony ships left Earth and started a settlement on Proxima Centauri...