• Chapter Eighteen:

    Storm had been spending most of his days down in the R&D workshop doing whatever needed done, be it maintenance or helping Vincent and his younger brother Kandle with their development work. Originally he had helped them reinstall the Zolumous’ weapon systems, but after he had showed them his schematics for his power suit both had taken to it like hounds to the kill. Storm liked them both, Vincent was the more quiet concise one and Kandle was the passionate and enthusiastic sort. Together they seemed ever in constant motion, pushing ahead in anything they set their heads together at.
    The only problem with the two was their astonishing ability to go off onto some tangent, usually a debate, and completely stop working for hours on end. And today was one of those days. They had been working on a modified reconstruction of Storm’s original suit, and Vincent had brought up how the suit needed to be more mobile and less heavy. Kandle’s argument was that it needed to have more armor and weaponry. That had been six hours ago, and the frame of the suit still lay on the workbench little more than a crude skeleton of what it would hopefully become. Storm had resigned himself to fixing one of the engine replacement parts that had been neglected the last few days while the two went on and on.
    The drone of their argument faded from his hearing for the most part as he thought about how little he had seen Maria over the last week. Her room was right next to his, but he had seen her only a handful of times when she came by the shop to pick up or drop off parts or tools. From what he had heard she had been spending most of her time in the underbelly of the ship working in the pipe systems and engine rooms. He found her desire for solitude a little concerning, considering how much she usually liked to be around people. The few times he had seen her she seemed detached, and almost melancholy. He told himself that she would perk up once they reached Stone Tomb. The city was practically a giant candy store for a kid like her, tech as far as you could see.
    He hadn’t seen much of anyone lately actually. Maybe he was the one being an isolationist. Khey had stopped in to check on him a couple times, and he had passed Rachel in the halls and had eaten lunch in the mess area a few times with her. She had told him how she had finally found a place for her to help out, in the clinic. He found himself glad for her, knowing that it seemed that she had been swept up into this dangerous life by chance it had seemed. But for it all she was doing well. A suburban pharmacist turned airship clinic worker. Not a long stretch, but definitely no small move in lifestyles.
    They would be in Stone Tomb by mid-day and that was when he, along with Vincent and Kandle, were going to head into the city. They needed to restock on some parts, and the three of them were interested especially in things for their new creation in the works. They had also been tasked with a mission to either find or build a vessel that could get them to the sea floor. No matter what route they took, it would involve a lot of precise work and likely days of careful prep work.
    Kandle, a big man by anyone’s measure, stormed out of the room. His eyes betrayed a solemn loss to his argument. His dusty blonde hair, cut short, and light blue eyes reminded Storm of so many soldiers he had commanded back in his days being in the Empire’s service. Storm was a big man, but he was getting on in years. Kandle was young, in his mid twenties, and as strong as an ox. He was also as clever as any many he had ever met in the military. It was a striking combination of talents that mad him someone Storm found himself liking almost immediately. Vincent too was just as clever, and his know-how of machinery and the sort was unparalleled. But both were also more stubborn than an old knitting woman when an argument arose. Most of the time, Storm just kept busy letting the two younger men talk it out. More than once he had ducked or stepped aside to avoid a thrown tool or something.
    Over the last week he felt like he had become like the third brother. A much older brother, almost old enough to be their father, but a brother none the less. It was a nice change to be able to work with people he didn’t have to really explain much to. It made him miss Maria being with him when he had used some of their slang and Vincent or Kandle had given him a questioning look until he explained he and Maria’s simple code-words. He thought that he should take Maria with him when they went into Stone Tomb. Maybe then the two of them could catch up and talk about things.

    By late afternoon the ship was moored at the Stone Tomb sky port, which Storm found to be one of the greatest technical marvels he had ever seen. The immense platform was constructed on the shear cliff face off the far side of the mountain named Limna, meaning little sister Khey had told him. The multi-tiered platforms were all interlocking and suspended from above with massive cables that ran straight into the mountainside and from below with arcing supports that reminded Storm of a hand bent backwards, the wrist jutting from the rock. It was a marvel both in design and in sculpture. The dwarves seemed to live up to their reputation of being masters of the earth.
    The group all disembarked the ship together. Aside from himself, Maria, Rachel, and Khey, the captain and the elf, Orion, along with the Kandle brothers all came too. The opening into the mountain from the sky port was massive to say the least. It was as if a great beast had once used this place for a home, and by the look of the darkened stone walls Storm guess that it may very well have been something like that in an age long since past.
    “This place is huge!” Maria said, jaw agape as her young eyes darted all around. Storm was happy to see the excitement back in her eyes. By the look of her she was practically shaking with anticipation of things yet to come. Rachel, standing on Maria’s far side, was beyond words, and walked with the same wide-eyes awe that the young girl had.
    This wasn’t the first time Storm had been to Stone Tomb, but then he had come as a soldier, and back then he had been just as in awe as the two women. He and Khey shared a brief grin at the girl’s giddy expressions. They were being lead inside by a dwarf with a long red beard and bald head. It always put on him on edge when he was near these people. The were the fiercest fighters he had ever seen, mixing clever technologies and unyielding fortitude on the battlefield. He would rather fight the savage orcs to the west than the dwarves any day. The dwarves were cunning and calculating. The never executed a plan that they didn’t think out ten steps above any countermeasure their adversaries may think up. And Stone Tomb was their strongest city. In over a thousand years no one had taken the great underground city. Some had managed to breach its doors, something the Crystanian Empire had failed even to do, but no one had gotten past the endless mazes and bulwarks once inside.
    They came to the customs office, which was little more than a security checkpoint. Unlike the human empire of Crystania, he knew other nations and peoples of the world were much more tolerant of each other, only coming to confrontations rarely. He envied their acceptant nature, as it was the reason for his separation from the Empire in the first place. He had seen that his people were the selfish and arrogant ones, and had done his best to wash his hands of all the evils he had committed in their name.
    After the quick check in they came to a grand tunnel junction, a city within itself, with corridors and large passageways leading off mostly down in different directions into the earth. Khey thanked their escort and told him they could find their way from here. The dwarf nodded and went to return to his post at the sky port. The place was more empty than Storm thought it should be. There were hundreds of building built right into the rock, but only small groups of people both dwarf and some other less common races of the area mulling about in sparse areas.
    Turning to Kandle, “I thought there would be more people here. Looks like everyone’s off somewhere else. I thought you said this was the main trade port of the whole north?”
    The younger brother looked a little worried in his response. “It is. We haven’t docked here in about five months or so, but back then there were at least ten times this many people. It was a madhouse compared to this.”
    The group of them all looked around, searching for all the missing people, as if just looking would lull them out of their mysterious hiding places. But none did. The place reminded Storm of a bombed out city he had once seen in western Halmahera. So many people, just gone, and the ones remaining were always casting weary glances this way and that, as if expecting even more horror. War had shaped who he had once been, and now those memories seemed to creep out of the far dark corners of the veteran’s mind.
    The War for Mankind they had called it. The Crystanian Empire had fought for what it told all was the wish to live in peace, away from the evils of the races of evil and long ago magics. Fighting for peace was like having a drink to celebrate ones abstinence. But he had been a soldier, and soldiers followed orders. He had lead troops into the deserts and wastes of the west, and fought terrible battles that fell into bloody guerilla warfare. The enemy often fled in small numbers, and Storm would call his forces off. Other commanders were not so tolerant. Many trying to escape the carnage were gunned down, those captured were often tortured until they would reveal the location of what the Empire had deemed terrorists, insurgents, spies, or whatever they could lead headlines with at the time.
    But Storm knew better. They, like all people, were fighting for their ways of life. They had not invaded the Empire with planes, tanks, and troops. There were always isolated cases of individuals who would bring trouble across the mountains to the Empire, but no place was perfect. The Empire had its occasional murders, crime lords, and such. But what it boiled down to was land and what the Grand Cardinal had deemed proper stock. It was the beliefs of the church that influenced the government parties to shift away from the council and elect the first Emperor who led as the head of both church and state combined. He became the single word of law itself.
    Two generations later, Halmahera was under the complete and total rule of Crystania, led by Emperor Marcus Sherlund. The human race was the only race to hold legal residence within the Empire’s borders, all others, including those with only half their bloodline outside the norm, were decreed tainted. Those that were caught were sentenced to life imprisonment. Next to none chose to remain when the executions started.
    It had been in one of those disheveled and destroyed towns that he had found Maria. She had been sitting in the corner of what had once been a small house, but was then no more than two walls with a collapsed roof for shelter. She was dirty, wearing what looking to be a night dress that she was close to outgrowing completely. Back then her hair had been longer, like it was now. Back then she almost never spoke. But when they had spent some time together, and Storm had cut her hair so she would fit in better, she began to talk more, and smile. Her smile had been the one thing that had kept his mind intact after the horrors he had seen and done in the name of the Empire.
    “Please sir,” came a girls voice from behind him, snapping Storm out of the chilling lock of his past. He turned and saw that it was a small child, he guessed a dwarf, though he knew little about them. He went down to a knee and gave the girl a smile. She looked sickly, her skin a tawny yellow shade, her eyes dark and rimmed with deep bags as if she had never known the comfort of a nights rest. Maria stood beside him, only slightly taller than he was while down low on one knee. He could see the concern on her eyes.
    “Please sir, I,” he words were cut off but a spurt of coughing so violent that Storm felt his chest tighten in sorrow for the girl. He imagined Maria in such pain and the thought made is mind swim with a near frantic need to know what was wrong. He pulled off his canteen from his belt and held it out to the girl who took it in both her tiny hands. It was then that Storm could see that she had been coughing blood, the stain of it dotted her hands. The girl drank some and tried to catch her breath.
    “What is it little one?” Storm said in a comforting voice, fighting the urge to scream for a doctor or scoop the little dwarf into his arms and run her to the hospital himself. But he confined himself to wait and listen first.
    “You are humans. Can you please help mom? She’s sick too, but can’t walk like me. Can you,” she coughed again, but it was only a short burst of it before the girl went on, “Can you please help mommy?” The girl pointed a small stubby finger at one of the abandoned looking houses off to the side of a narrow turn. It wasn’t more than a few hundred meters. “There.”
    Storm scooped the girl up then, remembering the first time he ever held Maria in his arms. He gave a nod to the others, telling them to go talk to some people and find out what was really going on. They gave him a nod and moved off in small groups. Maria held onto his shirt, like she has years ago, and he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to go with them. So together the two of them walked towards the little house of stone and brick set into the mountain.
    Storm pushed open the wooden door that looked well crafted from white maple. Once inside he sit the invisible wall. The rotten smell of decay and rot hit him like a wave, nausea tried to take its grip instantly, but it was not an unfamiliar smell to him. He felt the hand on his waist tighten and saw Maria cover her face with her sleeve. The little dwarf girl seemed unsexed by it, which struck him as more than troubling.
    After going through a narrow hallway they came to a bedroom. The musk made the air moist, feeling thick to even breath in. On the bed was a form covered completely with blankets. The girl in his arms wiggled, struggling to be free. Reluctantly, Storm set her down and she immediately ran over to the bed.
    The girl, no older than perhaps six or seven, shook little handfuls of the covers as she spoke in pleading tones. “Mommy mommy! I, I brought people here to make you better. I did, they’re not from here. They’ll make you better mommy.” There came no reply from the heap on the bed.
    Maria whispered something he couldn’t make out, but he saw his daughter’s eyes begin to water. She too knew. Storm left Maria at the doorway and closed the distance to the bed in two short steps. He knelt down, and put a hand on the dwarf girl’s back. “What’s your name, little one?” The girl looked up at him with tan-brown eyes filled with worry and an as of yet unspoiled innocence.
    “I’m Betty, Betty MacMorren.” She said, still holding onto the bedspread.
    “Well, Betty, how about you go stand over there with my daughter, Maria, ok?” He placed a hand on the form on the bed. “I’ll take a look, and see what’s the matter. Sound good?” Betty nodded her answer and shuffled over to Maria, who took the little girl’s hand into her own. Maria was a smart girl, Storm thought to himself.
    He braced himself for a second, before pulling back the sodden covers. The blast of stench hit him like a train, making his eyes water and stomach turn upon itself. What was left of the woman who once lay before him was now nothing more than a puss filled pile of rot and disease. Maggots crawled around the corpse and Storm was glad that Maria could not see from where she was standing, though he knew very well that she knew what he was seeing just but his reaction. He had to throw the covers back over the body to stop himself from vomiting right there and then.
    “Can you help mommy? Will mommy be better now?” The girls voice shattered Storm’s walls of mental stone in an instant, and his eyes began to tear from more than just the fowl reek of death. His heart caught in his chest, he grit his teeth to try and remain calm, though he knew it was only a matter of time then. Betty spoke again before Storm could answer. “Mommy will be all better now, won’t she?”
    Maria saw him falter, and pulled the girl outside, speaking words that were to Storm a world away. As soon as they were gone, he paced into the little bathroom, and vomited into the toilet, tears streaming down his eyes. He held the sobs back, but only barley. The flood of blood, destruction, horrors and more broke down every wall he had ever erected. He fell to his knees and wept silently, for himself, for those people then, for Betty and her dead mother.
    The only things he could hear in his mind were the words of that little girl, asking his her mother would be better now. How could you tell a child so young she would never see her mother again? How could you even begin to explain it?
    In a few minutes Storm made his way outside, relieved to have the mountain air dry his still wet cheeks. Maria was sitting on a sawhorse near what looked to be an old workshop. Betty stood nearby, looking even more worried to see him come out without her mother in tow.
    “Mommy?” The little dwarf craned her head, as if to try and see her mother standing behind the tall man before her. “Where’s mommy, mister?” She walked up to him, and tugged on his pant legs with both her little hands. “Where’s mommy?”

    “Since the beginning of our great Empire, when we were still a young Kingdom amidst a sea of warmongers and evil doers, we have always stood as a beacon of light against the darkness. We, the proud humans of Halmahera, inherited this land of our forefathers hundreds of years ago. It is that trust we now uphold, that responsibility we must now live up to. We must not shirk our responsibility to our fellow man, we must not waver to defend our right to live as we would see fit, free and safe.
    Amongst us are men and women of all ages who have sworn oaths to defend the Crystanian Empire, and the human way of life. I call to you now brothers and sisters, to stand strong and push these creatures out of our lands, these who are so ripe with the taint of evil magics. They are not our allies, not our friends, for our friends and allies would have understood our wishes and left peacefully and without bloodshed. But these monsters who remain would have our lives lay before them so that they may stomp us under-foot. I say to this, no! We shall purge this Empire, this land, of those who would jeopardize our peace.”
    -Except from Speech given by Cardinal Peridor Daskenburgh, 2020, at the start of the War of Mankind.



    Chapter Nineteen:

    Cross held his .45 caliber handgun’s barrels to the forehead of the dirty street thief. The scrawny young man was trembling as his green eyes looked up cross-eyed at the black metal barrel a scant inch from his flesh. Cross stood towering over the kneeling figure before him, the shadow of the building hiding them from the light of the half moon that was out. The streets were bare now, but what had surprised him was how bare they had been since his arrival in the little town.
    “I’m not going to say it again, filth. Where is everyone?” He cocked the handgun, his raptor eyes glaring down at the half-breed. Such an abomination, he wanted to put the little wretch out of his misery right then and there. The creature, looking like a mix of a man and orc, but at the same time neither, begged for his life before Cross covered in dirty rags and smelling worse than a day-old crime scene.
    “But… but I dun know, honest.” He was probably not even twenty, but the larger than average frame from his breeding made him to look older. His arms and legs were skinny, little more than taught flesh stretched over thick bones. He wrung his hands, with skin a green-yellow like a bean, pleading with Cross. “I just knows a lot of folks got real sick last few months. Some left, some stayed. But nobody comes outside much anymore.”
    With a cracking sound Cross hit his inquiry across the face with the handle of his gun. The half-breed’s body sprawled out before Cross, and it began to weep. Cross holstered his firearm, and picked the creature up, hauling it off its feet and pinned it against the brick wall. “Your telling me over six hundred-thousand people got sick, up and left. They left an entire town empty?” He slammed his witness against the brick again for good measure. “Well?” He growled. He didn’t know if the police of the area were still around, he hadn’t seen any since he entered what the sign had told him was the province of Cantrell.
    “Please sir, it’s the truth. I aint never hurt no body. Just fallen on hard times. I didn’t mean to offend when I asked yah for a handout, honest.” Cross made to slam him again, but when the youth put his hands up as if to block a hit, the want to continue left him. He was already walking the boundary, even for him. He left the half-breed down.
    “What your name, boy?” He looked out to the road, the eerie quiet of the lack of any noise seemed to ring in his ears. A town this size would be awake all hours, back in Crystania such a place would have at least two area codes, maybe three. He stopped the creature from talking, “On second thought, I don’t care. I’ll let you go this time, but I don’t want to see your green face again, understand?”
    With a fast set of nods, the boy was off into the alley way, leaving Cross to his own thoughts. He walked down the empty road, looking this way and that. It was even worse than the last place he had been. Before it had been a small village, with a population no bigger than a couple thousand at best. It had been pretty vacant too. But not like this. This was something you read about in cheap fiction novels. Everyone mysteriously gone, without a trace and only a handful of survivors left to face God knows what.
    He found himself talking to himself aloud, as if his mind needed to hear a voice to be able to think past the daunting quiet that loomed all around him. “Sick? There’s no way.” He notices a small bakery, the door had been locked and barred from the outside. Was it possible?
    “But something like this… would be broadcast worldwide. This would be of a pandemic scale. Why wouldn’t we know about it?” He turned the block, and walked past what looked to have been a car wreck. A small blue two-door had T-bones a white pickup. Both vehicles had been moved to the side if the road and left there. As he walked past he saw that there was a lot of blood inside the truck. The smell of it made him walked a little quicker as he left the area.
    An hour later he was back to where he had parked his bike, behind an overpass that led to the highway. It was from that little hill overlook that he had seen the city as he had originally intended to pass it by. But it had struck him odd that such a large area would be mostly dark at that time of night. He had set out on foot to try and avoid any suspicion should he be questioned. But he had only seen that beggar boy, and that had been by chance as it was. He had not seen another soul at all within the city limits.
    He pulled out some food from his backpack that was hanging onto the side of his bike. A can of fruit, a bottle of water, and some crackers. It was his last bit of food from home. He was out of rations. He was hungry, but wasn’t hungry enough to try to eat or drink anything locally, especially not now. The last thing he needed was to end up another statistic of some plague that was wiping out half the population of the north. He sat against a tree off the road and watched the town as the sun slowly began to creep its way up over the horizon. Two weeks he had traveled, two weeks since he had left home and began his chase of the criminal, Khey. Two weeks without a friendly face. He grunted a little laugh when he imagines his director’s face when he heard about Cross going rouge. And he thought of how it would all be overlook when he drug in Crystania’s most wanted, dead or alive.
    “Uhg…” Cross stood in a rush as the moan echoed in the early dawn. He hadn’t been paying attention, and he mentally kicked himself for it. He looked around, trying to figure out where it had come from. He drew his sidearm, leveling it across his left forearm as balance. Behind him was the vacant city, to the left and right stretched the highway for miles. Across the assault there were thick woods still shrouded in the nights darkness yet untouched by the dawn.
    “Who’s out there? Come out with your hand where I can see them. I will shoot.” Cross’ eyes darted around as his body stood ready to bolt at a moments notice. For a moment there was no sound save the wind blowing through the trees. It was the first breeze he’d felt in days, and the howling sound it made as it blew through the woods only added to his sense of danger.
    He heard footsteps on the road, and turned. There walking towards him was a woman, a human woman. She was wearing a yellow dress that came down to her knees. She was fair figured, if a bit disheveled with some dirt on her cloths and long brown hair a mess. She walked toward him as though she might be hurt, or cold. He lowered his weapon, and called out to her. “Ma’am, are you alright?”
    Though she kept walking toward him, she gave no reply. Her head was hung forward, her eyes to the ground. “Hey! What’s going on here?” He shouted. The woman stopped and looked up at him. As the sun crested over the horizon, the light it cast finally let him get a good look at her as she raised her head enough for him to make our her features. Her skin looked almost a sickly shade of yellow, and her eyes were concave, set back into her sockets. Those eyes were bloodshot, practically more red than white. Her skin was pulled tight across the bone, making her look like a walking skeleton wrapped in fleshy plastic. With the thoughts he’d been rolling around in his mind all night concerning the abandoned places he’d been, this was not something his mind needed. He knew he should act rationally, but his gut was telling him to shove his rational aside.
    “Uh… pl-please..” She was a little bit away, but Cross could make out the whispered words. He took a step forward, offering his hand in a gesture of caution. “Please ma’am, stay there and I will come to you. I am a police officer.” It was a half-truth at best, but he didn’t think now was the time to debate semantics with himself.
    Before he could take another two steps, the woman let out a glass shattering scream, her head arched back and her arms seemed to try and pull the sky down to her. Cross’ firearm shot up immediately. A moment later when the scream echoed to a halt, Benjamin Cross could hear his ears ringing, and his heart pounding hard in his chest. Something very bad was about to happen, he knew it. There was no more pretending that this was just some simple matter that reminded him of some midnight horror movie. This was happening here and now.
    Before he could say anything, the gaunt woman broke out into a run at him, a crazed look on her face. Cross leveled his weapon at her. “Stop! I will-” but she was coming to fast. In the back of his mind he heard the trigger click, heard the powder ignite and the bullet fly forth. He saw as if from another vantage point the woman’s shoulder spray blood as the body whipped around from the impact. Then the whole world went quiet again. He let out the breath he had been holding the whole time, and took in a fresh one. It wasn’t the first time he had shot someone, but he never liked doing it. But it was life or death, regardless of what reason said should dictate.
    “Urgh..” The sound made Cross pull his weapon up again, and point back at the wood line. There were easily a hundred people standing just on the other side of the road. Human, orc, dwarf, and he thought he even saw an elf or two as well as every misbegotten half-breed in between. They all had that same sickly look, that same dead look. Those same red blood-shot eyes.
    “s**t.” He pulled his second gun from its holster, and leveled both at the crowd at he very slowly inched his way to his bike. He had to get the hell out of there while he still had the chance, or he was a dead man. They were inching forward too, but all eyes were undoubtedly on him. He made it to his bike, and slowly put on gun away so he could start it up. The second his hand touched the handlebars the mob began growling like a mss of wild animals. They were closing in around him.
    A hand grabbed his shoulder, and he wheeled around, coming face to face with those red eyes. The creature, an old man, lunged for him when he pulled away, only to have a gun barrel thrust into his mouth, trigger pulled, and his brains evacuated out of the brand new hole in the back of his head. It was in that instant Cross knew he could not escape this without a fight. No sooner had the crash of that bullet subsided than did the crowd of monsters send a wailing howl into the air as one collective mass. The shear volume of it made Cross have to cover his ears less he be deafened. In a moment they subsided, and all at once begin to run at him.
    He dashed away from his bike. He needed to fight away from it so he could both be mobile and so that he didn’t have to risk hitting it in crossfire. He didn’t get far, as he figured, and the mass set upon him. Cross had both guns in hand, knife bayonets affixed. The bullets were sent flying with the pristine accuracy he had always trained with. He entered a zone of calm when he fought, and though this was like no fight he had ever been in before, he knew it was his only hope of survival to keep his cool.
    He aimed for heads when they came close, as it was the only way he knew that they wouldn’t get back up or try to attack him from the ground. He moved methodically, not wasting anything. It was an ancient martial arts form adapted to modern ends. With kicks, dodges, bullets, cuts, and any form of attack he could manage he continued to fell his attackers. He kept moving, trying to limit them totally surround him as much as possible.
    He ran to a tree and leapt up, grabbing a branch and swung over a large rock, coming down with a kick that incapacitated a stout dwarf monster. Two minutes later he was completely out of ammunition, and fought with his bladed fire-arms for his life. But they just kept coming, some vigorous and frenzied, some slow and lumbering. That alone made keeping his own rhythm intact a challenge.
    He sent a solid kick to the chest of one of the beasts, sending it flying into the crowd, opening up a hole he had to take advantage of while he had the chance. He dove through, claws and teeth reaching for him. As he rolled across and regained his foot as fast as he could, breaking into a run for his bike praying that he could start it up and be off before what was left of the crowd caught up with him.
    Thankfully, the bike started without protest as he feared it might. He had been riding it hard for the last week, and it needed an oil change as well as some other minor repairs. But thankfully his only companion seemed just as eager to be away as he pulled the throttle and spun the bike around. The rear tire peeled a little before the traction held and he was speeding off down the road and away from the frenzied mob.
    As the wind blew across his face, he did a slow double-take of the scene behind him. Was it all connected? In his mind he found it hard to even remotely consider. Widespread disease, mass hysteria, abandoned cities and towns. All without any information finding its way to the people of Halmahera. He was no small time official, and if it had been some government driven thing, Cross felt that he would surely know about it.
    “So… what?” He found himself asking the empty road. Why was the north so much more barren of humanoid life, and why was no knowledge of it known to the Empire. Since the foreign trade embargo act, all imports had been all but suspended, and travel outside the Empire had been restricted to all those without a class A license. The whole situation left more questions in his mind than answers. Not one of those questions he knew how to even begin to work out. He was a rouge agent on foreign ground, by all means alone and far behind what many considered enemy lines. He couldn’t call in support, or wire a flight home.
    There was no turning back without capturing the target. Khey was his key to going home. Dead or alive, Cross knew he had no choice but to press forward. He was out of food, ammo, and when he looked down to his gauges he saw that he was just below half a tank of gas. Great, he thought to himself. He had no leads but the one, and nothing to work with. He contemplated selling his bike, but the thought of hocking it for next to nothing just so he could get a handful of bullets and a sandwich made him push that idea right out of his head.
    He needed a plan. He needed Khey. And Benjamin Cross was on the verge of doing literally anything in order to get what he needed. He would not return home in shame. Khey would come willingly, on in a body-bag. Stone Tomb would be that criminal’s last stand.