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  She thought about it, felt the personal pain of it, but realized where he was going. “Every time.”

  “Wesley, you, too, suffered significant injuries. Yet in the battle you fought, you eliminated five key members of the enemy. In military terms, how often do you trade eliminating one key asset on your side with five key assets on the other?”

  Wesley grimaced. “Every time.”

  “And in the final battle, we eliminated the remainder of the enemy force while walking away with a sizable portion of ours still alive. Yes, we suffered casualties. Yes, people were injured. But… did we lose that battle?”

  “No,” Roddy said, frowning.

  “I understand your conclusion, Micah,” Sheila said. “But I don’t understand the implication. Are you saying… that winning the war… without losing a battle… is… a bad thing?” She frowned. “And wouldn’t we consider the first battle to be the launch of the Ravagers? We definitely didn’t win that.”

  “I guess I’ll rephrase. We never lost a battle once we started fighting back. And yes, that concerns me.”

  “I don’t get it, General,” Wesley said. “Why is that concerning?”

  “Let me tell you a story,” Micah said. “You have heard much from the Old Timers about Will Stark, correct?”

  “Sure.”

  “I won’t go into details, but in order for his side to win, Will Stark personally had to survive. Not his wife. Not his closest friends. Not his most capable leaders. It had to be him.”

  “Okay,” Wesley said, hands spread.

  “The enemy specifically trained people whose job it was to find him and either lock him in a special prison, or kill him outright. Thus, they needed to win only one battle to win the war. Will Stark had to win every battle.” He paused. “That war lasted for over five hundred years. And in the end, Will Stark stayed alive and stayed out of his enemy’s prison. At the end of it, he rallied his allies to defeat the forces that one day became the Phoenix Group.”

  “You’re saying it’s… mathematically impossible?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And you know why it happened in the past.”

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  “A close friend of Will’s went to the leader of the other side, in secret. She explained to him why Will, personally, had to remain alive and free. She was persuasive. The enemy leader intentionally fed poor information to his hired assassins, and chose men specifically because they were not capable of winning that fight. He lost the war on purpose.”

  “But you said in the fight on the island—“

  “That was a second war, Sheila. The bad guys—including their leader—absolutely tried to win that one. They just lost.”

  “So…” Mary frowned. “You’re thinking… that because we never lost a battle… someone from the other side was helping us?”

  “I don’t know.” He steepled his fingers again. “But I think it means we have to be extremely vigilant in watching for signs that there’s a new threat out there. It will be subtle at first; it always is.”

  “Why, though?” Sheila asked. “Why would someone from the other side help us win?”

  “In the earlier story,” Roddy replied, “they lost the first war so that they could win the second war. And that was the war that mattered.”

  “Yes,” Micah said. “And that is why we must remain vigilant. What is that next war that’s more important than the one just ended?”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  Then Micah sat back. “Perhaps I’m just an old robot with quirky circuits. It might be nothing. Let’s celebrate the impending arrival of Sheila and Wesley’s next child.”

  “Micah, I’m not due until next—oh!”

  Sheila looked down. Then at Wesley. “Get me to a med center, Wesley. Micah’s right. This is happening. And soon.”

  The concerned looks were replaced by smiles of joy, as the adults rushed to make sure that Sheila had what she needed, promised to watch Diego and Sandy, and requested to be kept updated.

  And then they were off.

  Micah watched the sphere leave. No matter what happened in the future, no matter the battles that might yet come their way, he knew that the children now coming into the world would be ready to fight.

  Epilogue

  He was alone in his private room, alone with his thoughts and his most critical possessions. He looked at the fading photograph on his desk, looked upon the man’s face with the reverence due, and deftly brushed aside the dust masking the man’s appearance. Thinning blond hair, eyes that pierced through the centuries with their intelligence and foresight.

  Some still alive called this man a monster, the root of all the evil in the world since times long forgotten.

  He didn’t. He called Arthur Lowell by other titles. Genius. Visionary. A man gone too soon, unable to set the world right, a man who died believing that Will Stark’s vision would be the one to dominate the future.

  He wouldn’t let that happen. And he would make sure that his father’s death, so long ago, wouldn’t be in vain.

  He thought about Sebastian Hunter, known in this era as Oswald Silver. He’d thought Sebastian would be capable of anything asked of him. Sebastian had worked intimately with Arthur Lowell for years, understood the man’s vision better than any, was favored as the only member of the group called Aliomenti not to be under the direct mental command of Arthur.

  He’d been wrong. Sebastian had found a way to conceive a child, and despite trying to maintain his emotional distance from the girl, he, just as his mentor had warned, had yielded to familial duties, no matter how imperfectly practiced, in lieu of staying the course and seeing things through to the end.

  When Sebastian Hunter couldn’t do what needed to be done, he had acted.

  He’d adopted a new name in this time. He’d used the name his father had given him, and had used as his surname a variant of the real one, for those with the wit to see it.

  Low-ell.

  Low L.

  High L.

  Hy-el.

  Hyel. Damien Hyel.

  “Oswald Silver” hadn’t made the connection; Damien couldn’t help but wonder if he’d forgotten his mentor had conceived a child just a few years before his death, because he’d offered enough clues.

  That was moot now. He’d used his wit to sabotage the Phoenix Group’s efforts in very subtle ways, ways that couldn’t be tracked. He’d found his out when he’d sensed the energy coming from the prison. And so he’d convinced everyone he’d gone to the Enclave, used his power to physically change his body, and had gotten himself thrown into the Brig. He’d latched on to those children with greater intensity when he saw their powers weren’t subject to that damned weapon Hope Stark built. If he could just learn that secret… he could still fix it.

  But he couldn’t. He’d masked his power, and when he’d had the opportunity to listen in as Light explained the awakening process to the odious remnants of Stark’s band of fools… he’d been left outside. Seen as one without power. Not needing to hear the tale. Sent back to the station.

  He’d had a bit of fun, trying to see if he could position the battle so the two sides could eliminate each other. But when Micah Jamison—a robot who’d managed to live as a human—had figured out the secret to canceling out the powers aboard the station, he had to do it. He’d gotten it close.

  Now, he’d need time to regroup. He’d need to think about how he’d coordinate things the next time. Bide his time. Wait for complacency to set in. Find the people he needed, people who weren’t weak like “Oswald Silver” and the others in his inner core.

  He sighed and rifled through yellowed papers he’d kept hidden for centuries, many of which he’d never read before. Too busy trying to survive.

  He found a report that looked interesting.

  Terraforming and Settling of Alpha Centauri Exoplanet D.

  That sounded interesting. He wondered what “Alpha Centauri” was.


  Then he read. “Alpha Centauri” was a name given to a specific star in the galaxy. Exoplanet D was a rocky planet, devoid of water and atmosphere, but otherwise in a “habitable zone” orbit around its star. Its gravity was 1.05 standard units, and its year was 363 days. Its axis tilted at 24.1 degrees, just above the perfect level. With an atmosphere, its surface temperature would be suitable for life.

  Ships were stocked with supplies, seeds, human and animal embryos, all frozen, all packed as tightly as possible. When the ships arrived into orbit around Exoplanet D, robots built out a floating city above the planet. Some of the humans—who’d slept for the decades-long journey—awakened and moved aboard that floating city. From there, they directed the terraforming efforts.

  Specialized bombs bombarded the surface, shooting dust into the sky, and, over time, a simple atmosphere formed. They tweaked the chemical composition to ensure that the surface would feature breathable air while the next phase began. More bombardments, controlled this time, used to carve out land masses and bodies of water in a layout familiar to the travelers. They then triggered the formation of water, and decades of constant rain filled streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans. Chemical reactions were triggered in the oceans, filling them with the salt that distinguished them from their freshwater counterparts.

  They sent machines to the dry land, breaking up the rock until it became soft, then triggered in trillions of tons of bacteria. Over time, those bacteria turned the rock into fertile soil, which was filled soon after with seeds from all manner of grasses, plants, and trees. Insects and birds followed. Fish started swimming in the bodies of water. Non-carnivorous animals followed. Then carnivores.

  They created condensed versions of instructions for reproducing the home planet’s most critical and powerful technologies. Those were planted at random sites around the planet.

  Those who were awake checked on the brain waves of those asleep. Those who’d traveled here with memories of the home world. It might confuse them, trying to reconcile memories of home—a home now centuries beyond what they remembered. So they changed things in their minds. It was a thousand years later. They’d lived and survived through countless calamities. The population was reduced, and the planet was a technological wasteland. Civilization would return, it was decided, when someone found one of the randomly buried capsules of knowledge.

  They grew the embryos to adulthood, creating the same memories of the past as those in the original travelers. They sent everyone to the surface at the same time, split up into randomly selected groups.

  And then they sat back and watched. Waited. Waited until someone figured out how to get to the floating city.

  Then the puppet masters, as they called themselves, moved to the surface. They avoided the societies created here. They watched the events happening in the outside world as they would a movie, without influencing. They lived underground.

  Damien found the story fascinating. He turned the page.

  He saw the image of the terraformed planet called Exoplanet D.

  It looked exactly like his home planet.

  He turned the page. He found the image of a planet that looked similar, but not quite the same. The land masses on this planet weren’t quite so similar in size as Exoplanet D. But there was a strong resemblance.

  That planet was labeled “Earth.”

  Damien put the report down. “Earth? What the hell is Earth?” he asked aloud.

  The knock at the door startled him, pulling him back to the present. There was something very alarming about that report, something he’d need to consider later. For the moment, he put it away carefully and opened the door.

  A woman stood there, eyes alight, with a smile to match. Damien smiled. “You look like you have good news?”

  “It’s a girl!” Mary said. “And they’re going to call her Ashley.”

  “Is everyone doing well?”

  “Yes. Everything’s perfect.”

  “Fantastic! Can you let me know when they’re home? Can’t wait to meet the new addition to the family.”

  “Happy to. Talk to you soon, John.”

  “Talk to you soon, Mary.”

  “John” closed the door, deep in thought.

  New births.

  New minds.

  He’d never gotten the tattoos. He’d let them believe he had no power requiring eradication.

  He smiled. That oversight would be their undoing.

  Perhaps… he’d just need to start his recruiting at a much, much younger age this time.

  Author’s Note

  If I’ve done my job as a writer, Chapter 27 put a nice bow on the Ravagers story arc now completed.

  And then the Epilogue ripped the bow off and showed just how large the overall story in this universe is. It’s a massive tale, one that starts with The Aliomenti Saga, runs through many as-yet-untold series, sagas, and stories, and ends with the Ravagers tales… those just finished, and those yet unwritten.

  With so much material, the question becomes: Where to next?

  The next stop will be a trilogy set a few decades after the conclusion of Adam’s Journey, the final book in The Aliomenti Saga story arc. It will show the then-current state of the world—yes, planet Earth :) — and how friends old and new trigger a massive disruption that leads to what our Ravagers friends describe as the Golden Ages. Interested? Sign up here to get an email alert when my next story is released.

  There’s still a lot of story to tell after that before we “catch up” to the time of the first Ravagers story, as you might gather from the Epilogue.

  Where I go after that trilogy will depend on you, dear reader. Which stories do you want to read next? Let me know!

  Thank you, as always, for your support.

  Alex

  [email protected]

  November 2017

  Somewhere on planet Earth. Probably.

  * * *

  P.S. If you’ve joined this story universe through The Ravagers series, I encourage you to sample The Aliomenti Saga.