Insurrection
Page 14

“That we are, Miss Stazen. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few of us to save.”
“Good luck, Commander.” And this time, she actually meant it. Most of all, she looked forward to his return. For once, she wanted to get to know him better and see what lay beneath his dark and sinister façade.
Hours later, Josiah flew through the darkness of what had once been the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, silent and watching. No longer part of the military he’d once known, the station now belonged to their enemies who used it as a detention facility for the humans they captured. Worse? They used it to conduct auctions for, and operations on, the Scraps of humanity.
Scraps. That was what the Drabs called them. It was how they viewed them. Nothing but cast-off remains to be used and discarded at will.
Worthless. Except to the ones who needed human body parts or those depraved beings who should be jailed for their crimes. It was nauseating that humanity had been reduced to this by a bunch of hypocritical creatures who thought of themselves as enlightened and morally superior.
Rise up and slam them to the ground. That had been his father’s teachings. Strike fast. Strike hard. Let no one see you bleed. The world belongs to those who have the cojones to face adversity and make it their bitch.
If you go down, you go down swinging.
Yeah, no one would ever confuse Takoda James Crow with Gandhi. His father had been a staunch naval commander who brooked no lip, or attitude, from any of his seven sons.
Or anyone else.
And little did the Drabs know that their base was one Josiah knew like the back of his hand. It’d been one of his mother’s favorite haunts while his father was out at sea for months on end.
He’d come of age here and the surrounding areas.
Now he came here for blood vengeance.
Josiah swooped down to get a better view of his enemies and the ones they were holding prisoner.
The Drabs lay far below, going about their business as if they had every right to exist on this planet. It galled him to the deepest part of his soul. Nothing had been right in the world for so long that he had to struggle most days to remember why he kept fighting when every omen seemed to foretell his doom and the end of humanity as a whole.
But in spite of the ache, he knew why.
Mohani. She would be the first to tell him to stand strong in this resistance. If you don’t fight for what you want, then don’t cry for what you’ve lost.
God, how he missed her and her sayings that had once driven him crazy. Never cry for a person who cares nothing for the value of your tears. She’d had something to say about everything. The perfect kick in his butt whenever he needed it.
The perfect kiss whenever he saw her. She could humble him with a simple smile. Wrap him around her finger without any effort. For her, he’d always been a fool.
Josiah winced as memories sliced through him with talons made of steel, and him feel guilty that he’d kissed Daria earlier. They burned deeper than his soul and left him raw and screaming inside.
But the one that never left him was those last moments of Mohani’s life when she’d struggled so hard to stay with him. When her pain-filled gaze had looked up at his. Not with accusation or regret.
Only love.
And though she’d been unable to speak past her pain, he’d heard her words clearly in his mind. “In times of great sorrow, we have no right to ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way.”
To this day, he had no understanding for why he’d lost her. Any more than he’d ever had for how he’d been lucky enough to find her in the first place.
I will fight for you, Mohani. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. So long as he held breath in his body, he would battle for them all.
No one else would ever mean as much to him as she had. He knew that. Because no one compared to her.
And his love of her was why he tolerated Lobo and hadn’t banished him for his supreme lunacy. Well, not so much Lobo as his younger brother David.
David Wayland was still their best asset and most vulnerable member. He alone held the key to Mohani’s research, and knew what it would take to save them and make sure the Drabs never again took the upper hand.
If only the boy would speak and let them know how best to proceed. David’s Autism had been bad before Mohani’s death. Without her here to guide him, David had locked down entirely and sat in a corner of his mind in bitter isolation that made Josiah’s look normal in comparison.
Mohani’s precious Avatar refused to communicate with anyone.
Even his big brother, Lobo.
“If something ever happens to me, Joey, you have to make sure that David survives. Remember what the Bhagavad Gita says—Whenever righteousness wanes and unrighteousness increases I send myself forth. For the protection of the good and for the destruction of evil, and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being, age after age.”
The fact that David had been born a decade and a half before the entire world had gone into crisis was almost enough to make Josiah believe Mohani’s prediction that the boy was a true avatar. Vishnu was said to always appear at such times so that he could right the balance and set the world to order again.
Would make sense. Stranger things had happened... such as the earth being invaded by Drabs with a plague that virtually wiped out the human race.
Him kissing Daria when he knew better ...
Yeah, the devil was definitely sitting on icicles today.
“Crimson Ninja Leader in position. Over.”
Josiah smiled at Mia’s call sign he could hear even in his bird form, as she notified their forces she had made it through the dark to slide through Drab security and come up to the rear of their installation.
She and her strike team had dubbed themselves Skateboard Ninjas. Though the way they maneuvered through things a quarter of their size with grace and ease, he usually referred to them as Skateboard Ninja Hamsters. No one could navigate the underground sewers and pipes better. It was why he’d made her a leader at an age when most were just joining their ranks.
“Horus? You there?”
He would never get used to his call sign that Anjelica had given him as a joke years ago. Horus, as in the Egyptian war god who was known for protection and wrath. Except Horus was a falcon, not a crow.
Huginn or Muninn would be more apropos. But then Josiah didn’t answer to anyone. For anything.
Not even the gods.