The Hunt And The Chase

During post war reconstruction, the Power Team learns that evil other than Lord Dread exists when captured Dread Youth soldiers begin to disappear.

Disclaimer: The following is a work of fan fiction based on the television series, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future. It is not intended to infringe on the copyrights of Landmark Entertainment Corporation or anyone else who may have legal rights to the characters and settings. I don't own the characters. However, I am putting them into an adventure since the show was cancelled and the writers/producers/directors/actors can’t put them into any new adventures.

The Hunt And The Chase

CHAPTER ONE – Gathering Intel

Three Months After Dread’s Defeat

Major Jason Rogers stood on the ridge, watching the spectacle below through binoculars.

Carefully selected Resistance fighters herded the overunits, youth leaders and Dread Youth soldiers that they had been chasing through the forest into the box canyon, firing their weapons continually. From time to time, some of the soldiers would return fire, only to be shot down by Rogers’ troops.

“A two-day hunt, sir,” Corporal Peterson commented. “I do believe that’s a record for this group.”

“Parker needs more practice tracking. Bridgers’ group would have hunted down these soldiers in the first day. Simon’s platoon probably would have had them in a few hours.”

“Dread Youth do have some survival skills, sir,” Peterson said. “They know how to maneuver in the wilderness, obtain a variety of weapons and ambush any pursuer. Parker’s people don’t have much experience hunting Dread Youth. The fact they were able to round up this many in two days is impressive for them.”

“For them, yes, I’ll agree. It’s just not an impressive record overall.” Rogers adjusted the binoculars to focus more clearly on the faces of the trapped soldiers. “I don’t think we’ll be setting groups of soldiers loose again. If there’s only one or two we’re hunting, they run. When they get in a group like this, they fight back. We can’t afford any extra losses of our own people. It would be too hard to keep that information from the public eye.”

“Yes, sir. Your orders, sir?” Peterson asked.

Rogers watched as the Dread soldiers reached the end of the box canyon and found themselves trapped by three walls and an advancing adversary.

He waited…

He saw them drop their weapons and raise their hands in surrender.

He saw his people take position across the mouth of the canyon.

“It’s the hunt. Tell Parker to shoot them dead, every one of them,” he ordered.

Peterson spoke the order into the radio. Within moments, Rogers was witness to another bloodbath as his soldiers wiped out their enemy.

“First rule of combat,” he told his subordinate, “never leave an enemy behind. Make sure they bury the bodies in unmarked graves. Don’t want everyone to know what we’re doing or they’ll all want in on it.” As an afterthought, “Oh, make sure we have their real names. I think it’s time to alter the reports again.”

~*~

Rogers reported back to his superior, his attitude that of smug competence. He carefully schooled his features so he looked like ‘the dutiful soldier’ reporting to his commanding officer.

“Sir,” Rogers saluted the colonel and handed him the data disk with the clean-up action.

Colonel Travis took the disk. In a tired voice, he asked, “What was the total count?”

“Three overunits, four youth leaders and fourteen foot soldiers.”

The colonel considered the numbers. “Identities established?”

“Yes, sir. I had my second-in-command crosscheck the personnel. Page three has a list of their names and duty stations at the end of the war.”

The colonel placed the data disk into his computer and opened the file. He scanned the pages quickly and read the names. “Interesting. Some were in tactically important positions. How did they do in the hunt?”

“Better than I’ve seen, but they were running from Parker’s group. They may not have fared quite as well against someone else. My guess is that the overunits and youth leaders received further survival training than the cadets did,” Rogers grudgingly praised his enemy. “It was a two day hunt for Parker’s team. The Dreadheads used some tactics none of us have seen before. They were able to outdistance Parker for most of the night, but they were caught around mid-morning.”

“Dealt with?”

“As per usual,” Rogers explained. “Parker just needs more experience. Next time out, he’ll do better. Sir, although we do have the prisoners we captured at the end of the war, there is still an unknown number of Dread soldiers in hiding. Those particular groups might be better prey for our people.”

The colonel knew what Rogers was going to say. “Since Dread’s defeat, they’ve got nowhere to go except in hiding. There are times when I wish Captain Power hadn’t waited until most of Dread’s soldiers were out of Volcania before attacking it. It would have been less of a headache for us.”

“That was never Power’s style except for a while after he lost his base.”

“Losing one’s base could cause even someone like Power to lose his temper and attack Dread personally. I’m sure there was something there that he hated losing, and I don’t just mean the base itself.”

“With your permission, Colonel, I’d like to volunteer my squads to do wilderness recon. Even though the Council ruled that all Dread Youth who surrender will be given trials, they don’t believe it and won’t do it. We might stand a better chance of finding them on our own rather than waiting for them to make a move.”

Colonel Travis seemed to consider the idea, but there was something wrong. “ Rogers, I know you hate everything to do with Dread. Many of us feel the same way. I can appreciate that. I find it … disconcerting that our newly established government is being so selective with whom they execute.”

“They’re traitors to the human race, sir,” Rogers spoke with conviction.

Travis nodded his head. “To some extent, yes. I agree that the overunits and youth leaders definitely do not merit a trial. However, some of the younger ones had never left Volcania and had no idea what the real world was like.”

“All were Dread soldiers, sir. Meaning no disrespect, but every single person who ever wore a Dread uniform should be executed. That’s why they’re turned over to us.”

“I don’t disagree with you. It’s given our troops ample opportunity to learn new tracking methods,” the colonel explained. “However, there are some new laws about to be put into place that are the result of a Council and Command combination Committee. It’s going to be somewhat confusing until jurisdictional issues are ironed out, but I’m certain we can weather that inconvenience.”

“New laws, sir?”

“Yes, but that’s not the problem. I’ve just received word from a contact at Command that someone was investigating certain disappearances and perhaps the manner in which some of these executions take place. Questions are being asked, and I don’t know from what quarter. The records that were being looked at have been adjusted so the questions have stopped. For now.” Travis stood up and walked over to his window. “You and I are not politicians. We’re soldiers. We see life in a very direct manner. The enemy is before us, we deal with the situation or we do the mopping up. Others are not so inclined.”

Rogers sighed. Politics were coming into play. He hated politics. “And the politicians want what, exactly, sir?”

“We are to capture Dread soldiers from now on. Deadly force is only to be ordered as a last resort.”

Rogers knew that the politicians would step in and ruin everything one day. “What do we do with them after we capture them?”

“The re-establishing local governments wish to institute a rule of law, and the issue of the Dread soldiers seems to be the most convenient first step for them since it’s a current topic with the population. One of the new laws pertains to assessing culpability of the soldiers. The overunits and youth leaders will automatically be sent to prisons to await trial to determine their degree of involvement. The younger ones, and I don’t know up to what age, will be housed at schools and orphanages for individual assessment. The older children, well, I’m not certain what will happen to them.”

Incarceration, re-education and induction?

“Sir,” Rogers tried to think of a respectful way of saying this, “they’re Dread Youth. They were born and bred to serve the Machine. The goal to destroy mankind is in their blood. Even one of them left alive is a threat to all we’re trying to build. They need to be removed immediately and permanently.”

The colonel raised a silencing hand. “There is a new way of thinking that what they stood for and what they were brainwashed to think was a threat, not the soldiers themselves regardless of their degree of guilt. Major, I know you don’t like this idea, I don’t either, but these instructions come straight from our superiors. We will carry them out to the best of our ability.”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers said unenthusiastically. “What are my orders?”

“You are being promoted to warden of New Chicago Prison, and your squads will be stationed there as the guards. The existing personnel will be remaining. There are several small communities in the area, each with its own government so you’ll have to be somewhat diplomatic and negotiate for what you need. I would strongly suggest that you make friends with the mayors of those towns to make things somewhat easier for you. Your orders will be to incarcerate and guard the incoming overunits and youth leaders sent there, but each town may have restrictions or rules that you’ll have to adhere to. I understand that the new Committee has ruled that using the captured soldiers as a labor force for the rebuilding or for whatever purpose the prison wardens deem adequate is not out of the question. Also, our Intel operatives have found the roster of Dread Youth soldiers dating back to the beginning of the program. We’re not certain how up-to-date it is, but not everyone on the list is still alive. You’ll need to keep track of who’s coming in and going out of your prison and cross-reference it with these names to make certain the individuals are, in fact, Dread Youth. Remember, Major, the list itself is not accurate. I believe you can make use of that fact.”

Rogers nodded his head. “Yes, sir,” he answered. Just because the politicians wanted things to look a certain way didn’t mean that it had to be that way. Basically, Rogers was looking at business as usual. All he had to do keep the paperwork clean.

The colonel handed Rogers his papers detailing the orders. “Do not think of this as a demotion. It’s not. This is a very important mission you’re being sent on.”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers answered unenthusiastically. “How long until the first prisoners arrive?”

The colonel checked his log. “Perhaps three days. About twenty were captured in Sector Four and are being marched to New Chicago. They may pick up a few more along the way. The only ones you are responsible for are the overunits and the youth leaders. Perhaps you can learn if your theory of their survival training is correct. The children will be sent to other facilities in the adjoining towns.”

“Our superiors aren’t concerned with keeping so many Dread Youth in a small area?”

“I don’t know what they’re concerned with, but I have no doubt you can deal with any trouble that may arise from your prisoners.”

Rogers gave the colonel a salute. “Yes, sir. I’ll get my squads moving immediately.”

Before Rogers could leave, Travis had one last admonition. “Major, just remember, the children are not your concern as far as guarding or incarcerating goes. Let the towns deal with them. Only help if the mayors specifically request your assistance. We can’t look like we’re interfering in local politics but are there to help should it become necessary. That could cause problems with the paperwork.”

A public relations task was included. Someone had made a stink about the recent ‘dispositions’ of Dread soldiers and how it could look to certain individuals. “Understood, sir.”

~*~*~*~*~

Eight Months After Dread’s Defeat

“I’m all broken up inside.”

“I love you, Jon. So much.”

“Just think of me sometime!”

The explosion blasted over the speaker… then silence…

Jon’s eyes opened in utter horror, and he sat up quickly in abject terror. That nightmare never left him. Every few weeks, it’d creep out from his unconscious and haunt him. That heart-wrenching moment when he knew he’d lost everything; the agonizing months following when his world had crumbled to dust and he was nothing more than a mindless automaton suffering from the grief that had a tight hold on him.

But it was just a nightmare.

A true nightmare, but one whose ending was much happier than that crumbled world he believed would be the rest of his life. Trying to catch his breath, Jon looked around his chilled, dark quarters. It was small but efficient, like the rest of the facility. The Arctic base was somewhat smaller than their previous one, but it had all the same power specifics and computerized capabilities as their former base. Mentor felt right at home in the main computer – or so he claimed.

At night, they switched the power to one quarter to conserve energy so the only illumination in the room came from the clock that read 3:47 a.m. and the small light on the computer console. Those simple lights gave the room an almost eerie quality. If his heart hadn’t been pounding from the sheer fear of losing Jennifer in that nightmarish explosion, then the very sight of the room would have sufficed. Still, the creepy ambiance had to be the influence of the nightmare because the other individual in the bed slept undisturbed, uninterrupted by the eeriness of the low light.

Jon lay back down and faced his sleeping companion. The drama of those few months was chiseled indelibly on his mind. From the moment he thought Jennifer was dead through the lonely months that followed until they learned she had been digitized, reintegrated and held prisoner in Volcania…he felt like his life just stopped. It didn’t start again until they raided the fortress and rescued her.  

Now, there she was, safe and sound, and deeply asleep.

She must have returned home late. He wouldn’t have heard her. He fell into an exhausted sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He’d been helping with the reconstruction of the new San Francisco outpost while Jennifer had been working at the New Vegas facility setting up communication networks with outposts in surrounding sectors. Both jobs kept them busy for weeks at a time and away from the base for long periods.

He reached out and gently touched the side of Jennifer’s face. Warm, alive, sometimes he couldn’t believe that she was there with him, not after the nightmare of what happened. If anyone had told him several years earlier that he’d have all that he did, he wouldn’t have believed them. After things being so bad for so long, it was hard to imagine anything being so good. Sharing a life with the woman he loved – he had never thought to be so lucky.

“You’re awake early,” she muttered sleepily.

She always was an extraordinarily light sleeper no matter how tired she was. “Nightmare,” he told her.

“Nightmare?” she whispered.

“Same one,” he answered back as he settled down, pulling her close.

Then he was looking through the near-dark into gray eyes, the slight glint of light reflected in them. “Just remember that nightmare turned out okay.”

He let his fingers drift through her hair, feeling it slip through his fingers. “How’s the project in Vegas going?”

She yawned, cuddled into him, laying her head on his shoulder. “Got Mexico City and Sonora online. We’re trying to patch in some outposts in Texas. Ran a diagnostic that took 48 hours to complete. Scout grabbed the results from me, said I hadn’t had a break in over two weeks and told me to come home for a couple of days. How was your trip?”

“I helped lay out the design for the new government building, had to negotiate with Los Angeles for some supplies, got the local communication system working – the mayor wants to bring in you and Scout to set up the long range communications. Worked with Hawk on drawing up the plan for a new airport. Tank’s working with the ground breakers to clear out more debris.” He didn’t tell her about the present he was making for her. It wasn’t finished yet, and he really did want it to be a surprise when he showed it to her.

“So… the usual,” she said as she settled down a bit more.

“The usual.” His fingers kept flowing through her hair, down to her back. Her skin was warm through the thin material of her nightshirt. He could feel the well-toned muscles beneath his fingers respond as they trailed further down. “And given our schedules, I’m beginning to think we’re going to have make appointments with each other just to spend any time together.”

He felt her giggling, rather sleepily, but giggling nonetheless. “I don’t have any plans for tomorrow, and I think we’ll have the base to ourselves if the others don’t get finished with their projects.”

“Tomorrow, huh? It’s after midnight, so technically it’s already tomorrow, right?”

She leaned her head back so she could look at him. “Just what do you have in mind, Mister Power?”

“Well, Mrs. Power,” he used the name he called her in private, “I was thinking that we could find a very good reason to sleep late tomorrow.”

“Really?” she asked, moving up a little so she could see him eye to eye. “And since it’s already technically tomorrow, that would require us staying up late now, wouldn’t it?”

“You know, I think you’re a mind reader,” he said as he kissed her. It had been weeks since they had even slept in the same bed together. Longer than that since they’d been alone. Long days, travelling all over the country to help rebuild, working late into the night, catching a few hours sleep on a cot that someone graciously loaned – and for the first time in  a long time, no one else was at the base. 

Beep beep beep

Jon glanced over at his communicator. Talk about bad timing!

“At this time of night, it has to be important,” she said.

“Better be.” Jon reached over, grabbed the communicator and pressed the talk button. “Go ahead, Mentor.”

“Captain, I’ve just received an emergency communication from Elzer Pulaski. He needs to speak with you as soon as possible.”

~*~*~*~*~

4:15 a.m.

Elzer Pulaski, formerly Freedom Two, watched the jumpship’s lights as it flew toward his position and land effortlessly in the clearing. Jennifer had to be piloting the ship. No one else could get the aging TF to respond so well.

The captain hadn’t sounded happy about the late night call, but Elzer’s information couldn’t wait for a more convenient time, not if he was right about what was happening – and if he was right, then Jennifer could soothe any ruffled feathers the captain had about the early morning meeting.

The jumpship’s exterior lights lit the area, and the pair disembarked, and with a wave to Elzer, walked in his direction. He had to admit that they did make a nice couple even though he still felt a few pangs of jealousy. He never told anyone, but he had some not-so-professional feelings for Jennifer Chase. And why not have feelings for her? It wasn’t every day a smart, beautiful woman risked her life to save his, but there had been a war on. Personal feelings came second to everything else. Even so, he could honestly say she chose the best man, even if it was only to himself.

“How are you, Elzer?” Captain Power called out.

“Pretty good,” Elzer shook the captain’s hand, then Jennifer’s. “How are you two?”

“A little tired but curious,” Jennifer told him.

“I don’t doubt it. Look, I’m sorry I woke you up and called you out at this hour, but I didn’t want to say this over an open channel. Besides, I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time to waste.”

“Sounds serious,” Jon said.

“It might be,” Elzer pulled a data disk from his shirt pocket and handed it to Jennifer. “I’ve been helping Supply and Re-armament out of Colorado and personnel assignments from the West Coast. Both Council and Command needed to get some actual troop and prisoner numbers to better coordinate new assignments, so I was crosschecking data from reports from several government and military sources to collate an answer for them. I stumbled onto a very a serious situation.”

~*~*~*~*~

Elzer’s report of a serious situation had been somewhat understated, and within two hours, the Power Team had regrouped at the Arctic base.

“How many?” Scout asked again, not believing what he’d heard.

Jennifer brought up the report in question once again. “Thirty-three overunits and sixty-seven youth leaders have disappeared from the system in the last month. They were assigned to the New Chicago prison under the command of Major Rogers, a former Resistance fighter. He’s been the warden there for the last five months. He has a reputation of being overly aggressive when not necessary. Possibly seventeen of the cadets who were about to be sent there from the schools in the surrounding towns are no longer listed as being assigned there but there aren’t any reports of escapes or transfers. Also, there aren’t any disappearances from the orphanages or schools reported.”

“That doesn’t sound good.” Hawk read through Rogers’ personnel file. “He’s got several commendations for successful missions, but there’s something wrong here, like there’s something missing from the file.”

Tank brought up another file. “The numbers aren’t adding up,” he pointed out. “Before he took command of the prison, one of his squads was tracking down a group of Dread Youth that had taken refuge in a forest. Twenty-one soldiers in all. His report lists their names and assignments at the end of the war, but there’s nothing in any of the prison rosters, deployments, schools or orphanages that show they were sent anywhere.”

“Twenty-one are chased, supposedly captured, and they just disappeared with no one noticing the discrepancy?” Jon asked.

“Probably because the discrepancy isn’t apparent,” Hawk pointed to the monitor in front of him. “ Rogers states that they chased the soldiers, says who the soldiers were, where they were found and that the situation was resolved according to orders. There’s not a single word of them being captured.” Hawk brought up several other files. “Now, here’s where it gets interesting. A roster of Dread’s soldiers from the beginning of the Dread Youth program was found some months ago. When I cross-reference the names of people on the roster and the names of the people being captured and those that seem to disappear not only in Rogers’ jurisdiction but in other places that Elzer found discrepancies… it’s not adding up. There are a few duplicate names --”

“No one in the Dread Youth had the same name as another,” Jennifer interrupted him. “That was something the caretakers made certain of because they didn’t want to risk anyone being confused with anyone else when orders were given.”

“Exactly.”

Jennifer leaned back in her seat, not wanting to believe what they were all thinking. “So… he killed them instead of capturing them and hid it all in the paperwork?”

“Maybe,” Hawk agreed. “ Mentor, are you finding any other similarities in the other discrepancies?”

“A few, Major,” the computer image explained. “The majority in the files that Mister Pulaski obtained are linked to Major Rogers. More prisoners are sent to New Chicago than are transferred out, yet there is never a population problem in the prison. Alcatraz, the Coastal prison, Joliet, Leavenworth and Facility 7 also seem to have similar discrepancies.”

“The names… I wonder…” Jennifer thought for a moment, the quickly typed in new parameters in the database, comparing name and transfer numbers with reports from the prison. What she saw, again, was hidden in the paperwork. “It’s the names. That’s how they’re doing it. That’s where a hiding place is.”

“How?” Jon asked her.

“Let’s say five people were transferred to a prison. Their names are listed on the prison manifest. Something happens to these five, but there’s no record of it. They may have hidden the bodies. To keep the population equal to the number reported to his superiors, five more people are transferred in or traded off the books, but they’re listed as being housed under the original five’s names. And look here –” She pointed to a list of names that seemed to show up more often than others in Elzer’s list. “All of these names, every one of them, are from the list of the Dread Youth assigned to Volcania during the final attack.” She waited a moment so what she said could register with the others.

Jon glanced at the names, then at his wife.

“Since we waited until the majority of soldiers were out of Volcania before we went in to limit the number of human casualties, these were the only particular names were known for some time. These names were used by more than one person for a few months prior to Rogers taking command of the New Chicago prison. After he took command, which wasn’t too long after the full roster of Dread Youth was discovered…” she brought up the list of names that showed the entire roster of Dread Youth personnel, “some of these names start showing up on the reports more than once.”

Jon thought for a moment, then, “Is it common knowledge that no two Dread Youth shared the same name?”

Jennifer shook her head. “No, it’s not.”  

“That’s something we can use. See anything else?”

Jennifer punched up another file. “This. Mentor said that there were transfers into the prison but never a population problem. The official transfers in would have to be approved by the Prison Commission. There would be a list of names officially recorded as being housed in New Chicago. At some point, the number would reach total capacity. In order to keep anyone from getting suspicious, there would have to be a certain number of prisoners being transferred out. There aren’t enough to offset the incoming prisoners. There are, however, a few reports of deaths in prison yard riots or some dying of natural causes. The names of these particular prisoners don’t show up again on any list. These names are removed from the Dread Youth roster.”

Scout quickly made the connection Jennifer was pointing out. “And all accidents, riots and deaths have to be recorded for the Prison Commission. It may mean that the prison doctors and Rogers’ superiors are involved in this.”

“There’s no way this is the work of only a few individuals,” Tank added.

“Paperwork and numbers won’t be enough. Is there anything we can do?” Scout wanted to know.

Jon shook his head. “Not without some proof. Any ideas?”

“Get proof,” was the unanimous answer.

Get proof.

Easier said than done.

Jon sometimes preferred the directness of battle. You were on one side; the enemy was on the other. There weren’t too many gray areas in a fight. It was survive at all costs. Dealing with all the political subterfuge embedded in the chaotic, post-war reconstruction was not his forte.

But if this was a case of murder and it was being hidden by a small group within the military…

How could they get proof and then where would they take that proof?

Another thought that concerned Jon was that Elzer had come across this information while not specifically looking for it. Had anyone else seen the same information and come to the same conclusions only to not act on them? Why? Even Elzer didn’t know who to contact in the military with the information. Why else would he contact them? Elzer didn’t know who to trust either.

They had to come at this problem sideways, not head on.

So first things first. They had to find a good reason to go to New Chicago. “Okay, we get proof. Any ideas how we’re going to walk into the area and look around without raising any suspicion or curiosity? Right now, all our schedules are pretty full, and they’re public. It’s not like we can come up with just any excuse.”

“Public appearance?” Scout suggested.

“None scheduled,” Hawk told him. “Meeting with an associate?”

“None are in New Chicago,” Tank offered.

“Engine trouble,” Jennifer told them. “If we all fly back to the West Coast in the jumpship instead of some of us riding sky bikes, I can make sure our course takes us near the area. If we have some engine trouble, we can land for repairs without too many questions.”

Engine trouble. “That’ll work,” Jon said, “but will the jumpship like it?”

Jennifer smiled her mischievous grin. “It’s for a good cause. She won’t mind me loosening up a bolt or two to get some smoke coming out the thrusters. I’ll talk to her.”

CHAPTER TWO – Close To The Edge

It didn’t matter what common sense dictated.

It didn’t matter that they knew better.

That jumpship was alive and didn’t like it when she had to pretend to be in trouble. She had a style and more than a bit of pride – she had out-flown everything Dread had thrown at them, knocked Soaron out of the sky more than once and moved refugees and survivors to safe locations for years. Pretending to be less than 100% seemed to make her fly less smoothly, less proudly. She seemed… annoyed. The ship had an attitude, and that’s all there was to it. Jennifer was the only one who could coax a bit of subterfuge out of her willingly.

“Now don’t you worry one bit,” they heard Jennifer say to the console from the pilot’s seat, “This is just to get us into New Chicago without any trouble. We might have a bad guy there. All I did was loosen those two bolts to redirect the smoke and raise the temperature a little bit. Their sensors will read an overheating engine. I can make fake repairs last a day or two if I need to. Besides, you know we’ll need you in top condition to get out of there if we need a very fast escape. If they think you’re not in top condition, then that could give us an edge in an escape. Besides, this is just to keep any of the locals from asking too many questions. And there’s not another ship anywhere that can do something like this as well as you can, okay?”

The ‘annoyed’ ship, if it had really been alive, would have appeared to consider Jennifer’s words because it suddenly flew… well, proudly.

“How does she do that?” Hawk asked Jon in a low voice. “This ship won’t do that for any of us.”

“Just be glad the ship does it for her,” Jon whispered back.

“You know, given the way Jennifer feels about this ship, you might need to worry,” Hawk joked.

Jon smiled. “Yeah, she loves it and she’s possessive about it, but she married me. I don’t think I have too much to worry about.”

~*~*~*~*~

“Chicago Base, this is the Power Team jumpship. Do you read?”

“Affirmative, Power Team jumpship, this is New Chicago Base.”

Jennifer keyed the mike. “Request permission to set down and affect repairs.”

There was a moment of silence. “Maybe it’s time you guys traded up. That ship’s got some age on her,” there was the slight sound of laughing in the background.

The ship shuddered slightly. Jennifer reached out and patted the console. “Just ignore them,” she whispered. Immediately, the ship flew without a single shudder.

“Permission to land on the Dobbinsville south platform granted. Anything we can do to help?”

“Negative. We have the tools we need, but thank you for the offer,” Jennifer told him.

Hearing the Chicago Base shut down their communicator, Hawk said, “That was a little too easy, wasn’t it?”

“Not anymore,” Scout told him. “We’re the big heroes right now. We can fly just about anywhere and be allowed to land. As long as they think we’re doing repairs on the ship, no one’s gonna raise an eyebrow at us. They may want a few autographs…”

“Autographs,” Tank scoffed. “We go some place, they treat us like celebrities. We’re just soldiers.”

“Enjoy it while you can, big guy,” Scout told him. “All too soon, we’ll just be names in a history book that no one will remember.”

Hawk laughed. “And be just regular folk again? That’d be a change. Ever wonder what you’ll do with all that time on your hands?”

“Sleep!” was the unanimous answer.

~*~*~*~*~

Mayor Ibold rushed to the platform the moment he heard that Captain Power and his team were there. This would be a huge boon to his new administration and hopefully something more useful to his own survival. It wasn’t every day the heroes of the war just happened to stop by.

He hurried through the landing port to the south platform. There, he saw them. He’d never met them in person, but he had seen their likenesses many times since the end of the war. Power, Ellis, Chase, Baker and Masterson. All five were present and accounted for. It was no surprise that they were dressed in simple uniforms. With the war over, who needed armor anymore?

He quickly walked over to the jumpship. “Ah, Captain Power,” he extended his hand in greeting. “Mayor Ibold of Dobbinsville. It is an honor to finally meet you.”

Power shook the mayor’s hand. “You, too, sir. Thank you for letting us land for repairs.”

“Tut. Think nothing of it. We’re here to help. It’s been a very long time since we’ve had the facilities or the resources to help anyone other than ourselves. It feels good to share in our abundances after such meager times. What can we do for you today?”

Jon shook his head. “Nothing, thank you, Mayor. The ship needs a few simple repairs but we couldn’t do them in the air.”

“Ah,” the mayor felt opportunity tapping on his shoulder. “Then, if you and your team aren’t on a tight schedule, I’d like to invite all of you to a feast we’re having in Dobbinsville this evening. We can give each of you accommodations for the night.”

“Feast?” Tank asked.

The mayor laughed. “Yes. The last few months have given us a great deal to be thankful for. We’ve got a working communications system, working farms, some new industries – we thought we could use an official night off.”

Hawk walked up beside the captain. “We’ve been working every day for months, Jon. A night off could be just what we need.”

The captain then looked at Chase. She said, “The repairs look easy enough. I can do them tomorrow.”

The captain glanced over his shoulder. Scout added “I like the idea too.”

Tank’s comment of “I don’t turn down a good meal” made Ibold laugh out loud.

Power turned back to the mayor. “We’d love to come.”

“Good, good,” the Ibold was ecstatic. “All the mayors of the neighboring towns are invited. So is the provincial governor.”

That statement seemed to get his guests’ attention. “Excuse me,” Chase asked, “but you have a provincial governor? I didn’t think any area had progressed to that point yet.”

“Yes. Major Jason Rogers. He’s in charge of the New Chicago prison. He has been a great help coordinating resources for all the towns and getting us the raw materials we need to rebuild. He has been a very effective liaison between the new governments and us. He’ll be at the feast as well. Like Lieutenant Ellis, he doesn’t turn down a good meal either.”

“That’s understandable,” Captain Power replied. “You miss a lot of meals with jobs like ours. I’m sure he’s working long hours like the rest of us.”

“Interminably long,” Ibold explained as he led the way away from the platform. “I once asked him if he ever slept. Know what his answer was? Sleep is overrated.”

“We know that feeling,” Hawk told him. “How long has he been the governor?”

“The last few months. It cut down on a lot of red tape and bureaucracy when he got the job. You know, dinner isn’t until tonight. Why not pay a visit to the governor? I’m sure he’d be glad to meet you.”

Power considered the idea. “We won’t be bothering him or interfering with his work?”

Again, Ibold laughed. “Sir, you’re Captain Power. You and your team are heroes. I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”

~*~*~*~*~

The mayor offered to provide them with transportation, but the team opted to walk to the prison. It was a beautiful day and the prison was an easy distance away.

“I don’t like this, Jon,” Matt said.

“We came here to do recon on this guy. We were worried about how to get to him without raising any suspicion, and we’re being told to go right up to his door and knock,” Jon explained.

Tank shook his head. “Too easy.”

Hawk kept on. “You did hear what Ibold said? Rogers has helped them out with the new governments? Rogers is military.”

“I heard. A military warden is answerable to Command. We’ll have to find out how he’s connected to the Council as well.”

“Are we being paranoid?” Scout asked them.

Jennifer shrugged. “Not if there’s something here to be paranoid about.”

“Just keep your eyes and ears open. Let’s see what we can find out,” Jon ordered.

~*~*~*~*~

Corporal Peterson walked quickly into the office. “Major, Captain Power and his team have arrived.”

More diplomatic duties. At least it was with another resistance group. “Finally. It took them a while to get here from the south platform.”

“They walked here, sir.”

“They walked?” Rogers asked. Seeing the corporal nod his head, he said, “They walked. Unbelievable. Show them in.” Best to get it over with.

Peterson moved back to the door and motioned for the team to enter. Rogers had never met the Power Team, but he had seen them in battle once. They were an impressive group, attacking from air and sky simultaneously in total concert with each other. What he saw walk through the door wasn’t quite what he expected. Sans armor, they looked like regular folk.

It was Power who undoubtedly entered first. He had the bearing of command -- that much was obvious. The rest of the team was the surprise.

“Major Rogers,” Captain Power saluted him.

“Captain Power,” Major Rogers returned the salute, his eyes glancing at all five of them. He didn’t correct the captain on not calling him ‘governor.’ It might be a better idea to not push the indelicacies until he knew more about why the team was there and what they wanted. “I’m honored.”

“The honor’s ours,” Power told him. “It’s not often we get to meet a fellow soldier with your record.”

Ah. Diplomacy. Rogers could do that. Power was speaking with him as a fellow soldier, not as a visitor and a governor. “Thank you. I must say that your reputation precedes you as well, Captain.”

“A good one, I hope.”

Rogers almost laughed. “The team that attacked Volcania several times and defeated Lord Dread himself? I’d say that is good indeed. May I ask as to the reason for your visit today?”

“Completely accidental. We were flying back to the West Coast when we experienced engine trouble and had to set down. The Mayor of Dobbinsville invited us to a feast they’re having tonight, and that was when we were told you’ve taken the job as the provincial governor of the area. The mayor thought it would be a good idea for us to initiate introductions.”

Protocols – everyone was learning them, Rogers as well. He took another quick glance at the Power Team. The older man had a military bearing. Probably in a unit before the war. The second man, tall and muscular, was a warrior rather than a soldier. Perhaps bred to the job? The third man seemed as if he were trying not to smile. A bit of a joker perhaps? Then there was the woman. The eyes, the hair… if Rogers didn’t know better, he would have thought she was a Dread Youth soldier, but that was impossible. She was in the Resistance, and no Dread Youth had ever broken the training.

“Indeed, so the protocols go. I’ve been invited to the feast myself. I have no doubt I’ll meet you there again. And your team?”

Again, protocol dictated form. Power introduced the others by rank, not gender. “Major Matt Masterson, Lieutenant Michael Ellis, Sergeant Robert Baker and Corporal Jennifer Chase.”

Jennifer Chase? That name sounded surprisingly familiar.

He nodded his head in greeting. “Welcome to New Chicago. If there is anything you need while you’re here, I’m certain that we can accommodate you.”

Power stepped back, the others did as well. They were preparing to leave. “A good meal and a night of company other than our own is a vacation for us.”

Rogers nodded his head and saluted. “That, I understand all too well.”

~*~*~*~*~

Once alone, Rogers entered the name Jennifer Chase into the database. Within moments, he received a response.

Jennifer Chase, taken by Dread Youth forces at age 3 in first harvesting of children for Dread Youth training.
Ranked first in every class in Dread Youth studies.
Youngest person promoted to Youth Leader.
Scheduled to be promoted to Overunit after Sand Town cleansing.
Declared killed in action one week later during cleansing of Two Ridges in Sector 3.
Reported to be a member of Power’s team six months later…

A Dread Youth in the Resistance? How was that possible? No Dread Youth had ever defected. None had ever broken the training. It wasn’t possible.

Reported to have self-destructed the Power Base when attacked by biomechs, destroying Blastarr and sacrificing her own life.

That report moved her name from the living Dread Youth database to the dead Dread Youth database. Some clerk hadn’t thought to alert anyone reading the file that a Dread soldier had been in the Resistance?

Determined at a later date that she was digitized, reintegrated and held prisoner in Volcania until rescued by the Power Team.

Then, there was an addendum that had been added just weeks prior to his taking command of the Chicago prison. With all the rebuilding, was it any wonder the paperwork backed up?

Led Resistance forces on the raid of the southern gate of Volcania during final attack.
Is reported to have destroyed Volcania’s security system and cannon array to allow other Resistance forces to attack the fortress from the air.

So that was what happened. There had been rumors about that battle, but each was more fantastic than the one before. That did not change the fact that she was a Dread Youth. Rogers went back over the file. Sand Town? He had the computer search every reference about that raid.

If the information was there in front of him, then someone on the Committee had to know that Jennifer Chase was former Dread Youth. Why had no alarm been sounded? Why had she not been arrested or detained? Why had she not surrendered per orders? Why hadn’t the Committee done anything?

Rogers hated politics.

~*~*~*~

Oh, it was a feast, all right.

Food of all sorts, some almost forgotten because of their non-existence during the war, was placed on all the tables. Root vegetables, fruits, fresh meats… it was a culinary delight that few had seen in years! The hydroponic scientists must have worked overtime to get genetically altered foods to grow in the near-dead soil to produce such a quantity.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mayor Ibold tapped his fork on the side of his metal cup to get everyone’s attention. Once, years ago, a speaker would tap a wine glass gently with a fork to indicate a speech was about to be made, but there were no such luxury items like wine glasses. Yet.  “On behalf of myself, Mayor Tompkins of Landisburg, Mayor Redding of Dunstan, Mayor Turnbull of Bandings and Mayor Benson of Worley, I wish to welcome all of you to tonight’s celebration.” He waited as the guests clapped their hands in response. “I’m going to make this speech very short –” That brought another round of applause, much more enthusiastic than the first. “I thought that would make you happy,” Ibold said.

He looked out at the assembly. There were old friends, new friends, family and guests. He smiled. “Eight months ago, Captain Power,” he pointed toward the captain sitting at the end of the table, “and his team,” he indicated other areas of the room where the team was scattered, “infiltrated Volcania and with the help of other Resistance forces, destroyed the fortress, Overmind and Lord Dread, effectively ending hostilities if not the war itself. For the last eight months, we have tried to re-establish ourselves as… well, as civilized human beings. Surviving has been a difficult road for many of us over these years; we have all lost a great deal to the Machine. Yet today, we sit here, alive, well, our plates about to filled with food.” There was a slight ripple of laughter. “Tonight’s gathering is one of thanksgiving and rest. For so long, we’ve worked and fought, and tonight, not only do we celebrate all the hard work we’ve done, we are also here to celebrate the fact that we now have lines of communication established between all major towns and cities within 1000 kilometers!” There was a great round of applause to that news. “It’s also meant to give us a night off from all the work we’ve been doing, and frankly, given all the work we’ve been doing, I think we deserve a night off!” There were cheers; glasses raised in agreement, good-natured laughter as the mayor said one final thing. “And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, I say let’s eat!”

~ ~ ~

“Have to love short speeches,” the man to Jon’s right said as he reached over for some bread. “Mayor Ibold’s famous for them.”

Small talk. Okay, Jon could do that. And bread? Who was growing wheat? “I guess he doesn’t like to mince words.”

“No, sir. That he doesn’t. I’ve got to say, Captain, we were all a little surprised when you accepted the invitation to come. Glad, but, uh, surprised.”

Surprised? “Why?” he asked.

The man looked genuinely confused, then he cleared his throat. “Uh, maybe you should forget I said anything.”

“But –”

“Look, Captain, I don’t want to get into any trouble, but, see that man sitting at the other end of the table? The one who looks like he’d rather be cleaning out a pig pen rather than sitting here?”

Jon casually glanced at the other end of the long table. There sat Rogers, his gaze firmly set on Jennifer who was sitting across the banquet hall talking to their friend Angela, a technician visiting from the Passages. The gaze looked almost murderous, and that put Jon’s over-protective instincts on alert. What had happened since they met earlier that day? “Major Rogers?”

“Yeah. You do know that he’s head of the New Chicago prison, right? The one where overunits and youth leaders are incarcerated? Word is that he’s a bit of a fanatic.”

The woman on the left of Jon who had heard the entire exchange quietly whispered, “He rages against anything to do with Dread and wants it all destroyed. He’s taking a rather personal interest in seeing that it is.”

Jon’s over-protective instincts went up another notch. “Most of everything Dread tried to do is being destroyed. His fortresses, his computers, his laboratories are now in the hands of the Resistance –”

“That’s not the point, Captain,” the man told him. “Notice what he’s doing?”

“He’s staring at a member of my team,” Jon answered. Not everyone knew that he and Jennifer were married, so there was no reason to give anyone any added information.

“There are lots of stories about all of you, Captain,” the woman told him. “One is that she used to be a youth leader.”

Since when was that a secret? “She left the Dread Youth as soon as she found out what they were,” Jon protested. No way was anyone going to accuse Jennifer of something wrong.

“Doesn’t matter to him. He looks over at her and sees a former youth leader, not one of the leaders of the Resistance. He and the mayor got into a huge argument before the feast. He was pretty vocal against any of you coming, especially her, but he was outvoted by the other mayors. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen them stand up to him like that on anything.”

Given what Elzer had told them, what they suspected, and now what these two said, Jon was more than ready to fight. The last thing Jon wanted to do was start an incident at a celebration though. He needed more information. They needed to find out exactly what was happening to the prisoners. He glanced over at his wife again. Jennifer was sitting in profile listening to whatever Angela was telling her, but he saw her surreptitiously glance at Rogers. She was aware she was being scrutinized. She glanced back at Jon, and he gave her the signal that he was aware of the situation. Hawk was sitting almost across from him, trading a few war stories with a few of the other older partygoers. Hawk realized he was being watched, took a quick look toward Jon who casually indicated Rogers. The message was received.

Hawk leaned back toward Scout who was telling jokes. A casual move of a hand and an almost undetectable motion of a finger, and Scout got the message loud and clear as well.  In a nearly covert move, Scout sent the message on to Tank with a mere nod of a head during a rather animated telling of a joke.

The Power Team was on alert within seconds of Jon being warned of Rogers.

“As long as he behaves himself and keeps his distance from Jennifer, I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” Jon said to himself in a very low voice.

CHAPTER THREE – Learning The Truth

Banquets provided opportunities for people to move around from group to group, overhear things that maybe the chatters didn’t want overheard. With Scout being his usual, entertaining self, telling jokes and keeping attention on him, Hawk moved around the crowds trying to get a bead on Rogers without being noticed.

A quick recon gave Hawk a great deal of information. Rogers’ important position as the governor allowed him access to town leaders and influential people who seemed intensely satisfied with his performance even if there was a slight edge of fear and maybe disdain to their opinions. Maybe they were being bought off? Rogers didn’t associate with people who were further down the working food chain. His body language indicated an egotistical arrogance, a sense of superiority, a wielding of power.

Hawk did not like dealing with people like that.

He moved further into the crowds, trying to blend in, joining into conversations as he passed. He saw Rogers talking to Ibold, every now and then glancing back toward Jennifer. Hawk finally got within hearing range.

Rogers spoke in a rough whisper. “It makes my gut churn to think I had to eat in the same room with… that.”

“Rogers, Jennifer Chase is one of the people who instrumentally brought about the end of the war. She’s one of Power’s team. She’s on our side.”

“Our side? You don’t know the Dread Youth like I do. The soldiers, the youth leaders, the overunits – it doesn’t matter. They’re all alike. She was the youth leader who destroyed Sand Town. Do you know how many people were murdered and digitized and enslaved that day? How many she probably murdered personally?”

“ Rogers –”

“She’s Dread scum like the rest of them. Why isn’t she rotting in prison or dead? Is the Committee being partial?”

Hawk listened closer. What was the Committee?

“ Rogers,” Ibold moved very close and his voice grew stern, “I don’t care about your personal feelings. Power and his team are politically powerful friends for any town to have. They risked their lives to save humans time and again and asked for nothing in return. They volunteered for the suicidal mission of attacking Volcania by infiltrating the base. Chase is a Resistance fighter, not a youth leader. She’s off limits to you and your excursions so forget she even exists. We don’t want Power as an enemy. Now drop the entire subject. The topic is no longer up for discussion.”

Excursions? What did that mean?

Ibold wasn’t his happy, jovial self. He certainly wasn’t behaving like the slight sycophant they had met at the platform earlier. No, that was the voice of someone standing his ground against someone he didn’t like. There was tension between him and Rogers. Could the other mayors feel the same way? Hawk had heard speeches against the Dread Youth and the leadership for years, but this was the first time he’d heard that hate directed so vocally toward Jennifer. What’s worse, if one person felt that way, how many others did as well? And if Rogers was killing Dread Youth like they suspected, what did that mean for them?

~*~*~*~*~

Scout kept the attention on him while the others kept gathering Intel. He was good at being the center of attention, cracking jokes, making people laugh. And when people were in a good mood, they were in more of a mood to talk.

Natalie Arthur, another friend from the Passages, had already gotten his attention. He couldn’t break away from the crowd just yet. He had to keep the joviality going. He gave her a hand wave to let her know that he saw her. Whatever it was, it was serious. Natalie looked too concerned for it to be anything unimportant.

“Then,” he continued on with the story, “there we were, clickers on one side of us, clickers on the other, the front entrance of the valley blocked with no way out. Tank was trying to cover us from the biomechs attacking us from the entrance while me and the captain were trying to keep the others from flanking us. We just knew the three of us were goners.”

“You must have been terrified,” a young lady exclaimed.

“Terrified? No, we were a little too busy to be terrified but I wouldn’t have wanted to try to count our heart rates at the time. But then, just when we knew we weren’t going to get out of there, Hawk came flying in from one angle, Pilot flew the jumpship in from the other, both of them firing every weapon they had to blast us a hole through the clickers. We kept firing, ran through the hole and made a clean getaway. It was a brilliant strategy.”

“But did you get the data disk?” another listener asked.

“Absolutely. It wouldn’t have been a lot of fun if we’d gone to all that trouble and walked away empty handed.”

There were more questions, more comments, then Scout saw Hawk give him the sign that he had information and Scout could take his turn. Undoubtedly, he’d seen Natalie too. He motioned Hawk over to him.

“Now, if you folks will excuse me, I think I’ll have another glass of this punch. But Hawk here has more than a few good stories to tell. He won’t be as entertaining as me, but he won’t bore you.”

“Thanks, Scout,” Matt said as he patted Scout on the shoulder. “Go get punch. I’m sure these folks need a bit of a break.”

Not much of a break, Scout mused as he walked toward the punchbowl and Natalie. Hawk could spin as good a yarn as any of them. Within moments, he heard laughing and talking. Yeah, Hawk was entertaining the masses.

“I was wondering when you’d pry yourself away from your audience,” Natalie joked as she handed him another glass.

“Well, you know the old saying, always leave them wanting more,” Scout told her. “So you got assigned here from the Passages?”

“Temporarily,” she told him as they walked away from the crowd. “They needed medical help with the huge influx of Dread soldiers and, to tell the truth, I wanted a break from the Passages. You know, breathe fresh air. See real sunlight.”

They stopped by a window that looked out on greening fields of crops. It was amazing to think that just mere months ago, those fields were nothing more than barren, dead soil.

“There’s something going on here,” she whispered. “I thought that might be why your team showed up.”

Scout took a sip of punch. “What have you got?”

“At first, there were a lot of transfers that weren’t recorded correctly. I thought that it was an oversight until I was in charge of certain activities. Some of the prisoners were assigned to work details on the farms and in the reconstruction projects. The same names are on the lists, but they’re not the same people. Then, at some point, some of them just ceased to exist in the computer system, and I couldn’t track them down --”

“Wait,” Scout stopped her. “When you say assigned to work details, what do you mean?”

Natalie looked out the window at the crops. “Every bit of work done on the farms is performed by the prisoners. The new roads, the new buildings, all of it. Very little work is done by the townspeople. They’re working more on desk jobs and leaving the heavy lifting to the inmates.”

That sounded ominously like… “They’re using the prisoners as slave labor and not just as a helping labor force? Even the ones that haven’t been to trial yet?”

“Yes, but what I don’t understand is why they’re using the same names of prisoners, not the same ones each time. It’s like someone just hates doing paperwork.”

That was the polar opposite of the truth, Scout knew, but he didn’t want to tip their hand to anyone yet. “That’s not legal,” Scout murmured. “Using them as a work force is, but that only applies to those who have been tried and convicted or those who volunteer for outside work. The Council ruled on that –”

“You mean the Committee, not the Council. It was the wording that makes using them as slave labor legal. The Committee merely stated that all of them could be assigned to work groups, and there’s no distinction between prisoners who have been tried and convicted and those awaiting trial. They consider all Dread Youth prisoners.”

“Loophole,” Scout muttered.

“A big one, but it’s the Committee that makes the decisions now, not the Council or Command.”

“What exactly is the Committee?” Scout knew none of his team had heard of this group.

“You don’t know them? They’re a joint group consisting of members of both Council and Command. They thought it was a good way to coordinate things since Command and Council each have jurisdiction over different groups.”

Another group in charge? Maybe that’s why there was so much confusion in the system all of a sudden.

“What about the prisoners that disappeared? Is there any similarity in their disappearances? Any clue about what happened to them?”

“None that I can find yet. I’ve looked, but I can’t find a paper trail. I can’t find any bodies,” Natalie took another sip of her drink. “Whatever’s going on, it has to be bad.”

“I think it just got worse,” Scout told her.

~*~*~*~*~

Both Jennifer and Angela indulged in another piece of chocolate cake.

Chocolate.

Did anyone realize how precious chocolate was?

“Where did they get chocolate?” Jennifer asked.

“They manufacture it,” Angela told her. “I think it comes from one of the hydroponics factories out near the prison.”

That didn’t sound right. “Did you say hydroponics factories?”

“Yeah. Prison labor works there growing the food they eat here and use for trade with other towns. One of the factories is set up for luxuries like sugar cane and cocoa beans.”

“And we can have chocolate,” Jennifer surmised.

“Absolutely. Other factories are set up for growing basics. I think one doubles as a cannery.”

And chocolate frosting! Jennifer couldn’t let a single crumb get away from her. It had been so long since she had chocolate – it was an extraordinarily rare treat yet Dobbinsville had plenty. “The workers in the factories, do you know if it’s all prison labor?”

“Every bit of it,” Angela told her. “Every factory, every farm, every bit of manual labor is done by prisoners.” Then, quickly and in a much lower voice, Angela asked, “How long are all of you staying?”

“Through tomorrow. I have some repairs to do on the jumpship. Mayor Ibold is putting us up for the night.”

“I’d get out of here as quickly as I could if I were you,” Angela advised.

“Why? What else is going on?”

Angela reached into a backpack sitting beside her. “They gave us these when we first arrived.” She pulled a reader out of the pack and gave it to Jennifer. “Read this when you’re alone. There are some here who have an odd idea of what freedom from Dread really means. It’s not safe for you here.”

Jennifer took the reader and placed it in her own gear sitting beside her chair. “Not safe how?”

“ Rogers. He doesn’t like anything to do with Dread Youth. I think he’s got a personal mission to make their lives as miserable as possible.”

“How is he doing that?” Jennifer asked her.

“I don’t know, but people in these small towns around the prison are acting very strange. It’s like they’re scared of Rogers but they’re covering for him, but I don’t know what it is. Just get out of here as quick as you can. Working for the Resistance might not keep even you safe.”

~*~*~*~*~

Despite Rogers and the Intel gathering, the team had a rather good time that night. Good food, good drink, good company was always a good start at gathering information. Yet, not to appear obvious, the team mingled and didn’t ask too many more questions to the crowd.

The party itself wrapped up about a half hour to midnight, and some of the revelers began to retire. After all, they had only been given ‘one night off.’ They all had to work to do in the morning.

Jon still felt uneasy about what he had learned. He understood why people mistrusted the soldiers. They were responsible for the suffering under Dread’s new world order, but so many of the so-called soldiers were children who had no idea that their life had been made up of lies. Now that they were free of Dread, they had a real chance at life. They were living in schools and orphanages or with families who were helping them reintegrate into human society. The most obvious obstacle was the fact these children thought they were inferior, that the machine was all-powerful, that they ‘wanted’ to have metalloid bodies in order to become one with the Machine.

“He looks over at her and sees a former youth leader, not one of the leaders of the Resistance.”

Those words haunted him. How many times had Jennifer proven her loyalty to the human race over the years? She had been willing to die to keep Dread from getting a single circuit from the Power Base by blowing it up. She risked her life in battles, she would charge into danger to rescue a total stranger from a biomech.

Did others only see her as just a youth leader and nothing more?

And Rogers, if he was guilty of what they thought he was guilty of, was he planning on going after his wife?

Jon had met some Dread Youth soldiers since Dread was defeated, and the differences between them and Jennifer when he first met her were startling. In retrospect, Jon could honestly say that Jennifer wasn’t Dread Youth then – at least, she didn’t have the outlook or the mindset of a Dread soldier. She was someone who had been raised in the training but who had had her eyes opened to the truth in a horrible manner. She willfully and willingly rejected the training and fought to regain her humanity. The soldiers that were captured after the attack on Volcania hadn’t had that opportunity. They hadn’t been exposed to the truth. They were Dread Youth.

That glaring difference was what made the difference in Jon’s mind. To him, there was a vast distinction between being in the Dread Youth and being a Dread Youth. Perhaps Rogers couldn’t see that distinction, but others could, and Jennifer was living proof of that difference.

He reached their assigned quarters and entered quietly although he knew Jennifer wouldn’t be asleep. On recon, she could go days without sleep to get information if she needed to. She was sitting cross-legged on the pallet perusing a digital reader, a concerned look on her face. Jon kicked off his shoes and sat down behind her.

“What’s that?”

“A little extra to the Rogers’ recon. Angela was given this when she first came here from the Passages and thought I needed to see it if we were going to stay. She said it might be a good idea if I left quickly. It’s a… it’s… here. You read it.” She handed him the reader.

At first, the words seemed rather innocuous. Further down, Jon read what worried Jennifer. Certain words used in certain ways – rhetoric. Hateful rhetoric.

‘The presence of the Dread soldiers places all humans in grave danger… killers trained from birth… murderers who believe in the superiority of the Machine… how much longer until they rise again? We must harness that strength; use it for our own good since they sought to destroy all the goodness in the world. They must be the examples to all future enemies of humanity…they must not be allowed to remain alive or be allowed to rise again…’

Some of it was old rhetoric. These were the half-truths that parents told their children to explain the existence of the Dread soldiers.  He checked the date on the reader. The writing was rather recent.

“ Rogers wrote that and sent it to the town councils when he first took over the prison,” she said.

“He’s trying to consolidate power and cause trouble,” Jon concluded.

“And he has the perfect scapegoats to use,” Jennifer added. “Keep reading. It doesn’t stop there.”

Jon skimmed the manifesto. It got progressively worse. He read aloud. “All rights of the Dread Youth are suspended by order of the Committee… only privileges allowed are those accorded to prisoners as already stated… no holidays or anniversaries or ceremonies will be allowed to be observed by any Dread Youth… this is becoming scarier by the moment,” he muttered. “What’s the Committee?”

“I don’t know, but the writing gets even worse. There’s not one word in any of that stating that these laws are for captured prisoners. It just says Dread Youth, over and over again. According to Rogers, these are the rules the Committee came out with. Dread Youth are under Command’s jurisdiction. The Committee must be something new?”

“I don’t know,” Jon answered. “Part of the Prison Commission maybe?”

“I don’t understand what they’re doing. One ruling says that the only privileges allowed are the ones already stated, then it says no holidays, anniversaries or ceremonies will be observed. That’s a contradiction. Besides, prisoners have been allowed to observe special days. Wouldn’t that be a privilege already accorded? It’s almost like they’re trying to make this confusing on purpose.”

“Maybe they are. Maybe that’s what Rogers needs to do whatever it is he’s doing. If the laws are contradictory, he’ll have a justification for his actions.”

“That’s even scarier,” Jennifer muttered. “There’s still a lot of hate out there for the Dread Youth. How can the ones that are still alive have fair trials with laws like these making things worse than they are? And if Rogers is killing the prisoners or making an example of them? Jon, some youth leaders had never left Volcania. They had no idea what was beyond the fortress walls.”

Rogers…

Rogers was the prison warden, he was the provincial governor, and he didn’t like the Dread Youth.

He shut down the reader and placed it on the floor next to the pallet. “It’s going to take a while for people to move on. The war lasted a long time and old hates die hard. For Rogers though… ” He placed a hand on the back of Jennifer’s neck and felt how tense her muscles were. Even after all the years she’d been away from them, her Dread Youth past still haunted her. People like Rogers compounded the issue when it turned hateful. Jon gently brushed Jennifer’s hair behind her shoulder and saw the scars on her temple left behind by the interrogations she endured before they could rescue her. He gingerly brushed his finger against them. “Hawk’s working recon on the other mayors. It seems like Rogers and Ibold don’t agree on a lot of things. Maybe the others feel the same way. Scout has been talking with Natalie about certain things that are happening at the prison, and Tank’s still in the banquet hall looking for someone who’s had just a little too much to drink tonight. We’ll regroup at the jumpship in the morning and put the pieces together.”

“I don’t think we’re going to like the pieces,” she said as Jon began to gently knead the muscles in her neck and shoulders. He could feel her relax a little, feel her lean into his hands. “We need to find where the prisoners who are disappearing are being transferred to. If they’re being transferred, that is.”

“It’s not all in the paperwork,” he reminded her. “I think we’ll need to catch him in the act.” He sensed a few more of her muscles becoming less tense. He tenderly kissed the soft fold of her ear, felt her lean her head back to give him better access. He let his lips slide further to her temple, moving slowly toward her jaw line.

“Or find out how he’s doing it by talking to someone inside and setting a trap.”

That one statement scared Jon more than seeing Rogers’ glare at Jennifer at the feast. He also knew that a scared, loud no to a perfectly valid and logistically logical idea would be met with stubborn resistance. That was something he had a lot of experience dealing with – especially since Jennifer was usually right when it came to tactics. The truth was that the idea of her going inside wasn’t an option he wanted to entertain. “It’s too dangerous right now, but if we do go that route, we need more Intel. There’d be no way to track you or be your backup, and without knowing what he’s doing, we’d have no way of knowing what to expect or counteract it. We’d need more information first.”

“Something tells me we don’t have that kind of time.”

The lights in their room dimmed. It was the beginning of the town’s shutdown for the night. First would be the private rooms, then the public rooms, then the main facilities. A lot of the towns went go to one-quarter power at night to conserve fuel. It was much more conducive for sleeping.

Jon placed his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “Know what I think we ought to do right now?” He placed his other arm around her and held her tight.

“What?” she asked.

“Worry about that tomorrow,” he suggested as he kissed her neck, slowly working his way around. He felt her relax further in his arms. “And you know what else I was thinking?”

“I could guess, but I think you want to tell me,” she smiled as she turned toward him.

“I seem to remember that you and I have been so busy for the last few weeks that I haven’t had a chance to court my wife.” He placed a gentle kiss on her lips.

“I have noticed that,” she teased.

“And very early this morning, we were talking about making an appointment for us to spend some time together tomorrow…”

“And you pointed out that any time after midnight was tomorrow,” she kissed him back, “and it’s still before midnight which means tomorrow is still today…”

“And since we technically have the night off,” he kissed her again, drawing her close, one hand going to the buttons on her shirt, “and we don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow morning…”

Further conversation wasn’t needed.

~*~*~*~*~

Tank’s luck was proving equally surprising. Since liquor had a tendency to loosen tongues, he waited around until the crowd thinned out. One of the still-conscious individuals could be the best bet they had of finding out more information of what was going on. Luckily, one of the factory engineers was still awake.

“All I know is that they want to take all the youth leaders and overunits and make examples out of them,” he said. The man was well on his way to getting drunk. “Keep the others from growing up and building another army. Some of the cadets tried doing just that. They got taken care of real quick. Handed them over to Rogers.” His words slurred as Tank poured him another drink. “Rogers, that guy hates them all.”

Tank saw Hawk across the room, pretending to be resting but actually listening to the other somewhat drunken conversations going on around him. “Why does he hate them that much?”

:: BURP :: was the first reply.

Tank ignored the man’s lack of manners. “He’s had experience with the soldiers?”

The man took another swig of his drink. His voice was getting progressively slurred. “Something happened years ago. Don’t know what. Never heard the details. Just know that he was a soldier. He did his duty. After the war, he rounded them up and killed a lot of them before he got to run the prison. Good riddance to bad rubbish if you ask me.”

“He kills the prisoners?” Tank asked.

“What if he does?” the drunken man told him. “Eh, well, no, not all of them. Just a few that will give him a good chase. Most of them, he loans out to the farms and the reconstruction teams and the factories. They do all the hard work. Says since they helped destroy it all, they can help rebuild it all.  Some of them, Rogers takes them on the hunt.”

Tank thought for a moment. Was Rogers working them to death? Wait… “What do you mean the hunt?”

The man took another gulp of his drink. “The hunt. You know. He hunts them. Gives them to others who hunt them. If you catch ‘em, you kill ‘em, you win. He lets the other prisoners do the back-breaking labor, so who cares? He likes to use the overunits and youth leaders since they got more training in wilderness survival than the foot soldiers. Makes our guys earn their kill, but he’s not picky. It’s not like they’re important anyway. Just Dreadscum. Even the mayors have turned some of the Dreadheads over to Rogers for his games.”

Tank gave the man a bottle, took his leave and walked back toward Hawk.

“Anything?” Tank whispered.

“Got something scary,” Hawk answered. “You?”

“Oh, yeah, and it’s bad. We need to get out of here. Fast.”

Hawk shook his head. “We can’t leave until morning. They’re shutting down the docking bay for the night in about fifteen minutes. We can’t fly out of here now.”

They looked around. “Most everyone’s leaving,” Hawk said. “I say we call it a night.”

They walked off, leaving the drunken partygoers on their own.

~*~*~*~*~

Ibold’s office was some distance from the banquet hall. As soon as the party began to break up, the mayors quietly and casually retired to the office. There was much they needed to discuss.

“ Rogers is going to cause us no end of trouble,” Mayor Ibold complained.

Turnbull poured himself another drink. “There’s nothing we can do. He’s the one in charge around here.”

Redding stood at the window, watching the dark clouds move almost imperceptibly in the pale moonlight. “He makes one move against that pilot, what do you think is going to happen? The Power Team will rain hell down on us to protect the woman. You saw how Power looked at her? She’s important to him.”

Tompkins paced the room. “ Rogers won’t raise a finger against her. He has to know better than that. It doesn’t matter if the pilot was in the Dread Youth. She got away and fought in the Resistance.”

Benson shook his head. “It matters to Rogers, and if he does make a move against Power and we do nothing, we can kiss our jobs goodbye because the population idolizes the Power Team. They’ll side with them –”

“Outside New Chicago? People will side with them,” Ibold quickly interrupted. “Here, people are scared of Rogers. They’re afraid he’ll put them in the hunt. If he decides to go after Chase, who’s going to speak against him? And if he does, the Council will come down on us like a firestorm because of what we’ve done. Or haven’t done. There’s no telling if Command will join in. We don’t even know if they’re aware of what the Committee’s doing.”

There was quiet. It stretched uncomfortably. “So what do we do?” Redding asked.

Turnbull finished up his drink in one big gulp. “Nothing or Rogers will come after us. But Power and his team better get out of here as quickly as possible before Rogers can make any move. Either way, we’ll be the ones who pay.”

~*~*~*~*~

An hour before dawn

Rogers waited at the computer terminal impatiently. The entire spectacle was insupportable. A youth leader, passing herself off as a Resistance fighter… there had been no general amnesty. All Dread Youth were to have surrendered to authorities. No exceptions. The flagrant flaunting of the law by one such as that… his anger kept mounting.

He waited…

He waited…

Finally, he received a response. His request was answered.

~*~*~*~*~

Before Dawn The Next Morning

Jennifer tightened the two bolts on the engine. It took all of five seconds for the “needed” repairs to the jumpship. “There, see?” she whispered to the jumpship. “Everything’s working perfectly again.”

“Slave labor and a manhunt with the total support of the local governments,” Hawk said disgusted. “How can this be happening now?”

Scout was still pacing the small aisle in the jumpship. “This Committee worded the orders in a way that allows the loophole. It’s all in the paperwork. And how can the Committee come up with these orders if the soldiers are under Command’s jurisdiction? This whole thing is confusing. Rogers is taking advantage of it and hiding what he’s doing.”

Jon shook his head. “This isn’t what the laws mean. We need to get to the Council or Command and find out if they know what’s going on. Jennifer, is the ship ready to go?”

“Probably more than I am,” she said, her voice betraying her concern. After all, it wasn’t every day that someone was targeting you because of how you grew up instead of something you’ve done. It made Jennifer very uncomfortable.

“Okay, let’s get out of here.”

Hawk took his seat in the co-pilot’s chair. “I don’t think I’ve been so glad to get out of a town since the war ended,” he muttered.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Jennifer said as she powered up the engines. “The Resistance won. Some of the overunits will be in prison for the rest of their lives. It’s not like what Rogers is doing can be kept secret for very long. Why wouldn’t he want us gone the minute we arrived?”

“Maybe he was being political,” Scout suggested. “In any case, all we have is hearsay and our guts telling us this guy is guilty as all get out. We’ve still got no hard proof, no bodies, nothing.”

Jon sat down in the captain’s chair. “We’ll let the Council and Command worry about that. We just need to get there and report what we’ve learned and give them what little evidence we have.”

A voice sounded over the communicator. “Power Team Jumpship, you are requested to power down your engines and disembark.”

“The hell we will,” Jon muttered. He reached over and flipped the comm switch next to his seat. In a still somewhat polite voice, he said, “This is Captain Power. Due to recent circumstances, we’re unable to comply with your request. Requesting permission to launch.”

“Negative, Jumpship,” the voice answered. “You’re being ordered to stand down immediately or we’re allowed to use force.”

“Who’s this guy kidding?” Scout asked.

“Negative, Chicago Base,” Jon answered. “As you just told us -- we were requested, not ordered, and given the nature of our duties assigned to us by the Council, we are unable to honor that request.”

A shot was fired across the jumpship’s nose, grazing the hull.

“They just shot my ship,” Jennifer muttered angrily.

“Jumpship, by the authority of the provincial governor, Major Jason Rogers, you are ordered to power down your engines and disembark.”

Jon looked back at Scout. “Did you record all that?”

“Every word, every threat.”

“Send a copy of everything we’ve got to Elzer now. Tell him to get it to the Council and Command immediately.”

“Elzer might need someone with a little more influence to get to them,” Jennifer added.

“Who do you have in mind?” Jon asked.

“General Grey with the UTO. He’s been working as a Command representative the last few months and has helped the Council with a few jurisdictional issues,” Jennifer added. “We know him, Command and Council know him -- Elzer might need the general’s help.”

“Good idea,” Hawk agreed.

“Already working on it,” Scout said as he punched the buttons on his comm controls. “Sometimes, it’s good to know people who have high connections,” he said.

Jon spoke into the microphone again. “There had better be a good reason for this.”

They heard a banging on the hull. Tank switched on the cameras that showed the exterior of the ship. Rogers and a company of armed guards were standing there.

“Okay, everybody,” Jon said. “Get on your game faces.”

“Suits?” Hawk asked.

Jon considered it. He knew that this was going to be bad. Politics were over with. Now it was power plays. “Better not. It could make a bad situation even worse. Let’s see what he wants.”

Jennifer powered down the engines and patted the console. “Be ready to fly, sweetheart. We may have to make a quick getaway.”

Jon opened the hatch and walked down the steps first. He said, “Major, I don’t like it when people shoot at our ship. That’s a hostile act I don’t take lightly.”

The major stood up even straighter. “I don’t like people who harbor traitors, Captain. Unfortunately, the arrest warrant from my superiors only includes Youth Leader Chase and not the rest of you.”

They all stopped moving. Youth Leader Chase? If Rogers thought he was going to get away with that…

In a low, threatening voice, Jon asked, “What are you talking about?”

“As per Committee Directive One-Five Stroke Nine, all Dread Youth soldiers regardless of rank are ordered to surrender to Resistance forces. Failure to do so will result in immediate incarceration upon capture, no trial necessary. You are aware of this directive, Captain?”

Jon shook his head. “No, I’m not. I am aware of the Council directive that states that all Dread Youth soldiers regardless of rank are urged to surrender voluntarily and be housed at a military facility under Command’s jurisdiction until trial to determine their culpability in the war. Are you aware of that one?”

Rogers scoffed. “In your dreams, Captain. The one that almost promised what I would consider a general amnesty was rescinded in favor of this particular directive.”

“And what does that have to do with detaining us?”

Rogers stared at Jon for a moment, a frown almost forming. “Captain, even you are not as stupid as to not realize you have a youth leader as a member of your crew.”

Jon’s overprotective instincts didn’t just go up a notch. This time, they went through the roof. Still, he kept his temper. “I know every member of my team. None of them are youth leaders.”

Rogers pulled out a reader. “Jennifer Chase, Dread Youth, youngest appointed youth leader. Was officially assigned to be awarded the rank of overunit after the Sand Town cleansing but disappeared and was presumed killed shortly afterwards. She was present at and took part in the Sand Town massacre.”

Jon waited a moment. “And?”

“All of the Dread Youth were to surrender or be taken immediately to prison upon capture. Those are our orders.”

Tank took a step forward. “Then go find some Dread Youth soldiers and convince them to surrender. There are none here.”

Rogers’ guards lifted their weapons and pointed them at the team. “Youth Leader Chase is under arrest and will be incarcerated for her crimes. This warrant allows me to take her into custody and imprison her immediately.”

Without warning, Hawk grabbed the warrant and read it. “No, it doesn’t. It says you can take a youth leader in your jurisdiction into custody. You wrote in Jennifer’s name which means the warrant has no legal binding since the name wasn’t included on the document at the time it was issued. Just to let you know, the warrants have to be requested by the governments with jurisdiction and issued by Command. Also, since there are no legal precedents at the moment for provincial governors to be appointed, your title is strictly honorary. This is Dobbinsville, under the jurisdiction of Mayor Ibold. Mayors work for the Council. He’d have to request the Council to petition Command for a warrant if a youth leader was here and was to be arrested. Lastly, there is no Youth Leader Jennifer Chase. You should really check the paperwork, Rogers.”

Rogers didn’t move. He simply stared at Jon.

Jon made certain he stood between Rogers and Jennifer. “What’s your game, Rogers?”

“Game?” Rogers asked. “No game. Dread Youth are all the same. This one…” he pointed his finger at Jennifer, “may have fooled you into thinking she’s changed, but they don’t fool me. They don’t change. Not a one of them has ever broken the conditioning. They’re taught from the cradle to kill us. They’re just waiting for the time to strike back. Monsters like that don’t deserve consideration.”

Jon saw unmitigated hatred shining in Rogers’ eyes. “They’re human, Rogers. They were taken from –”

“Spare me the sob stories, Power,” Rogers ordered. “They had no mercy for any human they destroyed. They didn’t care when they shot down my parents in cold blood, in the back while they were trying to escape. Or when they drove their tanks over my hometown, crushing people under their wheels, my brother included. They kidnapped my niece and nephew and turned them into monsters just like them. Why should a single human have any mercy for them?”

“We’ve all lost to Dread,” Jon told him. “Every person who survived the wars lost family members, homes, saw everything they ever had destroyed in front of them. That doesn’t give anyone the right to –”

“The hell it doesn’t,” Rogers took a step back, his guards a step forward. “If they resist, shoot them,” he ordered.

The rest of the team took defensive positions around Jennifer, and Jon was ready to launch himself at Rogers – Jennifer placed her hand on his shoulder to stop him. He turned toward her and claimed, “He’s not taking you.”

Jennifer leaned toward him and whispered, “We need proof, remember? All we have is hearsay and our gut. Going inside the prison might get us that proof. I can do recon there while you guys talk to the Council and Command and get me out legally. I can’t be the only one he’s come after. There’s no telling who else is in there.”

“Do you have any idea what could happen to you in there?”

“Jon –”

~*~*~*~*~

Jennifer opened her eyes.

There was a dark, stone ceiling above her.

Wait -- wasn’t she just outside?

At the landing pad?

She struggled to sit up… she was in a dark cell. It was a barren, dank room with a small window at the top of the door to let in light. There was a smell of mold, decay and sickness in the air. Sounds echoed around her, sounds she couldn’t completely make out.

What was that saying that Hawk said sometimes? She didn’t think she was in Kansas anymore.

She quickly checked under the sleeve of her uniform – her power suit was still there. Either no one had discovered it or didn’t know what it was and had left it alone.

How did she get in the cell?

Rogers must have used a stun blast on them to knock them out. There was no way Jon or the others would have let Rogers take her if they were conscious.

So if she was in a cell, then where were the guys?

CHAPTER FOUR – Into The Lion’s Den

The team was prepared to physically chain Jon to the ship if he tried to break into the prison. They had to play this smart. Rogers had a piece of paper that theoretically allowed him to take Jennifer, but the loopholes were on their side, not Rogers’.

One moment, they had been ready to launch themselves at Rogers; the next, they were waking up on the ground with no Rogers, no guards and no Jennifer in sight. They’d been stunned and left unconscious, only to be awakened by a very sycophantic, worried Mayor Ibold.

Jon was beyond angry.

This wasn’t the Jonathan Power that would revere human life no matter the person, no matter the risk. No, this was the Jonathan Power that would destroy anything between him and his kidnapped wife, and not even Dread himself would have been brave enough to stand in Jon’s way when he was like that.

“I don’t know what to say,” Ibold repeated as he watched Jon slowly pace the length of the jumpship.

“How about how Rogers didn’t want us at the feast?” Hawk demanded. “How about how all you mayors ganged up on him for the first time and told him to sit down and shut up and not say one word about Jennifer? How about how you were more than willing to turn him loose on us without any warning? How about how you stood back while one of our team was kidnapped? And while we’re at it, how about how all of you are involved with what Rogers is doing?”

“No, no, no, you don’t understand,” Ibold protested. “ Rogers is the authority here. He’s like the Committee’s right hand in New Chicago. We can only do so much without his approval or sanction or we’d end up like the inmates. He’d use us for the hunt. We hate what he’s doing, but we can’t stop him. I knew that if you came to the feast at my invitation, then the people could see that I had more powerful connections than Rogers did, and we could stand up to him, maybe stop him. He’d be the one who would be afraid to retaliate. I had no idea that Corporal Chase was a member of the Dread Youth.”

Tank grabbed Ibold by the shirt and lifted him a foot off the ground. “She was Resistance.”

“But she had been a member of the Dread Youth. That’s all Rogers needed to get an arrest warrant from the Committee.”

“Committee?” Jon charged Ibold, grabbed him away from Tank and shoved him against the hull of the jumpship. “What the hell is this Committee? The Council covers civilian law and does NOT have the authority to issue arrest warrants of soldiers. All Dread soldiers were categorized as soldiers regardless of their positions in the Dread Youth and are under Command authority until their culpability in the war is determined. That was agreed on between the Council and Command. Who gave Rogers a signed arrest warrant so he could kidnap my wife?”

Ibold was terrified. He was almost too scared to breathe. He stared at Jon in disbelief. “Wife? I didn’t know she was your wife. Last I heard, the Committee ruled that the Dread Youth couldn’t marry –”

“What?”

Ibold took a quick breath. “The Committee has suspended all rights for the Dread Youth. They can’t marry, can’t observe special days, aren’t recognized as legally independent entities –”

“And all of you just go right along with it?” Jon asked him, his voice edged with anger. “You’re committing crimes against people who had no idea what the truth was, and you have the gall to tell me that my wife isn’t married to me?”

“Captain, I’m only a mayor, and I have to follow the rules being set up by the new governments… I didn’t know she was your wife. Honest.”

“Tell us what you know about this Committee.”

“It’s Command and Council personnel,” Ibold’s voice was very shaky. “No one knew who had jurisdiction over certain individuals, plus the Council and Command kept stepping on each other’s toes, so the Committee was created to oversee all new laws.  Rogers said that they outrank the Council and Command when it comes to dealing with the Dread Youth. They keep the Committee quiet --”

Jon threw Ibold to the ground. “Quiet? That means the Committee isn’t an official government organization. It’s covert. That’s why we haven’t heard anything about it before now. Scout, track any communications out of here in the last fifteen hours. Find out who Rogers talked to. Then contact Elzer. See if he’s delivered the information we sent yet. Tell him the problem might be in the government itself and to go directly to General Grey if he hasn’t already. Ibold,” Jon’s almost murderous gaze dared Ibold to try to run, “I want to know two things. Where would Rogers keep Jennifer and how exactly does the hunt work?”

Ibold was shaking in fear, his voice trembling. “The hunt is just that. It’s a hunt. A Dread soldier is let loose somewhere out in the wilderness. Sometimes two or three at a time. Then Resistance soldiers are sent after them to hunt them down.”

Tank loomed over Ibold. “And?”

“And they catch them and kill them, usually. It’s a hunt,” Ibold’s voice kept breaking.

“Usually?” Hawk asked.

“Look, I don’t know exactly what goes on out there. I don’t know for certain what they do with the prisoners once they catch them. From what we’ve heard, most times, they just shoot them down as they run, but I’ve heard stories about others. Like there are some they don’t kill. Some put up such a good fight, they’re kept alive for whatever reason.”

“Alive?” Tank asked. “Why?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you? The Dread Youth are slave labor. They’re put to work doing anything that needs doing – or anything Rogers’ people wants doing. The Committee said they don’t have rights, they don’t have any standing, and they can be used to rebuild the world they tried to destroy. They’re put to work doing various tasks. They’ll work the farms and in the factories, some are domestic help, but from what I hear, the ones they put on the hunt, they’d rather be killed than be captured alive again. I think a lot of them force the soldiers to kill them on the hunt rather than live another day. I don’t know exactly why.”

“And Jennifer? Where’s she?” Jon asked again.

“As far as I know, he houses all new captures in the prison in solitary confinement, Captain. Then they’re checked out at the local hospital and determined if they’re suitable for the hunt or for manual labor. The ones he loans out to the towns to do the work are housed in the cells on the east side. That’s where the entry way is, so it’s more convenient to move them in and out. Some of the high profile prisoners or the ones who give him trouble are kept in the lower sections for specialized punishment or re-conditioning. The ones for the hunt… I don’t know exactly where he keeps them.”

“High profile?” Hawk asked. “Jennifer Chase is a member of this team. We led the final attack against Dread. She’s one of the leaders of the Resistance. How much more high-profile can you get?”

“What do you mean by specialized punishment and re-conditioning?” Jon’s voice was flat, almost deadly in tone and inflection.

Ibold swallowed. “Some of the overunits and youth leaders are hard believers. Nothing has stopped them from thinking that the Machine is superior and that organics must be destroyed. Rogers has no use for those because he can’t get any work out of them and they refuse to listen to reason. They won’t run on the hunt either. I heard he sends them to the lower sections. A few days down there, and they’re more than willing to run on the hunt. I hear it’s bad there.”

Scout was ready to toss Ibold through the bulkhead. “And?”

“And what?” Ibold almost cried. “I don’t know what happens down there, but I do know we don’t ever see those soldiers again either.”

That was enough. Jon was losing the tenuous control on his temper. “You’re thinking that Jennifer is there. Where exactly are the lower sections?” Jon asked.

“I don’t know,” Ibold answered.

Tank reached down to grab Ibold, but he scooted back. “I don’t know! I’ve never been to the lower sections. I’ve heard it’s like a dungeon. It’s dark and damp and a lot of them die pretty quick from starvation or sickness or exposure. There have been reported suicides. Even if she is down there, Rogers can’t let anything happen to Chase, don’t you understand? She’s too well-known.”

“He got a warrant,” Hawk reminded him. “Even if he had to write in her name himself, someone doesn’t think she’s too famous to keep from being kidnapped by a power-hungry –”

“Got it,” Scout interrupted. “The warrant was requested by Rogers’ immediate superior, a Colonel Ted Travis.”

“A colonel? He’d be under Command’s authority,” Jon thought out loud. “He’d have to go through the channels to request a warrant, then Command would have to request it from the Committee, right?”

“That’s how it’s supposed to work given what we know about how Command works, but the warrant came from the Committee with absolutely no mention of Command,” Scout told him. “Maybe they can’t have warrants falling under two jurisdictions? But why not go to Command in the first place?”

“Maybe because it’s Jennifer? She’s a former Dread Youth, a member of this team and we’re not regular military. They don’t know if she would be considered a Dread soldier, a Resistance soldier or a civilian. Plus, she’s too high profile for her arrest to be left to chance. They’re covering their bases?” Jon thought aloud, trying to think of multiple scenarios. Maybe that was the first good loophole they had. “Tell Elzer what’s happened. Let’s see if he can find out who Travis is in league with. As for you,” he grabbed Ibold and jerked him to his feet, “you are going to help me get my wife back, safe and sound, and if she’s hurt in any way, I will take it out of your hide. Understand?”

Ibold understood completely. “What do you need?”

“Easy. You and the other mayors are going to supply details of Rogers’ work. You’re going to denounce him, and then you’re going to do everything in your power to capture, arrest and put Rogers on trial. My wife is inside that prison, doing her job and I’ve got to let her, but we’re getting her out of there as soon as possible.”

 ~*~*~*~*~

Minutes passed slowly.

Jennifer tried to pass the time by counting the sound of slowly dripping water as each drop hit the ground somewhere. She soon tired of that.

Then, she mentally performed mathematical equations. After she tired of that, she imagined how she was going to re-task the holographic system on the jumpship. Then she thought about several books she wanted to read and considered how to get long-range communications set up between New York and Peru with the existing technology. Jon’s birthday was in a few months and she had no idea what to get him. All she could do was keep her mind occupied while she waited for something to happen.

Something had to happen soon, right?

One trick they taught the Dread Youth was how to gauge the passage of time without any type of timepiece. It was what they called an interior chronometer. Jennifer had once thought it somewhat useful, but over the years, she’d found that she was fairly accurate in her time-keeping guesses. She believed that maybe five hours had passed since she was at the jumpship. No one had come by with food or water. No one had spoken to her. For a while, the noises had stopped and everything was quiet. Later, she could hear other voices, perhaps other prisoners. Maybe she could find out where she was exactly.

She grabbed the bottom part of the small window in the door and hoisted herself up. She could see other doors, other windows, but now she could hear the murmuring a little more distinctly.

“They won’t talk to you,” a frail voice behind her said.

She dropped down and looked in the darkness. She thought she was alone. There had been no movement, no sound other than her.

“Who are you?” she asked, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she felt.

“Youth Leader Terese Vincent,” was the answer.

Jennifer could almost make out the form of the young woman as she dragged herself closer to the door. She was weak, emaciated, her hair shorn and her clothes hung on her thin limbs. “How long have you been here?”

She answered with a raspy breath, “Weeks, I think. They put us here to die after we’re captured if they don’t use us for the hunt or work.”

Die? Jennifer wasn’t ready to go down that road again. Not yet. “They can’t do that. All the overunits and youth leaders are to be given trials.”

Terese didn’t have the strength to scoff or smile. “You believed that? They’re liars. No trials for us. They just toss us in here and leave us if we don’t run. When we die, we’ll be tossed in unmarked graves.”

“ Rogers can’t get away with that,” Jennifer muttered.

“ Rogers? He’s at the New Chicago prison. Not here. Can’t stop him from doing anything.”

That didn’t sound good. “Where’s here?” Jennifer asked.

“Facility 7. They call this place the Lower Sections.”

Facility 7 had been a Dread prison outside what used to be Indianapolis that the Resistance had liberated at the end of the war.  It was almost 200 miles away from Chicago.

It also meant the others thought she was in New Chicago, not Indianapolis.

They had no idea where she was.

Now what was she going to do?

CHAPTER FIVE – The Chase Is On

Get her out legally.

That’s what Jennifer wanted. That’s what Jon was going to do.

That’s what Hawk hoped Jon would do.

It had been six hours since Jennifer had been out of their sight, and every minute ticked by more slowly than the previous one.

They had to legally prove that Rogers was committing criminal acts, and Jennifer going inside the prison while they got the information together ‘safe’ outside of the prison was the way to do it. They didn’t like it, they didn’t want it, and given the opportunity, they were going to go ballistic. The perceived calm at the jumpship was only a façade, but it was one they had to keep up for just a little while longer.

At that moment, all they could do was wait and hope Jon didn’t fire every weapon they had into the prison walls to rescue Jennifer. They got her out of Volcania after she’d been reintegrated, so the New Chicago prison wouldn’t pose a problem.

What Ibold had told them, or rather, what he hadn’t explicitly told them -- what they were all silently thinking – they were scared. Hawk knew Jon was terrified, more so than he’d been when they had learned Jennifer was alive and being held prisoner by Dread.

Volcania… Hawk didn’t like thinking of those months before the rescue. Jon had been an empty shell then, his purpose only to destroy anything and everything connected to Dread. Emotionless, all his feelings bottled up because his feelings for Jennifer ripped him apart inside if he let them loose, focused yet wavering, they almost lost him as an effective leader during that time. He left the ideals he’d kept such a tight hold of behind. He still believed in the preservation of a human life, but he was finished walking the high road when it came to Dread. He waged an all-out war against anything of the Machine. Biomechs, facilities, labs, personnel carriers – he was on a mission to destroy every bit of it. Then, when the news from another resistance group came that Jennifer was alive but imprisoned in Volcania, the real Jonathan Power came roaring back into the shell that had worked beside them for those months. Focused, unwavering -- Captain Power was back, and nothing was going to stop him from getting to Jennifer and getting her out of there. Dread and Volcania learned all too well what the wrath of Jonathan Power was like. It took months for Dread to rebuild.

Why didn’t the bad guys understand that if they tried to take Jennifer away from Jon, they wouldn’t see another sunrise? Yes, Jon held human life at a premium, but he held his wife’s life much more dearly. He wouldn’t let anyone take her from him without swift retribution.

“Anything yet?” Hawk asked.

Scout was listening to the comm, waiting for Elzer to answer. “Not yet. I don’t like this. How’s the captain?”

Hawk glanced outside the ship. Jon was leaning against the bulkhead, waiting for Tank and Ibold to come back. Tank would make certain that Ibold did exactly what he’d been told to do – find out exactly where Jennifer was in the prison along with the details to go after Rogers with – and bring him back without ripping his head off.  “We’d better find out what’s going on fast. Jon’s not going to be patient much longer.”

“I can’t believe he’s been this patient this long. He’s starting to act the same way he did when Dread had Jennifer.”

Hawk nodded his head. “I hate that we’re just sitting here waiting,” he muttered. “She’s not safe in there.”

Scout stared at the comm, willing it to respond. “No one’s safe in there, but Rogers can’t be stupid enough to let anything happen to her.”

“Stupidity isn’t his problem,” Hawk said. “He’s arrogant. He doesn’t think anyone can touch him. If he were to find out that we came here on a fact finding mission --”

“Don’t say it,” Scout warned him. “Don’t even think it. We’re getting her out of there as soon as we can, and with what all five of us have found out, we’ll put Rogers away for good.”

The comm pinged. Scout wrote out the answer quickly. “It’s Elzer. He talked to Grey and got his help. His informant found out that Colonel Ted Travis contacted his former CO who retired from the military, is now on the Committee, and asked for a warrant on an unnamed youth leader. He said to leave the name blank. It looks like they’ve been doing that a lot lately because so many of the Dread Youth are still hiding. They just get blank warrants for anyone they think might be Dread Youth. This particular one was asked for special because Rogers and the mayors were all mentioned as being involved.”

“Which won’t stand up in court,” Hawk said.

“I don’t think they’re worried about a court,” Scout muttered as he looked over the incoming data. “It’s not just Rogers doing this either. It’s almost like… Hawk, you need to look at this.”

Hawk moved behind Scout and read the information on the monitor. “People asking for blank warrants and using Dread Youth names more than once… Command personnel, Council personnel, these are people in the Passages, wait … this is a widespread conspiracy, not just limited to Rogers. Some of these names… people from all over are requesting arrest warrants from the Committee for Dread Youth. Unbelievable.”

Scout opened a computer file. “Accessing the names on the warrants…. According to the data we’ve got, most of these individuals are still alive at the moment. They’re on work crews and working in factories and houses, some in prisons --”

“Wait – most are still alive?” Hawk asked.

“Most. Others are listed as dead from various causes, but we can’t trust this. We already know that the same name is used to identify several people. Hawk, they want to destroy the Dread Youth, and they’re using the legal system to do it,” Scout said. “I just can’t see Council or Command going along with this.”

“They may not know it’s going on. They may think the warrants are legitimate,” Hawk suggested. “Then again, the paperwork may be completely wrong and Command and Council aren’t involved at all.”

“The question is how is the rest of this scam working and where are the bodies. Do you want to tell the captain or you want me to do it?”

One thing was certain; Jon was not going to like this.

“Hang on…” Scout listened to the message. “Elzer is coming here. He’s bringing some representatives from the Council and Command. Turns out they didn’t know this was going on either.”

“How soon?”

“Within the hour. They’re flying here.”

~*~*~*~*~

“We don’t have a choice,” Ibold told the rest of the mayors, noting that Tank was standing against the wall staring at them. “We have to move against Rogers now.”

“It would be suicide,” Redding told him.

Ibold would hear no dissension. “Power is willing to take the risk to rescue his wife.”

“Wife?” Tompkins exclaimed. “What wife? Wait, Chase is his wife?”

“Apparently. I was surprised too. I thought Dread Youth weren’t allowed to marry,” Ibold told them. “We have to move now. We’ve all got information we’ve been hoarding in case we needed to use it against Rogers. The time’s come.”

Benson shook his head. “And do what with it? Hand it over to Power? We won’t have jobs when they’re through with us!”

Ibold walked over to Benson and said in a low voice, “Right now, Power is more worried about getting his wife back alive. Our jobs pale in comparison as far as he’s concerned. Now I know he holds human life at a premium. He’s famous for it, but the man that was threatening me wasn’t a captain in the Resistance. It was a scared husband who’s going to seriously hurt anyone who harms his wife.”

“Enough,” Dunstan held up a quieting hand. “We get our notes and any proof we have. We give it to Power. We throw ourselves on the mercy of the Council. They may turn everything over to the Committee, and they have no jurisdiction over us. I hope.”

“Think it’ll matter?” Tompkins asked.

“We’ll see,” Ibold told him. “Now, how do you access the lower sections?”

Benson looked a little more worried than the others. “Why do you want to know?”

“There’s a good chance Chase might be there since she’s a high profile prisoner, and Power wants to get her out. Why?”

“Ibold, the Lower Sections aren’t a part of the New Chicago Prison. It’s what the Committee calls the dungeons of Facility 7. If Rogers transported Chase there, she won’t last long. If she doesn’t get sick, then they’ll either starve her or put her on the hunt. And then she’s going to wish she were dead.”

~*~*~*~*~

Jennifer’s cellmate wasn’t one for small talk, but that didn’t stop Jennifer from trying to get as much information as possible. “What happens if they catch someone during the hunt?”

“They kill them,” Terese said flatly.

“How?”

Terese coughed. “Any way they want. Take as long as they want. One overunit lasted three days when they caught him and tortured him. He just wouldn’t die. Some they shoot. I heard someone was killed with a bow and arrow.”

“And the bodies?”

Terese shook her head slightly. “Buried out there. Somewhere. I heard some were thrown near a stream. What animals are left go there to drink, so there wouldn’t be any reason to think the bodies would be left alone.”

The stream? Jennifer tried to think about the layout of the area in and around Facility 7. This wasn’t a location they came to often during the war, but there had been a few times… a stream… within running distance. Perhaps within a few hours of Facility 7… northwest. That’s where the nearest body of water she could think of was. It was a gamble, but if she was chosen for the hunt, she needed a direction to go. She had to make sure she did whatever she needed to do to get chosen for the hunt. She had to get out of there so she could find a way to contact the team.

“Are there any survivors?” Jennifer hoped that someone had escaped.

“A few. They get put to work doing other things.”

Jennifer didn’t like the sound of that. “What kind of other things.”

Terese stared at her for a long while. Then, she finally said, “They consider us their slaves. There’s an overunit forced to cook the warden’s meals. Some are on clean-up duty and laundry. A few drag away the dead bodies after prisoners die in here. A group maintains the ships and transports. Some have it worse.”

Worse. Jennifer didn’t want to know what worse was. She was scared to ask that question because she was sure she already knew the answer. “Have they hunted you?” she asked Terese.

“Most of us refused to be on the hunt,” was the answer. “They put us here to die.”

“Why?”

“We are of the Machine. We serve the Machine,” Terese told her. “We do not insult ourselves by consorting with traitors to the Machine. Those who show weakness are chosen for the hunt. Those who are even weaker return to do what the enemy commands. I am not weak.”

Part of a litany, remade for her current situation.

Jennifer hated the litanies.

“Why leave you here to die? Why not just kill you?”

Terese coughed again, weakly. “No sport in it for them that way. This way, they think they can watch us suffer. Lord Dread was too lenient with those who opposed him. Had he not been so merciful, we would not be here now.”

Questioning Dread? Jennifer didn’t say anything to that. It wouldn’t do any good, not at that moment.

“How do they choose people for the hunt?”

Terese took a ragged breath. Jennifer couldn’t see her clearly, but she could sense that her cellmate wouldn’t last much longer in the dank darkness. There was a rattle when she breathed. “Overunits and youth leaders are preferred for specialized hunts. Others are chosen for other types of hunts.”

Overunits and youth leaders preferred. Jennifer tried to think it through – why the leadership?  “Specialized hunts? What are they?”

“We’re taught to survive in the wilderness for long periods of time. Foot soldiers aren’t. They’ll put the three or four foot soldiers on the hunt at the same time. Us, they hunt individually. We’re more of a challenge for them.”

A challenge? Jennifer realized that the hunt was more than a means for revenge. It was a training exercise as well.

Terese seemed to disappear into the dark and became quiet again. Maybe she fell asleep – or even unconscious. Jennifer wasn’t sure. She felt alone.

Again, she tried to find something to occupy her mind until there was a chance to get out of her cell. She needed to get the information to Jon and the others, get it to the Council and Command. They had to put a stop to the killing and the enslavement. She counted drops of dripping water… listened to the echoes… she heard a noise. Someone somewhere had opened a door. She heard multiple footsteps walking, then stopping before her cell door. There was the sound of metal grinding on metal and the cell door opened. Four soldiers stood there, a fifth standing by the far wall of the corridor holding a reader. The soldiers leered at her, making her feel very uncomfortable.

Now she knew what the worse situation was for some of the survivors.

One of the soldiers looked back at another and said, “Not a bad looking one this time. Hasn’t been in prison long.”

“No. Bet she’ll give us some sport before we’re finished with her.”

Jennifer didn’t like the way they smirked and grinned and studied her. She schooled her features, didn’t let any emotion show. She had to get out of there.

The man with the reader stepped forward. “Overunit Élan Parsons. You have been chosen for the hunt.”

Jennifer didn’t move. Who was Élan Parsons?

One of the guards that had spoken moments earlier walked in, grabbed Jennifer and hauled her to her feet. “Stand up when you’re spoken to.” He jerked her arm behind her back, yanking her against him. He put his gun under her chin. She could hear him sniffing her. “Yeah, you’ll give us a lot of sport.”

She showed no fear. She just glared at the man with the reader with hate in her eyes. She couldn’t fight back – not yet – although she’d take a great deal of pleasure of knocking these guards on their backsides. She just had to keep calm a little longer.

“Élan Parsons,” the man with the reader repeated.

She knew she had to put on a good show, force them to think that she was somewhat meek or mild, but she knew it would seem strange to them if she did nothing. “I’m not Élan Parsons,” she protested.

The man who read her name off the reader walked in and punched her hard across the face, knocking her to the floor. For a moment, she saw stars.

The soldier grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. “Dread scum will not speak unless permission is granted.”

Again, the man with the reader spoke. “The rules are simple. You will have a two-hour head start. At the end of that time, these soldiers will hunt you down.”

“Seems a shame,” another guard said and he walked in and grabbed Jennifer’s chin, forcing her to look at him. “This one is pretty enough. Looks healthy. Why put her on the hunt at all? She’d be more useful in other… areas.” The man leaned down, his face very close to hers. “Another overunit, huh? Got acquainted with a few of you already.”

Jennifer didn’t say a word. She only stared at the man with utter contempt.

Their superior seemed to consider the option. “Some of those areas could use a new supply. However, this one is to be hunted first. Those are the Committee’s orders,” their superior said. “You four have shown some deficiencies in tracking and subduing your target in a timely manner. If you decide she’s worth keeping alive after you’ve caught her, then you can put her to work in those other areas. Otherwise, kill her when you’re done.” He looked at the guards. “Take her outside.”

As they pushed and shoved Jennifer toward the outer door, she realized how easy it was to make so many disappear. She wondered how many other Élan Parsons had been killed already so the paperwork looked good.

Then she wondered how many others weren’t killed at all but only wished they were dead.

~*~*~*~*~

Six and a half hours.

Jon wasn’t going to be able to be patient much longer.

“Captain!” Tank’s voice came over the radio.

Jon rushed back into the jumpship. “Tank, have you got it?”

“The Lower Sections are not here in New Chicago. It’s at Facility 7. If that’s where Rogers sent Pilot, then she’s near Indianapolis.”

“ Indianapolis?” Scout repeated. “How?”

“High Security Transport with a holographic cloaking device so we wouldn’t notice anything moving,” Jon muttered. “Facility 7 is the size of a small city. We’ve got to find out exactly where Jennifer is. How do we do that?”

“I say we find out from Rogers,” Tank’s voice said. “I’ll get it out of him myself.”

Jon paced for a moment. Jennifer was high profile. High profile prisoners were sent to the Lower Sections. The Lower Sections were in Indianapolis. Jennifer was willing to go into the prison to find out what she could while Jon and the rest of the team could work the problem from a legal angle.

Jon was going to do what Jennifer wanted. She wanted to protect the innocents who had not done anything wrong; Jon was going to do that.

Jon was never going to let Jennifer out of his sight again.

“Tank, get the mayors. Bring them to Rogers’ office with every bit of evidence they’ve got. Scout, contact Elzer, and have him bring the representatives there as well. We meet there in half an hour.”

“We’ll be there,” Tank said.

Jon hurried out of the jumpship, Hawk close on his heels.

“We’re getting her back, Jon,” Hawk told him once they were outside. “We’re not losing her again.”

“Can’t lose her,” Jon muttered. “I can’t lose her, Matt.”

“Look, if she is here in New Chicago, we get her out. If she’s in Indianapolis, we fly there and get her out. I have no problems with a jailbreak. I know you’re scared, Jon, and from what we’ve found out, you’ve got reason to be. But you’ve got to remember that Jennifer doesn’t back down to anyone, and a power-hungry grunt like Rogers is someone she’d take down, no matter what. She’s a fighter. Nothing’s changed that.”

“What if she’s been chosen for the hunt and it’s already started?”

Hawk thought for a moment. “Then she’ll run. She’s better out there in the wilderness than any of us. She knows how to survive, and she knows how to escape. She’ll find out more for us to use against Rogers and his group.”

Jon glanced up at the blue sky. Blue sky, white clouds… the pollution Dread pumped into the atmosphere was dissipating more and more each day. It’d take years for it to be gone completely, but to see blue sky again…

He’d have the brownish/gray skies back if it meant having Jennifer with him safe and unharmed. Rogers may have killed dozens, maybe hundreds, and now his wife could be running for her life while he was there doing nothing?

No, Jon was not going to think that. Jennifer was fine. She was alive, well and fighting.

He’d find her, and Rogers was going to pay.

~*~*~*~*~

Jennifer ran.

When they dragged her out of the facility, she saw several paths in front of her. She remembered an old story about people being able to choose two paths, one was well used, and the other wasn’t. Most hadn’t returned from their journey. The traveler decided to take the road less traveled since, if most hadn’t returned, then it would stand to reason they had taken the road most traveled. She immediately ran down an overgrown path that led directly into the wilderness.

When she had escaped the Dread Youth and took off into the wilderness, she had no food, no water and no survival gear. This time, she had her power suit and four men who would walk through fire for her to rescue her. Back then, she was on her own and was eventually chased by biomechs before the team found her. This time, she was going to be chased by trigger-happy killers who had more than just murder on their minds.

She had to find that stream. She had to find the bodies. She needed the find the proof to get the bad guys.

So Jennifer ran.

~*~*~*~*~

Seven hours.

Jon stood impatiently in Rogers’ office as the mayors testified to the Command and Council representatives about Rogers’ actions since becoming the warden of New Chicago prison. Papers, names, recorded conversations, the workers’ assignments – they had amassed quite a large amount of information.

General Nathan Grey, retired from the United Transport Organization, led the Command representatives. Jon watched him carefully. After Jennifer escaped from the Dread Youth and joined the team, she spent some time working with the UTO. They were short of experienced pilots, so she volunteered to help train new ones. She and General Grey had formed an odd sort of association. Jennifer wasn’t impressed by the fact he was a general, he wasn’t affected by the fact she had been Dread Youth. The two of them took each other for who they were, and when he needed a good pilot, he called on Jennifer for a mission. If the team needed someone high up in the Resistance for whatever reason, she called on Grey. How ever their relationship was structured, it worked. They had forged a rather interesting friendship over the years. At that moment, General Grey looked like he was ready to bite bullets in two.

When Mayor Ibold finished giving his testimony, Grey leaned over and whispered something to Council representative Tom Wallace. Both looked more angry and confused.

Hawk whispered, “Any idea what they’re thinking?”

“Not yet,” Jon answered. “But they better think fast. It’s been seven hours.”

Grey took another look at the evidence in front of him. “Mayor Ibold, is it your testimony that Major Rogers has not only used the Dread Youth prisoners but the detainees but also as slave labor and that some of the people placed in his custody have been hunted by Resistance forces -- to death or worse?”

“Yes, sir,” Ibold answered.

“And not one of you mayors did anything about it?”

“There wasn’t anything we could do, sir,” Ibold explained. “If we put up any resistance, we’d be arrested and put on the hunt as well.”

Grey nodded his head. “So instead of banding together, contacting Command and Council, telling us exactly what was going on as you have been forced to do by Captain Power, you weasels basically hid your heads in the sand and looked the other way.”

“Uh,” Ibold didn’t know exactly what to say. “It’s not quite that way –”

“It’s exactly that way,” Grey argued. He turned to Rogers. “Now for Corporal Jennifer Chase. Where is she?”

“Youth Leader Jennifer Chase has been arrested as per directive –”

“Do NOT quote Committee directives to me again, Major,” the general ordered. “I asked where she is. I want to know her exact location at this very moment.”

“I don’t know where she is at this very moment,” Rogers said.

“What?” Jon was ready to throttle Rogers. “You’re the one who kidnapped her.”

“On the contrary, Captain,” Rogers brought out the warrant. “I had every legal right to take a Dread Youth who had not surrendered to Resistance forces into custody.”

“By a Committee’s warrant?” Grey asked. “The Committee was only created to help the Council and Command deal with the various legal issues created on a daily basis by the cross-purposes of the civilian and military concerns. The Committee does not have any legal standing to issue warrants. Mister Pulaski,” Grey looked around at the very quiet Elzer, “how many warrants has the Committee illegally issued?”

Elzer brought up information on a reader. “Total warrants issued in the five months since Rogers took over as warden of the prison… 5,127. Since the Committee doesn’t have the any authority to issue warrants for anyone, then I’d say they’re all illegal.”

“5,127?” Grey asked, his voice betraying his surprise. “Were these warrants all issued to Rogers?”

“No, sir. To various personnel all over the continent.”

“Wait -- did you say continent?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Unbelievable. And what about this hunt? How many have had to suffer through that?” Grey asked.

Elzer looked at more data. “Only a small percentage. Maybe less than 8% of the total. Most are used for slave labor.”

“Wait…” Grey took out a reader and quickly jotted down the numbers. “8% of 5,127 is 410. Are you saying that over 400 individuals have been hunted down and murdered by them?”

“At least, sir,” Elzer affirmed.

“And these are just the numbers from the ones caught with warrants? What about all those captured after the final attack and incarcerated?”

Elzer shook his head. “We don’t have the numbers on that, sir. I wouldn’t doubt that since thousands of former Dread soldiers were captured before the Council urged the remaining ones to surrender that some of them were put on the hunt as well. But there is one more thing, sir. I don’t think those numbers are entirely accurate.”

“Explain.”

“The names of the Dread soldiers have been duplicated several times in the paperwork. It looks like several people have all been recorded under the same name, so the numbers on the hunt could be greater than 8%.”

Grey closed his eyes for a moment. Then, he looked at Elzer. “This fact didn’t alert anyone reading the reports?”

“Sir,” Elzer explained, “I was speaking with Captain Power just before we walked in. Very few would have been alerted to that particular fact because the fact that no Dread Youth has the same name as any other is not common knowledge.”

“Continent wide, you said?”

“Yes, sir.”

Grey sat back and glanced at Jon. “This has been going on right under our noses and no one knew. And we thought Dread was a monster.” Then he stared at Rogers. “Where is Jennifer Chase? And do not tell me you don’t know. You’re the one who orchestrated a Resistance leader’s kidnapping. If you are interested in any chance of escaping capital punishment, you’d better answer.”

“General, respectfully, I only asked for the warrant. Youth Leader Chase –”

“Corporal Jennifer Chase,” Grey corrected him. “She was a leader in the Resistance and a corporal on Captain Power’s team. You will remember that fact.”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers agreed. “As per my orders by the Committee, she was turned over to the Prison Commission’s transport team for relocation. Due to the high-profile nature of her position, they believed it prudent to remove her from any venue that would attract any public attention.”

He stopped talking.

Jon knew Rogers was answering the questions, but he wasn’t answering fully. He looked back at Grey. “He’s lying,” Jon said, hoping Grey would pick up on the hint.

“I’m aware of that, Captain. That’s perjury, another crime that Rogers will be tried for.”

“I am not lying, General,” Rogers protested. “All I have said is the complete truth.”

Grey stood up and towered over Rogers. “Where. Is. Jennifer. Chase? Where did you send her?”

“I’m certain the Prison Commission would have those records.”

Grey just shook his head. “He’s all yours, Jon.”

Jon didn’t waste any time. He charged across the room, grabbed Rogers and threw him against the wall. “Where is my wife?”

Rogers tried to wrestle Jon’s hands off his jacket. That one statement got Rogers’ attention. “Wife? She can’t be your wife. Dread Youth can’t marry. It’s not—”

Jon’s arm immediately went across Rogers’ throat and he pressed down hard. “Where is my wife? Location. Now.”

It took long moments before Rogers realized that Jon was not going to let him live if he didn’t answer. He wasn’t dealing with Captain Jonathan Power at that moment. He was in the grip of Jonathan Power, Jennifer Chase’s husband. Since everything he did was legal, he could answer completely. He’d get even with Power for this indignity later, and maybe have some fun watching the good captain suffer. He pushed Jon’s arm away slightly. In a gasping, breathless voice, he said, “ Indianapolis. Facility 7. If she’s still alive.” Jon let his arm relax, allowing Rogers to breathe. The major stood almost nose-to-nose with Jon. He had utter contempt glaring from his eyes. “How could you of all people, a leader of the Resistance, marry a Dread soldier?”

If Jon thought that the question was anything other than rhetorical, he’d have slammed his fist through Rogers’ jaw. An oath to preserve life didn’t mean he wouldn’t deck someone who deserved it and it didn’t extend to monsters like Rogers. “I didn’t. I married Jennifer Chase. Hell of a woman.” He glanced at Elzer, then back at Rogers. “Made a lot of men jealous when I did. Looks like your jealousy is showing, too.”

Rogers whispered, “No jealousy, Captain, but I doubt there’ll be anything left of your wife except a grave when they get through hunting her. Pretty little thing like that with the hard cases at Facility 7? The fact she’s Dread scum won’t mean much of anything to the soldiers there.”

Jon dropped him and looked back at Grey. “Is that all you needed for a confirmation?”

“Yeah. He’s ours now. You go get our girl, Jon. Make sure she’s all right. We’ll take care of Rogers and this bunch.”

Just as they were about to rush out of the room, Jon turned back and shouted, “Take care of the Committee too.”

~*~*~*~*~

Shots fired!

Jennifer had turned north in her rushed flight from the prison. She had to find that stream Terese had mentioned.

Another shot flew past her head, another hit her hair, She saw strands of it scatter and fall. She reached up – a huge chunk of her hair was blasted off. They were too close!

Her two-hour head start had been a bluff. Almost ten minutes after she took off, she knew they were flanking her position. Good thing she knew more about surviving in the wilderness than they did.

She had to find that stream, but first, she had to outdistance her pursuers.

Or, better yet, stop them altogether.

She turned northwest, running as fast as she could, her uniform catching on every briar and limb as she ran past. They were trying to run her to ground, trying to get ahead of her, boxing her in some way. It was an old tactic, but they knew the terrain and she didn’t. Knowing what they were doing didn’t give her the advantage.

What were the rules if being chased? Never run in a straight line. Zig-zag when possible. Put obstacles between you and your pursuers. Try to reach rocky ground so you don’t leave a trail. Every single way to avoid capture ran through her head as she ran.

She was on her own. Even if the others knew where she was, there was no guarantee they would find her before her pursuers did. She had to run as if there was no chance of rescue from any quarter. That could improve her odds of survival. 

If she could stay out of their sight until nightfall, she could cover more ground in the darkness. They wouldn’t be able to track her.

It was a battle of wits. Hopefully, she had them outgunned.

~*~*~*~*~

“Home in on her suit,” Jon ordered Tank as Hawk flew the jumpship toward Indianapolis.

“It’s not activated,” Tank told him. “I’m triangulating the activators’ signals now. It will take a few minutes. I can tell you this – she’s on the move.”

“Dammit!” Hawk exclaimed. “They’ve got her on the hunt already.”

“They didn’t waste any time,” Scout added. “She’ll give them a run for their money, but why hasn’t she activated her suit?”

“Buying us time to get there,” Jon told them. “Remember, they hide people under fake names. Whoever is in charge there may not know who she is. The moment she powers on her suit, they’ll know she’s a member of this team. They’ll kill her rather than risk having her report their actions to anyone. She has to be playing their game by their rules for now to get what she can on them.” That excuse sounded weak to Jon’s ears, but he knew it could be true.

She was running. Again. Years earlier, she had ran into the wilderness to escape Dread’s forces. Now, she was running to escape Resistance forces.

Jon had to find her.

~*~*~*~*~

Jennifer wasn’t going to make it until nightfall. It had been morning when she was taken, maybe eight hours had passed since then? She wouldn’t be able to keep her pursuers off her trail.

But she heard something. It sounded like water.

It had to be the stream. She immediately changed course in her mad rush and ran toward what sounded like flowing water – and saw something sticking up out of the ground.

She looked down at what had caught her eye and realized she was looking at a bone. Quickly, almost frantically, she dug around it with her bare hands, the loose dirt revealing more bones – it was a ribcage. Wrapped around the bones were the rags of what used to be a Dread soldier uniform.

She’d found a body, but one body didn’t make a burial ground. She looked around, her breath coming in short, exhausted gasps from running so hard.

Think, think think, she told herself. New graves meant loose dirt. Recently dug up dirt would be a slightly different color than dirt that had been undisturbed for a time… spot after spot of darker dirt lay in the area. Large spots. Large enough for a person to be buried under.

She’d found graves.

“Up ahead!” she heard someone yell.

Without another though, she ran further into the wilderness, away from the stream.

~*~*~*~*~

“Got her!” Tank yelled. “She’s approximately eight miles northwest of Facility 7.”

“Eight miles? On foot?” Hawk asked as he adjusted the jumpship’s direction. “She’s doing better than I thought.”

“How long?” Jon asked

“A few minutes to get there, Jon.”

“Everybody, power up your suits,” Jon ordered. “We’ll need the skybikes.”

~*~*~*~*~

Jennifer didn’t look back; she didn’t leave the cover of the trees. She ran as fast as she could over the terrain.

She heard rather than saw the four soldiers coming after her. They’d gained ground when she had stopped to look for graves. Those were precious moments she didn’t have to spare, and she’d lost them.

She had only one true advantage left in her arsenal: her suit. She was holding off powering it up until the last possible moment. If she had –

One of the soldiers rushed out in front of her, slamming her with the butt of his gun and knocking her to the ground. She turned, kicked, slammed his knee with one foot, a little higher with the other and brought him down as he gasped in pain. Another kick to the side of his head slammed him to the ground. She quickly reached up and touched her badge. “Power on!” she said as her armor took the place of her uniform.

“Power level 60%,” the suit’s computer told her.

Not good, not terrible. She had no choice. She had to use her suit now.

She slammed her elbow into the soldier’s nose, breaking it, knocking him back down to the ground. She took off again, ignoring his yelps of pain and threats.

A shot fired behind her, catching her squarely in the back, knocking her down. She performed a tuck and roll and got back up on her feet running. She rushed toward an area where the trees thinned out. She had to gain distance.

“Power level 40%,” the computer announced again.

More shots, some hits, some misses, the hits nearly forcing her to fall down given how close they were to her. They were firing in rapid succession. They hadn’t counted on her suit. She could almost hear their confused voices. They must have realized she was on the Power Team and they were in trouble they hadn’t realized.

There was a break in the trees up ahead. She had no choice. If it was open ground, that wasn’t good. If it was something else, that might not be good. Her choices were limited.

As she approached, she realized the break was a cliff! She had been herded into a trap! She heard roaring overhead – skybikes! The team was there! She turned slightly toward the sound of the bikes, tried to run parallel to the edge as the remaining three soldiers took aim at her and fired simultaneously. Jennifer let the suit take the brunt of the attack. The combined blast sent her flying through the air and over the edge of the cliff.

“Power level 5%. Suit deactivated.”

Unarmored, she tumbled down the side, hitting every obstacle in her path. She came to rest at a level spot and didn’t move. Every muscle hurt, but the pain was slowly receding into the darkness she was falling into.

She knew that the next sounds she’d hear would be the soldiers coming down toward her to finish the job before any of her team got there. After all that, after they realized she was wearing a Power suit – they would kill her for certain. They couldn’t afford to let her live now, not for any reason. She had no strength to fight them. She was almost unconscious. Then… shots… yells… shots… footsteps… shots… yells… running footsteps…rocks sliding down the cliff side…

“Jennifer?” She felt a gentle gloved hand touch her hair. Another hand touched the side of her throat… checking her heartbeat. “Jennifer?” It was Jon.

“Wait, Captain,” Scout’s voice called, coming closer. “Don’t let her move.”

She sensed rather than heard Scout check her with the scanner. Voices were retreating, sounds were retreating, and she was starting to float… it was such a comfortable feeling…

“Jennifer?” her husband’s scared voice called to her, keeping her from floating any further.

“Nothing broken but I don’t know how after that fall,” Scout said, “and she has to be hurting. We can’t get a sky bike or the ship down here. No way to get a gurney or a basket down safely either, not with those rocks. Carrying her… we’ll have to sedate her so she doesn’t feel anything.”

Sedate. She hated to be sedated. She carefully opened her eyes. She was lying mostly on her stomach – that wasn’t a great help if she wanted to see where she was. She tried to turn over –

“Whoa!” Scout said, his hand gently touching her shoulder. “Go slow.”

She felt Jon’s hands under her shoulders, helping her entire body turn at one time. She couldn’t keep a pained groan from sounding the moment her ribs felt movement. Next, she realized she was lying on her back, her head cradled in Jon’s hand while he gently brushed the dirt off her face and out of her hair. Worry and fear were radiating from his eyes. “I found out what happens inside,” she mumbled.

Jon forced a smile. “We found out what happened outside. We told Command and Council. They’ve got Rogers. We’re going to put these people out of business.”

“They were chasing me,” she tried to explain, every breath causing her ribs to scream in pain. “Jon, there’s worse things going on that we knew about. It’s more than just a hunt.”

“I know. We’ve got the ones chasing you,” Jon explained. “They’ll end up in cells next to Rogers after they get out of the hospital.” He helped her settle herself a little more comfortably on the ground. “Did they… I mean… did they --”

“They didn’t hurt me,” Jennifer couldn’t shake her head. It hurt too much. “At least nothing serious. Nothing I can’t handle,” she told him. “But if you want to beat them up, I wouldn’t stop you.”

“Already did that,” he whispered to her.

Scout leaned over so he could talk to her. “Jennifer, there’s no way to get you out of this ravine other than carrying you. You don’t have anything broken – I don’t know how – but it’s going to hurt. I’m going to have to sedate you, okay?” He showed her a syringe he’d removed from his first aid kit. “It won’t knock you out, but you shouldn’t really feel much of anything.”

She glanced up. That was a big drop she fell down. Then there was the pain she was already in. She didn’t want to make that worse. She barely nodded her head. She felt Jon’s hand in hers as Scout injected her with the syringe. 

Within moments, she felt that floating feeling return, only this time, it was less than comforting. She also felt Jon kiss her forehead and whisper, “I’ll be as careful as I can,” just before he slowly and carefully picked her up in his arms. She didn’t really feel anything, and what she did feel, she didn’t mind.

CHAPTER SIX – Full Circle 

Jon was a patient man. Given his profession, he had to be, but waiting for a doctor to tell him that his wife was going to be fine and then not knowing when that doctor was going to tell him exactly that – which he’d better -- he was losing patience.

He told the doctor he’d wait outside the room.

He was waiting.

He was tired of waiting.

“Jon,” Hawk admonished him, “pacing is not going to hurry things up.”

“We should have taken her to the Passages,” he murmured. “How’d you talk her into coming here?”

“I didn’t. She’s the one who suggested it. She knows we need actual proof about the hospital’s involvement in all this to go along with the mayors’ testimonies,” Hawk whispered back. “Jon, those new rulings by the Committee have been mangled by local governments like Rogers’ group. It’s in the wording, and they’re interpreting them in whatever way they want. None of this is working the way Command and Council intended it to. This hospital works closely with the prison. We need more witnesses or more people to prosecute if we’re going to put a stop to this. You know Jennifer. After what happened to her, she’s ready to fight them.”

But Jennifer had been hurt. Jon hated sending her in as bait or a guinea pig. Still, Hawk was right. They had to play this out no matter how much they hated it.

Tank was standing like a silent guard beside the hospital room door. Scout stood opposite him, neither one looked patient.

“Did she tell you how they threatened her?” Jon whispered.

Hawk nodded his head. “What they’ve done, Jon… in some ways, it’s worse than a lot of what Dread did. We’re going to take them down.”

“How do you make monsters like this pay for what they’ve done? What punishment is enough?” Jon asked.

“Nothing’s enough,” Hawk told him. “I was surprised that you didn’t kill Rogers.”

“Almost did,” Jon told him. “I wanted to. He took her from me, Hawk. He physically ripped her away from me. He put her in that hellhole and I could have crushed his windpipe. It took everything I had not to.”

“Why didn’t you? No one would have stopped you. We’d have helped.”

Jon thought for a moment. He had wanted to kill Rogers then. Now, knowing what had happened to his wife, Jon wanted to do far worse. He wanted to mangle, maim and mutilate Rogers. “There has to be more to it than just a hunt,” he explained to his friend. “There has to be something worse. He’s one of the few that we know has answers. If I had killed him, we wouldn’t get those answers and how many others would suffer?”

Finally, the doctor walked out of the hospital room, an odd expression on his face. “Who’s here for this one?”

“This one? What do you mean this one?” Jon asked. “She has a name. We brought her in.”

Without looking up, the doctor pulled out a pen and was poised to write down the information. “Your name?”

“Captain Jonathan Power.”

That stunned the doctor. “Captain Power?” The way he uttered Jon’s name sounded like he was surprised to see him. “You’re THE Captain Power? The Resistance fighter? The one who led the attack on Volcania?”

“How’s Jennifer?” Let the doctor be surprised. Jon just wanted to know how she was.

The doctor seemed taken aback, but he read the notes in his hand. “Jennifer?” he mumbled, confused. “The prisoner has bruised bones especially her ribs and shoulders, pulled muscles, a slight concussion. Your medic was correct in his diagnosis. There’s no severe injury, but she’ll be in pain for a while. You can take her back to prison now if you want, she can be on several of the factory crews, but if you want her for the hunt again, you’re going to have to wait a few weeks for these injuries to heal up. Those Dread Youth can really take a beating and keep on going. It’s no wonder it was so hard to beat them during the war. So why did you bring her in here again if you were hunting her and why are you calling her Jennifer?”

Jon stared at the man. This was proof that the doctor was one of Rogers’ crowd. “What do you mean?”

“The woman you brought in. According to the records, she’s a Dread Youth we’ve already seen before, about three weeks ago was the last time. Doctor Sinclair signed off on her. She was declared fit for the hunt then, work crews before that. So why did you bring her back here instead of killing her when you caught her? Do you need her alive for some reason?”

Stay calm, Jon told himself. “What the hell are you talking about? And what do you mean why did we bring her back here? She’s never been here before. She was nearly killed by a gang of murderers. She was hurt. This is a medical facility. Why do you think we brought her here?”

The doctor took a step away from Jon. “ Easy, Captain, I didn’t mean … look, it’s just that you don’t see any Resistance fighters going out of their way to help Dread Youth, that’s all. Especially overunits like her. Since they’re all going to be executed anyway -- ARGH!”

The doctor couldn’t speak when Jon shoved him up against the wall and slammed his arm across his throat. Wanting to beat the life out of two people twice in one day was a little out of the ordinary for Jon. “She’s not Dread Youth. She’s not an Overunit. She’s one of the Resistance leaders,” Jon said. He dropped the doctor on his rear and then kicked him away. “Get out of my sight.”

He saw a nurse standing nearby watching the goings-on. In a menacing voice, he said, “I want another doctor for her. Now. Is that clear?”

The nurse just nodded her head and hurried back the way she came.

He turned to his team. “That’s one doctor who’s in on it. We’ll move on the second one if he uses a similar approach. That way, we’ll know there’s more than one doctor involved. Don’t let anyone else in here for a few minutes.” Without a look back, Jon walked into the room and saw Jennifer lying on her side on the makeshift bed. Her head was lowered, and her arm was tucked close into her stomach. Jon could hear her hitched breathing indicating the pain she had to be in. “Jennifer?”

She slowly lifted her eyes to meet his. The bruises that weren’t visible earlier were becoming more and more apparent. “He didn’t have much of a bedside manner,” she muttered.

Jon pulled the chair close to her and sat down. He didn’t know what to do. He was afraid he’d hurt her if he touched her. Taking her hand, he saw the bruises and the cuts left by her dash into the wilderness. “I’m sorry. I don’t like the idea that you had to see someone like that.”

“It’s okay,” she muttered in a pain-filled voice. “We had to start somewhere. At least we know this facility is involved with Rogers and his group even if we don’t know how many are. Can we go now?”

He noticed her torn clothes, her ripped boots, the short, burnt edges of her hair where the weapon shot hit – it was testament to how hard she tried to escape, to stay alive, to find the bodies of the other Dread Youth. If she wanted to go, they’d go. If she wanted to fly to Paris, he’d take her there. Right at that moment, he wanted her safely away from these monsters that kept crawling around every corner.

“As soon as they release you -- which will probably be soon. I might have made that doctor angry. I’ll take you to the jumpship. You can bunk out there for a while. The rest of us have a few people to question and a few statements to get before we can go back home.”

“Statements?”

“The Council and Command are back in New Chicago. Elzer got to Grey, they raised hell with them about the Committee, we got the mayors to turn on Rogers. They arrested Rogers and the soldiers at the prison. They may have arrested the mayors. We left before that happened. Oh, General Grey was the Command representative hearing the case. He wasn’t happy with what happened to you.”

Jennifer almost smiled. “He wouldn’t be. He’s the type of man who doesn’t like it when someone hurts a friend of his, especially one who can outfly him.”

Outfly? “You never told me you beat Grey.”

“A lady can have a few secrets,” she quipped lightly. “Did he hit Rogers?”

Jon shook his head. “Not while we were there. I came close to choking him.”

“Close?”

“Very close. I probably would have if we didn’t need more information from him. We found out that the doctor who just left here is in on it, but we’re going to spring a trap on the next doctor that comes in if we think that one’s involved. I’d say some people have a big problem on their hands.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice strained and wispy. There were times when Jon cursed the Dread Youth more than others. The sublimation of pain, the not acknowledging when they were hurt – how many times had he seen Jennifer ignore her own injuries for the good of the mission? He wished she could scream in pain, yell, anything that would let her channel it instead of ignoring it. Some training was more difficult to break than others.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sorry about what you went through. I should have blasted into the prison, found out you weren’t there and then raided Facility 7. I shouldn’t have waited.”

Jennifer smiled slightly. “Then we wouldn’t know what we do now. We wouldn’t know how their operation worked or where some of the bodies were buried. It had to happen the way it did or it would have been for nothing. We needed solid proof.”

“If they had caught you –”

“They didn’t,” she reminded him. “And we know more than we did before. There’s more going on than what Elzer found out. Jon, all the prisoners they have now, all the thousands still in hiding… people like Rogers are worse than Dread. At least Dread was honest in his desire to destroy people. These people are hiding behind laws and rules and legal loopholes.”

“I know, and we had no idea anything like this was happening. We know now. We can do something about it even if we can’t help the people they’ve already hurt. We can still make the guilty pay for what they’ve done.” Jon carefully swept her hair away from her face. He could see the bruise of a handprint on her cheek… someone had struck her. He saw the darker bruise where a gun butt had hit her. The cuts, the bruises… he wanted to hit someone, just pound them until they couldn’t move anymore. “I don’t think I’ll let you out of my sight ever again,” he smiled at her.

“That could prove difficult,” she teased him. “I can move faster than you.”

“Not at the moment,” he forcibly smiled. “And once you are up and around, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Surprise?” she asked, trying to take a breath.

“Yeah. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while since I’ve been on the West Coast. It’s not finished yet, but it’s close enough.”

“So you’ve been goofing off instead of working out there, huh?” she joked, wrapping her fingers around his.

That time, his smile was genuine. If she could joke with him – “Goofing off? Me?”

There. There it was, that smile he loved to see. It was the smile that actually reached her eyes. “I love you, you know,” he told her as he kissed her fingers. “I’d have done anything to keep what happened from happening.”

“I know,” she said.  “Love you, too.”

There was a knock at the door and an older woman stepped into the room.

“Captain Power? I’m Doctor Sinclair. The nurse said you requested another doctor for the prisoner.”

Sinclair? Jon glanced back at Jennifer and saw her roll her eyes. This was going to be another long conversation.

“Show time,” he whispered to his wife.

“Prisoner?” Jon asked, trying to keep his anger in check. “Where did you ever get the idea that she’s a prisoner?”

The doctor looked at the chart in her hands. “It says here she’s Dread Youth, Overunit Élan Parsons. The only Dread Youth we get are prisoners we have to classify. So I naturally assumed –”

Hawk walked in behind her. “How many Dread Youth do you get here, Doctor?”

“All from the prison. Some transferees. They have to be certain that they’re healthy enough to work or fit for the hunt.”

“Let’s start with the work option.” This time, it was Tank who walked in the room, questioning the doctor. “What kind of work do the Dread Youth do?”

Now, the doctor was aware that whatever was going on was going to be bad for her, no matter what she said. “Perhaps you should speak to the hospital administrator –”

“We’re talking to you,” Scout told her as he entered and closed the door behind him. “We want to know about the Dread Youth you process through this place and what you’re processing them for.”

The doctor cleared her throat, not quite knowing what to say. “As per Committee orders, Governor Rogers sends the Dread Youth from the prison here to be assessed. Those that are considered healthy and able are sent to work on the farms, roads and in the factories. Those that are deemed fit for the hunt are used for that.”

“The hunt,” Hawk repeated. “Explain that.”

The doctor looked at the five individuals in the room. Something was very wrong. “It’s a hunt. A Dread Youth soldier is released into the wilderness while Resistance personnel hunt them down. They want healthy specimens so our soldiers can gain more expertise in tracking than they would get if they chased someone who was in poor health. It’s good training for finding all the Dread soldiers still in hiding.”

Tank towered over her. “How long has this been going on?”

“Months, maybe?” the doctor answered. “It’s perfectly legal. The Committee sanctioned it.”

“Sanctioned it? How?”

Sinclair seemed at a loss for words. “As I understand it, the Committee allows this form –”

“As you understand it?” Hawk repeated condescendingly. “How exactly is this law written? Word for word? Repeat it for us.”

“I’ve never actually read the law,” Sinclair protested. “I only know what the governor explained to us. He works for the Committee.”

“Slave labor and running targets, sanctioned by a group that has no legal standing to make laws,” Jon commented. “How many of these Dread Youth have you seen, Doctor?”

“Hundreds,” she said confidently. “I can assure you that they were all in good enough health to be put to some use when they left here.”

Hawk moved in front of her. “Where are they now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple question,” Jennifer said, her voice indicating that she was holding back the pain. “Where are the Dread Youth soldiers now?”

Sinclair looked at all of them, then said to Jennifer, “You should know. You’re Dread Youth and were in the prison. You know how the system works. Dread Youth are the new work force or they’re expendable. That’s their punishment for following Dread.”

“And Overunit Élan Parsons?” Scout asked. “Tell us about her.”

She looked down at her reader. “This prisoner was scheduled for the hunt three weeks ago and was on the work farm prior to that. She really shouldn’t be here if she was caught. The governor frowns on any of us covering for soldiers who can’t catch what they hunt.”

“Who said?” Scout asked as he leaned against the wall.

“Excuse me?” the doctor asked. “Who said what?”

“Who said she was a prisoner? We were the ones who brought her here, and not a single one of us said she was Dread Youth or in a prison. We brought in a woman who was beat up, injured and exhausted. You had a patient who needed assistance. One doctor that was just in here treated her worse than dirt. Her, a resistance leader, a member of the team who kicked Dread out of the picture. Where did you get the idea that she was Dread Youth or a prisoner?”

Sinclair stepped out away from them to try to figure out the answer they wanted. “Look at her. The hair, the eyes -- she’s Dread Youth.”

“So all blonde haired, gray eyed individuals are Dread Youth?” Hawk was quickly losing his patience with this doctor.

“The records show –”

“Lies,” Jennifer said as she moved toward the edge of bed. Jon helped her to stand, letting her move as slowly as she needed to. He didn’t dare support her by placing a hand on her waist. That would put her in more pain. He carefully held onto her arms as she took her first steps.

“I am not Dread Youth, but if I were, how would you assess my health at this moment? Able to work or run on the hunt? Sent to the Lower Sections in Facility 7 to die of starvation or sickness? Maybe for some other area that they use the Dread Youth for? I want to see that chart.”

“That’s not allowed –” the doctor started to say but stopped talking when Hawk reached over and grabbed the chart from her. He handed it to Jennifer.

“Let’s see…” Jennifer flipped through the pages. “Oh, my picture is here.”

“It is?” Jon glanced over her shoulder… there was Jennifer’s picture.

“It says here my name is Overunit Élan Parsons. I am being transferred from Facility 7 to the New Chicago prison; this is my fifth transfer and my fifth time to be checked out at this medical facility. I was in adequate health to join the work crews prior to the transfer three weeks ago... afterwards for the hunt… here we go. Apparently, I’m not a good candidate for the hunt for the next few weeks… Interesting fiction, don’t you agree, Doctor?”

“This is the paperwork that was sent when we ran your identification in the system.”

“Really?” Jon asked. He glanced over at Scout who nodded his head. They needed to check out how the identification system worked. “What form of identification did you use and how accurate is that system?”

“Look, I demand to know what is going on here –”

Tank crossed the short distance between them and loomed over her. “We have to repeat ourselves? This woman is Corporal Jennifer Chase, a member of the Power Team and one of the leaders of the Resistance. She was kidnapped, thrown into prison for no reason, chased, shot at and nearly killed by a band of murdering soldiers who think it’s fun to hunt people. As it turns out, there are several murdering bands out there that need a fresh supply of Dread Youth soldiers to hunt down. What we have discovered is that there is a conspiracy to channel as many of the imprisoned Dread Youth to these people, and even doctors such as you are helping. Tell us, Doctor, of the other times an Overunit Élan Parsons has gone through this facility, how many of her charts will have your signature?”

That did it. They had the doctor. They could tell by the look in her eyes that she was trapped.

“Tell you what,” Hawk said as he glanced around the room, “you cooperate with us, and we will put in a good word for you so you might not go to prison for life yourself.”

“Prison?” she gasped. “What are you talking about? Everything we did was legal.”

“Legal? Hidden in the paperwork, you mean,” they heard Jennifer murmur. Loopholes. The doctor may have been following the ‘legal’ interpretation of the Committee rulings as interpreted by Rogers, but they weren’t legal in the first place. “You sent people to their deaths – or worse --  knowing what was happening to them. So much for the doctor’s oath of first doing no harm,” Jennifer said, her voice now sounding low and angry. “You had the same names show up time and again but used by different individuals. A new picture was put with an old name, like this chart. You wrote down false statements on medical charts. You were willing to put an innocent person into that deathtrap – how many other innocent people did you send? Hmm? You knew. Your actions show the cover-ups of the entire operation. You’re not just looking at time in prison. You’re part of a mass murdering conspiracy. I believe once the entire truth of your conspiracy gets out, the Council will consider your crimes capital offenses. That could make you subject to execution.”

No one had ever heard Jennifer focus her anger on anyone like that before. They couldn’t tell if it was raw fury or a calculated gamble to force the doctor to confess.

“So this is what you are going to do,” Jennifer stepped away from Jon, her arm still holding onto her ribs, her foot dragging a bit with each step, “you are going to make a full confession. You’re going to write it all out, how the entire operation works –” she paused for effect as Scout handed the doctor a portable writer – “who’s involved, the timeline, the procedures, your contacts, all of it. You’re going to do that, and I can promise you this; we won’t let them execute you. You don’t want to disagree with me because there’s no third option.”

Calculated gamble.

“But we did nothing wrong,” the doctor protested half-heartedly.

“Look at me,” Jennifer ordered. The doctor was too afraid to not obey. “I’m bruised. Hurting. I’ve been chased, shot, beaten, threatened, can barely walk – and you have the audacity to even try to say you did nothing wrong? What do you think happened to the people you deemed fit for various work crews? What about the ones you sent on the hunt? Those you sent to other prisons like Facility 7? How many other innocent people have you sentenced to death?”

“But I didn’t –”

“And don’t you dare say you didn’t send them,” Jennifer warned her. “After all, we’ve got your signature on how many documents?”

The doctor didn’t move except her eyes grew wide.

“I’d start writing down all that information if I were you.”

~*~*~*~*~

They did it.

They found the bad guys, found out how they were doing what they did and brought down a major faction of them. Rogers was going to be spending a great deal of time in his own prison, only as a prisoner and not the warden. His squads along with anyone who hunted a Dread Youth were in trouble. A recent development was that all those towns around New Chicago had new mayors.

But this was only one particular evil in existence. How much more was out there that they didn’t know about?

The Prison Commission was investigating the prison facilities. The New Chicago prison and Facility 7 got first priority in the long, laborious process given the eyewitness accounts readily available from the Power Team. Story after story of the heinous crimes being committed against the Dread Youth soldiers was being made public. General Grey contacted Jennifer to let her know that Overunit Terese Vincent’s body had been found buried near the location Jennifer had uncovered the bones.

Jon couldn’t complain about the outcome – bad guys were stopped and innocent people were rescued -- but how they got there terrified him more than he let anyone know. That old nightmare where he relived the moment Jennifer blew up the old base came back every night. It would wake him up and keep him from falling asleep again. He’d sit in the chair by their bed and watch her as she slept. The bruises had begun to fade. The cuts were healing. Her much shorter hair would grow out again – Jon didn’t care if her hair was long or short, neither did she. Again, it was a residual affectation from her Dread Youth days. The females had long hair they always kept back in a tight braid. She would let her hair flow loose as a form of open defiance.

Sometimes, he could see her facial expression change when she moved in her sleep, aggravating a wounded bone or muscle. She didn’t like taking pain killers – part of that was a reflex action learned in her youth. The Dread Youth were trained to withstand a variety of pain and still keep going without acknowledging it. How many times had Jon seen her do that?

Those first few days he got her back to the base were the most unsettling for him, but Jennifer had soothed his fears in her own inimitable fashion.

“I’m all broken up inside.”

“I love you, Jon. So much.”

“Just think of me sometime!”

The explosion blasted over the speaker… then silence…

Jon woke up, looked around the dark room – no, Jennifer was lying there sleeping. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t blown up, she wasn’t digitized and she wasn’t being tortured for information. She was sound asleep, forced into slumber by a painkiller so she could have a few hours respite from the pain. Nighttime was the only time she agreed to take the painkillers, maybe so they could both get some sleep.

“Nightmare?” she asked him sleepily.

“Old one,” he said as he lay back down.

She opened up her eyes, groggy as she was and said, “One day, we’re going to have to convince your unconscious mind that I’m still here.”

“Not if we have many missions like the one with Rogers.”

“And given our jobs, it won’t be easy,” she grumbled. Then, trying to lift his mood, she added, “But we do get days off after missions like the one with Rogers.”

Jon smiled. “You know, I wanted to spend some time with you, but this isn’t how I planned it.”

Jennifer settled herself under the covers a little more. “We’ll just have to make those plans for later,” she mumbled as she started to fall asleep again.

She knew how to roll with the punches. Jon wished he could do that as well as she did.

After two months, Jon was determined that Jennifer could have some time off that wasn’t just recuperating from her wounds. Every now and then, he’d see her move and wince – her ribs were healed but still a little tender. She needed to relax, and he knew that as long as she stayed at the base, she’d find “something” to do instead of relaxing. It was time for him to give her the surprise he’d been working on.

There was a particular site that Jon had found about ten years earlier. It was near the coast, just in view of the ocean. He and Jennifer had gone there after a mission some months after they’d rescued her from Volcania. Jennifer was contacted by an acquaintance for a meeting. Jon flew her there on a sky bike. Afterwards they flew back to the site and set up camp. It wasn’t much, just a tent and a campfire.

However, Jennifer had a surprise for Jon. When he came back from finding firewood…

A hammock.

An honest-to-goodness hammock!

Jon hadn’t seen a hammock since he was a kid

Jennifer had brought a hammock with them. She must have found out about them during some of those conversations she had with Hawk when she was recuperating. Jon, Mitch and Katie used to love playing in the hammocks in the Masterson’s back yard when they were kids.

Darn things still wanted to tilt over when you climbed in, he soon discovered. After his third attempt landed him on his rear end for the third time, he was willing to give up. At least, he was until he heard Jennifer laughing at him.

“You think it’s easy?” he taunted her. “Let’s see you climb in this thing.”

“Okay,” she said confidently. With absolutely no trouble, she sat down on the side of the hammock and then slowly turned and lay down. “Easy,” she teased him. “Care to join me?” She took his hand and gave a gentle pull. Without hesitation, he easily landed in the hammock and lay next to her.

“I did that on purpose,” he told her.

“Really? Imagine that?” she smiled at him. “I’d hate to think that the leader of a Resistance group can’t climb into something as simple as a hammock.”

She was smiling, really smiling. It’d been months since they’d rescued her from Volcania, and she was behaving like her old self again. It had taken time, but she’d come back to them. It had been slowly at first. Sometimes, it was a look, sometimes it was a small smile. Then, eventually, the horrors of what had happened to her didn’t stay at the forefront of her mind. She was able to get through the day without the thoughts of what happened to her preying on her memory.

Jon reached up and gently brushed her hair behind her ear. “You know,” he said, “we never did finish that talk we were going to have.”

Maybe that was the right thing to say? Maybe it wasn’t? The smile went away. Had he said too much too soon?

“You don’t have to,” she said. “It was –”

He placed his finger on her lips, not letting her finish the statement. “Yes, I have to. I wanted to months ago, but Blastarr messed up my plans.” Lying there in the hammock, facing each other, touching – it was difficult for him to find the words he wanted to say. His concentration was moving toward other concerns. “I wanted to tell you then how much you meant to me, but when the moment came, I acted like the captain, all detached and professional. Then you weren’t there, and everything just sort of stopped for me. When we got you back, I wanted to tell you everything, but I couldn’t. Now…”He placed his hand on her waist and pulled her closer to him. He kissed her. It was that simple. He cupped her face, looking into her gray eyes, seeing a tear form. “I love you, Jennifer Chase, and I should have told you that a long time ago.”

He went back to that spot from time to time when working on the West Coast. He wanted to surprise Jennifer with a small cabin since neither one of them liked sleeping in a tent for nights on end. As cozy as a large sleeping bag could be – and it could be more than just cozy -- sometimes, it was nice to sleep in a bed and not on the ground when they camped out for the night on a mission or just got away from it all.

He’d read about how to build a log cabin, Mentor had given him a few tips, and he spent a few hours now and then when he could trying to construct a small structure on the site. One large room was the best he could build with the types of trees he had to work with, but he took care to build a front porch and extra large front porch at that. He remembered how he loved sitting on the front porch of his house when he was a kid, late at night or after summer was over but the nights weren’t cold. He would sleep out on that porch sometimes, listening to the crickets or the birds in the distance. It was something Jennifer had never seen let alone experienced, so he built a porch.

He still had that hammock tied to two trees just four feet from the porch. No way was he going to move that. Lots of good memories were tied to that hammock.

When they landed the sky bike, Jon couldn’t wait to show Jennifer her surprise. She didn’t know what to make of it. She’d heard of log cabins but she’d never seen one.

“Surprise,” he said with a grin.

Jennifer was astonished at the amount of work done. “You built this by yourself?”

“When I’d get a few hours free, and I’d come up here to work on it. What do you think?”

He’d never seen such a huge smile on her face as she ran inside to take a look around.

As a member of the Dread Youth, she was never allowed any personal property. During the war, personal belongings were at a minimum. Now, with the war over, they could have a few creature comforts but they had no time to collect them. A log cabin was a little more than an ordinary creature comfort, but it was now hers.

He shut down the sky bike and hurried after her. She was standing in the middle of the one large room, looking around. There were three soon-to-be windows sitting glassless in the walls, a door that closed and locked hung on wooden hinges, an open loft overhead that could be reached via a small, narrow staircase nailed to the wall, a solid wooden floor, and a ceiling. Furniture was very sparse. He had built two simple stools and a platform for a bed just big enough for the two of them. She took a few steps up the very narrow staircase to get a look at the open loft.

“All by yourself?” she repeated as she turned to look at him. “This was a lot of work.”

“It was, but I think it was worth it. I know how much you don’t like sleeping in a tent, so I thought something just a little bigger and little sturdier would be better when we came here. It’s not finished yet. The fireplace still needs to be bricked up, but it works. I need to put in windows instead of just having square holes in the walls… yeah, so far, all by myself.”

“Impressive,” she said as she looked around again.

“You like it?”

She smiled. “I love it.”

He walked over to the staircase to stand in front of her. “It’s all yours.”

There was a slight hint of disbelief in her eyes. Not that she disbelieved him – she didn’t – but it was more like disbelief that anyone would give her something like this. “Mine?”

Jon smiled at her astonishment and nodded his head. “Yours. I want you to have something all your own.”

“But you put so much work into it,” she told him, unable to keep the grin from her face.

“And it was worth every bit of it if it gets a smile like that,” he told her.

Ah, that got rid that small glint of disbelief in her eyes. She reached up, hooked his shirt with her finger and drew him to her so she could kiss him. “So that means if I want this to be our place, it’s my prerogative?”

“Absolutely,” he told her as he took her other hand in his, pulled her close and kissed her back. “There’s a lot more to be done to it –”

“Need help finishing it?” she asked, a more direct look from her saying more than mere words could.

“You’re supposed to relax here,” he said, taking note that the look was becoming more serious.

“I haven’t done anything I need to relax from in a while,” she pulled him close and whispered in his ear, “I won’t break.”

It had been two months since they were at Dobbinsville, two months since Jon could court his wife, two months since they had been together, months since they had been so completely alone… “Hmmm, well… come to think of it,” he pulled her into his arms. “It might be a good idea to see how sturdy that bed platform is.”

“I think you must be a mind reader – mmphb --” her voice was muffled when Jon pressed his lips to hers.

~*~*~*~*~

There was a constant breeze blowing in from the sea and into the cabin. The sound of the surf, once quieted by Dread’s wars and only now starting to reclaim its former glory, could be heard inside the cabin. Jon woke, but he couldn’t figure out why until he realized that he was alone in the oversized sleeping bag.

They had been at the cabin for about a week. Jennifer had slept and rested. They’d gone for long walks in the woods. They’d even gone swimming. Jennifer was moving without hurting – yes, Jon was convinced that coming to the cabin was a good idea. His nightmare hadn’t made another appearance since they had been there.

The small indention in the pillow showed that Jennifer hadn’t been up long. She really was all right. They first night they were there, he’d been worried, concerned that he’d hurt her if her wounds hadn’t healed completely. She knew why he had been so careful and humored him.

He kept his weight off her, using his arms to support most of his weight. He didn’t want to press on her ribs. He didn’t want to hurt her after everything she’d been through, not when he could finally make love to his wife.

She took his face in her hands, drew his lips to hers. “See? I’m all right,” she whispered. “I didn’t break.”

He laughed as lowered himself to his elbows and touched his forehead to hers. Just the sheer presence of her -- he knew he must have done something right to be lucky enough to have such a woman love him, to want to share a life with him.  He looked into the gray eyes he loved so much, saw the same emotion reflected in them. “You’re a remarkable woman, Jennifer Power,” he said, saying her married name that he spoke only in private. Remarkable wasn’t the right word. How could he sum up such an incredible woman in a few small syllables?  “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“You just showed me,” she said, still catching her breath after their exertions. “I think you may have finally given me something to relax from,” she joked.

Jon settled himself a bit more, feeling the thin mattress and their oversized sleeping bag yield more to their combined weight, delighting in the sensation of the physical comfort they shared. It was more than just comfort though. There was such a willing acceptance of each other when they joined together physically, a sharing that went beyond mere words.

“So does that mean this little trip was worth it?” He loved to see that smile on her face.

“I think so, but I meant what I said about helping you finish the cabin.”

“Do you think there’s a specific place we need to start?”

“Absolutely. You see, we may need more experimentation to see how sturdy the bed platform is…” she grinned.”After all, practice makes perfect.”

Oh? He noticed the mischievous gleam in her eye. “Really? Are you saying that there are some areas of our platform experiment that require further intense study? Or perhaps some research techniques that need some improvements?” he teased as he kissed her.

“You’d be hard pressed to improve on certain techniques. However, there is a maneuver or two… maybe three… that deserve repeated examination and very close scrutiny due to their complex and thorough nature. Now that you know I won’t break and the platform is extremely sturdy, there are a few exercises that I think I’ll submit for serious re-consideration.”

It was one of the few times they were completely alone in the two years since they had been married. A full moon, a dark night, peace, solitude – what more could they ask for when reconsidering certain maneuvers in repeated experiments?

He got up and walked through the small cabin until he reached the front door. Jennifer was sitting on the banister of the front porch, watching the moon shine on the incoming waves. The sound of crickets chirping in the woods echoed with the ocean’s roar. Birds flying overhead added their singing to the chorus and the night sounds were becoming familiar once again.

The world was returning to what Jon knew as a child, something that Jennifer had never known.

He walked outside and stood behind her. He carefully placed his arms around her waist and nestled her against him.

“Wide awake?”

“Woke up,” she told him. “A very loud bird screeched by. Couldn’t go back to sleep after that. What are you doing up?”

“I think I realized I was alone in the sleeping bag,” he told her as he kissed the top of her head.

“I don’t think this little cabin will be alone for long. People will realize there are sites like this and start building houses here themselves. We won’t have it all to ourselves anymore.”

Maybe not, Jon thought to himself. Re-population and re-settlement. The human race had a lot to do to rebuild civilization. “You know, we won’t have to live at the base forever. Once the governments are re-established, they won’t need us as much anymore. We could live anywhere you wanted to.” Thinking about a place to live… that was something Jon had never thought to do.

“Don’t you want to go back to Colorado?” she asked, mentioning his childhood home.

“It’s one of the places, but there are a lot of places in the world we can go. Mountains, seaside, Montana was known as the big sky country at one time, London, Madrid –”

“You want to travel a little, don’t you?” she teased him as she leaned her head back against his shoulder. “Maybe see all of Europe? Asia?”

“Since we don’t have to fight Dread or the biomechs anymore, we’d have the time,” he answered.

“I don’t know,” she told him. “I’ve never thought about having a real home anywhere.” She glanced up and could see stars. The ever-present pollution that Dread put in the air was slowly dissipating, and people could see stars at night again.  She placed her hands over Jon’s and urged him to tighten his grip.

Ah, yes, her ribs were fine now.

“Remember the first time we were here?”

Of course, he remembered it. He’d thought about just before when they landed. “A couple of years ago. We had some fun figuring out how to climb in a hammock.”

“You had fun climbing in the hammock. I had fun watching you.” She glanced back at the hammock in question.  Jon could tell something was bothering her.

“Jennifer? What is it?”

She sighed. “I was thinking about everything that happened with Rogers. I might not be welcome in a lot of places.”

“What do you mean?”

“After what happened… how many other people out there feel the same way? The minute they find out I used to be in the Dread Youth –”

“I’m never going to let anything like that happen to you again,” Jon told her. He moved so he could sit beside her.

“You can’t stop people from hating, Jon,” she said. She took his hand, and he placed his fingers in hers. “The Committee made laws restricting the rights of people who had no idea what they were doing was wrong. Even if the Committee’s been disbanded and the Council and Command have rescinded all their decisions, not everyone’s going to agree with that. Those doctors at the hospital at New Chicago had no problems doing what they did. The man Tank talked to after the feast? He didn’t care what happened to the Dread soldiers. Hundreds were hunted down and murdered, thousands were enslaved and it all happened right under our noses. We had no idea this was going on. There’s no telling what else has happened in just the ten months since we beat Dread. Those soldiers wanted to exterminate the Dread Youth. How different is that from Dread wanting to exterminate everyone and have only machines on the planet?”

“I know. Those people are in a lot of trouble right now,” Jon assured her. “They’ve arrested almost three hundred individuals that were involved and more arrests are happening every day.”

“They can arrest them all, but I don’t think it’ll change attitudes,” she murmured.

Jon shook his head. “No, not yet. They don’t understand, it’ll take time, but eventually everyone will know that most Dread soldiers were just children who didn’t understand and had never harmed anyone. Only a small percentage were guilty of any crimes.”

Jennifer looked out at the ocean again, the moonlight shining on the incoming waves. “A lot of people had no trouble allowing the rules the Committee passed that restricted the rights of a Dread Youth.”

“The Council and Command have tossed all those out.”

“But towns are allowed to govern themselves if they want,” Jennifer reminded him. “Some may keep the Committee’s rulings. There may be some places that wouldn’t recognize the fact we’re married. They might not allow you there just because you’re married to me.” 

These were concerns that had run through Jon’s mind as well. When Ibold had questioned his being married to Jennifer, that was another indication of how dangerous the Committee was. “I don’t need a piece of paper or a ring or some official verifying whether or not we’re married. I know we are. Their opinions don’t matter.”

“But the law does,” she reminded him. “Then I start to wonder… what about the children? What will they face by some of these governments if one or both of their parents were Dread Youth? They might not have any legal standing.”

Children? Jon hadn’t considered that. Would some of these governments deny them? If they could condemn children who had no idea that what Dread taught was wrong, then of course, they could condemn children who were born from the Dread Youth. He reached out and placed a gentle hand on her belly, “If we’re lucky enough to have children one day, they’re going to grow up knowing what it’s like to have parents who love them and how special their mother is.” He slid his hand along her waist so he could draw her to him. “They’re also going to grow up as happy as we can make them.”

“We’ve never really talked about having children,” she said.

“No, we haven’t,” he agreed.

“I’d like to have children some day -- when we’re ready. What about you?”

“One day,” Jon told her. “Right now, I like it just being the two of us.”

Just the two of them… years ago, if anyone had told Jon that life could be so good after all they’d been through, he might not have believed them then. Now he saw so many possibilities in front of them, so many choices life could offer them: home, children, a new world to build from the ashes of the old, a life without war…

So much lay before them, maybe more than they could imagine.

Beep beep beep

Both looked toward the noise. The communicator was demanding their attention.

“Talk about bad timing,” Jon muttered.

“The guys know we’re taking a break, so –”

“It’s got to be important,” Jon finished for her as walked back toward the communicator.

He pressed the talk button. “Go ahead, Mentor.”

“Captain, I’ve received an emergency communication from the Passages.”

Jon glanced back at Jennifer who laughed. “Time to go to work,” she said, smiling.

Right. Time to be the Power Team. The future would just have to wait a little while.

“All right, Mentor. We’re on our way.”

The End

Or is it just the beginning?

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