Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5) Read online

  Hold the Line

  Chimera Company Book 5

  By

  By Tim C. Taylor

  PUBLISHED BY: Theogony Books

  Copyright © 2021 Tim C. Taylor

  All Rights Reserved

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  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

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  Cover Design by Vincent Sammy

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  Contents

  Prologue: Hothouse

  Part 1: Freak Hunt

  Chapter One: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Two: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Three: Hines “Bronze” Zy Pel

  Chapter Four: Adony Zaydok

  Chapter Five: Adony Zaydok

  Chapter Six: Adony Zaydok

  Chapter Seven: Adony Zaydok

  Chapter Eight: Tavistock Fitzwilliam

  Part 2: Hexworld

  Chapter Nine: Urdizine

  Chapter Ten: Urdizine

  Chapter Eleven: Osu Sybutu

  Chapter Twelve: Perling Jing

  Chapter Thirteen: Urdizine

  Chapter Fourteen: Urdizine

  Chapter Fifteen: Lael Hrish-Ek

  Chapter Sixteen: Urdizine

  Chapter Seventeen: Urdizine

  Chapter Eighteen: Tessa Taresse

  Chapter Nineteen: Tessa Taresse

  Chapter Twenty: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-One: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Urdizine

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Major Storin

  Part 3: The Ibson Declaration

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Thirty: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Thirty-One: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Claudio Zanitch

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Silasja

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Kreyenish “Squids” Zee

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Claudio “Beans” Zanitch

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Lily Hjon

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Izza Zan Fey

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Enthree

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Tavistock Fitzwilliam

  Chapter Forty: Claudio “Beans” Zanitch

  Chapter Forty-One: Indiya

  Chapter Forty-Two: Indiya

  Chapter Forty-Three: Sergeant Meyasu

  Chapter Forty-Four: Sergeant Chenkong

  Chapter Forty-Five: Silasja

  Chapter Forty-Six: Osu Sybutu

  Chapter Forty-Seven: Lady Indiya

  Chapter Forty-Eight: Adony Zaydok

  Part 4: Contested Ground

  Chapter Forty-Nine: Lady Indiya

  Chapter Fifty: Lady Indiya

  Chapter Fifty-One: Lady Indiya

  Chapter Fifty-Two: Lady Indiya

  Chapter Fifty-Three: President Ansiyka

  Chapter Fifty-Four: Apinya Lantosh

  Chapter Fifty-Five: Weapons Chief Narazier

  Chapter Fifty-Six: Tavistock Fitzwilliam

  Chapter Fifty-Seven: Kreyenish “Squids” Zee

  Chapter Fifty-Nine: Tavistock Fitzwilliam

  Epilogue: The Offer

  About Tim C. Taylor

  Looking for the Latest in Scifi Goodness?

  Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle

  Excerpt from Book One of the Salvage Title Trilogy

  Excerpt from Book One of the Singularity War

  Excerpt from Devil Calls the Tune

  * * * * *

  Prologue: Hothouse

  Peace. Finally, peace.

  Dyffiu exhaled the tension of the day and settled back into his favorite chair.

  Snatched moments of calm were the most precious of commodities at Deep Hope. He smiled his contentment at Jennu, who sat beside him on the decking. Together, they enjoyed the last of the sun.

  Despite the endless obligations of this life, there was much to be grateful for in this place.

  A mirror flashed high in the eastern sky. Its dazzling light promised a bitterly cold night. He’d better make sure Robert had provided the livestock with plenty of fresh bedding.

  Dyffiu was proud of his boy. Normally he would trust the lad to complete his tasks, but Robert’s mind had found a distraction of late.

  Girls.

  He chuckled. One girl in particular. Tessa.

  She was a good ’un, but the kids were growing up so fast these days, and that unsettled him.

  He held one gnarled hand up to the sun, studying it in the last of the ruddy light before the northern wall swallowed the day. He marveled at its knottiness, the skin hanging thin and loose like cheap waxed hide. They weren’t his hands.

  Couldn’t be.

  It was a cruel trick this place had played on him. The hands that had stroked his mother’s cheek, teased pleasure from a young girl’s flesh, and then held the newborn she had grown inside her—they were an old man’s hands now.

  They were all growing up so fast.

  He chuckled again. His parents had told him the exact same thing. No doubt so too had their parents.

  He looked out across their modest package of land, trying to spy out his missing son. As a boy, Robert had liked to play in the orchard, but Dyffiu couldn’t see him among the trees.

  Apples, pears, and apricots. It was a mystery how trees that bore fruit so perfectly suited for the Human diet were present in the walled-off world of Deep Hope.

  Some said these plants had come from the First Earth. Dyffiu knew better than to believe fairytales about that other world. He believed in the things you could touch, taste, and see within the confines of Deep Hope. Who could possibly know what lay beyond?

  “Robert!” he shouted.

  No reply.

  The fear for his son was unfocused, but that made it much worse. He thought for a moment and realized what really troubled him was the speed at which he and Jennu were aging. They would leave Robert so young.

  Dyffiu reckoned he had a few seasons left in him. It wasn’t enough.

  He distracted himself from his fears by admiring the expansion to the orchard they’d planted in the spring. The trees were maturing so quickly, he wondered whether they might get a useful crop out of them this fall. Certainly they would bear fruit every season after.

  In his grandfather’s day, the crops were harvested only twice a year. Fruit trees took many years to mature enough to bear a crop worth taking to the market.

  Everything was growing so fast these days.

  Faster and faster.

  He tasted something sour and fizzing in the air.

  The Vril Rain.

  The outer weather might be clear and cloudless tonight, but the inner would soak the ground. Give it potency. Force it to grow.

  Vril mist would hang in the air for days. Sheltering under cover would be little protection.

  He rose from his chair, determined to be grateful for his precious moment of peace rather than bitter at its briefness.


  “And what do you think you’re doing?” his wife asked.

  “Bringing Robert in.”

  “We can’t keep him penned like the cattle.”

  “But he’s so…”

  He looked away. He’s so young. It would have been a stupid thing to say.

  Dyffiu stared at the woman he adored. She wore her white hair long, perfectly framing the face he would always love. The wrinkles were deep, but he didn’t mind them so much as her chin. She had an old woman’s jaw. Recessed. Unsteady. Like his own.

  When he’d been a little boy, his grandmother had told him that the lines on her face had been carved there by experience.

  Jennu’s weren’t. Later in the year, they were planning a joint 21st-birthday celebration.

  Twenty-one Terran standard years.

  People grow up so fast these days.

  “You tend to the livestock,” Jennu told him, “and pen them securely. You know how frantic they get when the Vril falls. I’ll go after Robert. I’ve an idea where he’ll be.”

  “I hope you’re right,” he said. “If he’s caught out in the rain with that girl—”

  “He’ll do exactly the same as you did when you were a boy caught out in the rain with this girl.” She laughed at the memory. “Let the boy have his life. I’m not going to stop him, but I won’t let him throw it away.”

  * * *

  Robert

  The promise of Hot Rain electrified the air.

  It went by many names. Vril Rain. The Passion Pour. Freak Fog.

  It drove people crazy. Animals, too. Robert was convinced the plants also felt it in their own way. For them, it was probably a heady growth narcotic.

  Tessa poked him in the side. “Not having second thoughts, are you?”

  Robert was filled with second thoughts. He bit his lip and said nothing.

  He breathed deeply of the air. The full deluge of Hot Rain was still an hour or so away, but there was enough in the air to fill his lungs with insanity. He gave her the ridiculous leer she enjoyed, delighted when she giggled.

  Man, she’s so fine.

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  They held on to their ropes, digging their heels into the fertile soil that accumulated this close to the wall.

  It took a few moments of solid, grunting effort, and then the A-frame lifted away from the ground.

  They kept on pulling, feeling the momentum build little by little.

  When the feet of the frame slid down into the pits they’d dug, the arcing movement lost momentum.

  But they’d come this far. They were determined to succeed.

  Tessa was putting in so much effort, she bellowed like a…well, Robert wasn’t sure quite what she sounded like, but he liked it. He locked his leg muscles, driving them into the ground as he pulled the rope with all his might.

  The A-frame reached vertical, settled for a moment, then fell toward the wall.

  The two of them switched to the ropes on the far side, holding on to slow the frame’s impact. They’d spent weeks secretly making this contraption. He’d be furious if it smashed.

  In the end, the weight of the wooden frame proved too much. “Let go!” he shouted. Too late.

  Before he’d finished the warning, Tessa’s rope pulled her to the ground. He laughed as she pushed herself up, mud smeared all over her cute face.

  She shrugged. “We’ll be standing under the Hot Rain soon.” She swallowed hard. “You can rub the dirt off me if you like.”

  He did like. Flashing her a grin, he discarded his boots and gloves, then he scrambled up the thick knots tied into the frame barefoot.

  He couldn’t understand why no one had done this before. He’d climbed 10 feet already, then 20. Eager to ascend the wall that enclosed their world. It was only 40 feet high.

  Tonight, they would reveal the mystery of Deep Hope.

  The apex of the frame rested above the number painted onto the wall.

  241.

  Below, the same number was repeated in Zhoogene. And below that were symbols no one understood but everyone assumed represented the same number.

  What did any of it mean?

  Did their little hexagonal world border one numbered 240? Perhaps he was about to greet the inhabitants of 243? According to legend, people used to talk with others who lived beyond the walls, but no one could tell him what had been said.

  By the time he reached its summit, the frame had boosted him up 30 of the wall’s 40 sheer feet.

  For some time, they’d realized the frame would be too short, but they’d come up with an ingenious solution for those last few feet.

  Terrifying, but smart.

  Robert looked down for support from Tessa, but she wasn’t on the ground anymore. She was clambering up the other leg of the A-frame.

  “I need you on the ground,” he told her. “What if I fall?”

  “Then you’re probably dead,” she told him nonchalantly. “I want to see, too, before the rain comes.”

  He knew it would be pointless to tell her to climb down. “Okay, but keep to your side of the frame for now. If I fall, I don’t want to take you down with me.”

  Robert removed the rucksack from his back and threw the contents of three canisters onto the wall above. The home-boiled glue stuck nicely, without much splashing. The contents of the fourth he smeared over the front of his overalls, taking care to get good coverage on the legs. The fifth he poured onto his bare hands and feet, which was tricky, because the cannister stuck to his hands, his front, the wall. Everything.

  Better than not sticking at all.

  They’d practiced this. He knew if you were light, bold, and fast, you could shimmy up 10 feet of this wall like a Muryani.

  But that had been starting from the ground. Now he was starting from 30 feet up.

  He felt a tingle of fear and used it as energy to leap up onto the wall,

  The stickiness gripped him. Gripped his overalls mostly, but that worked just fine.

  Immediately, he began sliding down, but that didn’t matter. Speed was his friend, and he followed the drill they’d practiced.

  He lifted his right foot and pushed his leg back onto the wall a little higher up.

  Then the palm of his left hand.

  Right hand. Left foot. Right foot.

  He was reciting in his head. Close by, Tessa was saying it out loud.

  Almost there! Another yard, and he’d be able to grip the top.

  Left hand. Right hand. Oww!

  Something hard hit the back of his skull.

  Robert slid down the wall.

  Oww!

  “Stop it!” Tessa screamed.

  “Robert Dannagee! Come down this instant!”

  The voice transfixed him with horror. He stared at his mother down below with a handful of apricot stones that she was pitching with deadly accuracy.

  Another smacked into the back of his leg.

  He slithered down, grateful for the gummy avenue he’d left against the wall on his ascent.

  “If you go over the top,” his mother told him, “the wall will kill you.”

  “You don’t know that,” Tessa said.

  “I do know that. Get back onto that frame before you fall off, you silly boy.”

  Robert sticky-abseiled down until he reached the safety of the apex.

  “I was so close,” he growled.

  “Damn right, you were. And for your information, Tessa, when I was something like your age, it was me standing where you are tonight, though we had the good sense to use a ladder that actually reached the top. My friend went first. She made it all the way up. Said she couldn’t see clearly what was on the other side, so she slithered on top of the wall.”

  “What did she see?” Tessa asked.

  “Machines came for her. Ugly, hovering things like gigantic artificial flies. They swarmed her and sprayed something over her.”

  “Poison?”

  “It dissolved her.”

  “Why hav
e you never spoken of this?” Robert asked.

  “Because I was just a girl. I shouldn’t have seen such horrors. I didn’t know how to explain what had happened to her grieving parents, so I told no one. Ever. Not even your father.”

  “Why?” Tessa was crying. “Why are there machines and walls?”

  “I don’t know,” Robert’s mother replied, “but I know this. Look around! There are mirrors in the sky. Vril Rain. Our ancestors were plucked from the Federation and made to live their lives here. Whoever has the power to do those things won’t rely on walls alone to keep us in.”

  Robert’s chest tightened. Waves of dizziness assaulted him, and they had nothing to do with being 30 feet in the air.

  “The wall is like the fences we use with the livestock,” he said. “An electrified fence. We live in a farm.” He breathed in the tingling, fecund air. “A hothouse farm.”

  “And we’re the crop,” Tessa whispered.

  “Yes.” Horror clutched at his throat. “Who would do this?”

  “You’re asking the wrong question,” Tessa snapped.

  Confused, he regarded her. In a tear-stained face, her eyes were sparkling with defiance.

  “Answer this instead,” she told him. “When it’s our time to be harvested, how are we going to fight back?”

  * * * * *

  Part 1: Freak Hunt

  Chapter One: Claudio Zanitch

  Corsair Mountains, Regina-Ventu

  Handbells rang out, filling the house with a cheerful rendition of a favorite electro-stomp song.

  This was the nice version of the perimeter chime Claudio Zanitch had installed when he’d built his ‘mountain fastness,’ as he liked to call his modest home in the foothills of the Corsairs. It was the alert Claudio had selected for visitors at least willing to perform the rituals of politeness, stating their name and business to the granite welcome post at the foot of his path.

  He’d also installed a nasty version. Same piece of music, but the original in all its angry, electro-fuzz glory with a baseline of tuned percussion drills. Intruders trying to sneak in would set off that alarm.