Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

fell down the mountain, first springing upright, then stumbling over the rocks that jutted out of the earth like speed bumps, and finally crashing down onto the boulder upon which the railgun sat.

“What’s gotten into you?” Carbine asked. “You hungry too?”

“It’s Maya! She’s back!” Jon shouted as he wiggled down next to the mounted rifle and scope. He wished more than anything that he could answer Maya, tell her how good it was to know she was all right. But he could not, so he settled for allowing tears of joyful relief to fall down his face. He struggled to maintain his vision through bleary eyes that searched through the railgun's scope for the visual counterpart to Maya’s heavenly voice.

He had to see her to know that he was not just having auditory hallucinations.

There she was, with Lucy and Ratt, all three of them back in the room together, without a hair on their heads harmed, except for Ratt, who looked like he had been through the wringer. He laugh-cried as all the stress and anxiety of the past evening washed out of him in strong, emotional waves.

“I am so sorry for forgetting the necklace earlier. You guys must have been pretty worried,” Maya said.

“It’s okay. I’m just glad you’re all right,” Jon replied, knowing that she couldn’t hear him.

“Well, I don’t know if you saw me or not, but I know you didn’t hear what happened, so I’m going to give you my report anyway. Listen up, guys, ‘cause we have some serious news for you.”

Jon listened to Maya’s recounting of the night’s events as dawn’s fingers began to reach out over the landscape, probing the darkness like a fumbling but insistent lover.

Jon listened as Maya related the story of her pampering in the bath—some of which Jon was already embarrassingly familiar with—and her dinner with Don Luis and Sofia, Sofia’s hostility toward her, and her walk with Don Luis into the evening air.

She told Jon of Don Luis’s vision for a civilized society of vampire masters and human cattle who were cared for and protected in exchange for a blood tax and their lawful obedience. It boggled Jon’s mind that the system not only worked, but worked so well.

It would seem at a glance that none of the humans who dwelt inside the protective wall of New Puebla considered themselves slaves or captives. Like the cows of Don Luis’s parable, the humans had seemingly grown one hundred percent dependent on their masters. They not only gave up their blood and their freedom willingly, but they also went so far as to police each other in the name of and for the sake of the vampires.

It was also clear that the humans outnumbered the vampires twenty to one, yet every morning, as today, the vampires slept soundly in their crypt-like homes, safe and sound, with peace of mind. Despite the fact that their dwellings were neither secret nor hidden, the notion that the humans might turn against the vampires and murder them in their sleep was not even dreamed of.

Or so it seemed.

“Truth is, guys,” Maya explained, “as distasteful as it may seem to us at first, to have monsters ruling over humans, the system works. I was convinced for a bit that the best thing for us to do, at least for now—that is, until we recover the Anvil—was to leave these people to live in peace. I thought that if we were to try and take out the vampires and free them, it would only expose these simple people to other threats, the obvious being things from the Drops that aren’t as accommodating.”

As Jon related to Carbine what Maya had told him, Carbine and Jon were both quick to judge the human citizens harshly for their willingness to give up and become domesticated slaves of a blood-tax farm. Jon was puzzled and felt ashamed for the people in the valley below, but when Carbine gave voice to their shared incredulity, Jon realized that he was in no position to criticize. Maya was right; it would be immoral of them to impose freedom on these people.

Although the exact details of the circumstances differed, had not he and other citizens of Home been guilty of the same craven, unquestionable submissiveness to Accoba Warbak? So much so that they had no longer been aware that they had even submitted? It had become a gestalt, an institution. Complete obedience to the state and compliance with its draconian pogrom against the Displaced had been the law of the land for generations.

Were those who willingly gave up their blood to the rulers and accepted their lower standard of living as a law of nature any more shameful and cowardly than those who’d believed without question the orders from their State? Were the citizens of New Puebla any different from those who’d never questioned the rule not to read? Who’d never questioned the State, and stood by as “illegal aliens” were slaughtered? Who were even complicit in the terrifying witch hunts conducted by the Ministry of Social Purity against the neighbors and children of Home who had been born with the ability to shape Strange, or had dared to read a book?

No, Jon himself had been just as guilty of lying down as the people of New Puebla. They thought that this was just how things were. Jon hadn’t realized the nature of his transgressions either. He had believed every lie ever told by the State, until someone had opened his eyes, freed him, and shown him the truth. And, considering the protection these people gained in exchange for the paltry price of blood that would refresh itself, he realized that he would make the same choices as the citizens of New Puebla. At least with the vampires present, New Puebla stood a fighting chance should the Harvesters ever happen this way.

“But what does she mean by at first?” Carbine asked. Curious, Jon shrugged and went back to listening to the goddess’s report.

Maya now