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

in another time, under different circumstances, Maya would have been able to explain to them what she meant when she said they’d still be able to have the same life they’d already had, except better. Maybe. The city was still there, it had its basic infrastructure, and it had the defensive wall. From where Maya stood, the only “service” the ruling class had ever provided was direction—someone to tell them what to do, as it was the human populace that in fact did everything in the city. The rulers had simply supped on the fruits on their serfs’ labors and drunk from the chalice of stolen blood. But with each shouted accusation, Maya began to slowly realize that she, and her guardians, had forced their own vision of morality onto an unwilling population. Somehow, she had become the villain. She had become what she despised.

Cries of “Killers!” and “Terrorists!” and shouted questions such as “Who will maintain the wall?” and “Who will protect us from the Drop-Beasts?” surged and threatened to drown out Maya’s pleas, magically enhanced or no.

Stunned, Maya’s shouts turned to murmurs, and she lowered her gaze to the ground.

“But… but you’re free now. You could protect yourselves; you could govern yourselves… cooperatively, without slavery or violence…” Her words trailed off. Her revolutionary fire had gone out. A cold realization came over her as if she was being wrapped in a wet blanket.

“You people disgust me!” Lacking Maya’s Strange, Lucy relied on her cybernetic body to make her voice loud enough for all to hear. Only some of the people near the front of the surging mob heard her. It made no difference—no significant one anyway. “How can you sell your souls to a gang of devils that suck the very life from your veins? Then when we risk our lives to bring you freedom, you cry foul and want to know who will protect you from the creatures of the night? The monsters from the Drops? You bent your very knees and broke your very backs to slave away for monsters from the Drops! How can you serve one demon and claim it protects you from another? You’re mad! All of you!” Lucy’s fury raged like a storm as she continued to scream her lecture at the mob, but her words were as impactful as a storm’s winds against stone mountains.

“You have all traded your freedom as men and women of the earth in exchange for some weak promise of security, yet your sons and husbands lie dead before you now because they had to do the fighting to protect their overlords… their… their owners! What sort of man would die to protect the ones that rule over him, lie to him, steal from and slowly kill him?”

“We’ve heard enough of your extremist bullshit!” Maya heard one call over the yelling.

“You’ve lost nothing today that you can’t and already don’t do for yourselves!” Maya heard Lucy say, but she knew, too late now, that the villagers were right.

Lost nothing except the dead, Lucy, except the dead. The dead and their security.

“You idiots! Can’t you see that she is right?” Lucy held out an open hand at the now silent and diminutive-looking Maya, still weeping. “You did it all, and the vampires just took. That’s all they do, the rulers: they take! You’ve just had someone doing all the thinking for you for so long, you don’t know how to think for yourselves anymore!”

Seeing their faces all twisted in hate for her and her friends made Maya feel slightly ill. Seeing the people hold up pieces of their fallen loved ones made her sick to her stomach.

We’ve failed here. It’s hopeless. The thought was like a needle; her self-righteous principles, a balloon. Deflated and defeated, Maya just stood there, weeping and shaking her head.

“Stop it, Lucy,” Maya said, just loud enough for her guardian to hear. “They are right. We erred.”

Lucy turned and studied Maya’s face. Her rage faded, grim understanding slowly colonizing her painted features.

“We want justice!” The crowd surged again, and this time, first one, then three, then many raced for the stage. Some were unarmed, others carried rifles and knives, and still others only carried household and farm implements: cattle prods, shovels, rakes, and the like. Ratt quickly bounced up the stairs to the stage platform proper.

“That’s enough!” Lucy’s left arm became a blur as it reached for her hip, which had equally as fast popped open and dispensed something into the receiving hand. The carrying hand whipped and threw a small grenade at the base of the stage, just meters before the incoming lynch mob.

There was a bright flash followed by a high-pitched whine. The onrushers stopped dead in their tracks and attempted in vain to cover both their eyes and ears at the same time. When the light faded, Maya could see many of them on their knees or hunched over, vomiting on the ground. Other than that, no one seemed to be hurt— no one new, that is. The shouting and screaming had been hushed, and now that the grenade’s whine had faded fully, the plaza was again quiet as the grave, save for the ringing in people’s ears.

“This is what’s going to happen.” Lucy stepped forward now, a good three strides in front of Maya and Jon, her toes nearly touching the edge of the stage. Her arms criss crossed her lithe metallic body, hands resting on the grips of her Macuahuitls.

Her legs opened into a slightly wider than shoulder-width stance, and she turned her head from side to side, making sure that she could see everyone and, more importantly, that they could see her. She continued to use her built-in amplifiers to address the free people of New Puebla.

“Every one of you will turn away from this stage, collect your dead, and return to your miserable lives in your miserable mud homes. You will not dally or hesitate. You have five minutes to clear this plaza, or I will clear