When War Calls(141)

Jaden nodded as he struggled to stay close to Ryan as they walked to the end of the hall. After navigating their way through several more corridors, they walked up a stairway and then out into daylight, above ground. Jaden felt the heat hit him as soon as he stepped out of the enclosure, and Ryan signalled for a jeep to come to them. Jaden quickly hopped up on the back while Ryan took the front seat next to the driver.

‘Northern wall, zone twelve, just a quick drive-by,’ said Ryan.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the driver.

The vehicle sped up quickly as it drove around the base of the mountainous rock they had come from, and Ryan turned to speak with Jaden. ‘These were once the streets of Corsec, but everything has been dismantled and moved underground. It’s quite safe, naturally, but if the Alliance were to see us above ground, they would send more attacks. Those homes you see in the mounds facing north are false dwellings. We leave them there for the Alliance to target so they leave the real homes alone.’

Jaden looked over his shoulder back toward the homes he had seen from his window, and now realised that most of them were badly damaged, with balconies collapsed and giant holes where entire homes would have been.

‘What’s over there?’ asked Jaden.

He had spotted a three-hundred-foot-high wall of concrete in the east between the mountains. Ryan tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed so that they would be taken to it.

‘That’s our last hope,’ said Ryan. ‘If we ever lost here, that wall would slow the Alliance down enough for us to escape.’

‘What’s behind it?’

‘Nothing. That’s why it’s still there. The Alliance doesn’t consider it a target. Under here is an escape route as well as our hospitals. The sick and injured will be moved out first this way, and the rest will follow soon after.’

Again Ryan tapped the driver on the shoulder, this time pointing north. After fifteen minutes’ drive, they reached the edge of the city and jumped out of the vehicle. Ryan led Jaden to the very edge so that they were looking from a giant cliff a mile in the air down to the ocean, where there were hundreds of gray lumps. Along the cliff top in both directions were turrets like those in Ceahlin and many personnel keeping watch ahead. The ocean was divided into two as a single strip of land, ten miles in length and two in width, ran from one shore to the other.

‘This is the Quartun Land Bridge,’ said Ryan. ‘And that is the continent Tiquan, one of three under Alliance rule.’

Jaden looked all around him with interest, smelling the salt in the air and listening to the seagulls as they swooped around them. This was it. This was Corsec, the most well defended stronghold in the Resistance, where the Alliance had been defeated time and time again. He had heard a lot about this place from the travellers who passed through Callibra, but he had never been able to imagine what it was really like to stand on these giant cliff faces. It gave him a sense of greatness like nowhere else. He was high above the world, untouchable under the blue sky, standing on the red dust and looking out over the dark ocean. But the more he looked at the ocean, the more he began to feel that this place was not as it seemed, that he was not safe, and the strange dreams with the dark-haired boy were not too different to what he saw now. This was a place of war, of bloodshed. No matter the stories of victory, it was a place of death.

‘We spot an Alliance unit from time to time,’ Ryan continued. ‘But they have learned to keep their distance. Our air force is constantly on guard, and while they get off the ground, these missile launchers take care of any incoming threat. The rest is taken care of by the Diadon Navy. They are not of the Resistance, but if not for us, their home islands would be under threat, so they do their part in protecting us.’

Ryan indicated the hundreds of ships anchored below on both sides of the land bridge, and Jaden now understood what the gray lumps were. Some of the ships were enormous, Jaden thought, as even from this height he could now make them out clearly.

‘They have tried many times, but they cannot breach our defence,’ said Ryan. ‘The only way up into these cliffs is by what we call “the ramp”. It’s steep, but you can drive a tank up it easily enough. It comes all the way up and ends a few miles into the heart of Corsec. Without that, the Alliance would have no hope of reaching here.’

‘Why don’t you fill it?’ asked Jaden.

‘Because, my naïve little brother, then we would have no means of getting down either.’

Ryan slapped Jaden on the back playfully and led him back to the vehicle.

‘But now the Alliance is coming from the south,’ said Jaden.