This new chapter for The Hungry Stars brings us back to Rally, as the players on that particular field reach their final (for this book) positions. What began as a simple investigation into Grace Proctor’s miraculous survival has led our characters down a much darker path, as questions about other missing citizens led to pointing fingers between rebels and government forces, with neither of them aware that someone else might have joined the game.
Icarus has made significant inroads on Rally, but they still need to silence the handful of people that know even the smallest hint of their existence, but the one thing they can’t always account for, as Peter himself said so long ago, is what someone will do for love… like a man will for the world he loves.
Below is a snippet from the chapter, the full text of which you can find at the links above. Enjoy!
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“Are you expecting anything?” Millirysa asked, her eyes never leaving the front window. She’d heard the vehicle coming before Anna did. The Proctors lived on a side street that didn’t get much traffic compared to the main roads through the neighbourhood.
“No,” Charles answered with a shake of his head. “That’s RapidStar. They don’t usually deliver this late in the day.” It could have been something for their neighbours. The Shen family’s house was on a blind corner and often got missed by delivery personnel. It wasn’t unusual for packages to be dropped at the Proctor’s door by mistake. “But it could be a late delivery.” He added, but even he didn’t fully believe his own words.
“Maybe,” Millirysa said, but she was no more convinced than Charles himself. Her tintas had gone very still and she opened her bag, pulling out a bow and quiver of arrows. The bow itself was too large and heavy for a human to use without decades of training. It was primitive in design, with no cams or extra cabling. Only the materials it was made from and the single small UV sight, invisible to human eyes, on it differentiated it from the weapons of an ancient, bygone era.
Charles was surprised Millirysa knew how to use it, but he realized that he shouldn’t be. Allyria hadn’t been an archer, but she had lived in this neighbourhood, either with the Parkers or, with increasing frequency as she got older, at this house. Millirysa had grown up in the Blue Quarter, and downing surveillance drones was a favoured pastime there. He didn’t like to imagine the other uses for that bow, but he’d seen news footage of fallen police and Enforcers with feathered shafts sticking out of their bodies. Even a Tribune’s thick skin wasn’t proof against an arrow loosed by a Verrish war bow.
The transport truck slowed down outside the Proctor residence and pulled into the driveway. A ripple of movement cascaded up from the tips of Millirysa’s tintas to her scalp. The vehicle stopped a few yards in front of the house, taking position in front of the well-worn sedan Millirysa had driven here, carelessly – or deliberately – blocking the other vehicle from driving straight out again. From the cab, two men and a woman emerged. They were dressed like regular RapidStar couriers, the woman checking a datascroll as if to confirm a delivery location while directing the men to the truck’s side door, but there was something about them that made Millirysa’s skin crawl. She’d long learned how to spot undercover police and CIS. Many Envoy Children had developed a similar skill, but doing so was even more critical to her survival than it was for them.
There was something off about the way these people moved. It was subtle. A human or Tribune probably wouldn’t have noticed. Many of her people wouldn’t have either, but Verrish instincts were finely honed, and Millirysa’s more than others. They moved too steadily, too fluidly for even the most efficiency-minded of civilian drivers. It was how military or combat personnel moved as they readied themselves for an operation. “Do you think so?”
~
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