Marcus had a new face. It wouldn't hold up to real inspection but was good enough to get through a crowd. His time on Mars and the beleaguered Moon had come to an end. In the fifteen years since the Commonwealth had actively instigated genocide measures he had infiltrated their command achieved the rank of Tsar of Expansion. This meant he had unprecedented access to almost all levels of the Commonwealth security grid. The fact that he had personally and publicly committed treason had not yet it seemed caught up with the Commonwealth security squads charged with internal sweeps. Suited him, if they had caught on to him he had dozens of back doors where he could access data anyway.
He scanned the milling crowd before him. He had to steal a transport. He was disgusted by New Humanity and its arrogance but he did not wish to kill any of the cattle before him to secure his transport.
He slipped into the crowd, hunched his shoulders cast his eyes to the ground and shuffled along, just one of the crowd. As he walked he caught snatches of conversation.
"Not true, its absurd."
"I heard that all the troops are to pacify an alien enemy out near andromeda."
"Come on! Everyone knows the moons as good as a slave colony!"
And more, Marcus's work had been well wrought. Although much remained to be done, he had simply created controversy but in time the overwhelming weight of normality and the status quo of the commonwealth would come to rights again, and the people would forget, disregard, and move on, content.
He found an unlocked door to a maintenance bay. With luck there would be a shuttle inside, or a way out to the rest of the port.
Mac took careful aim on the point man of another ill trained Commonwealth patrol. As he gently squeezed the trigger on his pulse rifle his two companions fired as well, all three hit their marks. The three soldiers dropped dead leaving their sergeant standing; she took one look at the terrain and beat feet for clear land. She was babbling into her radio as she ran. Mac ignored her.
He racked his rifle and checked the charge. Plenty left he gathered his crew up and crept back into the wild woodland.
The woods had become their best ally. While the Commonwealth could bomb the hell out of them from above, they risked losing track of survivors. So they sent hapless patrols and armored columns in instead. Fearing a bloodbath the troops were usually small in numbers and preselected for their expendability. While the Earthlings had suffered casualties the Commonwealth was taking the worst of it. Still Mac knew that sooner or later attrition would win out; the Commonwealth had billions of citizens Mac was down to a few thousand survivors. After losing Max many of the vampires and immortals had decided to flee and attempt to hide. Those that remained were the core. Too angry, bitter, or hopeless to bother lying to themselves about their chances alone, they chose to fight, to the quite literal end.
Mac allowed his crew to return to shelter to eat rest, make love, or write a journal whatever it was that kept them sane between duty shifts. Mac stood guard with the assigned patrol. He slept, sometimes four more like three hours a night now, the weight of their existence pulling on him.
Max shivered in Simon's arms Simon, her longtime friend and one time boss imprisoned for over a hundred years in the basement below the gate room in Cheyenne Mountain. She wondered if somewhere on this benighted planet the gate still existed and if her people could use it to escape this place, where her people once a secret and invaluable resource were no better than rabid dogs. She closed her eyes against the wind.
They had left Colorado Springs the day before. Simon's strange transformation had taken a heavy toll. The energy he once held close and hot and in such abundance had faded to coals. He had needed to rest for several days in Colorado Springs and had only been able to make a few hundred miles a day. Nothing compared to his strength and powers pre-imprisonment. Max doubted he would really be able to help her; still he did not deserve eternal imprisonment, in spite of his crimes.
Simon had done something once, something terrible and irredeemable, but it had saved the Earth, saved the Galaxy from a terrible force. But the cost had been high. Simon was not human, while he had managed to appear human a hundred years ago. He was half angel the bastard offspring of heaven. He had the powers and strength of an angel but the frailty of a human. His actions to save the Earth had been born of desperate fear, treated as an animal in his home of Oro before the angels had returned and killed their children he had been a savaged boy. As the only survivor he had been a wary and crafty creature. Still the thought of losing another home, another species had driven him to the edge, he had been wounded bleeding life energy and unwilling to die without knowing his planet and humans were safe.
The humans, who knew the score, knew that terrible cost of their safety, knew that there had been little if any choice, those humans had put him in chains and poured concrete in upon his prison left him to rot for eternity. Max felt a flush of shame at the thought that she had left him there for so long.
He held her closer as he banked toward the ground she panicked instinctively and gripped him so tightly her knuckles went white. As the ground rushed up at them at the speed of suicide Simon snapped his wings wide catching a mass of air and stealing their momentum he stabbed his legs downward and landed solidly. Max slowly released her grip and put her feet on the ground.
While she could not deny that flying with Simon saved her huge amounts of time, it was also completely terrifying.