CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

Mike left in the middle of the night to climb high up. He’d get far ahead of them with the ATV, then abandon it when he was forced to. He didn’t want to risk their lives.

He traveled for a day high up into the mountains on the ATV. The storms grew ever nearer. He felt as if he was chasing them up the mountains.

The scenery was spectacular. Infinite Grand Canyons and spectacular vistas surrounded him. He just had to find a way through them.

He almost wished he wasn’t connected by communication with Hok and Kench and with the communications room far down below. He’d almost have preferred the quiet.

In the morning the wind blew and the sun rose over the mountains, reflecting off the high clouds, and with the addition of the electric show of the distant lightning, it was beautiful, something he wouldn’t have minded sharing with Joe next to him. But absent that, he’d rather be alone with his thoughts.

But the fleet was getting nearer. At the moment Mike faced a massive line of jagged cliffs, gray and pink where the sun hit them, and shades of deep blue in the dense shadows.

Making sure his cling-suit was secure, his zukoh firmly attached, and limited materials well-stowed in his backpack, he set out on foot.

He kept his aura on so to enhance the protection of his semi-spacesuit. Under it, he wore the flannel shirt, jeans, and shoes he’d been wearing when they’d been captured on Earth.

Mike was caught up in the world of the technology he had that was connected to his mind. The storm on the mountain top in the distance swirled and grew. Lightning like none he’d seen on Earth flashed from mountain top to mountain top, from sky to valley. Gusts of thunder roared at him.

He climbed higher. He must have been twenty thousand feet above sea level. Taller mountains rose around him. He stood atop a craggy tor. He was in the first bits of snow swirling in the wind along the ground, but the sky directly above him was pristinely clear. His communicator showed him his most likely path. He’d climbed so high, so far, with little effect from the elements and the world around him. As he’d felt at peak moments before, his mind was now almost one with the technology of this alien world.

His small aura surrounded him and kept the elements at bay. He’d switched it on to keep himself warm, but he knew it would alert the enemy to where he was.

He trudged on. The precipices he traversed opened into vast emptiness thousands of feet below him. Bits of the vertigo he’d experienced on the first trip up drifted into his mind.

He kept on.

Now he knew what it felt like to look down into an abyss, but this was the abyss of his life, of his world, of his love. Everything dark, hopeless, and coming to a fearful end.

He trudged on.

His muscles were sore. His body ached.

He moved inch by inch closer to the storms. But now he wanted them to get closer. He wanted them to become part of him.

Mike had seen Joe use two communicators and a lightning storm from Earth to perform a miracle of destruction. One time Joe had said that the power he held in his hand and that had been implanted into him mind was limited only by his own abilities and imagination.

Mike was about to find out. He didn’t know if he’d live through this. He’d survived the lightning strike to build the tunnel.

Thoughts racked his mind. Would he survive his own power or see Joe again or his family? He thought of all the things that he’d not be part of in the future. The despair of confronting the titanic struggle to come nearly overwhelmed him. He faced the fact that it would be immensely easier to take a step to the right or left at the edge of a chasm and all of this would be over.

The thought that kept him on was that he wanted to be in Joe’s arms again. He concentrated on saving his husband, his people, and his world.

But he also wanted the ship Bex was on to fire on him. That’s why he’d turned his communicator on high. They would locate him. They had to. They would concentrate their fire here. He hoped. He could summon power, but as had happened with Bex’s first attack on him, he could also reflect back their own power on them. He wanted as much of the chances of the universe on his side as he could have.

So he’d have the storm, their own attack, the liquid zukoh, and the power in his hands, and in his mind. He had to hope it would be enough. And if it wasn’t, maybe he thought he’d be glad to be dead so this hell of death and separation would be over. Despair nearly overwhelmed him. But his love for Joe and his anger at the universe around him kept him upright.

Mike trudged on.