We arrived at the tables. I cleared a chair to make room for Anna. I sat to her left while Char sat to her right.
Over the next few minutes, people arrived. Samuel and Makara came, sitting near the head of the table on my left. Julian followed shortly after, sitting next to Makara. Ashton walked from Perseus, making his way toward the table. He sat next to Julian.
“Where are the rest?” Makara asked.
“There’s still ten minutes,” Samuel said.
A few people I didn’t recognize sat at the table — probably some of the civilian leaders of the Vegas Exodus. Deborah took a seat at the table. She was silent and contemplative, apparently finding more interest in staring at the surface of the wooden table than in making conversation.
Five minutes before the meeting, people began to gather around the table, wanting to hear everything that was discussed. This group included Raiders and Exiles, along with people from Las Vegas and the Community, whose faces were worn from all the hard times they had endured. All they wanted was peace and rest, the one thing we weren’t able to give them.
Finally, the last group of people arrived: Michael, Lauren, and Ruth, leading a battered Marcus, whose face was bruised and whose right lower leg was in a cast. He advanced slowly on a pair of crutches, his face worn and his reddish-brown beard long and tangled. Like his brother Char’s, Marcus’s blue eyes were bright and alert. With help from Lauren, he was eased into a seat next to Char. Michael knelt in front of Callie, who had been following her parents, pointing her toward a group of children who must have been part of the Vegas Exodus. Reluctantly, Callie set off.
All the seats at the table were taken, and everyone waited for Makara to begin. The crowd around the table murmured, but its voices were stilled when Makara stood, the legs of her wooden chair squealing against the cement.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I know the last few weeks haven’t been easy, and I can’t promise they’ll get any easier. We lost a lot of lives and we barely have time to mourn our dead. I’m sorry for that. Askala and the Radaskim aren’t going to wait for us, so we can’t wait for them. We have to move on to Los Angeles and help Augustus, for several reasons.”
Makara paused a moment, and everyone waited quietly for her to continue.
“The first reason is one of food. Even with our numbers lower, the food in Hydroponics won’t last forever. Samuel, Ruth, and I took inventory of what we have, and it’s clear: even with the canned food, we don’t have long. A couple of months at most. Civilians can stay in the Bunker for the meantime, but eventually, everyone will need move to Los Angeles.”
Everyone had grown quiet, waiting for her to say more. Makara continued.
“Augustus is being attacked from the west by the Reapers in the Inner City, and from the east by the Blighters. It won’t be long before his forces are crushed between the two sides.”
Miraculously, everyone was still quiet. The crowd was actually hearing Makara out. I had expected them to protest at having to continue fighting.
“Without Augustus, there’s no way we can win the war against Askala,” Makara said. “That’s why we have to help him. I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there, but winning means we’ll have the chance to make the counterattack on Ragnarok Crater.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from the crowd. Even a few faces at the council table went white at that announcement.
“So you’re just going to leave us behind?” One of the civilian leaders of the Exodus had spoken. “What if you don’t come back, like last time?”
“Please hold off on questions and comments for now,” Makara said. “But I will answer this one. We will come back. And if not, there should be few enough people here to survive for a long time, if not indefinitely.”
When no one protested, Makara continued.
“This is the first question I put before the council,” Makara went on, “and it has nothing to do with Los Angeles, but with Cain of the Sworn, along with those of his gang who followed him and surrendered to us. What is to be their fate?”
Now, the crowd’s voice rose in an angry murmur. Members of the council table looked at one another, waiting for the crowd’s voice to die.
When it became quiet, Samuel was the first to speak.
“It makes no sense to keep them alive anymore,” he said. “Keeping them alive would waste time and resources, draining our food and our manpower. They betrayed the New Angels, and they deserve nothing more than swift retribution.”
The crowd roared its agreement. I didn’t realize that we’d also be deciding the fate of Cain and the Sworn. Before I could think about my own feelings on the subject, Makara spoke.
“All members in the council in favor of the swift execution of Cain and the three Sworn who survived the battle, say ‘aye.’”
“Aye,” most all of the people at the council said in unison. I wasn’t ready to vote, so I said nothing. But it didn’t matter which way I voted; Cain and his followers were as good as dead.
“Now,” Makara said, “I’m going to open up the floor to discussion about how we can best help Augustus.”
The table was silent, and the crowd surrounding it stilled. From somewhere, a baby started crying.
“Obviously, the ship can only carry so many,” Ashton said. “We’ll have to find a safe landing point to unload all our forces. Whether that is Augustus’s camp, or somewhere else entirely, I don’t know. And we’ll have to make quite a few trips to transport everyone.”
“We have about two hundred fighters left,” Makara said. “What is that, five, six trips?”
Two hundred fighters sounded so pitiful when said out loud. Just a week ago we had been at least five hundred.
“If anything is clear,” Makara said, “the survival of the New Angels depends on winning the battle in Los Angeles. Two hundred fighters won’t do much to augment Augustus’s legions, which number in the thousands. Maybe if we set up a flank, we can get at the Reapers where it will hurt the most.”
“What do you mean?” Anna asked.
“If Carin is focused completely on Augustus, an attack from us would be completely unexpected,” Makara said. “It might be the chance we need.”
“That’s something we should talk about with Augustus,” Ashton said. “But maybe we should be focusing on the Blighters. They are the real enemy.”
“He’s been expecting us to come back for a few days by now,” I said. “The Blighters might have already gotten to him.”
“No, he’s alive,” Makara said. “I spoke to him a couple of hours ago. The Blighters started their attack this morning. He’s getting impatient, and I told him I’d let him know our decision tonight.”
“How soon do you plan on leaving?” Lauren asked.
Makara looked at her grimly. “Tonight. Every minute we wait is more men lost.”
Everyone in the hangar fell quiet at that.
“It will take many trips on Perseus to ferry two hundred people there,” Makara said. “I only trust the ship to carry thirty or so at a time.”
“That makes about seven trips,” I said, doing the math. “That’ll take at least a full day, working nonstop.”
“Probably longer,” Samuel said. “We can expect there to be roadblocks. Let’s expect two, or even three days. There are dragons to worry about.”
With the mention of dragons, I was reminded of Askal. It’d been a while since I’d seen him. I had gotten a glimpse of him defending Pyrite from the Radaskim when we had relocated to Bunker 84. And then there had been the dream, where he was outside Oasis. I had no idea how he was doing now, or even if he was safe.