Read REHO: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Hegemon Wars) for Free Online

him what they really thought. The same single word reflected in their gazes: freak .
    As he had in Red Denver, Reho would again have to vanish.
    The crowded parted as he exited, heading east toward the piers. No one stopped him. No one called out to him and no Community Enforcers arrived to intervene. Even if they had, what would have changed? A cloud of fear and disgust followed Reho as he passed through the people of his community. How many remembered me? One thing was for sure. No one would forget me now.
    Reho could hear the pulsating bass from the band as they continued to play.
    He returned to the place where he had stashed his rifle and pack, a secret spot he had used as a kid to hide his fishing gear and the wooden toy pulse rifle. No one had ever known the secret spot existed, except for Vaness and Drenfi.
    ***
    Reho was aware of their presence long before anyone spoke. Back at the RT, they’d watched from a corner booth. During the fight outside, he’d noticed one of them near the front of the crowd.
    Reho gazed from the end of the pier—not at his followers, but out across the ocean. He looked at the stars and imagined looking down on Earth from up there, how the Hegemon would have seen our planet before invading, conquering, and then killing any hope of rebuilding.
    In the Old World, the ocean had been called the Atlantic. Reho had once read a book in school about men and women, pilgrims, who had braved the same ocean and started a colony for their homeland, much like the Hegemon. Reho couldn’t remember the name of the land the pilgrims had come from, only that they had arrived on ships, landing near section 2E long before it was called that. Reho knew the few facts that everyone else in Usona knew. The aliens had arrived on space ships from a homeland just as foreign to Reho as the one the pilgrims had left.
    Several boats were docked nearby. Reho knew the basics of sailing; navigation he understood after years wandering the Blastlands and trekking the West Coast. He could disappear. No one was out here. He could easily steal a boat and vanish from Usona. Farther east, other lands existed. Survivors just like Usona. But some different, some lands never having suffered the Blasts, looking just as they always had since Pangaea had broken apart, dividing humans. Or so his teachers had explained.
    “You look like you could use an escape.” The voice was deep and authoritative.
    Reho dropped his gaze and stared at the end of the pier. This is as far as his feet could take him. “Where are your guys?” He turned and looked past the stranger to where he had sensed others standing a few minutes earlier.
    Shadows hid the man’s face. “I sent them to get the boat ready.”
    “What do you want?” Reho asked.
    “You,” he replied. “We do merchant work for a well-paying employer and need another crewman.” He stepped out of the shadows, his eyes locked on Reho.
    His face was square with a trio of scars running across his forehead. His hands stayed in his pockets. He was Reho’s height and dressed in black tactical clothing. Two pistols were strapped to either thigh. He was older, maybe in his forties, with broad shoulders and thick, scar-covered arms. His face reminded Reho of some of the knock-down-drag-outs he had encountered in Red Denver.
    “I’m Ends.”
    Reho stared. “Merchant work? How do you know me?”
    “I don’t.”
    “You were in the bar. Why did you stay?”
    “We saw no reason to leave. You fight like a Hegemon.”
    Hegemon?
    “How would you know?” Reho asked, unprepared for the comment and the unsettling comparison.
    He stepped closer to Reho and slipped his hands out of his pockets. “I’ve seen them fight. They move like you do: strong and quick. I’ve even seen one appear to fly. Regardless, I’ve seen enough to keep my distance when I can.”
    Reho looked at the man’s hands. They were scarred as well. “Why me?”
    “We need another crewman for our next job,” Ends