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

crew,” Ends said. “ If we weren’t so desperate, I’d tell you to rethink it.”
    “Yeah,” Gibson said, “if it wasn’t for Thursday’s tender cuddling, I’d have left this worthless crew a dozen commissions back.” Thursday turned around and shot his arm upward under the opposite forearm. Reho hadn’t seen the gesture before but considered it equal to the birds Sola delivered a minute ago.
    “If you two murks are done,” Sola said, “I’d like to leave before sunrise. We still need to secure the cargo below, unless you want to explain a half-million points in damaged device.” She headed below deck.
    “You can store your stuff in the room across from Sola’s,” Ends said. “Go down, then turn right behind the stairs. Yours is the one without a handle—which you might want to fix it if you don’t want Thursday throwing dead fish under your mattress.”
    Reho waited for a laugh from Ends, but it didn’t come. Instead, he left him standing alone on the deck.
    Reho glanced back at 4E. He had returned after six years only to leave it after a few hours. His aunt and uncle were dead. He came back with nothing but memories and now would leave again the same way. Whatever future he was to have, it would be somewhere on the other side of the ocean.
    ***
    The room was the size of a truck bed. The mattress, too short for him, took up most of the floor space. A cabinet, two of its drawers missing, was pushed against the opposite wall. Reho scanned the walls. OldWorld posters covered nearly every square inch: movies, bands, and advertisements for products, most of which Reho had seen before. One poster stood out from the rest. Reho edged around the room before giving up and stepping onto the bed to get a closer look. The poster featured a deserted, blast-ridden land. A barren road cut through the center; a lone man walked toward him with a mangy-looking dog. He wore black leather and appeared injured, desperate, and exhausted. But there was a fire, a purpose, in his eyes. What motivated him to continue? Was it the search for a new life or something more basic? Reho thought he knew what it was: he sought revenge, had a need for wrongs to be made right. The poster was entitled The Road Warrior . Reho thought back to his years walking the Blastlands and wondered how others must have perceived him. Had they seen in him what Reho saw in the poster?
    “I see you met Max,” Sola said. “Have you seen the movie?”
    Sola stood in the doorway. She hung on the doorframe, arms raised above her head. She had a beauty uncommon to Usona. She was from somewhere else, maybe the Eastern Bloc or one of the Antarctic communities. Her skin was milky white, and, like Ends, her arms were sinewy but still attractive. She wore a tight, black shirt and equally tight, black combat-style pants with expensive boots. Reho had only seen combats a few times in his wanderings. They were one of the most sought-after items in Red Denver. Out in the Blastlands, you could only go as far as your shoes could take you.
    “No,” Reho replied, “it looks as though it could have been filmed after the Blasts.”
    She stepped into the room. “Before the Blasts, lots of writers and filmmakers imagined what the apocalypse would look like and what would cause it. And from what I’ve seen . . .” She pointed to a poster depicting the severed head of Lady Liberty on the streets of what Reho knew to be OldWorld New York City. Its title read Escape from New York . “… every one of them got it wrong.”
    “At least we aren’t dealing with zombies,” Reho said with a nod toward a poster below the porthole. A zombie’s decayed, tortured face screamed out from the poster, as several undeads stumbled through eerie, moonlit fog. He had seen the film before but couldn't remember where. In it, radiation from a crashed alien satellite had resurrected the local dead.
    “Everyone will be in the mess room in about an hour,” Sola said. “Thursday might be