Refuge: The Minder's War, #1

By Gerhard Gehrke

• "A brilliantly created sci-fi dystopia." --Readers Enjoy Authors' Dreams
• "Sci-fi with horror, violence, and heart thumping action." --Jane Reads (Five star review)

For Deanne and her correctional facility work crew, the night the stars fell ended everything.

 

The godlike invaders brought death to any who opposed them. Those that served were changed forever.

 

To save her friends and herself, Deanne will have to find the one creature who dares to stand against the invaders. But saving mankind will mean surrendering what it means to be human.

 

Grab a copy of the science fiction thriller that will keep you turning the pages!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucas Ross Publishing
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540156594

Gerhard Gehrke

Gerhard Gehrke is the author of Nineveh's Child, the Supervillain High series, and A Beginner's Guide to Invading Earth.

Book preview

Chapter One – Awake

Iam.

Magus’s first thought upon waking confirmed that he was alive and alone. He felt the presence of billions of others nearby, but none shared his mind.

It’s over. The hive is dead.

He would not mourn the hive. He didn’t know sorrow. But he understood that with their passing, he had finally achieved a freedom that he hadn’t known for over a thousand years.

But he didn’t need to reach out to the other minders and guardians who had been in the hive’s servitude to know they would continue on their course, blind to the fact that their master was now gone, winked out of existence. It was in their nature to forge ahead loyally, as the obedient slaves knew nothing but servitude. Would any of them even sense their master’s passing? He didn’t know. Most of the trillions of hive particles were mindless, nothing more than microscopic seeds wrapped in carbon cocoons ensconced within the ships of their fleet, flying through space towards their next world. The fleet would continue on its course, their destination set long ago when the hive still lived.

And they had found the next world. Their flight would soon reach an end and another planet would fall. The other guardians would go to work ensuring the success of the invasion.

But he wouldn’t.

There had been enough time for sleep, and he thought he would stay awake a while.

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP, I muttered. Everyone in the group turned to look at me. I hadn’t intended to say it out loud, just like I hadn’t intended to get caught stealing my mother’s pills or selling her packages left on the front step, saying they had been snagged by some kid on a bicycle, but here I was.

In jail.

The room around us was cinder block and bare of art save for a few safety posters and one proclaiming The Responsibility Lies on You to Stop Sexual Harassment. There was some drug stuff too, and maybe a motivational poster with puppies. I don’t know. I never really looked at the walls.

You have something to add, Deanne? This was Bethany. She was the biggest of the girls I had dubbed the Unshorn Sisterhood, the ones that ran the Goddess prayer meetings where I was sitting at the fringes spouting my editorial comments. She was also the largest girl in the Roseville Youth Detention Center for Girls. Apparently when I called her Mongo that first day, she caught wind of it and someone must have explained Blazing Saddles to her, because she had cornered me and purred curiously specific threats about what would happen to my front and back private parts once she got me alone. But she had never followed up on any of her threats, and she’d even allowed me to achieve a Kuiper Belt–level rotation around her crew. But that was because of Mindy.

Mindy liked me.

I don’t know why. Maybe it was because on day two a baggie of joints fell out of Mindy’s pocket and just before a corrections officer spotted them I planted my foot squarely on the booty. Mindy recovered the goods once the officer passed along, and she thanked me and hugged me and promised we would be best friends. I didn’t like the best friends thing when I was in third grade and I didn’t want it now. I never told her I thought she hadn’t noticed the dropped bag and that I wanted the pot for myself.

I avoided eye contact with Bethany. This worked with most of the girls trying to establish a pecking order, but not with her. Why couldn’t everyone just shut up and do their time?

Bethany got up from the circle, pushing her folding metal chair back and shoving past a couple of the true believers. Everyone was wearing their powder blues that day, just like every day. Bethany had her sleeves rolled up to her biceps and pinned there, revealing rather impressive muscles for a seventeen-year-old girl. I had been sitting backwards on a chair and got up just in time for her to get close and tower over me. A hush fell over the room. It was precisely at moments like these that the enlightened and pious all went mute.

You push, Bethany said. You push and push and push. Her center-parted hair hung around her face like curtains. She jabbed me with a finger. I stepped back and she followed. She jabbed again. Her brilliant dark eyes shined. She was breathing on me. I could smell her sweat. I kept my palms up, the universal sign for Don’t wanna fight no more.

She didn’t speak sign language. She slugged me, a hard low blow to the beltline.

After taking a hit, a practiced beta dog like me knows how to stay in that in-between place that avoids escalation: not getting back up on my feet, and not dropping to the floor to get kicked and stomped, either. But she had knocked the breath out of me and I fell. I tried to protect myself with my arms and hands.

Bethany, stop it, Mindy said, tugging fecklessly on Bethany’s jumpsuit pants. She was small enough that Bethany might accidentally swallow someone like her in her sleep. She could bench-press six girls Mindy’s size, easy. But Bethany paused, looked down at me for a moment, and then turned and went back to her place in the circle.

Mindy helped me up.

Thanks, I said.

You okay? she asked, real concern in her voice.

I’ll be fine.

I went back to my chair, not so much to listen or to show that I was unfazed, but because I doubted I could make it out of the multipurpose room without collapsing.

Chapter Two – Division of Labor

Some of the other guardians and minders would not only sense the hive’s passing, Magus decided, but would adapt.

Many possessed greater intelligence than he and a few might thrive without the hive’s supervision. Even the weakest among them would see no reason to assume the hive would revive and resume control. These would fall in line with the stronger guardians, especially the Alpha, and remain docile drones. Magus didn’t fear any of these. None had demonstrated their will upon him or risen high in the hive’s hierarchy of captured servants, even though all of them had come from a conquered world and had retained their identity. Some possessed certain gifts or needed traits. The hive took and used what was needed.

Most became raw material for the conquest.

But all had their will bent, as had Magus.

There was one he feared, one who could have fought the hive off when they had invaded her world but who had chosen not to. The Alpha Guardian. Like him, she too still lived. All of the ships of the fleet were intact. He would have been alerted if any had suffered system failure.

The Alpha’s ship was in the lead position and she was already assuming control.

THEY HAD COMPUTERS for us at the youth correctional facility. With the internet, we had the wisdom of the ages and a window to the world. I could have been working on schoolwork or practicing SATs or soaking in a TED Talk on recidivism in criminals. Instead, I was compiling a YouTube playlist of monkey and goat screams that sounded like people having sex.

Mindy couldn’t stop laughing.

I turned the speakers on the computer all the way up and let it rip. The computer room came alive with the sounds of grunts, animal hoots, and oral spasms. The correctional officer scowled as she headed our way. She leaned in and looked at what was playing.

Shut it off, she ordered.

I hit pause. She waited until I closed the browser, revealing a 500-word essay Mindy was working on. Something about positive self-image and her feelings. I had a different therapist, but I could have summarized my feelings in two words if I could use a contraction and the F-bomb.

As soon as the CO had turned and taken three steps back to her desk, I relaunched the browser and played some more monkey sounds. A few other girls were laughing now. The CO pointed to a row of chairs against the wall by her desk.

That’s a time-out, Deanne, she said.

I went and sat, but something about the fact that it took the CO a few minutes to calm everyone down fed my soul. Only about half of the computers were occupied. About thirty girls were across the hall in the TV room watching the news. Through one of the inside windows, I could see a corner of the TV and a few of the faces paying rapt attention to CNN. Right away I knew what was on. It was the only thing the news covered these days. The Goddess had shown up again, and on this particular day she had been spotted in Nairobi.

LUNCH. AFTERNOON CLASS. Group for those who want a twelve-step feather in their cap for the juvenile parole board. None of it was memorable enough to be much of a blip on my radar. Late afternoon, my twelve-girl homeroom had kitchen duty, so we prepared dinner under the bored stare of the dining services supervisor. We were making spaghetti. Everyone wanted in on the measuring and stirring and tasting. That’s where the fights happened. I settled in washing pots and everyone left me alone. I liked the steam and the hot water and the fact that while washing pots, I couldn’t smell any of the other girls. By the time I was finishing up, my hands were wrinkled and my white apron stained and damp.

Mindy and the rest of the Goddess worshippers were lingering in the dining room by the time I was off shift and able to eat. There were a couple of new girls. One was a certified loner, and the other was one of the born-agains and a fixture in the group’s daily Bible study. I sat at a nearby table and listened in as Mongo—er, Bethany—expounded on what it meant to have a god on earth and what the future for all of us, and especially womankind, would be. I twisted noodles on my fork and ran them through the tomato sauce.

Bethany yielded the floor and the discussion became the usual bout of speculation and hopes and leavened dreams. The Goddess would end all wars. Halt global warming. Prevent earthquakes. She would cure cancer. She had cured cancer, at least for the neighbor of the cousin of one of the girls down in Fairfield. I was waiting for the Goddess to be cast as a superhero who would fight crime, but the group steered clear of that one, at least this time.

Finally it was Mindy’s turn to speak.

I think she’s beautiful, Mindy said.

Everyone agreed. It was a hard point to argue, as the footage of the Goddess showed a woman wreathed in flame leaving a trail like a meteor peeling out in the upper atmosphere. She radiated fire, leaving her facial features masked beyond a mere outline. It’s a wonder what special effects could do. But I kept quiet as I ate my noodles.

Her fire draws the faithful, Bethany said. It cleanses us. It’s the light that pushes away the eternal dark.

There followed a murmur of agreements.

She’s the daughter of fire, she continued, a flame that will never die. Bow your heads and we’ll pray.

I stopped eating while they prayed and tried not to make any noise. Enough of a ruckus from the kitchen cleaning crew echoed into the dining room. Voices, some laughing, some shouting, could be heard through the walls and windows of the rest of the facility. I kept quiet until they finished and then I ate the last few bites of my dinner.

SATURDAY MORNING WAS a light schedule, which meant we didn’t have school. Some girls took the opportunity to sleep in, but I couldn’t figure out how that was possible considering how loud the facility got once 120 girls were up and showering and making noise. Whatever homeroom had breakfast duty had mucked up the pancakes, as there was raw batter in the middle of mine. The flavorless cantaloupe and honeydew chunks were too cold and hurt my teeth. At least the veggie sausages weren’t bad if you put syrup on them.

I sipped coffee and watched Mindy eat. She happily sawed away at the done parts of the griddle cakes and sopped up the syrup without a word of complaint.

Is your mom coming tomorrow? she asked. It’s Sunday.

I know tomorrow’s Sunday, I said, prodding an uneaten chunk of fruit. Yeah, she’s supposed to.

My dad’s coming. And he said he’s bringing my baby brother.

Oh yeah? How old is he now?

Five. And smart. My dad says he can read really well, whole sentences and stuff. He loves books. I wish I was like that when I was little.

You can read fine now, I said. And you’re smart—smarter than the other girls in your little group.

It’s your group too.

I shrugged. I had run out of edible things on my tray. It looked like pancake surgery, and I had lost the patient. The Goddess worship group now counted as a faith meeting, which showed up on my paperwork. I was the well-rounded reprobate who could add religious service to her County Corrections Department résumé.

Mindy finished up and we went to walk the yard. The outside fall air was cold that morning and the sky held a smoggy tan haze. A few girls were playing basketball but most strolled about or sat talking. At least it was quiet. The distant sounds of traffic on the highway and the buzz of a chainsaw were somehow comforting and normal. Through a series of fences we could see the neighboring institution where the boys were held. Several basketball games were underway in their yard.

Have anything this morning? I asked.

Therapist, Mindy said.

How’s that going?

She’s really helpful and supportive.

That’s her job.

And she does it well. She says I need to challenge myself and set goals, even hard ones. She says if I can do this with the type of friends I choose, I won’t get into trouble like I have.

I didn’t say anything, just nodded, appreciating the irony of the comment as we made it to the end of the chain fence enclosure and turned to head back.

GOD, GRANT ME THE SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, I said. And bring back Firefly.

There followed a collective Amen from the seven girls in the group.

Ms. Garavano, the tweed-clad Latina who ran the group, said, Thank you, Deanne. Now let’s go around and share how our day has been going and how we made it through the week.

The girls shared. I shared. Through it all, I played a quiet game of hypocrisy, lie, or truth as the other girls revealed and made up facts about their struggles with drugs and alcohol. After we all said our piece, the score was 3-2-1. I didn’t count myself. My week had gone fine, thank you very much, and I told everyone it had been a struggle, with enough pausing to really sell it. But it hadn’t been a struggle. No one inside the facility had access to oxy and smoking a joint didn’t count as a set-back. I had ridden out my minor shakes in the first week of incarceration. But I dreamed of little white pills.

I sipped my fifth cup of coffee for the morning and offered encouragement to each speaker and nodded and didn’t stare at the cup of brown liquid or the floor throughout any of it. After our ritual confessions and oversharing, I was helpful with a couple of the girls who were working on their workbooks. Think second-grade-level coloring and puzzle book with an addiction theme, and you’ve got the right idea.

A girl named Ronda was having a bit of a breakdown. She was already being comforted by a couple of other girls who had their arms around her, but I leaned in and gave her a hug.

We draw strength from one another, I said softly in her ear. She nodded and the waterworks subsided. After the hour was up, the group filtered out.

Deanne, Ms. Garavano said. I lingered and she waited until we were alone. I just wanted to say that I appreciate how positive you are with the girls. You have a real gift—a talent—and I’m hoping your example will rub off on the others.

Thank you, Ms. Garavano, I said.

Oh, please. Call me Mary. You have a month left in here. Have you spoken with your counselor about placement with a school? I wanted to tell you I think you could sign up for your GED test and begin accumulating college credits. I’ve seen your academic scores. You’re quite bright, and your talents could do so much good outside of here. I know of several programs in the area you can apply to and I can get the paperwork started.

I nodded, my expression neutral. Let me think about it.

It’s no problem to do. It will give you a head start on any junior college you plan on attending and give you some excellent experience. Think of it like laying a foundation for your future.

It sounds exciting. I’ll get back to you.

I’ll even call your mother to get her to sign off on the paperwork. I’m sure she—

Leave her out of this, I said a little too quickly. Where I go once I graduate is none of her business.

Ms. Garavano was silent, her lips forming words that didn’t come. Had I yelled? Maybe I had.

Deanne, she said finally, composing herself. You have to learn to accept the help that comes your way. Women like us must stick together. The system as it stands does little enough. Think about it, and let me know Tuesday as these things take time.

I nodded but couldn’t make eye contact. Without a word, I gathered my own activity book and journal and left the room.

I felt edgy. Sleep never came easy, so going to bed early was out of the question. The TV room was crowded, but with the volume as high as it usually was I could drop into a chair and no one would bug me. I had learned a long time ago how to ignore people. If I was lucky, there might be something entertaining on. Unfortunately, though, the facility didn’t get the Syfy channel and no one else liked Star Trek anyway.

The privations of prison life.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON could get weird. Whatever saint said the devil finds work for idle hands must have gone to a youth detention facility. We had arts and crafts and game time like we were in kindergarten, or like we were seniors, spending the last years of our lives playing Parcheesi while sucking down our laudanum so we’d go quietly into the long night. Today, one counselor was providing art lessons with pencil, charcoal, and chalk. For some reason, everyone participating was drawing a clown. Just freaky. Another counselor brought in a helper dog. The animal was the center of attention, especially after it ate something that upset its stomach and developed a bout of diarrhea. Music came in from the neighboring room, where a few instruments were available, but the piano player, clarinet player, and the two on recorders couldn’t agree on a melody, or even a key.

In the middle of it all, Mindy doodled with the crayons, intent on her own non-clown-themed drawing of a sad bouquet of wilted flowers sitting in the middle of the table.

That’s really good, I said.

Thanks. She sifted through the pile of crayons, not finding the colors she needed. She settled for a canary yellow and began adding highlights to one of the flower petals. Using her thumb, she smeared each petal so the colors blended.

The correctional officer in charge of our room was flirting with a staffer just outside the doorway. The counselor giving the lessons had left to use the restroom. With plenty of blind spots, girls will be girls. Drugs were traded for cash. I saw two cell phones exchange hands. Anything that wouldn’t immediately be missed went into a pocket: pages ripped from books, paper clips, and marker pens that could be huffed to get even an imaginary buzz.

I made sure not to stare at anyone.

Among the books piled on the table was a copy of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook. I was leafing through it. There had been an actual D&D group in the facility the last time I had been a guest here. I had joined them in playing, but it didn’t last long. Apparently, it was bad form for my druid to sacrifice another one of the player characters to Gaia. But I loved the black-and-white illustrations that complemented the endless tables and class descriptions. The artists must have assumed that the women fighting alongside the men of the party wouldn’t need armor below the top of the thigh. I was reading through the psionics rules when someone called out, The Goddess has shown up again.

Mindy dropped the crayon and abandoned her artwork. I followed, and we both filed out and crowded into the TV room. The title