Prologue: 30 Years Ago

  The day the world ended, again.

  Marsh stood in the doorway of the med center in the ruins of the forward base with his big rex Cookie, standing watch, looking for movement coming from either end of the street. He moved his rosary in his hand, as he mindlessly murmured the Jesus prayer. That always helped him to calm himself. The sun was going down, and the smoke from the burning buildings was obscuring Marsh's view, but that wouldn't bother Cookie. The full-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex stood at the ready, sharp, cyber enhanced eyes bouncing back and forth, surveying the entire area. If he couldn’t see trouble coming, he would definitely smell it.

  Marsh hoped that having a fully armed and armored Rex standing out front would deter any looters. Desperate deserters had already pillaged the base, but best to keep an eye out for any souls looking for one last score. "Can they really be called deserters anymore?" Marsh thought. The war had consumed itself. The Barons had all died, dragging their armies with them. All except one, and he wasn’t long for this world.

  Inside, on a gurney, lay Baron Joseph Mancha, the tyrant who had dragged Marsh into this mess. Calli, the only medic left, worked furiously to keep the man alive.

  Calli pressed a glowing green crystal disk against the Baron’s neck, trying to stabilize the man's vitals as his life support vest was clearly failing to keep up with his injuries. Marsh knew she was doing everything she could to save him no matter how she felt about the man. Marsh smirked as he realized that the Baron had clearly not given himself the same gene and nanite augmentation that the tyrant had forced on the rest of them. ‘He might have survived if he had,’ Marsh thought to himself. Probably didn't want to risk someone turning the compliance collar on him, the bastard.

  “Could have been worse I guess” Marsh thought to himself. He had seen first hand what the Eastern Alliance had done to a majority of their troops. Some of those poor bastards were almost entirely machines now. He remembered the first time he had to kill one up close, when he finally saw one's face. It was a woman, even though you wouldn't have known from the bulky, clunky shape of her body. He had knocked her helmet off, half of her head was machine parts, but her face was still human. It was pale and almost corpse looking but she was alive. She was screaming, her eyes darting everywhere like she didn’t know where she was. Her broken body continued to fight as if it moved separately of her will. He finally cracked the power unit inside her chest and her limbs stopped attacking, but her head was still alive. She suddenly stopped screaming and just looked at him with those milky, terrified, eyes. She just stared and said, “Please, please.” in a distorted robotic voice.

  For a second he thought she was begging for her life, but he quickly understood. She wanted to die, she wanted this nightmare to end. He imagined if they found her , they might possibly “fix her,” and she would be forced to continue. He picked up a large stone and smashed her head in, he smashed over and over again until there was nothing left. He was just smashing goo into the dirt when Cookie nudged him and finally shook him out of it. He hadn’t even realised he was screaming. Or that he was crying.

  Calli worked relentlessly. She glanced at the gurney’s flashing vitals. Calli had been raised to be a healer, she took her oath to treat anyone in need very seriously. She watched the flickering light of her arm bracer’s digital read out, trying to sustain the dying man in front of her. She feared if he died his men might execute her, or Marsh and Paul if he died. When he died. She knew it was just a matter of time. It appeared his organs had been shredded. She couldn't help but think that if the Baron had the nanites he injected into all his men he might be in better condition. She wondered if all the command staff were the same. She barely registered Marsh in the doorway, but the sound of Cookie’s heavy, rhythmic breathing was a quiet comfort. It was a sound from her childhood, when she and Marsh played together as kids with Cookie never far away.

  This had all gone wrong earlier this morning. Marsh had been pulled unexpectedly from the front line by his commander and sent to the Ops Tankers. What he found appeared to be the aftermath of a failed coup. The first man to see him was General Hobbs, Mancha’s third-in-command, missing most of his right arm.

  “Who are you, trooper? Are you the rex rider we sent for?” Hobbs yelled.

  “Yes, sir,” Marsh said. “With the 4th cavalry unit, reporting as ordered, sir!”

  Marsh could hardly hear the general over the chaos. Medics ran; officers screamed. The tanker was shredded from an internal blast, blown open like a clam shell. Outside, one of the Brontosaurs used to tow the massive mobile unit lay dead, another trumpeting in pain, its bellowing shaking the walls. Hobbs shouted, “Someone put that creature down!” and the order was followed instantly by a round of shots and a final large thud that shook the ground.

  Hobbs grabbed Marsh’s vest collar. “Trooper, you are to load this man onto your mount and ride as quickly as possible to the med center at forward base Delta. You will be escorted by four Highguardsmen and Colonel Howard. Stop for nothing, stop for no one! A rex is the fastest transport we still have that can carry two men. NOW GO!”

  Marsh immediately went to Cookie and gave the old command to kneel. For years before the war, they had spent their time loading hay bales and feed bags back on the ranch. Cookie reacted to the old commands instantly.

  As the guardsmen brought out the litter, Marsh looked at the man's face and froze. Baron Mancha, bloody and dazed, wrapped in a flashing red life-support vest.

  A hard crack from a rifle butt shook Marsh from his stupor. “Move your ass, trooper!” yelled Colonel Howard. That earned a growl from Cookie, who flashed his massive teeth at the Colonel. Marsh jumped into the saddle. “We’re ready, Sir!”

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  As the Colonel and guardsmen mounted their raptors, Marsh heard General Hobbs shouting inside the tanker: “I want an all-out attack on the heart of the enemy line! Air and land units advance in overlapping waves! If the Eastern Alliance wants to fight dirty, we’ll oblige them! ENGAGE AND FIRE AT WILL!”

  Marsh kicked Cookie into motion, five raptors and their riders close behind.Cookie ran at a good speed, eating up the sixteen kilometers of flat mesa toward the opening of Crescent Canyon that led down to the base. The sound of battle carried clearly behind them: gunfire, explosions, the roars of giant beasts, and the screams of dying men. Marsh thought of his friends, his unit, all caught in a madman's last stand. He felt a wrenching guilt, but also an overwhelming relief that he wasn't there.

  As they rode, the Colonel got updates on his arm bracer: the enemy’s command structure had also been wiped out, and their army was also fully engaged.

  They were a few hundred yards from the canyon entrance when it happened. The sound of the battle didn't fade; it was switched off. The noise was replaced by a deep, unnatural vibration in the air. The Colonel's arm display went dead, replaced by pure static.

  Marsh turned and saw it: a blue sphere of light that began to expand rapidly. At its center was a black void that seemed to pull the light toward it instead of casting it out. The air itself began to suck backward toward the growing anomaly.

  Cookie roared, running flat out for the canyon. Marsh realized it wasn’t just the rex's speed; the air was being forcibly dragged toward the bubble. This wasn't a bomb; this felt like the final death knell of the whole world.

  Marsh had heard the rumors that the EA had some kind of super weapon. World ending stuff. The Barons had long suspected the Eastern Alliance held something they recovered during their expeditions across the ocean. A gravity weapon that could not just destroy life, but unravel matter. This was it he realized.

  They made it to the down ramp of the canyon and found relief from the pull. The Colonel and two guardsmen had stopped, watching. The other two guardsmen were stuck at the canyon's edge, their raptors running in place, unable to move forward. The lead Guardsmen shouted and started to move back towards his men.

  The Colonel screamed, “They’re already dead, you idiots! Look at them!”

  Marsh watched in horror as the two men and their raptors began to pull apart like dust, their screams echoing until even their sound was swallowed by the weird, unnatural silence.

  Then, suddenly, it all stopped. The silence was replaced by rushing wind, and the clear blue sky shone overhead. The gravity weapon had vanished, taking the armies with it.

  The Colonel tried his comms again, getting no answer. Marsh pulled out his own. “Come on, Calli, pick up, you have to be okay, pick up!”

  “Marsh! Is that you?” Calli’s voice crackled. “Where are you? What the hell just happened? We’re hearing all kinds of crazy things here, and all the base guards are leaving.”

  “Listen carefully, are you at your post in the med center?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay there. Prepare to receive injuried. We’ll be there within the hour. And be careful!”

  “Marsh, I think, I think something bad happened.”

  “CALLI! Do what I say!”

  “Okay. Yes, Marsh. We’ll be ready.”

  As they approached the base, Marsh saw a scene of total collapse: gates open, towers unmanned, dinosaurs roaming free, and soldiers fighting over scraps.

  “Keep moving, men,” the Colonel ordered. “We have to save the Baron. Then we will sort out this mess.”

  Calli and two nurses met them, along with Paul Tinhorn, Marsh’s childhood friend from the valley, who had been injured days ago, standing guard with a rifle in his good hand.

  “What is happening here!” demanded the Colonel.

  “All dead, or run off, sir,” Calli said, rushing to the gurney. “The command center blew up, then gunmen started shooting officers. By the time someone stopped them, every commander was dead. Then that thing happened, and the army just disappeared from comms. Everyone ran.”

  “It was them Scale-faced zealots, sir,” Paul reported. “The Way of Sobek. I saw the tattoos.”

  The Colonel inspected the dead gunman Paul had pointed out: scale tattoos confirming the man was a lizard-worshipping terrorist. “The Way of Sobek. Scum. How did they do this?”

  “Colonel, sir!” shouted Calli. “The Baron is regaining consciousness, but I don’t know for how long.”

  The Colonel pushed Calli aside and leaned over the bloody man. “My Baron, my Emperor, I am here. What do you wish of me?”

  The disfigured Baron struggled to speak. “Who has done this?”

  “It appears the Eastern Barons aligned with the Sobek terrorists. They used a weapon I have never seen—the gravity weapon we heard described from the Euro expeditions," the Colonel said.

  Mancha suddenly grabbed the Colonel’s shirt with a bloody, burned hand, pulling him closer. His eyes were wide and crazed. “This is not right! This is not what I was promised! They said they would strike at our enemies. I was to be Emperor of the entire continent! Treacherous Snakes! They showed me the vision! It was ordained! Destroy them, Howard! Destroy all of them! Destooooo…”

  The Baron fell back, his hand releasing the Colonel’s shirt. Calli rushed in, but finally stood back and shook her head. “The vest was the only thing keeping him alive. The internal damage was too great.”

  The Colonel stood, adjusted his uniform, and quietly stared at the dead tyrant. He removed the crest from the Baron’s uniform and pinned it to his own.

  “You will all bear witness. The Baron named me Baron and charged me with the glorious task of avenging his death and completing his dream! We will unite this entire continent under one ruler! One American Empire! Ruled by me, Baron Joseph Howard the Second! I will…”

  Howard cut off his speech suddenly, looking down at his chest. The tip of a short sword had appeared, pushing his newly pinned crest off his uniform. It hit the ground with a clang just before he did.

  The would-be Baron rolled over, gasping, looking up at the guardsman who had run him through. The guardsman quietly picked up a towel and wiped the blood from his sword. He locked eyes with Marsh, whose hand was resting on his sidearm.

  “I just wanna go home, see my ma again, if she’s still alive,” the guardsman said calmly. “I think the world may have just ended anyways. No more need for Barons.” The guardsmen then raised his boot and brought it down on Howard's head, finishing the man with a sickening crunch.

  He nodded to his partner, and they walked out without saying a word and rode away on their raptors, leaving the silence of the dead.

  “Well, what do you reckon we do now, Marsh?” said Paul.

  “We go home.”

  Calli hopped up onto Cookie with Marsh. Paul mounted the dead Colonel’s raptor. The three left the base and turned west, away from the smoke and the death. They rode towards the setting sun and towards the valley where the largest herds grazed. They rode home… to Thundersaur Valley.