War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

Stanleys, steam-powered battle robots made out of car parts. We’d turned one of the ARK’s super soldiers, Rachel Vixx, into a sister, but she didn’t make it. Alice, though, a big monster mutated by ARK genetic engineering, was still with us, and she was also a sister, no matter how big and smelly she was. Alice had been part of the army of hogs in Denver, though we called them Gammas.

But then armies were plentiful in the Juniper. The good ol’ U.S. of A. was sending in troops to the Juniper to quell the violence and bring law and order. Well, a day late and dollar short if you ask me. And a lie. Hoyt had a cut deal with the U.S. to help him clean up his messes and keep the Gammas a secret.

Me and my family made it through the Gammas, defeated the ARK, and got the cure to the Sterility Epidemic across the border and into Hays, Kansas. That was where Micaiah betrayed us, right in front of a zillion cameras, at this big news media event he’d set up.

Micaiah cut a deal with his maker, and in return, Hoyt let us go. And just like that, my boy and Tibbs Hoyt walked off the stage in Marriott’s Conference Center’s Grand Ballroom and out the door.

Leaving me alone to answer questions I couldn’t answer.

If I said a word, Hoyt would kill my family. They were all in the next room staring down the barrels of the ARK’s ground troops, the Cuius Regios.

Well, not everyone.

My sister Wren was upstairs, mutating, from a dose of the Gulo Delta that had saved her life but had left her cells irreparably changed.

We had no idea if she’d go full Gamma like Alice, or if she’d remain relatively human.

And after Micaiah’s final betrayal, all I could do was blink and feel my own changes.

My adventures had killed parts of me that should’ve been green and young, like an aspen sapling wet with April showers. Instead, my despair left me like a lightning-struck pine, blackened and dead.

Little did I know, I would weaponize my despair. ’Cause if hope can be weapon, so can despair.

Just more bullets God can use.

And, dang, but if Her aim ain’t true most of the time.

Chapter One

I THOUGHT I WAS A PROPHET. Then I thought I was a pawn. But in the end, I was a puppet. Powerful forces pulled my strings. Money and power forced me to dance. When I had questions, I was told I danced for the good of the world. I believed it so much that I continued the shuffle even after the strings were severed.

—Burke, Sally Brown, My Apologies, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2076

(i)

I stood on the stage of the Marriott Conference Center’s Grand Ballroom in Hays, Kansas, looking at the faces of all the reporters, the faces of the Cuius Regios working security, the lights flashing and the cameras recording my face. Questions rained down in a fine mist of promises, book deals, and money.

All those people wanted the truth, or at least a story they could sell. But if I said a word, my ex-boyfriend’s daddy would murder everyone I loved. My insides were desolate.

Nothing mattered. Tibbs Hoyt had won. And I was left with nothing but scars and tin-can angel wings, too busted to fly.

My family was in Alcove B, just down from the grand ballroom, being escorted out at gunpoint, deported back to the Juniper. The Juniper folk would be expatriated. Pilate and June Mai Angel might have passports, but I imagined being U.S. citizens wouldn’t help them much. Hoyt would pull out his wallet and pay Uncle Sam whatever cash it would take to make him forget about his children. He’d done it to his veterans before.

Or Hoyt might decide to lock away Pilate and June Mai in prisons for either terrorism or treason or both. They were wanted for various crimes, but Tibbs Hoyt had promised all charges would be dropped. We’d be able to walk free back into the Juniper if we never, ever messed with him again.

Micaiah had given up everything for us.

All that flashed through my head as the reporters continued to shout, as they continued to take pictures and video of me to post online, so I could enjoy my fifteen minutes of fame—such a thing tasted like manure.

“Is she stupid?” someone asked about me, some white woman who glanced over at a Hindu woman in a green sari.

That was something I could answer. “Yes, ma’am, I’m incredibly stupid. Though my grades were always good.”

“Grades? What school did you go to?” someone asked.

I opened my mouth to answer. Why not? As long as I played along with Hoyt, the charges in Ohio from the gunfight would be pardoned.

Never had the chance.

War hit the Marriott. Say what you will about my family, but we wouldn’t be going anywhere quietly. Especially not my sister Wren. Her real name was Irene but that name was too small for her to wear. She was up in her suite, changing into something neither hell nor heaven could hope to kill.

The fire alarms went off adding a whole new layer to the cacophony. The deafening noise sent my feet flying.

I couldn’t get out through the reporters, so I dashed through the side-door where Tibbs Hoyt had taken his family of murdering clones, the Severins, engineered for war, but fabricated to look like everyday women, old, young, even little kids.

Out in the hall, Kansas state troopers hoofed past me lugging Zeus 2 charge guns, electric rifles that could stun a bull or disintegrate a house depending on the settings. They were heading toward Alcove B where gunshots rang out. Pilate, June Mai Angel, my sister Sharlotte, all were in there, along with Alice, my adopted sister. She was the size of car walking on two feet and pretty much invulnerable unless you shot her in the head or severed her spine.

But how would Alice handle a full-on zap