Free Battle Beyond Earth: Resurrection by Nick S. Thomas Page B

there.”
    “We’re not going there to rest. We have work to do.”
    She looked puzzled. “So where are we heading?”
    “Paris.”

    * * *

    “Beautiful isn’t it?” Cyn asked.
    Jones was looking down from the co-pilots seat of their shuttle as they made their final descent. There was woodland and gardens for kilometres in every direction. They could see the city far into the distance, but where they were about to land was serene. Not a single other aircraft was in sight, for only those with clearance were allowed to take to the skies there.
    “You know the city used to stand right here?”
    “Yes, but you still haven’t told me what we’re doing here?”
    “Following orders,” he replied bluntly.
    She shook her head and turned back to the controls to make a landing in the nearest small opening to the coordinates Will had given her. They put down smoothly, and he was quickly out the door. They both stepped a few paces onto the grass, stopping to take it all in.
    This was not the artificial garden he had seen on the Ares station. Everything was natural here. Trees reached high into the sky; the grass cut short, and everything in sight was so well cared for it almost appeared artificial. He’d never appreciated the smell of nature as much as this day. He thought back to the confines of the Guam when he thought he would be trapped and killed in any second.
    But then Jones looked down at his console and quickly took to a stride towards the coordinates he had been given.
    “I don’t understand this, Will. Are we working or not?”
    “We’re working all right, just on the last thing I could ever have expected to do.”
    They passed through several hedgerows and came to an opening inside a circle of dense and tall trees. As they went inside, they could see an old stone structure and stepped closer. It had the statue of a man on top of it.
    “What? What is this?” Cyn asked.
    “Resting place of Mitch Taylor.”
    “The Mitch Taylor?”
    “Yep.”
    “I don’t understand; what are we doing here?”
    “Bringing him back from the dead.”
    She was speechless, as he led her around the structure where they found several soldiers with drones and medical personal waiting at the sealed doorway to the structure.
    “Lieutenant Jones?” one of them asked.
    “Yes,” he replied.
    “We are about to begin. Do we have your permission?”
    “Proceed.”
    Cyn looked at everything around her and couldn’t understand what was going on, but before she could say a word, the doorway released and slid open. They walked into the chamber to find a frozen incubation chamber. She could see equipment all around him that seemed to be working. She had expected to find nothing but a coffin.
    “He’s alive?”
    “Only barely.”
    “What are you doing with him?”
    “My orders. Bring him back, and prepare him to fight.”
    “What? That’s crazy.”
    “Yes, it sounds that way to me. No, it is crazy. But it’s just the kind of crazy that you might expect with Taylor.”
    She reached down to his hand and held it tight.
    “Will. I know you feel attached to the whole history of your family and those wars, but why are you doing this?”
    “This isn’t me. I never wanted this. These are my orders.”
    He looked over to the medical staff.
    “How long until he is ready for departure?”
    “We can have the chamber loaded aboard your shuttle within the hour.”

    * * *

    Seven days later.
    Taylor awoke and took in a deep breath of air as if he had just awoken from a nightmare. He sat up quickly but felt pain from the sudden movement, and then tightness in his chest. He was almost blinded from the bright light overhead and reached down to feel scar tissue on his chest. He looked down to see precise incision marks running almost the length and width of his torso, and other scars that appeared less uniform and more injury related. As he touched the wounds, his memory flashed back to his final fight with Erdogan, and his pulse began to