Dark Reckoning: Book Summary

It is not clear how much time has passed. It may have been a day, it may have been a week. But finally the attack from the kite ends.  The companions are finally able to get mobile once again.

Now that they are able to look around, they spot a door on the bottom level of the redoubt that they had not spotted before. As always, they decide to see where it leads to, in the hopes that it might be an armory since they are so low on ammunition.  JB examines it and quickly determines that it is not trapped.

When they open it some sort of creature is behind it and it attacks. They fire at it wounding it before they can finally close the door. They know that they can’t jump out of the redoubt so they decide to go top side and see what it is like.

When they open the door they discover one hell of an ash hurricane.  It was caused by the continuous assault from the kite. Ryan order the group away and they close the door. They have no choice but to search the redoubt once again for anything that they can use for weapons or food.

A barely sentient mutant is moving through the ash storm towards Silas’ base.  He smells meat and he wants it, as he is starving. As he closes in on the base, several of the blue shirts spot him and they get into a battle. The creature is finally killed and the survivor goes to report what happened to Baron Sheffield.

The new Baron has a former slave, a woman named Collette with him. The survivor reports what happens and Sheffield knows that if word gets out to the slaves, they will have another fight on their hands. So he orders the slave in the room to be executed. When one of the sec men argues, he is killed as well.

Ryan and company decide to try and get out using the gateways after all.  They reboot the system in hopes that it will unlock the gateway.   It works but when the system reboots, they discover it requires a six number password.  Doc tries his name and it works. They see a long recorded message from Silas to Sheffield. From the message they learn his plans.  They discuss jumping in for food and weapons.

They eat an unpleasant meal made of shoe leather, cat chow and continue to discuss their plan of action. 

Sheffield rapes Collett and she pretends to enjoy it, but she is actually planning to take his position as baron in the very near future.

It turns out that Baron Henderson of Casanova Ville, his grandson and about seventy of his men survived the attack on this ville. They were hunting when the attack came. Henderson angers his grandson to the point the young man draws on his grandfather.  When he puts the weapon away Henderson kills him and then appoints the head of his sec forces as his heir apparent.  He has a plan to attack and capture Front Royal as he believes that Cawdor is responsible for the destruction of his ville.

Baron Sheffield orders the slaves to chip away the hardened ash and mud from the base.  Due to the kite attack on the valley, it is no longer habitable and they will have to leave it. He knows of a dozen spots that have Satellite dishes where they could set up a new base. So he sets up two teams to take the remaining APC’s to scout out each of the sites.  The team that finds the suitable site will be rewarded with a permanent position as sec men at the whorehouses.

It is a new day and Ryan allowed Krysty to sleep until noon that day while they were busy cleaning and making weapons to use. Once they did all that they could they head back down to the doorway on the lowest level of the redoubt and open the door. Dean stays behind to act as the guard.

As they travel through the tunnel a mutant crab attacks them. They wound it and chase after it as it would make a great meal considering what they had been eating for so long. They go for a long distance before they finally discover an underground ville.

They sneak into the ville in the hopes of getting food and ammo.  They gather mushrooms as they pass through a field and find a pen filled with large mutant rats. They kill several and take them for food.

Then a mutant spots them and they give chase. They fight hard using up pretty much the last of the ammo and the crude weapons they made. A large number of the mutants are killed. They collapse a stone bridge.

Nathan is with his men having a feast.  His wife is nursing their newborn son, Alexander. He goes, as far as to serve his own men and it is obvious that they are loyal to him. Clem arrives and tells him about Henderson’s survival.

As the evening approaches Henderson attacks Front Royal. He uses a catapult to launch basically huge grenades at the ville. But Nathan returns the favor and sends his dogs out after them.  Most of Henderson’s men are wiped out by the dogs and the catapult is lost.  But he manages to escape once again.

About this time the first APC ends up getting into an accident and several of the men in it are injured and killed. They find themselves in a lake when it stops rolling and they head towards shore again.

The second team find their first Satellite location and end up losing four men due to a mutated scream wing.  When they inspect the dish, it collapses and kills another man. They then leave to the next dish.

After the bridge collapses the companions try to find a way back to the redoubt or out of the tunnels.  They eventually find a blue shirt truck that is half buried in the tunnel. It had been caught in the explosion that was caused by the cannies in Gaia’s Demise.  They find a couple of AK’s and food, grenades and ammo.

The mutants from the ville tracked them down and brought their mutant god with them.  The companions make short work of the mutant. It shocks the hell out of the mutants and they declare Ryan’s group their new god.

One of the APC’s arrive at the next dish and encounter a group of very strange people who attack them. They are carrying blasters but don’t use them. Many of the people are killed outright. But one survives and decides to follow the APC and get revenge.

After they clean the weapons they decide to use the gateway and make random jumps in order to get more weapons and food.

Campbell's team arrives at Setteville and promptly kill the men and the useless.  The save the females for themselves.

Ryan and JB take a jump to a redoubt. They are not sure where they landed but JB spots the Southern Cross in the night sky. Since the armory is barren they jump back to the redoubt in Tennessee.

A hermit watches as the LAV 25 passes by.  He knows that the LAV is going to run into trouble.  He is then killed by the man hunting them.

Mildred gets Ryan and JB to get some rest.  Krysty and Dean are next to jump. They arrive in the Alaskan redoubt and know it’s too big for them to get to the armory. When they jump out, someone who has made the redoubt his home, punches various buttons and they are sent on a random jump. When they materialize they discover that they are under water. They grab a pack from one of the corpses in the chamber and jump and use the LD button and make it home.

Sheffield’s men arrive at yet another sat dish. This one is just perfect but some sort of unseen underground mutant attacks them.  All but one of the men on the team are killed and the APC is lost. The survivor finds himself face to face with the man that has been hunting him.

During the bad jump Dean and Krysty lose the weapon so Doc jumps after it and gets it back. They have more food from the back that they captured.

Jak and Mildred are the next to jump and they come back almost instantly. They managed to get more weapons but were set upon by sec druids.  They did manage to escape without the sec druids following.

The guards at Shiloh base come under attack by hundreds of starving mutants. Sheffield and his men injure slaves and send them outside in order to distract the mutants and they head for their bunker, planning to use the kite to kill the mutants. Only about fifty of the sec men survive and make it.

Campbells crew leave at Dawn and head towards the next satellite dish. It is only two hours away, about sixty miles from Settieville.  They come across a ruined ville.  One of the mutants that attacked it tries to get into the APC. They kill the creature but it leaves an egg sac attached to the underside of the vehicle.

Henderson goes to the ville of Green Cove. Like Front Royal, he intends on taking the ville over.  A man named DuQuene runs the ville.  Henderson convinces him about the threat, after the destruction of the two villes.  The baron decides to let him stay but dispatches a team to check out the ville.

Sheffield uses the Kite to kill the mutants that are attacking the ville.

Ryan’s people prepare for another jump. Mildred announces that she is sure that Sheffield is going to try and leave. They have to up the timetable and attack.  So Ryan and JB go on one last jump for weapons. They are surprised to see that they arrived in Sheffield’s base, inside the storage shed. They load up on all the weapons and ammo they can carry and are attacked by sec men. They fight hard and then jump out.

Collette and a sec man arrive at the Tennessee redoubt and they find the dead sec man and the slave that was sent to try and gain access to the redoubt. She finds the paper with the cods and then kills the sec man she is with in order to gain access.  She finally finds the correct code and enters the base.

Henderson is enjoying a meal. The scouts return and report to the baron that the villes were indeed destroyed as Henderson said. He is trying to come up with a plan to take the ville for himself when more scouts arrive and announce that Front Royal is too busy repairing damage to be planning an attack.

The remains of Campbell’s team arrive back at Shiloh and announce that Green Bay is ripe for the picking and that the satellite dish looks optimal. Sheffield decides to turn the kite on it in order to blind the people and use them as slaves.

Henderson knows that he’s screwed so he shoots at an oil lantern and starts a fire. The lantern is over ammo and cooks it off. He races up the stairs in the confusion and finds himself at the ledge with the river below. He is blinded by the kite and falls to his death.

Ryan and the others use the tunnels, leaving Dean behind to act as the guard. After they leave his is knocked out by Colletta. Ryan and the others meet up with the muties and lead them to the tunnel near Sheffield’s base. They enter it as silently as they can and start to kill anyone they see. Ryan and JB take out a huge number of the sec men. They make it to the power plant and JB sets charges all over it.

Jak is discovered and he fights like an animal but is eventually captured by the sec men due to sheer numbers. Ryan refuses to leave him behind so they meet up and go back in to get him out before the charges blow.

Baron DuQuene decides to head as deep as he can go in order to try and escape the effect of the kite. It does work he gets deep into the building and is protected from the microwaves. But not from the prisoners. He is killed and eaten by his prisoners.

Sheffield plans to use the Kite on Front Royal the way he had on the other ville, blinding them for slaves.

Ryan and his group head deep into the base and kill even more blue shirts. They make it to the living quarters and enter it quickly. Here they capture Sheffield. Jak is alive but he is in very bad shape.

They pull out of the quarters and get into the APC. The survivors from Campbell’s group follow after them in a hummer as the charges blow.  The ville is destroyed and they are led on a merry chase but they finally manage to take out the pursuing hummer. Sheffield gets away from them but doesn’t make it far before Ryan kills him.

The group returns to the redoubt and find that Dean was successful in killing Collette.  They are back together and the treat against Front Royal is ended.

End of Dark Reckoning

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