Allie's War Season One (50 page)

I forced myself to a sitting position. Then, gripping the wall, I sucked in a breath and lurched to my feet. I stood there, trying to focus my eyes, when I heard voices on the balcony above. I froze.

“Here?”

A silence. I didn’t move, didn’t breathe.

“Could she jump that far?”

I heard a faint clicking sound, carried by wind.

“She was in and out too fast to pinpoint.” The male voice paused, grunting. “Whatever she did, she hurt herself.”

“Check the deck. I don’t see evidence of a fall.”

There was another silence. I stood there, still not breathing, focusing on my body like Revik taught me so I wouldn’t inadvertently fall into the Barrier in reflex. He said it was normal for a seer to go to the Barrier when threatened. He said that sometimes the hardest thing for a seer to do was to stay out.

I pressed my back to the glass door, hoping I was out of their line of sight, when the second Rook cursed.

I heard the crackle of a radio.

“She jumped. Confirm, she jumped. Looks like she hit the lifeboat on the way down...but she might have landed there, too. Bring the boat around, have them check the water on the port side. And if anyone’s close, have them check deck...” He must have been counting. “...Four. If she made it onto the lifeboat, she would have tried to get back in there.” A pause. “No, there’s no blood. She might have bounced right into the water.”

Seconds later, the balcony door above me closed.

I was still standing there, fighting to keep from passing out, when the light came on in the room behind me. I turned my head, terrified out of my mind.

A little old lady stared at me, her wrinkled mouth ajar as she gaped at a face I could barely see reflected in the glass. She clutched a pearl handbag, still holding the drapery cord she must have pulled to get a view of the night sky out her west-facing balcony. I had what looked like two blackening eyes, a swollen cheek, cut and bleeding lips. I touched my forehead, forgetting her briefly as I focused on my reflection. My hairline was bleeding too.

I contemplated a story to get her to let me in, then simply turned, limping for the opposite balcony wall. Gripping the glass divider, I climbed, fighting not to cry out as I put part of my weight on my swollen knee to boost myself up.

Gripping the glass divider, I slid around it with one leg, then eased down until my butt rested on the railing of the next balcony over. I placed my feet on the terrace floor and staggered to the glass door. After trying the handle and finding it locked, I walked the length of that balcony and did the same on the other side.

I repeated this again seven more times.

Finally, I had to rest. I leaned on a glass door leading into a darkened stateroom...worried I could pass out from the pain in my knee.

As soon as I’d regained my breath, I yanked myself up, teeth gritted, shielding my light more thoroughly than I could remember doing.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t tried the door yet.

I gave it a tug. The glass slid smoothly on its track, unlocked.

My brief elation flattened as I thought through my options once I was back inside the ship. I had no way to get off, short of trying to drop one of the lifeboats, which didn’t seem like a realistic option. Whether I left the cabin or stayed, I ran the risk of being caught by roving bands of infiltrators...or clubbed to death by Frank and Norma Jean from Great Falls once the Rooks convinced them I’d tortured and killed their pet poodle, Mr. Bigglesworth.

Giving a dark kind of laugh, I eased through the gap in the balcony door.

The room was empty.

For a moment I just stared at the darkened space, fighting to catch my breath. Even if there was a way to do it safely, I couldn’t leave the ship. I needed to find Chan, or Eliah. I needed help.

I’d take the stairs.

If they already had Revik—

But I couldn’t think about Revik yet.

TERIAN STARED AT the VR shadow of the squad leader.

“I am confused,” he said. “Please explain, ‘you lost her’...I am not following.”

“Sir.” The squad leader grew audibly nervous. “We made visual contact and she rabbited. We tracked her to a stateroom—” He cut himself off, sensing the other’s impatience. “We’ll find her, sir. We’re doing thermal scans of the wake now, in the event she jumped or fell—”

“Fell. As in, fell
off
the ship.” Terian’s lips twisted in puzzlement, replicated in painstaking accuracy by his virtual avatar. “Really. So that’s a possibility? The planet’s only living telekinetic seer may have accidentally ‘fallen off’ a moving vessel into freezing cold salt water...to be chopped into small pieces for the seals to eat? We are exploring that option, yes?”

“Sir, I—”

“Do you have any idea what I will do to you, if that scenario eventuates?”

The infiltrator’s shadow fell silent.

Terian said, “Yes. Good. Now, I would like you to explore options other than the ‘falling off’ one you seem so fond of...”

“Yes, sir. Of course, we—”

Terian terminated the link.

As his physical vision cleared, he found himself staring around at a damaged segment of corridor on the fifth deck, illuminated only by the sickly glow of an organic yisso torch.

It looked like what it was—the scene of a prolonged gunfight in a relatively tight space. They’d locked him down in one segment of corridor, but it took more than an hour to subdue him from there. The pastel and gold ship’s interior was barely recognizable.

As the torch panned, the swath of light illuminated holes in plaster walls. One still smoked, but they had finally gotten the last of the guns away from him, too.

Terian’s extraction team stood in an uneven half circle now, staring down at a being that was finally on the ground, although still not fully unconscious. Two of the med techs hunched over him, trying to assess the damage to his nervous system, if any, from the third dart they’d finally hit him with.

“He wasn’t to be killed,” Terian muttered. He looked at the leader of the extraction team. “He wasn’t to be killed, Varlan...I said two darts. No more.”

“He was threatening to kill himself, sir,” Varlan replied. “It was a calculated risk.”

“He threatened to kill himself...?”
Terian stared at his lead infiltrator, fighting to incorporate the new piece of information. “Why? Why would he do that?”

Varlan didn’t answer. Turning, he focused his eyes back on the downed seer.

Terian watched as Dehgoies raised his head, groping for a med tech, his eyes glassy from the drug. The young seer blanched, backing off. All of them had been unnerved by Dehgoies’s apparent imperviousness to the darts.

But Terian was familiar with his friend’s biological quirks.

Impatient, he pushed his way forward, kneeling by the dark head. He listened briefly to his muttered words, then clicked his fingers at one of the seers in the back.

“You...Legress. You are from Asia, yes? What language is this?”

A different voice answered, from closer.
“Magadhi Prakrit
, sir.”

Terian’s gaze swiveled. The male tech knelt behind the two working on Dehgoies’s abdomen. They lay a patch on his bare skin, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Is that a human language?” Terian said.

“Yes, sir. Old, though. Very old.”

“From where?”

“Nepal.” The Sark paused, seeing all eyes on him. “I recognize it from the camps, sir...they used some of the older languages as codes.” He smiled wryly. “That one was a particular favorite with the kneelers.” Seeing Terian’s gaze sharpen, the tech let his smile fade. “...It was supposedly the language the Buddha spoke. When he was alive.” He looked down at Dehgoies. “He must have learned it while he was imprisoned there. He’s about the right age.”

Terian raised an eyebrow. “Imprisoned? Why not a slaver, like yourself?”

The tech caught the edge in Terian’s choice of words.

Losing the smirk, he met Terian’s gaze. Swallowing, he glanced around, noting the flavor of hostility from the seers around him before he said,

“Smugglers didn’t use the language, sir. The prisoners did...so we couldn’t understand them. We learned enough to prevent them from organizing, but it was never in common use in the barracks.”

Terian motioned him forward. “What is he saying?”

The Sark crouched by the floor, lowering his head as Terian indicated.

After a pause, he said, “He’s apologizing to someone, sir. Saying he’ll do better...something about wanting to serve, that he’s ready to serve now.” The man lowered his ear to another broken stream of words. “No cave...he doesn’t want to go to the cave. A name...Merenj? Merenged? And something about wanting light, to touch light...I don’t fully understand that phrase sir,
iltere ak selen’te dur
...that’s old Prexci. I think something about the old God...”

The man leaned closer, straining to hear.

“He’s mixing languages...
arendelan ti’ a rigalem
...destiny is harder...
isthre ag tem degri
...to lead is...I think the word is sacrifice. It’s some kind of scripture.” Giving Terian an apologetic look, he said, “I’ve heard things like this before, from more arcane versions of the myths. I wouldn’t swear by the translation, though. It’s likely something local.”

“And you say Magadhi Prakrit is a human language?”

“Yes, sir. Human. The other is a bastardization of old Prexci...but I don’t think they spoke that at the camps. He must have gotten it somewhere else.”

Terian focused back on Dehgoies.

Slave camp. That didn’t fit anywhere in the biography of Dehgoies Revik he’d read, and Terian had read them all. Nor did he really believe his friend would have worked in one, either. Whatever Dehgoies’s ability to adjust ethical systems when it suited him, he never would have aligned with the worms to that extent.

Not for any amount of money.

He studied the angular face, noting its pallor. The blood on his hands shone a dark red, almost black in the light of the yisso. He’d lost so much his skin looked gray. He likely wouldn’t last the night, no matter what the techs did.

Still, caution seemed warranted.

Reaching into a pouch under his cloak, Terian pulled out a thick, organic, sight-restraint collar he’d commissioned specially for the purpose. Catching hold of Dehgoies’s hair, he lifted his head, sliding the collar around his neck. He clicked the ends together at the base of his skull, then bent down, opening a thumbnail latch to access a retinal scanner. He let the device scan his eyes, which it did, turning the skin of his friend’s neck briefly red.

When it clicked off, Terian tugged at the collar briefly, checking that the lock activated.

Feeling the stares, Terian looked up.

The lead tech looked affronted. “Sir, he’s hardly in a position to—”

“Continue to listen,” Terian told the other, ignoring the tech. “I want a record of everything he says. Translated and original. Every word...understood?”

The Sark gestured affirmative.

Terian started to rise to his feet when Dehgoies caught hold of his wrist. The long fingers clenched, ghostly white with streaks of blood.

“Terry.” He swallowed thickly. “Don’t hurt her.”

Terian could only stare, his jaw slack.