“Shekking blindworm!” shouted one of the warriors. Others let out wordless cries of horror.
Rahel watched the shell arc through the cool dawn sky, trailing a thin line of vapor. It hit the southern outskirts of Whitesun in what looked like a puff of dust. The sound arrived almost half a tick later, a deep boom and the crack of stonework breaking apart.
Though she had seen terrible images of the death and destruction caused by the solitary ground pounder sixteen days ago, none of them had affected her the way this distant explosion did. She couldn’t see which building had just been destroyed, but it didn’t matter. Her heart broke at the sight of that dust plume.
Then she realized that Feirein, her driver, was going straight up the back of the ground pounder.
“What are you doing?” she shouted over the sound of the wind. “It has eyes on all four sides! Slow down!”
Thankfully, he did. “Apologies, First Guard. I just wanted to get there.”
“So do I, but I’d like to be alive when it happens. Use that rise to block us.”
He swerved toward the small rise of land, nearly tossing one of the scholars over the side, and the ground exploded behind them. The ground pounder had fired its laser cannon.
“Fahla,” a scholar blurted, staring back at the cloud of falling dirt, rocks, and clumps of grass. “If we hadn’t swerved . . .”
Feirein hunched his shoulders.
Rahel said nothing. This was a lesson well learned; she didn’t need to add anything.
They stopped and piled out of the skimmer. With the warriors leading, they carefully edged around far enough to see the ground pounder.
“Are you in range?” Rahel asked.
The scholars nodded, already focused.
They were not trained in the kind of nuanced empathic force the rapist had used to paralyze her. With only four days to learn, they had been taught to use the bluntest weapon of all: terror. They were projecting their own worst fears and nightmares into the minds of the Voloth, horrors designed to make them desperate to escape.
The result would be a lockout of cognitive functions. Driven by overwhelming terror, the Voloth would act on instinct. How that instinct manifested would depend on the empath’s chosen projection and the individual mentality of the Voloth receiving it.
The ground pounder was still moving. Despite being farther away than the first one, it looked even more terrifying: upright, fully operational, and impossible to stop.
Until it did, between one step and the next.
Without the sound of its thudding steps, Rahel now heard more explosions coming from Whitesun. She refused to look, focusing instead on the immobile giant looming in front of them.
A small door clanged open in the base of the blocky top. With a wailing cry, a Voloth fell headfirst out of the hatch.
It was twenty paces down. The Voloth collapsed on impact and did not rise.
The remaining three soon followed, all of them frantically climbing over each other in an attempt to get down the access ladder built into one of the giant legs. One pushed another so forcefully that the second one lost her grip and fell. She landed with her neck at an impossible angle, quivered once, and went still.
When the last two reached the ground, one curled into a ball and did not look up. The other ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. He crashed into the ground pounder’s invisible shield, causing it to flare with a blue light, then rebounded off and ran again, only to crash into the opposite side. The shield flared twice more as he ricocheted around the interior space, until he suddenly stopped, clutching his chest and gasping, then went silent and crumpled to the ground.
Four Voloth were now scattered beneath the motionless machine. Only one of them was still alive.
Rahel swallowed hard, desperately trying to keep her last meal where it belonged.
This was their battle strategy, she reminded herself. The only way they could survive.
But she could imagine what those Voloth had felt. She knew the pain and terror of claws in her mind, yet the horror she had just witnessed was even worse. They had been empathically ripped apart. To be standing next to the people who could do that . . .
“Great Mother of us all,” Feirein said. “What in the name of Fahla did you do?”
Swallowing once more, she turned from the sickening scene and faced her unit.
The other seven warriors had edged away from the scholars. Their bodies were tense, ready to run or fight, trapped between enemies in front and allies they now feared.
Then she saw the scholars, trembling and pale. Arsinoe looked one breath away from vomiting.
Here was the trauma Captain Serrado had predicted. How odd, Rahel thought, that the Voloth and Gaians could look exactly alike, yet she and her fellow Alseans were killing one and taking advice from the other.
And even more odd that an alien would predict exactly what she was seeing now.
“They did what we asked them to do,” she said loudly. “They’re our weapons. They’re doing this for us, for Alsea, because we need them. And look at what it’s costing them.”
The warriors and scholars stared at each other.
“I administered their oaths. I touched their palms while they swore in the name of Fahla to never break her covenant except to fight these invaders. We have to support them while they do their job. While they save us.” She hardened her voice. “Do you understand?”
Seven spines snapped erect as every warrior said, “Yes!”
“Then remember your training! Remember why there are eight of us and only four of them. Their lives are worth more than ours. We can’t do a shekking thing to stop these ground pounders, but we can protect our scholars while they do. Which job would you rather have?”
From the looks on their faces, they were suddenly very glad to not be the ones destroying minds.
She turned to the scholars, who seemed slightly calmer but still looked sick. “I’m sorry you have to do this,” she said in a gentler tone. “But the truth is, you have to do it again. We’ve stopped two of these. There are over a hundred more, and they’re destroying our city right now. Are you prepared to go on?”
To her relief, they all nodded. She wasn’t sure what she would have done had any of them said no.
“Good. I need one of you to tell me if that last Voloth is still capable of causing harm.”
All of the scholars avoided eye contact with her until Arsinoe sighed. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.”
He closed his eyes for perhaps four pipticks before he grimaced, turned his head, and spat into the grass. “He’s . . . empty. You don’t need to worry about him.”
“Ever?” asked one of the younger warriors.
Arsinoe shook his head. “I don’t see how anyone comes back from that.”
“Good,” Rahel said crisply. “That means we can turn our backs on this ground pounder and not worry about being killed. Let’s go!”
The third ground pounder was much harder than the second. There was no good cover available, leaving them helpless to do anything but follow at a distance and watch it fire shell after shell into Whitesun. Rahel was so enraged after five ticks of this that she was almost ready to order Feirein to throw caution over the side and just go.
“I was always happy with my strength rating until now,” Arsinoe said from behind her. “But what I wouldn’t give for another half length of range!”
Several voices rose in agreement. Fury, it seemed, was a unifying force. Her unit had just coalesced into a fighting team with one goal.
“What about there?” she asked Feirein, pointing uphill. “Can we go over that ridge and get back down before the ground pounder passes it? We could ambush it.”
He nodded and threw the skimmer into a fast climb. Rahel turned in her seat and explained the plan to the others. If they weren’t fast enough, they would be easy targets.
Judging by the set faces looking back at her, everyone was willing to take that risk.
> She held on tightly as the skimmer leaped over the top of the ridge, nearly broke through its air cushion on the other side, then slewed sideways and dived downhill.
“Everyone still inside?” she shouted over the wind noise.
“Just get us there!” one of the scholars called back.
“I’ll do my job!” Feirein shouted. “You do yours!”
He did not slow as they neared the end of the ridge, shooting out into the open at full speed—right in front of the ground pounder.
“Go, go!” Rahel cried.
The ground pounder fired another shell at Whitesun, sending a chill through her. If it was still firing, then her scholars were too slow and in the next piptick—
It stopped.
“Goddess above, that was close,” a scholar said breathlessly.
Feirein slowed and began arcing the skimmer around, back toward the ground pounder. “It’s done, right?”
Almost before he finished speaking, one of the Voloth threw open the hatch and began scrambling down. A high, keening wail reached them even over the wind in their ears.
Rahel’s stomach turned to ice. Five ticks of watching this ground pounder systematically destroy parts of her home had made her want every Voloth inside of it dead. But that horrible sound . . .
As the skimmer pulled to a stop, another Voloth climbed out behind the first. This one was a hulking male who stepped off the ladder, walked up behind the wailing one, and broke his neck.
“Shekking Mother!” Rahel hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but good Fahla, what had they done to that Voloth?
The big male pulled a disruptor-style weapon from his belt and began shooting up through the hatch, over and over, until the disruptor ran out of energy. He threw it to the side, strode over to his dead comrade, and clumsily yanked his weapon free. Then he straightened, placed the end in his mouth, and fired.
His head vanished. The body crashed to its knees, then flopped sideways, as if it no longer contained solid bones.
The hillside was so quiet that Rahel heard a bird call, a bizarrely incongruous sound in the middle of a battle. In the distance, faint booms gave brutal testament to the mortars that continued to tear into Whitesun.
“Can I assume the other two are . . . done?” she asked in a voice that didn’t sound like hers.
“Yes.” Arsinoe’s voice was choked. “Oh, Fahla, that was—that was—”
She turned in her seat and faced them. “That was you saving all of our lives. If you had been one or two pipticks slower, we’d have had a close-up look at Voloth weaponry.”
“Yes, thank you,” said one of the warriors. “I want to live through this battle. You keep doing what you’re doing.”
For their fourth ground pounder, they were able to make use of a small rise of ground uphill of their target. Rahel was unwilling to take the same risk as before, and even if she had been, the topography wasn’t favorable for it. This time they stopped at the base of the rise, jumped out of the skimmer, and carefully climbed to the top.
She had ordered the scholars to stay low, to get just enough of a sight line to complete their task, but it wasn’t enough. Barely a piptick after they reached the top of the rise, the ground pounder swiveled its rapidgun around and fired.
Soil and grass blew up in a series of small explosions racing straight toward them. There was no time to think or call out a retreat. Rahel grabbed the scholar crouching next to her and threw both of them backward.
They rolled and bounced all the way to the bottom. When they came to a stop, Rahel needed a moment to catch her breath before tentatively checking her rib, which had hit a rock on the way down. It hurt, but not badly enough to need attention.
Beside her, the scholar was wide-eyed and panting.
Rahel rose to her hands and knees. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I think—”
A scream rent the air. “Help! Somebody help him!”
Rahel forgot about her rib in the mad scramble back up. Arsinoe was lying flat just below the top of the rise, his body half-covered by a warrior who looked oddly short.
She stopped, overcome by the horror in front of her. Then she swallowed hard and forced herself the rest of the way.
“Hoi,” she said as calmly as she could. “You just hold on, all right? We have to finish this dokker.”
“Right,” the warrior said. It was Pria, the same one who, perhaps eight ticks ago, had said he wanted to live through this battle. With both of his legs torn off above the knee and blood spurting out, he was not going to get his wish.
“I’m going to lift you just a bit.” Rahel locked eyes with Arsinoe, who nodded. Then she slid her hands beneath Pria’s shoulders and lifted.
Arsinoe scrambled out from beneath him, turned, and vomited. When he faced her again, wiping his mouth, she said, “Get back up there and make his sacrifice worth it. Break them.”
He nodded and began to crawl back up. The other three scholars quickly joined him, even the one she had left at the bottom of the rise.
“And keep your heads down!” she called.
They knew what to do. They would either do it or not; she couldn’t help them now.
Pria was striving mightily not to show his pain. She pulled a skinspray from her thigh pocket and hoped it had survived her roll down the hill.
As the paincounter hissed into his wrist, he sighed and relaxed.
“You threw yourself in front of him?” she asked.
“You said . . . their lives are worth more than ours.”
“They are. But not everyone could do what you just did. I honor your courage.”
He smiled. “Yeah, but you . . . were smarter. Or faster.”
There was nothing she could say to that. She held his hand, absorbing his fear through his skin and wishing she could turn back time just one tick.
Though the Guards and Mariners had medics, there weren’t nearly enough to put one on every high empath team across two continents. Many healers were high empaths, but few of them had volunteered to break Fahla’s covenant. And the forces couldn’t risk losing their healers in battle unless those healers were also acting as weapons.
Her team had no medic and no hope of evacuating Pria. He would die here, on this little rise of land in the hills south of Whitesun.
“It turned into a nice day,” he said, staring up at the now blue sky.
“It did,” Rahel agreed. The air was full of the scent of freshly turned soil and torn grass, odors she associated with gardening, not war. But gardening never involved the metallic scent of blood or the sour one of vomit.
Trying to keep Pria’s mind in a better place, she said, “There’s nothing quite like summer in Whitesun, is there?”
“No.” He coughed. “I’ve been everywhere. All the great cities. Whitemoon . . . they just think theirs is the most beautiful.”
“But we know the truth.” She felt his grip weaken and tightened her own in response. “Whitemoon is boring. Too tropical. The weather never changes, at least not enough to be worthwhile.”
His fear was receding along with his strength. He was not in pain, and he had accepted his death. “They think their storms are big,” he said with a slight smile.
She shook her head. “Let them try to walk outside during one of our winter storms and then see what they think. They don’t know what a storm is.”
The smile dropped. “I wanted to see . . . another winter storm.”
“You’ll see it from the other side.” Her throat was closing; she could sense his life ebbing away. “But before that, you’ll see the face of Fahla. You’ll stand in front of her with the pride of a warrior who did his duty with great, great courage. And such honor.”
Her earcuff came to life with an unmistakable voice. “This is Lancer Tal with an emergency message.”
They did not look away from each other as they listened to the Lancer explain that she had discovered a way to break the ground pounders’ shields. They had a new battle plan. Ins
tead of destroying the Voloth in their next ground pounder, the high empaths were now ordered to empathically neutralize them long enough for the warriors to break the shield. Then they would conduct a deep Sharing with the captive Voloth. They would redirect their loyalties and empathically force them to obey orders. At that point, the Voloth, the scholars, and one or two warriors would ride inside the intact ground pounders and turn their weapons against the other invaders.
“Stand by for images of the shield generator and further instructions for your high empaths,” Lancer Tal finished. “They’ll be coming to your reader cards within five ticks.”
The call ended.
“We’re going to win,” Pria whispered. “I’m glad I lived long enough to know that.”
He closed his eyes. Less than a tick later, she lost all sensory awareness of him.
He was gone.
40
REPORTING IN
Lancer Tal’s battle plan was spectacularly effective, though Rahel did not envy her scholars. According to the new instructions, the only way for untrained high empaths to overwrite existing loyalties was to empathically force the Voloth to love them. Her scholars had been horrified, then disgusted, then reluctantly convinced.
Now each of them had an adoring Voloth constantly watching them, eager for confirmation that they were doing the right thing as they fired missiles at other ground pounders. Language was no barrier when their only goal was to please.
Even Rahel felt buffeted by the unfronted emotions sloshing around the crammed interior of their ground pounder. Her blocks were not strong enough to shut it all out, but at least she could reduce it. The scholars needed to track those emotions as a means of communication, and were forced to endure it without any blocks at all.
Every captured ground pounder was marked with a beacon, enabling Rahel to determine which were friendly and which they should destroy. As the battle wore on, it became more and more difficult to find any under Voloth control. At one point, when she watched their Voloth happily consign four fellow soldiers to another expanding ball of flame, she wondered what would happen if the overwritten loyalties were returned. How could they live with the knowledge of what they had done to their own people?
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