Allies and Enemies: Fallen

by Amy J. Murphy

  His mind splayed open to her in a series of disjointed flashes: the dank innards of a tavern, a covenant of three mercenaries huddled around a table in conspiracy, the one in red seemed the leader, bloodthirsty, enough to evoke fear in his counterparts. The fugitive codex beacons displayed the image files: Wanted for desertion and treason, Jonvenlish Veradin, former captain. Known associate, Sela Tyron, former commander of the Regime. Bounties set at incredible sums. Enough to share.

  Erelah pulled away like a diver surfacing for air. It had only been mere seconds, but felt like an eternity.

  The knife clutched in his hand wavered. His whole body seemed to twitch in time with an unheard tune. His eyes locked, unblinking. She knew what needed to be done.

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” she said.

  ---

  Mid-stride Sela felt a sudden jolt. She changed direction abruptly, kicking up a spray of gravel and headed for a smaller alley between buildings on the temple’s spinward side. She told herself it was something she had heard or even noticed subconsciously, because the alternative made her uneasy.

  It would have meant Erelah’s “gift” had something to do with it.

  Taking the corner, she sprinted down the narrow alley, pausing long enough to unholster the A6. At first she thought it was a bundle of rags in the passage. As she stepped closer, Sela realized it was the body of a man, his back propped against the wall and his legs splayed.

  Hot pinpricks marched down her scalp.

  The man was not dead, as she had first assumed but well on his way. His chest heaved. A ragged wet gurgling bubbled out of the hole in his neck. A blade protruded from his throat, his hand clutched around the hilt weakly. She recognized him.

  It was one of the young men she questioned in her search for Lineao when they arrived on Tasemar.

  Sela crouched over him. Beneath the wet rattle of his dying was the distinctive sound of static broken by a tiny voice. Her hands searched the folds of his clothes, then encountered the collar mount of the throat mic slimy with blood. It was an outmoded Regime issue vox.

  Mercs.

  Sela stood. Erelah was in danger. She had to find her.

  Behind her came the scrape of a shoe over stone. Sela swung out an arm and grabbed a fist of clothes from her attacker. She pulled the person easily from the shadowed eave. Someone small and light. Sela realized, with a mix of annoyance and relief, that it was Erelah.

  How could she go from being a raving lunatic to a stealth commando in such a short time?

  The younger woman’s expression pinched with distress. Her words tangled in a hectic rush: “It worked. I didn’t think it would work.”

  “What happened? What did you do?” Sela released her grip.

  Wide-eyed but somehow still in control, Erelah looked up from the dead man.

  “I brought him here.”

  “You did what? Are you insane?” Sela grabbed a handful of her Erelah’s clothes. “They didn’t fix you. Tristic is still controlling you.”

  “No! It’s not like that. It’s part of my plan.” She stepped back.

  “Your plan to get us all killed?”

  “You were the one that refused to hear me out.”

  “So you brought a merc here?” Sela pointed at the lifeless form. “You killed him?”

  “No. I mean… I made him do it to himself,” Erelah quaked.

  Sela released her with a wary step back, eyes narrowed. Her finger moved off the trigger guard on the A6.

  Erelah held her hands up. Both covered in drying maroon. “Don’t look at me like that. It just… happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

  The vox dangled like a dead animal from Sela’s fist. A tiny voice called from it, words indiscernible.

  “He wasn’t alone. It’s not safe here,” Sela said.

  “I know,” Erelah replied. “There are three others with him. They have Jon at the landing field. They’ve summoned Ravstar to collect your bounties.”

  “What!” She erupted. “That should have been the first bloody thing you said!”

  Erelah remained rooted in place, staring down at the body. “I didn’t think it would work.”

  “We are leaving. Now!” Sela shouted. “Move!”

  She herded Erelah through the winding narrow passages between the outbuildings, urging her into a sprint when she slowed. As they approached the edge of the courtyard, Sela pulled her back. “Hold.”

  Something did not seem right. The street below the hill was now practically deserted. Only a few merchants with carts trundled past the walls.

  “Where is everyone?” Erelah asked. She was not entirely oblivious, Sela noted. There was hope for her yet.

  “Hiding.” She studied the street.

  “How do you know?”

  She looked at Erelah, incredulous. “I just know.”

  They couldn’t take the street downhill to the landing site of the Cass. In the baleful glow of daylight, their path would take them under too many higher vantages, exposing them to a lookout or a marksman. They needed to find another way off the temple mount and they could not afford to wait for the cover of dark.

  Erelah could have her “gift”; Sela had years of experience. These people knew what it was to live with war. She had seen it on a dozen worlds through as many campaigns. The local inhabitants were not lifeless buildings or rocks. They were a living, breathing component of the terrain and just as unpredictable as the enemy. Even though they might not all take up armaments, it was clear where their loyalties lay. They spoke to each other without words: a surreptitious nod here, a hooded glance there. Their actions and reactions were priceless intel.

  Sela backed further into the shadows of the pagoda, hopeful they had not been spotted. Erelah followed.

  “Just get me to the stryker,” Erelah said. “I can fix this. I can still salvage my plan.”

  “Shut up about your stupid plan. First thing’s first. Where’s Lineao?” Sela asked. If there was another way off the top of the hill without being seen, he would know. “We need him.”

  “At prayer with the others.”

  ---

  At the temple’s vestibule, Erelah wrenched free of Tyron’s grip. The soldier glared at her commandingly, then strode into the middle of the prayer chamber, unannounced. Over a dozen priests were posed in supplication, foreheads bent to the floor with their hoods drawn over their heads. With her imposing weapon still gripped in one hand, Tyron began pulling back their hoods, shouting “Lineao!”

  “Commander!” Lineao answered in a hushed voice. He rose from his spot farthest from the altar near the station of the Unworthy.

  Erelah pulled a tight, uncomfortable smile at the incredulous stares of the remaining members of the Order. Only a handful knew who they were. The rest saw their novice being led away by a crazed-looking Eugenes pilgrim wielding a weapon.

  “Lovely service,” Erelah stammered, backing out the door.

  “Come on!” Tyron growled. She herded the both into the pronaos, where the priests would don their cloaks.

  Sela grabbed a cloak from a peg and threw it at Erelah. “Put this on,” Tyron commanded. “Cover your head.”

  She turned to Lineao. “A bounty hunter has infiltrated the compound,” she told him. “The street is most likely under surveillance. We need to get back to our ship without being seen. Can you make that happen?”

  Lineao cast a glance at the entrance before he replied. “Follow me.”

  He led them through a passage off the pronaos. Soon they reached a low-set door and went through it, into the monastery’s food larder. He moved to a long, heavy table set against the far wall and gestured for Tyron to go to its opposite side. Together, they maneuvered it away from the wall. Behind it, a darkened entrance, waist high, was carved out of the mud walls. A damp draft came from the opening, smelling of age and mildew.

  “Here. The passage runs below the hillside. It empties out near the small river below the landing fie
ld.”

  Sela glowered at the priest. “My team could have used this. We could have gotten to the extraction site in half the time.”

  “And you would have been greeted with a dozen armed men and your death,” Lineao replied.

  “You were just stalling for her, weren’t you? Today in the courtyard, you were trying to distract me from watching her. Wasting my time,” Tyron demanded.

  “Please, Commander,” Erelah said, trying to step between them. “I asked Brother Lineao to keep you occupied.”

  “I did not consider it wasted time in trying to counsel a soul in turmoil,” Lineao said, easing Erelah to his side.

  “Turmoil?” Tyron grabbed a fist full of Lineao’s robe. “A world of hurt is going to rain down on this place if Ravstar comes here. Then you’ll see turmoil.”

  Erelah placed a hand on Tyron’s arm. “Not if we move quickly. Once we are off-world, we can lure Tristic away from Tasemar.”

  36

  “Come on. Move it!” Sela prodded Erelah’s back.

  The tunnel was narrow with little clearance, forcing them to move in a stooped scamper. Occasionally the chem light in their hands picked out sagging beams and sections that seemed near collapse. These obstacles slowed their pace further.

  “Stop shoving me,” Erelah groused.

  “Oh, you’ll know when I’m shoving you.”

  Erelah uttered a curse in Commonspeak. To hear the gutter words stretched over the pretentious arch of her crester accent made Sela chuckle.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “You need to practice cursing. No one will ever take you seriously.” Sela prodded her again.

  “Quit!”

  “Then move faster.”

  Erelah’s forward motion slowed, then stopped altogether. “You go first.”

  Sela stopped. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “Which one is it?”

  The girl turned, her features etched in the green glow of the chem light in her hand. “I don’t expect you to understand. I’m not like you. I never got training like yours. Never got whatever mental conditioning you did to strengthen you if you’re held captive.”

  “Is that what you think?” she scoffed.

  It never ceased to amaze Sela, the colorful stories that circulated about breeders. Sometimes she wished half of it were true. If so, she would be immortal and nearly three meters tall.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” Erelah asked.

  “Veradin, when a breeder is held captive, we’re told not to expect a rescue. You’re on your own. They don’t ransom us like they do a crester. You’re just another casualty. Help isn’t coming.”

  Erelah pressed against the wall and Sela squeezed past, careful not to touch her.

  “I guess that explains a lot.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Sela whirled on her.

  “Only why you are like that. Hard. All hard edges. All the soft spots buried really deep,” Erelah blurted. “I would have given anything for such strength.”

  Sela continued forward, feeling her way. The chem light did little to dispel the darkness. The downward slope underfoot began to even out.

  She surprised herself when she said, “I told you once, if you’re anything like Jon, you have strength… somewhere. It’s the reason you made it this far.”

  It was a bricky move she made with the merc, after all.

  Even though she was hard-pressed to understand how Erelah had thought that was going to work out for her.

  “Tristic threatened to kill Jon if I did not comply.”

  “I spent a great deal of my career keeping Jon alive too.”

  They moved on in silence for a few more yards. Then, Erelah said, “You must give him a second chance, Tyron. Together you are so much stronger.”

  “No.” Sela halted. The girl collided with her back. “You and I are not having this conversation. I’m getting you to the Cass and that’s the end.”

  Erelah placed her hand on Sela’s shoulder. “But you still care about him. I saw—”

  “Don’t touch me,” she growled, shrugging her hand off.

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Don’t care,” Sela sing-songed, mimicking Erelah’s arched accent. She renewed her speed. How long was this tunnel anyway?

  “When I touch someone for the first time, their bare skin, I can see things about them,” Erelah said. “There’s no order to it. It’s as if I become them for a moment. But if I touch them again, it’s much less powerful. Over time it all starts to fade, like static discharge.”

  Erelah’s tone turned introspective. “I don’t think Tristic had planned this. I think it’s like a side effect. Brother Liri said that it was dormant in me. Something changed when—”

  “Oh. Do stop talking,” she groaned, exasperated. The thought of such an ability made her insides squirm. “I really don’t want to know this.”

  The tunnel ended abruptly. Sela’s hands met rough stone and soil. She thrust the light forward, tracing the wall. There was a sharp turn to the right. Cautiously Sela stepped around. The quality of the air changed. It smelled fresher, dryer. This had to be it.

  The sound of running water echoed. A dim light gradually grew from the dark. The roof of the passage grew taller. She was able to stand, though her hair brushed the ceiling. The muscles in her lower back relaxed with gratitude.

  With the tunnel opening only a few strides away, Sela turned, holding a silencing hand up to Erelah. The girl nodded back, eyes wide beneath the cowl of the robe.

  Just beyond the tunnel’s mouth flowed the small river that Lineao had described. It was barely more than an energetic stream of murky brown water. Sliding along the wall, she ventured a glance outside. She saw that a steep embankment towered directly above them. Across the water, the other bank rose in a gentler slope. It could disguise an approach to the landing field up top. Sela saw no signs of another living soul.

  This was too easy.

  She withdrew into the tunnel and regarded Erelah. Then, sighing unhappily, she held out the A6 to her. The girl regarded the weapon as if Sela were holding a poisonous sand dragon for her to pet. When she did not move to take it, she took hold of Erelah’s wrist and shoved the weapon into her grip. Quickly she snatched her hand away at the curious sensation of heat traveling up her arm.

  “I am going to want that back,” Sela said.

  She stood, thinking. That quiet voice that had served her all her life told her that a trap probably awaited them at the ship.

  “They’ll keep Jon alive. And they don’t know that Ravstar is really looking for me. That’s an advantage for us,” said Erelah.

  Sela nodded. The bounty for him alive was triple that for a dead Jonvenlish Veradin. The Regime was non-specific when it came to the Volunteers turned deserters. Of their unlikely trio of fugitives, only Erelah was not technically hunted. She was, after all, nowhere, according to the information they had gleaned from the coms array. Tristic could not dare issue a warrant directly for her without raising considerable suspicions.

  Ironically the most sought after by Tristic, was the safest.

  “You know how to use it?” Sela jerked her chin at the A6 that Erelah now held like a contaminant.

  She lofted the weapon, keeping its muzzle trained at the ground. Her strange green eyes fixed on the middle distance between them. Sela felt the pins and needles stir along the back of her neck.

  Erelah’s words came out like a rote recitation any driller would be pleased to hear from a booter:

  “Simple single action firing mechanism. Forty metz round with less than .048 recharge. Range 347 meters with adjustable drift. Recoil-free action. It’s now at three-quarter charge.”

  “I think you got it.” A shuddering chill danced across Sela’s shoulders.

  She rifled that from my brain.

  Erelah released a pent-up breath. “It’s really dark in there.”

  Sela glared. “
You done?”

  She nodded.

  “And when this is all over, we’re going to have a chat about privacy.”

  With that, Sela returned to scan the river and the bank beyond. She shed the empty thigh holster and loose fitting duster. They would slow her down. She noticed Erelah remove her heavy hooded robe. Yet where Sela simply let the garment drop to the ground, the girl reverently folded hers on a pile of rocks.

  Sela rolled her eyes.

  Her only weapon now was the tactical knife. Sela switched the blade from hand to hand, getting a feel for it as she visualized her approach across the shallow river, up the embankment. The landing field would offer no cover. She would lose all vantage there. It would be essential to move quickly. Her hope was that the mercs knew nothing of the tunnel and thus were not covering it. She was counting on them to be slow, with poor training.

  Her hope and her luck had not been on speaking terms lately, however.

  “Three others. You’re certain?” Sela asked.

  “That’s what I saw,” Erelah replied, biting her lip.

  Sela gave instructions as she resized the A6’s holster to fit around Erelah’s narrow hips:

  “Watch me. Once I get across, wait for me to get to the top of the bank. Look for my signal once it’s clear. Then you start across.”

  “I understand.”

  Finally Sela slipped the chain bearing Valen and Atilio’s idents from her neck. She had strung the Seeker’s tracer there too. The A6 was useless without it.

  “If I don’t return in thirty minutes, take the tunnel back to the temple and find Lineao. Make sure no one else sees you.” She coiled the chain into the girl’s palm.

  “You’ll come back,” Erelah said, matter-of-factly. “This is why they made you.”

  Sela met her green-eyed gaze.

  “Watch out for the red one,” Erelah said.

  With a troubled frown, Sela sprinted out of the tunnel to cross the river.

  37