Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  “No,” Terian said after a pause. “I think he’s felt me, too.”

  “So... what?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  I felt the other male hesitate, as if trying to decide if he should say something aloud.

  “What?” I repeated, after another pause.

  “It is nothing,” Terian said at once, his voice dismissive. “Revi’s light. It feels very different. I almost cannot recognize him in it at all...”

  “Perhaps it is not him, then?”

  Terian didn’t answer, but I could feel his doubt.

  We slogged through the lowlands, a staggered, broken line that reached over a hundred yards in either direction. We’d entered a wet, dense segment of jungle, filled with birds, monkeys and even jaguars, as well as a significant number of indigenous humans who still managed to eke out an existence away from the rest of their kind.

  I knew that Karenti had been tasked with keeping an eye on the human presence in our current environment. It was relatively easy to do in here, since the local tribespeople had no ability to shield and no access to seers who might make them invisible behind the Barrier, but I knew we could not dismiss those tribal humans entirely. They were not soft like the humans from the cities. Further, I had read the reports. We had been warned the locals could be dangerous and not to underestimate them... or to even get close enough to them where a confrontation might occur. They had killed more than one agent operating outside the safety perimeter of the Black Arrow camp.

  Anyway, these weren’t the kinds of humans I had any interest in molesting.

  If all humans behaved as they did, meaning more or less lived off the land and lived and let live with those who left them in peace, seers would feel a lot less inclined to manipulate them from behind the Barrier.

  We would have a lot less need to take revenge upon their hides in blood, too.

  The jungle itself had a dense, wet, claustrophobic feel to it.

  The thick, lightless canopy overhead and broad leaves of the trees surrounding us blocked most of the rays of the sun. It left a green-tinted, dim cathedral of filtered light, where the sun only grew noticeable in its lack. In the later hours of the day, like now, that small bit of light was leaving us already, creeping rapidly into darkness due to the density of the jungle foliage and the mountain blocking most of the star’s light.

  I found I had to use my aleimi to compensate for the lack of natural light already, and true sunset remained at least an hour away, if not more.

  Luckily, enough living beings surrounded us that using their Barrier glows to navigate hardly proved difficult, especially since I operated more than halfway from inside the Barrier as a part of my current role. The broad-leafed trees around me let off a strange, rosy glow from their living light. Some of the smaller plants let off more yellows and purples and greens and even whites, but I saw that rosier tinge more sharply than any of it.

  Using my Barrier sight also made it easier for me to track the animals that lived and hung from tree branches in the near-dark, too. Of course, it made me and the rest of Terian’s infiltration team more visible behind the Barrier to other seers, as well.

  Even with the protection of the mobile construct, I couldn’t help feeling that visibility as a vulnerability... even a weakness.

  A few smallish hills stood to the northwest of the swampy lowlands where we walked, just north of the Rio Negro. Those had been the hills to which Terian first referred in his question to me, but they barely counted, in terms of elevation... especially to someone like me, who grew up in the Himalayas. A few hundred miles north, real mountains lay between this part of Brazil and the neighboring countries, but mostly, this stretch of land was flat... covered with rainforest so dense that we sometimes had to hack our way through the greenery to make a trail, using steel-bladed machetes like natives.

  Of course, we could have used more sophisticated tools to make a trail, too, but the pod was doing its best to maintain physical quiet, as much as silence behind the Barrier.

  “How close are they now?” I asked Terian, a few seconds later. “Have we caught up at all?”

  “Close,” Terian said, using the sub-vocals as well. “Very close, brother. They’ve slowed down significantly.”

  “Is Varlan sending you that?” I said, once more looking for the imprint from inside our shared construct.

  “Yes,” Terian said. “Has intelligence found a reason for the slow-down?”

  Again, I receded through those structures to ask the seers on the other side.

  “No,” I said, a beat later. “Not conclusively. They have a few working theories...”

  “Which are what?” Terian said, his voice slightly sharper.

  I glanced at him again.

  “The pregnant woman,” I said, blunt. “...Something to do with her. The team protecting her has stopped several times in such a way that indicates they might be tending to someone of ill health. Or perhaps, making accommodations to carry someone. The infiltration team is speculating that they will soon have to make an adjustment to that affect––bring her with them in another way, perhaps with some kind of make-shift stretcher, or gurney...”

  Seeing Terian frown, I shrugged before continuing.

  I made my voice more formal that time.

  “...Therefore, your team believes that the slow-down is either due to the pregnant female’s immediate health condition, or due to their perception that her condition may soon change status. That, or some other important person on their team has been seriously wounded. It does not feel like an intentional slow-down to the infiltration team, sir, but one of emergency. They feel more fear in the group than before... and more chaos, in terms of their overall plan...”

  I hesitated again before adding,

  “...They have also re-deployed a few of their people differently, including what you have already noticed, in their positioning of some of their more military-oriented seers in a smaller tracking team behind the main group. Tule agrees with you that this is likely a defensive strategy. He tells me that they believe from your Barrier imprints that Dehgoies is likely with that secondary team. He may even be leading them...”

  “Is she giving birth?” Terian said. “Is that why they came here so ill-prepared? Is she nearing the end of her term?”

  I nodded, as much to myself as the other seer.

  “It would make sense,” I said, thinking aloud. “It could also explain why they came here without setting up adequate air support on the way out. Perhaps they found her within days of launching the operation to extract her... ?”

  “Hours, brother,” Terian said, softer. “I strongly suspect they deployed mere hours after determining her location at the camp. This was a very hastily planned operation, indeed... the sheer sight rankings of some of the seers I have seen from behind the Barrier and the number of mistakes they have made can only indicate that they launched this with little to no planning... and further, that they were desperate.”

  I nodded again, unsure how to answer.

  Hesitating, I ventured a question anyway.

  “Who is she?” I said. “The female?”

  Terian didn’t answer.

  I pressed him again.

  “You know her, don’t you?” I said.

  A denser, hotter charge whispered through Terian’s light.

  Due to the other’s shielding, I felt it only at the bare edges of my awareness, but it had enough behind it to take me aback.

  It took me a second more to realize that the whisper of voltage I’d felt carried the distinct flavor of anger. Maybe more than anger. Maybe something closer to hatred, something that seethed, burned and coiled like a parasite somewhere in the aleimi that wound around Terian’s intestines. It needled him there, barely suppressed... unable to be dislodged.

  I found myself thinking that Terian shielded the majority of that emotion from me even now, although the longer I noticed it, the more distinctly I felt it.

  Terian’s voice came out calm whe
n he answered, but that charge lived there still.

  “I know her well enough to know I should have killed her when I met her the first time,” he said, his words low, a near whisper in my ear. “...If only I could be certain it was her now, and certain I could truly end her with the tactic, I might be tempted to carpet-bomb this entire jungle, brother, just to ensure I didn’t make that mistake again. I would quite happily send the bitch and her pup back to seek a new incarnation in a few hundred years... regardless of any life debt attached to that crime...”

  I fought to hide the shock in my light, and failed.

  Or he assumed I must have failed, because Terian’s anger shifted, twisting into a kind of humorless smile in the dark.

  “Don’t worry, brother,” he said. “I won’t do anything so drastic, not now. Not with Revi’ still running after her with a hard-on, still trying to protect her from the big bad wolf, which is presumably me... just as it was five years ago. I still have some hope that my old friend could be made to see reason...” Giving me a wry smile, he added, “Besides, Galaith would never forgive me if I ended his favorite son’s life on such a petty grudge.”

  That denser heat coiled back again, the parasite gnawing once more into his words.

  “...Still, to see him still doing this, even after five years. Chasing her like a dog. Chasing her like she was his own bitch, a bitch in heat... even with her pregnant with another male’s child...” He turned, staring at me through the dim light. “She was mated, you know. Even then.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, and eventually Terian looked away.

  “Revi’ knew she was mated. He knew... but he was such a fool he managed to convince himself he could have her anyway. Even when she didn’t want him... even when she couldn’t want him, when she was incapable of wanting him, given that her light belonged to another...”

  Terian trailed. The last remnants of his humor faded entirely when he next spoke.

  “...It is disheartening, little brother,” he said. “I find it is truly disheartening, indeed.”

  I felt a reaction turn in my gut.

  The feeling lived somewhere between jealousy and fascination, even as I fought to wind my way through the other’s words. I found I understood Terian’s meaning all too well, however, especially with those last few sentences. My own emotional reaction surprised me once I had, enough to make me wonder if it came from Terian as much as it did myself.

  “It’s her, isn’t it?” I said, blunt.

  I could hear the dense anger in my voice, even with the more complex feelings behind that anger. Even with my own jealousy.

  “...The female infiltrator,” I said. “The same one they sent to pull Dehgoies out of the Org. The one the Seven used to separate him from us.”

  “Yes, brother,” Terian said.

  His voice had gone infiltrator-blank, but I heard the heaviness there, too.

  I also found myself thinking that Terian was glad that I knew, that he didn’t have to hide it from me. He seemed to want someone else... someone besides himself... to know the importance of stopping this woman, and Dehgoies from leaving with her.

  Terian went on in a voice that sounded almost vacant, next.

  I heard the barest vestiges of his relief––presumably relief that I knew, that he no longer had to hide his anger––but Terian still sounded almost as if most of him existed somewhere else.

  Perhaps in a different jungle, where he’d last seen that woman with his friend.

  Were they friends, though? Terian and Dehgoies?

  The question ate at me.

  I sometimes thought the question wanted to consume me.

  “I cannot say for certain, of course...” Terian was saying. “But it feels like her. It feels exactly like what I remember of her, of some of the distinct flavorings of her light. She and I, we, too, had an odd...”

  Terian trailed slightly via the comm, as if thinking better of his words.

  When I looked over, he made his tone shift, nearly a shrug.

  “...Connection, I guess you could say, brother,” Terian finished. “Nothing personal, mind you. The closest I got to her was to bind and gag her naked so that we could try and get Revi’ to see her for what she was. We were still trying to reason with him, you see. We were trying to help him work out his unhealthy fascination in a way that might rid him of it. But there are some unusual similarities in our light––in mine and that female’s, I mean. Things that are uncommon enough to be distinctive. Things I can see easier than most, perhaps, for they also exist also in me...”

  He hesitated again, then seemed to wave off whatever he might have added.

  I frowned.

  I could feel Terian telling me something there, too.

  Something he didn’t want to say aloud for some reason.

  I also felt the seer’s willingness to talk to me, something I knew I might not be able to count on later, depending on what wind blew Terian’s mood into a different direction.

  Then again, we were in the middle of a live op, with weapons ready, only about a mile from the closest target, which might be Dehgoies, an ex-Org operative with enough field experience to pose a real problem if cornered.

  That is, assuming it was Dehgoies.

  ... And assuming the intelligence was correct, in terms of the distances, since I couldn’t see well enough to determine that on my own.

  But given Terian’s reaction to the whole thing, I found myself thinking it must be.

  It must be her. It must be Dehgoies with her, too.

  I ventured one more question, with Terian in his confessional mood.

  “Is there some key there?” I asked cautiously. “Some signature I... or perhaps one of the others, one with better sight ranking... should be looking for in her, sir? Something we could perhaps glean from your light? From which we might create an imprint with which to look for hers more accurately behind their shields?”

  “No, brother,” Terian said, his voice dismissive again. “No... you would not see it. I had to have it pointed out to me in my own light, to be truthful. ‘Blindness in the truth of one’s light,’ and all that...” he added, quoted an oft-repeated truth of infiltration.

  “But wouldn’t it be better if more than one of us––” I persisted.

  “No, brother,” Terian said, his voice stronger that time, more final. “Galaith will handle that end of things, Quay, if I need a second set of eyes. He has an interest at this point, as you may well have surmised. I have made him aware of exactly who and what we are tracking at this point, and he stays with us, even now...”

  I felt a tremor go through my light.

  Such a thing hadn’t even occurred to me.

  Galaith was watching over us out here? Now? In real time? It was unthinkable... and yet, totally logical, once I turned the question over in my mind for even half a minute.

  But of course Terian would be in direct contact with Galaith.

  He likely would have been in any case, but particularly given their quarry.

  I found myself reminded that I simply wasn’t used to dealing with seers at Terian’s level. I found it intimidated me, turned me on, excited my more ambitious side and disoriented me, all in the same breath. It also occurred to me that Galaith might have some awareness of me by now, too.

  Meaning me, myself... especially given my proximity to Terian’s light.

  Realizing in the same set of seconds that my conversation with Terian was now over, I filed my lingering questions away for a more opportune moment.

  I couldn’t help feeling watched, though.

  More than usual, that is.

  WE CONTINUED MOVING more or less silently towards those shielded lights.

  We walked through pitch-darkness now... in the physical, at least.

  I and the others made some noise, of course; it was inevitable, even with the sound-deadening boots we wore, and our ability to move more quietly than humans through dense terrain, especially without visual-spectrum light.r />
  We paused as a group only when we needed to hack through some impassable segment of jungle, or if we lost our quarry long enough that we needed to check in from several points, meaning more than just Central and me. Usually it was Gregor, Dayven and Jorel who worked the machetes, while the rest of us worked tirelessly from the Barrier.

  The light that felt like Dehgoies was close now, I knew.

  The defector and his rear-defense guard had drawn closer to the rest of the target group as the Org team drew closer to them. I found that interesting. Did Dehgoies do it in anticipation of a fight, to leverage more seers on the ground? Had the primary team merely fallen more behind, forcing their rear-guard to close the gap?

  Why had they sent Dehgoies back in the first place? Wouldn’t he serve them better by staying as close to the being he protected, rather than at a (potentially) unsafe distance? What was to keep us from sending a team up ahead via the air? Did Terian and Galaith know something I did not know about what Dehgoies might do?

  Was it because Dehgoies himself had the most resonance with the Org strike team?

  Was he merely another kind of decoy? A distraction from the female?

  More importantly, what would Dehgoies do when we caught up to him? As it now looked like we would do in the next three or four hours?

  What would he do?

  Fight us? Try to negotiate? Attempt to slow us down, or even kill us, one by one presumably, so the female might escape with her child under the protection of the rest of the infiltration team? Was he really so smitten with this female that he would throw away his life?

  And would Terian really kill a female and her newborn seer shortly after the birth?

  The idea fell beyond the pale.

  The very concept of killing a newborn seer was beyond taboo among seers. That had been true long before the population shortages following the time of First Contact.

  These days, it bordered on an unpardonable crime.

  Just killing any seer, no matter what their age, bordered on unpardonable nowadays.

  The few exceptions involved emergency scenarios, including self-defense or the defense of a greater number of their race... or the occasional violation of a personal nature that exceeded what the average seer could be expected to forgive, such as one who had convincingly threatened one’s mate or their family, committed rape of an unpardonable nature (such as that of a child or a bonded mate), certain types of torture or enslavement, medical experimentation like what the Nazis had done to pre-fertile seers... and so forth.