Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  Extreme circumstances, in other words.

  Unpardonable offenses, that made the finality of death more comprehendible.

  Generally speaking, seers fought their battles through the lives of humans, not of other seers. Even work camp bondage, with very few exceptions, was not meant to bring about the long term imprisonment, much less death, of those of our own kind.

  Abuses occurred in the camps, true.

  Since Galaith had been running things from behind the scenes, the Org made sure those abuses were kept to a minimum, however, and severely punished where caught, including but not limited to: rape of seers by humans, torture, medical experimentation and, most significantly in the past few years, human attempts to sneak in policies that would allow for the use of seer tissue for organic machines.

  Galaith may have run the camps, or in some cases even turned a blind eye... but he did so with the intent of curbing excesses, not exacerbating or condoning them.

  Further, seers, apart from a few very hardened criminals and/or terrorists, were not allowed to remain in the camps for more than a five-year period. Most remained in the camps for significantly less time than that, with the average length of stay being somewhere in the area of eight to ten months.

  I continued to turn over Terian’s words and the information I had gleaned from intelligence as I walked behind the others. I wondered if Terian meant what he’d said. I also wondered if Terian meant for me to wonder about that very thing.

  I only had a few more minutes to ponder those questions, however.

  Then it was as if twenty different lights pinged at mine, all at once.

  Like the rest of my ex-pod, I came to an abrupt halt.

  I stood there, panting, my light ignited in an ingrained fight or flight reflex.

  I listened, standing at the edge of a dense cluster of trees.

  TERIAN SENT THE flare to all of us first.

  Then, with a bare millisecond of delay, the intelligence team also invaded my light from the work camp back near Manaus. I sent that one on to the others, even as Varlan hit me from up ahead, and then the rest of my team in a disorienting and uneven procession.

  I found myself fighting to interpret three or four sets of data simultaneously, even as I listened to Terian speak through the now-open comm.

  “...They’ve got another team meeting up with them over that ridge,” Terian said in my ear, even as images flashed behind my eyes from the infiltration team back at Central as well as the one in Manaus. “...Relatively big. Maybe as many as forty or fifty ranked infiltrators. Extremely well-shielded. Galaith is saying Adhipan... he’s trying to confirm final numbers now. He’s got a secondary infiltration team deployed out of Asia, given the scope of this... and he’s pulled two teams out of São Paulo to meet us here...”

  I frowned. No one in São Paulo would get here in time.

  I didn’t speak that aloud, though. Instead I seconded Terian’s words.

  “Manaus intelligence confirms,” I said. “Monitoring and assessing the new strike unit from the north. They believe deployment originated in Bogota... conferring with Central now.”

  Terian acknowledged my words with a ping, then went on with scarcely a pause.

  “...We’ve also got a smaller team headed our way,” Terian added.

  His voice came out deceptively casual that time, but something about his light caused my eyes to jerk towards him.

  Terian nudged me away, directing my attention and light along with that of the rest of the group, aiming us towards the lights to which he’d referred.

  I saw it, even as Terian said it.

  A split-second before Terian highlighted the signature in the Barrier space, I pinged my own findings back to Central. Even so, I honestly didn’t know if I saw it first with my own sight before Terian showed me... or if I simply saw it a few beats earlier because I was more closely connected to Terian’s light. Either way, while the rest of the group caught up, I was already staring at the set of imprints that materialized seemingly out of nowhere among the trees.

  “They’re close,” Varlan said through the comm. “Very close.”

  I couldn’t see the older seer, but I frowned.

  “Headed straight our way,” I muttered. I switched my comm back to private, aiming my next words to Terian, even as I thought them. “Could they mean to parlay... ?”

  “Galaith thinks so, yes,” Terian said.

  He left his own vocals open on the public channel, but I felt him look over. I felt Terian’s attention focus briefly and sharply on me.

  “Do we intend to honor the parlay request?” I said, letting the others hear me that time.

  “We do,” Terian confirmed.

  “Any stipulations?” Gregor said.

  “I’ll coordinate that, through Galaith,” Terian answered easily. “I’m not acting with full discretion in this, not anymore... please expect some delay in the issuing of commands, and do not get itchy fingers. I’ve been asked to caution everyone not to make any aggressive moves whatsoever, not without a direct order from me...”

  I didn’t ask the next question dancing at the tip of my tongue.

  I felt it hovering there, though, even as Terian pushed at me subtly with his light, as if asking me not to ask it, at least not in front of the others. I honored the unspoken request, without ever being certain that I’d heard it in the first place.

  I knew one thing: Terian wasn’t happy.

  I didn’t know if that came from something Galaith had communicated to him, or from something that one of the other teams of Org infiltrators had picked up about the actions or intentions of the group of seers approaching us... or something else.

  I strongly suspected Terian wasn’t happy about being pushed aside, though.

  “I want two teams to spread out our range,” Terian continued, giving me another hard stare from behind the Barrier. “North and south. Varlan... deploy whomever you think is best. When and if you receive the retreat signal from me, I want you to break off, lose any pursuit if you can and head back to camp. Any problems, use the secure network and stay out of the Barrier. If necessary, we’ll turn this into a full-scale military operation, but for now, we’re assuming normal diplomatic rules, as they pertain to the Seven and their acolytes in the postwar Seertown Treaty...”

  I thought it was an interesting choice of words, if a politic one.

  What the fuck was going on, though?

  Obviously Galaith had hijacked this op from Terian, in the same way that Terian hijacked it from Varlan.

  But why? What had changed?

  Again, I felt a denser pulse of attention and warning from Terian. I did my best to shield my light more carefully from view. Even as I did so, however, Terian’s mind whispered through mine, sparking hotter, more dangerous-feeling flames.

  You are smart, brother Quay, Terian sent softly.

  The higher-ranked seer felt angry that time. Truly angry, perhaps for the first time since I had met him.

  Also for the first time, that anger felt aimed at me.

  ... Perhaps you are a little too smart, brother... given your rather amateur shielding abilities. A colder flavor seeped into Terian’s tone. ... I don’t suppose you could at least try to act like an infiltrator out in the field, working a live op, could you, brother? Or am I asking too much? I have perhaps given you too much responsibility too soon, brother?

  I felt embarrassment emanate from my light.

  I didn’t let the emotion linger, however.

  Rather, I slammed a shield over that, too, taking the warning to heart as I spent a few more seconds weaving a tighter net over my mind and thoughts, one that even the pod shouldn’t be able to penetrate, apart from perhaps Varlan.

  Better, Terian conceded, a few seconds later.

  The anger remained in his light, and in the thoughts he aimed at me.

  ... But we might have to up your training in that area, brother. Perhaps I can help some... if nothing else, in the area of inducements. I
can be quite creative with the stick, you know, not only the carrot... and it appears carrots might not be quite motivating enough in your case...

  I nodded, letting the other seer feel my acquiescence.

  Something in my surrender that time seemed to appease the other male.

  Very well, then, Terian sent, his light less overtly angry. In the meantime, if I feel anything like that from you again, brother Quay, with an enemy group of high-ranked seers so close to our collective asses, I will fucking skin you, brother... live op, or no. I will skin you, and then I’ll feed what’s left of you to the jungle...

  I didn’t answer at all that time.

  I felt the words somewhere in the region of my belly, but I didn’t waste Terian’s time with empty apologies, either. I knew, somehow, that we were beyond such formalities. Terian expected me to make it up in the field, as in now, not in words.

  I could do that.

  I also felt the real source underlying the other’s emotional intensity.

  Dehgoies. One of the seers approaching us was likely Dehgoies.

  Even as I noted it, I got another flash from the senior infiltrators back at the camp.

  Tule confirmed my impression about Dehgoies. He immediately sent a second dump of information from their combined efforts with Central Command, too. Seven seers, at least two, possibly three, with unusually high ranks. Dehgoies was cloaked by the two of the high-rankers, and therefore difficult to see clearly, in terms of the status of his own aleimi, but they ID’d him through trauma markers, like Terian intimated, not by his infiltrator actuals.

  I looked at the disjointed array of Barrier signatures and imprints, trying to collate them roughly into individual beings before I passed on the overall findings. I did it quickly, though, as quickly as I could without mistakes... and without causing more than a few seconds’ delay between the original ping and my release of the intel to Terian.

  I waited again while Terian looked at it.

  I let Terian feel I was holding off before disseminating to Varlan and the others.

  The whole team had come to a stop in the jungle by then.

  I stood next to Gregor by a cluster of giant buttress roots that fanned off the largest of the swamp trees in a smallish clearing. The roots rippled down off the thick-trunked tree almost like flattened snakes, twisting down from thinner to thicker from the lowest of the trunk-like branches reaching out from above our heads. I could see ferns and plants with sharper green leaves poking out from between the root folds with my aleimic sight, along with palm trees growing in another dense cluster just to my right.

  I glanced over the roots with my aleimi, then briefly switched on the infrared lenses I wore under my helmet, looking that way, too, mostly for snakes and other animals, even though I was more likely to see those from the Barrier, too. I paused to smack an insect against my neck, wincing at the sting when I killed it.

  I felt queasy still, maybe from the malaria pills, but I doubted that was all of it.

  I could feel the buzz in the construct by then, a feeling of tension accompanied by a sick feeling that might have been adrenaline but had a strange flavor of darker melancholy woven into it somehow. I didn’t think the feeling came from Terian alone, or even directly, but somehow that higher-vibrating tension I felt got informed by something related to Terian’s light.

  Even as I thought it, Terian gave me the ping to disseminate the intel to the rest of the pod. I did it without thought. As I did, I found myself sharing that emotional darkness I’d felt, too, what seemed to strangle Terian’s end of the construct.

  “Fuck,” Gregor muttered next to me, his comm switched off. “What is that? What is that feeling?”

  I didn’t try to answer him.

  I saw Cualla and Karenti glance over at me, too. I felt their agreement with Gregor’s words, and their unease about whatever caused the emotional flavor.

  Usually Org agents weren’t invited or encouraged to feel things from one another out in the field. It was a distraction. Moreover, since seers are so sensitive to light frequencies in the first place, it could cause a ripple effect that might amplify that emotion, if enough of the others resonated with it on a deeper, less-conscious level.

  No one wanted to feel that kind of thing, anyway.

  It was bad enough when the emotion was positive, but this reeked of the camps, of being left alone, in the dark, powerless... a slave.

  Again, I felt agreement from Karenti and Gregor.

  I shoved my own emotional reactions harder from my mind, but not before an image of Krikov swam there.

  I found myself wondering again what the hell was going on, but quieter that time, out of the range of the parts of my light that Gregor or one of the others might overhear. That sick feeling worsened, though, turning into a near anxiety, coupled with what started to feel a lot like jealousy coming from my own light.

  Terian was reacting to seeing Dehgoies.

  He was reacting with emotion. A hell of a lot of emotion.

  More than was considered safe out in the field.

  I felt the realization reverberate in my own light.

  Dehgoies was coming here. Not in chains, but willingly, to parlay... and moreover, Galaith was going to respect the rules of that parlay. He was going to allow Dehgoies to speak as a delegate of the Seven or the Adhipan, or whoever the hell he spoke for these days. He would treat Dehgoies as a protected diplomat from an enemy force... and then, assuming he continued to follow the rules, Galaith was going to let Dehgoies go.

  I wondered if Terian would do the same.

  As my mind turned over the question, I found another part of my light putting different but similar pieces together, making sense of what this might mean to Terian. Not just seeing Dehgoies in the flesh, presumably for the first time since they were brothers... but being forced to treat Dehgoies as a protected enemy agent.

  I wondered if Terian would be able to handle that according to protocol, particularly given who he believed the woman to be in the jungle ahead of us. Particularly since Terian believed, I had no doubt, that Dehgoies had been tricked into changing sides in the first place, and then brainwashed to make the change stick.

  Moreover, Galaith had stolen Terian’s chance to make things right.

  By agreeing to the parlay, Galaith had stolen Terian’s opportunity to possibly take his friend into living custody, to perhaps try and reverse what had been done to him. Galaith had likely stolen Terian’s chance to dispose of the female seer, too... the same female who had once upon a time manipulated Dehgoies into betraying Terian and the rest of his people. From what I could feel, Galaith had also done those things without so much as an explanation.

  Terian looked over at me.

  His eyes appeared cat-like once more, his amber irises glowing faintly in my infrared lenses. I had already clamped down harder on my light, but Terian’s gaze didn’t linger. Instead, it shifted back towards the tree-line at the edge of the clearing, towards the dark where I could now feel those seven presences approaching.

  Seven.

  They had sent seven seers, presumably with Dehgoies in their number.

  Was Dehgoies a follower these days, I wondered? Or still a leader?

  Was the number of seers sent some kind of message, too?

  I did not know the answer to any of these things. All I could do for those twenty or so minutes was wait along with the rest of my pod, listening to the silence, and watching the small party approach us through the dense branches with my light.

  5

  PARLAY

  THE BIG GUN infiltrators gave me a bit more intelligence... but not much.

  For some reason, I’d lost access to Central, but I still had a direct line to the camp seers, including those higher-echelon infiltrators Terian introduced me to in the CIC before we left. I didn’t know if they’d been cut off by Central, too, or if the seers that approached really were good enough to get by Central altogether. I also wondered (quietly) if the camp infiltrators
had gotten soft, primarily overseeing the inventory at the camp itself.

  It was that, or the seers approaching us somehow had sight ranks that surpassed anything the network could penetrate.

  I hadn’t once encountered beings who could get past Central, whatever a few of the higher-ranked off-the-griders could do to a local pod or even a larger squad with decent averages. Whatever the truth, the seers approaching us were more highly ranked than the vast majority of those I normally encountered out in the field.

  I could only assume that I wasn’t getting the whole story, given that Galaith had his own team on the job now, and that Terian must be working directly with that group, rather than the one he’d assigned at the camp.

  Further, yeah, Central had cut me out.

  I was forced to deduce that most of what was going on here was likely above my pay grade. The knowledge frustrated me slightly, but only in the background of my light, and only to the extent that I craved more knowledge of this... whatever this was.

  I already knew that, whatever it was, it was unusual.

  Unusual enough that just to be here was likely a stroke of luck, in terms of the potential significance of whatever agreements came out of this “negotiation.”

  My mind slid back into the basics of my training.

  Seven seers approaching, indeterminate sight ranks.

  Unreg’d... which we’d already assumed.

  One had a tag associated with a longstanding arrest warrant we had in the files, but that didn’t really tell me anything, either. Any unreg’d seer caught working outside one of the Human Protection Act agencies was technically a terrorist.

  Hell, any unreg’d seer, period, was technically a terrorist, at least above the age of fifteen or twenty. Even the clan seers were all supposed to be tagged these days.