Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  He took a bite from that without thinking, too, and while he chewed, Dalejem finished doing up the front of his armored vest.

  Revik finished the wrap in about thirty seconds flat, and his stomach only protested that there wasn’t more.

  As if he felt that, Dalejem laughed, punching him lightly on the arm.

  “There is more,” he said, smiling for the first time Revik remembered since they’d left for Guoreum. “But you’ll have to eat and walk, brother.”

  Revik only nodded, leaving the tent with him, and only pausing to reach down and tie the organic strap around his thigh, holding the lower holster to his leg.

  They were already dismantling the tent as he left out the front.

  He felt better, though.

  A lot better. And strangely ready for a fight.

  Dalejem must have felt some smattering of that, too, because he laughed, even as he motioned Revik to follow him where the front end of the group was already hefting packs to their shoulders, entering in a single line through an opening in the jungle at the far end of the clearing.

  Realizing again that they hadn’t been kidding, that the whole group really had been waiting for him, Revik sped up his pace, even as he took a second wrap from Garensche when the tall seer handed it to him.

  He took a bite out of the end, as much for the energetic boost as out of hunger at that point, following behind Yumi and Poresh as they disappeared along with the others in front of them, packs already strapped to their backs.

  He glanced back just long enough to see the last two seers of their group, Ontari and Vikram, stuff the last of his tent and mats into their own packs and heft them onto their shoulders to follow them as well.

  And just like that, they were a military unit again.

  8

  REQUESTED

  THEY HIKED THROUGH the jungle for two more days.

  During that time, Balidor’s team and the Rooks sparred back and forth between constructs in the Barrier, crossing lines with Revik’s group and the other splinter group. At the end of the first day, Balidor broke his own team into smaller fractions yet again, likely in a further attempt to keep the main Org extraction team off Kali.

  Yumi’s team, as Revik had come to think of it, now stood between Balidor’s remaining unit and that same Org extraction team. It took them almost twenty hours of the last forty or so to position themselves there, mapping the area of the Org’s mobile construct warily, and then skirting carefully around its edges.

  Revik knew that in large part, that caution had been because of him.

  He also knew there was still some uneasiness around their position because of him, and not only from within his own group.

  They kept Revik’s light as far away from that extraction team as they could.

  He had been told by Yumi and Dalejem that they were now using infiltrators in Asia to that end, as well, along with the teams on the ground. Most of the latter were charged with shielding the three constructs as a whole, but Revik suspected at least one of those seers had been assigned to him specifically.

  He didn’t try to probe closer, however, or to test those boundaries.

  Even so, he felt flickers of recognition, of familiarity, at times... and not from the Adhipan side of the shield. The longer they spent out here, the more Revik suspected he knew at least one of the seers following them from the Org.

  He even thought he knew which one.

  He chose not to think about that too closely, either, though. The idea of dealing with Terian out here, given their last interaction in Vietnam, was more than Revik’s mind could really wrap itself around. It had been five years. Five years that stretched into infinity in those caves of the Pamir, leaving his memories of his time with the other seer hazy at best.

  He knew he’d been high for a lot of it, which didn’t help.

  Hell, he couldn’t even be sure what their last interaction had been, precisely.

  He tried to remember what he’d done to Terian, when he took Kali out of Saigon. Had he hurt him? He must have disabled him and Raven in some way, but he couldn’t remember the specifics of that last encounter well enough to know for sure. He couldn’t have just knocked them out with his light; they were both too highly trained.

  He must have hurt them.

  He might have hurt them pretty badly, actually.

  It was the only thing that explained how he hadn’t been caught, or stopped before he reached India. Given the head start he’d given Kali, and then himself when he began making his way to Cambodia and then Thailand, he must have hurt them. He never would have gotten out of Saigon, otherwise. He especially would never have eluded Terian, who could be as dogged in his own way as those monks up in the Pamir.

  More so, maybe.

  Terian’s particular brand of crazy tended to come with a form of obsession that Revik hadn’t seen matched in many seers... despite the tendency towards fixation and obsession seers shared more generally. For all of his short attention span in the normal day-to-day, when Terian really got his mind set on something, he could be frighteningly single-minded.

  But Revik fought not to think about that, either.

  His body had finally more or less adjusted to the heat and humidity by the third day they’d been out here. Meaning, the third day following the go-live for the op, which to Revik started on that predawn morning, when Balidor first broke Kali out of Guoreum.

  He hadn’t heard anything specific about Kali’s condition, either, not in the last twenty-four or so hours. Really, not since he’d asked Dalejem about her from that stretcher as they carried him up to the make-shift camp at the rendezvous point, when he first woke up after the Org’s construct knocked him on his ass.

  He took a few swallows of water without slowing his pace, walking with the others in his team (... pod, his mind whispered, inserting the Org term for a basic ground unit before he could restrain himself). Like he had been for days now, he did his best to keep his mind only on the immediate terrain. He and the others currently formed a broken line up the hill, distributed more or less like a guerrilla fighting force, but he could tell they still formed more of a diversion and a buffer for Balidor’s group than an offensive fighting team.

  Still, he knew they would be expected to flip that on a dime, if need be.

  This particular slope angled steeper than the last few had, skirting a low valley filled with more grazing land, where Revik could see distant herds of cattle.

  He could feel that the Org construct was getting closer.

  Now that the sun was going down behind the hills on the other side of the valley to his left, he found the tension in his body worsening. The nights were more difficult for him, for some reason, in terms of the aleimic side of things, and resonating with those in the Org extraction unit. Watching the sun dip lower, he fought to prepare himself mentally to spend another night out here, and to keep his light focused on Vash and the other Asian seers as much as he could. Still, he knew the attacks would come as soon as the darkness settled.

  They would get worse in the early hours, meaning after midnight.

  As far as sleep went, they usually stopped not long after the Org team stopped, which only happened for a few hours at most, and often less than that. Each of them in Yumi’s unit would be lucky to get thirty, maybe forty minutes of sleep in a stretch, as they rotated through some combination of guard duty––both the Barrier variety and the physical one––and catnaps with the other infiltrators.

  Revik knew that was part of their psychological sparring with the Org, too.

  The Rooks would make sure they always got more sleep than their quarry. They would also try to make them want it, make them work around their own infiltrators to get it. Knowing that it was a power play didn’t really help to combat the effects, however.

  Revik knew that as part of their role as quarry, though. They could only do what they could to maintain a safe lead.

  They were probably carrying Kali by now.

  The th
ought brought a low stab of pain that caught him off guard.

  He saw a few of the nearby seers jump a little, too, and glance at him.

  It wasn’t sexual pain, though, not that time. More like worry mixed with a sharper, less-specific anxiety around the flavor of the Org’s construct following them. He knew Terry would want to kill Kali, if he knew it was her out here. Terian being involved in this mess might explain why they took Kali in the first place. Knowing Terry, he might have done it out of spite, or even just to lure Revik out in the open, meaning, out of those caves.

  The pain in his gut repeated at the thought.

  It wasn’t as bad that time.

  Even so, it was intense enough that Revik found himself wishing Kali’s damned mate would get here already.

  He also saw a few seers in the team glance at him again, curiosity in their eyes.

  “Why the fuck are we going this way?” he muttered to himself.

  He wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his forearm as he said it, gazing up the tree-filled slope in front of them as he felt his jaw harden. He’d been talking to himself mostly, barely muttering really, but Mara surprised him by answering, speaking in an almost normal tone of voice from where she walked slightly behind him.

  “We’re going this way because your girlfriend is an intermediary, Rook,” the female seer said, a thread of humor in her voice. “...And apparently, she’s calling the shots these days... not brother Balidor. So stop your whining, Dehgoies.”

  “Is whining against the law, now?” Ontari said, winking at Revik. “I think someone should tell sister Dalai that, if so.”

  “Bite me,” the same said sweetly. She trudged up the hill with an expressive frown on her fine-featured face. She looked about as seer as she possibly could, with the distinctive Asian-seer features and dark, purple-blue irises with the orange rims. “Is it my fault these wretched swamplands don’t agree with my delicate constitution?”

  Ontari snorted a laugh, rolling his eyes towards Revik.

  “Don’t believe her for a second, brother Dehgoies. I’ve seen her chop the heads off rats and eat them, when we were hungry enough...”

  Revik smiled a little in spite of himself, clicking softly.

  “Should I tell him about our last job in Afghanistan, brother?” Dalai said, her voice even more mockingly sweet. “I’m sure he would love to hear that story, Oni.”

  “No,” Ontari said, laughing again.

  Mara gripped Revik’s arm, causing him to jump, then look down.

  “I know,” she said, giving him another grin, a glint in her light eyes. “Why don’t you use the time we have out here to try and learn how to walk quieter, Rook? That, or we can help Gar lose weight like he said he wanted, and make him carry you up the hill...”

  Revik glanced at Garensche, without slowing his pace as he hiked. The big seer probably carried half the camp requisitions on his broad back already, Revik noted.

  Garensche looked at him in the same set of seconds, frowning with his thick lips.

  “The hell you will,” he said, his voice a louder mutter than Revik’s had been.

  On Gar’s other side, Poresh broke out in a laugh, as did Dalai.

  “Come on, brother Gar,” Poresh teased. “You know you want to...”

  When Gar looked over at the two of them, Dalai slapped the big seer playfully on the shoulder. “You did say you wanted to lose weight. I heard you... same as Mara.”

  “Not by giving myself a hernia,” Garensche retorted, clicking and smiling, despite his tone. “Are you all forgetting how fucking heavy that damned Rook is? He may look narrow, but he has bones made of iron, I swear it. That, or––”

  “Are you sure those were his bones?” Dalai teased, giving Revik’s crotch a pointed glance.

  “Shut up, all of you,” Yumi cut in, her voice quiet, but still managing to penetrate the banter. She gave Dalai and Poresh a couple of particularly hard stares. “Are we on a job here, or flirting with the ex-Rook? Which is it?”

  “Can’t we do both?” Gar asked, grinning at her.

  “No,” Yumi said, her voice colder.

  A few more of them chuckled that time, even Vikram, who was normally quiet.

  Revik felt flickers of humor from the group more generally, along with wise-ass remarks a number of them seemed to think better of and suppress, given Yumi’s threatening looks. He was used to that kind of thing, too, though. Being a smart-ass was kind of a military staple.

  It was just one of many ways of whistling in the dark.

  When Revik glanced forward, he saw Dalejem frowning back at the rest of them, too, even more deeply than Yumi. Revik saw his eyes settle the hardest on Mara, but he couldn’t get a sense of what that was about, either.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to.

  Brushing it from his mind, he gripped the rifle a little tighter, hitching the backpack higher on his shoulders in the same pause that it took him to rearrange the gear. He’d been pulled into the rotation with equipment and camp set up and break-down like the rest of them. Although really, he’d put himself into that rotation, without being told, or even asked.

  Even as he finished adjusting his pack, he felt another thread of recognition whisper around his light. Someone monitoring the shield around Revik’s aleimi knocked the thread away, but the proximity of that familiar light, which felt more and more like Terian’s, brought a rush of adrenaline back into Revik’s blood, getting his legs moving faster.

  They hiked in silence for what felt like another few hours.

  Throughout all of it, Revik felt probes like that, only to have them pulled away by one of the Adhipan or Pamir seers, and once by Yumi herself. She glanced at him when it happened that time, frowning slightly, although he felt more worry in it than accusation.

  The realization reassured him somewhat.

  But truthfully, not a lot.

  When the hit came to his light the next time, though, it wasn’t from the Org seers.

  Not surprisingly, perhaps, Revik was the last one of his group to feel it.

  He felt it through the others first, before the actual impulse reached enough of his light that he could pinpoint direction, or even the exact flavor from the Barrier. Once it had filtered over enough of his aleimi for him to get a sense of both things, understanding caused his breath to suck in, even as every seer in his group came to a dead halt.

  None of them spoke.

  It was so quiet, in fact, that Revik could hear Dalai breathing from beside him. He saw her white fingers knuckle into a clench around the straps of her backpack, even as she glanced at him. He also felt the question in her light.

  He sent back an impulse, no words.

  The impulse essentially meant, I don’t know.

  He was still standing there, breathing into the silence of the trees, when Yumi spoke, causing all of them to jump a little.

  She spoke to Revik, of all people.

  “Looks like you got your wish, pup,” she said, her voice holding a thread of humor.

  Ontari answered instead of Revik.

  “Which wish was that?” he said, his voice joking. “Or do we want to know?”

  Despite the male seer’s words, Revik felt the tension in the group deflate, even as relief swam through the mobile construct as a whole. Revik understood why, too. Whatever he had felt up ahead, it definitely didn’t belong to the Rooks.

  Yumi exhaled in a series of soft clicks, right along with the rest of them.

  “His wish for Kali’s husband to come here,” Yumi said.

  Revik could almost hear the smirk in her voice.

  Even so, he felt the relief more strongly still, especially from Yumi herself.

  Feeling somewhat emboldened by it, he reached out tentatively with his light, actively scanning for the specific wave of frequency in the Barrier he’d felt, rather than letting it trickle through the shields the others held around him. Once Revik aimed his light in the right direction, he could immediately see what Yu
mi had been referencing... partly because Yumi herself caught him in the act.

  Once she had, she plugged him directly into the new influence in the construct.

  New living lights exploded into Revik’s awareness, popping up all over the hill in front of him as they grew visible within Balidor’s construct and Yumi’s thread to the same. Looking over them all in wonder, Revik realized they’d been deliberately revealed once they were close enough to provide an effective message, not only to Revik himself, or to Yumi and the rest of their group, but to the Org extraction team directly.

  Feeling the strength of that message behind that distinctive flare of light, Revik felt his own shoulders lose some of their tension, too, noticing only then that they hadn’t.

  “Reinforcements,” he muttered.

  “Yes,” Yumi said, smiling at him. “It looks like Kali’s husband and the group from Los Angeles have finally arrived.”

  Once she finished showing all of them the full strength of their new allies, Yumi once more closed down the specific thread hooking their group to Balidor’s, probably to keep their own position relatively discreet from the Org extraction team.

  “They have brought reinforcements of their own,” she added. “Quite a lot of reinforcements, my brothers and sisters.”

  “From where?” Vikram asked in heavily-accented Prexci.

  “Unknown,” Yumi said. “They are not Adhipan. Nor Seven.”

  “They are friendly, though?” Ontari said, his voice wary.

  “Very friendly. They are here for the Bridge,” she smiled.

  Revik heard a few sighs next to him, with more relief in them than he would have guessed. He hadn’t really realized how much their precarious situation between the extraction team and Kali had been stressing all of them out.

  He alone seemed surprised by her words.

  “The Bridge?” he said, into that silence.

  Yumi gave him another direct look. She didn’t answer his implied question, however.

  “Balidor is coming here,” she said instead. “We are to wait for him and his people to reach us. He says they’re only about fifteen minutes out, and that we should remain ready to move, if need be. So packs on the ground, but stick with field reqs if you’re hungry.”