When the bulbous nose and swollen sides of the cargo jet came into view, she tightened her grip on her gun. Alistar stepped out onto the plain with Gaven. They waited as the wingjet landed, shielding their eyes from the blowing sand.
As soon as the jet touched down, Dysis scrambled up the rungs of the rusted emergency ladder fixed to the side of the building, grateful her solagun was harnassed securely to her back.
By the time the dome and cargo bay of the wingjet hissed open, she was in position.
As predicted, six soldiers emerged from the wingjet, beetle-like in their black uniforms. Dysis tried to remember that three of those men were their allies, but her finger twitched on the trigger anyway. Every muscle tensed as she watched them gather before Alistar.
“Where’s the wreckage?” one of the men asked. His voice carried easily throughout the clearing. He looked around. “We were told we needed to pick up evidence of some kind.”
Dysis focused every fiber of her being on the soldiers below her. The moment sharpened; this was it. From this heartbeat to the next, everything would change.
Alistar cocked his head. “You were misinformed.”
Gaven stepped back at the same instant three of the Safaran soldiers separated themselves from the group. One by one, they raised their weapons.
Dysis held her breath.
“Don’t move,” the tallest soldier said, pointing his solagun at the man who’d spoken.
From this distance, Dysis couldn’t see facial expressions that clearly, but she could read body language well enough. And the leader was standing his ground.
“What exactly are you doing?” he asked, not sounding nearly concerned enough.
The men with raised guns said nothing. Alistar stepped forward. “Put your weapons down. We’ve no wish to harm you, but we will, if it comes to that.”
Dysis was impressed at the steadiness of his voice. He spoke as he would to a patient, with a soothing calm. She never would guess that the lives of more than thirty people, most of them children, were riding on him. It was the single most important moment of his life, and he was owning it entirely.
One of the soldiers loyal to Ward Balias moved, his hand creeping toward his solagun, clearly not preparing to surrender.
It wasn’t part of the plan—Aris didn’t want to risk any retaliation—but the sooner these men relinquished their weapons, the sooner Dysis could be gone from here. She sighted down her long-range solagun, aiming for the light a few feet away from the assemblage. But before she could take the shot, more villagers appeared.
They all held up weapons, calmly stalking toward the three soldiers.
Balias’s men looked at each other. For an instant, Dysis was sure there would be a firefight.
But the one who’d been reaching for his solagun took the weapon and dropped it on the ground, raising his hands. The leader was the last to surrender.
“Why the hell are you doing this? You realize this is treason,” he yelled. “You’ve signed a death sentence for your family and for what?” His voice rose as the villagers restrained him. When all three men were secured, the leader still yelling, Gaven and Alistar marched them to the small building at the opposite edge of the clearing that served as the village’s jail. The noise didn’t stop until the cell door closed.
With silence restored, Dysis let out a heavy breath. That had been easy, as Aris had promised. Two villagers searched the cargo jet while the rebel soldiers stood in the clearing, waiting to help the children onto the jet. Aris emerged from her hiding place and climbed into the cabin to inspect the controls. Hopping down, she grinned so wide Dysis could make out the expression, even from a distance.
“Flying this beast will be no problem,” Aris said triumphantly.
A flurry of activity ensued. Alistar and one of the soldiers—the one with a child here—ran toward the caves.
Dysis stood and headed for the ladder.
There was no warning this time.
Dysis barely made it to the ground as a wingjet screamed overhead, sowing fire in its wake. The jail exploded. As she watched, horror-stricken, part of the clinic caught fire.
Daakon.
Without a second’s hesitation, she pounded the emergency transmitter on her chest.
Chapter 34
Aris ducked, covering her head to protect it from the burning rubble. The wingjet did another pass, dropping a firebomb on a small collection of houses at the edge of the landing pad, only a few feet from the field where she’d watched Kori and the others play. Flames burst into the sky as Aris crawled to Gaven.
He was lying on the ground, a chunk of concrete wedged against his stomach. His eyes were closed. She touched his face, but he didn’t respond. That’s when she noticed the blood pooling beneath his head. Stomach twisting, she checked his pulse.
Nothing.
The whine of the wingjet’s missiles stopped. Aris looked up. The sleek black jet hovered ominously for a few seconds before dropping to the ground. Another, smaller, wingjet appeared and began circling the village. Aris shot a look at the cargo jet. It didn’t appear to be damaged, but the clinic and jail were on fire. It wouldn’t be long before flames engulfed the jet, too. She scoured the edge of the clinic’s roof. Where was Dysis? Daakon? Calix?
A shout caught her attention. Specialist Baryn and the third soldier who’d helped them gestured to her, partially protected by a ragged half wall. With an inner sigh, Aris said goodbye to Gaven. Then she removed her solagun from its holster and scrambled over to the soldiers.
The wingjet had stopped shooting, but it would no doubt be a brief reprieve.
“What’s going on?” Aris gasped. “Did you know there were other wingjets in the area? Why are they attacking the village?”
The soldier she hadn’t met shook his head. “Those men aren’t with us. I don’t know—”
There was a flash of light.
The man crumpled slowly, surprise burned into his expression, a solagun-shot smoking at his throat.
Aris froze, watching his collapse with horror. “What—”
Baryn lowered his gun and yanked hers out of her hand before she had time to process what was happening. Then he grabbed her, his fingers digging savagely into her arm. “Let’s go.”
Aris couldn’t speak. They’d trusted that Baryn was loyal to this village. To Samira and Alistar.
We were wrong.
“Why are you doing this?” Aris struggled against Baryn’s grip, craning her whole body toward the caves. Had Lieutenant Nore betrayed them, too? What about his son? She combed the broken buildings with her eyes, looking for small, scared faces.
There was no sign of the children. Villagers fired toward the wingjet in the center of the clearing. A swarm of black-clad soldiers spilled from the back of the jet, returning fire as they moved farther into the village.
Baryn wrenched her arm, pulling her toward the jet. “I told you to stay out of sight, remember? Not that it would have mattered. As soon as I saw you, I knew it would mean big things for me,” he said. “You’re quite the prize.”
Aris tried to break Baryn’s hold, twisting with a kick toward his knee. He grabbed her splinted wrist and yanked. She screamed.
In a daze, she stumbled toward the wingjet, dragging against Baryn’s grip. In the center of the flurry of Safaran soldiers, a flash of white caught her eye. A tall, dark-skinned man in a flowing white tunic walked calmly down the wingjet’s ramp, and even before he turned and met her eyes across the plain, Aris knew.
It was Elom.
Chapter 35
Dysis ran along the side of the clinic, panic keeping pace. Acrid smoke burned her nose, and the sounds of solagun fire and people shouting assaulted her. When she reached the clearing, the scene on the landing pad sprang into unforgiving detail. There were only four or five villagers still fighting the swarm of Safaran soldiers. And there, being dragged across the plain . . .
Without thinking, Dysis dropped to her knee and sighted along her gun. A
ris’s captor fell a second later. Aris wrenched free from his body, her eyes wildly scanning her surroundings. Then she ran like hell into the shadows between two buildings. Dysis couldn’t tell if Aris had seen her or not. But a couple of the other soldiers had. In quick, merciless succession, she brought them down.
The others soldiers, realizing there was a new threat, found cover behind the wingjets, around the corners of buildings. The hiss of solagun fire slowed.
At least she’d bought the villagers a little time.
She swung the long-range gun onto her back, pulled her smaller solagun, and ran around the front of the building. She slipped through the doorway and into the clinic. Behind the flapping fabric door, the smoky room glowed red.
“Daakon?” she yelled. Fire licked along the ceiling.
She made it to his med-bed, but he wasn’t there.
“Dysis, help me.”
She held an arm up to cover her nose and mouth. Daakon was hunched over another med-bed, the small form of a child under the sheets. The bed shook with the force of the boy’s coughing.
“Can you carry him?” Daakon asked, turning a soot-streaked face toward her. His eyes ran with tears from the smoke. “He can’t walk.”
“Neither can you,” Dysis said, noticing how heavily he leaned against the bed.
He shook off her concerns. “I can manage. Help him. We don’t—” The fire roared as part of the roof collapsed, drowning his words. A thick wave of smoke engulfed them.
Dysis threw Daakon the smaller solagun and gathered the painfully thin boy into her arms. His bony fingers dug into her arm.
“Anyone else?” Smoke burned its way down to her lungs. She coughed, shoulders shaking.
“No,” Daakon said, staring into the heat of the fire. The beds at the end of the room were burning.
They turned and made their way toward the door. Daakon limped heavily, his injured leg almost entirely useless. The boy in her arms whimpered.
They reached the doorway just as the rest of the roof collapsed. The force of the falling rubble blasted against them, pushing them into the open. Daakon went down on one knee. Dysis stumbled forward, tangled in the tattered cloth covering the doorway. Desperately, she clutched the child closer as she fought to see, afraid she’d drop him.
Finally, she tore free of the fabric. All around her was the hiss of solagun fire.
“Come on, Daakon,” she said, shifting the boy in her arms to free a hand. She pulled on Daakon’s arm. “We need to get out of range.”
He didn’t answer.
“Come on.” Dysis yanked harder as she turned toward him.
The small, round hole in his forehead stared back at her as his body tumbled onto the ground.
For a second, the whole world froze.
Her breath. Her beating heart.
Everything.
A flash of solagun fire grazed her shoulder. In her arms, the boy cried. Something inside Dysis broke apart. She wrenched her long-range solagun from across her back. In seconds, the man who’d killed Daakon was dead himself, along with two of his friends.
Dysis clutched the boy closer to her and lurched around the corner of the building. The act of leaving Daakon behind burned more painfully than the scorched flesh of her shoulder.
As soon as they were out of range of the fighters, Dysis dropped to the ground, easing the boy to the dirt beside her. He propped himself against the wall, his breathing ragged. His face was black with soot, the whites of his eyes wide. He hugged his arms across his chest as if it would hold him together.
Dysis stared at the gap between buildings, where solagun fire still hissed. The second Safaran wingjet made another pass, and another building burst into flames.
It came out of nowhere. One second her solagun was up, and her eyes were surveying their position for danger, the next she was curled into a ball, weeping.
For a long time, she could do nothing but sob into her knees, oblivious to the boy beside her. To her own safety.
At the woosh of an incoming wingjet, Dysis lifted her head. Her eyes had dried to burning disks and her throat was raw. Above the village, two silver Atalantan wingjets cut through the white-hot sky. A new, grim resolve filled her.
“You okay?” Dysis leaned toward the boy she’d saved.
He gave her a shaky nod.
She inched along the wall to the entrance of the alleyway. She needed to return to the fight.
In the sky, the Atalantan recon drew the Safaran wingjet away from the village and shot it down. An explosion rattled the ground, throwing Dysis off-balance. More smoke billowed into the already caustic air. She didn’t see the transport.
As she reached the clearing, a cough, too loud to be the boy’s, echoed behind her. She whirled back into the alley, raising her solagun. Three figures stood a few yards beyond the boy, half-hidden by the smoke.
A split second before she pulled the trigger, one of the figures raised his hands. “Specialist Latza.”
She recognized the voice. Dysis lowered her weapon slowly. “Major Vadim. You made it.”
The major’s pale skin had a grayish tinge. Specialist Mann’s stocky, muscular form emerged from the smoke beside him. Otto came into focus last, his eyes wide as he took in the devastation.
“Where is Aris?” Major Vadim asked. He was surprisingly calm for having landed in a war zone. This couldn’t have been what he’d expected. “What’s happening here?”
“Last I saw, Aris was on the other side of the village,” Dysis reported. “Balias’s men showed up. . . . I think they’re here for her. The villagers are fighting back. They’re trying to help us.”
Vadim glanced at the boy huddled against the wall. “And who is—”
“Lieutenant Daakon’s dead,” she said in a rush, swallowing back a sob. The words made it real and irreversible. Daakon was dead.
Major Vadim’s breath hissed out, as if she’d punched him. “Daakon . . .”
A blast of solagun fire ripped across the concrete wall above them. Vadim crouched, searching for the source of the threat.
“I need to get Aris!” Major Vadim yelled over the sound of renewed battle.
Dysis pointed to the entrance of the alley. “That way.”
Another blast pounded above them.
The boy, still huddled against the wall, whimpered. Dysis caught Specialist Mann’s eye. “Can you carry this kid toward the mountains? There are caves . . . Other children. Ask for Alistar or Samira. They’ll help you get him to safety.”
Mann nodded and reached for the boy.
Major Vadim edged toward the entrance of the alley, braced for more solagun fire. Dysis joined him, her hands gripping her weapon tightly. Behind her, she heard footsteps as Otto followed suit.
“Pallas and Baksen are still up in the air. They’ll provide as much support as they can. As soon as I saw the fighting, I also called for reinforcements,” Major Vadim said. “We should have more help soon. In the meantime—”
“Go. Find Aris,” Dysis said, raising her weapon. “I’ll cover you.”
Chapter 36
In a one-room shack near the burning remnants of the jail, Aris fought to control her panic. She had no weapon. No way out. And Elom was after her. She’d run when Baryn went down, but the bright sunshine and rapidly exchanged fire had been disorienting. This was the first shelter she’d come to, and it had no door beyond a tattered sheet. It was out of the line of solagun fire, but if Elom or one of his soldiers found her, there’d be nowhere to go.
Calix and Samira hadn’t brought out the children when the second wingjet screamed out of nowhere; hopefully they were safe in the caves with Alistar. Of course, she couldn’t imagine either of them staying safe in the caves. They’d be out fighting soon, if they weren’t already.
Aris pressed her back against the wall beside the doorway and snuck glances outside. Not long ago, two Atalantan wingjets had appeared and taken out the airborne Safaran jet. But Elom and his men were still on the ground. Shouts an
d the hiss of weaponry still sent adrenaline coursing through her.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Anger and frustration increased the tension between her shoulder blades. Baryn had sold her out—all this death and destruction could have been avoided if they’d known not to trust him. Just one person, and everything was ruined.
She snuck another peek into the alley, just as two Safaran soldiers rounded the corner. She ducked back inside, but one of them spotted her. “Over here!” he yelled.
She scrambled farther from the door, as deep into the darkness of the windowless shack as she could get. Blight it.
If only she had a weapon: a sythin, a stone, anything.
Aris put her fists up as the men burst through the tattered fabric door. She would have settled for Dysis’s lethal combat skills.
Suddenly the men jerked to a stop. She heard a clank of metal, a grunt, a thud. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell what was happening, but no one grabbed or shot at her. Hopefully that was a good sign.
“Alistar?” she whispered.
Just then, a breeze blew the door covering askew, letting in a finger of sunlight. The Safaran soldiers were black-uniformed heaps on the ground. And, standing over them . . .
It wasn’t Alistar.
Milek and Otto stared back at her, their faces drawn.
“Aris.” Exhaustion and worry had left their mark on Milek. His clear blue eyes looked enormous in the low light, weighed down by the purple shadows beneath them.
Relief made her dizzy. “Oh holy, you’re here.”
Their arms were around each other in an instant, mouths pressed desperately together. Aris couldn’t get over how real he felt, how solid and substantial his body was against hers.
From behind them, Otto whistled. “Remind me never to get in the way of true love.”
Aris tried to pull away, but Milek held her fast. Against her mouth, he whispered, in wonder, “You’re alive.”
She tightened her grip on him for an instant before forcing space between them. “For now. Elom is here, Milek. He came for me.”
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