Allie's War Season Four

by JC Andrijeski

  I felt his light retreat once he had, re-immersing itself in that dense shield.

  He’d gone full-blown infiltrator on me in under a minute. His aleimi reconfigured again in those few seconds as I fought to catch my breath. Briefly, I felt a vague...something...in the space of my aleimi and the area of the bed.

  I was still trying to figure out what that meant, when a whisper of presence touched my wrist, right before that something shifted more concretely in the spaces behind my eyes.

  Then I heard an audible click. Realizing it was a physical sound that time, something I’d actually heard with my ears, I opened my eyes, right as...

  ...the cuff on my wrist fell open.

  Flinching a little, I blinked down at my freed arm.

  Lifting it, I rubbed my wrist, feeling strangely naked without the cuff.

  When I looked up at him again, my gaze sharpened.

  Revik was already shoving his feet into his shoes, which he’d left near the bed. I watched him tug on the back of the deck shoe, hooking the thick cloth over his heel as he hopped on one foot. Realizing abruptly what he was doing, I sat up, climbing off the bed after him.

  “Revik, wait. Baby, wait...don’t go.”

  He didn’t even look at me.

  I saw his jaw harden, though.

  I stood there, trying to decide if I should approach him or not.

  Feeling the unmistakeable “stay away” vibe on his light, I ended up just standing there, watching warily as he walked to the door. He flipped up the console cover to the left of the massive panel as soon as he reached it, hitting through the locking sequence once he’d exposed the DNA-coded keys. The sequence unlocked our side of the two-sided locks; entering the code also signaled to whoever worked the security station on the other side to let him out.

  He gave me one last, hard look after he’d finished entering the code...a look I read at once, and decided to comply with, if only because I probably would have felt the same way, if our positions were reversed. Reaching back over the bed, I snatched the sheet off the top of it, more or less wrapping it around my body before the door opened.

  “Revik,” I sighed. “Seriously. Can we talk about this?”

  He didn’t look at me that time, either.

  I felt a hard coil of pain leave his light, though.

  Some of that felt like separation pain, too, but not all of it.

  I couldn’t even tell if the anger I felt in that pain was aimed at me. It didn’t really feel like it. He’d gone into some kind of hyper-aware military mode instead, maybe through some perverse reflex around what I’d told him about Terian getting in here, or maybe just because the whole thing triggered something else in his light. I could feel he understood the attack had been virtual only; he just didn’t care. Woven into the anger I felt emanating from his light, I felt a focus that unnerved me, that told me he wasn’t just leaving to get away from me.

  He had a destination in mind. Some kind of goal.

  Maybe more than one.

  Before I could think of what else to say, the door opened wide enough for him to squeeze through the opening. Within seconds, he’d disappeared, giving me only a bare glimpse of Neela’s surprised face before Revik vanished down the hallway, heading for what looked like the stairs to the upper levels of the carrier. Watching him briefly over her shoulder, Neela turned to give me a startled look, a near question in her hazel eyes.

  Rather than answer it, I just motioned with one hand for her to close the door.

  The request seemed to snap her out of her bewilderment. Giving me a seer’s nod, she made the respectful sign of the Bridge, keeping her head below mine even as she started to comply.

  Neela still acted pretty weird around me, too, truthfully.

  I hadn’t fully realized just how religious a lot of the seers were, especially the ex-rebels, until I came out of that wire coma and my “sort of” death. Since then, a lot of them still treated me like some kind of half-spirit, half-angel creature...like my recovery was some kind of miracle, not a tactical plan I’d carried out with Tarsi’s help.

  Neela, especially, seemed to think I had quasi-mystical powers now.

  I pushed that out of my mind for now, too.

  Not before it brought another wave of frustration, though. I’d been trying to pretend things had gone back to normal, but they felt so damned far from normal, truthfully, and not only because of Revik. I wanted my husband to trust me again. I wanted Balidor to trust me again. I needed to stop walking on eggshells around everyone, being “nice” because I felt guilty about those eight months where they’d all thought they’d lost me.

  None of this crap was my fault. So why was I taking the fall for it? Still?

  The door clanged shut on me standing there, half-wrapped in a sheet and trying to decide if I should get dressed to follow him, or call Balidor so I could yell at someone, too.

  As the wheel spun closed on the other side of the door, I decided I would do both.

  Walking over to the nightstand, I snatched up the headset Revik had left me earlier, and fitted it over my ear. I barely had it switched on and Balidor’s signal activated, when the Adhipan leader picked up. I didn’t bother with a greeting.

  “You’ve got a potential issue headed your way,” I said.

  “Issue, Esteemed Bridge?” he said.

  “Revik. Massively pissed off. Don’t say I never did anything for you, ‘Dori.”

  There was a silence.

  “I see,” Balidor said. “Thank you for the, err, ‘head’s up,’ as you Americans would say. I appreciate it, Esteemed Bridge.”

  “That’s not the only reason I called,” I said.

  “Oh?” he inquired politely. “More presents?”

  I swallowed, fighting off my own reaction to my words.

  “We’re going to Dubai,” I informed him, feeling even more sure as I spoke the words aloud. “...We don’t need a fucking meeting to ‘discuss’ it. We’re going. That’s an order. So pull Yumi and Deklan and start planning the how. I know we need to pick up Loki and the others, but see if you can put together a rendezvous en route. If you can’t, we’ll leave as soon as they get back.”

  Silence fell over the line.

  I exhaled, clicking quietly under my breath. “I mean it, ‘Dori...my mind is made up. Put Yumi and Deklan to work organizing a landing party. I’ll fill Revik in when I see him next.”

  “Alyson, are you sure that’s such a––”

  “I’m really fucking sure that wasn’t a request,” I cut in, hiding my anger badly that time. “If that’s what you were going to ask me, ‘Dori, then the answer is no. Not a request.”

  There was a loaded silence.

  “Yes, Esteemed Bridge. I only meant––”

  But I didn’t want to listen to that, either.

  Using the mental command to switch off the link, I unhooked the headset from around my ear and tossed it on the bed.

  I’d listen to their hand-wringing and protests around security later.

  Really, more than anything, I felt relieved.

  For the first time in weeks, I felt like I’d made a clear decision without looking to one of them for some kind of validation. I felt like I was steering the ship again, and going more or less in the right direction. So yeah, given that, I would deal with the usual complaints, freak outs and paranoia attacks later. I would deal with Revik’s security issues later, too, whether in relation to Dubai, or Terian’s hacking abilities or whatever else.

  I already knew Revik would like this course change even less than Balidor...especially since he’d just pulled my memory of Terian telling me to do that very thing.

  Yeah, he would hate the idea.

  I would have to deal with his resistance even more intensely than ‘Dori’s or Wreg’s or Yumi’s or anyone else’s, given the Terian thing.

  But not right this second. After he’d calmed down some. Maybe after he’d finished venting at Balidor and Vikram and whoever else he felt the need to ye
ll at.

  Definitely after I’d had my first cup of coffee.

  Either way, I would cross that bridge...so to speak...when I came to it.

  All I knew for sure was, somehow, this impasse with me and Revik had to end. We needed to cut the crap. We needed to be working together again, not withholding information and keeping secrets from one another and whatever else.

  I just wasn’t sure what that was going to take, exactly, given that the entire crew seemed to be suffering from some form of PTSD.

  Sighing, I tugged the sheet back from around my body for the third time that day and tossed it in a heap on the bed. Combing my fingers through my hair, and fighting back my own sickening flush of separation pain, I aimed my feet for the shower, trying to shove the pain and Revik and PTSD and other worries out of my light. I tried not to worry too much about what I’d felt on Revik in those few minutes before he left the tank, either. I tried not to think about what we’d been doing before then...or what he might be doing or saying to Jorag now.

  I knew, though.

  He was right. I should have taken his words more seriously.

  He really hadn’t been kidding, when he asked me to indulge his neurosis for awhile, at least until he got over the worst pangs from thinking I’d been dead. At least until he wrapped his head around where things stood with us now.

  I also knew he truly believed Menlim wanted to kill me. He didn’t see that as some kind of hurdle we’d managed to overcome. He didn’t even see it as one of several risk factors we needed to take into account when planning ops from now on.

  He saw it as an immediate and impending danger to him and his family.

  He was deathly afraid that Menlim would find some way to get to me, even here...even out in the middle of the damned ocean.

  He was deathly afraid Menlim would find a way to take our child.

  The bottom line was, Revik still thought of both me and Lily as being actively in danger. Not danger the way I thought of it, as in, we were pretty much always in danger and had been ever since I found out what I was.

  Revik saw me as having a giant, red bullseye painted on my chest right now, with snipers lying in wait on all sides, just looking for their opening.

  Further, like he’d also warned me, he wasn’t going to be rational about this.

  He didn’t even want to be rational about it.

  Not even a little.

  12

  MUTINY

  “NO!” REVIK GROWLED. “No...fuck that!”

  Turning, the tall seer glared at Balidor, his angular face half in shadow where he stood by the door. Narrowing his nearly-colorless eyes, he focused on the corner where Balidor sat behind the desk in the small office off the control deck.

  “No,” the Elaerian repeated. “Absolutely fucking unacceptable, ‘Dori...”

  His clear irises reflected light like a cat’s, shining from where they focused on the opposite wall, right before they flickered back towards Balidor’s face.

  The look there caused Balidor to flinch, in spite of himself.

  He hadn’t seen the Elaerian this angry in weeks...months, really, perhaps even longer than that. Balidor certainly hadn’t seen him this openly emotional, not even during those few times in San Francisco and New York where he displayed anger on the surface. Something about the Sword’s anger during those months without his wife always felt muted, anyway, maybe because he locked so much of his feeling behind those infiltrator’s walls.

  Balidor shouldn’t be surprised, really, that Revik being back with his wife had already started to tear down those previous defenses.

  He knew they’d been having a lot of sex, which tended to be how seers re-bonded under such conditions...but he also knew that Dehgoies had been thwarting at least some of that re-bonding, from what Balidor could feel off both of their lights.

  Balidor didn’t want to know any of that, of course, but it came as an occupational hazard, unfortunately, given who he was.

  He’d also read from Allie that she was frustrated at how protective her husband had become, combined with how much he still held her at arm’s length. Balidor understood that, too, but he found himself wondering if Allie had any idea just how different Revik was...how different he had been, that whole time she’d been gone...and how all of them wondered if he’d ever recover. Balidor wondered, too, if Revik’s wife had any idea how much he’d changed already, just from having her and his child back in his light these past few months.

  He guessed she didn’t know.

  Maybe Balidor or Tarsi or one of the others needed to talk to her about that, too...and about maybe not pushing Revik too much until he’d healed a bit more from what Shadow and Cass had done to him. Maybe they’d all been side-stepping telling her too much already, for fear of making her worry...or worse, making her feel guilty for what had been done to her husband in her absence.

  Looking up at where Revik loomed over his desk, Balidor felt his body’s muscles clench, almost as if readying for a fight. The currents coming off the Sword hit his aleimi with another ripple of intensity and the charge there cut Balidor’s breath, even as he again considered calling Wreg...possibly Yumi and Deklan, too, and Jon...to help calm the other man down.

  He wondered if he needed to pull Allie into this, too.

  Maybe she needed to see this.

  To really see it in action.

  The thought made him nervous, though...and not only because she might still be handcuffed to that bed downstairs. He had no idea how the Sword might react, if they brought Allie up here to “handle” him, regardless of the merit of his fears.

  Balidor knew that at least some of what the Elaerian had been ranting about for the past ten minutes came from a legitimate beef with his wife’s recklessness, at least when it came to her own personal safety. Balidor also knew it was more than that. Recklessness hadn’t gotten Allie hurt by Cass––Shadow had done that, and Cass herself. Allie hadn’t done anything to cause that initial, tragic event to occur, which maybe made it worse in Revik’s mind.

  Generally speaking, Allie’s recklessness seemed to work out.

  More or less, anyway.

  Balidor had been warned by Vash to expect that from her, anyway. According to Vash, part of being the Bridge meant a total disruption in the usual way things were done. Balidor tried to remind himself of that fact now, with his own worries regarding Alyson’s last orders to him about Dubai shifting somewhere in the background of his light.

  Balidor also knew that, when it came to Dehgoies right now, he partly faced a trauma reaction from a person who had been dealt an inordinate number of emotional shocks in a very short period of time. He knew the Sword had been having control issues even before the travesty Cass inflicted on his wife.

  He’d been struggling ever since he’d found out his wife was pregnant.

  Hell, he’d been having such issues for years about his wife; getting her pregnant only made all of that worse, and not only because it likely happened about two hundred years before Revik expected it would happen. They’d never really been allowed to bond normally, which only exacerbated everything else, leaving a lingering veneer of distrust between them that should have mostly dissipated by now, in ordinary mates.

  Balidor knew theirs would fade, too, in time, if they could just catch a break and spend more time in one another’s light. Such distrust was beyond unusual in bonded mates. Balidor knew it had more to do with the evolution of both of their lights and not enough time together since they first got married. Knowing all of that didn’t particularly help Balidor now, however, in terms of dealing with the man in front of him.

  Revik seemed to feel even more out of control since he found out the extent to which he’d been cut out of his wife’s plans to move against Shadow and Cass in New York. Considering those plans included her actual death, as well as her subsequent resurrection by Tarsi followed by yet another clandestine op, Balidor couldn’t exactly blame the other man, either.

  Apparently, this br
each by Terian had been the thing to finally make him snap.

  Balidor almost understood that, too.

  But, regardless of the merits of the Sword’s emotional reactions, or even his arguments about and fears for his wife, the trauma aspect worried him.

  That trauma made Dehgoies unpredictable in the extreme.

  “I’m making a request,” Revik growled, forcing Balidor’s eyes back to his. “A formal fucking request, Balidor. I’ll take it to the goddamned Council if I have to...”

  “A formal request?” Balidor said. He knew he didn’t succeed in stripping his words, even his facial expression, of incredulity. “A formal request for what, precisely, laoban? To remove your wife from office?”

  When Revik’s irises sparked a second time, Balidor held up his hands, trying to use his aleimi to calm the other man down, even as the taller seer’s expression grew murderous.

  “Are you listening to yourself, Nenzi?” Balidor said. “You are advocating a partial mutiny, led by the Bridge’s own husband. What possible grounds do you have, for––”

  “I am not trying to remove her from office!” Revik snapped. “It’s not a fucking mutiny, Balidor. Jesus. Are you listening to me?”

  “Every seer in this fleet can probably hear you, brother,” Balidor muttered.

  “Most of them don’t even speak English! Or are you broadcasting this shit through the construct in case I try to kill you?”

  Balidor felt his jaw harden more.

  “Of course not,” he said. Taking a breath, he forced his voice to grow more subdued. “My point is, every seer in the fleet will see this as a mutiny, Nenz. I highly doubt you’ll get most of them to go along with it, no matter how you spin it––”

  “Bullshit! They don’t even need to know about it, ‘Dori!”

  “And what about Alyson, herself?” Balidor said. “Does she have to ‘know about it’? Do you imagine you could openly defy her orders, Nenz, without others noticing? Or do you really think she’ll agree to this? That she’ll just go along quietly with––”

  “My wife will just have to get over it, too.”