Allie's War Season Four

by JC Andrijeski

  He wanted to know why the fuck she hadn’t called him on the link. Meaning, while it was actually happening. Hell, Balidor talked about mutiny. Why the fuck hadn’t Balidor told him while it was happening? Or was he no longer Balidor’s commanding officer, either?

  He strongly suspected he knew the answer to that, too.

  He could feel the ship turning.

  He felt it not long after he left the control tower and Balidor.

  He heard whispers of their new orders, of the new destination in the construct. He knew Balidor was keeping that destination more or less under wraps for now, on a strictly need to know basis, but a lot of seers had already picked up on the change. He knew Balidor was following orders, too...that the idea to change course hadn’t originated from Balidor himself, or from the Adhipan leadership team more generally, or from Tarsi. Which meant those orders could have come from just one place. From one person.

  Allie.

  She’d ordered them to change course.

  She’d ordered them to head for Dubai.

  Remembering Terian’s words to her through the VR construct, Revik felt his molars grind in the back of his jaw, even as he caught hold of an oval, raised doorway and slid through past a small group of laughing humans heading in the direction of the ship’s bow. Frowning, he glanced down another set of oval doors as he jumped through the last segment of that particular corridor. Checking the blueprints in his mind briefly, he shifted direction again, walking out of that row of crew quarters and rapidly down a narrow, gray-metal catwalk that led to the open area of the main hangars, a few floors above the hard deck.

  Seeing a few seers working on what looked like a portion of the electrical systems, possibly adding an organic component to one of the breakers, Revik kept a neutral expression on his face as he nodded to them, hoping they wouldn’t think anything of him being out here.

  Or at least hoping they didn’t think enough of it to ping Balidor.

  One problem with being who he was, they all recognized him.

  They all knew him by sight, just like they knew Allie by sight. Like they stared at her, they stared at him, too, although more of them looked away when they felt him notice. Other seers tended to act a bit more entitled when it came to the Bridge, he’d noticed. They all felt like they owned her, in a sense, or at least that they had some claim to her.

  Thinking of her again, he clicked under his breath, fighting to calm his anger.

  He knew it was irrational to blame her for this. He knew it, but he didn’t fucking care. At this point, she’d be lucky he didn’t lock her to the bed permanently.

  Dubai.

  Jesus fucking christ.

  It was only the most heavily-guarded Shadow city there was.

  Revik’s jaw hardened more, even as he grabbed hold of a support strut and swung around a narrow corner on the upper catwalk, walking faster towards the stairs at the other end. She’d ordered them to plan an op for Dubai. She’d done it after Terian told her to go there. Fucking Terry...had she lost her mind? Why didn’t she just hand Lily to Shadow right now?

  Terry telling them to go to Dubai wasn’t much different than getting a handwritten invitation from Menlim himself.

  The thought made his teeth grind more.

  He tried to tell himself he knew it wasn’t that simple.

  Allie had been dreaming about Dubai. She had her own issues with the Displacement Lists, with what was happening in Asia in general. Allie had been watching the feeds about China and Beijing obsessively for the past few weeks...at least, when she wasn’t watching their daughter obsessively, through the organic window.

  Remembering their daughter both softened his anger towards her and brought another flush of frustration. She’d sent the order without even talking to him. Given where they’d just left things, given what was at stake for both of them, that one fact alone made him so fucking angry with her he didn’t even want to see her. Not now.

  Not until he’d taken care of a few other things, first.

  At the next landing, he found another ladder and took it, bracing the inner arches of his feet on the outside rails through his deck shoes and using his hands to control his speed as he dropped to the deck below. Two more ladders later, and he’d landed back on the water-level deck of the main hangar, where the Barrier containment tanks lived.

  The strangeness of the carrier’s design threw him again briefly.

  He looked around, using the blueprints to get his bearings, remembering details from those specs as well as from his familiarity with the habits of the United States military, and where they generally liked to put things, compared to the Russians or the Germans. Even so, it took him a few seconds to remember where he was, coming in from this side.

  The carrier had been made for the Americans by one of the South American companies, not by one operating out of America itself, so maybe that was part of it.

  A few of the Adhipan seers had jokingly renamed it the U.S.S. Vashentarenbuul while they worked on it...or, more specifically, during one of those nights of drinking following a long day of the crew prepping the ship on the docks of Portland, Maine. However it came about, and whoever first suggested it, the name stuck.

  Revik had been told by Wreg that a half-dozen seers even painted U.S.S. Vashentarenbuul on the ship’s steep stern and sides, priming over the original United States military name, which had been Raptor or Falconer or Bald Eagle or something like that.

  Three main hangars. Hangars 2 and 3 housed the Barrier containment tanks, where he’d been staying with Allie, and where Lilai, Cass and Maygar were also housed. That segment of the hold also contained the armory, along with a lot of the more sensitive of the organic machines. Balidor’s people built a fully-stocked security station down there, too, and converted several smaller, what might have been residency rooms, into low-level security and interrogation cells, all of them empty at the moment.

  Surli, their last quasi-prisoner, had been released. Also on Allie’s orders.

  He lived somewhere in the seer residency, upstairs.

  Revik had kept his mouth shut about that, too, but it irritated him.

  Revik hadn’t spent much time in Hangar 1 yet, but he knew it was the largest, and the one that led to the main docking bay at the front of the ship. That same docking bay, which lived under the shadow of the hard deck on top, had already been opened a number of times, mostly to load passengers following their evacuation from New York. From the schematics Balidor gave him, they stored something like ninety percent of the perishable food and water there now, along with a few helicopters that weren’t lashed to the runways, and a hell of a lot of domestic animals, seeds, plants, grains, beans, freeze dried and canned foods.

  Only the high ceilings and hollow sound of his feet on the metal deck reminded him of the hold’s previous function. Above him, metal struts crossed back and forth in long x-shapes between the heavier metal beams, four feet above the hard deck itself, and surrounding him in a broken rectangle lined with catwalks leading back into corridors of the main residential areas of the ship. He could see seers up on some of those still, and could feel a few of them staring at him now, although they all seemed to be trying to hide those stares.

  He could feel Balidor looking for him, too, and now, Jon and Wreg.

  He didn’t much care about that, though...not anymore.

  He’d beaten them down here. That, he cared about.

  Neela saw him only after he stood behind her.

  Revik watched the female infiltrator scramble to her feet, yanking her boots off the console before she jerked her body out of the padded security station chair. He had to give her props. She managed to do all of that without changing expression. Then again, she was an ex-rebel. They had the chain of command pounded into them even more than the Adhipan.

  Once she stood in front of him, he clicked his fingers.

  “I need your sidearm,” he said.

  Neither his voice nor his gaze wavered as he said it.


  Neela stared up at him, then at the corridor leading to his own section of the Barrier containment tank, presumably where Allie still was, assuming she hadn’t left. Seeing where Neela’s eyes trained, Revik felt a dense pulse of anger ripple out of his light.

  Did they really think he’d shoot his fucking wife?

  “Sister?” he said, colder. “That was an order.”

  She must have heard some portion of the thoughts accompanying his anger.

  Reddening, Neela scrambled to comply, reaching down to her gun belt. She unhooked the strap of the holster and pulled out a silver and organic-component SIG Saur P226 from where it rested by her hip. Checking it swiftly, she chambered a bullet where he could see it, unlocked the safety, probably with some kind of impulse-command, and passed it to him, handle first.

  Then she just stood there, nearly at attention as he checked the chamber a second time, then the magazine.

  “DNA encrypted?” he said.

  “No, sir,” she stammered.

  He nodded, once.

  “I’ll bring it back,” he said.

  Neela swallowed, her light still emanating a near-panic.

  “Sir?” She swallowed, but held her ground. “Is there anything else I can help you with, sir?”

  Revik frowned, not answering her probing stare.

  Still, he couldn’t help being relieved that only ex-rebels currently monitored this particular security station. He glanced at Raddi, even as he thought it, who watched the two of them from the back room, standing in a doorway he nearly filled with his broad shoulders. The room behind him had been built by the Adhipan seers, too, constructed directly onto the cargo hold floor of semi-organic metals, just like the outer hulls of the tanks themselves.

  Raddi’s dark eyes looked wary, too, Revik noted. But with Raddi, Revik could feel that wariness openly, as concern for his wife.

  Since Revik knew they had no reason for concern in that direction, it bothered him a lot less when he felt it the second time. After all, he wanted them paranoid when it came to Allie. He wanted them paranoid when it came to Lily, too.

  When Raddi saw Revik looking at him, he gave him a cautious but courteous nod, before motioning with one hand behind him.

  “The station is still fully manned, sir, as you asked, Illustrious Sword,” he said deferentially. “Oli is here, too. And Torek. We have two more agents, Chandre and Sita, in T2, with your daughter, as well as an additional agent, Wanai, on the door of her chamber.”

  Revik gave him a scarce nod. “Good,” he said, lowering the gun to his side, aiming the business end towards the floor. “I want you to open T1 for me.”

  Raddi and Neela exchanged looks.

  Neela glanced back at Revik first. Her eyes looked a lot more wary than Raddi’s did, although some of the overt fear had left them.

  Raddi looked almost at ease from the request.

  “Sir?” Neela said.

  “Did I stutter?” Revik said, giving her a colder look. “Unlock the fucking door. Now.”

  Neela looked about to question him again, even as nerves rippled through her aleimi, on the surface that time, where Revik could actually see them. Given Neela’s sight rank, he must have really rattled her, which meant she was thinking of Allie, too, and whatever orders Neela imagined coming from his wife regarding this particular point.

  Even as he thought it, Revik watched Neela glance down at the monitor for T3, the Barrier chamber he and Allie shared.

  He could almost feel her wondering if she should clear this with Allie.

  Angry for real that time, Revik sent her a hard flush of light, that time intense enough that Neela blanched openly, stepping back and looking up at him with wide eyes.

  When Revik glanced back at the doorway, he caught Raddi giving Neela a harder stare, too. Raddi motioned for her to comply, his dark eyes as uncompromising as glass.

  “Follow your orders, lieutenant,” Raddi growled.

  “Of course, sir,” Neela said. She turned politely to Revik, her skin paler. “Of course, Illustrious Sword. My profound apologies...”

  Raddi grunted, his eyes still holding a sheen of anger.

  Raddi was old school. One of Wreg’s initial recruits.

  Neela nodded a second time, her eyes still openly worried as she turned back to the console.

  “Sirs. Yes, sirs...right away.” Reaching out, she didn’t hesitate that time, her fingers moving rapidly through the primary security sequence used to gain access to the appropriate tank quadrant. Revik watched her hands as she worked, manipulating the security keys leading into the compartment labeled T-1 on the board after she’d verified her identity with DNA and retinal scans, and then the Barrier keys she held only in the higher areas of her aleimi.

  Raddi was already walking towards the door.

  Revik turned to follow him.

  He watched as the other male reached the wheel on the outside of the tank’s compartment, taking hold of it in one hand and then looking backwards, waiting for Neela to finish the sequence on her end. Unlike Neela, Revik couldn’t help noticing that Raddi’s overall light and demeanor exuded approval when he glanced at Revik, especially when the tall seer let his eyes linger on the gun Revik held in his right hand, its barrel pointed at the floor.

  Revik thought he even saw a glimmer of smugness there.

  In any case, Revik couldn’t help picking up smatterings of the overall feeling of good fucking riddance in the other man’s light.

  “Got it,” Neela said.

  Revik felt his jaw harden. They’d put a few extra codes on this particular cell.

  Made sense. He couldn’t say he disapproved of that, either.

  He watched Raddi give a single nod to Neela, right before he keyed a whole separate set of security numbers into the outside panel, along with the aleimic keys in the outer construct. The panel opened on that one, too, indicating the secondary IDs required, and Revik watched as Raddi leaned over a retinal scanner, even as he pressed his hand to the flat sensor panel on the wall. Revik knew the keys and even the procedures would change with each rotation, and that no one seer would be able to access any of the cells on their own.

  Further, the codes would be checked upstairs. Every time this door opened, someone upstairs got a ping that it was happening.

  This last part concerned him....but only just.

  It just meant he couldn’t dick around in there.

  He wouldn’t have a lot of time before they’d know where he was, in any case. Then, knowing Balidor and Wreg, he’d have company.

  Even as he thought it, Revik clicked impatiently at the other man again. “Are you almost finished?”

  Raddi gave him a respectful nod and keyed through a last sequence, turning at once to the wheel on the door after he finished and gripping it in both hands. Revik heard the low tone from the panel as the security code was accepted.

  “Do you require back up or assistance, sir?” Raddi asked politely, even as he gave a hard twist to the wheel. He glanced pointedly at the gun Revik held.

  “No,” Revik muttered, feeling his jaw harden more.

  The man smiled again, subtly that time.

  “Very good, sir.”

  Raddi twisted the organic-component wheel a few more times without speaking, before an audible click echoed in the narrow hall, all the way up to the high ceiling of the converted cargo bay, four stories above. Revik glanced up at the outer hull of the cell door, just in time to see the light switch from green to red, then to pulse, indicating that the seal had been broken on the Barrier field, that it had already begun to lose its integrity.

  Revik knew that once that red light stopped flashing, the room could be accessed by the Barrier proper. Which meant it could be accessed by the Dreng, by Menlim...and whoever else.

  He didn’t intend to leave the door open that long.

  As soon as Raddi swung the heavy, three-foot thick panel open far enough for Revik to squeeze his body through, Revik got through the opening and into the r
oughly eight by ten meter cell. He knew the exact size, because the cell was identical to the one where he slept, at least in terms of the bare bones of its dimensions.

  Glancing behind him before scoping out the space, he gestured a brief command for Raddi to close and lock the door. He felt and heard as it clanged shut behind him, but didn’t turn to verify. Instead, he began to scan the greenish-lit space.

  Despite the cell’s equivalent size, it bore very little resemblance to the room he shared with Allie. He gave the furnishings a cursory look, mainly to know his environment in case something went wrong. That, too, was a habit he brought with him from his childhood, and one that had saved him more than once, if only because he couldn’t shut it off, no matter where he was.

  Still, the look was brief, a mere tabulation of the individual physical components.

  Unlike his room, they hadn’t given her much.

  No monitor, console, books, headsets, hand-holds or anything like the size of the bed where he and Allie slept. His eyes glanced over a single, gray-sheeted, prison-type bed, shoved in one corner of the room next to a metal table and chair. The latter two furnishings were bolted to the floor, likely connected to the internal electronics, and therefore at least partly organic. The bed and bedding were adequate, he surmised. Not meant to be punishing, per se, but definitely prisoner bedding, not guest bedding.

  Nothing diverting had been left in the room.

  Revik himself had personally ordered them to rip the one monitor out of the wall before she regained consciousness the first time. Thinking about what Terian had just done, how he had accessed his and Allie’s room, Revik could only frown now, not exactly “glad” he’d done it, but more feeling like they might have dodged a potentially serious bullet.

  Not like the cell’s sole occupant had much intelligence to share with anyone.

  Either way, Revik could feel the difference in the walls from the one and only other time he’d ever been in here. They’d upped some of the measures from the original configuration. If they’d done that since the breach this morning, too, the security team hadn’t wasted any time. He couldn’t have been upstairs for more than twenty minutes.