Prophet: Bridge & Sword

by JC Andrijeski

  Revik’s body lay crumpled at Terian’s feet.

  Staring between the two of them, I struggled to make sense of the whole picture. Adrenaline continued to jerk and stutter through my blood as I stared––my aleimi hissing, sparking and coiling like a downed electrical cable.

  Everything in me told me I was in danger still, that I was about to die.

  But I couldn’t move.

  I could only stare at Terian and Revik, fighting to piece it together, to make it all make sense in my head. I was still staring when a shot echoed hollowly through the boathouse behind me, causing me to flatten reflexively against the cement floor.

  I had no idea who was shooting.

  I had no idea who they were shooting at.

  Truthfully, at that point, I could only assume it was probably me.

  60

  TAKING THE SHOT

  CHANDRE WAITED FOR Menlim to leave the opening between the crates.

  She didn’t raise her head, not even when the sound from the area near the cages grew loud enough to be disconcerting. Hearing another slamming noise and sickening thud, something heavy being thrown into something even heavier, she fought not to let her imagination fill in the blanks.

  Her mind went there anyway, of course.

  She’d heard Alyson shouting.

  Chandre felt her light vibrate under the onslaught of the Elaerian’s words, even more strongly than she had with Menlim. She’d felt those words hit up against the Sword’s aleimi and glance off like they were nothing.

  In the space behind her eyes, she saw bodies thrown into walls, bones crushed, spines snapped, skulls cracked.

  Forcing the morbidity of such thoughts from her mind, Chandre gripped the gun tighter. Holding her breath, she scanned the dark with the infrared, keeping her scope on the area where the Dreng infiltrators all appeared as they exited the wall of crates.

  A louder crash came from the area to her right.

  Chandre nearly raised her head to look that time, when suddenly, a cloth-covered head appeared on the open floor just past the crates.

  He stopped there, with only half his head showing.

  Chandre swore soundlessly in Prexci under her breath when he didn’t move.

  “Come on, you endruk et dugra upara d’ kitre,” she muttered.

  Just then, a dull-sounding thunk came from the area of the cages.

  It was softer than anything she’d heard from that sector in the last few minutes, but weirdly loud in the quiet that both preceded and followed it. Chandre almost turned her head a second time, but movement in front of her brought her eye abruptly back to the scope.

  The robed figure strode forward.

  Without looking at anything around him, he aimed his feet for the cages, in the direction of where Chandre just heard that thunk. Through the scope, she saw his skull-like face set in an expression so furious, her breath stopped, and not only for the shot.

  He made it a few more steps before she drew a bead on him.

  She followed him a few paces more, to be sure she had the exact speed of his legs. Then, holding her breath for real, she stilled her whole body––

  ––and fired.

  She knew, even before she finished squeezing the trigger.

  Even so, she didn’t raise her head from the infrared scope until she saw the spray of blood. She watched it plume out from the opposite side of his head, jerking his upper body sideways, as if he’d been hit hard by a blunt object.

  Miraculously, he didn’t fall.

  Regaining partial verticality, he stood there, head and shoulders tilted. His chest heaved a few times through the black cloth, his foot jerking him forward a step.

  Then, without fanfare, he crumpled to the cement floor.

  Chandre checked it through the scope, then with her physical eyes, just to be sure, but didn’t waste time beyond the initial confirmation. Opening her light to let the signal flare, she emitted one, strong blast to brothers Wreg and Balidor on the other side of that line.

  Then she returned her eyes to the scope.

  A group of black-clad infiltrators gathered over Menlim’s body, staring down.

  Lining up the reticle on the first of the five heads, Chandre squeezed off a shot. Without pausing, she moved the grid lines to the next head in that row, even as those heads turned, eyes aiming in her direction, infrared goggles shining at her through the rifle scope.

  She didn’t wait that time, either.

  Squeezing the trigger, she lined up her sights again.

  “HELP ME, TERRY!” I snapped at him, still fighting to see past the blood dripping down my face. “Help me move him! We need him behind cover!”

  I’d dragged Revik’s body halfway to the barred cages on my side of the aisle, but he was damned heavy. Also, I was battered to the point where I could barely walk, and I was wearing the most impractical shoes imaginable for dragging unconscious husbands across cement floors in the middle of a firefight.

  Terian walked up to me willingly enough.

  Not even bothering to duck to keep out of the way of stray bullets, he gripped Revik’s other arm. Around us, Jax, Chinja, Stanley, Tenzi and Anale continued to fire at black-clad infiltrators from behind crates on either side of the wider aisle. I saw Surli load a new magazine next to two Terian bodies, the one that looked like Revik and the Arabic-looking one, both of whom I’d forgotten about since we got here.

  They were firing on the black-clad soldiers, too.

  Between me and Terian, we got Revik behind a low cluster of crates.

  I’d already checked his head––and his pulse.

  He wasn’t bleeding as much as me, but he had a massive lump on the back of his head that scared the hell out of me, even beyond how little I could feel of his light.

  “You better not have killed him,” I snapped at Terian, fighting to control the fear that wound through my light. I crouched next to him again, caressing his face, feeling his skin and throat under my fingers, reassuring myself he was still alive.

  Terian chuckled, gesturing in the negative when I looked up.

  “Young love. It is so fickle.”

  Looking up long enough to scowl at him, I tried to find it funny, but couldn’t.

  Following my lead, the Terian with the amber eyes and the dark red hair crouched behind the crates next to me. He peered past me for a few seconds, his gaze following the firefight with some interest before he looked back to grin at me again.

  “Do not worry, my lovely, beautiful, sister Alyson. I would never kill Revi’. He’s my brother.” He inclined his head, pursing his mouth thoughtfully. “Anyway, Revi’s almost impossible to kill. Not like most people. Most people are very very easy to kill. Like butterflies. Or a person’s dreams.”

  I grunted, trying to find the humor in that, too, and still failing.

  Fighting anger, I tried to shove the fear from my mind, if only by focusing the direction of my thoughts elsewhere while I continued to hover over Revik.

  “Where’s Feigran?” I asked Terian. My eyes scanned faces in the cages. “Is he here, Terry? Or was that another lie?”

  Terian clicked softly, smiling as he shook his head.

  “No?” I bit my lip to keep from punching him in the face. He had, after all, just saved my life. Even if he’d done it in a way that made me want to strangle him. “No to which part? Terry, if he’s not here, then where the hell is he?”

  Terian motioned with his chin towards the other side of the warehouse.

  It took me a second. Then I understood.

  “In the house? That plantation house? With the pool party?” At Terian’s nod, I frowned, thinking. “Is that Feigran’s house, Terry?” Understanding made its way through my light, probably from Terian himself. “This boathouse is on Feigran’s land, isn’t it?”

  Grinning, Terian tilted his head yet again.

  That time, I could have smacked him for real.

  But yeah, he just saved my life, so I didn’t.

  Inste
ad, I held out a hand, fighting impatience when he just looked at it.

  “Give my your gun, Terry,” I said, my voice hard.

  “My… gun?” He raised an eyebrow, his expression openly puzzled.

  Seeing the bewilderment on his face, it hit me. He wasn’t fucking with me. Well, he was, but not in the way I imagined. He wasn’t reluctant to give me his gun.

  He genuinely didn’t understand why I would need it.

  After a few more seconds of thought, crouching there in that skin-tight dress, balancing on six-inch heels, I realized I didn’t really understand why I’d wanted Terry’s gun, either.

  My husband was lying unconscious on the cement. If he died, our daughter died.

  I died.

  Menlim was down. Someone hit him from above, a sniper Revik must have positioned at a high vantage point to back us up from those crates. The construct likely couldn’t hurt me, not with Revik unconscious.

  We had––at minimum––over two hundred seers and humans to move out of these cages.

  And I was done with Dubai.

  Like, really done with it.

  Even as I thought it, I glanced over my shoulder at the crumpled form of Dalejem, feeling a sharper pain in my heart. I didn’t know if he was still alive. I’d been almost afraid to check. He hadn’t moved since Revik threw him against that wall.

  At the thought, I rose smoothly to my feet, igniting the higher regions of my aleimi before I’d straightened to my full height. Immediately, the guns of several soldiers swiveled in my direction. From those same high structures, the arcing loop of their barrels happened in slow motion––almost comically slow after the fight with Revik from that space.

  They made it less than halfway to their targets.

  The cracking sound of exploding metal echoed through the warehouse space.

  I ignited the material in all three plasma rifles simultaneously––but I heard them one by one as they exploded at incrementally different rates.

  Feeling another gun go up in the half-second that followed, I ignited that one, too.

  Four more followed, as soon as I caught glimmers of the light of the seers holding them.

  Fury, rage, fear shuddered the construct.

  Stepping out of range of a bullet when a gun aimed at me before I could stop it, I used the eyes of Jax, who had a better vantage point, and ripped that gun apart too.

  My anger cooled as I worked. Calm fell over my mind, a kind of practiced methodicalness. My fear for Revik and Lily faded; it didn’t disappear entirely, but it receded into the background as I turned my head, using Chinja’s eyes that time, to locate the squad leader.

  I detonated a belt of grenades she wore around her chest.

  I found her second in command while she burned, and cracked his skull.

  Three more guns followed after the squad leader fell, then I was scanning openly, searching for more of them. I felt two more infiltrators running out the back door, but I stopped them in their tracks, ripping their spines in half when it occurred to me they might be running to the house where Terian claimed Feigran was staying.

  When I finished, the warehouse felt really, really quiet.

  It took me a few seconds to realize everyone left alive was staring at me, from the seers crouched behind crates, holding smoking guns they were no longer firing, to the rows of seers and humans gaping at me from behind thick steel bars.

  The silence went on for a few seconds more.

  Then, out of nowhere…

  Terian giggled.

  61

  BROTHER FOUR

  IT DIDN’T TAKE as long as I’d feared to get everyone moving again.

  Dalejem was alive, which I admit, filled me with relief.

  There was no guarantee he would stay that way, of course. In fact, there was a really good chance he wouldn’t––especially if we didn’t get him to the carrier, and soon.

  Even so, I was relieved Revik hadn’t killed him instantly.

  We used ropes, tarps and boards to build makeshift stretchers. Then I instructed some of the List seers and humans to carry Revik and Dalejem out of there.

  I needed my infiltrators free to use their weapons and their sight.

  Even among the Listers, I pulled a few with decent-seeming sight rank, concentrating on those who wore uniforms, specifically those who felt the least likely to turn their guns on us. Since we’d just killed a room full of their captors and freed them from a cage, they didn’t argue when I put them under Chinja’s command.

  Then again, given what they’d just seen go down between me and Revik, and the way I must have looked, they might have been too afraid to argue. I managed to wipe some of the blood off my face and stop the worst of the bleeding by wrapping a torn uniform shirt around my head, but just about every inch of my skin was streaked with drying blood.

  Lending credence to the latter theory, the ones who eventually took guns from me and the others all made the respectful sign of the Bridge and kept their heads lower than mine when I addressed them.

  Two voiced their allegiance to me then and there, which I accepted without protest.

  I’d let Balidor and Wreg sort that end out later.

  I got everyone moving instead, including Chandre after she’d jumped down from a high stack of crates, meeting us on the warehouse floor, rifle in hand.

  She told me she’d already sent out the evac signal, and that Balidor just transmitted back, telling her they had boats on the way to pick all of us up.

  Apparently they’d found some way to crack those impenetrable OBEs.

  Somehow, I suspected that method hadn’t been subtle.

  “I did it,” Terian told me, jerking my eyes towards him.

  Staring at him, I frowned. “You dropped the shield for us? The security barrier over Dubai?”

  He smiled, nodding. “I did it. It was me.”

  When I continued to stare at him, puzzled, he gestured gracefully towards the seers and humans in the cages.

  “It seemed faster, sister,” he said politely. “It is faster, yes?”

  That time, I finally did laugh.

  Balidor gave Chandre an ETA of nine minutes.

  After conferring with Chinja, Jax, Holo, Surli and Stanley, we decided to split our team anyway, to protect the List seers and humans. We’d send the wounded out and most of the Listers with Balidor, while the rest of us would return to land to draw off any pursuit or military action by border security. I would lead the land team, since I could use my light to draw them to us the easiest, especially inside the security perimeter.

  Our goal would be to make our way to a secondary gate on the landlocked side––the same gate where Wreg, Jon and the others waited, ready to lead us across the sand dunes to where we could get an air pickup by one of the carrier’s Chinooks.

  Hopefully.

  According to Chandre, Balidor advised us we shouldn’t wait. He thought the construct may have been severely weakened without Menlim there to prop it up, and wanted us out before that changed. He definitely wanted us out before they gathered their forces to retaliate.

  Which was perfectly fine with me.

  I just needed to make one stop first.

  I left most of them on the dock, behind the boathouse-slash-warehouse to wait for Balidor, so they could signal our people to shore.

  Surli and Stanley had instructions to start loading the wounded and the civilian-types among the human and seer Listers while I went looking for Feigran.

  Chinja, Chandre, Holo, Jax and Terian came with me.

  I stopped only long enough to switch out my high heels for boots from a female Dreng officer I’d killed––trying really hard not to think too hard about what I was doing while I was actually doing it.

  We left through a side exit Chandre showed us and moved quickly across the man-made field, making a straight line for the plantation-style house we’d passed on our way in.

  We made it there in a matter of minutes.

  Chandre, Jax and Chinj
a entered the fenced-in pool area first, rifles up and aimed at guests who screamed when they saw them, fleeing into the field and the house, clutching towels as they knocked over lounge chairs in their haste to get out of the way.

  Holo, Terian and I looked for Feigran.

  We found him seconds later.

  He sat in the bubbling hot tub, unfazed by the screaming and commotion from the nearby pool. He stared up at the stars, a tropical drink clutched in one hand. He only lowered his chin to look at all of us after Chandre and the others rejoined us, and we’d clustered all the way around the edges of the steaming, jet-filled water.

  Seeing me there, among the other faces, he broke out in a face-splitting grin, relief pouring out of his light, even as he let go of the drink, not seeming to notice when it disappeared under the surface of the frothing water.

  Shaking my head at the expression there, I clicked under my breath.

  Even so, I couldn’t help it.

  I grinned back at him.

  It was Feigran. What else could I do?

  62

  SAND

  WE WALKED FOR hours. The desert was hot, dry, unforgiving.

  Once we’d gone about a mile past the perimeter wall, leaving that godawful construct behind us, we saw no one else. Somewhere in those stretch of hours, I think my light finally calmed down enough that I was thinking clearly again.

  I remembered enough to tell myself not to obsess on Revik and Lily, at least.

  If they died, I would feel it. In the meantime, there was nothing at all I could do for them out here, apart from keeping myself alive.

  Balidor advised us to walk inland for as long as we could before we called in air support.

  We’d already been told they got the majority of the Listers and all of our wounded out by boat. They’d taken Dalejem with them, of course––and Revik, neither of whom had regained consciousness. They took Feigran with them, too, but left the remaining Terians with us, including the Revik lookalike and the one with those opaque orange eyes.

  I wasn’t positive what Balidor intended to do with Feigran once he got him back to the carrier––but I could guess.