Allie's War Season Two

by JC Andrijeski

  “...and Wreg’s face when the Sword first told them he intended to combine infiltration teams...” Ike added.

  “I’m not sure Wreg will ever forgive the Sword for not letting him gun Adhipan Balidor down on the spot,” Holo said, grinning. “He complains under his breath every time the boss isn’t listening...”

  “We’ve joked we should assign tasters for their food, so one of them doesn’t show up dead. At this point we need all the infiltrators we can get...”

  Allie looked around at all of them, a vague wonder still in her eyes.

  “How did this happen?” she said. “How are you all here?”

  Garensche laughed again, squeezing her against him, tightly enough that she grabbed his arm. “The boss gave us a choice. We could follow him, or Salinse and the Dreng...but not both. He told us we were going to ally with the Seven, which meant the Adhipan too...and no killing one another once we’d taken that vow...”

  “...He said we had to stop fighting amongst ourselves,” said Holo. “That we have to start rounding up the seers who are out there, from the work camps, before Salinse makes them dependent on the Rooks. He wants to rebuild a seer economy...”

  “...He wants to start a new colony, too,” Poresh added. “And rebuild Seertown...maybe also rebuild the colony in the Pamir. He’s talked about freeing the remaining seers from work camps...forcing new terms with the humans once we have the leverage...”

  Allie looked around her again, her mouth firming.

  But the bewilderment in her eyes remained, Jon noticed. He saw her willfully shove some of her own thoughts...or doubts maybe...from her mind.

  “But not everyone?” she said. “How many from the rebels took his terms?”

  “Thirty-eight of us, so far,” Jax answered promptly. “...In Asia anyway. A few more in South America. He hasn’t approached everyone yet. We were still in the process of contacting people, when...” He colored a little, looking down at her clothes, then shrugged with one hand.

  “...I don’t know how many of us are left,” he finished lamely.

  “How many went back to Salinse?” she said.

  The others looked at one another, and again Jax’s expression grew uncomfortable.

  “Closer to seventy, Esteemed Bridge,” he explained apologetically. “...Ute left first. She contacted a bunch of the others. Salinse commanded a lot of loyalty before the Sword returned. Many of them owe him their lives...”

  Allie nodded, but Jon saw a shadow pass over her eyes.

  “How many infiltrators?” she said.

  “Only about forty of a rank above four or five,” Garensche said reassuringly, rubbing her shoulder from where he held her against his side.

  “And on our side?” she said.

  He shrugged, smiling down at her. “You’re looking at them...and those in the other cars. We pretty much all came along when the Sword told us where he was going. There are a few deployed in the States, and in Europe...another half-dozen in South America...”

  Nodding, she smiled back, glancing around at all of their faces once more.

  Jon wondered if she was counting as her eyes passed over each one.

  He’d already counted the same. It was maybe fourteen total, of the rebels who were with them in Asia. Maybe they had Chan with them now, in America...plus the six Revik spoke to in Brazil. So around twenty...twenty-five if they were lucky. Half of what had opted to go to Salinse at the outset, and who knew how many of those were working both sides of the fence.

  The numbers hadn’t seemed to bother Revik though. Jon got the impression he’d been so relieved at Wreg’s answer that anyone after him had been a kind of bonus.

  He was still thinking about this, when Loki fished a tool out of the side pocket in the car's door. Jon had seen one like it before, the last time they were in China. Thick organic metal blades stood on either side of a heavy handle with dark grips. It reminded Jon of a nutcracker, or heavy wire cutters. After showing the tool to Allie, Loki asked a question with one hand.

  She answered with a returning gesture of her fingers, and he fit the grooved edges of the blade around the collar at her neck.

  He squeezed the handles and she gave a short gasp as the ring around her neck opened with a faint sucking sound. Jon knew that the coils of organic material were likely unraveling from around her neck. She was pulling it off when Loki caught hold of her other wrist, making another questioning motion with his hand.

  She nodded that time, instead of using seer hand-language. Jon and the others watched as he fit the tool under the chains around her wrist, cutting through the metal in a series of three or four squeezes of the thick handles. He moved immediately to the one at her ankle...then to her other wrist...then her other ankle.

  Another seer’s hands reached out, pulling the chains off her, tossing them to the floor on the other side of the car, by the opposite door.

  Jon watched the chains disappear, swallowing. He didn’t look away from her bare wrists and ankles until he felt Allie’s eyes on his face.

  He saw embarrassment in her eyes, but her jaw hardened while he watched, as if she was daring him to say something about it.

  “What about Chan, Jon?” she said. “Has anyone talked to her recently?”

  Jon hesitated.

  For a moment, he wondered how much he should say about that before she’d recovered from the rest of it...and given the high spirits of everyone in the car. Finally, he just shrugged, smiling at her with as much cheerfulness as he could muster.

  “She’s fine,” he said. He checked his watch, glancing at Dorje as he fought the worry from his voice. “She should be on a plane to South America right about now...”

  “South America?” Allie said, dumbfounded.

  Jon nodded, again looking at Dorje, maybe for help.

  “She’s gone to Argentina, Esteemed Bridge,” Dorje added reassuringly. “A reconnaissance mission. She is working with a few other seers...under the command of the Sword.”

  “A few other seers?” Allie said, still bewildered. “Who?”

  For a second, Jon and Dorje only looked at one another, hesitating again.

  “THEY HAVE HER,” Chan confirmed, speaking loud above the sound of the plane’s engines and whatever she listened to in her headset. “...She is all right.”

  Chandre glanced at the three seers who sat next to her in the middle row of commercial seats on the plane. Padded on either side with two empty seats, they had the row to themselves. They had only just left the air conditioned confines of the Albuquerque International Airport and been seated in the first class compartment of the Boeing 747-8.

  "Any news on Eddard?" Varlan asked her.

  Chandre, still listening on the other end, shook her head.

  "...Nothing on Maygar, either." She glanced at Varlan, then past him, to Rex and Stanley on his other side. "They haven't told them yet. The Bridge...or the Sword."

  Varlan didn't answer, but his indigo eyes flickered slightly.

  Chandre didn't bother to try and figure out what that meant.

  They’d headed south and east by car, not risking any of the Bay Area airports after blowing up the lab and electrical substation near Hayward, California. They'd settled on Albuquerque finally, as it was one of the smaller international airports in the area, far smaller than Denver or Phoenix. The op had gone fine, or so they thought up until the end. They managed to place all of the explosives, to find the exit through the ventilation shafts, just like Eddard had shown them. They also managed to round up and identify all of the head scientists for the project. It had been necessary, of course, to make sure those who could even possibly reconstruct the formula from memory went up with the equipment. That hadn't been Chandre's favorite part of the job, but she recognized the necessity for it; she didn't argue when Varlan gave the order.

  Everything had gone as smoothly as could be expected, really, considering that they'd tripped the construct alarms a good thirty minutes before they'd planned. Yet somewhe
re in the course of that op, while Chandre had been working with Stanley, Rex and Varlan to lay the charges in the main lab, Eddard and Maygar had vanished.

  Varlan and his people and Chandre spent months looking for them in the time since. They'd searched all over California, then widened that search to include most of the west coast when they still didn't turn up. Varlan had insisted on accompanying and aiding Chandre when she proposed a search. She wondered why at first, but then Varlan told her he had 'concerns' about Eddard and the samples of the human-killing virus he'd intended to remove from the lab.

  It hadn't occurred to Chandre until then that Varlan likely hadn't intended the human to succeed in that goal, as it directly violated the terms of his contract with his client, 'Shadow,' which had been to destroy the disease in totality. In fact, Chan realized, Varlan likely intended to put a few well-placed bullets in Eddard's brain before they'd left the lab, and after he'd ceased to be useful in terms of getting them in and out safely.

  But none of that occurred to her until the job was finished.

  They hadn't waited to find Maygar and Eddard to detonate the lab of course...they couldn't afford to, no matter what the odds that the human and the young seer had been left inside. Even in the wake of the attack, however, they hadn't found any evidence that the two had remained underground. Nor, really, had they found any evidence that they'd escaped, other than the fact that they searched the entire lab before leaving and saw no sign of either of them. Eddard had disappeared to collect his samples of the disease and the antidote. Maygar left to look for the exit through the cooling and ventilation shafts, as per Eddard's instructions. While Chandre and the others were halfway through setting the charges in the underground lab, Maygar had pinged them all to tell them that he'd found the way out.

  Then nothing.

  Neither of them had been heard from since.

  Varlan, however, had been relatively sure that he could sense imprints of the two of them, leaving out through the ventilation shafts ahead of them. Chandre knew it was possible he'd only said that, of course, to get the rest of them to leave when the clock started to run down, to keep them on schedule for the job...but for some reason, she believed him.

  Of course, with an infiltrator of Varlan's rank, she couldn't trust that feeling either.

  It bothered her more than she wanted to admit, that Maygar, little shit that he was, could have been trapped and killed down there. She knew it was still a strong possibility, that he had been missed somehow in their sweep and died in the explosions and cave ins that followed. The whole scene had gotten so chaotic once the Barrier alarms went off...Chandre had no way of pinning down an exact moment when she knew for certain that either Maygar or Eddard had no longer been with them.

  “...She is already out of the main city,” Chandre added, pulling her mind back to the present. "It looks like they got away cleanly..."

  Varlan’s expression remained unchanged at Chandre’s news, but something in the dark-skinned seer, Stanley's, visibly relaxed. He adjusted his narrow body in the cloth seat, looking off to the side to peer through the nearest of the distant oval windows. Chandre noted the male seer's expression though, and with some relief. Whoever he worked for, he didn't entirely hate the Bridge. Moreover, he was likely religious. The thought comforted her, especially since she had to trust the three of them, at least for the next leg of their journey.

  Balidor was footing the bill for this little venture, which was strange enough, but stranger still, Varlan had accepted his offer, despite the clear conflict of interest it posed with his client. Chandre couldn't help wondering what Balidor had said to him to convince him to accept. She also couldn't help wondering if the Adhipan leader had other things on his mind, in asking the ex-Rook to help them. Like perhaps recruitment...which wasn't so much of a stretch these days really, especially given the rank of the seer sitting directly beside her. Given the fact that it looked like Dehgoies now led military operations, as well as the shit storm they'd just stirred by picking a fight with the Lao Hu, they would need all the infiltrators they could get.

  In any case, when Chandre told Balidor about the mysterious client of Varlan's, Balidor had jumped at the chance, offering Varlan and his people more than twice their usual rate to allow Chandre to accompany them to their meeting with this 'Shadow' person. Varlan balked at first, for predictable reasons, claiming he couldn't afford to misuse his contacts or his clients in such a way, but Balidor managed to persuade him somewhere in the course of their conversation.

  Chandre didn't know how, exactly, but she suspected it hadn't only been with money.

  She still found it interesting Balidor hadn't told Dehgoies any of this, but maybe the Sword had enough on his mind, given what Allie had been up to for the past few months.

  That whole story, however, was something Chandre herself still had trouble believing.

  As if reading her thoughts, Rex, the mammoth seer who sat between Varlan and Stanley, leaned around the older seer to look at her.

  “Did they really sell her through the Rynak?” He kept his voice low, even as he darted a look at an airline stewardess as she passed in the aisle.

  Chandre nodded, aiming it in two directions at once when she caught the eye of a second airline steward, who frowned at her, tapping the side of his head to indicate her headset. Pulling the device from around her ear, Chandre clicked it off, giving the human an apologetic smile as she shoved it into her bag underneath the seat in front of her.

  She glanced up at Rex as she straightened, and found Stanley looking at her, too.

  “She seems to be fine," she said. "They say she is changed...”

  “Changed?” Varlan raised an eyebrow, giving her a pointed look.

  Chandre merely shrugged, her eyes shifting towards the far window, where Stanley's attention seemed to be focused once more.

  “Changed how, sister Chandre?”

  Considering for a moment, Chandre turned. There was no reason she could think of to withhold this information, so after another pause she shrugged, giving the older seer a humorless smile.

  “How do you think? They trained her...in several different arts. Her light is changed, brother.” She averted her eyes at his frown, fighting her own expression still. “...Apparently they trained her in more than simply those things which one might expect. Something to do with the transfer of rights over her person...an agreement they made with her new owners. They say they may have to give her a number now.” Her voice lowered still more as she watched the steward pass on the aisle next to Stanley. “...A real rank," she added, soft. "Actual, instead of simply a guess at her potential.”

  Varlan stared at her, his dark eyes holding nothing as he processed all of her words.

  “They had avoided that before,” he said finally.

  She nodded, using the human version of saying yes.

  Despite the contacts she wore, she’d already received a number of stares from other passengers, particularly in the boarding areas for the plane, so she wasn’t sure how many people she was actually fooling. Still, to make them at least pause, to question whether she was one thing or the other, was all they really required for this trip. The place where the plane landed did not exclude her people, so to obscure her race was more of a convenience than a necessity.

  “They may have no choice now,” she answered him.

  “Will they register her? Formally, I mean?”

  Chandre merely shrugged. “I do not know. He said they will determine that later...after they have done a more systematic assessment of what it is about her that has changed.”

  “Who said this?”

  “Adhipan Balidor.”

  Varlan didn't blink. “Did you speak to any others?”

  She shook her head, knowing what he was asking. Like the rest of them, he wanted information about the Sword, about what the Sword was thinking, about what he would do next. Chandre couldn't have told them that even if she wanted to. In the same set of heartbeats, however, it o
ccurred to her that using Revik's name likely had a lot to do with why Varlan had agreed to their arrangement in the first place.

  Tucking a stray braid behind her ear, she only blew out her cheeks before she glanced at him. “Right now, they are still questioning the woman they brought with them from the city. They only have a few more minutes with her, before they must depart...”

  “To go where?”

  Chandre gave him a warning look, glancing around them pointedly.

  “That will be determined, brother.”

  Varlan nodded at her words, but the slight frown never left his face. Chandre had focused back on her bag, trying to remember if she'd brought an actual paper book, when Rex spoke up from Varlan's other side, his voice holding a low humor.

  "The Sword is a lucky man," he said, whistling softly.

  Chandre tensed, even as she'd been about to grab a magazine from the rack in front of her. She almost didn't ask it. Then, after biting her lip, she did anyway.

  "Why do you say that?" she said stiffly.

  When she glanced up, Rex's brown eyes smiled along with his lips, but she felt the pulse of arousal there, a faint flare off his light.

  "The Lao Hu consorts are famous," he said, smiling at her, winking. "You have no idea what I'd give to have a wife trained in those arts...but maybe an arm." He nudged Stanley, who only grunted, his eyes still focused out the window. Rex laughed, adding, "...Maybe even a foot. I bet he doesn't let her out of their room, now that he has her back in his bed." His smile turned into a leer. "...Are you sure it was an accident she ended up there, sister Chandre?"

  Chan felt her mouth and jaw turn to granite. She stared at him, fighting the urge to punch him in the face, using the knuckles of the stronger of her two hands, maybe blinding him in one eye with her fingers. Instead she forced her gaze sideways, looking out the window to her left. She was still staring out, unseeing, when Varlan spoke from her other side.

  “Could he tell us anything?” he said. When Chandre turned, the anger still warring in her light, Varlan clarified, "Balidor. Did he say anything else? Anything that will help us, where we are going?”