Sibylla of Earth

by A. D. Baldwin

  “You must make the choice.”

  Sibylla noticed him looking away. This was her chance. She rolled to the side and jumped for her blade. Catching it in hand, she spun around to face him. “I don’t have to do anything,” she declared, aiming her blade at him.

  “You told me that you were here for someone, yes?” he asked.

  The image of Dillon flashed through her mind, and she felt a warmth of love struggling against the numbness of her fatigue. Was he even real? Did he even exist? She fought to make sense in her delirium. “I have to save him,” she managed.

  “Then do it! There is no peace here. No choice. Now hit me!”

  Sibylla lashed out at him with a variety of strikes, desperate to end the exercise. She swung at his arms. She swung at his legs, doing her best to hit him at whatever the cost. But he was too quick, too agile. He moved like the wind and retaliated like a snake. He punched her in the shoulders, kneed her in the thighs, tripped her at the ankles, systematically eliminating every one of her weapons, until she was on her knees, panting.

  When he was done, he circled her, shaking his head in disappointment. “I hear your father was a great man, a great leader. Was that a lie?”

  Sibylla gritted her teeth as she tried to register his words. “What are you talking about?”

  “Murdock,” he answered. “This is what he said to me. But now, I don’t believe him. I say, how can a great man have such a weak daughter?”

  Sibylla’s grip tightened around her blade. “Don’t talk about my father that way.”

  “Why not?” he asked. “What will you do? Hurt me? Stop me?” He laughed. “I do what I want. I say what I want. I beat you if I want. That is war.”

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” Sibylla said. “But I won’t give in. I won’t turn my back on who I am.”

  “Then don’t,” he said. “Be who you are. Be person who grows flowers on mountain. Hide from world. Live in mind. But know this. In doing so, those whom you love will be forced to suffer at the hands of your enemies.”

  Sibylla screamed as she bolted to her feet. She wanted this to be over. She wanted him to shut up and go away, to bow his head in defeat and retreat to his cell—even if it meant hurting him in the process.

  Lifting her sword, she shut her eyes and attacked him with everything she had, leaping into the abyss of combat and not caring what would happen.

  The thrust was quick, to the point, as sharp as she could make it, and as far as she could stretch. Opening her eyes, she saw that the tip of her blade was touching the valley of his chest.

  From the sides of the dome, came the sound of slow clapping. It was the Eagles. They were proud of her success.

  “I did it?” Sibylla asked in disbelief. Her arms were shaking and her legs were ready to give out, but she refused to pull the blade away, worried that if she did, he’d force her to continue.

  Grinning, Atra said, “It is over.”

  Oh thank God. Sibylla shut her eyes as she uncoiled to the floor, letting her arms and legs spread out in relief. She’d never been so tired, so weak. If the air was any heavier, she would’ve been stuck there.

  “Get up,” Atra ordered, offering his hand.

  She batted it away. “Screw off.”

  He laughed, then dropped to his haunches, leaning over her tired body. “Do you know how you hit me?”

  She looked away, ashamed. “Because I was angry. Because I wanted to hurt you more than anything.” Her bottom lip trembled. “Because I hated you.”

  “No,” he said. He wiped the hair from her face with his long fingers and she saw the beauty of his light blue eyes peering down at her through the fog of her mind. She thought he looked like an angel, something perfect and strong gazing down at her from heaven. “It is because you did not care for yourself. Because you were not scared. Because—”

  “I was empty,” Sibylla finished for him. It was a disconnected feeling. Yet, as disengaged as she’d felt from the world, she couldn’t deny the freedom, the power that came with it. And because of that, she was ashamed.

  Looking away, she asked. “Does this mean that I’ve finally connected with my spirit?” she asked wearily.

  “No,” he said with a mirthless smile. “You still have more to suffer.”

  23

  The Gorge

  “We have them on the run!” Yumiko yelled as she rose from behind the cover of a large trunk. It was a cold morning, racked with the wild confusion of battle.

  They’d been chasing the enemy platoon across a wide field, forcing them to retreat toward the mountain, where it opened up into a slim gorge.

  The enemy had been overrun by a wedge of troops that had advanced through the center. Yumiko had given them exact orders: “Split them down the middle, and drive them apart.”

  A simple command. But so far, it had been a clumsy engagement. Brawling criminals anxious for the chance at a fight, professional soldiers frozen by their need for orders. Yumiko reminded Sibylla of a mother handling a bunch of brats at a supermarket.

  “Let’s chase these bastards down and finish them off!” Yumiko yelled as she raised her rifle into the air, the brazen act earning her a loud cheer from the rest of her soldiers.

  Through the ruckus, Sibylla watched as the last of the enemy retreated into the gorge. They filed in through the tight crack, slipping into the heart of the mountain where they disappeared.

  At the end of the line, stopping for only a moment, a male recruit looked back over his shoulder, shooting Sibylla and her platoon a final glance. Sibylla activated the zoom of her helmet, and saw a thick chin framed by a goatee.

  It was Roberto Salazar, she recognized, a recruit from her Blade class. Tall and muscular with a strong ability to move, he was one of the better fighters in her group. But why had he stopped? Why take the moment to look back when the enemy was at his heels? The gesture didn’t sit right with Sibylla, and she found herself reluctant to move any closer.

  “Wait!” Sibylla said, her hand quickly rising to halt the advance. “It’s a trap.”

  “A trap?” Yumiko asked. “What the hell are you talking about? “We’ve got them on the run. They’ve got nowhere to go.”

  “Which is what they want you to think.” Sibylla removed her helmet and stepped toward Yumiko. “Aggression makes you overextend. You become predictable, easy to manipulate.”

  Her words drew the attention of the entire platoon, and silence quickly followed, one that Yumiko noticed. “Bullshit,” Yumiko said. “The more we wait, the longer we give them.”

  “Hold up,” Tayshaun said. He marched through the crowd, like a giant, his wide frame causing the other recruits to step shuffle out of his way. “Maybe she’s right.”

  “What the heck?” Yumiko turned to him. “Are you kidding me?”

  “It makes sense,” Anais added.

  “Well, no one asked for your opinion,” Yumiko said.

  “Well, too bad,” Anais shot back, getting into Yumiko’s face. “Cause I’m giving it.”

  The two soldiers idled as they held the other’s glare. But Sibylla stepped in, trying to extinguish the sudden animosity.

  “Hold on,” Sibylla said. The last thing they needed now was to start fighting amongst each other. But Sibylla had placed the platoon in a difficult position. She’d questioned the Platoon leader’s orders, and worse, she’d done it in front of everyone else. I’m gonna need to fix this, she told herself.

  “Look,” Sibylla said, turning to Yumiko. “You’re the one always saying that we should send in reconnaissance whenever we can, right? I’m just following your orders.”

  In truth, Yumiko had never said such a thing. In fact, her basic philosophy about life seemed to be shoot first and ask questions later. But manipulation was a game of finesse, she knew, a delicate maneuver that steered a person into doing something they didn’t want to while making them think it was their idea in the first place. Sibylla waited for her reply.

  Yumiko glared at the rec
ruits around her, seeming in deep contemplation. Finally, with the nod of her head, she agreed. “Yeah, I do say that. Okay, so this is how it’s going to be. Sibylla, you go in first, check it out. We’ll wait outside.”

  Sibylla let out an exaggerated sigh, making sure that everyone could see her disappointment, then, with a weak shrug, one that presented just enough reluctance to be believed, she nodded ascent. “Crap, alright.”

  The crevice was high and narrow and filled with a biting wind. She’d never examined a mountain before. Her expertise was man-made buildings, structures that were built out of logic and purpose. She wasn’t sure how she would do with something natural, but hey, why not give it a shot?

  Removing the glove from her right hand, she rested a palm against the rock wall and peered into the narrow opening, trying to imagine its twists and turns. It was strange, she thought, sensing something along her palm. Whenever she tried to make sense of a building, she was always impeded by a wall of interference, like the static burst of a busted speaker. But now, as she touched the cold rock, feeling its jagged edges, engaging with the weak vibration, she felt thrusted into a stream of energy that made her feel as if she was speaking to someone who wasn’t there.

  Accessing the com link, she whispered to Yumiko. “Come on in; I think I found something.”

  * * *

  Troops lined up around the slim gorge, forming a half circle and Sibylla began to count their number. Yumiko’s aggressive strategy had cost her nearly half her troops. But there were still enough to form a firing line for anything that tried to escape. Still, it was sad.

  “What do you mean, they screwed up?” Yumiko asked, impatient to the point of angry.

  “This isn’t a gorge,” Sibylla said, removing her helmet once more, so that she could fit better through slim passage. “It’s a crack. It doesn’t go anywhere.”

  “And how the heck would you know that?” Yumiko asked.

  “Yeah,” Tayshaun agreed. “And what the heck was all that touching the mountain stuff? What were you feeling for?”

  “You’re not actually basing all this on something that you felt…are you?” Yumiko asked.

  “When the earth speaks, one must listen,” Koda said, drawing a puzzled glance from the rest of the platoon.

  “Can’t argue with that logic,” Anais quipped.

  “Look,” Sibylla said, holding their gazes. “You guys need to trust me. Besides, there are only four soldiers in there. You counted the wounded yourself.”

  “That doesn’t change things,” Tayshaun shot back. “We can’t just let you slip in there by yourself. Now, are you going to tell us the truth or not?”

  Sibylla was at a loss for words. She’d never been sure herself. Whether the outside structure of the mountain hinted that she was right, or whether something in the ground really did speak to her, she just knew, for some crazy reason, that she was right. “I’ve seen this mountain before,” she finally said. “From the Drop. I wasn’t sure until now. But now I know.”

  “Then what was all that touching-the-mountain bullshit?” Yumiko asked.

  “Oh, that?” Sibylla replied with a shrug. “I was just checking the type of rock it’s made out of.”

  “And?” Tayshaun asked.

  “It’s the hard kind.” Sibylla shot him a wink as she brushed past him towards the fissure. She was just about to slip through when she heard Anais behind her.

  “You sure about this?” she asked.

  “They’re in there trapped,” Sibylla replied. “All I need to do is toss a couple of grenades in there and run out.”

  “But by yourself?” Anais continued.

  “Relax,” Sibylla assured, planting a hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “This is what I’m good at.”

  “And what’s that?” Anais asked.

  “Sneaking into shit.”

  Sibylla edged herself through the crevice of the mountain, slipping through the maze of jagged rocks and overhanging steps. The air was much colder here. No wind. Just colder, like the inside of a freezer.

  Around her, patches of orange moss covered the rocks. While up above, a rich sky beamed through the cracked ceiling, giving view to a sliver of winter blue that was strangely calming.

  Everything was so quiet here and so cramped. Her breath reflected off the dense stone walls with a crispness that made her think she was louder than she really was.

  Breaking into secure facilities had prepared her for this. She’d trained against Hive Drones, weaponized flying machines equipped with hyper-sound detection and 10K resolution. Chasing down a group of recruits holding their position in a mountain was nothing compared to that. Still, she didn’t want to risk anything. An electrical blast was an electrical blast, and she didn’t want to end up in the hospital.

  Coming to a corner, she heard the sound of scraping rocks. She dropped to her haunches, peeked around the corner and found the enemy stacking boulders along the high walls where the passage ballooned into a wide birth.

  Roberto grunted as he hefted a boulder nearly half his size onto a rocky shelf. He was incredibly strong, made only worse by the power of his exo-suit. They were positioning the boulders along the ridge so that a tiny electrical blast could unearth them and send them toppling down onto whatever unsuspecting force was passing through. Sibylla frowned.

  It was clever but extremely dangerous. Just one of those boulders could cave in a person’s helmet. But what did she expect? This was war, or at least a simulated one. As Williams had warned them from the beginning, anything could happen in an exercise, even death.

  Laying the bag of grenades at her feet, it occurred to her that she couldn’t use them in the passageway. Not with the loose boulders on top. If they were to fall, they could kill every enemy soldier trapped in the blast. She needed to think of another plan.

  Suddenly, three of the soldiers slipped away farther down the passage, leaving Roberto behind to finish the work. Could she take him? she wondered. He was larger than she was, stronger with more experience. But Atra had been training her on a daily basis, even on the weekends. Her ability had grown sharper, reinforced by a regiment of vitamins that were already making her muscles grow.

  But if she did fight him, she would need to inhibit his ability to use his comlink. As good as she’d become, there’d be no way to handle four soldiers at once. Was it possible? Could she do it? She had to try, at least for her platoon.

  Reaching for the blade at her back, she slid out of the corner. The beating of her heart was quickening, and she could feel her skin growing cold. You need to be quick, she told herself. Strike hard and don’t look back. Waiting until Roberto had lifted one of the boulders to his chest, she attacked.

  Roberto’s eyes widened as he saw her, and he tossed the boulder at her with frightening accuracy. She feinted to the right, and the boulder cracked into the wall behind her, splitting into two large halves that fell to the ground with a pair of loud thuds.

  Struck with fear and quickened by adrenaline, she crossed the distance in a single bound, swinging her blade against the side of his helmet and knocking him against the rock wall.

  Roberto fell back as sparks flew from his helmet. The visor was shattered, and pieces of the comlink lay scattered across the rocky ground. Sibylla stepped back, awestruck and fearful by what she’d just done. But there was no time to think. Roberto was already rising to a knee, reaching for his blade.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” he growled.

  Sibylla jumped back as Roberto dove at her. With the added strength of his exo-suit, his swings were fast and extremely powerful. Sibylla ducked as one of the swings came for her head, and the rock behind her exploded into a blast of pebbles.

  She glanced back at the severed boulder with wide eyes, terrified at how close it had come to her head. Rebounding as fast as she could, she struck Roberto in the midsection, piercing through the exposed lining of his suit and digging the end of the blunt tip into his stomach. He bent over, gasped for air,
and his eyes bulged from his sockets. Without a second thought, Sibylla followed up with a punch to the face.

  The blow landed against his jaw, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Falling to the side, he hit the ground like a heavy statue and Sibylla stared at his body in panic. What had she just done? She could’ve killed him. Staring at her hands; one balled up into a fist, the other wrapped around the handle of her blade, they didn’t feel like her own.

  From the rocky passage, came the sound of boots. It was the enemy! They were coming back! Quickly, Sibylla grasped Roberto by the arms and dragged him out of the passageway and around the corner, where her bag of grenades was lying.

  On the off chance that they detonated close enough to the sabotaged rocks, she didn’t want to risk Roberto’s life. When she’d finished hauling Roberto’s body safely away, she looked back into the passage, flinching as a gooey shell zipped past her head. It splattered against the wall behind her, detonating into a crackling explosion. Sibylla winced as one of them sliced her cheek.

  As fast as she could, she reached for the bag, pulled out a grenade and tossed it behind her, hoping that it would reach the soldiers before they reached the sabotaged boulders.

  24

  The Great Hall

  The Great Hall was filled with the sound of victory as platoons fresh from battle feasted in celebration. They laughed and roared, joked and teased, pausing only to lick their fingers as one of their own began recounting some amazing story from the day’s engagement.

  The hall itself was a large banquet room with raised wooden tables along the sides, where the victorious platoons sat and ate. White banners, marked with the flaming eagle, hung proudly from thick wooden beams along the ceiling. Against the far wall, a large fireplace roared in a thunderous crackle.