Apex

by Mercedes Lackey

  But Bastion was not unarmed: they had mortars, cannon, RPGs, and other assorted goodies that they could, and did, fire at the back ranks of the Othersiders. The cannons on the west wall were mostly just keeping a Drakken pinned down, but that still meant we didn’t need to deal with it just yet. Meanwhile all the smaller distance-weapons dropped lots of presents on the critters facing us.

  “Form up on me!” Kent ordered, and we gathered in. “Steel, Hammer, Knight. I want a joint Shield on us, now! Hounds outside, us inside. Joy, you and your alpha coordinate all the Hounds.”

  If I’d had time to think, I would have been knocked sideways by that order. But I didn’t have time to think; I only had time to act.

  Bya, Kent wants us to coordinate all the packs—

  There was not even a moment of hesitation on Bya’s part. Each one of the Hounds in your pack will take another two packs. Myrrdhin, Gwalchmai, Hevajra, and I will take four packs each. All will be well. Tell us what to do.

  I had to come up with something quick. Kent wasn’t giving me any orders. Hevajra, take the packs that can breathe fire. If there are more than four packs that breathe fire, Bya, take the others. Myrrdhin, Gwalchmai, take the packs of fliers. Dusana, take whichever packs that are left that have the biggest Hounds. The rest of you, work with who you know. Thank heavens I could count on Byra and Myrrdhin to relay what I was saying to Hold and Strike. Myrrdhin, are there any Harpies?

  At this point, the monsters had closed around us and were trying to get through our Shields.

  There are Harpies, Myrrdhin confirmed. We with the fliers will deal with them and anything else that flies. When the fliers are done, I will have them drop stones, or if we can get them, grenades.

  “Kent!” I shouted into my mic—the noise of us firing magic stuff at monsters, monsters beating on our Shields, and screaming was so bad you couldn’t hear the person standing right next to you—“Contact Bastion Defense, and if they have hand grenades, give them to any flying Hounds that come to the walls.” As I yelled to Kent, I thought what I was saying to him at my Hounds.

  “Roger that. Grenades for flier Hounds.”

  We heard, said Myrrdhin promptly.

  You can see what you’re doing out there better than I can. Do your best for us. I had to leave it at that because our Shields were beginning to bow inward from the weight of the Othersiders, weaponry, and rudimentary magic, and it was time for me to start throwing spells around.

  Harpies streamed up into the sky from some spot to the north, where I guessed the Othersiders had a Portal. But they were met by our Hounds, who were more than a match for the cowardly Harpies. Myrrdhin and Gwalchmai were somewhere safe and concealed, presumably, where they had a good view of the skies from the ground and could direct their fliers. I trusted them; how could I not? My pack, individually and together, had saved my life more times than I could count.

  Meanwhile, Dusana had grown to his biggest size, which was roughly as big as a shed, and had gathered a pack of two Hounds the size of plow horses, one to either side of him, with the rest of the pony-size Hounds behind them. They rammed their way through the front lines of the enemy, about ten feet from the Shield, biting and clawing everything they could get their jaws on, cutting a path for the rest of their packs of smaller Hounds led by Shinje and Chenresig to follow. Those smaller Hounds, in turn, bit and clawed into the hordes to either side of that clear path. That kept some pressure off the Shield, and threw the front couple of ranks of Othersiders into disorder.

  Where there were Nagas, the fire-breathing packs were wreaking havoc. As far as I could tell, all the rest of the Hounds led by Hold, Strike, Begtse, and Kalachakra were playing strike-and-run randomly along the back line, confusing the Othersiders when they found themselves attacked on two fronts. We Hunters couldn’t use physical weapons across the Shield without leaving ourselves open to physical attacks, so all we could use was magic.

  I already knew Othersiders had powerful senses of smell, so one of the first things I did was plant patches of skunk-spell everywhere I could. I had to be careful; too much and it would drift over to us, and then we’d be just as affected as they were. But the wind was at my back and in our favor, and by the number of Othersiders that were reacting sharply when the stink hit their noses, it was pretty clear my first efforts were a success.

  I took advantage of their distraction by abruptly raising and dismissing tiny sections of Wall among them. Tripping and gassing the Othersiders served us just as well as cracking a Shield and delivering a levin bolt to the face. But I had to be careful not to trip the Hounds, so I made sure the bits of Wall were only up for seconds at a time.

  Cielle didn’t dare cut loose with her big power; she might hit the Hounds. So she was firing off lesser bolts, and whatever she hit went down and stayed down.

  Dusana came through the lines a second time, and his team left screams of pain and death in their wake. A moment later, drops and drizzles of red spattered down on the Shield, then larger dollops. The Harpies are over your heads, Myrrdhin told me. They are not faring well. My gut churned a little, and I was glad that I was too busy to look up.

  A moment later, dead Harpies began to fall out of the sky, hitting the top of the Shield and sliding down, leaving smears of red behind them. But they were already dissolving into air and dust the moment they hit the Shield, and by the time they were about halfway down, there was nothing left of them to land on the ground.

  More of them—the not-quite-dead ones—were falling among their fellow Othersiders, further confusing the combat. How are the fliers? I asked anxiously, throwing up yet another tiny Wall and sending a cluster of three Minotaurs into one another.

  Getting enough manna to heal themselves, was the terse reply from Myrrdhin, as Dusana and his accompanying brutes rammed their way through the fighting monsters a third time.

  My Hounds clearly knew what they were doing. I only hoped I did.

  Knight, Hammer, and Steel had kept the Shields up as long as they could, but eventually they had run out of physical energy to manipulate the magic, so they’d dropped our protection, and we’d gone to weapons. I thought for one fleeting moment that we were going to lose this thing….

  That was when the Hounds tore their way through the ranks around us and formed a defensive perimeter of teeth and claws and belching flames between us and the Othersiders. Unlike us, they were feeding off manna every time one of the enemy went down, getting stronger rather than more exhausted as they fought. Magic we had in full. It was pure physical energy we lacked now.

  Then, at last, the close-air support arrived in the form of helichoppers with their chain guns loaded with Othersider-specific ammo. They’d chased off the Folk Mages keeping the Portals open, cutting off the hordes of monsters that were replenishing the ones we had destroyed. That finally turned the tide.

  The remaining Othersiders broke and fled when they realized there were no more reinforcements coming. My Hounds and I returned the packs to their proper Hunters, and we all went in pursuit, except for eight of us under the command of Kent who went after the last Drakken. I was so relieved to see that the Drakken was in pretty bad shape from all the cannon fire it had taken that I actually had tears running down my face. I don’t think I have ever been so exhausted in my life, except at the end of the Barrier Battles, and there wasn’t a one of us that was better off than I was.

  It was another brutal fight. Eventually, thanks in no small part to Cielle, who managed to drag up just enough willpower and strength to fire off her mega–levin bolt, we brought the Drakken down in a hail of magic and bullets, and our Hounds dove in to feed off the manna.

  And then, as the sound of chopper blades neared, I felt something like a cool breeze on my mind. My eyes flew open and I whipped my head around to the right.

  And I saw him, for a moment. Staring at me from across the battlefield, standing all by himself. That Folk Lord, the gold one. Bya’s head came up and I knew Bya could see him too. Beneath my hand, Bya�
��s back vibrated with his sudden growl.

  My Psi-shield wasn’t on, of course. I couldn’t have talked to Bya and the pack if it had been. All I had to keep me safe from the Folk Mage’s psionics was concentration on my One White Stone. Was that enough?

  The Mage caught my gaze with his molten-gold eyes. I couldn’t look away. I felt as if I were a bird caught in the gaze of a snake.

  Then he smiled sardonically, opened a Portal, stepped through it, and was gone.

  We had some wounded on that run. We were going to be operating about a third light for a couple of days, and I could not have been more grateful for all our new partners if I had gone to each one of them and kissed their hands. I sent Cielle to the medbay—maybe there was something the medics could give her that would help her recover faster. In the chopper she’d looked as limp as a rag doll without stuffing. Me, well, I went to the lounge, since it was a lot closer to the armory than my room was, and flung myself flat on a couch. I wasn’t the only one who’d had that idea either, and the vid-screens were blessedly tuned to random fractal patterns and soft, meandering music.

  Had this been a test? It certainly felt like one to me.

  My faint hope was that the Othersiders had overcommitted to this test and lost more than they could afford, at least for now. That might give us a couple days of respite—we’d had weeks of that kind of relief after the Barrier Battles.

  As I lay there, getting my wind back, feeling the aches, the bruises, the cuts and bites and strains sort themselves out, I gradually began to wonder how they felt after this last engagement. The Othersiders, I mean. We hadn’t lost anyone, but lots and lots of them had ended up dead. Did that even matter to them? It didn’t seem as if it did. Getting injured enraged them, individually, and the adults with young that we had seen did seem to have protective instincts with regards to their offspring—but the deaths of dozens, hundreds of their fellows, right next to them, didn’t seem to register with the still-living.

  So what makes them keep fighting us? Individuals, even groups, yeah—prey drive would account for it. But these armies? It had to be something outside themselves, driving them. It had to be the Folk Mages, who were probably doing a lot more than merely opening Portals.

  They don’t have to be mind-controlling them the whole time, though, I realized after a long moment of weary blanking out. The lesser Othersiders are probably set off with simple mind-controlling spells. Now, we didn’t have any magic like that, but there was ample evidence for it in legends and folklore.

  “Hey,” I said aloud into the quiet of the room. “Anybody got any clues as to why these motherless bastards keep throwing themselves on us like they are intent on suicide? This is not rational, thinking behavior. You saw what happened when I gave the Thunderbirds a chance to back out—so why don’t the rest act like that?”

  “They kind of always have.” That was Defender, somewhere across the room. “At least, they always have when they attack in any numbers.”

  “Which is…when they have Folk Mages with them….” That was Scarlet, clearly putting two and two together and coming up with the same answer I had.

  Having started that particular conversation, I decided to keep my mouth shut and listen. They all had a lot more experience with Othersiders than I did; I just seemed to be a trouble magnet.

  They were still hashing it out when lunchtime rolled around, and the discussion continued in the mess, where it soon involved every single Hunter that was there.

  There was surprisingly little dissension—mostly people just recounted their observations. I’d have taken notes, except that I knew the vid-system was already recording everything. The thing is, yes, all this information was technically on the Hunting records—the ones made out in the battlefield. But the problem with those recordings was they were only that: pure recording of nothing more than what had happened on the field. Hunting is as much about observation and learning as it is about going in there with your powers and your weapons and killing Othersiders—the kinds of things we talked about when we analyzed ourselves in the lounge, for instance. What I wanted to collect wasn’t on those tapes of the battlefield. It was in hunches, gut feelings—observation and deduction voiced out loud.

  I sent a couple text messages to Kent, clueing him in on our discussion in the mess. Surely Hunter HQ had some techs who specialized in analyzing this sort of thing. I got back a terse but satisfying reply. GJ. On it. “GJ,” of course, meaning “good job.”

  I had gotten the ball rolling. Maybe the techs—or the army Mages—could figure out how to block, or better still, cancel a controlling spell on the Othersiders. If we could get just some of them rebelling and fleeing, that would be a tremendous help.

  And just as I thought that, my Perscom beeped. Small callout. Cielle and me, Knight and whoever he was paired with. Flock of Gazers moving in on a village; I could net them, and Cielle could blast swaths of them, while Mark and his partner sniped from afar at the nasty little Jackals, who had a symbiotic partnership with the Gazers.

  I shoved off from the table; I heard chairs scrape as the other three did the same, and we all headed for the door.

  There were three more small callouts, but they didn’t involve me or Cielle. The Gazers proved a bit problematic out in the open, but with Cielle’s and Mark’s flying Hounds harrying them, we could keep them from turning their powers on us. Mark and his partner Sable set up on the top of a water tower, well out of Gazer eye-glare reach, and picked off the Jackals that half my Hounds and all of Sable’s herded away. While I netted Gazers, Cielle would blast the entire group, and the fliers would swoop in, suck up the manna, move on to the next group.

  It was nearly sunset when we mopped up the last of them. By my count there had been over forty of the wretched things. The days when I was terrified by a single Gazer seemed a lifetime ago.

  We managed to miss supper, but there was that little kitchen that used to be just for the Elite—everyone used it now, since it wasn’t only the Elite that were missing the regular mess times. We all grabbed food, heated it, and wolfed it down, then said good night and headed for our rooms to let our showers try and wash some of the soreness out.

  But when I got to my room, the message light was flashing. It was Josh. In guarded words, he told me that he was getting worried again, that he’d gotten warnings that Drift was impatient; she wasn’t pleased about the fact that all we’d exchanged were messages. Uncle hadn’t let me know that there was pressure being brought to bear, but Uncle didn’t have a friend in PsiCorps Admin who kept track of the Psimons being sent into that…program.

  Then again…I only have Josh’s word.

  Gah! It was horrible having to doubt people I should have been able to trust! For about the millionth time, I wished I was home. I wished I’d never met Josh. I wished that everything was simple again.

  If only there was a way to test him!

  And that was when it hit me. Because there was a way to test him.

  If he was really, truly as afraid as he claimed, if all he actually wanted to do was to get as far away from Drift and PsiCorps as he could, well, there was a way for him to do that.

  He’d have to ditch his Perscom, wear a Psi-shield, and go into hiding where PsiCorps never went.

  Spillover.

  Kent could probably help me arrange camping supplies for him; at this point Mark and I knew lots of places in Spillover where you could set up a pretty secure living spot. That old shelter where the three of us had met to talk about my bid for Elite status, for one. No one in PsiCorps would look for him there, because no one in PsiCorps would ever dream that one of theirs would subject himself to rough camping.

  If he was that afraid, he’d grab that promise of escape with both hands and demand I arrange it yesterday. If he wasn’t, well, he’d manage to find all sorts of excuses.

  It seemed like a good idea, but I needed to get a second opinion.

  I texted Kent. Anything come of the discussion in the mess? Or did my brain
go chasing a dekoi? I figured he’d catch the misspelling and realize I needed to talk to him privately.

  I was right, because I got a prompt text back. Quite a lot. Discuss it with you in depth? Over fish?

  I sent back a yes, wrote a mental note of regret to my sore muscles, and headed for the koi garden. As expected, Kent turned up shortly after me, sealed the door behind him, and raised an eyebrow at me.

  I explained my plan to him quickly. He nodded through all of it. “It’s solid,” he said. “Your uncle and I can arrange for pretty much everything you need. You’re unlikely to get in much trouble, even if he is trying to set you up in some way, if you just act like a stupid lovesick girl who is trying to help her boyfriend.”

  I grimaced a little at that. “Are you sure? I mean, I’d be helping him escape….”

  Kent shrugged. “We’re going to take advantage of some loopholes no one has ever thought to exploit. There’s nothing forbidding a Cit of Apex from leaving and going to live in Spillover, probably because the only people who would are criminals. Your uncle will know if there are any regulations preventing Josh from quitting PsiCorps and walking—but you know, there probably aren’t, because no one’s even considered doing so before this. The only thing you could possibly be guilty of would be not telling PsiCorps that he was thinking of leaving.”

  Could it really be that simple? I dared to hope. “If that’s all I told them, that he had told me he wanted to get out of Apex—”

  “Misdirection, and do not tell them that you don’t know where he is. Don’t lie, just don’t tell all the truth,” Kent advised. “Besides, if he’s telling the truth, well, this will get him away from Drift fast enough, and if he’s lying, he’ll make every excuse he can think of to get himself out of it.”