Demons of Divinity

by Luke R. Mitchell

  I liked that too.

  Inside, we skirted through the busy sea of specialists, officers, nodes, and displays that was operations, following Glenbark toward a flight of stairs I assumed must lead to her office. The crowd parted readily for us—or for her, at least—and curious stares abounded. Glenbark acknowledged a few updates from officers as she passed, patted a few specialists’ shoulders. Her people really seemed to love her—with the possible exception of the ruddy-faced, white-haired man waiting at the base of the stairs. I recognized him.

  General Auckus.

  I’d never met him before, but, of course, I’d heard a few things in my Sanctuary days. Legionnaires loved to talk about officers, and several of them had had plenty to say about Auckus. Especially the seemingly numerous females he’d treated in a manner most unbecoming of a Legion general.

  “General,” Glenbark said as we drew close, her tone neutral. “I assume you’d like to join us for the first look?”

  Auckus didn’t answer immediately. Made a point of taking his time looking over me, Elise, and Johnny.

  His dark eyes settled on me. “I knew your father.”

  There was no fondness in his voice—no reverence for a fallen hero. He said the words simply like they were proof that he was, in every way, my superior. I hadn’t needed much of a reason not to like him, but those four words did just fine.

  Then he turned to Glenbark, and added, “Updating our procedures yet again, I see? Sharing first look intel with tyros, demons, and concubines.” He barked a derisive laugh at his own words, and for a second, I thought he might actually spit at her feet.

  I had more than half a mind to telekinetically kick his legs out. Beside me, I could feel Elise thinking about doing worse. Around us, the room had gone quiet. I got the impression this wasn’t the first time the two generals had squared off.

  “Update the procedures that gifted us with such gracious leadership?” Glenbark said. “Unthinkable. Fortunately, I see neither tyros, demons, nor concubines present”—she glanced to the room at large—“unless we’re counting your, shall we say, rebuffed conquests, General Auckus.”

  Several of the specialists and officers snickered at that—particularly some of the females who I had strong feeling must’ve done some of that rebuffing.

  “Charming as always, Freya,” Auckus said, turning for the stairs. “Perhaps those assets of yours will yet prove useful. One of these days.”

  No one snickered at that as Auckus turned the first landing and disappeared up the stairs. Slowly, the room got back to work. Glenbark watched the spot where Auckus had disappeared for a long few seconds, her expression cold, calculating. Then she waved us on, and we all continued up the stairs together.

  I was starting to worry now.

  First, I thought it was simply the looming mystery of what on Enochia Alton Parker had seen fit to send me. But it was more than that. Much as I despised the way Auckus had put it, I realized I’d been hoping all along that Glenbark would step in and shut Elise out of this thing.

  Keep Elise half a planet away from the danger. That had been the plan, right? I should’ve asked her to wait behind in my quarters. Told her to practice until I got back.

  Breathe.

  It was fine. This was just an informal meeting. Nothing more than a look at a quite possibly harmless tablet. She wasn’t at risk here. But suddenly I couldn’t go another step—not knowing that whatever we found here might well put her in harm’s way down the line.

  I’d caught Glenbark’s wrist almost before I knew it. “High General,” I said quietly, even though there was no way Elise and Johnny wouldn’t hear. “Maybe it’s better if we, uh…”

  I drifted off at the look on her face. Slowly, very pointedly, Glenbark directed her gaze down to my hand on her wrist. I let go, realizing with a flush of heat to the cheeks how stupid it’d been, grabbing the High General of the Legion like that. Especially when I wasn’t even sure what I’d been planning to say.

  Luckily, once I’d released her and looked sufficiently guilty about my tactless move, it turned out Glenbark didn’t need my advice. “You two had better wait outside,” she said to Johnny and Elise, indicating the short line of chairs outside her office.

  I tried to keep the relief off my face, but I’m pretty sure Elise didn’t miss it. She watched me for a few seconds, probably wondering if I’d step in on her behalf. Once Johnny had finished murmuring his obedient affirmative and it became clear I wouldn’t, she turned to Glenbark with a forced smile.

  “If it helps alleviate tensions with General Skirt-Chaser in there, I’ll sit in the kid’s corner.” Her eyes went several degrees colder as she turned them back on me and telepathically added, “For now.”

  “Lise, I just don’t wanna—”

  “What? Put me in danger? You’re trying to protect me like you did with Johnny, now?”

  Her exterior remained deadly cool, but I flinched at the fire in her thoughts. Glenbark looked between us, seeming to gather that something had passed between us, but she turned without another word and strode for her office door, not looking back as she said, “If you please, Citizen Raish, I believe you have a tablet to unlock.”

  The secure door hissed open at her touch, and she disappeared inside, leaving it open behind her. I looked back to my friends.

  Elise extended a hand toward the open door. “Duty calls.”

  “Well,” Johnny said, touching a clarifying hand to her shoulder, “only if you’re, like, special though.”

  “Oh, right,” Elise said, nodding emphatically. “How silly of me to forget.”

  They both turned to me and arched their eyebrows, as if they were surprised to find me interrupting their meeting. It was kind of disconcerting how easily they fell into the act.

  “I guess I’ll just, uh, be out in a few minutes then, probably,” I said, taking a hesitant step toward the door.

  “We’ll be here,” was all Elise said. By the way she said it, I couldn’t help but wonder for what kind of duration that statement might remain true.

  Not sure I wanted to know the answer, I turned for Glenbark’s office without another word.

  12

  Politics

  Glenbark’s office was modest for her station, though still nice by most standards. Darkwood furniture. An elaborate workstation. A spacious conference area, backed by shelves of actual print books. Judging by the lack of any additional decor, I guessed Glenbark might have simply found the office this way upon her recent arrival and either appreciated the aesthetic or cared so little that she hadn’t bothered to change anything.

  The two generals were already seated, facing one another from across a long, sturdy-looking darkwood table—Glenbark calm and poised with her hands laid to either side of the tablet in front of her, and General Auckus seemingly trying to occupy as much physical space as possible from a seated position.

  “Oh, grand,” Auckus said, eyeing me, though he was clearly speaking to Glenbark. “You dropped a civie and a pup and decided to stick with the Demon of Divinity.”

  “The tablet was addressed to Citizen Raish,” Glenbark said. “By rights, it’s his property.”

  “Unless we seize it,” Auckus grumbled, but he didn’t say anything more as Glenbark gestured for me to join them.

  I sat with one chair separating me and Glenbark, not feeling particularly close to either of them at the moment, and was a bit surprised when she slid the tablet my way.

  “It was addressed to you,” was all she said.

  The tablet booted quickly and without a single interesting deviation from normal tablet behavior. The lock display, as the bomb specialist had indicated, did indeed have my name on it, in big block letters. HALDIN. No missing that. Nor was there any missing the password prompt.

  “The sweetest thing?” Auckus said, squinting at the tablet to read upside down from his side of the table. “Riddles. Wonderful. I’m guessing it’s not a sweetfizz?”

  I couldn’t answer for the ho
llowness in my gut. Because it sure as scud wasn’t a sweetfizz. And it wasn’t much of a riddle, either. When I noticed Glenbark’s piercing eyes watching me, I could see that she’d read as much from my face.

  “What does it mean, Haldin?”

  I stared through the darkwood table, not wanting to answer, suddenly wishing that I’d fought to have Elise join us—that she were holding my hand under the table right now, whispering in my mind that it was okay.

  “My mom,” I finally said. “It’s what Al’Kundesha—Kublich, whatever you wanna call him… It’s what he said about my mom’s blood.”

  So not sweetfizz, I wished Johnny were here to say. But he wasn’t, and the silence was palpable. Even General Auckus seemed to feel bad. I slid the tablet closer, refusing to meet their wounded animal stares. My fingers hovered over the letters, trembling.

  This was exactly what Alton Parker had wanted, wasn’t it? Me, quivering like a broken thing, remembering how many separate ways he could destroy me—already had destroyed me.

  Well, grop that.

  Except, no matter how fiercely I thought it, my fingers wouldn’t seem to move. Beside me, Glenbark extended a hand, palm up—a silent offer to take the burden from my shoulders. I clenched my jaw and swiped in the name.

 

  Through the blur of looming tears, I watched the tablet launch to a tidy home display—nothing but a few standard programs and a single matrix file, again labeled HALDIN, as if he’d been worried I might struggle to follow the less-than-subtle trail. I slid the tablet over to Glenbark. Anything to move the attention off me.

  The generals pretended not to notice as I hastily dabbed my eyes with a sleeve—Auckus tapping the table with a single finger while Glenbark swiped the tablet feed over to the holodisk on the table and tapped open the matrix file. The file’s front layer sprang to life as a pale holo above the darkwood table. I scanned dated rows of numbers, looking for landmarks at the column tops.

  Pending. Active. Deployed.

  “Troop counts,” Auckus said.

  “Hybrids?” I asked, morbid curiosity quickly offsetting the painful memories.

  Glenbark pointed at the lower rows. “They’re dated into the future.”

  With a few swipes, she displayed the data in graph form, which immediately drew a disturbingly clear picture. Slow, steady growth of all three lines—Pending, Active, and Deployed—dating up until a week earlier, when Pending and Active had spiked and taken off at considerably steeper rates moving into the future.

  “Scare tactics,” Auckus muttered, though he sounded less than convinced.

  I wanted to believe him—because why the scud else would Alton Parker decide to share this kind of intel?—but the significant dip in the lines over the past couple days gave me pause. If the data reflected their losses from the fighting at Oasis and the Vantage facility, was it possible these figures were real? Or had Alton added that touch of realism specifically to bolster the credibility of his lie?

  Glenbark wordlessly flipped to the next matrix layer. More column headings and graphs, this time modeling long term population growth and blood supply and demand. My stomach sank at the point where the graphs leveled out about a year from now. The point that had been tagged with bold red text.

  Repopulation Complete.

  “Baseless models,” Auckus said. “Without evidence, this is nothing but empty gesturing.”

  Glenbark silently swiped to the next layer.

  “Scud,” I heard myself whisper under Auckus’ far more colorful muttering.

  Glenbark spared us a stern glance before returning her attention to the array of images floating over the table. There were several rows of them, each clearly showing hybrid chambers, all clearly in different rooms—and not from the lab we’d destroyed yesterday. We watched silently as Glenbark swiped to the last layer.

  Nothing but two words. Good luck.

  “We need to call an assembly,” General Auckus said, his sneer having finally died for good beneath the weight of his very real concern. “And I feel the need to reiterate, High General, that a civilian has no business seeing this intel, regardless of his family history.”

  Maybe it was just the gravity of the findings in front of us, but he sounded slightly less insubordinate now that we weren’t in front of a crowd.

  Glenbark took a moment to think. “I agree,” she said, drawing surprised looks from both of us. “Which is why I’m declaring Citizen Raish an essential operations consultant, top security clearance, effective immediately. I’m also promoting Legionnaire Wingard to the role of personal servitor to the High General, also effective immediately. Witnessed?”

  “Consultant,” Auckus repeated, eyeing me with open skepticism. “Consultant on what, exactly? Small cell terrorism tactics?” He turned a steely glare her way, daring her to defend herself.

  Glenbark was unfazed. “I asked you a question, General.”

  Auckus sneered and started to say something, then thought better of it and shifted tactics. “You already have a servitor.”

  “And I’m taking another,” Glenbark said. “Witnessed?”

  “It doesn’t make you a hero, Freya, spitting in the eye of tradition and good sense time and time again.” The anger in Auckus’ expression cooled, and he shrugged. “But by all means, continue to ignore the lessons of history. I won’t argue if you insist on handing me your title and office by season’s end.”

  Glenbark smiled at him then—the first full smile I’d seen from her. It was beautiful, and terrible, and utterly without humor. “The lessons of history?” Her smile froze over. “You saw what happened at Oasis. You’ve seen what these creatures can do. Explain to me which part of the raknoth threat has any precedent in our illustrious history, General Auckus.”

  For a second, Auckus looked stumped. Then he snarled and practically spat out, “Fine. Witnessed. And may Alpha see to it that this mark the beginning of your end, High General.”

  “Call the assembly, Gregor,” Glenbark said, looking like she’d already forgotten he was there. “I need a private word with my consultant.”

  We sat silently until the door had hissed shut behind Auckus’ retreating form, at which point, Glenbark closed her eyes and let out a long, deep breath. For a second, she almost looked vulnerable. Which was fair enough, seeing as she’d just all but slapped General Auckus straight in the wrinklies. Even the High General wasn’t above punishment if the twelve generals unanimously decided she was failing to operate in the best interests of the Legion and Enochia.

  “Was that wise, sir?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Of course not.” She frowned at the door. “But less unwise than trying to explain what you’re really doing here to a man like Gregor Auckus. They’re slowly starting to understand that we’re dealing with something out of our depths here. The scudstorm at Oasis saw to that. But if I put it on the record that I’m counting on a kid with seventeen years to his name and a list of crimes longer than his arm, including heresy, to protect our people’s minds from alien telepaths…” She trailed off, shaking her head at the thought.

  “Well,” I said after a length of silence, “for what it’s worth, I’ll at least have eighteen years to my name if we’re all still here next Willowsday.”

  She looked at me like she’d just remembered I was sitting there, and Alpha be damned, she actually smiled a little. “Yes, that’ll be much better.” The smile faded, and she gestured at the matrix holo still floating above the table. “Let me worry about the politics, Haldin. We have bigger problems to address.”

  I studied those two words. Good luck.

  “Why did he send this? If any of it’s actually true…”

  “It might well be a scare tactic, as General Auckus originally said. Even if the intel is accurate, Parker gets to rattle our cages without handing us anything more actionable than the information that they can produce soldiers far faster than we can.”

  “That part rattles my cage just fine.”
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  “Oh, it’s certainly troubling,” Glenbark agreed. “But hardly surprising, given what we’ve already observed. The true question is what we do in response to this information.”

  “Which is?”

  “Beat him, hopefully,” Glenbark said, staring thoughtfully at the holo. “What is it he really shared with us here?”

  “That they’re expanding?”

  “I was thinking more along the line that they’re going to win if we don’t do anything. Which means at least one of three things, in my mind. Option one, Alton Parker wants us to spend weeks and extensive resources trying to hunt these facilities down, either because he’s buying time for something else or because he knows our attempts would be inconsequential. Option two, he’s hoping to frighten us into throwing everything we have at Oasis to break their stronghold before they can reinforce it, either because he knows that the effort would end in slaughter for us, or…” She frowned. “Or because he’s afraid their advantage won’t last indefinitely.”

  I found myself nodding along, thoroughly impressed by Glenbark’s analysis, until the last bit sparked an additional thought. “He did notice I was trying to cover Hound Company with my cloak back at Vantage. Maybe he’s worried we’re going to, well, you know, do exactly what you want me to do. Cloak the legions and storm Oasis.”

  Glenbark looked less than thrilled by the news.

  “So we either move on Oasis fast,” I added quickly, “or we figure out how to locate their breeding facilities and hit them all at once. Therese Brown and the other Vantage researchers might be able to work out some way to track them.”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me at all, lost in thought as she appeared to be.

  “Sir?”

  She blinked away whatever thought she’d been exploring and looked at me like she was suddenly wondering what had compelled her to share her analysis in the first place. Without explanation, she closed the tablet down and stood, turning for the door.