Portal Jumpers

by Chloe Garner

  Jesse raised an eyebrow.

  “What did she get?” he asked.

  “A war.”

  “And the extinction of an entire species,” Jesse said.

  “Why would she do that?” Cassie asked. Jesse shook his head.

  “You saw her before.”

  “With Charm,” Cassie said.

  “A species on the verge of extinction,” Jesse said.

  “You think she’s seeking them out?” Cassie asked.

  “No, he thinks I’m causing them,” Mab said. Cassie turned. The woman was beautiful, with long legs and toned skin, but her eyes were so angry.

  “What are you doing?” Jesse asked.

  “Whatever I want,” Mab answered. “What dreary quarters they’ve got you in. I asked for worse.” She spun on her toe, then dropped to one knee, tucking the other knee under her chin.

  “Long time,” she murmured, staring at Jesse.

  “What are you doing?” Jesse asked again.

  “I’m going to leave soon,” she said, soft, a viperish warmth to her words. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

  “I’m sure they’ll miss you,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe next time we see each other, we can talk without your new pet,” Mab said, rolling her eyes toward Cassie. “Honestly, why her?”

  “What happened to you?” Jesse asked.

  Mab tapped his nose with her forefinger.

  “Long story,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Jesse asked. Cassie sighed.

  “I’m still working on that,” Mab said. She winked. “I’ll see you around.”

  She stood.

  “In here,” she yelled. “Where are their guards? I told you people to keep an eye on them.”

  Mab stormed out and Cassie slid over next to Jesse, watching Mab leave.

  “What is she talking about?” Cassie asked. Jesse shook his head.

  “I haven’t a clue. This isn’t like her.”

  “What? Evil mastermind? She seems to have it down.”

  Jesse laughed and nodded, chewing on his tongue at the back of his mouth.

  “It’s like she’s playing a character,” he said. “Trying to tell me something she can’t. She’s always been stubborn, but never angry like this.”

  “So this is the first species you think she’s tried to take out?” Cassie asked. She wasn’t sure where this was coming from, but actually coming at it head-on felt too intense.

  “I still can’t believe she would do it,” Jesse said. “She’d charge without thinking, sure, but never to destroy something.”

  “I guess you never know what people are capable of,” Cassie said. Jesse’s head jerked.

  “Don’t ever say that again,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking for a clue as to why, but finding none. “So what’s your history with her?”

  Jesse shook his head.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Romantic?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” he said. “We’ve just fought basically as long as we’ve known each other. I wasn’t expecting her to be cooperative. That would have surprised me. But she always leaves hints…”

  “Why did you do it?” an Adena Lampak charged, coming into the room. The wind kicked up, blowing cold drafts across the floor.

  “I admit my landing wasn’t great, but you were the one who threw me,” Jesse said.

  A crowd of Adena Lampak formed behind the first, pushing him into the room and swelling to fill the far end.

  “Kill them now,” someone called.

  “…Centralist traitors…”

  “…too much trust…”

  “…deserve worse…”

  Mab pushed through the crowd.

  “I chased them here,” she said. “I was too slow. I’m sorry.”

  “Why would they come back here?” a familiar voice asked. Benth. Cassie stood, trying to spot him.

  “Where else would they go?” Mab asked. “You cut off the rest of their escapes. All they can do is lie.”

  “What’s going on?” Cassie asked.

  “The Commander is dead,” Jesse said. The room silenced at a instant. Jesse uncurled himself from the floor, scanning the Adena Lampak for a moment, then resting on Mab. “You saw the whole thing happen and brought them here to punish us for killing him.”

  “No,” Mab whispered, smirking. She turned.

  “They’ve killed you, do you understand?” she asked the crowd, her voice raised well above where it needed to be for those in the hall to hear her. “My agreement was with the Commander. I have other responsibilities, and with him dead, I must go.”

  This caused a massive uproar that only quieted when Mab pointed.

  “They’ve brought about the end of your people, because the Url wanted to win the war.”

  There was a general motion forward, edging around Mab, and Jesse took Cassie’s hand. Mab held out both arms.

  “Wait,” she yelled, almost drowned out this time with the outraged noises coming from the Adena Lampak. “You can still win this war. In the end, you will lose everything either way, but this is what you must do to honor the sacrifices of the men and women who came before you, the memory of the Commander.”

  She grabbed the arm of one of the Adena Lampak nearest her.

  “Cartan, you are in charge now. You need to order the attacks. The plan is still good.”

  “We should speak privately,” the Adena Lampak answered. “They must be tried and punished, and you and I should speak. I would ask that you stay.”

  “I only came back because of the Commander. Other species are suffering because I am here and not there. You failed him, in failing to protect him, and there are other people who deserve my help more, now.” Mab turned to face Jesse, standing next to the Adena Lampak she’d called Cartan. “And the worst punishment you can offer them is to make them watch you annihilate the Url and the rest of the Centralists. End the war. Prove them wrong. Make these two watch.” Mab released Cartan’s arm and took a step away. “I must go.”

  She put her hand to her arm and as the Adena Lampak gasped dismay, she vanished.

  “We should kill them,” someone muttered.

  “Who was supposed to be guarding them?” Cartan asked.

  “They were my charges,” Benth said, stepping forward. Cassie shook her head.

  “We didn’t do it,” she said. “It’s a lie.”

  “The commander is dead,” Cartan said. “We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Someone killed him in the middle of his own army. I will hear your pleas another day.”

  He turned to face the rest of the Adena Lampak.

  “We continue with our plans. The Url’s deception will not go unpunished, even if there is no one left to save us, after. Benth, hand your command over to your subordinates. You will stay here and guard the two of them. If they are not here when we return, your life will end even before we begin our celebrations.”

  “You’re so sure you’ll win?” Jesse asked.

  “The end is near, Palta. You will watch our armies leave, and you will sit and await their return. The Url and the Centralists mourn their caretakers, but they have resumed life. We will teach them what war means to the Southerners.”

  “You’ve been fed a steady diet of disinformation,” Jesse said. “I can’t fix that in an hour, or even a day. Stay your plans and let me speak with you.”

  Cartan laughed.

  “You think we would trust an agent of the Url to replace our adviser? No. You are a murderer, and you will face punishment for it. Benth?”

  Benth stepped forward again.

  “This is the only charge remaining in your career. You have been a good soldier, but you will not go with us into this final fight. Do you understand?”

  “I do,” Benth said. Cartan nodded.

  “Good. Officers, marshal your troops. Send out the signal. We leave at dawn.”

  The preparations were elaborate. Even from the
little room off to the side of everything, though, it was apparent that this had been planned for some time.

  “Why now?” Cassie asked as she and Jesse sat quietly, watching through the gaps in the skins at the hosts of Adena Lampak as they arrived. Jesse glanced at her.

  “Keep talking.”

  “They have the commander’s murder as a catalyst, so today, tomorrow, or the next day, sure, you pick today. But why now, on a larger scale? I still don’t see how either side has the motivation to be an aggressor. They don’t want to take anything. The raids I get, but why launch an all-out attack?”

  “Random isn’t good enough for you?” Jesse asked. It sounded like a test. “Element of surprise?”

  “Yeah, that’s the why, but what’s the why under the why? Why leave so much ground exposed? They’re taking a huge risk, here. What is pushing them to do it?”

  “Fish swim, currents flow, tomorrow will be a different day,” Benth murmured.

  “Why do you think?” Jesse asked. Cassie shook her head.

  “Bad blood justifies a lot of death,” she said, quoting one of her favorite authors. “I don’t know that I know enough of the history of the war to be able to even guess.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Need more data,” he said. Cassie shrugged, smiling to herself.

  “Always.”

  “Good thing Benth here is willing to tell us all about it,” Jesse said. Cassie turned.

  “What?”

  Over the past hours, through the meals and the sleeping times, Benth had been as much a prisoner as they had been. More, really, because Jesse and Cassie could leave whenever they wanted to. Benth had to live with the realities of the world for the rest of his life. It made Cassie sad.

  The Adena Lampak had been largely silent, spending most of his time on his cot staring at the beams that stretched skins tight against the rain and the wind. He ate and he drank and he spoke occasionally, but never about anything of consequence.

  Jesse stood and stretched.

  “Fish swim, currents flow, tomorrow will be a different day,” he said. Benth looked at him with a resigned curiosity.

  “Sounds like something you tell a child,” Cassie said. Jesse nodded.

  “Those tend to be the things that have the most profound insights on how the world works,” Jesse said.

  “What am I missing?”

  “It’s about the tides,” Jesse said, going to sit on his cot. “And the seasons here.”

  “We don’t have seasons,” Benth said. Jesse whistled through his teeth, dismissive.

  “Of course you do. The fact that your axial rotation is perpendicular to your solar rotational plane just means they’re shorter.” Benth stared at the ceiling for a moment, then turned to face Jesse.

  “The tides here are seasonal,” Jesse said. “There’s some shift as the sand moves around the planet, so there are primary seasons and secondary seasons based on the shape of the rock in the planet’s crust, but the truism is talking about the primary seasons.”

  “Sounds like it’s talking about fish to me,” Cassie said. Jesse sighed.

  “Stubborn humans. The fish swim with the tides. The prominent oceanic currents change shape as the moons go around the planet. Tomorrow really will be different from today. They shape their hunting seasons around where the fish are going to be, where the water is going to bring them.”

  Jesse swung his legs up into his cot and scratched his head.

  “The real question is, what about the tides make a difference, now?”

  “They want to sack Calenna,” Cassie said.

  “There are no major currents through most of the central part of the planet,” Jesse said. “It’s too shallow.”

  “Then what changes?”

  Jesse rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his fist, looking at Benth.

  “It’s a very good question. What changes that makes this the time to launch an all-out attack now?”

  “Is it the caretakers?” Cassie asked. “Are they in danger?”

  It was the only thing she could think of that might have motivated the Commander to commit all of his troops to one last engagement.

  Benth was staring at the ceiling.

  “The predator wave,” Jesse said. Even to Cassie’s eyes, Benth flinched. Jesse nodded. “It’s coming for them, isn’t it? Random bad luck, after the first few years, but you had to know it would happen. Why can’t you move them?”

  “They won’t,” Benth growled.

  “What does that mean?”

  The look on Benth’s face broke Cassie’s heart, when the Adena Lampak finally looked over.

  “No harm in telling you now,” Benth said. “By light, it will all be done. We use their caves as a stopover for raids. We’ve all been there. No one told the Adviser because he was an outsider. At first they were like reunions. We brought supplies and food, and they were happy to see us. Then it changed. More than two years ago, they stopped welcoming us. The air walkers hid the caretakers away and fought us if we tried to find them. The Commander didn’t want to start a war against his own people, so he let it go. We will straighten it out after the war. They maintained the caves, so we had our outpost, and they defended themselves, and everything was okay…”

  “And then your current forecasts showed the predator wave going across the outpost, and you can’t get them to listen to you to move out of the way,” Jesse said. “It moved up the timetable.”

  “But the Commander’s dead,” Cassie said. “And the Adviser is gone. Why not just go get them? Whatever you would do after the war, why can’t you do that now?”

  “You would cancel the attack?” Jesse asked.

  “Me? No. I put in the planning work, this is the right timing, I’d do it. But I’m human.”

  Jesse snorted and Cassie shifted, looking hard at Benth.

  “But you are different. This wasn’t a war of acquisition or elimination. As much as the Commander spun it as a war against an oppressive power, this was about forcing them to align their interests with yours. It was to force them to help you survive.” She looked at Jesse. “Do they have an idiom that’s equivalent to burning bridges?”

  “Cutting fins,” Jesse said. Cassie opened her mouth, then hesitated and looked at Jesse again.

  “Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “When an Adena Lampak commits himself to life in air, he re-cuts his fins to make it easier to walk and exist in air. He’ll never swim again.”

  “That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”

  “No more than burning your bridges,” Jesse said. “Or your boats, which is, I assume, closer to what you were going for, anyway.”

  “Same thing,” Cassie argued.

  “Burning bridges has too many other ideas attached to it.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “It’s my language, not yours.”

  “I’m not impressed.”

  She looked back at Benth.

  “I understand you wanted to make it look like you were cutting your fins…” she looked at Jesse. “Is that the right use?”

  “Close enough,” Benth sighed.

  “When you really didn’t. That makes sense. But why push it so far? Why wouldn’t you take the time away from the war and save the one asset that might save your species?”

  “We couldn’t hatch eggs,” Benth said. “There’s no reason to believe that we could save ourselves by saving them.”

  “You had two choices,” Cassie said. “One that would lead you to try to fix the caretakers and one that would try to eliminate them. Why did you choose the one you did?”

  There was a long silence.

  “We did try,” Benth said.

  “And?”

  “Nothing changed.”

  “How long did you try?”

  “Half a year,” Benth said.

  “And that justified spending, what, two and a half years trying to replace them?” Cassie asked.

  “We were making progress,”
Benth said. “With each tide, they came closer to hatching eggs.”

  Jesse stood, waving his hand dismissively.

  “False progress to ensure you’d keep doing what you were told,” Jesse said. “Cassie asked the right question, though. Why aren’t you going to rescue the caretakers? Why does that depend on winning the war first?”

  “False progress?” Benth asked, sitting up, his body taut. “I’ve spoken to those who saw the infants. They were real. They were whole. They saw them. How dare you?”

  “I have no doubt you made some real scientific breakthroughs to get where you did, but I guarantee Mab kept you on a path that was carefully regulated to ensure that you kept working and didn’t question whether or not you should revisit trying to hatch eggs successfully with caretakers. It was staring you in the face. Why could Calenna still hatch them when you couldn’t? The hope kept you from answering the question. You need to tell me why you have to win the war first, Benth. It’s important.”

  “You accuse our Adviser,” Benth said. “How would he be able to do such a thing?”

  “He’s Palta,” Jesse said. “Why do you have to win the war?”

  Benth stood, turning away.

  “You killed the Commander. I will not answer your questions.”

  “I would never do that,” Jesse said.

  “I would,” Cassie said, standing to face Benth. The Adena Lampak turned. She nodded. “You know I would. If this were my war and those were my orders. Obviously he would say that he wouldn’t,” she said, motioning to Jesse. “He’s a diplomat and a scientist. If he wouldn’t do it, he would say he wouldn’t. If he would do it, he would say he wouldn’t. Soldier to soldier, I wouldn’t have hesitated to put a knife into your Commander’s gut and split him in half. But this isn’t my war. I think your people are beautiful and intelligent and tragic, but I don’t think that killing the head of an army is going to stop the war. I know armies too well. It’s just going to make things worse. The person who killed your Commander wanted the war to continue. He wanted you to launch the attack that’s coming. Nothing could motivate me to want that.”

  “You accuse the Adviser yet again,” Benth said. “The one who helped us the most.”

  “There are exactly two ways to look at Mab,” Cassie said. “Either he was exactly what he said, and always told the truth, or he wanted to exterminate your species and never spoke anything but lies. If the Adviser told the truth, then one of us killed your Commander in a poorly-planned attempt to hamstring your side of the war. I might go so far as to call it stupid. If the Adviser lied, he killed the Commander himself and left, giving you fresh reason to attack.”