Echoes of War

by Cheryl Campbell

  “You’re a much better fighter than you were before.” Rowan stood and rubbed his sore wrist for a moment, then wiped at the blood on his face.

  Dani stood and tried to slow her panicked heart rate and breathing. She’d tricked Rowan into thinking she was a trembling mess after leaving the stretcher. Though it hadn’t been far from the truth, the deception had worked to land some good strikes against him. Still, this wasn’t a training session with Gavin. Rowan planned to end her life today—and, possibly, let her regen and do it again. He was a twisted fuck; he wouldn’t be satisfied with killing her just once.

  She placed her right hand on her hip, near her one remaining small blade, and kept focusing on slowing her breaths. Rowan’s eyes flicked around the room. They both ignored the continued banging against the window. Bits of glass broke away and rained down inside the room. Dani hoped she could stall Rowan long enough for the glass to fully break, but she wasn’t resting all her hopes on that plan.

  They moved in arcs, circling away from each other. Rowan pulled the knife that he’d used to cut open her sleeve from his belt and shifted as if preparing to charge her, but Dani wasn’t tricked by the feint.

  He shifted a second time, and this time he committed to the charge. Dani removed her own blade from its hiding place as she spun away, and she sliced his arm open as he moved past her. He didn’t flinch at the injury; he immediately attacked again.

  They slammed into medical equipment as they wrestled to free their wrists from one another’s grip. Dani used her small blade to cut into Rowan’s forearm. He loosened his grip, and she pulled her wrist free. He shoved her back into a wall and pushed his body against hers. As he did, she drove her blade into his neck—and he stabbed her in her right side with his knife.

  She shuddered when the blade penetrated her body. Severe pain registered in her mind, and she cried out and shoved him back.

  Rowan dropped his blade to use both of his hands to slow the blood pouring out of his neck. Dani leaned forward, clutching her side. Blood covered her hand, seeped through her fingers, and spattered onto the floor.

  “Bitch!” Rowan growled.

  More glass fell from the window, and both Mary and Miles shouted at her from above. Dani still couldn’t give them her attention. She remained focused on Rowan. The high-pitched whine of a quake rifle turned her attention to the Warden entering through the double doors. There was no time to duck before the blast struck her in the chest.

  “Curtis!” Rowan scowled. “Why did you do that? I had her.”

  “She’s not the one bleeding out of her neck.” Curtis fired his rifle at the man and woman screaming and banging on the glass above them. They dove aside as the glass exploded into the corridor around them. Curtis used one hand to yank med cart drawers open and remove contents. He used his teeth to tear open a few packages of bandages.

  Rowan watched to see if the man and woman returned to the window. No sign of them so far.

  “Grab the tape,” Curtis said.

  Rowan found the roll he’d used on Dani’s IV, and Curtis pressed the bandages against the wound on his superior’s neck. Rowan held the dressing in place with one blood-covered hand and unwound a length of tape with the other. Curtis took the tape and placed several wraps around the bandage and Rowan’s neck to secure it.

  “It’s tight,” Rowan said with a grunt.

  “Not nearly as tight as I want to wrap it, I promise. Besides, it’s just to keep you alive for a few minutes longer.” Curtis pulled Rowan toward the exit.

  Rowan resisted. “She’s an Echo. We have to take her.”

  “She’s a human corpse, Rowan. Look! I hit her in the chest with a goddamn quake rifle. No human survives that.” Curtis resumed herding Rowan out of the medical bay.

  “But—”

  “If she was an Echo, she’d be regenerating by now. Move!” Curtis gave him a violent shove.

  “Wait. She hasn’t aged a day since we first took Portland.”

  “You’re mistaken, Rowan.”

  “I’m not.”

  “We’ve lost the base, no thanks to you fucking around with your girlfriend down here instead of leading the counterattack. You’ve got about five minutes before you bleed out anyway. I already evacuated your family. You’re welcome.” Curtis shook his head.

  Rowan stared back at the med bay though the doors had closed. He felt dizzy; he stumbled. “I might pass out.”

  Curtis sighed. “If you do, I’ll carry you.”

  As soon as the Wardens were gone, Miles took Mary’s hands, helped her over the window’s edge, and lowered her into the room. She still had an eight-foot drop.

  She hit the floor boots first, rolled along her hip and side, then hopped back up to her feet. She pushed a stretcher over to shorten Miles’s longer drop. Once he landed, denting the stretcher with the impact, they went to Dani’s side. Mary rolled her to her back and pressed her fingertips against her neck.

  “She’s alive. I don’t know how, but she is.”

  Miles felt a mix of relief and terror. “Gavin, I need a medic for Dani, now!”

  “Air strike is inbound,” Gavin said.

  “Delay it. We’re in some sort of medical part of the base, and I don’t know how to get out of here.” Miles turned to Mary. “Do you have any idea how to treat her with anything in this room?”

  She shook her head.

  Miles scooped Dani into his arms. “Then we’ll just have to find our way out of here.”

  CHAPTER

  48

  Within a few hours of the Wardens abandoning the base, those that did not escape into the tunnels were captured or permanently killed. Some Wardens chose to terminate their own lives with grenades instead of surrendering. CNA ground troops had now arrived to relieve the troops who had mounted the initial attack, but Gavin refused to rest.

  He stood inside a field tent, staring at the map of the base on the table before him. He rubbed his eyes when his vision blurred. The attack plan had been solid until everything went wrong.

  Houston entered. When she looked up from her panel and saw Gavin standing there, she frowned. “I told you an hour ago to leave. I don’t care if you’re in your twenties again, you’re relieved.”

  “Where’s my replacement?” Gavin asked, bitterness in his voice. He waved his arms, highlighting the fact that no one else was inside the tent with them.

  “For a man that used to respect my position, you’re mighty defiant now.”

  Gavin looked away. “What’s the casualty count?”

  “High.” Houston tossed the panel to the table between them.

  Gavin stared at the device but didn’t pick it up.

  “Why the bullshit game, Gavin? You ask for the casualty count, but you don’t really want to know the answer, do you? Have anything to do with Dani needing surgery to put her back together?”

  “She’s tough; she’ll be fine.”

  “Will she? Will you?”

  Gavin tightened his jaw and lifted the panel from the table. He scanned the numbers, which kept ticking upward as the constant feed of data was relayed to Houston’s device. He dropped the panel back to the table with a clatter and passed his hand over his face. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. We took a damn beating, that’s for sure.”

  “What percentage were killed after the Wardens started fleeing the base?”

  “That’s the wrong question.”

  Gavin glared at Houston. “Don’t try your mind games on me.” She shrugged. “No games, just stating a fact. You’re asking the wrong question.”

  “How many died because I made you delay the air strike?”

  “Now we have the question you wanted to ask the first time.”

  “What’s the answer?”

  “It doesn’t matter. As field commander, all combat-related decisions, the right ones and the wrong ones, are mine. You begged for an air strike delay, and I agreed. You didn’t ‘make’ me do anything. We had key people inside the base who we needed
out before tearing the place to shreds.”

  Gavin shook his head and returned his attention to the map.

  “Go ahead and hang on to that guilt as long as you want. Take it to bed with you, let it eat at you, Gavin. It’s not yours to keep, but you’ll do what you want anyway. Right?”

  He didn’t answer her, and they both gazed at the map in silence for a few minutes.

  “What are you working on for new assignments?” Gavin asked.

  “In Maine?”

  “Outside of Maine.”

  “Before or after Dani is out of the hospital?”

  Gavin tensed, but said nothing.

  “So, you want to leave before she’s out. Your decision.” Houston shrugged. “You want a small team, or to work solo?”

  “Either is fine.”

  “I need recon to the north, west, and south, all along Maine’s borders, to identify any Warden outposts in the state. I’m planning to use the local fisherman along the coast to keep an eye on anything coming in from the east. I also want to start probing New Hampshire. Portsmouth is of interest, but we have some CNA presence already in the White Mountains—in Lincoln. I need someone to help organize the Brigands there.”

  “I’ll handle the Brigands. Send me to Lincoln. Enlist me as a CNA soldier so I can formally represent you.”

  “Enlist? You refused my offer before.”

  “I’m not refusing now.”

  “As a volunteer, I can put you where I want. If you enlist and become CNA, the brass above me can deploy you where they want. I may not be able to keep you on my assignments.”

  Gavin shrugged. “You’ll find a way to keep me if you want me, ma’am.”

  “Ah, back to the formalities now? God, you’re fickle.”

  “Just handle the goddamn paperwork, Catherine.”

  Houston chuckled at his outburst, which infuriated him more.

  “Gavin, you’re a mess. You’re exhausted and need to rest before making this kind of decision. Right now, you can’t even decide if we’re on a first-name basis or if you’re still acknowledging military protocol. I bet if I give you a few more flippant answers I can make you homicidal.”

  He took a deep breath. “I admit that I am tired, but I know what I’m doing. Put me in the CNA as a soldier, not a volunteer. Do it soon and give me my orders.”

  “You are certain?”

  He nodded.

  “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.”

  “Okay. I’ll give you want you want, now get the hell out of my tent.”

  Gavin saluted and left. He wanted to find a tent to rest in, but his feet carried him to the field hospital. CNA troops escorted Warden prisoners in I-cuffs away from the hospital toward a temporary brig. He hoped the prisoners would provide the CNA with some decent intel. He was desperate to know that the cost of this battle was worth something other than so many dead and wounded.

  He knew he must look terrible, because several of the staff he questioned regarding Dani’s location tried to triage him. He found Miles and Mary pacing outside one of the field hospital’s surgical tents and cradling mugs of coffee in their hands.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “Out of surgery and in a recovery area,” Mary said. “They only let us see her for a minute.”

  “She’s awake?”

  Mary shook her head. “It’s bad, Gavin. That fucking Warden got her good with the knife and the other one shot her right in the chest with a quake rifle. She shouldn’t be alive.”

  Gavin sighed.

  “Are you okay?” Miles asked him.

  “Yeah. I look like shit, but regen fixes the internal damage.” Most of it.

  “Knocked a decade or two off you, too,” Miles said.

  “When did you die?” Mary asked.

  “After the towers blew. Sewers collapsed right on top of us.”

  “You and Dani lied when you said you would be clear of the air traffic tower?” Mary asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And had me detonate on time.”

  Gavin nodded.

  Mary sighed and shook her head with disgust. “Great. So I almost killed Dani and did manage to kill you. You’re an asshole, Gavin.”

  He shrugged. “Not the first time I’ve been told that. Do they know when she’ll wake up?”

  “No,” Mary said.

  “We can’t continue to hover around here while she sleeps. In a few hours, we go back on duty to start clearing the areas around the base for any Wardens in hiding.” Gavin took Miles’s coffee from him. “You’re on the first rotation, so take your rack time now. Thanks for getting Dani out of the base alive.”

  Miles nodded and left.

  Gavin lingered. “Mary, I’ll be on patrols most of the time over the next few days, but send word on how she is when you have a break to check on her, will you?”

  Mary stared at him a moment. “Why wouldn’t you visit her yourself?”

  “I’m taking a new assignment from Houston, so I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’d leave before Dani woke up?”

  “If I’m ordered to go, yes.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “I will visit her, Mary. I want to be the one to talk to her before I go, okay?”

  “Absolutely. No way in hell would I want to deliver the news to her that you’re heading out of town right after she wakes up. I don’t know what’s up your ass or why you’d agree to an assignment like this, but that’s your problem. Don’t expect her to be happy.”

  Gavin nodded, his shoulders hunched.

  Mary finished her coffee and left.

  He considered drinking Miles’s leftover coffee but instead tossed the brown liquid into a snow bank, found a tent with an empty bunk, and collapsed into it. His body was so fatigued that even his guilt-stricken mind couldn’t resist the pull of sleep.

  CHAPTER

  49

  Dani stirred and reached for Brody. She opened her eyes when her hand instead touched something hard. Eight-inch-tall, white walls surrounded her upper body like a capsule; above her she saw only ceiling.

  Her first thought was that she was lying in a coffin. She twisted and reached for the side to climb out and gasped as pain shot through her side and chest. The coffin’s walls now blinked with tiny lights and beeped, but she kept her grip on the opening near her head, undeterred. Then Mary’s face appeared, and Gavin’s, and she relaxed a little.

  Mary touched her shoulder. “You’re fine.”

  “Where am I?” Dani asked. “What is this?”

  “You’re in a field hospital, and this is a healing pod,” Mary said.

  “Not a coffin?”

  “No, not a coffin. A Warden stabbed you in your side. You had major internal damage, and it took the surgeons hours to put you back together.”

  “I don’t like this pod thing.”

  “Tell me when to stop,” Mary said. She pressed a button somewhere, and the top part of the pod angled upward.

  Dani could now see more of the room, which decreased her feeling of claustrophobia.

  “That’s good,” she said. She winced as she released the pod’s wall to lie on her back again. She remembered getting stabbed in the ribs. She touched the center of her chest. “The last thing I remember is the whine of a quake rifle.”

  “Another Warden showed up and shot you in the chest with one.”

  Dani shook her head. “If that happened, I’d be dead—well, I’d be a ten-year-old kid, at least.”

  “You did your best to die, but Gavin threatened the medics with their lives if they lost you.”

  Gavin nodded. “Apparently wearing Warden body armor over two layers of Commonwealth armor helps you survive an almost point-blank quake rifle blast. We also learned that the newer Warden body armor can stop a plasma pistol. You had a hole in the back of your jacket.”

  “I didn’t know what he hit me in
the back with, other than it hurt like hell and I couldn’t move. Did those two Wardens escape?”

  “Yeah.” Gavin sighed. “After the airstrike, we went back in. We followed a shitload of blood before it stopped. I’m guessing the one you cut died, but his buddy with the rifle still got him out. By the time we unlocked the tunnels they’d used to escape, they were long gone.”

  Dani blinked a few times and realized how young Gavin appeared now. The wisps of gray in his hair were gone, and he smiled without any wrinkles. “I’m still mad you made you made me leave you dying in the sewers.”

  He shrugged. “It would’ve been a waste of time for you to stay with me until regen. You completely failed your mission to take out their secondary power source, of course … but you rescued a couple dozen kids from those psychopaths. All in all, not a bad day’s work.”

  “Rowan,” Dani said.

  Mary and Gavin glanced at each other.

  “What?” Mary asked.

  “Rowan was the name of the guy who stabbed me. He said we’d run into each other before, but I didn’t remember him. God, he wanted me dead—well, tortured first, then dead. He called for someone named Curtis to come to the med bay. I’m guessing he was the one with the rifle.”

  “Rowan was the one in charge of the base.” Gavin shook his head in disbelief. “Curtis was second-in-command. Jesus, Dani, what did you do to make the head Warden come after you like that?”

  “No idea.”

  “I’ll notify Houston,” Gavin said. “Some of the Wardens we captured may have more information on them.”

  “Where’s Miles?” Dani asked.

  “He’s in a different wing of the field hospital. The day after we took the base, we started clearing the area around Portland. He took a plasma pistol shot in the leg; the med teams are still putting his femur back together.”

  “He’ll be okay?”

  Mary nodded. “You’re both on the same transport back to Bangor to finish healing there. You leave tomorrow. We’re still digging through the base, but crews found Rosen, somehow still alive. She needs more surgery. Marcic, Jens, and Zykov didn’t make it.”

  “Rosen’s made of tough stuff.” Dani grimaced. “Man, we took a beating.”