The Exalting

by Dan Allen

  Tyrus had no idea what she had been through. He hadn’t run for his life. He hadn’t felt Sindar’s touch as he died.

  They’re counting on me, Dana thought. I can’t just ignore their plight. I have to return the stone.

  And then what? Return to Norr?

  Within her pocket, Dana fingered the bloodstone in its pouch. This was a curse, yes. But also a chance, a call.

  “Dana—”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “Not until you admit you were stealing from the trappers.”

  She had almost died, and all he cared about was proving her wrong. He was her brother. Didn’t he care about her?

  “You want to know what really happened in the forest?” Dana gripped her spoon like a weapon. “I was hunted. I ran for my life. I was choked and pinned to the ground by a warlock. He tried to shoot me with an arrow!”

  Her parents looked as though they couldn’t decide whether she was being completely irrational or whether they thought she was seriously traumatized.

  Tyrus narrowed his eyes. “A warlock adept in the forest tried to kill you? Why?”

  “Because I’m powerful.” It was mostly true. Her abilities had led her to Sindar. No druid in Norr could sense an animal’s pain half a mile away. No druid Dana had ever heard of could do that.

  “What were you doing in the forest?” Tyrus asked.

  “Trying to save someone he had shot.”

  “Did you tell this to the chancellor?” her father asked. His face was ashen. Her mother gripped a hand towel with both hands. Her sifa trembled.

  “Of course I didn’t,” Dana said.

  “Why not?” Tyrus demanded. “If there’s a killer in the province—”

  “Because I killed him!”

  Her dad’s expression turned to totally incredulous. How could his daughter do something like that?

  Dana could scarcely believe she had said it. But the truth was there, boiling within her, desperate to get out. Killing someone, even to protect herself, was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was like she was being eaten from inside by her perfect memory of it. Perhaps it wasn’t so much a confession as it was a plea for understanding.

  Her answer was silence. Were they afraid—or just confused?

  “They were coming for Togath,” Dana added.

  Her mother put a hand to her mouth, as if she were about to say something.

  Ah. There it is. There was a reason Sindar was trying to find her grandfather, and her mother knew it.

  “Why did grandpa leave Shoul Falls?” Dana demanded. “Why were they looking for him?”

  Her father raised a hand to wave off her mother’s answer. “I’m afraid we can’t explain that.”

  They were always shutting her out. How could not knowing protect her?

  A sense of finality settled over Dana. She could never come sifa-to-sifa with them, not completely.

  “I know more than you think,” Dana whispered. She looked at her mother and then her father, hoping her bluff would loosen their lips.

  Tyrus inclined his head. It was obvious he wanted to know as well. “Then you tell us. Why did Togath come to Norr?”

  Dana couldn’t answer.

  He shrugged at Dana’s silence. “See, she’s making stuff up again.”

  After all that, he was just blowing her off—after everything she had said.

  “Did I make this up?” Dana drew the pouch with the stone out of her pocket and slammed it on the table. She placed both hands on either side of the precious object, making sure nobody would attempt to take it.

  Tyrus turned his hands up. “Wow. It’s great, Dana—what is it, a rock?”

  Dana’s eyes turned first to her mother, then her father. “It was brought from Shoul Falls by a dying kazen. You tell me.”

  Silence . . . and fear flickering in her parents’ eyes.

  “Well I know what it is.” Dana shoved the shrouded bloodstone back into her pocket and ran out of the house.

  Her father called frantically, dashing after her to the door.

  Dana turned, all three rows of sifa flaring in rage. “I don’t belong here. And I can’t stay any longer. I’m putting you all at risk.”

  “Let her go.” Her mother’s voice was drenched with emotion, a desperate sort of finality. This day had been a long time coming.

  “But Marit, if that—”

  “It’s not our concern, Romus.”

  “But she’s our child.”

  Their arguing voices faded as Dana ran down the street. Her resolve solidified the farther she ran.

  I’m not coming back.

  Chapter 8

  Jet searched the forest for any path of escape. The Talaksian between him and his team dripped with the acid sweat that only ran when its body was superheating for a berserker attack.

  “Oh boy.”

  “Let me at it!” Dormit charged at the orc from behind.

  “Dormit, get clear. That creature will tear you apart!” Yaris called.

  “He may be bulletproof,” Dormit said, “but his bones aren’t laced with iron. Geronimo!”

  The orc spun and backhanded the charging dwarf that was only half its size.

  Jet winced at the blow that would have left a human unconscious, or possibly in more than one piece.

  Dormit rolled twice and came up on his feet. He screamed a challenge in Wodynian that was apparently rather vile because Angel said, “Oh my. That is rather inappropriate.”

  The orc leapt and came down at the much smaller dwarf with a hammer-fisted blow, intent on pounding him into the ground.

  But this time Dormit was ready. He swung his fist at the same time, meeting the orc’s blow knuckle-on-knuckle.

  The crack was so loud, Jet could almost feel it. “Holy angels of the Zion!” Jet cried. “He just broke its hand.”

  The orc reared back, screaming as it cradled its arm.

  Growing up on a planet with more than twice Earth’s gravity gave the Wodynians exceptional bone density. The Talaksian may as well have tried to punch a rock.

  The orc swung its gargantuan leg and kicked at Dormit, who ducked the blow and launched into a kamikaze headbutt to the orc’s groin.

  Dormit’s helmet cracked. The orc staggered back and roared in pain.

  Jet put a bullet in its open mouth.

  The orc fell. It hit the ground limp. It was the kind of deadeye shot that would earn bragging rights in any squad. But after what Dormit had just done, it seemed a little anticlimactic.

  “Enough playing around. Let’s go.”

  “Hold on a second.” Dormit teetered, with one hand on the ground for balance. “Just getting my bearings.” He pushed to his feet and shook his head. “That’s worth a round at the saloon—I just bested an orc in a fist fight!”

  “You done good, pardner.” Jet said, obliging the dwarf’s fetish with Old Western sayings. He waved his team into a stand of high, tree-like ferns. “The landing zone is this way. Time to lay down the law.”

  The three marines spread out and then charged through the massive ferns.

  With the enemy’s main force focused on preventing the dropship from landing, Jet rushed into the enemy’s position from behind. In a blaze of firepower, the trio decimated the entrenched fighters.

  Whatever attackers weren’t killed by Dormit’s heavy machine gun, or Yaris’s flamethrower, fled into the jungle.

  The remains of Gamma squad converged into the wide clearing, supporting Jet’s tentative hold on the landing zone.

  “Where’s Delta squad?” Jet asked.

  “Where do you think?” the Gamma leader said, wiping blood from his visor. “Let’s get this done.”

  The dropship wasted no time in descending into the hastily secured landing zone.

  “Trouble,” Angel announced, highlighting a human leaning out from behind an oversized fern. The soldier raised a shoulder-mounted missile tube.

  Jet squeezed off two rounds, letting Angel guide the bullets with
microfins. One round dropped the human; the other, a nonlethal “fudge” round, exploded in a quick-setting foam that ensured the missile wouldn’t get out of its tube.

  When three enemies burst from the trees, Jet was hard pressed to stop them with a sustained fully automatic burst that emptied his clip.

  He was holding his ground, but the rate he was expending ammo was worrisome.

  Angel seemed to be thinking the same thing. “I could possess one of those enemy turrets with a subroutine.”

  “If that’s how you get your kicks.” Jet found the turret’s datacom port and jacked in. He crouched as Angel reprogrammed the turret.

  Five tortuous seconds later his tacnet lit up with targets now in range.

  “Go, Angel!” Jet’s eyes selected targets as quickly as her cloned defense subroutine threw down a hail of bullets at the regrouping enemy forces.

  But a well-placed enemy round jammed the turret’s magazine.

  “We’ve got a sniper,” Dormit warned, before a high-velocity round cored his chest armor and the brave marine fell back.

  “No!” Jet rolled behind a rock and searched his AI’s view of the world. But the sniper was outside his sensor range.

  Jet beat the ground with his fist. Not Dormit. Not Dormit.

  Anger coursed through him as the dropship extended its landing feet, its landing turbines throwing up clouds of dust. The dropship had landed. The mission would succeed—almost. Gamma team would lead the High Councillors from their hidden bunker back to the landing zone, but then the sniper would take them out like ducks in a pond.

  Jet met Yaris’s dark brown eyes. They would have to work together.

  Jet motioned toward the jungle, and Yaris moved out.

  The enemy sniper had only made one mistake. They had taken out Dormit when Jet was watching.

  He knew which direction the shooter had fired from. Yaris was already headed that way, attempting to draw the sniper’s fire.

  Jet unclipped his rifle and inspected the barrel. He leveled it, set the foot, and put his eye to the scope.

  “Come on, Yaris. Move.”

  The elf ran with a speed that defied even the fastest human athletes, racing through the jungle like a deer in flight. Bounding off boulders and swinging from the occasional branch, the Caprian made a decidedly difficult target.

  “One shot. Take it.”

  Jet hated the words. He was urging the sniper to shoot at his friend. But he needed that shot.

  Jet scanned the treetops.

  Muzzle flash flickered from a rocky outcropping that rose above the trees. One breath later Yaris’s body twisted, and the sound of the shot cracked in Jet’s ears.

  Shoulder wound—he’s alive.

  Automatically, Jet leveled his rifle in the direction of the muzzle flash and quickly centered the sniper in his scope. He dialed in the range and let the wind compensation settle. It was not an impossible shot by any means, but it would be nearly two seconds before for his high-caliber round found its target.

  Then Angel pointed out something interesting, highlighting the irregularity of the target’s thermal signature.

  It wasn’t human. It was a simuloid. That complicated things. A simuloid robot was fast enough to dodge a bullet at that range.

  Then Jet noticed the glossy black rock behind the sniper. Bingo.

  Without changing the target, he selected a high-explosive round, sighted a tree twenty feet to the right of the sniper, and squeezed off the shot.

  “Bend baby, bend.”

  Jet’s sniper rifle was not, in fact, a rifle at all. Its barrel was smooth, which meant the bullet wasn’t spinning. It could turn thanks to microfins.

  In the two seconds that the bullet had to reach the target, several things happened.

  The self-guiding round attempted to course correct, bending toward the target.

  But the sniper dodged and spun in the air, twisting away from the shot to expose its well-armored back to Jet, should he fire additional rounds.

  However, Jet’s aim was deliberately too far off. The high-explosive round merely slammed into the rock several feet to the target’s right, sending out a storm of sharp, obsidian-like shrapnel in its shock wave.

  Tacarmor was designed to stop bullets with a self-locking polymer weave. The inner layer was airtight but was easily punctured by objects smaller than the bulletproof weave could stop.

  This kind of rock conducted electricity. Jet had been on the receiving end of a more than one faeling prank using the conductive rock.

  With hundreds of simultaneous electrical shorts overloading its system, the enemy simuloid began jerking erratically. Then a thick, black smoke began to rise from its body. The power supply had just hit thermal runaway.

  Scratch one sniper.

  Yaris, clutching his shoulder, began a pained jog back to the landing zone.

  Jet dragged Dormit’s heavy body toward the dropship, the weight on his heart even heavier.

  As he neared the dropship, Gamma team and the dregs from the other decimated squads led seven of the High Councillors from their underground bunker.

  “All clear?” Jet asked as a marine shepherded the elderly High Councillors up the dropship’s loading ramp.

  “One more.”

  Jet turned to see a marine emerged from the bunker, walking backwards, gun raised at some unseen target.

  The name appeared on his tacnet: Monique.

  She survived!

  Wessca called in on the tacnet. “What’s going on?”

  Monique answered. “Sir, the last High Councillor has been taken hostage.”

  “Crap.” Jet dropped Dormit’s body on the open landing hatch and ran toward the bunker entrance.

  Emerging from the shadows was a human girl—a teen—clearly of Indian Asian descent.

  Eyes wide in horror and trembling hands raised, she stepped forward.

  Behind her emerged the twin-horned head of a Dayali.

  Its red skin glinted in the light of the tropical sun. Its smile revealed sharp teeth, but no sharper than the spine of its long, whip-like tail embedded at the base of the young High Councillor’s neck.

  “We have kids on the High Council?” Jet said.

  “Shut it, Naman. She’s the High Seer,” Captain Austin barked over the tacnet. “We can’t leave without her.”

  “She’s what?”

  “One shot and she dies,” cried the Dayali, its sibilant accent dripping with cruelty. “My sting will kill her the moment I’m attacked.”

  It was true. A small knot of nerves at the base of his spine ran the tail. It was a quasi-independent appendage, as the Dayali often claimed when accused of impropriety.

  “Drop your weapons—now! Or she dies. Three. Two. One—”

  The soldiers in the landing zone set down their guns.

  Jet tossed his rifle aside.

  But not casually. It was a deliberate throw that sent the barrel spinning.

  “Now, Angel.”

  The AI, tracking the spin of the rifle, took the shot.

  The Dayali screamed as the bullet severed its tail near the stinger.

  The girl collapsed forward, and Jet charged at the devil, only to see it knocked down by a hail of bullets from the landing pad.

  Jet recognized the sound of Yaris’s sleek semiautomatic sidearm, a custom piece.

  “Thanks, Yaris.” Jet crouched to lift the High Seer. Throwing the girl over his shoulders, he fell into the protective cover of Gamma squad’s four remaining marines.

  The dropship was in the air before the landing hatch was even closed.

  “Jet,” Angel toned. “A standard ascent trajectory will put us right in the middle of ASP’s fleet.”

  “What do I do?”

  “Get me to the bridge.”

  “And get court-martialed,” Jet mumbled, “ . . . again.” He left the High Seer in the care of Gamma squad and ran to the bridge.

  “A plan would be good,” Captain Austin said as the dropship acceler
ated. “They’ve probably already launched an orbital strike on our position—marine, you need something?”

  Jet read from the text Angel ran across the inside of his helmet. “Use those high-altitude clouds to the north for cover and plot a polar ascent that puts the two nearest interdictor frigates in each other’s firing lines. By the time we’re clear, our vapor plumes should shield us from their fleet lasers.”

  “That just might work,” Gauss said. “Course plotted.”

  “Let’s hope the ASP ships aren’t crazy enough to shoot at each other,” Jet breathed.

  The High Seer struggled onto the bridge. “That devil got the location of Xahna,” the girl whispered. “I couldn’t keep it from him.”

  “Their venom starts to take over your mind,” Austin said. “He’s dead now. Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, he radioed it to someone in orbit.”

  “Crap,” Jet said. “Then we really gotta move.”

  “Thankfully, the ASP fleet isn’t ready for departure,” Captain Austin noted. “They only just arrived to declare the extermination order and demand Avalon hand over the location. Now they’ll have to wait for the surface radiation to cool down a few weeks before they can collect enough tritium from the oceans to refuel.”

  “They killed the planet,” the girl whimpered. “They killed Avalon!” She erupted in a wail. “Just as I saw they would. Just as I saw . . .”

  The girl broke down in tears.

  “Get her in cryo with the others,” Captain Austin said.

  A Gamma squad soldier led the weeping girl off of the bridge.

  “Gauss, punch it!” Captain Austin ordered. “Tell the fleet we’ve got the High Council—all of them.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The strap-on transorbital boosters roared like thunder, tripling gravity as the ship rocketed upward.

  From his helmet display, Jet read a text broadcast to the crew from Gauss. The fleet had finished their high-g gravity boost around the Avalonian star and was already on course for Xahna.

  Angel gave a sigh of relief. “So, they faked a fleet-level engagement with ASP to give us time to get the High Council. That was clever. By the way, where did you find the power cell to run my program? They confiscated your last one.”

  “Just found it,” Jet said. “Nobody was using it.”