Wandering Storm

by Steven Anderson

  “It’s not betrayal when you’re doing the right thing.” I had had enough of Colonel Gerbrandij for the night.

  “Oh, yes it is. You have a lot to learn about trust and loyalty, Lieutenant. I needed their deaths, and yours, to stop the Puca’s plan for Kastanje. Regrettable, but a damn small price to pay.” He took a couple of steps toward me, Colin following.

  “I’m the one fighting what the Puca want,” I screamed at him.

  “Really? They showed me how I could keep the provisional government weak and the factions fighting each other. I could make myself powerful in the process, playing one against the other while thousands suffered and died. Just like you’re doing. But in the background of their thoughts I could see how to prevent it, how the right person could bring everyone together and stop the slaughter. Kastanje could have peace again. I vowed to stop them, no matter the cost.”

  “They showed me a vision of one person ruling this planet, crushing the factions, and becoming a fascist dictator. Just like you’re doing. I could decide how the people would live, and they would worship me for restoring order and making their lives better. For refusing, they did this to me.” I held up my arm.

  “You? You running the planet and being worshiped?” He laughed. “I admit that it’s dangerous to underestimate you, but damn…I think they might have been lying to you.” He said it as if he was talking to a child.

  I blushed, embarrassed and angry. “They lied to both of us and played us against each other. More chaos. More pain. More food for the Puca.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  A siren started warbling in the distance.

  “Ms. Weldon, how do you want to play this with the local police?” Kal asked. He was completely calm now, but his rifle was still tracking Colonel Gerbrandij. Colin was back to sniffing things on the sidewalk.

  “Colonel?”

  Gerbrandij frowned at the two corpses. “These two men were assigned by the Provisional Government for my protection. It turns out they were members of the Slak faction. With your help, Sergeant, Lieutenant Holloman and I were able to fight them off when they attempted to kidnap us. Does that sound convincing to you?”

  “That should cover it if they don’t dig too deep. The loss of the Orageux was sabotage by the same group?”

  “Why not? We may need to find a scapegoat or two up there to pin it on, but that–”

  “The hell you will,” I protested. “No one else is going to die tonight. We’ve lost the Captain and Winona. Am I the only one who cares about that?”

  “Don’t pretend that you’re squeamish, Lieutenant.” He pointed at the man I’d killed. “And I saw what you did to Costrano.”

  Kal was frowning, face frozen and cruel, like I was responsible for Winona’s death. He addressed the Colonel, but his eyes never left me. “Creatures like the Puca that Costrano had with him have been breeding her family for centuries. And her husband’s. They feed on human emotions and hers are stronger and more extreme than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  “Good God. And she’s pregnant with the next generation? I’m surprised you don’t keep her in a cage.”

  I glanced at Mom, maybe now she’d finally shoot him. She was watching me, her emotions closed.

  “The ones that I know are called Merrimac, and they’re good,” I told him. “They help people and they only want what’s best for us. Merrimac is my friend, and I’m proud of what he’s done to my family, and of my part in keeping it going.”

  Silence, even from Mom, the three of them staring at weird Mala Dusa. “I want to go back to the shipyard now and try to find Winona.” I turned to Kal. “Come with me. We can’t just let her fall through the atmosphere and be a pretty streak of light for a few seconds.”

  “Why not? I think she’d like that.”

  The sirens were getting closer.

  “Colonel?” Mom had the gun she’d taken from me pointed at him. About time. “I’m afraid you won’t be here when the police arrive. I really must insist that you come with me. The Sergeant and my daughter can tell them the story of your kidnapping. I have a transformable waiting for us nearby.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  She held the gun out to me and I reached for it eagerly.

  “Fine. I’ll go, for all the good it will do you. Your frigate has been destroyed and it will be a week before the Union can respond. If you’re here to support reunification, you should come with me.”

  She pulled the pistol back before I could take it from her. “We’ll talk for a couple of days and then see where things stand. You’ll be well treated if you cooperate and refrain from trying to kill anyone else that I love.”

  “Can I have him back when you’re done with him?” I asked. The dark hum of the Puca was back and I knew she was feeling it too. I didn’t want to shoot him anymore. That would be too quick even if I was careful.

  “Time will tell. Colonel? This way please.”

  I called after her. “Mom, what am I supposed to do? Is Sam with you? What about Dad?”

  “You’re a big girl. Figure it out.” She slipped away down a narrow alley between the buildings.

  I turned to Kal. “I hate it when she does that.” Colin looked up at me for a second and then started licking the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE SHADOWS

  I did OK for the first few minutes, still so angry with my mom that nothing else was penetrating. Kal wasn’t talking. His attention was on the sky, watching the occasional steak of light. The street was deserted even though we were only a block and a half away from the Fourth Street café where I’d had dinner. The siren that had been getting closer stopped and I shivered, coming down off the adrenaline high. Clouds were moving back in, moving low and fast across the sky, and it smelled like rain.

  I looked up and down the street. “I don’t see a car or anything, do you?”

  Colin was back to full alert, keying off the tension I could see in Kal’s eyes. “There. At the end of the block.”

  A large black truck had stopped eighty meters away, blocking the intersection.

  “Kal? I feel like I want to run. Should we run?”

  A second vehicle pulled into the intersection, drove over the sidewalk, and started towards us, moving slowly. Kal looked at me as if it was my fault, as if everything was my fault. “Sure. Where would you like to go? Do you know your way around the city? Have friends that live close by?”

  “How did you and Colin get here? You must have had transportation.”

  He was busy tapping on his display pad. “Ms. Weldon. She picked us up. Camp Schaarsbergen, the KDF facility where we’re garrisoned, is over ten klicks away.” He sighed and when his eyes came back to mine I knew something else must be my fault. “We have six joint patrols out right now and none of them are responding. The KDF has locked down the Camp and our barracks is without power. No one else has lost power.”

  “The Puca are moving tonight. I feel them. They’re angry because things are not going as they expected.”

  “Oh, really? You mean this could be worse?”

  “It is worse. They’ll try to take us all out tonight. I hear them whispering. We have to get to the hospital. Our shuttle is there. I want to grab Hurtado and Kim and get the hell out of here.”

  “And how far is that?”

  “About five kilometers. Maybe six. That way.” I pointed back toward the café. “I think. Run?”

  “Oh, what the hell.”

  There was shouting behind us. We covered fifty meters before the first shot.

  “They’re shooting at us,” I panted. Colin looked up at Kal.

  “Not yet, boy. Warning shot.”

  Eighty meters. The heat from the plasma scorched my right ear a split second before the blue flash passed me. “Close.”

  Kal turned and fired behind us, only losing a half s
tep. “Damn it. I was on patrol with those guys two days ago. We need to get off the street.”

  “Café. That one, right there.”

  The owner of The Fourth Street Café, Mr. Hoffner, didn’t seem surprised to see me. “Sir.” I was almost crying. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ja, the Colonel, he is not the man I once knew. I saw it right off. His eyes have lost their spark.” He wiped his hands on his apron, looking me up and down. There was blood splattered on my uniform. “Did you have to…”

  “No, no. He’s fine. For now. He’s still a good man. I’m sure of it. He lost his family, you know. His wife and daughter were both killed, and after that–” Kal shoved me hard in the back. “I’m so sorry. We need to leave. I wish I could tell you more. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  I stumbled through the doorway, past the startled diners and out the back emergency exit. It was raining again.

  “Colin. Guard.”

  I looked back as we ran. “How long will he stay there? How will he find us?”

  “He’ll buy us as much time as he can.”

  “And then he’ll follow us?”

  No answer, just the steady splashing of our feet in the alley.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Colin was guarding the door, ready to attack anything that came through it.

  “You can’t leave him there. He’ll die.”

  “It’s what he’s trained to do. He dies. We live.”

  I turned again, getting a last look at him with ears up and the very tip of his tail slowly wagging while he waited.

  “Winona. My Captain. My ship. Now Colin.” There were Puca nearby. I could feel their joy at my pain, black laughter skittering around in my head. They were following us, feeding as we ran. “I’ll kill them all, Kal. Every one of them. No matter how long it takes.”

  “Who?”

  “Puca. They’re doing this. It’s all their fault.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  We slowed to a walk after we’d covered two or three kilometers. We were a couple of blocks over from Fourth Street, working our way through an alley full of trash bins and big-eyed little creatures hiding in the shadows. The rain had diminished to a warm mist.

  “I loved her so much, Kal. More than life. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “You and the plan. She loves you too. More than can be explained or understood, if that makes you feel any better.”

  “Worse. She wasn’t supposed to die.” I stopped. “Kal, I want you to go on to the hospital and get Hurtado and Kim. Get them back up to the Hoog Schelde Yards. You’ll all be safe there. I’ll stay here and find a way to wherever my mom is hiding. Sam’s probably there too.”

  “So that’s part of the plan now? You staying here to slow down the guys that are chasing us so I can escape?”

  “I don’t know. I only see the plan as it’s happening. Then it’s like, that was part of the plan, or that wasn’t part of the plan.”

  “You don’t know the plan.”

  I shrugged. “They showed it to me, but I didn’t understand it. Winona would have, but not me. I don’t think the way they think. It’s all tangled and…she wasn’t supposed to die, I know that much. Maybe it’s broken now. I’ll stay here and wait for the guys chasing us, or the Puca, or whoever shows up. You go save some people.”

  “What about Sam?”

  “He’s still blocking me even though he promised he’d never do that again. That’s how I know he’s with my mom. She turns him so easily. She twists everyone. It’s a gift.” I leaned against a brick wall. “You go. I’ll be fine.”

  “Is that an order, Lieutenant?”

  I blinked at him. The idea that I could give Kal an order seemed strange. “Yes, Sergeant. That’s an order.”

  He sat down on a pallet full of boxes. “Winn gives me orders sometimes, but it’s usually to do something I want to do anyway. She warned me that you might get this way. So, no, ma’am, I will not leave you. She ordered me to protect you, and that’s what I’m going to do. She’d kill me if I left you here in some dark, damp alley.”

  I rubbed my watch, wanting to touch the lock of hair under the band. “It’s like I can still hear her.” Tears started to form and I pushed them away. “I don’t know what to do without her. I’m slowing you down and wasting time we don’t have. Please, go on without me.”

  He sighed. “Always the princess. Always the drama. Here.”

  He handed me his comm pin and I slipped it over my ear. “So I can call you later?”

  “No, idiot. Winona. Call Winona.”

  “Um, Winn is…” I trailed off as Kal crossed his arms and glared at me, his head tipped. “Winona? Are you with me?”

  There was a couple seconds delay and then her voice came to me along with a hiss of static from a jammer somewhere nearby. “Duse, tell me you’re not sitting in the rain weeping because I’m dead. You have too much to do to be indulging yourself like that.”

  “Are you really Winona or are you a Winona AI?”

  “Funny. I should let the Puca have you.”

  “I almost died tonight.”

  “I saw. Why are you still doing that stupid drop and roll thing to change positions? You’d be dead now if Colin hadn’t taken out the other shooter.”

  “You were there?”

  “Red dress.”

  “I saw you! I should have recognized your legs. I’ve followed them enough times when we were running the trails at the Academy. Who were you locking lips with? That was really convincing.”

  “Um…”

  “Tell Samuel that he’s a dead man.”

  “Don’t worry. He’s a pretty good kisser, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was totally focused on you.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I just sent the coordinates to your display pad, you should have them–”

  The ding sounded over the comm link. “Oops.”

  “You gave your pad to Colonel Gerbrandij?”

  “He took it from me! It wasn’t like I had a choice. Don’t tell my parents. They always get so unreasonable when I break or lose the damn things. Send the coordinates to Kal.” I sighed. “Damn it, Winn. Why did you let me think you were dead? Do you know what that did to me?”

  “It was Hannah’s idea, and I saw what it did to you. I thought Sam might die from the pain you were in. Hannah was trying to hide us from the Puca. Sam and I can block pretty well, but you broadcast loud enough that they can probably hear you all over Kastanje.”

  I gasped. “Of course. I see it. I see the next step. We’re back on plan.”

  “Wonderful. What are you seeing?”

  “All the Puca in one place. Thousands of them in Oranjestad, all of them chasing me. It’s so perfect.”

  “Then what?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve got to get to the hospital and rescue Hurtado and Kim first, and then we’ll be on our way to you.”

  I pulled the comm pin from my ear and tossed it back to Kal. He tossed it right back. “Keep it. I have a couple of spares. The new ones are so delicate that I keep breaking them in half. I’d like to meet the guy that certified them for combat.”

  I slipped it back over my ear.

  “OK, princess, are you ready to run some more?” He was back on his feet.

  “I am the wind.”

  An hour later, I was ready to admit that we were lost. Kal’s display pad was dependent on the Esprit Orageux for ground navigation, and our comms with Winona and Sam were being jammed. Without the ship, we were blind and our path to the hospital had turned into a labyrinth as we neared the center of Oranjestad. The orderly grid of parallel and perpendicular roads had given way to curved streets that changed names every block.

  “Kal, I don’t know where we are.” We were sheltering in the entryway
of an office building while another rainsquall moved through the city.

  “It doesn’t matter. We have bigger problems. Look,” he pointed. “See there? One of the sensors we gave the KDF is mounted on that light pole, and another one is on the corner of the building above where the bricks change color.”

  “I see them.”

  “The KDF knows where we are, but that’s not the worst of it. There, in the shadows under that bush, eyes watching us while they stay out of the rain. Friends of yours?”

  “I feel them. Hungry. Eager. They’re planning to kill me. And you. They want to wait for the right time and they want to do it in the right way.” I shivered even though it wasn’t cold. “Do you feel them?”

  “Crawling around inside my brain. I’m afraid and angry for no reason. I think…I think maybe that I should leave you here. You’re not worth it. I’ll die if I stay with you. I’ll never be with Winona again, and it’s your fault that Captain Rostron is dead and that Colin is dead. Major Alaoui died protecting you.”

  He looked at me and narrowed his eyes, a hard look, without pity. He lifted the soggy cap from my head and dropped it on the pavement. I tipped my face up at him, willing to accept whatever he wanted to do. The Puca had washed away my willingness to fight and my desire to live.

  “Maybe I should kill you. I want to.” His voice was low and his breathing was ragged.

  “I don’t think you should. More and more of them are coming. I thought we might make it to the hospital and then to the shuttle. I got us lost. I think the Puca might let you go if you leave me here for them. They’ll be angry if you kill me and they’ll shred you before you make it a block. I can see the plans they have for me. I’ll still be alive days from now. Weeks, probably.”

  He shook himself. “Damn it. You know I can’t do that to you. Winona…”

  I nodded and he bent to get my cap. I put it back on my wet hair. “I wish Storm was up there to guide us. She had control of all these sensors.” I sighed, the Puca pushing despair into me. “My Storm. I killed you too.”