Allie's War Early Years

by JC Andrijeski

  Revik glanced around as other seers began shrugging the packs off their shoulders, leaning them against trees. A few had canteens out already, and were drinking from them freely, heads tilted back. It didn’t really cool down very much out here at night. Not enough, anyway. Not for the pace they were moving, and how much gear and clothing they wore.

  Still, Revik felt some surprise in the others, at Yumi’s revelation about Balidor.

  Then it seemed like they were all looking at him.

  Meaning Revik himself.

  “Yes,” Yumi said, as if answering some question Revik hadn’t heard. “It’s for him. I’ll let brother Balidor explain, since he’s on his way here already.”

  “Is that such a good idea, sister?” Vikram asked sharply. “Given what happened last time?”

  “We will let Balidor explain.”

  “But sister––”

  “Again,” Yumi said, her voice harder, less compromising. “That is between him and his gods. He will have to decide for himself.”

  Realizing they were talking about him again, Revik looked over at her, seeing the bare outline of her face with his combat-trained night vision. The female seer smiled at him, but that time, he didn’t feel a lot of humor in her light.

  In fact, what he felt came closer to sympathy.

  “Looks like you’ve been requested again, pup,” she said only.

  Before he could say anything, she shrugged off her own backpack, and promptly sat on top of it, tugging out a piece of jerky from her vest. Revik watched her chew on it, and tried to decide if he wanted to ask one of the dozen or so questions he could now feel hovering over the construct they all shared.

  He decided he didn’t.

  Shrugging off his own backpack, he let it fall to the ground pretty much where he stood, then bent his knees to sit on it, as well. Tugging the canteen from his own belt, he took a long drink, then aimed his eyes up at the canopy and the few stars he could see past it, twinkling like sentries through the dark leaves.

  He settled himself in to wait.

  THEY DIDN’T HAVE to wait long.

  It turned out that fifteen minutes had been conservative, despite the distance Revik felt between Yumi’s team and Balidor’s main camp when Revik first looked for them.

  It seemed that Balidor and his people must have already been moving fast in their direction when Balidor sent Yumi the impulse to remain where they were until he arrived.

  Revik could feel by then that the Org extraction team had stopped walking as well, which shouldn’t have surprised him.

  When Balidor entered the clearing he didn’t hesitate, but walked directly up to Revik himself, who he seemed to be able to see a lot more clearly through the dark of the trees than Revik could see the Adhipan leader. Once Balidor stood directly in front of him, he spoke aloud, seemingly addressing the entire group.

  “Galaith has agreed to a parlay,” Balidor announced, standing roughly in the middle of their small group.

  Revik’s eyes and light twitched towards the periphery of their circle, feeling Zula and Tobe out there, as well as four other seers whose names he had never learned, but whose lights he recognized from the main camp outside of Guoreum, as well as from the construct more generally. At least one of them was part of his protective detail from the Barrier.

  “...Galaith has a stipulation, however,” Balidor said, at the end of the long pause. His eyes swiveled back to Revik. “He will only deal with you, brother.”

  Revik just sat there, looking up at him.

  He felt the other seers in the group staring at him again.

  He felt stronger whispers from some of them than others, but the overall feeling was more or less consistent, at least coming from the seers in Yumi’s group. They considered him one of theirs now. They’d seen him collapse in the road outside the periphery fence of Guoreum. They’d risked their lives, been shot at, carried him for miles, all to save his life. They thought this was a trap. They didn’t want him to do it.

  They wanted him to say no.

  In all of that, Revik felt Dalejem especially strongly. The other male wished that same no at him so strongly that Revik had to disentangle himself from the imperative behind it to even be able to see his own thoughts.

  Even then, he struggled to think about Balidor’s request clearly.

  He could see what his unit saw. He could see the lack of transparency there, in the Rooks’ light, the duplicitousness of it... and especially of Galaith.

  They could see a teacher who craved contact with his former student.

  They didn’t like it. They didn’t like it at all.

  Truthfully, Revik didn’t like it, either.

  Again, however, he already more or less knew what he’d do.

  “Yes,” he said aloud. He didn’t realize he’d been staring at the ground when he said it, not until he looked up, meeting Balidor’s gaze in the bare light of the clearing. “I’ll do it.”

  He felt a stab of angry light at him, and turned his head, seeing Dalejem standing there. His aleimi picked out more details than his eyes, feeling the Dalejem’s arms taut at his sides, his hands clenched into fists where they rested on his gun belt. Revik felt another pulse of anger from the other seer and winced, in spite of himself.

  I’m sorry, he sent to him quietly.

  “I’m going,” Dalejem said aloud to Balidor, ignoring Revik’s own words. “If you’re bringing him to them, like a sacrificial-fucking-lamb, then I’m coming, too.”

  Balidor gave him a long-seeming stare, then nodded.

  “Agreed.”

  He looked around at the rest of the group then, his expression unmoving. His light didn’t so much as ripple, either, from what Revik could feel or see.

  “We can take seven, including Dehgoies,” he added, still looking around. “That leaves spots for four more. Any volunteers?”

  “Me,” Vikram said, surprising Revik.

  He glanced at the Indian-looking seer, who smiled at him from the dark. The seer’s white teeth shone at him, strangely reassuring.

  Then next voice that spoke surprised Revik even more, though.

  “Me,” Mara said, stepping forward. “I will go.”

  “Me, as well,” Yumi said.

  “I will go, too,” Dalai added.

  Balidor nodded, looking around at all of them. “That is seven.” He looked back at Revik, his light exuding a faint worry that time, even as he adjusted the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “No packs,” he said, his voice still expressionless. “...And we leave now.” He looked at Garensche. “You are in charge of the remainder of the group out here. My people, too. I would like all of you to stay here, in roughly this area, until we come back. Use sentries, though, and be ready to move, if I call for reinforcements.”

  The big seer nodded, glancing at Revik.

  Revik felt worry ripple off his light, too.

  It occurred to him only then that at least half of the seers here didn’t expect him to come back from this... not alive anyway.

  The other half seemed to think he would at least come back damaged.

  Swallowing a little, Revik found himself standing with the others, arranging the gun strapped around his shoulder not unlike Balidor had, but more in a kind of nervous patterning than anything approaching practicality. He was still standing there when his self-appointed personal guard and Balidor started to move out, aiming for the opening between the trees to the south of where they now stood, so back in the direction they’d already walked.

  Only Dalejem stopped beside him.

  Before Revik realized what he intended, the seer formed a link, just the two of them. As he did it, he shielded them, too, pushing the rest of the seers’ lights out.

  You don’t have to do this, he sent. Dalejem barely paused before his light grew fainter, becoming the barest trace of a whisper. Don’t do it, Revik. Please. We’ll find another way.

  Revik felt a strange jolt in his chest.

  He r
ealized it was because Dalejem had used his given name.

  He looked at him, and found the other male wouldn’t meet his gaze.

  I have to, Revik told him simply.

  Why? Dalejem demanded, his light sparking with anger. Why do you have to?

  Revik sighed, clicking softly. Because Balidor wouldn’t have brought this to me, if there was another way.

  He didn’t say the other thing he thought... what he felt, without knowing how he felt it.

  Kali was having her baby.

  Revik sent a pulse of warmth when the other seer frowned.

  When Dalejem moved away an instant later, severing the link between them and stepping deliberately out of Revik’s light, Revik felt his chest tighten again, for a different reason that time.

  Still, he managed to keep it off his expression.

  Gripping the rifle he wore, he followed the small group leading him silently into the gap between the trees. By the time he’d more or less caught up with Dalejem and the others, his mind was almost blank, focused only on the sounds and smells of the jungle.

  He barely noticed as Vikram and Dalai took up position behind him.

  9

  PARLAY

  REVIK FELT THE panic start in his chest as they approached the edges of the mobile construct of the Org extraction team. Some part of his mind remembered what Guoreum had done to him, almost like an animal remembers being burnt in a fire, and it flipped a panic switch somewhere in the background of his mind, causing his heart rate to speed up, his breathing to tighten.

  They were still at least a hundred yards from the clearing Balidor had told them about, where the Org pod waited for them up ahead.

  No one in Revik’s group had talked for at least the past half-hour, however.

  Really, not since Balidor briefed him on their way back down the hill.

  Now Revik felt a keening kind of nausea beginning in his belly, one that––for once––had absolutely nothing to do with separation pain.

  It was fear. Pure, unbridled fear.

  He felt the seers around him reacting to that same fear, drawing closer to him, but it didn’t really help. Revik started to worry that he wouldn’t be able to handle this at all, even apart from what the construct might do to him when he crossed that line––

  Brother, a voice spoke gently into his mind. Calm yourself... there is more than just me protecting you out here. You will be all right.

  It’s not you I don’t trust, Revik began, knowing his panic was spilling out over into his thoughts, but unable to do anything to pull it back, at least not to where the other wouldn’t feel it. I can’t handle this. I dropped like a dead person outside of Guoreum. You saw it...

  That was my fault, brother, Balidor sent.

  His mental voice held more of an edge that time, but not one aimed at Revik himself.

  That was a mistake I haven’t even come close to apologizing to you for deeply enough, brother, Balidor added grimly. ... and likely never will.

  It wasn’t your fault––

  It was, Balidor cut in, looking at him through the dark. It was entirely my fault, brother Revik, and trust me, I do not speak only for my own opinion in saying it. I thought your Aunt Tarsi would fire me as head of the Adhipan for what I did there... if she did not have me banished from the Pamir altogether.

  The thought brought Revik’s mind to a brief halt.

  Fired from the Adhipan? Was that even possible? Or just a term of speech?

  Balidor surprised him, chuckling in the recesses of Revik’s mind.

  Oh, it’s possible, brother. Believe me. Tarsi might have had to persuade Vash, if that had been her decision, since he is the official head of the Council of Seven. But truthfully, I don’t think that would have been overly difficult. He was quite angry with me, too...

  Revik didn’t answer that, either, not directly.

  Even so, Balidor’s words that time surprised him even more.

  He couldn’t even imagine Vash angry.

  Balidor chuckled at that, too.

  Revik stiffened, though, realizing suddenly that he was being distracted. They had reached the edge of the Org construct already, and before Revik knew it, before he could think about halting the progress of his body and feet forward, or raising a real protest...

  He had crossed that line into the Pyramid’s wave.

  He didn’t feel it as strongly that time.

  The light around him shifted, sure, but he felt the connection to Balidor more, as well as that to the rest of the seers who now stood more or less around him. Even as Revik adjusted to the shift in light, still walking through the woods, an actual, physical light ignited through the trees in front of them. As it did, Revik realized they were even closer to the clearing with the Org operatives than he’d imagined. He recognized the peculiar greenish-yellow glow of organic yisso torches even as he watched Balidor enter the last row of trees before the clearing itself.

  Dalejem and Yumi followed Balidor without hesitation.

  Leaving Revik to be the one to hesitate, right at that edge, even as he felt a flush of warmth and reassurance from Vikram and Dalai, who still walked behind him.

  It’s okay, brother, Vikram told him softly. We won’t let those bastards touch you.

  Revik glanced back, even as he saw Dalai nod, gesturing her agreement with Vikram emphatically with one hand. It hit Revik again that they felt responsible for him, however it was they actually felt about him, or what he’d once been.

  Taking a deep breath at the thought, he forced himself to move forward once more, walking blinking into the lit clearing behind Balidor and the others.

  For a moment, a scarce instant, it felt as if he, himself, were being birthed.

  HE ENDED UP walking out past the others, into the center of the clearing.

  He was supposed to be the emissary, after all.

  Something about being inside the thing, and still on his feet––or maybe just the reality of being cocooned from all but the barest tastes of that Dreng-soaked light––switched off the panic that had nearly incapacitated Revik outside the construct itself. It flipped him into pure infiltrator mode instead, almost before he realized he’d made the change.

  They had already decided a few things, of course, before they got here.

  Revik and Balidor discussed a number of details and particulars like this on the way back down that hill. Some of them, Revik had even suggested himself.

  Revik would stand in front, as the emissary.

  He would hold onto his guns, but not hold any of them in his hands.

  Therefore, when Revik entered the clearing, his rifle remained slung behind his back, his handguns in their holsters. He held his hands visible, too, to emphasize the fact that they were empty, even as he found himself sliding into more of a fighter’s walk as he approached the line of Org infiltrators waiting for him on the other side of those trees.

  But that was habit, too, he supposed.

  His mind remained more or less blank, at least once he broke that circle of light that bled into the jungle trees from the two torches, each held by a separate Org agent, one female and one male. The torch-bearing agents stood on either side of the ring of trees around the clearing, so that most of the area was lit, and even most of the faces Revik could now see.

  All of those agents were armed of course, holding weapons in their hands.

  Revik noted that fact, even as he deliberately ignored it.

  He walked directly to the middle of the clearing while still in that strangely empty mental space. If anything the clarity and silence of that space heightened, the more faces of Org infiltrators he could see. The reality of them snapped him into a different kind of mental space altogether, turning them from bogeymen to tangible targets, something he could wrap his arms and mind around, at least.

  Something in that shift of perspective sent him into a weird kind of calm, too.

  Instead of fearing them, he measured them, like he would measure potential adversa
ries on any op. Or hell, simply in any situation where he couldn’t predict the outcome, and found himself heavily outnumbered, and surrounded by seers he didn’t trust.

  His mind found twenty distinct infiltrators, almost at once.

  Some of those were more visible than others, but he didn’t doubt the count, and even took snapshots of the markers on some of them for future reference. Apart from their leader, he didn’t recognize any of those lights specifically.

  Well, at least not that he could remember.

  He suspected there were more agents out in the jungle, too. He felt flickers of a separate construct even, along with the barest markers of some kind of formation to the east and the west of where he currently stood. His military mind made those wings wrapped around the main unit.

  Protection, but also with offensive capability.

  Not a dumb move, either. But then, Terian was never dumb. Nor were the Org military planners, whatever their other shortcomings.

  Revik’s mind told him a minimum of twenty-four. Maybe as many as thirty.

  Twenty-five, a voice murmured in his mind.

  Revik glanced behind him. His eyes met Balidor’s, and he felt his shoulders lose a fraction of their tension when he realized it was Balidor who had spoken. The two of them were still connected. The thought relieved him enough that he dared to answer back, hoping it stayed inside the construct-within-the-construct.

  They have us flanked. They could cut us off, he said to the Adhipan leader.

  I know, Balidor said, pulsing reassurance at him. They’ve got some unusual qualities in this construct, brother, so stay alert. I sense close to ten out there, on either side of our exit path... with some of the nearer lights being mirrored decoys to give us close to accurate numbers while obscuring their formation. So we know how many, but not where, precisely.

  They’ve got three times our numbers, Revik sent. Probably more that could reach us by air in a handful of minutes.