Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  But they weren’t. Which was…interesting.

  The noodles were ready then, and so was the sauce; we took everything to the dining table. Uncle sat at the end, and I sat at a right angle to him. “You are making sure, not only to keep your Psi-shield on, but to keep up the psionic blocks your Masters taught you?”

  “Tighter than a banjo string,” I said fervently. “Tighter than the lid on the last jar of jam. Why?”

  “Because if the Psimon who has been meeting you thinks you are coming too close to something PsiCorps does not want you to know, he’ll alter your memory,” Uncle replied grimly. “So be very careful.”

  Psimons can do that?

  And that was when something occurred to me. Actually, when it hit me, I felt absolutely stunned. “Uncle,” I said, “can Othersiders alter peoples’ memories the way Psimons can?”

  It was his turn to blink at me, perplexed. “I suppose they can. They have similar psionic abilities. Why?”

  “Because that explains how Ace got away with murdering Karly, and how he put that vamp down in the storm sewers that was intended for me without his Hounds twigging to it and telling on him,” I said slowly. “Look, now we know he’s obviously been in contact with Othersiders for a while, right?”

  “Obviously, given they knew he was in army custody. We know his Hounds had no inkling he was trying to kill another Hunter. But if he had the memories altered or blocked after every meeting—”

  “Then the Hounds would never know,” I said. “They’d never get anything from his thoughts; unless we actually try to reach them Otherside, they can’t pick up on what we’re doing when they’re off away except for strong emotions. And any Psimons that happened to check on him wouldn’t have picked that up either, if it was blocked.”

  “Or the Psimons who read him after his arrest…” But he sounded uncertain. “On the other hand, while I have never known Psimons to directly lie, sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth either.”

  “They haven’t been telling the truth about what’s going on in the sewers, have they?” I pointed out.

  His mouth went into a thin line. “No,” he replied. “They haven’t.”

  I didn’t go out on sewer Hunts for the next week, since I was out on teams from dawn to dark; this wasn’t obviously increased Othersider activity, or at least, not something Kent said anything about, I suppose because Elites got callouts every single day, but it was definitely a workout. Flocks of Wyverns, another small Drakken, an entire tribe of Ogres, just one callout after another, and generally at least two every day. That was because, thanks to my huge pack, not only was I in demand on a small team, I also didn’t get worn out as fast as some of the others, so I could handle two calls a day.

  But by the time I finished stuffing my face each evening—more often than not, long after the mess hall was closed—I was generally so tired (and often bruised up) all I really wanted was to maybe mindlessly watch a vid, then sleep, although Retro would always look for me. He was easing off on the asking-for-a-date business; instead, he’d try to make me laugh. I did need those laughs, and I hated to admit it, but he was hilarious. Usually he’d tell some outrageous story about what he’d been doing that was so over the top I found myself laughing until my sides hurt.

  And I dreamed about Karly most nights. Funny dreams, though: all she would do would be to show up, nod decisively once, then fade away. They weren’t the sort of dream that left me upset, or crying, or anything like that. Maybe they were just my subconscious telling me I’d solved the mystery of how Ace had done his murdering without giving himself away, and it was time to get on with catching the rat.

  As if I could! He was…somewhere I couldn’t reach, presumably in the hands of the Folk. But of course, the subconscious never pays any attention to logic.

  Then, finally, after about a week of this, the Othersiders eased up. I had one callout in the morning, then spent the afternoon waiting, not daring to go down for a sewer Hunt just in case…but more calls never happened.

  In midafternoon, my Perscom went off, but it wasn’t a callout—it was Josh. “It lives!” he exclaimed when I answered—because when he’d called before, I’d either been neck-deep in trouble and couldn’t answer, or I was too tired to do more than mumble a few apologetic words.

  “It does,” I agreed. “Don’t jinx me!” We got a chance for a nice long talk about nothing before I started nodding off in mid-sentence. That’s when I said good night, but of course…he jinxed me.

  Before my alarm could go off, the full-team alert shrilled, jolting me out of deepest, darkest sleep. I scrambled into clothing and slammed out my front door, racing down the hall to the armory along with everyone else on my hallway. Kent and a couple staff were already there, making up packs and tossing them to people. Everyone was getting the same thing for basic load-out: assault rifle with steel-jacketed and incendiary ammo, .45 or .50 caliber handguns with the same, knives, and a bag of cold-forged iron caltrops. “Same as Bensonville, people,” Kent shouted over the sound of people strapping their gear on. “We’ve got a multi-mega-beast incident. We’ve got positive reports of two big Drakken, maybe more, and a lot of small stuff that it’s too dark to ID. Town is called Zion; they’re fortified with 30 mm Avenger cannon on the walls. Right now, they’re holding out, but they won’t be able to for much longer. Three choppers, same teams as last time. White Knight, you’re with me.”

  Once we were geared up, we raced out to the pad, where the choppers were already waiting in the predawn darkness, their blades sending up dust we couldn’t see, only taste in the air. Me, Hammer, Steel, Archer, Kent, and now Knight. I was first in; as usual, Hammer just picked me up and tossed me in. Knight was next. What’s Jessie going to think of this, I wonder? I thought as I strapped in next to him. “You going to be all right?” I asked him bluntly. He nodded. He didn’t look any different, and I didn’t get the sense that he was nervous—but then, he was pretty stone-faced, so how would I know? Well…it was barely possible Jessie had no idea what the alarm had meant, so she wouldn’t even know he was on a full-team callout until someone told her or she asked the comp where he was. Kent got in last, as usual, and banged the side of the chopper to let the pilot know to take off. I tapped my ear to let Knight know that from now on we’d be using the thread mics and earpieces. He nodded.

  Kent began our briefing as we vibrated and yawed and rolled across the landscape, the heavy beat of the chopper blades over our heads drowning out everything but Kent’s voice in our ears.

  “We’re going to be landing in the dark,” Kent said over the radio. “Zion will stop firing at that point, to avoid pasting us. Be even sharper than usual, people. Don’t shoot unless you know you’ve got a clear shot and none of us are in front of you. Shields up at all times, just in case someone hasn’t seen you. If you have to choose between Shields and attacking, choose Shields until we get some light. Now, sound off, in order of seniority. Kent, yo!”

  And that was how I found out for sure that the armorer was the most senior Elite. Retro was just before me, so after “Retro here,” I sounded off with “Joy, roger,” and Mark chimed in last with “White Knight, yo.”

  “Zion can’t give us any intel on what we’re facing, so we’re playing this one as a full team and by ear. When you can positively ID something, you report it straight to me. If you get into trouble, shout for your subteam lead. Other than that, stay off the comm. Everything we’ve got so far is streaming to your Perscoms, so eyeball those till we get there, and when we bail out, form up on me. We’ll get close air support as soon as we’ve got light, probably artillery shortly after that.”

  Was Knight’s girl watching this? We had cams, of course; there were always cams, whether or not the footage got shown to the Cits. If something went right, it was a teaching thing, and if something went wrong…it was a teaching thing. Was she worried? Was she scared? That was one position I’d never had to be in—that of the one who watched and waited. It came to me that it must b
e far harder to do that than to fight.

  He was a Hunter at home, before they sent him here. She knew that. You’d think she’d be used to it, right? I couldn’t help but think about how Karly had told me the way her wife split up with her, when Karly popped Powers. Karly’s wife had grown up with all the Hunter channels, and still, when it had come down to the Hunter being Karly and not some stranger, the wife couldn’t take it. And we were taking on all these huge monsters, things they likely never saw and barely heard of back where she came from. Would it be too much of a shock?

  Well, maybe. There was a big difference between the stuff I’d tackled on the Mountain and the stuff I’d faced as a ranker Hunter. And an enormous difference between what I faced as a ranker and what I was facing as an Elite. When she finally saw what he was up against—when the light came or one of us managed to light up the field—would she be too terrified to even breathe? Would she be like Karly’s wife?

  But maybe she bought into that mythology of the always-victorious Elite. Maybe she’d watch it as a Cit would, with the sure and certain knowledge, however false that “knowledge” was, that Knight would come back triumphant.

  And maybe I need to stop worrying about Knight’s girl and get my head in the game, I scolded myself, and bent over the tiny screen on my Perscom.

  It wasn’t showing me much that was useful. It looked like the walls of Zion had big artillery guns on them, and spotlights. But the Drakken were moving fast, so all you got were glimpses of heads, torsos, the flash of a tail, or an enormous claw. You were supposed to be able to use the laser-sight to lock on to a target on those guns, but not if other things dashed between you and your target, and that was what it looked like was going on. The Drakken, more than two, I was sure, were dodging and weaving around each other, keeping anyone from getting a lock on them, and meanwhile screaming at the tops of their lungs. Some of the gunners were just firing randomly, hoping to hit something. Zion had shot up flares too, but they weren’t doing a whole lot of good, other than revealing that there were smaller shapes milling around on the ground.

  And then a spotlight dropped just enough that I, and a couple other people, got enough of a good look to be positive. “Nagas,” I said, a fraction of a second before Scarlet and Bull.

  “Roger that. Nagas ID’d. We’ll use fire for those. Make sure you’ve got incendiary rounds, or be with someone who does.”

  Then my private frequency activated. “Joy, do you copy?” Kent said.

  “Copy, roger,” I replied.

  “Think you can pull off one of those Drakken and bring it to the rest of us?”

  I swallowed hard. Those were big Drakken; probably three or four times the size of the one Hammer, Steel, and I had taken down. But we obviously couldn’t wade into that mass of death and take them all on at once….

  But then I got a brainstorm. “Can I have Knight? Dusana can carry double; he can layer his Shields on mine and Dusana’s, and we’ll have better odds of skidding those tongue-strikes off.”

  That was what I was really worried about. Drakken being magic and all, I thought they would probably have a good chance of cracking my shields with those jaw-tongues of theirs. But with three Shields, even if the outermost one cracked, there’d still be two more between us and it.

  “Dusana can carry the weight?”

  “Three times that,” I replied.

  “You’ve got him.” I felt Mark stir beside me and heard his “Copy, roger,” as Kent contacted him and told him the plan. He glanced over at me. I offered a fist. He bumped it, and I relaxed a teeny, tiny bit. Good. Mark was on board with this.

  Someone else ID’d Ogres, and just before we set down, Minotaurs. We bailed out, and the entire lot of us crouched with our hands in front of our faces because there was no time for anything but the quick, dirty, and painful way of bringing our Hounds across. I felt the searing pain on the backs of my hands, and the sudden drain of manna as the Hounds all burst through. Then the burning of my hands cooled, and I stood up to see myself surrounded by my pack.

  And Knight’s; Knight was standing right next to me.

  I looked at Knight’s winged critters. “Can you guys fly as fast as mine can run?” I asked them. They looked at each other, and then at my crazy-colored Alebrijes, and I guessed they were quickly comparing notes because all four of the winged ones shook their heads. I already knew they couldn’t run as fast as my guys; those wings would catch air and hold them back. “Can you see in the dark?” I continued.

  Now their furry faces got a look of excitement, and they nodded. “Good. Get some height, and keep a sharp eye out for Harpies. One of them dropping something in front of Dusana while we’re running from a Drakken would be a disaster. Go!”

  They went, leaping up and into the sky. Dusana knelt so Mark and I could get on his back, and then he grew a bunch of spines that held us in place, with Mark behind me, and me riding Dusana’s shoulders. “Bya, find us a Drakken a little away from the others. When you’ve got one, Dusana, bamph to where it is, and we’ll start this thing.”

  Bya ran off into the dark, past Kent, who was organizing everyone else into the ambush squad.

  “Wait, what—” Mark said.

  I interrupted. “Mark, your Shield up first; yours is the strongest, I want that innermost. Then mine, then Dusana, put yours up last and outermost.”

  Mark put up his Shield. I layered mine on top of his, and Dusana put up his. Then we waited for Bya.

  We didn’t have to wait long. Got one. He’s off by himself. I think he thinks he’s found a weak spot in the wall.

  Dusana, go! I ordered, and Dusana bamphed.

  Either Mark had a stronger stomach than me, or bamphing didn’t bother him as much. In either case, at least he didn’t barf on my back. He was probably wondering just how I was going to attract the attention of something the size of a Drakken, because the odds it would feel any bullet or magic attack I could launch were pretty minimal.

  But I wasn’t going to do either of those things. “Close your eyes,” I said over our shared frequency, and I lit us up like festival fireworks.

  That definitely got the Drakken’s attention. It had been staring at the city wall; it whipped its head around and stared over its shoulder at us, startled. Before it could move, Dusana launched into his run.

  The Drakken screamed, a noise that sounded like tearing metal. I didn’t look over my shoulder this time; I was too busy lighting up the ground in front of us so Dusana could see where he was going; a misstep at this stage, or worse, a fall, would put us at the Drakken’s nonexistent mercy. Of course this made us more visible to the Drakken, but that was what we wanted. I felt Mark turning his body to look back, though, and I didn’t envy him.

  Bya, where? I called my Alpha.

  Here. Look. And suddenly, ahead of us in the dark, I caught sight of a patch of stripes bobbing along at the same rate of speed that we were going. Dusana snorted with satisfaction, I felt him hunkering down under my legs and putting on more speed. I kept the light going; the ground out here was bad, all torn up by the shells from the cannon on the walls. The ground in front of us and the air above us suddenly went red with the light from a flare, but it didn’t help at all.

  The sound of the Drakken chasing us was something I can’t adequately describe. Maybe if you magnified the sound of a galloping horse by a million times—but no, even that wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine why the monster hadn’t caught us, but Dusana was running faster than he’d ever run before. Then the Drakken behind us screeched again. The sound made me cringe, and all my instincts cried out to me to go hide somewhere, to go to earth, to dig a hole and pull it in after me and wait for this monstrous thing to pass. All I could realistically do was make myself as small as possible on Dusana’s back, light his path in front of him, and feed him manna as he ran.

  Then, without warning, Dusana bamphed.

  We came out again a split second later in darkness; Dusana stopped abruptly by digging all four feet
into the dirt, and we lurched against the spines holding us to his back. He whirled, and I saw that the Drakken was stopped, its head flattened oddly against a Wall.

  Steel’s Wall, reinforced by his brother’s.

  Behind me, Knight whipped the assault rifle off his back and laid it down on my left shoulder. I understood immediately what he was doing, clapped my hands over my ears, making a protective sound-muffling magical shield over them, and froze. So did Dusana.

  There was the muffled crack of the rifle right next to my ear, followed by a second shot. The first round must have been steel-jacketed, since nothing obvious happened to the Drakken, but the second was an incendiary round, and the eye nearest us blossomed with flame.

  The Drakken tossed its bruised head up, shrieking. The rifle barked twice more, and the Drakken lost his other eye.

  Now blinded, all he could do was flail with claws and tail, shaking his head from side to side. And then—he wasn’t shaking his head; it was being battered, as if by blows from a giant fist. Hammer, surely—and from the tension in Mark’s body behind me, White Knight was getting in his fair share too.

  I ran through my bag of tricks in my head, trying to come up with something that would work against this huge creature, because even blinded, it could still kill any of us that got within range of that tail or the claws. And suddenly I had it, and a moment later, I sent a sticky version of my net spinning across the air between us, aiming for the Drakken’s right foreleg.

  I caught it, then waited until the left came within range, and caught that as well. Catching the first leg hadn’t done anything because I hadn’t anchored the net. Catching the second leg, however…

  Unable to see what was happening and not able to feel what I had done until it was too late, the blinded Drakken tried to lash out and pulled his own legs out from underneath himself. He toppled over sideways, his head hitting the ground with a boom. I netted his head to the ground and held on for dear life, as the rest of the team and all the Hounds descended on the downed Drakken to finish him off with magic and steel, tooth and claw.