Elite: A Hunter novel

by Mercedes Lackey

  “You know good and well that no one is going to want to go there but you,” I continued. “There isn’t even a single Apex Hunter that will want to go back there. I’d have precedence over you, if I volunteered, because it was my home first, but I won’t bump you if they say someone can go. I won’t lie to you, I think something’s building and we’re going to need every Hunter Apex has, Elite or not; if nothing else, this is probably the start of something Archer told me about called a ‘surge.’ You can ask him about it. But you’re going to be no good to anyone if you’re getting torn up over this, and the armorer isn’t an idiot—he probably knows what’s going on with you already.”

  He sighed heavily. “Don’t tell Jessie this—” he began.

  I snorted. “She wouldn’t believe it if I did. If she’s jealous enough of me to make you meet me here in secret, she won’t believe a word that comes out of my mouth. But if things get to that point where you’re too stressed to Hunt properly, then I think maybe it can be arranged.” I sighed. “Remember, this is why Kent warned you to come to him if you and Jessie started to have problems. You all stressed out means we have half a Hunter out there when we need to have you at your sharpest.”

  I had been going to tell him about me and Josh…but now, why should I put another weight on his shoulders? It wasn’t fair, and friends don’t do that to friends.

  “My pa would tell me I’m a fool for not keeping my woman in line,” he said unhappily.

  “Your pa is an idiot,” I said, not feeling at all charitable toward anyone that was contributing to this mess. “Unless he means you should beat her, in which case he’s a sadistic bastard, and if I ever meet him, I’ll break his jaw.”

  Knight stared at me, openmouthed, for a long time. “You know, I think you actually might,” he said after a long silence.

  “Damn right I would.” I threw food to the fish. “Then I’d ask him how he likes being done by as he did.”

  Actually…right at that moment, I really would have liked to have a target like that in front of me.

  “Well…he doesn’t beat Ma…” Knight said uncertainly. “It’s—”

  “Never mind. I know, it’s a godliness thing,” I replied, cutting him off because I didn’t want to get into an argument with him over “godliness” and how woman was decreed by scripture to obedience and all that rot. And I didn’t want to get into an argument that if his Jessie’d had an upbringing that didn’t keep shoving her in that role, she might have had the gumption to try and fit in here. Because those were arguments I would never win, and anyway, Karly hadn’t fared any better with her wife when she popped Powers, and they had both been Apex born and raised.

  I wished devoutly for a callout at that moment because the only thing that was going to make me feel any better was to kill something. But, of course, given the turn my luck had taken, there was nothing.

  “I don’t know what else to tell you,” I said finally. “I really don’t.”

  “I thought once I got her here, everything would be grand,” he mourned. “The hard part would be over, and we could be happy.”

  Yeah, I can relate.

  “You could try flirting with Scarlet,” I said. “Then at least she’d stop being jealous of me.”

  He gave me a long, long look. “You are devious, Joy.”

  “Never pretended to be otherwise,” I pointed out. “I’ve been forced to be devious since I got here.” Then I softened. “Look, the Personnel guy, Rik Severn, was supposed to find something for her to do. Tell Kent to build a fire under him and find her something that will really occupy her right now. Maybe she can see something else that can be done with the inedible parts of what we farm, or improve the critters who supply the cores for the cloned meat. Maybe she can work with the kitchen to build us some new recipes; heck, maybe she can figure out a way to make the basic ration biscuits taste a little less like wooden slats. And that’d be helping out the downtrodden, or at least, as downtrodden as a Cit gets around here, so that would be godly.” I let out my breath in a puff. After my initial annoyance, I was beginning to feel a little sorry for her. Only a little, but…yeah. All this had to be hard on her. Maybe all it would take would be finding something useful for her to do. Something to make her more than just “Mark’s wife.”

  He shook his head and dusted off the last of the fish-food crumbs on his hands into the pond. I did the same, and we both stood up.

  “Good luck,” we said at the same time. I laughed weakly.

  Then we said a clumsy good night. I left first because I just couldn’t take any more awkwardness.

  When I got back to my room, I opened the Way and Bya stepped through. He looked up at me soberly. It has been a very bad day, he observed.

  “Not the worst, but…yeah.” I made that cup of Chocolike that I’d promised myself, and turned the vid-screen into a “fireplace” so I could stare at the flames while I cuddled up on the couch with Bya.

  I wished this were yesterday. I wished I could rewind all of it. I wished I’d known about Abigail Drift weeks ago, because there might have been something I would have done differently if I had.

  I wished I was a Psimon and I could read everyone’s mind to find out what the hell they were all up to, even if I couldn’t actually do anything about any of it.

  You do not wish to be a Psimon, Bya said vehemently, although he didn’t say why. No matter what, you still have your pack.

  So I do, I replied, and put my head down on his soft back. So I do.

  IN FAIRY TALES AND folktales that involve wishes, there’s always the underlying theme of “be careful what you ask for.”

  Too bad I didn’t remember that. I had wanted a callout because I needed something to take my hurt and anger out on. And I got my wish.

  I was awakened out of the dreamless part of sleep by the alert Klaxon. That harsh ahWOOgah, ahWOOgah was enough to shatter the peace of the dead, which is probably why everyone uses that particular horn. I’d never heard that in Apex in all the time I had been here. It shocked me awake with my heart racing, I literally jumped out of bed on automatic, and as soon as I did, my vid-screen in the bedroom lit up with yellow text on flashing red.

  Attack on Apex. Report to armory.

  My brain couldn’t make sense of that, Attack on Apex? How was that even possible?

  But my body was smarter than my brain and knew that nothing mattered except that fact that an attack was happening at right this very minute. I scrambled into Hunting gear, wadded my hair into a messy knot, and hit the door running.

  I squeezed in the door with two more Hunters who got there at the same time, with more pounding toward us. The armory was packed—not just with Elite, but with every Hunter in the building, no matter what shift they were on. Assistants were running weapons, ammo belts, and packs up to the counter. Anyone who hadn’t armed up was wiggling his or her way there and picking up what best suited them. The armory assistants were making sure everyone took a pack and a belt before picking up any other equipment. I took my place at the counter, snatching up an assault rifle, ammo, and grenades before going back to the group and working my way up to the front.

  Kent was looking down at some gadget in his hand; it was sort of clipboard shaped, so I guessed it was an electronic version of a noteboard or something like an oversize Perscom. The vid-screen behind him was blank, and here in the armory, the Klaxon still sounding out in the halls came through the walls as a mere hint. People were talking, but in a sort of nervous mutter.

  Finally, as I heard the door behind me open and close again—letting in the aWOOgah one more time—he looked up and whistled shrilly. Anxious conversation stopped dead. The only noise in the room now was the sound of weapons hitting the counter or being snatched up and the whisper of the Klaxon.

  Now the vid-screen lit up—to display a scene that drew a gasp from every single one of us.

  There was an army—a literal army—of Othersiders, spotlighted by huge lamps on the Barrier pylons that I didn’t ev
en know existed. But I knew that spot, on the west side of Apex, where the big farm fields began.

  Bad enough that there were more Othersiders than I could ever have thought possible, but they were at the Prime Barrier! Gogs, Magogs, Wyverns, Drakken, Trolls, an ever-moving sea of smaller Othersiders surging around their ankles—all I could do was stare in horror. This was like a scene from the Diseray, when the Othersiders first broke through and swarmed the cities, waves of destruction as powerful and primal as tornadoes or earthquakes.

  “About an hour ago, Portals opened up in the area between the Second and Prime Barriers,” Armorer Kent said into the shocked silence. “Despite heroic efforts by the army Mages to close them down, they remained open, and Othersider troops under Folk command emerged and formed up. Fifteen minutes ago, they commenced an attack on the Prime Barrier.”

  The vid-screen switched to another cam; this one showed Gogs and Magogs using enormous battering rams against one of the Barrier pylons. A chopper gunship flew by, strafing them, but they paid very little notice as bullets stitched across their tough, magic-hardened hides, and as we watched, a levin bolt lanced upward from the mass of Othersiders at their feet, narrowly missing the chopper’s motor. The chopper veered off and up, out of reach, and the attack on the pylon continued,

  “We’ve got troopships on the helipad,” Kent said. “You’ll work in teams of eight. Your assignments are on your Perscoms. Scramble for the choppers; your Perscom will flash red if you’re trying to get on the one that isn’t assigned to your team. We have to hold them back until the missile launchers can get into position. Go!”

  Well, most of us couldn’t go—there wasn’t enough room at the door for us to all surge through. Those of us stuck for the moment took the chance to look at our Perscoms. I was afraid that Kent might have put me in charge of a group of Hunters, since I was Elite now, but to my relief, I was listed along with Hammer and Steel and a group of five, one of which was Dazzle, with Steel designated as the leader. I clicked my acknowledgment. Then the door cleared enough for me to squeeze through, and I sprinted as fast as the crowd would allow to get to the landing pads.

  As I burst through the outside door, I spotted Steel sprinting for one of the farther choppers. I followed, then caught up with him. We both jumped in the open door of the chopper at about the same time, and after a quick glance at my Perscom to make sure I had the right chopper, I strapped down into a seat. Dazzle strapped down next to me in the next minute. Then the rest came on in a rush, and I checked my Perscom again. Headset and mic, front left pouch, it was saying, so I fished mine out and stuffed the little earpieces into my ears and adjusted the threadlike mic. The chopper took off with a jolt and a sideways tilt as the others were putting on their gear.

  “Sound off,” Steel’s voice said in my ears.

  “Hammer,” said his brother, followed by “Dazzle.” “Joy,” I said, and the other four signed on in succession.

  “All right, listen up,” said Steel. “This is a shitstorm of epic proportions. Nobody’s got a strategy. I have no idea where we’re gonna get put down. So here’s what we’ll do. We’ll all bring our Hounds over, and my brother and I will Shield the whole group. Then we’ll keep the Shields up while we work our way toward the group attacking the pylon. Dazzle, if the Gogs and Magogs are in your range, I want you to concentrate on blinding them; if they aren’t, hold back and save your energy until they are in range. The rest of you eat away at anything standing between us and the pylon gang. To give you a chance to rest magic, we’ll drop the Shields at intervals so you can hose the enemy down with conventional fire. We’ll give you a countdown when we’re about do that. Clear?”

  We all answered in the affirmative.

  “Folk are commanding here, we assume using psi to issue orders. So Folk are priority targets. Folk Mages, doubly so. Joy, if we spot any Folk, I want you to sic your entire pack on them.”

  “Yessir,” I responded immediately.

  “The rest of you, keep your Hounds close. Getting cut off from the rest of the group is going to be fatal.” There was a pause. “All right, we’re coming in hot. The pilot’s not landing, and it’ll be about a three-foot jump. Get out the door, ready weapons, summon your Hounds, and wait for the Shields. If you’ve got grenades, use ’em once the chopper’s away.”

  We all felt the chopper slow down and stop. Then we were bailing out the door into the chaos and the darkness, a darkness split from time to time by the flash of magic. I rolled out the door instead of jumping, dropping about four feet, landing in a crouch with the others around me.

  I felt the prop wash as the chopper sped away, and clapped my hands over my eyes and did the emergency summons. I’ve never had my Hounds come through so fast before; there was a kind of tearing in my chest as a sort of Portal formed in front of me; I couldn’t see the Portal because my hands were over my eyes—and yet I could see it, or sense it anyway. The backs of my hands still felt as if they were on fire as the last of my Hounds joined the others, and I took my hands down, just in time to see the Portal fade into nothing.

  We’d been set down at some distance from the enemy forces, and they didn’t seem to have taken any notice of us yet. I guessed maybe the army Mages had put some sort of stealth-spell on the choppers. That “invisibility” wouldn’t last now that we were away from our transport. But at least it gave us a few minutes to organize and for Hammer and Steel to put their stacked Shields on us.

  The noise was unbelievable. The Othersiders shrieked, roared, howled, and screamed in a hundred different cries and tones. Helichopper gunships did fast flybys, door guns chattering. Ahead of us, grenades exploded irregularly. I couldn’t see where the Othersider Portals were, but I guessed they were somewhere in that mass of Othersiders ahead of us, continuing to feed fighters into the fray. Occasionally, the sizzle of a levin bolt or the splash of a fire bolt lit the mob from within, but mostly the only illumination came from the spotlights on the pylons themselves.

  And under all that noise came the steady, inexorable boom, boom, boom, as the ram hit the pylon.

  I was sandwiched between Dazzle and Hammer; our Hounds were all packed up in front of us. There was no way to shoot without the risk of hitting a Hound, and I wasn’t willing to take that risk. I could give them immunity from my offensive spells just by willing it so, but I had no way of protecting them from our conventional weapons. I wished I had Mark’s trick of curving bullets; it would come in really useful about now.

  Just at that moment, the brothers got their Shields up; strong enough to be visible even by ordinary people, they shimmered dimly in the darkness, covering us. “All right, time to move out; take it slow and steady. When we hit their back lines, let them have it. Have the Hounds protect our backs.”

  I relayed that to my pack, they ran around behind us, and we began to move forward.

  Dazzle got within her effective range a lot sooner than the rest of us did; suddenly the heads of the Gogs and Magogs blossomed with blinding flashes of light. I was glad I wasn’t looking straight at them at the time; even catching an indirect glance left spots in my vision. I couldn’t see anything of the ground beneath the enemy’s feet, so I couldn’t put up trip Walls. All I could do was to find single targets I actually could see, and fire off levin bolts at them.

  “Close your eyes!” yelled one of the Hunters I didn’t know. “Night-vision spell!”

  I’d never heard of this, but I obediently closed my eyes, felt a kind of electric tingle in my eyeballs that made me yelp with surprise, and my eyes flew open again. And I could see! It wasn’t like night-vision goggles at all. It was more as if everything around me emitted its own inner light; the world painted in black and white, everything, down to single blades of grass, with its own little glowing outline,

  And oh, dear little gods and great, I really wished I hadn’t been able to see. Because while they were just an amorphous mass, it had been possible to think that there might not be as many Othersiders as there seemed to be
.

  Now, however, it was all too obvious that there were more than I had guessed. They were jammed together, crowded up too closely for anything but the couple of ranks on the outside to effectively fight, but that just meant that no matter how many you cut down, there would be dozens, hundreds, to replace the fallen.

  Immediately in front of us, and turning, as they became aware that we were behind them, was a herd of Minotaurs. On their right, was a group of Trolls. On their left, a bunch of skeletal-looking Wendigos. All three groups were at least three deep, and I couldn’t make out what was behind them. But before I could do more than feel the first surge of terror, Steel shouted in my ears.

  “Grenades out!” Automatically, I obeyed. “Shields coming down in three! Two! One!”

  The shimmering bowl of the Shields vanished.

  “Grenades! Three! Two! One!”

  I put as much arm-power and magic-power as I could behind my throw; the grenades fell among the Othersiders who were only now turning to attack us. The Shields came back up as the first of the grenades exploded, and the world erupted in sound and light. Explosions, howls, screams, the sound hit us with almost the same impact as the blast wave.

  It looked as if we had a mix of flash, incendiary, and explosive grenades, and I had no idea which I had thrown. None of these grenades threw shrapnel; at these close quarters, shrapnel could hit us as easily as the enemy if the Shields faltered for that critical second. By chance, one that fell among the Minotaurs was incendiary, and as closely packed as they were, facing us, there was no way for them to escape it. Several of them caught fire at once and began thrashing and kicking, trying to escape or put the flames out, creating chaos and panic in their ranks. There was the terrible stink of burning hair, followed by the disconcerting smell of cooking beef, as I backed up the incendiary grenades with fire bolts.

  The flash-grenades disoriented, making their victims easier targets. The explosives all landed deeper into the mob; I couldn’t see what they had done. Besides, I was too busy trying to keep the things that were already on fire burning hotter, and setting everything else around them ablaze.