I’ll have to find another way to calm her down. Her telepathy was useless; the bear’s mind wasn’t sophisticated enough to register beyond vague impressions. It was like trying to read another language when you’d never seen it before.
But Jay could feel the creature’s emotions. Anger, and the fear from the cubs at being woken from torpor. Between charges the animal was blowing through its mouth and clacking sharp teeth together, displays designed to intimidate her. She held the big animal off with another telekinetic push as the hairy behemoth lunged again, but she wouldn’t be able to keep pushing indefinitely. She was tired when she entered the cave, and fending off the bear was just making her exhaustion worse.
“I get it, you’re just protecting your little ones, but you don’t need to fear me. I don’t want to hurt them. Or you.” She accompanied the words with emotions; calm, soothing waves. The bear stopped lunging, its ears raising from their flattened positions. The bear didn’t move to rush her again, so she continued talking to it.
“There, see, I’m not a threat. I’m looking for a place to sleep, just like you.”
The bear made a clicking sound and moved forward at a walk before opening its jaws wide and showing its teeth. It wasn’t angry, more curious about her. Jay intensified her projective empathy, trying to push emotions that the creature would understand. The need for rest and her sense of loneliness.
As the bear snorted and dropped to all fours in the tunnel, she could see it working as it tilted its head at her and made a curious-sounding grunt.
“You’re not so scary, big momma. You should see Sarge on a bad day with no coffee. Sorry I disturbed you. Let’s be friends, okay?”
The bear responded by edging closer, sniffing heavily, ears flicking back and forth. Definitely curious.
“We were wrestling just then, weren’t we?” Jay remained still in her submissive crouch. She could sense the fear from the now-quiet cubs, but a small huff from their mother seemed to relax them. It was hard to tell what the bear was thinking, and now with no strong emotions it was like a mist had descended. The bear sat, sniffing and tilting its head.
Did you think the wrestling was playing? “See, I’m not so bad, am I?”
For a few minutes the bear examined her, making small vocalizations and changing its body language with tilts of its head and jaw opening. Whatever the bear decided she was, eventually it rolled to its feet and started to amble back to its den, looking over its shoulder at her as it did so and huffing softly at her.
When she didn’t move, the bear stopped and turned back, huffing again as if impatient with her. “I’m not one of your cubs, and despite you looking very cuddly and warm, big momma, I think I’ll go sleep in another tunnel. But thanks.”
Without further noise, the bear returned to its hollow. Jay breathed a sigh of relief, standing up and edging past the boulder.
Okay, I could have done without losing a hover, but that was actually pretty wonderful. Jay smiled to herself as she made her way into the main entrance of the cavern.
From his low position in the gully, Philippe couldn’t get eyes on enemy combatants. Just damned pine trees and snow and the calling of cardinals.
“You ready Hamm?”
“Let’s do this.”
Heart in his throat, Philippe lifted from the ground in one easy movement and ran as fast as he could towards the tree line, trying not to slip on the treacherous ground. At his side he could hear the crunch of ice as Hamm shadowed him.
The two men made the tree line with no answering shots.
Back to a tree trunk, Philippe breathed heavily and swung his head around, trying to find something to shoot at, clocking Hamm’s position as the slower man slid into a snowbank and did the same.
Nothing yet, damn. If this bastard is lodged in the middle of this thicket, Sacks and Casper might not get a shot off.
Making a cardinal’s call to get Hamm’s attention, Philippe made a circling motion towards the west, then pointed to himself with another motion to the east. If we circle around we might drive whoever this is towards Casper. While dense, the thicket wasn’t large enough to effectively hide more than a couple of men. Given the prints they’d already seen, he doubted there was more than one, unless this was a rendezvous point.
Hamm nodded his understanding and slid forward on his belly like a penguin, the neoprene of his sniper suit silent on the snow. Philippe copied him, snaking forward in the direction he’d last seen the tracks.
After three tense minutes he came across the prints, shallower under the pine foliage. They led directly towards the center of the grove, with no deviations. Casting an eye towards where he knew Sacks was positioned, he motioned at the direction the tracks had taken, then continued circling the trees.
The adrenalin in his system was causing his hands to shake as he continued moving. He was keyed up, ready for action, but lack of response made nervous sweat prickle along his spine.
Two more minutes of careful sliding and maneuvering and he came across another set of tracks heading out of the grove at an obtuse angle. He could tell the direction from the tail on the snowshoe, and he studied the tracks intently. It was an old trick to walk backwards in your own tracks to leave a misleading trail, but unless you were very careful, it left an indent in the skids’ tails, and he couldn’t see that.
He’s not in the grove. This transmitter is just a lure, or a diversion. If it was another sniper out there, he’d be hidden on a ridge a kilometer away looking through a scope right now. It was an unpleasant thought, but if the situation were reversed, he’d hold off firing until he’d located all his pursuers, to try and take them all out at once.
Now he was worried about Sacks and Casper. They were more exposed than him, but without comms he couldn’t tell them. He had no choice, he needed to find that transmitter, and do it now.
Phil got to his feet and moved alongside the tracks towards the center of the thicket. It was barely seventy meters to the center of the grove when he saw it. A deadfall made a small clearing, and in the precise center, sitting on the fallen tree, was the black box of the transmitter unit. It’s too perfect. Jesus, that screams booby trap—but traps are like magic tricks. Misdirection is key.
He continued following the tracks carefully, wanting to get closer for an effective shot with his handgun. There was no way he was touching that box. As he crept forward, something made him pause. The tracks in the snow. Something about them was wrong. It looks like the snow was smoothed over.
He got down on all fours and saw the tripwire. Barely above the snow, a transparent, high-gauge fishing line was almost invisible against the white background. He never would have seen it except for those faint marks that made him pause. Following the line with his eyes, it disappeared into the snow at the base of a pine, into a mound of snow he wouldn’t have looked at twice.
Claymore.
The transmitter sat in the open. The conclusion was obvious. Someone had left this and probably more nasty surprises for anyone sent to investigate the tracks and comms issue. Sixty meters to the jamming device. A long shot with the handgun and he’d have to make it count. Hamm would come running at the sound of gunfire. He’d have to disable the device with one shot and get on the horn immediately to stop him from running forward into any other traps.
He took two steps to place himself next to the tree with the claymore buried at its base, the bulk of the trunk between him and where he figured the explosive was. Using the tree trunk, he braced his arm, took careful aim, and breathed out, holding his breath for a moment before slowly squeezing the trigger.
As the bullet hit the small black box, the world disappeared in a haze of white and flame.
Jay sat upright, the silvery microbag making a small, crinkly noise that echoed off the cave walls. Something had woken her so she checked the mindscape. Nothing beyond the oh-so-faint, sleepy contentment she now knew was the bear cubs in their torpor.
Rubbing her eyes and yawning, a small pulsing li
ght in her peripheral vision indicated the squealer had returned. He must have finished sweeping the cave system. She reached over for her bag and drew out the display and a couple of light emitters, flicking them on and turning to the collected data. The holographic map data from the squealer shone in the darkness. Glowing wireframe lines, showing the extensive cave system.
She studied it carefully, but didn’t see what she was hoping for. She flipped open the precious diary page and looked at the small, cryptic poem in the margin.
An ethereal glow did beckon
down a stone titan’s throat,
light secrets to reckon
surrounded by the moat.
Wondrous stone full of light.
Angel and demon shining bright.
In the darkness of the not-night.
With touch comes the faculty of sight.
No moat, nor anything that looks like a throat. It’s not here. Her eyes turned to the bad poetry. The writing was small and precisely elegant. King Mycroft Barrett had written this, the man responsible for her existence; but not a real father, not like the man she called Dad. ‘Inseminator’ is more appropriate. It’s a suitable name for a monster.
There was no way around it. Mycroft was a monster and she was his daughter. He was responsible for killing half the world. Wiping out peoples and cultures and traditions on a scale of death and destruction never seen before.
And Jay considered that line: Angel and demon shining bright.
Was he a good man once? Did the world key make him a monster? The demon wins over the angel. She almost didn’t want to find the key, but it was the only chance the Rebels had to overthrow the Five, the only chance to save the people she loved from a lifetime of oppression and hiding. As her Mom said, most didn’t choose to be Rebels—they were just being themselves and bringing down the Five wouldn’t be achieved without bloodshed. Is that my fate? Is the key cursed to forever cause destruction?
At a small flare of pain in her thumb she realized she’d been chewing her thumbnail. She hadn’t even noticed until she tore into the quick.
Spitting out the errant bit of nail, she unzipped the microbag and climbed out. With the whole cave mapped, there was no point being here. It was time to move on to the fifth cave marked on the map.
Hurriedly, she repacked the equipment and took out a hover before inputting the data for the next cave entrance marked. Another walk through the brisk air, she thought sarcastically. Hopefully this time it won’t actually be snowing outside. Man, what I wouldn’t give for a set of snowshoes.
She hefted the bag onto her back, shrugging her shoulders to settle the contents, and started forward out of this section of cave to the entry she’d first encountered. The cheerful hover was at her back.
As the light of the entryway came into view, she snagged the hover and tucked it into a pocket. She considered saying goodbye to the bears again for a brief second before discarding the idea. It probably wasn’t good to keep waking them up when they should be sleeping and she could still sense that faint, sleepy contentment.
Wait. What’s that?
She paused, hunched over at the cave entrance. That sense of predatory focus that she’d felt when she first entered the cave was back. It was nebulous and outside her range, but closer than before, probably less than a mile away. She shrugged. Probably a cougar. She could handle it.
Dappled afternoon sun sent lances through the trees to glare off the snow. Only a couple of hours of sunlight to make the next cave. She’d have to hustle.
She stepped forward, feeling a slight resistance on her ankle and looked down when she heard a metallic ping. She gasped in surprise at two loud pops as sickly sweet smoke poured out of the snow at the entrance, fogging the air around her. Oh shit.
She placed gloved hands in front of her mouth and tried not to breathe, but whatever it was, she’d already gotten a lungful, enough to feel dizzy and uncoordinated. She staggered back inside, her vision narrowing and thoughts slow.
She had no idea which direction she was moving in and laid a hand against the rock for support as she swayed drunkenly. It was becoming difficult to breathe. She felt her knees hit the hard rock, but there was no sensation of pain as she collapsed the rest of the way, struggling to stay conscious.
Phil couldn’t have been unconscious for long as he woke to hands checking his pulse and Sacks’s reassuring voice barely audible over the ringing in his ears. “Phil! Shit, you scared me half to death.” In reflex, Phil did the assessment. Everythingattached? Yes. No broken bones? All good. All my blood on the inside? Thank goodness. Ears ringing, possible concussion, feel like I need to puke? Hell yes.
That done, Phil sat up with Sacks’s assistance and looked over the destruction of the trees. Saplings had been sheared off, shrapnel embedded deeply into thicker trunks, white wood against brown bark looking like wounds. A splash of red caught his attention. It wasn’t blood. Bright red feathers indicated that a cardinal had been shredded in the explosion, forlorn feathers scattered.
The destruction extended around the grove. When he’d shot the transmitter, not only had that trap exploded, but a number of traps in the surrounding trees as well. They must have all been linked.
“Is everyone okay?” he asked, fumbling his ear bud back in. “Casper, Hamm, sound off.”
“Casper here Sir, I’m fine, but Hamm’s messed up, over.”
Phil swore, then got to his feet. “Casper, do what you can, we’re coming to you, over.” He started moving, switching channels on the radio. “Captain Tremblay, come back.”
“Leve! Carter here, Tremblay’s dead. Some asshole has laid booby traps. C4 and claymores all over the fucking place. We’ve been ambushed, half the squad is dead or wounded, location is … Butterbeer. Over.”
“Son of a whore,” Sacks swore fiercely, a white-knuckled grip on his Tac-50 as they picked their way through the wreckage of the trees. “Think it’s the same bastard that did this?”
“Maybe,” Philippe replied, recalling the tactical briefing. “Butterbeer is to the northwest. Those tracks I found leading out of the grove were fresh and they lead off to the northeast. There’s no way he could have got into position so fast. So if it was the same person they’d have to have set the traps earlier.”
“Received Carter, you’ve got comms now, jamming transmitter is down. Call up mobile command, see if Coombs will spring for some air support or some fucking sat pictures, see if you can pinpoint him, over.”
“Understood Sir.”
“So the bastard that almost killed you is still around,” Sacks said in a satisfied tone. “I’m going to fucking end him.”
Philippe gave the smaller man’s shoulder a squeeze as Casper’s voice came over the ear piece. “Got you sir, we’re fifty meters from you. Over.”
“Roger that.”
As Philippe came close, he could see where Casper had used the butt of his Tac-50 to shovel snow into a concealing hillock. Smart kid. Hidden behind, Hamm was lying flat on his back, eyes closed, blood welling around a chunk of pine lodged deep in his upper thigh.
“How’s he doing?” Philippe asked, trying to assess the wound.
“I had to give him morphine Sir, that is fucking brutal. We take that out, we could kill him. We need a bird to fly him out or some boonie bouncers to get him back to command camp. Orders Sir?”
“Fucker that did this is close. All of this is just a diversion—the transmitter, the bombs, they’re trying to keep us from something, slow us down. What do you think, Sacks?”
“I say we leave Hamm in the tender care of Nurse Casper here and go find the trap-happy son of a bitch. We can’t leave him alive to shoot us in the back if we try and evac Hamm outta here.”
Casper nodded seriously at the expression on Sacks’s face. He wanted some payback too.
“Agreed. Let’s go get him, Sacks.”
“Don’t be long Sir, this cod-choker’s gonna wake up pissed,” Casper farewelled them.
Jay thought
she was dying. Each breath was harder than the last and she struggled to keep her eyes open and keep moving forward. Whatever that gas was, it slowly choked the life from her. The mindscape was on the other side of a chasm, unreachable but tantalizingly close. Even her empathy was silent, and using TK was simply out of the question.
I’d be shaking from fear if my limbs worked properly, she thought, dragging herself forward another half-pace. She didn’t know how long she’d been doing the slow motion attempt to flee from her unseen assailant, or how long it would take for them to reach her. What would they do if they found her before she recovered? If she recovered. Her entire world consisted of the few feet around her she could sense. The icy rocks and grit beneath her gloves, the smell of dried clover that came from the hibernating bears, the sound of her own heartbeat loud in her ears. This was her whole world.
She must have blacked out; the next thing she felt was a pair of rough hands wrenching the backpack from her shoulders. She barely managed to open her eyes, only seeing faint glimmers of light that waved and danced across her vision. In the center was a white, ghostly shape that writhed hideously with that faint, recognizable predatory sense she’d felt earlier. She tried to scream and all that came out was a wheezing grunt.
A heavy snow boot planted itself on her lower back, hard enough for her to feel the tread pattern even in her numb state, and then she heard the sibilant sound of a cold, steel blade leaving a sheath. He’s gonna stab me! She made the grunting sound again, unable to get enough air into her lungs to scream. Yet the blade she expected to stab into her sliced one of the straps instead, freeing the bag. The shrouded figure stood, stepping back a couple of paces.
Suffrage (World Key Chronicles Book 1) Page 24