Dragon_The Final War

by JC Andrijeski

  “I should go with you––” I said again.

  He shook his head. “No. I’ll be faster alone.”

  “What about the Lao Hu?” I bit my lip. “We still might need to evacuate them. Especially with you blowing shit up underground. They won’t listen to you. They might listen to me.”

  He didn’t look back, keeping his eyes on the open panel as he shook his head.

  “I agree,” he said, exhaling. “But you can’t do it from here. Not now, in the middle of a gunfight. They’ll shoot me on sight. Probably you, too, given who you are to me.”

  I felt another pulse of pain leave his light, right before he glanced over his shoulder. When he went on, his voice sounded gruffer, almost forced.

  “Use Brooks,” he said. “Maybe it will give them some common ground after this.”

  “Revik––”

  “Allie, I need to go inside. You don’t.”

  “Why?” I said, frustrated. “Can’t we do that from a distance, too?”

  He shook his head. “That bunker is too deep. Even nukes won’t touch it, and I’m not leaving that goddamned machine alive down there.”

  “But Revik, how would you even––”

  “There was a fusion reactor,” he cut in. “I walked right by the fucking thing the last time I was in there. I know where it is.” Exhaling, he clicked at me softly, still not quite meeting my gaze. “Allie, you need to go. Please. Talk to Brooks. Get her to evacuate the City, if you can. When was the exit planned for?”

  “Four hours,” I said. “That’s the default. They said to call to move it up.”

  Revik nodded. “I shouldn’t need that much time. Give me an hour for set up. Ninety minutes if you’re nervous. That’s plenty of time. I can easily get in and out of there and to a reasonable pick up point by sixty. Two hours for full evac.”

  “Jasek was going to default to the airport. Do you still want that?”

  Revik frowned. I could almost feel him thinking.

  “I’d prefer to have a backup,” he said. “In case it runs longer than I’m expecting.”

  “So initial here,” I said. “Tiananmen. Secondary at the airport. I think that works better anyway. They can pick you up here and drive you there, unless you get held up.” Hesitating, I added, “Final rendezvous is some place on the coast. Dalian, it’s called. It’s pretty close to North Korea.”

  Watching as he checked the second magazine I’d given him, I bit my lip, blurting, “I’ll tell them ninety minutes for Tiananmen, okay? You really should try to make that one. You’d have to get to the airport on your own if it’s more than that. Or the pickup point outside the main gate if it’s under that. I want us out of China this morning.”

  “I can do that.”

  “The airport’s not that close, Revik.”

  “Make it two hours for set up then, to be safe,” he said, checking his watch. “Two and a half for the evac. Oh-nine-thirty for Tiananmen. If I don’t make it, I’ll steal a car.”

  I bit my lip, fighting not to tell him that might not be all that easy, either.

  He knew that, of course.

  I also knew he’d find a way.

  When I fell silent, he looked over his shoulder at me, exhaling in a series of clicks.

  “Allie. If I do what we’re talking about, it will take out most of the City, aboveground and below. You need to go. You need to get out of here and warn them. You know damned well they’re not going to want to abandon the City. Voi Pai definitely won’t. It will take some persuading. That should come from Brooks. Or you.”

  “What if the Lao Hu go after you?” I said. “Trap you down there?”

  He shook his head. “They won’t. Not with the City’s construct down. They can’t bring me down alone and they know it.”

  “But what about Dragon?” I said, still not wanting to leave him. “You said you saw him in here, in the gardens.”

  “He didn’t hurt me,” Revik said.

  Exhaling and clicking, I grimaced, remembering the bare bones of their exchange. “You said he was fucking eating someone, Revik. Raw. Besides, what makes you think he wouldn’t hurt you this time? You don’t know.”

  I watched him stare off for a second or two, thinking. Then he shook his head, frowning as he combed his fingers through his black hair.

  “No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not here for me.”

  I bit my lip, wanting to argue with him, even though internally, I found myself agreeing with him. Dragon wasn’t here for Revik, not anymore.

  Maybe he never was.

  Revik and I were just, I don’t know––stepping stones along the way.

  I couldn’t make myself care about any of that right now, though. Thinking about Dragon or what his motives might be was just more white noise.

  I didn’t want to leave him.

  I didn’t want to fucking leave him here, not for an hour––not even for ten minutes. I didn’t much care if it made sense or not. I wanted to scream at him about no separations, about agreements we’d made, vows we’d taken, but some part of me knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring any of that up right then.

  So I just stood there, watching his back as Revik rearranged his grip on the edge of the disguised organic, yanking it open the rest of the way with an effort, his tattooed forearm and shoulder straining. Once he got it open about four feet, he inserted his body through, peering around the edge of the opening to scan the garden and nearby trees.

  I watched him, feeling my heart pound harder in my chest.

  I couldn’t seem to make myself walk away from him.

  I couldn’t make myself walk away.

  “Allie.” Revik turned, sliding back behind the stone wall.

  He kept his foot propped in the opening.

  That time, before I could read the look on his face, he caught hold of the front of my dress, pulling me towards him. When I looked up at him, meeting his gaze, there were tears in his eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk now,” he said, his German accent thicker. “I don’t.”

  I nodded, fighting to control my light. “Okay.”

  Leaning down, he kissed me, shocking me with the contact even as I felt pain expand off his light. The taste and shape of his mouth shocked me more, making my own pain exponentially worse. My heart stopped as his aleimi slid into mine, making it hard to breathe.

  A similar reaction coiled through him, a near-violence twisted into anger just before he pulled away.

  He liked the dress. He also hated that I was wearing it.

  He was fighting not to make a crack about it.

  He didn’t let go of me, though.

  “I love you,” he said, meeting my gaze.

  His words came out hard. His jaw clenched as he looked at me, his clear eyes brightening more. I felt it that time. I felt the emotion behind his words. I felt that love even as my heart clenched, feeling like I was going to suffocate from the pain pulsing off him as he looked at me. I felt jealousy on him too, but that fierceness of love briefly overshadowed the rest.

  When he exhaled, wiping his face, I felt his pain worsen.

  Pulling me closer, he leaned his face against mine. “I’d do it for you again, Allie. All of it,” he murmured. “I swear I would. I’d do anything for you, wife. No regrets. None. Okay?”

  I nodded, grasping his arms.

  I held him tightly, maybe too tightly, my fingers and light desperate as I fought to control myself, to keep from wrapping myself around him, pulling him away from that opening in the wall.

  He didn’t let me hold onto him for long, though.

  Disentangling his arms, he kissed me again, more lingeringly that time.

  “We knew it might come to this.” Clasping my fingers, he pulled my hand and arm closer to his chest, closer to his heart. “Allie… we knew. Both of us. You can’t blame yourself. You can’t, Allie. You just can’t.” His jaw tightened, his eyes on mine. “I love you. I love you, wife. You’re all I thought about. Thr
ough all of it. Know that. Please know that.”

  I nodded, fighting to breathe, to even see him clearly. I stared down at the grass, still fighting to breathe, still feeling like I was suffocating.

  “Revik.” I fought to speak, to force out words. “Revik… please. I love you.”

  He’d already let go of me.

  “More than anything,” I said. “More than anything, Revik––”

  I looked up.

  He was already gone.

  He’d disappeared through the opening in the wall before I could even finish saying it.

  56

  ACTION AND REACTION

  “WHAT?” BALIDOR GRITTED his teeth, gripping the instrument panel of the helicopter where he sat shotgun to Varlan, who was flying the thing through heavy turbulence. “Brother… gaos. I knew about the attack, yes. Jax contacted us. But the network was still operational then, so he could only send through an encrypted message, and there were few details. She actually killed some of ours? Are you sure that––”

  “Sure?” Declan grunted, his Asian accent coming out more strongly. “Yes, brother, I am very sure of this. She killed five of us.”

  Balidor sucked in a hissing breath. Five?

  His heart jackknifed sideways, even before he heard the names.

  “Sister Talei,” Declan said. “Sister Neela. That Chinese seer, Surli. Two of yours. Ike was killed while standing guard. Also Mara.”

  The pain in Balidor’s light worsened, going from disbelief to a light-darkening grief. He fought with his own emotions, unable to answer for those few seconds.

  He had trained Mara. Recruited her. He’d known her as a child.

  Ike came from Tarsi’s generation, but Balidor ran ops with him for decades. Centuries, really. They’d eaten together, slept back to back, fought side by side. They’d never really been close personally, yet, like all those in the Adhipan, he’d been family.

  Even Neela was a personal blow.

  He’d recently begun to befriend the ex-Rebel. Hell, he’d slept with her during that rooftop bonding session, which was recent enough, he could still recall resonances of her in his light.

  He’d enjoyed it. He’d enjoyed it a little too much, really.

  Enough to get him in trouble with––

  Next to him, Varlan turned, his violet eyes holding scrutiny from where he gripped the cyclic in both hands. When Balidor blanked his mind, the older seer’s mouth turned in a frown.

  “What is it, brother?” Varlan said after a pause. “What has happened?”

  Balidor shook his head, not answering as he returned his mind to Declan.

  “What about the rest of the team?” he said into the link. “Is everyone else all right, brother? Apart from those mentioned?”

  “No,” Declan said, blunt. His deep voice held more anger as he continued, “She wounded brother Raddi severely… and brother Jorag, who has a concussion and a broken leg. That female seer, Kat, was shot in the stomach. She is in danger of losing her life from loss of blood. We have her with human medics now, so I will pray for her to survive this, but they didn’t have enough blood available in her typing in their storage––”

  “Is a donor possible?”

  “We are looking at that now.” Declan’s voice grew colder. “The rest of us would like to go hunting, brother. We await only you and brother Wreg’s word.”

  Silence fell.

  Balidor felt Varlan listening to that silence, along with Wreg and Jon now too, who listened from seats on the other side of the curtain separating the cockpit from the main cabin.

  The four of them rode in an Mi-8/17 series Russian helicopter, heading directly for Chinese airspace now that the network had been downed.

  Balidor still couldn’t believe the network was down.

  He’d scarcely recovered from learning the truth of what Dehgoies and Alyson had been up to over the past ten months, running what appeared to be a multi-level infiltration op to break into Shadow’s construct from the inside. From what he understood, they’d designed a distraction scenario for the first level, one in which they’d intended Revik be caught as a means of convincing Menlim it was safe to reintegrate him into all of the security levels of the construct, which was their true objective from the start.

  Revik leaving, pretending to martyr himself for his family, going back to work for Menlim, refusing to be connected to the Dreng network, releasing Allie from their marriage vows––that was all simply the first phase of the op.

  Him going to China, drinking excessively and letting the Dreng ply him with Lao Hu prostitutes was part of that lower-level scenario, too.

  Allie’s whole thing with Dalejem––

  But Balidor struggled to even think about the details now.

  It would likely take weeks of debriefings to untangle all of it, and to understand exactly what they’d cooked up to accomplish all this. In the meantime, Balidor was simultaneously impressed, furious to the point of violence at the unbelievable risk they’d taken with all their lives, a little in awe at their audacity, and angry at himself for not seeing the truth of it.

  When it came to Alyson and Revik in particular, he honestly couldn’t decide if he wanted to kiss the two of them for what they’d pulled off, or lock them in the tank until they promised to never do anything so insanely stupid again.

  More pressingly, he struggled with the bare bones of where this left them tactically––how long it might last, how it could impact the world stage, what it even meant for them. He’d partitioned off several higher levels of his light to map out ways they might capitalize on the window before it closed, but he needed the Bridge and Sword to go in depth into that end of things, as well.

  Alyson already issued several sets of orders, the largest of those being to deal with that underground facility she’d found in Denver, and to scan for any sign of the network resurfacing in the event they’d missed one of the storage facilities for bodies.

  Truly, though, Balidor suspected none of them understood the full implications of what had just occurred––including Alyson and her husband.

  Perhaps especially them, in that they had such intense personal motivations for all of this––motives that likely trumped anything more in the strategic vein.

  More worrisome perhaps, neither Balidor, Allie, Revik, nor anyone else on their team had any idea at all what the Dreng might do in response.

  Balidor suspected they’d entered a whole new area of the game board.

  Even his team’s physical responses felt more reactionary than not at this point.

  They’d only obtained the helicopter that morning. Varlan negotiated the deal in trade––mostly livestock and seeds but also some fuel and fresh water. Luckily, the damned thing seemed to be operating well, but Balidor knew that could change at any time.

  “Brother, there is something else,” Declan said via the link. “The human president. Brooks. She is missing. Most of her inner circle people are also dead.”

  Balidor flinched. “Chandre?”

  “We believe so, yes.”

  Balidor’s jaw hardened.

  Again, he tried to put himself in Shadow’s shoes, and in those of the Dreng more generally. His mind flipped through scenarios, good and bad, regarding what might be their next step. Would emotion factor into their response?

  Did the Dreng feel rage? Frustration? Fear?

  A desire for revenge?

  Or would they approach this with cold, crystal-clear logic?

  He would need to ask Tarsi, as he himself had never studied such things.

  One thing he felt reasonably, if somewhat irrationally sure of––Shadow had not seen this coming either. The multi-leveled, op-within-an-op charade Allie and her mate perpetrated over the course of the past nine or ten months managed to truly surprise the Dreng beings operating down here.

  Still, he couldn’t count on this significantly delaying their response. This thing with Chandre and Brooks had to be some level of that response.

&
nbsp; But why would Shadow want Brooks?

  Balidor realized he knew the answer to that, too.

  “Gaos di'lanlente a' guete.” His face lost much of its blood. Turning in his seat, he shouted back into the helicopter’s main cabin. “Wreg! Jon! Up here… now!”

  He heard them unstrap safety belts and regain their feet, right before the curtain twitched and Wreg appeared in the doorway of the cockpit. His broad shoulders filled the opening almost entirely in his full combat gear.

  He stared down at Balidor, his obsidian eyes holding a denser understanding.

  Balidor didn’t wait to discover what the other seer had already felt on his light.

  “They’re going to nuke Beijing.” Balidor took a breath, feeling the understanding lodge in his chest. “Wreg. They’re going to nuke China. Beijing, at least. For real this time. They’re going to try and take out the Bridge and Sword.”

  Squeezing past Wreg’s bulk, Jon wedged himself into the cockpit itself, gripping the back of Balidor’s flight chair. He stared down at him, swaying slightly to keep his balance.

  “Why would they attack their own site?” he said, speaking loudly over the rotors. “Didn’t Allie say he has an underground facility there? Why nuke his own facility?”

  Balidor shook his head, fighting to think.

  “Maybe he knows it is breached.” Still thinking, he frowned. “Or maybe––more likely––he knows it would not be at risk. Nenzi said it was far underground. Perhaps it was built specifically to survive such a thing. From her impressions of the compound in Denver, Allie seemed to think nuclear war was likely the next step for them––”

  “Then why wouldn’t he have done it already?” Jon said.

  Balidor blinked up at him, taken aback by the flat tone of his voice.

  It hit him that Jon was in a kind of lockdown mode with the military stuff, something he seemed to be increasingly picking up from his husband, Wreg. The two of them were so far in one another’s light by now, Balidor noticed a lot of tendencies and skills transferring between them with a seamlessness that could be startling.