Dragon: Bridge & Sword: The Final War (Bridge & Sword Series Book 9)

by JC Andrijeski

  “You must know something,” she threw back at me, more than a little testy herself. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be going at all. The last time we spoke you told me you were months away from Beijing, Esteemed Bridge. ‘Two months, minimum,’ you said. That was three weeks ago. So clearly, something’s changed.”

  I flinched a little at her using my seer title. Either someone was coaching her at Langley, or this was Brooks genuinely trying to communicate with me, using seer terminology.

  It could be either, honestly––or both.

  After another beat, I made my tone more conciliatory.

  “The change in timing is due to a different concern, Madame President,” I said.

  “Which is what?”

  I bit my lip, fighting that still-coiling anger. Doing my best to keep it from my voice, I gave her a seer’s shrug, my voice carefully respectful.

  “It is in regard to my husband, Madame President.”

  “What about him?” Brooks said, her voice even more wary.

  I exhaled, then told her the truth. “I have serious concerns for his well-being. And therefore my daughter’s. And mine, for that matter.”

  Silence fell over the line.

  Instead of the dark from before, the line just went quiet. I saw Brooks turn her head, answering something one of the others was saying. Frowning slightly, she looked back at me. I saw the flicker of understanding in her face and eyes.

  “I see,” she said, exhaling. “You still think you can extract him? Or do you think they’ve turned him?”

  I shrugged, remembering to do it the human way that time. “I honestly don’t know. But I’m worried if they can’t turn him within a certain timeframe, killing him might be their next step. I have to get there before that happens.”

  She nodded, once.

  The fact that it was close to a seer’s nod might have amused me at another time.

  Then again, she was a politician, so of course she’d be good at mirroring people.

  “I might still need the other,” I told her cautiously. “The contingency we talked about. But I would need to request it from there––”

  “Understood,” she said.

  For a moment, her eyes looked distant.

  Not in a checked-out way, which might have made me nervous. Rather, it was more like she was watching something other than me. A few seconds later, I realized she was probably looking at a monitor on the other side of our comm, just from the way her eyes tracked the movement. Probably the news feeds then. Or live satellite transmissions of one kind or another.

  Having seen far too many of those myself since C2-77 broke, I found myself understanding the frown at her lips more than I wanted.

  “All right.” Her voice held an open concession that time. Looking away from the wall she’d been focused on, she rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  “Your people have explained to me that you would need radio silence for the first half of this operation. Including in terms of how you people… err, communicate.”

  I firmed my mouth, fighting not to smile.

  Nodding to her politely, I inclined my head.

  “Correct.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, given that, we can give you two weeks of dead air.”

  Her eyes grew warning.

  “…But that’s all, Esteemed Bridge. You need to check in with us in some way at the two week mark––or before––or have someone else do it in your stead. If you don’t, I can’t be held responsible for what my people do. The assumption will be that Dragon is in China, and that you are dead or a captive. Dragon will become the priority objective at that point.”

  At my silence, she cleared her throat.

  “I’m sorry to be so blunt, Esteemed Bridge, but I need you to understand this. Frankly, if we get intel that Dragon is in China before that time, I can’t promise I can give you a second longer than those two weeks. And that will not be easy.”

  She was still watching me closely when I nodded.

  “Understood.”

  “You should also know,” she added. “I don’t disagree with them on this. Eliminating this Dragon has to be the priority. The human race won’t survive another Syrimne. Particularly not now.”

  I didn’t bother to point out that I was going there to prevent the real Syrimne from becoming Syrimne again, since I figured that probably wouldn’t help my case. Nor did I bother to point out that Revik was a known risk, whereas Dragon was entirely unknown.

  One curious thing I’d noticed about human memories and seer life spans––humans often didn’t really, fully believe that seers lived as long as they did.

  Meaning, they knew they did, of course, but their minds still played tricks on them when it came to actual history. I’d used that fact to my advantage more than once when it came to Revik, since even though he was now officially documented as Syrimne, and commonly known via the media to have been Syrimne, a lot of humans didn’t really fully get that he actually was Syrimne.

  Not “like” Syrimne… but actually Syrimne.

  They knew it, but they didn’t know it.

  For the same reason now, I kept my mouth shut.

  Brooks added, “I can’t afford to wait around for Dragon to ally with this ‘Shadow’ person you told me about. From everything you’ve said, that would be an unmitigated disaster.”

  There wasn’t a lot I could say to that, either, at least that would genuinely reassure her. I didn’t bother to tell her I highly doubted “alliance” with Shadow was Dragon’s goal, but I knew I might be wrong about that, too.

  Either way, I completely understood why she felt the way she did.

  I also couldn’t blame her for taking a hard-line stance.

  “Understood,” I said, nodding once.

  “Don’t be late for that check in,” she warned, her dark eyes holding a harder meaning. “I mean it, Ms. Taylor. Yours is not the only pressure on me right now. Nor the loudest.”

  “I understand,” I said again. “I really do.”

  “Good,” she said, nodding in that seer-like way. Giving me the first smile of our conversation, she added, “As much as I hate to admit it… I like you, Ms. Taylor. I’d prefer it if we could make this alliance work, if only because I like the alternatives a lot less than I do the prospect of you continuing to boss me around.”

  Smiling faintly at the humor in her voice, I rolled my eyes, clicking humorously in reply. Lifting my coffee cup, I leaned back in the leather chair.

  “I, as well, Madam President,” I murmured, raising the cup to her. “I, as well.”

  “THAT’S GOING TO have to be your call now,” I told Balidor via the headset, glancing to my right as I felt the light of a seer I didn’t know approaching.

  “…Both of your call,” I added, acknowledging that Wreg shared the link. “But if you’re asking for my advice, I’d say wait. There’s a good chance that making a move in that direction will tip Shadow off that we’ve known for awhile. If that’s the case, acting on it now will cause more problems than it solves. Worse, it might put Revik in more danger.”

  I heard Balidor sigh via the link.

  “Agreed, Esteemed Bridge,” he said.

  Wreg didn’t answer, which I tried my best to ignore.

  Even so, the thought caused me to glance at Dalejem as he lowered his weight into the plane seat next to mine, pausing to caress my thigh with one hand through the combat pants.

  I swear I felt Wreg react to that brief touch through the line.

  “Do you have any more intel on what we can expect after we land?” I said, brusque. Then, feeling that other, strange seer yet again, I glanced up to see him walking towards the back aisle of the plane where we sat. I exhaled. “Hang on a minute, brothers.”

  Giving the approaching seer an undisguised you’re interrupting me look, I touched my ear wearing the headset to indicate I was talking to someone. The strange infiltrator with the tattoo of a sun around one eye didn’t seem to get the hint.

&
nbsp; He just walked up and stood there, a question on his face.

  When he didn’t react to my frown, I glanced at Dalejem, motioning to him in sign language to handle whatever it was the guy wanted. Grunting, Jem rose to his feet, lightly touching the back of my neck with warm fingers as he walked to the end of the aisle.

  Again, I swear to the gods I felt Wreg flinch… then scowl.

  I stayed off the live link until I’d watched Dalejem catch hold of the seer’s arm and begin steering him back towards the front of the plane. As they left, I couldn’t help but catch the strange male’s frown after he saw Dalejem touch me, too.

  Internally, I fought to sigh versus getting angry.

  I knew I’d pulled a Revik, sitting in the far back of the plane, but I now understood why he did it. It gave me an unobstructed view of every seer on the plane. More importantly perhaps, it was a lot easier to avoid unwanted distractions––and to avoid being overheard––when I used VR versus the Barrier.

  I watched Jem and the other seer walk further down the aisle, waiting until I was sure they were out of earshot and there wasn’t any kind of real problem.

  Before I clicked back on the live link I also sent Jem a side ping to look at the guy’s light.

  Jem acknowledged me in a warm flush that told me a) he’d already intended to do that and b) the guy had already managed to annoy the shit out of him. Apparently he’d picked up on the strange seer being a little too curious about the two of us, as well.

  I also caught that Jem thought it was some religious thing.

  Great. Now I had total strangers judging me, too.

  I didn’t really like having all of these strange seers around us, honestly. I would have been a lot happier if it had remained just me and Jem, although I fully understood why that approach flat-out wasn’t practical where we were going.

  I appreciated the support from the London seers, especially Jasek. I knew he was trying to protect us––well, I was reasonably sure he was––but not knowing who I could trust mostly just transferred my stress about being shot by strangers into stress about being shot by my own people.

  China wasn’t the kind of place we’d be able to travel inconspicuously, though, no matter what alias I used. Given how hard they’d been hit by C2-77, it also wasn’t the safest place in the world right now in general. We were told to expect a lot of hungry, armed humans––some of whom had once belonged to militaries from China and the surrounding areas.

  We were also told to expect well-organized bands of Wvercians, both on horseback and in vehicles of various kinds. Apparently the Wvercians constituted an even bigger threat, especially in the areas around Beijing. They were also better armed.

  We couldn’t fly into Beijing-monitored airspace, of course, although I was deliberately being kept in the dark about the flight plan. The last I knew, the plateaus of inner Mongolia were the closest anyone could get without entering the zone now being monitored full-time by the Dreng, but I had my doubts they would want to fly us so far into the mountains given what we’d have to pass through on the ground to get to Beijing.

  I didn’t ask questions though, or let myself dwell on the specifics of our approach.

  Because yeah, there was still the whole Revik thing.

  “Hey,” I said, reactivating the channel. “I’m back. So? Any updates on the situation on the ground there?”

  Balidor clicked softly.

  I could feel something else on his mind, but I wasn’t sure I should push him to find out what it was. If it had to do with Jem, I definitely wasn’t in the mood.

  Particularly not with Wreg on the line with us.

  “Nothing new, no,” he said, blunt. “We have to assume Revik will feel you, though. Which means Menlim will, too.”

  “I know,” I muttered, watching Jem again as he continued to talk to the other seer. “Believe me, I know.”

  “And this deal you have made with Brooks––” Balidor added.

  “It was the best I could do, ‘Dor,” I said, clicking at him softly. “She’s still got a lot of people around her screaming to strike back after what Dragon did. I think finding out Novak had infiltrated them across two different administrations didn’t exactly help––”

  “Was it absolutely necessary that she share that with them?” Balidor said drily.

  I grunted. “Trust me, I had that talk with her, too. She believes in transparency where possible, being an elected official. Normally I wouldn’t fault her for that, but in this case, yeah, it wasn’t ideal. Also the footage got out from the NORAD facility attack, so now she’s getting pressure from outside of the administration, too––”

  “I’m aware of that,” Balidor said. “We have been watching the feeds, Alyson.”

  I nodded. Of course they had been.

  I tried accessing Dante’s satellite feeds via the link, but got blocked.

  “We can’t show you those, Esteemed Bridge,” Balidor reminded me.

  I sighed, clicking. Of course they couldn’t. We had to assume Shadow’s people were hearing everything now, not only the things we’d been feeding them.

  It had been over a month of radio silence now.

  I hadn’t felt Revik at all during that time.

  “Any news on Dragon?” I said.

  Again, Balidor was the one to answer.

  “We sent Loki to the next drop point according to your map.”

  “And?”

  “Same thing,” Balidor said. “Dead body. Recent. No new intel apart from that.”

  I felt something in his light, and frowned. “Nothing different at all?”

  There was a silence.

  Balidor sighed, clicking at me. “Nothing relevant.”

  “Is it something you can’t tell me? Because of Revik?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then tell me,” I said, my voice a touch harder.

  I could almost see Balidor shaking his head, possibly looking at Wreg as he did it, his hands on his hips as he exhaled in irritation.

  “Fine,” he said, letting that irritation be audible. “In the room where the victim was found, he’d written on the wall in the victim’s blood. The message was in Old Prexci and read, ‘You were not invited.’ In the bedroom, he’d written ‘Where is my sister? Has she forgotten all her vows?’”

  I felt myself wince.

  Enough that Jem looked over his shoulder at me, his posture stiffening.

  We were definitely becoming way too connected.

  “I’d noticed that,” Balidor said, his voice a touch harder. “So has brother Wreg. And brother Jon. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that Revik will notice it, too?”

  “Not now, ’Dori––”

  “I heard he threatened several of Jasek’s people,” he cut in, pushing right past me. “…and Surli back at Langley, among others. So am I to assume the two of you are under agreement now? Or is he just exerting rights as if you were?”

  “‘Dor––”

  “Alyson, this plan is fucking suicide,” Balidor said, his voice openly angry. “Everyone here thinks you’ve lost your goddamned mind. We had to excuse Jon from this meeting because he openly admitted he would not be able to speak to you rationally about this. At this point I don’t know if he’s worried about you more or less than he is fucking angry with you, Allie.”

  When I didn’t speak, Balidor’s voice grew colder.

  “He thinks we should bring you in,” he added. “…Forcibly, if necessary. He also thinks Dalejem’s a goddamned spy. He is not alone in these things, Allie.”

  I bit my lip, silent.

  I’d wondered why Jon wasn’t there, but hearing Balidor spell out the reason didn’t exactly help, and not only because I’d already guessed part of it.

  “It would be suicide even without the complication of Jem and you,” Balidor went on, his voice still angry. “If you think Revik hasn’t felt this thing between the two of you by now, you are deceiving yourself massively, Alyson. He will kill Jem on sigh
t, and probably kill you too, by now… or at least put you in the fucking hospital. That’s assuming Menlim doesn’t just trigger him to murder you outright. Have you forgotten Dubai? When he didn’t even have a reason for wanting to harm you?”

  I shook my head, but still didn’t speak. My eyes flickered to Jem, right before I strengthened the shield around my light.

  When Balidor didn’t go on, I sighed, clicking softly under my breath.

  “This isn’t about that, Balidor,” I said, switching to sub-vocals. “I have to get there before Dragon, or Revik is dead. That’s all I care about right now. If I don’t do that, it won’t matter how he feels about me and Jem––because I’ll be dead. So will he. So will Lily.”

  “Assuming Menlim hasn’t found some way to break the bond between the two of you already,” Balidor returned shortly. “…and assuming Dragon isn’t there to create an alliance with your husband, versus killing him.”

  I shook my head.

  I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew that wasn’t it.

  “How could you possibly know that, Alyson?” Balidor said, feeling the thread of my thoughts. “I know you rely on these ‘feelings’ of yours, but in this case I think that’s taking the Bridge thing a bit far, don’t you…?”

  “Maybe,” I muttered through the sub-vocals.

  My hands tightened on the armrests as the plane lurched into motion. The engines rose to a higher-pitched whine as we began to taxi towards the military runway.

  “‘Dori,” I said. “How the hell do I know anything? How does my mother? And why would I stop trusting that now, when it matters the most?”

  The Adhipan seer grew quiet, but I could feel his frustration.

  “Look,” I said. “Balidor. I’m not staying away from Revik because of Jem. I’m not. So all of you need to just… I don’t know. Get over it.”

  Wreg made a disbelieving sound, the first I’d heard from him since Balidor started in on me.

  I ignored it, going on as if I hadn’t heard.