Jon gaped at the resulting pile-up of vehicles in the mounds of dirt and rock.
The Mythers lines were in disarray, to say the least.
Jon watched them veer off into one another as their lines spread out, trying to avoid the conventional weapons, primarily missiles, that Wreg coordinated from the cliffs on either side.
He saw other trucks and even a few tanks veer into smaller canyons and washes that branched off from the main valley. He knew they were likely trying to get out of the canyon altogether, looking for some way around the giant, telekinetic spirits to reach Ship Rock via a different route.
The Kachinas came at them from the front, and at this point, they were doing more damage than Wreg’s people. Jon knew the gods themselves were only window-dressing, that it was really one of their telekinetics throwing those rocks and shooting lightning bolts at the Myther army.
He found he couldn’t tear his eyes off the illusion anyway.
Watching them, he also couldn’t help grinning.
Hitting at them when they reached the valley north of the flatter plain where Ship Rock lived had been Wreg’s idea. Revik, Maygar and Cass were working some kind of shielding-illusion thing that was obscuring the location of their missiles and their people, but the firing and coordination was all his mate.
“Where the hell did we get all these missiles?” Jon said, shouting as another four went off, aiming straight for the middle part of the procession that darkened the valley floor. “I thought we were low on ordinance for these things?”
He motioned vaguely towards the row of launchers.
Rather than shout back from where he stood by the heavy weapons, Wreg’s voice rose in its normal tones in his headset.
“Denver,” he said. “NORAD, really. Brooks has been moving conventional weapons and their remaining forces from over there for weeks. More was brought over when Brooks told them to evacuate what remained in NORAD and the Air Force Academy there. That’s why our human population more or less doubled while Nenz and his bride were down for the count.”
He grunted, glancing over his shoulder at Jon.
“…and that was before Atwar’s people got here.”
“Can they stop them?” Jon said, switching to his own headset. “Revik and the others? It doesn’t seem like the Myther seers have been able to do much, even the telekinetics.”
“Nenz said they’ve had to fight back pretty hard on the cliffs where the illusions are centered,” Wreg said, his voice grim. “They’re not battle-tested though, these telekinetics. From what Nenz said, they also can’t really think independently. It’s more like a hive-mind, and that mind is only partially directed by the Dreng and Deifilius. So they’ve got a lot of firepower, but so far, Nenz and his team have been able to misdirect and trick them fairly easily. They’re fighting them off on those other cliffs in part to maintain the illusion that we’re firing from there.”
“What about Allie?” Jon said, using his headset but still speaking too loudly over the sound of another series of crashing booms from the valley below. He saw missiles light up from a row of armored trucks of the Mythers.
Those missiles whistled as they let go, screaming across the sky to impact into the cliff about ten miles west of them.
Jon winced, then clicked his headset back on.
“Allie?” he repeated. “Any news on the door?”
“Not yet. Nenz is down there with her, but his consciousness is pretty split, so I’ve been trying not to bother him too much. He’s coordinating that Eagle Kachina down there.” Wreg motioned a tattooed hand towards the valley and the white-winged eagle. “Cass has the Raven. Maygar is running the firepower behind the mud-head. The clones have the Sun God.”
“Has he given any kind of timeline for when we need to move locations? Or does he want us to stay up here until they’re into the main valley?
“He wants us to hammer them here, for as long as we can.”
Wreg’s voice turned grim.
“…Once they’re out on the flats, we’re going to lose a lot in range. We’ll have flyers, a few satellite weapons, and Nenz’s telekinetic team, but anything manned we use against them will be pulverized. Once they’re out of range, Nenz said to take the tunnels back to the main cave complex at once. We’ve still got the missiles we can fire via remotes. And Brooks’ people brought a few toys that might help. Mostly, though, I think we’re going to dig in and defend the tunnels… buy his wife time to get that u’hatre davos door open.”
Jon nodded.
He heard and felt the worry in his mate.
As gratifying as it was to knock out part of their forces in this valley, it hit Jon again just how large of a force the Mythers had brought with them here. Even with the damage they’d managed to inflict over the past twenty or so minutes, their troops darkened the valley like a swarm of ants.
They were also close to reaching the mouth of that valley.
They’d be entirely in the flats not long after.
“Any word on where the Myther telekinetics are riding?” Jon said. “Weren’t we going to try to take some of them out? Especially now, before they’ve managed to figure out––”
A rumbling sound erupted from under his feet, cutting him off.
Wreg looked up from where he stood nearer to the cliff’s edge.
His dark eyes were so wide, Jon’s heart leapt to his throat.
Waving both of his tattooed hands, Wreg shouted to all of them on the other side.
“GO! GO! GO! GO! RUN!”
The others didn’t hesitate.
Declan, Jax, Holo, Chinja, Nulek, and two of the Native scouts named Joseph and Keri, ran past Jon at a full sprint. They were followed immediately by Kalen, Wanai, Forley, Baleur, and Illeg––all of them obeying Wreg without question, without so much as a backwards glance.
Jon stood there, waiting for his mate to catch up to them.
“GO!” Wreg bellowed at him. “JON, GO! RUN!”
“YOU RUN!” Jon yelled back.
Wreg frowned, but didn’t argue. He only sprinted harder, running all-out across the red earth and through the scrub brush that dotted the top of the cliff.
Jon didn’t turn and start to do the same until the Chinese seer had nearly reached him.
When he did, Wreg caught his bicep roughly in his hand, forcing him faster so that Jon broke into an all-out sprint. He lengthened his strides even more at Wreg’s urging with his light and hands, leaping after him to keep up as they fled the edge of the cliff.
It wasn’t until he’d run into the thin strand of trees past the lower covering of dirt and scrub brush that Jon realized he’d left his organic rifle behind, along with his pack with all of his water, food, ammunition, and other supplies.
He barely gave it a second thought as he struggled to keep up with Wreg’s longer strides.
Even running as fast as they could, they were almost too late.
Jon looked back briefly when there was a booming crack just behind him.
He saw when the ridge began to go.
Rather than crumbling down gradually, the whole cliff face sheered off in one go, starting about thirty yards back from the edge.
It fell straight down––trees, rocks, grass, scrub brush, red earth, granite, shale, sand. Jon saw the missile launcher disappear in a near free-fall, followed by the armored truck holding all of their missiles and whatever guns and gear they’d left behind.
Jon and Wreg didn’t stop running until they’d gone at least twenty or so yards farther.
By then, they’d rejoined the rest of their group, who were standing in a cluster of dry pine trees nearly at the top of the highest part of the ridge. Everyone was panting and sweating, pale despite the beating sun and red and yellow dust on their faces. They all stared back at where the cliff had been.
The new edge began only a few car lengths from where they now stood.
Still gasping, fighting to get back his breath, Wreg leaned his muscular hands on his thighs and th
e dusty armored pants he wore, looking up at Jon. A humorless smile touched the edges of his lips, right before he quirked a dark eyebrow.
His chest still heaved erratically as he spoke.
“I’d say their telekinetics are getting the hang of things, brother,” he said, gasping. “What do you think? That or maybe their satellites finally picked us up.” Glancing around, frowning, he added, “Either way, we should move.”
The rest of the group nodded, still bent over and fighting to catch their breath. A few chuckled, looking at one another in a kind of shocked disbelief, maybe just that they were alive. To Jon, it felt more like a shock reaction than real humor.
Looking around at their faces, Wreg seemed to be counting heads.
He frowned a few seconds later.
“Where’s Garend?” he said.
Jon felt his stomach drop.
Looking around, he felt the blood drain from his face when he didn’t see the handsome male seer’s face among those who stood with them in the trees.
Garend had been one of his first friends in Seertown, back what felt like a million years ago now. They’d met in Vash’s sight classes, not long after Jon arrived in India.
After a few seconds of heavy-feeling silence, Wanai spoke up.
“He was in the back of the truck,” she said, her voice reluctant.
Wreg frowned at her, then over at Jon.
Without speaking, all of them turned back towards the cliff’s edge, watching the clouds of dust rise up from where most of it had fallen into the valley below.
54
DIGGERS AND STINGERS
“GAOS D’JUREKIL’A,” BALIDOR muttered, looking up from the console. “We just lost one of the launchers.” Glancing at Ullysa, then at Yarli, both of whom stood with him at that same console, he frowned. “…Also Garend.”
From the nearby tech area, Anale sucked in a breath. She looked over, sharp.
Staring at Balidor, wide-eyed, her face paled under the thin layer of red dust stuck to her sweaty skin.
Balidor winced.
He’d forgotten.
Anale and Garend were involved in some way.
Sending her a sympathetic pulse of light, he looked back at his team, focusing first on Yumi, then back on Ullysa and Yarli. “We need to try and give them cover as they come back. Wreg’s going to do what he can to use the portable launchers to try and keep hitting them until they get to the tunnels on the lower ridge. In the meantime, someone let Maygar know to direct his team to go at them as hard as they can, see if they can keep their telekinetics busy in that valley.”
Ullysa nodded, once.
She touched her headset even as she did it.
They’d tried to set up single points of contact for all of the smaller teams, especially for the telekinetics and the infiltrators conducting direct combat work. The less those teams had to split and re-split their consciousness, the more of their aleimi and mental power they could aim at the actual fighting.
Given what they had coming at them, Balidor didn’t want to distract any of them any more than was strictly necessary.
Ullysa was assigned to coordinate between the infiltration team and the telekinetics.
Balidor himself was acting as the central link between all of the teams.
He was also the only direct link to the group down by the Barrier door.
Now that the Sword and the rest of the Four had relocated down there, it made sense that he should coordinate that end personally. He split channels between Cass and Revik, even now, although he knew Tarsi, Kali and Uye were down there, as well, in addition to Feigran, Allie and Lily.
Frowning down at the virtual image of a giant Kachina hurling a handful of boulders and earth at the approaching army, he was about to hit the comm for Loki’s team on the north ridge, when a red light bleeped in his headset.
He hit over at once.
“What is it?” he said.
Dalejem’s voice rose, grim. “I think you’d better come over here.”
“Now?” Balidor frowned. “What for?”
“It’s better if you see this for yourself.”
Frowning harder, and now grumbling under his breath, Balidor weighed it back and forth, just long enough for him to remember who he was talking to. Jem would never ask him to go down there in person unless there was a damned good reason.
“On my way.”
His eyes clicked into focus and he nodded at Yumi. “You have the comm up here. I’ll keep the channel open between you and the door.”
She nodded once, her expression grim.
Balidor strode rapidly back through the dim, maze-like space of the central ops cave, heading for the main corridor. Once he hit the more brightly-lit tunnel, he found himself surrounded by people, mostly humans, all of them looking afraid as they walked and jogged rapidly down the corridor.
He noticed with a frown they all seemed to be going the same direction.
Had there been some kind of cave-in? Had something gotten in?
If the diggers were down here, they definitely would have gotten a breach alarm. Balidor had the engineering team set up sensors at every point they’d identified digging taking place, no matter how far they were from the tunnels their people were currently using.
The engineering team didn’t expect the first hybrid to break through for at least for another half-hour––more likely an hour. They were already working on isolating those areas with OBE fields, barricades and by collapsing tunnels on areas they weren’t using. They’d blocked off the eastern tunnel already, as well as one that previously went to a ladder up Ship Rock.
Once Wreg and Loki brought their teams back, they’d block off the tunnel leading to the mesas and the northern canyon, as well.
Frowning as another group of humans and seers rushed past him, all of them walking south down the corridor, all of them wearing backpacks and carrying bundles in their arms, he got bumped hard from the side before he could move out of the way and clenched his jaw.
He hit his headset link for the command center.
“Yumi?” he said.
“Receiving.”
“We need someone to come out here and organize the humans. There’s too much traffic in these corridors.” Frowning as a human family made up of an adult male and female, plus three frightened children scuttled past, all of them holding knapsacks in front of their bodies, he scanned them briefly, then clicked back out of the Barrier.
“…They’re fucking panicking,” he said, switching to Prexci so they wouldn’t understand him. “We need them calm. Get someone to handle it. Stanley, if he’s not too busy. Get Jorag to help him, or Raddi. They need to infuse some calm into the construct. And find out where all of these humans are going. None of the ones near me know, either.”
“Understood, sir.”
“They all seem to be moving south. Any idea why?”
He could almost see the seer frowning, wrinkling the large blue tattoo on her face.
“Nothing’s coming up, sir,” she said after a pause. “I’ve got nothing at all on the sensors up there, apart from fields we have in place. Wreg’s team’s not back yet. Neither is Loki’s. But the northern part of the compound now seems to be emptying out.”
“Where’s Hondo?” he said. “Could she or Jorag go check it out? Find out what’s got them spooked? Maybe there’s a digger site up there we missed?”
Pausing, he realized he was dispersing too many resources.
“Never mind. Just tell Jorag or Stanley to do it. Have them head up to the north passage once they’ve stabilized the construct here. We don’t want all these humans moving too far from the Barrier hotspot. We need to be able to move them back north and down below, as soon as Allie gives the word.”
“Understood, sir.”
The ceiling shook from above, sending down showers of silt.
More humans ran by him in the corridor, bumping and pushing past him with pale faces.
“Gaos,” he muttered, still talkin
g to Yumi. “We’re going to have a fucking stampede down here if we don’t get this under control. Take care of it. Now. Maybe the tribal elders can help to calm people down.”
Still staring up at the ceiling, he added, “…And what the hell hit us just now? Are they bombing again?”
“Negative, sir. It looks like some kind of explosion inside the tunnels. Multiple. Also from the north. Dante’s working on ID’ing it now.”
“Multiple? As in more than one? What kind of explosion? Could it be Wreg’s people?”
“Negative, sir. We’ve been in contact with them, since we might have to divert. Dante’s looking at the readings now. She says the detonations are happening in discreet spots up and down the corridors. So not a single explosion, but multiple.”
Balidor pursed his lips, still staring up, but now using his light on what Yumi had just told him. “Goddamn it. Did the diggers get in?”
“Dante thinks not. But we’re working to confirm, sir. I was about to call you anyway. We have a secondary problem that just came up, so it’s split our resources somewhat for the comp and satellite team––”
“What kind of secondary problem?”
“An air vehicle, sir. Just appeared about twenty miles south of Ship Rock, headed our way. Dante believes it’s manned.”
“Any chance it’s friendly?”
“Definitely not friendly, sir.”
“And Dante says it’s manned?” Thinking about this, Balidor scowled. He sped his steps, pushing humans out of the way when they once more crowded him in the corridor. “Can we hit it with the remotes?”
“Vik’s working on that now, sir.”
“I don’t like it. Take it out, whatever it is. Why in all the hells below would they send someone ahead, with their military so close? It’s foolhardy in the extreme.”
“Working on satellite capability now, sir. Vik says four minutes. He’s hoping to have access to some of the armed capability on the satellite as well.” Exhaling in obvious frustration, Yumi added, “As to your questions, sir, we don’t know. Vik’s trying to angle a drone to get close enough to ID the people inside.”
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