Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  And Lorsk had felt a breath of hot air on his face and mane that was almost refreshing after the jungle. The coast was calling to them, they were so near that the breeze was skirling over the range toward them—then the shockwave and the true heat of the first explosion reached him. The gust was not a breeze after all, only one of his ships blowing up.

  In an instant, the Fire Season descended on Rreluush-Tren.

  The piss-yellow sky was awash in crimson flame and oily black smoke, ship debris raining down on the flanks of the ridge in razor missiles. Thirty Osk and as many Baskar were caught by the shrapnel, reduced to offal and slashed armor in the seconds before Lorsk and the two Baskar commanders screamed at the others to get down. The iridescent purple shapes of Urd warships erupted from the blue-green foliage on either side of the ridge, shaking a scrum of undergrowth from their spikes like a vulis shedding the sand from its burrow. A stream of razor fire poured from the throat of each, strafing the trapped soldiers huddling on the ridge’s granite face. Incendiaries snaked through the air toward the Osk planes, blowing two more out of the sky before they could so much as bank to face the enemy. There were at least six Urd warships, three to each side converging on that narrow spine of land. They’d camouflaged themselves in the jungle canyons below in a classic trapdoor hunting strategy; the Urd penned in the caves along the ridge had merely been the bait.

  The cave outpost was entirely forgotten as the three Coalition detachments made desperately for the crude shield walls they had set up at the base of the ridge. The walls’ broad sides faced the Urd encampment, but the minimal protection of their narrow sides was better than nothing. Crouched on their bellies, the soldiers had taken shot after shot at the Urd ships, giving what small aid they could to the planes above their heads.

  It was a fight the Leading Edge’s air complement had never prepared for. Yet even in that hideous bind, with razors and grenades knifing above his head, Lorsk felt a grim pride for his ships: ambushed, outgunned and outmaneuvered, his air force still managed to down two of the massive Urd warships.

  A well-aimed RPG ripped into the engine compartment of the first, painting the sky with a blue miasma of fuel that wrapped the Urd ship in flames as it twisted toward the treetops below.

  Under cover of the smoke from the dying warship, another plane closed with the second. Even in their flying machines, his kind have been able to keep their blades: Osk warplanes have forward-facing wings whose leading edges are razor sharp. His plane slashed open the Urd ship like a fat black egg, fileting the ugly craft before being shot down itself.

  The Leading Edge’s planes paid a ghastly price for their defiance. Pinned to the ridge, edging slowly toward the jungle that now seemed an ironic refuge from the Urd razor fire, Lorsk had watched his ships die. Fire swallowed the sky as a deadly hail of metal and ceramic shards slammed into the rocky ground. There had been blood too, a steaming shower of dark blue ichor splattering over the soldiers, choking their nostrils with its metallic scent. By turns, the Urd warships pummeled each component of the Leading Edge into wreckage, their living hearts torn open by razor fire—and soon enough, incendiary missiles from Terran craft.

  When the Terran craft broke over the ridge, Lorsk knew the battle was lost. He’d counted twelve before the ships started firing. Every ship was gleaming wet, water streaming off their wings and bodies. He surmised later that the Terrans had concealed their craft in the ocean, and swept into battle when the Urd radioed for their assistance. They were smaller than the Urd warships, streamlined ovals with triangular wings not unlike his own craft, but that made them faster.

  And their missiles were more accurate than the Urd razorcannon; some were supposed to have enough intelligence to target and kill enemy commanders with visual recognition software. The Terran missiles that poured down on them from the ridge had no such capability and needed none. Lorsk had taken one look at the halo of fire advancing on them from the slope above and ordered a general retreat. The two Baskar legions were falling back too, springing into the jungle as fast as their locomotor tentacles could carry them.

  If the Osk battalion did one thing right in the battle of the ridge, it was to provide themselves a reliable escape route. Lorsk had ordered a tunnel carved into the earth from their nearest supply cache, kilometers back in the jungle, to the ridge’s edge.

  His soldiers poured into the earthen refuge almost before Lorsk could give the order, glancing back with wide, scared eyes at the circling Terran planes and the fire engulfing the battle-field. Osk fear death by fire above all other ways: It is an instinct that goes bone-deep, back to Oskaran and the fires that scourge the land every turn of Krenkyr. The invasion of Rreluush-Tren has shown Lorsk that the Osk of Teluk are not exempt from this ancient dread. Neither is he himself.

  Lorsk shivers in the heat. Retreat. He doesn’t know what the other Coalition commanders are doing. He doesn’t know if any of them are even still alive. He has not made this decision as a commander of a Coalition force—he has made it as the leader of a faction of the Fleet trying to save what is left of his people, Osk who trusted him to lead them into battle and out again. But so many of them will never come out.

  It is tradition for an Osk commander to consult with his advising seph before making a decision of this magnitude. But that path is closed: his seph - advisor is dead, decapitated by a tree-mounted razor turret within days of their leaving the coast for the deep jungle. He would ask the battalion’s diplomatic attaché, brought with them to negotiate with any Urd forces they encountered, to help Lorsk calculate the safest route, using his knowledge of how Urd and Terrans think to predict their moves, but their attaché is gone too—blown to bits in a mine explosion that lofted a plume of smoke and dirt and flesh twenty meters above the tree line. Lorsk can still remember how his ears rang for days, echoing the haze of anguish and disbelief that had wrapped his mind. It was only after the diplomat’s death that Lorsk realized he’d promised himself he would keep the young Osk safe.

  Death dogged the first part of their blind retreat from the ridge: too many of the soldiers were on the verge of panic, focused on getting as far into the jungle and away from the fire as they could. They’d forgotten the jungle’s hazards, but it hadn’t forgotten them. Only a half hour’s march from the ridge, a soldier called Kresh stepped under a nest of venomvines. He had lost his helmet at the ridge, and the plant’s seedpods burst greedily over his head and neck and face. Herask tried to scour the acidic sap with an alkaline unguent, but Kresh’s pain had been too great and the medicine too slow. His screams seemed loud enough to bring the entire Terran-Urd host down on them. Finally, Herask delivered the final mercy upon Kresh by cutting the soldier’s throat.

  After that, Lorsk ordered them to go slower; the number of casualties fell off. Now, as then, Lorsk operates in a numb fog, giving commands on automatic. Scout ahead, make camp and break it, post sentries, cover our trail. Most of the engineer corps has miraculously survived, and he has them planting mines behind the battalion’s trail and around their camps. The number of soldiers falling prey to mines has lessened as well: Engineer Geks claims she can smell the materials that go into them, even buried in the soil, so he’s had her scouting ahead for them. She hasn’t been wrong yet.

  The coast lies a day away. A day of uncertain travel, agonizing slow, with the possibility of death from above or below shadowing their every step. But they are making it.

  Four days have passed since the last death. Only sixteen hours Rreluush-Tren local time stand between them and Arkkranet, and safety. They will make it.

  Lorsk dares to hope.

  As he related the old war story, Lorsk’s expression had become faraway and abstracted. “When we reached the compound at Arkkranet the next day, our battalion was one of the last to lift off,” Lorsk said. “The ones behind us, those still in the jungle, I don’t know exactly what became of them. I just know they didn’t make it out.”

  Gau waited, unsure what, if any, reaction was expected
of him. Lorsk hadn’t talked much about that chapter of the faction’s history. All though Gau’s childhood, once the Djandjer-Pralsh had retrieved him from the streets, Lorsk had talked about the future—the glorious Aival Surarchy that he would have headed if not for those Church sunspawn—but only rarely about the past. The war that had altered the faction’s trajectory onto this path.

  Abruptly, Lorsk cleared his throat and seemed to come back to the present. “You know how we survived through it all, Gau?”

  He formed the beginning of an obedient, How, commander— but it seemed the question was half rhetorical, for Lorsk went on before Gau spoke the words.

  “Discipline,” Lorsk said. “Everyone had their role, and followed my orders without question.”

  Like the order you gave to attack the ridge when the other Coalition commanders were already falling back? A self-destructive impulse in him wanted to ask. How many Djandjer-Pralsh loyals had Lorsk gotten killed following those orders? Gau pressed his lips into a tight line against the question.

  “I know I can be harsh with you sometimes, but it’s only to keep you and everyone else in the faction safe.” Lorsk’s lips twitched up in an attempt at a conciliatory smile, which melted almost immediately into a smug one. “That’s why I’ve remained this faction’s leader all this time. They trust me to keep them alive. There’s nothing like the promise of security for inspiring loyalty.”

  Huh. Maybe that was why Gau had never been loyal, what with Lorsk’s habit of holding his place in the faction hostage to Gau’s good behavior. But underneath the familiar snide resentment, the grain of uncertainty in his chest shifted. There had been a time when he’d been loyal, if not to Lorsk, then to his vision; when he had believed in the project of the Aival Surarchy, because he’d had nothing else. Been nothing else. Had no parents, no past, only one future. That had lasted until a few months into the war for Olios 3, when he’d been long enough away for the thought nagging at his brain since his departure to finish forming: that Lorsk’s approach to keeping people alive had a funny way of getting them killed.

  Gau acknowledged the surface of Lorsk’s words with a neutral jab. He fingered the EMP spikes still in his pocket. The metal hook was tucked in on the opposite side. He made a show of becoming aware of the equipment, hefting the plasma rifle he’d set down by his side. “Speaking of roles,” Gau began slowly, “I should see Drej about returning this equipment to Supply.

  It’s late.”

  “Hm? Ah yes,” Lorsk said, waving Gau off. “Dismissed.” He stood stiffly. He still carried that distracted air, as though his mind were only half on the present, the other half still buried in old defeats, old martyrdoms.

  Gau had reached the door when Lorsk called out, “Oh, and Gau?”

  His spine stiff, Gau turned back to face some parting criticism or threat.

  Lorsk pointed at the residue of wrappers littering the living room from the earlier feast. “Get someone from Supply to come and clean up this mess.”

  Gau jabbed obediently, and fled.

  The first thing he saw once his eyes adjusted to the dark corridor was Ariveth’s worried face. “Are you all right?” she asked in a voice just above a whisper—as though a sleeping vulis lurked beyond the door, waiting to rise to wrath. Which, Gau reflected ruefully, was figuratively if not literally true. “I heard something crash.”

  She brought a hand to his face, lifted up his snout and turned his head side to side. Looking for bruises? It had been years since she’d done that, before it had become clear that wasn’t Lorsk’s style. He’d never hit Gau. Smashed furniture, piled threats on him, screamed in his face, yes—but never hit him.

  Gau submitted to her perfunctory inspection anyway. Her cool, smooth touch helped calm his trembling heartbeat to something like its resting pace. “He overturned a chair. That’s all.”

  “Because you were late?” Her pupils widened from slivers to tapered ellipses.

  “No . . .” He forced himself to say the rest, so it came out all in a rush. “I went back to the base after the raid to look for anything we could use against the White Arrows.”

  Spikes of shock flooded her scent. “You didn’t. Gau, if they’d caught you, you could have compromised—”

  “Don’t you start!” he snapped. “I’ve already had it from Lorsk, I don’t need you enumerating my failings, too.”

  Ariveth recoiled, and Gau instantly regretted his tone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But you know how he can get.” As she watched him, saying nothing, a prickle of his anger returned. With effort he kept it from his voice. “I covered my tracks. I know it was a risk,” he went on, forestalling her protests with a raised palm. “But the greater risk is continuing our campaign in the dark, without fresh data about the White Arrows’ operations here—their troop complements, armaments, shift schedules. I thought Lorsk would understand that.”

  Her face went still in thought for a moment. “Come up-stairs with me.” At his questioning look, she added, “I have an idea I think you’ll like.”

  The room Ariveth shared with Jarn was identical to Gau’s own apartment, but faced the back of the building. After retrieving a lightpad from a shelf, she led him around Jarn’s sleeping form, a dark comma curled in the nest of blankets, and onto the covered balcony. Two chairs of reclaimed materials faced each other across a makeshift table. The tarp shrouding the balcony let in the faintest glow of dawn light; as Ariveth unfolded the tablet, the glare of its backlit screen stabbed Gau’s eyes. She opened a program, and the window turned a more manageable black. White lines of code covered about half the window.

  She gestured for him to pull his chair closer, then pointed at the screen. “This is the standard fishing program we use to monitor the city’s datanets.” He jabbed; the Djandjer-Pralsh had used such a program, loaded onto a standard data sliver, to extract information from Diego Two’s public terminals and stay abreast of developments in the city and wider Expansion.

  “You’re using EMP spikes to knock out the Arrows’ sensors, right?” At his jab, Ariveth duplicated the window and began typing in new lines of code on the program copy. “It would be easy to alter some lines of code and create a version of the data probe that rides on the spike’s signal. We could penetrate the bases’ mainframes, run searches on the information we need, and let the reset triggered by the EMP erase any trace of the probe.”

  Gau stared at her for a moment; he hadn’t known what idea to expect from her, but it wasn’t this. “That’s . . . that’s good,” he managed at last. “That could work.” He grinned. “That could definitely work.”

  She closed the lightpad’s cover and raised an eyebrow at him. “Don’t sound so surprised. Or did you forget I wrote this program?”

  “It’s not that.” Although partially, it was. Gau had been away for years, had changed so much from the child she’d known. Both of them had been barely adults when he’d left for Olios 3. Yet somehow he hadn’t thought about her changing. Though she’d never called herself part of the Djandjer-Pralsh in his hearing, a queasy feeling came over Gau as he realized that she must at least think herself part of them.

  “It’s just . . . why help me gather this intel if it’s that dangerous?” he asked.

  “Because I know you’re going to do it anyway,” she said flatly. Then her tone softened. “I might as well help you do it in a way that carries less risk. Who knows, we might turn up something invaluable.”

  He gnawed on a knuckle. “We still have to convince Lorsk to do it, though.”

  After a small pause, she said, “I’ll handle Lorsk. It may be best if this idea didn’t come from you, just now.”

  “Agreed.” He shifted on his chair, looking slightly away from her. “You never seemed to set him off like I did. Like I do.”

  Gau bit his cheek, wondering if his words sounded as much like whining to her as they did to him.

  A crooked smile turned her long lips. “He used to drill me in inventory for hours, and make me do it all over ag
ain if I miscounted a single item. After he screamed at me for getting it wrong, of course.” Her tone was falsely breezy on the surface. Then darkness welled into it from below. “It’s true though, that kind of thing tapered off around the time we rescued you.”

  There was a six-year age difference between Gau and Ariveth. She would have been about eighteen, physically and mentally near to an adult even if she hadn’t formally declared her adulthood’s path, when Gau had returned to the faction at age twelve. “Lorsk must have seen me as fresh meat.” He shrugged, the gesture jerkier and angrier than he’d intended it.

  “It wasn’t that,” Ariveth said immediately. At his startled look, she bit her lip with a canine, then abruptly rose and closed the doors to the balcony.

  Bemused, Gau waited for Ariveth to settle herself and say whatever she was working herself up to.

  “It was a few days after you returned to us,” she said. “Your survival had put everyone into a state, wondering if you might be the first of more to come. Not all enclave members were accounted for among the dead that night.”

  False hope. Gau clenched his jaw on that comment and waved her on.

  “Anyway, it must have affected Lorsk more profoundly than he let on, because for a while after he became . . . distracted. Lost in might-have-beens, if I had to guess.” She drew a long breath that made her shoulders visibly rise and fall. “We were doing inventory, one night. Drej was out on a supply run for more recently expired medicine, so it was just Lorsk and me in the supply room.

  “I remember his exact words to me: ‘You look so much like her, now you’re grown.’” Repeating this quote, Ariveth’s voice was flat. “It was only later I realized ‘her’ meant Geks. Because of what happened next. He stroked my mane”—her hand flew up to but didn’t quite touch her civilian-short cap of blue-black hair—“and tried to touch my . . . to touch me.” In its descent, her hand slowed in the vicinity of her throat where one of her sensitive scent glands nestled.