Allie's War Season Four

by JC Andrijeski

  Anyway, Surli made sense. He had few visible ties to us and none that we knew of to Shadow, or to either of Shadow’s rebellions. The seer who volunteered to go with Surli made a lot less sense, from a purely strategic standpoint, but I’d okay’d him, too, for reasons I was less clear about. That seer had been Stanley.

  I probably wouldn’t have even considered using Stanley for this, given that he was one of the rare, nine intermediaries and already had been taken captive by Menlim once, but after Stanley offered, Kali spoke up on his behalf, declaring him a good choice. When Tarsi agreed with Kali, along with several seers in the Council, I decided not to argue.

  So, despite grumbles from Revik, the two of them were briefed, prepped, and left to catch a ride with a smuggling ship off the coast of India.

  Now I bobbed in the weirdly warm but very salty water of the Persian Gulf––or maybe, technically, the Arabian Gulf or the Gulf of Oman, I wasn’t sure––and watched Revik where he bobbed next to me in his form-fitting wet suit. We both wore oxygen tanks on our backs and I followed his hands as he fitted organic goggles over his eyes before he picked up the regulator on his tank and blew on it.

  “You ready?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  He laughed, then leaned closer, kissing me with wet, salty lips.

  Liar, he sent fondly, blowing heat in my general direction. You’re worse than me.

  Feeling the adrenaline coursing through my limbs, I realized that most of that wasn’t fear. It was anticipation. Hell, it was almost impatience.

  Damn him.

  I heard Revik chuckle again, right before he fit the regulator into his mouth, arranging the goggles a last time once he had it in place. Inclining his head for me to follow him, I felt another pulse of heat off him, that one holding more than just affection.

  Hurry up, he sent. You’re turning me on, exuding all that warrior light.

  Rolling my eyes, I did as he said, pulling on my own goggles and flicking the organics on by my temple. I winced at the spark of current, although I’d been assured repeatedly that they were totally safe and wouldn’t electrocute my head.

  “Boys and their toys,” I muttered softly.

  “What?” Revik said, still treading water in front of me.

  Not answering, I glanced up, and saw Jon looking down at me, his face set in a worried-looking grimace.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he blurted. “Please. Or is that a futile request?”

  Realizing how little time I’d had with Jon since he and Wreg came out of hibernation, I felt a sudden stab of missing him, and a burst of guilt about hurting him with the telekinisis in the mess hall that day. I resolved to fix the first one, at least, once we got back from this mess. Maybe we could all go on a mini-vacation or something.

  Him, Wreg, me, Revik, Lily.

  At Jon’s snort, I blew warmth at him, infused with a not-subtle amount of love.

  “Avoid stupid,” I said. “Check.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t humor me.”

  “Just don’t let your husband shoot at us and we’ll be fine,” I told him, grinning.

  I saw him flinch from the second pulse of emotion I sent, right before his eyes softened. That worried look didn’t leave his expression, however.

  “No promises,” he said, gruff. “And hey, I mean it, Al. No reckless bullshit, okay? You’re a mother now. You can’t get away with that crap anymore. So listen to Revik. For once.”

  “I will,” I told him, right before I fit my own regulator into my mouth.

  Next to me, Revik gave an openly disbelieving snort.

  Wreg apparently agreed with him. “No you won’t,” the muscular seer muttered.

  Looking at Wreg, I was surprised to see worry in his eyes, too, along with more emotion than I was used to from the ex-rebel. When I glanced back at Jon, his frown deepened. I could tell just by looking at him that he didn’t believe me any more than Revik or Wreg.

  Giving them both a last, weird smile through the awkwardness of the breathing equipment in my mouth, I winked, waved, then let go of the boat.

  Revik followed me.

  Together, we let the weight on our belts and of our tanks pull us under.

  WE’D MAPPED THE shipping routes weeks before, mainly via satellite taps.

  We’d still been docked at Sri Lanka when we started most of that end of things.

  After the entire leadership team agreed not to let the aircraft carrier get any closer to Dubai than the coast of India––especially since we had good reason to believe they might be tracking us by then––we’d mapped out alternative routes into Dubai City from the staging area. We still didn’t know for certain whether we were being actively tracked, via the Barrier or in the physical, but we had to assume that if they’d figured out a physical means of tracking us, they would have tied that to satellites to pinpoint a location track inside the Barrier as well.

  Wreg and his team, along with Vikram’s team, had gone over every mechanical and organic component in the ship, looking for anything that might serve as an easy-to-follow trail in the physical world, apart from the carrier’s actual wake.

  They’d also looked for any foreign signals tracking them, or being sent from the ship without authorization.

  They’d found nothing.

  Wreg now cautiously theorized it was a Barrier leak only.

  We all knew they would be looking for ways to use that Barrier leak to pinpoint a physical tracking mechanism, however. Once they managed that, assuming they hadn’t already, we could pretty much guarantee that the next step would be direct assault...assuming they didn’t just bomb the carrier outright, meaning, from a distance.

  On other fronts, we’d also decided to send Maygar with Lily, rather than putting him with the military team supporting Dubai. That had been Revik’s call, and I knew why he’d done it and didn’t argue.

  Truthfully, I felt better having Maygar with Lily, too.

  And yeah, we were all worried about his light still, in terms of Shadow, but Tarsi and Balidor both said that Maygar had a lot less of that black stuff in his aleimi than either Revik or Lily... and much, much less than Cass.

  I was also assured that he would continue to sleep in the tank, and that Kali and Uye would keep an eye on him, as would Tarsi, who would be with them as well. So yeah, I felt better about Lily’s protection at least.

  Realistically, I knew that me or Revik being killed in Dubai was probably the biggest threat to Lily’s life right now, anyway. No one came out and said so, but I knew everyone else agreed with me, including Revik.

  Even Revik and I didn’t know where they’d taken Lily, despite our light-bond with her.

  I couldn’t help obsessing on that fact.

  I didn’t let myself scan for her, of course, but yeah, I was obsessing.

  I was thinking about her even as Revik and I floated in the darkness of the Persian Gulf, not far from where we’d flown with a small team the night before, making numerous stops and plane-changes along the way to reach the southern shore of what used to be Iran.

  Luckily, there was a fair bit of air and boat traffic in these parts still, and most of it off-the-grid. We were reasonably confident that our multiple plane changes, several treks over land and several boats hadn’t been tracked––at least not in a way that was relevant to us. Meaning, even if someone logged each individual leg of our journey via satellite and whatever other types of surveillance might be active in different areas, none of that would be traced back to the aircraft carrier, or to us.

  We’d all been in disguises during that time, too.

  Revik and I even had prosthetics on underwater.

  I’d also changed my hair color slightly, making it more red, if a darker, almost-black-with-metallic-red-highlights kind of red. Revik dyed his a light, ash-colored blond, so that it was closer to the color of Uye’s, which yeah, looked pretty strange on him, but still pretty hot. We also wore contact lenses, in addition to the prosthetics, and
blood patches on all of the areas they would be most likely to draw our blood in a race-cat checkpoint.

  Revik even wore prosthetics on his back to cover his scars and tattoos, since the scars, at least, were rare enough among seers to garner attention. I also had prosthetics covering my sword and sun tattoo, since I wore it in an unusual place for seers––as well as the one Ditrini gave me, since that wasn’t a standard tat, and might be remembered.

  We’d both try to pass as a human, given the option, but we had no idea what we’d be facing on the other side, or if there might be some reason why either of us might have to take off our clothes. Of course, that idea didn’t exactly thrill me, especially in regards to Revik, but I kept my mouth shut about that, too.

  We couldn’t do anything about our height, collectively or separately.

  They did teach me to walk differently, to throw off any gait recognition software they might have installed on the docks or in other parts of the city. From what we’d been told, the place was a “pristine fortress” (Stanley’s words)... or a “well-decorated prison camp” (Surli’s description). In other words, we had to expect military-grade surveillance pretty much everywhere.

  According to Surli and Stanley, our mystery collector turned out to be a bit of a local bigwig, which probably shouldn’t have surprised me given the size of his purchase orders for infiltrators in Macau alone. We had to assume he’d have private security systems more rigorous than what existed in public areas.

  One kind-of surprise: he was Chinese.

  Meaning, he’d lived in Beijing most of his life and allied with the Chinese government, even working for them for a time. Since he’d ventured full-bore into the world of business, he’d amassed a small empire of companies that built everything from organic machines to non-flammable cooking oil.

  Apparently, he was an infiltrator, too, so likely ex-Lao Hu.

  He had a weird name, even for a seer: Dalcius Dontan, a name that meant nothing to Surli, despite all of his years working for the Chinese government.

  He admitted that didn’t mean much though, especially if the guy was traveling under an alias, and really, even if he wasn’t. The Lao Hu trained seers from all over the world, according to Surli. The Chinese government also had contracts, short and long, with scores of seers who may not have ever crossed Surli’s path.

  To me, the name almost sounded made up.

  It was pretty weird for a seer to own other seers, but maybe that was part of Menlim’s brave new world. This Dontan guy apparently owned seer fetish clubs all over Dubai City, along with a number of strip clubs, high-end restaurants, and even a few hotels.

  Stanley and Surli also told us that Shadow himself was rumored to have a palacial residence just outside the main walls of Dubai City, and that he owned droves of seers and human servants, as well. He and Dontan appeared to be on dinner-guest terms, which was a bit worrisome at first, until Surli told us Menlim entertained all of the heavy hitters among the Emirite’s populace, and said it might not mean much.

  Of course, Menlim didn’t go by “Shadow” here, or even Menlim.

  He went by a human name, Jacobus Laningdale, which meant nothing to me, but made Revik wince and grimace when he heard it. I saw a frown touch Balidor’s lips as well, although no one spoke aloud while we listened to Surli’s transmission.

  When I gave Revik a questioning look, he just shook his head, clicking softly. I felt the darker thread of irony in his light, but I felt a flicker of disgust there, too.

  It’s from a book, is all he said.

  What book?

  He only gazed around at the others sitting at the table, not looking at me when he shook his head. Before your time. It doesn’t matter, Allie.

  Balidor told me later it was the name of a fictional character who proposed wiping out billions of people using a disease as their weapon. The book had been popular a few decades after First Contact. While the book itself hadn’t spelled out seers as the alien race in question, many who read it at the time had seen them as the implied targets of that disease. The book ignited a lot of controversy as a result. Of course, that same implication made it popular with anti-seer groups, especially after World War II.

  When I asked Revik about it that night, he told me Menlim would find the name ironic. Apparently he’d been big on using scriptural names of various kinds during the First World War, as well as literary references from obscure texts that few would catch. According to Revik, even the name “Menlim” had some meaning from the older versions of the seer texts.

  I admit, little details like that unnerved me––partly because they allowed me to see more into Menlim’s light and the way he tended to think, than I really wanted.

  They also reminded me just how damned dangerous this little excursion was.

  Not just to us. To Lily.

  Fighting not to think about the risk we were taking, letting Revik anywhere near a construct of the Dreng, I felt my face tighten more.

  I adjusted my goggles as I tried to push the thought out of my mind, telling myself it was too late to second-guess the op parameters now. Turning in the water, I looked at Revik through the dark where he floated next to me in the odd silence of the pre-dawn ocean. I knew our suits would hide any residual body heat, well enough to keep us from being noticed by passing infrared scans, but I still felt weirdly exposed, maybe just because there was nothing around us for miles but water now that the boat had left.

  In addition to infrared, virtual capability and GPS, the goggles also had small transmitters we could only use in case of emergencies––meaning, if we needed to be picked up in a hell of a hurry because something had gone horribly wrong and we were about to die.

  For now, we switched all of it off but the infrared, relying on hand signals to communicate, which were somewhat imprecise, given where we were.

  I heard the ship long before I could see it, and well before Revik began signaling to me with his hands. Even so, I followed the motion of his fingers via the infrared.

  Get ready, he gestured smoothly, if slower than usual. The window is small.

  I nodded, not bothering with more of a reply.

  I watched as he checked the harness holding us together. He’d hooked the thing onto my belt and a pair of rings they’d installed on either side of my chest, not long after we reached the target zone. I knew it was a nervous tic for the most part, but I just floated there, letting him check the rigging all over again anyway.

  Once he’d done that, he checked the rigging holding the penguin to his own suit.

  By the time he’d finished, the sound was getting louder.

  The boat chewed inexorably through the water, at first south of us, and then, when we positioned ourselves for the connect, it began to pass over us, too. By then, I could see the long line of metal and the white wake stretching in a line behind it.

  I watched Revik aim the harpoon-like gun, or “penguin,” as Wreg and Dante called it. They’d been the masterminds in rigging that thing up, so I guess they got to name it, too. It was based on a combat pick-up Wreg had used with helicopters in the past, modified by Dante to work underwater.

  Revik and I both practiced with it on the deck, as well as in the water by the ship.

  For this part of things, I was just back up though.

  Only one person was needed to fire the thing.

  Revik being that one person was fine with me. I might be a decent shot these days, but I hadn’t done a lot of shooting underwater, and he still had about a hundred years’ more combat experience than me. Revik had never done an underwater hitchhike like this, (well, to be fair, so far as we knew, no one had), but he’d had a lot more experience conducting military operations in underwater environments.

  Not like that was saying much, since I had zero.

  Anyway, Revik wanted me focused on keeping us shielded until we got to the construct around the city itself.

  I’d been warned this thing had a good kick, big enough that it might get picked up b
y sonar, if they had their machines calibrated finely enough. Even so, I flinched when Revik fired it sooner than I expected, and panicked a little when I saw a fleet of organic flyers (swimmers?) come at us from the belly of the ship, presumably to check out what we were.

  Wreg and Dante had tried to plan for that, too.

  The gun sent out two hard pulses of interference, meant to confuse the sonar of the flyer/swimmers into thinking we were something other than what we were––another ingenius enhancement by Dante. It must have worked, because all six of the little machines I saw buzzing towards us through the dark water went right around us and then past us, deeper into the dark water. In the very long-feeling seconds that ticked by after they did, I felt a sharp jolt as the magnetic bolt hit the back of the ship, well above where the propellers churned a good twenty feet deeper under the surface.

  The cord coiled for a moment in the water, not moving.

  Even with the harness, Revik gripped my arm as soon as the mechanism caught.

  The line went taut, then began pulling us swiftly up through the water.

  Dante had done something to the line so that once it hit, the first thing it did was to pull the line taut and directly horizontal, well before it started pulling us towards the ship itself. She explained to us that she’d done that mainly to keep us from being dragged up into the propellers, depending on the angle, but also so that we could hide in the turmoil caused by the wake, in the event her interference pulses didn’t work on the swimmers.

  Either way, the first thing I felt was a pull in my gut as the cable dragged us up, not forward, bringing us level with where Revik had aimed the blunt end of the dart at the midpoint of the stern. The line brought us directly into the turmoil of the wake.

  Only then did I realize just how intense the wake of a big ship really was.

  I lowered my head, like Wreg and Revik had instructed me to do, partly so I wouldn’t lose my goggles. Gripping the regulator in my teeth so I wouldn’t get that torn out of my mouth as well, I fought to keep from struggling, even as I felt another sickening lurch as the cable started to pull us directly towards the ship. I felt Revik reacting to the slight panic in my light, gripping me in his hands as the cable yanked us swiftly through the water, only about five yards under the surface.