Galec shook his head. “We’re both new to S and R. I got rotated from a combat unit near Bieza.”
Dysis gave a low whistle, a new respect filling her eyes. “Is it as bad as they say?”
“Nah,” Galec said, all amusement dropping from his face. “It’s worse.”
•••
After breakfast, Lieutenant Daakon assembled the unit, nearly fifty soldiers, outside in tight formation on a dusty training ground. As the sun beat down on her bald head, Aris took her place in the front row. She glanced to the clear blue arc of sky above and wished she could be up there, tipping her wings to the tiny ribbons of cloud that hung along the horizon.
The hiss of a door interrupted her thoughts. From the domed, shimmering building beside the training ground, Major Vidar, Lieutenant Wolfe, and Lieutenant Talon approached. Without a word, they formed a line along the edge of the clearing. When they were in position, Lieutenant Daakon gestured a brown hand to a pile of mats stacked next to him.
“Pair up with your sectormates and grab a mat,” he said. “Spread out. Make sure you leave enough room.”
Before Aris had time to move, Dysis was there, dropping a mat on the dirt between them.
“Alright, let’s see what you green ears picked up at basic,” Daakon continued, once everyone had paired off. “Kicking and punching are okay. No face blows or biting. Go to it.”
Aris put her fists up, but she was too nervous to bounce on the balls of her feet as Dianthe had taught her. It didn’t make a blighting bit of difference that she knew Dysis was really a woman; all she saw in that moment was a tall man with fierce eyes and large fists coming toward her.
She blocked Dysis’s first punch, barely.
Dipping her head, Aris weaved to the side. If this fight were a dance between wingjets, a thrust and parry of silver wings—
Crack!
The top of Dysis’s foot made contact with her ribs. Aris tried to retaliate, jabbing upward, but Dysis deflected her fist easily, spinning behind her. Another blow to the ribs.
Aris focused on dodging her sectormate’s blows and not falling down, ignoring the grunts and thuds of the other fighters. Dysis was going easy on her, she could tell, but it still filled her with panic every time a large fist flew toward her. She’d gotten better under Dianthe’s tutelage, but she wasn’t nearly fast enough to make it an evenly matched fight.
Aris groaned as she attempted yet another kick, high enough but still too slow to be effective. Dysis ducked and swept her other leg, sending Aris tumbling to the ground.
She stayed there, belly up on the mat, panting, until a dark shadow blocked out the clear, blue sky. “What’s your name, Specialist?” Lieutenant Daakon asked. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.
Aris scrambled to her feet so fast she got a head rush. “Aristos Haan, sir.”
The officer studied her, one heavy brow raised. “Just had your selection ceremony, did you?”
“I volunteered.” She cleared her throat against the rising panic. “Uh, sir,” she added quickly, drawing back her jacket to reveal the twining vines of the Enviro brand on her arm.
“Where’d you train?” He glanced down at the digitablet in his hands, presumably consulting his soldier roster.
Oh holy. He’s suspicious. He knows. In her gruff new voice, barely above a whisper, she said, “Pono,” the name of the training stationpoint Dianthe had made her memorize.
He nodded thoughtfully, swiping his finger across the digitab. Behind Aris, Dysis was still breathing hard from their fight. She didn’t say anything. Aris wondered if she was also frozen in fear.
Lieutenant Daakon’s silence went on and on, eaten up by the sounds of the rest of the unit sparring. Finally, he looked up. Little black dots appeared before Aris’s eyes; with a belated gasp, she realized she’d been holding her breath.
“Watch how you expend you energy, Specialist,” he said. “You’re putting too much effort into avoidance. Focus on your fists connecting, not as much on Specialist—?”
“Latza,” Dysis supplied.
“—Specialist Latza’s blows,” Lieutenant Daakon said. “Understand me?”
Aris nodded.
Lieutenant Daakon turned his attention to Dysis. “You have a fluid fighting style, nice variety of movement. Well done.”
Dysis bowed her head. “Thank you, sir.”
As Daakon walked to the next pair of soldiers, Aris swayed on liquid knees. Dysis whispered, “Thought that was it.”
“Me, too.” Aris was certain she still wore a wide-eyed look of terror.
“Enough!” A strong voice carried over the thwacks and grunts of the other fighters.
With a secret sigh of relief, Aris lowered her fists.
Major Vidar paced in front of the field of soldiers, his suitably short golden hair practically glowing in the harsh sun. “This afternoon, you’ll be issued a solagun. We begin weapons training tomorrow.”
Her stomach sank. So much for hoping she wouldn’t have to use one.
“In the meantime, as you practice sparring, I want you to pay close attention to your partner. Every look and subtle movement is important in a fight.” He didn’t sound like he was from the North. Or at least not Bolvik, the city her father was from. “You have to find his weaknesses and capitalize on them. Try to anticipate his next move. Be proactive and trust your instincts.” He stopped walking and looked over the group of soldiers.
Aris couldn’t look directly into his clear blue eyes. She had the sudden, overwhelming conviction that if she did, he would be able to tell she was a fake, that she didn’t belong here.
He continued, “The likelihood that you will actually engage in hand-to-hand combat is slim. As a member of a search and rescue unit, you’ll generally be arriving after the enemy has left the area. But things happen. Hand-to-hand combat should be your absolute last resort. Our goal, as a unit, is to retrieve our targets with minimal engagement of the enemy. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” came the unified response.
Major Vidar clapped his hands once, and Aris turned toward her sectormate, stomach tight. With a single well-timed punch, Dysis sent her to the ground again.
Chapter 21
“A month and a half after this year’s disastrous World Council, Ward Vadim is still in quarantine. The other members of the Council have been tested for the highly contagious bacterium found in Vadim’s blood; so far, no else has contracted the illness. Ward Vadim’s husband, Josef, suspects she may have been exposed during a recent visit to—”
“Off,” Pyralis barked. The monitor blinked white and then black, the reporter’s voice silenced mid-sentence.
He walked to the window. Beyond the glass, tall, thin trees shook their sharp leaves at him, and blue sky winked between their branches. Panthea would be hot today, thick with sun. Here in the hills, it was cooler.
“Is she getting any better?” Bett asked from behind him.
“I don’t know.” He sighed. “Her menders have been cagey. I suspect it’s to avoid overpromising on the speed and extent of her recovery, but it’s annoying as hell. I’d like a straight answer for once.”
She rubbed her hands over his shoulders. “Maybe you should just go to the clinic. Are they really going to turn you away?”
The speaker on the desk buzzed. “Ward Nekos, you have a visitor.” Kellan’s voice was strained.
The door to the office slid open to admit a tangle of raised voices.
“Please, just give me a moment—”
“No, now. I won’t wait any longer.”
Pyralis turned, instinctively stepping between Bett and whoever was yelling through his open door. “Kellan—”
“I have to see her.” The words fell like bricks into sudden silence.
Pyralis knew that voice. “Josef.”
The man didn’t move beyond the threshold. The light from the hallway behind him was brighter than the soft glow in the office; it threw his shadow, monstrously distorted, ac
ross the floor. “You have no right to keep me from my wife.”
In one graceful movement, Bett stepped toward Josef, hands outstretched. “Please, do come in. Let us offer you a drink.”
He ignored her; his gaze never left Pyralis’s face. “You know it’s wrong, what they’re saying. You know Galena doesn’t have some exotic bacterium. Contagious. No one else has fallen ill, so how can it be contagious? It’s all a lie!”
Josef’s jacket was rumpled, his chin dark with the scattered beginnings of a beard. The skin under his bloodshot hazel eyes sagged.
“Josef,” Pyralis said. His heart pounded in his temples and he suddenly felt like a Castalian gladfighter, thrown into the pen with a bull for the first time. “Galena is ill. It’s difficult, knowing she’s in pain . . .” the tiny wobble in his voice was nearly imperceptible, “but you must believe she is getting the best possible care.”
“And you don’t think it’s odd, that she fell ill at the World Council? Just before the vote?” Josef stalked forward until they were nose to nose. He was the shorter of the two men, but his anger lent him height.
Pyralis met his glare. “The vote would not have gone in her favor, either way,” he replied, weariness seeping into the words.
Josef’s shoulders slumped. “So . . . Ruslana was the only one who would stand against Safara?”
“They didn’t need the World Council to impose sanctions. And no one has changed their policies since.”
At that moment, Bett came toward them, holding out two cut-crystal glasses full of amber liquid.
“Here,” she said softly, handing a glass to Josef first and then to Pyralis.
Josef took the glass and nodded absently in thanks, his eyes still wary. “So there wasn’t a plot to poison her? To keep her from turning the vote?”
Pyralis shook his head. “I know the timing seems suspect, but I’ve heard no whisper of such a plot, and Ward Vadim’s menders keep me informed of her progress, just as they do you.”
“They won’t let me see her.” Josef stared miserably at the glass. “Not once. We haven’t spoken in . . .” His eyes flew again to Pyralis. “You have to make them let me see her. I don’t care if I catch what she has. I must speak with her.”
Pyralis swallowed a mouthful of the amber liquid, buying time to think. Galena was still on Atalantan soil; if he refused her husband access it could cause tension with Ruslana, and that he couldn’t afford. But the entire clinic was quarantined. Even he didn’t have access to her. Not yet.
Best to stall. “It won’t be long,” he said, finally. “They’ve told you, surely, that she’s recovering a little more every day? That the blood tests are encouraging?”
“Not good enough,” Josef growled.
Pyralis shrugged, hoping Josef understood that he wished he could do more. “I’m sorry. Even I am not allowed to visit her.”
For a long moment, Josef said nothing, just stared at him as if his gaze could pierce Pyralis’s soul. Then, with an inarticulate noise, he flung the remains of his drink down his throat and slammed the glass on the edge of the desk. “And you think she’d see you, even if you were?”
With that he spun and left the room.
Chapter 22
Target practice was the last place Aris expected to think of Echo.
Once, about a year ago, Echo had invited Aris to her house before a night out at The Toad. When Aris walked into her bedroom, two canvases were set up—one a newly finished painting and the other a large square of unblemished white.
Her dark curls bouncing, Echo gestured to the blank canvas. “I need to relax for a minute before we go out. Do you mind?” When Aris shook her head, Echo grinned and handed her a brush. “You can help.”
Echo took her own brush and swept a glistening vermilion trail across the stark white canvas.
“Are you sure?” Aris asked, holding the brush gingerly between two fingers. “I’ll ruin it. I’m a terrible painter.”
Echo added another slash of color, cobalt this time. “You can’t ruin it. This is just for fun. Come on, Aris, throw a little paint up there. Get dirty. I promise, you can’t make a mistake.”
But holding that brush had felt like a mistake. Aris was certain that if she tried to put paint to canvas, she would ruin everything. She couldn’t relax. An irrational fear of failure held her back, kept her from painting her first colorful line.
Eventually she did, of course, and she enjoyed swirling the emeralds and silvers and crimsons into a great big mess, but in that first moment she was consumed by insecurity.
Now, with a solagun shaking in her hands, the fear that coursed through her wasn’t irrational. It wasn’t insecurity. The brilliant green shots of energy with which she was supposed to paint the sim monitor wouldn’t make a pretty picture. They’d paint pain, danger. Death.
Beside her, a steady series of hisses punctuated Dysis’s shooting. She’d already gone through two sim targets, and Aris hadn’t taken a single shot.
Noticing the silence to her right, Dysis glanced up. “Everything okay?”
Aris nodded, swallowing. The sim room was loud with the sibilant whine of solagun fire. On her other side, another soldier, Specialist Pallas, was having trouble with his aim. His blank, human-shaped target only had two hits—one at the edge of the shoulder and the other just grazing the line of the head. Pallas was skinny with a pointed chin and short, white-blond hair that fuzzed up around his head like a halo. He kept lifting his weapon to aim, eyes wide, and then letting his hands fall as if unsure of himself.
“Is there a problem?” A voice rumbled over Aris’s shoulder. With a start, she twisted and came face to face with Major Vidar. He regarded her steadily.
“Um, no,” she replied, flustered. Keep it together.
“You haven’t fired your weapon.”
“I—I . . . I’m just getting used to it. This is my first time,” she said, then wanted to smack herself. He was going to see right through her. What man didn’t want to practice firing weapons?
The thin pink scar pulled at the edge of his mouth as he gave her an odd look. “Didn’t you do weapons training at Pono?”
Oh Gods. Why hadn’t Dianthe done weapons training with her? All they did was run and spar! Aris scrambled for something to say, some excuse. “They mostly had me in the air, sir,” she said at last, staring at the solagun in her hands to avoid his eyes. “This isn’t my first first time,” she cleared her throat, “just, you know . . . first time here.”
He gave a little groan. She glanced over in time to see him run a large hand across the back of his neck. His equally large arm muscles bulged. “Blighting hell.”
Aris’s throat closed. Had he figured it out? “I’m sorry, sir. I—”
Major Vidar sighed and said, “Not your fault, Specialist,” in a long-suffering way. “Not the first time green ears have come to us with subpar training.” He reached for her solagun and held it up, aiming for the sim target. “Keep your elbows relaxed, wrists firm, hands steady. Like this. See?”
She nodded, so relieved she wasn’t exposed that she almost didn’t cringe when he handed the sleek, chrome weapon back to her. He waited while she drew the solagun into position. Her hands still shook, and her breath, trapped between her raised arms, sounded loud in her ears.
“Do flyers really need to carry solaguns?” She couldn’t imagine actually aiming at someone, let alone pulling the trigger.
He grabbed the butt of the weapon, curling his fingers over part of her hand. The physical contact nearly made her drop the solagun. “You have to be able to protect yourself. You won’t always be in the air.” He pulled up on her hands to adjust her aim, then let go. “Good, sight down the line, there. Okay, now fire.”
She squinted at the target, took a deep breath, held it, and did as he ordered. The hiss of the solagun was swallowed by the sounds of other guns firing around them. She lowered the weapon and stared at the target; a green hit showed against the lower center of the human shape’s stom
ach.
“Not too bad,” Major Vidar said, nodding.
Aris let out a shaky breath.
“Next time, don’t close your eyes when you pull the trigger.”
He moved down the line. “Pallas, it works better if you aim at your own target.”
Chapter 23
Aris and Dysis slipped out of breakfast early to comm up before morning formation. When a comm from Calix flashed on her digitablet screen, Aris let out a silent breath.
I’m glad the job is going well, Aris. I wish I could say the same. I haven’t slept in so long, I feel that if I closed my eyes they might never open again. There was a fight in a village near our stationpoint a few days ago, and we’ve been picking up the pieces ever since. For every person I save, it seems another one dies. Can’t the whole world close its eyes, just for a moment? Can’t it all just rest?
Sometimes at night, I pretend the rumble of distant explosions is the crash of waves, and we’re in our cave on the beach, just you and me. I know you’re in Panthea now, but I always imagine you in Lux, standing at the edge of the water with the sun setting behind you, all red and gold. I think about you all the time: your smile, the wind blowing your wild hair around, the way you laugh when you fly. You keep me going. Knowing that you’re safe, that you’re waiting for me . . . right now it’s one of the only comforts I have. I love you. ~ Calix
Aris quickly looked up the news on her digitablet. What village was Calix talking about?
Finally, after several different searches, she found a two-line mention in a war report from several days ago. A small village in Atalanta’s Mittaka region had been the site of a skirmish between Atalantan and Safaran forces. Wounded fighters were being sent to the two mender points close by: Revening and Mekia. She filed the names away. Revening. Mekia. She’d know soon enough where Calix was. He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone exactly where he was, but Dianthe had said Aris’s S and R unit would take their victims to a single mender stationpoint. Calix’s. Her first mission, and she’d know. Revening or Mekia. Soon, she’d see him in the flesh.
The Diatous Wars 1: Rebel Wing Page 10