Allie's War Season One

by JC Andrijeski

  When Revik got restless, he headed west...not east.

  He’d tried not to take it personally. It had to have been a controversial decision to allow him back at all, given who he was. He knew he was chosen to guard Allie partly because no one would have believed Vash would give him such an important responsibility. And there was Allie herself. Her security had to be a priority, as well as the necessity of keeping her, and therefore her protection, anonymous. He couldn’t be a regular fixture in Vash’s circle, or someone might decide he was worth monitoring a little more closely.

  The cover had worked well. No one came near him in those years. He’d worked for the humans dutifully, and that felt appropriate too.

  He woke up when the roan splashed into a stream.

  Jerking his head, he looked around in some alarm, realizing he’d dozed off. From the horse walking beside the roan, the seer with the scar on his face was watching him, curiosity in his dark eyes. After a pause, the man grinned, pointing vaguely at Revik’s genital area.

  “Married?” he said, leering. “Good, eh? The Bridge?”

  Revik stared blankly at the seer. Biting back what he would have liked to say, he pulled the canteen off his belt, taking a long drink of water. He was a little feverish. He couldn’t afford to get sick, not for any reason.

  How long? he asked the leader.

  Not long, Small. Not long now.

  Where are we going?

  Not far. They are waiting for you already.

  Waiting for me? Revik felt a brief flicker of hope. Who? Adhipan?

  The man made a ‘more or less’ gesture with his hand. Some Adhipan. We save who we can. Of the worthy.

  “The worthy?” Revik said aloud. He fought his voice neutral. “Aren’t we all worthy...friend?”

  The leader smiled. Can’t save everyone, little brother. Victory without quarter, yes? Have to keep your eyes on the end point...

  Revik didn’t answer, but his nerves rose. Something in the wording of that response hit a less-often accessed part of his mind...and resonated with an after-tone he didn’t much like.

  He glanced down at his leg, wincing as the horse jostled it again. Blood was starting to seep through the organic bandages.

  Whoever they really were, it didn’t matter.

  He didn’t much care whose side he played on, not anymore.

  20

  REBELLION

  THE EXPLOSION FLARED up out of darkness.

  Cass watched it go, feeling a part of her go silent inside.

  That hadn’t been a bomb. But then, the fires had been igniting fuel and ammunition stockpiles since about an hour after the first run by the planes.

  She’d never been in a bombing before. If someone had told her a year ago that she would be in the mountains of Asia now, running from bombs dropped by American planes, she would have laughed.

  She wasn’t laughing now.

  The explosion seemed to originate from the area of town Balidor called the 8th District...where Chandre had been heading. She’d gone down there looking for cargo ships and ground transport to hire after the humans (the humans...Cass found it interesting how easily the words formed that way in her mind) bombed the Adhipan’s small fleet, along with the helicopters and the rust bucket Russian drop plane nursed up into the air by the sheer willpower of the engineers working for the Seven’s Guard.

  Cass had seen bombs fall on the 8th earlier, so the fires must have found something, ignited something larger and more flammable. It looked like half the District was on fire now.

  Balidor said it was a big district, and that most of it lived underground.

  Chandre had probably heard the planes coming, just like they had. Chan was an infiltrator, so she’d been in lots of things like this. Well, maybe not lots, but she hardly compared to one of the barista and musician slacker crowd Cass hung with back home.

  Chan would know what to do. She would have heard the planes, found cover, protected herself somehow. She had her seer powers. She could sidestep an explosion, just like Balidor had steered Cass away from that large castle-like building right before the upper windows blew out from heat and flame.

  Cass hadn’t let herself think about Jon, not yet.

  The planes hadn’t left. Even as she thought it, a formation of them came around for another pass, veering lower to shoot at the town of Seertown proper. Cass winced as the guns went off, as rockets connected with buildings, trembling the ground. Explosions echoed through the small valley.

  The whole thing felt unreal, but for the smell, the screaming and the people she saw...like the monk now running down the street, his robe on fire, his dark face covered in blood.

  Swallowing, she looked away, up to the sky as another formation flashed overhead. Gripping her gun tighter, she blinked sweat and smoke out of her eyes, fighting to block out the screams.

  It was light out now, so they could be different planes...there was no way to know, really. It felt like this had been going on for days.

  The planes themselves still looked American to Cass, but she’d heard the seers arguing back and forth about that too, on the VR network. The one advantage to being in a fight; Cass could actually hear what was going on as seers dropped out of the Barrier to hide from other seers. They relied on technology to communicate instead, ironically because they were less likely to be overheard.

  Cass herself was a risk factor for the team...but not a very big one. Their attackers might be more likely to look for seers where they saw a lone human hiding in the woods. Or they might just as easily think she was just a dumb worm, hiding out in the trees from the bombs.

  Which wasn’t all that far from the truth, really. Being human, she was visible in the Barrier all the time, but also inconsequential to the vast majority of seers. Her main protection was that they simply didn’t see her as a threat.

  The castle-like structure seers called simply “the Old House” or “the House on the Hill,” burned high above Seertown itself, as well as the castle’s own strangely symmetrical gardens with their white stones and even whiter-skinned trees. The bare-looking white trees with their animalistic-looking branches decorated the sprawling manicured lawns in spirals from above. They also dotted sandy paths, interspersed with moss-covered statues and benches made of aging white stone.

  The trees caught fire too, as Cass watched, until the building and its grounds looked like something out of an Apocalyptic fairytale.

  She watched fire blow out more windows on the upper floors, ribboning tapestries. It climbed higher when a breeze caught hold of the flames, jumping them to the next set of rooms...or the next set of branches. Ashes thrown by the wind joined black smoke clouds in the sky, twisting into cyclone-like shapes.

  The scream of planes back to the far end of the valley snapped her out of her trance. Down the hill from where she and Balidor stood, a second explosion trembled the ridge, shaking the ground under their legs.

  Then a third.

  They were still dropping bombs. It had been dark when they started, and now the sun had passed the zenith in the sky and headed west towards the opposite ridge of mountains.

  They were trying to annihilate them. To kill the seers off for good.

  “Maybe,” Balidor said quietly, looking out over the same scene.

  Cass jumped a little. She had forgotten seers could almost always hear her when she stood this close. She looked back at the 8th District, watching it burn.

  “It ignited something,” she said, unnecessarily. “Just how much ammo and fuel do you guys have stored up here?”

  He focused on the same area of the 8th District, his face granite.

  Cass looked at him. “Allie. Have you heard anything from—”

  “No,” he said.

  Plumes of fire rose to the clouds, staining the black briefly to red and gold. Cass watched a second mushroom of fire reach up towards blue sky, again lighting up the blanket of smoke. She blinked in the sudden radiance as it lit the 8th District, as well, and the di
sjointed array of mud buildings scattered around a long, flat landing strip covered in ships.

  It was the first real look she’d gotten of the 8th. She’d been pretty much warned off going there...first by Chandre, and more recently by Balidor and his pals.

  The 8th wasn’t technically part of Seertown proper, but part of the parcel of land allocated by the human government of India for seers. From what she could tell, the 8th District was Seertown’s dark underbelly...its Tenderloin, or maybe something closer to the mafia district. It consisted mostly of smugglers...purveyors of illegal seer tech and organic machines, brokers for sight trading and seer children, prostitution on a grand scale, even kidnappings for upper-end purchases. Unlike the monk-like exterior of even the civilians who lived in Seertown itself, the demeanor of those in the 8th seemed closer to pirates...at least if she could believe Maygar.

  They couldn’t even be bothered to use their violence in the cause of seer rights. They’d thrown their lot in with the great oppressors instead, embracing the human expansion by profiting off its worst excesses.

  Balidor told her the Rooks had been well-connected there, back when the Pyramid still existed. Part of that was pure geography, though. The 8th was as close as the Rooks could get to Seertown legally and still not break treaty.

  Cass was still watching Balidor’s face when the shots came.

  Two of the nearby Adhipan dropped at once, ducking behind cover to return fire. Balidor grabbed Cass’ wrist before she could turn her head.

  He dragged her into a small grove of trees, pushing her up against a wide trunk. He held his gun but did not fire, shielding her with his arm and holding her against the thickest part of the tree. She touched her own gun, but he gave her a warning look, taking her hand off the holster.

  More protection. He didn’t want to be responsible for killing the Bridge’s human. It occurred to her also that he might not be firing to disguise their numbers. She’d heard the seers talk often enough to know they did their best to obscure their forces in one direction or the other in most engagements.

  So she stood there, wincing whenever bullets struck near enough to throw up chunks of wood. She watched Balidor’s face. He still held her against the trunk with one arm, using hand-signals to communicate with the other seers.

  Then he froze, as if listening.

  Cass saw shapes whisper by them, running down the hill so fast they looked like ghosts. She watched two in the Adhipan run after them. Balidor hesitated, then gave her a fleetingly apologetic look. He leaned his mouth by her ear.

  “Find cover...don’t go into Seertown. And be careful! I don’t feel any more, but don’t stay here...go higher. I’m leaving Pradaj with you.”

  Kissing her on the cheek, he ran down the slope after the others.

  She saw him briefly silhouetted as he ran off the edge of a small cliff. She heard a faint crashing sound as tree branches swayed in the ravine below.

  The sounds receded. When she glanced to one side, she saw Pradaj, another middle-aged seer, but a bit more beat up than Balidor. His dark face was scarred, and he looked East Indian. She raised a hand in greeting and he smiled wanly in return, as if amused with her wave in the aftermath of a gunfight.

  She was about to speak, when a shot rang out.

  Pradaj collapsed. Falling to his back, he lay there and didn’t move.

  Cass stood there, paralyzed for a few seconds more as she stared at his body, realizing he’d been shot in the head. He’d been dead instantly...gone before she could emit so much as a sound.

  Out of nowhere came a voice.

  “Men,” it said, clicking ruefully. “They’re just not reliable, are they?”

  Cass turned, feeling something twist in her belly. She found herself facing a smile she recognized, on a face she didn’t.

  “Your friend Chandre wouldn’t have left you in the lurch like this,” he said, pointing his gun at her chest. “...would she?”

  Cass felt her belly knot so violently her bowels nearly voided. She gripped the tree’s trunk, staring at a face she’d never seen before, but that she recognized nonetheless. The Asian man smiled at her, his black hair twisted into a clip at the back of his head. His trench coat was stained white with ash and smoke.

  “How are you, Cassandra? You’re looking well.”

  She fumbled frantically to unholster her Glock.

  “Uh, uh...no.” He motioned with his hand.

  She looked down to where his gun already pointed at her.

  He waited for her to make up her mind, smiling as he studied her eyes.

  “We’re old friends now, you and I,” he said. “...and while we could do this the usual way, with me shooting you, or overpowering your feeble worm mind, I’d rather have you see reason.” His voice grew cajoling.

  “...Lose the gun, lover. I won’t hurt you this time. Promise.”

  Staring at his hand holding the gun, she tried to disobey. She would rather be dead than go anywhere with him. But her hand wouldn’t do what she wanted, and she found herself staring at him, fighting to breathe, nearly gasping with the effort of trying to lift the gun higher, to aim it at him.

  He’d been lying of course, like he always lied.

  He was in her mind, controlling her; it was all just another one of his twisted games.

  He reached out, closing his hand around the Glock.

  He took it from her, his fingers surprisingly gentle. Cass watched her gun disappear to an inside pocket of his coat, feeling every nerve in her body scream. Adrenaline coursed through her limbs, causing them to shake. She wanted to attack him, to rip at his face with her bare hands.

  He clicked at her, and it held a tinge of amusement.

  “Give me the book, Cassandra,” he said.

  Reaching into the bag slung across her shoulder, she opened it, her hands shaking. After a brief battle between her limbs and mind and heart, she gripped the thick, leather-bound book and handed it to him wordlessly.

  “Good girl,” he said. “Now turn around. We’re going for a little walk.”

  For another collection of seconds, she struggled to disobey.

  She was still standing there, half-panting from the exertion, when a massive form appeared from behind the largest of the nearby trees.

  Cass looked up at him, doubting her senses.

  The giant put a thick finger to his pink lips. Black eyes stared at her from a flat, broad, Asian-featured face with pale skin. He looked like a Viking...a half-Chinese albino Viking wearing animal skins, with some kind of fancy organic headset wrapped around his skull. She focused on the Viking’s hands.

  He carried what looked like...

  Holy bejeesus, it was a sword.

  She was still staring when the Viking plunged the four-foot, serrated blade through the middle of this new Terian’s abdomen.

  Cass could only stand there, paralyzed, as Terian screamed, lifted off his feet by the sword with the jagged teeth. The giant cut him nearly in half, using the sword to slice up through his rib cage and solar plexus. The blade got jammed on something around where his neck met his shoulders, but the giant grunted, shaking the body like a dog might shake a rat.

  Shoving the body forward to brace it with a tree, he yanked upwards to free the blade. Whatever Terian had been using to hold Cass released her the instant the sword vacated his flesh.

  Right about the same time, he stopped screaming.

  What remained of Terian collapsed to the ground.

  Cass watched it twitch, still spurting blood in a few places...until the blood stopped too.

  She looked up at the giant.

  For a moment, the two of them just stood there.

  Then, reaching down, the giant picked up the leather-bound book and brushed it off with his thick fingers. Smiling, he handed it back to Cass. He patted her head affectionately, gesturing at her upper arm. Cass looked down at where the blue and white sword and sun tattoo stood out on her tanned skin, the skin still reddish as it healed.

&nb
sp; Lifting his own shirt sleeve, the giant showed her a replica of the same mark only as a brand, not a tattoo...and much older. Glancing between the burn on his arm and the sword and sun on her own skin, Cass felt herself relax.

  The albino motioned at her with his head and arm.

  Making the seer gesture for ‘yes,’ she tucked the leather-bound book back into her shoulder bag, fastening the leather straps.

  Without a word, she followed him into the trees.

  BALIDOR STOOD INSIDE a circle of white-skinned trees. Moss-covered statues lined a path of white stones dotted with cairns and granite benches. The garden beneath the House on the Hill was almost as old as the structure itself.

  It had started to rain. One of those late-in-the-day summer storms that were so common in this part of the Himalayan foothills.

  Gregor Cardesian, the United States Army general the Americans called “The Apostle” chose the location. Balidor found it an odd one, but this had been a day of things he couldn’t comprehend. Exhaustion was starting to wear on him, and he knew most of it wasn’t physical. He let his gaze run over lines of blue and camouflage uniforms, only half-seeing them.

  He shouldn’t have left Cass.

  He’d come in at Vash’s request. He understood the request, given what had happened, but he didn’t fully agree with it. He’d sent a few of his people to the 8th to ascertain the severity of the situation, but of those who weren’t dead or injured from the carpet bombing, he’d sent the majority to find Allie and her mate.

  His eyes paused on burning strings of prayer flags over one section of the garden. Looking up the hill at the blackened, white-trunked trees and ash-filled sky, Balidor found that the gardens looked ancient to him suddenly.