Tinaree: Trial By Inferno (Shadows Of Peace Book 1)

by Nic Plume

  "Sure thing," Tonee answered easily and looked at Mica. "You heard the man. Get going." He waved Mica and the others ahead as he studied his teammates’ faces. He hadn’t missed Salayla’s aborted move. His eyes tightened and his jaw set for an instant.

  Kaydeen fell in beside Tonee as Taylor and Mica led them off the lane and into the next field.

  "It’s all good." She looked up at Tonee. "Trust is a finicky thing and takes a lot of work, especially when you’ve become so used to physical verification." She grimaced. "It’s a challenge we need to remaster."

  Tonee stayed silent for long moments as they walked between the first two rows of evenly-spaced brambles growing along lines of wire. Smoke rose in the distance over Mannahe, bespeaking the destruction ahead of them. The fighting had intensified since they had seen the valley from the mountain trail the day before, but it hadn’t yet reached the fields they were crossing. Kaydeen was glad for that. With only a single pistol and no effective cover against sensors, they wouldn’t stand a chance. She hoped they could obtain more firearms before they reached the battle zone.

  "What did he do?"

  Tonee’s question surprised her, at least his word choice. Taylor had been in his view, after all, so Tonee had seen everything Taylor did.

  "You’ve been around us too long." She grinned. "You’re way too comfortable with our thought and speech patterns. Every other human would’ve asked about what he said."

  "You’re not as concerned about the words that come out as the words that stay in."

  "And, your true depth reveals itself."

  His eyes danced at her jab, but he stayed on subject. "Well?"

  "The usual." She shrugged. "He shut us out."

  "That’s it?" He pulled his head back with a frown. "You do need to come off the physical verification thing a little." He looked at her. "You’re starting to display withdrawal symptoms."

  She snorted. "It’s not a drug."

  "It seems to be with you two."

  Her steps faltered as she stared at him. He continued on but turned and pointed at his mouth. "Truth, right here."

  She shook her head and slapped his arm as she caught back up.

  Tonee’s face sobered as she fell in beside him. "So, what else?"

  Before she could answer, he raised his hand for silence and cocked his head. She looked around. The lane they were following curved slightly, allowing a clear view of no more than a few hundred meters in each direction. The sky in their vicinity was clear, too. She was about to ask what had alerted him when she heard the rumbling whine in the distance behind them. As she listened, it grew louder.

  "Vehicle," Tonee called to the others. "From behind."

  Taylor immediately stopped and motioned for everybody to seek cover. They spread out, ducking behind the thickest parts of the brambles.

  Less than a minute later, a small wheeled transport with a cargo bed sped up the lane they had been walking on only a few minutes before. Had Taylor not chosen to cut into the field when he did, the team would have been caught in the open as the brambles were too tight to easily pass through and the plants in the field across the lane were barely knee high. Within moments, the transport was upon them and then past. Six fully armed and armored Tinaree Guard members sat in the bed, three more in the cab. Kaydeen was glad they didn’t have to test if the patrol would find their group worthy of investigating. They waited a full two minutes once the transport’s rumble had disappeared into the distance before Taylor stood to move on. Definitely a sign that he agreed with her notion that this patrol wasn’t something they wanted to be confronted by.

  They continued on, a little more careful and subdued. Half an hour later, another patrol sped by, this one in a larger troop carrier. Again, they sought cover in the field of plants, although this time they had to move in deeper to stay out of sight. After that, three more patrols went by, all heading toward the city. About an hour before dusk, Taylor stopped and pointed out a building with an A-frame roof across a few fields to their right.

  "A barn?" he asked without preamble.

  "Storage building," Leer answered, "for field equipment."

  "Would it be locked?" Tonee wanted to know. "It looks like it has an upstairs floor with windows," he added, "maybe a good place to spend the night."

  Taylor nodded his agreement and looked at Leer for an answer to Tonee’s question.

  Leer shrugged. "Don’t know, never been in one."

  They turned onto the next cross lane and made their way to the building.

  The building’s walls didn’t quite touch the ground. The metal sheeting left roughly a half-meter gap that granted them easy access into its interior. Inside, five brightly-colored machines of different sizes took up most of the floor space. The smallest was close to the size of the cargo transport that had passed them earlier. The largest was six times its size. Thick cables running on overhead tracks connected each machine to a junction box hanging from the ceiling in the center of the building’s front half. The back half had a loft with a catwalk running along each wall to a small platform above the large front doors.

  The loft had no obvious way of access—no stairs, no lift. The power terminal in the far corner was dead, as was the control panel inside the man-size door in the back wall. They could sleep on the floor in between the machines, but if they suddenly sprang to life, the teammates wouldn’t have much room to maneuver, and some of machines’ implements and dangling appendages could easily cut through flesh and bone.

  Taylor had other ideas and proceeded to climb the largest machine. From its top, he used one of the cables to pull himself onto the track, which he then followed to where it was attached to the underside of the loft’s floor. He stepped into the loft and disappeared. A minute later, he reappeared and motioned the rest of them to follow his route up.

  The loft was a workshop with tools and spare parts to maintain and repair the field machines. It had six windows, two in each slanted section of the roof and one each facing out the front and back of the building, overlooking the surrounding fields. The windows were open, allowing the sun-heated daytime air to quickly be replaced by the cold nighttime chill Mica had warned them about when they had scavenged supplies from the apartments. The boys had brought well-insulated sleeping bags and mats to keep them warm while the teammates used blankets, and a large thermal sheet as a ground cover. The loft’s floor space was at a premium, but after moving some of the equipment, they were able to open up a large enough space for everyone to lie in its center. They ate some of the food they’d brought from the apartment and then settled in for the night. Tonee volunteered to take the first guard shift and instructed everyone else to rest. Taylor lay down beside Kaydeen—he on his back, she on her side—close enough to share heat, but not touching. Within minutes, he was asleep. Soon after, so was she.

  Pain bolting through her hand startled Kaydeen awake. Had she inadvertently touched some exposed wiring? The pain ceased the moment she grasped the thought. She opened her eyes. She was still on her side. In front of her, Taylor lay on his back, left hand clutching his right, rubbing his skin where it had touched hers. He had felt the current too, then. He rolled onto his side, clutching his right arm to his chest and tugging his left hand under his right shoulder so he wouldn’t accidentally touch her again, but he didn’t move away.

  He looked at her. No emotion, no comment about what had happened, and no discussion of why. Their energies had collided. It was similar to what had happened that night in the mine, but back then, their energies had danced around each other and intermingled, not slammed against each other. He knew it. He’d felt it and identified it, too, then and now. Was he as confused as her? He closed his eyes.

  His breathing stayed ragged for a while. She watched it settle, slow down, and even out. His skin glistened and his warmth radiated, inviting her to touch him, feel his skin against hers. She fought down the urge. This was neither the time nor the place. What was going on? Bond-mates often talked about how
irresistible they had found each other from the moment they touched for the first time. But she’d touched him many times before—becoming comfortable with all of your teammates’ body parts, dressed or not, was part of the training. So, if they were destined to be bond-mates, it would’ve already happened. Plus, it wasn’t supposed to be painful. The pain had felt like an electric current, similar but much stronger than the static discharge she’d felt whenever she’d touched him yesterday. At the time, she’d dismissed it as a side effect of being caught in the blast, but maybe it was a manifestation of his injuries. Although it wasn’t a symptom she’d heard of before, it did follow the same pattern of worsening with time. And, her physical attraction might be a result of biology and circumstance. Captivity wasn’t conducive for satisfying one’s sexual desires. So, the two had probably nothing to do with each other. She would have to keep an eye on his symptoms and take care to bleed off its effect so it didn’t affect their performance.

  A presence above her pulled her awake again some time later. Moonlight, filtering through the windows, bathed the workshop in a bluish hue that allowed her to easily distinguish its open spaces from the midnight-black shadows of the blocky equipment and the in-between shades of smaller and less solid shapes of gear and people. Or maybe the time in the mine had trained her eyes to pick out more details in low-light situations. Either way, she readily identified Mica as he stepped over her into the spot where Taylor had lain. He continued to where Taylor sat on a tool bench looking out the window.

  Taylor didn’t move, but his stiff back indicated that he was aware of Mica’s approach. Mica hadn’t quite reached him when Taylor spoke quietly. "You should be sleeping." But he made room for Mica to sit beside him.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes. Kaydeen was dozing off again when Mica’s low voice pulled her back to the present.

  "I’m sorry for what you had to go through."

  "It wasn’t your fault."

  "I should’ve gotten you out of that transport. I should’ve moved faster. I froze when you started coughing."

  "You saved my life."

  "But I didn’t get you out."

  "You did yesterday."

  Mica shook his head. "You guys were already free by the time I found you."

  "We wouldn’t have found our way out of the complex in time without you."

  "Maybe, but if I’d gotten you out six months ago, it would’ve saved you a lot of pain."

  "Don’t dwell on the past." Taylor looked at him. "Everything happens for a reason."

  Kaydeen perked up at Taylor’s words. That wasn’t a sentiment he subscribed to. He wasn’t saying it out of his convictions, but because Mica needed to hear and believe it. Still, it wasn’t something she would’ve expected Taylor to say. He preferred truthful bluntness over sparing somebody’s feelings with half-lies.

  "You reached your goal," he continued. "Sometimes the road is longer and has twists and turns you don’t expect, but you stuck with it and you finally succeeded. That’s all that counts."

  "Still—"

  "You saved my life back then," Taylor repeated with more emphasis.

  "How so?"

  "The cord around my neck was too tight and slowly strangling me."

  That was arguable, but Mica didn’t seem to have enough medical training to know better.

  "Oh."

  "I had been struggling to stay awake already. If you hadn’t cut it when you did…" His voice trailed off, leaving the rest to Mica’s imagination—and Mica imagined the worst.

  "That’s why you coughed so much…and I was trying to make you stop…if the guard hadn’t come, I could’ve…"

  "That wouldn’t have killed me." Taylor sounded amused.

  "But you were already choking, you said—"

  "Mica," Taylor interrupted, "accept that you did well. Yeah, you didn’t get the result you wanted, but you did help me. So, stop putting yourself down for failing. You didn’t."

  Kaydeen smiled at the exasperation in Taylor’s voice. Self-doubt wasn’t something Taylor had ever suffered from.

  "The results you aim for are rarely the results you attain," Taylor continued, "but usually they’re the results you need. Stop focusing on missing the bullseye and see that you did hit the target."

  Such wisdom for such a young age. Kaydeen cringed as the words popped into her head— in The Father’s sagacious tone, no less.

  She’d heard it often enough during the many hours she and Salayla had spent in the small group discussions the current head of their Family Clan had instituted long before he’d stepped into the role of The Father. He still led many of them himself—to stay grounded and in touch with the clan’s future, he liked to say, though Kaydeen always had the impression that he enjoyed the lively and open discussions an informal get-together with a gaggle of teenagers could produce. Through luck of proximity, Kaydeen’s and Salayla’s group discussions with The Father had always been in person, which afforded a much more intimate and personal experience. There was nothing like having such a mega-presence in the room with you to instill a sense of the trust and responsibility Mother Dinai conferred to each of her children when bestowing her gifts. Especially when said powerhouse readily used his gifts to demonstrate the negative effects that abusing one’s power over others can have, and the responsibility they each had to protect others against such abuse.

  "You aren’t just saying this to make me feel good?"

  Mica’s voice pulled her back to the conversation at hand.

  "I don’t lie," Taylor said, "and it’s not my responsibility to make you feel good."

  No, my friend, you do not; but you’ve picked up some tricks from a certain member of our team in how to avoid telling the truth without lying. He would be quite proud to hear you talk like that.

  The two fell quiet again. Soon after, Kaydeen fell back asleep.

  19

  Mannahe

  They entered the outskirts of the city the next morning following a maglev line. The rail system connected the towns and cities in the region and would’ve brought them to their destination in less than an hour if it were running. On foot, they could expect to take at least the rest of the day and part of the night to get there, if they didn’t run into further complications.

  From the thickening mantle of smoke and dust hanging over the city, easy and uncomplicated wasn’t going to be on the day’s agenda. A promise the wind underscored whenever it turned against them and delivered a whiff of the acrid stench of destruction and misery enveloping the inner city.

  The suburb they entered was still clean and untouched, its housing lots widespread and abundant with greenery, but the streets and yards were deserted. Not even the occasional stolen glance out a darkened window like Kaydeen had spotted the day before was in evidence. People were hiding, probably waiting and hoping for this manmade storm to blow over soon.

  Even Tuscoony, with its seemingly busy market, had given evidence of that. In retrospect, more so than when they’d been there. Something had felt odd about the town. At the time, she’d thought it was the surreality of seeing people perusing the market’s offerings in leisure while their world was in turmoil.

  Now, seeing the opposite in evidence, she realized that the market—a mundane, routine activity they knew and could control—had been how Tuscoony’s residents had coped with the chaos their life had turned into. The people here obviously thought hiding, or maybe even leaving, was their best option.

  "Was the city evacuated?" she asked no one in particular.

  All eyes turned to her. It was Leer who answered. "No. There’s too many people and not enough places for them to go."

  "What about a curfew?"

  "Nah," Nitus shook his head. "They don’t really work, anyway."

  Tonee raised his eyebrows. "They don’t?"

  Leer laughed. "Not here. People just apply for an exception and go about their normal routine."

  "Ah," Tonee nodded knowingly. "Every rule has its exception. Some ha
ve more than others."

  "Your kind of place." Kaydeen teased.

  Tonee grinned in reply.

  As they traveled farther into the city, the gardens became smaller and the architecture closer and more compact. Soon, the rail line disappeared underground. Taylor paused and then steered Mica to a side street.

  "Where are you going?" Leer asked. "The fastest route is to follow the rail line to its stop under the plaza."

  "Not a good idea."

  "Why?" Leer asked. "Because it wasn’t yours?" He looked at the dark hole of the tunnel. "Or are you afraid of the dark?"

  Taylor considered him for a moment, but then turned to the team. "Tunnel is a no-go, and with no one on the streets, it’s time to go the back way."

  Leer looked at Tonee. "You going to let him change our route like that?"

  "Following the rail line was one of the possible routes, not the only one."

  "But all of you," Leer included Kaydeen and Salayla with a motion of his head, "agreed that it was the shortest and best choice."

  "If it’s clear."

  "We would’ve noticed if the trains started running again."

  "The trains aren’t the only ones who might be using the tunnels." Kaydeen put in. "If we see the advantage of using them, I’m sure others do, too."

  "But, we won’t know that until we’re down there."

  "Exactly," Tonee said.

  "Leer," Salayla interjected, "we discussed this."

  "Yeah, but I still don’t agree."

  "You don’t have to agree." Taylor had stopped and turned around. "You just have to follow."

  Leer stared at him. The standoff lasted longer than in the apartment, but in the end, Leer gave in. He motioned Mica ahead. Taylor resumed walking without another word.