I couldn’t even conjure a bitter smile in response. “Good to see you too, sir. Might you be able to tell me what the Legion wants with me?”
Any petty judgment he felt toward me vanished behind his professional mask. “You saw the news?”
I nodded. “Oasis under attack. But you have the numbers ten times over. I assume it’s under control.”
Mathis traded a look with Johnny. “It is indeed.”
“And?”
“And it’s not our control it’s under,” Johnny said, all traces of humor gone now.
Dread crept in—the same dread I felt at nighttime when memories of red eyes and my bloody parents came to visit me in the darkness.
“You’re saying…”
Mathis gave a reluctant nod, looking more tired than I’d ever seen.
“The raknoth have taken Oasis.”
2
Trouble in Paradise
“Well look at us,” Johnny said, wrapping his knuckles on our dingy kitchen table. “The gang, all back together again.”
Elise shot him a half-hearted frown. Johnny gave her his most disarming grin, but there were traces of pain behind the look. I was just busy trying to ignore the part of me wanting to point out that the gang was decidedly not all back together.
Not my parents. Not Carlisle. Not the hundreds of civilians and legionnaires who’d died at the White Tower because I’d been stupid enough to think I could beat the raknoth at their own game.
“Any word on Anna?” I asked quietly, maybe because I wasn’t already feeling enough pain, or maybe because some twisted part of me wanted Johnny to share in some of it.
His sister, Annabelle, had gone missing just a few days after he’d started his new post at Haven, when his family had been in transit to join him there. Dozens of transports had made the flight that day. One—the one Anna had boarded to ride with her best friend, Liza—had gone mysteriously dark mid-flight, and hadn’t been heard from since.
That’d been nearly a cycle ago. Long enough that I wasn’t expecting good news so much as praying for it. But the look on his face told me all I needed to know before he worked up the will to give a weak shake of his head.
No. The gang was most certainly not all back together.
I wished I would’ve been there for him like I should’ve. I wished a lot of things about these past twelve days. But here we were, reunited by the blunt force of disaster.
I looked from Mathis to Johnny and back again. “How the scud did this happen?”
Mathis was still busy on his palmlight, as he had been for minutes now. It kind of made me want to blow the thing’s electronics with my mind after the way they’d just barged in unannounced. Johnny leaned forward and began his disgorge before temptation got the better of me.
“Sounds like the attacking force was way bigger than anything they’d projected from what little intel we have. They must be making new hybrids somewhere, because, well…” He dropped my gaze, like he was almost embarrassed by what came next.
“How many?” I asked.
“Estimates put their numbers over two thousand,” Mathis said, closing his palmlight.
“What?” Elise said, her hand clamping onto mine underneath the table. I couldn’t say if I squeezed back or not. I was too busy trying to process.
The hybrids were savage creatures—humans who’d been, for lack of a better word, infected with raknoth genetic material. Part human, part raknoth. And from what I’d seen, I was pretty sure that balance tipped more to the scaly side with each passing day. The true raknoth, like Alton Parker, could telepathically control the creatures, but without that input, I’d never seen anything but mindless violence from them. They were as terrifying as they were strong.
And apparently there were still more than enough out there to take down a major Legion base.
“Was Parker there?” I asked.
“Alton Parker has not been seen since the night of the White Tower Massacre,” Mathis said. He tried to keep it mechanical as usual, but I saw the waver in his face. He’d been there too, after all, and even a hardsteel chomper like Mathis couldn’t live through something like that without carrying away a few scars, inside and out.
Right then, I was more worried about where that slimy bastard Parker might’ve slithered off to now that his imploding Vantage Corp had publicly given him the boot in wake of the horrific blood farming and hybrid production operation we’d unmasked. The Legion hadn’t shared all of the gritty details with the public, but it’d been more than enough.
Alpha only knew what Alton Parker was up to now.
“We think there were at least a couple of the raknoth present, though,” Johnny added. “And there were a few humans, too. Civilian clothes. Odd reports.”
“Seekers?” Elise asked.
Johnny shrugged as if to say what else?
Mathis looked like he wanted to point out that, officially, there was no such thing as Seekers.
I was about to ask why the Legion had seen fit to share even this much information with a pair of civilians when a buzz from Mathis’ palmlight stole our attention.
“She’s ready,” the docere told Johnny, sliding a holodisk onto the table with authoritative weight and fixing me with a you’d better behave scowl. “The High General wished to speak with you herself.”
That was unexpected.
What the scud was going on here?
Elise and I barely had time to trade a surprised look before the disk lit and a holo of Freya Glenbark from the shoulders up appeared beside Mathis. Even at half size and in the pale, translucent tones of holo, the new High General exerted an intimidating aura—like a lioness with her strong brow and her mane of straight, golden hair that looked as if it would stop softsteel slugs in their tracks. We all sat a little straighter. Especially Johnny.
“Citizen Raish,” she said in her precise tone, studying us with eyes that were piercing if not quite unkind. “Citizen Fields. The Legion appreciates your time in this matter.”
My fist was halfway to my chest in a reflexive salute when I caught myself. “High General Glenbark,” I said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
A minor pain in the ass too, maybe. But an honor all the same.
I’d never met Freya Glenbark, but from what I’d heard from my dad and others, she was unquestionably one of the good guys—or good ladies, as it were. The fact that she’d managed to become the second female ever to ascend to High General—and to do it before the age of forty and in such a time of crisis—spoke volumes of her ability.
Elise echoed my sentiment with genuine respect.
“Not to be rude, sir,” I added, “but what matter is it, exactly, that the Legion appreciates our time in?”
“Have you been briefed?”
“Basics only.”
“Then I understand your confusion,” she said. “You are no doubt wondering why we haven’t simply retaken Oasis by force.”
“You have the numbers,” I said. “At least ten times over. The hybrids don’t even know how to use weapons, as far as I’ve seen. And the raknoth aren’t invulnerable. It should be a stroll in the flowers.”
“But you’re here, talking to us,” Elise said. “Which means—”
“That it’s not as simple as throwing numbers at the problem,” I finished.
“Or that you’ve already tried,” Elise added, shooting me a frown at having been cut off, “and something went wrong.”
Glenbark studied Elise, her expression unreadable.
My stomach fell as the silence stretched. Too long.
“Citizen Fields is correct,” Glenbark finally said. “Our attempt to reclaim Oasis failed an hour ago.”
I looked at Mathis and Johnny, searching for some reaction—some sign of shock or acknowledgment.
They just looked grim.
“I was getting to that part,” Johnny murmured.
“How?” was all I could manage.
“I don’t know,” Glenbark said, looking none too
pleased about it. “But, given the unprecedented nature of what these raknoth did to our forces, it was brought to my attention that you might be able to offer some explanation.”
So that’s what this was about.
They’d hunted me. Called me terrorist, heretic, and enemy of Enochia. And now they wanted to pick my brain about the very thing I’d been trying to tell them all along.
“What happened?” I asked, keeping my voice as neutral as I could.
“It’s as you said. We had the numbers, the superior firepower. We had everything, and, by all conventional reasoning, every reason to move before they could dig in.”
“But?”
Her composure held, but it was the first time in the conversation that she dropped her gaze. “But all of that ceased to matter when our legionnaires inexplicably broke command and turned their weapons on one another. There was no warning.”
“Sweet Alpha,” Elise murmured.
“It was bad,” Mathis agreed, his hard edges gone for the moment. “Real bad.”
Glenbark’s gaze flicked toward Johnny before returning to skewer me. “Can you tell me what happened to my people out there, Haldin?”
“I…”
… was still trying to figure that out myself. The raknoth were powerful telepaths. They’d be able to mind-snatch most humans in seconds and bend them to their will as they pleased. Scud, I could do that—had done that once, I was less than proud to say. But how many men might one raknoth be able to control at once if they pushed themselves?
I had no idea.
“How many legionnaires turned?”
Glenbark studied me like she was trying to ascertain whether I might really have any idea what was happening. “Difficult to say. Things got messy quite quickly.”
That was probably an understatement. I couldn’t even imagine the chaos—the way it would feel to watch your own squad mates turning to end the life you’d trusted them with.
“At a guess,” Glenbark continued, “at least three hundred. Those who made it back reported a state of helpless paralysis. They saw events unfolding but were unable to prevent it, or control their own bodies. We’re holding them for evaluation now.”
I felt Elise’s questioning look beside me. “Could they control that many at once?”
“I don’t know.” I considered how easy it had been for me to breach an unprotected human mind. Weighed that against my memory of Al’Kundesha’s strength when we’d telepathically battled back at the Sanctuary brig. Made some laughably vague estimations. “It’s possible, I guess. Especially if they had help from a few Seekers.”
Mathis cleared his throat as if to say Great, now share with the whole class. A faint frown touched Glenbark’s brow, but she said nothing, waiting for my explanation.
Glossing over the weirder points and the fact that I too possessed these abilities, I explained the raknoth’s telepathy and the threat it posed as concisely as I could. I couldn’t help but notice the way Johnny watched me, as if he were remembering all over again that I wasn’t the tyro he’d grown up with—that I’d become something else. Something irrefutably different.
Mathis didn’t hide his skepticism as I spoke. Glenbark, for her part, listened with rapt attention. If she found any of it hard to believe, she kept it to herself.
“Fine,” she said when I’d finished. “Thank you for your candor. I only have one question left.”
“How do you protect your legionnaires?” I asked.
She nodded, betraying none of the desperation I could only imagine she might be feeling right now. I was starting to see why her fellow officers sang her praises.
“You need to get your people cloaked,” Elise said.
“Cloaked,” Glenbark repeated. “How?”
A quick mental probe toward Johnny confirmed he was still wearing the cloak Carlisle had given him. The guilt on his face as he touched the spot where it must be resting beneath his uniform suggested he was just now realizing he should have brought this up sooner.
I held up my own pendant so Glenbark could see its rune-etched surface. “This keeps my mind safe from other telepaths.”
Mathis looked like he wanted to slap the table and call bullscud but couldn’t bring himself to break discipline in front of the High General. Glenbark’s stare was intent until something interrupted her on her end. She looked off for a second, gave a curt nod, and returned her attention to me. “How does it work?”
“I’m pretty sure the only two people who knew that were…”
The words stuck in my throat, and just like that, I was back in the White Tower—howling winds whipping at me, Carlisle ahead, dying, clutching his old mentor’s face, both of them wrapped in the violet storm consuming the—
A sharp squeeze on my leg brought me back to the tiny kitchen, where Elise was watching me with that look again.
Consciously, I relaxed tight shoulders. “I think the secret was lost at the White Tower. Have you talked to the Sanctum? By all rights, their Seekers should know more about this than I do.”
A hint of disdain crept over Glenbark’s features. “The Sanctum has been… unhistorically uncommunicative since the White Tower incident. Suffice it to say, even if they were willing to admit to the existence of these fabled Seekers—which they most certainly are not—I’m left with the sinking impression that their people lack the knowledge to fix this problem.”
“And that’s supposed to make it my job?”
The words left my mouth before I gave them leave.
Mathis tensed. I half-expected him to lunge across the table. Maybe I even wanted him to.
Grop it. I wasn’t a soldier anymore, right?
Not according to official records, where I’d been dishonorably discharged somewhere right between being declared dead, being revived and branded a terrorist, and finally being sentenced to hang as a heretic.
By all rights, I was pretty sure I had good reason to be pissed right then. But somehow, all I seemed to feel was shame under Glenbark’s steady stare.
“People are dying, Citizen Raish,” she said. “And you might be able to do something about it. I pray that alone is enough that you’ll consider it.” She glanced off at another distraction and nodded at someone. “Now, I have other matters to tend to. Good day Citizen Fields, Citizen Raish.”
Her holo died before either of us could say a thing. Somehow, her disappearance only increased the weight of the shame. It sank over me like molten softsteel, bowing my head under its weight.
Johnny was the first to break the silence.
“We really do need you, broto. We’re out of our depths with this stuff, and this new High Cleric is playing coy with whatever Seekers he’s hiding.” He held his hands up, empty. “I know it sucks, but there’s no one else.”
I said nothing—didn’t know where to start.
So Mathis took his turn, speaking as if he were actually reading straight from the field orders. “High General Glenbark has instructed us to extend her invitation to join us at Haven in a special consultant capacity. By extension, Citizen Fields and her family will also be entitled to civilian quarters on base. In return, we ask that you—”
“Why’d they send you, Mathis?”
He paused from his highly official invitation.
Anger rippled somewhere deep beneath the indignation and the shame, bright and sudden. Anger at what exactly, I couldn’t say. But here was Mathis, watching me with inscrutable dark eyes.
“Why you? They just wanna remind me?”
All the times this man had called me silver spoon… Daddy’s tyro... All the times he’d reminded me just how pathetically I measured up next to Captain Martin Raish, honored hero of Sanctuary…
Elise’s hand tightened on mine, a silent reminder to keep it together. At Mathis, she forced a smile that said kindly get the scud out of here. “I think we could use a couple days to think about it, if you goodfellows wouldn’t mind…”
Johnny nodded and started to stand.
Mathis didn’t budge. “We can’t afford days, Citizen Fields. Would that we could all bury our heads in the flowers and try to forget our—”
“Get out.”
I only whispered the words, but they gave Mathis pause all the same.
Maybe he could hear what was bubbling beneath the surface. Maybe he even understood it. I sure as scud didn’t. All I knew was that I needed them to stop telling me what I owed to the Legion. To Enochia.
As if I hadn’t paid enough already.
Mathis took a deep breath. “Raish, I need you to—”
I didn’t consciously think about channeling the energy, or focusing the will. Almost before I knew it, I was telekinetically hauling Mathis to his feet, half-tossing him out of the tiny kitchen space and toward the door.
He kept his wits enough to catch his balance, but it was the first time I’d ever seen him look surprised.
“I think you two should go,” Elise said, her hand like a hardsteel turngrip on mine.
Mathis turned those wide eyes to Johnny, designated meeting lubricant, who was frozen halfway out of his chair. Johnny looked a question at Elise, touching a finger to his own chest as if to say, Me too?
“You shouldn’t have brought backup if you wanted to talk,” Elise said.
Johnny scowled, standing the rest of the way. “I didn’t—” He glanced at Mathis. “That’s not what this was.” He focused on me, his eyes pleading. “Hal…”
I dropped his gaze. Focused on the table. I couldn’t handle this. Not now.
“Fine.” He spread his hands. “Fine. I’ll go. But I’m not done with your stubborn ass, broto.”
I kept my eyes on the table.
“Be careful out there, Johnny,” Elise said.
“You be careful in here.” He went to join Mathis. Paused at the doorway. “It doesn’t matter whose gropping job it is, Hal. Just… remember what it was all for.”
His words hit me like physical blows. My best friend, the king of cavalier lightheartedness, resorting to that tone with me. I forced myself to meet his eyes—just long enough to take in the judgment. The disappointment. Instead, all I saw in his eyes was worry, and maybe a hint of fear.
Demons of Divinity Page 2