Abysm (21 page)

She sucked in air and began to survey her state anew. Her chest still hurt. Everything still hurt, though she conceded some of it might be a result of the rough trip through the mob gauntlet outside.

She was grief-stricken, exhausted and mentally spent…but with each new breath she grew closer to functioning on a minimal level. Valkyrie’s suffering had in fact been that suffocating.

“Oh, Valkyrie, I’m so sorry for you. I wish you didn’t have to feel this pain. I wish I could save you from it. I wish I could have saved her for you. For me.”

She’d hung all her hopes on the belief Abigail would somehow be able to tweak a few settings and, presto, magically ‘fix’ her. Make it so she would be able to dance freely in the elemental realm without repercussions in this one. It was a horrendously selfish thing to dwell on when Abigail was
dead dead dead
….

But what the hell was she going to do now? How was she going to find her way through? Not lose Caleb. Not lose her sanity—

The distant but unmistakable sound of shattering glass cut through her wallowing. Great, more terrorists trying to kill them. Marvelous.

She grabbed the edge of the counter and dragged herself to her feet.

Caleb shouted above the clamor filling the room. “Everybody stay low to the floor and get away from the windows. Head for the hallway.”

His hands patted Mia down, searching for the wound from the shot meant for her but finding none. “Were you hit?”

“I don’t think so. I’m okay.”

“To the hallway. Devon?”

The response came from ahead of him. “Already there.”

He ushered several of the others forward while crawling toward the doorway and stopped to help a woman who’d been cut by the glass. But when he reached the hall and glanced behind him the room was empty of people and bodies. No one had been gravely enough wounded to not be able to get themselves clear.

He linked into the RRF comms.
Harper, you’ve got a sniper on the roof across from IDCC Headquarters, Rainaldi side
.

HarperRF:  Understood.

As soon as everyone was safely outside any line of sight from the sniper, he tried to check Mia again, but she waved him off. He decided he had to take her at her word; next he leapt to his feet and rushed down the hallway toward the washroom.

He bumped into Alex outside the door as she exited, the guard behind her. “What’s happening? I heard a crash or—”

He grasped her by the shoulders, surveying her body for new injuries. “Sniper. Everyone’s okay. Are you?” He knew the question was getting repetitive for all involved, but unfortunately it continued to be a relevant one.

She nodded. And she did seem a little better. Her eyes were sharper—and now her own—and her gaze was a little more
here
.

Right now he would take what he could get. “Come on. We all need to stay together.”

He took her hand and together they hurried back to the others, who they found mostly sitting against the walls in the hallway. Someone had found a med kit and was tending to the wounded.

Mia flashed him a harried smile. “Morgan and Harper are on it—Morgan from above, Harper below. Soon the sniper is going to be way too busy to worry about us.”

“Good. But there may be more than one, so nobody goes near a window. Are the building defenses holding?”

“On the ground level, yes. I’m told we’re actually gaining traction on the street protesters.”

He exhaled, relieved the situation appeared to once again be under control, for the moment.

Alex made a noise beside him; in another life it would’ve been a chuckle. “Devon, you showed some nice moves out there. You’ve picked up impressive skills.”

He scowled. “Not really. Your mind can inhabit a spaceship. That’s far more noteworthy than a few hand-to-hand tricks.”

An uncomfortable silence loomed heavy in the air despite the distant sounds of chaos outside. Finally Devon huffed a breath. “I’m guessing that wasn’t the most appropriate thing to say in this crowd. Forgive me, I’m a bit off my game on account of Abigail being dead.”

Mia leaned across someone Caleb didn’t know to put a hand on his knee. “Devon—”

“No, it’s cool. Let’s concentrate on the shit-show outside.”

Yes, let’s
. Caleb drew Mia’s attention to him. “Listen, there’s something you need to know, because it impacts what’s happening on the ground and your response to it. One of the attackers at Dr. Canivon’s apartment was Alliance military. Likely special forces.” He felt Alex flinch beside him at the mention of the murder scene.

“What? How the hell did I miss that?”

He squeezed Alex’s hand but looked to Devon, the source of the outburst. “You were focused on defending yourself. Understandable. I recognized the tactical vest design and the blade hilt on one of the bodies—both standard issue Alliance MSO gear.”

Mia gaped at him in disbelief. “Are you saying the Alliance military is working with OTS? On Romane soil? Have they lost all reason?”

“I’m saying one of the people who killed Dr. Canivon was Alliance military, but covert. And right now, that is all I’m saying.”

Devon groaned and banged the back of his head into the wall. “Alerting Morgan to the fact she may not be dealing with simple terrorists.”

“Now they tell us.” Harper grumbled as she checked the body at her feet. Oh, surprise of surprises, he wore Marine gear.

She didn’t want to think about the fact a few months ago he might have been a colleague, but for chance, a fellow squad member. Now he was here. He had tried to kill her, because he was following orders, and she had killed him in return.

He could have refused those orders. Malcolm Jenner refused them. Others refused them. This man’s actions were not wholly excusable…but they were understandable.

And now was not the time to be waxing poetic. She stood and motioned three members of her team ahead to clear the next hallway.

Commander Lekkas:  Sniper down. Watch for fleeing comrades.

HarperRF:  Affirmative. Chase them to us.

She paused to check the status of her people on the ground and came away pleased. It was close to being over. Romane’s jails were going to be crowded, but the rioters were being moved off the streets and dispersed or arrested.

The echo of pounding footsteps got her attention. Time to spring another trap.

She and the team members with her activated their cloaking shields—Veils. The qualitative difference was so great between the personal cloaking shields the RRF enjoyed and those used by the Alliance and Federation militaries and everyone else, Mia had decided the new technology needed a name to distinguish it. ‘Veil’ had stuck.

The ensuing encounter with the fleeing terrorists—or Marines—wasn’t a fair contest, really. Which was fine, as no one who conducted it had ever claimed warfare should be fair. Her team knocked the two fleeing combatants off their feet as they rounded the corner and subdued them without incident. They didn’t see their subduers until after the restraints were firmly in place.

She surveyed the new prisoners’ gear critically. It was blatantly Alliance-issue. Goddammit! Winslow and Fullerton were playing dirty. She didn’t feel as bad for the unfair advantage the Veils presented now.

She jerked her head down the hall. “Pello, Odaka, check the upper floors and make sure nobody’s turtled up waiting for us to leave. Verela, take this guy downstairs.”

Once they disappeared she lifted the other prisoner off the ground and shoved him—no, her—against the wall. “Any chance you want to talk to me about your orders?”

The Marine’s mouth set into a firm line as she stared silently at Brooklyn.

“Yeah. Didn’t think so. But I know a few things about black ops and plausible deniability. The IDCC
obviously
doesn’t have an extradition treaty—or any kind of treaty—with the Earth Alliance. As of a few weeks ago, neither does Romane. The only way you’re getting home is if your prime minister gets kicked out of office and on Admiral Solovy’s recommendation the next one makes nice with us. Though if that happens, you might not want to go home.” She shrugged. “Tough spot to be in.”

She acknowledged Pello and Odaka’s update of an all-clear on the two floors above then propelled the prisoner forward toward the lift. “You can think it over in a cell. Eventually, though, if you haven’t piped up and given us some useful intel, I’ll send my Prevo girlfriend in to melt your brain with her mind until it spills out your ears. That’s what you’ve been told they do, right?

“You should be aware, they’re still figuring out how some of the details work, so it’ll take a while to kill you. Hurts like a motherfucker, too. And the mess….” She wrinkled her nose. “Liquefied brain matter looks like curdled lentil soup—”

“Wait, wait!”

Seriously,
this
made the Marine break? Did she believe her mom’s stories of the boogeyman in the closet, too? “I’m listening.”

“I didn’t sign up to die for Winslow.”

In point of fact, you did.
But Brooklyn wasn’t about to correct her now. “Of course you didn’t. Is that who sent you? The prime minister herself? What was your mission?”

“The orders came from…they came from Admiral Fullerton, but everyone knows Winslow is controlling the military these days—or the part of the military not loyal to Admiral Solovy. Our orders were to take out as much of the IDCC leadership as possible, but our number one priority was the Prevo, Mia Requelme.”

“See, now, that wasn’t so hard.” She saved the recorded confession in a priority folder in her eVi.

“For what it’s worth, my girlfriend wasn’t actually going to melt your brain. Probably could if she wanted to, though.”

20

ROMANE

“
B
UGGER IT ALL,
pull our people out. No, not the chav street protesters,
our people
. Get them back here.”

Jude Winslow ran a hand through his hair and glowered out the windows of the safe house.

The fires were going out. Once radiant in the flames of his destructive power, the cityscape now began to quiet. Far too many lights in the darkness remained lit, but they were ordinary lights, the universal sign of safety. Of peace.

The balance of power had shifted. The IDCC forces were beating his people back, albeit with a lot of help from the Romane civil service.

Romane burnt, but it would not burn to the ground. Not this night.

Dammit, he’d hoped for an outright, unmitigated victory here tonight. He’d hoped to tear down the shining towers of this haughty little colony. But now he forced himself to step away and objectively evaluate the situation.

One of his two highest value targets was dead: win. Dr. Abigail Canivon had created her last monstrosity. Her death came at the cost of several of his best mercenaries and two of his mother’s military operatives, but it was worth the cost.

But none of the three primary Prevo targets had been eliminated—no, four targets. Word reached him earlier that Alexis Solovy had returned to the game board. It would please him a great deal to end her life, nearly as much as it would please his mother to end her mother’s.

The younger Solovy wasn’t part of this Prevo rebellion—she’d allegedly been off wreaking her own havoc elsewhere—but according to what he’d learned from his mother’s Project Noetica files, she was the one who had begun all this madness. Now that she was here, she represented a threat. And she lived, along with the rest.

Along with Devon Reynolds. Simply thinking the name caused him to grind his teeth in disgust.

The offices of Galaxy First, Total Chemical Solutions and Choung Pharmaceuticals had been destroyed or severely damaged, and their Artificials with them. Multiple lesser targets had been hit to some degree of success as well.

On the other hand, the IDCC forces proved to be more formidable than expected. Manifestly so, as they were now…
winning
. Proof of their power, and thus of the danger Prevos posed to all humanity.

Before the offensive had begun, he’d walked the streets in the light of day. They had stunk of Prevos. The abominations clogged the sidewalks. One in a hundred? One in fifty? It had made him want to bolt for Earth, noble cause be damned.