“Yes, I’m ready, Colonel.” The doctor nodded for a couple of soldiers to grab Jelena. “Her first.”
Cuffs, Erick, she ordered silently.
Oh sure, now you want to listen to me and stage an escape. He must have been prepared for the order, because Jelena’s cuffs sprang open at the same time as his and Masika’s.
Masika reacted instantly, springing directly into the closest group of soldiers. Jelena cursed as she raised a barrier around herself. She’d wanted to put it around all three of them, so they could run away together, but she couldn’t when Masika was in the middle of a fray. Jelena didn’t want to fight all these people, just escape.
“Shoot them,” the colonel cried as the sergeant from the truck grabbed the doctor and pulled her out of the way.
“Not the words of someone trying hard to win me over,” Jelena muttered over the shouts that broke out.
The soldiers scooted away from Masika, who was punching and kicking with the speed and ferocity of a tornado. Men went down before they even registered that she was among them.
Erick lifted a hand, and the locker lid flew open. His staff soared over to him. Soldiers opened fire on Jelena even though she hadn’t done anything yet. She was ready, and her barrier remained up, but adrenaline shot through her veins, and fear thrummed in her gut. This was real. People she’d never met before and who didn’t know her were trying to kill her.
“Masika,” Erick called. “Get in here.” He jerked his hand in a gesture to indicate his barrier.
But Masika seemed too busy fighting to hear him. She was keeping herself close to those she attacked, making sure the others couldn’t shoot her without risking shooting their own people.
Jelena walked toward her, bullets bouncing off her barrier. She couldn’t attack while focusing on keeping it up, but maybe she could lower it long enough to grab Masika and pull her into its protective influence. She could protect all three of them, leaving Erick free to open the gate and deal with pursuing enemies.
The planes roared past overhead again, but nobody paused to look up this time. The colonel barked into a comm for backup. Soldiers fired incessantly at Jelena and Erick, as if they thought they could wear down the barriers by attrition. Maybe they could, but not soon. Jelena hadn’t drawn upon her power much that day, and the bullets didn’t take as much out of her as deflecting blazer bolts did.
Masika wasn’t protected, though, not yet, and a soldier managed to sneak in behind her. He clubbed her in the back with the butt of his rifle, and she stumbled, almost falling. Erick surged past Jelena, dropping his barrier as he rushed for Masika. Jelena followed, trying to extend her barrier around them without lowering it. During the split second that Erick wasn’t protected, a shot got through, and he cried out.
Soldiers surged forward like rabid wolves. Erick flung his staff out, and a wave of power crashed into them, hurling most of them to the ground. A couple rolled to the ground to avoid the attack and jumped up close to him. With the way as clear as it would get, Jelena wrapped her barrier around Erick and Masika, also catching those two soldiers inside as Masika turned to ward off their attack. One had lost his rifle, but he yanked out a knife. Masika moved like lightning, kicking it out of his hand. It flew three feet, struck the inside of Jelena’s barrier and bounced back. It almost hit the soldier in the shoulder. His comrade pulled him back, or maybe he was pulling his buddy away from the furious Masika, her eyes blazing as she pressed her attack. In that instant, Jelena couldn’t see any of the scenery-loving painter in her face.
“Keep your barrier up, Jelena,” Erick said, his teeth gritted, his voice pained. He growled and turned toward the entrance of a building to the side of the main headquarters. A garage door had gone up, and something akin to a tank was trundling out, a giant shell-gun pointing in their direction.
“I will,” Jelena said. He could attack if she handled defenses.
Erick thrust his staff in front of him with both hands, his power striking another squad of soldiers. Men kept firing, some shooting even though they were flying backward. Jelena kept her focus, not letting herself think about how one slip on her part could allow all three of them to be mowed down, and also trying not to think about the hole in Erick’s shoulder, and the pain she sensed flowing from him.
With the soldiers either down or unable to get through Jelena’s barrier, Erick focused on the tank. It stopped with a lurch, and the gun swung back toward the main building. A boom sounded as it fired. A shell slammed through a window, taking out a portion of the wall below it.
Another boom followed, and the ground quaked under Jelena’s feet. That hadn’t been the tank.
Fighting for balance—and to keep her focus—she looked through the fence and toward the city. Those planes were approaching again, but she didn’t think they’d dropped any bombs. Black smoke poured from a building halfway between the hill and the harbor. She couldn’t tell through the smoke what it was or what had been destroyed, but several of the soldiers shouted, and most of them stopped firing.
“The forcefield generator,” someone yelled. “They got it!”
“They couldn’t have from outside.”
“They must have had someone inside.” That was the private who had spoken to Jelena. He turned toward her now, his face a mixture of fear, horror, and betrayal.
He thought she’d done it, she could tell. As if she knew anything about their city’s defenses. She started to feel indignant, but what if that had been Thor?
Wait. So what if it had been? Maybe he was making a distraction for them so they could escape more easily. Robbing the Chollans of their city’s protection seemed cruel, but it wasn’t as if Jelena had picked this fight. If the Chollans hadn’t wanted to start a fight with her team, they shouldn’t have kidnapped them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Erick gasped, clutching his shoulder.
Jelena hesitated, wondering if they might do some kidnapping of their own and take the doctor with them, but the soldiers must have pulled her inside to safety. Relative safety. Those planes were approaching quickly. Even as Jelena glanced at them, one dropped a huge bomb from its belly.
“I agree,” Masika barked.
She had finally stopped fighting, realizing she was protected by Jelena’s barrier—or perhaps trapped by it. She had downed the soldiers stuck inside with them, and she couldn’t get out to reach more.
Jelena led the way toward the gate the truck had driven through. The gate was closed now, but she trusted that Erick, even wounded, could find the focus to fling it open. She only concentrated on keeping her barrier up, especially when some of the soldiers saw them leaving and chased after them, firing. A few men in watch towers along the fence also started firing, but it didn’t last long.
The bomb, the first of many, dropped onto the city. The ground quaked and heaved as power rocked the earth, power that dwarfed what Jelena could do with her mind. Entire structures flew to pieces, some utterly obliterated when bombs dropped onto them. Craters appeared where before there had been buildings full of people.
Horror filled Jelena, and she struggled to keep her barrier up, struggled to keep memories from flooding back to her and breaking her concentration, memories of that devastating day in Perun Central. Guilt also assailed her mind as she wished she could take back her earlier thought, that if Thor had blown up the forcefield generator, it would be justified. There was nothing that could justify this destruction.
Smoke and dust filled the air, and in the short seconds it took her team to reach the gate, a gray and brown haze covered the entire city, blocking the view of the harbor and the ocean. Jelena coughed and inhaled smoke as heat roiled up the hill from below, slipping underneath her barrier. It felt like being trapped in a forest fire. Would the Opuntians bomb the entire city out of existence? What about their own people?
The gate flew open with a wrenching that was barely audible over the booms and screams and sirens coming from the city. Erick stumbled, and Jelena brought her fo
cus back to her team. She gripped his arm in case he needed help and led him and Masika out onto the road. But she paused as soon as the gate was behind them. Where should they go? There was no safety in the city, not now.
She had a vague notion of running out into the desert, however long it would take to reach it, because who would bomb cactuses? But as she looked for a road that might lead that way, she spotted a group of women and children running into an alley at the bottom of the hill. Someone beckoned to them from a sewer manhole.
“There are supposed to be underground areas, right?” Jelena asked. “Where most of the people live now?”
Erick’s face had gone white, and he only shook his head. He needed to sit down and rest, not run all over the city or out to the desert.
“That’s what the sys-net entry said.” Masika pointed at the alley, having seen it, too—the women were lowering children down to someone. “I have no idea if being underground is a good idea when the city aboveground is being bombed.”
Jelena didn’t, either. She could easily imagine tunnels collapsing. But those people seemed to believe safety lay there. And there was no way Jelena and her team could get to the submarine rendezvous point right now. They needed somewhere they could lie low until the attack ended. So much for the idea that the Opuntians wouldn’t attack the city when their own people were being held in that plant.
“Let’s go.” Jelena squeezed Erick’s arm and led the way down the hill. She didn’t lower her barrier, afraid of people taking parting shots at them—or a bomb dropping atop them. Blessings of the Suns Trinity, what would she do then? She couldn’t keep her shield up with that kind of power being unleashed on it.
“The soldiers have stopped firing.” Masika glanced back. “And they’re not following.”
“They have bigger problems than us right now.”
“I’m not sure whether to be thankful or not.”
Jelena looked out toward the smoky city, the craters and missing buildings. She thought of the churches they’d driven past and of the soldier who’d been friendly to her. Had he survived Masika’s tornado of attacks? Would any of those people survive this?
“I’m not,” Jelena said quietly. “I’m not.”
Chapter 10
As Jelena dropped into the manhole, landing on dry ground inside a wide tunnel, she reached out with her senses, worried some guard would be stationed there to shoot intruders. But there wasn’t anyone else by the entrance. Coughs mingled with frightened cries and groans of pain attested to the presence of people—a lot of people—farther down the tunnel. Or tunnels. Her cursory probing revealed a whole maze of them.
“Hope Thor can find us here,” she whispered as Masika dropped down beside her.
“Is he still alive?” she asked.
Jelena started to say, “I hope so,” but she could still feel that faint awareness of him in the back of her mind. “Yes,” she said firmly.
“Is it safe down there?” Erick called from above, sitting on the edge, his legs dangling down. Normally, he would jump down as easily as they had, but that shoulder had to hurt every time he moved it.
“Yes,” Masika said, her response almost drowned out by another distant boom. “Do you want me to catch you?”
“Yes, but I don’t think I should admit that.” Erick handed his staff down to Jelena, grunted, and pushed himself over the lip.
He dropped between them and stumbled. Jelena and Masika steadied him with their hands.
A flash appeared in the circle of smoky sky visible through the manhole. Jelena sensed rather than saw one of the planes exploding. She didn’t know if the Chollans had mustered air forces of their own or if their automated missile systems had gotten their acts together, but they were fighting back now. She hoped the bombing would stop soon, as she still had visions of tunnels collapsing atop them. Fortunately, the passage they had dropped into seemed sturdy and was relatively free of smoke and dust.
“Which way?” Masika asked, peering into the gloom to either side.
“I have no idea.” Jelena wanted to find someplace safe where they could hide until the bombing ended, but they needed to treat Erick’s wound too. Was he losing a lot of blood? It was impossible to tell through that black robe. She wished she’d thought to grab one of their packs when they’d been fleeing. They’d all had first-aid kits along. She could close a wound with her mental talents, but she was less certain about her ability to remove a bullet, especially without any surgical implements.
“Whichever way has fewer unfriendly people,” Erick said.
“Or a doctor,” Masika said, eyeing him. “Friendly or otherwise.”
“My senses can’t tell me people’s occupations at a glance, unfortunately.” Jelena nodded to her left, only because fewer coughs were coming from that direction, and she thought there were fewer people that way too.
Before they’d taken more than a few steps, she sensed someone running up behind them.
Jelena turned, forming a barrier across the tunnel before she’d identified the intruder. Erick also turned, leaning heavily on his staff.
“I’ll take care of it,” Jelena murmured, stepping forward.
A girl of nine or ten ran into the shaft of light coming from above, her eyes wide as she stared at them.
“You sure you can handle it?” Erick asked, then winced. Why was he trying to talk when he was in pain? “She looks fierce.”
No, she didn’t. Dust dulled the girl’s long black ponytail, and dirt and a couple of fresh bruises darkened her face. More dust coated the yellow robe she wore, the color barely detectable under the grime.
“Are you Starseers?” the girl asked, her dark eyes still wide, almost shining in comparison to the dust all around.
“I’m not,” Masika said.
The girl didn’t glance at her—she was staring at Jelena and Erick in their all-too-identifiable robes, robes that Jelena regretted bringing along now. They had been fine for cowing the war minister’s people back in Opuntia, and she’d thought the ability to do the same thing here might come in handy, but it was proving to be a mistake. It would have been better not to reveal their abilities to anyone on this continent.
Of course, the robes might also be what had kept the Chollans from shooting them outright at the harbor. They’d clearly wanted something.
“What if we are?” Jelena asked.
Maybe it was foolish to feel wary of a ten-year-old girl, but she could raise an alarm as easily as the next person.
“You can help us drive out the vile Opuntians and bring peace back to our land!”
“Uhm.” Jelena didn’t feel much like helping the Chollans or anyone on this continent after being bombed in a submarine, knocked out in a harbor, and shot at in a driveway.
“Does your friend need help?” The girl peered at Erick. “My sister is a doctor. I can take you to her!”
With those bruises, she looked like she needed a doctor herself. Everyone down here probably did, but Erick didn’t look good. Did Jelena dare pass up the offer? They not only needed to survive the next three days in this city, but they needed to find and rescue the prisoners. She hadn’t endured all of this to fail. She would rescue those people. And so would Erick. They were both going to be heroes together, damn it. Heroes who paid off their loans. All right, it was only her loan. But Erick could heroically help her pay it.
“She’ll be helping the injured back in Delta Camp. That way.” The girl pointed over her shoulder, then trotted closer to Jelena.
But Jelena hadn’t lowered her barrier yet, and the girl bumped against it. Fear flashed in her young eyes, but as she reached out and touched her fingers to the invisible field, wonder overrode her concern.
“Is this yours?” She patted along it. “You are Starseers.”
Masika looked at Jelena. “Spies are supposed to lie low and be incognito, you know.”
“What’s your point?”
“That you’re bad at it.”
“Technically, we?
??re being mercenaries this week, not spies.”
“You don’t make convincing mercenaries, either,” Masika said.
“Erick got shot. Isn’t that convincing? I feel like that happens to mercenaries a lot.”
“Comforting,” he muttered.
Jelena lowered her barrier. She had doubts about going to an encampment full of the people who’d been shooting at them twenty minutes ago, but she didn’t think she had anything to worry about from the girl.
“We’d like to see your doctor, yes,” Jelena said.
“Good! She’s the best.”
Jelena hoped “she’s the best” meant she was significantly older than the girl. Erick wouldn’t appreciate being worked on by a doctor younger than he was, someone who might have, given the predicament these people were in, learned her trade from a book. Or some nomadic desert medicine woman using tools made from bones and sticks.
“I’m Hoshi,” the girl added, pressing her hands together in front of her chest and bowing.
“Jelena, Erick, and Masika,” Jelena said. “Lead the way, please, Hoshi.”
The girl twirled two circles before heading off down the tunnel.
“What else can you do?” she asked as they walked. “Can you fly? Can you talk with your minds? Can you really see into stars? That’s where the name comes from, right? You can see the actual fusion happening inside the suns? With your minds?” Hoshi glanced back frequently, as if she worried she would lose her charges. Or maybe she simply felt it was proper to look people in the eye while interrogating them.
“I can’t fly without a ship,” Jelena said, though she thought of the way Thor had lifted her and Erick over a tall electric fence back on Upsilon Seven. That had been like flying. “Some of the other stuff… Uhm, maybe. I can communicate with animals.”
“Like dogs? I love dogs. But it’s really sad now. So many people have died, so now their dogs don’t have anyone to take care of them, and they just roam the streets.”
Hoshi led them through a wide tunnel with alcoves; people huddled inside all of them. The only light came from occasional storm grates, so Jelena could barely see them, but she could sense them. All of their eyes were turned toward her group. Hoshi continued on, gesticulating while she spoke, and didn’t seem aware of the onlookers.