“The missiles,” Thor pointed out.
“I haven’t forgotten. I’m hoping the nearby ones were taken out in those bombings. If not, we have to shut them down somehow. Austin, I’ll comm you later with details. Keep me updated on your status.”
He said something, but again, the fuzz made it impossible to understand. Then the link died.
Jelena sighed.
“We don’t know where the missiles are in relation to the city,” Thor said.
“Are you telling me that with all your surfing of people’s thoughts, you can’t get that information?”
“Only if someone is actively thinking about them. I doubt the average citizen knows much about missile silo locations.”
“We’ll find someone less average to question. Or—” Jelena slowed down. “What if we went and had a chat with this war leader and asked him to shut them down? Or make some allowance to permit our ship to land near the city? Without being fired on.”
“You think he’s going to do that when the reason we want him to turn off the missiles is so we can land and steal his POWs?”
“You’d have to convince him that it’s a good idea. Or maybe—I don’t know. Maybe we could actually make a deal with him.”
Aware of the stubborn and dubious expression on Thor’s face, she groped for a way to convince him this was a good idea. Or to go along with her even if it wasn’t a good idea.
She snapped her fingers as inspiration struck. “You want this planet’s ahridium, right? Or an option to buy some of it in the future? Then you should definitely try to make a deal with the man.”
“If I use my talents to manipulate him, he’ll remember it later, and won’t want to deal with me again.”
“Then we’ll just have to figure out how to get him to come around to our way of thinking without using your talents.” And they would have to do it quickly. If Austin had to leave dock, it wouldn’t take him long to fly the Snapper across the ocean. She couldn’t have him fly circles around the continent, since the ship burned fuel a lot faster in atmosphere than it did in space, and Austin would probably knock out a fueling station if he tried to land—assuming Fourseas even had a station for fueling spaceships.
“So I’m supposed to smile at him and use my natural charisma?” Thor asked.
“Or I could do it. Do you think I’m more charming than you are? Maybe we should have asked Masika which one of us she had fewer urges to drug.”
“Your smile is more attractive than mine.”
“Why, Thor. I’m so pleased you’ve noticed.” She smiled and batted her eyelashes at him, a gesture that might have been more effective in daylight rather than in a dim tunnel.
Thor shook his head. “I don’t see how this could possibly go well.”
Chapter 12
Jelena and Thor came up into the city near the street of churches that she’d ridden down before. Late afternoon left deep shadows in the rubbled intersections, and the suns had an odd reddish tint as their light filtered through lingering smoke. To her surprise, people lingered too. Most of the churches and temples remained standing, and all of them had their doors or gates open. Songs and chants drifted out from inside, some in Solis Lingua and some in tongues she couldn’t understand. She peered through one of the doorways and spotted people on benches facing an altar or lying on blankets filling the marble floor. Many people were embracing or sitting close, sharing rations and praying or singing.
There were temples and monasteries all over the system for those who sought learning or blessings from the monks and disciples of the Divine Suns Trinity, but the average citizen or subject did not visit them regularly, as far as Jelena knew. It was understood that anywhere the light of the three suns touched, it brought the influence of Solis-de, Opus-de, and Rebus-de, and that prayers would be received. She wondered if the majority of the system was missing out by not having more of a sense of community with its religion. Granted, disaster would bring people together whether religion was involved or not, but she sensed that many of these people had known each other before the bombing, and that they’d come here for emotional support as much as for a refuge.
“We’re close,” Thor said. “Up there, and to the right. There’s a military fort where this war leader is supposed to keep his office.”
“In a tent?”
“In a tent.”
Jelena felt nervous about walking into a military base full of soldiers that had been ordered to capture them. Maybe she and Thor should have accepted Hoshi’s offer to take them personally. Maybe she was well known as the doctor’s little sister and could have acted as a diplomat for them.
As they went around a corner, they passed a temple with gongs reverberating from within, and Jelena’s step faltered. Less than fifty meters ahead, the street—and the buildings that should have lined it—was missing, a huge crater taking its place.
“That’s appalling,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“How many people lived in those buildings?” Jelena spotted a few bodies near the lip of the crater, all bloody, many missing limbs, none moving.
“Impossible to know.” Thor continued down the street. “The base is on the other side. I think we can go around.”
Jelena almost snapped at him, annoyed by his practicality in the face of such horror. But she kept her mouth shut. Someone needed to be practical. She was having a hard time remembering why they were even out here. A selfish part of her wished they’d been able to stay in the tunnels all the way to the base, that they hadn’t needed to come up and witness this.
A boy walked toward them, his face burned, his clothing torn. He peered into alleys and whistled. He paused when Jelena and Thor drew close, frowning at her robe, and she expected a comment about Starseers.
All he said was, “Have you seen my dog? She got scared and ran off. My brother’s missing, and we don’t know if Dad made it. She’s my best friend. I can’t lose her too.” He blinked moist eyes and started for the next alley.
Jelena had the feeling he’d delivered that question and those words to numerous people and didn’t expect an answer. Thor shook his head and kept walking.
Jelena closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, searching for dogs in the surrounding area. She found four within a few blocks that did not appear to be attached to people. They huddled behind trash bins or cowered in gaps in the rubble. She coaxed them from their hiding spots, promising food if they came to her.
“Jelena?” Thor, several paces ahead, stopped.
“Just a moment.” She delved into her inside pocket and pulled out a smashed and mangled ration bar. Fortunately, its wrapper had sealed in the contents during her earlier ocean swim.
The first dog trotted out of an alley, its ribs showing through its thin fur. The boy turned, eyes hopeful, but slumped.
“That’s not my dog.” Still, he went forward sadly, offering his hand for a sniff.
The dog seemed half-feral, and Jelena believed it had been on the streets for a while, but the promise of food kept it from flinching away from the boy. She handed him a piece of the ration bar to feed to it.
Two more dogs came out, one limping, and tears came to Jelena’s eyes. She felt as distressed at seeing animals hurt as people—maybe it was even worse, because animals couldn’t vote or choose whether or not to go to war. They were pure victims in this.
They came straight to her. Jelena didn’t see recognition in the boy’s eyes, but he did look more hopeful as he studied her curiously, maybe wondering if she could produce more dogs. She fed the newcomers, and the one with a limp leaned against her leg, reminding her of Alfie. Alfie who was probably scared back on the ship, with bombings occurring all around. Jelena had promised her a good life when she’d taken her from that lab, but maybe she should have left her at the shelter on Upsilon Seven. A good life didn’t involve battles and wars.
She stroked the dog leaning against her as she closed her eyes again to draw upon her powers. She examined the dog’
s wounded hip with her mind, detecting fractured bones. It might not be wise to let herself grow so distracted in the middle of a war-torn street, but she’d healed animals before, and she didn’t think she could let this one go without trying to do something. It wasn’t as if a veterinarian would soon wander through the streets with injectors full of repair nanobots.
Minutes passed as she stroked the dog’s side and worked on knitting its bones back together with her mind, as Grandpa had taught her to do. Technically, he’d been teaching her so she could heal humans, but animals were easier. Everything was always easier with animals.
A bark sounded, drawing Jelena from the near trance she’d been in, and she straightened. The dog looked up at her and wagged his tail. His leg would still hurt for a while, but she’d started the healing process and mended the fractures. She wiped her eyes, hoping the dog would survive all this and have time to heal fully.
She looked up and found Thor standing only a couple of feet away, his hand on the hilt of his sword as he gazed toward a walled compound on the other side of the crater. She thought he might shoot her an exasperated look for dilly-dallying, but he touched her arm and nodded behind her.
A fourth dog had appeared, a big, fluffy gray one, and the boy was on his knees in the street hugging her.
“Thank you,” he told Jelena when their eyes met.
She tossed the last piece of the ration bar to him so he could feed his canine friend a treat. The dog did not appear injured, so Jelena nodded to Thor and said, “We can go now.”
“Good. We’ve already been observed.” His next nod went toward the wall of that compound. A woman in brown fatigues stood atop one corner, her helmet under her arm as she gazed toward them.
Thor lowered his hand from his sword and walked around the crater and toward the compound. It occurred to Jelena that he’d been watching her—protecting her, if necessary—while she worked on the dog.
“Thank you,” she said as they navigated around the crater.
“You’re welcome,” he said, though his voice had a distracted quality to it, and his gaze remained focused on that woman.
She walked down some interior stairway leading off the wall and disappeared from sight.
“I take it she’s going to report our presence to her superiors?” Jelena asked.
Thor’s expression grew indecipherable. “Not exactly.”
The rusty iron double doors leading into the military fort opened before he and Jelena reached them.
“We’re being invited in?” she asked.
Admittedly, the doors were a formality. Further down, one corner of the wall had been destroyed, and it would have been easy to climb over the rubble.
“It seems so.”
There weren’t any guards standing at the door, so Thor and Jelena walked into the courtyard. That corner of the wall wasn’t the only thing that had been destroyed. Only two of what must have been seven or eight buildings remained standing. Some of the rubble seemed fresh, with broken furniture mingling with the wall material, whereas other buildings appeared to have been destroyed during previous raids, with their rubble shoved into piles at the rear of the compound.
Six soldiers walked toward them, and Jelena’s grip tightened on her staff. They were all armed, and she mentally prepared herself to erect a barrier if need be. Her head ached after healing the dog—that kind of work required an intense attention to detail, one that was more draining than engaging in battles.
The woman from the wall walked at the back of the group, her helmet still under her arm. She was older than Jelena had guessed at first, in her fifties at least, with short black hair that might have been dyed to hide the gray. A young officer with a tablet computer trailed after her. The tablet looked to be twenty or thirty years old, but it was one of the more modern things Jelena had seen since arriving.
The male soldiers stepped aside so that only the woman faced her and Thor.
“War Leader Hakim,” Thor said, inclining his head.
Jelena nearly fell over.
“Prince Thorian,” the woman said, startling Jelena anew. It wasn’t as if Thor was wearing a disguise, but the pictures that had been in all of his news vids of late had shown ten-year-old Thorian, not the adult version. And what news could these people be getting with their satellites destroyed and sys-net access cut off? Or had Thor, for some reason, communicated with her already and shared who he was?
“Your intelligence network is more capable than that of your opponents,” Thor remarked. No, he hadn’t given up his name to her. But he also didn’t seem surprised or concerned that she knew.
“I’d be smug about that if my opponents weren’t bombing our last legs out from under us.” Hakim sighed, gazing skyward sadly.
“That would rob a person of her smugness.” Thor looked at Jelena.
“Is this the part where I smile?” she asked.
“Perhaps not. When I suggested that strategy, I imagined the war leader was a man.”
Hakim’s eyebrows rose. “My predecessor, General Vu, was. I’m a colonel and was the fort commander here when this all started. After he was killed, nobody else wanted the job.”
“That’s not the story War Minister Sorel told us about you,” Jelena said. “You’re supposed to be uniting your people to make a push to take over the world.”
“Ah, that was General Vu. If Sorel and Chang don’t know he’s dead, their intelligence is even worse than I thought. But I suspect they know the truth, and that’s just the story they’re telling their people and the Alliance representatives to ensure cooperation. Technically, General Vu only wanted to unite all of Cholla so we would present a unified front and could more successfully keep the Alliance and their corporate allies from taking over our land.” She studied Jelena with dark, thoughtful eyes. “Who are you? As the prince said, I’m Colonel Jamila Hakim.” She offered her hand.
Jelena returned the clasp, surprised the woman had bothered to ask. Everyone else had assumed Thor was in charge and had barely looked at her.
“I’m Jelena Marchenko.” She debated whether to claim to be a captain. Mom and Leonidas hadn’t made that official yet, and given the way her second chance at proving herself was going… Jelena feared it might never be official. “I run freight.”
Hakim’s eyebrow rose. “And wear a Starseer robe.”
“Yes, they’re terribly comfortable. I imagine all freighter pilots will start wearing them soon.”
Hakim squinted at her. Confused? Maybe she didn’t know if Jelena was claiming not to be a Starseer.
“We both have Starseer training,” Thor clarified. “Jelena inherited her mother’s sense of humor.”
“Thor didn’t inherit a sense of humor at all,” Jelena said. “It’s unfortunate. I’m thinking of seeing if there’s an implant he could get.”
“A… humor implant?” Hakim eyed the man with the tablet computer—her aide, Jelena presumed. The young man shrugged back.
Stick to using your smile, Thor told Jelena silently. Your levity is confusing them.
That’s too bad. With the world they’re living in, I bet they need levity.
Maybe they just need better levity.
Don’t think I won’t kick you while we’re meeting with the leader of a nation.
Thor took a step to the side. “War Leader Hakim, what do you mean the Alliance is taking over, or wants to take over, your land? What is their role in all this?”
Hakim gazed thoughtfully at him before answering, maybe debating if she should answer his questions. They hadn’t agreed to be allies. If Hakim’s intelligence network was as good as it seemed, she ought to know that Jelena’s team had been sent by the Opuntians.
“We’ve only spoken to a couple of Alliance representatives,” Hakim said, and Jelena couldn’t tell if she’d decided of her own accord to share information or if Thor was coercing her. Her eyes did not have the glassy look that people sometimes got when they were being manipulated. “We don’t know if they spoke for
the Alliance as a whole. They originally bypassed the Opuntians and landed here to visit us. They came offering a place in the Alliance, tax-free trade with other planets in the system, and a deal that could make our nation very wealthy. We’re not opposed to wealth, mind you. Even before the war started, we were never what you would call a rich and prosperous people. We have few natural resources, and there aren’t many animals or plants that can thrive in our desert ecosystem. For centuries, our people have lived almost entirely on fish and the edible varieties of cactus out there.”
“Including the one that’s considered a delicacy in the system?”
Hakim smiled faintly. “Arigato cactus, yes. During the heyday of the empire, traders came and made deals for it, but after the fall, I think the system mostly forgot about it. Or maybe the political climate out there made it difficult for the traders to make money. Either way, arigato never made anyone wealthy. And it’s not what the Alliance representatives wanted when they came. Through some illegal exploratory mining done along our coasts, some corporation learned that we have ahridium deposits here, deposits that are closer to the surface and more accessible than in other locations in the system. Sort of. Most of the deposits are under the ocean floor and a challenge to get to, but perhaps not as challenging to reach as the ones buried in asteroids.”
“The news leaked to the Alliance, and they decided to offer you a place under their umbrella, along with perks, in exchange for being allowed to set up ahridium mining operations?” Thor asked.