Angle of Truth

  A few more dusty machines hunkered against the wall behind Erick, but the packed-earth floor was open all around him. Surprised Hakim was standing by the doorway instead of looming over his shoulder, Jelena started toward Erick. But she paused, spotting an armored man unmoving on the floor partway to the generator. His leg was twisted at an unlikely angle, especially since his armor should have protected him from breaking or dislocating anything. Soot darkened the front half of his suit. She checked him with her senses. He was dead.

  “Stay over there,” Erick said, not looking up. He’d retained his toolbox in the chaos, and it rested next to him, the lid open. “There are homemade land mines buried in the floor all around the generator.”

  He waved toward a crater a few feet from the dead man. Jelena hadn’t noticed it. Even if she had, she would have assumed the bombings had been responsible for it. A black substance darkened the earth around the rim.

  “Homemade?” she asked.

  “I can barely sense them—if not for that fellow, I might have stepped right on one. They’re mostly sacks of gunpowder with tiny detonation mechanisms. Given the rubble and bits of broken machinery all over the floor of the warehouse, it would be a pain in the ass to locate them all, even with Starseer senses.”

  Hakim left her soldiers attending to each other’s wounds near the doorway and joined Jelena, careful to follow in her footsteps and not walk out any farther. Jelena grimaced, looking back the way she had come and wondering if she’d risked blowing herself up without knowing it.

  “I stopped you before you came into the field,” Erick said, then added in a low voice, “I think.”

  “They did a good job disguising them,” Hakim said, nodding toward the packed-earth floor, “especially since they must have been pressed for time, maybe under attack even as they handled the explosives.”

  “They who?” Jelena started to set her staff on the ground, but decided to hold it horizontally in her hand instead. Now, she was afraid to even shift her weight. “Didn’t you have people out here working on the generator this afternoon?”

  “Yes.” Hakim pointed to a body in the shadows on the opposite side of the generator from Erick. “I think a blazer caught him from across the room. There was another engineer with him, and that may be who planted the mines. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.” She gazed toward the hole in the wall and the city beyond it.

  “Were they trying to keep the Opuntian team out then?” Jelena asked.

  “Away from the generator, I’d guess. They must have hoped someone would be able to fix it. It isn’t damaged that badly, considering.” Hakim waved to the collapsed half of the building.

  No, the sturdy panels on the generator looked like they had been designed to withstand some abuse, at least moderate abuse. If one of those planes dropped a bomb right on the building, that would be the end of it.

  “The mercenaries were probably ordered to make sure they destroyed it thoroughly,” Hakim said, her gaze shifting to the one on the floor. “Maybe they realized they hadn’t done as good a job as they hoped, or maybe they saw our people working on it, so they came back.” Her tone turned sour. “Nobody thought to update me.”

  “Maybe your people were too busy with their booby traps.” Jelena nodded at the bare floor. In the dim lighting, it was impossible to see disturbed soil where the mines had been placed. The engineer had been too thorough in refilling the dirt and patting it down. Unlike Erick, Jelena couldn’t sense anything at all under the floor. Gunpowder, if that was the primary component, wouldn’t seem much different from dirt to her mind’s eye. “At least Erick was able to get through without triggering anything. Did you walk across, Erick?”

  “He flew,” Hakim said.

  “I jumped.” Erick clanged at something with a tool and didn’t look over at them. “Far.” I had Thorian teach me that trick, he added silently to Jelena. In exchange, I offered to help him create a brilliant character in Striker Odyssey, but he declined.

  “Then you can jump back when you’re done, right?” Jelena asked, not surprised Thor was uninterested in the game. “And we can leave the mines in situ?”

  The Chollans could worry about finding them after the war ended, if Jelena was indeed able to finagle that into happening. She hadn’t run her plan by Hakim yet.

  Hoshi scampered across the floor toward Jelena.

  Hakim whirled, holding a hand up. “Stay back.”

  “But the Starseers have to know. The bombers are coming.”

  Yes, Jelena had heard the planes approaching.

  “They destroyed our local missile stations,” Hakim said. “There’s nothing we can do but hope the engineer gets the generator fixed in time.”

  Destroyed? Jelena looked at her. When had that happened? Did that mean she and Thor hadn’t needed to ask for the missiles to be disabled so the Snapper could land?

  “And also hope the bombers aren’t aiming for this building in particular,” Hakim added, not noticing Jelena’s look. Maybe she hadn’t known about the missile stations earlier. Otherwise, wouldn’t Thor have read the information in her thoughts? “Any chance your ship can fight them off?” Hakim asked. “Or do whatever you did earlier to make them help against that other ship?”

  The woman didn’t seem to miss much.

  “Thor is the one who did that.” Jelena reached out to check on him and found him fighting two armored men in a collapsed building a block away. “And he’s busy.” She grimaced again, now worried for him. She’d seen him battle more armored troops than that at once, and figured he should be all right, but if a bomb landed and distracted him while he was surrounded by enemies firing at him… even he wasn’t perfect. “Fighting your enemies,” Jelena added, in case Hakim believed he’d just gone out for a smoke or something.

  Hakim nodded, as if she’d known. Maybe she had.

  “I regret that I can’t send my men out to help. Our rifles are useless against their armor.”

  “I know,” Jelena said.

  A boom sounded, and the ground shivered. The first bomb dropping. It sounded like it had been on the other side of the city, but Jelena couldn’t assume the bombers wouldn’t find their way here eventually.

  “As for my ship…” Jelena looked toward Erick, wondering how long he would be. Maybe she could be of more help if she went back to pilot. She could attack the bombers with the Snapper, assuming enough time had passed for Austin to fix the steering problem. It seemed a poor reward for the Opuntian pilots, considering they had helped with the gold ship, however inadvertently, but maybe she could disable the planes without killing their pilots.

  “I’d prefer you stay here and figure out how to disarm those mines,” Erick said, his voice sounding flat as he focused on something else. He’d lowered his tool and was staring into the generator innards, manipulating something with his mind.

  “Is that a priority?” Jelena asked, surprised. “Can’t you jump back out here when you’re done and avoid them?”

  “I was more worried about the mines going off while I’m working. They’re touch sensitive, and if the ground keeps shaking, or if a bomb lands near us and more of the ceiling drops…”

  Shit. Jelena hadn’t imagined that scenario.

  Another bomb dropped, and the ground trembled harder that time. Erick gripped the side of the generator and looked over at her. She sensed him creating a barrier around himself, but he wouldn’t be able to do much else if he was concentrating on defending himself. Judging by the concern in his eyes, he considered those mines going off a strong likelihood.

  “I can try to nullify them or deactivate them if you tell me how to locate them,” Jelena said.

  “You’ll have to use your senses.”

  “Uh.” Jelena glanced at Hakim, hating to admit her weaknesses in front of strangers. “I thought you couldn’t sense them well.”

  I can’t. Erick switched to silent communication. But you have more natural aptitude than I do, Jelena.

  My aptitud
e doesn’t discern the difference been gunpowder and dirt powder.

  Just figure something out. His frustration came through with his words, and he focused on the generator again, letting his barrier drop so he could work. People die every time one of those bombs drops.

  Jelena tugged at her ponytail. “Hakim, do your soldiers have any way to detect land mines?”

  She shook her head. “Unless they’re made with a lot of metal and a metal detector can find them, no. Most of them aren’t anymore. The usual way to deal with areas full of them is to throw rocks and try to detonate them from afar.”

  Jelena thought the woman was joking, but her grim expression never changed.

  “We don’t want to detonate these,” Jelena said.

  “I know.”

  Jelena looked toward Erick, on the verge of asking about the metal. He answered preemptively.

  I told you. There’s just a tiny detonator and gunpowder. Even if you could find a metal detector around now, I doubt it would work. I’d be able to detect them far more easily if there were a lot of metal.

  Another bomb dropped, and he swore and went back to work. Jelena vowed not to distract him again.

  A scream came from outside. Jelena jumped, then realized it was Thor at work and not a bomber. She did a quick check to make sure he hadn’t been the one hollering in pain. No, he was on the hunt again. She shouldn’t distract him by asking him for advice, either, though she suspected his senses would be strong enough to detect the mines.

  “Does gunpowder smell like anything?” Jelena thought she remembered a smoky scent as some of the soldiers had used their bullet-based guns.

  “After it ignites, yes,” Hakim said.

  “But it must smell like something before then, too, right? I mean, everything smells like something.”

  Hakim gave her an odd look.

  Jelena shrugged and stretched out with her senses again, an idea forming. The dogs were still in the alley. One seemed to be a hound type, and she introduced herself with a brush of her mind and conveyed a promise in exchange for some assistance.

  “I could use some snacks,” she told Hakim. “If you or your men have anything.”

  Hakim’s expression shifted from odd to incredulous.

  “For a friend,” Jelena said. “Hurry, please.”

  Hakim walked carefully back the way she had come, stepping around Hoshi, who was watching Jelena with bright eyes, almost as if she knew what she had in mind. Hakim started as she passed the doorway and a figure trotted in.

  One of the men reached for a gun, but Jelena blurted, “That’s our friend,” at the same time as another soldier said, “It’s just a dog.”

  Jelena nudged the dog with her mind, instructing him on a safe path to reach her. He ambled toward her, a big black-and-tan hound with floppy ears and large nostrils. Perfect. She patted him a few times, but, aware of the bombers continuing to fly over the city to unleash their loads, she didn’t let the greeting go on for long. She picked a careful way toward the dead man in armor and the crater, keeping her barrier close around her and the dog as they went.

  In her mind, she formed an image of the dog sniffing the crater, then shared it. The hound amiably complied, examining the area with his nose. For a moment, with their minds linked, Jelena also experienced his stunning sense of smell, and she detected all the subtleties, both in the spent gunpowder and in the earth and in the people in the building. She had a hunch the dog might have found the bombs just by detecting the different scent of the newly packed earth versus that which hadn’t been disturbed.

  “All right, my friend,” she whispered. “Let’s find more gunpowder.”

  She conveyed the idea to the dog, of pointing to other spots that smelled like the crater, hoping the unspent powder would be similar enough to the burned stuff that he wouldn’t have trouble discerning it. The hound wagged his tail, interested by the game.

  “Hakim? If we find them, I need your team to figure out a way to nullify them.”

  Jelena turned to find Hakim behind her. She must have caught on, because she handed a bunch of metal wires to her. To be used as flags to mark the positions?

  “We’ll get some water,” Hakim said. “That’s all I can think to use. If the mines use simple gunpowder and aren’t protected by a watertight container…” She shrugged. “I can’t imagine that Smith had time to make anything fancy. Waterlogged gunpowder won’t ignite.”

  “Shit, hose down the whole floor then,” Erick said.

  “Hose?” Hakim asked.

  “Never mind.”

  Yes, even if there had been a hose and a spigot nearby, the odds of the city having running water right now were poor.

  “We’ve got our canteens,” Hakim said. “I’ll send a couple of men to look for buckets and more water.”

  Jelena nodded and urged her new friend to begin. She crouched, watching him intently with her eyes and her senses as he ventured out onto the floor, nose to the earth. She would raise a barrier around him as quickly as possible if he took a false step, but she hoped she had conveyed the danger of actually stepping on the area that smelled of gunpowder.

  The hound went directly to a spot, stopped, and wagged his tail. Jelena picked her way to him, understanding from his mind that he’d already found a mine, and stuck a wire into the ground next to it. Now that he’d pointed it out, she thought she could detect the detonator with her senses, but she continued to let him lead the way. Hakim and a couple of her uninjured men trailed after her with canteens. Another soldier jogged into the building with his helmet full of water. Jelena had no idea if this extremely low-tech solution would work, but she and the hound kept marking spots.

  The bombers roared closer, and the earth shook harder. With nobody to oppose the enemy airplanes, they dropped their loads systematically throughout the city. Jelena hoped the majority of the citizens were underground and far away from the metropolis. She couldn’t imagine the tunnels underneath the city being strong enough to withstand such a deluge.

  Her comm beeped.

  “Captain?” Austin blurted. “Two of the bombers are circling over us, and one just dropped a bomb!”

  “How are the shields?”

  “All right for a few hits, but do you want me to fly up and go somewhere?”

  Not if it meant he would have to land again.

  “Have Masika get one of those Alliance people on the comm to talk to the bombers,” Jelena said. “Tell them that their own POWs are in the hold.”

  “What if that doesn’t work?”

  “Make it work.”

  “Er.”

  A thunk came from the generator, followed by a yelp of pain. Erick glared over at Jelena, as if his frustrating predicament was her fault. Technically, it was.

  “Comm back if it doesn’t work, Austin,” Jelena said. She’d tell him to fly up into space if she had to, where the airplanes presumably couldn’t follow, but she would prefer not to test his landing abilities again, not until they had time for flying lessons.

  A distant shout sounded over the comm, and then the channel closed.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean the prisoners are causing trouble.” Jelena had enough trouble already. She bent to mark another mine as the hound wagged his tail.

  There’s a bomber heading straight toward you, Thor spoke into her mind. Destroying the generator has been his mission all along. I’ve been distracting him, but I’m— A long pause followed the abrupt ending.

  Thor?

  A cacophonous boom sounded close to the building.

  Distracted, Thor finished.

  Jelena sensed his alarm as he dealt with mercenaries hurling grenades at him, many grenades, from several different directions. A concerted attack.

  Another explosion erupted just outside the generator building, and the ground lurched. Hakim and her soldiers gaped toward the ceiling, but the real threat came from beneath their feet. One of the land mines exploded, hurling flames into the air.

  Nobody was s
tanding next to it, but it went off near a wall. Rock and dust flew as the wall shuddered, then tumbled down. Debris must have landed on another mine, because a second one went off with an earth-shaking roar.

  The hound fled to Jelena, burying his head between her legs. She created a barrier around them, promising to protect him, even as she tried to figure out how she might extend her defense all the way to the soldiers by the door. And Erick—was he protecting himself?

  “I’ve almost got it fixed,” he yelled, as if that was what she’d been asking by looking over at him.

  “The bomber.” Hoshi pointed at the ceiling. “It’s right above us.”

  “Hoshi, come here,” Jelena barked, realizing she wasn’t by the soldiers or close enough for Jelena to protect with her barrier.

  Jelena sensed the airplane up there as she heard the roar of its engine over the rubble still tumbling from that wall. It dropped its bomb. Jelena ran toward Hoshi—the girl was staring upward, her eyes wide. The hound raced after her. Jelena dropped her barrier and focused on the bomb plummeting toward the roof of their building. Two seconds, and it would hit. There wasn’t time to do anything fancy. She recreated her barrier as high above the building as she could—which wasn’t very high.

  The bomb hit it. She prayed it would bounce back up and blow up far away from them, but it exploded on contact.

  The pure power striking her barrier shattered it, and the backlash snapped in her mind like a rubber band. A giant rubber band. She tripped and tumbled, pain ricocheting around inside her skull. Instead of reaching Hoshi and protecting her, she rolled to a stop at the girl’s feet.

  “Look out!” she had time to cry before the roof started falling.

  The bomb hadn’t struck it directly, but it didn’t matter. Its power was so great that the shockwave did massive damage. Rock and roofing tiles slammed to the ground all around them.

  Jelena shoved herself to her feet, struggling to refocus and re-form her barrier. But abruptly the sound of things pelting to the ground halted. She grew aware of Thor’s presence. He was no longer outside the building in some fight, but next to her. He gripped her arm and pulled her close, drawing Hoshi in too. The hound leaned against Jelena’s leg. Outside, metal wrenched as something crashed.