Allie's War Season Four (29 page)

“Good luck, my brother,” he murmured, not looking up again.

Hooking his hands through the straps of the carry-on bag, Jon slung it over his shoulder. He turned his back on the other man, reaching for the antique, porcelain door handle and jerking it sideways to open the door.

He left the room, fighting the sudden tightness in his chest, fighting to breathe.

Wreg didn’t follow him.

JON SAT IN a metal folding chair in the basement of the Victorian house.

This was supposed to be the final ‘talk’ before they left San Francisco. Not quite a planning session, at least from what Jon could pick out of the minds around him––most of the on-the-ground planning had been completed––but it wouldn’t just be a pep talk, either.

Jon had never really been along for a military operation with Revik before...at least not one the Elaerian led personally. He’d been with him when they broke out of that prison in the Caucasus Mountains, and when they’d been dragged by Ditrini through the sewers...but this didn’t feel like either of those. It felt a few hundred miles distant from that extraction op in San Francisco, and not only because Allie wasn’t planning it with him.

Less than an hour had passed since he’d left Wreg.

The metal folding chair in which Jon sat took up an exceedingly small part of a low-ceilinged space dotted with at least two dozen more chairs exactly like it. The room itself had padded floors and walls from being used as a mulei practice space.

Jon sat in a cluster of other seers in a half-ring around Revik, who faced them in another of those folding chairs. The chair looked oddly small under Revik’s long legs, despite the fact that he sat perfectly straight against the back, poised with that strange precision of his.

The seers all wore clothing that looked more or less like what Jon wore, Revik included. Black armored shirts hung down over armored pants. Thicker armored vests wrapped around the shirts with side and shoulder holsters for guns along with pockets and pouches for magazines, flares, hand-helds and whatever else.

Revik had his ankle propped sideways on his opposite thigh, his hand resting on his foot where it sat just above and past his knee. His fingers looked longer and whiter than Jon remembered, in contrast to all of that black armored clothing, as well as the dark green walls of the organically-padded room and his black hair. Most of the furniture in the place had been stripped, leaving only a mirror behind Revik, duplicating their numbers, and duplicating the emptiness around where they sat.

A pile of black duffle bags stood against a wall by the door, the only other things left in the room apart from the folding chairs, the floor pads and the seers themselves.

Jon found himself watching Revik, just as the rest of them did.

For a long-feeling few minutes, Revik didn’t speak. He watched the few stragglers come into the room and take seats, leaving their own duffels on the pile in the corner as they slunk in, looking vaguely guilty at the silence.

Jon watched Revik’s clear eyes as he scanned all of their faces. Jon wondered if Revik was thinking about what he intended to say, or maybe if he was counting heads and bodies to remind himself of their number, or to determine if everyone had finally arrived. He could have been once more contemplating that fine balance between what he needed in New York and what he wanted to leave here, in San Francisco, with Allie.

Jon’s eyes followed Revik’s as he took in the wash of different-colored faces and eyes. He followed them again as Revik paused to assess the pile of bags that stood in an uneven mound by the propped-open door, as well as the stacked crates of equipment in the hallway just beyond it. Jon knew the latter held everything from ammunition magazines to grenades to a frighteningly diverse number of hand-held guns, rifles and other weapons.

That didn’t even include whatever they’d already loaded onto the truck downstairs.

Revik never believed in scrimping when it came to weapons.

Jon’s eyes returned to the faces of the other seers, counting them.

Twenty-five in total...twenty-seven with him and Revik...but only half of those faces were truly known to Jon, other than in passing.

Neela was there, along with Maygar, Jorag, Garensche, Jax, Loki, Oli, Poresh, Illeg, that British seer friend of Revik’s, Torek (not to be confused with Tardek, Jon reminded himself, that older rebel who died in the tsunami). Chinja and Yumi were there, too. Jon didn’t know much of the concrete plan yet, but he knew that in New York, they would be joined in an operational sense by Holo, Deklan, Anale, Mika, Ullysa, Raddi, Hondo, Argo and a bunch of others, too.

Balidor would stay here, overseeing their shields long distance.

Wreg would be staying, too. He’d been put in charge of the protective detail over Allie.

Jon knew, just from knowing Revik, that he’d likely already spent the previous ten or so hours talking to the infiltrators he would leave behind. Revik would have hammered out a few dozen protection protocols with Wreg and Balidor personally, along with whatever contingency plans he would undoubtedly have in place in the event of an attack on San Francisco itself. Supposedly Varlan was tracking Ditrini and monitoring his location in the physical, aided by Chandre, Rig, Stanley and Balidor’s new girlfriend, Yarli, who was a better than decent infiltrator in her own right...as well as a male seer named Damon.

Even so, Revik wouldn’t want to take any chances.

Jon knew that nothing would truly calm Revik down about Ditrini except a bullet in the Lao Hu seer’s head. Jon felt pretty much the same way himself, actually. It only occurred to him sometimes, and usually in the dark when he laid down to sleep, that wishing someone else dead, even a psychopath like Ditrini, was a relatively new experience for him. He didn’t really want to think about what Vash would have said about that.

Right now, given everything, he didn’t really want to think about Vash at all.

When Revik shifted in his seat, Jon’s eyes jerked back to his.

That time, Jon found himself focusing reluctantly on the bruise under the other man’s eye and the top part of his cheek. The mark was fresh, mostly red still, although it had already started to darken. Jon already knew from Maygar and Revik’s minds exactly where that bruise had come from. Wreg had punched Revik in the face, during one of their ‘talks’ that morning.

Wreg hadn’t mentioned that to him, of course.

Then again, neither had Revik.

Jon supposed that might explain, though, why Wreg had been excused from this meeting. Grimacing, he jerked his eyes off the fresh bruise, watching as Revik leaned back and at an angle in the metal folding chair, one black-clad arm slung over the curved metal back.

“All right,” Revik said, clearing his throat. “The plane is being fueled and checked over at SFO. We’re leaving this house in thirty minutes. We’re lifting off in...”

He glanced at the organic wrist-band he wore.

“...Two hours, following loading and Balidor’s team putting some final touches on the construct for the plane. That’s two hours, tops.”

Revik’s long jaw tightened, right before he rearranged his body in the metal seat.

“I just want to make sure everyone is clear on things, before we go,” he said next. “This is your last chance to speak freely before we’re out the door. Once we leave here, we’re live. That means chain of command. That means military rules. In here, that’s void...but only in here, and only until we walk out that door.”

Revik lifted his hand off his ankle long enough to aim his finger at the outside corridor. His clear eyes sharpened in the green-tinted light as he looked around at all of them.

“I want everyone to be crystal clear on that point, because I won’t say it again. If you have something to say to me...to any of your commanding officers...say it now. Right now, I genuinely want to hear it. Later, I probably won’t...not unless it’s op-dependent.”

Jon glanced around at the faces of the other seers.

He knew from Allie, as well as from Wreg and even Revik himself, that the Elaerian meant what he said. Revik lived by the chain of command out in the field. He might shoot someone who defied him out there, if he felt strongly enough about it.

Jon felt the other seers thinking, too, as he glanced around.

If anything, the room had grown more still and silent than before. Even some of the darker-skinned seers looked pale now, but Jon couldn’t tell for sure what that meant, either. Had Revik intimidated them? That wasn’t exactly uncommon, given who he was, and if that was all it meant, that didn’t matter. But Jon couldn’t help wondering if that
was
all it was.

Jon knew some of them were more than a little superstitious about the Bridge. He also knew, mostly from Maygar’s mind and light, that some of them weren’t happy that Allie would be staying behind.

As the silence continued, Revik only sat there, arms folded in front of his chest as he waited.

Then Chinja cleared her throat, glancing at Jax before she turned back towards Revik.

“Just so I understand, sir,” she said politely, holding her hand up in the sign of the Sword. “There is no contingency to capture the being, War, alive...even if it were possible to do so?”

There was a brief silence.

In it, Jon felt the room seem to drop a few degrees in temperature. The change didn’t feel aimed at Chinja herself, however.

“No, sister, there is not,” Revik said, using formal Prexci that time.

“What about Feigran?” Jax blurted, glancing around at the others before adding, “...Sir? Is there any contingency in place for extracting him?”

“Yes,” Revik said simply.

“What will prevent the same thing from happening as last time, Illustrious Sword?” Jorag said, his voice also lower and more polite than usual. “...Meaning with the constructs, sir, in that stronghold in Argentina. Is there a possibility that we won’t have access to you or your son’s...” He blanched as Revik’s eyes narrowed. “...I just mean...” Jorag stammered. “Is there a back-up plan, if the telekinesis can’t be made functional?”

Revik sighed a bit, his eyes clearing. The sigh came out more like a clicking purr. Leaning back in the chair, he rearranged his feet on the padded floor before aiming a level stare around the room. He paused on a few faces, including Jorag’s.

“You are all concerned about this?” he said.

The way he said it made it sound only marginally like a question.

“Yes, Illustrious Sword,” Neela said, answering for more than herself.

Revik nodded, but no emotion touched his clear eyes. “I understand. Unfortunately, there are elements of the plan I cannot share with all of you, for security purposes. However, I want to assure you, this issue has strongly been taken into consideration. We have a number of contingencies in place, as well as...”

He trailed, his eyes shifting to the doorway into the room.

Jon’s gaze followed his, unthinking, as did every seer’s in the room.

Allie stood there.

Jon found himself riveted to her face, to those pale green eyes shining between twin curtains of long, nearly-black hair. Jon was so focused on the lack of expression in her high-cheekboned face that it took him a few seconds more to realize that the other seers had started shifting uncomfortably in their seats, looking away from where she remained by the door.

Then Jon glanced down.

Immediately, his own face flushed with warmth.

She was completely naked. She wasn’t even wearing socks.

Revik glanced around sharply at the others, then back at the door.