Allie's War Season Four (75 page)

Balidor tried to keep a screen open via the headset to keep tabs on the weather, too...as well as the river and ocean tides, given their probable options for escape in the event of a street-level attack. He kept a screen open for any news from Dehgoies and the others, too...although he tried not to think about how long it had been since he’d last heard news of their whereabouts in the Tower.

Too much time had passed.

Some of that was his own fault, as he tried to find ways to stall invasion of the hotel from the upper levels while the others escaped. Balidor had been setting his own, less obvious traps for the past forty minutes, hoping to at least slow their progress to the lower floors, in the event he couldn’t stop them outright.

He reached the final landing below the door to the roof even as he thought this last.

After pausing and listening for a moment, he climbed the rest of the way up. He hesitated only a heartbeat before laying his ear against the metal. He kept his aleimi close to his body, behind a shield.

Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything.

Glancing to his left, he saw the panel into the ventilation system, just like he’d remembered. Keeping his light behind the shield, Balidor carefully touched his headset.

“Deklan.” Balidor used subvocals, keeping totally silent inside his Barrier shield. “I’m here. Anything more for me on the roof, before I start?”

There was a silence.

Then he heard the click-over of the other seer.

Immediately, Balidor flinched, hearing a chaos of sounds on the other end, what sounded like screaming, fabric shifting as bodies thudded into and rubbed past one another in a space too small for all of them to pass. Balidor heard voices talking.

What sounded like gunshots...

“What the hell?” he said, still keeping his speaking silent, using the emphasis in the transmitter itself. “Deklan!”

“Here, boss.”

Balidor said, “What in the gods is happening? Are they rioting?”

“Damn near,” Tenzi said, breaking into Deklan’s link. “We’ve got troops on the street now, Adhipan Balidor. FEMA and SCARB mostly...but there’s a number that look like regular army. They’ve got a fucking tank...pardon my language...”

Balidor stiffened. “Same group as went after Nenzi?”

“Possibly. We have word that the military continues to seal off the Tower, too, so it can’t be all of them. I imagine some of this is from what the Sword did to the airfield today. They’ve known we were here for awhile...it’s been live and let live until now...”

“Can you get them out?” Balidor said, glancing at the door. His nerves twanged from his nearness to the Lao Hu infiltrator. He could almost feel the bastard, although he knew that was in his head, too. Gripping the M-4 more tightly in his hands, he fought to listen to Deklan and Tenzi as they answered him.

“We think so, sir––”

“We’ve had to re-work the contingency,” Tenzi cut in. “...Since the roof’s out of the question and now the street. We’ve got transport ready to pick us up at a secondary rendezvous point––”

“We’re having to take the refugees and the listers downstairs,” Deklan added. “No one wants to go below because of the flooding, but I don’t see as we’ve got much choice––”

“Can you get them out that way?” Balidor cut in, feeling his muscles tense as he fought to follow the two seers as they spoke quickly over all of that other noise.

“We think so, yes,” Tenzi said.

“It is still flooded?” Balidor clarified. “Will you make them go through the water?”

“Yes,” Deklan broke in. “...To both.” His voice held a kind of wry humor. “We have boats, if you can believe it, sir. Small ones, but we think it will be faster. We have to hurry, though. We’re still getting weather warnings from south of the coast. The tunnel could flood completely.”

“If an earthquake hits––” Balidor began, but Tenzi broke in before he could finish.

“––Then we’re royally fucked, sir,” the Tibetan seer said. “...If you’ll pardon my saying. But it’s the lesser of the risks right now, boss. Given that they’ve got another tank coming to join the first one upstairs. They’ve got missiles on them. Real ones...”

Balidor nodded, feeling his jaw clench.

Still thinking, he pulled a multipurpose tool off his belt, then turned it over, flipping the small, powered screwdriver appendage from the body of the device. He reached up, making sure the gun hung behind his back as he began using the tool to carefully and quietly unscrew the slatted cover off the ventilation duct. He kept the headset on the subvocal setting.

“Any news for me?” he asked again, not pausing in his work. “...About the roof?”

“We have estimated numbers, sir,” Deklan said. “Can’t guarantee anything, of course––”

“Just give me what you have.”

“Two dozen,” Tenzi said.

Balidor frowned. “Did you get in touch with Chandre?”

“She and her team have been diverted, sir.”

“Diverted?” Balidor’s focus snapped off the screwdriver and the grate at the other’s words. He paused to think, then continued as soundlessly as before. He concentrated briefly on restraining his light before he spoke next, feeling the muscles in his arms and hands clench.

“What in the name of the ancestors does that mean?” he said, a beat later.

Deklan answered, “She wouldn’t say, sir...couldn’t, maybe.”

“Is she in the city?”

“Yes, sir,” Tenzi said at once. “We did affirm that much.”

“Has she been in touch with Dehgoies?” Balidor said.

Silence fell over the transmitter. Well, not silence, but neither Deklan nor Tenzi spoke to Balidor for a number of seconds. Balidor heard shouting and screaming in the background during that pause, echoing in a hollow-sounding space. His mind classified the acoustics as belonging to another stairwell, or possibly an underground tunnel.

“We don’t know that,” Tenzi said then, cautious.

Balidor could hear the other man’s voice jarring slightly as he walked.

Staircase, then, his mind catalogued.

“...Not for certain,” Deklan added, also slightly out of breath. “We’re guessing Chan hasn’t been in touch with him, sir...”

“But she’s been talking to someone in our group,” Tenzi broke in. “We’re trying to pinpoint who now. It’s possible she’s been tapped by Ditrini and his pals...”

Balidor nodded, firming his mouth.

“Yarli?” he said, hearing the tension in his own voice, even through the subvocals. “Is she with them still? Do you know?”

Balidor heard Tenzi exhale, as if he’d made a short jump, then landed on something wet with a soft splash of his boots. The younger seer’s voice turned more openly reassuring.

“We haven’t heard otherwise, sir,” he said. “We’re assuming it’s still the same group we sent after Ditrini initially. Chan, Varlan, Stanley, Yarli, Rig, Damon. Chan hadn’t lost anyone, as far as we know. Varlan’s been training them to stay out of Ditrini’s light, I guess...”

Balidor nodded again, more to himself that time.

He finished with the last screw and pulled it carefully out of the hole, holding the metal cover in one hand. Pocketing the screws to keep them from making noise, he reached up with his newly freed hand, grasping the cover in his fingers before he began to pull it...carefully...off the opening to the air duct passage. He removed it completely a few seconds later and brought it slowly and soundlessly to the floor.

He straightened, giving a last glance at the metal door leading out to the roof.

“Well,” he said, exhaling soundlessly. “Keep me informed, would you?”

“Of course, sir.”

Tenzi ventured, “Are you still going up there, sir?”

“I’m still going up,” Balidor confirmed.

He looked up at the opening he’d created in the wall, his hands on his hips. Measuring the opening with his eyes, he pulled the M-4 down from where he’d had it slung around his chest before turning it over in his hands. He checked the scope briefly, right before re-checking the magazine, as well as the bullets already in the chamber, making sure it wouldn’t jam. Then he re-looped the leather strap around his neck and shoulder.

“...I shouldn’t be long,” he added through the subvocal. “But don’t wait for me. I’ll meet you downstairs when I’ve finished here...”

Neither of the two answered before Balidor terminated the connection.

Reaching up, he tested his grip on the edges of the opening in the wall. Once he was sure he had it, he began pulling himself up, landing softly on his stomach and chest before he began sliding achingly slowly through the organic-rimmed opening.

He knew where he was going. He had the blueprints of the hotel memorized, too.

Inching down the tunnel, he breathed silently, controlling the airflow in and out of his lungs down to the millimeter it might dent the tunnel under him. Sliding down carefully on his palms and torso, he cranked up the sound-dulling setting on his boots, vest and armored pants via the headset, even as he held his light tightly around his body.

A few minutes later, he reached another vent.

This one aimed outwards, pulling fresh air in from the protected area of the roof. Balidor knew the same duct in which he now lay fed into the air scrubbers above the first hotel floor, and the filters below that, prior to the air reaching any of the suites or rooms. Shifting carefully to his side, Balidor pulled the gun back around him, careful not to let it touch any of the walls.

Still lying on his side, he positioned his body, wedging his knees against the side of the vent and resting the gun against his shoulder and his hand, above where he’d propped his elbow on the floor of the duct.

Only then did he aim the gun through the narrow opening in the wall.

Arranging his body in tiny increments, Balidor settled himself in to wait.

THE WAIT FELT interminable.

Even so, Balidor knew only a few minutes had passed.

Given what he could feel going on downstairs, those seconds stretched into a thrumming clock in his head, beating a drum that lessened his chances for survival––and, more importantly, for success––with every passing beat.

He thought of Yarli briefly, but pushed her from his mind, too.

They both knew, especially after those cakes at the Bridge and Sword’s wedding, that things could go either way for them in this fight, once it really got started.

He was still fighting to clear his mind of her, and his memory of her light, when he realized suddenly that he could hear them.

Ditrini popped into his physical sight abruptly, without warning.

Balidor nearly flinched at the other man’s nearness on the other side of the vent, but managed not to react beyond the small shield he’d erected for himself, primarily by keeping his light deathly still, and thus invisible to any seer operating within the Barrier. Staring through the metal slats to the visible portion of the roof, Balidor found himself lining up his sights on the silver-eyed seer’s head...when, just as abruptly, another seer moved into the space between Balidor and his main target.

After barely a second, Balidor realized he recognized her, too.

It was the female rebel, Ute.

Balidor had only seen her once before, over a year ago now. She’d been in the crowd in Hong Kong during the initial ‘demonstration’ of Shadow’s human-killing disease, C2-77. She’d fired at Balidor’s head, narrowly missing him. Ironically, she’d come close to hitting Cass, too, whom Balidor had been protecting at the time.