Allie's War Season Three (104 page)

After another pause, Revik glanced at me, his eyes apologetic. He didn't have to verbalize the answer; I got the message, well enough.

"They aren't fighting," he assured me. "We shouldn't be shot at while we fall. But they still think we shouldn't risk landing the plane..."

"Is that just Wreg being paranoid?" I pressed.

"I want him to be paranoid, wife."

Biting my lip, I nodded again.

"We'll go together," he said, still trying to reassure me. "It'll be fine."

I didn't look at him that time when I gestured in the affirmative. After a bare pause, I glanced at Jon instead, to see if he'd caught the gist of our conversation. I guessed from the paleness of his face inside the dark helmet that he had.

Before I could even begin to wrap my head around the idea, I found my eyes jerked off the dust and salt-encrusted window to see the other seers already unbuckling harnesses and getting to their feet. I heard the groan of the engines as their orientation shifted, moving vertical once more. We didn't come to a stop, but our velocity slowed as the orientation changed.

I didn't move for a few seconds, watching as the other seers lined up on either side of the plane but closer to the tail, where I knew the metal door would open soon. I knew the plane had been modified somewhat to make it easier to do these kinds of jumps, but that thought didn't reassure me overly, either.

I sat there, still harnessed to my seat, when Yumi unlocked the latch to the control panel and and shoved the manual lever up to open the tail door. The instant a dark crack appeared around the seal, wind rushed through the rear cabin, turning it into a billowing cave and searing me to the bone, despite the organic jumpsuit I wore. The air felt like moving ice, and seemed to freeze the skin of my face and ears where they lay exposed by the helmet. More than that, the noise filled my head, making it difficult to breathe or even think, despite the added oxygen.

I didn't get up until Revik motioned for me to join him.

Following as he led me to the back of the line of parachute-wearing seers, I moved in front of him when he motioned me forwards. I reached up to hook my line to the railing next to Chinja's while he gave my chute another once-over, pulling and jerking at straps to make sure everything was in its correct place. I didn't miss the fact that Revik had sandwiched me between himself and the military-trained, female infiltrator, with Jon in front of her. Chinja was doing the same thing to Jon's chute that Revik was doing to mine, which I only found vaguely reassuring. I watched her work with a machine-like methodicalness even as Jon hooked his line in front of hers. Once he had it in place, he yanked hard to make sure it was secure, just like I'd done, and like I'd seen the rest of them do.

Revik held my arm now, firmly in his hand.

"Calm down, Allie," he said. He leaned down by my ear, which was mostly exposed, despite the helmet. "Please calm down, baby...trust me, okay?"

I nodded, but I didn't answer him. He blew warmth through my body, and I tried to let it relax me, breathing it in as best as I could.

"I'm okay," I muttered.

"You can do this," he assured me. "You did everything technically right when we practiced. I wouldn't be letting you do this if you hadn't..." He paused, then spoke again, telling me things I already knew, maybe in the hopes his words might reassure me, or give me something more tangible on which to grasp. "...You don't have to worry about the chute, okay?" he said. "It's a line jump, Allie, so all of that is taken care of for you. If there's any problem whatsoever, all of us will feel it...and the one closest to you will bring you down. There shouldn't be any weight problems with one of these chutes carrying two people..."

I nodded again, still not looking at him.

"Your headset's working?" he said. "It should switch to infrared as soon as you're out of the plane..."

I nodded again, but checked the headset attached to my helmet anyway, as if I hadn't already checked it a few dozen times during the course of the flight, and even before we got on the plane. VR, infrared manual and automatic settings, altimeter, comm link...it all seemed to be working fine. Just like it had been the first fifty times I checked it.

"I'll talk you down if you need it okay?" Revik said. "I'll be right there...all of us will, if you have any problems. Most of us have been doing night jumps for years...we can pretty much handle any contingency that comes up, but there shouldn't be any, Allie..."

I nodded again, trying to feel his words, but unable to feel much of anything but a blind panic at the idea of jumping out the ass-end of a moving plane in the dark. I couldn't see anything past the running lights of the plane itself through that searing wind from the open door. My skin had gotten used to the cold, sort of, but it still felt like I'd be free-falling into a dark, arctic pit with nothing but ice and sharp rocks at the bottom. Thinking about that, I realized we weren't all that far from the Antarctic really, not down here. As if on queue, I found myself making out a white, jagged shape in the distance, what might have been snow on the looming shadow of a nearby mountain.

The ground itself looked black as ink.

Then people were disappearing from the line in front of me, seemingly faster than my eyes could track. I watched four of them go on my side alone in a matter of seconds, and realized more than that had already disappeared through the opening ahead of them. Before I could wrap my head around this, Jon disappeared, then Chinja...then I found myself moving under Revik's prodding, aiming my feet for the opening and the pitch black sky before I let myself think, much less feel. There was a split second where I hovered over that abyss...

And then I was out the door.

The first thing that hit me was that shock of cold air. I struggled to get my body into free-fall position, panicking briefly when it wanted to tumble at first...but then I had it, and it seemed like there was nothing but silence for second after second after second...

Strangely, it was during that silence, where all I could see was dark below and before my infrared goggles kicked in, that I completely relaxed. The feeling of falling vanished, leaving me with the rush of air in my ears and my face, a feeling of floating...

Then a tug.

I'd expected something more violent, I guess. I thought it would jerk me backwards, yank on my shoulders like the kickback of a big gun.

But it didn't hurt...in fact, it was strangely smooth.

Then I just hung there, over that blackness...until it wasn't black anymore.

The infrared kicked in, along with a VR rendition of the ground below. The version it gave me looked more like twilight than full daylight, but the VR image compensated for that eerie green I associated with infrared, and gave me a better sense of the real layout. I also saw the circle of pale light on the ground, which had to be the drop target. Even as I saw it, Revik spoke up in my headset.

"Can you see it?"

I nodded, then laughed. He'd sounded so close I'd forgotten he couldn't see me.

"I see it," I said.

"Did you check your canopy?"

I looked up, squinting through the VR rendition. "Seems fine. I'm falling slower..."

Revik laughed, and I heard the relief in his voice. "You look fine. I can see you. But try to remember to check next time, Allie..."

I found myself staring at the mountains while I fell, seeing their jagged outline against a pale blue sky that looked like dawn through my goggles. Those mountains looked massive, bigger even from here than the view of the Himalayas from Seertown. Some of that might have been contrast with the valley over which we floated, which stretched out like a plain up to the edge of the highest peak, covered in a dense pack of snow and ice.

"Can you see Jon?" I asked Revik.

"Yes." He sent me a pulse of warmth, startling me. "He's fine, Allie. Chinja's falling not far from him, and she's making sure he stays close to target..."

I felt myself tensing slightly as I looked at the altimeter. The ground was getting closer through my goggles, too. Revik said the VR should compensate for the normal blackout that happened in night drops when reaching the ground, but I still found my heart beating harder, and adrenaline pumping through my veins as the ground came closer.

Even so, all of my anxiety ended up being for nothing.

I'd expected to crash down, the way people did in the movies, or even in the feeds when showing military-style drops. Instead, I landed easily on my feet, and only really knew I was down when the chute landed behind me. Before I could fumble with the harness I wore, a gust of wind grabbed it, jerking my balance backwards a little. Then warm hands caught hold of my arms, and someone held me there, while another person unbuckled the harness, pulling it off my shoulders. I didn't really realize that the second person was Revik until the first person let go of my arms and Revik leaned down, smiling into my face.

"Are you all right?"

I nodded, then found myself looking up at the sky.

"You really weren't kidding," I said, hearing the wonder in my own voice. "That wasn't a big deal at all...it was actually kind of nice."

He leaned down, kissing me, and that time I felt the relief in his light. Pulling me against him, he brought me out of the jump zone even as I realized that other seers were still unhooking harnesses and landing in blank spots all around us.

"We were lucky," Revik told me, his arm still around my shoulders. "Not much wind. The weather was good...the cloud cover might have even helped us, overall." He pointed up. "But a storm's on its way. In a few hours, we might have had to abort the jump and risk landing the plane anyway..."

I nodded, still getting used to having my feet on the ground. I held the harness against my chest until another seer came up to us and took it from me. I wondered what they were doing with all of the equipment and saw him walk to a large, canvas-looking bag where he stuffed mine along with a bunch of others. My parachute had already disappeared.

Forcing my mind back on track, I scanned through the rest of the people on the ground. I saw a lot of seers I didn't recognize, and not just those from the plane.

In fact, I saw a lot of seers, period...way more than I would have expected, given the numbers I knew we had at our disposal. I remembered where Wreg had been for the last few days and looked up at Revik.

"I had no idea he'd get so many," I said in a low voice. As I said it, a seer walked by me, giving the respectful sign of the Bridge and smiling. I smiled back, even as Revik slid an arm tighter around me.

"Yeah," he said, the same surprise in his voice. "Me neither."

"So you didn't know about this?"

Revik shook his head, pulling me tighter against him. Just then, he paused in a step. When I turned my head, I saw him staring at Wreg. It probably would have taken me longer to make him out among the other black uniforms, but once I saw him, there was no doubt who it was...or who stood there with him. I looked away a second later, if only to avoid staring while my brother was being publicly mauled.

Revik only laughed, and kept us walking towards the two of them. Within minutes, we stood right next to them. We might not have been there at all, though, for all the attention they paid us. I tried clearing my throat, but they ignored that, too.

"Do you mind?" I said finally, smacking Jon on the arm when they still hadn't come up for air. "Superior officers here. Waiting." When Wreg kissed him again, I smacked the seer on the arm, harder that time. "Jeez, Louise...get a room, guys."

Jon pulled away from Wreg long enough to laugh at me.

"Karma's a bitch," he said, letting go of the black-suited seer. "Isn't it, little sis?"

"Hey," I said. "Older than you...remember? You can't call me that anymore."

"The hell he can't," Wreg said. Despite his tone, as well as all of his protests about bringing Jon along in the first place, he grinned at me, his arm slung over Jon's back. "He's still a good three inches taller than you, princess. He can call you 'little' all he likes..."

"Says the guy who calls my husband 'runt' even though he's half a foot taller than you..."

"My memory is longer than my body, Esteemed Bridge," Wreg said with an unapologetic flourish of his hand. "...Can I help it that both are bordering on decrepit?"

Jon smacked him in the chest with the flat of his hand. When I saw them looking at each other again, I let out another pained groan, but this one more humorous.