Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine (58 page)

Rolling my eyes, I decided not to argue.

Really, I wondered why I’d argued with him in the first place. Loading up on light prior to a possible telekinesis binge was a given.

Shoving the data key I still gripped in one hand inside my vest, I zipped up the pocket then gripped my own rifle more tightly. Increasing my pace, I hooked into the light structure in the center of Dalejem’s chest, tentatively at first…then gradually with more purpose. He offered himself and his light freely, which made me uncomfortable, too.

I continued matching his pace without thinking too clearly about that.

We were almost to the main corridor.

“You ready?” he said.

I was still pulling on his light. I could hear and feel his reaction to that in his voice. Fighting my own reactions to having him yet
more
entwined in my aleimi, I clenched my jaw.

“We’re going to try to cross through the human section first,” I warned him. “Beat out the sec team out if we can…so guns up, until we know our cover is blown. I know it won’t help us with the outside gate, but––”

“We won’t make it.” Dalejem shook his head, once. “You were in there too long. Dragon could be setting off alarms all over this place––”

“––Or shutting them off,” I growled. “Guy’s crazy. We can’t factor him in, Jem.”

“They’ll have routed the breach file up to SCARB by now––”

“––And we have Deklan,” I reminded him. “And Chan, Talei, Kat and Mara. A little faith, brother, that they might have helped to slow those reactions down some.”

“They can’t blow their cover. They can’t. It would be a disaster.”

“And Talei assured me they wouldn’t send out a general alarm for something like this,” I said. “They’ll want us alive, and they won’t trust the regular military with––”

“Unless they changed the protocols.”

Clenching my jaw, I gave him a disbelieving look. “In which case I’ll be proved wrong, and you can laugh at me later, brother.”

I felt Dalejem’s skepticism, but that time, he remained silent.

I felt him reacting to me pulling on his light again, too.

I could feel it screwing with both of us, me as much as him.

I knew it was probably messing with our judgment. I knew it might be causing this argument as much as anything we were actually saying. Pain slid through his light even as I thought it, dense enough that my chest clenched, throwing off the rhythm of my steps. I recovered easily but separation pooled and sparked in my light in reaction, making me think of Revik…and I sure as fuck didn’t want to think about him right then, either.

I still needed light, but I tried to decide if I should disengage.

“Don’t bother,” he growled. “That ship has sailed, Esteemed Bridge.”

I didn’t ask him what he meant by that either.

Even so, my neck and face flushed as his words sank in. Whatever the wisdom of us taking the time to argue about nothing when we were about to enter a firefight, we definitely didn’t have time to have
that
conversation.

Which meant we might not ever have it.

We’d reached the end of the hall.

It turned out we’d been angst-ing about who to shoot and whether to use the telekinesis or walk in guns blazing…for nothing.

I slowed to a walk right before we would have been visible from the mess area linking the different segments of residential corridors. I felt Dalejem slow next to me, pacing me even as he let himself draw slightly ahead.

We’d left the secure hallway behind a few turns back by then.

As we made our way through secondary corridors between Novak’s weird command center and the regular military areas, our progress was notable only in that we didn’t see another living being the whole way.

Well, apart from organic machines.

Now we were getting close to that larger space, the one that had been filled with humans and seers walking to and fro through wider corridors with higher ceilings. The silence unnerved me. The first time we’d walked through there, it had been a busy thoroughfare…a place for crossing between meetings and shifts, for coming and going from private rooms to get in a quick nap or shower or a fuck or whatever else.

Linking to the main mess hall for that part of the compound, it also had tables and chairs scattered under overhangs outside the more brightly-lit mess hall itself. The hall, which we’d seen from the greenish corridor, housed rows of tables and benches that ran its length, along with an old-style cafeteria, buffet-style, adjacent to an industrial-sized kitchen.

The mess hall itself was big…from my perspective at least. It looked to be about three of my high school cafeterias back home. Maybe ten of the cafeteria on the carrier we’d been using as common space before we abandoned it in the waters off Dubai.

So yeah, the space we were about to enter was huge, and should be teeming with people.

Even before we got there, I felt it, though. I felt it before it occurred to me again how quiet it was, and how little I could sense with my light, even given the interference of the shield.

Given all that, I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess. I should have known what we would see when we rounded that corner.

Even so…even feeling that misgiving and finally noticing the quiet and sensing ripples in my light as Dalejem reacted to something similar…even then, we both still skidded to a stop when we stepped out into that common area.

Dalejem reacted faster than I did.

He had his gun off his shoulder and aimed forward while I continued to stare around where we stood, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut…again.

Bodies. Bodies strewn as far as I could see in the flickering light. I say flickering because a number of organic lights had been blown out of the ceiling. Scorch marks decorated the walls and floors, as well as the ceiling in parts.

I could smell blood. I could actually
smell
it…along with burning skin, hair and flesh. I scanned over those broken forms with my eyes, listening for some sign that any of them lived. Groans. Movement of any kind…even feeble movement.

I didn’t see anything. I also didn’t hear anything apart from those sparking lights.

There’d been a firefight here all right…we’d just missed it.

“Gaos…”
Dalejem muttered.

I followed his eyes to the cafeteria itself. Under the stark lights of that long space, even more bodies lay broken among tables. Part of that room was on fire, in addition to having more blown out light tubes and the starker contrast of those bodies on the white floor and tables. An orange emergency light rotated in one corner. No sprinklers appeared to be going off and I didn’t hear any actual alarm pulses echoing through the space.

The alarm could be silent, of course. If so, I didn’t feel anyone coming.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Dalejem burst out.
“Gaos…”

I felt his emotions twisting out from under him.

Looking at him in alarm, I realized some of that was from the loss of light, from me draining him. Stepping closer to him at once, I wound back into him with my aleimi, giving him some of that light back.

“Don’t…” he began, his voice gruff as he glared at me.

He started to push me off, but I didn’t let him.

“I don’t need it,” I said, gripping his arm. “I don’t need it now, and you know it. Whatever this is, it’s over, okay?” Not waiting for him to acknowledge my words, I laid my palm on his chest, giving him more light, in a bigger, denser burst. I felt him react at once and clenched my jaw, watching his face for signs that it was working.

Pain coiled around him again, mixing with his emotional reaction to all of that death.

“Gaos,”
he exhaled. “…I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Calm down, okay?” I murmured.

He nodded, avoiding my eyes.

I felt his pain worsen as his jaw clenched, right before he caught hold of me with his hands. He was breathing harder then. I pretended not to notice how much heat came off his light in those few seconds, and I didn’t look down at his body either. When I glanced at his face that time, he bit his lip, wrapping his fingers around me tighter.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

I didn’t answer, fighting not to react to what I felt on his light.

When I’d fed him enough to see his expression start to smooth, I took my hand off his chest. It wasn’t really enough, but it would have to be enough for now…I wanted to get the fuck out of there, too, despite what I’d just said to him. I also wasn’t sure if I could deal with sharing any more light with him right then, not until both of us were thinking more clearly.

We’d both just gotten another major emotional shock, which wasn’t helping.

My brain knew all of this, even as my own light continued to struggle with the smell and light remnants of death all around us.

He released me somewhere in that, more heat pluming off his light.

I didn’t let go of his arm, though.

Instead I gripped it tighter, walking him around and over and through the downed bodies filling the long space, aiming my feet for the smaller corridors on the other side. Dalejem followed me wordlessly, still holding the gun, his other hand gripping it with white knuckles. In the corridor on the other side, more bodies lay by the walls and a few in the middle. I saw lights hanging down, sparking, more burns from gun blasts.

“Try to reach Chan,” I told Dalejem, glancing back at his face. He was staring at bodies as we passed, still gripping the rifle. His light still snaked around him strangely; he still felt more depleted than not. “Jem?” I said levelly. I waited, trying to get him to look at me. When he did a few seconds later, I made my voice stronger. “…I don’t think our signal’s going to matter now. Call Chan, okay? Find out where they are. We need to know how wide this is.”

I watched his eyes clear slightly, which is what I’d been going for.

When he nodded that time, the infiltrator’s cloak has returned somewhat to his light. I felt him trigger the headset an instant later, right before he routed the signal to include me.

I kept my eyes on the corridor, still feeling ahead carefully from behind the shield as I walked us around bodies. Dalejem gently took his arm back right as someone on the other end picked up, surprising both of us.

I don’t think I’d realized until then that I’d expected all of them to be dead.

“Dalejem? Where’s the fucking Bridge?” Chandre’s voice was harsh.

Dalejem sent her a snapshot of our location, a millisecond of pause before speaking.

“Where are you?” he said.

“Northeast entrance…the main…”

I heard a lot of noise in the background. Gunshots. Impact concussions, big enough to be grenades at least. Definitely automatic weapon fire. Shouting.

“Where’s the fucking Bridge?” Chandre repeated. “Dalejem?”

“I’m here,” I snapped, my voice shockingly loud in the more or less empty corridor. I realized I was shouting to compensate for what I heard on the other side of that line.

“Who or what are you engaging right now, Chan? Who’s firing?”

“It’s him,” she said. “That fucking manipulator you told us about…the monster who looks like the Sword. With the muzzle over––”

“Disengage!” I said, shouting the word. “Disengage…right the fuck now! I mean it! He’s wiped out this whole level of the compound…”