Theirs Not to Reason Why 4: Hardship (10 page)

“Stay out of sight, you fools!” she hissed, vision streaked with coruscating bands of nerve-damaged pain. She couldn’t see their faces as anything more than tear-blurred blobs. Behind her, she could hear the whining of servos, several startled shouts, and the tearing and tangling of fabric being moved. “I’m their primary target! Crawl
that
way!”

He rolled a bit more behind the shelter of the tent, then got up. Together, he and her crew member—Private Floathawg, she could see the burgundy blotches on his face—pulled her a couple meters past its edge. Sizzling sounds from laser rifles and the
tat-tat-tat
of projectile fire told her someone was counterattacking.

Blinking her right eye caused more pain in her left, but she saw a hand-shaped blur lift to a nonblotched face. Or rather, to his ear; the Army man still had on his headset. Hers was tucked in her shirt pocket. “Captain Ia, there are no other signs of an outright attack. It looks like it was just a lone sniper. Captain Roghetti wants to know if you want to cancel that evacuation order, sir.”

Having her eye scorched out of her head hurt worse than being shot in the shoulder, but pain was nothing new. She pushed onto her knees, head swimming for a moment. A shaky check of the timestreams showed his report looked to be true . . . but her instincts were still demanding that they run. “No. The local bird-things flew up on the
northwest
side of camp, and that shot came from the east—evacuate the camp! That’s an order!”

“With respect, Ship’s Captain, you are
not
in our chain of command,” the private retorted.

“With respect, Private,
shove it
!” she heard Floathawg snap. Wrapping his arm around her ribs, he hauled her to her feet with a grunt. “When my Captain says we all move, we
all
move!”

Forcing her legs to cooperate, Ia stumbled along at Harley’s side as they left Roghetti’s man behind. Her crewman kept the two of them to the edges of the tents. Getting used to the pain along the left side of her face, Ia moved as best she could with him. At least she could see more and more clearly with her right as the seconds stretched into a minute. She didn’t need a mirror to know her left eye was gone; she had no depth perception, and her precognition wasn’t working properly. But she did physically see members of her Company executing their retreat plan, grabbing packs of essential supplies, weapons, and whatever else they could lay their hands on that was of any use within a single minute.

An orange-speckled body moved up at her side, a field medic with the faint green stripe of the Army. “Sir, we need to get you to the infirmary. At least, the part not being
stolen
by that crazy chief medi—”

Something
boomed
in the distance. The sky crackled with momentary static. Orange light flashed, bright and strong.

Her instincts snapped again. Grabbing the woman, Ia flung both her and Harley to the ground with another shove. Something whistled in and
WHOMMED
bare meters away. Debris from the shelled tent showered down around them. The woman thrown prone next to Ia shrieked, peppered with shrapnel from the backsplash, but Ia’s instincts said not badly, not lethally. Most of the impact had continued onward in the direction of the strike. Harley hadn’t been touched, and she had only picked up a few stings, a cut on her cheek. She didn’t know if anyone inside that tent had been injured or killed, though.

The blast left her ears ringing. Using her hands, Ia stroked the crying woman’s face to refocus her attention, pressed two muddy fingers to her lips, then helped her onto hands and knees. Other concussions from exploding projectiles rumbled through the ground and the air, more felt than heard. Adrenaline made the pain in her head and body fade, allowing her to see and think more clearly, though she could still barely hear.

Pointing the way in pure instinct, she led three of them in a crawling shuffle through the smoke until they could gain their feet. Trucks were already on their way out of the field, swerving wildly to avoid the incoming rounds. Yanking the hood of her poncho up over her distinctive white hair, Ia tugged on the strings to bring it close to her face. That scraped the edge of the burn mark, blurring her vision from the pain. Teeth clenched, she ignored it, grabbing Harley and the Army medic by the shoulders.

“Run for it on three . . .
Three!
”

Shoving them forward, Ia tugged and pushed them right and left as her battle instincts demanded. Arms spread wide for balance when she wasn’t grabbing one or the other either for avoidance or for support—her eyesight and her ears weren’t doing too well, meddling with her sense of balance—she dodged as well. Laser fire scorched her poncho and bullets
paffed
through the soil at their feet, but they reached the bush-choked edge of the forest with no more real injuries. A handful of reddish-leaved branches scraped her face, searing pain across her nerves, but once past the sunlit, leaf-choked edge, most of the branches were high enough, she didn’t feel like she was going to poke out her other eye just yet.

Movement caught her eye. Skimming through the shrubs at head height, someone pulled up a hoverbike next to them. It was Private Mara Sunrise, one of Sadneczek’s full-time clerks and Floathawg’s teammate. “Captain, are you alright?”

“
Yes
, some
real
transport! Permission to take that bike to cover our retreat, sir,” Private Floathawg hissed, slowing down. He started to reach for the gun holstered at his hip and did a double take at his teammate. “Wait, how do
you
know how to ride a hawg? I thought you said they were too dangerous for your tastes.”

“Stow it, Harley!” Ia snapped, pushing him forward. She squinted up at Sunrise and enunciated clearly through the agony in her head. “
Staff Sergeant
, our position is compromised. Grab whatever you need and ride ahead to secure the Beta site. If you cannot secure it, report to Lieutenant Commander Helstead on the situation why.”

“
Staff
Sergeant?” Floathawg asked her, bewildered. His teammate, however, stiffened, blinked, and narrowed her eyes at their CO.

“Morning has broken, sir?” Sunrise asked Ia cryptically.

“Someone go fix it,” Ia replied, sign and countersign. “Tag, you’re it.”

“Oh
rapture
. I finally get to violate my parole.” Swaying the hoverbike closer to her teammate, the mousey-haired woman leaned down and snatched the projectile pistol from his hip. A second fast yank unsnapped the pouch of c-clips at his waist. Before he could do more than yelp in protest, she gunned the bike’s thrusters and took off,
with
his weapon and ammunition.

“—The hell?” Floathawg protested, gaping as she left. “Captain? What the
hell
was that about? Why’d
she
take the hoverbike? And my gun!”

“Not
now
. Keep moving.” Ia ordered. Her ears were now free enough from the ringing to hear the hissing of lasers striking into the trees, and the concussions of more missiles. Off to her right, thankfully within her functioning peripheral vision, she saw the nurse staggering, the torn fabric of her shirt and slacks showing patches of blood from her shrapnel wounds. Ia swayed that way to catch her. Harley followed her.

“Captain, you just sent a
clerk
to secure the Beta site,” he hissed, moving to assist the Army woman. “No disrespect, sir, but did that laser penetrate your brain? Hell,
I’m
a better shot, and I’m a mechanic!”

“I just sent a
Knifeman
to secure that site, soldier,” Ia countered grimly. “But you keep that part quiet; she’s
not
supposed to violate her parole. And I’m not brain-damaged. The laser didn’t strike that deep. Unfortunately, we have been compromised somehow, and right now, I don’t know if the Beta site
is
secure or not.”

The moment she said it, Ia realized she had used the wrong pronoun . . .
Not
we’ve
been compromised.
I’ve
been compromised. Little fuzzy patches . . . !

She wanted to curse and scream, but didn’t have the energy or the time. Those scudding patches of fog that vanished whenever she looked directly, the gray patches of optical illusion on the grid,
they
were the reality, not the all-too-clear and clean crossroads she had focused upon. Her precognition had been compromised somehow, but
not
her battlecognition. One relied on direct examination of the timestreams, but the other relied on the paranormal equivalent of peripheral vision . . . where the scudding clouds of psychic obfuscation lay, and could not fully cover. Someone was messing with her ability to read the timestreams . . .

No.
Meddling
with her mind.

The underbrush thickened for a moment; the need to avoid impaling herself thwarted her rising anger. Emerging in the firebreak that contained the farmer’s force-field-projected fence line, Ia nudged the two with her to the right. That fence was now down. About a hundred meters down the way, one of the escaping hovertrucks had stopped just on the other side of the inert pylons. Limping, the nurse stumbled that way. Ia and Harley helped her.

She spotted a member of the Damned and hustled them forward a little faster. “Private Jeeves! Front and center!”

The metrokinetic blinked, faced her, and started in shock. “Captain, your face—Medic!”

Two more soldiers swerved and came running at Jeeves’s shout, one with a field kit in his hands. Ia pushed the Army woman at them. “Tend
her
, not me. My eye’s cauterized, so it’ll keep. Jeeves, get over here. KIman!”

Private Jeeves jogged over at her command. He was barely dressed in camouflage shirt and pants, his boots hastily knotted, and his long black hair unbound in a rain-dampened, tangled mess instead of pinned up in a neat bun at the back of his head as per regulations. He wasn’t the only one who had been forced to make do with whatever they could grab to wear; others who had been on their sleeping shift wore haphazard gear, pieces of clothing, light armor, whatever they had grabbed without having the time to dig into their kitbags for full outfits just yet.

“Whatever you need, you got it, Captain,” Private Jeeves offered. He extended his hand to offer her his personal energies.

“Not from you.
To
you. I need you to muck up the weather,” she ordered, grabbing his hand. Or tried to; it took her two tries since she had no depth perception anymore. “Take my kinetic inergy, get on that truck, and wring the hardest rain you can out of those clouds. The Salik are hunters; they might like the humidity, but we need our ground tracks covered and their scanner range reduced, fast!”

He blinked, startled, but nodded grimly. Bracing himself with a deep breath, he said, “Ready, sir.”

Closing her good eye—ignoring the pain caused by the reflex of trying to close the bad one—Ia spun kinetic inergy out of herself. It was something like the crackling sting of electrokinetic energy, and something like the cool wash of biokinetic, and carried the flavor of both, but much more personal. It was also a lot stronger than the weather-psi was expecting. His hair snapped and fluffed out despite the drizzling, misting rain trying to keep it flattened down.

She opened her eye just in time to see his brown ones rolling up and back in his head. Above them, the clouds boiled a little in the distance, darkening as he thickened their cover. Ia kept feeding him energy while more stragglers came out of the woods. She could still hear the Salik attacking the camp in the distance but didn’t stop until she felt dizzy, until the timestreams fogged from depleted energy.

Releasing his hand, she clasped his shoulder, holding him steady while he swayed, all of his attention still focused inward and upward. “KImen! I need two KImen!”

Two Army figures eyed each other, then jumped out of the truck, hurrying toward Ia. She felt a hand clasp her own shoulder. “We need to get
out
of here, Captain!”

“I know that, Floathawg—you and you!” she ordered the two approaching women, nodding at Private Jeeves. “Take this soldier up on that truck and you keep him psychically fed. Cycle in whoever you need to when you get dizzy. He’ll be covering our tracks with a storm.” Raising her voice as the two soldiers grabbed and guided him away, she shouted at the others. “This is a full-on retreat, soldiers!
Fall back!
I want an armed rearguard detail, but do
not
engage the enemy if you can avoid it.

“Everybody, move out!” Pulling Floathawg’s hand off her shoulder, she tucked it behind her back, stuffing his fingers into her belt. “Get me to the nearest truck, Harley; I’m having trouble gauging distances at the moment.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he agreed, picking up into a jog. The muscular ex-V’Dan didn’t quite carry her, but he did guide her as they ran in tandem, keeping her on her feet as her boots stumbled over deceptive bits of terrain. “Heave up, sir!”

She pushed off the ground, yanked up indelicately by the belt as he boosted her into the back of the truck. Twisting around as she landed, she hauled him in as well, then awkwardly grabbed the hand of the man behind him, pulling that soldier in as well. A tree fell nearby, knocked down by an explosive blast. The truck started moving. Three more soldiers were still running their way, dodging bits of plant life turned into shrapnel.

With an Herculean effort, all three managed to grab the truck; Ia and the others pulled them inside. As soon as she could, she pushed them off her and tucked herself into the back corner of the truck, huddled up into as small a figure as she could manage. With her reserves either bled into Jeeves for manipulating the weather or tied into her wound to keep it biokinetically stable, she did not trust her ability to control the timeplains. She didn’t trust
anything
about the timeplains beyond her deepest battle instincts anymore.

Somewhere out there, a Feyori had managed to sink him- or herself deeply enough into those same timeplains that they could occlude and rewrite temporal reality. It was the only answer to this mess that made sense. Not a direct touch because she
would
notice that. She’d touched more than enough Meddler minds to know exactly what their energies, their thoughts, felt like . . . but not on the timeplains before now.