Pillars of light and fir.., p.86
PILLARS OF LIGHT AND FIRE: THE COMPLETE SERIES, page 86
“I didn’t know her garden had grown so much,” Jeri said. “I knew she’d worked on it years back, before she returned to the company . . .”
Morgan turned, but Jeri wasn’t looking at her. She’d taken her scorched coat and gloves off. Beneath she wore a white Paladin suit, marred with black smudges. Morgan touched a snapdragon and admired the expansive garden. The lilies weren’t in bloom yet, which was a shame. Muire Ann loved those. “I know you didn’t do this. I’m angry,” Morgan said in French.
“Then you know me better than I thought.”
“But not half as much as I should, Paladin. You’ve been busy.”
“The world is a busy place,” Jeri replied. She looked no older than she had the last time Morgan had seen her, but then again, the Conditioning and manifest had an arresting effect on the aging process. Jeri regarded Morgan. “You’ve been busy yourself.”
“I have a lot to do.” Morgan chided herself. Did the Conditioning really affect the mind? No. Her thoughts shifted gears. She had a Paladin before her. Should she chance it? It was her cousin after all.
Jeri sighed. “There won’t be a point to funeral services now. No point in such an ignominious end.”
“Who was it?”
“Many people, but we have an idea.”
“There are plenty of other ways to kill me,” Morgan said. “So, this was a message. Seems elaborate though.”
“Was it?” Jeri asked. “I thought we were talking about the funeral.”
She won’t stay, Morgan thought. So, she wouldn’t have time to persuade her. That was wise of Jeri, though unfortunate for Morgan. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard your original name, Géraldine.”
“No one’s ever called me anything other than Jeri. Except Maman.”
Morgan shrugged.
Jeri strolled through the garden.
Morgan followed, her mind focusing. “Have you considered my offer?”
Jeri shook her head. “I haven’t changed my mind. The Mare de Scientia know.”
“I don’t give a damn about the Sisterhood!” Morgan snapped. That was a lie. She’d betrayed their basic tenets in her own pursuits and paid the price.
Jeri continued on.
Morgan sighed and followed, catching up after a few steps.
“Don’t you have your own Sisterhood?” Jeri asked.
Morgan clasped her hands behind her back as she fell in step. “Of a kind, but they’ve made no forward progress.”
“I wonder why.” Jeri shrugged.
Morgan grabbed Jeri’s arm. Jeri swung around, moving to a fighting stance, dropping her coat. Morgan stepped back, hands up. “I need new tech, Jeri. The Chevaliers won’t last without it.”
Jeri glowed, fist clenched. “You have the God Cannons, which you got from our Longinus satellite years ago. What more do you want?”
“What’s your success rate for Conditioning?” Morgan ventured.
Jeri looked confused for a moment. “It’s . . . reasonable. Yours is much higher. Close to ninety percent?”
“Ninety-two percent,” Morgan agreed. “I can fix that for you.”
Jeri’s brow furrowed.
Morgan had her off balance now. She pressed forward but changed tack. “Samson Brastius. There are reports he’s a full Paladin again.”
Jeri’s fist relaxed. “What about him? Your burnouts? Have you been experimenting on your own Chevaliers now?”
Morgan lowered her hands. So, she’s not denying it. It may be possible. “I want to know if you can . . . fix someone unable to manifest.”
Jeri studied Morgan.
Morgan calmed herself, hoping the slip in her mask was enough.
Jeri shook her head again. “No.”
Morgan let her shoulders slump. She showed just enough emotion.
Jeri held up a hand. “We’re not doing this, Morgan. We’re not playing these games. Not today. I saw my mother blown to pieces in front of my face!”
“I was there! Don’t you know what she meant to me? I stayed with her when you ran.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jeri growled.
Morgan felt the heat of her anger. She was a LaFayette to the core.
Jeri continued. “You want our technology. You want our secrets. You took them the first time. You’ve tried bribing me, so are you going to take them now? It won’t work. You’re not a Paladin, and what it would take to become one is beyond you.”
“You think it’s some magical test to do what you can do?” Morgan replied. “It’s not. It’s science, and those who have the right genes can be what you are.”
“Then why are you asking for a way around that problem?” Jeri folded her hands, searching Morgan’s face. “You’re not ready and you may never be ready.” Jeri turned and ventured farther into the garden. Her words confused Morgan. What wasn’t Morgan ready for?
Morgan followed for a moment, considering whether Jeri’s mind could be changed. Jeri was a LaFayette, but she had been out of the influence of her mother and family for a long time. If Morgan could reach that part of her . . .
As they approached the farthest part of Muire Ann’s garden, Jeri saw Chevaliers at the edges. One Chevalier, a large man, wore a bulky gray backpack. She turned back to Morgan. “You want to take my tech by force? After what I’ve done for you?”
“They’re not here for you. They’re here for me,” Morgan said, signaling for him to stay away. “You’ve done nothing for me.”
Jeri looked at the slate-gray uniforms, out of place in Muire Ann’s manicured grounds. She smiled at Morgan. “What you think you can be isn’t governed by chemicals or to be controlled like animals and overseen by the powerful. When you’re ready, you’ll come begging to us. When you’re ready to sacrifice who you are, you’ll be ready.”
“You think I’d join you? You should bow to me,” Morgan replied.
Jeri’s smile deepened. “‘An alliance with a powerful person is never safe.’”
“Phaedrus is old, don’t you think? You think I’ll make a mistake?”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“Tripoli wasn’t a mistake.”
“I’m not talking about that.” Jeri rubbed her red, raw eyes.
Morgan knew Jeri was vulnerable, but tip the wrong way and you get nothing. Tip the right way . . .
Jeri continued. “Yours was made years ago. You need to live with it.” She seemed to make up her mind. Morgan hadn’t tipped her far enough.
“You don’t want to know who killed your mother? My aunt?”
Jeri sighed. “She was already dead. That’s what set the bomb off, but you’ll find out for yourself.” There was anger in Jeri’s face again.
“You never cared enough.”
“I cared more than anyone, but my mother was not a kind soul. She was cruel. What you two did to Owen . . . I’ll never forgive you for that.”
Morgan’s throat tightened. “He was broken already. He was family, and I still loved him.”
Jeri snarled at that. She glowed brightly and raised her hand.
Morgan kept her composure. She wouldn’t falter in trusting that Jeri, honorable and kind, would not strike her down.
“You’ll never be ready, you heartless bitch. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘family’! Anora is all wrong about you. I should’ve let you die. You’ll never admit what you already know.”
Jeri shot up into the air. There was a terrific double boom as she streaked away into the sky. Morgan covered her ears against the effect momentarily. “Jésus!” Morgan exclaimed, then watched the spark of light that was Jeri Brand fade into the clouds. She’d tipped the wrong way. Damn. What did Anora know about Morgan? What did Morgan already know? She filed that away for further thought.
Chevalier Griflet, a dark-haired woman with Parisienne features, approached. “We could track her.”
Morgan shook her head. “I doubt you could. What’s the report from Kiev?”
“We have provisional approval from the Ukrainian parliament for Country Embed Teams.”
Morgan nodded. At least she could solve this problem. Muire Ann would have liked this sleight of hand. She checked her watch and calculated the time difference. “I want a report on Sword and the package en route. I also want to get ahold of Perilous command in New Tripoli. Let’s get to the airport.”
“You can’t go to the airport, madame. You have to be released from the local police first. They want to take a statement from you regarding the attack.”
Morgan frowned. Of course, she would be detained. “Tell Commander Doc at Perilous to shift her UN Peace Enforcers to the new Ukrainian Embed charter. She’ll know what to do. Use the encrypted command line.”
“Yes, madame. I also have a report.”
“Is this report about the explosion?”
“No, from Haut, who’s assisting the French police. She checked our manifest systems. While the Chevaliers arrived with you, the portable grid had yet to be moved from the vehicle. As you know, they do not allow grid drones in France.”
Morgan frowned and looked at the Chevalier with the bulky backpack. That was their portable grid. Griflet was efficient, but she was overly thorough. She had to cut her short. “What are you telling me?”
Chevalier Griflet looked dismayed. She’d wanted to detail everything out. She collected herself. “You weren’t within range of the grid when the bomb went off.”
Morgan looked back up at the empty sky. Jeri had saved her life by being next to her. Why? Was it just proximity and circumstance? There were more questions than answers.
8
Warmer
KIEV, UKRAINE—
The two members of Sword Team and the Ukrainian forces left Paragon at the perimeter, where they had hemmed in the enemy forces. Paragon conferred briefly with Sheath and the Ukrainian army on the best plan. With Pommel out of the picture, it wouldn’t make sense for Crossguard to proceed inside the perimeter. She would remain with Pommel and the Ukrainians to provide a backstop and prepare for Sheath and the retrieval team. The Ukrainian upper echelons liked the Chevaliers, as their vanguard and tactics had deftly maneuvered the rebel forces into a retreating action close to the river’s edge. The rebels had a means of escape, but that wouldn’t be for hours, and if they waited too long, they would break out.
The Ukrainian forces on the ground were another matter. They were wary and suspicious of the gray-cloaked Chevaliers. Their fear softened when they saw Pommel and saw they were human and could be injured, but they knew who this was. This was Sword, and Kiev could become like Tripoli. As a disciplined fighting force, their fear showed in less obvious ways, like how they stood just one step farther back from any member of Sword.
“Be seeing you, Paragon,” Crossguard said. The Ukrainian captain only watched her with an expression that Paragon guessed was a mix between foolhardiness and fear.
Paragon turned and passed into no-man’s-land, where snipers and rebel forces in the buildings shot at her. It didn’t slow her, but the crack of gunfire reminded her of something long ago. She’d been shot at when she was training? The memory was like an old Polaroid, faded and without detail. She wore a thin white suit . . . She watched the windows and saw the muzzle flashes and felt the pulse as she absorbed the kinetic energy of the bullet until it fell to her feet.
The gunfire ceased for a moment, and she took the opportunity. “Put down your weapons and you will not be harmed,” Paragon said, her helmet circuits amplifying her voice to eighty decibels. Her helmet dampened the noise, but she knew the insurgents heard her. She could crank it past 110 decibels, but there was no point. Her light tape shifted from red and orange flashes to red pulses seen through her poncho. She checked the GCI timer; she’d passed the seven-minute mark. She felt the matrix field from the grid drones overhead. She had to get to the epicenter. No more gunfire came. The snipers were gone, or something else was coming.
Special forces attacked her first. They were incredibly well trained, firing from a vantage point along the street. Bullets flashed against her KE field, most against her helmet and her chest. When she got close, they set off a mine, blasting her with debris and concussive force. Her field absorbed it all, her poncho flapping and sparking as parts beyond her KE field caught fire. In a surprising move, she ran into the blast to avoid the greater impact. She wasn’t foolish or brazen. She was only Paragon. More explosives erupted around and under her. The former still didn’t harm her but losing ground beneath her feet made her dance. Still she came on, adding speed as she ran along the street, deeper into the belly.
They streamed out of the narrow side streets and recessed doorways, knives drawn. While this had the best chance of harming her, it also brought her most deadly weapon to bear—waveblades. She slowed as they advanced, wary and practical. She’d had a lot of practice at fighting armed and experienced soldiers. The mind makes the motions. She reached up, clicked the release, and pulled off her poncho. Her hands twitched in anticipation.
The first two flanked her, coming in high and low, hoping to either surprise her or catch her off guard. She stepped back; her right hand moved almost too fast for the man behind her to see and the knife blade vanished in a flash of white. Her arm didn’t stop and swept downward, the second flicker of waveblade slicing off the black blade at the hilt. She hadn’t maimed them, but these were killers. The man behind grabbed her by the neck and reached for her sword arm. She moved her other hand back and lanced him in the heart, and then did the same to the man in front of her as he threw his weight into a bone-cracking punch. It landed on her KE field, but the man was unconscious when he struck the ground. A third man came and struck her in the side. She lanced him through the eye into the brain, putting him into seizures. A dozen more came on and she moved. There was no choreography, but there was a sudden and feral beauty to her fighting. She’d evolved, and it took three minutes to dispatch them.
Paragon leaned against the gutted husk of a car, breathing hard. Her neck was stiff where one man had almost twisted her head off before she deadened his arm with a touch. She looked at the black-clad and urban-camouflaged bodies and weapons in pieces around her, manifest flowing through her. She rubbed her neck through the reinforced Kevlar and heard her own heavy breathing through her helmet. No, she wasn’t hurt badly. They were excellent fighters, but she was Paragon. Perfect. She checked over her torso where some blades had landed, stopped by her KE field. No damage there either. She worked out the soreness in her left elbow where one had dug a blade in, but not past the Kevlar. They were killers, so she had to be deliberate. She glanced at the GCI timer, pulled on her poncho, and jogged on. The window would open soon.
She entered Navodnitsky Park—home of the Motherland Monument—where tank shells and bullets came at her, stopping millimeters from her body before falling to the ground. Bullets peppered her poncho with holes and flames sparked on the fire-resistant material. She batted and kicked the tank shells away. Some exploded nearby, showering the air with debris that rolled off her KE field. She felt the shudder and vibration through the soles of her suit.
She pushed her KE field out and held her ground for a moment. The KE field was invisible, but bullets and shells dropped farther from her body, falling, exploding, and flashing against the field, feeding energy back into her. The ache in her neck and elbow faded with the gush of power.
“Put down your weapons and you will not be harmed,” Paragon repeated above the booming and staccato gunfire.
The shelling stopped, but the gunfire didn’t. Craters and piles of dirt and brick and metal surrounded her. She let the KE field collapse back to her, climbed onto a nearby BTR-80 armored transporter, lanced the driver and commander, and sliced off the thirty-millimeter gun’s barrel. The rebel infantry attacked, but she was red, gray, and phased blue lightning, her poncho swirling as she spun above the vehicle, lancing men left and right with both of her waveblades. Her foot connected with faces and her waveblade struck hands and chests and heads—anything that came within reach. When she finished, she stood on top of the transporter’s hull, looking around at the twitching bodies, her poncho settling from the dervish motion of her body. She scored the armored body of the transport with dozens of waveblade cuts. The motions are the form.
Some rebels broke ranks, dropped their guns, and ran. After such a protracted conflict with the Chevaliers, these rebels—mostly Russians—wouldn’t back down from a fight. So, she was here to end it, to make them back down.
“Sheath, I’m ready,” she reported, surveying the battleground. She crouched and strolled, her waveblade cutting the internals of the transport behind her. The GCI wasn’t overhead yet, so she jumped off the dead transporter and moved closer to the enemy’s center of gravity. She came into the widened, decimated battleground near the Motherland Monument. The highway and bridge were still intact—a way for the Russians to retreat, as the Ukrainian forces held the western side of Kiev now.
Here were the tanks they had rolled into the city. The Russians had given up any pretense that they weren’t trying to influence the fate of Crimea when the Peace Enforcers came.
She waited there, pushing her KE field out and repeating her phrase, until a man in one of the tanks opened its hatch and shouted back, “Go to hell, Tripoli Killer!”
Infantrymen shouted insults at her, calling her Death and using other colorful phrases. She cut off her internal speakers and listened to her own natural and regular breathing. She stepped up onto their barricade—the point where they thought they had a toehold in western Kiev. They took potshots at her. She checked her timer. Her poncho whipped around her, jerking as bullets beat at the material. Red Hilt sparkled, but she felt herself on the edge of the drone grid. The drones were in the clouds now, out of the range of rebel artillery. She was waiting for someone to fire an RPG or missile at her, so she pushed her KE field out again. She wanted the GCI now . . .
