Earth Awakened, page 19
Naomi and her squad had settled in a Victorian house with an intact wraparound porch. A few soldiers, if you could call them that, lounged on the porch. One particularly courageous man sat on the railing with his feet propped straight ahead of him and his head lolling to the side in sleep. Three others were engaged in a heated card game and, from the sound of the argument, someone had cheated.
Their army fatigues didn’t blend in at all with the periwinkle-painted house. They looked as if two small children had been forced to play together, and one of them had stuffed their army men in the other’s dollhouse.
High above in the white-trimmed gables, three scraggly nests made of dead grasses, twigs, hair, and some fabric had been stuffed under the eaves.
Great. The crows live here, but fly over every morning to bother us.
The quaint, waist-high iron gate had been left open and the front walk cleared of grass. As he approached the house, the sentinels on the porch noticed him. The arguing at the card game died to a subdued murmur, and one of them reached out and punched the sleeping soldier’s boot.
His irate bellow cut off when they pointed Javen out.
Despite the contradictions given by his behavior and leadership, certain Terremain survivors saw him as a grenade with its pin pulled. Most of this group had witnessed what had happened the day Terremain had fallen. While some saw him as an opportunity for protection, others feared the potential for destruction.
Time could fix that. Time and consistent leadership.
Unless I make a big mistake.
“Good morning,” he said, stopping at the bottom step. “Is Naomi up and moving yet?”
A man stepped forward and a cloud of smoke came with him, awakening a longing for nicotine he had been fighting since the local store in Hazelwood, Terremain had been razed by a Swarzgardian patrol. Phantom butterflies flittered in his chest, making it difficult to stand still. Javen crossed his arms across his chest and lifted a fist to his lips. The flight of the butterflies slowed as he concentrated on the pressure on his mouth.
“Sergeant Rossi,” one of the men corrected, his gaze slipping up and down Javen as if he were looking at a fly.
In another life, the man would have been a heartthrob in the movies—or at least popular on Javen’s old campus. Vibrant blue eyes were accented by impeccable light brown eyebrows that followed the arch of his brow ridge, and he had a well-muscled, athletic build that was absolutely trimmed of fat.
But the war had taken its toll. Like the rest of them, he looked drawn and tired. His nicotine usage was beginning to pull in the conformation of his face, creating lines under his cheek bones, and those brilliant blue eyes always seemed to look beyond their target. While his companions wore their fatigue tees, he sported a thin muscle shirt that backlighted the flat silver dog tag around his neck. A pale scar started just below his right eye and ended at his chin.
Javen didn’t know if this man had earned the nickname ‘Thorn’ before or after obtaining that scar.
He decided he didn’t need the clarification.
Thorn held his cigarette between his thumb and his forefinger and took a long drag. He was not a Terremain survivor with a gun, but a tough-as-nails soldier who had been involved in the war since the first deployment.
At least he isn’t afraid of me.
“Sergeant Rossi is meeting with Staff Talbot,” he said. The soldier lowered his cigarette and grinned. “Didn’t get the invite, did you?”
“I have an automatic invitation to every meeting, Thorn.”
Thorn rolled his eyes and puffed his cigarette a few times before tossing the butt into the tall grass. He then shrugged and gave a mocking smile that made his scar dance. When he stepped aside to allow Javen to pass, he left little room.
Men like Thorn demanded earned respect. He had joined the ranks of the 2nd Infantry Division before the war had even started and had been deployed more often than he had been assigned to a base.
Javen’s taking down of a Swarzgardian plane meant little to someone who had done the same without magic.
He understood what Thorn required of him, and he knew he had yet to meet those conditions.
The steps creaked under his weight, but the wood held firm. Most of the porch dwellers avoided his eye, but Thorn’s head turned with Javen’s movements. Cigarette smoke, both stale and fresh, created an invisible yet pungent aura around the soldier.
He turned the brass handle of the door and entered the house. A foyer with thick carpets, cherry-stained furniture, and a sweeping, grand staircase made the place feel so much more homely than the house his team had chosen. But, like the other house, he could smell the deterioration in the wood.
Despite its appearances, this building suffered the same as the others in the neighborhood.
The door closed behind him with a quiet click, and Naomi’s voice came from the room to the right of the foyer.
“How many troops will you need to dismantle both targets?”
Whoever had owned this house had embraced the theme of the architecture. Red, Neo Glec wallpaper stretched around the room from floor to ceiling. The busyness of the bright Victorian hue mixed with the stenciling of Greek designs to make the room loud to the modern eye. Stately, distinguished men watched from gold-framed portraits. An abundance of books, side tables, sitting chairs, and a few chaises longues laid claim to most of the space.
Two tall-backed, overly stuffed chairs had been dragged in front of a long-dead fireplace where Bonnie and Naomi sat and leaned over the paperwork laid out on the small table between them.
They had stopped talking long before he reached them, which gave him a good twelve or so steps of awkward silence. Bonnie wore her blond hair in a tight French braid that looked to be pulling at her scalp, and her icy blue eyes had the ability to look curious and thoroughly impudent in the same instance.
It made reading her difficult.
Then again, Naomi would have been a difficult read if they hadn’t shared a past.
“We were just about to execute the orders, Javen,” Naomi said. She sat so stiffly in her chair that she could have supported herself with just her bent legs. The sleep she had gotten the night before hadn’t managed to reach her face. As he settled into a chair across from them, her avoidance of his gaze seemed deliberate.
“Is that wise?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said curtly. When she turned toward Bonnie, he could see how she wore her hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
Low and out of the way of her helmet.
“Bonnie,” said Naomi, “I will detail Javen. You get your team to the Zone of Action. You, Thorn, and Bolo make sure that none of those Rainbows end up on their own. Make sure that we can see your fuses from the inlet. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bonnie pulled a rifle from the other side of her chair, stood, and slung the weapon on her back. The gun looked too large for her small frame, but she moved just as smoothly and easily as the other seasoned soldiers. She dipped her chin at Javen before weaving around the furniture and exiting the room.
“I hope you found water,” Naomi said.
Well, good morning.
“The well cleared out this morning,” he said. The upholstery on his chair was stiff and unmoving. It pinched his legs where his fatigues had bunched together. He tugged on the sides of his pants to straighten the fabric.
Naomi studied his behavior from her chair. Whatever judgment she settled on, she didn’t share it.
“Bonnie and her squad will be stopping at your safe house to replenish their supply. The well on this property is bone dry. We ran it all night, and it only moaned.”
Once upon a time, I would have made a joke there.
An iron curtain of silence split the room in half, separating them. Naomi settled into her chair, her shoulders and back rolling into the cushions. She closed her eyes as her hand rummaged through her breast pocket and pulled out a green lighter and a pristine, unscathed pack of factory-rolled cigarettes.
He recognized the brand. It was a good one, the kind you smoke too much when you drink.
Those had been the first to disappear after Terremain fell.
Naomi carefully slid two cigarettes from the pack, lifted them to her nose, and inhaled deeply. Her eyes never opened as she placed both onto her lips and lit them. The ends blossomed into glowing cherries that burned bright as fire as she inhaled and dulled to embers as she exhaled. Once she was satisfied that the tobacco had caught, she wordlessly flopped an arm toward Javen. The smoke lazily drifted toward the ceiling.
“Are you going to detail me, then?”
He took the cigarette to be polite. Even though the smell and the feel of it tortured him, he felt the need to be polite.
“Just let me have one minute,” she said. Her body had become more limp, her slouch almost admirable. With nowhere to escape, the smoke grew thicker. Sunlight from the far windows crossed the room as prominent beams.
“Did you find the towers?”
Abandoned house or not, this residence once gave pride to its owners. It felt almost sinful to purposely defile it. Ash built up on the end of his cigarette. He hoped that not actually smoking it would put it out, but Naomi had given the fire a good head start.
She had the convenience of flicking her ashes in the fireplace. He had the misfortune of possibly flicking off some ghosts.
“Two comm towers,” she began.
He listened to her, but he also looked for a way to dispose of the cigarette before she noticed him rejecting her gift.
She exhaled a long and thin flow that resembled the steam from a tea kettle. “Each tower is situated on one of the arms of the foothills that splits up the districts of the city. At any time, one man is at each station, but a convoy of eight moves between the towers. They don’t cut through town. Too much open airspace, by my guess. Built a fucking road through the hills.”
A small table sat between his chair and an empty one partnered with his. A family of shiny, porcelain dolls led a mother cow and her baby, all of them accented with splashes of pastel paints and gifted with larger-than-life sets of eyelashes. The mother cow’s back was quite flat.
“Bonnie’s squad is going to split into teams. The idea is to hit the towers simultaneously while the convoy is moving through the mountains. About three hours from now.”
He ground the cherry of his cigarette onto the back of the cow until the cinders were extinguished. With the distraction destroyed, his brain had a chance to catch up to his ears.
His breath caught.
“Three hours?”
“Yeah,” she said, lighting another cigarette. She rolled it between her fingers for a moment before lifting it toward him. “Enjoy this minute. It’s the last bit of peace you will get for… who knows how long.”
The nonchalance she emanated might have been a welcome change had it been any other situation. After months of her being an inflexible, unyielding wall, the part of him that had known her before the loss of Terremain celebrated seeing her so laid-back.
However, the part of him that had stepped onto the front stage saw the danger in having the commander of their small forces chain-smoking cigarettes in an abandoned house.
“I need the rest of the plan,” he said, standing. He resisted pacing around the room for two reasons. Firstly, he doubted zig-zagging through the furniture would have the effect he desired. Secondly, he knew she was good at reading tells.
She looked from her offered cigarette back to him, shrugged, and put it in her mouth.
“There’s an inlet, cuts the town in half.” She stretched out her arms to tap the paper on her little table. He moved closer and saw a map of Seola sketched in ink. As a former traveler to the city, it looked fairly accurate. Certain areas of the map had been marked with rectangles. Flag-like, they each had some sort of symbol on them that meant nothing to him but probably meant something to Naomi and Bonnie.
“They are using this outpost here.” She pointed at the tip of the inlet where a small peninsula jutted out from the mainland. “The piece of the land that sticks out has docks for boats and, judging by how they looked, they are being used. Those boats being so close will be an issue because they could escape during an attack. We need to have them engage us off the peninsula.”
He pointed with his middle finger at the place on the map where the inlet met the bay. “What about the base? How long would we have before reinforcements show up?”
“How long does it take to get here from Terremain?” She smiled and tossed her cigarette butt into the fireplace. “Bonnie’s group met us earlier than we originally planned. Pairing Thorn and Bonnie together—they are effective. With the early reinforcements, we were able to send a scout to the base. That place is light’s out, Javen. I doubt we will find any ammunition but, fuck, that base even has a golf course on it. This is good news for us and good news for Westray. Good news for us because we have a base to claim once we get rid of the stragglers here. Good news for Westray, because Swarzgard has officially stretched itself beyond its capabilities. It can’t hold Seola while it holds Terremain and Ryarne.”
That means they may never retaliate. That means this could be home.
“Is that all?” he said, keeping his voice even. Hypothetical futures played in his head. Some of them involved reality while others were doused in a sparkling coat of delusion. He could see a refugee sanctuary forming in the likes of the rumored Underground in Ryarne. He could also see Swarzgard invading Mersetzdeitz and not having the resources to hold Terremain.
No one is senseless enough to attack Mersetzdeitz.
“That’s about everything,” she said. “Bonnie and Thorn are splitting the squad into two teams that will focus on taking down the comm towers. This will cut off the outpost from communicating with Swarzgard. Those mountains fuck up radio signals. There are no mountains between the outpost and the naval blockade at the mouth of the bay, but they would never be able to send help in time. They can send their own messages to Swarzgard, but I am hoping that we overwhelm them enough to prevent the ships from even knowing what happened. The tower teams will send flares once their targets are eliminated. We need to be at the inlet to take the outpost. From what we counted, they have a platoon waiting for us.”
“How many is that?”
“I counted thirty-seven.”
They outnumbered the outpost group, but only by numbers. Naomi’s experience as a drill sergeant had helped them collect a ragtag group of fighters. However, Terremain did not offer the facilities of Fort Lagman, the base Westray had used for Basic Training, and the training her cadets did receive could only happen on days where it was safe to lead them far enough outside of the city for the occupying Swarzgardian forces to not hear the gunshots.
They had more people, but the outpost had more soldiers.
“So, this is everything?”
Her brow furrowed and her hazel eyes focused on his face.
“Yes.”
Perhaps telling him about what happened in Mersetzdeitz right before a battle was not the ideal move to make, but he couldn’t block the blaze of anger that whipped across his mind.
Once upon a love story, they would talk each other hoarse with a grotesque amount of overshare. Now, as she lifted herself from the chair and straightened her back, that impenetrable barrier hardened over her face. He always assumed she did this as a way to shut herself off from the hardship of war.
This time, she was shutting him out.
Chapter 23
When they left the house, Javen made a mental note of the bronze numbers that announced the address. It was impossible to know if his group would ever be strong enough to control that much of Seola, but it was nice to know that the house existed.
Only a few soldiers remained on the porch, and none of them were army-trained. Naomi and her small band started their rounds, collecting the rest of the two infantry groups and preparing the vehicles. Bonnie’s earlier instructions had been carried out effectively—everyone had been waiting for their orders.
Which left Javen with the task of preparing his team for battle.
The three of them were in the living room when he returned to the house, huddled together on the area rug that was surrounded by cardboard boxes. Photographs of every size, color, and quality littered the floor.
For a few moments, they didn’t notice him, their laughter too loud and raucous. Gannon sorted through a stack of photos on his right and held it up to Rosie and Caleb. More laughter.
Javen had missed the joke, but he didn’t miss the moment.
He hated to ruin it.
When Rosie saw him in the doorway, her smile faltered.
He steeled himself, stepped inside, and began organizing them.
Caleb and Gannon took the news well, as always. Fate and the happenstance of magic had put Rosie and Caleb on Javen’s team, but an eagerness to make a difference had put Gannon there—he supported them without the need of magic, while Caleb accepted the responsibility of using his.
New assignments rarely fazed them.
But Rosie…
She tried to not get upset in front of the younger men. She really did. He watched her fight the tears and struggle to control her breathing as she packed her things, and his heart panged.
The teacher in him wanted to try to fix the situation, to encourage and placate.
The leader in him knew there wasn’t time for it.
Everything was packed and thrown into the trucks so quickly that he felt that anxiety one feels when you know something is probably being forgotten.
He brushed it aside.
If things go well today, we will have an entire city to scavenge.
He and Naomi took the lead vehicle, his old truck. Bolo, the mechanic in the group, had this truck on the list of vehicles to be replaced once better options were available, but Javen planned to fight tooth and nail to keep it.
