“Didn’t anyone think to say something to Kesun?”
“Yes. But it is only now that I understand his reply, that we must all return to the ways of Dalera. I thought he was giving his blessing for such actions. In fact, he was stating the only truth that matters.”
This Station was becoming a makeshift hospital as well. The lady they’d met in the markets, the one Lisera called an apothecary, had taken refuge there when the warriors kicked everyone out of Sanctuary Hall to make room for incoming evacuees. Aiden had left Lisera with most of the supplies they’d recovered, to help the apothecary treat the injured as best she could. Apparently the local equivalent of doctors were hard to come by, although word had gone out for any healers to make their way there.
“I don’t think it was wise to leave Lisera to be cared for only by warriors and merchants,” Yann said as they walked. “I should have stayed with her.”
Great. Aiden felt so much better. Not that he would have been all that comfortable with Yann staying behind, either. Lousy choices all around. “Yeah, well, we need you to round up the rest of your rebel pals and make sure they’re protected.”
Yann spun around to face him. “Less than twenty of those that I knew partook of the potion before Balzar’s men wrested it from them.”
That made Aiden pause. “I thought Ushat took care of Balzar?”
“Ushat and his warriors killed only to defend themselves and the Chosen. Gat and many of the chiefs were killed, but Balzar is a coward. He would have run and hidden in the sewers.”
“So the dozen Genes we found hiding inside the transports near the bridges are probably all we’re going to find.” The men had thrown away their recently acquired Shields, and it had taken some convincing to get eight of them to go with the warriors to the Stations that the Major had identified, and for the others to accept new Shields and help in the evacuation of villages. They’d become a little more cooperative once it was apparent that the panic in the streets was beginning to settle down. Word was spreading that the Atlanteans had a plan that could save everyone. Instead of killing each other, the mobs patrolling the streets began to focus their aggression on making sure that the pilots of downed Darts didn’t live long enough to become a problem.
Being with Yann, who carried a Shield, meant that Aiden wasn’t getting spooked out by the usual Wraith tactics. Still, while moving around the Citadel between the transports and the Stations, they’d stumbled across several desiccated bodies. Not every Wraith was being dispatched. Just as troubling, not everyone in the Citadel was setting aside their differences. There was a lot of deep-seated animosity in this place, generations’ worth of resentment that, having been ignited, weren’t about to be extinguished by a common cause. Teyla was right. When people lost everything and everyone they’d ever cared for, long-term planning didn’t enter into the picture. For many, the short-term goal wasn’t survival but reprisal.
Aiden thought about the de facto government that had developed in this place, and wondered what would replace it if the society survived. Political leadership, in any of its forms, had never really wowed him. He’d found the military’s clear and unequivocal chain of command an easier structure to accept. You did as you were told, and you expected those under you to do as you told them. That was the underlying code that made everything work and guaranteed that others would be watching your six just as you watched theirs.
“Look out!” Ushat shouted, knocking Aiden out of the path of an airborne axe flying from the shadows of an alleyway.
The axe’s owner was a guy who smelled like the cell that Aiden and Teyla had recently inhabited. Suddenly, he, Yann, Ushat, and the two warriors with them were surrounded by a mob of about fifteen Daleran men. Surrounding them was a bunch of women who looked like refugees from the Salem witch trials, egging them on. “Kill the Chosen for failing to protect us! Butcher their warriors. Behead them all!”
Rodney cursed as he slipped over yet one more jagged piece of prehistoric shale. According to Artos or Amos or whatever his name was, a multitude of tiny animals lay trapped within the layers of the ancient marine bed. Fossils. He was talking about fossils to Viking engineers. “You do realize that blackwater — oil — is composed entirely of countless billions of small animals that perished here several million years ago?”
“You mean, even before the time of the Ancestors?”
Before he snapped an ‘of course’, Rodney realized that it was not inconceivable that the Ancients had actually inhabited the planet for millions of years. He settled on a curt “Probably,” and concentrated on finding a path through the rock while trying not to slice his ankles open any more than he already had.
The point where the river divided came into view, and Artos paused. “There.”
There indeed. What the man meant to convey with that word, Rodney surmised, was that they were once again screwed.
The wreckage of two Darts, probably the ones they’d heard earlier, had plowed into the cliff overlooking the entrance to the North Channel. The impact and ensuing self-destruct sequence had collapsed most of the cliff face into the waterway. And wasn’t that just one more reason to hate those soulless creatures with the heat of a supernova?
Artos’s gaze flitted back and forth between Rodney and the North Channel. “It is not completely impassable,” he said, hesitant. “Perhaps the blackwater will still light.”
“Now is a singularly bad time to try relying on optimism.” There was some water getting past, true, but it was mostly at depth. Only a thin layer of oil trickled over the top. “The blackwater layer needs to be several millimeters thick to even ignite, let alone give us the sustained burn that we’ll need.” Recognizing belatedly that a millimeter was a foreign concept to these people, Rodney held up his thumb and forefinger at an approximate distance to explain.
The group of engineers traded despondent glances. It was evident to all that they couldn’t possibly clear enough of the wreckage from the channel in time to do any good. Even if they could, the momentum of the river was firmly on the southern side now, and it wouldn’t be easily or rapidly diverted. Time to shift gears once again. Trouble was, Rodney was running out of gears.
“This is getting a little old,” Aiden muttered. The first few times they’d been confronted by mobs, he’d managed to scatter them by taking a page from the Major’s book and firing a short round from his P-90 into the ground or over their heads. But this gang wasn’t backing down.
Behind him, Ushat blew a couple of short notes on his horn. While Aiden would have given a lot for a working radio, the horns had proved to be surprisingly efficient, using a set of calls that the Major had described as a simplified Morse Code.
The present signal was one Aiden now recognized as ‘under attack’. The response was immediate. They were only half a block from what had become their adopted Command Center, the City Hall-type place with all the maps. About twenty warriors appeared at one end of the alley. A batch of Teyla’s new ‘recruits’, mostly fishermen, builders and blacksmiths whom she was helping prepare for the ambush, appeared from the other end. Before the attackers had a chance to vanish back into the sewers, Teyla signaled the rookies to pounce on them with well-placed nets. Two who tried to escape down a narrow alley were brought down by bolas.
“Wow.” Aiden grinned, lowered his weapon and smiled approvingly at Teyla and the recruits. “Nice work.”
“They have learned to wait until given the order to strike.” Ushat looked impressed as well. “That is strong work for untrained warriors.”
Yann leveled a hard stare on him. “Unlike the ‘trained’ warriors, those of us who live outside the Citadel have been fighting the Wraith for weeks now.”
Well, there went that team-spirit moment. Aiden opened his mouth to head off the coming argument, but was interrupted by another warning call from the nearby Station. The sound abruptly halted.