We stand in silence and wait. I try to focus past the Faida’s anatomical machinery. I try to throw my hearing out beyond anything I can even begin to see. I filter out breath and heartbeats, growling stomachs and a low careening tone that is likely a Kir-Abisat thing, but I hear nothing else. I wonder if everyone on this Earth is dead.
“I have the base in visual range,” Doe’s voice says quietly. Arif looks at me and in that moment, I am anxious for him. “There are Faida on the ground and in the air.”
“What?” Arif exclaims as he half flies, half jumps beside me. “What are they doing? How many are there?”
“I told you. This program won’t answer your questions. It only follows my orders. Or Levi’s,” I say, trying to get him to back off a bit. “First things first. Doe, is there an active Rift here?”
“There is no Rift activity on my sensors.”
“Well, that could be good. If the Roones had won, you would assume they would just go back to business as usual.”
“Or maybe they are just exercising control. An open Rift isn’t necessary anymore. The Faida know the truth. At this point, Immigrants would just be a hassle,” Ezra points out astutely.
“We must go!” Arif says. He grabs my arm. I look at his hand and tense until he, very smartly, removes it. Softening his tone, he says, “Your drones are all very well and good, but unless they have the ability to see through walls, they won’t be able to provide us with any real information.”
“They can’t see through walls, but they can pick up life signs and read heat signatures. We should at least know how many Faida we’re dealing with and if there are any visible Roones,” I argue.
“You want us to wait? That is unacceptable! We must know if our comrades are alive. Ryn, you can’t tell me that if you were in my position you would be able to sit idly here.”
I sigh and run a hand over my scalp. My hair is up, in a messy topknot. The back of my head is sticky with dried blood, and the biopatch is beginning to chafe.
No, he’s right. I wouldn’t wait, but I would hope that there would be someone like me there to be objective. Someone who wasn’t involved emotionally and who could give me the most strategically viable option.
“It’s too risky to just go barging in, though. So why don’t you let Levi and me go down there. In our sensuits. We could get actual eyes on the situation.”
“Go down there? There is no down. Our base is a thousand feet in the air, inside a mountain. You can’t get there. And even if you could, you don’t speak our language. What could you possibly learn? I know of a place where we could land undetected.” Arif is almost frantic now. His wings are practically humming with energy.
“Just because you could land there before doesn’t mean you can now. If your side lost, the defenses would be shored up,” Levi says without hostility.
“You don’t know—”
“Ryn,” Doe voice says, and I raise a finger to silence Arif. “There is a squadron of fifty potential hostiles coming in from the east at 126 kilometers per hour. They will be at your location in less than a minute.”
“We have incoming,” I say to the group quickly as I inventory my options. If I open a Rift, we won’t have any answers. If this is not Arif’s faction but is instead a faction loyal to the altered Roones, we’re screwed. Obviously, they have some sort of device that trumps SenMach Rift cloaking.
I reach down into my pack and grab an extra sensuit, which I throw to Ezra. “Put this on,” I tell him. “Doe, have the sensuits go into stealth mode.”
“What is happening,” Arif says looking around wildly. “Where did you go?”
“I hope for your sake and ours that your side won, Arif. But if they didn’t, don’t let them take you alive.” I don’t feel great about throwing our newest potential allies to the wolves, but they did say they wanted to go home. If Arif and the rest lost, we are losing a squadron of Faida, which would be helpful for the sake of intel but wouldn’t make much of a dent in the numbers, not really. But that’s not why this is a massive risk, because if even one of them is captured and gives us up, we’ve lost before we’ve even begun. We might have forty-eight hours, tops, to warn our own people. But there is no “safe” when it comes to war. There is only risk and retreat. There is no point in retreat now. They already know we’re here.
Now, there is only hope.
I listen for Ezra’s heartbeat and find him. I touch him lightly on the hand and whisper, “Hush.”
The incoming Faida dive and land with such intensity that the ground quivers beneath our feet. I watch Arif and his troops. They have no ammo thanks to the pigs, so they have made themselves ready by taking a stance that is mostly crouched, presumably to take off in the air with considerable force. Everything is resting on a knife’s edge.
And then a Faida woman comes forward, and I watch Arif’s entire body relax. His arms lower, his legs straighten, and the look on his face goes beyond relief. It is almost ecstatic.
The woman he is looking at is all cheekbones and red curls. She does not smile. Her lips tremble, though, and she stops herself by covering her mouth with a single hand. Her other hand is outstretched, as if it has just received an impossible prayer in her palm. Or maybe she waiting for Arif to take it?
Arif says something in Faida and then—as with a jolt, as if he’s just now accepting what he’s seeing with his eyes—he races to her and they embrace tightly. I let go of the breath I was holding and lift my head to the sky. This all could have gone very badly. It still could. Whatever is transpiring between these two is fiercely intense. I almost feel like looking away, but there is too much at stake to allow them a private moment. Despite their intimacy, this woman could be compromised. Even worse, this could have been Arif’s plan all along—to get us right here, lulling us with stories of rebellion and spycraft. I put my hands on my holster, my fingers a breath away from the trigger of my sidearm.
The two of them begin speaking in Faida. It is a language as light and airy as their wings. Words fall into and over one another. It’s almost like Mandarin, but less nasal. I try to follow what they are saying, or at least the tone. For all my linguistic prowess, though, I have no idea. Finally, after a few minutes, Arif points over to where we’re standing, still in stealth mode. Our cover blown, I deactivate my suit, and Levi does the same. The woman walks over to me.
“My name is Navaa,” she tells me in Roonish without even the tiniest speck of emotion.
“Hello,” I say matching her deadpan tone.
“Arif tells me that you rescued our squadron from the Spiradael Earth. And while I am pleased at his return, I also find the circumstances unusually convenient.”
“Interesting,” I tell her as I plant my feet firmly in the ground, legs locked, shoulders back. I may not look like an angel, with the hair and the perfect skin and all, but I won’t be intimidated. “Because I felt exactly the same when I discovered your people were trapped on an Earth that wasn’t theirs.”
Navaa tilts her head to one side, eyeing me warily, as I do her. “I see,” she says slowly. She doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust her. I’m surprised that Arif himself isn’t