For a minute, they simply stood there. The sun had fallen and the sounds of the newly awakened jungle surrounded them. Raoul and a couple of the ex-Imperials were standing guard, but they gave Dan and Sam a wide berth. Even the new additions to the camp could sense the tension between the two, and none of them wanted any part of it.
Finally, Sam spoke.
“Dan,” she took a breath to steady herself. “The past week or so here has been a wakeup call. I’ve always been so sure of myself. Confident in my abilities and the course I’ve plotted for myself. Everyone has always looked up to me as a protege, complimented my expertise, and lauded me at every turn. It was easy for me to discount what other people were struggling through, but that doesn’t make it right.”
“Henry showered me with praise,” she spoke over Dan, raising a hand to silence him before he could speak. “He convinced me that the work I was doing would be humanity’s salvation. Hell, he might even have been right. Still, whenever we were alone together, he would feed into my ego. He would praise my research into magic. He would credit my training regimine for your successes. He did everything he could to convince me that I was the keystone to humanity getting magic. It was idiotic. You were the one suffering through the training and taking all of the risks, but I was vain and I believed him.”
“That’s really always been the problem.” She stared up at the foliage above. “I’ve always thought of you like a younger brother. I’ve cared for you, but I thought I knew better than you. It just seemed second nature to me to make decisions for you. At some point, you grew up, but I was stuck in the past. Still in the middle of some petty prank war with you while I tried to guide your fate without any input from you. It was wrong, and I was wrong.”
“I ignored Henry’s instability because it was a tough problem to face head on,” she looked back at him and cracked a slight smile. “How do you tell your boss that he’s crazier than a box full of squirrels on amphetamines? It was my responsibility though. When he put functions in to control you, I should have spoken up to him or warned you. Instead, he just promised me that he wouldn’t use them, and eventually I gave up on the issue. When he recruited his candidates from that stupid video game, I tried to stop him. He said something about how ‘gamers had more creative and resilient minds’ than the military. Who the hell knows if that’s true, but now that we’re here, I don’t see a whole lot of surviving gamers. So many people borderline kidnapped, then sent to their deaths, and for what? To pad his ego. To prove that his dumb ideas were better than the government’s plans.”
“I let you down, Dan.” There was a catch in her voice as she spoke. “Even now, there’s a part of me trying to shirk responsibility and blame Henry for all of this, but deep down, I know that it isn’t right. I didn’t treat you like an adult, and I let you get hurt. So many times. I can say I’m sorry a million times, and it won’t be enough. Still, I’m going to say it.”
“Dan,” Sam took a deep breath before continuing, “I’m sorry. I’ve treated you like shit, and I haven’t respected you. Please just give me another chance.”
She stood in the darkness, observing him with plaintive eyes. He was still angry with her, but the situation became more difficult when he lined his mistakes up next to hers. She let him get shocked and concealed things from him, but he knew exactly what she was talking about with Henry. He should have spoken up to the eccentric billionaire when he insisted on drawing recruits from World of Magic Online. When Henry pointlessly incited conflict with the military, Dan could have said or done something.
Instead, he kept his head down and let it become someone else’s problem. He liked to think that he would’ve said something if Sam were involved, but he had never been in the situation to test that belief. In the end, Sam did the right thing. He could hate her for slipping up, but in the face of a war with space elves, it all seemed a bit petty now that she had taken the initiative.
“I appreciate it,” Dan finally responded, causing Sam to exhale with relief. “I’m not super thrilled about you keeping such a major secret from me, but at the end of the day, we’ve been through a lot. Just treat me like an adult next time, and we won’t have a problem.”
“God,” she smiled wryly. “That’s the most nervous I’ve been since I asked Mary-Beth Haskins out to the prom in High School. This entire thing has taught me that I need to do some work on myself. I definitely have a blindspot where my own ego is involved.”
“You’re lucky I’m not the hugging and crying type.” Dan chuckled dryly. “This certainly had the potential for me to drag it out and make it infinitely more awkward, just to mess with you.”
“I’d deserve it, but thank you for avoiding the temptation.” Sam rolled her eyes. “You know I’m basically allergic to public displays of emotion.”
“I seem to recall you pretending not to know some crying co-eds asking why you hadn’t called back, and asking them to schedule any further appointments through me.” Dan laughed, much of the tension from the last couple of days melting from his shoulders. “Whatever happened with that formal? You know, the fancy dress when you asked that Mary-Beth girl out?”
“She had a boyfriend.” Sam winked at him. “A common mistake made by a lot of confused young women.”
“Well.” Dan laughed again. “You can’t win them all.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. She went to the prom with him, but she ended up at the hotel with me.” Sam tossed a smile over her shoulder as she walked back toward the camp.
The next morning, Dan woke up before the sun rose to the droning of planes. Abe was already up and sitting next to the satellite phone, chewing on his lip slightly as he stared at the silent receiver. Dan walked over next to the other man and crouched down next to him.
“Any idea what’s about to happen, Abe?” Dan nodded at the satellite phone.
“We’re about to hit back,” Abe grimaced as he shifted his position. “I don’t know exactly what’s about to happen, but it sounds like heavy airstrikes on the sites we identified with paratroopers jumping in to pick up the pieces. All we can really do is hang out and wait for orders. They might come later today, they might come in a week.”
“Do we know if a nuke is going to be used?” Dan asked, concern in his voice. “We’re probably far enough away to survive if we button up a bit. As far as I can tell, the nanites have a decent chance of preventing the worst of radiation poisoning so long as we aren’t exposed too directly.”
“I hope not,” Abe shrugged. “They know where the targets are, and I don’t think they’ll need nukes to take anything down. Merella didn’t identify anything too hardened, other than the main landing site, and that’s far enough in the interior of the jungle we might not even see the mushroom cloud if atomics are used.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” Dan punched Abe lightly in the shoulder. “It really helped pick up my spirits after a rough couple of days to know that our allies might wipe us off the map in a flash of nuclear fire without even warning us.”
Abe rolled his eyes at Dan as he began making his way toward the ex-Imperial section of the camp. Now that they had runecrafting materials, he had promises to keep with the survivors. Specifically related to ensuring they stayed survivors.
As the sun was rising, the sounds of explosions began to reach the camp. Occasionally, one of the ex-Imperials would point out a flight of cruise missiles streaking overhead. Dan just ignored the distractions as he tried to decipher the control rune on Tessa. It wasn’t terribly complex; the actual glyphs were much larger and more crudely drawn than anything on his own body. Still, he was trying to decipher someone else’s coding without any documentation or remarks. Even with the aid of the System, it was a bit of a challenge.
He finally figured out how the runescripting worked, just as a squadron of helicopters flew low and fast overhead. The runes were simple and deadly. They consisted of a mana reservoir that was designed to slowly empty over time which functioned as a crude timer. The reservoir could be refilled by a mage pulsing mana in a specific pattern, likely via a spell only taught to supervising elves. Once the reservoir ran out, the rune would try to draw mana directly from the user’s accumulation rune and funnel it into a purposefully flawed rune that regulated the user’s metabolism, causing them to quickly grow lethargic and die.
In the distance, high caliber gunfire chattered to punctuate the now-constant rumble of explosions. Dan wiped sweat from his eyes as he inscribed the runes on Tessa’s rib cage that would disconnect the control mechanism from her accumulation rune. In theory, it would create a closed circuit that would safely draw the mana meant for the control rune into itself, only to return it back to Tessa’s core with minimal effect or loss. Each individual rune glowed green in his eyes as the System approved of his work. Still, there was only one way to find out if Dan knew what he was doing.
He looked up at her, asking a question with a cock of his head. Tessa nodded in reply and Dan put his finger on the new runescripting and activated it with a fraction of his mana. For a moment, nothing happened as the newly activated scripting switched from Dan’s mana to Tessa’s spirit spheres. Both of them exhaled in relief as the control rune powered down, it’s mana pathways safely redirected to the safe dud circuit.
Much to Dan’s embarrassment, Tessa leaned forward and hugged him, tears of wonder streaming down her face as she periodically glanced down at the now dormant rune that had ruled her life. Despite the heat creeping into Dan’s cheeks, he was proud of his work. In a way, the Imperial soldiers and the Starshield candidates were in the same boat. Thrust into a war beyond their control with their very freedom at stake.
It might not be the same as directly speaking up against the Thoth Foundation, but it was a small step toward individual freedom in a universe that had a tendency to eliminate all but two options for the average human. Comply or perish.
As Dan moved to work on the next Imperial, Abe walked up to him, a complex expression on his face. With a wave of his hand the soldier pulled him aside.
“Thrush,” Abe’s voice hid some tension. “I just heard back from command. They were able to verify most of our coordinates via satellite. Between cruise missiles, close air support, and thermobaric bombs we’ve managed to more or less utterly wipe out around 75% of the Tellask bases in the jungle.”
“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ here,” Dan replied, stretching some of the kinks he had earned from crouching over Tessa out of his back.
“But,” Abe smiled thinly. “The main Tellask landing site has some sort of gigantic spellshield set up. Worse, it has some annoyingly effective anti-aircraft defenses. Basically gigantic crystals with pillars built on top of them that shoot lightning or lasers at anything that comes nearby. Video game bullshit, but effective. They have a hard time tracking anything moving too fast, but they managed to chew up an F-35 squadron that slowed down enough to look for weaknesses in the shield.”
“Shit,” Dan frowned.
“Shit is right,” Abe agreed unhappily. “They want that landing site gone, and they want us as part of the operation. In two weeks, a joint task force of Brazilians, Americans, Canadians, French, and Indian airmobile troops will be deploying as close as we can to the landing site, and we will be assaulting it on foot.”
“That’s not a whole lot of time, but I think we can be ready by then.” Dan ran his hand through his hair.
“No, it is not,” Abe replied, frustration coloring his voice.
“How are we getting there?” Dan asked. “Helicopter, or do they expect us to jump from planes? I don’t have any sort of training, but maybe with gravitational easing, I could make it work.”
“The orders were to ‘arrange our own transportation,” Abe replied. “Apparently the invaders have been taking down about half of the helicopters we fly over the jungle. They’ve got those big flying lizards that can hide in the trees until a flight is overhead before jumping them. Right now, they aren’t planning on risking any pilots until the final push to unseat the aliens.”
“They honestly expect us to cover about eighty or ninety miles through the fucking Amazon,” Dan blurted out. “On foot?
“That’s the schedule.” Abe grimaced. “They want us there in a week to scout the area and clear spots for artillery teams. Whatever preparations you have planned, make them quick.”
