CHAPTER FOUR

A Pinpoint Shot

Score one for the Arissen!

Melín grinned as the all-clear whistle died away across the sunblast air. There was nothing more satisfying than walking away from a field with a cold weapon—the grain loaded, the firefighters and harvesters safe, and not a single shot fired.

The shadeline drew cool over her skin. She waved away a cloud of tiny insects, wiped sweat from her lip, and entered the overforested zone.

This place never got less incredible. The ancient bark-trees had trunks broader than a city street, roots that wrestled through the dirt, and massive arms that sheltered her from the gulf of sky. The shinca trees had silvery-bright cylindrical trunks as smooth as glass, rootless feet, and slender branches. The birds fluttered and bickered in tangles of bushes. The flowers burst with sudden scents. It had, maybe, rightness?

Peace. That was the word—but not a peace that belonged to people.

A wysp winked past at knee level, splashing shadows among the bushes and vines it passed through. Aimless, and harmless: agitation-level zero. For now.

That was why she carried a weapon of war.

The rust-red tent of headquarters was a beacon in the green: small, but strategically placed. Behind the door-flap, the radio officers sat to one side with their steel desk of maps and equipment, coordinating the field teams.

“Specialist First Melín reporting to Captain for reassignment,” she said, to the officer who had his headphones pushed back off one ear.

“Confirmed, Specialist. You’re scheduled for a break.”

Already? “Understood, sir.”

“Captain wants to talk to you. Report to her first.”

“Yes, sir.”

From the coordinators’ desk, a bundle of electrical cords ran across and down a tumble of stones into a cave opening. Melín boot-stepped down stone to stone beside it, then ducked into the tunnel and jogged deeper until it opened up.

The Division had used this cave pocket for upwards of eighty years, because everybody preferred underground, and because it saved on equipment-hauling. The large inside space was warm and bright at all hours and in all seasons, because the trunk of a shinca tree passed straight through its center. This did have drawbacks: shinca trees attracted and absorbed energy, so you couldn’t store weapons in here for any length of time or their batteries would drain. And it was too bright to take a nap.

Captain Keyt was at her desk, earphone in one ear. She had evenly sunmarked skin and a scar where her right eye used to be. Her left eye was busy over maps and schedules.

Melín saluted, a chop of her right hand to her left shoulder. “Specialist First Melín, reporting as requested, sir.”

“Thank you, Specialist.” Captain didn’t stand. She kept a folding chair on the side of her desk that she could keep her eye on; she glanced over at the man sitting in it. “Someone’s here to speak to you. Won’t tell me what it’s about.” She glanced up meaningfully. “He’s been waiting a couple of hours.”

Oh boy. This man had never seen surface duty in his life: overly stiff with knees and heels together, external sun lenses held awkwardly in his fingers, not a single sunmark on his skin. He stood up like police—and with just a bit of edge to him, something to prove. Definitely not a Cohort First.

“Yes, sir,” Melín said.

“Third Solnis,” said Captain Keyt, “you have four minutes. Then I need Specialist Melín to report back to me.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said.

“First, I gotta set this thing down,” said Melín. She headed past the shinca and through the tunnel to the weapons room. Here, the weapons racks were shielded from the shinca by a thick wall of rock; Specialist weapons were first inside the door. She slung the bolt rifle off her shoulder—finally!—and slotted it into the charger.

The weapons officer posted at the rack called, “Nush, check!” His tunnel-hound lolloped over, running its broad, electrosensitive snout over the weapons on the shelf before giving a musical yelp. The officer rewarded it with a treat.

“Quite a weapon,” Third Solnis said.

Melín glanced at him. Gods. Save me from police attitude. If Solnis ever made Division, he’d probably be one of those guys that tried to mark particular weapons as their own. She shrugged. “It is what it is.” She whistled to Nush, and crouched down to scrub the hound’s velvety, eyeless head between her hands.

“I’d think you might have more respect for it, seeing as you’re the pinpoint shot of the Division.”

Melín laughed out loud. “Is that why you wanted to talk to me?” The hound wriggled with excitement and draped its forepaws over her knee, so she crooned to it. “He thinks I’m the pinpoint shot of the Division, yes he does.”

“I’m not known for getting bad information.”

“He’s not known for getting bad information, Nush, no he’s not.” She shot a look at Solnis. “You talk like an Imbati.” She winked at the weapons officers. “Doesn’t he, seni?” Both of them laughed, and Solnis reddened.

“There’s no need to insult me.”

There was no need for him to stand around and be insulted, either. Just like there was no need for him to wait around under Captain’s eye for a couple of hours. He wanted something. Melín stood up.

“If you want the pinpoint shot of the Division, go talk to Sixth Elovin. You should know, though, he got demoted off the Specialist team because he took a perfectly accurate shot at the perfectly wrong time, and got five people killed. Those things—” She waved at the bolt rifles. “A bolt rifle’s a tool for one job. In the wrong hands, it’s worth less than my ass.” She enjoyed the look on the weapons officers’ faces; they weren’t the only ones who appreciated her ass. “Come to me when you want the top Wysp Specialist of the Division.”

“I want the top Wysp Specialist of the Division.”

He sure was persistent. “What for?”

“This team I’m a part of, we recently . . . lost a member. We appreciate people with your skills.”

“You might have noticed I already have a job.”

“Oh, I’m not trying to poach you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Mai’s eye sees you, seni.”

“No, no. This is more of a . . . a contracting position. You might appreciate the extra pay.”

“I got two words for you,” Melín said. In one motion, she reached over her shoulder, drew her Division blade from its sheath across her back, and touched its narrow, curved tip to the end of his nose. “My. Ass.”

To the laughter of the weapons officers, she smirked and returned the blade to its sheath. Third Solnis reddened and left in a hurry. Melín sauntered until she reached the room where Captain was sitting, then resumed her professional gait. She waited until Captain’s eye came to her.

“Captain, Third Solnis was trying to offer me a second job.”

“Was he, now?”

“Yes, sir. Somehow, he’d heard I was a good shot. I refused, though, sir. I’m ready for my next assignment.”

Captain Keyt regarded her levelly. “What is the most important skill of a Specialist?”

That was Specialist training question number one. “Good judgment, sir.”

“Exactly. I appreciate that you never forget that. You’ve been a positive influence on the other Specialists in your cohort. If you began giving some hours to training new candidates for Specialist, you’d provide great benefit to my cohorts, and to the whole Division.”

“Sir?”

“Specialist Melín, I’m offering to promote you to Captain’s Hand. I want an instructor who can give our Specialists the perspective they need.”

“Captain, thank you, sir. But no, thank you.”

Captain Keyt studied her face. “Are you sure I can’t convince you, Specialist?”

“Sir.” Her throat felt dry. “I’m honored that you feel I’d be a good instructor. I’d be happy to volunteer hours when I’m not on duty.”

“But you don’t want to be taken off the fields.”

Melín stood to attention. “Thank you for understanding, sir.”

Captain sighed. “I hope you’ll—” She straightened suddenly, one hand to her earphone and fire in her eye. “Specialist, wysp emergency, field three.”

“Thank you, sir. Up and out!” Melín ducked through into the weapons room, snatched a fully charged bolt rifle from the upper shelf, and slung it over her shoulder. She ran through the tunnels and up the tumble of stones. Once she was clear, she drew her blade. She had the field map in her gut at this point; field three wasn’t far.

She ran, slashing obstructing vegetation, crushing grass and soft moss. The access path swerved around giant trees, through a thicket, and around a mountain of thorn bushes.

A whistle-signal reached her first: wysp emergency/active measures. Then smoke—thin, but who knew what that meant with the wind so uncertain. Sunblast began to pierce the forest, patches growing larger and brighter from up ahead. She sheathed her blade, dragged her bolt rifle to ready, and broke out beneath a pond of open sky.

Plis’ bones.

Ten wysps were within shooting range: seven sparks whirled in a vortex at agitation-level three; two stood at agitation-level four, jittering close to each other straight ahead where the field had been cut. Closer by and extending to the right, uncut dense green rippled in the breeze like a pool of waist-deep water. Gnash it, a paper field—because of course it was. Like that trash was worth people’s lives.

Six people stood in blast range. She was just outside it, but still close enough that a blast would get her burned. She jogged farther along the field’s edge, turned, reassessed.

Closest by were two Division wysp-spotters, and four Venorai farmers in thick leather castemark belts, one sitting at the controls of a harvester machine. He’d have cut its power when the first whistle blew, as would the driver of the cargo floater behind it. There, another team of four Venorai had been stacking bales.

Thin strands of white smoke blew across the air. That would be a lure-fire—part of the active measures—which meant a team of three firefighters also in danger. Possibly more if this turned into a wysp attack.

The jitter of the two wysps intensified. The vortex above them spun faster, and one sank into the bottom group, jittering also.

Where was the Specialist assigned to this field?

Melín breathed deep, but a whistle shriek—Specialist fire—sounded from her right before she could set her lips to the whistle at the shoulder of her uniform. Field teams awoke from their paralysis as if by electric shock, and bolted for the forest wall. She gritted her teeth in anticipation, but kept her eyes wide open.

Zzzap!

No explosion. Green paper leaves fluttered in the breeze. The last straggler reached the forest wall.

But she’d heard the shot, seen the energy bolt flash . . . She blinked, finding the bolt’s doomed path fading in the back of her eye: it had veered off and vanished.

Varin’s teeth—a shinca tree had caught it.

She searched, and found the shinca hidden on the far side of the field, where narrow bark-trees presented like a row of sentinels. The shinca’s bole was broad, which accounted for its reach. The sunblast came from that direction, too, but she should have known sun alone wouldn’t outline trees so sharply.

The wysps changed, snapping her attention back to the field. Provoked by the shot, one expanded to the size of her fist. It crackled loudly and started to move closer, clenching her in uncomfortable places.

All right, you.

Melín blew her whistle and brought her rifle up; adjusting for the shinca’s pull, she fired three times.

CRA-CRA-CRACK!

She dropped face-down, but the wysp had closed too much distance; the edge of the explosion singed her nose-to-chin where her helmet’s brim couldn’t block it. The tips of her ears screamed with pain. Varin’s teeth! She quickly leapt up again. Oven air—nearby sections of the field had caught fire. A Division firefighting team dashed in from the right, spraying foam from backpack-tanks to prevent the fire from drawing more wysps. A Venorai wysp lurer with blotchy brown sunmarks on her arms walked along the field’s edge. Enough wysps followed her that the vortex dispersed.

Thank Heile. But at the edge of the fire zone, a patch of plants shuddered.

Trouble. Someone down.

Melín ran forward. It was the other Specialist, writhing and whimpering on the ground, hands over his face. She whistled the call for medic and crouched down, pouring water from her bottle over his face and hands. Gnash it, gnash it—she knew what that felt like. How bad were the burns? You idiot, why didn’t you heed my whistle warning?

But she knew why—trying for a better shot in case she missed. Better one soldier down than fifteen killed by rogue wysps.

A field wasn’t something you could afford to lose.