Allie's War Episodes 1-4(121)

Chandre rounded the gun back on me.
“You too, Bridge! I would just as soon shoot you as well...dump your body right over the side. For all I know, you were in on it. For all I know, this is you starting your fucking war...”
Eliah laughed louder. “Are you crying over Dehgoies, too, my sweet, sweet, Chandre? I would never have guessed...”
“Eight of my people are dead! Three of them had mates, families. Dehgoies at least carried the karma of such a death...that and a hundred times over...”
I stared at the other woman, feeling her grief, her anger, even her fear. I wondered at her ability to feel so much. My own body felt like stone.
I couldn’t see through the light in my eyes but the woman’s outline shone there anyway, a shadow with two hands gripping a desert eagle I recognized from a different set of long, white fingers. Chandre took another threatening step in our direction, stopping when I didn’t react, or change expression.
After a pause, she exhaled, pointing the gun at Eliah without taking her eyes off mine.
“Gods,” she said to me. “You’re even starting to look like him.”
Under my feet, the deck trembled, just before I heard a hollow booming sound that shook the metal.
Eliah lost his balance on the edge of the doorway.
I saw my chance.
Without thinking, I lunged towards him, helping gravity and the shaking metal under our feet along.
It didn’t take much. He’d been standing too close to the rim.
Before I could think about what I’d done, he was falling, and I tumbled with him, tangled in his limbs. I groped backwards for the metal chain...but it slipped through my fingers, leaving a hovering instant where it occurred to me I wouldn’t be able to get free of him.
I plummeted through freezing wind and spray. I was sure I would die in those few seconds it took to fall, numb to everything but his hands on me and the deafening roar of water.
I hit the dark surface and it was like being thrown into a wood-chipper.
Tossed downwards, Eliah and I were ripped apart.
I felt his hands clench then leave my skin. A curl of wake threw me upwards and I surfaced, gasping.
Not far from me, another body slammed into the water. Then another.
I fought to keep my head above the white foam.
My leg hurt so badly I could barely force myself to breathe. Next to me, a dark head surfaced, and I began backing away, using my arms. I recognized Chandre, braids plastered to her head. Another head breached next to hers. In confusion, I stared at the face of another of the Seven’s Guard that I recognized.
I tried to paddle backwards, but I could barely stay afloat; my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I looked down the lines of the ship at the ship’s wake and saw what looked like another person, their face white above dark water. I watched the body struggle against the current, sucking downwards towards the lower stern and the propellers...
“You’re fucking crazy, Bridge!” Chandre yelled.
I tried to work my arms faster, to get away from her, but Chandre swam after me, groping for my limbs. “Bridge! It’s okay! It’s okay, Bridge!” Once she had ahold of me, her eyes followed the body caught in the ship’s wake.
“He’s gone!” she shouted above the spray. “You killed him!”
“Are you going to kill me?” I said.
“No,” she said, spitting water. Unbelievably, she smiled. “No, Bridge. You won’t be dying today. I wouldn’t kill the mate of the man who exacted the only revenge anyone on my team got against those bastards. And anyway, if you’d been working for him, I don’t think you would have wanted him dead so badly.”
Hearing her words, I looked up the steep sides of the ship, and my throat closed. I looked down at my hand. Somehow I still clutched the ring.
...15, 2, 1, 111, 99, 3326, 1, 42, 47, 15, 15, 12, 996, 651, 222, 231, 244, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 27, 13, 15, 15, 21, 66, 24, 89, 97...
At that exact moment, the sky caught on fire.



The explosion flared out of darkness.
It blew back the nearest of the helicopters, causing it to careen into the one flying alongside it. The propeller clipped the vehicle’s hull, splintered like dry kindling.
Galaith watched in a kind of slow fascination as the bird in front of him fell in a nearly straight line, breaking apart as it slammed the dark water.
The booming from the ship continued.
Shock waves from the second explosion reached the part of sky where Galaith’s larger transport helicopter maintained a safe distance. It shook the metal under his legs, forcing the pilot of the craft to compensate. A third explosion rattled the glass. Galaith heard his own pilot curse through his microphone, forgetting himself momentarily as he leaned on the cyclic, moving them sideways below the cloud deck.