Allie's War Episodes 1-4(94)

Terian even swears he’s felt Dehgoies masturbate...although he can’t be certain of something that specific, of course. Not from outside the construct’s walls.
This feels different.
The images stabilize, enfolded by whoever is currently tasked with monitoring the construct walls. Terian already knows that whoever that person is...it is not Dehgoies.
An old steam engine floats by, whispers of blood and illness, and then back to water and night, ice and mountains, eagles winging silently over cold waves and tastes of Asia and even flickers of Germany and the war, South America and the United States, Russia and the Ukraine.
Withdrawing more of his consciousness from the Barrier, Terian pinpoints the new flavor again, rolling it over his tongue, so to speak, as his light acquaints him with the difference it carries, making sure he understands what it means.
Once he is sure, he snaps out entirely...
...and his blue eyes focused on polished wood.
Alone in the fireplace-heated room, he laughed aloud.
The raw flavor of sex was a new development, clearly.
It could be one of the other seers, of course, but the impact it had on the construct made Terian doubt that very much. No, it had to be the Bridge...or Dehgoies himself.
Probably both of them.
Which meant, first and foremost, that Dehgoies had been uncharacteristically restrained with her. Terian couldn’t help but wonder why. In any case, it was almost a pity he would have to interrupt them so early in their little courtship ritual. If Terian had more information from behind those construct walls, he might choose not to, given the option.
After all, nothing was more vulnerable than a seer in the first stage of a mating ritual. As it was, Terian strongly suspected they had not yet consummated. Likely because Dehgoies did not wish to be that vulnerable, either.
Still, Terian wondered if there was more to it.
Terian had flown several of his bodies to this base in Alaska, to be on the waiting end of their slow excursion through the inside passage up the Canadian coast. Most cruises took a week to make the journey north to Anchorage. Likely to throw them off, Dehgoies and the Bridge followed a route that spent nearly a month on the coasts of the United States and Canada before entering the open seas for Russia. Terian had examined the route carefully, of course, as soon as he knew which ship they would take.
He would take them then, he’d decided...as soon as they had no place left to run.
Once the ship left the shores of Alaska and entered the open ocean, Terian’s people would move on the Seven’s Guard, and then on to Dehgoies and the Bridge.
Which meant they needed to be in place well before.
Despite his careful planning, though, Terian was growing impatient.
Given all the movement in the Pyramid of late, he feared Galaith might be angling another of his squadrons into place to make the collar on the Bridge.
Terian knew how things worked.
One minute your team led a key op. The next, it was relegated to clean up duty. A security mechanism in part, the changes often had a mechanical component, built into the fabric of the Pyramid itself. The rotating tiers formed the primary defense that secured Galaith’s position as Head, by keeping all of the tiers below him in constant flux, and thus all of Galaith’s potential successors in flux, too. Despite the mechanical aspect of the rotating hierarchy, however, Terian happened to know that Galaith still had discretionary control at the top.
Terian would only be pulled if Galaith let it happen.
But Terian didn’t trust Galaith anymore.
In fact, Terian had been getting the feeling for awhile now that the boss wanted to put some distance between himself and Dehgoies...maybe even between himself and the Bridge, too. Maybe Galaith thought he’d pull a stunt like Dehgoies had, try to tie the Bridge to him by gaining access to a more intimate level of her light.
In any case, Galaith had grown secretive again, telling Terian next to nothing about his overall plan. He’d been stalling on the final approach for weeks now. It almost seemed like he wanted Dehgoies and the Bridge to remain free awhile longer.
Terian knew he would never know if he’d been sidelined, either.
All he could do was run his own secondary op, and ignore the edicts from above if they seemed to pull him further and further away from the center of the action.#p#分页标题#e#
He wasn’t just any second tier aspirant.
In fact, Terian was pretty sick of being second-tier altogether.
The Org would have grabbed Dehgoies years ago if Terian had been in charge, not left him in the Seven to rot. Terian would have done for his friend what he hoped Dehgoies would once have done for him—help him see reason. Help him realize the depth of his mistake, and that it wasn’t too late to make things right.