“Is it so hard to imagine a reality where there may be a force field guarding you?” Carlee asked, taking even this chance to educate him. Training had always been her third favorite part of being a vagrant, after helping people and being able to see happy possibilities.
“I’m not sure I could press fast enough,” Jeff admitted.
“Have an idea of what you are going to press before you need to fully form that connection. It’ll help you do it in time. What about a reality where the space the bullets are occupying is taken by something much less sinister, like a flower?”
“You can turn bullets into flowers even as they are about to kill you?”
“Right before they kill you,” Stefani said. “For most of us, we have to be pretty close to what we are pressing.”
“That sounds insane,” Jeff said. “Even for you two.”
“Give it a try,” Stefani said, her voice back to the hyperaware, impending-danger tone she switched on whenever things got tense. Carlee had always found it comforting for some reason. “But maybe not today. Dodge or use a force field.”
Carlee stopped when they stood just fifteen feet from the wall. There were dozens of guns focused on them from on top of the wall, but it wasn’t enough to concern her. She glanced down the line to see Jeff studying the guards profusely as he fidgeted nervously. It reminded her of her first few missions with the vagrants; even with Bobby by her side, she had been scared. Stefani looked bored.
“We come in peace,” Carlee shouted loud enough for everyone to hear. She lowered her hood, cutting herself off from the fortress, but she hoped to make herself appear more human to the frightened men. Some shouting happened in response, and the wailing sirens in the background stopped.
“Ya’ll brought lots of guns for peace,” a man with graying whiskers shouted back at them from the top of their fortifications.
“We weren’t the ones to open fire,” Carlee said. She tried to disarm them with her voice, but they didn’t lower their guns. It was rarely that easy.
“We didn’t send any invitations. Ya’ll are trespassing.”
“We wish to speak to your mayor or leader,” Carlee said. “There’s no need for us to come inside your walls. We will wait here.”
“We’ll be doing our talking from here,” the man shouted. “And I’ll be the one you’ll be speaking with.”
“We could let ourselves in if we wanted.” Carlee gestured back to the fortress, its firepower clearly visible. “I understand that you don’t trust us or want us here, but I will speak to your mayor. One way or another.”
“Are you threatening me, girl? Ya’ll left your ship, and now I’ve got a hundred guns fixin’ to send ya on your way.”
“Even now, your men would be dead before they could fire,” Carlee said. It was a much stronger tone than she had ever used with civilians, but everyone listening was a potential recruit, and she wanted to project strength and confidence.
The men on the wall shuddered, and she checked behind her to see that the fortress’s massive forward guns had rotated to focus on them. Stefani had not lowered her hood. She didn’t worry about Stefani accidently blowing their little wall to pieces, but she didn’t like how this conversation was going.
The man started to laugh, a low, rolling crackle that built to a hearty howl. Stefani growled under breath, and Jeff looked to Carlee, concerned. This was hardly how she had hoped this mission would begin.
“I don’t know how ya’ll came about that fancy boat there, but as pretty as it may be, you won’t be extorting us today.”
There was a confidence in the man’s voice that couldn’t be faked. He didn’t fear the fortress, and Carlee couldn’t understand why. In her experience, most communities wilted at the sight of Stefani’s gun, let alone their fortress.
“I’m going to shoot him,” Stefani mumbled.
“Something’s not right,” Jeff said. He was right. The situation didn’t make sense. She didn’t have any insights from other realities warning her of danger, but she didn’t like this at all.
The man stopped his laugh, which had not spread to any of his fellow guards, and sneered down at them.
“We don’t get pushed around by anyone anymore. Darwin protects us.” Hearing that name triggered something in her; however, she wasn’t ready to give up.
“We should go,” Jeff whispered.
“I agree,” Stefani said.
“We came to help you protect yourself,” Carlee said. “We are going to leave crates of weapons, medicine, and supplies just behind us. These are yours, our gift to you.”
“What’s your game, girl? Bombs in the boxes? Some sort of modern-day Trojan horse?”
“In exchange, we demand two things of your leaders. The first being that none of these gifts are used for preemptive or offensive attacks. The second is that anyone who wants join us must be given the chance to become a vagrant.”
Her announcement sent ripples through the men on the wall. The only things that humans feared more than leeches and warlords were Apostles and vagrants. She prepared to press a shield in around them in case they decided to be foolish.
The whiskered man consulted with the men near him. But before they could answer, chills went down her spine as she sensed a glimpse of another reality.
“Oh, no . . .” Stefani said. Her voice announced in no uncertain terms that bad things were happening. Carlee focused on her friend, who was connected with the fortress through her hood. “There is an Apostle coming.”
34 FLIGHT
“SAVE YOURSELVES—THERE IS AN APOSTLE coming!” Carlee shouted before she started running for the fortress. Jeff didn’t hesitate as he sprinted after her. If Horus was coming back to finish off the communities he had spared last time, Jeff didn’t want to be anywhere nearby.
Jeff pulled his hood up while he ran, and he saw that the fortress was already well into the process of preparing to leave. The steps were far enough off the ground by the time Jeff reached them that he had to jump to make it. He held himself against the rails with his human arm while he reached back to pull Stefani aboard with his metal arm.
“Jeff, make sure the crates are off!” Carlee shouted as she raced to the controls.
He sprinted to the back of the fortress, where four giant crates of weapons and supplies were ready to be offloaded. Indicators and alarms were going off in his head, and he didn’t know what any of them meant, but he knew they couldn’t be good. He threw his body into the first crate and shoved it off the back of the transport. Before it even collided with the ground, he had pushed the next one off.
The fortress lurched forward, nearly sending Jeff falling off the back of the transport with the other two crates. He struggled to step forward against the air pressure until the force fields kicked in.
As soon as he regained his bearings, he followed the indicators, transmitted from his uniform hood, to where a blinking red light was growing rapidly in the sky. He didn’t need to read the information displayed to the side of the indicator to know that it was tracking a large source of temurim that was heading directly for them.
“Coming in hot!” Jeff shouted as he ran to the front of the ship, where Carlee was focused on the controls; Stefani was aiming her sniper rifle.
“It’s following us,” Stefani said. She held her gun up, putting her scope to her eye, and cursed. “We gotta go faster, Carl!”
“Working on it!” Carlee shouted back. The fortress ripped past fields and trees and over lakes, continually picking up speed as it fled from Townend. Jeff stared up at the marker in his enhanced vision in fear as it continued to close in on them.
“It’s almost in range,” Stefani said. Her finger rested on the trigger even though it wasn’t necessary. She had explained to him while they were near the ocean how the gun connected to her hood and allowed her to aim the gun perfectly—although she claimed she didn’t need the help.