Ki had already been awake when the attack started.

She didn’t know exactly what had woken her—some small sound surely, but when she opened her eyes everything was quiet and all the recruits were peacefully sleeping in their bunks. She should have rolled over and gone back to bed—sleep was scarce in the militia, and especially while they were traveling the soldiers were greedy for any of it they could get—but for whatever reason, something had compelled her to get up and go outside. Maybe it was thirst, maybe something else.

On the way to the water rations, she saw the first dead soldier. At any one time, there were a few on guard duty, and the recruits took different watches throughout the night. Upon seeing the crumpled, smoldering form dressed in Tinaria’s faded red uniform, she instantly knew that an attack was underway, and if this guard was killed all the others probably were as well.

She didn’t have time to call out though, because that was exactly the moment there was an explosion in the munitions

It must have been scarcely twenty seconds later that she found herself in the midst of a frantic standoff between the surviving recruits and whoever was advancing on them from the cover of the woods. It seemed that most of the threat was coming from a northeast direction, but it was hard to tell. Glitz was erupting everywhere, and the brightness of the blasts made it difficult to see anything in the surrounding darkness. Ki had got her hands on a functional glitzer and was holding formation as best she could with a small group of recruits. There was a lot of running around and shouting but the one voice no one could hear was Commander Genys’.

“Hold the line!” someone shouted. Ki sent a few shots of glitz into the trees and for a moment the shots illuminated figures on the edge of the meadow, but as far as how many there were was still unclear.

“Where’s the commander?” someone else shouted.

“Follow your individual platoon leads,” someone else called back. “Stick to rank authority until we find her!”

Ki couldn’t tell which leads were still with them, if any. Her’s certainly was nowhere to be found. It was an Ullulian in his late thirties named Jik.

Jik was a friend of her father's, and he was also important because she happened to know that he was in on a certain secret. It was the same secret she had approached that strange man Jaak about the day before. Wherever Jik was, she needed to find him. There could be others in the squadron involved or connected in some way to the resistance, but she wouldn’t know who any of them were. Jik would. As she sprinted from her hiding place a blast of purple glitz tore through the air behind her.

Who’s doing this? Raiders are rare nowadays even up in the pass. They’d never come this far down unless something had pushed them out of the mountains. It can’t be the Yarvan resistance. They know some of us are sympathizers.

“It’s not us,” said a voice suddenly from beside her. She turned to see Jik crouched down behind a line of metal rations containers. Even in the low light, she could see he was badly burned.

“You were near the explosion?” she asked.

Jik nodded. “Others got it worse though.” He cocked his head toward the trees. “This isn’t us. It can’t be. I’d have heard of any attacks planned.”

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Ki nodded. “I hadn’t heard anything either. But raiders this far down from the passes?”

“Unlikely,” Jik said, motioning for Ki to join him behind the containers. Just as she did, another flurry of glitz sliced the air.

Something else is going on,” Jik said, peeking over the containers and taking aim. “If the only two options we can think of seem too unlikely it usually means there’s a third option that makes more sense, and sometimes it means it’s a third option we aren’t aware of at all.”

“You sound like my father when you say that,” Ki said.

“One of many lessons he passed on from a lifetime of fighting,” Jik said, blasting off a round of glitz into the trees.

Ki looked toward the opposite side of the meadow, into the dark forest behind the line of barracks tents. No shots were coming from that direction, but there was an ominous sort of feeling emanating from the trees and it had nothing to do with the current battle. The forests in the foothills of the Mountains of Athe had a reputation—one that wasn't well-known in Tinaria, but one that she had grown up hearing about. If the truth was anything like that reputation, she wasn't too eager to go jaunting through those trees at night.

But those were just childhood fears. There was no time for that sort of thing now. Ki did her best to push away the thoughts and turned back to Jik.

“Do we make a run for it?” she asked. “They’ll think we died in the explosion.” A flurry of glitzer blasts punched into the crates they were using as cover, forcing them both to duck again. After the shots ceased they both popped back up over the top of the metal crates and fired back. Ki had to slap out a bit of flaming glitz that was eating through the metal container. “They’re using high-end ammo.”

“If we go now we won’t have access to any information on the inside,” Jik said. “We’ll never know the real reason Genys is taking us to Ullulia.”

“Yes, but also the others could use what information we’ve already gathered,” Ki insisted. “And we may not get an opportunity as good as this one again.”

Jik seemed to make a hundred calculations in his head before turning to her and nodding. “You’re right. That’s very true. You should go.”

“I should go?”

“Yes.”

Ki shook her head. “Splitting up was not part of our instructions. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite of them.”

“Yeah well,” Jik motioned to the ongoing glitzfight. “This isn’t exactly going according to plan, is it? Desperate times hunger for improvisation.”

“My father used to say that?”

Jik shook his head. “That one’s mine.”

Ki didn’t say anything. She just monitored the perimeter and took a few more shots into the trees. After a moment it seemed like the return fire was lessening.

“You already know it’s the right thing to do,” Jik said.

Ki set her gun down and squatted behind the containers. “Yeah. I know.” she looked out at the foreboding forest on the opposite side of the clearing again. “I was just hoping you’d change your mind.” She took one more deep breath and prepared herself for the sprint. Just before she leapt up Jik held up a hand to stop her.

“You know who you should find,” he said, not taking his eyes off the enemies in the trees. “Jaak.”

“The one from Earth?” Ki said incredulously. “You asked me to talk to him and I did. He’s out.”

“Try him again,” Jik said. “and the little one Orf too.”

“I thought I’m supposed to be escaping.”

“You are, but so are they. I saw them take to the woods,” Jik fired off a few more shots until his glitz was depleted and the small compartment popped open on his glitzer. He quickly loaded another orb and clicked it back into place before looking back up at Ki. “I think you should go find them."

Not long after that Ki was very alone, and everything was also very quiet.

It was impressive just how dark the forest could be.