“Are there any?” Enoa sounded more articulate in her mind. Were there any Liberty Corps officers left alive after the destruction of the War Force? Were there any leaders who could reach her across the desert? She couldn’t manage that many words. She wondered if the strain of maintaining the fog while confronting this man could be seen on her face.
“There are enough,” the man said. “They’ll find you if I show them. I’m guessing if something happened to you that smoke would go away, and without it, this battle turns around. The War Force has too many guns. These hermits and farmers can’t fight a regiment without your Shaper magic.”
“You’re Liberty Corps too.”
He hadn’t said as much, but how else would he have the necessary communications equipment to contact the troops in the road?
Enoa’s mental focus slipped. It was as if she held water in cupped hands and her fingers parted. She tightened her resolve and found control again, but some of the fog slipped away, evaporated into the dry air.
“I never worked for Sloan,” the man said. “Hell, I really like Littlefield. There are good people living down there. I don’t want the town to get demolished just so some middle manager-type can role-play as a General. But the Dreamside Road needs responsible leadership. I need your key.”
“Sloan is dead.” Enoa pointed her staff at the man. “You will never have my key. It is my birthright. The Liberty Corps destroyed my home. It will take nothing else from me or my family. Never!”
“You’re not giving me much choice.” The man wiggled the hand holding the device. “You’re not going to…”
He stopped speaking, but didn’t close his mouth. He stared at Enoa – no, past her and her water trucks. The man was looking at something further along the incline.
Enoa risked a glance over her shoulder.
She didn’t know what she was looking at, her mind too sluggish to handle the absurd apparition that ran toward them.
The newcomer wore a long, billowing garment that flared all around him, as he moved. The person was carrying multiple bags. Heavy straps fell across the stranger’s shoulders.
The newcomer also wore an astronaut helmet. It was oddly familiar and the sight of it tickled at something in the back of Enoa’s memory, but she couldn’t understand the recollection. Her confusion doubled when the newcomer shouted. Captain Maros’s muffled voice came from the astronaut helmet.
“Agent Racz!” he yelled. “Stand down, Agent Racz! Stand down! We’re leaving. We’re leaving now!”
“YOU!” Enoa released the fog for the second time. She didn’t think or plan. Her already divided mind shifted from one Shaping task to another. If Maros had made the mistake of following her again, she would remind him of her power.
But then she remembered herself. She couldn’t abandon Littlefield’s defenses, not to confront her personal enemies. While her energy shield still protected her from high-speed projectiles, she could not let up with the fog. She took new control of the shroud over the road.
“I’m so sorry.” Maros removed the helmet. His eyes were wide, his face dirty, his hair released from its bun. “Miss Cloud, I’m sorry for everything…”
“I should have known you would be here.” She was surprised how loud her voice was. She was surprised by its strength and the strength of her mind, strong enough to hold onto the fog while speaking. She swung her staff to point at his face. “Do you go everywhere the Liberty Corps destroys someone’s home, or were you following Orson and me?”
“No!” Maros raised both hands. He came no closer. “It was all a mistake. I need…”
“Captain.” The man who had threatened Enoa, Agent Racz, interrupted Maros. “I have this…”
“Shut up!” Enoa yelled. Maros yelled the same words, only a second later.
“You will pay for what you did to me.” Enoa didn’t want to hear him speak. The sound of his voice brought back the image of smoke rising above the Nimauk Valley and her own helpless desperation and impotent rage. She couldn’t afford to feel that. She couldn’t let herself return to that emotional place, not with Littlefield depending on her abilities.
“You will pay for the Liberty Corps,” she said. “When the Pacific Alliance gets here, I’ll give you to them. We’re so far away from my home, but at least you’ll face justice for trying to destroy Littlefield.”
“I saved Littlefield!” Maros screamed the words. “I sent the warning. Please. Let me speak. Let me speak!” He began to walk. He took careful steps. He walked far around her and her trucks, like he was truly headed toward Racz. Enoa followed him with her staff.
“I sent the telegram that warned Captain Gregory and the town,” Maros said.
“What?” Racz turned fully away from Enoa and faced his Captain. “What the…”
“Not now, Agent Racz!” Maros didn’t look at the other man. He kept his eyes on Enoa. “I couldn’t let Sloan destroy Littlefield. I couldn’t let those people die. I joined the Liberty Corps to protect people and…”
“I don’t believe you!” Enoa couldn’t contain herself anymore. Just remembering Maros existed reminded her of her rage, the same anger that had aided her first Shaping. But seeing him, hearing his voice was too much for her to bear.
“You were protecting me when you burned my home? Is that right? You were protecting Nimauk when you took the festival guests prisoner or when you took Sheriff Webster prisoner or when you helped Tucker or…”
“I was wrong!” Maros yelled. “I was wrong. I was wrong for years. I thought the Liberty Corps was the way to fix the world, so we could all be safe again. I thought finding the Dreamside Road was stopping a second Thunderworks. I thought of your aunt as a traitor. I never thought about you, at all, but I’ve seen the world since then. I’ve lost my own home since then. I did everything I could do to stop Sloan today. The telegram was accurate, wasn’t it? Why would I lie to you now? What could my purpose be? I gave everything to you, all the numbers, the railgun, Nine-flails. I’m so sorry, and I will never repay…”
Enoa missed the last words Maros spoke. The sound of his voice was drowned out by an explosion. Seventeen iron projectiles, all the size of railroad spikes, drummed against her low-power energy field, until it overloaded. An eighteenth spike took her in the cloak, in the armor Orson had lent her. The strange metal held, but the strike threw her to the ground. The staff slipped from her grip and fell. It rolled toward the water trucks.
Enoa also lost her grip on the fog. This time she couldn’t reclaim it.
More iron spikes flew into her water trucks, puncturing the tankers, sending the water running out onto the dirt. Enoa tried to wield her focused rage. She found only panic in its place. Her staff lay out of reach, behind the trucks, in a pool of the water.
Four figures in white Liberty Corps officer armor ran along the hillside. They all held weapons – spears and axes. A hovering cart with a block of iron floated between them. Their armor and blades were bloody. Two of them pointed spears at her. The others faced Maros and Racz.
“Captain Kolben Maros.” One of the Liberty Corps officers, a woman, approached Maros. She held a long polearm weapon with a complicated blade on its tip. “You are under arrest for treason and dereliction of duty and…”
“We were wrong, Brielle.” Maros called to the woman. “We were so, so wrong. Sloan was corrupt. He was everything that caused the end of the old world. The forces he called here weren’t soldiers. They were butchers and murderers.”
“You may refer to me as Major Rinlee,” the woman said.
“We need to kill him here, Rinlee,” one of the other officers said. He stood beside the woman. “The procedure is very clear. We heard his own admission of guilt. There is no reason to take him into custody.”
“He can be an example to others,” the woman, Rinlee, said. “We’re leaving here in my transport, Major Waldyn. While that remains the case…”
“Without the Partizan,” the male officer, Waldyn, said. “Any other vehicle you control is general requisitions and is not permanently under your jurisdiction.”
Enoa snuck a glance at the other two Shapers. Both watched the argument. No one was looking at her.
She crawled on her belly. She moved without raising herself from the dirt, across the ground, toward the rear of the nearest truck, where her staff waited for her.
“We’re not discussing this,” Rinlee replied.
“We were all wrong, Brielle,” Maros said. “Deep down, you must know it. You have to know that we are building the new world on the graves of innocent people. You must…”
“I’ll do it,” Waldyn said. “I can perform the execution, Rinlee. Your intimate history with Mr. Maros is clouding your judgment. Given this unique circumstance, I am assuming command. He has earned his death.”
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Enoa reached the wet ground, where the pooling water siphoned from the truck. Her hands slipped through the mud, her fingers sliding into the slimy muck, all the way over the backs of her hands.
“Don’t move!” One of the officers screamed. Enoa stopped crawling. She was only an arm’s length from her staff. If she’d mastered the Bullet Rain, she could fight off everyone, without it. “Stay where you are!” She heard footsteps approach.
No! She needed her staff. She needed to fight them off before she could summon the fog again.
Distantly, she could still hear gunfire and shouts and explosions. She could feel her fog thinning, dissipating to a morning mist. How many would die because she’d been interrupted?
“We arrest Maros.” Rinlee stepped in front of Waldyn. “I said we’re not discussing it.”
Enoa could not risk reaching for the staff, but if she could focus on the moisture, on the water, could she move the weapon back to her? Could she slide the weapon across the mud?
She took control of the liquid that poured from the truck. She stopped it from leeching into the soil. She forced it to pool under the staff. The footsteps came closer.
“I won’t fight you, Brielle,” Maros said. “But you have to know there is no justice in the Liberty Corps. If no one could challenge Sloan’s butchery, there is no law worth saving, not with them.”
“With them?” Rinlee’s cool command slipped. Her voice rose. She infused those two words with a manic edge.
Enoa stopped struggling with the water when Maros screamed. This was agony she heard, the instinctual reaction to sudden pain, pain enough to overwhelm the senses.
Enoa turned back to the confrontation. A spear protruded from Maros’s shoulder. He collapsed. She didn’t know whether Waldyn had aimed to wound only, or if Maros had partially-succeeded in dodging.
But Waldyn failed to dodge. Agent Racz drew a revolver and fired it, without threat or warning. He sent a bullet directly into Waldyn’s unarmored throat. Then he aimed his revolver at Rinlee.
Waldyn released a squelching gurgle and crumpled into the dirt.
“You’ve signed your own death sentence.” Major Rinlee aimed her spear toward Racz. “Choosing your friend over the Corps. Choosing conspiracy over the Corps. Killing a superior officer. Murder.”
“Kol’s the best of us, Brielle,” Racz said. “We both know it. No one is more loyal than him. If he turned his back on the Liberty Corps, I trust him. You and me, we’re just survivors, but Kol’s a good person. I’m taking him away from here, and I will kill you too if you try to stop me. Don’t make me.”
“You’re not quick enough to survive killing me, Mr. Racz,” Rinlee said.
“Same goes for you,” Racz said. “You spent months on your floating nails, but a gun works just as well. And don’t forget, I can easily turn my transponder into an S.O.S. that’ll call Gregory. Let him know you’re a threat to Cloud, and he’ll have you in a dozen pieces. He killed Nine-flails. What chance have you got?”
Maros moaned. There was something childlike about the sound, so desperate that Enoa forgot her hatred. She looked across the earth toward him, her contemporary, facing death for aiding Littlefield.
But then she heard one of the Liberty Corps officers take another step toward her. If she was going to have any chance, it was now. She needed to fight now.
Enoa summoned her staff. The individual molecules of water flowed toward her, bringing the staff with it. She raised her head above the pooling liquid and closed her fingers around her aunt’s weapon. The warm thrill raced up her arm. The certainty of her own power returned with it.
“Drop the staff!” An officer screamed at her.
Enoa pulled her cloak shut and jumped to her feet. She saw clearly the officer who approached her. He ran, the floating cart of iron beside him.
A long metal spear peeled away from the block. It floated in the air, keeping pace with the officer as he charged.
The blade flew at Enoa. It met her staff and the explosion that bloomed from the tip. The projectile fell to the ground, misshapen slag.
“That used to be so hard to do.” Enoa smiled, sweetly. “But I’m pretty good at it now.”
“Cover Racz!” Rinlee yelled. The second of the unnamed officers raised his hands. Small pieces of iron floated around him, all aimed toward Racz.
“I’ve been hoping to meet you, Cloud.” Rinlee stepped away from Maros and Racz. She pointed her spear at Enoa.
“I’m busy right now,” Enoa said. “So I don’t really have any time to talk. If you plan on trying to hurt me, please go for it so I can beat you and get back to work.”
Major Rinlee threw her spear. Enoa expected it and struck it aside with another blast from the staff.
The officer who’d attacked Enoa before shaped himself a wall from the block of iron. He stood behind the barricade, out of sight.
Enoa had no time to savor her growing strength or wonder about her enemies’ maneuver. Rinlee’s spear throw was only a feint. The Major ran at her. The other woman shaped blades as she charged, throwing them at Enoa, alternating hands, a continuous barrage of iron.
Enoa felt a strange tingling at the nape of her neck, like she sensed a vibration outside the range of her hearing. Could she physically feel the Shaping of others?
Enoa blocked the first four knives with staff blasts, aided by her calm mind and the odd sensation. She’d found a rhythm to her explosions. When she’d blasted Maros, it had been instinct. Now, after weeks of daily training, she understood what she was feeling. She understood the strain of rapid transmutation. She understood the intense mental energy behind the combustion.
But each explosion weakened her. By the fourth blast, the knife was only redirected, rather than destroyed. When Rinlee threw a fifth blade, Enoa jumped out of the way. She fell again, to the dirt. She wished she’d started the martial arts portion of her self-defense training.
Rinlee stopped throwing knives. Was the mental metallurgy as tiring as Enoa’s own defense? The Major kept her eyes on Enoa but didn’t run toward her, instead aiming for the hovering cart.
The metal unfurled itself from the block in thin strips, like a spool of unraveling thread. The metal wrapped around Rinlee’s body, from her boots to her helmet, like some horror-movie mummy. But the metal solidified into a single mass of armor, like the full-body covering Daniel Tucker had performed in his battle with Orson.
The officer who had conjured the wall stepped from behind the barricade. He raised his hands. The remainder of their iron supply formed more walls. They planted themselves in the ground, segment-after-segment, surrounding Enoa. Major Rinlee stepped around the hovering cart, her face concealed. How could she see in there? How could she breathe?
“After what you did to Mr. Maros,” Rinlee said. “I thought you’d be a challenge, but you’re just a little girl.”
Needle-sized iron pieces flew free of Rinlee’s armor. A dozen of them launched out of the metal covering and sped at Enoa. The Anemos explosions – at least the ones she could wield – could not stop so many targets.
Enoa turned away from the barrage. The metal pummeled her cloak and the armor hidden inside it. The beautiful fabric of her parting gift from Nimauk tore where the iron struck it. She could feel the slivers moving inside the fabric, searching for a way in, searching for a way to reach her flesh.
Enoa backed away toward her trucks, until her shoes sloshed through the mud and pooling water. Should she run and abandon the trucks, abandon her attempt to create the fog? Rinlee’s needles could likely chase her down.
“What do the Nimauk believe in, Enoa Cloud?” Major Rinlee approached her. “Does your tribe believe in an afterlife? Will you see your aunt when I kill you?”
No, she couldn’t die, killed by the Liberty Corps, killed by the people who would rob her, people who would kill anyone, even their own.
When the next barrage came, Enoa braced herself. She called to the falling water, the liquid pooled at her feet, the sweat that beaded on her skin, to the slight moisture in the dry air. She called to Anemos and Aunt Sucora’s teachings. With her mind strong, she could wield a power to match Rinlee’s needles.
Enoa had learned enough to know her limits and avoid them. Now, she had no reason to fear exhaustion. She would either leave this place exhausted or dead. She lost herself in her breathing and left the fear behind her.
Enoa wielded the cycles of the world against Major Rinlee. She found her belief, her own personal belief, in her aunt’s teachings, in the strength that she had earned, in the ability granted to her by the universe.
The water from the truck and the air and her body poured at Rinlee. The water divided into drops, all of them launched at velocities near sound. All of them transmuted into gas, bursting in explosive heat against Major Rinlee’s armor.
The Major tried another iron volley, but all needles were all obliterated. She tried to form a larger spear, but her entire body was overwhelmed by the blasts of water.
The iron armor was torn apart, like a timelapse video of erosion. The explosive Anemos tore into the iron like locusts through a harvest or piranhas through meat. The iron was ripped to pieces.
All but one of the barricades the other officer had formed collapsed inward, cannibalized in the Major’s attempt to avoid the Bullet Rain.
The water tore through the iron as soon as Rinlee could form it. Even when the entire spare iron supply joined together to protect the Major – it still wasn’t enough.
Enoa turned the water into the barrage of an army, made the moisture of her own body into a weapon. The practiced, orderly Iron Shaping of the Liberty Corps had no counter for the ferocity of Sucora Cloud’s great technique.
Enoa felt herself fading away, an exhaustion so palpable it reached her even in her meditation, in the glade, far from harm and pain.
Agent Racz bought her a moment to think. Enoa heard the gunshot and the screaming, but she couldn’t place the sound. Her eyes could see the other Liberty Corps Shaper, the one who Rinlee had put on guard duty, collapse, unmoving to the ground. Her eyes saw the wall-building Shaper send two daggers flying at Racz.
Enoa’s eyes saw the daggers fail when they slammed into a glowing, blue wall, living energy, like her shield. But neither one of them had brought a shield device. Was it Shaping of some kind? She couldn’t tell. The tingling was constant from the ongoing strain of Rinlee’s technique.
When the light cleared, fading from opaque to translucent, her eyes could see the silhouettes of Maros and Racz, charging up the incline together, fleeing. The light followed them as they escaped.
Enoa’s eyes could see all of those things, but she couldn’t process the information. She couldn’t comprehend anything other than the immediate truth – Major Rinlee and the wall-builder had looked away from her. Their attention was gone.
Enoa sent a last blast of Bullet Rain at Major Rinlee. The other woman formed iron shields from the palms of her hands, but the Anemos bored through the gathering defense, chewing at the armor until it reached the Major’s flesh.
Rinlee screamed and ran. She sprinted away from the barrage, her armor still chipping away under the power of the Bullet Rain torrent.
The wall-builder sent his last wall, his last defense, sliding across the ground at Enoa. It was a desperate move, using his only shield as a projectile.
Enoa was so tired that the wall almost pinned her against the truck. She staggered out of the way. Her Bullet Rain ceased, her mind and will totally exhausted. The projectile wall slammed into the nearest water truck. The almost empty tanker rang like a bell when the iron struck it. The whole truck wobbled and Enoa thought it was about to topple over. One of its tires popped. Enoa jumped at the noise and looked toward it, but the truck had righted itself.
When Enoa turned her attention back to Major Rinlee, she and the wall-builder were both in the far distance. The builder was half-carrying the Major as they fled, on foot, away from the battle, into the desert.
Maros and Racz were already out of sight. Enoa was left alone with the bodies of the two Liberty Corps Shapers.
She almost collapsed. Her legs nearly gave out, as they had after her previous battles, with Maros and with Brett Nalrik. She kept her footing, but only barely. She knew exhaustion would soon take her. That was inevitable. She couldn’t resist for long.
Enoa had only one possible shelter with her mirage and energy shields depleted and her mind almost broken. She had just enough sense left to climb inside the cab of a water tanker.
Enoa had two thoughts. Hide. Rest. Hide. Rest.
She hid and used the last of her strength to close and lock the cab door behind her. She lay across the bucket seats, but before she rested, she had a third and final thought.
Captain Maros had betrayed the Liberty Corps. The man who had destroyed her home had given up his entire world to save the homes and lives of Littlefield.