Shadow Army: A Shadows Rising Novella

16. Grog

Nox

"Anything?"

I lifted an eyebrow. "Was there supposed to be something?"

Cress sighed, then went back to... whatever it was she was doing with my control interface. All I knew was that it involved a bunch of shiny tools and one of the power cells from the military vehicles. When it came to this monstrosity of a body, I was only too happy to leave the mechanics to someone else. I was old fashioned. Give me a plain old compression engine any day. Glowing blue lights and metal that moved on command were all well beyond my comfort level.

I stared around at the rocky clearing Cress had decided to take a rest in. We had made it almost five miles after leaving the mine, following Cress around to the far side of the peak above the town the Coventry had wiped out.

Barely five miles, and the two girls from town were already limping and whimpering, and Beckett was white as a sheet. The girls were currently huddled next to each other on a nearby rock, and Dr. Starling and Jimmy were sitting with Beckett.

At this rate, it would take four days to cross the fifty miles of mountain standing between us and the Illyrians, if Starling was right about where their lines were.

There was a sudden zing of energy at the base of my skull and Cress jerked behind me, swearing under her breath and flapping her hand.

Starling glanced up from where he was giving Beckett a drink from a canteen. "You alright?"

"Yes," Cress snapped. "Fine." Then she smacked the back of my head.

There was a pop, my vision doubled, and a bunch of bright orange screed began rolling upward so fast I couldn't read any of it. "That did something," I said, helpfully.

She shuffled around to peer at my face, squinting into my eyes, then she started muttering something about command arcs, and grabbed a long, pointy thing from her little pile of tools, disappearing behind me again.

"So," Starling said, looking down at Beckett. "What do we have to expect from the mountains? Trolls? This looks like troll country."

Beckett smiled a little, and Jimmy rolled his eyes. "Naw, Doc, this is chaghara country."

"Wild dogs," Beckett croaked.

"Bears? Are there bears?" Jimmy asked, looking up at Cress. "I think there are bears. Khulu, too."

The older girl from town was staring at the three of them with huge, horrified eyes. "Khulu are just a myth."

"Not around here they're not," Jimmy retorted, suddenly not teasing at all. "You ever been on a hunting trip? No? I didn't think so. Howabout you just keep quiet about stuff you know nothing about?"

"Stop scaring them, Jamesh," Cress said quietly. Then she twisted something that apparently wasn't supposed to have come untwisted, because everything went dark.

I grunted. "Um." There was a jolt, and then, abruptly, I was looking at a glowing list of command channels I had never seen before.

"Got anything?"

"All I can see is a bunch of command lines," I muttered. "Is that a good thing?"

"Yes! Good. That's good... I think it's good. Maybe. Can you follow any of them?"

It was like reading the page of a book. The list stayed put when I moved my eyes. I tried looking at just one line for a moment and got nothing. "I don't know how to do that."

"Uh..." there was a tug and then a bunch of clicking.

On a whim, I tried moving a finger to where my eyes said the line of text was. The line blinked twice, and shot to the top of the 'page,' with a new cluster of related command lines beneath it. I was looking at a list of biological functions and fuel sources. "Wait. I got it."