D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

“Why? What’s going on?” I mumbled.

“It’s the warning alarm,” she answered quickly.

“Warning? Warning for what?”

“Two guesses,” she said, and headed for the bedroom door.

I didn’t need the second guess. I was finally awake enough to understand what was happening, and it had nothing to do with submarines. Or dreams.

The battle for Black Water was about to begin.

Boon should stay here,” I announced as I came out of the bedroom, rubbing my eyes, trying to gear myself up.

“What? No!” he protested. “Why?”

“It isn’t fair to ask you to take sides,” I said. “Better that you sit it out.”

“I have already chosen my side, Pendragon,” he shot back. “I do not agree with what Ravinia has done to Eelong.”

“And you’re willing to side with the gars against the klees to prove it?” I asked. “That’s too much to ask.”

Boon started to argue, but stopped himself. I don’t think he had thought it through that far. To side with the gars would mean to take up arms against his own kind. His own species. That would have been hard, if not impossible, no matter what the circumstances.

“I agree with you, Bobby, but Boon can’t stay here,” Courtney said as she slipped into a lightweight green vest that covered her chest and back. It looked like protective gear.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I can’t guarantee he’d be safe. Nobody around 424~PErrDRAG0rj~ here is going to know he’s on our side. All they’ll see is a klee, and if we aren’t here to protect him-”

She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.

“All right, I get it,” I admitted. “Boon comes.”

“Put these on,” Courtney instructed, and handed each of us one of the green vests.

“What will they do?” Kasha asked as she slipped hers on.

“The material will protect against arrows and knives and claws. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Kasha held her vest in one paw. She flicked out one of her claws and raked it across the material, testing it.

“Strong,” she concluded.

“What’s the plan?” I asked. “What exactly are you ready for? Hand-to-hand combat? Courtney, these little vests might slow down an angry klee for a second or two, but that’s about it.”

“You’re right. We could never go toe-to-toe with them. These vests are just a precaution. The plan is to not let it get that far. We knew the klees would eventually attack Black Water. Want to see how we’re going to welcome them?”

“Absolutely.”

Courtney led us out of her cabin into the gray, predawn light of Black Water. The steady whoop of the warning horn continued. People were running everywhere, all away from the center of the village. I noticed both short gars and taller exiles from Second Earth. Yanks. It wasn’t a frantic rush, but it was fast. Everyone had purpose. They knew what they had to do.

“We’re going up top,” Courtney announced.

“Up top where?” Boon asked.

Courtney pointed up to the mountains that surrounded Black Water.

My heart sank. “We have to climb all the way up there?”

“Who said anything about climbing?” she answered with a sly smile. “I told you, this isn’t the same Black Water you knew.”

The four of us jogged away from Courtney’s cabin in the general direction of the tunnel that led here from the valley of waterfalls. Nobody seemed to be bothered by Kasha and Boon. Either it was still too dark to notice them, or everyone was so focused on their task that they thought of nothing else. Either way, we weren’t bothered.

When we reached the outer ring of structures, I saw what Courtney meant when she said that the larger cabins were there for defense. Men and women entered and came out quickly with what looked like weapons, but they were like nothing I had ever seen before. They were green tubes about eight feet long. They seemed heavy and unwieldy. It took two people to carry each one. There were braces on the tube, so that the weapon could rest on their shoulders, along with hand grips to control it. On the back end there was a large silver box device.

“Radio cannons,” Courtney explained. “That’s what we used to knock your gig out of the sky. If they come by air again, they won’t be up there for long.”

The people with the radio cannons took up positions on the back side of each of the defensive structures, looking out. They were ready. I assumed that the same was happening along the entire outer ring of the village. When we ran past the structures, I looked back to see that several gars were positioned inside the large huts, looking out of long, narrow windows along the top of each structure.

“Archers,” Courtney explained. “That’s our last line of defense. If a huge number of klees get this far, this will only slow them down. It won’t stop them. Still, our finest fighters are here. They will battle to the death before letting a single klee pass.” She then looked at Kasha and Boon and added, “Sorry.”

Kasha wasn’t bothered by this news in the least. “But you are still confident of victory?” Kasha asked skeptically.

“Oh yeah. What you see here is only going to come into play if things get desperate. If things go well, no one inside Black Water will have to face a single klee.”

“So what is this incredible scheme you’ve got going on?” I asked.

Courtney’s answer was to pick up the pace. Several other gars ran alongside us, all headed in the same direction. Looking off to either side, I could see that there were gars and Yanks everywhere, all headed for the mountains. Courtney led us to a spot a few hundred feet to the right of the tunnel that led out and into the valley of waterfalls. There, cut into the rock at the base of the mountain, was a man-made tunnel entrance. Above the entrance a symbol was carved into the rock that I didn’t recognize. But Courtney did.

“This is my station,” she explained.

“You seem to know exactly what you are doing,” Kasha commented.

“We all do,” Courtney shot back. “We usually drill once a day. We never know when it’s going to happen, either. Whatever we’re doing, we’ve been trained to drop everything and get to our stations immediately.”

As with Mark, it was hard to believe that this was the Courtney Chetwynde I had grown up with. She was always confident, but with the experience that came with age and conflict, she had become a force. It made me love her even more. Courtney jogged right into the tunnel. It wasn’t deep. We ran for about thirty seconds until we hit a set of black double doors. Courtney touched a button to the right and the double doors slid open immediately. It was an elevator.

“Going up?” she announced. “No dawdling. It’s the express.”

The four of us hurried inside. There were only two places where this elevator stopped. The bottom and the top. In seconds we were launched up through the center of the mountain, climbing higher and higher toward Courtney’s post. Nobody said anything on the ride up, which was pretty much the way it always worked on elevators, no matter where you were. I wonder why that is? I stole a sideways glance at Courtney. She didn’t seem nervous, but she was definitely focused. Maybe they had done this drill so many times that it was old hat to her. But this was no drill. If the warning horns were correct, the klees had arrived.

When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, we were hit with a blast of warm air and a breathtaking view of Black Water. It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of heights, or I would have lost it. For a second I was worried about Kasha and Boon, but then realized how idiotic that was. They were cats. It wasn’t in their DNA to be freaked by heights. According to Courtney she had been up there once a day, so the only person who had wet palms was me.