Page 123 of Seer Prophet

Terry telling them to go to Dubai wasn’t much different than getting a handwritten invitation from Menlim himself.

The thought made his teeth grind.

He tried to tell himself it wasn’t that simple.

Allie had been dreaming about Dubai.

She had her own issues with the Displacement Lists, with what was happening in Asia, even with Terian. He was a member of the Four. He was their brother, as fucked up as he was. Allie had been watching the feeds about China and Beijing obsessively for the past few weeks––at least, when she wasn’t watching their daughter obsessively.

Remembering their daughter both softened his anger towards his wife and brought another flush of frustration. She’d sent the order without eventalkingto him. Given where they’d just left things, given what was at stake for both of them, that single fact made him so fucking angry he didn’t evenwantto see her. Not now.

Not until he’d taken care of a few things.

At the next landing, he found another ladder and took it, bracing the inner arches of his feet on the outside rails through his deck shoes and using his hands to control his speed as he dropped to the deck below. Two more ladders later, and he’d landed back on the water-level deck of the main hangar, where the Barrier containment tank lived.

The strangeness of the carrier’s design threw him again briefly.

He looked around, using the blueprints to get his bearings, remembering details from those specs as well as from his passing familiarity with the habits of the United States military, and where they generally liked to put things, compared to the Russians or the Germans.

Even so, it took him a few seconds to remember where he was, coming in from this side.

A few of the Adhipan seers jokingly renamed the carrier theU.S.S. Vashentarenbuulafter a particularly rough day of prepping the ship on the docks of Portland, Maine.

The name stuck.

Half a dozen seers even paintedU.S.S. Vashentarenbuulon the ship’s steep stern and sides, priming over the original United States military name, which had beenRaptororFalconerorBald Eagleor something like that.

The ship contained three main hangars.

Hangars 2 and 3 housed the Barrier containment tanks, where Revik been living with Allie, and where Lily, Cass, and Maygar were also housed. That segment of the hold also contained the armory, some of their more sensitive organic machines, and a fully-stocked security station complete with interrogation and holding cells.

All of those cells were empty at the moment.

Surli, their last quasi-prisoner, had been released––also on Allie’s orders.

He lived somewhere in the seer residency, upstairs.

Revik kept his mouth shut about that, too, but it irritated him.

He hadn’t spent much time in Hangar 1 yet, but he knew it was by far the largest, and the one that led to the main docking bay at the front of the ship. That same docking bay, which lived under the shadow of the hard deck on top, had already been opened a number of times, mostly to load passengers following their evacuation from New York.

They now stored something like ninety percent of their perishable food and water in there, along with a few helicopters that weren’t lashed to the runways. Domestic animals, seeds, plants, grains, beans, freeze dried and canned foods, sapling trees and even a small greenhouse all lived in that hangar, along with vertical planter boxes on rotating winches that went all the way to the ceiling.

Where he was now housed mostly water tanks. Metal struts crossed back and forth in long X-shapes overhead. A series of catwalks connected the two areas of the ship, with most leading back into the main residential area.

He could see seers on those catwalks now. A few stared at him, although they seemed to be trying to hide those stares.

He could feel Balidor looking for him––and now Jon, Wreg.

He didn’t much care about that, not anymore.

He’d beaten them down here. That, he cared about.

It didn’t take him long to get back to the tank.

Neela felt him only once he stood behind her.

Revik watched the female infiltrator scramble to her feet, yanking her boots off the console before she jerked her body out of the padded security station chair. He had to give her props. She managed to do all of that without changing expression.

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