Page 326 of Seer Prophet

We walked for hours. The desert was hot, dry, unforgiving.

Once we’d gone about a mile past the perimeter wall, leaving that godawful construct behind us, we saw no one else. Somewhere in those stretch of hours, I think my light finally calmed down enough that I was thinking clearly again.

I remembered enough to tell myself not to obsess on Revik and Lily, at least.

If they died, I would feel it. In the meantime, there was nothing at all I could do for them out here, apart from keeping myself alive.

Balidor advised us to walk inland for as long as we could before we called in air support.

We’d already been told they got the majority of the Listers and all of our wounded out by boat. They’d taken Dalejem with them, of course?and Revik, neither of whom had regained consciousness. They took Feigran with them, too, but left the remaining Terians with us, including the Revik lookalike and the one with those opaque orange eyes.

I wasn’t positive what Balidor intended to do with Feigran once he got him back to the carrier?but I could guess.

I wondered if the Terians with me could guess, too.

If so, they didn’t let on as they trekked across those glistening white dunes with us in the dark.

We walked in silence mostly, although I heard murmurings here and there as stories were exchanged on several sides. Most of the exchanges occurred between Loki, Chinja and Wreg’s teams, but I heard some of the new Listers join in the discussion as well. Most of the stories being told were by seers who’d been with us in the boathouse.

I didn’t join any of those discussions.

Neither did Chandre, I noticed, who walked silently next to me for most of the night, still wearing the rifle slung around her back that she’d used to take out Menlim.

I had questions about her part in all of this.

I decided those could wait.

Anyway, I could guess the basics. She’d been another contingency?a way to cover our backs, and to take out Menlim if Revik failed. There were details that nagged at me, like how she managed to follow us into the Waterfront complex without tripping security, but I figured Revik was probably behind that, too.

Chan already told me at the boathouse that he’d given her a mobile construct to use in the event of emergencies, something he and Balidor cooked up on the side.

I didn’t need to know any more than that.

Not right now, anyway.

As we walked over the white dunes, I noticed Kat kept herself apart from the other seers as well, huddled inside a robe someone must have given her?likely to cover the ridiculous clothing we both still wore, as much as for the chill of the night desert air.

The sky was growing lighter on the horizon ahead when I heard Wreg make the call to bring in air support. I couldn’t suppress my relief once I made out his words.

I was exhausted. More than that, the last thing I wanted was to be walking out here when that Arabian sun rose higher in the sky.

Chandre handed me her canteen, clearly overhearing my thoughts. I tilted my head, taking a long couple of swallows before handing it back to her with a grateful nod.

I gazed back out over the sand while she drank, watching it start to pick up diamonds from the rising sun. Right now, the soft dunes were beautiful?pink and gold in the new light?but those beautiful white dunes would heat up in no time at all if we stayed out here, even if we only walked until mid-morning.

Anyway, we were probably far enough from the city by now.

I found out only after we reunited with Wreg and Jon that Balidor and the others had abandoned the carrier totally, even moving the last segment of the Barrier-containment tank and all of the animals to smaller ships. They’d spread those ships across the Arabian Sea, presumably to hide among other boats operating in the area, and to act more as a caravan.

Balidor told me over the same link that so far at least, the tactic seemed to be working to keep us inconspicuous to Shadow’s agents.

It was a good thing they did it when they did.

I wouldn’t find out until the next morning, after I’d slept for over ten hours in the bunk of a much smaller ship, that someone dropped a half-dozen missiles on our old carrier in the middle of the night, not long before Menlim and his black-clad army of infiltrators showed up in that boathouse on the Persian Gulf.

TheU.S.S. Vashentarenbuulsank to the bottom of the Gulf, along with everything in it?probably right around the time Terian was bashing my husband’s head with a metal pole.

Terian’s stars did fall from the sky that night.

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