Hello again! This... week? 3-4 day span? This chapter, it's time to check in on the White Fang... and Sienna's growing headache.
27. Sabotage
The fire was brief, intense, and hot enough to melt several glass beakers stored inside the tent. The wooden pole in the center snapped in the heat, bringing the whole thing down, and smothering the worst of the flames. That was the only reason they still had any of their injection equipment left.
Sienna paced around the ruined tent. It hadn't hit any of the eggs, which she supposed was lucky. The Dust had gone off in the middle of the night, when there weren't any injections being done, and the incubators were far enough away to escape the blaze. It could have been much worse.
This was not comforting. Three of the Fang braved the fire, saving most of the dust and preventing a chain reaction. All of them were in the medical tent while Coral treated their burns. They had lost most of their needles. Several very specialized, very expensive machines were broken. It would take weeks for faunus sympathetic to the cause to carry replacements out to the camp—longer if the humans were unwilling to loan them the lien to pay for them. Weeks of sitting in the woods watching eggs hatch, unable to inject any new ones. Worst of all, they were almost completely out of fire Dust—and it was fire Dust that heated the incubators. They had only a few days of fuel left, at which point they would start to lose eggs as their temperatures dropped.
She halted in front of the wreck, glowering at the charred scraps of canvas. Eleven vials of fire Dust. That was their chemist's best guess at what had caused the explosion. Except that the Dust couldn't have been agitated like that if it was still in the vial. Someone had poured it out and deliberately set it off.
Someone in the White Fang was sabotaging them.
"Sienna?" She whirled around, barely holding back a snarl. Ilia leaned away from her and turned an alarmed shade of yellow.
"What."
"The Albains and the Lieutenant want to talk. They're in Adam's tent."
Sienna followed Ilia back to the center of the camp. Adam's tent had become a makeshift command center for the five of them—she hoped it would lend some more legitimacy to their leadership. They needed all the help they could get.
The other three were already there, seated in a circle in the middle of the tent. Corsac spoke first. "We need to find the traitor."
No greeting. No beating around the bush. Sienna was thankful for small mercies. "We'll post a guard in the future," she decided. "As it is, we'll have a hard time narrowing down the possibilities, since just about anyone could have gotten in."
"We can rule out the three who jumped into the fire," Ilia said. "Right?"
"Probably, but that isn't much help."
Silence.
Ilia turned the color of a bruise. "If no one else is going to say it... what about the human?"
"Hazel?" Sienna frowned. "I doubt it."
"He's not part of the Fang. We have no idea what his 'employer' actually wants."
"True," Corsac allowed, "but we do know that they've invested quite a lot of money into this venture. It seems rather foolish to burn the equipment they paid for."
"Pointing fingers won't get us anywhere." Sienna's ears flicked irritably. "We'll start with guards."
"I can do it," the Lieutenant offered.
Ilia nodded and said, "So can I."
"The three who were burned will be good candidates when they recover," added Fennec. "In the meantime... Justice and Harbinger, perhaps?"
"That should be enough." Sienna nodded once, satisfied. It might not prevent a repeat incident all on its own, but there were other precautions they could take. "We'll need padlocks. A safe, for Dust that isn't in use... if we can figure out how to lock up the tent, even better."
"That wouldn't matter," Ilia said. "The traitor could just cut their way through the walls."
She grimaced. "True. We'll do what we can to up security, and if nothing else that will make it much easier to tell who was responsible."
"Dust is our most immediate concern," Corsac said. "We don't have any fire left at all."
The Lieutenant grunted. "I'll lead a raid."
"Justice and I can go with you," offered Ilia.
"Good."
Sienna stood up. "Unless there's anything else, I'd like to take another look at the lab, see if there are any patterns we might have missed."
"Actually, yes." Fennec's eyes glittered. "There is the issue of the hybrid that you lost."
"It ran off," Sienna replied, through gritted teeth. "I can guess that there might have been a congenital behavioral issue at play that we didn't notice in time."
"Even so. Since we're even less likely to produce functional hybrids in the next few weeks, it seems prudent to wait to give you another one until the rest of the inner circle has received an egg. To make sure you've ironed out any... issues."
"What?! But it wasn't her fault!" Ilia was indignant. "The hatchling must not have bonded right. They don't run away from their riders like that, they just don't."
Sienna tried not to think of Brand, and failed.
"And if there's another unfortunate incident with the next egg? It seems unwise to risk—"
"Enough." The Lieutenant looked at Fennec, his expression still hidden behind his mask. "We don't know that the beast's behavior had anything to do with her."
Corsac glanced at Fennec. "We will all get eggs. It seems as though reducing the risk of another... defector, so to speak, is worth the slight inconvenience to Sienna."
Ah. So he'd finally noticed the jealousy.
Ilia opened her mouth to argue, but Sienna put a hand on her upper arm to stop her. "I understand your concern," she said mildly. "And I don't think this is worth arguing over."
It wasn't. She didn't want to spend any more time on this than necessary, not with a traitor still walking freely through their camp. But she liked the idea of letting the Albains dominate their circle even less. So she smiled in an accommodating sort of way—at the Lieutenant.
"I'd be willing to wait until after the next egg has been hatched. There isn't much reason that one of us needs a dragon sooner than the other."
She couldn't see most of his face, but she did see his eyebrow twitch. "Alright..." he said, sounding slightly suspicious. Sienna guessed he hadn't figured out why she'd done that. Ilia probably wouldn't, either.
The Albains both knew, and Fennec would resent her for it. So be it—as long as he didn't have an egg, the two of them weren't as much of an inseparable unit as usual. And as long as she got a dragon soon, she'd be part of the inner circle whether they liked it or not.
Politics.
Sienna left the tent soon after that. She wandered out towards the woods, massaging her temples with one hand. Damn Adam, and damn Blake. The two of them couldn't have left the White Fang more headless if they'd been working together and trying.
If only Ilia hadn't been needed at Haven during that whole mess. If only she could've persuaded Adam to pick another second-in-command. If only his obvious successor hadn't run off to join the humans. If only, if only...
The raid was hastily planned. They chose a shipment from the SDC to Vale, and the very next day they made their move—any longer, and they might not return in time to save the eggs.
Justice was glad. It was horribly boring spending all day cooped up in the camp, and after the explosion everyone had gotten tense. Ilia said there was a traitor. It made his blood boil just thinking about it. So many traitors and deserters...
It was a relief to finally be able to do something about it.
"Get ready," the Lieutenant's voice rumbled through the scroll. Justice tensed, flexing his wings. He and Ilia waited on a cliff overlooking a set of train tracks as they curved around the base of the mountain. The big man and six others hid in the woods far below.
A small speck appeared in the distance. As the train approached, Ilia hopped onto his back—but did not strap herself into the saddle. They waited... and waited...
"Now!"
Justice leaped off the cliff and glided smoothly towards the frontmost car. Ilia slid off him the moment he landed and dropped into the car. A moment later there was a harsh screeching noise as the train began to slow.
Several cars down, a hatch burst open. Guards in faceless white armor poured out, all of them pointing guns and shouting. Justice hissed and lunged at them, scattering them like bowling pins. One of them shot at him. He grabbed the offender's gun in his jaws and ripped it away before it could do any harm.
More guards swarmed out of other cars. Justice reared back and roared in alarm. There weren't supposed to be this many.
"Justice!" Ilia clambered up out of the front car. "Are you—" She turned a sickly green when she saw the guards. "Shit!"
More gunfire. Justice lunged at his rider and sheltered her under his wings. Bullets stung his flank and one of his forelegs. He flexed the muscles there and growled. These smaller guns weren't as bad as the council's rifles, but they still hurt.
Justice uncurled himself, taking care to keep his body between Ilia and the guns. Then he swept his tail through the mass of guards, sweeping almost a dozen of them off the train. Fire built in his stomach, and he spat it onto the roof of the train. They backed away. The hail of bullets stopped.
"Are you hurt?" Ilia crouched behind him, resting a hand on his shoulder. "And why the hell are there so many of them?!"
"No," Justice said, answering the first question. He had no idea about the second.
Some of the guards had recovered enough to keep shooting. Ilia slid across the roof of the car and ducked back inside it. That left Justice free to charge the humans. Several of them screamed as he tore down the length of the train. It had slowed to a crawl, now, and knocking them off wasn't as helpful. He threw himself into their midst, pushing them to the ground and whipping his tail through their ranks. If they got up, he hit them again until they stayed down, stunned or unconscious.
Several minutes later the gunfire stopped again, this time for good. The rest of their raiding party reached the train and broke into the rear cars, carrying out crates of Dust. Justice sat proudly on the roof, licking some of his wounds and flexing his legs and wings to make sure everything was still working fine. One wing was a bit sore, but otherwise he felt fine. This was easy.
There was a single sharp bang. A gunshot. Coming from the front car.
Justice's claws scrabbled on the roof of the train as he bolted, skidding to a screeching stop at the front. He ripped the hatch open with a tortured squeal of tearing metal and forced his head inside.
Ilia crouched behind the conductor's chair, her skin ashen grey. There was a hole in the console that threw off sparks. A bruise bloomed at the corner of her jaw. And another guard stood there, frozen in the act of lining up his gun for another shot.
Justice lunged. His teeth sank into the man's shoulder and chest, crushing the armor and then punching through. An agonized howl made him fold his ears back. Then he shook the human, hard, and threw him into a wall. He roared, and the fire built in the back of his throat, and he opened his jaws—
"No!"
He clamped down on the flames as Ilia threw herself between them, her arms spread out. Justice screeched in outrage, tried to shove her aside. His claws dug into the roof of the car. This thing tried to kill his rider. He growled, smoke billowing from between his jaws. It would go away, now, it would turn into ash and dust and they would be safe.
Ilia whacked his nose, hard. He reared back and hissed. "Stop it!" she shouted. "He's down!"
The man lay in a crumpled heap, groaning quietly and bleeding on the floor. He was still moving. "Bad," Justice said, frustrated that she didn't seem to understand that he'd tried to kill her.
"Justice, please!"
Reluctantly, he swallowed the fire. Then he grabbed his rider by the back of her shirt and hauled her bodily out of the train car. The others joined them, and they fled before the guards could recover from being thrown around. The whole way back to the camp, Ilia kept looking at him like he'd done something wrong. Like she was scared.
It was just one stupid human!
He couldn't stand it. He loped off into the woods—anything to get away from the look on her face. It was getting dark, now. A fire between his jaws lit up the area around him, throwing weird, writhing shadows across the ground. He sat in a small clearing with his tail wrapped around his feet.
Justice didn't understand what he'd done wrong. Brand might be able to tell him, but the older dragon didn't talk to him anymore. Harbinger probably wouldn't know, and he didn't talk to anyone much. Not since the hatchling ran away.
He got up and paced back and forth, his tail flicking irritably. What had he done wrong? He'd stayed with Ilia, he hadn't abandoned their cause. And he wouldn't, he never would.
Frustration bubbled over, and he took a swipe at a nearby tree. Then another and another, until it shook, cracked, and came crashing down.
"Why?!" he bellowed.
"Why?!"
The tree splintered and fell, sending small animals scattering in all directions. Justice paced, roaring at the sky and lashing his tail from side to side. It whipped against the ground with a sharp crack.
In the deep shadows of the undergrowth, sun-yellow eyes gleamed. Her heart fluttered under sandy scales, hammering in anticipation of the blinding flash that had come with the loud noise last time. When it didn't come, the panic receded enough for her to bolt further into the shadows, moving silently over leaves and twigs until she crouched in a tangle of wildflowers. Their smell should obscure her own. The bigger dragon kept pacing, letting out frustrated growls and lashing out at the forest around him. Fire flickered between his jaws.
Tiny claws kneaded the earth, and muscles coiled in her hind legs. If she could sneak around behind him, she might be able to blind him again. He would run away if that happened. But he was too big to fight, if she missed... and even if she didn't, he would bring others into the woods. They would hunt her.
The puzzle lock clicks open. Then her ears ring, there is fire under her eyelids, pain... tightness all around her, smothering her, until her claws shear through fabric.
She backed up a few paces, keeping the bigger dragon in her sight. Better to stay away from him until she was older.
Then, he spoke. "Rudder?"
Her heart beat against her ribs again, she could feel it pounding right down to the tip of her tail. She crouched, poised, her wings raised in preparation for the strike. Had he seen her? Smelled her? What was a rudder?
"I want... I want to talk to you."
Her ears perked up. Talk?
"I know you're in Vale." A frustrated flick of his tail. "Or... you were. You're probably somewhere else now."
She tilted her head to one side. He wasn't talking to her, but there was no one else in the forest nearby. He'd scared away all the animals. All that was left were the trees and the vast, empty sky.
Justice collapsed onto his haunches, and all the menace went out of him like a puff of smoke. His wings crumpled in on themselves, his head hung low, his tail curled limply in the dirt. There was a defeated slump to his shoulders as he said, so softly she hardly heard him, "I hate it here."
She crept forward and crouched once again in the patch of flowers, listening intently.
"There were supposed to be other dragons. Someone I could finally..." He shook his head. "And I can only talk to you when you're not even here.
"I want... I want..."
He snorted, fire flickering from his snout. "This is stupid." His neck craned upward, staring at the shattered moon overhead. "It's wrong... but I want Jade and Whisper. I want that hill where we used to sit. I want...
"I want to go home."
The words hung in the air a long moment, as if frozen there by the cold silver light that filtered through the leaves. Then Justice threw his head back and howled. It was a piercing, mournful sound, and the night swallowed it up without a trace.
She crouched among the flowers, shivering. Her pupils were blown wide, reflecting the moonlight. Her chest ached with a longing to join her voice to his, to ease the horrible loneliness of that haunting cry. She stayed silent and hidden.
Justice sat there a while longer. Then, without another word, he stood up and walked away.