Scarlet Eyes
A Rifts Story
by Alexis Williams
(Based on the Rifts Roleplaying Game, published by Palladium Books)
CHAPTER FIVE
"Well, of course I didn't want to tell him my real name, because he knew my family," Tobias said, weaving his third tale of the evening. "So I smiled and said, 'My name is Bond. James Bond.' And just using his name gave me the confidence to pull off the deception."
Nine-year-old Maya, the most eager of his audience, said, "Who's Bond James Bond?"
Tobias smiled. "He was a great hero from ancient times. He spent his whole life fighting powerful evildoers."
She said, "If he lived in ancient times, how do you know about him?"
"Well, I read about him in a book."
"What's a book?"
Always pleased to come across an inquisitive mind, Tobias reached into a pocket on his lower leg and pulled out a ragged paperback.
Maya sprang up to him, the other members of the audience forgotten. He opened it up to show her the print. "These markings here stand for words. Just by looking at them, I can hear the voice of the person who made them speaking to me."
Her eyes were wide. "Wow. Is it magic?"
He chuckled. "Well, in a way, I guess it is."
From near the entrance, "That's all fine and nice, but it won't help you fight off the Coalition. This will."
Tobias turned toward him with a patient smile. "Why don't you tell us about it, Royd?"
His eyes bright, Royd started to explain his brilliant feat of engineering, but was interrupted by the sound of a twig snapping somewhere near. Royd and Tobias peeked behind the hanging branches of the willow to see a young woman climbing up to the cave.
After a few moments, Sonia Korpanoff entered, everyone watching her with uncertainty. Jon had not informed the others of her actions, but as she was not a member of the Front, her presence was a mystery.
She took a deep breath, looking at Nikolai and Jon. "What I did was wrong. I'm sorry."
The group of fugitives stood silently in the darkness, no one sure what to say. The quiet was eventually broken by the agitated chittering of a flock of birds, which faded away as they took to flight.
Then came the sound of a heavy thumping.
Royd recognized the sound immediately. "A SAMAS is approaching." Tobias and Jon joined him in peeking out of the cave. They saw a limping, power-armored soldier moving toward the inert spider walker.
A grin spread across Royd's face. "He's taking the bait." He pulled from his pocket one of the small communicators that he and his friends always carried. "All I have to do is send a signal to the comm system in the walker, and it'll activate the rail gun targeting system. When it tries to fire, the bypass'll cause the reactor to overload and, well—it should be quite a show."
The SAMAS was walking all around the vehicle, his rifle aimed at it, looking for a reaction.
Royd, his eyes intense, pressed the communicator's transmit button.
Nothing happened.
Alarmed, Royd checked his frequency and jabbed at the button. "Dammit!" After trying in vain for another ten seconds, he finally gave up with a sigh. "I shoulda touched the scar first."
The power-armored sergeant turned away from the vehicle, adjusting controls on his helmet. Staring at the ground, he began to move slowly in the general direction of the cave.
Tobias armed his laser pistol. Nikolai readied his shotgun. Royd bitterly cast aside the comm unit and pulled out his plasma rifle. They all waited quietly, hoping for a miracle.
After several attempts, Sonia got Nikolai's attention. She held his hand. "Nicky, you were right about everything. I really hope that someday you can forgive me."
Nikolai sighed and spoke quietly. "Like you said, what's done is done." He looked her in the eyes. "I don't hate you. I just wish . . . I wish things could have gone differently."
She nodded. "Me, too." She hugged him. "I love you, Nicky. Never forget that." Without looking at him, she let go and quickly slipped out of the cave.
Tobias looked at Nikolai with disbelief. "What is she doing?"
Jon answered. "She's surviving. It's something that's very important to her." They watched as she quietly disappeared into the darkness. Nikolai turned away from them.
The SAMAS continued to move closer.
Tobias whispered to Royd, "Maybe the others should try to escape, too."
Royd shook his head. "She was lucky. They'd never make it."
"Maybe a couple might escape," the scholar countered. "It's better than standing here hoping that he loses that heat trail."
Royd considered for a moment. "All right. Of course, they'd have a better chance if you and I ran out and distracted him."
"Sounds like a plan," Tobias said. "An insane, suicidal plan."
Royd grinned. "At least it's got style."
Tobias clapped him on the shoulder. "Let's do it." He turned his head to tell everyone the plan, when suddenly, a clanking noise reverberated through the clearing. They scanned the area quickly, discovering that the spider walker had sprung to life. It was vibrating in a vain attempt to lift its carriage off the ground.
The SAMAS took immediate notice, springing into the air and landing a few meters from it. In a flash, the sergeant brought his weapon to bear and fired on it.
The walker stopped vibrating. Its rail gun turrets targeted the attacker.
With sudden realization, Royd spun around, tackling everyone around him with his muscular frame and driving them backwards. A deafening explosion rocked the cave, a fireball incinerating all the branches they had just been peeking through. The shockwave knocked everyone down as a burst of searing heat stormed through the cave, dislodging chunks of rock from the ceiling to shower the terrified fugitives.
Everyone lay still, except for smoke-induced coughing. Eventually, they stirred and surveyed the situation.
Tobias looked out onto the charred remains of the forest clearing. "Congratulations, Royd," he said. "The effect was a little larger than I would've liked, but at least you finally had a plan that worked."
Royd surveyed the twisted remains of the SAMAS. The walker itself was completely gone. "Except that it didn't."
"What do you mean?" Jon asked, joining them, followed by Nikolai.
Royd frowned. "I didn't program it to move around like that. And the communicator failed. Somebody was in that walker."
It was Tobias's turn to frown. "But who? Who would've known—" He stopped, his eyes turning fearfully toward Nikolai. A tense moment passed before Nikolai returned his look.
"No," Nikolai said breathlessly. He rushed passed them. "No!" He leaped out of the cave, ran into the forest, and began searching furiously.
Mina's head throbbed.
She opened her eyes to find herself looking at a star-speckled sky, framed by swaying tree limbs. To her left, she heard the babbling of a creek and the shower of a nearby waterfall. She was stretched out on the ground, her head on something soft. Owen Selby sat on a rock a short distance away. Her thoughts were jumbled.
She said, "What happened?"
Owen exhaled with relief. He looked over at her. "It seems that Private Gable's plasma rifle was cross-fed with the suit's interior power grid, causing a feedback discharge inside his armor." He shook his head. "He won't be bothering anyone anymore."
Mina remembered the final moments of the conflict. She remembered her expectation of death. She remembered Owen fiddling with the soldier's suit. The implication of this gave her a great deal of mixed feelings. Finally, without looking at him, she said, "Thank you for saving my life, Owen."
He nodded solemnly. "You're welcome."
She considered what to do next. It seemed somewhat ungrateful to just get up and leave. But this was still the man she'd hated for years. The man responsible for so much pain.
He was also the man who only an hour ago had come to her to defect. To beg her forgiveness. Asking to learn how to become more like her.
She'd had every right to turn him away. She was under no obligation to forgive, even now that he had just saved her life. Her hatred was perfectly justified.
Wasn't it?
"If you're okay," he said. "I guess I can leave." He paused for a moment, then stood, moving away.
"Owen."
He stopped, turning back toward her.
She wasn't sure why she said it. She just wasn't ready to for him to leave just yet. "When . . . when did you figure out that you were working for the bad guys?"
He sat back down, thinking about it for a long heartbeat. "Part of me knew in that final moment, just before you jumped from that window. You turned back, and our eyes met for an instant."
Mina remembered that moment. At the time, she couldn't believe that her lover had brought down such destruction upon her. She'd had to see his face before escaping, to read whatever it had to say. His angry face and cold eyes had told her in an instant that this was no longer her lifelong friend and cherished lover, but a ruthless enemy.
"When you looked at me, Mina," he continued. "I saw the hatred in your eyes. And I realized it was over. That I had lost you."
"I know that couldn't have been a surprise to you." Mina propped herself up on an elbow. "You didn't expect me to still love you after you betrayed me and had me arrested, did you?"
He looked at her with amazement. "Surely you know that was never my intention. When I activated the spy cameras we'd installed, and the major saw you actually teaching the magic class, I was terrified. I tried to talk him out of arresting you, but I couldn't."
She sat up, her pulse quickening. "You shouldn't have summoned them in the first place. And don't tell me you had to do it because that's what our mission was. Don't tell me about our duty—because that won't mean much to me. It's obvious you loved the army more than me."
"That wasn't why I called them," he said.
"Then, why?" she demanded.
"Because it was the only thing I could think of to get you back."
She frowned in confusion. "What?"
He turned his head upward, closing his eyes. "For weeks before that, we'd been growing farther and farther apart. It was the magic. Something forbidden. Something you loved and I could hardly understand. You were delving deeper and deeper into it. It was taking you from me." He sighed. "I had to end that mission. I had to get you away from the influence of that mage. It was the only way I knew to get us back to the way things were before."
Mina was stunned. For years, she had fumed about Owen's act of betrayal, his heartless, evil deed. And now, to finally learn that his act wasn't that of an ambitious officer or a brainwashed pawn of the Emperor, but that of a forlorn lover—it was incredible to her that she'd never considered it, never been able to see it from his point of view.
Her hatred, she realized, had blinded her. His act had been desperate and misguided—but not actually evil in its intent. She turned away from him and gazed at the creek, tiny sparkles of moonlight dancing across the flowing water. Hatred was not the way of the Earth. And for the first time, she knew that if she let go of it, she would be stronger. It was a blindfold that had to be eliminated.
She turned toward Owen and regarded him freshly. Though still young, his body was gaunt and bent. His pallid, scruffy face was turned downward, haunted eyes gazing at the ground.
The object of her hatred was just a broken little man.
She said, "And now you want to leave the Coalition?"
"Yes." He looked back at her with an intense expression. "How can any group claim to be humanity's last hope while outlawing people's freedom to learn and think and speak and love—all the things that make us human?"
Mina smiled at his passionate outburst. He was truly on a rode of discovery. Perhaps the two of them weren't so different after all. She climbed to her feet, Owen rushing over to help her. They stood close.
She said, "How would you like to come with me?"
He barely managed to stutter, "I'd like that very much."
She smiled and turned. "Then come on." She jumped into the creek and started moving upstream. Owen had a surprised expression, but followed. The stream widened into a pool that was fed by a small waterfall dropping from the rocks above. Mina and Owen walked under it.
She let the cool water drench her face and body. She could see on Owen's face a lightness and a joy that were certainly new to him. For a moment, they were no longer fighters in a grand and tragic struggle. They were children, playing outside.
As she let her pain wash away, she looked into Owen's eyes.
And they were new.