Dragon: Allie's War Book Nine Read Online Free Page A

trying to breach their wall. Again.
    I’d been hearing about this kind of thing on the feeds, even before we got here. It wasn’t only happening in Thailand. These more systematic and better-armed attempts to break into enclave communities from the outside had been springing up all over. We didn’t know if Shadow’s people were behind it, not for certain, but I strongly suspected they were.
    I figured they had to be funding it, at least, even if they weren’t involved directly.
    Anyway, this had the stink of Menlim all over it, from the weirdo apocalyptic religious crap to what it seemed to be doing to the human population. Divide and conquer, keep everyone afraid and traumatized, willing to act impulsively, violently…and stupidly.
    It might have been boring in its repetition if it wasn’t so consistently effective.
    Adding that darker injection of religious fanaticism just made it all worse.
    You couldn’t reason with these fuckers, whether they were being actively brainwashed by Shadow and his people or not.
    All of it seemed calculated to divide the human populations further and get them to turn on one another even more. Also, yeah, so far they’d solely targeted non-Shadow cities and enclaves, so there was that. The feeds claimed that was because security measures were too impenetrable in the Dreng cities, but I had serious doubts that was all of it.
    I was still watching the smoke rise on that end of the wall when a voice rose in my headset.
    “Hey,” he said, impatient. “What’s going on? Are we all right to continue?”
    I clicked softly, my lips firming.
    I looked down to the streets around the hotel itself, looking for any increased activity from the blast. There was plenty, but it was all heading away from us, not towards us. Civilians were locking their doors. The militia was heading for the wall on the other side of the river.
    I clicked over into the Barrier construct I was helping to hold since we didn’t have anything permanent in place yet. I pinged Wreg in the same set of seconds.
    Hey, I said to him. We okay? Revik wants to know.
    I practically heard Wreg’s snort, even with the wind and from all the way across the roof.
    Of course he does, Wreg muttered. Tell him we’ve split off part of the team to monitor the area of the bomb, but we should have more than enough to cover his end. I was considering sending Chan down there…since they haven’t left yet. What do you think?
    I nodded, once.
    Before I answered Revik, I sent a packed message to Balidor conveying everything Wreg just told me, including the part about Chandre.
    Tell him yes on Chan, Balidor sent back at once. Unless you disagree?
    No, I agree, I assured him. Thanks. And let me know if anything changes down by that wall. Can you coordinate with Chan directly?
    When I felt Balidor acquiesce, I switched my focus back to Revik, unshielding my light.
    We’re all good, I assured him. Balidor’s monitoring the situation on the wall. You don’t need to worry about that. And I’m staying away from those lights, too.
    I felt Revik relax…slightly…but he still felt wound up.
    I didn’t bother to ask why.
    Good, he sent. Then we’re ready to go down here…
    I passed that on to Wreg, too.
    It was weird acting as translator for Revik of all people, but they didn’t want him tied in too closely to our main security constructs right now, for obvious reasons. I was only in part of those same constructs for the same obvious reasons. Wreg acted as a go-between too, keeping my light in an area of the construct that had been sequestered off from the most high-level security segments. They’d restructured all of those constructs in the last few weeks, too.
    Are they any closer to locking that box of crazy down? Wreg asked me.
    Rather than interrupting Revik to ask, I read him in order to answer Wreg’s question.
    Revik thinks they’re most of the way there. It can only be temporary, of course… I added, more or less translating