Messiah by S. Andrew Swann

horizon.”
    Somewhere, in the city in front of them, a siren began blaring. Then another, and another, until the resonance of multiple high-pitched klaxons made her teeth ache and left an empty spot in her chest.
    “Fifty now,” Nickolai said.
     
    Parvi was not happy with Kugara’s news, or the implications.
    “Even if I agree with you,” Parvi had to nearly shout at her over the still blaring sirens. “What about the civilians?” Her voice echoed slightly off the concrete walls around them. The word civilian, by now, didn’t include Brody, Dörner, and Flynn, who stood by Kugara and Parvi dressed in the surplused khaki jumpsuits that their Wilson hosts had given them.
    “We have to trust that the PSDC won’t arbitrarily target a POW facility,” Kugara argued, unsure if she thought she was in the right, or just could no longer bear standing still in the midst of chaos.
    “Trust?” Parvi said.
    “Which is exactly what we’re doing if we sit tight here,” Kugara said.
    Parvi shook her head.
    “She has a point,” Brody said, massaging the cast on his arm. “We came down here for a reason.”
    “I know that,” Parvi snapped. “But we can’t just walk out of here through a minefield—where the hell is Nickolai?”
    Parvi looked around the empty floor where they had been housed, as if Nickolai might have been hiding in a corner somewhere. Not that there was anyplace to hide, it was just one large ferrocrete floor dotted with cots and temporary folding chairs and tables. Even the impromptu toilet facilities were only private by dint of a flimsy screen.
    Silence fell across the room, and Parvi narrowed her eyes at Kugara. “Where is he?”
    “He’s getting us a guide.”
    “ What? ” Parvi glared at her. Kugara’s—and Nickolai’s— actions were insubordinate if not outright mutinous, but she didn’t want to directly challenge Parvi’s nominal command of their mission. It was hard enough to convince Nickolai that in this instance it would be better to ask forgiveness rather than permission.
    “We knew we were running out of time,” she told Parvi, “and that without a guide we’d be trapped here. Nickolai had to act before the Wilson militia evacuated themselves.”
    “I see . . .”
    “That was our next step,” Kugara asked. “Right, Captain?”
    The glance Parvi gave to Flynn and the scientists was subtle, but Kugara noticed. She didn’t know what had happened to their commander, but this Parvi was a different woman than the mercenary hard-ass that had hired her and Nickolai. Something like doubt had crept in and dulled her command. Ever since it became apparent they had landed in the midst of a shooting war, Kugara had watched Parvi become more and more tentative.
    In a situation like this, that was frightening.
    Fortunately, even though they both knew Kugara had overstepped her authority, Parvi decided to accept Kugara’s belated acknowledgment of her command. “Don’t take such decisions upon yourself in the future.” She turned to the other three and said, “We’re going to have to move, stay with us—”
    She was interrupted by someone shouting, “Get your hands off me, you furry freak.”
    Everyone turned to see Nickolai pushing one of the Wilson militia guards ahead of him. He carried the man’s weapon, and the caseless shotgun looked like a toy in his hands. He held the gun butt-first toward Kugara and said to the man, “You’re going to lead us out of here.”
    “Are you crazy, don’t you hear the sirens? The PSDC will start strafing in a couple of minutes.”
    “It isn’t an air raid,” Kugara said. “It’s a full-scale invasion.”
    “What?”
    “The PSDC is going to take this city,” Nickolai said. “We want to leave before that happens.”

    “You don’t need to point that at me,” the militia guard told her as they walked single file toward the bombed-out perimeter.
    “Just concentrate on where we’re going,” Kugara told him.
    “Uh-huh.” He