By the time Niko reached them seconds later, the sharp report of rifle fire was fading through the forest. Spent shell casings littered the ground. “Seer’s balls!” Hicks whooped, smacking Niko on the back. “You crazy fucking keck, you ran into a truck!”
Niko gasped for breath, his heart still thudding with adrenaline and the elation of his own successful daring. A voice in the back of his brain exclaimed: If only the Horn had seen that! When he opened his mouth to speak, a noise emerged from inside the truck: a highpitched cry of pain.
The men froze at the chilling sound. Niko moved first, pushing past Hicks and approaching the open cab. He saw the middle-aged driver and another, younger man, both dead, sprawled in their winter coats in the front seat. In the back seat was a boy—perhaps twelve, flopped over into the lap of a smaller child, a girl, maybe his sister. Nine or ten years old, covered in blood, but alive and wailing feebly.
“Fuck the gods,” Teije breathed behind him.
GSI’s intelligence sources in the Udaini government had told them that their target was an insurgent scouting party, that the men in the truck were the leaders of a radical Deliverantist cell. The dead men did not look like trained and hardened soldiers. They looked like ordinary townspeople.
Teije yanked the tarp off the back of the truck. “There’s nothing here.” No weapons, no explosives—just bundles of firewood, a coil of rope, and a red plastic sled.
Niko could not stop looking at the girl. Her hair was pale beneath a pink wool cap and she had dark freckles. Her mouth opened and closed as she stared back at him in confusion and terror. He reached into the truck and tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, to lift her out.
Falston seized Niko’s arm. For a second, the man’s Espenian words didn’t register with Niko. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “Before reinforcements arrive.”
Niko jerked his arm out of the man’s grip. “There aren’t any reinforcements. We fucked up.” Then realizing that in his shock and anger, he’d spoken in Kekonese, he said, in rough Espenian, “The girl. We have to help her.”
“You can’t,” Falston said, his voice deadened with certainty. “She’s not going to make it.” The man was right. Niko could Perceive the life escaping the child like white smoke spilling into darkness. He pushed the girl’s dead brother aside and began to Channel into her, but it was like trying to keep water inside a colander. The energy was pouring out in multiple directions and he didn’t have the level of Perception and medical training to know where to focus.
If only Uncle Anden were here. He’d know what to do. He could save her. He even brought my ma back from the dead.
The girl’s chest stopped moving. Niko knew the moment he was Channeling into a corpse—it felt like trying to push his own energy into a dry sponge. Her eyes were still open, gazing unblinking at nothing.
Niko turned around. Teije was standing behind him, staring over his shoulder. The man’s fingers were moving agitatedly over the jade he wore around his neck. He backed away from the expression on Niko’s face. “We couldn’t have done anything,” he said weakly.
Niko launched himself at Falston. “Why did you fire?” he shouted, grabbing the man by his tactical vest. “I stopped the truck. You should’ve looked inside. You should’ve—” He could not string the right Espenian words together to express himself coherently, to scream that any moron could fire an assault rifle, but Green Bones trained their jade abilities for a reason. Any Finger careless enough to spray gunfire into innocent people would be jade-stripped by his own clan before being exiled or executed for breaking aisho.
Falston was a large, strong man. He shoved Niko away, hard, sending him stumbling back. Hicks got in between them, and Teije grabbed Niko. Jade auras flared, sharp and white with aggression and panic.
“Get a fucking grip!” Hicks shouted at Niko. “It’s no one’s fault, we were doing our jobs. There must’ve been a mix-up, we obviously got some shitty intel, all right?”
Teije glanced back at the truck and blanched. “Should we report this?” According to GSI’s policies, all noncombatant casualties were supposed to be escalated to an ethics review committee.
“Fuck, no,” Hicks exclaimed, aghast at Teije’s question. “We’re not soldiers in the ROE military! We’re contractors; we don’t get any government protection. If they decide we used inappropriate force, we’re liable.”