Chapter 28
Chapter twenty-eight
From the gleam of hope in Rhodda’s eyes, the conversation quickly turned to what else was going on across the island. Hallie could almost see the director’s mind working as he absorbed the new information and facts from her and Girard, with supplements from Rhodda.
At some point, despite the food and coffee, Hallie found herself half-asleep at the table.
She’d learned that Jonah’s men had been taken to the outbuildings and were being watched by members of the tactical team in rotation.
The team had also brought some basic cot beds with them, which seemed to be standard practice.
Half-asleep, Hallie followed Girard to one of the rooms on the upper level of the house where a half dozen cots had been set up.
There were a few people already asleep. Members of the tactical team, getting some rest. So she and Girard were not alone, but he held her hand for a moment, skin warm and real against hers before she took the nearest spare bed, awake only long enough to see him leave the room before sleep washed over her.
She woke to the faint warmth of winter sunlight on her face and the quiet sounds of other people sleeping around her.
A quick look around the room showed her that Rhodda was in one of the cots, and the rest were taken up by members of the tac team.
Hallie grabbed her boots from the end of the bed and padded out of the room and down stairs in the borrowed socks, pausing to sit on the last couple of steps to put on her boots.
The front doors of the house were standing open and in the bright morning sunlight she could see the damage that had been done by the gunfire the night before and the rear end of the helicopter, tilted on its side.
She got up and headed outside, amazed that she and Girard had escaped unharmed.
But then, their attackers had been human and night had been falling.
There were two tac team members making their way at a steady walk around the house, very much as Knot and No-knot had done the day before.
Except that this pair were not talking, and although they were wearing their helmets, hiding their expressions, everything about them said they were alert and ready for trouble.
Hallie exchanged a brief nod with them as she made her way across to the helicopter, amazed that no one had been killed in the crash.
The sweep of gravel at the front of the house would take a great deal of effort to repair. The helicopter blades had dug deep into it, churning up the soil in deep furrows before snapping off the body of the vehicle.
She walked around the front of the black hulking metal and spotted movement in the trees ahead of her.
She went still, all at once feeling exposed and vulnerable, out in the open.
She’d left the armoured vest on the back of the chair in the kitchen the night before and although she was carrying the gun that Girard and the director had provided for her, that wasn’t going to stop someone from shooting at her.
As she watched the flicker of movement she realised it wasn’t in the trees but on the roadway that led up to the house. The movement was slow. People walking.
She looked over her shoulder and raised a hand, beckoning the tac team over to her. The pair moved briskly.
“There are people coming up the road,” she told them, speaking quietly so her voice wouldn’t carry.
“We’ll alert the commander. Stay behind cover, ma’am,” one of them said. The other was already reaching for the radio clipped at his shoulder.
Hallie had to hide a smile at the honorary term. She still wasn’t used to it, although it was being said to her more and more as she continued to deal with hochlen.
Still, she stayed where she was as the pair moved forward, weapons ready, to meet whoever it was coming up the hill.
As the people came around the final corner that brought them into the clearing around the house, Hallie was firstly surprised at the small number - only four - then surprised again as she recognised the man in the lead.
Donall. Even as she worked through her own shock, Donall and the others stopped in their tracks, faced with two black-clad, armed hochlen, and the sight of a fallen helicopter.
Each of the new arrivals was carrying a bag across their bodies, and Hallie recognised them all as Reunion settlers she’d last seen escaping from New Hope.
As well as Donall, there was Sylvie, the young man Bryn and another man.
“Good morning,” Hallie said, stepping out from behind the helicopter. “It’s alright,” she told the armed men. “These are settlers from Reunion.”
“Good day to you,” Donall said, a smile lifting his mouth. “I should have known that you’d be involved somewhere in this.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Hallie said.
“No. It’s not somewhere we’d normally venture, that’s true,” Donall told her, eyes moving past her to take in the house. “But we heard and saw the explosions last night. We knew something momentous had happened.”
“We thought there might be injured here,” Sylvie added. “We brought what medical supplies we have, and what food we could spare.”
“That’s kind of you,” Hallie said, amazed at the generosity of people who’d lived in fear of Jonah and his men for a long time being not just willing to lend aid, but to have gone out of their way to bring it up the hill to this house.
“The men Jonah had with him here, they weren’t all strangers,” Donall said, as if that explained everything. “Some of them were our friends, our family. So we wanted to see how they were.”
Hallie found she had a lump in her throat at that and was spared the task of finding something to say by brisk boot steps coming across the gravel behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Girard, the director and commander all coming towards them.
The commander had left his helmet off, but still presented an intimidating figure with his body armour and weapons, his expression watchful as he assessed the newcomers.
“Is Rhodda here?” Donall asked, clearly concerned.
“She is. She was sleeping last I saw,” Hallie said, “but I expect she’ll be along in a bit.”
“And Brock?” Sylvie asked.
“That’s a longer story. But he’s here, yes, and he’s in one piece,” Hallie told them as the trio from the house came to stop beside her. “Donall Greer, this is Director Peredur Roth, head of the Conclave Investigators, and Commander Yasir Rojas, who leads the tactical team.”
“Master Greer,” the director said, “I am pleased to know you. Have you come all the way from Reunion this morning?”
“We set off in the night,” Donall said, a rueful twist to his mouth. “We thought we might be needed, but it seems not.”
“It’s good that you’re here, though. If you would, we have some coffee brewing and I’d welcome a chance to talk with you,” the director said.
There was a low murmur among the Reunion settlers that Hallie had no difficulty in interpreting as longing at the mention of coffee. Apparently the director read it as well as his mouth lifted in a small smile.
“Coffee all round, then,” the director said. “Do come with us.”
Before they could move, Hallie caught the low sound of engines through the trees.
She wasn’t the only one. The commander and his men went on alert, a subtle but definite shift of their postures, all of them turning towards the road that was mostly hidden by the trees, their weapons lifted to their shoulders, ready to use.
“Sounds like ATVs,” Hallie commented, mostly for the benefit of Donall and the others who were looking alarmed at the weapons around them.
Donall grimaced. “Probably Nicholas come to see what he can scavenge.” There was a savage bite to his tone that hadn’t been there before. He glanced at his three companions, then back at the director. “Before he arrives, I wish to make it clear that he does not speak for all of us.”
“Understood,” the director said, his expression giving nothing away.
However, Hallie knew that he had listened to both her and Girard carefully the night before, and had asked them follow-up questions, too.
She didn’t think there was any world in which Peredur Roth would be well-disposed to someone who put children in cages, but there was no time to reassure Donall and the others of that as the ATVs were coming into view.
She was not surprised to see Nicholas riding as a passenger on the first vehicle, which was being driven by the burly, dark-haired man she and Girard had met at the gates of New Hope.
She was also not surprised to see that he’d brought another two ATVs with him, bristling with men with guns, or that Nicholas’ arrival was met by what looked like the entire complement of the Conclave Investigators’ tac team, armed and ready to fire.
Nicholas was not expecting that greeting.
His driver stopped short of driving into the line of armed hochlen, close enough for Hallie to read the variety of expressions that went across Nicholas’ face from shock to embarrassment to fury.
Looking past the line of armed men, he spotted Donall and the others and got out of the ATV, stalking his way across the gravel.
“You have no business here,” he stated, pointing a finger at Donall. “None of you.” He jabbed the finger in a circle in the air, covering everyone who was present from the hochlen to humans.
“And you must be Nicholas Rigg,” the director said. Hallie had never heard him sound so utterly arrogant, so completely hochlen, before. “I am Peredur Roth, director of the Conclave Investigators. I have a warrant for your arrest from the Conclave.”