by Richard Fox
“That’s weird.” Estan spat into the dirt. “Pretty vague for rules of engagement. They say anything about the triple layers of radar scattering canopy?”
“Yeah, it needs to be perfect. Lieutenant and the line sergeant will be doing inspections. Constantly,” Garta said.
“This isn’t how most field exercises go?” Nemsi asked.
“Nah, kid, this feels like a deployment right up to the heretics’ border,” Estan said. “We were assigned to Prince Riktan when he was about to crush the border fort at Chaimal Pass after they took some potshots at us. King had to pull him back at the very last second.”
“The King…” Nemsi pondered for a moment. “There were some long limousines near the airfield too.”
“Told you,” Garta said, climbing back into the turret. “You know what that means.”
“Yup.” Estan sighed and closed up the thermoses.
“What?” Nemsi asked.
“Better start polishing the brass on every bullet for the machine guns,” Estan said. “Because if there are high-falootin’ Royals around, we’ve got to look good so the Royals in charge of our unit look good.”
“Royals ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” Garta said. “Estan, grab your binos and keep an eye on the sky. Nemsi, get a shovel and start digging.”
“Digging? Why?”
“Because when you’re digging, no one ever asks you to go and do anything else. And we might need a trench to take cover in. Or shit in. Depends how deep you go. Get started,” Garta said.
****
The hood came off Clay’s head and bright light stung his eyes. He sat on a wooden chair with his hands cuffed through wooden slats he could feel, his ankles shackled to the peg legs. He shifted slightly and his seat didn’t move. It was bolted to the floor.
The room was musty, the concrete floor uneven and stained. Old.
“Let me guess, Fort Horizon?” Clay asked.
“Why do you think that?” Fastal stepped out of the shadows and bent forward to look Clay eye to eye.
“Went from a cool breeze that smelled of the ocean when we landed. Big hangar doors closed behind us and now we’re in what looks like a munitions bunker. This is the base with the most fighter squadrons in the whole kingdom. I figured you’d take me someplace like this…where’s my family?”
“Safe,” Fastal said. “Not here, but safe.”
“Thank you,” Clay said.
Fastal stood up. “You said you’re here to help us…you can start now. Bring it over.” He half turned and looked outside the circle of light.
A gurney wheeled in from the shadows, a pair of Blooded in simple fatigues on either end. The dead Myrmidon was on the gurney, a black body bag beneath his armored bulk. Sazon skirted the edge of the light, a clipboard and pencil in hand.
The smell of stale blood hit Clay’s nose and a flood of memories came with it. Human blood had more of a copper tang to it than Tyr.
“What is this thing?” Fastal asked. “Why did your caste kill it?”
“They’re not my caste. Not anymore. What you’ve got there is a dead human wearing a Myrmidon-pattern exo-armor suit. Not the newest model, but I’m familiar with it.” Clay craned his neck up to look at the corpse. “What do you want to know?”
“How…how to kill it,” Fastal said. “How many are there? What was it shooting us with? There were these snaps when it fired and we didn’t find a single spent cartridge anywhere on the mountain.”
“Gauss technology. Magnets accelerate the rounds and fire them that way, much more reliable. Nothing to clean and nothing to get jammed,” Clay said. “Look, we can waste a lot of time beating around the bush of what you do and do not know about the Myrmidons, or I can stand up and show you.”
“I don’t know what will happen if you touch this.” Fastal poked the weapon mounted on the dead man’s arm.
“Allow me.” Clay leaned forward and strained as he pulled his arms apart. The cuffs snapped apart and Clay rubbed his wrists but remained seated. “Gravity differential, makes me a bit stronger than I look.”
Fastal’s mouth contorted for a moment, then he motioned for Clay to get up. Clay crouched up, then broke the chair’s legs with short kicks.
“Mighty polite of you to keep those cuffs on for as long as you did,” Fastal said.
“It was getting a bit old.” Clay went over to the gurney and broke the cuffs off his wrists with a twist. “You see this?” He poked a finger into the Myrmidon’s chest and the fabric gave slightly, a hex pattern appearing beneath the light. “Graphene weave. You could poke a pencil tip against it and have a bronto stand on top without this stuff tearing. Feel this.” Clay squeezed the Myrmidon’s upper arm, feeling a length of metal beneath his touch.
“Non-Newtonian gel layer distributes force across the suit, counters blast waves and impact damage. There’s a frame over his body, like bones, that handles the weight of the suit and augments his strength even more than mine. The onboard computer should have self-destructed when his life signs terminated…” He pushed the body up on one shoulder and poked a finger into a melted, blackened mass at the top of the Myrmidon’s shoulders. “Gone.”
“There was a computer in that tiny little box?” Sazon asked. “How? Our smallest one can barely fit in this room. And what is ‘graphene’?”
“Who is ‘Myrmidon’?” Fastal asked. “Is that a clan?”
“Can we go back to ‘graphene’?” Sazon slightly raised her hand holding the pencil.
“How do we kill them?” Marshal Hawn’ru stepped out of the shadows.
“Marshal,” Clay said, touching his fingertips to his brows as a show of respect. “You have a dead one here. I assume you have an idea how to do it.”
“One of your chieftains finished him off,” Fastal said. “I doubt we can plan on that happening again and to every one of these demons that sets foot on our planet.”
“Looks like blast damage.” Clay ran his fingertips over small pits on the armor. “Grenade?”
“Yes, shoulder launcher,” Fastal said. “Barely slowed him down.”
“Taking a blast like that puts the gel layer off its equilibrium for a few minutes…you must have…here.” Clay stuck a finger into the knife wound near the Myrmidon’s neck. “You broke his containment layer. Hulegu—that’s their leader—must have killed him because he was infected with…any local virus. He was an infection risk to everyone else in his ship.”
“So we just attack with grenades and hope the graph things have a bad day?” Fastal asked. "How do we kill them?”
“You have to fight them like you’re fighting tanks,” Clay said. “Fragmentation grenades? No.” He shook his head. “Hit them with that molten lance of metal from an anti-tank shaped charge and it might—might—beat their armor. Or a tandem warhead…do you all have that yet?”
“‘Yet’ needs to come pretty soon.” Fastal looked up at the ceiling. “When we fought the slavers at Falling Strike Pass, I had my men organized into small kill teams. We ambushed their tanks using the warheads you described, but there was nothing ‘tandem’ about it.”
“Can we backtrack?” Sazon waggled the eraser end of her pencil next to her face.
“You’re…not sick,” Sazon said.
“We go to great lengths to immunize ourselves before we come here,” Clay said.
“Then we back engineer some of the Slaver’s equipment. They used poison gas and—” Hawn’ru stopped when Clay raised a hand.
“Useless—now, at any rate. The astronauts didn’t die in a crash, did they? They were taken. Taken because Zike needed their bodies to manufacture a serum against Tyr’s diseases.”
“How do you know Zike?” Ciolsi asked from the shadows.
“We spoke briefly when he arrived, then he tried to kill me and my family when we returned to help you.” Clay turned around to look into the darkness around them, making out more Tyr. “You’ve met him, I assume.”
“He wants us to abandon the Azure Is
lands.” King Menicus stepped forward. “We have a little more than a day to comply.”
“Sire.” Clay went to one knee, but Fastal caught him under the arm and forced him back up.
“Show your face. Your true face,” Menicus said.
Clay pressed behind his ears and the synth layer over his face went slack, then fell free like a curtain off a broken rod. His skin stung in the fresh air, and he tensed as a collective gasp filled the bunker. A moment passed and no one tried to kill him as a demon…this time.
“No god has touched you,” Menicus said. “You are like the cursed and the Hidden.”
“I am no Tyr, so no, the gods would not have graced me with their favor.” Clay opened his tunic and tucked his false face inside. “We have different tones to our skin, different prevalent features due to our heritage, but all humans are just humans, though it took us awhile to appreciate that about ourselves.”
“You were the one that tried to warn us,” the King said.
Clay nodded, then turned his attention back to the dead Myrmidon.
“This Zike demands the Azure Islands. I cannot give those to him. It is—”
“The homeland of the Royal caste and has the most sacred temples of the Speakers. I know, sire,” Clay said. “You no doubt told this to Zike and it changed nothing.”
“Why? Why must he have that land? Of all the places, he wants the one I cannot surrender!” Menicus shouted, his hands balled and shaking with rage. No one else made a sound as his cry echoed off the walls.
“Because they are so beautiful,” Clay said. “They are here to set up cities. To resettle human beings to your world. You must understand this, sire. We do not share planets. With anyone. The natives are always exterminated in time.”
“But Zike promised no further demands if we complied.” Matron Virid stepped forward.
Clay picked up the Myrmidon’s non-gun arm and touched the bottom of a ring over the wrist. A blade snapped out of a forearm housing, the focused-laser edge burning crimson. He clicked the ring to one side and the blade retracted.
“A lie.” Clay shook his head. “He’s playing for time. The colony ship isn’t here yet. Once that arrives, he’ll have no reason to negotiate with you. No reason to hold off the slaughter.”
“How many of those things does he have?” Hawn’ru asked, pointing to the Myrmidon.
“Probably no more than a few dozen, but these aren’t the worst of his weapons. You saw the warship? Several times the size of the Holy Favor aircraft carrier from the last war. It’s armed with missiles that are more accurate and destructive than you can possibly imagine,” Clay said.
“But they won’t use nuclear warheads,” Hawn’ru said.
“No…they won’t need to. An eradication action on a planet this size and with this population would take…maybe six weeks,” Clay said. “Assuming they don’t use bioweapons.”
“If it’s so hopeless, then why are you helping us?” Menicus asked.
“The wormhole,” Clay said, pointing to the ceiling, “the portal through space that we came through behind Kleegar; it’s Zike’s only weakness. If we tear it down, he’ll retreat or be trapped here for decades, and he doesn’t have enough soldiers to fight every last Tyr, not if you’re united.”
“Negotiate with the heretics or give up the Azure Islands.” Menicus crossed his arms. “Both are impossible things.”
“I daresay the gods will forgive you if you reach out to the Worthy People just this once,” Clay said, “because they should still have nuclear warheads and we’re going to need them. The only way to destroy the wormhole is with a significant quantum field disturbance, and that takes a gamma particle spike that only a nuke can provide…or a Sebrinski/Onozawa generator…but I doubt you’ve got one of those handy.”
“And if we had a warhead?” Menicus asked.
“I’d have to get it to within line of sight and a few hundred kilometers of the wormhole.” Clay rubbed the raw skin on the bridge of his nose. “Which is a whole other problem.”
“We still have a fair number of fissile—”
“Sire, no,” Hawn’ru spoke up. “He knew where our nuclear stockpile was and then his people attacked. Don’t give him another target.”
“Immediate problem first,” Menicus said. “Zike’s threat to take the Azure Islands.”
“I’m surprised he even gave you a chance,” Clay said, frowning. “Deadly serious. He’ll kill everyone he finds there after the deadline, and he’ll attack with things far worse than this Myrmidon.” He poked the corpse on the shoulder.
“Then an evacuation is warranted,” the King said, and the room erupted in shouts.
Menicus raised his hands and a tense silence returned.
“We give this Zike what he wants. Put him at ease long enough to give us time to fight back,” the King said. “Trying to get another warhead in the midst of an attack by the demons from the Far Darkness and worldwide panic would be a tall order, wouldn’t it, Matron? Marshal?”
“There will be a panic no matter what we do,” Virid said. “At least we have this untouched monstrosity to prove to the heretics that we’re not running an elaborate joke on them when we do come and ask for a warhead.”
“The Royals will object to leaving their estates,” Hawn’ru said. “You ask the Blooded to remove them and…”
“I can handle my own caste just fine, thank you, Marshal.” Menicus ran a hand down his face. “Where is my scribe? I need to prepare the evacuation order. You,” he pointed at Clay, “tell the marshal how to make those tandem warheads you mentioned and put your disguise back on. You’re…unnatural.”
“Yes, sire,” Clay said and unbuttoned his tunic.
Chapter 39
Elsime dipped her quill into a tiny inkwell situated inside her wooden lap desk, then wrote the date on the bottom of the scroll. She swiped a fingertip into another open jar and rubbed a very fine dust onto the moist ink.
Sighing, she looked out the back window of the King’s limousine.
A Close Guard sitting catty-corner from her touched the side of an earpiece.
“No word when His Highness will be done,” the guard said.
“I can’t believe we were left behind,” she said, wafting air over the ink, watching it dry.
“You were left behind. I’m assigned to you,” he said.
“Oh, do pardon my assumption.” Elsime rolled the scroll up and slipped it into a leather case. “Though I also assumed that I would be at the King’s side for all affairs of state to keep the official record. Yet here I am while the King speaks to…one of them.”
“The scribe records what needs to be on record. Not everything needs to be on that record. You heard anything about who—or what—they’ve got down there?” the guard asked.
“My duty is to record, not elicit” She set her writing desk aside and folded her hands on her lap.
“Shadow’s caught up to a family of these…not Tyr. They can change their caste at will. Worse security threat than any Hidden operative we’ve ever encountered. Then the local police went to search their residence and the whole building sort of…vanished.”
“Sorry, go back to the part about ‘Hidden operatives.’ The Hidden are just a myth. A tale from the Speakers to keep everyone moral and just. Sin enough beneath the gaze and the gods will take their gift away,” she said, motioning around her Royal ketafik markings. “Tyr without a caste. Please.”
The guard chuckled. “You remember the Speaker’s ritual when you were welcomed to the palace? Anointment with an oil that smelled like grish piss? That’s a solvent to dissolve the false caste markings the Hidden use to disguise themselves when they move amongst the kingdom. And the heretics. No one tolerates a ghost face.”
“What would the Speaker have done if my…what happens? The Hidden burst into flames like a demon that’s crossed into a sanctified shrine?”
“The oil runs dark and then the Close Guard hiding behind the curtains shoot the spy. We’ve ne
ver taken one prisoner before. They always commit suicide once they’re discovered. Poisoned teeth. Daggers to their own hearts. Hard to interrogate a corpse.”
“The Hidden are real…”
“Don’t write that down,” he said.
“I gathered as much. Not the most life-shattering revelation of late, is it? You’re a Close Guard. What do you think will happen once the people find out about these visitors? These humans?”
“Now you’re eliciting plenty.”
“You started it. We can just sit here and stare at each other or we can talk.”
The guard sighed. “Because there is no real precedent for…not Tyr, it will likely come down to how the Speakers interpret their arrival. If the priests say they’re an abomination beneath the gaze, then the castes will fight any cooperation with them…and not look too kindly on the King for meeting with them.”
“Ah…now it makes more sense…why I’m not recording the King’s meeting with the one in the bunker,” she said.
“Some Royal houses are always alert for a reason to push the King’s family out of power. Even in the midst of a crisis. If the Speakers interpret the arrival as they’re some kind of a new caste…then maybe the Tyr castes will accept them not as demons, but as mortals we can fight. Which is why High Speaker Osuda is at the Grand Temple back in the Azure Islands. Divining just how the priests will react.”
“I thought that revelation would come from being in the gods’ presence after enough oaxa.”
“Osuda is no fool. Sometimes he can gauge the gods’ intentions without a full ‘revelation.’”
“I’ve noticed some of the Speaker’s edicts have been rather…convenient—another realization about the kingdom that shouldn’t surprise me anymore. But the human caste crossed the stars and can speak through reflections of light from no mirrors. Their Blooded are formidable. Fighting them…”
