by Mel Odom
“Exactly,” Halladay said. “Oringu-class. Twenty-seven meters long and zips through water like a fish. Designed to be support and defense, and it’s armed to the teeth. Getting one of the submersibles will be hard. Taking over both of them is going to be next to impossible.”
“That river is deep enough to allow both of those vessels to navigate?” Sage asked.
“The Yeraf River is over two hundred meters deep in that area,” Jahup said. “In other places, it is even deeper.”
“The Zaire River in Africa is over two hundred meters deep,” Kiwanuka said. “Makaum is a slightly larger planet, and it has more surface land mass than Terra.”
All of it filled with things that want to kill you and eat you. Sage glanced at the two submersibles. “How many crewmen are on the boats?”
“The Kinob will be stripped down,” Halladay said. “Huang’s best guess was seven, including captain, pilot, navigator, and quartermaster. It will have three or four grunts to handle cargo. The Oringu is harder to access. Terran mil intel lists crews of up to twenty aboard. Captain, pilot, navigator, quartermaster, weps, and the rest are warriors who specialize in asset recovery and boarding crews.”
“Boarding crews?” Sage asked. “Like pirates?”
“Like naval crews used by Lord Nelson’s British Navy,” Halladay said. “They’ll be experienced warriors used to fighting in close quarters.”
“Then we’ll fill our complement with special forces people,” Sage said. “We’ve got a few men who fought the Phrenorians at Cidra. They had to dig the Phrenorians out of the tunnels at Samoq. And we’ve been training for urban terrain tactics. We can make do with those people.”
Halladay nodded. “I’ve already got most of them on your list, Master Sergeant. You’ve got a thirty-minute window to review it, then you’ve got to join Huang’s caravan. They’re already en route to that destination.”
“Copy that.” Sage looked at Jahup. “You and I will review those lists, Sergeant. I want some of your people among them. People who know the area and how to fight in a tight environment. Can do?”
Jahup nodded and didn’t look excited, for which Sage was grateful. “Can do.”
Sage glanced at Halladay. “Anything else, sir?”
“No. I’ll just wish you luck.”
“Roger that.” Sage saluted and performed an about-face that was textbook perfect.
At his side, Jahup did the same, but he relented his stoic demeanor when his grandmother reached out to hug him and speak privately to him for a moment.
By the time Sage reached the door, Jahup and Kiwanuka had fallen in behind him.
THIRTY-ONE
Outside Tactical Command Center
Fort York
0011 Hours Zulu Time
“Master Sergeant,” Jahup called after the sec door shushed closed behind them.
“Yeah?” Sage responded.
Jahup hesitated, then hurried through his request. “Can I have five minutes? I’ll meet you at the helipad.”
Sage was pretty sure he knew what the younger man was going to do, so he nodded. “You have your five minutes, Sergeant, but if you’re late, I’m leaving without you.”
“You won’t be leaving without me,” Jahup promised. He turned and hurried back down the corridor.
Kiwanuka walked at Sage’s side as they continued their trek. “Those two needed to have more time together. It’s hard enough figuring out you’re in love at that age without a war going on around you.”
“Knowing you’re in someone’s crosshairs allows you to live life more honestly, too. You know it could be over at any minute, so you follow your instincts. If this situation hadn’t turned worse, they might not have figured it out at all.”
“I know they’ve been divided over the situation here,” Kiwanuka said. “Do you think they’ve truly figured out where they are with each other?”
“For the moment, sure.”
“Noojin’s rejoined the military. She’s one of us again.”
Sage nodded. He’d had the feeling earlier after their talk that was where Noojin was headed.
“When are you leaving?” Sage asked Kiwanuka as they walked through the corridor leading away from the tactical command center.
“I’ve got to leave the fort in nine minutes if I’m going to make the shuttle at North Star Spaceport,” Kiwanuka replied.
“The assassin and his team are going to expect company after today’s events. Us or the Phrenorians. Those people are used to being hunted.”
“Copy that,” Kiwanuka replied.
“Do you know where to find their ship?”
“I do. Corporal Pingasa tracked Morlortai’s shuttle burning off from the planet when it left. Further investigative efforts on my team’s part turned up a snitch inside Wosesa Staumar’s staff that sold information to a man named Ny’age. Ny’age is part of Morlortai’s crew who usually acts as a go-between.”
“The Phrenorians could have found the same guy.”
“I’ll let you know if they beat me there.”
“You can’t hide in open space,” Sage pointed out.
“Neither can Morlortai or his crew. Maybe he’ll see me coming, but once I have eyes on him, he can’t get away.”
Sage brooded for a moment over all the fronts that were popping up around them. “I don’t like the fact that we’re getting spread thin on this.”
“Neither do I,” Kiwanuka admitted. “So you be sure you make it back, Master Sergeant. As I recall, I saved your life earlier and you owe me dinner.”
“I do. You make sure you show up. I don’t like drinking alone.”
“Copy that.”
They stopped at a juncture in the hallway and Sage realized they were heading in different directions. He turned to her and looked into her eyes.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” Sage said.
Kiwanuka nodded. “You will.” She turned and went, and—for a short time—he watched her go. She didn’t look back. He’d known she wouldn’t.
0015 Hours Zulu Time
Noojin sat at a table in the mess hall where Jahup’s near-AI had located her. For a moment, he stood in the doorway and watched her sitting there.
She was alert and ready, but her mind was somewhere else. Her armor gleamed and showed her attention to its readiness. Her short-cropped dark hair framed her face and made her look younger than her years, almost childlike. But the bleakness in her eyes almost broke his heart.
When they’d hunted together, when they’d lost hunters who were their mentors and younger hunters they themselves were training, they’d grieved together. But those losses hadn’t dragged them down—or apart—the way the war had. The hunts had been everything, a way to prove they could take care of themselves against everything the jungle and the planet could throw at them.
But the arrival of the Phrenorians and the Terrans had changed that. Jahup hadn’t realized how innocent he had been until he’d almost lost Noojin to the corp drug traffickers, and then again when she had stepped away from him and chosen to go her own path.
He’d been a fool thinking nothing would ever come between them.
As if sensing she was being stared at, a skill learned out in the jungle, Noojin looked at him. For a moment, her expression didn’t change and he thought she was still mad at him for almost getting killed earlier.
He quashed the immediate impulse to feel frustrated and instead walked over to her.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He gestured to the bench across from her.
She nodded.
He sat. “I got called in to the colonel’s office.”
“The Quass told me.”
“I’m going on a mission with Sage.”
“I was told that too.”
For a moment, Jahup was silent and tried to figure out what he wanted to say. “You weren’t there when I woke up.”
“I had to rest. Your grandmother ordered me to. I didn’t have t
he strength to argue with her. I was asleep when you were released from the med center. Then I had to go get my equipment ready.”
“This is really what you want to do?”
“We don’t have a choice. The Phrenorians are coming now. There will be no stopping them.”
“You do have a choice. You can get offplanet.”
“And go where?”
“Anywhere.”
She shook her head. “No. This morning when I thought I’d lost you proved that to me. I could live without you, anywhere else but Makaum, but that’s not what I would ever choose to do. Not as long as there’s a chance we can be together.”
“I feel the same way, but if letting you go meant you would be safe, I’d do that.”
Noojin showed him a small smile. “This is what I have to do. I tried sitting out of the war. I tried not to worry about you.” She shook her head. “None of that worked. I worried about you during the hunts too, but at least during those there were breaks in between. With this . . . it’s all the time. There are no breaks.”
“I know.” Jahup pulled off one of his gauntlets and took her hand in his. Her fingers felt strong and alive, and he hoped she stayed that way. He couldn’t imagine life without her. “I don’t want us to be apart, Noojin.”
“Neither do I.”
Her helmet buzzed for attention.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m meeting up with Sergeant Kiwanuka.”
Surprise spiked through him. “You’re going after the assassin?”
Noojin nodded. “I’m a hunter. Like you. I’m better trained in close quarters combat than most of the soldiers she has available to her.”
Jahup suppressed the immediate anxiety that threaded through him, and he knew Noojin was dealing with the same fears. “Make sure you come back.”
“I will. You do the same.”
They stood and were awkward for a moment. Then Jahup leaned in and kissed her. Maybe she was surprised because he’d never done that before, or maybe it was because they were in a public place and she didn’t like showing emotions like that, but she didn’t respond.
Not at first.
Then she kissed him back and his head spun.
Her helmet buzzed again, and his did the same, letting him know the five minutes he’d asked for had elapsed.
With a final kiss, they separated and went their own ways. Jahup turned his thoughts to the mission with Sage, and his resolve to accomplish whatever he had to do in order to return to Noojin burned within him.
THIRTY-TWO
A-Pakeb Node
General’s Personal Quarters
Makaum
29117 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Zhoh shifted through screens of information on the computer, flicking from one to another with quick deliberation. Sat vid from recon units they had hidden and paid for among corp support arrays in near-planet orbits played in other screens.
Several of those screens showed a steady line of beings creeping out of the sprawl through shadowy alleys and flowing into the solid dark of the waiting jungle. To Zhoh, it didn’t make sense. The beings worked hard to maintain their urban area, fighting back the creeping vegetation that would not give up, and cohabitating with it when they couldn’t fight it. They had spent generations building the area into a habitable environment. Even a few days away from it would see large tracts of land lost to them. The jungle would reclaim everything.
“The Makaum people are withdrawing from the sprawl?” he asked.
“Yes, triarr,” Mato replied. He had brought the news to Zhoh only minutes ago.
“What is the purpose?”
“Our analysts believe the beings are abandoning the sprawl.”
“Because of today’s violence?”
“Yes.”
That didn’t make sense to Zhoh either. The battle in the streets had been nothing compared to areas where total war had broken out. But he remembered these beings weren’t fighters. They were barely civilized, and they hadn’t had any enemies except the planet’s natural predators. An opposing army would be a frightening thing to them. “Where will they go?”
“Into the jungle.”
“There’s no place for them to gather out there.”
“None that we have ever seen.”
Zhoh considered that. Such a retreat meant that there would be less combat necessary in the streets as the Phrenorian army seized the assets there, but rounding up the populace as slave labor would become more tedious. It would still be done, but it would be accomplished more slowly.
And then effort would be required to rebuild the sprawl. This development was infuriating.
“For what purpose?” Zhoh demanded. “If the Terran military was going to give these beings asylum, they would use shuttles to take them into space. And they wouldn’t do that until they had proper transport in place. Supporting hundreds of extra beings on a space station will stress its resources and make it more indefensible for a blockade. Once we cut off their food and water, they’ll have no choice but to capitulate.”
“Agreed,” Mato said. “Our analysts also believe this retreat is being done to get the Makaum beings out of the path of the coming military engagement.”
Zhoh sat up straighter in his chair. His primaries clicked irritably and his pheromones were thick and threatening. He quickly checked himself and forced himself to be calmer.
“The Terrans are planning on fighting.” The thought excited Zhoh even though his warriors were outnumbered. His warriors were also blooded combatants. Many of the Terran soldiers lacked such experience.
“They know we will give them no choice.”
“This is a delaying tactic,” Zhoh said.
“I think so too, General.”
“They wish to avoid a confrontation. Or maybe they hope to hide and live in the shadows while we take what we want. Then, after we’ve taken our fill, they’ll live on the dregs of this planet and be forgotten.”
“That is a possibility.”
“I don’t like the idea of having to dig those beings out of that jungle,” Zhoh said. “It will be too costly and too slow.”
On top of that, he didn’t like being in the jungle. There were too many dangerous things out there. He wasn’t afraid of combat, but there were creatures and plants out in the wilderness that would kill a warrior before he even recognized the threat.
“Still, triarr, they can do nothing to stop us from doing exactly that.”
Zhoh thought of the jungle and the times he’d been out in it. Everything on the planet seemed determined to kill anything that was foreign to it. The Makaum beings had managed to live within it, even to build a city where they could live together, but they hadn’t truly thrived in the ecosphere. Their number had slowly grown over the years after the generation ship had crash-landed four hundred years ago.
“Have you been out in the jungle, Mato?”
“Not often.”
“I’ve been on thirty different planets during my career,” Zhoh said. “I’ve fought Terrans and other beings on all of them. I’ve had to wear radiation suits to protect me from fallout in nuked sprawls while salvaging technology and scientists, lived through the ravages of disease in internment camps that could have killed me, and fought every hellish monster and being that lived on those planets. But I have never before faced something as vile as this world.”
“Nor have I.”
Zhoh watched the vids of beings streaming from the sprawl. They went in groups, transporting only what they could by carts pulled by dafeerorg and anti-grav “mules,” flat cargo platforms they’d bought from corp-sponsored shops. Most of the beings only carried what they could pack out under their own power.
“Do we have an estimate of how many beings are leaving the sprawl?” Zhoh asked.
“Our best estimate is seventy-two percent.”
The number was intolerable. The after-conquest stats were in and the success of the follow-up mission was dependent on the labor force they intended
to enslave.
“And the other twenty-eight percent?”
“Most are staying where they are. Others have taken shuttles to the space stations.”
“They can’t remain as a large group out in the jungle,” Zhoh said. “They would become easy prey for predators, and they wouldn’t be able to find a sustainable food source. That is the problem with trying to become urbanized without resources. Water out there will be no problem, but living off the land is hard. They will exterminate their food supply, meat and vegetable. And if too many of them try to congregate in the same area, even with an abundant supply of fresh water, they will be living in their own filth in short order.”
There had been worlds where Zhoh had been forced to do that with troops for a time so he knew the hardships those beings faced. Having to live off the land had defeated armies in the past. Large groups of forces were only viable if they had supply lines. If a unit could not be fed, it could not be fielded.
Then there was the matter of sanitation and sickness.
The Makaum beings were only delaying the inevitable.
“This makes no sense to me,” Zhoh said. “They will have to fragment, divide their numbers into smaller groups, and become prey for the predators that dwell outside the sprawl. I wouldn’t do this. I would rather fight to the death and die free.”
Mato nodded. “As would I, triarr. But we are not these beings. Their ways are not our ways. We are warriors. These beings have been agriculturally based and have had no wars.”
“The generation ship crashed on this planet four hundred years ago,” Zhoh said. “How long have the Makaum lived in the sprawl?”
“I know only a little of their history. Perhaps two hundred and fifty years? Not more than that. They feared living in groups for a time. Earlier efforts to build a sprawl ended in defeat until they learned to fight off the larger predators like the kifrik and others that immediately hunted them as a prey source.”
“Do we know who is behind this withdrawal?”
“According to our sources, word was sent out from Quass Leghef.”
