by Mel Odom
“Kjersti,” Noojin said in a strained voice, remembering too late that they were in the field and that wasn’t how she was supposed to address the staff sergeant. “Something’s wrong.”
“What?” Kiwanuka asked.
“It’s Telilu.” Noojin rocked as she leaned against the dropship’s bulkhead and held on to cargo netting. “When the Phrenorians arrived, she got worried. She couldn’t sleep at night. She was afraid that they would try to steal her away. I put an emergency transponder in her doll and told her I would monitor it, that all she had to do was press it and I would know.”
“All right,” Kiwanuka said.
“Once we reached the atmosphere, my armor lit up with the signal because I’d patched it through on my personal network,” Noojin went on. When she tried to continue, her voice gave out and she had to work to keep speaking. “The transponder wasn’t strong enough to broadcast where we were. There were no repeaters for personal sat systems in space.”
“Telilu is probably fine. She most likely pressed the transponder during a time when she was scared. There’s plenty to be afraid of down there right now.”
“I know that,” Noojin said. “I told myself that, but where Telilu is just isn’t making sense.”
“What do you mean?”
Noojin forwarded the information from her HUD to Kiwanuka’s. “That’s the Sulusku Highlands,” she said. “There’s no reason for her to be there.”
“A lot of people bailed from the sprawl after the attack started,” Kiwanuka said. “She’s probably in one of those groups.”
“No,” Noojin said desperately. “You don’t understand. Telilu wouldn’t go there. No one would. She’s somewhere on sacred grounds. We stay away from them. Not even this attack would make Telilu go there.”
“Is she talking about the Sulusku Highlands?” Colonel Halladay asked.
“Yes sir.” Kiwanuka quickly explained the transponder’s signal and how Noojin had it.
Just as quickly, Halladay explained about Sage’s assignment tracking Quass Leghef. Noojin’s fears grew.
“Sage told me he was following a trail the last time I talked to him,” Halladay said. “He’s been comm silent for a while because he’s in close to where he believes Quass Leghef is being held by Tholak. Jahup mentioned something about a place called the Caves of the Glass Dead.”
“I’ve never heard of a place called that,” Kiwanuka said.
“Neither have I,” Halladay said. “Whatever Sage is on to out there, I’m betting it’s bigger than eight soldiers can handle.”
Noojin made herself speak. “The Caves of the Glass Dead is where the different groups of Makaum people first came together and realized that they had to live as one. No one goes there.” She hurried on because she couldn’t stop herself. “What about Jahup?”
“He’s with Sage,” Halladay said.
The hard knot that had formed in Noojin’s chest softened somewhat, but the location of where Jahup was headed and where Telilu was, and possibly Quass Leghef was as well, left her with sour bile at the back of her throat.
“We have to go there,” Noojin said.
“You are,” Halladay said. “Staff Sergeant, do you think your commandeered transport can get you there?”
“Yes sir.”
“We need Leghef somewhere we can keep her safe,” Halladay said. “Important negotiations are taking place among Alliance members and she needs to be part of that. Leghef is key right now, Staff Sergeant. Find the master sergeant, find Leghef, and get her to safety.”
“Copy that, sir.”
The comm went dead as Kiwanuka gave the dropship pilot the new orders.
Noojin resumed her seat and concentrated on pulling herself together. When they arrived, Jahup, Telilu, and the Quass would need her at her best.
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
28 Kilometers North of Makaum Sprawl
0837 Hours Zulu Time
Crouched behind a boulder on a small rise above the entrance to the cave system where the crawlers had parked, Sage surveyed the motley group that had assembled there.
Despite the fact that they were working together in some capacity, the Makaum people and offworlder mercenaries clustered in their groups apart from the Phrenorian warriors standing guard over the cave entrance.
There was no mistaking who was in charge. The Sting-Tails ran the operation and everyone knew it.
Jahup crouched only a couple meters away from Sage. Despite the younger man’s worries about his grandmother, he remained calm and listened. He was, Sage knew, going to be a good soldier.
As long as he survived the war taking place on Makaum.
That seemed doubtful because they were currently outnumbered four to one, and three-fourths of those were Phrenorians.
So far, there had been no sign of Leghef. And there was no way they were leaving the area without her.
Sage opened a burst comm transmission to Jahup. This close in to the Phrenorian network, he didn’t want to chance a long-distance link to the fort. He had also cut his HUD link to Fort York as well because that would have shown up on any Phrenorian signal sweeping the immediate vicinity.
He didn’t want to know how bad things had gotten at the fort, and he was certain things were worse, because he didn’t want to be torn in two directions.
One mission at a time, Sage reminded himself. A soldier lived longer that way.
“What are those caves?” Sage asked.
“The Caves of the Glass Dead,” Jahup answered softly.
“That doesn’t tell me much, Jahup.”
“I don’t know much.” Jahup paused and breathed out. The whisper-soft noise carried over the comm connection. “The older people rarely talk about this place, and even then only in bits and pieces. What I do know is that it was here the Forging was accomplished.”
“What is the Forging?”
“Do we have time for this? My grandmother is in there, and we have no idea what’s being done to her.”
“We need to know what we’re dealing with to get some idea of what’s being done to her,” Sage replied. “I know this is hard, Jahup. It’s everything I can do not to rush in there myself. The only thing that’s stopping me is that I’m about as certain as you can get that we’d be KIA before we reached those caves. I need the intel. So do you. So does your grandmother. We only get one chance at this.”
“Back a hundred years ago, maybe more,” Jahup said, “our people were split into small, roving groups of no more than a hundred and fifty people.”
Sage was familiar with hunter/gatherer groups. Several tribes still existed like that in Colombia when he’d been a boy. The free ones did. It was the only way to escape enslavement by the narco-barons growing coca plants. If they were good, if they were careful, a group of a hundred and fifty people could live off the land while living a nomadic lifestyle.
“Groups were predatory,” Jahup went on. “They had to be. Some of them became cannibals.”
“Because it was easier to hunt their own kind than to hunt the monsters hunting them,” Sage said.
“Yes. Those were the Dark Times, and the cannibals were called Oszage, which in our language means ‘stealer of the future.’ Each life they took withered our greater family.”
“Nobody’s ever mentioned that,” Sage said.
“No one will,” Jahup said. “That’s why this place isn’t talked about. There’s too much bad history here. In those days, not so long ago to people my grandmother’s age, and the previous generation, our ancestors feared each other and they lived small lives without any promise of a better or safer existence.”
The Makaum men opened the back doors of a cargo crawler and crowded around.
“Then the three brothers were born,” Jahup went on. “Dendene, Nytai, and Risal. All of them became leaders of their own groups. Their family line stretched back to Shipfall, when the generation ship transporting our people crashed onto Makaum. They grew up together, th
en the day came when their father split them up, establishing each of them with their own group. They didn’t like having to live apart. No one did. But the brothers vowed to find a way to live as one large tribe. They carried knowledge their father had given them regarding farming, and they planned the crops they would raise.”
The Makaum men hauled crates from the crawler and placed them on the ground. They brought out crowbars and put them to work opening the protective cases.
“So they found a place, where we live now, and set up their farm,” Jahup said. “After they were attacked by two groups of the Oszage, the brothers formed warrior bands, which became the hunters of our people, and tracked the cannibals down. Then they invited the other groups they found to the farmland. Slowly, they grew their population and their ability to produce enough food for everyone. Eventually, after much hard work and bloodshed, they had all of the groups together as they had dreamed. That was called the Forging, where they forged all the groups into one large group.”
“So what is the Glass Dead?” Sage asked.
“The brothers.” Jahup sounded distracted. “According to my grandmother, the brothers live in the cave.”
“They ‘live in the cave’?” Sage repeated. “Didn’t you say this was a hundred years ago?”
“At least. Probably closer to two hundred. I learned how to hunt. I didn’t care about history because incidents in the past weren’t what killed you. It was what you met in the jungle that did.”
When the Makaum men were finished uncrating their cargo, three self-propelled satellites about the size of a full-grown man stood on the ground. They were globe-shaped and had four fins and a thruster. Onboard containers of lifting gas, usually hydrogen or helium, provided lighter-than-air mobility.
With all the rivers and oceans on the planet, hydrogen would be readily available and, with offworld technology, extraction and usage would be simple enough for satellite suppliers.
“What are those devices?” Jahup asked.
“Low-orbit satellites,” Sage answered. “I think I know what Tholak and the Phrenorians want with your grandmother.” He pinged Culpepper. “Do you see those sat systems?”
“Roger that, Master Sergeant,” Culpepper replied.
“I don’t want those to get airborne.”
“Copy that, but making that happen isn’t going to be easy.”
“The last easy assignment you had was this morning when you brought a mountain down, Corporal.”
“Oh, yeah, that.”
“Get back to me when you have an idea.”
“Oh, I’ve already got an idea because I figured you might ask me something like this. I have to warn you: it’ll be loud and visible. Nothing subtle about it.”
“I’ve learned not to expect subtle from you,” Sage said. “But make sure it’s effective.”
“Copy that. I’m always effective.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
The Caves of the Glass Dead
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
28 Kilometers North of Makaum Sprawl
0841 Hours Zulu Time
“Are they asleep?” Telilu whispered.
“Some say they are,” Leghef said.
The three men, all of them old and bearded but somehow still strong and fierce, stood in a loose semicircle at the end of the cave. Strong offworld lanterns hung around the cavern and chased away the darkness.
When Leghef had last been there, visitors had burned torches. Black soot still marked the walls in the places where the torches had hung, and a black smudge coated the uneven, rounded cavern roof.
The place was smaller than Leghef remembered, but it was no less fearsome.
“Others,” Leghef went on, “believe that one day, should we need them, they will wake and come to help us.”
“Why?”
“Because we are their children. We are the future they promised their people.”
Telilu looked pointedly at Tholak and the two Phrenorian officers conversing at the passageway entrance they’d come through.
“Then why aren’t they waking up now?” her granddaughter asked.
“Maybe because they know we can take care of ourselves,” Leghef said in as brave a voice as she could manage.
The three brothers—Dendene, Nytai, and Risal—stood with weapons in hand: a sword, a spear, and an ax. Nytai wore a laser pistol at his hip. That weapon was a replica of a true pistol that had survived the wreck of the generation ship and generations of hard use.
All three men looked like they’d been carved from yellow gold stone. In reality, after death each man had been painstakingly coated in moschon sap, a resin that was used to preserve and strengthen furniture surfaces, and their youth returned to them through the hands of talented sculptors. They stood on carved stone pedestals that looked like miniature jungles.
Around them, on the walls, scenes from the stories of the brothers, of the generation starship, and some of the monsters they had discovered in the jungle were rendered in bas-relief. Each scene was meticulously carved out of the rock and stippled with ore-based paint so the images stood out in bright color.
“Why are they here?” Telilu asked.
“So that people remember them and all the good things they did,” Leghef said.
“Just like they will remember Leghef is the mother of your father, child,” Tholak said as he approached. “After she reunites our people.”
Even though her hands were still bound, Leghef stepped in front of her granddaughter so Tholak could not easily get to her.
Tholak grinned at her to show how ineffectual he believed her to be. He stopped just out of arm’s reach.
“My men are setting up a sat-relay station,” he said. “In a few minutes, we will be ready for you to make an impassioned plea to the people who are hiding out in the jungle.”
Some of Tholak’s men carried in protective cases. They placed them on the cavern floor, opened them, and unpacked the electronic equipment within. A small generator whirred to life in one corner of the cavern and powered it all as the men engaged the different pieces.
“Even if I were to do what you say,” Leghef said, struggling to get the words out, “how do you expect those people to hear you?”
“Because the Terran military supplied all of those groups with comms,” Tholak replied. “Military-grade units keyed to frequencies Fort York uses for public service announcements. We’re going to appropriate those frequencies and deliver your message.”
He reached into his coat and took out a small handheld device. When he punched it on, script filled the screen and Leghef recognized it was a speech.
“This message,” Tholak said. “The one that will unite our people to submit to the Phrenorian Empire and ask them for protection from the Terran Alliance.”
“I won’t do it,” Leghef said. “You might as well go ahead and kill me.”
Telilu’s eyes rounded in fear and she grabbed Leghef tightly. “No!”
Tenderly, Tholak reached out and brushed Telilu’s hair. The girl drew away from him.
“You will do as I tell you,” Tholak growled menacingly, “or I’ll slice this child to pieces in front of you.” He grinned coldly. “You weren’t the only one who learned to take meat from a sul’gha, Leghef. Tell me: do you think I can keep her alive long enough to remove her still-beating heart?”
Rilormang
The Sulusku Highlands
318991 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Zhoh spotted the first traitorous Phrenorian guard posted along the outer perimeter of the sec line Nalit’s and Warar’s warriors had established around the caves. The transport ship had dropped them on a hilltop four hundred meters away and he’d led his warriors toward the caves through the jungle.
As he peered at the warrior over his rifle, there was an instant when Zhoh considered ordering the private before him to stand down, but he didn’t trust that order to be obeyed. The warriors who were out here had disobeyed his orders already by aban
doning their battle assignments.
Instead, Zhoh pulled the particle beam rifle he carried to his shoulder, took aim at the center of the warrior’s chest as the private lifted his own assault rifle, and squeezed the trigger.
The initial blast knocked the warrior backward.
Zhoh fired again, still inexorably walking forward, and the second blast reduced the warrior’s cephalothorax into a mass of broken chitin and torn tissue. The warrior was dead by the time he hit the jungle floor.
Three more traitors dodged to the sides and situated themselves behind rocks and trees. Still, they vacillated before firing even though one of their own now lay dead.
“Don’t hesitate,” Zhoh commanded his troops. “These warriors are traitors to the Empire. They have forsaken their duties and don’t deserve to live. Kill them all.”
He took cover as he moved and marked his targets automatically. Farther down, the traitors guarding the mouth of the cave sought shelter and immediately returned fire. Whatever hesitation they might have had disappeared. The Makaum people and the offworlder mercenaries ran for protection.
Zhoh scanned the battlefield but couldn’t find Nalit or Warar. He guessed they were inside the cave. Even now they were hiding, unwilling to risk their lives.
“Ashtasu,” Zhoh called over his comm. “Release the drones.”
The corporal in charge of the drones wasn’t visible, but the units came online an instant later, and after that they took to the air. Eight of them, in two diamond patterns, flitted through the trees. They were the length of one of his primaries and armed with laser rifles and particle beam weapons.
“Triarr,” Mato called over the comm link they shared. “I have the drones. As I get information you need, I will relay it.”
“Find Nalit and Warar,” Zhoh commanded. “I want to see them dead at my feet.”
“I will.”
Zhoh looked at the surrounding jungle. “And find the master sergeant. Perhaps we arrived here before he did, but he will be along.”
“I’ll alert you as soon as I see him. What do you want done with the low-orbit sat relays?”
