by Jean Kilczer
“Go with the devil!” I said to their fleeing kwaiis as I took my holster and strapped it on. “Your kwaiis belong to him anyway.”
Chancey and Wolfie trotted up.
Chancey went into the tent to get the SPS. “I'll tie it to the travois,” he called back.
“Where's the battery?” Wolfie asked me.
I motioned to Weed to bring the horses forward. “Come on!” I told Wolfie and ran toward the tent that housed the battery.
Weed kept the animals in shadows as he came forward.
The battery lay between two empty cots like a foot locker. Good disguise that. That but not good enough. By the time Wolfie and I dragged it outside, Chancey and Weed were tying the SPS to the travois behind the white mare. We dragged the battery to them and they tied it down. “Listen!” I told the group. “Get back to Joe. Tell him…” I felt staggered by the weight of what I was about to say. “Tell him – “
Chancey paused and looked up at me.
“Tell him the invasion is set for dawn.”
“Tomorrow?” Chancey made the last knot.
I nodded. “Weed.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I'm sorry. We didn't make it in time. The BEM fleet is on its way.”
“Mother fucker.” Chancey stood up and mounted the white mare.
“How bad will it be?” Weed rasped.
“Worse than you can imagine,” I said. “I'm sorry.” I took Asil's reins and mounted. Uh oh. I put a hand to my head. The hive mind had detected the death of the three BEMs and were zeroing in on me. By now, they would've alerted the rest of the garrison.
“Get out of here!” I yelled as BEMs began to pour out from lit tents. I turned Asil toward the dark mountains.
“This way!” Chancey called to me as the team headed for the landing site.
I reined in. “Can't, Chancey. They're already tracking me.” I kicked Asil's sides and he leaped into the night.
“Jules!” Chancey called.
I glanced back. The team was racing toward the landing site with the SPS and battery bouncing behind Chancey's white mare.
I'd given them every chance I could. The rest was up to them. Was Joe going to be pissed when I didn't show up. But I knew what I had to do. I was the decoy to lead the hive mind away from the team and the SPS.
Horses have good night vision, but that promise of rain had brought cloud cover and a drizzle, and this wild gallop was pushing it.
Behind me, the whine of hovairs. Searchlights played across bare patches and flickered between branches. The trees were taller as we raced into the foothills. Scrub brush was replaced by spruce and conifers, which offered more cover. Asil shied but kept his footing as a nocturnal hunter growled and fled with a rustling of leaves. He stumbled once and I pulled up his head. The stream I followed took a left turn and he slipped on wet rocks as we plunged through it. His sides heaved. Sooner or later he would lose his footing in this mad flight.
Like miniature space fighters, the hive surrounded me and attacked, diving, seeking breaches within the web I threw up inside my shields. Pinpricks of pain assailed my temples as the bees probed and burrowed, assaulting my optic nerves. My vision blurred and sharp pains shot through my head behind my eyes. The crotefuckers were trying to blind me! The stream became a silver blur of mercury. Ahead, it plunged into a pool seen darkly through my tunneling vision.
A hovair flew low over treetops with a whine like the wail of death. Its lights swept the ground, barely missing me. I urged Asil on. I would not be taken alive. That much I knew for certain.
I had an idea, born of desperation. I reined in by an overhang near the pool, slid off Asil's back and led him under the ledge. I tied his reins to his fetlock to hold him there, though after our hard run, he should have been walked to cool down. But I was in a fight for my life.
I stripped off my clothes, my shoes, opened the saddlebag and took out the fulgurite specimen. I slid down the bank of the pool and splashed into cold water. Water that was a barrier in my own tel probes, and with the help of Great Mind, a barrier for the hive too. I cupped my mouth around one end of the fulgurite, raised the other end above the surface, and slid underwater. I began to shiver immediately. But cold was preferable to death. I kept my eyes squeezed shut as small creatures brushed my cheeks. Even going one foot underwater increases pressure and I had to pull in air. But the pain behind my eyes lessened. The attacks into my tel cell clusters ceased.
Thank you, Great Mind, I thought and trembled. I stayed in the pool until the sound of hovairs diminished. I was shaking so badly I feared hypothermia was setting in as I crawled onto the slippery bank. My vision cleared as I ran to Asil, still clutching the fulgurite, pulled a towel out of my saddlebag, and wiped myself dry before dressing.
I picked up the fulgurite tube and smiled. “When you're older, Lis',” I said, my hand shaking, “Dad will tell you how your present saved his life.” I put it back into the saddlebag and loosened the cinch to give Asil a break. My hands were still cold as I wrapped myself in my bedroll and led him to the water's edge for a drink.
Then we walked. He needed to cool down, and I needed to warm up. As we moved deeper into the hills, the wind whispered through pines like the sound of a running stream. The grass grew thick and high, with wildflowers nodding delicate heads. This could have been the Rockies of my home state, Colorado. Parallel evolution, I thought.
I paused on an outcrop with a clear view to the east and stared down at Northwest Village, huddled in a valley as though for protection. The BEM garrison, not far to the east, could've been part of the community. From here, anyway.
Tomorrow at dawn, those cloud-driven skies would be full of BEM warships, raking the villages to soften the peaceful Denebrians into absolute submission, and thousands of years of peace would be shattered. Even if Alpha was already notified by the team, it was too late to stop the invasion.
The BEM hovairs were gone. With the coming invasion, one Terran, tel or not, was probably not worth their trouble. If I knew Joe, he wouldn't take the team all the way back to the cliff hideout. By now, he'd contacted Alpha and was probably holed up in DAB's underground HQs, lending his expertise to the cause.
It would've been nice to remain in these lush, quiet mountains, studying alien lifeforms, away from the coming agony of war. I had almost retreated into the wilds of Syl' Terria when the hard-nosed police chief threatened to arrest me for the accidental death of a young volunteer at my animal sanctuary.
I twisted the reins in my hands. There are invisible bonds stronger than any iron. I tightened the cinch on Asil's saddle, mounted and turned his head toward Northwestern Village.
* * *
“Hi, Joe,” I said from the broken door of General Roothe's underground war room.
Joe sat in a central chair of the long wooden table, surrounded by Chancey, Wolfie, Reika, and Bat. Huff lay curled in a corner. General Roothe turned in his chair to look at me.
Joe seemed gaunt and tired as he rose from his seat. “Jules!”
Reika got up and came around the table.
“Reika!” Joe said.
She stopped as though she'd hit a glass door.
Huff looked up at me and drew back lips in a smile.
“Hi, big guy.” I said.
“If it ain't the superstar,” Chancey said. “Welcome home.”
“Glad you made it back.” Bat lowered his head and rubbed his eyes. Wolfie just watched and remained expressionless.
I bit my lip. “Did you, uh, contact Alpha?” I asked Joe.
Joe leaned his hands on the table. “You gave me your word.”
“Joe, let me explain.”
He came around the table.
Uh oh. I backed to the door. “It was the hive – “
He followed. “I could have you executed for desertion under fire.”
“Executed?” I said. “Come on, Joe. Be serious!”
“You want serious?” He grabbed the front of my jacket and pushed me against the doorframe. Huff
growled and rose to his back legs.
“No, Huff!” I said and wondered if Joe knew just how dangerous Huff could become. He thought of me as a cub and was capable of turning ferocious for my protection. “No, Huff,” I said again.
Joe shook me. “What do you think would have happened at the garrison if the rest of the team decided to run?”
“Run?” I grabbed his wrists. “I gave the rest of the team their chance to get away. The hive mind was – “
“We needed you at the landing site.” He pushed me against the wall. “We needed your tel to warn us that a BEM patrol was approaching.”
“Jules.” Reika reached out a hand but didn't move forward. “They killed Weed.”
“Oh!” I said. “Weed. Oh, God. I'm sorry.”
“You're sorry?” Joe broke my grip on his wrists and hit me across my left cheek. “Not as sorry as Weed.”
I found myself on the floor, holding my head, which felt as though a minor explosion had taken place. “Dammit,” I muttered, “why don't you ever let me explain?”
I got up and staggered to a chair, holding my cheek. “The hive mind was tracking me. Captain!” I told Joe. “I led them away from the team and the SPS.”
Huff came and sat beside me. I stroked his back. The gentle contact always calmed both of us
Joe put a hand to his head and swayed. I've rarely seen him look so tired. He even seemed defeated, which scared the hell out of me.
He returned to his chair and sat down stiffly. “Alpha has dispatched a group of government officials to Tau Ceti to demand that the BEMs cease their aggression against Denebria.”
I pulled my chair closer. “Do you think they can turn back the invasion force?”
“I think the BEMs will attempt to conquer and hold Denebria,” Joe said. “I think they'll sign all the goddamn peace treaties Alpha lays on the table. But until the Worlds Alliance backs up the demands with boots on Tau Ceti, the BEMs will have a free hand on Denebria.”
“What about the people in the line of fire tomorrow morning?” I looked at General Roothe. “Have they been warned?”
“Our people are on their way to shelters,” General Roothe said. He seemed subdued.
“Where's the SPS?” I asked.
“It's hidden here,” Bat said. “We showed the general how to get in touch with Alpha.”
“Suppose we give DABs a helping hand?” I said.
The group waited.
“We're directly under the garrison,” I told them. “Those are BEM generators you hear.”
Joe looked at Wolfie.
“We could blow the garrison to hell,” Wolfie said.
“That's what I'm thinking,” I added.
General Roothe looked from me to Joe. “You can do that?”
“General,” Joe said too softly, “why didn't you tell us we were under the BEM garrison?”
“You didn't ask,” the general said.
Joe wiped a hand across his eyes.
“Captain,” Bat said, “what about the BEM HQ?” I'd love to see that slaughterhouse go back to being a sand.”
We were silent as we waited for Joe to speak.
He leaned back and closed his eyes.
“Joe?” I said. “Are you all right?”
He sighed and opened his eyes. “The garrison first. Then the BEM HQ. We stock up on provisions from the sous at the hideout, then move on to our objective in the desert.” He shrugged. “That should keep us busy for a while.”
“We can offer you troops,” General Roothe said. “How many people do you require?”
Joe shook his head. “This is better accomplished as a platoon. “You're going to need every soldier you've got, General. When…if you kill a BEM, make sure you take his weapons and whatever else he's got that you can use against them.”
The general nodded. “I would have lived in different times,” he whispered.
“Jules,” Joe said.
I looked up. What the fuck did I do now? I thought.
“I shouldn't have hit you.”
“No, you shouldn't have. But what the hell.” I touched my cheek. “What's one more welt?”
He smiled, but I had the distinct feeling that Joe had been pushed beyond his limits. At sixty-seven, he just couldn't regain his strength and endurance as quickly as the rest of the team.
I slid Chancey a look.
He lifted his brows and nodded discreetly.
I glanced at Reika. She shook her head slightly. Wolfie returned my glance with a look that said What the hell is your problem?
Wolfie, Reika, and Chancey set the explosives at strategic locations throughout the warren while General Roothe and his officers evacuated their families and took the SPS. The rest of the team waited outside with the horses. The farmhouse, the barn where I'd taken cover, the corral, were all dark and deserted. The village itself was silent, except for pleasure craft that picked up refugees and flew them to shelters.
Roothe had gotten word to Korschaff to evacuate, but there were other villages, archaic farming lands, including South Village, that had no communications. There would be deaths, many of them. I thought of the animals left behind, and the planet's wildlife. It would be an ecological disaster.
Voices within the tunnel.
Reika, Chancey and Wolf trotted out wearing their backpacks and mounted their horses.
“How long?” Joe asked.
“Twenty minutes,” Chancey told him.
Joe turned his horse east. I rode between Reika and Bat as we followed. Huff, as usual, trotted in front of Asil. Wolfie was riding point, though what he expected to run into up ahead, only Wolfie knew.
Dawn was lifting her head above the high plains as we rode, and branding the bellies of stray clouds with fire when we heard the blast behind us. We looked at each other. Chancey smiled.
Joe, riding ahead, turned in his saddle. “Good work.”
“Let the crotefuckers celebrate that,” I said.
When we reached the cliffs and our hideout, we put the horses out to graze and rest by the swift-running stream and ate our last meal from the chef, a mixture of different mock meats, vegetables, rice and potatoes.
“The packets are empty,” Reika told us.
“From now on,” Chancey said, “it's grubs and larvae.”
“And digestall,” Bat added.
Trouble was, we had precious little left of that either. Joe still carried the poison test-kit in his saddlebag, but first we'd have to find nourishing plants.
I stopped eating and glanced at Wolfie. Would we be reduced to killing and eating wild animals? The thought disturbed me.
Joe fell asleep halfway through his meal. Bat, sitting beside him, grabbed his arm as he started to fall. “Whoa,” Bat said and eased him down to the ground.
Chancey left the cave and came back with a blanket from behind a saddle. He covered Joe, stared at him and rubbed his chin. “I'm thinking we should ask Joe to wait for us here.”
Reika nodded. “He's reached the end of his rope.”
“He'll never go for it,” I told them.
“Well, Reika said, “if he insists on coming, we have the travois, if he needs it.”
“We might need it,” Bat said, “if we have wounded.”
I studied Joe, so weary in sleep. “I think he'll be the one to make the decision.”
“We might have to make it for him,” Wolfie said and took a bite of mock lamb.
Joe opened his eyes and sat up.
“You've been listening,” I said.
He rubbed his red eyes. “Wolfie's right. I'm turning over the command of this operation to him.”
We glanced at each other.
“Then we meet back here,” I asked Joe, “after we blow up the BEM's HQ?”
“That's up to Wolfie now,” Joe said.
“We meet back here.” Wolfie finished the last of his food.
“Jules,” Joe said.
“Yeah?”
“I wouldn't count on Wolfie being as
gentle as I was if you disobey his orders.”
Wolfie threw aside his empty dish. “You disobey my orders under fire,” he told me, “I'll execute you on the spot.”
I looked at Joe.
He raised his eyebrows.
Huff growled deep in his throat and stared at Wolfie.
A blast from the west shook sand down the walls in rivulets. The BEMs were attacking Northwest Village.
“And so it begins,” I said.
“Let's saddle up.” Wolfie walked outside.
“Joe,” I said, “can I get you anything before we leave?”
He patted my cheek and sighed. “I'm not dying, kid. Keep your mind on your work. I'll be fine.”
I took his hand and kissed it. “Take care of yourself, Dad,” I whispered and walked outside.
We were too far east to see Northwest Village huddled under the BEM barrage. But we heard the distant Harpy shrieks of missiles, the muffled thuds as they hit. I pictured the village like a stricken animal lying beneath the predator's teeth.
* * *
The sun hid behind a blanket of dark rain clouds that drenched the sand, the horses, and us as I lay on the crest of a dune and peered through rain-splattered graphoculars that gave an impressionistic view of the BEM headquarters below. To our right, a shuttle stood poised on a runway. To our left, Denebrian children ran and splashed through puddles in the fenced killing field, so innocent of what awaited them. The adults talked in groups. Some lay on higher ground that was still dry.
I lowered the graphoculars and wiped rainwater off my face. I had spread my bedroll across Asil's back and neck and cinched the saddle over it. We had raingear, given to us by grateful Denebrian slaves we had rescued. But they were bright yellow, and we looked like giant chickens in them. Not great camouflage. We left them in our saddlebags.
Wolfie ran low along the flank of the dune and slid down beside us. “They've got people posted there, there, and there.” He pointed to three small dunes west of the fenced field and threw back wet, scraggly hair. His bony face and long nose ran rainwater. “They think we'll approach from the west.”
But we had circled to the south, far enough from the BEM's HQ so that Bountiful could not detect me in a tel link.
