“Only three kilometers ahead. That’s where she’s bringing us,” Kurt advised.
Tom nodded. Something was fishy here. The Ugna were supposed to be seeing Driun F49 for the first time, but it appeared as though they’d already begun making a home. Add in the fact that their entire two million-strong population was spread out in a massive fleet above the world in orbit, and Tom had a real puzzle. But the Prime didn’t act overly concerned about anything when it came to the Ugna, so maybe he shouldn’t either.
He was about to ask Fayle about the structures when the first form fell from the trees.
____________
Ven Ittix was elated. This was what his people had been fighting for, and the day had finally arrived. They were liberated from their small villages and could openly live as a nation among one another. But as excited as he was about the change for the Ugna, he still felt partially cut off from their joy. He wouldn’t be staying here, even though Elder Fayle had hinted at him that he could remain behind when Constantine departed tomorrow.
If he didn’t leave, he could be part of their culture, perhaps joining the ranks of the Elders one day, after years of meditation and training. It was a possibility, and one he’d dreamt of as a youth. Now the idea seemed like a distant apparition. Then there was the woman from Vastness, Hanli. She was unique and intriguing in a way Ven had never experienced before.
He’d always had a path, even if he wasn’t aware of it, and his choices were limited. He stood at the precipice of an important decision in his life, and he didn’t know which direction to take.
Whatever was tracking them was growing nearer, and Ven sent a flux of energy outward, if he could feel anything from the creatures. He drew a blank. Elder Barip approached them, almost panting from the heat and exertion. Ven wondered why the old man had opted for this treacherous walk. Likely, Fayle hadn’t been transparent about the distance they were traveling when she invited him.
Ven peered over his shoulder and noticed the captain had stopped, bent over a tablet, looking concerned, judging by the furrowed brow. Ven slowed and Fayle joined him, but Barip continued on.
The man’s scream was muffled, but Ven felt the terrified emotions shoot out of him as the form dropped from the trees. It moved so quickly, Ven didn’t have a chance to see the figure. When it was gone, so was Barip.
The Ugna soldiers brushed past him, chasing after the ghost.
“What in the Vastness was that?” Tom asked, Ven noticing the PL-30 in his grip. Ven armed himself and they formed a circle, back to back, with the human officers. The two Ugna were ten yards away, guns aimed toward the treetops.
“It took Barip. He’s gone,” Ven told the captain.
“Fayle, why are we here? Did you know about these things?” Tom asked.
“How could I? We only just arrived,” she told him calmly.
“Then I won’t ask you why there’s half a damned city a couple of kilometers from here.”
Ven stood rigid. There was a city here? How?
The leaves above rustled, and the Ugna soldiers fired into the canopy. Pieces of foliage dropped to the ground—leaves, branches, vines—but no creatures. There was still no sign of Barip.
“He is gone,” Fayle whispered seconds later. Ven sought the man’s energy but drew a blank.
“Until we meet in the Vastness,” Captain Baldwin muttered.
“What do we do, Captain?” Kurt asked.
Something dropped behind them, and Ven shoved the captain out of the way as a long arm extended in a blur. He fell to the forest bed while the thing caught the other security officer, dragging him into the surrounding undergrowth.
“Damn it!” the captain shouted.
“We need to move!” Kurt yelled, pulling Baldwin to his feet.
Ven didn’t hesitate. The two Ugna soldiers arrived, half-hauling Fayle toward the edge of the forest. They all ran, moving quickly, and Ven’s heart pounded heavily within his chest. He kept glancing to the trees above, worried something would grasp him.
Kurt grunted as he fell, and Ven stopped, moving with the captain to assist the man. The creature dropped, hanging from a vine on a long arm. It was thin, its head too large for the small body, an irritated beak opening and closing angrily. Ven fired, hitting it in the chest, and it screeched, falling from the vine. Kurt got to his feet, and they kept moving.
Ven noticed the tree cover thinning here, and was confident they were almost at the edge of the forest. Fayle crept behind her soldiers, and they fired at an unseen target a short distance ahead. Their group gathered into a circle again, finding themselves surrounded by at least ten of the animals.
They were each about eight feet tall, now that Ven could get a sense of scale, and their long arms hung them from tree branches and vines. Their taloned feet never touched the ground. They howled ferociously, as frightful a sound as Ven had ever experienced. His blood turned to ice.
“We’re close to the edge,” Tom said.
“They may follow us,” Kurt advised.
Ven cut in. “I don’t think so. They live in the trees. They probably don’t care for the ground.” His pulse continued to race as he stared at them. They weren’t much more than a smooth outline, their feathers short and matted, the color of the surrounding shrubbery, rendering them camouflaged.
“There are too many,” Tom whispered.
The soldiers started forward, but Fayle barked a command at them to halt. They obeyed without hesitation. “Ven, to me.” She reached a hand for him, and he took it, feeling the energy vibrate from within her.
She tugged him in front of Kurt and Captain Baldwin, speaking a language he was unfamiliar with. Her tongue clicked and popped inside her mouth as she spoke some kind of incantation, and Ven’s strength was drained from him. One second, he felt strong and able, prepared to flee; the next, the creatures were falling from their perches, landing hard on the ground. A scream began in Fayle’s throat, growing until it was all anyone in the trees could hear. The guards shifted uneasily as they gave space for their leader, and Ven felt the captain’s hands holding him up.
His nose bled, a line of red over his pale face, and a moment later, Fayle collapsed to the moss. He joined her, rolling her to the side. “She breathes,” Ven said quietly.
Tom and Kurt were at one of the creatures, the security officer lifting one of their arms and releasing it. “They aren’t. Looks like she damned near melted their brains. There’s blood everywhere.”
“There could be more. We need to move,” Baldwin said, and the Ugna soldiers understood. They hefted Fayle between them, and Ven let the two humans help him to his feet. The edge of the forest couldn’t come soon enough.
Ten
“What are we going to do about this? We need to retaliate!” Iliandra said too loudly in the meeting room. Treena sat between the Advisor and Rene Bouchard, who appeared to be growing tired of the demands.
“Advisor Iliandra, we understand your concern, but we have orders. We’re waiting for word from the Concord on the trade. We need to begin negotiations with the Vusuls, not chase after them and attack,” Rene said, with more patience than Treena expected.
“But the girl. Charlan must be located, and safely. We could send a rescue…” The woman had changed from her dusty garb into another fresh Advisor uniform, and her counterpart remained on the surface of Talepen, gathering what troops they could. All of their dreadnaughts had been destroyed by the giant Vusuls vessel, leaving them nearly defenseless. They hadn’t been prepared for something like this. Treena thought it was partly the Concord’s duty to protect their partners, or at least give them the tools to defend along the Border here. She was angry at the failings of her government.
Conner Douglas interjected, “Do you have any idea how difficult a search and rescue mission is in space?”
Treena shook her head. “I’ve done one, and it took every bit of luck and honor from the depths of the Vastness to bring me back alive.”
“Did the target live?�
�� Iliandra asked.
He pursed his lips before shaking his head. “Nope. And that’s why it’s nearly impossible. There’s just no method to board a vessel like theirs undiscovered, and even if we did, how would we recover the asset without encountering resistance? No. This has to be a negotiation.”
Treena smiled at Rene’s reaction to her executive lieutenant’s analysis of the situation. He was speaking out of turn, but he was used to captaining his own vessel along the Border. “I’ve seen guys like this a lot. They don’t live with rules like we do. They’re unscrupulous and dangerous. From the way they devoured your fleet and incapacitated you on the ground, they weren’t messing around. If they want Keen, they did the right thing, didn’t they?”
Doctor Nee was in the meeting with them, and he tented his gloved fingers. “I still cling to the idea that this may be a ruse.”
“Why’s that?” Treena asked him. Reeve was noticeably absent as she and Commander Kan Shu worked with the locals on their power grid, attempting to reassemble order to their devastated capital city.
“Because of what Yunrio and Caalizan told us. If this Vusuls race is related to them, and the original race of the Pilia, then they’re likely experiencing the same genetic failings around this time,” Nee offered.
“We’ve discussed this. It could be possible, but we can’t be certain. Either way, they’ve made a demand, and we have yet to respond days later,” Rene said. “We have to make a decision.”
Treena rubbed the palms of her hands under the table. She really wished Tom would provide an answer to them, but he was too busy dropping the Ugna off in some silly diplomatic duty, while they had a real scenario over here.
“Tom will let us know tomorrow,” she said.
“Well, I’ve already sent a message to Benitor, and I expect her to reply soon,” Rene said.
Treena bristled. “I thought we agreed to move through Baldwin on this one.”
“You did. I didn’t. Besides, he’s got his hands full, and you and I are two extremely viable leaders, are we not?” Rene winked at her, and Treena relaxed slightly into the chair.
“Enough delaying. We demand you find them, or we’re sending our own Guardians to do the job,” Iliandra told them. Treena’s gaze drifted to the self-assured man with the gray beard near the exit. His left foot crossed over the right as he stood there, arms dangling at his sides. He met her gaze and grinned.
“You and what army?” Conner asked the Advisor.
“I think you miscalculate the skills of a Guardian,” Iliandra mumbled.
“Do we? Then where is the girl, Charlan, if she was under the protection of a Guardian?” Rene asked.
“I… see your point.”
“Advisor, we will have a verdict tomorrow, and in the meantime, we need you to answer some questions,” Treena said, pressing the console keypad. “Bring in Caalizan and Yunrio, please.”
The Seeli man followed the Minon scientist inside, and they gaped at everyone before taking seats at the edge of the table where Treena had beckoned them.
“Would you please explain to the Advisor what actions you’ve been performing, Caalizan?” Treena ordered.
He appeared nervous, but that wasn’t a surprise. “We did it for the benefit of our people.”
Treena leaned forward, elbows on the meeting room table. “Tell her.”
“As you know, Advisor Iliandra, we’ve been able to use the onboard computer system from the discovered vessel on Vaxiar,” Caalizan told her.
She nodded. “I’m aware. We all are.”
“But we haven’t told you we tracked the flights of the colony ships,” he told her.
Treena waited for the punchline he’d given her an hour earlier.
“That is obvious.” Iliandra looked annoyed. “The two ships landed on Vaxiar and Talepen.”
“Advisor, hear him out. He’s trying to tell you something,” Conner said.
“Then he’d be best to get it out before my patience has entirely vacated my body,” she said curtly.
“We found their origin,” Caalizan said, and she gasped.
“Celevon? You found the planet?” she asked.
He nodded. “We did… as well as the destination of the fifth colony vessel.”
“And where is this world?” she asked. Rene hadn’t heard this part, and Treena braced herself.
“Celevon is distant, almost beyond our renowned star maps. Even with today’s hyperlight, we’d be looking at five Standard years to arrive,” he said, the air puffing from his chest.
Iliandra’s eyes went wide. “That far? And what of the fifth vessel?”
“It landed somewhere named Sol, from what we can tell,” the Minon scientist advised them.
Conner frowned. “Did you say ‘Sol’?”
“That’s right. Ever heard of it?” Caalizan asked. Yunrio refrained from speaking, watching their interactions with casual interest.
“I’ve heard of it. I don’t know where…” Conner fiddled with the emblem on his uniform.
“We’ll do some digging,” Rene promised. “So far, we have a few facts sorted out. You all originate from Celevon. A disaster struck; five colony ships departed a long time ago. Two of them ended up near one another, and a million years later, you have the Seeli”—she pointed at Yunrio—“and you have the Minon.” She pointed at Caalizan, and then to Iliandra. “Meanwhile, to make matters more complicated, the third one is none other than the Vusuls, who attacked you and stole the Pilia woman, the last of her kind.
“Does that add up?”
Advisor Iliandra nodded. “That’s about the gist of it.”
Rene grimaced. “There were two other colony vessels, one that was destined for a distant system with which we are unfamiliar, and the other was…”
“The ship we tracked down,” Yunrio said.
“How did you find it?” Rene asked.
“Once we discovered the location of Celevon and the target destination of the fifth vessel, we worked backward, following the trajectory,” Caalizan told her.
Treena thought this was a good idea. “Where was their destination?”
“Nolix,” the man advised them.
“Interesting. The Tekol wouldn’t have been there yet, but they never made it, correct?” Rene asked.
“That’s right. They weren’t even central to the destination when we found them,” Caalizan said.
“Wait.” Conner placed his palm on the table. “Something isn’t adding up. If they’re five years away and you found her two weeks ago, how did you get her here, only to have her stolen a few days later? That trip should have taken you years.”
“I apologize. We found the ship two years ago, but we only returned with the girl a few weeks ago. The colony ship would not function,” Caalizan said.
“And the ship? Where is it?” Treena had an idea.
He pointed to the ceiling. “Still out there.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be, say, ten kilometers long and black, would it?” she asked.
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“Then we have to assume the same ship that came to attack you was the Vusuls colony ship,” Treena suggested.
“This could be true.”
“Where do the Vusuls live?” Conner prodded.
“We have no idea,” Advisor Iliandra said.
“That’s because they don’t have a home planet. They live on their ship. Think about it. These brutes are still lugging around in their colony vessel. So I think it’s clear what they want,” Conner said emphatically.
“Other than Keen?” Rene asked.
“Sure. They want…”
“A home,” Treena finished for him.
“Aren’t there enough beyond the Border?” Nee asked.
Yunrio took this one. “Not as many as you’d think. Even within the Concord, there are only fifty or so Class Zero Nine worlds. They’d have their choice of planets if they didn’t mind living in gas or hiding beneath an icy surface. There are fewer
beyond the Border than within, at least in this galaxy. They’re likely hard pressed to find one worth inhabiting.”
“Keen must have promised them access. He thought he was taking over, and now they’ve grown tired of waiting. He failed his attempt to overthrow the government, and he’s sitting in a cell, unable to communicate. They knew about your attempts to find the girl, and your plight, taking advantage to contact the man.” Rene’s theory made a lot of sense.
“But how did they obtain that information?” Advisor Iliandra asked.
Caalizan shifted in his seat, and Treena instantly saw guilt cross over the old man’s expression. “Spill it,” she told him.
“They knew because we’ve been interacting with them,” he whispered.
The Advisor slapped the table hard, and her Guardian was at her side faster than Treena would have thought possible, with a slim gun in his hand. It was aimed at the Minon scientist.
“Put that away,” Treena ordered, moving to stand between them. He did, but only after a nod from his boss.
“Why did you bring them to our world? What could you possibly have wanted with these destructive, evil people?” Iliandra asked.
“We’re desperate, Advisor. The Seeli are in the same boat. We needed to find a solution to save our citizens. You and the other Advisors told us to solve this, and we’re trying at any cost,” Caalizan pleaded.
“You brought this on us. Our station gone. Twenty thousand of our people dead with the blink of an eye, another five thousand in our irreplaceable fleet. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” she asked.
He remained silent, accepting the verbal assault.
“You’ve increased our end date substantially. That many people could have prolonged our population until we found a cure,” she said.
“There is no cure, Advisor Iliandra. We’re doomed.” Caalizan hung his head.
“There’s still the girl. The Pilia might be able to help,” Doctor Nee told them.
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 95
