by Michael Ryan
We carried everything of value we could find out of the mining camp. The newly freed troops entered the jungle with a renewed belief we’d all be rescued soon.
Freedom, even when it’s only been experienced for a day, is contagious and inspiring.
I sincerely hoped our rescue mission didn’t morph into the same short-lived excitement felt by an escaping pet running into the street, only to be flattened by a transport.
Our first month with the newly freed slaves passed almost uneventfully.
A private died from the bite of a small venomous snake, and a few other soldiers were injured in falls. Compared to warfare, it was almost like a vacation.
My power supply had dropped to seventy-five percent. I could last approximately another three months; whether Command was planning on showing up in the next ninety days was anyone’s guess. During that month, we saw no sign of Drekis.
That would change on an otherwise typical temperate morning.
“Avery,” Abrel said as he ran out of the jungle, “we’ve got company.”
I’d been lashing together branches to make an observation loft in a tall tree on the perimeter of our camp. In a flash my efforts were rendered useless. My sensors picked up the heli-jet a few seconds later. “Callie?” I called out over our private comm. Earlier that morning, she’d left with a group to pick fruit. I received no answer.
“Is Mallsin with you?” I asked Abrel.
“No, she went with Callie,” he answered.
“Okay, you move to Hozzen Charlie, and I’ll set up at Tango Leon.”
“Roger,” he answered.
I beat a shovel against a pot, our agreed upon early warning system. Soldiers scattered for cover. I climbed to a perch in a banyan tree, our point designated Tango Leon. The heli-jet flew overhead a moment later. I hoped that the recon patrol would miss our camp, but I realized as I looked down from my perch that my wish was unrealistic and naive.
Our camp was too exposed for any but the most incompetent spotter to miss.
About two clicks out, the heli-jet turned in a full looping one-eighty and flew over again.
It returned a third time and hovered.
I had to make a split-second decision whether to engage or not. If Abrel and I could successfully down the recon craft – a chancy proposition at best in spite of my previous success – we’d soon be facing another one…or perhaps two or more.
The Drekis made my decision for me and raced off in a burst of speed and were soon out of range.
“We need to move,” I said to Abrel. “I want to be mobile in ten minutes. Find the women.”
“Roger,” he said, and sprinted toward the fruit grove.
Major Zalator approached. “Orders?”
“Bug-out time within ten,” I answered. “We need to put some distance between this camp and wherever we end up hunkering down for the night.”
“Sir,” he said.
Zalator had taken the lead over the other company commanders. It wasn’t an official command position, but it worked. We’d planned for this eventuality, so not unsurprisingly in eleven minutes the group was trekking through the jungle in files toward a preselected set-point. It wasn’t uncommon for ten or twenty percent of our force to be off hunting or fishing, so in the case of an emergency evacuation, we’d agreed on where to meet.
There was no tactical reason for me to race ahead, so I kept pace with the group.
Callie caught up with us after two hours.
“Vacation’s over,” she said, stating the obvious. “I expected it sooner.”
“Me too,” I admitted. “At least it was a recon patrol and not an entire squadron. Are Abrel and Mallsin good?”
“Yes, they’re accompanying the group that was with us. They’ve decided to keep their pace down to allow stragglers to catch up.”
It took us another six hours to reach set-point Alpha-One, the designator for our first rendezvous. We’d mapped out three of these spots to allow any separated troops to find us in days one through three. By day four, any missing soldiers would be on their own.
At dawn on day two I called for a status report.
Major Zalator coordinated with the other COs and counted heads.
Military ways are efficient at certain things, and arranging large groups into manageable numbers is one of those. The squad leaders reported to the platoon leaders, and the platoon leaders reported to the company commanders. Within a few minutes the major reported to me. We were six hundred and seventy-two strong, which left six soldiers unaccounted for.
We waited an additional day.
Four arrived.
We left the following morning and headed for set-point Alpha-Two.
Another trooper was waiting there, so we’d reunited with five of six missing soldiers.
Which wasn’t a terrible percentage considering the strange and hostile environment we were operating in.
The sixth missing soldier was a Gurt private named Aveaster Vonnziner; he was never accounted for. My condolences to his family and friends; we did all we could. It’s never a good feeling to leave a man behind, but sometimes nature claims victims. It happened often enough in the Amazon on Earth and the Biragon on Purvas.
Nature, however, is sometimes wrongly blamed for a soldier’s death.
A voice that sounded vaguely familiar asked, “Avery, is that really you?”
With nearly seven hundred souls under my command in a hostile and low-tech world, I’d hardly had time to meet – much less talk – to all of them. “I’m Avery, yes,” I said. “Avery Ford.”
“It’s me, Maaly,” she said, weeping openly. “I’m Maaly Velabeltiria; we were friends once.”
“Maaly? Is it actually you, here?”
She cried louder and nodded her head.
Callie and Mallsin responded to the commotion. Over our comm, Mallsin asked me who the woman was.
“It’s our old friend Maaly,” I answered.
“From our drop into the Biragon? I thought she went missing.”
“She did,” I said.
We switched to external speakers.
“Maaly, this is Callie,” I said, pointing to my wife.
She wiped her eyes and said, “Callie, it’s you? You’re still together?”
“Yes,” Callie answered. “I’m so happy you’re alive. It’s been…”
“A decade,” I said, “or nearly so.”
“Wait a minute,” Mallsin interrupted. “You’re saying this woman was taken a decade ago?”
“From Purvas, roughly a year before the Tetra War ended.”
“Golvin,” she said. “I need to get Abrel.”
When Abrel joined us, we had Maaly explain everything she could about the trip to Drekiland.
“I was taken in the Biragon. They used an electrical force, I think. Something powerful shut down my suit. I was unconscious; for how long…I don’t know. The next thing I knew, I was being herded into a heli-jet on this planet. They had several hundred of us, including Sergeant Veetea–”
“What!” I interrupted. “Sergeant Veetea is here?”
“I was part of a group transferred to the mine about a year or so ago. Jecob wasn’t. But he was alive and healthy when I last saw him.”
“Jouzchen,” I said. “Sergeant Veetea was my squad leader on my first drop onto Purvas.”
“Avery,” Maaly said, “you won’t leave us here, will you?”
“Of course not,” I said immediately. Without thinking through the implications, I made a vow. “I promise.” Some promises should never be made, but this was one I realized I had to keep, regardless of cost.
“Avery,” Abrel said privately, “are you sure you want to obligate yourself to–”
“Remember,” I interrupted while switching us to our team comm, “remember the heli-pilot Jordan?”
“Yes, of course,” Abrel said.
“He saved your life,” I reminded him. “And mine.”
“And mine,” Mallsin added.
“He saved Pow, too,” Callie said. “If he hadn’t saved Pow, none of us would be here.”
“True,” I agreed. “I asked Sam why he didn’t bail out of the heli-jet. Why he stayed with us. Do you know what he said?”
Callie answered, “Space marines don’t leave anyone behind.”
“Space marines don’t leave anyone behind,” I repeated over my external speaker. “Maaly, you have my word as a Gurt and your friend, I’ll get you, Sergeant Veetea, and the others off this planet. Or die trying.”
She wept while I pondered the difficulty I’d face keeping my word.
But I did.
In spite of the lives it ultimately cost.
CHAPTER TEN
Whoever passes to the next world without having fought for the cause of the Holy One dies on a river flowing with hypocrisy.
~General Floceez Goertezn
Maaly, Major Zalator, and former slaves who had been at the other mining operation created a map. It was crude, but they remembered prominent landmarks and the placement of buildings.
More importantly, the site was also on a river. The likely conclusion was that if we traveled downstream from the first camp, we’d find the other prisoners. Although not identical, Dreki troop heli-jets were similar to those employed on the tri-planets. Based upon estimated flight times between the camps, we guessed they were approximately four to five hundred clicks apart.
That was a straight-line distance.
Our trek would likely be five to six hundred clicks, which would be a ten- to fifteen-day hump.
Assuming nothing went sideways.
I left the major in charge of the battalion. We created a series of meet points at thirty, sixty, and ninety days in the future. I instructed them to stay on the move unless they found a secure hiding place; Dreki recon scouts would undoubtedly comb many square kilometers looking to recapture them. After all, they’d originally jumped to another galaxy to steal them.
“Good luck,” the major said the morning we left.
“Thank you, Avery,” Maaly added.
“You don’t need to thank me, but you’re welcome,” I said.
Abrel, Mallsin, Callie, and I left in good spirits.
“You think they’ll survive?” Mallsin asked. I think she just wanted to talk.
“Zalator and his crew were doing okay,” I said.
“Yeah, but that was barely fifty men. The Drekis have a greater incentive to go after the group now that the entire workforce escaped.”
“True.”
“I think they have a chance,” Callie said.
“A chance is different than being likely,” Abrel argued. “It’s like saying there’s a chance Command will show up in five minutes and rescue all of us.”
“Could happen,” she said enthusiastically.
“Sure,” he replied. “And we might discover a good pizza restaurant out here. One with a nice microbrew.”
“You’re a dream killer.”
“I’m a realist,” he said. “But, like you, I’m hoping Command comes back. They do have an incentive.”
“You guys want to play spades?” I asked. We needed something to break up the time. Technically, we weren’t supposed to play games or watch movies while on a march, but being as I was an acting light colonel, I figured I could do anything I damn well pleased.
We trekked for days without anything more exciting than me winning three simultaneous games of chess.
Around twenty-three hundred local time on the fifth day, we had the first break in an otherwise monotonous journey. We were settling in for the night. On a fast-paced march, it was usually advisable to allocate a six-hour sleep schedule. The nano-pharma in the latest suit design could make you feel like a superhero, but pushing too far was dangerous. It wasn’t uncommon for soldiers coming out of particularly brutal campaigns to receive psychological discharges due to organic damage to the brain. Before I fell asleep watching a movie with Callie, a pair of dragon-bat creatures landed near us to investigate whether we were meal worthy.
The beasts were long. They constantly moved, making it difficult to get an exact measurement, but snout to tail they were easily thirty meters. They were covered in sleek fur and appeared mammalian. They had pit-viper-shaped heads attached to necks that had similar proportions to a giraffe in relation to their bodies. At the end of whiplike tails were round boney masses that reminded me of a flail. The larger of the two creatures walked awkwardly toward us. They were built for flight, and like bats, they moved on the ground using the elbow portion of their wings in conjunction with legs that seemed too small.
To survive, the creatures had to develop attributes like sharp teeth, claws, and flails on the ends of their tails; I decided to name them “pekasmok.”
Assuming we survived and were eventually rescued, my designation would be cataloged into Command systems. Because I was the highest ranking officer on the planet and the first to invent a moniker for the creatures, it would become official. Rank had its privileges.
“I wonder if they eat people,” Abrel said.
“Nobody seemed concerned about them in camp,” Mallsin said. “I guess we should have asked.”
“Maybe the Drekis keep them away,” I said. “As fearsome as they are, I doubt they pose much threat to a heli-jet or an armed lizard. In any case, I’ve created a file on them and named them pekasmok.”
Abrel stepped closer to one. “I wonder if they–”
The first creature spat fire breath at Mallsin like a mythical dragon.
“Golvin,” Abrel said, “that’s impressive.”
Our suits could take extreme heat well, and the fiery spurt didn’t last long. Mallsin had a soft spot for animals, so I wasn’t surprised that she didn’t fire a missile at the predator.
“That was unexpected,” she said. “I guess if we’re unsuited and run into one of these dragons, we’ll be barbecued.”
“Not dragons,” I corrected. “They’re called pekasmok, and they’re obviously mammalian.”
“You’re being pedantic again,” Callie said.
“Playtime’s over,” I said. “We need a quiet and nonlethal way to scare them off.”
Abrel took several steps towards the smaller animal and clapped his hands. Next, he turned on his external speaker and said, “Shooo!”
The pair of pekasmoks attacked him in tandem.
A swift movement by the first knocked him to the ground. The second followed with a blow to Abrel’s head using its bone-tipped tail. They followed with short bursts of fire breath. While they were obviously intelligent hunters, they stood no chance of defeating our armor.
“Abrel, quit goofing around,” I said. “I don’t want to kill them unless it’s absolutely necessary. Let’s slowly move away.”
“Avery’s right,” Callie said, and backed away from the creatures.
Mallsin followed her.
“Come on, Abrel,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “I was just having some fun.” He swatted at the head of the smaller creature.
It shrieked in a high-pitched cry that reminded me of a bird of prey.
The next moment happened in a flash.
A third pekasmok streaked from the sky.
It knocked Abrel to the ground, grasped him in its claws, and took off in flight. The other two followed. I expected him to fire a missile or open fire with his coil-gun, but he didn’t.
“Abrel?”
He responded immediately. “Don’t fire. There’s a heli flying around up here, and I’m too high to drop safely.”
“Golvin,” I said. “We need to follow him without sending up a drone.”
Mallsin was already running through the jungle before I finished my sentence. Callie and I joined her, and we did our best to coordinate tracking Abrel without doing anything to give our position away to the Dreki patrol. Our suits could protect us from falls from a few stories up, maybe twenty. Abrel was well above that altitude. He had to avoid doing anything that would alert the Drek
i recon, like firing off his backup parachute.
I began to question our soft spot for wildlife.
We had been on the trail of the three flying beasts for a few clicks when the heli-jet appeared. Surprisingly, the pekasmoks circled the hovering craft, which was over a meadow. Abrel unloaded a flurry of missiles at the aircraft.
They evaded his assault with countermeasures but didn’t shoot anything directly at him.
I was confused for a moment by their passivity because usually they were ruthlessly aggressive.
Callie cleared up my confusion. “They’re Dreki pets,” she said. “The dragons.”
“They’re pekasmoks,” I said, defending my choice in naming them.
We reached the edge of the meadow but stayed in the shadows.
The heli-jet landed, and the creatures circled it just above the ground.
Abrel was dropped in front of the craft, and a bluish bolt of electricity from a nose gun hit him directly in the chest. His icon on my display screen went dark.
“Abrel,” Mallsin said, and bolted toward the meadow.
I dove at her legs and tackled her. “No, Mallsin. He’s alive, I’m sure. We can’t risk detection.”
“I have to–”
“No, wait. Maaly explained this phenomenon. It’s how they kidnapped soldiers on Purvas. They have a method to shut down our systems. We have to let them take Abrel. They’ll de-suit him, but at least he’ll be alive. If we interfere now, he’ll suffocate.”
“I…” She stopped struggling.
“He’s right, Mal,” Callie said. “If we start a firefight…”
“Even if we win,” Mallsin said, “we won’t have time to save Abrel. I get it.”
Two Dreki soldiers carried our unconscious friend to their aircraft. I assumed they were taking him prisoner and wanted to keep him alive. Regardless of the truth, this assumption was his only hope. Another Dreki in light armor walked away from the heli-jet with a sack over his shoulder. The three pekasmoks flew in erratic circles around him. When he opened the bag, the beasts dropped to the ground. They shook their heads and appeared to be begging like dogs.
