The Tetra War_The Katash Enigma
Page 26
They were devoid of people and, instead, stuffed with high explosives.
Our squadron hovered upward, staying as close to the side of the cliff as could be safely accomplished. When we eclipsed the top edge of the cliff, the helis moved forward, just off the ground. A friendly battery fired a row of HE behind us into the highest part of the sheer rock face, and a series of bright explosions was followed by an avalanche of rock.
The ground transports sped away at full speed, a dust cloud billowing behind them.
Our tanks battered Dreki positions.
We streaked over two squadrons of friendly helis. They’d been positioned on the ground away from the cliff before the start of our descent. They launched into flight and headed back toward the fight with the intention of acting as decoys for our squadron.
Whether they were picked up as new craft was impossible to know, but we hoped that they’d successfully appear to be us to any enemies tracking our escape. We stayed low, flying just above the trees as we put distance between us and the ongoing battle.
Major Elainvertz watched the pieces move as if a giant board game were being played.
The decoy helis appeared to have replaced the escaping helis successfully; he’d tracked them himself as if he’d been with the lizard forces. The transports were drawing fire and attention. The main thrust of the Dreki army was moved from advancing on the cave toward the JFUA ground headquarters. That was a good sign, and the ruse continued with a vigorous defense of the transports.
It needed to appear as if all their forces were working to save the vehicles before they were destroyed.
As the black screen of smoke began to dissipate, the lizards moved the last of their heli-jets up the valley. Another series of large rockets were launched, but in spite of their payloads and impressive flight controls, they were vulnerable to countermeasures. JFUA guns took them out in the upper atmosphere, and Elainvertz wondered if Drekiland would end up a radioactive hell with a nuclear winter that lasted for centuries.
“Major,” General Balestain said over the Command priority ship-to-surface sat-comm.
“Sir,” he answered.
“How do we look?”
“Green and progressing as planned.”
“Excellent. Keep me informed,” he said.
The comm ended, and the major went back to watching screens that depicted the chaos across the theater.
We continued flying until green forests gave way to grassy lowlands. I viewed herds of grazing beasts that numbered in the millions, and I wondered if the petaízmaj hunted them. Perhaps the planet had even more fearsome predators, but even if so, it was unlikely that an alpha existed more powerful than men, purvasts, talarrstans, and lizards.
Wherever evolution produced animals capable of turning grass into meat, mother nature created predators.
But it took something more sinister than nature’s roll of the dice to turn a flesh-eater into a beast capable of war.
“Avery,” Callie said, “you’ve barely said a word to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been thinking of all the things that can still go wrong.”
I could recognize her voice through my earpiece, but without seeing her face, I had to remind myself that we’d actually rescued her and that she was sitting next to me. “I’m plugged into the heli’s system. We aren’t being pursued,” she declared.
I’d been monitoring our escape as well, but my pessimism and experience kept me on edge. “I’ll relax when we’re in orbit.”
“Suit yourself,” she said. “I made a decision I need to talk to you about…”
“And?” I asked after a moment.
Her voice went cold. “I’m finished, Avery. I can’t do this anymore. No more war.”
“We won’t have…Callie, we don’t have a choice.” We’d made deals, and Balestain had intervened on our behalf. As powerful as the JFUA was, and as strong as the general’s political connections were, somewhere on a Guritain computer were arrest warrants for all four of us.
Being useful in this new war was our unspoken bail.
“We always have choices,” she argued.
“Yes, and we made one. We signed up to fight the Dreki-Nakahi,” I countered. “It’s a good fight, too.”
“I’m going to help these women.”
“The Katashie?”
“Yes,” Callie answered. “It’s my right and my decision. I…”
“What about us?”
“I leave that in your hands, Avery. I love you, but I can’t anymore. I can’t fight. I can’t kill. I won’t.”
“We’ll talk when we’re back on the Kuznetsov,” I said.
“I…okay. We’ll talk.”
The heli banked sharply, and the vibrating hammering of metal on metal echoed in my earpiece. I turned off the external microphone and toggled to the heli’s comm. “Burns, what the hell?”
“Hozzen leader, I’m taking fire…hell.”
“Move up…shit. Fire a falcon.”
“Owl, owl, owl.”
“They’re down…I have two floaters. Marking.”
“Xeem leader, get your wingman off my ass.”
“Golvin! Where did that come from?”
“Fire, fire, fire!”
“I have your six, Queen leader.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mentiooooo!”
“There’s another squadron. How did they–”
“Never mind the how. Everyone climb, evasive – check that – dive, dive, dive.”
“Release a round of chaff.”
“They’ve got shit…I’m hit…Golvin, permission to eject?”
“Denied.”
“Burns, dammit! What’s going on?” I asked.
“Prepare for impact, Avery,” he answered. “We’re going down hard.”
“Avery?”
“I love you, Callie,” I said. She died moments later.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Politicians use the faith of pecorazes to fight wars; the pecorazes fight wars over faith.
~ Master Malkz Teezled
I’ve never cared for ceremonies.
General Balestain spared me from having to attend the official event, and with a simple acknowledgment I was a new captain in the Joint Unified Armed Forces. The next day – as days go on a starship – I dined with him. Pow, Abrel, Mallsin, and the single Katash who’d survived the fight on Drekiland joined us.
Our dinner party’s makeup was unusual, as far as the military normally functioned. I’ve come to realize that when you’re a general, especially a politically prominent one, it’s impossible to know if anyone is ever actually your friend.
I admired Balestain, but I hated him, too. He was aware of my feelings, and I think it allowed him to trust me.
In a bizarre way, Pow united us all. If anyone had a reason for bitterness, it was him. Yet he had a childlike demeanor about him when he wasn’t working to solve astrophysical mathematical problems. Pow pieced puzzles together that were so complex only a few minds in all of the tri-planets even understood what the questions were.
I admired the beautiful blue-eyed woman who sat with us. Her red hair was intricately braided, and her black evening gown set off her pale skin. I gave her a slight, friendly smile. “You’re a sneaky bastard, sir,” I said to Balestain. The woman blushed.
“Indeed,” he replied knowingly. “If I hadn’t been sneaky, Alayna wouldn’t be sitting here flirting with you. Please, friends. A toast.”
“A human custom?” I asked. “And I wasn’t flirting, sir. With all due respect, I’m in mourning.”
He gave me a sly smile and winked his eye. “Yes, of course, my apologies. I don’t hate all things human, by the way,” he said. “But if that fact leaves this room, I’ll throw you all in the brig. Alayna excepted, of course.”
“What are we toasting, sir?” Pow asked.
“To the memory of Callie,” he said, “and our future victory over the Drekis.”
; “To Callie,” Abrel said.
Mallsin’s eyes watered and she wiped away a tear. “To my friend.”
Remaining silent, I emptied my glass.
I glanced at Alayna and then quickly looked away. “Will she help us?” I asked Pow as the burn of the alcohol faded.
“I’ve lowered the data points I require by two after only a week,” he said. “It’s slow going with the language barrier.”
“Does she – sorry,” Mallsin said, turning to the woman, “do you understand any Common English?”
“Small,” she said, displaying her finger and thumb a few centimeters apart. “I’m study.”
“Studying,” I said to her. “I’m studying.”
“Perhaps you can tutor her,” Balestain said.
“I…” I turned to the woman and said, “I was married to Callie.”
“Callie is metal woman?”
“Yes.”
“My friend,” she said.
“Mine too.” I refilled my glass and drank, fighting to maintain my composure.
Abrel came to my rescue. “So what have you learned from Alayna, Pow?”
Pow straightened his back. “In the early twentieth century a great number of Irish children went missing. Famines, mass migrations, and superstitions about everything were as common as rainstorms. During this period the Drekis took slaves. Why the Irish? Why that exact period? We might never know.”
Pow looked at Alayna and continued. “It could have been as simple as finding red hair fascinating. Or freckles. Or it was simply the random decision of a slave-ship captain.”
Pow refilled his drink and stared at the glass.
“Why does the general prefer Scotch? It’s good, but that’s not a reason why he prefers it over vodka, rakazi, or beer. It’s just personal taste. What’s important to my calculations is the timing, not the reasons.”
“And Alayna knows that?” Mallsin asked. “That seems…incredible.”
“Yes, that would be incredible,” Pow said. “No, she doesn’t know the time. Not exactly. Her ancestors were taken from Earth nearly four hundred years ago. There were no records, of course. To make matters more complicated, it seems that during that period the Drekis were only taking children.”
“That doesn’t make…sorry, go on,” Mallsin said.
“There’s a certain elegance to their reasoning,” Pow said. “From what I’ve determined interviewing Golonist, it seems the Drekis had found many suitable planets for…for farming humanoids. They could abandon a few thousand humans, or purvasts, or even a mixture of them, on a hospitable planet and leave them there.”
“The strongest and healthiest would survive,” I said. “It’s evil and ingenious.”
“Yes, by placing children and adolescents from agrarian cultures, they had a reasonable chance of growing entire races of strong, but naive, humanoids for harvesting later as slaves.” Pow set down his glass and looked at Alayna. “She’s from a culture that is thousands of years behind Earth, not in actual years, but in advancement. And the reason isn’t because she’s not highly intelligent, it’s because technology builds on itself. If you took a thousand fifteen-year-olds from Chemecko today and placed them on a Talamz-like planet all alone, they’d know about starships, but they’d probably all die.”
Pow pointed at the redheaded woman. “Her ancestors were taken from a hellish existence and dropped onto a planet that was a relative paradise compared to Earth. I imagine many of them thought they’d died and had gone to heaven. Their new home wasn’t perfectly safe, but it lacked the English government. There wasn’t a famine in this new world, but instead, abundance. Strict religious teachings were instantly gone, and natural desires took over. I’m sure the new population exploded under those conditions.”
“Jesus,” I said. “It’s perversely weird. They were better off being snatched from Earth, yet their progeny were destined to become slaves.”
“Yes,” Pow agreed. “It’s strange. Callie recorded Alayna when they talked. There was a particular song Alayna remembered from her childhood that contained the name of a town in Ireland. At the time, the church located there was fundamental and brutish. Young women were raped and then blamed for being pregnant. Mass graves of infant bones were discovered there in the twentieth century; the religious elders literally threw babies away like trash.”
“Jesus,” I said again.
“Yes, that’s the deity they claimed demanded punishment of the children. It was a dark time in human history, but it was perfect for the Drekis. Nobody suspected aliens. Golvin, if someone suggested lizard men from starships had abducted children, the church would have likely burned them as witches. Or imprisoned them in a house for the insane. It was the perfect cover.”
I looked at the woman and said, “Perhaps, in the end, they’re better off for having been kidnapped.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Pow said. “We are fortunate, in any case. The intricacies of intergalactic shift physics, the calculations to travel safely, are dependent on the alignment of entire galaxies, as well as individual stars. By knowing the window of time that Alayna’s ancestors were stolen from Earth, I can eliminate entire systems as possible Dreki home worlds.”
“Doesn’t that assume a lot?” Abrel asked. “I mean, what if they traveled from somewhere else?”
“Entirely possible, Abrel,” Pow admitted. “But empty starships don’t leave ‘somewhere else’ that often. It’s too expensive. Even wooden ships, such as those on Earth in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, would drop off slaves in a port in the New World and then fill their holds with rum, sugar cane, or cod. Or any number of other resources, such as gold and silver. Ship captains are always loath to travel with empty hulls.”
“So you’re saying Dreki starships came to Earth, Purvas, or Talamz with empty holds, filled them with children, and then what? Dropped them on these colony planets and did what? Filled up with fish?”
“Or diamonds. Look at Drekiland; they were using slaves here to mine gemstones. It’s likely the worlds where they’ve created slave colonies have vast resources.”
“And I don’t suppose the Guritains and the Tedesconians care about that?” Abrel said. “Hell, we’re only saving people so another society can enslave them.”
“They’re not as bad as the lizards, Abrel,” Mallsin said.
“I agree,” I said as well. “The Grems aren’t reasonable.”
“And you’re claiming the Tedesconians are?” Abrel asked.
“Hold on,” General Balestain interrupted. “Politics has its place, but I deal with these types of committees all day long. I’d like to enjoy our meal. Let’s agree that nothing is perfect–”
A servant entered the room. “General, dinner is served.”
Balestain smiled. “Except for properly prepared pecoraz, my friends.”
After we returned to Talamz, I requested a thirty-day leave.
I didn’t leave the city.
There was nowhere I wished to go.
And while I needed time to myself, I never wanted to be alone for long. I often dined with Pow and occasionally took meals with General Balestain. Alayna, who was excelling in her Common English studies, charmed me into becoming her informal tutor. We met daily. Her presence was a healing balm in many ways, but also a splinter that reminded me of my losses.
One day she took my hand. “You cannot…you should not…it’s bad to mourn forever, Avery.”
“I know,” I said. I gently kissed her on the forehead. “I need more time.”
She gave me a knowing smile. “Callie was a great woman.”
I broke down and wept, finally shedding tears that I’d stored like old coins in a jar.
“Captain Ford,” a major said to me several months later, “welcome to Zed Company.”
“Sir,” I said.
“We’ve scheduled a meeting at thirteen hundred hours. Until then, make yourself at home. The battalion mess is in the yellow building.”
“Thank you, sir. I’
ll find my own way.”
“As you wish, Captain,” he said. “Have you heard any news?”
It was impossible to keep my connection to General Balestain a secret. It was usually helpful, but sometimes a curse. “Yes,” I admitted. “I spoke to the general last night.”
“And?”
“And,” I whispered, “Professor Requienter has succeeded.”
“We’ve found the Dreki home world?”
“I suspect we’ll be receiving orders within the week, sir.”
The major beamed. “Thank Versus!”
“No, sir,” I said. “Thank a blue-eyed Katash, and all those who died to save her.”
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT