The Eidolon's Conquest
by Yamila Abraham
Edited by Michelle Henson. Copyright © 2016 Yamila Abraham. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. All characters depicted in this work are over 18 years old.
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"This is an all frequencies message for the Rendono refinery saboteur."
Rand turned down the volume on his communicator from where he hung upside-down in the abandoned mine. The voice coming through was human—not robotic. One of the elite Eidolons was reaching out to him directly. He felt mildly humbled.
"I'm High Lord Deandred."
Rand's eyes bulged. Whoa, the High Lord?
He adjusted his grip on the metal loops he'd fused into the massive mine's ceiling. A quick glance through the night vision setting of his goggles confirmed his camouflage cloak was still perfectly sealed against the rock. Even if the robot soldiers looked right at him, they wouldn't detect him.
"We know you're in the derelict mining cave. All our forces are converging there. We will find you. There's no chance for you to escape. Given this fact, I would like to negotiate for your surrender."
Rand swallowed down some thick spittle. He wanted to take a swig from his canteen, but the amount of movement that would cause might lead to his detection. He nudged a button on his communicator with his chin.
"If you're so sure you're going to catch me, then why negotiate?"
Silence followed for a few moments. Rand kept his ears perked for any movement in the cave. The mine floor was fifty feet below him.
"To whom am I speaking?" Deandred said.
"Stealth Fighter Rand." Rand said it without hesitation. He didn't care if they knew who he was. They'd still never catch him.
"Rand, it's my preference to take you alive. However, since you're clearly the same saboteur who destroyed Krot-Den, Hiver-1, and the machine factory in Chalbenex..."
Rand grinned as his resume was ticked off. What a shame Rendono's refinery couldn't be added to the list.
"...I must stop you by any means necessary. Here's what I offer: surrender and you will not be executed, you'll be provided a comfortable cell and palatable food, and you will only suffer mild torture."
The word torture put an incredulous expression on his face. Rand wondered if this was a sincere attempt to gain his surrender, or if High Lord Deandred was just trying to throw him off his game. He'd already impressed Rand with an ingenious booby-trap in the garbage chute of the refinery's main building. The fact Deandred not only knew Rand would strike their most heavily guarded refinery, but also knew how he'd planned to infiltrate it, blew Rand's mind.
For the first time since he was drafted he'd finally found an Eidolon he considered a worthy opponent.
He decided to humor him.
"You should have left out the torture part, High Lord."
"I respect you enough not to lie to you." Deandred had a smooth aristocratic voice. Rand could picture his big Eidolon silhouette sitting coolly at a com station, legs crossed and his long fingers coiled around a mic. "Don't let the torture prevent you from making the proper decision, Rand. I've promised you it will be mild. Someone with your level of physical and mental stamina will have no trouble enduring."
"Torture is kind of a deal-breaker, High Lord."
"Torture is the word your superiors use to describe our preferred method of dealing with human prisoners. You know exactly what I'm referring to. It will simply be that, but performed without undue cruelty or injury to you."
Rand chuckled. Oh...so you want to fuck me. That's not what he would call torture, but the Eidolons probably encountered straight soldiers most often. A rendezvous with one of the big muscly Eidolons sounded appealing. He'd been going through a daddy phase recently—well, for the last 6 years. If it was just pretend he'd be down for some 'mild torture.'
Since he'd tripped a booby trap he was sure he'd been caught on security cameras. Deandred had a chance to drink in his lean body. Rand's eyes were concealed by goggles, but the rest of his face, red pouty lips, a shapely chin with a thin goatee, and a blond pile of sultry tresses on his head, must have looked good to him.
"All right, you win. I surrender."
"Excellent."
The two soldier robots who'd been searching below him moved too far away for Rand to hear their footfalls. He turned off the communicator to move the hooks holding up his feet one at a time so he could crawl forward on the ceiling. "I'm all the way in the back of the mine, down the old elevator shaft that's caved in. I did that. You have to dig through."
"Understood."
While Deandred answered he placed his foot where his hand had been and moved another hook forward to continue crawling upside-down.
"I'm three floors down. I'll meet your robots in front of the elevator. Then I'll hand over my weapons."
A sleek ship flew into the mine, destroying an old fence blocking the entrance as it did. Rand scampered out onto the side of the cliff after the nose passed him.
"I'm extremely pleased. I shall reward your cooperation."
Rand rock-climbed down and towards the right where the remains of a dead forest met the bottom of the cliff. He only checked his trajectory once, and then kept his head hidden beneath his camouflaging cloak. He moved fast, but with the rhythm of a leaf bug, bandying from side to side so that he merged into the fluctuating shadows the smog clouds caused. The sun was finally in the right position to cover his movements.
"Okay, High Lord. Remember your promise to uh...you know, be gentle with me." He clicked off his communicator to laugh. As if he'd sign on as a sadistic eidolon's fuck-toy; he was far too skilled to actually get caught.
"Rand, I hope you're not so foolish as to be trifling with me now."
This got rid of his smile. Damn this guy is good.
"Even if you think you've found a means to escape, your people have no chance of winning this war. You'll be my prisoner eventually. I have your face mapped, Rand Kalyx. I don't forget those who've slighted me."
Deandred impressed him once again by discovering his last name so quickly.
"I'd never trifle with you, High Lord."
His feet touched the ground, but he remained camouflaged to scan for soldier robots. The only ones visible were in the distance, heading for the trail that led up the cliff.
Rand bolted at an immediate sprint away from the mine. He hugged the cliff bottom for half a mile, then ran deeper into Eidolon territory. They'd search for him in the direction of the border once his ruse was discovered. By going deeper into the wasp's nest he knew he could hit a ship depot. Once it got dark he could steal a ride out of there.
Maybe he'd plant the bomb he'd meant for Rendono-5 there while he was at it. Since he'd already pissed off the High Lord he might as well go big.
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Two months later. Delphi Headquarters.
Rand stood in the doorway of a giant lecture arena crammed full of
new draftees. His arms were crossed and he leaned against the doorjamb while only half listening to the aging sergeant on the central stage below.
"Delphi's advantage has always been numbers," the general with noncompliant shaggy facial hair said. "For all their robots, machines, and mech vehicles, the Eidolons are only 500 individuals. Probably less than that now. You've heard of Gizmoidon, that super computer piece of shit. Gizmoidon made all his elite super soldiers all male. They can't breed with humans, so they can only be made, and word has it Gizmoidon is out of the resources he needs to make any more of them. They're tough to kill, what with super strength and bodies that handle trauma better than any of our armor, but it's not impossible. We wipe out 500 of these bastards and we win this thing. Then blow up Gizmoidon and it's all over. We get to turn the clock back 50 years before these fuckers started ruining everyone's lives."
A major general named Skip tapped Rand's shoulder. Rand glanced briefly at the olive-skinned man, then looked back at the stage.
"What are you listening to this for?" Skip said. "You know it inside and out."
"I'm waiting for him to get to the part about Gizmo-fuck programming his super-twats with a 'need for conquest'. I want to see if he's going to mention the fact that it turned them all into perverts."
Skip's mouth screwed to one side. "I wouldn't say perverts exactly. Some people are into the same kinks on our side."
"That's how they learned it all. Spankings and nipple-clamps." He turned to Skip with a brow raised. "You into that shit?"
"Who, me?" Skip incriminated himself by laughing nervously. He cleared his throat abruptly. "Are you here for that meeting with High Command?"
"How do you know about that?"
"Brigadier Hornet sent me to sit in for him. He's doing maneuvers on the equator islands."
"Huh." Rand pushed himself off the doorjamb to start walking. "Must be some big shit going on if they're calling in brigadiers."
Skip kept stride with him. "There's been rumbles about a truce."
"There's always rumbles. Shit never happens."
They went to the end of the broad corridor. Rand opened a panel on the wall and leaned down for his eyeball to be scanned. A capsule elevator came up from the clear cylinder in front of them and sleek metal doors slid open. Rand and Skip entered.
"You better have clearance, you little twerp, riding on my eyeball ticket."
"Hornet called ahead for me. I was his highest ranking subordinate on base." He shifted his weight. "You know, technically, I outrank you."
"No one outranks me," Rand said while staring straight ahead. "I'm the only one in this fucked up army that gets shit done."
The elevator descended seven floors and then opened to a lighted corridor walled with steel. Rand led the way toward forbidding doors at the end.
Another eyeball scan caused the left door to pop open. They entered into a long conference room with a table that seated thirty. All the chairs were full of their highest-ranking officers except for the two empty seats nearest to their rotund Master General, Sidmory Gray. Standing behind each chair, causing Rand to hesitate in the doorway, were armed soldiers. To the untrained eye they might have appeared to be low-ranking infantry, but Rand recognized enough faces to know they were all stealth fighters, like him.
Sidmory stood and scowled across the table at them. "Finally."
Rand entered, followed sheepishly by Skip.
"You're late, you dumb fuck," Sidmory said to Rand.
Rand pulled out the chair kitty-corner to the General and sat. "I was hoping to miss the boring shit."
Skip took the chair beside him. The General's wizened eyes moved to him.
"Why the fuck couldn't your brigadier make it?"
Skip fidgeted with his hands. "He uh...he's doing maneuvers down by the equator."
Sidmory resumed his seat. "No shit." He gestured to the man on the other side of him, seated across from Rand. "And Brigadier Hern was in South Quadrant." His hand moved toward another man. "Jeck was up in Moors Bay. He should have took a fucking hover jet and got his ass in here."
Skip turned up his hands and shrugged.
The General snuffled at him with a sneer. Then he placed his entwined fingers on the table and looked out toward the rest of them.
"Fine. I'll get right to it. Gentlemen, we have a truce."
Rand's eyes bulged. The gathering erupted into cheers. Most of the men rose from their chairs to give celebratory handshakes to each other while bursting with happy expletives.
Rand used the commotion to draw a blade out of his thigh pocket. He prepared it in his clenched fist between his ring and middle fingers.
Sidmory remained stone-faced in his seat. "Sit the fuck down. You haven't heard the terms yet."
Only a few smiles erased as the gathering resumed their chairs.
Sidmory opened a plain white folder. "For the last few weeks the word from our spies has all been the same. The Eidolons are running out of resources. Their mines are tapped-out, their seas have gone dry due to last year's drought, there's only 500 of them and they're even running low on food. They've been cannibalizing their own shit just to maintain the border."
"That's what our scientists said would happen for years," Brigadier Jeck said. "They were plundering the land like there was no tomorrow, speeding up their own desertification in the process."
Sidmory flipped a page in his folder. "Yeah, well it's finally happened. We always say our best advantage over the Eidolons is our numbers. It's more than that. We hold the wet side of the world. We've got all the planet's resources. Now they need them. They've gotten desperate."
"So they have to play ball," a colonel major Rand didn't remember the name of said. "Why the Hell can't we celebrate?"
Sidmory slammed his fist down on the papers. "Because the Eidolons never have to play ball! They've got the fucking bomb, remember? They can end this war any time they want by blowing our cities to smithereens."
"Then they'd destroy all our resources...the stuff they need," Skip said, almost too quietly to be heard.
The Master General looked at him. "They'd destroy a big chunk of what they need, but not all of it. They'd have enough to get by until the scorched areas recovered. That's what they were headed for. Spies reported they were melting down mech vehicles to make warheads. Big ones." He closed the folder. "When the Eidolons get desperate, we all have to get desperate. That's just how it is. They'll always outmatch us on weaponry."
All the smiles were gone now.
"How did this lead us to a truce?" Jeck said.
The anger lines on Sidmory's face deepened. "Because we begged them. We got down on our fucking knees and begged. Don't bomb us. Let's open up trade. Ore is out of the question, but water, food, wood, all that shit we got plenty of and they got none of, we'll open trade with them for it. Our trucks will haul it in to their territories. Get them out of panic mode—their finger off the button. Get ourselves a truce in the meantime."
"They're not going to open the border to Delphi vehicles," Brigadier Hern said with his dark eyes opened wide. "We'd sneak in every stealth fighter, every bomb, every spy we have!"
Sidmory lowered his eyes. "They're asking to hold collateral for the duration of the truce to make sure we don't pull any shit like that."
Rand hid his knife clenching hand in his pocket and shot up from his seat. "You know...I just remembered there's somewhere I need to be."
The stealth fighter behind him placed a strong hand on his shoulder. Rand darted him a seething glare.
"Sit the fuck down, Rand," Sidmory said.
Rand shifted the glare to him. Then he took a quick glance around to see that the rest of the stealth fighters had all fixed on him. The hands not on their weapons were close to the pockets where their stunners were housed.
Rand fumed through his nostrils. "Well, fuck." He lowered back into his seat. The stealth fighter removed the hand on him, but stayed close behind him.
Sidmory eyed him a few
seconds before continuing. "We're going to let them hold 4,986 of our men for the duration of the truce."
Gasps and groans passed through the gathering.
"We violate their trust in any way, they decide how many men they get to kill in return."
Jeck clenched his teeth. "Fuck!"
"They've agreed to humane internment for 4,500 of our men. No torture. We get to approve the prisoner encampments before handing over the soldiers. The men who volunteer to be prisoners will get traded out for new prisoners at the end of their service contract. They'll be prisoners five years max, and then get to go home."
"You think this truce is going to last more than five years?" Hern said.
"We want this truce to last forever, to turn into a treaty." He moved his gaze over each of them slowly. "This war isn't sustainable for the Eidolons. Over fifty years we've proven that. They're never going to have enough resources to beat us with robots and machines. Either they finally bomb us to oblivion or they sign a lasting treaty. I'm saying it's worth going for a treaty no matter what the cost. Even if we have to cede the balance of power to them. If that's what it takes then let them call the shots. The war isn't sustainable for us either. They lose robots—hunks of metal—every time we battle. We lose men. Human lives. Tens of thousands of them every year. We are taking the gamble on lasting peace, letting them know we're willing to bow down if that's what it takes to end the war. We're going to make peace too good for them to give up this truce. And we're going to do it with a fucking smile, because this is what our people need. It's got to end. Let's end it."
Rand scratched a circle into the patina of the wooden table. "Gee, sounds great. I just can't help but notice—"
"You're expecting our men to volunteer to be prisoners?" Jeck said.
Sidmory looked at him. "Yes. That's right. Twenty percent of funds earned in trade with the Eidolons will be put in a bonus fund for the prisoners. We're talking about an astronomical amount. Each prisoner will get that bonus at the end of their service contract. They won't have to work a single day as a civilian."
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