by Mel Odom
Like many of the others, Kiwanuka wore a hardsuit and carried weapons. Her helmet hung at her hip. She smiled at Noojin. “I’m having coffee. Care to join me?”
Noojin wanted that because she didn’t want to be alone, but she didn’t want to talk to anyone either. Still, she felt she had something in common with Kiwanuka. She also knew that Kiwanuka hadn’t just happened to find her there.
“Sergeant Sage sent you, didn’t he?”
Kiwanuka didn’t try to lie or avoid the question. “Yes. He and I both thought you could use some company right about now.”
“I told him everything I know.”
“I believe you.”
“Doesn’t he believe me?”
“He does, but he also wants to make sure that you’re okay. I’m here for you. You’ve been through a lot.”
“I’m fine.” Noojin made her words cold, trying to put that hard exterior back into place. If she needed anyone by her side right now, she needed Jahup, but that would be too complicated.
“I can see that. However, I’m going to have coffee, and I wouldn’t mind some company. You can talk—or not—as you wish. What do you say?”
Noojin looked at the door. “If I leave, you’re going to follow me?”
“Yes. The master sergeant wants you protected.”
“From what?”
“From anyone who wants to hurt you.”
“Doesn’t he trust the soldiers here?”
Kiwanuka smiled. “You’re not in any danger from the soldiers, Noojin, but there are outsiders on base. We’ve got things locked down tight, but there are still citizen employees at the fort. Sage wants to make sure you’re out of harm’s way in case the men from this morning have friends. Quass Leghef would expect nothing less.” She paused. “I know you like coffee. Jahup says you’ve developed a taste for it.”
“He’s telling everyone what I eat and what I like to drink.”
“Not everyone. Just the master sergeant. Sage told me.”
“Where is Jahup? Why isn’t he here?” Noojin felt betrayed by his absence.
“Master Sergeant Sage suggested Jahup give you some space for a while. He’s still down in medical.”
Concern filled Noojin and for a moment she forgot about her problems. “Has something gone wrong? Sage told me Jahup was hurt.”
“It’s nothing serious. The sergeant decided to have Jahup sedated so he could sleep while the nanobots repaired his ribs. Jahup had been up over thirty-eight hours. Sleep is a good thing right now.”
“Do you know where Jahup and the sergeant went while they were gone?”
Kiwanuka shook her head, then took Noojin by the elbow and guided her to a small table in the corner.
“You wouldn’t tell me if you knew.”
“Not if I was told not to, no.”
“Then how do I know you don’t know where they went and what they were doing?”
“Because I’m telling you I don’t know. If I knew and wasn’t going to tell you, I’d tell you I wasn’t going to answer your question. That’s how you know.”
A server came by and Kiwanuka ordered two coffees. Noojin sat in silence and Kiwanuka didn’t speak either. The coffee arrived and she waited till it cooled a little before sipping.
“What is Sage going to do about those men that attacked the fort?” Noojin asked when she couldn’t endure the silence anymore.
“He’s going to make things right.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Noojin stared into her coffee and tried to find answers in the dark liquid, but none appeared. “I’ve betrayed my people by giving those names to Sage.”
“No, you haven’t. Those people betrayed you by breaking treaty. Evidently at least one of them would have killed you. Probably Jahup’s sister as well.” Kiwanuka held her gaze. “This has to be settled before someone else gets hurt.”
“Do you think Sage is going to be able to do what he’s doing without hurting someone?”
Kiwanuka hesitated for just a moment. “That depends on what those men do.”
“If this goes badly, things between the Makaum and your people are going to be worse.”
“The master sergeant is aware of that. That’s why he’s going to work through channels.”
Med Center
Fort York
2034 Hours Zulu Time
Sage came out of the twilight sleep he’d been put into and felt a little more rested. Unfortunately, two hours of sleep only put a sharper edge on the fatigue that filled him.
“You feeling okay, Top?” The med tech beside Sage’s bed wore all white and looked earnest.
Leaning forward, Sage sat up on the bed and felt a momentary wobble of dizziness that sorted itself out when he closed his eyes and reopened them. He tested his injured shoulder, moving it in a circle. The muscles felt a little stiff and sore, but none of the pain he’d been feeling before the doctor had programmed the nanobots to fix his rotator cuff was there now.
“Feels right,” Sage answered.
“You’ll have to do some physical therapy to get it back to peak.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been here before. Am I good to go?”
“Gimme a thumbprint and you are.” The orderly extended his PAD and took Sage’s thumbprint. “I’ve sent the PT schedule to your PAD, Top, and scheduled you with one of our rehab people.”
“Thanks.” Sage already had ACU pants on. He slid out of bed and pulled on clean socks and his military boots, then slipped into a fresh olive-drab tee shirt and ACU blouse. He ran a hand through his short-cropped dark hair, but knew he wouldn’t feel clean again until he’d showered and shaved. There was something about a hospital room that always seemed to leave a residue.
After checking the patient list, Sage went to see Private Trevor Anders in the ICU ward. Sage stepped through the clean zone and walked to Anders’s bed.
The private lay quietly on the sterile white sheets. Cell-stim fluid packs covered Anders’s legs up to mid-thigh. Other minor burns marred his upper body and the right side of his face, but all of those looked like they were healing well. Nanobot reconstruction worked quickly.
Sage was about to leave, but Anders must have sensed him standing there because the young man’s eyes flickered open, took a moment to focus, then locked on the sergeant.
“Hey, Top,” Anders said in a drowsy voice that indicated he was on a constant pain-management feed.
“Anders, how are you doing?” Sage stopped beside the private’s bed.
“They tell me I’m doing good.” Anders licked his dry lips and looked up at Sage blearily. “They also tell me you’re going to get the guys who did this to me.”
“I am. Want a drink?”
Anders smiled. “Yeah. Like you wouldn’t believe. But it feels like I’ve already gone over my limit.”
Sage picked up the water bulb next to the bed and held the straw so Anders could get to it. The man sipped a little and swallowed slowly, then pulled away.
“Thanks, Top.”
“Sure.” Sage put the water bulb aside. “Anything else you need?”
Anders shook his head and glanced away. “I can’t believe I got taken by surprise like that. Stupid mistake. I was thinking there was no way anyone would try to attack the fort. I figured patrol was just a waste of time.”
“Patrol is never a waste of time, soldier. We do it to stay safe and stay sharp, but no matter how thorough you are, surprises happen. You lived through this one, so that means you probably learned something. Focus on that.”
“Yeah.” Anders grimaced. “The thing that bothers me most is I nearly killed that girl and that kid. I was too quick on the trigger. The suit read the arrow shot as an attack, plotted the trajectory, and I came up firing instead of confirming the targe
t. I should have held off till I knew what I was dealing with.”
“You should have looked for cover. When you’re attacked, you find or create a defensive position first thing. That’s something you’ve learned. We’ll work on it in training when you get back on your feet.”
“Okay, Top.”
“You just get back in fighting shape, soldier. That’s your job right now.”
“I will, Top.”
Sage nodded to Anders and headed back out of the ICU. He stopped at the outer ward and checked on Jahup. The young man looked small on the hospital bed, and guilt crept in over Sage when he thought about how he’d risked Jahup’s life taking him out to the Phrenorian base. He hadn’t thought about it until now, but Jahup was only a couple years older than Danilo was when he’d been killed.
Captain Karl Gilbride, one of the senior medical people on post, saw Sage and walked over to join him.
“Can I have a word, Top?” Gilbride was almost as tall as Sage. His brown hair was neatly clipped, a little long by Army regs. His face was square and handsome, and he had a rep as a lady’s man.
“Of course, sir.” Sage stopped and faced the man. When they’d first met, they hadn’t gotten along well. Gilbride was used to doing things the way he wanted to. Since then, Gilbride had grudgingly come around and shown respect for Sage. Gilbride was a top-notch nano-surgeon with a lot of experience, a good med person to have out in the field with a unit.
“Anders is doing really well,” Gilbride said. “He should be up and around in another week or ten days, once the cloned skin settles in.”
“That’s good to hear, sir. You people do good work here.”
“Thank you, Top. I wanted to talk to you about Private Jahup.” Gilbride waved to the boy in the bed.
Sage’s interest sharpened. “Is something wrong, sir?”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve got him sedated, as you requested. The ribs have already knitted, so he’s ready to get back to work if that’s what you want.”
After a brief consideration, Sage shook his head. “That’s not what I want. Yet.”
“I thought as much, given the attack last night and his relationships with the girls. I want to know how long you want me to keep him here.”
“How long can you give me?”
“I can turn him into Rip Van Winkle.”
Sage frowned, not knowing what Gilbride meant.
Gilbride waved a hand in dismissal. “Old Terran literary reference. I can give you a couple days if you want, no problem. Frankly, Jahup can use the downtime. That young man came in here nearly exhausted. Sleep will be a good thing.”
“It shouldn’t be more than a few more hours. I’ve got to set some things up without him being in the way.”
“Just let me know.” Gilbride hesitated for a moment. “I’ve got to ask, Top. Are we going to start seeing more wounded in here anytime soon?”
“I’m going to try to prevent that, sir. But I think we’re all going to have to be prepared for things to get worse before they get better.”
SIXTEEN
Colonel Halladay’s Office
Fort York
2051 Hours Zulu Time
Sage entered the colonel’s office after the corporal outside announced him.
Halladay returned Sage’s salute and told him to have a seat.
Sage took a chair in front of the colonel’s immaculate desk. The holo behind Halladay took up nearly the whole wall and showed the river that wound through the jungle where the Phrenorian base lay. Onscreen, there was no mysterious structure.
Halladay turned to face the holo. “This is the sat view of the area where you say the Phrenorian installation is.”
“It’s there,” Sage said.
“No foul, Top. I believe you. As you can see, there is no sign of the structure.”
“Satellites can be fooled, sir. That’s why we send in scouts to verify intel. We didn’t pick up any sign of the Phrenorian base before Jahup and I went in there either. There are a half dozen different camo possibilities that would hide that installation from the air and space. If you want a true look at that site, you’re going to have to send in specialized drones.”
“Which would alert the Phrenorians that we’re onto them.” Halladay cursed under his breath.
Sage didn’t say anything. That was the downside of the drones.
“If I were in charge of a hidden base that had just gotten discovered,” Halladay said, “I would evacuate everything I had in that place and go on an immediate offensive. That sound right to you?”
“There’s no other way to play it, sir. If you keep your units there, you’re a sitting duck. You can’t deploy them and just expect them to disappear. Going on the offensive would be the only way to handle it.”
“And I’d stock that fortification with anti-aircraft weps to repel an air-based attack, as well as minefields to keep a ground attack at bay. You confirmed the existence of a minefield?”
“Yes sir. The minefield runs a half klick deep, packed tightly enough to make sure you can’t get a unit or crawlers into the area without taking damage. Try that and you’ll lose soldiers and vehicles. Jahup and I negotiated the minefield easily enough, but it was just two of us and we went slow. The systems are redundant. By the time you try to remove the mines, the drone patrols will have targeted you as a threat.”
“We need more information about that installation.” Halladay sat forward in his seat. “Since getting someone inside that base seems impossible, there’s only one way to get the information we need.”
“We find someone who’s been inside and take that person,” Sage agreed. He’d already been thinking about that himself.
“Exactly, and Zhoh has been inside.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s seen everything there, sir. Like I said, I didn’t get the impression he was a guest.”
“He’ll have seen more than we have.”
“Even so, Zhoh will be hard to get to.”
“There’s friction between Zhoh and General Rangha that we might be able to exploit.” Halladay consulted his PAD and put it down next to the holo projector. An image of Zhoh formed above the projector. “I’ve got a buddy in a Sensitive Operations Group who’s studying Phrenorian language cryptography, and who has managed to hack into some of the Phrenorian comms. I had to pull in a couple of deep favors to get this intel, so this is just between us.”
“Yes sir.”
“Have you ever heard the Phrenorian term kalque?”
Sage thought for a moment and shook his head. He’d concentrated on learning how to fight the Sting-Tails, their abilities and their unit tactics. He was sure whatever kalque was, it didn’t have anything to do with fighting.
“It’s the closest verbal approximation of the Phrenorian word we can make,” Halladay said. “What kalque basically means is a being without a future. A living dead being. The Phrenorian culture is based on a caste system, from the primes on down to the kalques, and those divisions are made based on family lines, history, performance, and exoskeleton color. There are a lot of shades of differences in between, and even SOG doesn’t know all of them. The Phrenorians are, according to my source, a deeply stratified community. Normally kalque are identified at birth, separated and streamlined straight into positions of no power. Colonel Zhoh GhiCemid was declared kalque months ago, busted in rank and benefits, and dumped onto Makaum to serve General Rangha.”
“How did that happen?”
“We’re not sure. Xenosociologists believe that the only time the Phrenorian Empire would render a being of Zhoh’s stature kalque was if a genetic deficiency showed up, one that before had gone unnoticed. Their marriages and unions focus on improving the bloodstock.”
“The way the old royalty did in ancient Terra.”
“Exactly.”
�
��That led to a lot of inbreeding. Physical deformity. Mental problems and full-blown insanity.”
“The Phrenorians evidently dealt with that as well, which is one of the reasons they are so driven to keep the gene pool strong. Some of the Xenohistorians who have studied captured Phrenorian documents say that the Sting-Tails had their share of insane leaders in the past, and once a pandemic wiped out nearly eight percent of their populace in the Iaerad System a few hundred years ago because the genes were too similar. It made them all susceptible to the sickness. After that, the Phrenorian primes instituted a review for any union that was proposed and insisted that the gene pool remained varied.”
“Zhoh found a female who tweaked his chelicerae, decided to get hitched, and got declared genetically deficient?”
“Something like that, Top. There’s nothing definite about this information.” Halladay tapped the PAD and an image of another Phrenorian appeared. “You didn’t see this Sting-Tail this morning at that base, did you?”
Sage studied the Phrenorian. Sometimes it was hard to tell the Sting-Tails apart because they looked so similar and only subtle shifts in color, striation, and patterns marked them as unique. On the battlefield, with weapons blazing, differentiating the warriors was almost impossible. Sage had killed all that had confronted him.
This one seemed slightly smaller than Zhoh, less threatening. There were no scars. He looked pristine, like a showpiece.
“I don’t think so, sir. There were a few of the Phrenorians out there, and it was dark. With the color of their exoskeletons, they blend into the dark pretty well.”
“Understood. This is General Rangha, the Phrenorian in charge of the ‘trade’ agreement here on Makaum.”
The name meant nothing to Sage. “Do we know anything about him?”
“Rangha is as close to true royalty as the Phrenorians get, I’m told,” Halladay replied. “He is yaloreng, which translates into something like ‘valued.’ ”
“ ‘Valued?’ ”
“He had an ancestor who was recognized as a Phrenorian champion in some war, and he has the proper coloration. The yaloreng bloodlines are those the Phrenorians want to see continue. They keep careful track of those and make sure the descendants are placed in positions of power. The Phrenorians treasure their heroes.”
