by Scott Moon
Gunnarr strode angrily toward Seccon. He paused, turned in a full circle, slowly surveying the area and even looking at the sky theatrically. “Why do you panic my people?”
Seccon stalled wordlessly for as long as he could, but understood his miscalculation. The Commonwealth Recon team had summoned a strike force, but there was not going to be an attack, not now. Perhaps, when Gunnarr led them back to the village, everything would kick off and the villagers would be slaughtered: man, woman, and child. But he didn’t think so. In all of his long career as the Strongarm of the Emperor, he had never made a tactical mistake. Three emperors he’d served, guarding against overconfidence and complacency.
This world threw him off his game. During quiet moments with Borghild, he felt oddly at peace and at home. He was able, with effort, to think about his dead life without horrible guilt and longing. But when it came to taking action, the planet of Grendel seemed a living creature that resisted his every move.
“Aefel brought great danger to Sky Clan,” Seccon said. “The attack may not come today, but it will come. And when it comes, it will be worse than anything a rival clan could bring against you.”
To Gunnarr’s credit, he did consider the information. After a few moments, however, he snorted and turned back to the villagers. Most of them were women, surviving desperate times as thousands of generations had survived wars of attrition in the past. Most of them were old enough to be Gunnarr’s mother or grandmother since shield maidens often went to war with husbands, brothers, fathers, and cousins. The remaining women were already chiding him for his foolishness and he was in no mood for argument.
“Back to the village, women!” Gunnarr said as he stomped down the trail.
Fey lingered. When most of the others had left the clearing carrying baskets and all the items taken during the evacuation with them, she moved closer to Seccon. She was unusually quiet.
Seccon stared at the now invisible vapor trails in the distant sky. “You’re the only person in this village that doesn’t think I'm insane.”
Fey didn’t respond.
“Tell me why, Fey. What makes you believe me?”
Fey moved closer and stared at Borghild until the larger woman grunted and walked away to unpack and repack the large basket of food goods she had taken when the order to evacuate had been given. Several times, she looked toward Seccon with a face that was unreadable.
Fey turned her back on the taller woman. She stepped very close and spoke in a low, somewhat angry voice. “I saw a red-eyed fairy in the forest.”
Seccon was not able to control his laugh and he thought that Fey would punch him in the throat. He gave himself several seconds of release. The tension of the last few hours was suddenly enormous. In the thick of it, he hadn’t thought about the stress he felt.
“My people call them drones. They come before the attack.”
“Why?” Fey asked.
Seccon considered several versions of how to explain the concept of drones to this Viking woman. She was completely ignorant of technology. Seccon feared that she would not remain ignorant for long. “Their masters can see through their eyes. They want to know who was in the village and if they’re worth killing.”
4
MORNING
SKY CLAN VILLAGE
GRENDEL 0473829: SURFACE, HIGHLAND VALLEY 83A2T
MISSION CLOCK: n/a – ROGUE OPERATOR
Aefel was thankful for the lessons he’d learned during his time with the Sky Clan villagers. Years ago, when he was a young soldier for the Commonwealth, he’d been trained in escape and evasion techniques and knew how to live off the land. Several times since basic training and his advance infantry training, he had been forced to use those skills to survive. But the emphasis in escape and evasion was on moving fast and there was always an expectation of rescue and relief. Making a home on a hostile planet while trying to protect people that he’d come to care for was an entirely different mission and was vastly more challenging.
He wanted to laugh at Seccon and his haphazard evacuation. The man should’ve known that he was acting prematurely. Until that moment, Aefel assumed Seccon knew more about what was happening on Grendel than he did. Night after night, Aefel stayed awake analyzing what he had learned in the Sky Clan village and what he understood of Seccon. He came to the conclusion that the man was not here to slaughter the innocent children of the Emperor’s sister. What didn’t make sense was that Seccon had come alone. If he planned to use these children, planned to barter the Blood Royal for his own purposes, he was completely without confederates.
Rebellions required people. Causing a revolution took supplies, money, and a base of operation. Destroying the order of the universe took armies. Rebellions required the will of the people and the desire for change whether that desire came from honest reasons or from revolutionist propaganda. So far as Aefel could determine, Seccon was just one man blundering around an abandoned historical reenactment planet making eyes at a moderately attractive Amazon who tried unsuccessfully to bully Fey.
Aefel climbed into a rock alcove in the foothills of the mountains surrounding the upland valley. Getting into the little cubbyhole was nearly impossible, even for an experienced rock climber like Aefel. He didn’t have tools, but he had determination. He knew the place where he could sleep without fear of being surprised.
He cooked a meal, confident his fire was shielded from outside eyes and that even the smoke was filtered through so many openings to the cave network that he was unlikely to be detected. If his enemies were looking for him, they wouldn’t need smoke trails in the sky. They could just re-task a satellite and drop a laser down his throat.
He ate a rabbit that he had trapped, cooked on a spit, and then salted with various seasonings stolen from the village in the night. He drank mead and chased it with thick ale. Water wasn’t something he trusted on a planet like this. It could be pure and innocuous to the locals, but toxic to him. At this point in the game, he could not afford even a minor stomach flu. The Commonwealth Recon soldiers he had been shadowing were good — probably from the Seventh Light-infantry Reconnaissance Division, SLRDs. Most of his fellow FALD Reavers called them SLRD Turds despite a state of mutual respect.
They were well trained, equipped, and dedicated. It surprised him that Seccon was able to spot them and sound his premature alarm.
Aefel had also seen the drones and the vapor trails in the sky. By his best estimate, there were three companies of Commonwealth Special Forces soldiers on their way to the area. And by “on their way,” he meant they were practically here. He understood what Seccon had been thinking. An orbital bombardment would be a very good choice, given what the locals thought about such a spectacle. The flaming smoke trails descending from the sky would seem like a natural phenomenon or an act of the gods, or God, depending on where they were in their theological evolution.
He didn’t want to be found. After the first day of avoiding the Commonwealth Recon soldiers, he realized that the damage Fey did to his Internals and global positioning nodes had probably saved his life. He still had some functionality from the cybernetic enhancements that were attached to bone and others that flowed freely in his bloodstream. Some of the readings that he received in regards to his physical condition were inaccurate. Several times, he had been ordered by the automated messaging system of his Internals to report to the infirmary for total rest.
The concept of total rest was anathema on this world.
He received no further messages after the order to destroy Sky Clan. That did not mean the Commonwealth Command and Control was unable to contact him if they wanted to. And if they could contact him, they could track him. Of course they knew he was in the area. That didn’t mean he wanted to make the retaliation against his refusal to carry out the orders easy.
He needed to remove the rest of his Internals. Those that were affixed to his bone in various parts of his body could be cut out. The bots in his blood would eventually perish without support from the larger
, bone-mounted units. In short, he was going to be in a hell of a lot of pain after cutting all of the devices free of his flesh, and then he was going to be sick as a dog as his body chemistry adapted to the loss of internal monitoring.
Ooja, Reaver. Good times!
For the better part of an hour, he observed the valley beyond his cave. Once he was certain that he wasn’t going to regurgitate his meal, he performed a series of exercises and meditated. Controlled breathing lowered his pulse rate and altered his state of mind. Then, without thinking too much, he took the sharpest blade he possessed and started with the most dangerous Internal that remained inside of his body, knowing it would be hard to reach.
The Core Internal that Fey removed after his crash landing came out of his hip. The primary reason for where it had been placed was that it also dispensed a minute amount of medication and sometimes sampled fluids and tissues to be retained for a future examination. The Core Internal required a reservoir for pain medications, antibiotics, and an assortment of other medicines. By contrast, the processor located on the back of his skull was the electronic nexus for the antenna that ran through his skeleton and was used to transmit and receive long-range communications.
He counted the vertebrae and then felt the area until he thought he had located the device. Unlike the piece of technology that Fey stole from him, this one was very small. He held his knife near the tip of the blade and began to work. Several quick movements opened the flesh and cut down to the bone at the base of his skull. Blood streamed down his fingers, running along his forearms to his elbows and dripping into a growing red pool on the ground.
Aefel focused on a fixed spot in the distance and held his breath.
Yanking the device out was another matter. He thought that whoever designed the device had purposely connected it to pain receptors. He yanked it free and cried out. Then he dropped the knife and fell forward onto his knees, resting his forehead on the ground as he trembled. Several moments later, he regained composure, still sobbing, and straightened. He looked between the fingertips of his right hand and saw the insubstantial device peeking out.
Aefel placed the sliver of silicon that was half the size of his fingernail on the ground and smashed it with the hilt of his knife.
He repeated the process for Internals located in the flesh of his forearms and shins. He wasn’t an expert in cybernetic enhancements, but he knew his inventory. If the Earth Systems Commonwealth government had somehow placed other devices inside of him, he would have no way of knowing. Despite the prevalence of cybernetic technology, he doubted the government would spend the extra money. There were a lot of soldiers in the Commonwealth military.
He cleaned and dressed his wounds. He ate a light meal, drank a considerable amount of mead, and slept. In the morning, he would decide whether or not to remove more serious components. At complete maturity, major bones were braced and reinforced with space-age metal alloys and carbon composites. Some of these were the broken bones that Fey had seen sticking out of his flesh after his crash landing. Structural braces hurt like hell when they were destroyed, but healing wasn’t required. A support beam running along the shin prevented fractures, but wasn’t necessary for normal functioning. It was glorified armor under the skin. During his early days on Grendel, he removed one of these pieces from the shin because it was too mangled to remain poking out of the flesh. He buried it when Fey wasn’t looking and hadn’t thought about it since.
The view was incredible when he crawled to gaze from the cave opening. He could see the Sky Clan village in all of its glory far across the valley. When living in the half-buried dwelling with its thatch roof, the place felt shabby. But from a distance, it was regal. There was a divine order to the layout of the village. It made sense for both agrarian functionality and for defense in case of raids. Snow covered rooftops and smoke emerged from chimneys and doorways at the end of each longhouse. He saw smaller buildings where animals were kept out of the elements. He felt bad for the sheep and goats, as they seemed to be left to their own survival instincts. Cows and horses had marginally better lives in the Sky Clan village than lesser livestock.
His last thoughts before sleep were frustrated justifications for why the people of the Sky Clan village had not left. He should’ve directly warned Fey about the wrath of the Commonwealth military. There was no chance for him to make direct contact to warn them now, because to do so would expose his intentions to the Recon scouts. His only advantage was that they hadn't located him.
His time was running out. Stealth and evasion were not his specialties. He knew how the Recon commandos operated, but that would only get him so far. The men and women hunting him were professionals and wouldn’t quit.
He wanted to be with Fey. Maybe he could convince her to gather her siblings and leave the area entirely or convince Gunnarr and the village elders to join with another clan. After they had lost so much to retain their independence, he did not think this was an idea that would go over well. There was also a good chance it would be pointless. Every warrior on Grendel would die if they fought the Commonwealth.
He’d seen it before. He had been the man running the auto-cannon.
Pain throbbed in his bones. Without his Internals dripping pain medication and patented hormonal cocktails, his recovery felt like a slow death. He took a deep breath and thought of the planet, its people, and his new life. It was a strange feeling to be sick with pain and realize happiness was within his reach if he could grab it and hold on. He had found Fey only to lose her, but it seemed like he was meant to be here. It seemed like he was doing something important.
5
NIGHT
SKY CLAN VILLAGE
GRENDEL 0473829: SURFACE, HIGHLAND VALLEY 83A2T
MISSION CLOCK: n/a – FUGITIVE
A fire pit dominated the center of the longhouse. Smoke twisted toward the support beams in the tall ceiling and meandered out of the single chimney at the far end of the room. There were no windows, but the main door was open and allowed some fresh air to come in, cold as it was. Seccon ate his meal without looking up from the table. When he could, he watched Fey on his left and Borghild on his right. He packed a freshly baked loaf of barley bread with meat and stewed vegetables and stuck it in his mouth.
“I didn’t want to come back to the village,” Borghild said. “I did it for you, Sangerhinde. No one changes here. Fey is an angry little cat and no one missed me when I was gone. Thom might have, but he died before you came. Take me away, Seccon. Please. How many ways must I ask?”
Seccon continued to eat, although he was aware of how she pressed against his side with her body and held his right arm with both hands. On Seccon’s left, Fey rapped a spoon on the table. The rhythm was very quick and angry.
“Yes, please, take her away, Sangerhinde,” Fey said. “You know that she can’t sing. And since there are so few men left around here, she’s really of no use in the village.”
Seccon clutched the greasy bread and pulled pork sandwich, ducking and wincing as the fight began. Borghild struck first, reaching around him with a right hook to tag Fey squarely in the face. Blood flowed from the smaller woman’s nose and mouth — something that Seccon sensed more than saw. Fey scrambled over him, attacking Borghild with a vengeance as he shoved back from the table with one hand, sending a ripple of spilled drinks and scattered plates down the long table. He lost half of his sandwich and crushed the rest, grease squirting between his clenched fingers as he floundered backward and clear of the melee.
There had been a time when he might’ve been amused by two women fighting. Nearly half of his Imperial Strongarms had been women, and they were some of his best warriors, but his fascination with the spectacle of two women grappling enthralled him more than it should. Perhaps it was a cultural prejudice he couldn’t shake. Perhaps there was something primal about seeing two women fight over him.
They are not fighting over you. Bitter thoughts and emotional exhaustion soured his mood.
He watc
hed them fight, thankful to be out of the mix. Once they moved away from the table, he returned to his food, picked up what was left of the trencher that he had squeezed to death, and ate it. Sveinn brought him a tall flagon of ale, which tasted strange; never exactly the same brew twice in this place. For a moment, he thought the boy was going to throw his arm around him and sing, but moments later, the young Blood Royal was distracted by one of the women of the village and disappeared into the smoky longhall.
Seccon wanted to leave the village. He wanted everyone to grab their kids and their animals and evacuate the area, march day and night until they were out of this upland valley. Despite the fact that the attack had not come when he thought it should have, he still believed that everyone in the village was in danger. There would be an orbital bombardment or an assault of heavily armed and armored Commonwealth soldiers, or both. The one thing he regretted more than killing Emperor Dan Uburt-Wesson was that he had been unable to learn the details of the Emperor’s orders to murder his nephew and his nieces.
He had acted on his belief, but could never prove the crime. What he knew was that the death of the more legitimate heirs to the throne had been faked after they were spirited away to Grendel to save them from Dan Uburt-Wesson’s wrath.
Seccon rubbed his head with slow, crushing force.
The monarch of an interstellar commonwealth could not afford to show mercy. There were people who would agree with eliminating rivals for the throne. Seccon forced himself not to have an opinion on the matter. But what he knew was that children of the Blood Royal had survived and it was his duty to protect them.
It was your duty to protect the Emperor or die in the attempt.
He had not liked the man. He had done his duty for years, foiling countless assassination attempts. The moment he suspected that the Emperor had killed his sister’s children, Seccon, the best Strongarm ever to serve the Emperor, turned on his master like a venomous snake.
