Bartoc Secret

by Clara Woods

  It was Lenah’s turn to snort. “Or not.”

  “You’re going to the bridge of the battle ship. The rest of us get to hang out in here, parked uselessly—helplessly—inside the King Arthur’s ship bay.”

  “At least, they’re sending the full UPL force, including their best army leader.”

  “Who decided not to use his best weapons.” Persia pointed her finger at Lenah.

  “He’s right. Sending two mind mages against fifty-five thousand Muha Dara is a feeble attempt.”

  “That’s twice as good as not sending any mind mage. I mean, what is he saving you for?”

  Lenah couldn’t hide a grin. “I’m glad you’re so worried about me.”

  “You know what I mean,” Persia grumbled, then faced forward again. “I really wonder why this Thuat Jones sent for us. If he’s such good buddies with Buntus, what could he possibly want?”

  “I’m not sure they are good buddies.” Lenah turned off the engine and left her seat. “He seemed nice, for starters, and I did think he was interested in considering other solutions.” She made for the hatch with Persia following closely behind.

  Uz, Cassius, and Martello caught up to them halfway down the corridor. “The others decided to stay?” Lenah asked.

  Uz nodded. “They don’t want to waste time being away from their research, even though Doctor Lund seemed eager to go and explore.”

  “That’s good. We don’t have time to lose.” Lenah pressed the button to open the hatch.

  Hot air immediately swarmed them as they stepped out into the sunlight. Juan’s World didn’t just look like a desert, it definitely felt like one too. Each breath she took burned its way down into her lungs. Her throat instantly felt like parched leather. Lenah knew it wasn’t meant to stay like this forever, but terraforming a planet was a long term undertaking even after it had successfully been given an atmosphere. She was sure that once UPL made their second headquarters here, the dusty planet would be a green oasis.

  They crossed the footpath crudely marked into the desert dust. The only building of the starport contained a boxy terminal. It lay completely abandoned. Lenah wondered if people had stayed home because of the expected battle. She assumed so but also figured that the place was never truly busy. As far as she knew, Juan’s World’s population didn’t exceed a few hundred thousand, all of them terraformers—scientists, farmers, builders—working hard on making this place more hospitable for future generations and hoping to eventually leave big fortunes to their children’s children.

  They exited the terminal and stepped into Juan’s Town, the world’s capital.

  Buildings stood in neat rows to their left and right, most only one story high made of sandstone and metal support structures. It was clear the planet had a short settlement history. One block down, one building towered over all the others. Large red letters painted on its facade proclaimed it a water reclamation facility.

  “Guess water is important here,” Lenah said more to herself than anyone in particular. Persia grunted a response, her face turned toward the fields behind the houses. Lenah followed her gaze and saw neat rows of a waist-high plant ending in thick and hairy-looking pods.

  “Desert cracks native to Victory II,” Cassius said.

  “You know this crazy thing?” Persia asked. “They look like little gnomes; those knobs in the pods are their noses.”

  Cassius grinned down on her. “They taste better than they look.”

  “You eat those?” Persia asked. “What’s wrong with minnen or rice? And is that an Ilacidae?” She pointed to a silhouette barely visible in the bright sunlight.

  Lenah squinted, curious. She’d heard of the ant-like creatures that would imprint on the first person they saw in their lives, which made for an excellent and cheap transport. “I thought they were only allowed on Victory II.”

  “They are only being exported by Victory Corp, my girl,” Martello said with a glimmer in his eyes. “Their nature makes them ideal for a rural location like Juan’s World, and Victory Corp’s monopoly only made the black-market prices skyrocket.” He rubbed his hands.

  Cassius frowned at his grandfather and pinched his lips together.

  Lenah wondered why; from a smuggler’s perspective, dealing with transport animals seemed harmless. Useful even.

  The longer she looked, the more detail of the animal she could see. A huge head followed by long front legs, with two balloon-like parts of a torso and shorter hind legs. Nonetheless, it walked evenly, a tall basket-like saddle mounted between its torso’s middle sections swaying lightly. A woman sat there, holding reigns as she was using some device, pointing it at each of the rows of desert cracks.

  “What did the directions say?” Persia joined Lenah at the front of the group.

  “Straight on High Street for three blocks, gray stone and metal building to the left,” Lenah answered, having memorized Thuat Jones’s message.

  “I see now why it’s so easy.” Persia pointed at the perfectly straight street in front of them.

  “Is that the one?” Uz asked.

  Lenah turned to follow her outstretched finger toward a two-story building that immediately stood out. It wasn’t made of the local sandstone, instead built from gray bricks and supported by large metal columns.

  “Your garden shed is better than this,” Persia said, looking aghast. “This is supposed to become UPL central?”

  “I’m sure they’ll build something proper once they get close to that,” Lenah said as she took the lead down the street. She liked the pragmatic nature of everything here. The word that came to her mind was practical, not shabby. Everything was in great order and well kept.

  They stopped in front of the door, and Lenah knocked. She had barely dropped her hand when it swung open with a soft squeak.

  Thuat Jones stood inside with a smile, as if he were receiving friends for dinner, not a group of strangers on the day his planet was about to be attacked. “Come in quick. Better not let too much heat get inside.” He quickly closed the door once they had entered.

  Lenah took a deep breath of cool and clean air.

  “Miss Callo, I’m so glad you could make it. And I’m pleased to meet your crew.” Thuat Jones’s gaze swept over each of them, lingering a little longer on Uz. Lenah was getting used to the looks Uz’s scarred face drew from people, but she thought Thuat Jones would be in better control of his features.

  “This is Persia Mingh, Uzara Ikanobu, Martello Lombardi, and Cassius Lombardi,” she introduced each of them. “And this is Thuat Jones, head of the LIW Development Force.”

  Thuat Jones shook hands with everyone. “Please, as you can see by the town, we are not formal here. You can call me Thuat. Allow me to introduce my wife.” He motioned behind him, and a tall green-skinned woman melted out of the shadows of the hallway.

  Before she could hold the reaction back, Lenah gasped. Then she caught herself and met the Cassidian with a smile. Had Thuat said wife?

  “This is Akimi,” Thuat said. Lenah shook hands with the smiling woman. She was almost as tall as Cassius, though not quite as tall as Uz. Her skin was pale green and, just like Uz, scars marred her pretty face. Over her bright-green eyes, two stumps told of cut gyrums.

  Uz hissed loudly, not taking Akimi’s hands when it was her turn to greet the other Cassidian. “You…you’re married to a human?” she stuttered instead, staring blank-faced.

  “Uz!” Lenah whispered and elbowed her in the side. But Thuat’s wife didn’t seem to take Uz’s reaction in a bad way. Still smiling, she lifted her hands to her forehead and moved them first diagonally to the right, then left.

  As if dazed, Uz repeated the same movements. A Cassidian greeting.

  Akimi said something in the melodic singsong that was the Cassidian language. Uz answered, but Akimi looked at her husband instead. To Lenah’s surprise, he answered in fluent Cassidian. As if that had settled everything, he waved the stunned group up a flight of stairs.

  As they climbed, Le
nah looked at the interior of the house. It was simple, made of handmade stone bricks, the walls supported by exposed metal beams. Plants, mostly cacti, decorated the corners, giving the hall a homey feel despite its otherwise blank walls. They continued to climb and passed a wooden door and then inside a comfortable apartment. Thuat led them through the first door of a short corridor. A table large enough for a group double their size filled the room. Refreshments had been placed in its center.

  “Please sit down and feel at home.” Akimi pointed at the chairs.

  Lenah eagerly complied. She didn’t know what they had been invited here for, but she hoped that it had something to do with her comments the previous day about Saltoc.

  “Krygg juice?” Thuat asked politely, lifting a jar with a light-yellow beverage.

  “Please,” Lenah said, accepting a glass but unsure what it was.

  “I’ll make this short,” Thuat said after he had served each of them a drink. “Not to be rude but because I have to get to my headquarters very soon.” He grimaced. “It will be a busy day.” Gone was the good-natured man.

  Lenah met his dark eyes.

  “You mentioned something yesterday that piqued both my and my wife’s attention,” Thuat said. “You believe there are mind mages elsewhere.” His eyes were locked on Lenah.

  “We have reason to believe there are human mind mages.”

  His expression didn’t change, but Akimi gasped, even though she must have known that was Lenah’s claim already.

  “And what do you base that theory on?” There was no mockery in Thuat’s tone.

  “We have access to confidential information from the Guild of Mages. There is a record about a family of mind mages, centuries ago, called the Strikers. They made a trading alliance with the Bartoc. The first and only one,” Lenah explained.

  “That sounds like a family tragedy,” Akimi said. “Saltoc is not and has never been a welcoming destination.”

  “Everything points to them leaving the Cassidian sector deliberately. They emptied their houses, took their ships.”

  Thuat nodded and laid a hand on his wife’s back. “It is an indication, but maybe the Bartoc decided to kill them all. Trade agreement or not. By the stars, I don’t know much about them, but I’ve had my personal experiences—and all I will say is that they aren’t famed for their brutality by accident.”

  “It’s in their nature,” his wife murmured, and raw pain flickered over her face. She exchanged a meaningful look with her husband. “My husband speaks the truth. It’s far more likely the Bartoc killed all of these Strikers. The Bartoc have—”

  Thuat gave her an almost imperceptible nod.

  “They have a special interest in all things magic, even though they don’t possess any.” She looked at her feet and fell silent.

  “There’s something you’re not telling us,” Martello said.

  Thuat sighed and busied himself by refilling the glasses that had barely been touched.

  Akimi swallowed, then met Lenah’s gaze. “The Saltoc sector is a tense topic for my husband and me,” she finally said. “We met when I was hostage to a party of Bartoc raiders.”

  Uz choked on her drink, and Lenah couldn’t hold back a shudder. The Bartoc—intelligent, but non-humanoid creatures equipped with deadly stingers and pedipalps the size of a human head—were imposing creatures.

  “I was to be brought behind the Saltoc lines,” Akimi continued. Her tone was flat, but Lenah could hear the repressed emotion. This topic wasn’t easy for her. “You can see that I have some insider knowledge on their species, even though I can by no means claim to be an expert.”

  No one spoke during the short silence. They were all staring at Akimi.

  “In my time with them, I saw strange things, inexplicable and dark things. I believe that the Bartoc are more than they claim to be.”

  “What do they claim to be, in your opinion?” Martello asked.

  “They showed a special interest in kidnapping me, a Cassidian with warp magic.”

  “You were taken before you were cut?” Uz asked.

  Akimi nodded. “Yes, it was in the course of freeing me that I lost access to my vertex.”

  Uz gasped. “You weren’t cut by Cassidians?”

  “Oh, I was,” Akimi answered. “But that is a story for another day.” Seeing Uz’s shocked face, she added, “Rest assured, in the end, it was all for the best. I have found happiness here, like I could never have imagined.”

  Thuat pulled her closer into his side. He cleared his throat and pulled up his sleeve to reveal a modern wristpiece. With a flick of his finger, the LIW leader pulled up a holoimage that hovered over the table in front of them all.

  “A broken drone, sir?” Cassius looked confused.

  Lenah focused on the image, a crushed mess of c-nano and intelisteel. That was a drone?

  Thuat nodded at Cassius. “It’s the last one we sent into Saltoc. We’re neighbors, after all.” With another flick of his finger, the image vanished. “We try on regular intervals. Different equipment, different areas of the border. But the end result is always the same.” He pointed in the air.

  “The equipment is destroyed?” Martello asked.

  “And not just the equipment. In the past, we’ve sent manned shuttles too. The humans come back looking just like that drone.”

  Lenah shivered. And that’s where she wanted to go? Somewhere no one got into or out of alive?

  “Wait a moment,” Persia said. “Are you implying they send everything back? They kill, destroy, and then they send it back?”

  Thuat sighed. “Yes. We believe that it’s all part of their strategy to keep us out. Not that they need it, because they have superior sensors that can track anything entering their sector, and then something shields the sector. It’s there but invisible.”

  “They don’t just destroy,” Martello said. “They send it back in a show of strength. Smart business strategy.” He pressed his lips into a grim smile. “Brutal, but effective.”

  “Yes,” Thuat said simply.

  “What does that mean then? We can’t go? We’re as good as dead if we try?” There was a slight tremble in Uz’s voice. “But if we don’t find more mind mages, what are we going to do?”

  “Buy all the laser bundlers CPL Corp can produce, I assume.” Thuat’s tone was marked with seriousness but held some sadness. He let go of his wife and looked at Lenah. “Wouldn’t you agree, Miss Callo?”

  “Please, call me Lenah,” she said automatically, trying to make up her mind. Honesty or politics?

  Thuat smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What would you do in Commander Buntus’s shoes, Lenah?”

  Lenah decided on honesty. “I would use every weapon I have. I would also make use of the best weapon I have.”

  “Mind mages,” Thuat said.

  Lenah dipped her head. “I would search any avenue, no matter how unlikely it might seem, to find more of us.”

  “Like going into Saltoc?” Akimi’s voice held a slight shiver.

  “Yes.”

  Thuat and Akimi exchanged a glance.

  “I agree with you,” Thuat said. “Yet, we are not the ones to decide, nor is doing that within our power. You said ‘unlikely’ not ‘impossible.’ You would get yourselves killed.”

  A shudder went through Lenah. Would she truly attempt something that no one had ever managed? What could an old ship like the Star Rambler with sheer desperation and determination of its crew bring to the equation? The short answer was nothing.

  Lenah couldn’t risk her life like that. Not with so many humans depending on her mind magic. She had a bad feeling about the laser bundler’s success and was prepared to fight in a battle today.

  An alarm beeped on Thuat’s wristpiece.

  Without glancing at it, he said, “We must go. It is time to prepare for battle.”

  5 The Battle

  “Don’t you have to go and get ready?” Uz asked as they lifted the heavy bars of one of the engine room�
��s cells off the ground.

  Struggling under the weight, Lenah shook her head. “I have some time.”

  In truth, Uz was probably right, but Lenah couldn’t imagine sitting around in her cabin and waiting for her pickup to arrive.

  Persia stuck her head through the hatch. “There’s a CPL guy here for you, Lenah.”

  “Already?” Lenah moaned, feeling her hands go sweaty in a heart’s beat. “I guess it’s time to go,” she said mostly to steel herself and to stop hearing the loud thumping of her heart. She walked by Persia, who followed close behind. Lenah stopped at the hatch, hand hovering over the open button.

  “Feeling alright?” Persia asked softly.

  “Fine,” Lenah said, a slight tremor in her voice.

  Persia raised an eyebrow and Lenah momentarily hesitated.

  “Okay, I’m not fine. I feel we’re making a huge mistake. It feels like we are repeating Corinna’s overconfidence on Astur. It’s making my hands all sweaty and my heart beat three times as fast as it should. I want to hide in my cabin, not go out there and actually see what’s going to happen.”

  “You know, maybe we’re right and the Cava Dara will just fly right by. Let Saltoc handle this.”

  Lenah smiled at her. “You’re a good friend. You’ll be okay in here?”

  Persia shrugged, looking around the cargo hold. “We’ll be right here. Now go and show that damn Buntus what you’ve got.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, Lenah and Corinna crossed the threshold to the King Arthur’s command bridge. This time, the room was brimming with intense energy, every single station occupied. Commander Buntus sat in his command chair wearing the goggles that would show him a replica of the battle matrix in the large empty space next to him.

  He removed his goggles and gazed at Lenah and Corinna. “Miss Cheung,” he said with steel in his voice, waving Corinna over. Corinna gave Lenah a shrug, then left Lenah standing alone close to the entrance.

  The room was filled with busy people everywhere Lenah looked. There was no space to sit. A small woman walked up to her.

  “Colonel Travies, executive officer,” the woman said in a voice that seemed too deep for her small body. Her intense blue gaze swept down Lenah’s black suit, then back to her face. Clasping both hands behind her back, Colonel Travies inclined her head. “You may sit over there.” She looked at a small bench that stood against the wall behind the command matrix and as far away from the bridge as the room would allow.