Tom and Grant were ranging somewhere behind them, making certain they weren’t being followed. Dom and Hans were probably half a day ahead of them at this point, headed for the exfil site. They were going to be late. Somebody needed to be there . . . if Jensen could return on time.
“We are now,” he said after a sending a look of warning to both of the troublemakers.
Jeff looked at him, and tried and failed to suppress a grin. “OK, then. We’ll stay on this game-trail for a bit. You guys whistle if you need a breather.”
Jeremy and Augusto bent down to up their load, but paused when they saw Josh standing there with his hand raised.
“What?”
“What if we have something important to say?” Josh was so earnest that Kyle managed to bite down on his reply.
“You will wait until we have stopped for a rest,” Kyle explained. “Then you will raise your hand.”
He turned when he heard Danny’s intake of breath. “That goes for you, too.”
They were making shitty time. Even Danny’s three-legged, crutch-assisted wobbling was faster than he was being carried. He’d tested his leg before they’d set out. He had found himself in immediate agreement with Jeff’s assessment that his left leg wasn’t ready to bear any weight. He could feel the itch and heat of the rapid tissue repair from the nanites. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but one he welcomed. All he could do was try to give the leg enough rest. He could try again, when they stopped to sleep.
Until then, his own patience was going to be his battle. It was his least favorite kind of fight. He glanced over at Danny Carlisle, who seemed to be ignoring the rest of them. In front, and above him, Josh plowed on, carrying enough weight between the stretcher and an extra-heavy pack that any soldier alive would have been bitching about. Maybe there was hope for them, if they didn’t drive him to murder.
*
Chapter 22
Isle of Landing, Chandra
The walk from the harbor back to the entrance of the pavilion was a welcome moment of peace. The sleepy village that had ringed the harbor’s edge six months ago was gone, replaced by a burgeoning small city that worked to keep the Gemendi cadre within the pavilion fed and supplied. It was near midnight, and even the new city was quiet. Amona was alone and embraced the freedom that fact offered. No High Blood Gemendi making demands, no subject Gemendi currying favors. His only companion was a mangy street animal that had followed him for a short distance before sensing that his solitude was not going to be interrupted.
He was a dead man. It was only a matter of time; there was more than a modicum of relief to be found in that. Breda had kept his distance for the last month, and for his own part, he had followed the angry Jehavian Gemendi’s instructions and done the same. That had all changed two hours ago.
He had met Breda coming the other way, within the labyrinth of tunnels cut out of the soft limestone underneath the pavilion. The Gemendi had been carrying something in a canvas bag thrown over his shoulder that had the angry little man hunched over. For the briefest of moments, he had wondered who Breda had killed, and that the man should be smarter than to think he could walk out of the pavilion with a body, or parts of a body, thrown over his shoulder. The truth had been just as bad.
“Thank the balls of the prelate!”
Amona stopped in shock and looked behind him in the corridor. They were alone. A comment like that would have had Breda slow-roasted for entertainment, and himself killed outright for having suffered the overheard insult.
“I’ve been walking up and down this tunnel for half an hour, waiting for you. I had to look busy, you understand.”
Out of instinct, he looked past Breda and gave another furtive glance behind himself before answering. “What are you talking about?”
Breda heaved the canvas sack off his shoulder, and with great exertion sat it on the stone floor as gently as possible.
So, not body parts, he gathered.
“You’ve seen today’s progress reports?”
He felt his own head shake in confusion. “I’ve only just finished collecting them. I still need to prioritize them before I deliver them to Lord Tima.”
Breda gave him a malicious grin and bent over to open the sack. “Let me save you a step.” The top of the bag fell open. “This will be at the top of your list this evening.”
He looked down and believed for a moment the ground was going to open up beneath him.
“That’s one of the bombs . . .”
“No, it isn’t,” Breda huffed. “Some High Blood found an ancient set of instructions. It’s called a power cell, and the hundreds of these things lying around will be more precious than the prelate’s nut sack by morning. I thought we should steal one, before you’re asked to make an accounting for them.”
“A power . . . cell?”
“Or a bomb.” Breda shrugged. “A very big bomb, we think. That is if its crystalline structure is shattered when it has a charge.”
“But we . . . they can’t charge it—can they?”
Breda’s bony finger tapped him once on the forehead. “Just a matter of time, my bookkeeper friend. They still can’t figure out the generator; more confused there than ever. We have to assume they will at some point.”
“What do you expect me to do with it?”
“Hide it someplace they won’t find it. Nobody knows this rat warren better than you.”
“I . . .”
“It’s heavier than it looks; I’ll help you. If you’re stopped, think of something to say that won’t get us killed.”
“You’re insane . . .”
The expression on Breda’s face changed in an instant. His head bowed towards him until the man’s face was inches from his throat. “Can you help me in this? Or no?” Breda leaned back in expectation. “If you can’t . . .”
Amona suddenly remembered Mungali. The fellow Hijala member hadn’t been of any use to Breda, either, and had died horribly.
“I die by your hands rather than the Kaerin’s?”
“I was going to suggest that you tell me where I should hide it,” Breda said angrily. “I trust you, old man. You started this, remember?”
What was wrong with him? He knew there was little chance of surviving this in any fashion. “My apologies.”
“Fuck your apologies,” Breda said quietly. “Where do we take it?”
In the end, they’d gone to the deepest levels of the cave system and hidden the lifeless power cell among the stores of objects that they knew were bombs. Breda had clapped him on the back once they were back up to the upper levels and leaned in close to him.
“That was a lot easier than trying to get rid of your body.”
Amona almost tripped, but Breda’s hand gripped him tightly. “You really need to learn to laugh, bookkeeper.”
He stopped and just stared at the Jehavian, who was smiling back at him with laughter playing at the edges of his eyes. He knew he’d lived a sheltered life of servitude on the island, and couldn’t know anything of the life Breda and his people had lived within the shadow of the Kaerin capital. Though at this moment, he would wager Breda’s own clan thought the man crazy as well.
There were others walking within the chamber, but no one was close by. “What now?”
“You go make your report.” Breda grinned. “Lord Tima will be in a good mood tomorrow. We will bide our time until we are ready and able to charge the infernal device.”
“You make this sound as if you’ve got experience in this.”
Breda bowed his head for a moment. “This has to end.”
“Agreed.”
“Send another of your messages; warn the Hijala that the Kaerin are making progress on the ancient weapons. There are others out there like us; there have to be. Otherwise, you’d already be dead. Every subject on this rock would be.”
“I don’t understand.”
Breda, exasperated, gave his head a shake. “If the Kaerin discovered that word of what they are doing here h
ad leaked out . . . Do you think they’d bother sniffing out the rat or just feed us all to the crabs?”
“Not sure I like being called a rat.”
Breda clapped him on the arm. “A hero? A rat? It’s all a matter of perspective. Send the message.”
And so, he had. There was a supply ship due in tomorrow that had a courier among its crew. He left the hastily scrawled message in the hands of one of the dockworkers he knew he could trust. He’d had to wake the man up to explain what he needed done.
His solitary walk was almost ended. He was nearing the pavilion and the carved-out tunnels and chambers below that were now his home and would, in all likelihood, be his last. It was a strange feeling to know where one was going to die, and not when.
*
Baltic Coast, Chandra
It had been almost two weeks since Audy had picked him and Lupe up off the beach. Jake had known Audy would get over the fact that he’d brought a local back with him, the son of the Hatwa Gemendi prelate, no less. He just couldn’t have imagined that Cal’as’ presence would become such a source of angst. In another one of those eff’d up Jema cultural pretzels that he’d never understand, Audy’s first take on Cal’as was of a warrior who had abandoned his people and was worthy of zero respect or trust. Adding to his confusion, at times Cal’as himself appeared to accept that valuation.
The mitigating factor, for both of them, was the fact it had been Cal’as’ father, A’tor, who had “volunteered” his son. In Audy’s opinion and in the eyes of the rest of the Jema, the fact that Cal’as had obeyed his father’s wishes over his own honor was a strong plus. For Cal’as, the fact he’d been given over to these outsiders just made him angry—at the Jema, at his father, at him for bringing him here, and at the people among Arsolis’s village for hosting him. In Jake’s opinion, Audy needed to realize that if it was allies he wanted on Chandra, those same people were going to have to turn their backs on whatever loyalty they’d had before the Jema had shown up.
The situation had reached a point where Jake knew he needed to say something to both Cal’as and Audy. He’d lain in his sleeping bag for the last hour as the village . . .? hamlet . . .? He settled on farmyard of Varsana came awake around him. Contrary to every piece of popular culture he’d ever been exposed to, a crowing rooster didn’t wake a place like this. The half dozen cattle wandering around the edges of the place, or the two-dozen sheep whose pen was less than fifty yards away, made enough noise in the early morning that the rooster going off before sunrise was entirely redundant and about an hour late.
He pulled on his boots and sat huffing some warmth into his hands. The wattle-and-daub construction of their longhouse-derived hut was in bad repair, and did little to keep in the warmth from any of the three fires burning within the stone pits laid out on its floor. With nearly fifty of them sleeping like stacked logs across the straw-covered floor, the nights weren’t too bad. But as soon as people were up and moving, and the canvas-lined door was open to the morning air, the temperature inside dropped fast enough that it was one more reason to get up and get moving.
The weather was another issue. The Jema had lived on what Jake considered the coast of Portugal for the last several hundred years. They had a concept of what cold weather was; they’d gotten a taste of it on Eden last winter. Even with that, he didn’t think Audy had an appreciation for how cold it was going to be here soon. Then again, Jake figured his own worry over the weather was just his Earth-conditioned softness kicking in. Audy and his Jema would probably just shrug it off; it’s winter—it’s cold—we have shelter and food—we’ll live.
Jake stood and stomped his feet a few times as he zipped up his coat. He glanced over at Lupe’s empty sleeping bag, and gave the man a mental golf clap. Lupe had slept inside Arsolis’s much-larger, sturdier, and warmer main house. The krathik’s daughter, Tama, had lost all interest in Jake when he’d shown up with Cal’as in tow. She’d picked up on the fact his actions had angered Audy, and she’d dropped any interest in him faster than he’d come to expect from a lifetime of short-term relationships. The fact that she now seemed to be taken with Lupe, rather than with him, was a source of great relief to her father, who still grunted and sometimes spit whenever he laid eyes on the man he’d labeled Jakas. None of which bothered him in the least, except Arsolis had a big cast-iron beast of a woodstove in his house.
Coffee was his first thought as he exited the longhouse, and stepped deftly around a still-steaming cow pie. Coffee and some oatmeal were a great if unvaried way to start the day. At least as long as the oats were the good kind, from the tons of supplies that they had brought with them, and not the local variety of gruel that you had to pick tiny pieces of stone out of. He glanced around and realized in an instant that breakfast was going to have to wait. Audy was directly ahead across the courtyard, head bowed in conversation with Arsolis. His friend spotted him and waved him over. Shit . . .
“There is a problem.” Audy looked up at him long enough to dispense that nugget of truth.
“Worse than the fact I haven’t had any coffee yet?”
“The Hatwa host has been called by Lord Madral,” Audy said, jerking his head towards Arsolis as the source of the information.
When he didn’t reply, Audy shook his head. “It is nearly winter; this is not done.”
“Ever?”
“The Kaerin bring the hosts together to fight in the summer, after the crops are in. A few times, it has happened in the spring. Never in our memory has it happened with winter so near.”
“Do we know why?” The one reason he could think of almost made him forget about his coffee.
“No.” This time Arsolis answered. The village leader had even looked at him and answered directly, without the preliminary spit of disgust.
“I had a boat crew in the city yesterday,” Arsolis explained. “They have just returned with word that the muster will begin at the next moon.”
“Two days from now,” Audy interjected and then nodded to the Hatwa. “Tell him the rest.”
The Hatwa sighed loudly and then pursed his lips as if he were about to disagree with the need to tell him anything. For his part, Jake was about to test the limits of his Chandrian and tell the crusty fisherman off.
“My men were in the city yesterday; one of our fishing boats needed a new sail.”
Jake waited expectantly.
“The old one had many holes in it from Kaerin rifles.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jake rolled his hands together. “You’ve mentioned that a few times already. What happened in the city?”
“My men saw the Gemendi prelate taken from his home under guard.”
“Arrested,” Audy added for clarity.
Jake shook his head. “Could it be anything else? An honor guard, maybe? Could they just want to know where A’tor’s son had disappeared to?”
“Cal’as does not live under his father’s roof,” Audy explained. “His wrongdoing would not fall on the father.”
“I’m pretty sure the fact that he’s holed up with us would come back on his dad.” Jake had no doubt the Kaerin would put the whole Hatwa clan under a cloud if they knew the Jema had returned with outlanders and were living in Hatwa lands.
“How could the Kaerin know that Cal’as is with us?” Arsolis asked no one in particular.
“They couldn’t,” Audy said. “Unless someone here told them. The Gemendi would not have turned himself in.”
Arsolis stiffened in response, hunching his shoulder in Audy’s direction. “Jema, do you accuse one of my people or all of us?”
“There’s another possibility,” Jake offered before Audy could respond and really offend Arsolis. “A’tor spoke of this Hijala network. Maybe the Kaerin intercepted a communication.”
“It is possible,” Audy allowed, and gave Arsolis the slightest bow of his head. “I do not accuse you or one of your people.”
“You would not know of this if not for my men.” Arsolis wasn’t about to let it go. Jak
e had already determined that Arsolis was the type of man who never forgot a slight. He could go to his grave promising the old man that he had never laid a hand on Tama. It would even be the truth. As far as Arsolis saw it, Jake would always be the man who had stolen Tama from her people and filled the headstrong woman with the idea that they could be free from the Kaerin. It was as if he didn’t know his own daughter. Jake doubted anybody had ever convinced Tama of anything in her life. She was as hardheaded as her father. He wished Lupe all the luck in the world with that.
“If suspicion has fallen on the Gemendi prelate,” Audy said, “the Kaerin will use the heartspeak.”
At the mention of the Kaerin truth serum, Arsolis hacked up something from the bottom levels of his lungs. He paused to give the wad of lung cheese a chew and then turned his head to launch the loogie across the courtyard. Jake couldn’t help but be a little impressed as he followed the arc. If the throw weight of a respective loogie was an indication of the depth of anger Arsolis was feeling, Jake stood relieved that there were things in Arsolis’s world held in lower esteem than he was.
“That’s . . . not good.”
“Not good?” Arsolis’s broken and weathered face turned on him. “It will be the end of my family, this whole village.”
The last thing Jake wanted was for their hosts to take a hit meant for the Jema and Edenite militia that made up their expeditionary force.
“It won’t come to that.” Jake did his best to stare down the village elder and failed miserably. He turned to Audy.
“Any word from Hyrika?”
“She should have returned last night.” Audy’s eyebrow gave a twitch upward.
Hyrika had taken her scouts west in a RHIB to scout what they had been considering a fallback position on the island of Gotland in the event they had to make a run for it. According to Arsolis, with the exception of a single Kaerin fort, the island was populated only by sheep that would be left alone until the spring. It was a mission that he should have led. The fact that Audy hadn’t let him go was still a sore point with him.
New Shores: The Eden Chronicles - Book Three Page 31
