Star People Legacy

by Smith, T. L.

  Scrambled eggs with cheese and onions, bacon, toast, our usual patrol breakfast. I loaded up a plate and joined him at the table, taking his tablet. A burned out stolen delivery truck found off Hwy 8, filled with bodies of dead illegals. “Yeah. He got called out at four this morning. Don’t have any details yet.”

  “Shame. All our work and this still happens. Damned Coyotes.” Lutz took his tablet back. “They’d have been better off coming through our corridor.”

  “Maybe.” My instincts weren’t so sure, but I didn’t want to say anything right now. I restarted my tablet. Normally I spent the first morning home reviewing mission recordings for my official report. Then I’d forward it to HQ.

  That was the procedure, but today was different. I had something serious to deal with. Even though the patrol leaving this morning was working the different sector, I had to say something to someone.

  “Let’s go over this business yesterday and then we can decide what to report.”

  “Happy you asked. I need to see it all again, just to know we didn’t dream it all up.” He smirked his doubt.

  I set up my tablet, downloading the recordings and set them to play side-by-side. Lutz propped his legs on an empty kitchen chair, leaning back in his chair. Since nothing had happened the first three days, other than undisturbed relief stations, I fast-forwarded to our leaving RS4.

  We reached the point where I noticed the fake brushing of tracks. The recording showed me leaving the main wash. Lutz’ video still ran parallel to mine. A bouncy view of my backside. The video went through my lesson on erasing tracks.

  We progressed up the wash a short distance, then my video went to static. As Lutz reached the same point in the trail, his went out too.

  “Shit!” We said it in unison, sitting forward.

  I re-ran the recording. Nothing. A seven minute gap of nothing, but static. I ran it frame by frame, hoping for a flicker of our assailants. It was blank until I came down the wash again, following Lutz.

  “We got zip!”

  Lutz pushed away from the table. “I thought it was just the radio links.”

  “So did I. Now it’s just our word that there’s something going on up there.” I got up from the table, pacing. “I need a statement from you, just in case. Something we can make sure gets to our commander if anything else happens.”

  “Like them carrying out their threats?” Lutz crossed the room to look out over the apartment courtyard. “I didn’t hear what he said to you, but I know when someone holding a gun on me is perfectly willing to pull the trigger. His backup was just waiting for the order to take us down.”

  “I need you to say that, for the record.” I returned to the table, switching to my incident report program. “I need to report this, even if I do end up getting charged with… whatever they might dream up.”

  “We take our orders from the Marines and the President, not some freak in the desert.” He came back to the table, picking up his own tablet. “I’ll record whatever you need.”

  “Just the facts. What you witnessed, not what I told you.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  I remained at the table, opening an incident report, uploading our mission videos and filling in the missing seven minute gap. I could repeat the encounter nearly verbatim, right down to the last warnings. I wrapped it up with the suspicious marks under my vehicle and the threatening drink delivered to my table.

  Lutz returned from his room. I didn’t look up at him, instead focused on the camera’s eye. “A statement from Sgt. Brandon Lutz is attached to my own, but I feel it is necessary to return to the site, legitimately sanctioned or not, to confirm their presence is not in violation of military regulations. This report will be electronically delivered in three days if I do not return to deliver or rescind it personally.”

  Lutz’ mouth was open, but he didn’t interrupt me. Not until I uploaded his statement and shut down the video. “You plan on going back out there?”

  I hadn’t consciously thought about it until the words came out of my mouth. “Every fiber in my body is screaming that something is wrong out there. Wrong on a universal scale. I can’t just hope someone else investigates. I have to do this.”

  “No! We have to. You’re not going out there alone. I’m your partner.”

  “I can’t ask you to stick your neck out.”

  “I’m going and I’m sure your boyfriend…”

  “Absolutely not!” I stood up, leaning over the table. “You’re not saying anything to him. That’s an order.”

  Lutz took a step back at my sudden vehemence. In our few months as partners I’d never forced an order. I could see him struggle with it, then nod. “Yes, ma’am, but I’m going with you, or I will be forced to report you to our unit commander.”

  He didn’t flinch as I squinted back at him. Touché. “All right, Sgt. Get ready. Pull whatever supplies we’ll make travel arrangements.” He headed to his room and I sent the report to my private cloud account, set it to automatically broadcast one hour after we were scheduled to report back to duty.

  Using my burner phone, I set my plan into motion. Within an hour a neighbor drove us out of the complex, Lutz and I were in the back of her SUV where the windows were shaded dark against the desert sun.

  Michelle looked at us in the rear-view mirror. “You sure you want to go out today? It’s supposed to be well over 110 degrees.”

  “Only get so many days off.” I kept the details limited. “We saw an interesting quartz outcrop that begs closer inspection.” We were dressed in our BDU pants, boots and t-shirts, but had safety vests and backpacks of water and ‘tools’. We carried our sidearms and I had an old camera attached to my belt loop, making us look all the more touristy.

  “Well, Billy said just to bring the bikes back with full tanks and he’s fine.”

  “Appreciate it. We’d have used ours, but Casey went out early this morning and I forgot to ask him for the keys. God only knows when he’ll get home.”

  “Oh, yeah!” She looked at me in the mirror again. “I read all about it this morning. What’s with people these days, killing all those innocent people? Really, I mean, yeah, they were trying to get into the country illegally, but to die like that. Then someone set them on fire.” She shivered and shook her head, looking out her side window as she turned the corner. “When’s all this crazy going to end?”

  “Not soon enough. We’d love to be put out of work.” I watched where she went, looking out for any vehicles following us. I fidgeted with the little rock Yazzie gave me, until I saw Lutz watching. I shoved it into my pocket.

  It was only a few blocks to the RV Park the complex leased for residents. It kept our toys from making the parking lot look ‘trashy’. The gates opened to her security code and she took us to the enclosure assigned to her family. Billy’s truck, three adult desert bikes and two kids’ 4-wheelers.

  Lutz loaded up two of the bikes while she gave me the truck keys and her security code. “Drop the keys in the flower pot tonight and I’ll get them in the morning.”

  “Gotcha. Maybe we’ll find some pretty rocks for your pots.”

  “Me too?” Michelle’s twelve-year old daughter leaned over the steering wheel.

  “Yeah, Carly, I’ll try to find you something special.”

  She grinned, disappearing back inside the vehicle.

  “Thanks.” Michelle climbed up into her SUV and waved as she exited the yard. We finished prepping the bikes.

  Baseball caps, aviator glasses, shaded windows up and air conditioner cranked to full, I took us to Hwy 8. This section of the range was down for maintenance this week, so getting approval was easy.

  I bypassed the range road, heading for one of the old herding trails. It wouldn’t be easy. The trails were broken down, sections washed out or blocked by rock slides. If not for 4-wheel drive, we wouldn’t have gotten far after we left the highway.

  Lutz huffed as we bounced. “Why are we going in this way?”

 
“Because this is how the locals get in.” I gripped the wheel as we tilted over a small slide of rocks. “Pretty obvious if we came in on the range road.”

  “Yeah…” He braced. “I think this is rougher than going off-road.” He pointed to the side of the trail.

  “Probably, but we don’t damage more than we have to.”

  “It’s a bombing range!”

  I rolled my eyes at his point, valid as it was. “Yes, but it’s still owned by the Cocopah.”

  He huffed again at a rough wash out, maybe a bit louder than normal, for emphasis.

  I ignored him, sticking to the remnants of the road. It took longer to reach the trail I’d mapped out. “There’s the box canyon where we can hide the truck.” I pulled in, parking Billy’s old beat up truck up under a mesquite tree.

  Lutz cringed at a scrapping noise. “Sure he won’t complain about scratches?”

  I could see the limb on the hood, but shrugged. “Did you look at the truck as you loaded it? He’s way past worrying about a shiny paint job.” I shoved the keys down between the seats and cracked the window a few inches. “Get the bikes.”

  Lutz cracked his window and got out, thumping around as he unload the truck. I located the trail and rejoined him. We went over the map before mounting up.

  The route wasn’t any more than goat and sheep trails. The local tribes turned their herds loose here when monsoons made the desert plants grow wild. A little water and the ravines turned into beautiful gardens. Those plants changed the flavor of the goats’ milk and meat.

  The tribes coordinated mission and grazing dates and pilots learned fast the retribution if they went off track and shot up a herd of goats. However, sheep and goats wandered where they wanted, so it was deemed a no-foul if they grazed over the line.

  Right now their four-legged paths were our way in. We tangled our way up steep ravines and through narrow passes, until I could see the flags for RS4 and RS5. I pointed them out to Lutz.

  Not far off trail was a decent-sized Torote tree. Fed off whatever little bit of rain that trickled down the steep hill behind it, it provided some shade during the worst heat of the day. We tucked the bikes behind the tree and took a water break for ourselves.

  Lutz sat under the tree, wiping sweat off his neck. The helmet wasn’t the high-tech model we wore on duty. It had ventilation, but no fans to cool our heads. “Think we made it in undetected?”

  “No guarantees.” I joined him, giving the tree a token of our thanks with a splash of water before I took my own drink. Lutz remembered and gave his own offering, humoring my ritual teachings. I took a second drink. “I don’t see any tampering with the path, but they wouldn’t expect anything but animals to come up this way.”

  “Let’s hope.” He took one more drink before putting his bottle away. “Where now?”

  I pulled out the map. “We go on foot along this ridge. It will give us cover.” I pointed to an area on the aerial map of the range. “That’s Surveyors Tank, RS5 and the wash we went down.” My finger settled into an area between the three. “I suspect this point is where we need to go. This trail will bring us up over the top of that target.”

  “Huh, looks like a step carved into the side of the mountain.”

  “A perfect point to hide without us picking them up on satellite updates, unless we were looking for them.” I folded up the map and checked my camera. It was an old digital model, not hooked up to any com lines that could be hacked. “Let’s get up there.”

  CHAPTER

  11

  This wasn’t our first hiking adventure. I’d been putting Lutz through my own desert survival training and he was learning. We took breaks, but the last half-hour the most brutal with an almost vertical ascent. We set rappel ropes for our descent. Fortunately the path was fairly level the rest of the way. Twenty more minutes and I pulled Lutz down behind a boulder.

  “Here we are.” I’d caught the briefest glimpse before taking cover. We both edged up enough again to see past this outcropping of rocks. Sure enough, on a plateau below us were buildings mashed up against the cliff face. Set in a point of almost perpetual shade. “Got’em.”

  We dropped back down. “I need to get pictures without them seeing me. See that brush, break me off some of the branches and drag them up here.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Lutz skidded down the incline. At this altitude the shrubs didn’t get much water, so they grew short and sparse. He broke off some of the branches, paying for them with the remains of a bottle of water, before he dragged them back to me. I built an impromptu blind, getting into place as Lutz pulled the last branch over us. He hung onto it as I raised my head over the rocks again.

  “There’s no activity.” I started clicking pictures of the buildings. “One building looks rather large and newer than the other one. The second one looks reminiscent of an old miner’s shack, or a mine entrance, a bit dilapidated. Two SUVs are parked up next to the cliff, but no people.”

  “Well, we know there are at least three trucks, so one is out here somewhere. Probably taking their bad-ass show on the road again.” Lutz had a tad of snark in his tone.

  “I’d rather know exactly where they.... hey, door’s opening.” I poised the camera, waiting. Sure enough, several men came out of the larger building, walking out into the sunlight. They were looking up, but not at us. That made me stop taking pictures and try to see what they were looking for. “Shit, hang onto the branches.”

  Over the opposing ridge the rotors of a helicopter appeared, running silent. I also grabbed branches of our cover, dropping my head behind the ridge. The backwash from the rotor blades hit us and it took everything to hang onto our little bit of cover.

  When the turbulence stopped I slipped up to the edge again, switching my camera to video mode. “People are getting out of the helicopter. A lot of people, but from the looks of things they aren’t here voluntarily.”

  “Illegals?” Lutz was still holding the branches, but turned enough to see the screen of my camera as I recorded the scene.

  I could see the passengers now. “Yup. Looks like they’re rounding them up.”

  “For what? They’re not Border Patrol and we took care of all the local vigilante groups.” He stretched to look over the edge too. Just then a woman was tossed from the helicopter, landing on her hands and knees, crying out as one of the uniformed men dragged her to the lineup. “That’s not good.” He looked over the group as they clustered together. “No kids. Where are the kids?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to guess because my mind went to the darkest place ever. I kept recording as the last of the illegals were pushed into the group. That’s when I saw the man from the wash, the Smirker, walking out of the mine shack. His mouth moved, but we were too far away to hear what he said with the helicopter blades still whirling down.

  “What could he possibly want with these people? Human trafficking?” Lutz caught his breath as a young man made a break from the group, running for the edge of the plateau, one of the uniforms started after him, but Smirker raised a gun. No warning shot. Hitting the man in the back.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” This was definitely no government operation. Lutz looked just as horrified as I felt. The Smirker was yelling now.

  I could hear him as he raised his voice. “Anyone else?” His gun was pointed at them. “There’s no escape!” He shouted it in Spanish, making sure they understood.

  Just then the door to the miner’s shack opened again. I thought it was going to be more mercenaries, but I nearly dropped the camera at the sight of a large… monster slithered out onto the plateau. A large horned serpent.

  “What the fuck is that?” Lutz’ whole body stiffened as if ready to take off, even though we had to be at least fifty feet above the plateau.

  I wanted to run too, but couldn’t. That certainty that I had to come here today was vindicated. I was here to prepare myself for something bigger, something of legends. I’d seen this beast in our ancient texts, in myths told
to scare children around the campfire. In the stories I’d reread only hours ago. It was alive in front of me.

  “It’s a…” Just thinking the word ignited a fire inside me. “It’s a Maxa’xak.”

  “A what, a Maxak? How the fuck would you know?”

  “A Maxa’xak. I’ll try to explain…later.” I refocused the camera.

  The monster undulated across the rock floor, just as a snake would. It was easily the length of a city bus and the girth of two, three large men. Where it traveled there was a path of wet slime, but there was something wrong with the appearance. As solid as it appeared, there was a blurriness, a lack of definition.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Simple logic should have me denying what I saw, but I knew with a certainty this monster was real. I knew this monster deep down in the bones of my people. My blood burned as I reopened my eyes to look at it again. Now my vision was clear.

  This was a Maxa’xak!

  The beast rose up as it reached the cowering illegals, who screamed in terror, dropping to their knees as the massive horned head hovered over them. It hissed, fangs exposed and dripping as it sniffed at them. The Maxa’xak’s head jerked forward and grabbed one of the men in its mouth.

  He screamed in pain and terror as the giant snake carried him away. A woman dared to chase after him, but got the butt of a rifle to her head. Gun barrels started to poke at the rest of the group, urging them to their feet and herding them into the mine.

  I stopped recording as the door closed, sliding down the ridge to where Lutz had escaped, throwing up over a boulder. He went into dry heaves as I rubbed his back.

  “We got to get out of here.”

  “We can’t leave them here, to that… that monster. What the hell was that?” He got his water bottle out and tried to take a drink, a small one.

  “The horned serpent. An evil water Spirit.”

  “Seriously?” He looked at me as if I was crazy. “It’s got to be alien.”