She caught up to the first ripples, the trailing edges of laughter. Then she reached the next waves, full-bodied chuckles. She could pick out each man’s voice, each nuance. She saw where the laughter began, and then, like a bloodhound on a fresh scent, she zeroed in on the speaker and his careless words. He was making a vulgar conjecture that she would not repeat. But she would toy with him.
Awen left the Unity of all things and opened her eyes. She was back in the present. “Too bad you’ll never be man enough to find out, Corporal Chico.”
The trooper winced in his armor and took a step back. Helmets pivoted back and forth as the troopers looked between themselves. Perfect. Awen guessed they’d be more cautious to say anything inappropriate over their “secure” comms from then on.
“You’ll have to forgive them,” the lead trooper said. “Most have never met a Luma before.”
“And you have?” Awen asked.
“Enough to know not to do anything stupid around you.”
“But following me into the inner sanctum of your Republic’s longest unconquerable adversary doesn’t sound at least a little bit stupid to you?”
“No, ma’am. That’s just doing our job. Stupid is what the corporal did.”
Fair enough. At least this one isn’t a total reprobate. She took a deep breath and turned to Matteo. “How come I wasn’t informed about this?”
Matteo shrugged.
Then the most senior Luma, Elder Toochu, approached her. “Awen,” he said in his frail yet confident voice. He took her hand like a doting grandfather. The elder had a liver-spotted baldpate and white wisps of hair over his ears to match. “Master So-Elku trusts you wholly, as do we all. Know this.” He leaned close to her ear. “However, he does not trust the Jujari. Therefore, he perceived that it was in all of our best interests to concede to the Republic’s wish to provide you with a security detail. Surely, no harm can come from their protection.”
But harm would come. Her mind raced through a hundred history lessons about moments when projected hostility was met with violence and, in the end, death. Worse still, these troopers had to know that they posed little threat to the Jujari. They would be sliced and devoured before a blaster shot even crossed the room. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But it won’t end well.
“Fine,” Awen said, turning to the trooper. “I permit you to escort us. However, you will keep well apart from us, and for the love of all the mystics, keep those blasters down. We don’t need a war on our hands, and they won’t do you much good anyway.”
“We’ll keep our weapons in low ready position, Madame Emissary,” the trooper said.
“A compromise. Also, I need a name or rank or something.”
“I’m SR-2133, Commanding Officer of Charlie Platoon with the Seventy-Ninth Reconnaissance Battalion, Marine Special Units—”
Awen interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “I don’t do your numbers and units.”
The trooper stared at her. Awen couldn’t tell if he was considering how to bite her head off or trying to remember his birth name apart from his indoctrination. His brainwashing.
“Lieutenant Adonis Olin Magnus.”
“Lieutenant.” Moving onto her tiptoes to as close to the trooper’s face as she could reach, Awen whispered, “Just so you know, I don’t need an escort.”
“And just so you know,” Magnus replied, the output volume of his helmet lowered to match hers, “I don’t need to protect you.”
“Then we have an understanding.”
“It seems we do.”
3
When the first Jujari emerged from behind the linen wall, his voice sounded like the bottom of a Gull-class freighter grinding against a shoal in the Meridian Outskirts. His words seemed to tear a hole in the hull of Awen’s soul, and she could sense the troopers bristling at the Jujari.
The hyena-like warrior stood half a meter taller than the troopers and twice as wide. Though they still preferred to run on all fours, the Jujari had evolved to stand on their hind legs and use their forearms as humanoids did, making them a dramatic though terrifying amalgamation of canine and human characteristics. This one wore a crimson sash across his tawny chest and a wide leather belt around his waist; on it hung a holstered blaster and the ceremonial curved keeltari long sword. The fur on his shoulders was matted down by a thick red fluid. An uneducated observer would assume it was paint, but Awen knew it was blood from the day’s executions.
Awen realized that this was a blood wolf, a member of the mwadim’s inner pack. She really wanted to interview him, but she had a job to do. That, and the warrior would most likely slaughter her the moment they were alone, no matter how much of the mother tongue she spoke.
“The mwadim’s elect invites that you search your kyat and then to ingest the sharsh should you merit audience,” the Jujari said. His words barely seemed to escape his maw of bared teeth as his tongue labored to articulate Republic common. Still, Awen was impressed that this warrior had mastered so much of the galactic tongue.
“Thank you,” Awen said in the beast’s native language, returning the favor and lowering her head to one side in submission.
The effort clearly surprised him, as evidenced by the way his ears perked up. “One among you speaks the mother tongue,” he snarled. “You have been blessed by the Alpha.”
Awen bowed again but noticed that the warrior refused to acknowledge her with his eyes. Apparently, the sexist assumptions were true, even for guests.
“Uh, Awen, what does any of that mean?” Matteo whispered. The corner of his mouth twitched. She wouldn’t be surprised if he’d soiled himself.
“Right,” she said, turning to face her group. “The mwadim’s sorgil is inviting us to the next chamber, where we are expected to search our souls as to whether our motives are pure.”
“How do we do that?” one of the troopers asked over an external speaker.
The rest of the unit turned to glare at him. That was most likely out of line.
Awen took pity on him. “Fair question. But we don’t have time for a lesson in the finer points of Jujari etiquette, so you’ll just need to follow my lead. The good news is that our security guards are exempt, as long as they don’t intend to do any talking.” She knew the “security guard” jab would land somewhere on the lieutenant’s thick head.
* * *
Magnus had never seen a Jujari in the flesh before or imagined he’d get this close to one. No wonder the Republic had kept their distance for so many centuries: the beast seemed to embody a level of pent-up violence he would hate to meet without his MAR30. He decided to give this red-shouldered Jujari warrior the name Chief. The dog wasn’t the mwadim, but judging by the blood on his shoulders, he wasn’t a noob either.
The line of Luma followed Chief into the next room and down a long corridor. Magnus followed as tightly as he could without inviting Awen’s scorn. He didn’t like how close she was to Chief, but if he got close enough to protect her, she’d just chew him out again. That would look bad on the after-action review. But so would her headless corpse.
It didn’t take Magnus long to realize that Awen was going to be much more of a pain in the ass than he’d bargained for. It was one thing to have to babysit the Luma; it was another thing to get assigned Miss Jujari Scholar herself. Great, just great.
His private channel chirped. It was the rest of the Fearsome Four.
“What do you got, boys?” he asked.
“Man, LT, I gotta say, she’s quite the asset.”
“Easy, Deeks,” Magnus replied, using Sergeant Michael “Flow” Deeks’s real last name to get his point across.
“You afraid she’s listening to us right now?” Mouth asked.
“Negative,” Flow said. “She’s too focused on minding her manners so she won’t get eaten. She might be the Luma’s dog whisperer, but she’s just as tasty as any of the rest of us.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cheeks added.
“Can it, Cheeks,” M
agnus ordered.
“Sorry, LT. Just saying she ain’t hard to look at, you know? Especially for a Luma.”
“Eyes up, and keep the chatter down,” Magnus ordered and closed the channel.
His boys weren’t wrong. Awen was beautiful, surprisingly so. Her willowy features and pointed ears were unmistakably Elonian—Magnus had known his share of that humanoid species. She wore her black hair in a tight braid, revealing much of her pale skin and mesmerizingly purple eyes. He’d almost stumbled over his first words when she looked at him out on the platform. But Elonian or not, she was a Luma, and he didn’t trust them.
Magnus’s platoon followed the entourage to a spiral ramp that accessed the floors above and below. He pinged Wainwright again. “We’re at waypoint bravo two, Captain.”
“Copy that,” Wainwright said. “Ascend to bravo three. No sudden moves, Lieutenant. Orbital is reporting no unnecessary traffic and only a handful of Jujari battleships in stand-down. So we’re still green all around. Waiting for you up top.”
“Copy that, Captain.” The channel closed.
Magnus pulled a little on his MAR30 to feel the pressure of the sling against his shoulder. He knew he could get the weapon up fast enough but didn’t like that he couldn’t scan the room along the barrel. As any Marine knew, your blaster was your third appendage. It started in basic training and went with you to the grave, so going soft with it was just… unnatural.
As the group began ascending the ramp, he felt his nerves start to twitch. Easy, Magnus. One step at a time.
This whole setup reminded him way too much of the Caledonian Wars. Good Marines had died because of bone-headed decisions made by people behind desks a million lightyears from the nearest blaster bolts. Magnus had hoped that things would be different in the Recon. But they weren’t. Same old splick, just a new planet to dump it on.
In the end, it was all about kowtowing to this culture’s needs or that people’s wants, and good people got killed because of it. The Repub didn’t have a navy and Marines so that they could have tea parties with their adversaries, and he felt they’d forgotten that somewhere along the way.
Just thinking about the changes in the Republic made Magnus’s blood begin to boil. But at the same time, hadn’t he made compromises too?
I’ve got just as much blood on my hands. But he wouldn’t if the Republic weren’t so corrupt.
A loud bark came from one of two guards stationed at the top of the ramp. Magnus exerted all his will not to level his MAR30 at the beasts. Ahead, Chief conferred with the guards then indicated Awen and her male companion. There was a lot of growling back and forth. And head dipping, like dogs did when meeting alpha males.
“Anybody got ears on that?” Magnus asked over TACNET.
“Negative,” all the leads answered as they double-checked with their fire teams. Magnus’s own sensors were having trouble establishing the line-of-sight connection to the asset. He’d done a full body scan in the first room while they’d been talking, but without a tracker on the emissary, the dynamic data only flowed when he had a sight line established.
“How’s our rear?” he asked.
“Looking fine,” Cheeks said. “Mmm.”
“Tighten it up,” Magnus ordered.
Just then, the two Jujari guards stepped aside, and the Luma began walking again. The group filed past the sentries in single file until it was the platoon’s turn.
“It’s a choke point,” Flow said.
“Man, I don’t like this one bit,” Cheeks said. “Anyone else feel the sudden urge to MAR these dogs?”
“Shut it down, Recon,” Magnus interjected, not wanting anyone to answer Corporal Chico’s question. The Luma were halfway through, and Magnus knew he wasn’t the only one scanning the space with his entire sensor suite. “I don’t want any sudden moves. Eyes forward, and do not look them in the eyes. I don’t care that they can’t see past our visors. They’ll feel it.” His HUD pinged with everyone’s acknowledgment icons.
Magnus was in the lead, following close behind the last Luma. He had to set the tone, or this was going to go sideways in a hurry. While he couldn’t smell the guards, he could feel their violent energy. Thick bands of tightly knit muscles wound over their bodies like ropes, each ready to unwind in a flurry of tearing and snapping.
Magnus came even with the guards, knowing they were probably using all their restraint not to end his life. At least it’s mutual. He saw one of the beasts sneer at him. His MAR30 felt a hundred klicks away. Don’t do it, Magnus. He willed himself to let out a slow breath, targeting eight breaths per minute. And then, just like that, he was past the guards.
“Clear,” Magnus said over TACNET. “Keep it together, Hunters. Own the field.”
OTF acknowledgment icons lit up on his HUD. He knew the men were wound tight. But they’d make it through because they were Marines, they were Recon, they were the Midnight Hunters.
Magnus followed the Luma through a low-ceilinged corridor and into a wide anteroom with a basin and pedestal in the middle. Lamps lit each corner.
“Now, what’s this splick?” Flow asked.
“Guessing it’s another formality,” Magnus said.
Sure enough, the asset approached the basin at Chief’s insistence and lapped a mouthful of water. She tilted her head back and took a gulp of air to show the water had been swallowed.
“Awww, hell no,” Flow said. “We ain’t doing that splick. No way, no how.”
“I don’t think we have to,” Magnus said, hoping he was right. “We’re not the ones speaking here. We didn’t eat the fruit, and they still allowed us in. Checking with command. Stand by.”
Magnus pinged the captain.
“Go ahead, Lieutenant,” Wainwright said.
“Captain, please tell me we don’t need to take off our buckets for this bowl ceremony.”
“That’s a negative, Lieutenant. They seemed fine with letting us pass without drinking it.”
Magnus let out a sigh. “Thanks, Captain. Just checking. Had some nervous boys here.”
“Understood. And don’t make any sudden moves in the long hallway either.”
“Captain?”
“It’s another choke point.”
“Copy that.” Magnus closed the channel.
Each Luma followed the asset as the Jujari led her into a narrow linen-lined passage wide enough for another single-file line. Magnus’s HUD lit up with warning indicators, and he switched to thermal imaging.
“You seeing this, LT?” Deeks asked, his voice tight.
“Affirmative.” Magnus’s pulse quickened. Thermal showed at least two dozen Jujari warriors along the other side of both corridor walls, each holding a long spear. Their heads were bowed. Magnus couldn’t be sure, but it almost seemed like their eyes were closed too. Then he noticed the asset: she was at the front of the line with her head back and arms splayed to her sides. His helmet’s AI brought up an audio feed: she was humming something, and then she sang something in Jujari.
“LT, what in the—”
“I don’t know, Flow,” Magnus replied. “Just play along. We’re almost there.”
“Copy.”
But Magnus could tell from Flow’s voice that he didn’t copy. None of them did.
Magnus entered the corridor after the last Luma and kept his head forward. He noticed that the Jujari with the spears were swaying back and forth. Are they in some sort of trance maybe? He passed pair after pair, bracing for an attack, waiting for something to happen. But nothing did.
Curtains parted at the end of the hallway, and the asset stepped through. The remaining Luma followed her and then the Marines. Magnus’s eyes widened as his platoon emerged into a massive ballroom nearly as tall as it was wide and covered in white linens. Translucent fabric of various colors looped from chandelier to chandelier and was tethered to wooden beams, then it plunged twenty-five meters to the floor where it pooled on lush rugs.
Lampstands dotted the perimeter of the room, as di
d a host of Jujari sentries—except for the far wall, which appeared to be a solid curtain of gold fabric. More translucent fabric acted as side windows to the massive cityscape beyond. From this height, the group looked down on every other building in the metropolis.
In the center of the room sat at least fifty ornate cushions, more than half of them occupied by Republican delegates and even a few key heads of state. The rest of the pillows remained vacant, presumably for the Luma. Between the pack of cushions and the outer guards stood Wainwright’s platoon.
“You made it through the drowsy pack of hyenas, I see,” Wainwright said, overriding Magnus’s need to accept the incoming audio.
“Yeah. I didn’t feel like waking anyone up from their beauty sleep.”
“Smart. They obviously need more than they’re getting.”
Magnus couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure his CO smiled. Wainwright had become famous during the Caledonian Wars and was someone Magnus admired. The fact that they were able to serve together again—now in the Midnight Hunters—was a career highlight.
“Our assets have been sitting here for over twenty minutes,” Wainwright added. “No one’s moved. Get your assets seated and see if we can’t get this circus going. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I have a holo date with my wife scheduled for twenty-three hundred.”
“Copy that, sir.” Magnus sincerely hoped the captain would make that date, but he wouldn’t bet on it.
4
Piper didn’t know what was wrong with her parents, but she knew it was bad. Her dad had been coming home late for several weeks, and her mom was spending more time in her room than usual. Piper didn’t need any help concluding that something terrible was going to happen.
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 3