A muffled response came back, utterly unintelligible, but Ben took it as “good to go.”
The Ranger lieutenant turned back to the view of the truck rumbling ahead of his vehicle and the vehicle’s fold-up computer screen in front of him, showing him everything from the status of each vehicle in the convoy to their position on the road to New Galveston, Epsilon Eridani’s main research facility.
“So, get this,” Ramirez piped up from the driver’s seat. “I’m online last night checking out the news, and the scroller at the bottom of the screen announces that NASA just found three more. Can you believe that?”
Ben shrugged as he scrolled through the different open windows on the computer screen. “Sure, they find new habitable worlds all the time now.”
“Yeah, but I mean the way they announce it now,” Ramirez went on. “When I was a kid, they would break into a news broadcast to announce it. Now they find three at once and all it warrants is an announcement at the bottom during a morning show segment about a guy who dresses up as fruit to get kids to eat healthier? What’s the world coming to?”
“How many do you think there are, anyway?” Specialist Clarence piped up from the back seat.
“Grandpa used to tell me how when they first started getting probe data back, scientists were saying how the odds of a world being habitable were one-in-a-billion-trillion-gajillion,” Ramirez told him. “Then BAM! First try, they found one. He said NASA thought they won the lottery.”
Ben heard Peterson cough and winced in sympathy.
Ramirez went on, stopping only to take a sip from the water bladder concealed in his assault pack. “Then, before they could even start planning a manned trip, they find another one. And another. And another!”
“Jess said astronomers refer to it as ‘The Time of Plenty,’” Ben offered up. “She said they were certain it had to be a flaw in the probes’ programming because it was mathematically impossible.”
“Yeah, well, I suck at ma…”
The beam of blue light slamming into the left side of the vehicle’s engine block cut off Clarence’s comment, and Ramirez jerked the wheel, trying to retain control of the vehicle.
“HOLD ON!” Ben screamed as he felt the left side of the jeep leave the ground and they started to roll. Behind him, Clarence shoved Peterson’s legs as hard as he could, trying to make the private fall down into the vehicle before it rolled over onto him, but he was a little too late. The vehicle rolled twice and landed on its right side, its undercarriage facing the direction the Va’Shen’s shot had come from.
Ben took a quick physical survey of his condition and found nothing broken. Looking around he saw the others in varying stages of consciousness.
“EVERYONE OUT!” he screamed.
Clarence and the other specialist, Simpson, pushed past Peterson in the turret, dragging the unconscious or possibly dead gunner’s body out with them. Ramirez unhooked his harness and fell against the center console. Gaining a foothold, he climbed out the turret, and Ben followed a moment later.
The captain looked ahead and saw the rest of the convoy driving away as quickly as they could. A cargo truck passed them, and before it could get more than a hundred feet, another blue energy bolt slammed into the engine compartment, causing the truck to roll to a halt. Ben saw two soldiers hop out the passenger side with their weapons.
He poked his head around the front edge of the vehicle, careful to use the car’s engine as cover, and saw more blue flashes as a group of Va’Shen on top of a rocky outcropping a hundred meters away started firing at them.
Ben pulled his head back and turned to the others. Ramirez was on the far side of the vehicle, his carbine up. Clarence and Simpson had Peterson laying on his back and were checking his vitals.
“Ramirez! Clarence! Suppress the fire on that hilltop!” The two Rangers started firing up the hill, more to keep the Va’Shen from poking their heads up and firing than any real hope of actually hitting them. Ben turned to the two soldiers in the other vehicle and pointed up the hill. They got the message and started banging away with their weapons.
He clicked the mic on his radio. “Sword Maiden! Sword Maiden! This is Slayer Red Six! Troops in contact five-two miles east of Checkpoint Three! One wounded! Two vehicles inoperable! Attackers are Va’Shen, approximately squad-sized! Heavy energy weapons! Request air support and MEDEVAC! Over!”
“Copy, Slayer Red Six,” a female voice came back over the radio. “We’re directing a Wildcat to your area. Time on target, five minutes. Can you hold?”
Before he could reply, a blue energy bolt punched through the LTV’s engine block barely a foot from his face and hit the sand nearby. Their “cover and concealment” had officially become just “concealment.”
“We’ll get back to you on that!” Ben yelled.
“Loading!” he heard Ramirez yell. Ben turned and climbed into the turret back into the vehicle. Crawling to the passenger seat, he found the computer terminal and hit several keys. On the left side of the vehicle, now pointed upward, a large tube turned, directed by gyroscopes to point directly up, and fired.
Thirty feet up, the casing around the projectile broke away and a small drone sped into the sky above them. Ben hastily crawled back out of the vehicle as another energy bolt smashed through the bottom of the driver’s seat and out the LTV’s ceiling.
He fell out of the turret into the sand, almost landing on Peterson. Simpson was rendering first aid, and Ben wanted to help, but he knew the best way to save the private’s life was to finish the fight as quickly as possible.
Retaking his position at the front of the vehicle, he raised his rifle and pulled open the tablet that folded against the rifle’s left side, just forward of the magazine well. The small smartphone sized screen came to life and automatically linked to the drone he had launched. He heard an explosion and turned to see the other truck now on fire, and the two soldiers who had hidden behind it on the ground, one of them rolling in pain.
“Dammit,” he muttered. He looked at the thermal image on the screen. He could see his LTV and the Rangers hiding behind it, and he could also see six red blobs moving around a large rock.
“SHIFT FIRE LEFT!” he called. “They’re moving!”
Ramirez and Clarence aimed further to their left and kept shooting. Ben began to turn to offer his own fire to theirs but stopped when a message popped up on the tablet’s screen.
Ben tapped the “Yes.”
The Ranger grit his teeth. This would be almost funny if they weren’t all about to die…
He moved his finger around the six red blobs, leaving a blue circle around them.
Ben growled and banged the “yes” option.
As he was turning to warn the others, an energy bolt roared through the back of the LTV and through Clarence’s leg, dropping the screaming Ranger like a load of bricks.
“Clarence!” Simpson yelled, rushing to his side to perform first aid.
“EVERYONE DOWN!” Ben yelled.
The soldiers ducked and covered their heads. Had they been looking up the hill, they might have seen a lightning-quick blur shoot from the sky and into the hillside nearby, erupting in a huge explosion that threatened to knock the damaged vehicle over on top of them.
Ben looked cautiously up as dirt and small rocks rained down onto his helmet. Squinting around the LTV, he saw smoke rising from where the Va’Shen soldiers had been shooting at them. The tablet on his rifle beeped for his attention.
The Ranger captain let out an exhausted breath and tapped “no.”
The memory of that fight on Epsilon Eridani echoed in Ben’s head as he sat on the metal chair he had positioned in the open doorway of his hooch. It was raining outside, and, unable to sleep, he had wanted to sit and watch the rain. As he watched the lightning play in the dark clouds over the base and listened to light rumblings of thunder, he idly flipped the folded print-out between his fingers, still unwilling to open it.
Peterson survived, but his back had been so damaged that the Army sent him home. Ben assumed he had been on Persephone during the strike. Clarence, oddly enough, didn’t even rate a trip home. The beam had passed right through his leg and cauterized the wound as it went. A bullet along the same path would have caused him to bleed out.
It was one of the things that bothered Ben about the Va’Shen, and his earlier conversation with Patricia had brought it and the memory back to the fore. As technologically advanced as the Va’Shen were in some ways, they were equally backwards in others, and those areas where they were more advanced, it almost seemed like they didn’t know how to best apply their own tech.
For example, the Va’Shen energy weapons seemed like the next great step in weapons design, but even if and when humans were able to actually miniaturize energy weapons to the point where a soldier could carry one, odds are they wouldn’t for the exact reason that it wouldn’t kill reliably enough. The goal was to get enemy soldiers off the battlefield. A weapon that didn’t make you bleed was almost pointless.
His gaze came to rest at the door to the DV quarters across the narrow dirt, now mud, pathway from his hooch. Standing outside, trying her best to stay dry, Specialist Carson was pressed against the wall, trying to get herself completely under the narrow awning and the meager protection from the rain it might provide.
He fingered the print-out. What was their game? He resisted the urge to march over there and beat on the door with his fist, to somehow force the answers out of the fox girl who was sleeping inside.
If he’d had the technology that was available to him on Epsilon Eridani, he wouldn’t even need to talk to this girl. He could have LTVs with micro-drones search up and down the valley until they caught a heat signature or have Jamieson fly a few Wildcats overhead and loiter for days until one of them poked their head out of whatever cave they were hiding in.
Again, he wondered why he was bothering. He wondered if the other sector commanders were having problems like this or if this level of difficulty was a uniquely Pellean thing.
He pocketed the printout and stood up, grabbing the back of his chair and pulling it back inside his hooch. Tomorrow was likely to be another long day.
Alacea picked up the small, white covered bowl and shook it. Something, a lot of somethings, rattled against the plastic inside. Looking at the top, which seemed to be made of some kind of paper but shinier and more durable, a drawing of some kind of animal was showing its teeth to her.
Her first morning as the Dark Ones’ prisoner was not going well at all. When she awoke, the guard opened the door and beckoned her to follow and to take one of the brown towels with her. For a moment, the Na’Sha was delighted at the prospect that they might be taking her to a bath. She hadn’t had a proper soak in more than a week. However, the guard took her to another small building wherein there were several stalls with a metal nozzle in the wall.
The guard mimed undressing, and Alacea obeyed, blushing furiously. The guard then held up her hand with her fingers spread and pointed to the stalls before turning and sitting on a bench near the sinks nearby.
Curious, Alacea entered one of the stalls and found a lever in the wall at about chest level. Turning it, she shrieked as freezing water sprayed down on her from the nozzle in the wall, then shrieked again as the water got progressively hotter and hotter, threatening to scald her.
The guard came charging in and adjusted the lever, soaking herself and all her clothes in the process. After a moment to calm down, the fox girl realized the water was warm and clean. It wasn’t a bath, they were basically hosing her down like she were cattle that had rolled in the mud.
Mortified, she washed as best she could in the five minutes she was allotted and after drying and dressing in her dirty robes, allowed the guard to take her back to her prison.
When she arrived, she found a tray on the table with the covered bowl, a paper rectangular box and a spoon sitting on top of it.
She shook the bowl again and it rattled. Pressing down on the top, her fingernails punctured the paper and she tore it open to reveal several brownish circles. Was this food? It looked like animal feed. She put one of the circles in her mouth and chewed, grimacing at the bland taste.
The fox woman didn’t have long to eat, however. There was a knock on the door just before it opened, and Patricia came in, smiling at her.
Alacea bowed politely.
Patricia moved aside and the Overlord followed her inside the prison.
The Va’Shen bowed again in assent and looked up at the Overlord. He was more than a head taller than her, even with her ears, dressed in the same mottled green uniform as all the other Dark Ones she had seen so far. Piercing blue eyes seemed to bore into her, and she found herself swallowing nervously in his gaze. This, she was certain, was no farmer or lumberman. He carried himself as a man who knew he had complete power over everything he put his eyes upon.
“I am Captain Ben Gibson,” he began evenly, trying not to unnecessarily unnerve her. He listened as Patricia translated before continuing. “Lieutenant Kim said you have confessed to some very horrible crimes.”
Once Patricia had finished translating, Alacea raised her head defiantly.
It was the same wording she had given Patricia yesterday, so the terp knew how to translate it.
“You ordered the bombing of Persephone?” Ben asked.
Alacea told him after the translation.
“Who in your community?” Ben asked. “Who among your people did you order to bomb our colony?”
This question was new, and Alacea paused. she said.
“Would you tell me, if you knew?” Ben asked.
Alacea grit her teeth as she heard the translation, her tail twitching angrily.
Patricia struggled to translate all of it, growling to herself as she did her best. “It’s fine,” she said. “They did what they could because they could. I am responsible. Punish me. My people are safe.”
Ben stared at the fox girl, and Alacea met his gaze with her own ferocious eyes.
“We don’t want to hurt your people,” he said. Patricia translated. “We want them to come home.”
Patricia’s brow furrowed. “It sounds like she thinks we’re tricking her by not
treating her badly,” she said.
Ben sighed. “Where are your people?”
Alacea glared at him.
Chapter 5
“Okay, I’m done,” Ben announced as he and Patricia walked down the camp’s main thoroughfare toward his office. “It’s like they’re going out of their way to make it difficult.”
“It’s a cross-cultural miscommunication,” Patricia said with a shrug.
“We are speaking as plainly as we can,” Ben argued.
“Yeah, in their spoken language, but there’s a lot more here than that,” she said. “We can’t base our communications with them on what we know about cultures on Earth. It’s the little things that impact the communication process. We’re missing something, something important.”
Ben opened the door to the polymer hut that housed the two officers’ desks and stepped inside, removing his patrol cap in one swift movement. Patricia did the same and collapsed in her cheap office chair.
“So,” she began, “Let her go?”
“Hell no!” Ben cried. “The investigation is ongoing.”
“Ongoing?” Patricia asked incredulously. “I think it’s pretty obvious by now that she hasn’t really done anything.”
“She confessed to being a war criminal,” Ben pointed out.
“Along with a million other things!” Patricia argued. “Give me five minutes with her, and I’ll get her to confess to inventing country music!”
“There could be up to a thousand Va’Shen up in those mountains with energy weapons,” Ben told her. “Now, they might be cold, scared and hungry now. But the longer this goes on, the colder, scareder, and hungrier they’re going to get. And that means they might also get angrier and more desperate too.”
The Vixen War Bride Page 8