“An entire species cannot disappear in one day.”
Tirr shook his head. “You misunderstand me. They all disappeared at the same exact time across the galaxy, Commander. No one has seen any until now.”
Raleigh noticed the injuries on the TriRusk’s leg. “It’s hurt?”
“Healing well.” Fuul said. “She appears to be feral. For a youngling of this age, at least four equivalent years, she should be talking or at least attempting to communicate. There has been no such activity. We’re hoping to release her back into the wild soon. There are others in the jungle nearby. They’ve come looking for her several times.”
“She’s a female?” Raleigh asked and realized in a split second how stupid the question sounded. The TriRusk opened her eyes and stood. With an awkward shuffle around the crib, she positioned her rear end in a corner and squatted.
“Good.” Fuul said. “This way you can see it with your own eyes.”
“See what?” Raleigh asked. “I’ve seen plenty of things take a shit in my life, Doctor.”
The TriRusk moved away from the corner and back to the ruffled pad where she had been resting. Raleigh immediately saw and smelled what looked like human baby shit, but it had several small lumps. Fuul donned an examination gown, reached into the deposit, and rooted around with her claws. His stomach flopped at the sight, but Raleigh kept from getting sick. Fuul used both hands to extract and clean off one of the small lumps. Raleigh saw a familiar sparkle.
“Is that a diamond?”
Fuul nodded. “Synthesized biochemically. We don’t know how, but our medical archives say it is something a young, albino TriRusk will produce regularly.”
Raleigh grabbed the TriRusk’s pad and tore off a chunk. Placing the cloth in his palm, he gestured at Fuul to deposit the diamond, so he could inspect it closer. “This happens every time they take a dump?”
Both MinSha stared blankly at him.
“When they excrete waste? Take a shit? Drop off the kids at the pool?”
“You mean defecate?” Tirr asked. “Your colloquial human sayings are confusing, Commander.”
Raleigh looked at the synthetic diamond. He’d seen some before, mainly ones created using high-vacuum, high-pressure techniques that he’d swiped during a mission. They’d almost paid for his first cruiser by themselves. “How much do they produce?”
“Up to five grams per week.”
Cha-ching! You greedy fuckers found this thing and decided to turn a profit. Raleigh grinned. “I see. Are there others?”
“Other children?” Tirr asked.
“Other albino TriRusk. Have you observed any?”
Full glanced at Tirr then back at him. “Yes. We’ve seen at least one more, but we’ve been unable to determine where the tribe is. Psymrr declared the jungle too dangerous for a mission to find them.
“He did, did he?” Raleigh grinned. The MinSha hadn’t been armed, equipped, or trained to handle what was beyond the walls? “Where are the rest of the diamonds? You’ve had this being for a couple of weeks now, and it’s been producing diamonds. Where are they?”
Tirr turned to the bulkhead behind him and tapped a recessed control panel. A door opened in the wall. As the top came down, Raleigh laughed. This was too good to be true. “I see. Timmons! Secure those diamonds in my quarters now!”
The squad leader strode into the room and secured the bin holding the diamonds. Raleigh watched them sparkle as they caught the room’s light and reflected it vibrantly in all directions. All the precious stones were his, and there were still more to be had, until the child outlived her condition.
“Now you understand why Psymrr wanted to discuss terms,” Tirr said. “Fuul can continue to care for the TriRusk as long as you’d like.”
Raleigh nodded. “Yes, you will, Doctor. But that’s not all we’re going to do.”
Tirr blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Get me images of this TriRusk, and any you have of the ones you say you’ve observed, right now.” Raleigh touched his ear and heard a beep as the headpiece came online. “All units, this is Commander Reilly. Change of mission. Briefing in thirty minutes at the central compound. You’re going to love this one. Because I smell credits, and we all know what happens next.”
* * * * *
Chapter Nineteen
Weqq
TriRusk Colony
Sleep teased every fiber of her being. Lying in the semi-darkness on what she could best describe as a thatch and fur rug, Jessica drifted on the edge of rest and let her subconscious wander through a sea of memories. The warmth of the adobe building, combined with the comfort of the rug and her fatigue, pushed her toward sleep, but her mind would not release. Her instructors called it droning, a mental state where your body achieved complete rest and your conscious mind quieted. While rest did a body good, it was essential for problem-solving to have your mind be well rested. Though not a trance, droning enabled Jessica to detach from the current situation long enough for ‘her mind to sort things out in a stream of seemingly unimportant events and disjointed recollections of events that may or may not have happened. Waiting for the artificial night in the TriRusk city to completely fall, Jessica sorted through the threads in her mind and latched on to one with an almost conscious resolve.
* * *
Five years earlier
“I know you, Jess. You’re going to tell me we’ve met our objectives and exceeded our performance standards for this mission. After that, you’re going to tell me it’s time to shuttle the company up to the Trigger Happy and get the hell out of Dodge, but there’s an opportunity here that bears exploration.”
Jessica frowned at her then-husband. “Your opportunities pay off less than ten percent of the time, Marc.”
He beamed. “The last one, though, paid a hundred thousand credits for next to no investment. That was profitable.”
“Marc.” She sighed and saw his happiness begin to dissolve into surliness. The conversation was going nowhere fast, but it needed to be said again. “It wasn’t profitable at all. You didn’t bother to factor in the costs of ammunition, fuel, supplies, or time lost for other work. That’s not even talking about payroll for the company. The hundred thousand in credits we got for that hijacked load of whatever that petrochemical sludge turned out to be barely paid for the cleaning of Victory Twelve’s loading bays because of spillage.”
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes. That she had her own ship had never sat well with him, and that she’d paid for its cleaning and overhaul after ten thousand liters of waste spilled in the loading bays with company money irritated him. Marc Lemieux had a marginal ability to command a merc unit, but his managerial skills were non-existent. He wasn’t interested in accounting and forecasting. All he wanted to do was run operations, without conducting a shred of planning first. No matter how many times she’d tried to coach him to think beyond the end of an operation and actually consider a profit and loss statement, she’d failed.
“Look,” he continued with a shrug. “Any smash and grab mission has an ulterior motive for the ground forces. All a good mercenary company has to do is find it.”
“That’s looting. Absolutely forbidden by Union policies.”
“And everyone does it, Jess.” Marc pointed at her. “Whether it’s something we find on the ground of value or something we take from a vanquished opponent doesn’t matter. Pillaging is within the bounds of most contracts unless expressly forbidden.”
Jessica barely kept from rolling her eyes. Vanquished opponent? Gods, who talks like that?
“I will not have the reputation of this company reduced to piracy, Marc!”
“It’s not piracy, Jess. We’re privateers.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Marc! It’s the same thing.” Jessica shook her head. “You’re wasting time looking for scraps, when we could be working on the next contract.”
“We’re looking for opportunities, Jess.”
“By wasting coordinated intelligence? Using sen
sors beyond the scope of the mission? Cross-referencing data? No, you’re letting a group of CASPer pilots run around and tear up, tear down, and shoot anything you think might be worth something. Finding opportunities is not something simply done. The simple things…”
* * *
Weqq
TriRusk Colony
“…are always hard.”
Jessica stirred, those words in her head. Kurrang stood on his rear legs looking out the thin window of the main room. The city appeared to be in full darkness. It wasn’t hard to replicate ‘night’ in a cavern, but the effort to support the race’s circadian rhythm was coordinated and executed on a grand scale. She looked through the window and saw a shimmering point of light that couldn’t possibly be there.
“Are those stars?”
Kurrang did not turn to look at her. “Yes. They model the night sky on our home planet before its destruction. The lighting system replicates everything. The length of day, the seasons, the night sky.”
Jessica kicked off the blanket and spun around on the rug but did not stand up. “You’ve either been here a long time, or you have technology I haven’t seen, Kurrang. Which is it?”
The TriRusk looked at her. His wide eyes were somber and dark. “Both, Jessica.”
“The MinSha said your race was among the most respected in the galaxy a few hundred years ago, but you ran away. Because of fear of exploitation? For children like your daughter?”
“Yes,” Kurrang said. After a small hesitation, he continued with a grunt, “There’s much more to the story, of course. We had great allies, and the MinSha saw us as an asset they could protect from harm, like a financial institution. The more the MinSha moved against our best interests in the pursuit of profit, though, the more we were exposed. We were pursued by all the races, none more vigorously than the Veetanho. One day, the MinSha were no longer the allies we needed. They were too into their wars and weren’t there to protect us when we needed it.”
Jessica stood and walked to the window, stretching her arms across her chest as she did. “And you ran?”
“Not immediately. There were attacks. They hit our outlying colonies. They took our economic holdings and held them over us for a diamond ransom we could not meet. The only thing for us to do was preserve and protect our resources. For that reason, we ran.”
“I understand,” Jessica said.
Kurrang snorted. “You can’t yet, Jessica. They’re after your race, your planet, and your resources now. New Union races are the easiest to prey upon. Humans, especially.”
“Not all humans are alike.” Jessica curled one side of her mouth under.
“For your sake, Peacemaker, I hope so.” Kurrang said and looked outside. “It’s time to go.”
Jessica looked down at her empty holster. “It would be much easier with weapons, Kurrang.”
Without a word, he turned and rummaged in a large pack by the door she didn’t remember seeing. It took a moment, but he finished and held out a hand to her. In his large palm was her regulation issue laser pistol. She grabbed it, felt the familiar click of the palm reader as it read her prints and activated the weapon with a barely apparent hum. “I thought you threw it away. I can’t believe I fell for that.” She chuckled and squinted at him. “You sure you didn’t bring my slate and earpiece?”
Kurrang shook his head once. “I told you before. I left those behind. Electromagnetic sensors could have allowed them to follow our path. I apologize.”
Damn, it was worth a shot. Not knowing who to trust is getting old. Jessica blinked and tried to let it go. Connecting to Lucille would have made things easier. From her location inside the MinSha compound, Lucille could have given them intelligence about the remaining forces, patrol routes, and whatever else her programming could dredge up.
“It’s okay,” Jessica said. “We can figure out the situation by observing the compound just as well as my computer could tell me what the mercenaries are doing. Sometimes the old ways are the best.” She smiled. Simple things were always hard, but the hard things were always simple. Doing the simple things, like putting your own eyes on a situation, often made the difference in the hard ones.
“Do your young sneak out of domiciles?”
Jessica blinked, then chuckled. “Some more successfully than others, I reckon.”
“It’s a practice as old as time,” Kurrang said. “Now, though, we do it at significant risk.”
Nurr. Jessica nodded. As the colony leader, or whatever her official position was, Nurr would be obligated to stop them. Jessica’s mind snapped out three quick probabilities. The lowest probability was that she and Kurrang would sneak out of the city unopposed. The most likely was that they would meet resistance from Nurr. The most dangerous was that the conflict at the gates would be bloody. “Do we have more weapons?”
Kurrang grunted. “You have your sidearm, Peacemaker. The only other weapon you need is your mind.”
A bolt of electricity shot down Jessica’s spine. She’d heard the same exact phrase at Peacemaker U too many times to count. “W-what did you say?”
“You have your sidearm, Peacemaker. The only other weapon you need is your mind. Do they not teach that at the Academy anymore?”
She squinted at the TriRusk. “Who exactly are you, Kurrang? Level with me.”
He looked at her, and one corner of his wide maw came up—the approximation of a smile. “Just one of the forgotten, Jessica.”
“Bullshit.”
Kurrang guffawed, a short, coughing sound. He blinked several times and turned his somber eyes to her again. “Who I am doesn’t matter, Jessica. What matters is only what I am about to do. For my daughter, I will subvert the laws of my colony. I risk excommunication. I risk my life so she may walk free again, whether that be on this planet or someplace else. Whether the Urrtam peel the flesh from my bones or not, none of that matters in this moment. Right now, I am solely who I am meant to be. As are you. Are you ready to follow me? Will you be with me through whatever we face?”
Her face flushed. “Of course. I can deputize you, Kurrang. You can have the protection of my guild and—”
He raised a hand and stopped her mid-sentence. “We do not recognize your guild in any official manner—the same for the Union itself. My…people…will not understand that I will risk so much for a youngling. They do not believe any child is more important than any other, nor will they support my attempt to retrieve my daughter, but I simply cannot do nothing.”
“You love your daughter. I get that, Kurrang.”
The TriRusk lowered his head. “I do not understand the human concept of love, but I believe my child has as much right to live a protected, sure-footed life as I have, even at the risk of revealing the presence of my tribe and our technology. That much you may understand, Peacemaker. But I do so knowing I may never return here again. That’s why I must succeed. If I fail, there will be nothing for me.”
“Then we’ll have to succeed, Kurrang.” Jessica holstered her pistol and nodded at him with what she hoped was a pleasant and confident look on her face. “How are we going to do this?”
Kurrang replied. “Follow me.”
* * *
In the city’s artificial night, Jessica marveled at both the complicated lighting of the cavern’s roof and the presence of a low-pulsing hum she hadn’t noticed on their initial entry. Kurrang crept along the domicile’s wall until he reached a corner. Using handholds she hadn’t seen, he climbed to the roof and motioned for her to join him. Unlike the MinSha ladders, the handholds on the adobe bricks weren’t much different from things she’d seen in the North American desert on dwellings hundreds of years old. She climbed up, swung her legs over the edge, and dropped a meter and a half to the roof of Kurrang’s home. Kneeling there, Jessica clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the gasp that threatened to escape. The rooftop held not one but two portable fusion units. She’d seen something similar during her time with the Besquith and realized the technology was much older and
much more refined than she’d previously assumed. The TriRusk were at least as advanced as the elSha, and maybe equal to the Dusman.
“Your whole city is powered like this?” Jessica whispered.
Kurrang nodded. “Quite.”
Jessica shook her head. “You have weapons here. Things that can drive the humans away from the MinSha, don’t you?”
“This isn’t the time, Jessica. We have to get out of the city.”
“Why right now, Kurrang? Why not ask Nurr to assist us? Your people obviously have the ability to face this threat. Why do you keep running?”
Kurrang looked away. “There will always be someone who wants to take what we hold dear, Jessica. For the TriRusk, there is nothing more important than keeping what is ours. We will do whatever it takes—we will even let your Union pass us by. Now, let’s go.”
They moved quickly along the curving wall of the cavern, stepping over rooftop walls that had never seen a bird dropping or a rainy day. In the very near dark, Jessica felt her way along the walls. Flashes of movement, usually Kurrang’s heavy white arms, allowed her to keep close. Each of the domiciles was roughly the same dimension, which meant she could step over a wall and take four regular steps before stopping to half-step and plant her foot against the next wall. Twelve times they’d repeated the cycle when Kurrang caught her arm.
“Wait.”
Jessica blinked and opened her eyes as wide as she could to allow her night vision to compensate. Beyond the wall where she’d placed her right foot was open space. They’d reached the end of the row of domiciles. The curve of the wall behind her suggested they were near the entrance point, but she couldn’t see it. Kurrang moved past her, toward the front facings of the buildings below, and froze. A half-second later, the entranceway to Jessica’s right snapped into view, courtesy of a half-dozen pulsing, blue plasma lamps unlike anything she’d seen before, hanging from staffs. Under each lamp was a large male TriRusk, wearing black and gold body armor across their broad chests, with large clubs slung from heavy belts at their waists. The dichotomy between the advanced plasma lamps and the simplistic armor wasn’t lost on Jessica. At the top of the slope, Nurr stood bathed in the light of the lamps.
Honor the Threat (The Revelations Cycle Book 12) Page 21