Sojourners: Farpointe Initiative Book Two

by Aaron Hubble

  “Doubt me at your own risk.”

  “That’s the truth,” Parker said.

  After stealing a quick look down both directions of the hallway to make sure no one was coming, Dillon stepped into the room. He stopped short when he saw what was inside.

  The large, open room was filled with upright silver cylinders. He quickly understood they were the stasis units. The units had all manner of cables and hoses running to and from their underside. A small, clear window adorned the lid of the cylinders.

  Parker had moved to one. “Sweet mother of Earth,” he whispered. “I think we found the women.”

  Dillon moved to his side and peered through the window. A woman who appeared to be sleeping lay in the casket pressed into some sort of gel. Wires and tubes extended from several places on her body.

  “What are they doing to them?” asked Parker.

  Dillon breathed. “Extracting something important.”

  “This is where the cure for the virus is coming from, isn’t it?” Parker asked.

  Dillon nodded. “That’s what a tech told me. I just didn’t know this was how they were getting it out of them.”

  Parker started backing toward the door. “I wish I hadn’t seen this. Ignorance is bliss, right?”

  The door opened and a white-coated man stepped into the room. He stopped short, clearly surprised to see someone.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  Dillon stammered. “Just dropping off some supplies. Must have taken a wrong turn.”

  “You need to leave. You can’t be in here.”

  “Right. Just leaving,” said Dillon. As he passed the man he pushed the box of supplies into his arms. “For you.”

  They exited the room and quickly walked out of the building. Several soldiers were standing around the supply vehicle they had parked in front of the building. The two men made a hard right turn, moving away from the vehicle and the hospital without saying a word to each other.

  In his head Dillon knew their survival depended on what was being done, but he wondered if there was another way. He pushed the thoughts out of his head and replaced them with the cold parameters of his mission. If they hurried, they might still have time to get something to eat before the ship was ready to leave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Camp was filled with the busy hustle of everyone packing and rearranging bags to accommodate what the slain umbaku had been carrying. They were able to take most of it, but left a few items deemed less necessary. By midday the preparations were complete, and the small group of survivors ventured deeper into the forest.

  The day passed in exhausting monotony. The terrain was rough and uneven, the trees thick and closely packed. They continued to hack their way through the underbrush with swords and machetes. At times it created a wall so dense they were forced to detour until they found a passable route. Maltoki and Calier would lead the way at these times, hacking through the dense brush with their short swords. It was impossible for Calier to gauge the distance they were covering, but he thought it was much less than the ache in his legs was telling him it was. It was as if the forest was wrapping its hands around them and holding them back, slowing their progress for reasons unknown.

  That night they began the process of cooking and preserving the meat. Amer cut the meat into long, thin slices and suspended it over a separate fire they made with an assortment of dry and green wood.

  The next day dawned gray and wet. The canopy sheltered the fire, but it was still difficult keeping the fire going. They stretched a tarp among several trees and tied it off with some cord Berit had taken from her family’s farms. This helped the process of drying the meat. Most of the people spent the day huddled around the fire, eating umbaku meat and resting their weary bodies.

  The next day was no better. They packed up their soaked belongings and trudged through the puddles. Calier watched as the group moved through their tasks mechanically, their eyes downcast, soaked and miserable.

  Calier lifted a pack in the air, struggling to place the burden on an umbaku. He had begun to weaken from the lack of food and was sure he would drop the pack into the mud when it suddenly grew lighter and was thrown onto the back of the creature. Breathing heavily, he turned his head and saw Denar shifting the weight of the pack on the umbaku, settling it and finding the straps to secure the load.

  “Thanks.”

  “You were struggling,” said Denar. He continued securing the straps, never looking up at Calier.

  “Lack of food and sleep has made it a lot harder to throw those packs around.” Calier studied the man’s face. Denar was probably in his late thirties, with short stubbly hair. His gray eyes were hard. Calier found it difficult to maintain eye contact with the man. There was such anger in those eyes.

  Calier cleared his throat while he checked to make sure the packs were secure. “So I know you were a writer, but did you have a family?”

  The man stiffened and Calier saw his jaw tighten. Those fierce eyes bored into Calier. He had to force himself not to take a step back.

  “Just because we talked while we were working on the umbaku doesn’t make us friends, Professor. What difference does it make now?” Denar sneered. He took a step closer to Calier. “What do you want to hear? I was a husband and a father and then I failed them? That they all died? Is that what you want to hear?”

  Calier held up his hands. “Denar, I was just trying to be friendly.”

  “No need, Professor. Friends are the last thing I need right now.”

  Denar stormed past Calier, his shoulder catching Calier’s, spinning him out of the way. The impact jarred Calier’s still mending ribs, and he winced. He watched Denar splash off through the camp, pick up his pack, and move a short distance away from the rest of the group.

  Way to make a friend, Calier, he thought.

  “Denar’s a man trying to deal with more pain than he’s equipped to handle.”

  Calier saw Kohena staring after Denar. The man’s long white hair was plastered to his head. “I thought my question was an innocent one. Apparently I was wrong.”

  The shepherd turned his gaze on Calier and was silent for several moments. Calier felt as if the man was reading him, like he read a book, gleaning information from the silence.

  After a few seconds, Kohena spoke. “Denar will separate himself from us at the time he needs us the most. I suspect you know a little about that, don’t you, Professor?”

  Looking at the shepherd, Calier tried to meet his gaze and attempted to study the old man as Kohena was studying him. How could this man know about his pain?

  Breaking the deadlock, Kohena looked into the sky. “I always loved rainy days.” He wiped water out of his eyes. “Of course, that was when I could spend the day in my study reading and drinking a hot cup of midbar.” Kohena smiled and waved toward the rest of the group. “Looks like everyone is gathered and ready to move out. Shall we?”

  “Of course,” said Calier. He looked at Kohena one more time and then grabbed his umbaku’s lead and walked toward the front of the group. He and Ibris consulted for a few minutes, looking at the map and determining their course for the day, and then set out.

  It was in Calier’s nature to ponder and mull mysteries over in his mind. That was the job of a professor. He discovered things, and asked why an event had unfolded the way it had or why a group or an individual had made the decisions that led to disaster or salvation. Denar and Kohena were proving to be mysteries Calier needed answers to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Wonder of wonders, the next set of instructions to come in from Shepherd wasn’t more orders to ferry supplies, it was an honest to goodness patrol mission. Nothing too exciting, but it was something different from carrying boxes. After twenty-four hours of rest in the walled city they’d cleaned up and loaded Mrs. Norris for an extended patrol mission around the perimeter of the large forest dominating the central portion of the continent. They had very little information on the forest, and
Command wanted eyes on it to begin mapping and surveillance.

  Once in the air and over the forest, it wasn’t long before the Pilot alerted Dillon to some faint life signs in the forest.

  Dillon studied the eighteen figures, represented as blue generic humaoid shapes, as they moved steadily over the topographical landscape of the holo-map.

  “Eighteen. That’s the lucky number today, Commander.” Parker leaned on the other side of the table chewing on a ration stick. “Can we tell how many of these are female from this distance?”

  Dillon shook his head. “No. The Pilot did a heck of a job just picking up this reading. There are so many life signs in the forest it’s throwing off our scans.” He rotated the map with a swipe of his hand and zoomed out. “They’re already in the forest. I would assume they feel safer in there than out on the plains. Which is a solid plan. As I said, we know there’s a lot of living things hiding in those trees; we just can’t differentiate between the signals. For all we know, what’s left of the indigenous population is camping in the forest and singing songs around the campfire.”

  Morris joined them. “So we need to go in and get them.”

  “Give that man a prize,” Parker said. He tossed his half-eaten ration stick in the young soldiers direction. Morris batted it out of the air and onto the floor.

  “Alright kids, that’ll be enough. Do I need to put you in timeout?”

  The two soldiers grinned and piped up, “No, sir.”

  “Okay. Here’s what I’m thinking. Pilot has estimated at their current walking speed they’ll be near this area where the trees are thinner in about two hours.” He circled his finger over an area of the map lit up red. “Let’s have Pilot make a wide swing around the edge of the forest and at the right time, ride in hard and fast as the sun is going down. We ambush them in the clearing, jump down, and round them up.” Dillon swung the map around and jabbed at it with his finger.

  Parker grinned and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Put ourselves between the quarry and its burrow and we throw them into confusion. They’ll scatter like scared rabbits.”

  “And then you.” Dillon pointed at Parker. “You’ll pick off the females one by one from the crow’s nest.

  “What if there are no females?”

  Dillon pressed a button and the map disappeared. “Then there will be no need for the darts, will there?”

  ****

  The doors of Mrs. Norris were open, ready to allow them easy exit from the vehicle when the time came. Air rushed into the cabin and rippled Dillon’s fatigues. He wished he could feel it on his face; it would be a lot better than having a stuffy helmet crammed on his head. Below him, the forest stretched out for miles in all directions. They were running dark and silent, attempting to time their arrival with the indigenous where the trees thinned. It would be close, but he had faith in his Pilot.

  He looked around the cabin and saw eight other helmeted figures. Morris was easy to pick out, his large frame dwarfing those of the other men. Parker was already in his perch atop the craft. The trees could prove a hindrance to Parker’s effectiveness, but the sniper was good. He would get the job done.

  “Fifteen minutes from intersect position, Commander.”

  “Affirmative, Pilot,” Dillon said. “Heads up, eyes open, and feet ready, squad. Parker, when you have open shots, you take them. We’ll move when you begin knocking down the ducks.”

  “Aye, Commander.” Parker’s baritone sounded in his ears.

  The all-too-familiar butterflies invaded Dillon’s stomach. No matter how many engagements he’d taken part in or how mundane the mission, he always felt anxious right before he gave the green light. He took several more deep breaths. He opened his visor and let the cool air hit him in the face. It brought with it the earthy smells of the forest. There was a jarring juxtaposition with what was transpiring at this very moment. The land below him was at peace; it had no way of knowing what streaked across the sky above. In the air, Dillon and his men waited, gripping instruments of death that would soon shatter the peace with gunfire.

  Inside, a small part of him revolted against this thought and the actions he was about to take. However, the much larger part of him, the part trained to be a soldier, squashed the weaker part of himself and beat it into submission. There was no room for weakness in a soldier’s life. There was only duty and victory. Victory no matter whom you had to run over to accomplish the mission parameters.

  “Targets in range, Commander,” Parker said.

  Dillon opened his eyes. “The light is green.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Pa’al sat in his sentry perch high in a tree. Looking out into the small meadow running up to the foot of the mountain range before him. He watched three deer slowly emerge from the forest and cautiously sniff the air for danger. Satisfied they were safe, the deer moved into the meadow and began browsing on the sweet mountain grass.

  With practiced movements, Pa’al moved the charcoal across the paper and the doe began to take shape. The body came to life first and then the head. As he drew the ears, he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Why were the ears always the hardest to capture? He erased the first attempt and changed the angle of his hand to see if it would help. Holding the paper out at arm’s length, he considered the rendering, and then tore the paper out of the notebook and let it drop to the floor of his perch. It fell among the countless other discarded drawings.

  Picking up the charcoal, he meant to start again, but let the charcoal and notebook fall to the floor. Drawing was proving to be a struggle today and the rubbish at his feet proved it. Standing and stretching he looked out of the little treehouse-like perch and admired the mountains. The wind at the peaks was strong today and he saw a white haze of snow being whipped off the caps and drifting on the invisible current.

  Pa’al picked up his binoculars, scanned the meadow, and made a 360-degree observation of his surroundings. The elders had decided to heighten security along the perimeter of what was deemed Ma’Ha’Nae space. Sentries had even been sent out to the edge of the forest to monitor any possible incursions by the new, mysterious invaders. Finishing his sweep, he wondered if anyone would ever enter the forest. Perhaps the Ma’Ha’Nae could live as they had for hundreds of years without the invaders even knowing they were there.

  The breeze carried a sound to his ears. It was like a high-pitched whistle. He turned and saw a black dot in the sky growing larger as the noise became louder. Within seconds an aircraft roared over his head, shaking the tree he was perched in. The wash from the engines made him close his eyes and cover his head. The craft was gone in a moment, continuing north. The invader aircraft had been described to him, but he had never seen one before. They had been spotted in the sky around the edge of the forest, but had never flown directly over the heart of the Ma’Ha’Nae homeland. He watched it go, holding his breath.

  He slowly exhaled as the aircraft moved out of sight. Relief washed over Pa’al and he keyed his communicator to check in with the sentry unit on the ground at the edge of the forest. His eyes continued to follow the receding black dot. His finger was on the comm button when he blinked several times to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him.

  Keying the comm unit, Pa’al contacted the sentry unit on the edge of the forest.

  “Bacca, this is Pa’al. We have a problem.”

  ****

  Ammaya laced up her boots just like any other day. She tried to tell herself that was exactly what it was, just a normal day. She and her squad of sentries were going out on a normal patrol around the perimeter of Lake Keali, making sure there were no predators getting too close. Wrapping the lace around the back of her leather boot and tying it securely in the front, Ammaya sucked in a deep breath and stood in front of the mirror. She quickly pulled her brown hair behind her head and her slim fingers nimbly wove it into a neat braid, her black streaks winding through the plait.

  She wished they were a brighter color, more vibrant, instead of the dull, lifeless black ref
lected in the mirror. Not that anyone would ever see them. They were almost always pulled behind her head and hidden under her green sentry hood as she roamed Sho’el.

  Time was short. She needed to meet her squad at the tunnel entrance in ten minutes. She picked up a small container from the edge of the sink and unscrewed the lid.

  It was time to put on her makeup.

  She smirked and dabbed her finger into the container. Ammaya lightly drew curved lines and irregular shapes with the dark green paste on her face. The camouflage paint was as close to makeup as she got. While it wasn’t unheard of for a woman to be a part of the sentries, it was unusual for one to remain in the ranks so long. And Ammaya had risen through the ranks quickly, a source of pride for her.

  Still, she sometimes wished she was like other women. Content to live and work in the city, maybe get married and have children. It appealed to her, but she would have a hard time giving up the freedom of the forest. She felt she had an important job to fulfill, and she loved being a sentry captain.

  Ammaya screwed the lid back on the jar, appraised her reflection in the mirror and shrugged on the dark green hooded jacket. She checked her knife to make sure it was securely sheathed in its place on her left forearm. She picked up her rifle, inspected the weapon, and slammed a clip into place. All was in order.

  There was no reason to delay any longer. She tried again to tell herself this was just like any other day, but the knot in her stomach told her otherwise. After centuries of hiding in Sho’el, the Ma’Ha’Nae had entered the fray, so to speak. Because of their ability to move with speed and stealth, her squad had been called upon to scout an incursion into their forest. They knew the cities had been attacked by some unknown enemy and now one of the ships had been sighted over the trees.