by Michael Ryan
“As long as we don’t have to de-suit,” she reminded me.
“We’ve survived that, too,” I said.
“I love you, Avery.”
“We’re going to be okay.”
She shared her music playlist with me after we finished our card game, and I fell into a dreamless sleep listening to light techno Mecko rock.
CHAPTER SIX
Heathens reject faith, and I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and the next; none will have help to save them.
~ Holy Writs of Vahobra, 119:16
Shortly after our internal systems woke us, the planet’s ochre sun broke over the horizon. Dawn’s arrival brought with it flying insects, colorful birds, and jumping fish. When the morning was still young, our mysterious enemy appeared sans armor. Assuming we could get a sat-comm burst to one of our ships, the guesses about the nature of the Drekis could finally end.
They were obviously reptilian.
Purplish-green in the morning light, they were colored similarly to many of the plants we’d seen. But not long after first spotting them unarmored, we discovered they were like chameleons. Their scaly skin was capable of changing colors and morphed depending on their activity and, presumably, their mood. The Dreki-Nakahi walked upright, the same as they did when suited in armor. This fact had been debated because a suit could be designed to move in ways that were not natural to the occupant.
The lizards’ arms were roughly humanoid; they had hands with five digits: two opposable thumbs and three long fingers.
Their eyes were located on the sides of their heads, like a prey animal, but they were set in movable cone-shaped projections. When they looked forward, their dark orbs faced straight ahead. Topping the heads of some were short horns. Others lacked these curved protuberances, and we assumed these were the females, as they were also slightly smaller. It was an educated guess at the time, but later discoveries verified the truth in the assumption.
They had prehensile tails, which were long enough to bring food to their mouths and strong enough to hold heavy tools.
Whether their tails could support their body weight while they swung in trees was an unanswered question; on Earth, the evolutionary purpose of that tail design was to allow arboreal mammals to find and eat food without falling from branches.
Whatever the evolution behind their design, they were impressive killers.
I focused my telescope on the head of a particularly large specimen; it flicked a tri-forked tongue in the air, reminding me of the snakelike lizard that had tried to eat Callie on Purvas. The question of convergent evolution versus shared ancestry once again popped into my mind.
“Damn,” Mallsin said. “We can’t de-suit. Those things would eat us.”
“I don’t know if they could digest us,” I said. “It’s possible we’d be toxic, or maybe just taste bad.”
“I’d rather not find out,” Callie said.
I’d run atmospheric tests several times since we’d learned we’d been left behind. I reran one.
<
Abrel sent me a private message. “It’s likely we’re going to die here. Should we even bother with any of this?”
“It’s our job,” I answered.
“I don’t feel much obligation to a master who abandoned us.”
“We’re not exactly slaves, Abrel. We all volunteered.”
“We’re not much different.”
“Now there are some actual slaves,” I said. “Look at that.”
Reptile masters led a group of humanoids into the mud pits. Each slave carried a floating basket attached to their wrists. They walked slowly through the slurry, occasionally putting something they’d found into the containers.
“Jesus Christ, how many mysteries are answered?” Abrel asked.
I switched back to our general comm.
“We have an addition to our mission,” I declared. “I want to confirm those slaves are from our systems, whether human or purvast.”
“Or talarrstan,” Callie reminded me.
“Yes, or talarrstan.”
“They could be from a different planet,” Mallsin said. “But their presence answers why the Drekis haven’t tried to reach out to us and form peaceful trade relationships; they’re a slaver society.”
“All capitalistic societies are slavers,” Abrel said.
“Golvin, not this again.” I didn’t agree with my friend when it came to his political leanings, although I respected his enthusiasm. “If the Gurts and Teds were slavers, then the Drekis should have contacted them. It’s cheaper to buy slaves than go to war to steal them.”
“Not always,” Abrel said, unwilling to concede the point.
“Boys,” Mallsin interjected, “we don’t have time to argue. If we stay in one place too long, we’ll be discovered.”
“We can’t move until after dark.” I’d begun an internal debate about how to proceed. There were several viable options, but one thing I had to remember was absolute: reptiles have fantastic senses.
“Avery’s right,” Abrel said. “If we move while they’re out there, we’ll be detected.”
“So we sit here all day?” Mallsin asked.
“Yes. Until they leave or it’s dark.” I turned on my camo system, locked down my suit, and instructed them to follow my example.
We observed the scene all day. Nothing changed from our initial observation. The Drekis used their tails like whips, but the slaves were docile. The reptilian masters rarely resorted to using physical pain as an incentive. They didn’t appear to be able to communicate with the humanoids, but I hypothesized that unspoken and probably horrific threats kept them working.
We counted five Drekis, but cataloged six hundred and seventy-two slaves, giving further indication that they were helpless to resist their taskmasters.
“Spades?” Callie asked an hour before the sun was directly overhead. The workers had been taken to a shady spot and given food.
“Sure,” I answered. “Doesn’t look like much is going on for a while.”
The lunchbreak for the captives lasted over two hours, indicating an effort to gain more productivity from them. It was entirely possible we had no idea what was happening, but my gut told me that the slaves were humans.
If the Drekis considered humanoid mammals the way humans, purvasts, and talarrstan considered most quadrupeds, we could hardly blame them for taking slaves. Why would we expect the lizards to treat us any differently than we treated pigs, horses, and cows?
Of course, that didn’t change my desire to kill the lizards so I could rescue my interplanetary cousins.
We waited until after midnight to begin our recon of the mining facilities.
The slaves were housed in twenty-four light metal structures set on stilts, interconnected with raised walking platforms. We assumed that the area flooded on a regular basis, as all the wooden posts had telltale lines of dried sediment at various heights. Besides the five Drekis we counted during the day, we discovered an additional four during the night sweep. They were housed several hundred meters upwind from the humanoids; whether this was a coincidence or not, we couldn’t guess.
Our suits could sample the air and provide matches to many chemicals. For things offensive to human olfactory senses, as well as for pleasurable fragrances, the display screen would merely give a general description.
<
We circled the entire encampment in four hours after heading upstream to cross at a narrower, rocky portion of the river, and I kept the team together for safety. We ran our camo system whenever we stopped to observe but turned it off when we moved. Even the latest generation of light-bending technology wasn’t capable of evading detection under movement. But when engaged in conjunction with locking down the suit, we were virtually invisible.
Or so we assumed.
&n
bsp; Nothing about the Drekis was sure at this point. We didn’t have a long history of hostilities with them; the current war was less than a year old.
This made gathering intel of the unsuited lizards crucial.
“We should take them out now,” Mallsin said.
“I agree,” Callie said.
Abrel was more cautious and suggested we wait at least one day.
Mallsin was more inclined to take advantage of our superior numbers. “What if more show up?”
“Yeah,” Callie said, “and what if armored ones arrive here?”
“We’re going to wait at least one day,” I answered. “It’s worth the risk. We need to determine, if we can, whether they have long-range comm capacity here. Regardless of when we attack, it’s possible they’ll send an alert and reinforcements will arrive. At this moment, the one advantage we have is they have no idea we’re here.”
We spotted a structure that appeared to have a sat-dish and tagged it on our system maps as the probable command center. Another building was apparently a kitchen; we saw evidence that the Drekis weren’t vegetarians, but saw nothing to indicate they ate humanoids. Beyond the dining facility was a landing area suitable for heli-jets. There was no runway for fixed-wing aircraft, and we saw no evidence that there were any roads coming into the camp.
If their only transportation from the area was by heli-jet, it was an advantage for us. The best heli-jets were extremely quiet, but they couldn’t completely evade detection by our sensors.
“Don’t forget the boat docks, Avery,” Mallsin said.
“True,” I admitted. “If they use stealth crafts of any kind on the river, we could be taken by surprise.”
“I doubt they’d bother with a submarine,” Abrel said. “And why would they bother using a quiet boat?”
“Electric motors aren’t noisy,” I answered. “But there’s that rocky portion where we crossed. If they used boats, wouldn’t they have dredged?”
“They could come from the opposite direction,” Abrel countered. “But we should prioritize the sky, and we’ll monitor everywhere when we attack these bastards.”
“We’re going to attack them?” Callie asked. “I thought our mission was recon and intel.”
“They aren’t in suits, so we have a huge advantage,” I answered. “Besides, we have an obligation to rescue the slaves.”
“Why?” Callie wasn’t necessarily arguing with me because she disagreed. She often asked me questions to flesh out the value in a decision, or to play devil’s advocate to be sure I’d thought through all the angles of a problem.
“There might be humans in there,” I stated with conviction. I believed there were humans, although I admit that at the time, it was only a gut feeling.
“Some of them are purvasts,” Abrel said. “I’m sure of it. We might have a quandary here. If we rescue them now, they could be worse off.”
“What are you suggesting?” I asked. “That we expect Command to come back here and get them at some future date?”
“We’re going to be lucky if Command comes for us, Avery. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. We’re probably going to die here ourselves. Killing the Dreki guards might lead to unforeseen negative consequences.”
I looked at the compound. All was quiet and still. A single guard stood duty at a post located between the two housing areas. He carried a weapon that my system couldn’t categorize. It was shaped like a rifle but didn’t appear to be a Gauss or coil-gun. The reality for the slaves was that even if hundreds of them jumped the guard, they’d lose. I suspected this would also be true if he had no weapons.
“If we kill the guards, it’s possible they’d starve. For all we know their food is shipped here. I haven’t seen enough wildlife to think they could survive by hunting.”
“I haven’t noticed any fruit growing, either,” Abrel said. “But, still…”
“Wouldn’t you want to be rescued if you were a slave?” I asked.
Abrel didn’t answer me at first. He couldn’t look me in the eye, a problematic deficiency when encased in TCI-Armor. Eventually, he said, “Yes.”
I leaned towards the idea of having a chance at freedom, even if the odds were slim. But the matter of timing was crucial. Would they be more likely to survive freedom if we waited until Command sent a starship back? Or would it be better to rescue them now, while we had superior equipment and the element of surprise?
“Barring any new information,” I declared, “we’ll attack in twenty-four hours.”
“And what about the slaves?” Abrel asked.
“If they’re from any of the tri-planets, they’ll have Common-English speakers among them. We’ll reevaluate our plans after we interview them and gain intel. If by chance they’re all from entirely different systems, we’ll…”
“We’ll have some answers, at least,” Callie said.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It won’t be as helpful, but it’s information for the puzzle.”
“Seems weird hoping they’re from the tri-planets,” Mallsin said. “As opposed to hoping they aren’t related to us in any way, other than being mammals.”
“It would explain a lot of missing people,” Callie said.
“I always thought the damn government was lying about KIAs and MIAs,” Abrel said.
“Quiet,” I said.
Everyone locked down. There was movement in the camp.
A new guard approached the one who’d been standing a post.
“Just a shift change,” I said. “Okay, the time is marked. We’ll attack tomorrow night when they change shifts. We’ll take out the two guards first. That’ll leave seven – presumably asleep – to kill.”
“Easy,” Abrel said.
The next night, after a day that was identical to the one before, we discovered the truth to yet another military truism: nothing’s ever easy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
The following night arrived without a change in plans, and I centered the image of the first guard on my display screen.
After inspecting the beast’s anatomy, I concluded that a head shot was the most logical place to aim for a kill. To my knowledge, this would be the first recorded termination of an unarmored Dreki. The programming I used was simple: the target was under two clicks away, the night was windless, there were no obstructions, and the guard wasn’t moving.
I moved the reticule halfway along its snout, placing my aim literally “right between the eyes.”
The dot flashed yellow three times, giving me time to pause if required. I allowed the program to advance. An APA round spat out of my SCG-16X after the reticule turned green. It streaked across the river to its history-making destiny.
When a high-density round burns through armor, resistance slows it down. Usually, the drop in speed prevents it from becoming a through-and-through. But with the skull shot into an unarmored head, the dart-shaped projectile went entirely through its victim and burst out the back of the creature’s skull. The supersonic speed and energy of the dense metal created a vacuum-like effect, and lizard brain was sucked out of the exit wound. Blackish goop sprayed across the guard shack walls like a volcano had erupted.
Callie’s shot dropped the second guard at nearly the same moment.
We were prepared for an alarm to sound, but nothing happened. The kills had been instantaneous and silent, and no other guards appeared.
Callie and I headed toward the river to cross directly ahead of our hideout, while Abrel and Mallsin provided overwatch from a small bluff that provided a good field of fire on the compound.
“We’re moving in,” I said.
They were ready to fire missiles once the element of surprise was no longer a factor. Stealth would be meaningless after the Drekis knew we were attacking. If an alarm sounded, Abrel and Mallsin would unleash a massive assault of high explosives to cover us as we came out of the water on the o
pposite shore.
Abrel said, “Seven left.”
“Be careful,” Mallsin added.
“Roger. We’ll be out of comm in about a minute.”
“Have a nice swim,” she said.
The water was too muddy for my DS to show me anything but a dark reddish color as I walked into the current. As I moved farther from shore, the display screen view turned dark. The planet had a moon, but even in sunlight, the soupy nature of the river would have prevented sight. I continued walking, but soon it became harder to get my armored feet out of the clay.
Uh-oh, I thought.
Abrel and Mallsin waited twenty minutes before he finally broke the silence between them.
“Fuck,” he said.
“They should have exited by now,” Mallsin said, as if it wasn’t the most obvious thing about their new predicament.
“No shit. Versus, this was a bad plan.”
“They should have gone upstream and crossed where–”
“There’s no point in talking about what they should have done,” Abrel said. “We need to finish the mission. We’ll search for them afterward.”
Mallsin turned off her camo system and stood. “Maybe we should look for them first. At least for a couple of hours.”
“No.” Abrel began walking. “Follow me. We’ve got an appointment with seven lizards.”
“Okay, but I don’t see how it would hurt to at least spend a few minutes searching the river.”
“If they got swept downstream or eaten by a giant electrical eel,” Abrel explained, “we’d do nobody any good by joining them. We have orders. We’ll follow those orders and then reevaluate.”
“You think there are giant electrical eels in there?” she asked.
“It’s an example, Mal. Not literally something that I know happened. They could have been sucked into a vortex that spit them into another universe for all we know.”
“Don’t be mean. What do you think happened?”
“They might have been killed by an unknown creature. Perhaps they’re just stuck in clay, which is something Avery should have anticipated. It’s entirely possible they walked into a massive current and got swept downstream. Golvin, the Drekis might have submarines after all.”