Panic threatened to paralyze him. He tried to think of a Duri prayer for strength during combat, but in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t remember a single one. All he could do was frantically slap the release button for the parachute in a final desperate attempt at salvation, and then he was yanked backward so abruptly that his neck would have snapped if not for the carefully calibrated equalizers in his suit. Even so, he suspected he’d feel the jolt deep in his shoulders for weeks.
But at least he was alive, he reminded himself, and his descent was steadily slowing, the jungle floor seeming less an inevitable grave and more like the rendezvous point it was supposed to be.
The rendezvous point, he thought. His stomach dropped at the thought. He’d forgotten to reactivate his comm link after shutting it off on the shuttle. He might have missed critical information during his radio silence, or worse yet, been directly contacted by the commander. If that was the case, he would face severe punishment from his Duri Master once the commander filed a detailed report of his field performance.
“…miles from rendezvous point. Should arrive within fifteen minutes, sir.”
“Understood,” the commander responded, then fell silent as he neared the jungle canopy.
“Ten seconds to impact,” the AI voice in Nuri’s suit informed him. He didn’t need the reminder since he could almost reach out and touch the tops of the trees with his toes at that point, but it still made the crash through the canopy less jarring somehow.
He braced his body the way he’d been trained to do. He pulled his legs close to his chest for the initial impact, then triggered the release to hit the ground running before his chute tangled in the trees. Despite the rain, which made him slip twice as he landed, everything went according to plan. Better, in fact, than any drop he’d completed during training. He released the chute before it could jolt him back again, then retrieved it to erase evidence of his entry if any curious parties visited the colony’s remnants to investigate the cleansing.
Once he’d broken down the chute and was safely out of sight from any passing aircraft, he initiated the self-destruct mechanism on the pack and it burst into a brief, brilliant ball of flame.
He’d ignored most of the chatter over the comm link while he’d taken care of the chute, but now he cranked up the volume again to report that he’d successfully dropped and would proceed to the rendezvous point as scheduled.
“This is Twelve,” he said. “Chute has been destroyed. Proceeding to the RP from a quarter-mile out. Will arrive in two minutes.”
“Understood, Twelve,” the commander’s voice crackled back over the comm line.
Two minutes was an irrelevant estimation, seeing as he was the closest of the twelve Called soldiers to the commander’s position. Those coordinates were the de facto rendezvous point since they were nearest the mission’s destination of any drop. Even if he took his time, he would arrive at the commander’s holding location at least a few minutes before the others.
That allowed ample opportunity for self-doubt to consume him in the meantime, and for him to consider defecting before he was forced to senselessly take another life.
I would die in the process, he reasoned. I wouldn’t be able to take all twelve of them, even with the help of the colonists. They’re all just as skilled as I am, and the commander has me beat in experience if nothing else.
Yet he wondered if it was worth it nonetheless. At least if he stood up to the massacre, he would die knowing he’d done the right thing by fighting for the innocent.
And then I’d be condemned to eternity in Tscharia for forsaking the Will of God.
He frowned, but he recognized the futility of his internal debate. His allegiance had been bought and paid for, and despite his reservations, the idea of eternal torment finally sold him on proceeding with the mission. The Duri had bred a formidable fear in his soul for the righteous wrath of God and the grotesque pleasures of the Evil One. Dying at the hands of the Called soldiers through swift justice was one thing. Suffering for the cosmic eternity while enduring unimaginable torture and utter separation from God was another monster altogether.
His heart and mind fell somber as he trudged through the thick jungle, barely noticing the branches and plants he picked through on his way to the commander.
Why don’t they just send the Hidria for missions like these? he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time since he’d begun his Duri training.
He knew the answer, of course. Or, at least, the answer the Duri Masters were comfortable providing to inquiring young recruits who didn’t know any better. The Hidria only concerned themselves with heresies of the highest order. Insufferable Heresies, as they were termed. The Duri Masters did not command them any more than they commanded God, though their interests were so intermingled that they were often viewed as one and the same. That was the official word, anyway.
Aside from that, though, Nuri suspected a more logical explanation was simply that the Duri Masters wanted the Called to perform the smaller missions for the sake of their training. Perhaps, even, to test their resolve, as Nuri’s resolve was being tested on his journey to rendezvous with the commander.
Better get it together soon, he told himself. They’ll see right through me like this, and I know exactly what they’ll do if they find out I’m having doubts.
For Nuri, it was well-worn territory. First, they’d beat and starve him for weeks or perhaps months. Much longer than he’d been punished for killing the old man in place of the river girl, in any case. In that time, he would be brainwashed through several invasive psychological procedures and branded over and over with the mark of the Divine Infinite. If it was then decided that he still didn’t have faith in the Duri teachings, he would be publicly executed as a message to all other Duri followers.
Public execution.
The thought made him shiver. He’d seen enough of the hangings, crucifixions, and decapitations to know just how disgraced the victims were. Unlike the cleansing of heretic planets and colonies which were cold and impersonal by design, the punishment for the Called who sinned against the Duri faith was to discourage rebellion against God and the Duri and therefore necessitated the ultimate act of desecration.
Focus, Nuri thought. Don’t work yourself up or the mission will fail.
He glanced behind him as he walked, trying to decide if other Called soldiers were close enough to see him with his guard down and his rifle hanging limply at his side. Such an egregious breach of protocol in the middle of an actual mission would have been reported immediately. He would have been hunted through the jungle well before the strike team worried about the colonists. Eradicating defective Called always took precedent over the Holy missions. The Duri didn’t want any sign of weakness or dissension among the ranks of their killing machines to leak, otherwise they were liable to have an anti-Duri revolution on their hands. The tribunal was perpetually terrified by the prospect of media outlets uncovering the truth of a failed cleansing and then spreading the information throughout human systems. Over the years, they’d skated dangerously close to that reality as it was, even without the benefit of indisputable holo-vid evidence.
“Checking in,” the first Called soldier reported over the comm link. “One point five miles out. Should arrive in ten minutes.”
“Understood,” the commander said. The flood of reports was about to begin in earnest, and that meant Nuri had to be close to the commander’s position since he’d been the closest Called soldier to begin with.
“Checking in,” the second soldier called. “One mile out. Should arrive in seven minutes.”
“Understood.”
Just as the third soldier called in her report, Nuri spotted the commander with his back against a giant tree. Red, banana-shaped fruit hung over his helmet.
He flipped his comm link to mute and approached the commander with flawless combat protocol. “Twelve reporting, sir,” he said. His voice barely broke through the heavy rain beating against the jungle leave
s and the whistling wind that snaked between branches, but the commander had already spotted him and likely identified his designation from his sensor readings.
“Fall in, Twelve,” the commander said.
Nuri did as he was told and took point for the designated approach vector. He could see the dim glow of the colony a mile off through heavy jungle. His heart leapt in his throat with dread and a peculiar excitement he didn’t dare acknowledge.
For the most part, the commander ignored him. The Called were not encouraged to adopt discernible personalities, particularly on missions, and they did not engage in small talk. The silence led Nuri’s mind to wander, though, which wasn’t a good thing considering all the questions and doubts nagging at him. Briefly, he considered turning his blaster on the commander right then and there, wondering how the mission would proceed without its leader and with little evidence to prove Nuri had been the culprit. Perhaps the rest of the Called soldiers would decide that completing the mission would be too risky if the colonists were aware of their arrival and had used guerrilla tactics to kill the commander before they could assemble and march on the colony.
I’d be the de facto commander, then, he realized. Protocol dictates that the lead point takes command if anything happens to the CO in the middle of a strike.
Nuri shuddered. He didn’t like the idea of being at the helm of the kill force. It was strange how committing the same amount of murders in the colony seemed so much different when he was the one leading the Called to the slaughter. It made him feel more culpable for the deaths than simply being a mindless blaster rifle aimed where the Duri Masters had pointed him.
Unless I purposely command the Called to fan out and isolate themselves, making them easier for the colonists to deal with.
The prospect had its own allure, mostly because so many unknowns existed in that proposed future once his ties with the Duri Masters had been severed. By then, however, the opportunity for action had passed. The next Called soldier—designation Eleven—appeared a dozen yards ahead of them and clicked off her comm link. “Eleven reporting, sir,” she said.
“Fall in, Eleven,” the commander said.
Nuri grimaced beneath the shelter of his featureless faceplate and shifted so that Eleven could tuck in beside him.
For a moment, he thought that she was staring at him, waiting for a response or some conspiratorial gesture. It was the girl who’d sat beside him on the shuttle, after all. The one he’d originally thought looked just as troubled as he felt when they boarded the vessel. It was impossible to tell where her gaze was fixed under the expressionless armor though, so he kept his mouth shut and waited for the others to arrive.
As the minutes passed, the commander became visibly impatient for the stragglers. He broke combat protocol and began to pace back and forth around the clearing, tapping his blaster rifle against his leg armor anxiously.
“Ten, report,” he said into the comm link.
“Ten reporting, sir,” the Called soldier replied. He didn’t need his comm link because he was standing in front of the commander, followed closely by Nine. “Sorry, sir. My chute got tangled in the trees. I had to manually cut and fold to get rid of it without starting a fire.”
The commander stared him down for a moment, then seemed to relax as Eight came into view. “Should have called it in,” he said coldly, then turned back to the assembled Called.
Nine and Ten fell in without comment. Eight lingered for a moment, watching for Seven in the brush behind him, then the two Called dropped into line together.
“As soon as Six arrives,” the commander told Nuri, “move out.”
“Understood,” he responded, biting back a protest. It didn’t seem like sound strategy to split the group in two as long as they were entering the colony through the same gate, especially with the commander falling in the rear group rather than taking point, but it wouldn’t do any good for Nuri to argue. At least, not now that there were so many witnesses who could report back to the Duri Masters on his insubordination during a critical juncture in the cleansing.
A moment later, Six checked in and Nuri nodded to Eleven. “Let’s move out,” he said.
The five other Called soldiers comprising his half of the dozen followed obediently.
The journey through the last stretch of the jungle before the flatlands passed too quickly for Nuri’s liking. He was still struggling with the notion of participating in the slaughter at all, let alone being the first through the gate with the first kill. He’d never asked for that sort of responsibility, and truly, he didn’t think the commander should have put him in that position in the first place.
Unless this is a test. Maybe he sensed my wavering convictions and is forcing me to command the others to prove my loyalty.
Beneath his faceplate, Nuri clenched his jaw and inhaled deeply. It seemed like a reasonable assumption. The Duri constantly employed mind games to root out the weak for public execution, and it would be just like them to use command of a questionable cleansing operation to test Nuri’s resolve.
They also could be testing to see whether I’m ready for the Hidria trials, he thought, then quickly brushed the notion aside as utterly ludicrous. He was too young to be taken in by the Hidria, even if he somehow managed to pass the trials.
“Twelve reporting, sir,” he said into the comm link once they were within two hundred yards of the colony. When they reached one hundred-fifty, they’d be detected by the proximity scanners, and then their cover would be blown. Not quickly enough for the colonists to realize what was happening, but enough to sound an alarm somewhere, and that would undoubtedly make Nuri’s job more difficult. By rule, it was the first soldier who assumed the greatest risk in a frontal assault, even with the element of surprise on his or her side. “We’ll reach the detection point in twenty seconds.”
“Understood, Twelve,” the commander responded. “We’re just leaving the RP now. We’ll double-time and fall in right behind you. Feel free to easy pace the next fifty.”
“Yes, sir,” Nuri said. Then, switching his comm link to Called designations Seven through Eleven, he turned and held up his left hand for a stop. “You heard him. Stall for time, but don’t do anything to attract attention.”
All five of the soldiers nodded back to him, not questioning his command role in the least even though at least one of them must have sensed his preoccupations leading up to the drop.
That’s just paranoia, he assured himself, kneeling in the moon mud and trying to ignore the assault of raindrops rattling his armor. The other Called soldiers followed suit, waiting out the storm in silence until they saw the first reflection of their comrades closing on their position.
“All right,” Nuri said, taking a deep breath with the comm link on mute to prepare himself. He switched the channel back on. “Weapons at the ready, shield modulators checked, let’s go.”
He stood and motioned for them to follow, gazing up at the high walls of the open-domed colony buildings, which used rain as its primary energy source. The curved, stone structures were especially imposing with the view of the moon’s orange gas giant looming large and menacing overhead. Lights glowed from observation windows dotting the side of the colony walls, but the stealth armor and approach of Nuri’s soundless boots were too advanced for the primitive colonial scanning systems. They wouldn’t be able to track heat signatures until the soldiers were close enough to sprint through and disable the gate, and they had fallen into formation to camouflage their movements as indigenous predators.
This is it, he thought as they passed the one hundred fifty-yard proximity mark. He winced, staring at the readings projected inside his faceplate to see if any alarms rang inside or if any colonists approached through the gate. What if they shut the gate before we reach them? he wondered as they skulked closer to the settlement. What if this is a trap?
His blood ran cold at the notion, and even when he rationalized away his prevailing paranoia, the chill remained. A false mission of that
magnitude seemed a large expenditure on the Duri’s part simply to get their Called soldiers killed outside the public eye, but the Duri often operated unpredictably. For all that Nuri knew, the Duri could have orchestrated an ambush on the Called so word of their sacrifice would reach the press and politicians and justify a jihad against all pagan or atheist human colonies throughout the galaxy. At least that would explain why the commander had fallen in with the rear group rather than running point for the assault.
“One hundred yards,” Nuri reported over the comm link.
He paused, waiting for the commander’s response, but none came.
Hmmm…
“Twelve reporting, sir,” he said over the comm again, thinking maybe he’d forgotten to switch back to the correct frequency to raise the whole group. “We’re one hundred yards out and closing. Should we proceed?”
Again, there was no answer.
Nuri continued advancing slowly, risking a quick glance over his shoulder to get a read on the second group while keeping as much of his attention as possible on the gate.
Eleven had stopped behind him, staring back toward the other half of their unit. “What’s happening?” she asked.
Nuri finally stopped as well and went to one knee in the mud with his blaster resting on his thigh. He swallowed nervously, sure that the colonists would stream through the gate with pistols and pulse rifles any moment for a pre-emptive strike. “I don’t know,” he said weakly.
Only one soldier approached them through the glow of the gas giant, and the raindrops illuminated his faceplate poignantly enough to draw attention from even the most dimwitted guards along the colony gate.
“Who is that?” Eight asked.
All six of them were kneeling in a staggered line and their attention was focused on the Called soldier with his weapon smoking from blaster charges, oblivious to the searchlights that suddenly fell on his position and the shrill alarms blaring throughout the colony.
“Twelve reporting, commander. Can you confirm your status?” Nuri said into the comm through a thick knot of dread that had formed in his throat.
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 12