“I know, look at them.” He watched their people celebrate like they’d won the war, “If we go on like this for the rest of our lives, I’d be happy.”
“Partying, Mitch?”
“A challenge, a fight, humiliating Erdogan, and then back here to celebrate. I could repeat that every week for life, Eli.”
“That’s good, because maybe that will be the case. War isn’t going to be over that easy.”
“I don’t know,” Taylor said, looking over to the alien vessels that had put down beside their ships, "Their technology is something else. With them, we might be in for a quicker fight than you think."
"Aren't you forgetting something rather significant?"
Taylor looked puzzled.
"Their tech is amazing, but they were beaten by the Krys before, and beaten badly by the looks. Ever stopped to wonder why?"
"Irala told me. It was a numbers game."
"And you think that's all? You think he's really telling you everything?"
Taylor shrugged. "Why wouldn't he? And anyway, the Krys aren't what they were. We may have lost the war, but we smashed their armies. We go back there together, and we're going back strong."
"Yeah, we smashed 'em, and they smashed us, too, but there aren't as many of us left as you seem to think."
"Irala tells me Erdogan has let many humans live. That's a whole lot of potential fighters we have down there. It will be the biggest mistake he ever made."
"Showing mercy?"
Taylor scowled.
"He hasn't shown any mercy. Those people are alive because he has put them to work or he hasn't managed to catch them yet. No, he wouldn't show mercy; he wouldn't know what the word meant," Taylor replied bitterly.
"I meant no offence, Mitch."
Taylor knocked back his drink and tried to get back into the spirit of the occasion. Even hearing Erdogan's name made him angry and on edge. But he put it past him now and went on in a determined manner to enjoy their celebrations. Next thing he knew, he was awaking in a bed in one of the temporary structures and was alone. He had a splitting headache and was massively dehydrated.
"Good morning, Colonel," a voice said to him.
He rolled over. Irala stood at the foot of his bed.
"Jesus, haven't you ever heard of privacy?"
"Yes," he said abruptly.
"Well, can I have a little?"
"I will wait for you outside," he replied and vanished into thin air.
"That's just plain creepy," Mitch muttered to himself, "Can't a guy get a goddamn lie-in just once in a goddamn while?"
He got up and pulled on his clothing and nothing more than a sidearm. It was a rare occasion he felt safe enough to wander freely without his gear. He stepped out into the bright sunlight and felt the heat burning his eyes.
Why? Why so early on this of all days?
"Good morning, Colonel," Irala repeated.
He opened his eyes. The Alien stood beside him. Then he felt something strike him lightly on his shoulder. It was Jafar offering him a flask of water. He took it appreciatively and knocked it back in one. Water dribbled down his mouth and uniform, but it felt so good he didn't care, and he knew the sweltering heat would have his shirt dry in no time.
"What can I do for you, Irala?"
"You asked me to share more with you about our race, and now we are ready."
It was unexpected. "Okay."
"Follow me."
He did so, and Jafar trailed close behind. Irala looked at Taylor, as if about say Jafar could not come, but Taylor beat him to it.
"He goes where I go. You trust me, so trust him."
Irala said nothing and led them onwards, out of the camp. They paced out into the middle of nowhere until Irala finally stopped. Taylor looked around in every direction for some sign of civilisation, but there was nothing but their fleet in the distance. Taylor sighed and wondered if his time was just being wasted.
"You got me up for this? For a walk about the desert?"
He asked as he kicked the sand and felt hard rock just beneath the surface.
"We've known each other for weeks, and still I see nothing but sand. A few ships, you. Well, not even you, a hologram. When are you going to let us in? We are allies."
The ground in front of him suddenly opened up and dropped down in a cascading fashion, forming a stairway like it had when they first met.
"This is why I brought you here." He held out his hand to invite Taylor in.
"Just the two of us? You know I don't lead my people, right? I'm just a marine...a fighter, that's all."
"It is clear to all that you are far more than that. Your significance to Erdogan alone showed us that."
He pointed down the broad stairway in the rock once again. Taylor looked in warily. He could see lights emanating from inside, but he couldn't see any other way in or out, and he didn't like that fact.
"You remember we are allies, right?"
Irala nodded.
"And you know we pose no threat to you, and neither does he," Mitch pointed to Jafar.
"We invite you in. I cannot promise your friend will be made comfortable, but I will guarantee both your safety while you continue to pose no threat to us."
"That's reassuring," he replied.
"You ask a lot."
"Well, we need a lot."
He went on down the stairway with Jafar close behind. The carried just a pistol and Assegai each, the lightest load any of them would ever carry. Fifty steps down, and Taylor could finally see the ground stretching out into a room. Irala stood in front of them. He turned back to see the hologram was still following them, but it vanished as he looked. He turned back to the alien now in front of him.
"You for real this time?"
He nodded, and Taylor outstretched his hand in friendship. Irala took it as if knowing the human gesture intimately.
"You know I'm really not keen on that hologram shit. Erdogan uses it to piss me off, and I don't much like being reminded of that."
"Then I am sorry that you are made uncomfortable, but our use of hologram technology is a necessity."
Taylor looked confused. "What do you mean?"
Irala gestured for them to follow him. It was at this time Taylor looked at the room they were in and studied it. The walls and ceiling were one cylindrical tunnel shape, and bands of light were spaced every couple of metres for as far as he could see. It gave such a balanced light it almost felt unnatural. The room corridor was more than twenty metres wide, and he could see others linked to it further along.
There was no sign of text, images, or decoration anywhere; not even cables, switches, or control panels of any kind. The smell too was just as surgically clean as the look. It smelt as if it had been cleaned with violently strong solutions that made Taylor's nose tingle, it was so severe. Despite the clean feel and appearance, it was far from inviting and homely.
"Makes the Fatihi look interesting," whispered Taylor.
"Yes," Jafar said, but made no comment.
They took a bend, and Irala stopped to look at what appeared to be nothing but a black wall. He passed his hand over an empty area of space nearby, and that blackness faded to reveal a transparent glass of some kind. Inside, three of Irala's kind lay on what appeared to be medical incubation tables.
"What is this?" Taylor asked.
"This is why we use holograms. We possess technology far superior to either of your races. Intellectually, we are a world apart, but physically we are...weak."
"Weak? Didn't look too weak kicking ass out there."
"All of our strength derives from advanced technologies."
He pointed to the suit he wore.
"Wearing of this suit, allows me to pick either of you off the ground and throw you across this room with little effort. Without it, I would struggle to push you off balance."
"I get that; we use exoskeleton suits to boost our combat abilities and strength."
"A primitive but effective solution, but far les
s significant than what I speak of. We require these suits in order to be strong beside your races, but they drain our bodies of energy rapidly. They allow us to do things our physiology was never intended for. We may wear these suits for a matter of hours only at a time before needing substantial recovery time."
"That's a bitch."
"We are a small race. Rich in science, but we are few. We live long lives, and yet can be killed easily."
"Thousands of years, you say?"
"Sometimes. You asked why we lost to Erdogan's kind. This is why. There were too few of us, and we are forever limited by the time we can be combat effective. We are also more susceptible to disease, and the loss of a single one of us is a major loss for our people. There are less than nine hundred of us left. The losses we took to protect your fleet were more than we can ever afford to lose again."
Taylor felt a shiver down his spine; the personal cost to them for assisting a race they cared nothing for.
"Then why did you do it? Help us," he asked.
"Because some things in life are more important than merely surviving. Some things are worth fighting for, and worth dying for."
"Couldn't have said it better myself."
He looked back at the creatures on the tables.
"So those robots you sent against us, you developed them to fight in your stead?"
"Yes."
"Then why not make more of them? An army of those things could take on the Krys."
“We do not have the resources to build, maintain, and operate such an army.”
“Why not? If you can build machines like that, then why can’t you build machines to keep on building more of ‘em?”
“As autonomous drones they are effective guards, but not as proficient soldiers. Not like you seem to think.”
“Well I saw them kicking some serious ass, and nearly ended us two.”
“Those were under the direct control of well-trained Aranui operators.”
“Ones like you? Sitting inside those robots?”
“Not inside, controlled remotely.”
Taylor shook his head, seeing how short sighted he had been. He was starting to understand he was still thinking in old world terms, before their contact with alien races. It had been so much to take in over the years that he forever found himself reverting to old ideas.
“So if you need one of your own to control these things, you can never field many, and I’m guessing you have to be fairly close to maintain a signal with them.”
Irala nodded his head slowly.
“The Krys have always managed to jam our communications in combat, so how do you get around that?”
“We lost greatly because of that, but it is no longer a problem.”
“You can get around their jamming? That’s cost us dearly. Please show us how you do it.”
“In time.”
Irala led them on to a room with the robots they had first fought. They were lined up, six either side of the room, and Taylor could see doors leading to other similar rooms of the machines.
“You don’t have the people to man these things, so build them for us, and let my people drive ‘em. We’d take Erdogan’s armies apart, without ever having to lose people in the process.”
“It would take many years to train humans to control these devices, if the human mind was even capable; and my people cannot risk humans having the power and ability to destroy us.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Right now, you have no reason to, but in the future?”
Taylor opened his mouth to speak but soon shut it again; knowing Irala was talking sense, even if it didn’t help their position right now.
“So you're technologically ahead of us by what, hundreds of years? But you won’t risk the few people you have, and don’t want to share too much with us? What will you do?”
“Everything we can.”
He led them to a room filled with projected displays screens. For a moment, Taylor tried to recognise what he was seeing, and then noticed they were scenes on Earth. Some showed Mech forces at locations he recognised, but others showed humans in communities.
“What is this?”
‘This is your world.”
“Yes, I can see that,” replied Taylor, “but when?”
“Now, or as close as we can get. The images are transmitted through tiny Gateways.”
Taylor looked around at the screens and could barely speak.
“So you’ve been watching us all the time?”
“Not like this. We maintained our distance and only studied your people infrequently. These feeds were dispersed during your last mission.”
“When we went for the defence grid?”
“Yes.”
“So you’ve got a whole extra plan going down, and we knew nothing of it? If we’re gonna work together, it’s about damn time we had some trust between each other,” he demanded.
“Not like this. We monitored you from afar. But on our joint mission together, we took the opportunity to increase our surveillance.”
“You see, we are allies, and this is the kind of shit that needs to be shared!”
“But why?” Irala asked.
“So we can work together and best make use of our shared resources, and…”
“Why?”
“To win,” he replied, “We have to start trusting each other.”
“Is this not trust, bringing you into our home?”
Taylor could sense in his tone that they were the first foreign creatures to have ever done as such, and he needed to stop pushing.
“So have you learnt anything new from these new feeds? Do you know who is left? Anyone still fighting?”
“There is still some outlying resistance. Not enough that they could make a difference alone, but still they fight.”
Irala seemed surprised by the prospect, and Taylor looked at him to clarify.
“To fight without chance of success? Why not flee or surrender?”
“Surrender? I’ve seen what they do to humans. Our civilisation would be gone in a year.”
“You have encountered far lesser Lords of their people, but Erdogan will not seek to make your race extinct, at least not yet.”
“You said before he will put humans to work?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“If humans work for him like average Krys do, why destroy a useful commodity?”
It was cold, but Taylor took it as some relief that so many could still be alive.
"You said about resistance. Tell me more about them."
"We have identified seventeen areas where resistance is proving effective at hindering enemy forces," he said, pointing to a row of displays screens.
Taylor paced up closer to them and studied each of them carefully. Many of the areas were in countries he had never even been to and meant nothing to him. Most were remote locations, although he instantly recognised New York.
"People are still fighting there? It was flattened."
Only a few landmarks that were still standing allowed him to work it out. The video feed zoomed in to a street where he could see some movement. A handful of humans darted out from the front of a store and vanished below the surface via a subway station.
"How do they keep going on?"
"Wouldn't you?" Jafar asked.
They were the first words he had heard from his friend since descending into the Aranui base.
"Maybe, but it's our job. They didn't even look like regular forces. Probably just a bunch of civilians that have scavenged weapons."
"There are no civilians anymore," he replied, "Only fighters and slaves."
Taylor could tell the concept was familiar to him. There was a hint of bitterness in his tone. He carried on looking from screen to screen. He didn't even know exactly what he was looking for, and then Irala asked him.
"What do you hope to find?"
"I don't know. Hope maybe," Taylor answered him.
He turn
ed back to Irala. "Do these fighters have any chance?"
"Chance of what?"
"Making it?"
"I do not know what you mean."
"Can they survive, can they keep on going as they are and keep living?"
Irala shook his head. "We believe the resistance elements on Earth will be finished within three months."
"So Erdogan is hunting them down?"
"Yes."
"He can't afford to have any loose ends, I guess...just like us," added Taylor.
"He studied the screens and passed over two that meant little to him, finally stopping on the third. It was a bird's eye view of a few dozen vehicles parked in a clearing amongst tall trees.
"Can you zoom in on that?" he asked, stepping closer and carefully studying the image. The projection drew nearer and was remarkably sharp. The focus closed in on the vehicle in the centre. Taylor seemed to recognise the vehicle, despite damage to its roof, but he could not remember why.
"I've seen that before."
"That location?" Irala asked.
"Where is it?"
"The Black Forest in Germany."
That got Taylor's interest even more, and he continued to focus on the vehicle as the camera feed zoomed in. There was a person sitting on the hood, leaning back against the windscreen as if they were resting there. But as they closed in, he could see it was a man reading a book. Not an e-reader, but an actual physical book.
"What the hell?"
Taylor could see the man wore Reitech armour, and a rifle lay on the hood beside him in what was a bizarre scene. A helmet lay next to the helmet, and all Taylor could make out was the baldhead of the character.
"Can we get this from another angle?" he asked Irala.
"No. We have to be very careful to avoid detection. This is all we can do, right now."
Taylor looked back to the man. It was the correct location, and the truck looked right.
"Jafar, you recognise that truck?" he asked.
His friend said nothing. Then as Taylor continued to stare at the screen, the man looked up into the sky as if looking almost right into the camera because he knew he was being watched.
"I don't believe it!"
"You know this man?"
"Bet your ass I do, Irala. Kelly is one of the hardest bastards the wars ever created. I should have known he'd still be there and raising hell. He could have come with us, but he told me no. He said he wouldn't leave his home again."
Battle Earth: 11 Page 12