by John Ringo
“So what are they doing here?” Suntoro asked. “How did they get here? They couldn’t have walked.”
“Yeah, that’s the rub,” Mike said, rubbing his head as if in response. He pulled out a pinch of dip and stuck it between his cheek and gum, contemplating the Skoal can balefully. “Admiral, figure it’s time to say some of this in front of an AID. You’re not stupid. We both know the Darhel ain’t what I’d call fully open and honest.”
“The Darhel are our supporters,” the admiral said, stoutly. “They saved us from the Posleen through their aid and support.”
“Yeah, except for, you know, most of the world,” Mike said. “And they’ve managed to keep us pretty much under the yoke since. And we both know that there are things they don’t want us to know about that.”
“I will hear no disrespect spoken of the Darhel,” the admiral snapped. “That is treason.”
“Nah, just honesty,” Mike said, sighing again. He suspected that under Galactic law it just might be treason. “Problem is, this is one of those things I’m wondering if they ever wanted anyone to find out. And trust me, I wouldn’t have poked if I knew about it. But here we are. The term ‘fucked’ comes to mind.”
“What are we going to do?” the admiral asked, rubbing his hands nervously. “Perhaps we should meet. In person.”
“Too late for that,” Mike pointed out. “The AID network knows about it. Not much we can cover up at this point. And no Darhel to bring it to and try to discuss it logically. I think that you can give up blaming me for his lintatai, by the way. If we could look at his secret communciations, I suspect we’d find out he had some orders he couldn’t carry out. Like ‘don’t let the humans go to R-1496 Delta, whatever you do.’ Information lag. Nobody knew we were headed this way until the reports got back to the core worlds. And now we’re here.”
“What are you going to do?” the admiral asked.
“I’m trying to arrange a meet with their leaders. For the time being I’m going to stay on mission. Set up a rest and refit base down here. I figure we’re going to be getting orders pretty soon to come back to earth. At that point, we’ll need to figure something out.”
“What do you mean?” the admiral said.
“Well, what do you think the likelihood of us getting back is?”
* * *
“Here they come,” Colonel Ashland said.
Ross Ashland was tall and slim, making an interesting contrast with his commander. The Corps G-2 also had a lightning quick mind. Mike hadn’t discussed their current predicament with him but he had to be thinking the same thoughts. He had spent too much time deep in Fleet Strike intel not to have some inkling of how ruthless the Darhel could be when they felt the need.
“Any idea from where?” Mike asked as the party hove into view. The Nor used a leather cloak covered in strips of cloth in much the way that recon specialists used a ghillie suit. It had the added benefit of being, perhaps from sort of treatment, pretty much immune to infra-red radiation. Thus the lack of thermal signature.
They weren’t hiding this time, though. They were just walking up the hill in the open.
“Recon pod has them exiting a tunnel about a klick west,” Ashland replied. “This area is high in limestone. No telling how far back the tunnel stretches.”
“Greetings, Swodrath,” Mike said, bowing his head to the Huntmaster. “How’s the jaw.”
“A Gamra recovers swiftly,” the Nor said. “The Mistress has agreed to meet you. Only you.”
“Very well,” Mike said, donning his helmet. “Lead on.”
“Sir… ” Colonel Ashland said.
“Just deal, Colonel,” Mike replied. “I’ll be fine. And if I’m not, tell Brigadier General Corval he’s got a whole Corps available to come find me. Lead on, Swodrath.”
* * *
The initial entrance was a cleverly concealed cave opening. A slide in the cave had been cleared at some point, not recently from the looks of it, opening into a deeper area.
The course, lit by smoky but long-lasting torches, was complex. On the other hand, the inertial tracker in the suit was getting feedback from external sub-space location sensors. Mike could follow the trace more or less as if he was on the surface.
The route they took was about two klicks in straight distance and about six following the twists of the caves. In places sections had been mined out, opening up sections of the cave that hadn’t previously been connected. The marks of chisels were clear and most of those portions were particularly low.
Finally, though, they entered an area that was more interesting. The limestone in the area overlay granite and when they reached that portion they entered what was clearly a mine. However, the cuttings were anything but primitive. The walls had the flat, glassy look of Indowy or Posleen borers. Curiouser and curiouser.
The mine tunnels debouched into a pretty fair sized canyon. The vast room was home to at least three hundred people by the looks of the tents that occupied the floor. Where they got their food was what interested Mike.
Most of the inhabitants were either hiding or out somewhere. But a few of the elderly were huddling around fires, someone brought in firewood, and children were playing in the area. The children were clearly curious but they stayed back from the party instead of tagging along as most kids on Earth would.
They crossed to the east side of the cavern and entered a smaller tunnel which debouched into a room about fifty feet on a side. Arrayed by the entrance were guards, more of the “Gamra” by the looks of them. There were also some male and female humans in the room, gathered around as if at an audience. But what caught Mike’s eye was the female on the fur-covered chair that was clearly a throne.
Tall was his first impression. At least six foot four at a guess since she was sitting down. Pretty was the second impression. Make that beautiful. But her looks were thrown off by her long silver hair, true silver not the “silver” of age, and when he approached he could see she had cat-pupiled eyes that were pure purple. Not just the iris, all purple.
Her face was also strange. Pretty but alien she looked more like a Darhel than even the Gamra. Her face was long and elegant but he couldn’t get the impression of a fox out of his head. Or, maybe, an elf.
“Duendtor Lerskel,” Swodrath said, bowing. “The leader of the visitors, Lieutenant General Michael O’Neal.”
Mike took off his helmet and nodded at the woman.
“Greetings, Lord O’Neal,” the Duendtor said. Her voice was high and sybillant with an undertone that made Mike shiver. It was a very primitive reaction. His immediate desire was to worship her. He managed to suppress it, though. The Darhel had the same sort of voices and he’d gotten over any desire to ‘worship’ them fast. “My lieges tell me that it is through your efforts that the scourge of the Pokree has been suppressed.”
“Well, me and about twenty thousand shooters,” Mike said, looking up into those purple eyes. “And a bunch of kinetic energy strikes. But, yeah. You’re welcome.”
“You are a sky traveller, I presume,” Lerskel said.
“Glad you’re taking this so well,” Mike replied. “Yes, we’re from the sky.”
“We must speak,” Lerskel said, raising a hand. “Privately.”
If there were any protests at the audience being broken up so quickly they weren’t vocalized. The crowd just filed out as a seat was brought over for O’Neal.
He looked at the spindly stool and shrugged.
“I think I’d better stand,” he said. “No offense intended. But I’d break that.”
“Stand or sit as you wish,” Lerskel said, waving off the stool. “Many of the niceties have had to be foregone since the coming of the Pokree.”
“Were you around for that?” Mike asked, curiously.
“I was,” Lerskel said. “Their sky fire could be seen from afar. I was the governor of this province of Hodoro. When first the Pokree landed we feared they were the Dareel. But it quickly became evident that they were not. Instead t
hey were much worse. From where do you hail.”
“A planet called Earth,” Mike said.
“I suspect this is Are,” Lerskel said. “The cold planet, the planet of ice. Home.”
“Probably not,” Mike said. “I mean, we’ve got polar ice caps but it’s not exactly Hoth.”
“Our people left Are long ago,” Lerskel said. “What do you know of the history of your planet?”
“Uh… ” Mike said then paused. “Wait. How long ago?”
“The exact duration has been lost,” Lerskel said, pulling out a massive tome. “This, however, is the Book of Becoming. In its secret chapters are estimates by scholars. We came to this planet at least twenty thousand of our years ago.”
“Shelly?” Mike asked.
“Thirty thousand years,” the AID replied. “The earth was in an iceage at that time. The Wurm Glaciation.”
“I said that you should sit,” the woman said, laughing sybillantly.
* * *
“The Dareel,” Mike said, looking at the picture in the book. Given a bit of hyperbole it looked like the Darhel. Sort of an evil Darhel on steroids but… Okay, it looked more like a Darhel than Darhel looked like Darhel. The inner truth if you will.
“And the Innow,” Lerskel said, turning to another page. “The makers and builders.”
“Indowy,” Mike said, nodding. The page wasn’t in color but, again, with a bit of squinting it was pretty clear that the scary figures on the paper were Indowy. “I’m amazed you managed to keep this information for so long. So what happened to the Darhel and the rest?”
“Our people were all once as you and the commons,” Lerskel said. “The first coming of the Darell to our people is not recorded. But from the very first there were those who did not believe they were gods. The first portions of the Book are from tales told of the first coming. Then there are the Records which we have kept as accurately as we can. The Dareel gathered peoples from among the best and trained them. Some were trained in the ways of war, others in controlling the warriors. Those, who became the Duendtor, were the face of the People to the Dareel. The Dareel changed us to make us more palatable to their sight and to better control the Commons. They also created the methods for creating the Gamra.
“But always the Book of Becoming was kept. There were, among the Innow, those who opposed the Dareel. They found humans who felt the same, even among the Duendtor. But there was little we could do. The warriors, the Gamra especially, were fast in their belief that the Dareel were Gods.
“Many of the people that the Dareel gathered were brought here, to Ackia, the land of Exile. There was something in the mountains that the Dareel wanted and the animals of this place were very dangerous. They used the People to protect the Innow as they labored.”
“This went on for many years until the Dareel made a mistake. How they managed to break the worship of a Gamra was unclear, but a great rebellion broke out on Are. This was lead by not just a Gamra but something greater and more fell. So fell that in time the Dareel fled Are. Word was sent of the rebellion on Are to here and we, in turn, revolted. It was hard to sway the warriors, and especially the Gamra, but enough were brought to the side of the People that we threw off the Dareel.
“The Dareel went away and left us to this world, our world of exile. We survived. The records of that time showed it was very hard. The magical weapons failed as soon as the Dareel left and we had to learn other ways of survival.
“There were wars fought between the peoples, assuredly. But we retained the Book against the day that the Dareel might return. We will have no more sky gods.”
“Oh, hell,” Mike said, when she was finished. “The Darhel are going to flip their lids when this comes out. People are going to go nuts.”
“There is more,” the woman said, flipping through the book. “There were no trainers of fighters among the Dareel. They could not fight.”
“Still the same,” Mike said, bitterly. “But damn can they manipulate.”
“And they trained we Duendtor in the same,” Lerskel said, turning the book around. “But these were our trainers of fighters. Which was why when the first Pokree came, we greeted them as friends.”
The depiction was better in its way than that of either the Darhel or the Indowy. Clearly in the book a Posleen was training two humans in sword fighting.
“Oh, bloody hell.”
* * *
“Okay, so thirty thousand years ago or so, the Darhel gathered a bunch of cavemen as guards,” Mike said, his head in his hands.
The meeting was decidedly AID free. Like it or not, the boxes were not going to be in on this conference.
“And they were in contact with the Posleen,” General Corval said. The Corps Chief of Staff was medium height and nearly as pumped as his boss. “That’s the part that’s really got me furious. How much actual warning did they have of the Posleen invasion?”
“After tinkering with humans for a while they got a double rebellion on their hands,” Mike said, ignoring the interjection. “And they left. So why are there no remains anywhere on earth. Note: these Duendtor are probably nearly as tricky as a Darhel. I’m not taking anything on face value.”
“Well, postulate that they had most of their earthly infrastructure at one remote location,” Colonel Ashland said. “Say an island. And they managed to sink it or something.”
“Atlantis?” Mike asked, looking up. “You’re serious.”
“It’s a very common myth in the Indo-European area,” Ashland said, shrugging. “And this language is clearly Indo-European. The oral record could have been handed down in a garbled form for generations. Postulating that the Darhel also gave the sort of expanded lifetime that they gave to, well, us, that wouldn’t be many generations.”
“Methuselah now makes so much more sense,” Corval said. “Not to mention how the Darhel had stuff like rejuv and Hiberzine ready, immediately, for human use.”
“The problem is that there’s nothing we can do with this,” Mike said. “It’s nothing but a ticking nuke in our hands. There is no way that the Darhel are going to let this story get disseminated.”
“Be pretty hard to stop,” General Corval said. “There are nearly twenty thousand members of the Corps. And, trust me, the story is all over. At least that there are humans here.”
“Recall all those stories about missing colony ships, General?” Colonel Ashland said. “I’ve seen the confidential reports. They weren’t all rumors and they weren’t all, or even mostly, accidents.”
“You don’t think they’d… ” Corval said then swallowed. “That’s sick!”
“To cover this up?” Mike asked. “Oh, yeah. They’d dump us all into a hole in hyperspace in a second. I’ve been wondering when it was going to happen, anyway. The cost of demobilizing the Corps would be saved.”
“Well, the hell if I’m going to get dumped into space,” General Corval said, setting his jaw. “If it was just my life, that would be one thing. But… ”
“But I’m responsible for the lives of twenty thousand troopers,” Mike said, nodding. “There’s just one problem. We don’t control the ships.”
“Easy enough to change that,” Colonel Ross Swartzbaugh said. The Corps G-3 was medium height and build and prematurely bald. He covered that up by shaving his head like a cueball. “Not sure what we’d do once we took them, but we’ve got a corps of ACS. Various opportunities come to mind.”
“Every ship requires an AID to operate,” Mike said. “You think they’re not going to get an update telling them to dump us the first time we get near a sat? And the ships are keyed to specific AIDs. Prevents mutiny.”
“Which is what we’re contemplating, you realize,” Colonel Ashland said.
“Not really,” Mike said. “I mean, I’m still trying to figure a way around it. I just don’t see one. Well, there’s one.”
“What?” General Corval asked.
“We send the ships back empty,” Mike said. “Just sit tight here. Tell them
we misunderstood the orders or something. If the ships make it back, they’ll ask us what the fuck happened. I mean, a whole corps missing movement? But if they don’t, they might never know.”
“And we’ll be marooned on this dirtball,” Colonel Swartzbaugh said, rubbing his head. “Not my first choice. And how, exactly, do we explain it to the Corps?”
“Lie,” Mike said. “Tell them we were ordered to stand down and await transport. In a year or so it might get sticky. But they’ll be alive.”
There was a knock at the door and Mike looked at it furiously. Rawls had very direct orders not to interfere.
“Get it,” he said, gesturing with his chin to Colonel Ashland.
“Sir, I’m sorry,” Rawls said. “There’s an Indowy out here saying he has to talk to you now. He says that he has information that you need about what you’re talking about. He’s really exercised. He said if I didn’t let him in he was going to quote rip my head off and shit in my neck.”
Mike looked at the NCO blankly for a moment.
“An Indowy said that to you?” Colonel Ashland said, incredulously.
“Yes, sir,” Rawls said, caught between his own incredulity and humor. “An Indowy.”
“Show him in,” Mike said. “Then shut the door.”