Eli nodded to Sergeant Drek. Along with the rest of the six-Minith team, he’d been sitting on the periphery, listening to the discussion. At the cue, Drek stepped forward and handed Eli the canvas package he’d been carrying.
Eli took the package with a nod and unwrapped the Zrthn-inspired comm unit he’d taken from the Agate.
“This should help us contact the Alliance,” he announced, showing the assembled crew what he’d retrieved from the crash. “Aank, how long will it take to set up comms from one of the carriers?”
Aank’s large, black eyes looked back at Eli. He blinked once, then replied.
“Unfortunately, the device you hold is not capable of long range communication when placed into a carrier, Captain,” the little green engineer replied. A brief flash of apology entered Eli’s head along with Aank’s spoken words. It was accompanied by a sense of regret and a mild rebuke. The Waa was telling him he should have informed him of his idea before saying it out loud in front of the assembly.
Eli mentally kicked himself. So much for his grand plan.
So there’s nothing we can do? Eli asked the engineer.
It is possible we can communicate from the Agate, Eli. If one or more of the drives has retained any significant charge, we could use that to power the device.
Eli groaned and rubbed his throbbing temples. He hated the thought of going back to the crashed ship but realized they might not have a choice. They had to let the Alliance know what was happening here.
“Are you certain, Aank? There’s no way this can work with the carriers?”
“My apologies, Captain,” Aank answered. “We can place the device into one of the carriers, but the vehicle cannot generate the amount of power needed to activate the device. The Agate offers the only chance of using the device . . . unless . . .”
“Yes? What else?”
“The enemy mine also has the capability.”
Eli looked to Benson and saw the lieutenant shaking his head.
“That would be a suicide mission, Captain,” Benson said. “There are Zrthns showing up all the time. Not to mention the Minith guarding the perimeter. If we knew the layout of the facility and where to find the comms room, it might be possible. Not easy, but possible.”
Eli looked to Drek and got a slight nod in response to his unasked question. The Minith could help them with that aspect, if they decided to go that route.
“Okay, let’s shelve the idea of communicating with the Alliance for the moment,” Eli ceded. “But we can still focus on slowing the Zrthn advance.”
Eli laid out his idea and got immediate buy in from his rangers. They agreed to finalize planning, make preparations, and begin operations the following day.
An overwhelming fatigue settled over Eli when the details were ironed out, and the ranger excused himself from the group. He needed sleep desperately and quickly set out to locate an open cot in one of the geo-domes. The thought of bedding down on a thinly cushioned cot seemed like an extravagance, but it was one that he eagerly anticipated. Being surrounded by his fellow rangers was a comfort. They would watch over the camp, and he was eager to give himself over to sleep fully for the first time since arriving on the planet.
He found an unclaimed bunk in the second dome he investigated and lowered himself down upon it wearily. The bed groaned against his suited weight, and he didn’t argue with the need to slip out of his armor. He quickly shed the protection and flopped unceremoniously onto the thin foam mattress. It was heavenly.
Eli closed his eyes with a sigh and surrendered to the weariness. Sleep was moments away.
Waa, Waa, Waa!
Eli’s eyes blinked open and he groaned.
Not now, he begged.
Waa, Waa, Waa!
Come, come, come!
Eli turned onto his stomach and wrapped his arms around his head. He hadn’t told Aank about the Chih yet, and they were reminding him of his promise. He wouldn’t forget—couldn’t forget what he owed them. But it wouldn’t be tonight. The Chih would have to wait.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! His reply was adamant.
He waited for a few seconds but heard no retort or further argument. Apparently, they were okay with waiting another day, which was a good thing since he had no intention of moving from the cot for the next several hours.
Chapter 28
Eli settled the helmet onto his head and keyed the transmit switch.
“Test, test, test. Can you read me?”
“Loud and clear, Captain,” Sergeant Jerrone replied. Eli nodded and gave the other ranger a thumbs-up.
Excellent work, Aank, Eli projected toward his friend, who was on the far side of the clearing near the tree trunk that led down to the second carrier. The Waa engineer had replaced the broken transmission unit on his PEACE suit while he’d slept. The tiny alien looked over to Eli and gave a slow, three-blink response.
The large area that had held the camp was nearly empty. The geo-domes, cots, tables, and other supplies that had filled the space only hours before had already been disassembled, lowered to the surface, and put back into the two remaining carriers. They couldn’t risk having a static camp located so close to the mine once the action started. Eli was planning to kick the nest of the invading army, and they needed to be ready for the probable backlash. Another five minutes and they’d be ready to move down to the surface and begin.
Eli considered telling Aank about the Chih before they set off on today’s journey, but he hesitated, unsure of exactly what he’d say about the little six-legged canines. He imagined how that would go: This group of tiny dogs, called the Chih, wants me to bring you to their home. By the way, their home is in an old, crashed Waa mothership. And get this—a dozen of your dead forefathers are there also, entombed in glass coffins.
Yeah, he wasn’t ready for that discussion just yet.
Eli focused on lowering the final bundle of equipment down the tree to the first carrier. After it was successfully stowed into the carrier below by Sergeant Jerrone, Eli would use the line to lower two of the unsuited Agate crew to the surface.
The captain looked across the clearing at the group performing similar tasks at the second tree. He was pleased to see that Aank was already tied into the safety line and being lowered through the branches by Ming. Once all the civilians were successfully on the ground, Eli would recall Sergeant Drek and the five Minith soldiers from their position watching their perimeter and they’d climb down. Once the Minith were down, Eli and Ming would follow.
“Lieutenant Benson,” Eli hailed his second in command using the suit’s comm system. They had ceased radio silence based on Drek’s intel that nothing inside the mining facility could pick up their transmission. “The camp is clear. We’ll be heading out in about ten minutes. How are things at the mine?”
“No change at all, EJ—um—Captain,” his friend answered. “The next group of Zrthns is assembling below, just like they’ve done every hour for the past two weeks. They will likely be ready to march out the east gate in fifteen to twenty minutes.”
“Okay, sounds good. I don’t expect any deviation from the routine until we begin, but let me know if anything unusual happens. We don’t need any surprises.”
“Copy that, Captain. Understood.”
* * *
Eli waited, unmoving, along with Ming and Wagner. The trio maintained firm grips on the tree trunk and watched silently as twenty meters below their position rank after rank of Zrthn soldiers passed by. The mist clouded much of the detail of those passing through on their way to the ocean, but Eli didn’t need detail.
These were well-armed invaders, marching along a well-trod path, toward an assembly site. The Zrthns were marshalling troops to fight the Alliance. Roughly a thousand troops passed this spot each hour, and it was time to slow that advance.
When the last rank of Zrthns passed their position, Eli waited five minutes, alert for potential stragglers, before giving the word.
“Okay, let’s move,”
he finally announced to his fellow rangers.
Eli descended quickly and dismounted the trunk, pleased to note that Ming and Wagner were right behind him. No further words were needed. The small group raced thirty meters to the west and halted at the misting device they had scouted out earlier. It was exactly like the one Eli had inspected days before: a large metal orb, sitting on a tripod frame. The meter-wide orb pulled water from the ground via a metal tube sunk into the soil and dispersed that water across the path the invaders were following.
“Sergeant Jerrone, is your team in place?” Eli asked. Jerrone was leading a second three-ranger team, targeting another, similar orb on the far side of the Zrthn “road.”
“In place and ready, Captain,” came the response.
Eli looked at Ming and Wagner and nodded, giving them the go-ahead.
“Proceed, Sergeant.”
As Eli looked on, the two rangers looked over the device and, as they had previously discussed, grabbed the tripod upon which it rested and shoved. The device moved, but just barely. Eli stepped up and lent the strength of a third armored suit to the endeavor. Together the three pushed and the orb began to tilt.
The three men strained with the effort but eventually managed to push the orb over so that it lay on its side. Unfortunately, that minor success presented a new problem: the water the orb had been disbursing outward, across the planet’s surface, was now being directed downward, and the three rangers found themselves in a wet deluge of splashing water and mud. The unexpected froth grew, and within seconds Eli felt as if he was caught inside a raging whirlwind of sludge and crud. He was immediately blinded by the mire and quickly found himself up to his knees in the splashing mess.
This wasn’t how he’d envisioned this task.
“Back away,” he gasped to his team as he struggled to push himself up and out of the maelstrom that gripped him.
If he hadn’t been suited in the PEACE armor, it would have been a lost cause. But the suit allowed him to gain purchase, and he pulled himself slowly away from the raging pool that was growing around the misting orb. Hands gripped his suit under the arms, and he felt himself being hauled roughly out of, and away from, the rising deluge. He was dumped unceremoniously on his ass several meters away from the muck.
He wiped a gloved hand over his faceplate to remove some of the mire and found himself sitting between Ming and Wagner.
“That didn’t go exactly as planned, eh, Captain?” Ming’s question was obviously rhetorical, but it carried a hint of surprised amusement that Eli appreciated. He looked at his fellow ranger and chuckled.
“Yeah. Not so much,” he admitted, pushing himself up from the ground. “There’s gotta be a better way.”
Eli wondered how Jerrone and his team were making out with their mister and sent a message to the sergeant requesting a status.
“Flocking thing wouldn’t budge when we tried pushing it over, Captain,” the sergeant answered. “But we surrounded the frame and twisted it in unison. Worked great. The ground shaft snapped and the water stopped flowing. After that, we were able to topple it with no trouble.”
Eli looked at the still-sputtering mess he and his team had made of their target. He looked up at Ming and Wagner. Both men merely shrugged.
So . . . twisting was the answer.
Good to know.
* * *
The dual ranger teams worked in tandem, moving from west to east along the Zrthn road. They systematically twisted, removed, and destroyed each mister they came across. After two hours of effort, Eli received word from Benson that the Zrthn forces staging at the mine weren’t moving out. Apparently, the damaged misters had been discovered and the procession of enemy soldiers had been halted.
It was likely the enemy was still trying to figure out what had caused the damage and how extensive it was. They wouldn’t know the damage continued along the entire route until they sent recon teams beyond the first damaged systems. By then, Eli had hoped they would be closer to the ocean where the mister line ended. Unfortunately, their progress was limited by the speed with which the last contingent of Zrthn troops to pass the misters successfully—the contingent they were following—could proceed.
With luck, no one at the mining facility would reach out to the leader of those troops, halt their advance toward the ocean, and order them to backtrack. If that happened, the gig was up. For now, anyway.
“Captain Justice, this is Corporal Aquino,” Eli heard. Flock. Not now. Aquino had been sent ahead to trail the Zrthn column. His checking in meant only one thing: something had changed with the group they were following.
“This is Justice. What’s up Corporal?”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Captain. But the squids have stopped moving east. It looks like—wait. Yep. Captain, they’re turning around. Looks like they’re headed back in your direction.”
Flock!
“Okay, Aquino. Head back this way on the double. Meet up with carrier two and wait for instructions.”
“Be there in five, Captain,” Aquino acknowledged. They hadn’t allowed the Zrthn column to get very far ahead, which meant they didn’t have much time before the aliens doubled back to their location. It was time to move out.
Eli was perturbed that they hadn’t made more progress, but he also conceded that the ten kilometers of misters they’d already destroyed wasn’t a small feat. They had put a serious dent into the enemy’s movements, which was what they had set out to do. They’d keep it up, as much as they could, until the Alliance counterattack happened. The trick would be to stay alive and uncaptured until then.
“Jerrone, I assume you heard that?”
“Affirmative, captain.”
“Good, take out the mister you’re working on, then move north and meet up with your carrier.”
“We’re already done here, captain,” the sergeant confirmed. “Moving north now.”
Eli looked up and met the eyes of Ming and Wagner. They already had a good grip on the mister they surrounded; they were just waiting on him to begin twisting it from the metal tube connecting it to the soil.
“We’re five minutes behind you,” Eli replied, then took up his own grip and nodded his readiness.
As a team, the three men leaned their weight and the power of their suits into the device and twisted the frame in a clockwise motion. After performing the same task more than two dozen times already, the necessary timing and movements required to accomplish their goal had become habit. The sudden snap of the ground pipe rang out exactly as expected and the water immediately stopped flowing from the unit.
Pulling together, the three rangers hauled the large orb twenty meters to the south, then delivered several suit-assisted kicks to the device. Each hit opened up a new, boot-size hole in the sphere.
Satisfied the mister was beyond repair, Eli nodded and turned to the north where the two carriers waited half a kilometer away. He set a quick pace which the two other rangers easily matched.
* * *
The trio of rangers spied their ride and moved toward carrier one. They were joined by Corporal Aquino, who sprinted in from the right, returning from his task of trailing the Zrthn column. Eli clapped him on the shoulder, and, in a calm line, the four rangers boarded the carrier.
Eli was the last to enter. When he’d taken his seat, he knew it was time to keep his promise.
“Ensign Sheen,” he said, addressing the carrier’s pilot. “Put us on a northern heading. I’ll send the exact coordinates to the carrier’s guidance system.”
“Yes sir.”
Aank, Eli unbuckled his helmet and reached out to the Waa with his mind.
Yes, Eli.
There’s something I need to tell you.
Eli removed the helmet from his head, scratched his pate, and pushed his memories surrounding the Chih—from the first tenuous interaction, to his eventual visit to the ancient Waa mothership—toward the Waa. Using mindspeak, it took no more than four or five seconds to convey his experi
ences to the alien engineer. His intent was to inform the engineer about what he had experienced and to alert him to where they were headed.
The reaction he received back from his friend at the announcement was immediate, unexpected, and overwhelming. His being was flooded with powerful emotions and visions of past events unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Eli felt his head expand, and his vision wavered under the assault. Awe. Joy. Love. Doubt. Discovery. All of those thoughts and emotions slammed into Eli’s being at once, and the ranger felt himself falling. Darkness reached up for him from the depths of his core, grabbed him, and pulled him roughly into its cold embrace.
The young ranger was unconscious a full second before his head slammed into the deck of the carrier.
Chapter 29
Eli found himself in an underground facility facing three Waa, and they were blinking at him.
He felt strange, detached.
His head and his body ached, but in ways he’d never experienced before. He struggled to make sense of his surroundings, and it took him a few moments to realize the truth of his current situation.
He was dreaming.
But this dream was different, unique.
This experience was somehow being guided by Aank. The alien was directing the action of this particular illusion. Eli wasn’t certain how he knew this, but it was as clear to him as his own name.
This isn’t a dream I am sharing with you, Eli, Aank interjected.
It feels like a dream. I’m not awake.
You aren’t awake, but you are not dreaming. This is a memory. It is one of your father’s memories.
My . . . father’s memory? How is that possible?
It’s a simple matter, really. The memory resides within me and I’m choosing to share it with you now.
But . . . why?
I apologize for how I reacted to your announcement about the Chih. My inability to curb my emotions caused you to pass out. You will awaken soon, but before you do, I want you to understand who the Chih are to the Waa—what they mean to us.
Stranded Justice (The Justice Trilogy Series Book 2) Page 17