by Mark Harritt
Tom stared at Ken, “You’re kidding, right?”
Ken shook his head, “I wish I was.”
Tom looked at the tunnel, and then back at Ken, “They’ve met Latricia. I know they’ve met Latricia. My wife would gut them like a fish.”
Ken spread his hands, “Once again, I don’t think they thought the whole thing through.”
“Collective stupidity,” Everett opined.
“Where are the other three?” Mike asked.
Ken tilted his head toward the inner compound, “We have three new graves out there.”
Mike studied Ken, “I thought you said their firing pins were filled down.”
Ken nodded, “They were. I couldn’t very well tell everybody about that, though. I didn’t know who was involved.”
Mickey whistled, “I bet they were surprised.”
“And Mitchem shot Landberg. I don’t know who was surprised more. Landberg when he got shot by Mitchem, or Mitchem when Joe told him that Landberg’s firing pin had been filed down.”
Mike shook his head, “Man, I bet that was intense.”
Ken smiled, “You have no idea.”
Everett held up a hand, “Oh, I bet we do. Let me tell you about giant killer robots.”
“And Turinzoni hunting us,” Tom added.
Now it was Ken’s turn to study them. He didn’t know if they were pulling his leg or not, “Really?”
All four of them nodded.
“Aliens?” Ken asked.
Mike wagged his hand, “Well, definitely from a different planet. Mickey seems to think that they’re hominids though.”
Ken looked at Mickey, “You mean, like Matki?”
Mickey nodded, “Yeah. Same stock back in history, but different evolutionary pressures on different planets. They look too much like us. Structurally, they’re a lot like us, down to the expression on their faces. We have too much in common with them for them to have evolved on a different planet entirely.”
“How many of them are there?” Ken asked.
Mike’s expression grew grim, “Too many. They’re a definite danger to us. In fact, that’s something we need to talk to you about.”
Ken nodded, “Go on.”
“The Turinzoni, they’re slavers. And, they aren’t the only off world hominid species on this planet. We’ve just become aware of them because they’re expanding their operations to our side of the planet.”
Ken stared at him, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Mike shook his head, “I wish I was.”
“Is there anything we can do about them?”
Mike nodded, “I think so. In fact, that’s what we want to talk to you about.”
----------------------------------------------------
Chapter Ten
The group looked up as Joan entered the room. It was the head shed leadership, waiting for Mike and Everett to catch them up on what had happened. Joan walked over and sat down next to Everett. She reached over and squeezed his hand.
“Is she going to be okay?” Mike asked.
Joan nodded, “Yes, she’ll be fine. I couldn’t give her a sedative because of the baby, but she finally fell asleep. Tracy and Latricia are sitting with her. It was a shock to hear about Rob.”
Mike sighed, “It was the last thing that I wanted to have to tell her.”
Jen took his hand in hers. An uneven, crooked smile gentled his features. He hadn’t realized just how much he missed her until he saw her again.
“What the hell happened out there?” Bob Leitz asked.
Mike looked around the room. He shook his head, “Honestly, I don’t really know. Everything just came apart. We were on patrol, trying to get back to Matki’s family, and we stumbled on an old city filled with the bones of the inhabitants. Some horrible massacre had occurred. Then we were attacked when we tried to leave. Robots came from everywhere.”
He paused, and Everett continued, “Yeah, and it got worse from there. We suddenly found out we were being hunted. We thought we got away from them, but they tracked us to Matki’s home. They came in the morning, and we ambushed and killed them.”
Everett stopped, not wanting to say what happened next, but he continued, with a slight quaver in his voice, “We found Roberto after the ambush. He’d taken a bullet. Mickey did everything he could to save Rob, but the bullet nicked an artery. Hell, we all did. We couldn’t do anything, though. It just happened so quickly.”
Everett stopped. Nobody wanted to speak, knowing that Mike and Everett had gone through hell when Rob died.
Mike took a deep breath, and continued, “Then they attacked with a much larger force. We knew we had to pull them away, lure them away, from Matki’s tribe, otherwise they would have been slaughtered.”
Dr. Humphreys interrupted, “How did you know that?”
Mike looked at Dr. Humphreys, “What do you mean?”
“How did you know that those men would have slaughtered Matki’s tribe? Maybe they were just after you. Or maybe they just wanted to talk.”
Mike considered what Dr. Humphreys was asking. Joel was a good man, a kind man, and he understood what Joel was getting at. He thought about it, and discarded the idea that they could have done something different.
Mike shook his head, “Joel, men that want to talk, or have peaceful intentions don’t send a raiding party in the middle of the night into a village. If they have peaceful intentions, they come in the middle of the day, and give warning that they’re coming. Armed men coming in the middle of the night usually means bad intentions.”
Mollified with the answer, Joel sat back, a pensive look on his face.
Mike continued, “So we attacked, and they followed us away from the direction that Matki’s family and tribe were traveling in. That’s how I lost this.”
He held up his hand to show them the stump of his finger, then he pointed at Everett, “And Everett was wounded, as well as Mickey.”
Joan looked startled. She turned to Everett, “Baby, are you okay?”
Everett smiled at her, and gripped her hand tighter, “Yeah, I’m okay. It wasn’t so bad. It’s healing. I’m still a little stiff, but I’ll be okay.”
“Who are these Turinzoni? Who’s the guy you’re calling Shar? Are they aliens?” Hank asked.
Everett fielded that question, “Well, they’re called the Turinzoni, and, in the sense that they aren’t from Earth, I guess they are, aliens. We know they’re definitely from other planets. The Turinzoni are from a planet with a heavier gravity. But Mickey believes that they’re humans, like Matki’s people. He says that structurally, they have too much in common with us.”
Joan looked at Joel, who nodded. She looked back at the group, “It’s possible, I guess. Different worlds, different evolutionary pressures, plenty of time to evolve.”
“What do they want? Why did they attack you?” Hank continued.
Mike shook his head, “Honestly, I don’t know. But from what Shar told me, there’s a woman, called the Dostori Rev, who’s the ruler of our planet. It looks like we’ve been caught up in something much larger than we anticipated. She’s systematically trying to eliminate all of the original inhabitants of this world. We seemed to be caught in a conflict between the Dostori Rev and the local humans. So, we’re caught between the dragons down here, and the Turinzoni up there. It may be worse than that, though. The Dostori Rev seems to have enemies beyond our solar system.
Hanks stared at Mike, “Jesus.”
Mike nodded, and sighed, “It’s complicated.”
“Are we in danger?” Jen asked.
Mike paused before he answered, “I think we are.”
Cursing filled the air, and questions started coming at Mike quicker than he could answer them. He held up a hand, “Look, I can’t answer all your questions at once. Let me tell you what I know.”
The questions and chatter quieted down. Mike continued, “We got lucky out there. I can’t put it any other way. Even with Rob’s death,” Mike choked up for a
moment, “Even with Rob’s death, we got off pretty light. The only reason we were able to cause as much damage as we did, was because they underestimated us at every turn. They had no idea what they were up against. I don’t think we’ll have that kind of luck going forward.”
“Are you sure we’re going to need it?”
Mike looked across the room at the new man in the group. Mitchem was sitting there. Mike wasn’t too sure how he felt about Mitchem being included with the council.
Mike spread his hands, “Here’s the deal. They’re slavers.”
Once again, everybody started talking. Mike waited for the commotion to die down, then continued, “They explore the area, capture the local inhabitants, take them back to their forward operating base, and then prep them for shipment. So, sooner or later, we’re going to have to deal with them.”
“How many of them are there?”
Mike shrugged, “Not sure. The last group we fought had about two-fifty, three hundred guys in it.”
Mike Crandall choked on the tea he was drinking, “Three hundred guys? How the hell did you kill three hundred men?”
Everett chuckled, “Well, luck mostly. Some explosives helped. And then, our old nemesis, the Ancient, showed up and took care of a lot of them for us.”
Everybody in the room stared at Everett. Ken broke the silence, “How in God’s name did you get the Ancient to attack the Turinzoni?”
Mike answered, “Well, it wasn’t us. You can thank Matki for that. He enticed the dragon to follow. Put the Ancient close to humans, and things just proceed naturally.”
Everett interrupted, “Still, the main point here is that there are a whole lot of Turinzoni out there. And eventually, they’re going to find us. If we stay here, we’ll be trapped, with no way out.”
Mike nodded, “Yeah, so the original plan sticks. We have to move out of here. We have no choice.”
“Where the hell are we going to go?” Hank asked.
“North, on this side of the big mountains. That will keep us away from the Turinzoni for a while. Hopefully well be in a better position to fight them the next time we see them.”
Mike looked at Everett, who nodded, “And we’ll have a much larger force to use against them as well. We acquired a lot of rifles that the Turinzoni no longer had a use for. We’re going to give them to Matki’s people, and maybe some other tribes. We can create a larger military force to use against the Turinzoni if they come at us.”
“What the hell are you doing Mike?” It was Mitchem again.
Mike cleared his throat, “What do you mean?”
“It sounds like you’re getting us in some kind of war here.”
Everett held up a hand, “Whoa, Mitchem. We’re not getting into a war. We’re already in a war.”
“What do you mean?”
“They threw the first punch. And, from what we’ve seen, they’re going to keep punching. It’s better if we have a strong force to face them, than to try and go it alone. Next time, we aren’t going to be so lucky. Eventually, they’ll come with enough force, enough men, to crack the nut.”
Everett stopped talking. Nobody spoke, all of them contemplating what he’d said.
Mike waited for a moment, then brought up the most important point, “Look, we can deal with them from a position of weakness, or we can continue to increase our strength. None of this changes the fact that we need allies, the food situation aside. The stronger we are, the better our chances for survival here.”
He paused for a moment, to let that sink in, then continued, “Which brings me to my next point. I’ve talked this over with the team, and I think we’ve come up with a way to strike a major blow against the Turinzoni and the Dostori Rev.”
Once again, nobody spoke, waiting for Mike to continue, “The Turinzoni have a base on the other side of the mountains. Right now, they’re below strength. I think we could take the security team in, and kill all of the Turinzoni in the compound.”
Cursing filled the air again as people started talking over each other. “Are you crazy?” was the common refrain.
Mike took his hand out of Jen’s and held both in the air, “Hey, give me a chance to explain, okay?”
The noise decreased, and Mike continued, “Look, this allows us to do two things. First, we kick the Turinzoni in the teeth and tell them that this is our land, our home. Second, it allows us to gain the good will of the tribes in the mountains. One of the villages has been taken as slaves. Hundreds of tribesmen are in the slave pits. We can go in and rescue these people, and get them out of there. After that, I don’t think we’ll have any problems getting the tribes to side with us.”
“That’s crazy!” Luis said. He looked at Ken, “What do you think about this? It’s your men he’s talking about taking into an armed compound.”
Ken grinned, “Well, you’re right, it is crazy. But, Mike’s got a plan. And, I think his plan just might work.”
Bob looked down at the floor, shook his head, and raised his hands up, then smacked them back down onto his knees, “Of course he does. Mike always has a plan.” He looked up at Mike, “So what’s the plan?
All eyes were on him, “Well, we need a big diversion, so we’re going to do the exact same thing that Matki did to save us, and lure some large dragons to their compound. While the Turinzoni security is busy fighting off the dragons, we’ll land behind them, and start killing the Turinzoni. We’ll have the advantage of the fact that the Turinzoni don’t know that Shar is working with us. We also know that the Turinzoni will be split up among six different locations along the force field wall, so we can take care of much smaller forces than we’d have to ordinarily.”
Luis put his head down in his hands, “Jesus, my head hurts.” He looked up at Mike, “You know that you just mentioned dragons and force fields in the same sentence, right?”
Mike grinned at Luis, “I know what you mean. Kind of unreal when you think about it. Plus, the aircraft out there runs on some kind of anti-gravity engine.”
The engineers in the group suddenly became more attentive. Mike grinned because he could see the wheels turning in their minds. Bobby was interested also, “Mike, are they going to have any kind of computers there? Maybe a database of some kind?”
Mike shrugged, “Honestly, I don’t know what they have. Shar thinks they may have some kind of database or computers”
“A damn civilization with anti-gravity should have computers,” Hank pointed out.
Ed spoke, directing his question at Bobby, “Even if they have a database, do you think you’d be able to understand how the software works?”
Bobby grinned, “If it’s software, I can figure it out. Especially with the A.I. helping me.” He looked at Mike, “How do you understand the pilot?”
“He has an electronic translator like ours, but his has a pretty good learning program. Most of the time, we have our translator sitting next to his spitting words back and forth, learning each other’s language.”
Bobby’s grin grew wider, “That’s part of the solution right there. We may get into their computers and find out a whole lot more about them.”
Mike nodded, “I hope so. We’re kind of sucking without intel right now. We don’t know a whole lot about what’s going on in the world around us. It would be a great help if you could extract some more information for us.”
Mike looked around at the group, “So what do you think? Is our mission a go?”
----------------------------------------------------
It was three days before they came around to Mike’s mission plan. While the head shed talked about it, the team and the security team spent their time training for the mission. They set up a simple mockup of the different locations in the grey man compound by laying stones out on the ground. They practiced entering and clearing the different locations. When Mike and Everett finally convinced them that the mission needed to be done, the team was as ready as they could hope to be. They couldn’t wait any longer. There was a danger that
the villagers would be moved to another location, or that the compound would be reinforced.
The hardest part though, was knowing that he had to leave Jen again, even if it was only for a few days. Jen had her own ideas about it as well. They’d spent the night alone out among the trees. Mike’s and Jennifer’s needs were intense. Even when they finished, Mike knew he needed her again. After the passion, though, Jen had questions.
They lay naked under the night sky, with Jen’s head resting on his bicep.
“Why Mike? Why is this our fight?”
Mike sighed, and looked at the top of her head. He kissed her on the crown and she shifted so that she could look him in the eye.
“You didn’t see it, Jen. The kind of brutality that these guys are capable of. The Turinzoni killed forty of the oldest, the ones they didn’t want. The villagers died where they stood, laid out like garbage on the side of the hill. Hell, they beat their own men. I’ve seen one of their officers beat a man until he was unconscious. They aren’t like us.”
She leaned in and kissed him, “Just know this, Michael Duggins, if you don’t get back here when you say you’re coming back, I’m hopping in a Mech suit and coming after you.”
He grinned, kissed her, and their passion increased. The questions stopped, and they made love again. Afterwards, there were no more questions. Jen didn’t push too much, knowing that Mike didn’t need that kind of pressure before he went out on mission, and he loved her for that. He just hoped that he’d be back with her soon.
Now, he sat in the back of the transport, dressed in his monomolecular combat suit. They were getting ready for infil. Mike looked at the compound through the drone sensors. The compound was set next to the side of the mountain. It was the force field that drew his attention though. It shimmered at night, and during the day, it caused a distortion along the area where it was active
Mike was amazed at the tech they had. He wondered about the people he faced. It was almost like they had half the solution, but couldn’t figure out the rest. They had amazing tech, but there were incredible gaps in how they used it. Their tech was like a patchwork quilt, hastily stitched together.