Gregor's Run: The Universe is too Small to Hide

by Saxon Andrew

  Why not?”

  Kel winced slightly as a branch rubbed him on the burn, “The tree trunks we pulled into the trees are being detected by the floaters and they’ve turned all their focus on them. It was attacking them from above that allows us to do it safely on the ground now. If we had attacked them on the ground earlier, they would be scanning for our presence there now.”

  “You’re right. I wonder how much longer this is going to work.”

  “Gregor, I think they’ve programmed their scanners to ignore any life from larger than a human. Ellie is right. There are so many large predators in the forest around those convoys that they had to filter them out to keep their scanners clear to detect humans. They just don’t know yet that we’re here with you.”

  Gregor realized Kel was right. He thought for a moment and Kel said, “What are you thinking?”

  “Get on the communicator and see if you can get a count on how many columns are still moving with active force fields?”

  Kel took out the communicator and started speaking. Kaylee contacted him, “Why aren’t we moving out toward the next column?”

  “Give me a moment.”

  Kel was listening to the reports and after five minutes turned to Gregor, “A hundred and fifty active columns are still moving.”

  “How many teams reported in?”

  “There were a hundred teams with ten Dragons and Archers in each when we started this. All of them have some survivors and all of them have lost some of their teams.”

  “I want you to contact all the teams and have them assign two Dragon and Archer Teams to each of those remaining columns. I want all of them attacked simultaneously.”

  “And just how are we going to manage that?”

  “Remember, they won’t show up on the Movement’s scanners and have them on the ground pursuing about four hundred yards away. Just have them keep moving ahead of each column until all of the teams are in place. When they are, send the order to attack.”

  “What about the rest of the teams?”

  “Have them head back toward the clearing.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s the only place the floaters can leave the forest.” Kel stared at Gregor and then smiled as he began speaking on the communicator. Gregor asked, “Did you hear that Kaylee?”

  “I did.”

  “Have Kil contact all the Archers hiding in cutouts along the lake to move into the cutouts we originally made in the tree trunks and get ready for the floaters to start moving back to the clearing.”

  “Why do you think they’ll give up the search and go there, Gregor?”

  “Kaylee, without a column, even if they found anyone, who is going to capture them? They certainly can’t land and do it. They have to have ground support to capture anyone they find. And if we take out all of the remaining convoys’ force field generators, we can shoot them out of their open seats on the surviving vehicles.”

  “But a huge number of the troops and mobile blasters weren’t harmed in our attacks.”

  “That’s true Kaylee, but all of them were exposed to a lethal dose of radiation gas. Within a few more hours, the first symptoms of radiation poisoning will start to show. A few hours after that, they won’t be strong enough to pick up their feet. That’s when they’ll start running for the clearing.”

  “Duh, I’m not as bright as you think I am.”

  “I stand by what I said. Make sure all of the archers know to stay far enough away from the clearing so they can’t be fired on by the movement blasters on their ships in the clearing.”

  “Will do.”

  “Kel, once you contact all of our forces, send the instructions to the other communities.”

  “Will do.”

  Gregor waited and as soon as Kel finished speaking, five of the seven teams rushed through the trees toward the Clearing Community. There were two thousand archers hiding in cutouts close to the community. If they could move into the forest quickly enough, many of them could be carried up in the trees by the arriving Dragons. Thank Creation that the Dragons were as powerful as they are; they never seemed to tire. Which was more than he could say for himself. His arms were weary from firing his bow to the point of fatigue and he knew the other archers needed some time to rest as well. The fight had started at daybreak and it was two in the afternoon. He held on to Kel using the loop and locked his feet in the wide strap. Kel moved smoothly through the canopy and Gregor slept half of the way back to the clearing.

  • • •

  The last columns hit were the ones that had advanced the furthest into the forest. They stopped when they began hearing reports from the first columns that were attacked that they were starting to weaken and were struggling to keep moving. A doctor with one of them reported that they were all suffering from what appeared to be an exposure to a lethal dose of radiation. The Column Commanders suddenly realized too late that the gas that rushed through their formations was highly radioactive and they immediately ordered their surviving forces to turn and head back to the ships where they could be treated. The vast majority of mobile vehicles forgot about the force fields, turned around, and rushed toward the clearing. They were starting to feel sick and rushed to get treatment on their ships. It only took a few minutes longer for the Commander of the floaters to realize that without the columns to take captives, they were useless in the forest. He ordered his forces back to the ships. The floaters roared past the columns as fast as they could maneuver through the trees.

  • • •

  The thousands of Clan Archers were distributed on a semi-circle front six miles into the forest from the clearing. The first floaters to arrive were hit by at least ten arrows each and they began crashing immediately. Any pilot that survived the crash was hit by an arrow the moment they raised their cockpits to escape their burning floaters. Soon, hundreds of floaters began appearing as they weaved through the trees and most of them were shot out of the air. But some survived and made it back to the safety of the ships. Then thousands began roaring through the trees and the killing grew into a frenzy.

  • • •

  The Priest and old man were still sitting at the log when the first floaters came roaring out of the forest toward the Movement Freighter landed in the clearing. The Priest watched them fly past them and wondered what was happening. The old man said, “It appears they have encountered a problem.” The Priest continued to stand and began to hear distant explosions in the forest from floaters crashing into the ground. The old man sighed, “Sit down! This is going to take a while for the survivors to arrive.”

  The Priest looked down at the old man, “Survivors?”

  “Ye do remember the numbers that left here, don’t ye?” The Priest nodded. “Do ye think those flying things would leave them behind undefended?”

  The Priest saw twenty more floaters roar past them overhead and collapsed to the sand. “I don’t understand.”

  The old man handed him the water skin, “Ye should leave when the ground forces start arriving.” The Priest stared at him with shock and bewilderment on his face. The old man stood up and stretched, “As I think about it, perhaps ye should go back to yon ship now. I suspect the leader will not be happy about what’s happened and might take a shot at the buildings. It’s been a pleasure seeing ye again and tell Grahame that I’m ashamed of what he’s become.”

  “How do you know Grahame?” the Priest asked.

  “He’s me brother and that’s why I volunteered to do this. Tell him he has been disowned by his clan and his name has been placed in the Book of Shamed Souls. Good luck. I hope Ye know that we’ll be coming for ye one day.”

  The old man stood up and walked into the community and disappeared into the forest. The Priest watched him leave and saw the first mobile blasters and troop transports rushing through the community. They stopped outside the freighter and many of the troops fell as they climbed out of their transports. Most stayed where they fell. The Priest turned and ran toward the freighter. He f
orgot his chants, he forgot his training, and all he could hear in his mind was the old man saying they would be coming for him one day. He rushed into the freighter and curled into a ball next to the landing bay doors as men stumbled into the landing bay and collapsed. Soon, their bodies were being thrown out of the landing bay doors to the sand twenty feet below the entry ramp. Many fell on the ramp and the mobile blasters that rolled into the bay crushed their bodies under their tracks. He wondered what hell had spawned the demons that lived on the hellish deathtrap planet known as Bellingham. At the end, the Commander of the Movement ships forgot about firing on the communities, all they wanted was to get off this planet as quickly as possible. The crews on the Movement Warships were sickened by the number of survivors coming aboard and immediately dying.

  Chapter Twenty

  The leader looked at his monitor and saw his spy was close to tears, “What happened?!”

  “We sent close to a million men down to the planet. Only fifty thousand or so made it back to the ships. Forty three thousands of them died from a lethal dose of radiation within six hours of lifting off the planet. The seven thousand that lived managed to get their floaters on board before we abandoned the planet.”

  “WE SENT TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND FLOATERS TO ATTACK THAT PLANET!!”

  “And only seven thousand survived. All of the rest were shot out of the sky and all of the land forces were exposed to lethal radiation from ruptured nuclear reactors in their vehicles.”

  “BUT THEY HAD FORCE FIELDS!!”

  “As did the mobile blasters and infantry.”

  “How did they penetrate the force fields?!”

  “No one that survived who can tell us. I did hear from one pilot that their arrows weren’t stopped by the force fields and it was them that ruptured the reactors.”

  “THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!!”

  “So is a force field.”

  “That’s more than ninety eight percent of our forces!”

  “No ships were damaged but that’s the only good news from this debacle. They knew we were coming and they were ready and waiting for us to arrive.”

  “But…”

  “You ordered us in! This is on you!”

  “But…” The monitor went dark and he knew that his spy was lost. The spy’s twin brother was one of the commanders that went down to the planet leading one of the columns. It was obvious from the spy’s expression that he didn’t survive.

  He pressed a button on his panel and saw Grahame appear, “I have bad news.” Grahame’s expression after the first minute of his report told him all he needed to know. The guards arrived before he finished his report and blasted his head off his body.

  • • •

  Ten days later, the entire staff of the Movement’s Headquarters met at a cemetery next to the large city over the mountains from the Movement Headquarters’ Building to hold a memorial for the fallen on Bellingham. At the same moment in the spaceport in that city, a trader completed offloading the food it had brought to Earth and a young woman entered the freighter’s landing bay. A young man greeted her and they embraced tightly. “Are you ready to go?”

  The woman nodded as she hugged him tightly, “I’ve been ready for years to leave this nest of evil. Thank you for coming for me.”

  “I’d never leave you here. I’ve hated every day you were here and not in my arms. I have also been looking forward to this day, my love.”

  “Please take me away from here!”

  The man looked over his shoulder, “Lift for orbit and leave immediately for the intersection.” The giant freighter ignited its boosters and moved slowly off the ground. By the time the memorial ended, it had reached the intersection and disappeared on one of the filaments.

  • • •

  The new Leader sat in his predecessor’s office trying to get a handle on the defeat and his Chief of Security stepped through the door, “Sir, one of the telepaths on the fifth floor has not returned from the memorial.”

  “Did she have family on Bellingham?”

  “No, she did not.”

  The Leader’s eyebrows came together, “Where is she?”

  “I’ve not been able to locate her. You know how difficult it is to track a telepath. She avoided anyone that might have recognized her and no one remembers seeing her at the memorial.”

  “FIND HER!”

  The Chief of Security shook his head, “She was a class eight telepath, Sir.”

  “I thought level seven was as high as they go.”

  “She is in a class by herself and she can avoid being seen by any of the others. If she chooses not to be found, we will not find her.”

  “Do you believe she was an informant?”

  “How would I know? She’s the one that checked everyone before we hired them to work for us to weed out any informants. No one was capable of checking her.”

  “This is not how I want to start my first day!” the leader said sternly.

  The Chief nodded, “I would highly recommend that you not reveal this piece of information right now and calling for an extensive search for her will not go unnoticed.”

  The new Leader fell back in his chair, “Keep this just between us and let us hope she comes back later. She probably went to deal with the emotions of what happened on Bellingham.” The Security Chief nodded and stepped out of the office. His expression showed he didn’t believe it would happen either.

  • • •

  The Dragon Transports began arriving and moving out to the Clan Communities to pick up their survivors. A hundred thousand Dragons had participated in the battle on Bellingham and sixty thousand would not be going home. More than eighty thousand Clan Warriors had also died but the massive forces landed by the Movement were obliterated.

  Kel walked over to Gregor and Kaylee, “It appears the trees absorbed most of the radioactive gasses before it could rise into the atmosphere.”

  “That’s not good!” Kaylee responded. She saw Kel’s expression and said, “Is it?”

  “Actually, they appear to be flouring from it. I guess any three that absorbs metal wouldn’t be harmed much from radioactivity. The ground is affected but not as bad as I expected. It will be safe to go to the sites where the gasses were released in less than three months. My engineers say the tree’s roots are absorbing most of it quickly. The Clans will also have thousands of mobile blasters to use against any future invasion.” He looked at Gregor, “What are you going to do now?”

  Gregor saw his ship landing in the clearing and Kaylee’s was a mile above it moving toward the surface, “I think I need to resolve an issue on Earth.”

  “We didn’t harm their fleet, Gregor,” Kel quickly responded.

  “I know but it has to be done.”

  “Their fleet won’t be on Earth,” Kaylee interrupted. Gregor and Kel looked at her and she sighed, “They don’t keep the fleet anywhere near Earth. Most of them are scattered and only come together away from Earth to carry out the Movement’s directives. There will be four or five warships on the ground outside the Movement’s Headquarters Building and the others can be quickly called in if they’re needed. However, the vast majority of their ships are nowhere near Earth.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Gregor asked.

  “I am. It would raise too many eyebrows to have that many ships in orbit around Earth. Remember that most of humanity doesn’t know what the Movement is doing and they will not risk having to answer questions from Earth’s current government about why they need so many ships around the planet. However, they will have some ships close to the intersection just outside the inflowing filament, scanning for any possible dangers. Those ships will be their fast response team.”

  Gregor sighed, “And they do have a frequency on our ships; they will see us approaching.”

  “My mother told me that you would probably be doing this and she has a suggestion or two.”

  Gregor’s eyes narrowed, “She does?”

  “Come on board the transport and l
et her tell you what she thinks.”

  Kaylee looked at Gregor and shrugged as he said, “Lead the way.”

  • • •

  The giant freighter moved toward the planet and received clearance to enter the traffic pattern. The Commander lifted his communicator and said, “Clearance received. We’ll be moving down momentarily.”

  The Commander turned and looked at a woman sitting at a scanning panel, who said, “I never thought I would be coming back here. I detest this place.”

  Gregor smiled, “You don’t know how much we appreciate your doing it.”

  Kaylee looked at her, “Why do you hate the movement so much?”

  The woman was silent and Bart said, “Tell them Leelah.”

  The woman sighed and turned to Gregor, “I was being trained by the Movement on how to control filaments when I was a young girl. You were also being trained then and during that time, I got to know your mother. She made life bearable for me and I came to love her like my own mother. She was the most beautiful soul I’ve ever known and she filled my days with happiness. I heard in the minds of my trainers that she had been killed at the orders of the Movement’s Leader. I stopped accepting their training and was eventually moved to the Headquarters Staff to assist in their communications when they decided that I was a failure at controlling filaments.” She looked at Bart, “I met Bart when I was sent to see if he represented a danger to them.” Leelah smiled, “I guess it was love at first sight. I would meet him on my time off whenever he made a delivery and eventually told him what was going on.”

  Bart looked at Gregor, “I knew I had to do something to stop them so I started sending information to the Dragon Queen. Her planet was also on my delivery schedule and I learned to trust her. I’m the one that caused you to be bugged, Gregor.”

  Gregor tilted his head and then took a deep breath. He exhaled slowly and said, “I came close to being killed numerous times because of that, Bart.”

  “I know.”

  “But, if you hadn’t done it, Bellingham would be in the Movement’s hands and we wouldn’t be here today. You did the right thing and it was your and Leelah’s information that allowed us to prepare for the invasion. Do not feel any regret for doing it.”