by Jack Hanson
“Why do people keep saying that?” Sand asked, shaking his head.
“Did you enjoy it? What did he say to you?” Salem asked, curious what had her friend almost sparkling.
“He just asked about my studies, how I was doing, that sort of thing. Made me feel plenty important though,” she admitted, smiling faintly. She looked at Salem, and shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. I swear you humans turn everything into sex, one way or another. I asked him to dance, to start with, and I thought he would just tell me off, since you made him out to be an ogre. But he accepted, and we had a nice chat. He told me I could send him a message if I ever needed someone to talk to.”
“Well that’s interesting,” said Salem. Of course, Black had made himself available to them as well, but going out of his way like this didn’t seem like part of his nature. Then again, the man seemed to have layers like an onion.
“Oh, there you are,” said someone else. The voice’s owner came up and hugged Petra. The half-caste flinched, and the new arrival almost fell, if it hadn’t been for Sand catching her. It was Salem’s red-headed friend, Laila, and she smiled up at the blonde cadet as he helped her stand.
“Salem, we were wondering when you were going to show up,” she said, giving Salem a tight hug. She turned to Petra and asked “How was your dance then?”
“I was just telling them there’s nothing to be scared of and he’s a very nice man,” Petra said, tossing her head and causing her bound neural braids to shift.
“You were terrified,” Laila said, and laughed at Petra’s indignant response. “C’mon, let’s go dance, cutie,” said the girl, grabbing Sand’s hand and leading him out on the dance floor.
The two girls and Paris watched Laila take Sand out onto the floor and place his hands around her waist before striking up a conversation with him while they danced. It took him a minute to get into it, as surprised and flabbergasted as Salem knew he was by the whole sequence of events, but eventually he had Laila laughing as well.
“Now that I think of it,” said Salem, “it’s not so surprising. They’re both pretty bubbly personalities, goes to figure they’d attract.”
“I guess, but man, that girl is like a little whirlwind,” said Paris, running a hand over his smooth scalp.
“Seems like they’re enjoying themselves,” said Petra. “I’m going to go get something to eat. Do you two want anything?”
Salem and Paris both shook their heads, and Petra made her way to the buffet table, leaving them alone. The other two members of their team were dancing, and there was an awkward silence for a moment until Salem said “C’mon, let’s dance,” grabbing the Rillik’s arm and pulling him along with her.
Looking too stunned to resist, Paris found his hands around Salem’s waist, her arms reaching up to rest on his shoulders. “Um…” he began.
“Don’t read too much into it, but I’m not going to stand there with you being a bundle of nerves until you think of an excuse to walk off,” she said. “So, what’s it like being a Rillik?”
“Direct, huh?” he asked, a little gruff all of a sudden.
“Oh stop. You brood about it all the time, so excuse me for being curious about why you brood. And don’t think about wandering off. People are watching us and I am not going to have you leave me,” she told him, turning on the charm with a friendly smile.
There was another moment of silence as Paris thought, and finally spoke up. “It’s just… different, I guess. You’re separate because of your size and how you look. People wonder why your parents did it to you, and there’s a lot expected of you because of what you are, so that’s two burdens to carry. You just want to be like everyone else, and you never can.”
Salem tapped him on his chest. “It is what is expected of all of us. It’s part of growing up and being an adult. I’ve got expectations put on me too,” she said.
“Like what?” asked Paris. “You’ve got to be the prettiest and most popular girl at school or your parents disown you?”
He gave a mock cry of pain when she hit him on the arm.
“It’s more complex than that and you know it. Everyone expects me to be perfectly poised at all times, and nothing I gain is because of my skill or my talents, it’s because I’m pretty and popular. Why do you think I run?” she asked him. “Because no one can claim I’m messing with my times because I’m so damn pretty. Anything I get there everyone knows I earned. You’re not the only one who has to deal with the opinions of others.”
They danced in silence again for a moment.
“Yeah, I didn’t look at it that way,” Paris admitted.
“I know that, or else you wouldn’t be so down on yourself all the time,” she told him.
“Hey Salem, thanks for being my friend,” he said suddenly.
A little shocked, Salem only laughed lightly in response.
“Paris, thanks for being mine,” she told him, and gave him a small hug when their dance was over.
He carefully returned the favor.
“Let’s go see what’s keeping Petra at the buffet table. There’s got to be something good for us there,” he said.
“That’s one of the better ideas you’ve had all night,” she said, following.
Chapter Thirteen—First Contact
Deception was always our first weapon. When the Hulorn finally subverted the Illurian royalty, your race entered the war in fire and thunder. There was no reasoning with you Terns, and for that I am grateful.
—Excerpt from “Interviews with the Naith Exile,” League of Silence archives
The landing craft hummed quietly as it slid through the high atmosphere of Fatima III. The thirteen occupants of the cargo bay sat quietly in the low lighting. All the chatter and excitement of the last few days was gone now, a cold feeling in each of the recruit’s guts making conversation hard to start. Their squad had been assigned a signals tech named Baqi and a medic who’d introduced himself as Santiago. The additional specialists were standard procedure for these patrols, as the cadets didn’t have the training required for those roles.
Pairna’s addition was not as standard. The hulking Khajali was in the full thrombium armor he had been wearing the first day, sitting near Black and Ostler at the far end of the cargo bay. His rai’lith was planted butt down between his legs, and occasionally the veterans exchanged words that were low enough to be silenced by the low drone of the engines.
Paris looked over at the three older janissaries– but didn’t join in the sporadic conversation with the two men and the Khajali. They had seemed friendly enough at the briefing, delivered by a cornet who was also in training, with a captain watching his delivery for critique later.
“Cadets,” Cornet Pierce had addressed them, “and janissaries, this is the mission. Fatima III is a terraformed planet, recently colonized, along with several of its moons. We’ve had reports of raiders striking at stations in orbits as well as hitting Fatima IV, which isn’t much more advanced, being dedicated to agriculture. They seem to be using stolen or looted Peacer technology, as the weapon detritus found is of needle variety ammo, as well as some of their two-stage liquid fuel state missiles, and we recovered a broken crysblade as well.”
The Peace Federation preferred to use magnets to launch needle-like projectiles at high speed. The advantage was the lack of noise as well as the massive amounts of ammo they were able to fill the air with to wear down shields easily. The disadvantages were that janissary armor would turn the projectiles easily, and a janissary had to catch one of the barbed projectiles in an uncovered spot to do any real damage. The crysblade was the standard Naith melee weapon, a blade of manufactured crystal that, while fragile, could slice through many different materials.
The screen flashed, and Paris found himself looking at an overhead map of a rough series of mountains.
“This is a picture from a survey satellite o
f the Borar Mountain chain on the secondary landmass in the southern hemisphere,” said Pierce, and then pointed at the screen again.
The overlay changed, and Paris gasped softly along with the other seven cadets at what they saw. “This is what ground penetrating radar found,” the cornet told them, pointing out a hangar bay, suspected barracks, and storage rooms. The females, Paris had thought, seemed restless as they squirmed in their seats. He attributed it to the Khajalian antibodies they had been injected with. There was a minuscule risk of being exposed to Khajali pheromones, but accidental exposure by an allied Khajali were not unknown in the heat of battle. These injections would prevent any sort of harmonization from occurring.
Paris snapped back to the present as the ship shook a little, thinking of the smiles Black and Ostler had exchanged, old dogs allowed to run with the pups once again. He wasn’t sure whether to be comforted or concerned, and instead rested his helmeted head against the barrel of his prototype battle rifle.
Sand was a bundle of nerves inside, but for once it didn’t show through his demeanor. He had spent the last few days with Laila, wondering why he had never run into her before. Well, to be fair, they’d also been with Salem and Petra most of the time, but he’d had still had a great time running around Alarius with them over the weekend. He looked forward to meeting up with her when they got back, and felt a flush as he wondered where that could lead. He shifted in his seat, feeling his armor click softly against the armrests. It had felt strange, to suit up knowing that this wasn’t a drill or a practice round, loading live ammo into his machinegun and boarding the ship to go fight an enemy. Part of him wondered what he was doing, part of him wanted it to be done and over with it. There was a third part though, a part of him that smoldered with desire, and was ready for the fight. Looking across at Salem, he wondered how she felt.
Salem’s attempts to control her breathing were working finally. She’d been excited but calm aboard the transport ship, but as soon as the shuttlecraft had left the Blazer a sense of panic had threatened to overtake her. The feeling was only now finally subsiding. This was the real deal; she realized once she felt the craft lift off, and four years of being unable to face up to the reality of what combat would be almost crushed her.
Almost was the key word there, and her relief fed into her self-confidence, bolstering her outlook on what was to come. She wondered if this was why Pairna had begun teaching them to meditate before and after each melee tactics session, so that they could fight down the panic when it did come. Pushing up her visor, she wiped the sweat off her brow, thinking that the worst was over, no matter what came next. Besides, she told herself with a smirk, she would never live it down if she had freaked out while Jane stayed stoic and cool.
Jane, for her part, was glancing over at Hailey. There were no secret frequencies for them Hailey to chat on, so every now and then she would satisfy herself with a glance and smile under her visor. They’d had a wonderful weekend together, taking some time to visit Lake Walker on the academy grounds and build a fire on the shoreline, enjoying the solitude. Underneath her armor, a lock of Hailey’s hair had been tied in a throng. She’d laughed at his befuddled response to her request, and he’d told her she’d read too many books, but did it for her anyway.
So I’ll always have a piece of you, she’d told him.
The thing that stuck with her was his parents would be coming in, and he wanted her to meet them. The way he had looked when he told her that still made her heart pound in her chest a little harder.
Their helmets clicked as someone entered the net, and Black’s voice sounded in their ears, cool and composed as ever.
“Alright Cadets, we’re about three minutes out before we hit the ground. Ostler’s team will bounce first, and then we’ll follow. The landing zone is a meadow in some pine forest, about a mile out from the objective. Pairna will stay behind and cover our flanks in case something unexpected happens. Questions?”
There was silence over the net, and their headsets clicked again as he left the frequency. The lights dimmed even more, and the cadets began to sit up, flexing their legs and giving their gear one last check, looking over each other as well as inspecting themselves. Their gear harnesses had magazines on each side of their chest, as well as a medical pouch and an extra battery for the communications and shield rigs. On each of their hips was a thick blade about a foot and a half long, with a chopping edge and a stabbing point, in case things got up close and personal. Paris was the only exception, and wore a heavy blade that was stouter, with a peculiar curving hilt. It had been sent to him by Rhulo weeks ago, when he and Sand had gone into town that fateful day, and Black had acquiesced to letting him wear it on patrol.
Reaching above the headrest, they each pulled down an assault pack with a day’s worth of supplies, and more ammo. Paris’s included a drum of rounds for his new machinegun. Then they hooked a tube into their body armor. The tube connected to a water bladder in the assault pack, and each tested the flow by sucking on a small straw that sat just to the left of their mouth. There were no deficiencies. The final sound as the shuttle swept in was that of magazines being locked and loaded.
Paris heard Ostler’s voice, rougher but with the same cadence as Black’s, over the squad frequency. “All right, thirty seconds now and that ramp’s going to drop. Don’t break an ankle coming off.”
Ostler’s team moved to the back of the shuttle to form up on him. Behind him, Black stood casually. While Ostler carried a modular carbine with a grenade launcher slung under the barrel, Black preferred a modified shotgun and a heavy barreled pistol. A green glow from the pistol was more visible as the lights dimmed almost totally, and he adjusted his holster to cover it. Several different bandoliers of ammo were attached to his rig; slugs, buckshot, and even more esoteric rounds for what they would encounter. His blade, ever present but yet to be seen, was sheathed over his right shoulder.
Finally, all the waiting was done, and the ramp descended, exposing a world shrouded in twilight, waist high grass all around.
Ostler didn’t wait. With confidence born of long experience, he went bounding off the ramp, his team following behind mechanically. They ran for the treeline, and Black gave them a five second head start before following. Sand and Jane were the first two behind Black and covered the front and to the right, while Paris and Salem covered the rear and the left. Medic Santiago came with their group, his flechette pistol drawn. The Peace Federation did not respect the idea of noncombatants, and it was assumed that pirates wouldn’t act the same.
Making it to the woods was uneventful, with Ostler’s team moving out the minute Epsilon Team took cover behind the trees. Pairna leapt from the back of the ramp, covering about ten yards of distance, and the shuttlecraft began to ascend. Paris watched him as he flicked something on his vambrace, and vanished with a shower of sparks. Paris blinked, surprised, and realized he’d just seen a Mirror Cloak in action. A tap on his shoulder made him turn, and Salem jerked her thumb for him to follow. He spared one last glance, searching the grass for sign of the massive Khajali, but saw nothing. He hefted the battle rifle, and turned to follow the group, pulling rear security.
To keep radio silence, Black directed his team via hand signals and pings through their radar display on the HUD in each visor. It seemed like the passage through the forest took no time at all, and they were with Ostler’s team against a small draw at the base of the hills. Baqi, the signal tech, approached a wall of rocks with a scryer, sweeping the handheld device back and forth in front of him. He tapped a series of buttons on the screen and the rocks seemed to waver for a second, then faded, revealing a pair of steel double doors.
Black’s team moved in to provide security for Baqi, while he walked over to a small keypad and continued to utilize the scryer. Rows of numbers appeared on the screen, and Baqi hacked through the firewalls. The door opened with a pressurized hiss. He turned to the squad with a thumb up, and
stepped aside as Ostler’s group moved up, filing in with them. Track lighting along the floors and ceiling revealed a Spartan steel hallway leading into the guts of the place. The cadets stayed off the walls and staggered themselves down the middle of the hallway, stopping at each doorway as Baqi scanned for life signs inside each room.
At the first bend, Ostler stopped and pinged Black, who began to file in with his cadets. There was a definite sense of foreboding throughout the teams as they wondered where everyone was.
“Baqi?” asked Black over the command frequency that could only be utilized by the four janissaries and the ar’bakh.
“Assault Sergeant?” he responded.
“Do you have anything yet? We’ve swept through half this place, and haven’t seen hair or hide of anybody. I’m just getting a little bit of nerves here, like we’re being set up,” he admitted.
“No, Assault Sergeant, I’ve got nothing, and I know how you’re feeling. I’ve just run a field diagnostics on this thing, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It just seems like there’s no one home,” he replied.
“Okay. Ostler, what’s your gut telling you?” Black asked.
Ostler, about fifty meters ahead, grunted into his mike. “Well, we’re either walking into a honeypot, or someone’s in for a hell of a surprise when they come home. Ar’bakh, can you hear us?”
“I hear. I’ve seen nothing to indicate an ambush waiting to follow in behind you, or anything at all that’s suspicious. I’m scouting for a secondary entrance, but do not see one,” the Khajali said.
“Okay, we’re going to head into the hangar, clear it, and then start sweeping back through the rooms we’ve already checked,” Black said. “Is there anything in the hangers? Signals?”