Soldier's Duty

by Patty Jansen

  Eris stepped over it carefully, holding his scanner. He walked slowly, holding the apparatus close to the ground.

  Izramith, Wairin and Braedon waited.

  Drops fell from the trees in increasing frequency. Water ran into her suit from her helmet into the neck of her armour. The growing wet spot made her shiver.

  Then a patch of mist lifted and Izramith spotted Dashu behind a tree at the edge of the drop-off, peering into the forest ahead. No sign of Loxa.

  Eris motioned that they could follow him. He led the group to Dashu in an agonisingly slow pace.

  Izramith mouthed, "Where is Loxa?"

  "I don't know what happened. One moment he was there and then he was gone."

  "Was that when the explosion happened?"

  "No. Just after. I hit the trip wire and it went off. He said he'd check it out." Her eyes were wide.

  Izramith's helmet-scan showed a tangle of bushes ahead, with the ground dropping off sharply.

  "He might have fallen in between two boulders."

  Izramith nodded, but she felt cold inside.

  Her common sense told her that they were better off retreating and asking for backup, and she would give that order, if Loxa had been with the group.

  "Let's go find him. I go first. You cover me."

  It was unclear where the hilltop ended and the drop-off began. The vegetation was so thick that some of the roots and branches formed shelves, some of which supported by rock underneath, some not. You could slip and your leg would sink all the way into the hole. There was no way that someone could easily escape that way. Or take aim, for that matter.

  Loxa could have fallen down there, especially with his Coldi poor eyesight in the dark. She peered between the gnarls of shrubbery, but saw nothing except tangled vegetation.

  Then there was a rustling of leaves behind her, and a weapon discharged.

  Izramith spun around just in time to see a figure jumping from a tree. She raised aimed the gun, fired—

  The figure went down. Bushes threshed violently when he fell.

  Izramith ran forward. Braedon and Dashu came out from behind the tree trunk. All three of them had just walked past this man and had missed him. How was that possible?

  She pushed branches aside—

  —and found a man in a grey insulation suit. The shot had hit him square in the back, where his suit had blackened and disintegrated. His helmet had fallen off and his head was uncovered. He had short-cropped, golden curls.

  "Mirani?" Dashu asked. Her face was pale. How much actual battle experience did she have? Not much probably.

  Izramith turned him over. His face was covered in mud, his eyes open. The irises were blue.

  Then she spotted a device attached to his chest. She unclipped it and studied the unfamiliar screen.

  "Braedon? What does it say?"

  He took the device from her, his hands fleetingly touching hers. A flash of memory from last night jolted her. Nethana, huh? Keep acting like nothing has happened and ignore each other in daily life.

  Braedon frowned at the screen. "It looks like it's some kind of communication device, but I haven't seen anything like this before." He turned the thing over. "I can't see how it transmits, if it does so. The text is all in code. A lot of numbers that don't mean anything to me."

  "Take it? Leave it here?"

  He looked up, his blue eyes meeting hers. The concern in them disturbed her. "It could give away our location."

  Just as she thought.

  Dashu shouted in the forest. Izramith dropped the device next to the body. She'd pick it up later.

  Dashu had managed to clamber down through the tangle of shrubbery and was standing in a narrow gap between two mossy boulders, looking up.

  "There is a cave of some sort here," she said.

  "Natural?" Izramith asked.

  "Seems so, but there are footsteps in the sand."

  "Recent?"

  "Looks like."

  "How far down does it go?"

  "Can't see the end of it. Too dark."

  Izramith stepped off the hilltop onto the tangle of vines which supported her weight, wriggled through a gap and slid down a large boulder. She landed next to Dashu.

  The cave was a natural hollow between the boulders. A path worn smooth by the passage of feet led from the opening on a path zig-zagging between the boulders downhill. That, clearly, was the easier way of reaching this site. Holding her gun, she peered into the opening, but as Dashu had said, it was too dark. She activated her comm light. The cave walls all looked natural, with places where the moss had scraped off with people passing. The floor was mostly rocky, but there was patch of sand, which showed booted footsteps and the mark of something being dragged across. And dark spots.

  She crouched and examined them. Braedon leaned over her. Izramith looked up and met his eyes. They said what she thought: blood and also Loxa.

  Shit.

  She directed her light further into the passage. It disappeared out of sight.

  "What would they want with Loxa?" Dashu's eyes were wide. Izramith didn't feel the strength of the zhayma bond, but it was evident from the pain on Dashu's face.

  Izramith wished she could say something positive, but this was not looking good.

  She said, her voice grim, "We have to find him. I'm going in."

  "I'm going, too." Braedon came to stand behind her, fiddling with the settings on his gun.

  "I'm using my knife," Eris said, sliding it from his belt.

  Dashu positioned herself at the front. Her face was pale.

  Izramith asked Wairin to remain at the entrance. "Either these people are inside or outside. If outside, warn us if anything moves and retreat to a position you can defend."

  He nodded, his face grave, then started taking some of his arsenal of explosives out of his pockets and placed them on a rock shelf. Guess they would know pretty soon if anyone turned up.

  Dashu insisted that she wanted to lead the group inside. Izramith went second, followed by Eris and Braedon. The passage was quite long and winding. At first, they stumbled through a rough tunnel, but then the ground evened out and walls became smooth, showing up as hewn out into the stone by the light of their comms.

  Dashu stopped. The passage ended ahead in two steps leading up to a closed door.

  She went up the steps and listened.

  "Hear anything?" Izramith mouthed.

  Dashu shook her head. She heaved at the door handle, and it opened. The room beyond was dark. Dashu angled the light into the opening. The glow hit moss-covered walls, and another set of stairs going down into the earth.

  As quiet as they could, they went down. The floor consisted of roughly-hewn rock, covered in moss and slime.

  At the bottom of the stairs they came to a low-ceilinged room which contained tables around the perimeter, carrying a bevy of equipment, none of it familiar, but all of it working and on despite the cloying humidity and trails of water running down the walls. Lights blinked in the gloom. There was a ladder in the middle of the room and a hatch in the ceiling.

  "We're under the shack," Dashu said, looking at her comm screen.

  But where was Loxa?

  The room had another exit, up a couple of steps and down a narrow corridor.

  Dashu went first, followed by Eris and Izramith followed them, with Braedon bringing up the rear.

  Izramith was studying her infrared scanner screen when Eris stopped suddenly and she almost crashed into him.

  Dashu at the front said, "Shh." She switched off her light.

  Eris did the same and Izramith held her scanner with the lighted screen pressed against her body armour.

  They listened.

  A faint sound of voices drifted down the passage. Izramith could make out not just two, but at least four different voices.

  Very slowly, Dashu moved again, holding the grip of her gun in both hands. They went around a corner. The glow of light came into the passage from the other direction. Izramit
h raised her gun.

  Male voices laughed in the room ahead. There was so much echo in these passages that it was hard to hear what language they spoke. It could be Mirani. Could be something else. Their voices were too deep to be Coldi.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Braedon's face stood out like a pale oval.

  Izramith quickly sent a message to Wairin, Have found people. They might need Wairin. Explosives were bad news in caves, but they might still need him.

  At that moment, people were getting up in the room, pushing chairs over the ground. A silhouette came into the opening—

  Dashu fired.

  Men screamed inside the room. Furniture was pushed around.

  Dashu ran forward, followed by Eris. Izramith went next. Into the brightly-lit room, low-ceilinged, but quite deep. There was a table at the far end and at the side closer to the door stood rows of beds. A couple of people—men, all, she thought—had been at the table and now ducked between the beds, one of them had been overturned to provide shelter.

  The mattress hanging halfway on the floor was leaking smoke, probably from having been hit by Dashu's charge.

  Izramith crouched behind the closest bed, pointing her gun at the other side of the room.

  A man came out from between two beds and charged towards her. Izramith deflected his attack with her shoulder. She grabbed him under his arm and by the back of his clothes and swung him over her hip. The ceiling was so low that his feet slammed into it before he crashed into the ground flat on his back.

  Braedon yelled, "Careful!"

  Izramith hit the ground next to the man, while a weapon discharged over her head.

  The man was a lot taller than her—that's why his feet had hit the low ceiling—and pale-skinned. His hair had an odd reddish tint and was curly like that of a Mirani Nikala.

  A bit of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were half-open but didn't move. His head lay at an odd angle.

  Damn. At least he wouldn't attack anymore.

  Braedon stood at the door, firing over her head at the far side of the room. Two men went down, both hit square in the chest.

  Dashu stood over another man who lay in a puddle of blood on the floor. The last man crawled under a nearby bed. In a few steps, Izramith crossed the room and lifted the whole thing off the floor. It was attached to the wall, but wood splintered and the structure disintegrated.

  The man squeaked and backed away. Izramith pinned him to the wall and Eris helped her tie his hands behind his back.

  Braedon came into the room, his chest heaving with deep breaths. His eyes were wide. He still clutched his gun with both hands.

  "Was that all of them?" Even his voice sounded shocked. She remembered his story about killing a man that he had told her last night.

  "Think so," Dashu said.

  "Did you find Loxa?"

  Dashu's face hardened.

  Eris nodded to the other side of the room, the wall next to the door. With all the fighting, Izramith had not noticed that Loxa lay on the bed in the furthest corner. His suit was covered in blood, one of his hands hung limp off the side of the bed.

  Braedon strode across the room and dropped to his knees. He undid the fastening to the neck of Loxa's suit, probed the soft flesh of the neck with his fingers.

  No one dared move.

  No one dared speak.

  Braedon sighed and shook his head. He slowly heaved himself to his feet.

  Izramith looked at Dashu, whose face was white and devoid of all emotion. She had known this. Izramith had no idea what to say to her.

  She had failed Loxa and Dashu both. They had wanted her to be part of their association, but she had pushed them away, creating confusion, not just for them, but for her as well. Loxa was Dashu's zhayma and only last night had she begun to understand what it might mean.

  Chapter 22

  Dashu fell to her knees, leaning over Loxa's chest. Her cries cut Izramith inside. Memories took her to the aftermath of the Indrahui disaster, the dust, the smell of blood and decay, the lines of family members in front of the makeshift morgue Tears were too close to the surface. She glanced sideways at Braedon, but he didn't meet her eyes.

  Wairin came into the room, looking wide-eyed at the bodies on the floor.

  "I discovered—" He swallowed visibly. "We seem to have stumbled across a major spying post. All the equipment back there relays to a Mirani satellite via a separate network that doesn't use the Exchange."

  "Contact Barresh," Izramith said, trying to force her voice into an unemotional tone. "We'll want reinforcements and a pick-up."

  Wairin nodded wordlessly and left the room again.

  Braedon knelt next to each victim in turn. There were two Mirani, a Pengali—a woman in combat gear—and a keihu man too young to be involved in armed conflicts. There were four men like the one she had killed. Izramith had no idea where they came from.

  The man whose wrists they had bound sat, pale and shivering, wide-eyed, propped up against the wall. A red welt bloomed on his cheekbone and a drop of blood welled from a cut on his lip. This man had a pale skin and bronze-coloured hair like Indrahui, but only loose curls. His eyes were vivid green.

  When Braedon went to treat his cuts, he yelled something in Mirani that didn't sound friendly. Braedon calmly continued cleaning the man's bloodied face.

  How did he even do that? She would have slapped the guy, maybe hard enough to kill him.

  Wairin came back into the room. "They're coming."

  No one said anything. Dashu still sat with Loxa, staring at his face, running her fingertips along the line of his jaw. Tears ran over her face. Eris sat on one of the beds, his head in his hands.

  Izramith couldn't stand the tension. People were dead and it was all her fault. This was Indrahui all over again.

  She went into the room with the transmitters and stood there in the semidarkness, staring at nothing and trembling. Braedon's voice drifted from the other room, but no one came to check on her.

  She clutched the gun in her left hand.

  How easy would it be to just shoot herself? There would be no more war, and no more guilt. No more pain or fear.

  The thought scared her.

  If she died, would anyone mourn her?

  Her vision blurred.

  More than anything, more than that nasty jealousy that kept popping up at stupid moments, more than her anger towards her family, she wanted some place to belong, someone to come home to who would be happy to see her.

  Last night with Braedon meant nothing. Nethana, they had promised each other. He was a Trader and had his own life. He cared a lot for people, but not in particular for her. No one cared about her.

  Why was she thinking this shit?

  She was strong. She was a guard. Her nephew needed her. Like Ydana, she would make her own family.

  Slowly, she relaxed and sank back into the awful truth.

  Dashu was no longer crying, but when she spoke, her voice sounded hoarse and her tone empty.

  Dead bodies, damaged equipment.

  All the stuff in this room would have to be taken to Barresh and would have to be investigated. She sat at one of the chairs, in front of a screen that looked familiar. Sure enough, the Hedron guard used the same equipment for tracking aircraft in the area. She switched it on. Even the commands were in Coldi. She navigated through the menus and settings. Whoever had used this last had been using it at long distance, receiving a signal from elsewhere, a satellite or a stratospheric balloon, probably.

  She swept the receiver around but there was no signal.

  A few lines of Mirani text had appeared on one of the screens.

  She called, "Braedon, look at this."

  He came in from the dorm room, his hands covered in blood and with blood stains on his clothes.

  Izramith gestured at the screen. "What does this say?"

  He crossed the room and looked. "It says 'Initiate procedure 34'."

  The prisoner yelled in Mi
rani from the next room.

  Braedon replied.

  "What did he say?"

  Braedon rose and went back to the dorm room.

  Another line of Mirani text scrolled across the screen. Damn, this stuff was auto-communicating maybe with a base in Miran, maybe just across the border. Barresh was only a small territory and maybe troops in Miran were even closer than the backup which was coming out of Barresh.

  Braedon came back. "How long did Wairin say the transport would take to get here?"

  "I don't care. We're leaving now. Back to the beach."

  "What? Why?"

  The prisoner yelled again.

  "I think it may be a trap. We should get out of here to a defensible position. I don't know what this equipment does, but it's communicating with something elsewhere. Get everyone ready."

  He nodded, his face serious and went back into the other room.

  Izramith looked around the banks of equipment. If the equipment was Hedron-made, there would be a data storage hub somewhere. She rummaged behind the screens, under the desk, in the corner that held all the power boxes. There was a cabinet against the back wall—

  Ah. Part of the back wall was a storage bank with blinking lights. On a shelf stood a couple of boxes with datasticks and other small electronics.

  From the storage bank, she removed whichever tabs she could find. A couple of lights blinked red after she pulled the tabs out and tucked the data tabs in the pocket of her jacket.

  Braedon entered from the dorm, followed by Wairin, forcing their captive in front by pulling the hair at the back of his head and pushing the barrel of his gun into the man's back. The man yelled what sounded like abuse.

  Then Dashu and Eris, carrying a makeshift stretcher with Loxa's body. Dashu's face was distant and unemotional and didn't meet Izramith's eyes.

  They trudged to the cave entrance in single file. The prisoner kept yelling.

  They got as far as the cave entrance, only to find that they couldn't easily negotiate the boulders while carrying the stretcher.

  Eris had to go between the rocks first so that Dashu could push the stretcher to him.

  The captive said something in Mirani in a strained, almost desperate, voice.

  "Tell him to shut up."