by Pam Uphoff
Oscar took a couple of carefully controlled breaths. "Your lady guard all right?"
"Just fine. Let's back out of here, now." They slipped into their unnoticeable spells and jogged away.
The noodles were tipping three bodies out of their boxes. Oscar got close enough to feel the cold from the open container. Had they frozen the bodies to keep them from decaying? He got a good look at each man. They were all in Western uniforms, showing a bit of wear, no one he knew. Little holes in the uniforms, not a lot of blood, as if they'd died quickly.
:: What the heck? Stiletto? Arrows with a simple point? Bran, do you have any idea what sort of wounds those 'guns' of theirs make? ::
:: No idea. But I'll bet you're onto something. They'd have to use a gun, if they want to fool the Earthers. ::
As the noodles withdrew, Oscar searched the bodies and removed the few papers on the corpses. Then he galloped after Bran, getting over a roll in the terrain so he could let the spell go before his head exploded. The alarm sounded below; the Oners charged out of the large central building and through the lighted area with swords raised. The first troops out ducked away, pulling pistols. The Oners got around the corner of a building and ran. Some soldiers blocked them and fell quickly, without a hand touching them. Then the Oners were racing into the dark with only a few flashes of light, and some triplet bangs from the long guns pursuing them. The Earthers wisely decided not to chase the attackers out into the dark hills, at least on foot. Engines were starting back in the camp.
Oscar and Bran hid up on the hill until they were satisfied the Earthers had suffered no casualties apart from the stunnings, and had decided against any pursuit at all. Then they headed south to pick up the trail of the Oners. It was time to collect some information on the other side of this three way confrontation.
The Oner's transport was fascinating. They'd just about gotten used to seeing the metal cold-coffins floating along above the ground, when the Oners camped the second night at what must have been their forward base. Everything was well hidden, deep in a gully with steep edges, occasional overhangs and brushy willows. The two long sausage shapes were colored to blend in, and floated, despite being about the size of three large carriages. The coffins were stowed in one of the big floaters, and tents and small cans unloaded from the other. The low one man tents were erected under the willows. The Oners tapped the cans and set them aside for a moment. When they opened them the contents steamed.
Bran sniffed. "Dinner." He slipped invisibly into camp and returned with two of them.
Oscar snickered. "If we follow them very far we're going to have to hunt." He frowned at the label. "Now this looks a bit like old Arbish." He pushed the 'heat' button and set the can down as it warmed suddenly. After a moment, nothing else seemed to be happening, so he fiddled with a tab on top and got it open. Apparently the Oners cooked the same way Earth did. Too much salt in everything.
Bran did the same. "I have a suspicion that those . . . things are fast. Any ideas?"
"If we ditched two of the coffins we could hide behind the third one."
"You are completely suicidal. I like that in a partner."
"Yeah. What say we take on the looks of a couple of the noodles and stroll over there in a few hours?"
"Sounds good to me."
The Oner camp, never noisy, became utterly silent quickly. They ghosted quietly around to the vehicles and with a little work figured out how to open the storage compartment. The coffins were strapped to the ceiling of the low compartment, and only the exterior one was visible. Perfect. They snagged the first two, and floated them away from the camp. They couldn't bury them, or indeed, get them to go high enough to float away. They finally just tied their tow straps to the brushy willows, and jogged back to the floating sausages.
"Why Egto, whatever are you doing out here so late?"
Oscar jerked around in surprise. The Commander had Bran by the shirt front. The bug-eyed woman frowned at Oscar.
"I never knew you Information Team people even knew how to sneak around. Need something from your personal gear?" The commander pushed Bran back against the vehicle.
"I, umm."
Oscar winced. Bran obviously realized they'd give themselves away as soon as they opened their mouths. Bran gestured vaguely, then reached back and pulled out his hip flask.
"A present? For me?" The commander's voice dripped sarcasm as she took the flask and opened it. Oscar reached to the high frequencies and tried to dim all detection of spells, felt Bran doing the same . . . She took a sip. Blinked and took another.
The bug-eyed girl stepped closer. "What is it?"
"Wine." She handed the flask to her assistant and got both hands on Bran's shirt. "Alcohol on a mission? My, you do have a discipline problem."
Oscar tried blocking the assistant as well, as she wrinkled her nose and took a bare taste. Her eyes went wide as the Commander kissed Bran, then ripped his shirt open. "Kael! What are you doing?" She backed away wide eyed, and absent-mindedly took a long pull at the flask. Turning, she ran straight into Oscar.
Oscar leaned down and kissed her.
The storage compartment was far from roomy, even with the two coffins gone.
"One more floating drop like that and I'm going to loose my lunch." Bran moaned.
Oscar snorted. "We didn't have any lunch. Old gods, I wish I could have seen the camp this morning." They'd left the women snoring on the grass and locked themselves in before dawn. Even worrying about being caught, he'd had trouble keeping his eyes open. The two women had been insatiable. "Are we insane? Why didn't we run last night? We haven't the faintest idea where they are taking us."
"Home to Mother?" Bran snickered. "We really do need to study these people. Up till now all we've done is beat up a couple of them, and occasionally eavesdrop. I mean, what sorts of names are these? Egto, Idre, Kael?"
"All four letter names. If you call those names. They sound like some scrambled code. But one of the soldiers called his sergeant Neartuone, so that's not universal."
"I thought he said Near to One? Sort of like a title."
They wrangled over their insufficient data and slept off and on for hours before the sausage-like vehicles slowed and stopped. They rocked back and forth like a carriage with people stepping in and out, then sat there, still. Oscar closed his eyes and tracked the Oners, and when they settled off a small distance, maneuvered the last coffin carefully side ways so they could get past it, and carefully opened the hatch. Yes. It was dark. They hustled off into the grass and brush to relieve their bladders.
"All right. Maybe I'll survive this madness after all." Bran looked around. "If I don't starve. I'm not sure we ought to cut too far into their supplies."
"C'mon." Oscar led him around camp and way downwind before cutting across and sneaking close enough to an undersized deer to snap out a slice and kill it.
Oscar gathered wood for a fire, while Bran took care of the butchering. They stuffed themselves on half seared meat and argued about whether the creature was a deer or a goat.
"The antlers are all wrong for a deer. And it's a female, shouldn't have antlers at all. It's got to be a type of wild goat." Bran pulled the last chunk off his skewer and popped it in his mouth.
"Two long horns . . . you know, apart from the color it's a bit like some of the Black Goats. Maybe we just ate Dydit's cousin."
"Yuck. You would think something hideous like that." Bran swallowed his mouthful anyway.
"Whatever it is, we're going to regret eating so much of it tomorrow." Oscar buried the fire and they left the rest of the animal to scavengers as they walked back to the Oners camp. They stayed out in the brush most of the night, then swiped some food cans from the other floater before they snuck into the storage compartment in the predawn as the camp stirred.
The vehicle only moved for half the day, or more accurately, the motion changed mid-day. A recognizable rocking, a relaxing all though his body. "We're on a boat." He sank down and listened to the s
ea for awhile. "Half of them are all over on that side of the boat, and half are in another boat behind us."
Bran finally poked him. "I don't care if it's broad daylight, I need to get out of here."
They shifted the coffin again, and opened the hatch carefully. Nothing in sight but the rail of a boat and open ocean. Bran warped light and slithered out. They checked the odd boat carefully. It had two long thin hulls, connected by a braced cross platform. The masts and sails were in the center part, the Oners in the other hull. This side fit the floating vehicle perfectly. Oscar looked around and spotted the other ship behind them. "So long as we keep down and the other ship doesn't come around to starboard, we can sit out here." He reached back into the compartment for a couple of cans. "Hungry?"
Chapter Ten
15 March 3488/ Late Winter 1361
Gate Camp, Asia, Comet Fall
"Their uniforms match the pictures we have of the city police in Karista." Damien frowned down at the dead body. "Shot, you say?"
"Oui. And then kept just above freezing." The Army doctor snorted. "I may not be a real coroner, but I do know a body lying out in just below zero for less than half an hour shouldn't be cold all the way through. Stomach contents were different between the three of them, they didn't eat in a mess or anyplace with a limited selection of food. Apart from that, there's not much to say."
"Hmm. I wonder if the Oners didn't dump them, and pull that raid simply to make sure we didn't start friendly relations with the natives. Anything else odd?"
"Well, I've done med clinics for the natives on other worlds before, and I can tell you, I've never seen three mouthfuls of such beautiful teeth. Not one of them has ever had a cavity."
"That's . . . interesting."
"Well, with only three of them . . . " The doctor shrugged. "And the guards that were knocked out, minor concussions. As if someone shook them just hard enough to bump their brains against the inside of their skulls, without leaving a mark. The two on duty guards were both under the impression they were about to get their throats slit when they passed out. The other soldiers were responding to the alarm, and folded when the attackers got to within about ten feet of them."
Damien nodded. "We saw the recordings. The attackers were waving swords. But you didn't treat any cuts?"
"Non. It was all for show."
Colonel Kellerman had been propping up the wall and listening. Now he nodded. "In my opinion, this was a stage play, probably set up by the Oners. I'll be passing that on up the chain of command. The Oners know we're here."
Chapter Eleven
23 Shaban 1363yp / Early Spring 1361 local
Fascia, Auralian Empire, Target Forty-two
Ajha scrambled up the rope ladder, delighted to be getting away from the Action Team. Leader Kael and her aide Mead Servaone had been scowling at them. He hadn't noticed it before the action—then they'd been getting sneers. And he was quite certain he hadn't screwed up anything badly enough to warrant this attention. But he couldn't answer for the others and Idre and Egto did seem to be catching the majority of the dirty looks.
But once on the deck of the Garavette he could relax. Mission accomplished. They'd sailed east from Asia, crossing the Pacific to this rendezvous well out to sea from the Cove Islands. The Action Team was staying on the catamarans, sailing around to Discordia, while the Garavette would drop the Infos off on the Panama coast so they could report into the Ambassador in Fascia.
Idre climbed over the rail and the crew cast off. "Now perhaps we can buckle down and work on the problem of the local magic."
Ajha nodded. "We haven't tracked down the reports of the God of War yet. High time, don't you think?"
"Yeah." Egto cast one last regretful look toward the catamaran.
Wink choked. "You didn't!"
"She climbed all over me!"
Ajha looked at Idre. He was looking straight faced out over the ocean, meeting no one's gaze.
Ajha shook his head in disbelief. "I've heard that post battle some people get, umm. But it didn't hit me that way at all."
Idre snorted. "It hit them. Trust me."
Ajha made himself useful, or at least minimally interfering for the two week voyage, the week overland and then the sail down the coast to Fascia, and reported to the Ambassador in the newly finished embassy building.
One of the Ambassador's aides met them.
"This is getting very awkward. I think the Priest will be just in time to stop some problems with our relationship with the Amma." He led them into a small dining room. The only other people there were Edmo's Action Team.
"What is the problem?" Idre looked concerned, and picked at the dinner a servaone placed in front of him.
"The status of women is so low here that even a highly prized wife, such as the Princess Rior, is not considered a part of the governmental power structure. Her insistence on being in these meetings with the Embassy staff is considered borderline scandalous. When the Priest gets here, we'll stop them altogether, and keep the Princess apprised of developments via holo."
Ajha choked. "But the Princess is in charge. You can't cut off a Princess of the One."
"We have to, to save this alliance. And in any case, the Princess is only in charge of influencing the Amma. Other-wise the Ambassador is in charge of relations with the government of Auralia. The Priest is in charge of the conquest of this World."
Ajha's stomach flipped. They've shoved the princess down to the third tier. At least we only rape and murder the natives. So far. And Princess Rior might disagree with me, about whether her marital relations count as rape or not.
And I need to stop being a clueless naïf. This is war, in slow motion. It's dirty, by its very nature.
"Hurry and finish, and we'll go to the Palace, for a meeting. The first Action Team needed to report to her as well." The aide glanced over at the lounging Action Team. Edmo returned an impatient frown. They'd finished and were just lingering over coffee.
"No dinner meetings allowed?" Egto wiped his hands and pushed his plate away.
"Only a husband eats with his wife. If she eats with anyone else, it is a sign of possible infidelity. Come along then."
The stage setting at the Palace was interesting. Princess Rior, covered from head to toe in black silk, nothing but her eyes showing, reclined behind a screen, while three women, also in black, sat in between the men and the Princess. Two big fat men, eunuchs, stood to the side, more or less out of hearing.
"I'm glad you are back from that action. Now I'd like you to concentrate on the thirteen so-called Gods and any local schools of magic. The Church of Ba'al seems to have been disbanded. So look further abroad.
"When we eliminate the local magic, those thirteen will have to be killed. Starting with Pax."
"Why Dear, I thought you loved me." They spun at the sound of the snide voice. Lord Pax, as he was called locally, strolled up and stopped, well back from Rior's cordon of respectability. "You still won't admit that our magic is stronger than yours."
Edmo growled something under his breath as he stood up. The leader of the Action Team lowered his privacy shields and glowed with power as he stalked over to the native. "The One is supreme."
Ajha saw movement behind them. The Amma was watching this confrontation.
Judging between two powers.
"You make claims, but never do anything." Edmo jutted his jaw out.
"Very amusing. If you One People do want to eliminate the thirteen gods, by all means kill the Auld Wulf first. The God of War, in case you didn't know. I'd be delighted to stop you after he's gone."
"Because you're afraid to face him? Coward. Powerless . . . " Edmo swayed suddenly.
The Action Team twitched, but didn't go anywhere. Ajha tried to lift his hand and found it unresponsive.
One of the women buffering the Princess from their male presence stumbled forward suddenly, shedding her clothing as she staggered up to the Action Leader then crumbled at his feet. The Action Leader twitched and tur
ned red with the effort. Then he suddenly relaxed, dropped his pants, knelt and rolled the limp woman over on her back.
Ajha watched Pax. Watched his expressions, his breaking a sweat and his orgasm, as the Action Leader came in the woman. That wasn't control, that was possession.
The Action Leader jumped back from the woman and to his feet. He staggered as his pants tripped him. Pax smiled and turned and walked away.
Edmo jerked his pants up and started after him. The Amma's guards stepped out and he stopped.
"And that is why they must all die." The snarl from behind the screen was dripping with fury. "Information Team, you will continue your research in the local libraries, and co-ordinate with the Action Team. We need to locate all these perverts and eliminate them. Any opportunity that presents itself to kill Pax is to be taken immediately. By the Order of The One."
They all bowed their heads. "By the Order of the One."
Ajha was glad to feel his muscles answer to his commands, and he tried to ignore the tears of the woman pulling herself together, wrapping herself in black and sitting, again, between her Lady and the men. This time without even her eyes showing.
"I've heard about the God of War. What other Gods have been seen since the Comet fell?" The Princess's voice was still angry.
"We've read mentions of the Traveler, The God of Luck, The God of Love, The Goddess of Health and Fertility, possibly the God of Virtue." Idre tossed a glance over his shoulder. No one was in sight, now.