Desperado (Murphy's Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 2)

by Kevin Ikenberry

  Murphy had also given her the task of locating credible intelligence relating to the efforts to lift items to orbit. The Harvesters were coming, there was no secret about that, and part of the farming and local mining seemed to be geared toward providing them a host of things to remove from the planet during the Sear. Aliza had observed several caravans arriving in the Outer City with large pallets heaped high with bushels of medicinal plants. Some of them she identified easily, and others were mysteries to her. She’d learned as much of the regional flora as she could, and the specimens she did not recognize indicated more distant origins. What else was she missing? That lack of knowledge gave her more than enough impetus to visit the Outer City as often as possible to learn exactly what was being harvested and why.

  Finally, Murphy believed there were individuals gathering in the towns who knew the security procedures of the orbital operations. They would prepare the landing sites and storage facilities. He believed they might possess the tools and knowledge necessary for other Lost Soldiers to accomplish “an important operation in orbit”—and that was all he was willing to say about it. Identifying those persons of interest—what Bo called high-value targets—was the last piece of Aliza’s job.

  The procession conducted itself to the eastern wall and through the opening where the aquifer and canal exited the glacis. Aliza and the other women emerged into the relative darkness beyond. There were several boys carrying torches to help them descend the steep, slick path by the waterfall. Negotiating the narrow path was difficult with the heavy pack on her back. More than once she had to grab an offered arm, but the young men apparently didn’t mind; they were there for that purpose.

  When they had descended to the level of the pond itself, the women and children spread out to the left and right. There was no rushing, no competition. The procession was a concerted effort to ring the pond and begin their collection. No sooner had Aliza started along the edge of the pond, trying to move to an area as far to the southeast as possible, than she saw her first kr’it.

  Despite everything she’d been told, it was actually much uglier. It was a robust creature and undoubtedly would provide what the locals needed nutritionally to survive the Sear. There appeared to be millions of them. Most of them hovered just below the surface, swimming back and forth, feeding on organisms she could not see with her naked eye.

  Aliza and the women found their designated place on the southeast corner of the pond. After a few minutes of adjusting the baskets and their garments, they waded into the shallows and began the work of harvesting the kr’it. Women and children used quick hands to secure their prizes and toss them to others on the shore for processing.

  Playing her designated role as just another worker, Aliza went through the motions, mainly, and grabbed one of the squirming creatures. They reminded her of snakes. Its skin was soft but had a sheen to it. Each of the kr’it possessed small, sharp claws. The triangular head and rows of tiny teeth were not sharp enough to do any damage to her skin, but it was just ferocious enough in her grasp that she was glad to be done with it. She bashed it over the head with a heavy rock and then passed it to another woman who used a sharp knife to decapitate the creature. Its squirming body was then tossed into one of the woven baskets. Each woman could expect to gather sixty to seventy of the kr’it in one iteration. They would fill their baskets three or four times during the nightly harvest.

  As the women worked, they sang softly, an older song with an archaic dialect which Aliza could not fully understand, but that wasn’t its intent. The song was to cover Aliza sitting with her basket and bashing kr’it over the head with a rock while speaking on the radio. Carefully, Aliza brought up the handset and put the earpiece to her ear. She glanced at her watch, trying to see the luminous hands.

  She was over thirty-eight minutes beyond her appointed contact time. Standard operating procedure dictated she try every fifteen minutes for one hour until they made contact. The lifespan of the irreplaceable lithium batteries for the radios was limited, and nobody wanted them to run out.

  Aliza continued to work on the kr’it, staying occupied until the next call time. There was a peaceful routine to the work and the unfamiliar, yet beautiful song of the surrounding women. She tried to lose herself in both for a few moments. At forty-five minutes past the hour, she reached into her basket, turned on the radio by feel, and placed her thumb on the push-to-talk button.

  “Desperado Six, this is Queen of Hearts. Over.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Two

  Assembly Area

  R’Bak

  Across the narrow valley from Imsurmik, Major Bo Moorefield sat cross-legged atop an exposed outcropping overlooking the terrain below. The city itself reminded him of Mesa Verde, a place he’d visited in Colorado on several occasions. Built into the rock of a plateau, the city concerned him, but his worries were on other things at the moment. With the radio at his side, he turned it on to monitor the set frequency precisely at the top of the midnight hour. Once again, Aliza was late. Whatever the reason, she was not able to transmit on time for the fifth day in a row. While he tried to tell himself she was busy, that she was ensuring her own security, he was worried. She was fiercely independent and could hold her own, but she wasn’t a soldier, no matter the rank bestowed on her.

  Why did Murphy promote her?

  Bo chastised himself at the thought. During the J’Stull Job, Aliza had taken command of a defensive position when Sergeant First Class Whittaker was killed. Even before the skirmish, she was a natural leader and teacher. In more ways than one, she was a better officer than most of the people Bo knew during his life in the 1980s and ’90s back on Earth. She deserved the rank and, frankly, had earned it in combat.

  Bo leaned back on his hands and stared up into the unfamiliar heavens. He knew where to look for Earth, but there was nothing there for him anymore. Everything he needed, and everything he wanted, was right there. The problem was he couldn’t articulate it well enough for Aliza. Either the time wasn’t right, or the words wouldn’t come out. While he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about it, he couldn’t help it as he waited for her. If all went well, he’d see her soon.

  For the last seven days, he’d deployed his cavalry force to scout Imsurmik from a distance. He could have moved them closer but decided against it. From his current position he had a commanding view of the area around the town of twenty thousand. There were two major roads which intersected about five kilometers to the southeast of the town. The crossroads sat almost exactly a kilometer to the west of a junction between a wide, shallow river flowing from the northwest to the southeast and an intermittent creek from the north. The river, known as the Sallus, flowed all the way to the R’Bak Sea. Eventually, the bulk of the Lost Soldiers would follow the river as the operation progressed and he would provide security for them. For the moment, though, his attention was on the town and the roads leading into it. Traffic had burgeoned over the last several days, and, if Colonel Murphy’s intelligence was correct, it would continue to do so.

  What troubled Bo more than Aliza’s tardiness was the number of armed militants he’d seen moving into the city itself. From a distance, it was hard to determine if the weapons systems he saw being moved by vehicles were staying in the Outer City or if they were being pushed into the Inner City itself. Until the enemy emplaced their weapons along the top of the glacis, there was no way of telling. Therefore, he had to assume the worst, which was that the enemy was merging their forces. So, with every passing day, they grew stronger, which would be a problem for the Lawless.

  “Your orders are to observe the town and be prepared to strike,” Colonel Murphy had said. “Once we get the intelligence we need from the inside, you’ll move on the town and secure it. After your initial attack, a strike team led by Captain Cutter will go in and grab our high-value targets.”

  “What are our high-value targets?” Bo asked.

  Murphy smiled. “People.”

  Bo had seen thro
ugh Murphy’s statement. “So, my job is to attack the town and distract all the enemy forces so that the strike team can get in, get our targets, and leave, right?”

  Murphy nodded. “This is more than a distraction, Bo. If worse comes to worst, and we can’t get off the planet, this could be a site where we could hole up for the Sear, if necessary.”

  Bo shook his head. “You’ve stated we’re going to get to orbit and get off the planet before the Sear happens. What changed?”

  “Nothing has changed, Bo. We will get off the planet, but you of all people know sometimes in combat things don’t go as expected. We have to prepare for the unexpected, no matter how successful we are.”

  Bo knew that all too well. His experience in Somalia with the United Nations coalition had been a less than stellar effort. Far too often, they had gone on convoys and minor operations without the proper intelligence. Granted, in an urban area like Mogadishu, credible and actionable intelligence had been almost impossible. The state of the enemy was always in flux, and they held the advantage and the initiative on the ground they knew like the backs of their hands. Frequently, Bo’s forces were engaged by irregular troops and armed civilians they had not expected. Staring across the valley at the low houses of the Outer City, Bo couldn’t help but think how familiar Imsurmik looked. He could have mistaken the Outer City for areas of Mogadishu, and the similarity did not sit well with him.

  He leaned forward and checked his watch again. It was almost fifteen minutes after the hour. Bo turned on the radio, as procedure dictated, and listened. Nothing. With a sigh, he turned the radio off and kept looking up at the unfamiliar sky. After a few moments, he saw the streak of a falling star and it brought a smile to his face. As a teenager, he’d enjoyed taking the family’s pontoon boat out on the southern spur of Pickwick Lake. One night, just before his sixteenth birthday, he’d been out on the boat alone, lying on one of the long, padded seats, watching the sky. He’d caught the peak of the annual Leonid meteor shower; over one hundred shooting stars per hour lit up the night. For a moment, he could have almost been back home, and Bo let himself enjoy the wait. To his surprise, at precisely forty-five minutes after the hour, he heard Aliza’s voice.

  “Desperado Six, this is Queen of Hearts. Over.”

  Bo’s heart leapt at the sound of her voice. He could tell she was whispering, and he didn’t want to yelp or excitedly ask how she was doing. They didn’t have much time. “I’m here. How are things? Over.”

  “The same as yesterday. More forces coming in. I’d say we’re at a couple of hundred now. Heavier weapons have arrived, too. Mainly rockets from what I could tell. Over.”

  Bo’s gut tightened. Rockets meant standoff distance. Standoff distance meant it would be harder for his vehicles to get close enough to capture the town for the strike team.

  “I understand. What about the other priorities? Over.”

  “Nothing. My contacts have not identified anybody, yet. I was able to get eyes on Foxtrot today, but none of his entourage. There are at least two new ‘players’ of interest who arrived today. No names on the new players yet. Over.”

  She’d at least been able to identify F’ahdn, the town’s mayor, for lack of a better term. That was good news.

  “Let me know when you know something about them. Over.”

  “I will. Hopefully tomorrow. How are you? Over,” Aliza whispered.

  Bo chewed his lower lip for a moment. I miss you. I love you. I’m sorry. I really need to do better at everything.

  With all the thoughts in his head, Bo’s sense of caution swelled. “Everything’s fine here. We’ll talk tomorrow. Over.”

  “Okay. Good night, cowboy.” Her voice was hesitant and shaky. Maybe, just maybe, she felt something similar and couldn’t articulate it. But he didn’t wait to find out.

  “Desperado Six, out.”

  Bo leaned forward and turned the radio off. He sat forward and rested his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees. A soft noise came from behind him. No matter how many times he heard it, he couldn’t help but think it sounded like a cross between a neighing horse and a purring cat.

  Bo lifted his head. “It’s okay, Scout. Everything’s okay.”

  The gentle whinaalani call came again, and Bo realized Scout knew him almost better than he knew himself. Over the last several months, he and the other Lost Soldiers had gotten to know quite a bit about the whinnies. The animals were far more intelligent than they’d assumed, and while they had had little luck in developing true communications between the two species, there was no doubt the whinnies understood them and often anticipated the humans. Bo looked over his right shoulder and saw Scout peering intently at him in the near darkness.

  “You don’t have any expert advice about dealing with women, do you?”

  Bo saw the alien blink slowly, but there was no other display of understanding or emotion.

  “Of course, you don’t, buddy. I’m all alone in this kind of shit again, huh?”

  Scout didn’t respond.

  “I know I have to tell her.” Bo sighed.

  There had been plenty of opportunities for him to have similar conversations with his ex-wife while he was deployed. He’d chosen not to. While he had forgiven Sharron for her decision to leave him, and he regretted not having the opportunity to reconcile with her, there were some things that made him feel helpless. Articulating his feelings—communicating what was on his mind without filtering it—was still something that needed a tremendous amount of work. He believed Aliza would be patient. They loved each other. At one time, he’d believed love would be enough for anything, but losing Sharron proved otherwise.

  Let’s just get through this operation and I’ll do it. The fact that there will be another mission can’t stop me again. There’s always gonna be another mission. I might not get another chance to let her know.

  You ain’t getting no younger, Bo.

  Scout made his restless noise again and came forward to sit next to Bo and looked across the valley. Bo followed his gaze and realized the time had come for him to put together the plan. He’d been thinking about the possibility of a raid across the valley since their deployment, but it was clear they were going to have a target soon. It was only a matter of time until Aliza got the intelligence they needed, and rather than sit in the dark and wonder about the rest of his life, Bo needed to decide on a course of action. He would ensure it took care of the people, and Aliza, as best as possible.

  At the top of the next hour, Bo and Scout were still sitting on top of the rock, looking across the valley at the town. This time Bo reached for the PFM, the sardonic acronym they’d adopted for the space-capable radio. The joke of alien technology referred to as “pure fucking magic” never failed to bring a smile to his face. While it didn’t have the same power requirements or perishable power supply as the Vietnam-era PRC-77s, it was still something he didn’t want to turn on until necessary. From everything they knew about the inhabitants of the town, his own communications capabilities did not appear to be at any risk of enemy jamming or compromise. But Bo also knew Murphy would’ve been happier if they’d been able to just use UHF; the PFM operated somewhere north of the S band. Either way, Bo didn’t really know that much about the electromagnetic spectrum. All he knew was that when he turned on the radio, it worked, even though Murphy was hundreds of miles away.

  “Home Plate, this is Fenway Park. Over.”

  Surprisingly, Colonel Murphy himself responded. “Fenway, Home Plate Umpire. What are the balls and strikes?”

  Callsigns and radio procedures were always designed to confuse the enemy, but in this case, Bo had taken an extra step. He’d set up his unit with a second set of references that would totally bewilder anyone who might be listening. He doubted anyone outside of his forces knew who the Eagles were. They’d have no idea about baseball, either. And if by some chance a local had learned about either from one of the Lost Soldiers, it was beyond plausibility that they would have learned about both.<
br />
  Bo grinned at the layers of subterfuge. He’d never pegged Murphy as a baseball fan, and the likelihood was that his commanding officer was not. Bo’s knowledge of the sport was mostly limited to the games played by his beloved Atlanta Braves. At the time of his disappearance, things had been looking up for them and their competitiveness would surely have taken them on to more World Series. He wondered what had happened to those teams, but it wasn’t pressing enough for him to actually look it up. Still, the J’Stull and the others on the planet did not understand what baseball was, and that was what mattered.

  In their communications procedures, balls were the number of Priority Information Requirements they’d been able to gather. Strikes were the persons of interest and other Commander’s Critical Information Requirements.

  “One ball, one strike,” Bo reported. “Confirmed on Foxtrot.”

  “How’s the pace of play?”

  Bo chuckled. “Speeding up. Seeing more players in the dugout.”

  “How’s your pitcher?”

  “Got a pretty decent pitch count today. Still looking good,” Bo replied.

  Truth be told, he wasn’t exactly sure what Aliza was doing, but doubt was the least of the things he could give her the benefit of.

  “Understood. Got your relievers ready?”

  “Always ready, Home Plate.”

  “Glad to hear it. Keep me informed. What’s our inning?”

  Bo gave it some thought. According to the procedures, bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded would be the time for the attack. “Bottom of the third, Home Plate. No runners on base.”

  “Bottom of the third, understood. All green?”

  “All green,” Bo replied.

  “And what about you?”