Aiben was rubbing his arm again. The woman pulled his hand away, turned his arm over, and pushed back the sleeve of his shirt to bare it. On the inside of his arm were the striations of what looked like a burgundy-colored bruise that hadn’t been there before. It was in the exact spot where he had been feeling the pain well up in his arm. Aiben looked closer and realized it had a pattern to it. It was the same design, which adorned the arms of the woman and her men.
Oromgol let his rifle fall and motioned for the others to do the same. “Shelez ashalik hazmel,” he said. His words almost caught in his throat.
Aiben understood the Haman expression: History has come for the future.
“Ashalik!” the other men echoed back. The woman remained silent, a look of shock on her face the only explanation.
“What are they saying?” Ballis said. He looked from Aiben to the woman for an answer.
Finding her voice, the woman spoke, but it was to Aiben. “Forgive me. I didn’t think to look until now. I should have realized who you might be when you spoke with shalal hiliz. Besti is a place known to us as a code word.”
“He spoke with shalal hiliz?” Oromgol said. “Why didn’t you say it immediately?”
“Please forgive me, old friend, I was thrown off guard.” Her eyes pleaded, but her body maintained the language of authority. “Yes, he speaks the ancient tongue in his thoughts.”
“Then he has truly come,” Oromgol said almost inaudibly.
“Please follow us to safety.” The Keazil signaled in endri hiliz for her men to move out. “Soon enough this entire area will be crawling with Zenzani. Let’s not waste any more time here.”
Come with me, Iniri’ki Hegirith. The thought pierced his mind from hers.
The Neilemi’aak soldiers began to blend back into the camouflage of the tall grass. Dawning light outlined them like shadows returning to the darkness before daybreak chased them away. All of them but the woman dissolved from sight.
Ballis picked-up Aiben’s arm and examined it. “Looks like there’s something you haven’t told us after all. What is this thing?” His cold breath touched Aiben’s face. It forced him to feel the chilly morning air he had been ignoring.
“I honestly don’t know,” Aiben said and shivered. “It just appeared. I don’t even know how she knew it was there.”
“I think we had better accompany her then,” Lev-9, who had been silent during the entire interchange, spoke. “It may be our only chance if we wish to find out what it is. We also need their help to avoid the Zenzani patrols.”
“I agree,” Aiben said.
Ballis was more reluctant to give his consent, but finally did. Aiben nodded to the woman and they fell into step behind her, shadowing her into the steppes.
CHAPTER 13
Gormy pushed the convertible hoverflyer to its highest altitude to avoid obstruction and set it on autopilot. He was traveling down the lush spine of the river delta, which cut through the valley and took him towards Abri Mor. He reinstated the virtual view feeding into his eyes through the crystalline rod in his helmet. He zoomed in on one of the smaller spires that rose above the fog tops of the garrison city some distance from the large docking tower in its center.
Keeping his eyes on the spire, he dug into one the storage compartments of his hoverflyer and extracted a pair of telerobotic controllers. He pulled the sensor-covered gloves over his furred hands and activated the control pads on either wrist. They started to hum. He switched his optical enhancer over to a private channel whose exact frequency and decryption sequence only he knew. Instantly, he found himself in a dim garage bay, which was blanketed by a fine layer of dust and cluttered with all manner of electronic junk and weaponry.
He raised one gloved hand, and in his virtual line of sight, a dented, tarnished, steel robotic arm moved in tandem with him. He activated the bay doors with the robotic arm and once they had cranked aside, he tapped a set of coordinates into the controls of the wrist pads. He channeled back to the satellite link-up just in time to see the warmech emerge from the garage bay located on the side of the spire he had been watching. Its suspension jets kept it hovering in the air.
He let out a pitiful little cackle, a moderate amount of saliva splashed down his chin. He was pleased that the Moolag had not discovered his toy. Only the military could afford this kind of equipment, and so it was something the Moolag would confiscate if he found it. It had taken Gormy a lot of bartering, using some of the Moolag’s resources and influence, of course, to hook his hands onto it. He dispatched the warmech on an intercept course with his quarry.
***
The small band of rebels was striking a northeasterly course across the wind-swept pampas of Mora Bentia’s higher latitudes. The sun was just climbing over the eastern horizon, casting orange and pink hues into the expanse of the thin, dry, bamboo-like grass that waved in the morning breeze along their path. The scent of sun-dried herb permeated the air.
The woman who had called herself Keazil walked the point of their band. Aiben and Lev-9 took up the center. Ballis and Oromgol pulled up the rear. Ballis couldn’t see Oromgol’s other men. They had melted into the grassland and disappeared. Occasionally, the old soldier in him caught a glimpse of something moving about in the distance.
Ballis craned his neck from where they had just come and saw the wall of trees they had navigated their way through during the night. The grove’s foliage was a bright, yellow-tinted green, a trick of the morning light that made its color look sharper than it really was. Behind the copse of trees, a stream of smoke still rolled up from the crash and churned into a dissipating clump of black cloud. The sight was soon lost to him, however, as they penetrated yet another island of trees set in the sea of bamboo-grass.
“Our mechanoid friend detected communication activity about sixty odd miles from where you found us. That’s where we were going.” Ballis indicated the direction of which he spoke. “We’re heading east from that original bearing. Is there a reason for that?”
“It’s good we crossed paths when we did then.” Oromgol kept his eyes forward. “That way is only trouble.”
“A Zenzani military base?”
Oromgol grunted in reply.
Twigs cracked underfoot and stirred up smells of dry earth and crunchy leaves. They weren’t bothering with caution as they entered the perimeter of trees. Ballis suspected their scouts had declared the area free of enemy trouble and had signaled their commander without him knowing.
“It’s been several hours since we crashed,” Ballis opined. “If their base is so close, why hasn’t the Protectorate blanketed this area with troops by now?”
“They should have.” Oromgol looked sidelong at Ballis. His eyes shadowed under heavy brows. “You wonder about this because you are a soldier yourself?”
“I was at one time,” Ballis said, “but that was long ago.”
“But you understand the Zenzani?”
“I’ve dealt with their fanatics before. I know they prefer open assault tactics.” Ballis ran a finger along the scar beneath his eye. “That was before there was a Protectorate, though.”
Memories of Nor Joon caught Ballis up in a wave of melancholy. After seeing more small skirmishes in the border territories than he cared to remember, they had promoted him to full colonel in the Expeditionary Guild and given him a command in the Sedri Liab system. He was to be the commandant of a deuterium refueling station on Hespri, a small chunk of spinning, cratered rock, third of twenty-seven moons, which circled a gas giant named Nor Joon, the sixth planet from Sedri Liab.
Sharing the system, and orbiting closer in towards the hot yellow star, was the only real bastion of civilization in parsecs. It was a verdant world veiled in white mist, layered with turquoise oceans, dotted by forested atolls. Ora Benai was the home for a group of Zenzani refugees, whose ancestors, two hundred years earlier, had led a mass exodus from their homeworld during a battle with the Seven Guilds. They developed the uninhabited wo
rld into a paradise for their descendants and had lived peacefully on the edge of Guild space for one hundred and seventy-five years more.
The Expeditionary Guild, requiring deuterium to fuel ships outbound for the galactic rim, scouted out Hespri and established a base there to scoop Nor Joon’s atmosphere. The Seven Guilds cataloged Nor Joon and her moons as Guild Space and dropped a small military garrison there to protect it. The Zenzani settlers on Ora Benai had long memories of their feud with the Seven Guilds, however. They felt their ancestral enemies would exploit their adopted home system, Sedri Liab, much like they had the original Zenzani home system.
At first, they made small clumsy strikes against the Expeditionary Guild’s base on Hespri, but soon they learned how effective full-scale assaults on the scoop-ships skimming Nor Joon’s atmosphere could be. The hostilities escalated into the first real war for the Seven Guilds in over a hundred years. Expeditionary Command ordered Ballis and his troops into battle against the insurgents, and despite the high loss of life on the side of the Guild, their superior weaponry drove back the Zenzani terrorists.
Ballis was elevated almost to the status of an idol after the battle. He became the Guild’s first war hero in a century and the media made sure everyone knew it. For his part, he had simply done his duty as a soldier, even though he hadn’t personally agreed with the methods they had ordered him to take. His stomach still tied itself into knots when he thought of the bloody faces of the young men and women he had sent to die for such an insignificant cause.
The media dubbed the incident, The Nor Joon Uprisings, which spawned two critical events. One would forever shape a life and one would forever shape a galaxy. First, Ballis made a decision soon after the war to leave the Expeditionary Guild and find a quieter life on Besti. Second, the fanaticism of the Ora Benai Zenzani fueled the fire of patriotism once again on the long compliant Zenzani Homeworld. Magron started to preach his religion of war there and it sent the Zenzani on a new jihad across the Seven Guilds.
“Perhaps these Zenzani are craftier than those you once knew. Perhaps they still lay in wait for us up ahead.” Oromgol’s rough voice drilled through Ballis’s thoughts. He signaled something with his hand to the unseen men crouching somewhere in the trees around them. Ballis still couldn’t make out anything but trees covered by mossy vines and long green ferns.
“Maybe, I just find it hard to believe they’d be waiting to ambush us when they have enough firepower for a frontal attack.”
“They fight for what they believe is a grand cause,” Oromgol said.
His statement seemed off subject to their conversation, but not to Ballis’s thoughts. “They believed their insurrection at Nor Joon was some grand cause, that’s for sure. Maybe that’s it. Maybe the Zenzani think a few refugees and some natives aren’t important enough for their immediate response. Unless there is something about your people I don’t know yet.”
“Then you hold our motives in suspicion also?”
Ballis rubbed his chin as if thinking for the first time about something he hadn’t considered before. Was it these people that stayed the Protectorate’s hand, or was it something else? “I’m here to protect Aiben. That means I suspect everyone.”
“Of course,” Oromgol sounded almost apologetic. “Despite my play of words, you are absolutely right. The Zenzani are never too afraid to make a frontal assault. It doesn’t matter if it is I, or the Keazil, or a hundred of our most capable who is their target. It is strange indeed that none of us has seen them yet. If they are planning an ambush, though, my scouts are already moving ahead and will uncover their trap before we spring it.”
Ballis thought about how Aiben had said these people spoke with their thoughts. “You’re cybermancers then? Is that how your men will alert you to any hostile activity?”
“A cybermancer?” Oromgol’s heavy brows twisted with incomprehension. “What does that mean?”
“Do you send and receive thoughts using small mechanoids in your body?”
“Of course not! Such a thing sounds ridiculous.” Oromgol was smiling as if Ballis had been joking. “If you are from one of the five ilud’hi, you can exchange thoughts without the help of some machine. It is simply a part of who we are.”
Ballis just nodded not quite understanding, but realizing he didn’t have the time to understand in their present circumstances either. He would have to investigate later without raising suspicion.
“Tell me,” Oromgol said, “how did you know we were coming upon you? Was it the mechanoid?”
“No, it was Aiben.” Ballis pointed towards his companion. “His body is full of those little mechanoids I asked you about. They have enhanced his senses. He can usually hear or see something before we can.”
There was silence for a few seconds between the two as Oromgol studied Aiben’s back. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter and a little hoarse. “Aiben, that’s what you call him?”
“Yes, that’s his name.”
“Aiben.” Oromgol sounded as if he was trying to convince himself of something with the sound of the cybermancer’s name.
“My sensors have picked up a possible problem approaching,” Lev-9 said loud enough for everyone to hear. His sensor band completed several revolutions. “There is a fast-moving, metallic object coming this way just above the trees to the west of us.”
Ballis didn’t doubt the mechanoid’s readings. After the Keazil and her men had almost caught them off guard, Lev-9 had stretched his sensor range to its fullest. He would now be able to detect danger even before Aiben. The Mora Bentians didn’t look like they doubted Lev-9 either. Not waiting for further explanation, they hoisted their energy rifles to readiness. There was silence for a few more seconds as everyone strained to hear or see something.
“I can hear it now,” Aiben said. “What is it, Lev?”
Lev-9 trained one of the sensor bundles on the side of his head towards the object for more details. Ballis tried to get a visual fix on it, but he could only see slight movements in the treetops, caused by what he would have thought were nothing more than light winds. Oromgol was scowling and gesturing with his hands. The man looked at the Keazil questioningly, but she gave a terse shake of her head. Although Ballis didn’t comprehend their battle language, his instincts told him that neither of them could contact the men any longer that they had sent scouting ahead.
“It is an XT16 warmech,” Lev-9 answered.
“A what?” the Keazil demanded.
Oromgol began to fidget with his weapon.
“A mech designed for use in combat,” Ballis answered, his tone calm and matter-of-fact, not wanting to plant seeds of fear from which deadly mistakes could grow. His scar writhed under his eye with a life of its own. “It was used decades ago by Expeditionary forces as a first line of offense before dropping infantry into heavy battle zones. We used them at Nor Joon.”
“XT16s are level one mechanoids,” Lev-9 continued. “They have no artificial intelligence of their own, and are nothing more than an amalgamation of mechanical tools and functions controlled by telerobotics. It has just passed us and is now looping back, bearing down on our position.”
“In other words, someone is controlling it,” Oromgol said.
“How long before it gets here?” the Keazil asked, her body tensing, getting ready.
The answer came swiftly. The sinister shape of a warmech crashed down through the trees less than a hundred feet away and hummed towards them. A complex array of offensive weaponry, grasping extensions, and sensor antennae protruded from the circumference of the metal monster’s cylindrical shell.
“What do we do against that?” Aiben’s mouth hung open.
“You’re the cybermancer,” Ballis said, “anything you can do?”
“I don’t think I can.” Aiben clenched his jaw and rubbed his forearm where the enigmatic mark had appeared. “My nanomechs won’t be able to adapt and interface fast enough to have any effect on that thing.”
“OK, it
s main limitation is the person that operates it,” Ballis said. “It’s not easy to react telerobotically on instinct, unless its controller is very well trained. We’ll have to hope that is the case and use it to our advantage.”
“Can the mechanoid disrupt its controller up-link somehow?” Oromgol said.
“These things are pretty notorious for their encryption routines,” Ballis answered. “Lev, how ‘bout it?”
Before he could answer, it attacked. From one of the compact energy cannons on the warmech’s side, a beam shot out and connected with Lev-9. The beam’s electrically charged particles snaked their way through the mechanoid’s systems and began to disrupt them. The discharge knocked him off balance and he stumbled into Aiben who was standing next to him. The cybermancer rolled out of the way, thanks to his training in hez alim, and avoided being pinned under the mechanoid as he fell to the ground. Lev-9’s sensor ring sputtered and went dark.
Oromgol took aim and discharged his energy rifle. Its beam seared off the offending cannon from its casing in an explosion of sparks. The warmech powered up a second weapon, tracked Oromgol, and spit out an energy burst. The man tried to dodge the beam, but didn’t quite make it. It grazed his side, burning away a strip of cloth and sizzling his skin from the heat.
The Keazil squeezed off several more shots into the hovering beast’s side, which spun it around and stripped off another lethal appendage, giving Oromgol enough time to react. A grimace on his face from the burning pain, he grunted as he flung his rifle beneath the warmech straight at Ballis. Ballis dropped to the ground and rolled underneath the hovering machine, catching the rifle on the last revolution. The mech dipped as Ballis disrupted the downward airflow of its hover jets.
Before the warmech’s hidden controller could react, Ballis came up and razed its back with energy discharge, dismembering the warmech of several more weapons connected to it. The warmech spun with lightning speed to face Ballis. A trail of smoke emanating from the charred components on its back corkscrewed around it.
Several more energy weapons powered up and glowed blue-hot, and then, just as quickly, they faded to black and died. All of the warmech’s systems shut down simultaneously. Bereft of its hover jets, the two-ton hunk of dead metal slammed into the ground in front of Ballis spraying him with chunks of dirt, and dry leaves.