“I do not, High Prod. I understand.”
They walked through the early morning calm, listening to the distant waves of the ocean crashing and the seagulls cawing.
“High Prod, I had a question… something I was meaning to ask.”
“Yes, Sharm Zurra?”
“When I was on the bridge, with Dakkal, he said something to me. He implied that my elder brother is still alive.”
Nikkwill considered this. “Your father was never satisfied with the report of the raid by the Forbidden Army against the Academy. He believed that your brother survived the attack that killed twenty-one other capable young cadets. Cadet Akgu Turka did, however, perish in that raid, as far as I am concerned.”
Zurra shook his head. “It is a thought I have never been able to be rid of. Do you recall the assignment you gave me at my father’s funeral?”
“Yes, of course.”
“When I encountered Grakko that afternoon… when I had him in my grasp, and he escaped…”
“Sharm Zurra, mistakes are made. You were forgiven.”
Zurra breathed out. “He said something to me that day that has stuck with me ever since. He said, ‘Your brother says hello.’ It was short and simple. I took it to be a gloat of his, but the way he phrased it… I took it quite literally.”
“Have you ever considered the reasons as to why your father would not declare nohoken against Grakko and his compatriots?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your father obsession with the events surrounding your brother’s death defined the final years of his life. Perhaps, in his quest to learn his son’s fate, he realized that he was being consumed by something dark and wanted to avoid deepening his madness. Perhaps… well, Akgu Juska may have thought that it was inappropriate to declare nohoken for the death of someone who had not actually died. This is just conjecture.”
Zurra sighed. “I suppose.”
“Now, as for what happened two days ago, I cannot commend you again. You and the intelligence officer – the ‘cooker of foods’ – should have songs written in your honor. You have done the Empire a great service, and you have earned something valuable in return.”
“What is that, High Prod Nikkwill?”
“A friend. In my career, I have had few of them. Your friendship with Gresham could in turn help bring the Empire and Alliance closer together. If you two can work together harmoniously, our governments can too.” Nikkwill turned to venture one final thought before leaving. “We have many differences, us and the humans, but I am certain in time our antagonism will be banished to the annals of history. Frusrand guide your path, Akgu Zurra.”
“And may he guide yours,” Zurra said and saluted his superior.
Once Nikkwill had gone back inside, Zurra found a bench on the embassy grounds to sit upon and he stared up at the early morning sky. He closed his eyes, and a rush of memories returned, almost as if upon request.
Orbital missiles detonated in the bog around him, debris and soot flying through the air as he grappled with the krokator who had killed his brother. Despite Zurra’s size and strength, Grakko was a surprisingly adept fighter and he managed to wiggle his way out of Zurra’s vice.
Zurra brandished a knife and lunged. An orbital missile struck not ten yards away and they were thrown, together, into a large rock. Zurra hit his head against the stone and had begun slipping into unconsciousness at that point, but before he did he had managed to swing his blade in a wide arc and catch Grakko in the face, cutting a deep wound from above his eyebrow all the way down to the bottom of his jaw, by some miracle not gouging out his eye.
Grakko’s screams still echoed in Zurra’s mind as he sat on the bench at the embassy. He rose, clenching his jaw and considering Grakko’s final words to him.
Your brother says hello.
#
“How you doing, John?” Moss asked and took a seat on a chair by Gresham’s hospital bed. Gresham had been released from critical care only an hour previously and both Colonel Moss and Sam Troy had been there to see him when he was given a bed in a private room at the Northridge Medical Center.
“I feel like I’ve been shot,” Gresham admitted, sticking his tongue through the gaps where two of his teeth had once been. “Any word on when I get to leave this place?”
“Not anytime soon. They need to make sure the blood transfusion worked. Frankly, it’s a miracle you’re alive,” Moss said sternly. “You’re nuts, John, you know that right?”
“Hey, it’s your ass that would be cinders right now if I hadn’t shown up.”
“Fair enough,” Moss laughed. “You know it wasn’t just MV5 Hess had rigged up down there, right?”
“I saw some heating tubes of some kind…”
“They were cylinders of nuclear waste. Highly radioactive,” Troy interjected. “Hess had been buying them through client companies for months, as well as ordering all sorts of industrial equipment used to build ship reactors.” He paused and studied Gresham, looking over his swollen lip and face, his bandaged shoulder and his half-missing ear. “I’m so sorry, John, that I wasn’t here… that I couldn’t help you and Lara…”
“No, Sam, don’t be. If you had been, you’d be dead too. What exactly did Lara have on her computer that nobody could see?”
“Well, you know how crafty she was. She managed to trace a pretty intricate money trail. Once she could use Perry and Jurkken to tie everything through, she realized somebody at SIS was on the take as well, she just didn’t know who. She forwarded those files to Cray, and well, the rest we know. Vosen must have been dirty for months, if not years.”
“Three SIS agents dead thanks to that weasel,” Gresham said with a scowl.
“No, actually, more than that. Turns out Vosen had an accomplice. Kevin Barkley, a career security specialist, who personally volunteered to oversee the summit’s protection. He was taking even more cash than Vosen was. His goons took out all the real SIS agents working at the conference to give Hess the opening he needed.”
“Do you think Vosen and Barkley helped create a security breach for Perry’s boys to hit at Haimon and Paine?”
“It appears so. The summit was most likely always the big target, but I get the impression they were getting cute with that smaller attack first. They would’ve stood to benefit financially too – Perry had accounts for them at Pacific Capital, and they were betting short on every major galactic exchange. If that convention center had been blown up, not only does Hessian probably escape legal punishment, but those bastards would have made a killing on the ensuing stock market collapse.”
Gresham leaned back in his bed. “What a mess.”
“I know. But we got Barkley, that’s the good news. Just before he killed you, too.”
There was an awkward pause before Gresham asked the question he had been dreading since waking up. “Did you find out what happened to Lara?”
“John, she… well, they found her in the Zone. It looks like the wounds she sustained fighting off her attackers in the apartment were too severe, and she must have succumbed to them. It didn’t look like anything else had happened.”
“Christ,” Gresham muttered under his breath.
Troy clicked his tongue. “I’m sorry, John. I know you were fond of her.”
“Who takes over Alien Affairs now that Vosen is dead?” Moss asked, seeking to change the subject. “I can’t imagine the new director will wait long.”
“You’re looking at him,” Troy said with a subdued smile. “Official as of this morning. Well, anyways, I should get going. Feel better, John.”
“Yeah, right.”
Troy closed the door behind himself and Gresham turned to Moss. “I’ve done some thinking about your offer, Gary. I accept. If you’ll help expedite the process, I would be honored to transfer to Section One.”
“Don’t do this because you feel you owe some debt to the late Ms. Taylor,” Moss warned. “Field work is dangerous, John. You almost died Friday night.”
r /> “I can handle myself. I’ve been going to the shooting range for years,” Gresham said with a pleased smile. “How’d you think I stayed so sharp?”
“I never thought about it, really.”
“Look, Moss, I finished what Lara and I started. She can rest in peace knowing that Perry and all those bastards are burning in hell now.”
“You seem awfully blasé about this, John. Are you psychologically fine with taking a life? This isn’t like war. You shot Perry while he was inches from you. Have you even accepted that yet?”
“I don’t have much going for me here. I’m almost forty and once divorced, Gary. I have a few friends, and you’re one of them, but I can’t sit around analyzing the budget of the krokator military anymore, not now. Not after all this.”
“Okay, John, I’ll sign off on your transfer, but you better rest a long time before going out looking for trouble again.”
“I know. Besides, I’m in awful shape. I need to start working out if I’m going to get into another mess like this.”
“I doubt you ever will. Oh, by the way, we identified the picture you found in Hess’s possession. It’s his only son, Benjamin, and his daughter-in-law, Lydia. Ben spoke with his father Friday morning and believed they were going fishing sometime this week. Needless to say, Ben won’t be taking over the family business. All of Hess’s shares were willed to be distributed amongst upper management.”
Gresham smiled. “Hess was protecting his son. Maybe he wasn’t as cold a bastard as we thought.”
“Interesting way to go about it if he was,” Moss said and tossed a package lightly onto the side of Gresham’s bed. “That’s a get-well gift, from me and the boys at the office. Godford went out and got a bottle of real nice scotch for you but didn’t get it to me on time. He’ll probably stop by later this afternoon.”
“Sounds good, Gary. And thank you.”
You’re welcome. Now get some rest, Major! That’s an order.”
“Yes sir,” Gresham grunted in return and gave a faux salute as Moss left.
The colonel stopped just beyond the door and glanced back inside. “Hey, John, you have another visitor.”
“Oh?”
Jeff Vance floated in on an airchair, looking just as disheveled and exhausted as Gresham. He smiled as best he could. “Hey there, John.”
“Christ, Vance, you’re up!” Gresham said with a laugh and extended his good arm to shake his friend’s hand. “How are you?”
“I feel like I’ve been stabbed,” Vance replied dryly. Moss smiled from beyond the door and shook his head with a chuckle, walking away.
Gresham watched his superior leave and then looked back at Vance. “Jeff, it’s good to see you, and to see you’re okay.”
“You too. They told me you finished my investigation, right when I woke up. How’d it go? Who was stealing the guns?”
Vance’s expression was expectant but innocent. Gresham grinned from ear to ear and replied, “Jeff, you won’t believe what Lara and I dug up…”
#
Paine looked up as Godford knocked on his office door. “Ah, yes, Richard. Come in.”
Godford took a seat across from Paine and looked out of the window, enjoying the view of the Pacific and its unusually peaceful waters. “You holding up alright, Howard?”
“Well, to be honest, that summit left me exhausted, the additional events notwithstanding. To imagine, Colin Hess trying to personally blow us all up with MV5 and protected by mercs with okka guns? What’s the galaxy coming to, Richard?”
Godford shuffled a stack of files in his hands. “Howard, that’s why I’m here… I hate to tell you this, but things are a lot worse than we assumed.”
“How do you mean?”
“We apprehended some of the men posing as SIS security personnel at the convention center after the Marines and LAPD stormed the place.”
“Please don’t remind me. It was the most politically embarrassing moment of my career.”
“Yes… well, the impostors were hired mercenaries from a rogue faction called the ‘Crimson Dragons.’ Do you know the name?”
“No, not quite,” Paine said and put his glasses on. “It sounds as if I should, however.”
Godford handed Paine the two files. “The Crimson Dragons are your typical mercenary outfit. They steal guns, tanks, ships, and violent to boot. Used to dabble in the sex trade, too, and rumor has it they’ve wound up with Raptor technology. Whether that’s true or not, though, isn’t what I’m concerned about.”
“It’s not?”
“Under normal circumstances, it would be,” Godford explained. “The Crimson Dragons are the military arm of a cult, a cult with blind, unquestioned reverence for their hypnotic leader. He calls himself ‘Kataan the Visionary’ and claims to receive divine commands from a mighty, god-like dragon. And, it turns out, he’s an old friend.”
Paine hesitated in apprehension, and then opened the top file.
Glossary of Terms
Krokam
Hudda Kugrall – The Forbidden Army
Hudda Krokatosh – The Army of the Krokator
Suban Krokatosh – The Navy of the Krokator
Krokator – Literally, ‘Sun-People’ or ‘People of the Sun’
‘Osh’ – suffix denoting origin or affiliation; for example, a native of Kenka is Kenkosh while a native of Rukkur is Rukkurosh. Conjugation of suffix varies in context.
Rukkur – Literally, ‘Cradle;’ name of the krokator homeworld
Subanprod – Warlord of Navy, translates more directly into Standard as Admiral
Subanprod Oranokkumudda – Warlord of Navy of the Sphere of Oranokk; commander of the entire krokator fleet
Akumaprod – High Warlord; often translated as ‘High Prod’
Prod – Highest krokator military rank, often translated as ‘warlord’ or ‘war chief’
Tarl – Second-highest krokator military rank; the title-holder is referred to as having a ‘tarlship’
Sharm – the middle-tier military rank, typically given to garrison commanders
Karp – the second-level military rank, given to officers directly subservient to a sharm
Gora – the lowest-level officer rank, given to all graduates of the Academy or soldiers promoted due to excellent field work
Nuganki – a heretic
Nohoken – literally, ‘revenge killing.’
Gurumoken – literally, ‘embarrassment killing’
Krokandir – literally, ‘City of the Sun,’ practically translated, ‘Imperial City’
Kroka – Sun; specifically, the sun which the planet Rukkur orbits
Miscellaneous
HUVR – Standard human planetary vehicle, named after a play on the combining of Human Utility Vehicle and the word ‘hover’
LUXR – a more private, luxurious and expensive variant of the HUVR
SHIPR – a cargo-carrying variant of the HUVR
Jump gate – most common method of interstellar travel, which smaller vessels are incapable of on their own. Jump gates are calibrated to transport spacecraft several lightyears in a short amount of time, making galactic commerce and travel possible
AI- Artificial Intelligence
Voxcom – a personal communication device nearly ubiquitous through the galaxy
Obedience Stick – an electrified, non-lethal bludgeoning instrument used commonly by krokator soldiers to subdue enemies
Likala – a standard, three-wheeled and three-seated krokator ground vehicle
Skyrail – a mode of rapid transit common within the Krokator Star Empire, using cars suspended from magnetic rods high above the ground to move rapidly above congested streets
Galactic Democrats – The Galactic Democrats are one of the two major political parties in the Human Alliance, and are almost exclusively referred to by the acronym GDP (Galactic Democratic Party). Their members tend to identify with the center-right end of the political spectrum, making them the conservative party in the Allianc
e.
Allied Socialists – The Allied Socialists are one of the two major political parties in the Human Alliance. Party membership tends to identify with the center-left end of the political spectrum, making them the social democratic party in the Alliance. They are often referred to by the acronym ASP (Allied Socialist Party), but it is not ubiquitous. Individual members are typically referred to simply as ‘Socialists.’
AG-111 – Human-manufactured semi-automatic assault rifle. One generation older than the AG-122. Referred to colloquially as a Triple-One
AG-122 – Human-manufactured assault rifle. Successor of the AG-111.
Okka – Venomous plant native to the planet of Sartokken. Its venom, when introduced to the bloodstream of most organic life, is nearly instantly fatal. Barbs coated with this poison are common in the Krokator Star Empire
MV5 – Highly concentrated putty explosive developed by the iktathol for use in calcium mining
Acknowledgements
The Forbidden Army started out as a very different book, by a very different author, when I was fifteen years old. In this original, Gresham and Zurra were sent to investigate an alien world captured by a futuristic apocalyptic cult and liberate the planet’s oppressed natives in an epic battle. Four hundred and ninety pages of single-spaced type in Microsoft Word later, I was nowhere close to being done and the book was virtually unreadable.
Returning to characters like Gresham, Zurra, Fust, High Prod Nikkwill and Richard Godford several years later has been an adventure in and of itself. On this adventure with me have been some very special people – my parents, Niklas and Ingegard, who did their best to work their way through the dense, confusing and unnavigable tome I produced in high school and have supported my writing since I could barely walk; Karley, who convinced me to stop sitting on a finished manuscript and actually edit it, and gave me the push I needed to give self-publishing a go; Thomas and Kathleen Moore, who read the novel as impartial observers and gave terrific feedback on which characters needed more meat, which political commentary needed to be trimmed down, and which action sequences were awesome; and to Ronnell D. Porter, for designing an awesome cover that I didn’t know was the right cover until I saw it – now I can’t imagine using anything else.
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