Chapter Forty-Two
The Hamain, R’Bak
“Priority message, Commander Murphy.” The pilot turned, eyes wide. “Routed through the orbital relay, sir.”
Murphy carefully replaced the binder he’d just extracted from his briefing folio and nodded. “Go ahead.” He put his worries aside, cleared his mind of every thought and task, purposely let his eyes lose focus: all so that he could just hear the words without distraction. And hopefully, concentrate enough to overcome the tendency most likely to push him out of the present: his reflex to analyze every event and word in the context of securing the Lost Soldiers’ future.
He succeeded, more or less. He listened carefully, nodded when the copilot/comms operator finished, asked him to read it back very slowly. No reason not to be sure that he had, in fact, remained attentive to each word.
The copilot glanced sideways at him and complied.
At the end, Murphy nodded again. “Thank you.”
“Wonderful news,” said the pilot, but his tone ended on the rising tone of a question.
Murphy kept his voice and his face calm, composed. “Yes, it is wonderful news.” He turned to face the copilot directly. “Please tell the chief that I need my main pack. Be certain that he handles it carefully when he removes the lashings.”
The copilot stared at the hatch behind him, saw that Murphy did indeed mean for him to oversee the chief’s compliance personally, popped his straps and slipped back into the payload bay.
Murphy turned toward the pilot. “Change of flight plan, Captain Essklur. I need to go to Ikaan-tel.”
“Ikaan-tel, sir?”
“That is what I said, Captain. I need to convey this news personally to some of our contacts there.”
The pilot looked at his plot. “How long do you plan to be there, Commander Murphy? I will need to apprise security that your ETA has changed.”
Murphy shook his head. “I will be at Ikaan-tel for at least a day, possibly longer, and as this is currently our only planetside shuttle, we can’t afford to let it sit on the ground. If I recall, you’re due to pick up a combat team for insertion near the coast, so you will not be changing your ETA.”
The pilot looked sideways. “Sir, given the protocols for your security . . . Commander Murphy, are you sure about this?”
Murphy smiled. “Well, Captain, you could speak to the CO about enforcing those protocols.” The pilot’s eyes revealed the instant he remembered who he was talking to. “But I think we can be pretty certain regarding the outcome of that conversation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“However, after you’ve dusted off from Ikaan-tel, I need your comms officer to send a signal back to the microsat. Routing is to Crystal Villa, aboard Spin One.”
The pilot raised an eyebrow. “Crystal Villa, sir? I have never heard that code name.”
“And you shouldn’t have. The message is a single character: ‘delta.’ I will also need you to keep checking for my recall signal; there’s a slim possibility I could be done within a few hours. Either way, top up your fuel tanks every chance you get, because when you return, I will probably not be your only passenger. Assume you’ll be loading at least six other individuals, about eight tonnes of equipment, and possibly a small vehicle.”
The pilot stared at him. Murphy shook his head. “I can’t tell you what’s going on. But since it supersedes our survey of western coast’s port traffic all the way up to the Greens, you can guess the comparative priority.”
The pilot nodded. “I think I do, sir. Changing heading for Ikaan-tel. ETA: twenty minutes.”
Murphy nodded and stared down at details among the dunes which, given the shuttle’s speed and altitude, scudded by like frozen white waves.
R’Bak Island, R’Bak
Bo hated admitting that Max Messina had been right.
Which was made harder by the fact that if he hadn’t insisted, one Major Hubert Moorefield would have been KIA at the Battle of Downport.
Well, actually the Battle for R’Bak city. Once the two guns had been smoked in—and ultimately taken out with thermally sighted counterfire from Kaladar Six—the wharf became the invasion force’s secure highway. Meanwhile, the really big tracks—and whole Free Bands—swept across Downport’s expanse with little opposition. The few surveyors and locals that fought back learned, in the hardest possible way, not to try cases with machine-gun-armed APCs, surging with impatience to discharge scores of vengeful, M14-toting R’Baku.
But the strategy for taking the city was necessarily more measured. Bo, ringed by almost a dozen Lost Soldiers who were either company and troop leaders or staff for his mobile CP, had explained the plan to the locals, none of whom had been read in. R’Baku were loyal, but as locals, they were always subject to extortion of the most cruel and abhorrent kinds.
“We are not fighting to take the city,” he began. “We are making a very focused strike into the northwest quarter only.” He pointed to the location on a hastily improvised sand table. “It will be a fast armored assault, spearheaded and well-flanked by infantry. Right now, we do not care about the rest of the city, so we are avoiding it.”
A local had raised his dark, tattooed hand: a tribal from the eastern extents of the Hamain. “But how can the attack succeed if we do not control the whole city?”
Bo smiled. “Oh, we will. But we won’t have to fight for it.” He pointed to a square in the approximate center of the northwest quarter. “We are going to take and hold the power plant. If that falls, all the other surveyor infrastructure in the city collapses. That is why we are not going after the surveyor stations, or the satraps, or the puppet government. We are going for the electricity upon which every Kulsian advantage depends.
“The tactics are simple. Infantry secures the moving column: front, flanks, rear. Local intel multiply confirms that the Kulsians have never brought portable antitank weapons to R’Bak, because they’re the only ones with tanks. Other explosives are possible, but between infantry on point, and local sympathizers—of whom we have many; watch for red armbands and a white hat or sash—we should have no significant opposition getting to the power plant.”
A woman Band leader in Sarmatchani garb stood. “I mean no disrespect, Major SHAEF”—a strange permutation of which Bo was growing fond—“but how can you, who are not from here, know if some who approach us as friends are only pretending to be?”
Bo remembered smiling. “Firstly, we gathered some very good local intelligence on the city starting a year ago. We will also be met by a dozen proven friends who will travel near the infantry that is on point or guarding our flanks. And they will know if those dressed as sympathizer are impostors.
“The only factor that may delay us are the satraps’ crowd-control vehicles—er, big machine-gun carriers built by the surveyors for putting down disturbances or protests.” The R’Baku who had encountered the upgunned versions of SWAT tactical vehicles muttered grimly. “If any are encountered, you are ordered to fall back to the head of the mechanized column. The guns and armor of our vehicles are more than a match for those machine-gun carriers.” Which was almost a comical understatement, as the locals would no doubt discover.
The plan was simple in concept, and its execution did not ask the Free Bands to perform any actions they weren’t already familiar with: move-and-fire leapfrog advances, supporting armored vehicles, and pinning threats in place until superior firepower could arrive. But as Bo was climbing into the hatch of his chosen command vehicle, Max had appeared alongside him and looked at the rooftops ahead. “So, this thunder run of yours—”
Bo grinned. “I see I’m not the only one reading through some of the history we’ve missed.”
The big man nodded but did not return Moorefield’s smile. “I have, sir. Enough to look at this culture and say that the chance of running into IEDs that could take out our tracks are pretty slim.”
“But . . . ?”
“Sir, you can take your mobile CP wherever you want—but buttoned up. The whole time.”
“You do know we’re going to have air support within the hour?” With the defeat of the Harvester fleet and the seizure of the downport, Mara Lee’s Hueys were dusting off from their staging base near the same southern cove that Ulmaren had favored when he was still carrying cargos and smuggling on the side.
Max shook his head. “No one is happier to hear the whup-whup of an inbound slick than me, sir. But they can’t look in windows, and they can’t stop thrown bombs. They can get payback, sure, but that’s not really the point here, is it, sir?”
Bo sighed and stared at the quiet bear of a man. Messina had watched his commander’s six throughout the entire unloading of Roro Zero and probably had several litters of kittens while doing it. And damn it, the man knew his craft from Vietnam, so . . . “Okay, Max: no open hatch.”
So it was with a chill like the one Bo’s grandma called “walking over your own grave” that Hubert Moorefield saw one of the two vehicles that had been lost to second-story Molotov cocktails. The blackened body slumped over an open hatch’s weapon ring could easily have been his own. He swallowed thickly as the image dropped beyond where he could see it through the bulletproof observation ports of his own vehicle’s sealed commander’s cupola.
* * *
As the already-battered Track Five drove its bulk through the perimeter fence of the powerplant, surveyors and local troops scattered in all directions.
Finally deemed safe enough for “Major SHAEF,” Bo emerged just as the first four of Mara’s choppers began orbiting, their door gunners cutting down ambush teams waiting on roofs or lurking around blind corners. For every enemy they hit, half a dozen broke and ran.
Max Messina was, of course, right behind Bo. Who sighed. “Moose, you’re a bigger man than I am.”
“Very obviously, sir.”
“I mean big in character: for not saying, ‘I told you so.’”
Moose just shook his head. “Those locals back there, the ones who burned to death doing their duty? I’m not about to crack wise or make quips in the shadow of their bodies, sir. We may be from Earth and they may be from R’Bak, but we fought side by side.
“Maybe I’ve got the charity of spirit you think I do, sir. Who knows? Maybe I do. But today, I couldn’t tell you. Because with their ghosts all around us, I’d be a bastard to do anything other than hold my peace in respect.”
As they watched, smoke grenades were popped inside the compound. A rich, violet plume reached up and, as if summoned by it, four Hueys came in hard and low.
“Purple haze,” murmured Max with a tone between longing and melancholy as the slicks lifted their noses and slowed.
Bo nodded. He’d only heard the phrase in films; Maximiliano Messina had lived it and had lost brothers while wreathed in the same-colored fog that was even now dissipating.
With the Hueys still a meter off the deck, Chalmers and Jacks jumped down, leading their teams toward red-and-white-wearing locals who’d infiltrated the plant the night before.
“Major?” Sergeant Renaldi called from the RTO’s seat in the AFV that was Bo’s CP. “Am I cleared to signal objective taken?”
Bo looked at the power plant, the downport, and finally the blue sky beyond which their fates had been decided. “Yes, Adam. Send that SHAEF reports, ‘Omaha is open.’”
Spin One
“Major Tapper,” Timmy Uggs called from the main room of the operations center. “Coded sitrep coming in.”
“Source?”
Harry heard the comm operator’s nervous swallow all the way in Murphy’s office. The keyboard that Makarov had increasing ceded to Uggs clattered briefly. A long pause. “Code alpha, sir! Bowden won! Or, as the message says, they all did.”
Tapper leaned back in Murphy’s chair, pushed back the irony that the man who’d orchestrated so much of the day’s desperate gambles wasn’t here to see them pay off. Assuming, of course, that all of them did . . . which was a pretty big assumption.
“New code coming in, sir!”
“From dirtside?”
“Aye, sir. It’s from Major Moorefield.” Timmy whooped. “He sends, ‘Omaha is open’! And, eh, he adds that he is presently consolidating control of Downport. He estimates it will be an hour before he can clear landers.” His head poked around the coaming of the secure hatch. “Damn, sir: two victories in one day! Can you believe it?”
Frankly, not really. Harry Tapper had learned to expect that some hitch, some mishap, some loss invariably came along with every operation—and the greater the success, the more certain that fate would insert a sufficiently sobering counterpoint. C’mon, he thought at the overhead, get it over with. Drop the other shoe, already!
His stomach plummeted when Timmy jumped away from the hatchway in response to yet another of the pings that indicated an incoming signal.
Still staring at the overhead, Tapper felt a bead of sweat forming on his hairline. No: I didn’t really want anything to go wrong. I was just being a cranky SEAL. I would never—
“Sir . . . ” Happily, Timmy’s voice was not dark with grief. But it was . . . baffled?
“What’s the signal, Mr. Uggs? Is there a problem?”
“No, sir. I mean, I don’t think so. But this is . . . well, it’s a strange signal. And it was routed here but to a call sign I don’t recognize.”
Tapper stood. “What’s the call sign?”
“Crystal Villa, sir.”
Tapper frowned as Timmy reappeared in the hatchway. “What or who is ‘Crystal Villa,’ sir?”
It’s me: the home-plate backup in case Glass Palace goes offline. Which is to say, something may have gone sideways with Murphy. “Who’s the sender?”
“Pulling that up, now, sir. It’s . . . huh?”
“Report, Mr. Uggs!”
“Sir, I—yes, sir, but it doesn’t make sense. Sender is Glass Palace, sir.”
What the fu—? “What’s the signal, Mr. Uggs?”
Timmy had rushed back to the computer, answered in a loud, aggravated mutter. “It’s double-encrypted sir. Cracking now . . . produces day code ‘delta.’” Uggs may have cursed under his breath before calling out. “Sir, since it’s a single Greek letter spelled out, it should refer to one of our fast sitrep or instruction presets. But ‘delta’ is not in the code list.”
Tapper discovered that his mouth had become dry. “Enter it.” He walked to the hatchway to watch as Uggs processed the signal.
“But, sir, the system will reject any unrecognized code.”
Yes, but you don’t have the clearance to see the full menu of codes resident in the system, Timmy. “Just enter it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Uggs blinked when the screen started scrolling through the security handshakes. “Hey, it’s processing! You were right, sir!”
Wish I wasn’t. Tapper managed to wait a whole second before pressing, “The message, Mr. Uggs?”
“Oh, right, sir! Uh . . . the message is ‘Lawful Lawless. Check files.’” Timmy looked up, brow furrowed in perplexity. “Does that mean anything to you, Major?”
Harry frowned. “It does, Timmy. I need the ops center for a few minutes. Shut the hatch. I’ll dog it behind you.”
The Hamain, R’Bak
The young Atti of Ikaan-tel, Salsaliin, waved her two guards out of the yurt-hut. The village hetman, Bafguur, rose. Murphy did as well.
Salsaliin held up her hand: a gesture of request, not command. “Why do you leave, Honored Bafguur, first of our tribe?”
He bowed to her. “Because soon, the colonel’s questions will no longer concern tribal matters.” He smiled toward Murphy. “Since telling us of the defeat of the Kulsians and the health of your daughter’s sire, his questions increasingly touch upon the whinaalanis and the tunnels below. Soon he will ask of the Daaj or things very close to it. And that is not for my ears.”
Bafguur grinned. “Of course, they are not for his, either. But when dying, Atti Ooshwelo trusted Vat to carry her to the place of which we do not speak. So I suspect his commander must already know more than I do.”
Murphy nodded slowly and deeply. “I thank you for understanding, Hetman Bafguur. Your wisdom has spared me the rudeness of requesting privacy: a rudeness that no guest should ever show to a host. Particularly the leader of a community.”
Bafguur’s smile widened, revealing several gaps where teeth should have been. “You have been our friends from the first, you and your Lost Soldiers. Because of you, we may never need to take refuge in the tunnels again. It is a small thing, giving you the space to ask your questions.”
After the flap closed behind him, Salsaliin mused, “He believes he is seeing the great wheel of fate finally coming full circle. Legend has it that men from the sky ruined the world, hunted whinalaanis, and behaved as do the Kulsians. It is only fitting that now, other men from the sky undo their works and are friends to the whinalaanis, just as our ancient forebears were said to be. So although it is we who keep the whinaalanis’ shelter safe and guard their water source, it is you whom they seek out and bear upon their backs.”
Murphy nodded, decided to take a chance that might move things along quickly; every minute counted, now. “When you speak of the whinaalanis’ water source, I presume you refer to the butte beyond the mountain you call Mount Whinaalani, just to the north.”
Salsaliin sat very erect. “How do you know there is water at that butte? That was not even revealed to Va—Lieutenant Thomas.”
Murphy shrugged. “In the course of freeing large towns from the yoke of the satraps, we found many ancient records, most of which they had forgotten.”
Salsaliin sniffed. “I am not surprised. The satraps care for nothing but money and the power it brings.”
Murphy nodded. “We, on the other hand, consider knowledge the greatest power and, if used wisely, a path toward much that is good within and between people.”
“These are close to the words of the Daaj.” She paused. “Perhaps the essence of the Daaj has sent you here.”
Murphy heard the tone: half curiosity, half trap baited to catch opportunists and megalomaniacs. He smiled and waited.
She smiled back. “That is the last time I shall try to be sly with you, Colonel Murphy.”
He shrugged. “A leader cannot neglect any tool that might protect their people. But if I am here at the will of the Daaj, I assure you, no one would be more surprised than me.”
She chuckled softly. “So, these ancient writings told you of Whinaakanut?”
“The butte?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “You know of it but do not know its name?”
“That is correct. It was referred to, but not by that name—if it was named at all. However, the information allowed the machines that watch from above to locate it and peer deep into the crevice that can only be reached from its top. Except for birds . . . and, of course, whinaalanis.”
“So you know of their preference for water in high places.”
Murphy shrugged. “It is embarrassing we did not foresee it. Their ability to scale rock should have told us that for them, every inaccessible water source is what a high-walled oasis is to humans. Particularly those where the water never runs dry.”
Salsaliin frowned. “Your eyes in space could show you all of what you say . . . except that the water of Whinaakanut is always present, even in the height of the Searing. Yet I see in your eyes and hear in your voice that you are quite certain of this. How?”
Murphy set aside all the measurements and projections and models made possible by the Dornaani satellite, found the story-skein that ran through them all. “The eyes in space do not just see light; they see heat. And when a surface reflects light differently—such as when wet rocks shine—it shows that, too.
“We noticed that when night falls, the rock surfaces that line the inside of the crevice cool much sooner than the others. The water that collects on them runs down into a pool that, once they saw it, our space eyes revealed to be fed by a spring as well. Between those two sources, the water collects until it reaches the point where it is vaporized by the suns. We think a measure of it also runs off more slowly in underground caves and”—Murphy glanced at the ground—“to other subterranean structures.”
Salsaliin reclined with a sigh. “According to the few who have ever scaled Whinaakanut, all is as you say. And your unspoken guess is correct; the water from the crevice which we call Ajat-huk—the Well of Deliverance—sustains the refuges of the Daaj. It also feeds Ikaan-tel’s village well, but in the Searing, it does so slowly or sometimes, ceases altogether.”
Murphy nodded gratefully. There was no reason to mention that he had not had to guess that the Daaj’s reservoir was sustained by the Well of Deliverance. Maps from various sources showed that it was the only subterranean water source within a hundred kilometers and that the aquifer that spread out from it was the only reason Ikaan-tel had a well at all.
Salsaliin considered him. “As Bafguur remarked, you have asked many questions. But I cannot help but wonder if they are preludes to a request.”
“They are.”
She frowned. “When Ooshwelo allowed Vat to behold the Daaj, she was in dire need. He was the only one present with enough strength to carry her to the place where her mothers were sure to find her spirit, and where she knew I would take the first step of becoming the next Atii. Unless your need is as dire as was hers, please do not request that I bring you to the very place I am sworn to keep secret.”
Murphy shook his head. “That is not my request.”
Salsaliin sighed, relieved, but puzzled also. “Then if not that, what do you wish?”
Murphy pointed north. “It is written that there is an entrance to a smuggler’s tunnel halfway up Mount Whinaalani’s windward slope. Do your people know of it?”
She nodded. “Yes, but it has not been used in many decades.”
“By humans, you mean?”
Salsaliin smiled. “So, is it whinaalanis you seek or tunnels?”
Murphy smiled back. “Both. They are part of the same mystery.”
She leaned forward. “Which is . . . ?”
His smile widened. “Now it is I who must ask you not to ask after a secret that I may not divulge.”
She laughed. “You are quite pleasant. It is strange that your men think you so severe and humorless.”
“Well, they do see a different side of me.”
She chuckled. “That, too, is true.” She stood. “I know of this tunnel and shall summon two hunters who can show you the way. But you will arrive only a few hours before dark. If that. If you wish, I can arrange for you to stay with—”
Murphy stood and shook his head. “I am grateful, but I must decline. I have promised to be on my way before the sun sets.”
Salsaliin frowned. “To whom did you make this promise?”
Murphy shrugged. “To myself.” Which was the simple truth. “I have a journey to undertake, and I am the only one who may undertake it. So to start at once is one of the promises I must keep.” “And miles to go before I sleep”—in one fashion or another.
Salsaliin was nodding slowly. “This sounds much like our Trek of Self. Vat said it was very similar to the vision quest of some of your native peoples.”
Murphy nodded. “Similar. It’s actually probably closer to what some of the peoples of a place called Australia do: something called a walkabout. But both must be done alone.”
Salsaliin began heading to the flap of her ritual home. “I—we understand that. Our Trek of Self is just that.”
Murphy stopped, she turned. “Then you will understand that, if others come seeking me, I ask you one further favor: that you do not mention what we spoke of here. Although they might be my friends, and might mean well, they might also try to find me—and that would be the end of my walkabout.”
Salsaliin nodded solemnly. “I shall respect your wishes. Now, come: if you mean to make it to the tunnels before dark, we must move quickly. Once inside, your friends could search the four points of the compass and not find you.”
Murphy nodded and, as she turned to lead him out, smiled sadly. That was the plan, after all: scatter them across the whole system.
As they must be, if they’re to remain safe.