Border Wars, page 2
part #8 of On Silver Wings Series
"It is as nothing," The man demurred, "and I apologize for my inhospitality. Times have been trying of late. I am Amhur."
"Sorilla," She said with a bow of her head, "These times do try us all."
Amhur nodded with a slightly somber look. "Indeed. Heru sent you, and I thank you for the delivery. I was running short for myself and my family."
He settled the package on the table and broke open the seal, revealing the crackled and discolored crystals within. A large knife separated out a decent chunk and he dropped it into a wooden mortar, then applying a pestle to begin crushing the material.
Sorilla observed with interest, having seen packages of similar nature being exchanged all over the sprawling communities of Allahu in the last six weeks.
When he was finished, Amher portioned out the resulting powdered crystals and proffered some to Sorilla.
She shook her head, "Thank you, but no. I am well provisioned, and spend much time closer to supplies. Out here, deliveries must come rarely..."
"If at all," Amher agreed, hesitating. Finally, he nodded reluctantly and settled the grains back into the bowl, "so I thank you for risking much to bring me this."
"It was as nothing," She assured him, though he would likely not believe how easy it had been for her.
Traversing the wilderness on foot would have been doable, but her team didn't have that kind of time. They had dropships and APCs as needed, so long as it didn't jeopardize the mission, which made things easier and faster.
If only it were so easy for the locals, she thought as she looked at the granular crystals on the table in front of her. I wonder how many people die every year, just delivering table salt.
While the climate on Allahua was cooler and far more temperate than on Arkana, the world had a surprising sparsity of sodium chloride. Granted, a human didn't need much salt to live, but you did need it. The salt trade was one of the most reliable caravan networks on the planet, which did allow for it to provide an excellent introduction when one needed such things.
"I was... Surprised."Amher admitted with reluctance, not wanting to finish what he was thinking.
"That Heru sent a woman?" Sorilla asked, smiling softly and as unthreateningly as she could manage.
Were she in her normal kit, she doubted she could have managed that particularly effectively at all. In the local woman's garb, even the rough travelers weave she wore, however, she wasn't surprised to see Amher relax. Sorilla doubted he'd have done so if he were aware that, as close as she were to him, she could neutralize him in dozens of ways with barely any effort at all.
"Yes, sorry," He nodded, slightly, looking a little abashed at the admission.
"It is a difficult life," Sorilla said, "but I was born to a rough father who taught me his trade because he had no sons. I am comfortable in the wilds, not so much in the cities I am afraid."
"Pah," Amher spat, rolling his eyes, "The cities. Honest men and women have no place there, thieves and beggars all."
Sorilla shrugged noncommittally, "All things under God."
"And above all things, Allah the Merciful," Amher sighed as he responded, "True, true. Sometimes, though, I fail to see his plan when I see the way the cities turn against his word."
Sorilla nodded, taking another sip of her tea finally.
"That sounds like you have had experiences in the cities," She said mildly.
"More to my shame," He said in agreement, "I was born in the Landing, spent many years of my life there... until the Genii and Beasts came."
Sorilla's eyes flickered up as she made certain her implants were recording everything and transmitting to her team. "Oh? You were there that day?"
"Yes, that hated day when they arrived will burn my blood for the rest of my worthless life," Amher said. "I should have died there. We all should have died there. The stain on my soul will never be erased from that night."
He got up and walked over to the fire, looking into the crackling flame.
"The night we surrendered God's world and people to them."
*****
Hayden Capitol
The shadow of the tether cut a line through the city at the base of the transport station as Cassius stepped out into the humid jungle air, taking deep breaths to clear the anti-septic smell of the tether and starship air from his lungs.
The smells were different from his home in Northern Mexico, the heat more humid than he had grown familiar with, but Cassius had spent his life in jungles of all sorts. The possibility of experiencing a new one excited him to his core.
"Mr Aida!"
He turned, surprised to hear his name, spotting an unfamiliar figure approaching him.
"It is Mr Aida, I hope?" The sandy haired man asked, an affable expression on his face.
"Cassius, boy," Cassius said gruffly, "Not been Mr Aida since my little girl left high school and I stopped getting contacted by members of the PTA."
"Cassius then," The man said, extending a hand, "Call me Jerry. Hard as it is to imagine the Sarge as anything even close to a high school girl, any family of hers is family of a lot of us here on Hayden."
Cassius grinned, shaking the hand, "You one of the Pathfinders she spoke of then?"
"I am yes," Jerry said, "I picked her out of the jungle when her insertion went bad back during that first mission. We've been comrades in arms from time to time ever since."
"Any friend of hers, Jerry," Cassius said warmly as he looked around, "I take it this isn't a coincidence you meeting me?"
"No sir, Gil called ahead." Jerry said, "figured you might appreciate a guide, and maybe someone to fly you out to your daughter's claim."
Cassius raised an eyebrow, "I'm confident I can find my own way, lad."
Jerry laughed, "If you're anything like your daughter, I have no doubts. You'll likely arrive with an army of locals no one knew was still out in the jungle too, but I figured I'd just make things easier."
"That so?" Cassius asked dryly, but sighed good naturedly after a moment, "I guess it would be easier. I'm hardly checked out on local flight systems anyway."
Jerry nodded, "We have global positioning, of course, but most of the local craft are still run mostly through manual systems. They're easier to maintain, and there's not a lot of air traffic to speak of out here, so less worry about mid-air collisions. New people here on Hayden take some time getting used to that."
"I expect so," Cassius said, hefting his ruck over his shoulder, "Well why don't you show me around then?"
"Be a pleasure, sir. You have anything else?"
Cassius shook his head, "My stuff is in stowage topside until I need it. No sense lugging everything around until I know where it's going."
Jerry nodded, gesturing down the curving street, and they started walking.
"You hungry?" He asked, "I don't know if you want to get moving right away, but if so, it is a fairly long flight."
"I could eat, and I'm in no rush."
"Excellent, Tara would be pissed with me if I let you slip out of town before she could meet you," Jerry grinned.
"Wife?"
"Maybe, in the future," Jerry conceded.
"Best we don't make her angry then," Cassius laughed.
"More than you know," Jerry shuddered, "She's a nurse too."
"Ouch," Cassius grimaced, "Braver lad than I am."
Jerry chuckled, "Tara is a sweetheart, and she adores the Sarge, so you're safe. Me? Me, she'll threaten with needles if I don't bring you home for supper."
Cassius laughed loudly, "I didn't think they still used needles, is it different out here?"
Jerry sighed, shaking his head, "No, but Tara has a collection of medical antiques."
Cassius laughed boisterously and slapped the trimmer man on the shoulder, "Lead the way, lad. I can't leave you to suffer a fate such as that. We can swap stories about my daughter in the meantime. She ever tell you about the time I caught her messing with the border patrol north of my ranch?"
******
Chapter Two
USV SOL
Orbit over God Is Great, Alliance Space
"Colonel Aida has turned up a lead, Sir."
Mattan blew out a simultaneously relieved and irritated breath of air, "I wish I could say finally and mean it. But given the mess down there I'm shocked they found anything this fast."
"Yes Sir," His aide nodded sympathetically, "The idea of inserting into the salt delivery network was a good one. I have to admit, I thought that it would be better to go after the weapons traffickers."
Mattan nodded, getting up and stepping out from behind his desk, "It would have been if we had a clean insert for it. Building up enough local background not to be suspicious as hell to gun runners would have taken months, though. That was the other benefit of the salt network, incidentally, she was building her reputation. The gun runners were next on the list, one way or another."
"Oh... I... didn't know," The young officer admitted, more than a little shamefully.
"And now you do, Lieutenant," Mattan said, "Come on, let's go review what she's dug up."
"Yes sir."
The detachment from the United States Fifth Special Forces Group were still largely stationed on the Sol, having nowhere better to work from until they had more information on what exactly they were dealing with. Part of the mission was to help the Alliance ease the destruction of inter-colonial warfare between Allahu and Arkana, but the more pressing issue in the eyes of Mattan and Ruger would be finding out who in the Alliance was being so abysmally stupid as to dealing high tech weapons to the two groups of fundamentalist idiots.
Someone wants to kick off the war again, Mattan thought grimly, Or a war, at the very least.
So far, they'd found precious little that showed whether the instigators cared one way or another if SOLCOM and Earth were dragged into it, but there was no question that whoever it was wanted war in the Alliance. After a fashion, Mattan wondered if he shouldn't be encouraging just that himself.
It wouldn't be too hard to sabotage the current mission, make it look like the locals' fault... or even the Lucians'. That bunch were gung - ho as hell, but they made Marines look subtle by comparison. Framing them for a fuck up wouldn't be child's play exactly, but a teenager could likely pull it off.
Only two things were really stopping him from doing more than making contingency plans in that direction, really. First, his orders were to neutralize the threats, not compound them... and a war in the Alliance, likely instigated by humans... whether they were part of SOLCOM or not... would spill over. Second, well the professional in him wanted to know who was setting this up and why before he made any moves along those lines.
And the professional always won when it came to decisions Mattan made.
They stepped into the Sol's situation room a short walk later, eyes on the displays that showed the telemetry feeds from the squad on the ground. The Colonel's was front and center on the big screen, of course, and showed the interior of a hand constructed hut that looked reasonably solid if pretty rough.
"What's the news?" Mattan demanded as he walked up to where Admiral Ruger was standing in the center of the room.
"Aida just completed a salt delivery and somehow turned up someone who fits the profile we're looking for." Ruger rolled his eyes. "I swear that woman could fall into a New York sewer and come up smiling like roses."
"And wearing gator boots," Mattan added gruffly, "But only because she'd have scouted the area before she went in. I told you this was a likely avenue when she proposed it, you just didn't want to buy into it. Terror groups aren't formed in big comfortable cities, they start out in the country, unless you have a city that's being torn apart already by fighting. The main colony site is reasonably peaceful, we'd never have slipped into the cells that are there."
"At least you admit that they're there now," Ruger muttered, remembering the arguments that had rolled back and forth over that very subject.
"Of course, they're in the city, but those cells will be closed and paranoid. No way they'd let someone slip in not even Aida, as good as she is. Not without an introduction, at least." Mattan said, eyes slipping to the screens again. "What has she turned up?"
"So far? Just a profile hit, but it's more than we had."
"All we need is a thread," Mattan promised, "just a single threat to pluck at, and then Sister will unravel this mess for us."
*****
God Is Great
"It sounds like you saw some fighting," Sorilla said softly, hands wrapped around her cup of tea as she stared down into the muddy liquid that remained. "I know what it feels like."
Amher shot her a dark look of scorn, "What could you possibly know if it?"
"They came in the dark," She said, cutting him off before he could wind up into a rant. "Struck the middle of the village like a bomb hit it. Found out later it was something dropped from above, truly high above. The screaming started shortly after, at first from the shock of the explosion but then from the attacks that came street by street."
Amher stared as the story spilled out, eyes wide as he slumped down into the chair across from the woman.
"We never saw them, it was like they were invisible," She went on, not looking up at him. "But we could feel a chill fill the air, like... like..."
"Like ghosts walking across your grave," Amher finished.
Sorilla nodded quietly.
"So, you do know something of this, I suppose. I apologize, I over spoke myself."
*****
SOLCOM APC
"What story is she telling?" One of the men whispered, recognizing that it wasn't an invented spiel.
"She is describing a Ross invasion strike," Kriss said simply, "Much of the Alliance uses environmental generators that would fit those conditions, but only the Ross would strike invisibly in that manner."
Strickland shrugged, "Sounds like the Haden invasion night, probably stories she heard from the survivors... but likely with her own experiences mixed in. It's a good story, he'll buy it."
Kriss didn't comment further as the men continued to listen to conversation. It was an odd thing, he thought, to hear of an Alliance strike from the other side and to find himself sympathizing with the teller. Of course, the Ross were a plague on the galaxy... allies or not, he had no love for the inscrutable bastards and their extreme technical prowess.
*****
"I remember the chills," Amher admitted, "But it was the grey faced monsters that came upon us. They were not invisible, but they may as well have been considering how effective our weapons were against them. We fought, of course, but they slaughtered those standing against them like harvesters against the wheat."
Sorilla nodded. They faced Lucians then. Almost worse than the Ross.
The Ross would let you run, once you were out of their immediate perimeter they no longer cared if you lived or died. It wasn't a personal thing with them, as monstrous as the alien species seemed to be.
The Lucians, however, waged war because they enjoyed it. The Sentinels, at least. She hadn't met any others, so Sorilla supposed that there were peace loving Lucians somewhere back on whatever world they called home. The Lucian Sentinels, however, would give chase and run their enemies into the ground, if given the option.
She said nothing, however, because she didn't know how much of it was common knowledge amongst the people on God is Great.
"I know," She said instead, "We encountered some of them later. They came at us in the forest, I was lucky to escape with my life..."
She reached down in a calculated move, but made it look reflexive as she exposed the local handgun to Amher's sight.
It was a decent enough weapon, by civilian standards, she supposed. A ten - millimeter hand cannon, using high velocity supersonic ammunition, but not remotely a match for Lucian hide and muscle, to say nothing of the Ross armor and tech.
Amher's eyes dropped to the exposed weapon on her belt as she moved her hand away, giving him a clear view before her battered jacket fell back to cover it. He grunted and nodded, "If you were carrying that, it is a miracle you survived."
"This... is new," Sorilla admitted, as though she didn't want to say as much. "I sought it out after."
That much was the truth, of course. She had been using a SOLCOM issued assault rifle and her MTAC during her actual encounter with the Lucians. Amher didn't need to know that, however.
"I felt helpless then, in a way that I never had before," Sorilla said somberly.
*****
Kriss grunted, amused.
"That is not how I recall that particular meeting," He said in Alliance standard, mirth poorly concealed.
"What really happened?" One of the humans asked him, rather surprising the Lucian as the soldiers rarely spoke to him or his fellows.
"We were running a strike and fade campaign against the human forces on the world you call Hayden," He said with no hesitation, fondly recalling the mission in question. "We'd been having our way for several weeks. The regular forces were of little challenge in the jungle, even with the rather more skilled jungle trackers you called Pathfinders. One of my teams was zeroing in on another jungle patrol, nothing they'd not dealt with in the past, but this time when they made their move... well, from what we've been able to piece together since then, your Colonel was waiting in the shadows."
"She was," Strickland confirmed, "I read the mission report for that one. She was a Top back then, assigned to Hayden under the Command of Captain Washington. With the full brief, her team elected not to contact the locals, instead they bird dogged them on their patrol, waiting for your team to strike."
Kris nodded, unsurprised. That meshed with what the Alliance had been able to put together.
"In a few seconds, I lost four Sentinels, the first Lucian casualties on Hayden," He said, snorting in open amusement, "She let the fifth one go, putting shots into the ground and jungle around to 'scare' him into running home."
The other Lucians laughed, matching his tone.
"Didn't work, I assume?" A Sergeant asked dryly.
"It would have against anyone else, but not a Lucian," Kris shook his head. "We mounted an ambush, and he led her team right into the kill zone. I still don't know what tipped them off, could not have been much, but whatever it was just before we opened fire the lead soldier dove for cover and it turned into a free fire as both teams kept trying to gain the upper hand. It was the first time we felt that maybe the war was worth our time."
