Son of Justice (12 page)

“Not long. A minute or so.”

Eli pushed himself into a sitting position and looked around. The Telgoran was still out. He lay a couple of meters away, surrounded by three of the team. All had weapons pointed.

Two of the team were keeping watch at the cave entrance. The remaining four were spread out in a defensive line ten meters down the tunnel.

Good
.

He shook his head against the throbbing, stood slowly, and approached the gray figure. Eli had met Telgorans before, but it had been years since his last encounter. His dad had once shown him a picture of giant stone carvings from an island on Earth that closely resembled the natives of this world. This one looked like what he remembered. Even prone, it was clear he was taller than a man. He had a head that seemed too large for his thin, reedlike body. He had just learned firsthand that the strength in those deceptively thin arms and legs lived up to everything he had been told.

Eli looked at the darkened cave beyond their position. He noticed the floor dropped noticeably downward as the tunnel descended beneath the planet’s surface. He expected company at any moment and marveled at the idiocy of his thinking. What had seemed like a good idea only minutes before now seemed like the largest blunder of his life. He considered abandoning the cave before additional Telgorans arrived—and they would. An attack on one was an attack on all. That was a benefit of having a mental link. But he wouldn’t leave. That was a coward’s way out, and he resigned himself to standing firm and taking accountability for his actions.

He rubbed his eyes and exhaled. Failure was a tough pill to swallow, but he reconciled himself to proceed as best as he could.

“Saunders, Sanchez, Perot, Childes,” he called out to the four men guarding the tunnel. They turned in his direction. “Lower your weapons and step back to the tunnel entrance.”

“What’s going on?” Benson asked.

“I messed up,” Eli confessed. “We’re going to put our weapons down so we don’t pose a threat to the other Telgorans when they show up. That goes for everyone. Weapons on the ground and retreat to the entrance.”

Without complaint or further questions, everyone did as they were instructed. Weapons were piled up next to the Telgoran on the cave floor and they moved to the entrance and sat down.

All they could do now was wait.

* * *

Free awoke with a start and jumped to his feet. He still held the staff and swung it in a circle as he looked around.

What he saw was both confusing and comforting. The humans were seated at the cave entrance, hands on top of their heads. Their weapons were piled at his feet.

“What is this?” he asked.

One of the humans—it looked to be the one he had fought—stood up.

“We . . . friends,” the man answered in a rough, but passable, version of Telgoran.

* * *

“Don’t tell me you speak Telgoran too.”

Eli shook his head at Benson and gave him a hard look. Hopefully, the other recruit got the message.
Not now
.

Eli turned back to the Telgoran and held his hands open, out at his sides.

“You have our weapons,” he said, pointing to the pile. “We mean no harm.”

Unlike his mastery of Minith, Eli’s Telgoran was rudimentary. He had spent hundreds of hours learning the basics of the language, but not having a native speaker to practice with limited his abilities. Again, he thanked his father for his foresight in suggesting he study all the languages of the Shiale Alliance—not just the two he had grown up around, Earth Standard and Minith.

“Why did you enter our cavern?” The Telgoran’s voice was high in pitch, but clearly understandable. He debated on how best to answer the question, decided on the truth.

“Long story,” he began.

* * *

Free listened to the story, only stopping the man when necessary to ensure he understood what was being communicated. The human’s speech patterns were halting, and he used the wrong tenses and words on occasion, but for the most part, he got his message across.

As he listened, understanding filtered down upon Free’s mind. Gaps were filled in and bridges of knowledge were built. He finally knew why the human soldiers gathered on the plain below and where they went when they departed. He was surprised to learn that Minith waited in the distance with weapons, and that no human force had ever managed to reach them, much less defeat them. The story reminded him of his own people’s failed attempts at defeating the Minith in the years before the humans had arrived and showed them a new way.

By the time the human, who called himself “Eli,” finished, Free understood their need. He knew of the tower that stood alone in the desert. An entrance to their underground home was nearby. He agreed to help them in the same way that the emissary, Titan, had helped his own people years earlier.

He only had one condition.

* * *

“His name is Free and he’s agreed to lead us to the tower,” Eli relayed to the team. The announcement was greeted with muted cheers and smiles all around. “Everyone grab your weapons and get ready to move. We don’t have much time. Ellison should already be moving by now.”

“What’s he doing anyway?” Benson asked. “We didn’t have time to discuss that earlier.”

Eli smiled. “He’s making sure the Minith think we’re still playing their game.”

“Okay. Whatever that means,” the other man ceded as he picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder. “I still can’t get my mind around how you speak both Minith and Telgoran. You’ll probably tell me next that you speak Waa also.”

“Not likely,” Eli replied. He grabbed his own weapon from the pile and clapped Benson on the shoulder. “They don’t share their language with the likes of us lowly humans. They all speak Earth Standard, though, so there aren’t any language barriers.”

“Oh . . . yeah. I forgot.”

Once everyone was set, Eli nodded to Free.

“We’re ready.”

“Try to keep up,” the Telgoran announced. He then turned and sped off into the tunnel without a single glance backward.

Damn, he’s fast
, Eli thought as he rushed to catch up. He had told Free that speed was important and that they needed to hurry. He hoped his team could maintain the pace and chanced a quick glance behind. So far, so good. Everyone was keeping up.

He also noted the pacer floating along in its normal position, ten meters behind the last soldier. He had no doubt
it
could keep the pace.

“These pings are getting more intense, Major.” Shawn Tinson, the corporal in charge of monitoring the deep-space probes for the Rhino-3 station focused his attention on the screen at the front of his stations and adjusted the buds seated firmly in his ears. “There’s something out there, but I can’t tell what—or exactly where—it is.”

“I’m not surprised,” Major Stevens replied, looking over Corporal Tinson’s shoulder. As commander of the monitoring station, it was Stevens’s job to receive information, analyze it, and make the appropriate decision on how to respond. He was trying to do that now, but the incomplete data was making him both anxious and more than a bit irritated. “Despite what they tell us, these sensors aren’t good at picking out hard targets beyond the outer edge of the system.”

They had been receiving ghostlike pings for the past two hours, but nothing definitive had shown itself. He sincerely hoped it was a glitch, but his gut and experience told him otherwise. He’d have been certain the system was acting up only three days earlier, before they’d lost contact with Rhino-2. That station was located in the next closest solar system, which was virtually right next door, less than three day’s travel by mothership. As the outermost ring of the Shiale Alliance defenses, it was up to stations like theirs to monitor space traffic, watch for unexpected incursions into their territory, and report back to Waa on anything out of the ordinary. Not that it would do them any good if they were attacked. It took three days for messages to reach the nearest mothership and another week for them to be relayed to Waa. Designed primarily as a remote listening outpost, their on-ground forces were minimal—less than a thousand soldiers, most of who were trained in communications. The 350 Minith posted to the tiny planet made up the core of their infantry force. They were truly the outermost line of the Shiale Alliance.

Stevens turned to the sergeant on his right.

“Send word to the mothership that we’ve got potential targets on the outer horizon. Then alert the Minith commander and the rest of our forces to stand ready. It’s probably nothing, but I’d rather be prepared than not.”

“Yes, Major,” the sergeant replied. He swallowed before continuing. “The mothership is probably just entering range of Rhino-1 and hasn’t yet received our message about Rhino-2 going silent. By the time they receive this transmission, they will likely be en route to that location.”

“I’m aware of the timing issues, Sergeant Bloom. But there’s not a lot we can do about it.”

It was obvious the mothership, with its load of five thousand soldiers and hundreds of fighting vehicles, was chasing ghosts of its own. If someone was playing cat and mouse with them, they were cleverly staying one step ahead of the Alliance cavalry.

The support mothership was normally stationed an equal distance from the three outposts that made up the Rhino sector. Its job was to provide backup and support to the three stations if and when needed. That was the idea, anyway. Unfortunately, the three-day comm lag had turned into a week when the ship moved out to support Rhino-1, who had been the first to report the ghost pings that Stevens and his team were now seeing.

The week delay in communications, coupled with the four-days of travel time once the mothership received the message, meant help was a long way off for Rhino-3, should it be needed.

“Contact!” The single word from the corporal interrupted Major Steven’s thoughts like the alarm it was. “Zrthn battle carrier just crossed into the outer fringe of the solar system. Looks like . . . at least a half dozen support ships in attendance.”

“Bloom, get a message out to the mothership and another to Waa!”

“Already on—” the sergeant began, then snapped his jaws shut. He worked furiously at the controls before him before reaching his right hand up to wipe his brow. Stevens wondered what the man was doing and was about to demand a response when the man spoke. “Um. Sir?”

“Spit it out, Bloom. What’s going on?”

“Um. It looks as if the incoming ships are blocking our transmissions,” the suddenly nervous sergeant answered. “I’m getting nothing on the trans-beam. Just noise.”

“They’re jamming our comms?” Stevens asked, but already knew the answer. That explained why they hadn’t received a final transmission from Rhino-2 before they went silent. They hadn’t been able to break through the jamming.

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep trying,” Stevens ordered before taking a moment to consider the situation. “Do we still have local comms?”

“Negative, Major. All systems are nonfunctional.”

“Flock me,” he swore under his breath. The urge to shout the accepted military profanity was strong, but the lifelong demand for peace that had been instilled by his parents since childhood kicked in, and he held back. He swallowed the anger that threatened to explode from his chest and took a deep breath. “Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you run to the Minith barracks and alert Major Grinnt of our situation? He’ll know what to do to prepare our forces to receive the Zrthn force headed our way.”

“Um. Of course, sir.”

Major Stevens watched the young soldier exit the command center at a sprint, then turned to the corporal at the console. “How long until they reach us, Corporal?”

“They can land on the planet in . . . approximately twenty-six hours, sir.”

“Well, keep trying to get our comms operational,” Stevens sighed. He knew it would probably prove useless, but what could they do except keep trying? For all intents and purposes, they were on their own against whatever the Zrthns were planning. If the continued silence from Rhino-2 was any indication, whatever they were planning couldn’t be good.

* * *

“They’ve begun their approach,” Brek stated, looking up from the monitor that reported on the location of the humans in their charge.

“What method have they chosen?” Twigg asked. Not that it would matter.

“It’s very . . . unusual,” the Minith sergeant replied. “They aren’t moving as a team. There are . . . five moving out in a direct line for the tower. The rest are still at the jump-off point.”

Twigg growled. This was the human called Jayson’s attempt at strategy, no doubt. He was clever, that was for certain. No matter. Cleverness could not overcome the certainty of meeting the tower and its superior weapons. Their ability to track the exact location of each human also helped, of course. The human could delay the inevitable, but the end result would be the same.

The urge to teach the human a lesson, as well as those who had elected him as their leader, grew stronger with each passing moment.

“Pass word to the warriors below,” Twigg instructed the private that assisted them in the tower. “Each human receives a minimum of two pulses.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” the private replied with a smile and an ear twitch. “A
minimum
of two.”

* * *

Ellison waited fifteen minutes before beginning, just as he had been instructed.

Now, he jogged forward at a steady pace. Under each arm, he carried two of the PEACE suits that had been abandoned by Jayson and the others. His own armor provided enough strength to make the task a relatively simple one. His heads-up display alerted him when he reached a point exactly half a kilometer from their starting point, and he halted. After a quick scan of his surroundings, he deposited each of the suits behind a large rock. Satisfied with their placement, he turned around and jogged back to retrieve the next four. Three trips in this leg to bring all eleven suits forward. Three trips in the next.

With luck on their side, Jayson and the rest of the team would reach the tower and complete their mission before a third leg was needed. If it took longer, no problem. He had plenty of trips to make before he would reach the point where he’d be in range of the Minith weapons pointed in his direction.