Torian Reclamation 3: Test of Fortitude (24 page)

“How is he?” Alan asked.

“He got hit in the back. It looks like a flesh wound. He’s hurt, but he can travel okay. He saved us, you know.” Kayla looked at Jumper, as if expecting some kind of reaction.

Jumper gave none.

The noise from the canyon grew louder and the ship came into view. It was sizeable.

*

“You’ve been here how long?” General Islog8 asked.

“Only a few days,” Brandon said. “I must say I’m pleased that you showed up so soon after my arrival, General. And I’m impressed by your fleet.”

That much was true. The Torian fleet was a most welcome sight. If there was any doubt over Tora’s military dominance in the Erobian Sphere, all one had to do was get a glimpse of the dozens of transport ships—escorted by multiple squadrons of ITF1’s—currently drifting in the space between Dirg and its solitary moon.

“Humph.” General Islog8 lifted his tube of Redflower20. “This is only half of it. I usually don’t come in here with anywhere near this many. But our last runner ship brought a message from the High General requesting us to make a grander showing for some extat reason.” He eyeballed Brandon suspiciously before taking his drink.

Brandon swallowed his as well.

“Did the message include any information about me?” Brandon spoke too soon, before the storm of bitterness in his mouth had fully subsided—so he ended up choking out some of the words.

The general stared at him for a minute before responding. The two of them sat in a small conference room on the command ship, surrounded on all sides by panoramic video screens with a live shot of the space outside. Seven or eight Torian transport ships floated peacefully in the foreground. Beyond them, Brandon could see his own ship—dwarfed in size by comparison—orbiting Dirg. The rest of the fleet was behind them.

“About you specifically?” Islog8 finally said. “No. But I was told a Class-3 reconnaissance mission may be meeting me here to relay information they have gathered.” He paused again. “I’m hoping whatever you have to say is of some military relevance.”

“Why wouldn’t it be, General?”

Islog8 leaned forward to place his empty tube in the rack on the table.

“Your anomalous friendship with Olut6 is known among the high command, as is your notoriety among the Earthling population. I’m aware that the High General places some credence in your purported peripheral …abilities. But there are those of us who are hesitant to invest in these types of intangibles.”

“I can only assume you are referring to the unfortunate label some humans have assigned me.” Brandon casually retuned his own tube to the rack. “I assure you, General, that I take every opportunity to deny and disown that. I’m before you now as a personal favor to the High General, only because he judges me most qualified for the task. But, if tangible military prerequisites are needed before you’re capable of giving my report the respect it deserves, I’ll think you’ll find my resume is not short on those. I’d wager that I’ve personally been involved in more critical military actions than any native in your fleet.”

Islog8 managed a smile. “Yes, you were a good shot in your younger days, weren’t you?”

The general’s comment should have been irksome. But it wasn’t. Not today. Brandon was rattle-proof after his conversation with Bleear at the Ulork village. And he now discovered something interesting. By being emotionally detached from the conversation, he was able to see through Islog8. He knew his intentions. This was simply how the general rolled. It was how he sized people up, being slightly rude and making unflattering insinuations. That was his way of gathering insightful information. Had Brandon been vulnerable to his emotional jabs, he probably would have missed that.

“Why don’t we get to business?” Brandon said in a friendly tone.

Islog8 frowned. Perhaps he realized he met his match today.

“By all means, Brandon. Proceed.”

Brandon slowly relayed the findings of his mission as factually as he could. While he explained the reasoning behind each decision, he was careful not to use defensive language. It was not his purpose to steer the fleet commander towards any conclusions. It was only to provide information. Hopefully, Islog8 would arrive at the same deduction as he and Perry.

He didn’t.

“Is that it?” Islog8 said when Brandon finished.

“Yes.”

“I don’t understand why you came to Dirg. Your mission failed.”

Brandon cocked his head. “Information was gathered, General. Just as Olut6 requested. I thought it significant enough to bring to you directly.”

“Significant? Why?”

“Everything I’ve discovered supports the High General’s suspicions of an enemy coalition.”

“A coalition involving who?” Islog8 slapped his hand on the table. “Azaar? I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you have nothing more than wild and unfounded hunches. Unless there’s something else you haven’t told me. But I doubt that.”

“Not only with Azaar,” Brandon said. “With all the outer fringe worlds except this one.” He pointed at Dirg on the screen.

“How in Erob do you draw that conclusion?”

Brandon couldn’t help but smile at the mention of Erob, even if it was used only as a curse word. He was still in full afterglow mode from a wonderfully enlightening meeting with a half-breed prophet. Erob was real, the Erobs were still alive and watching everything, and he knew it—at least for the moment.

The general, however, seemed only to become more agitated by his smile.

“You think you know special things the rest of us don’t because you have some magic gift, don’t you? I’m not persuaded, Earthling. Not by you and not by Olut6’s conspiracy theories, either. I’m a military man, so I follow orders. But let me tell you what I’ve seen out here these last eight months while I’ve been on patrol: nothing. No enemy sightings, no suspicious activity of any kind, and no abnormal traffic between these worlds. If I was in charge of Tora, we’d all be home protecting our own system, not out here on the edge of known civilization hunting phantoms.”

“You don’t find it odd that so many of these worlds have gone dark?” Brandon asked. “And only on this side of the sphere, where Latia happens to lie?”

“Dark. What do you mean, dark? You mean that they stopped coming to Amulen’s extat tournament? Or that they’ve entered a period of reduced interstellar travel? And by ‘so many’ do you mean three or four? Because none of that adds up to a mound of yuquil dung.”

Brandon was undeterred. “What about the Chenel video I was given?”

“What about it?” Islog8 said. “You’ve handed me nothing but paranoid speculation. A message in a charm from a half-breed. Tell me, what do you suspect it contains?”

“Very possibly specific information about enemy activity.”

“Very possibly?”

Brandon had to check himself. He was beginning to lose at Islog8’s game. Extat, he started out so well. But this guy was good. The general was drawing him in and getting him emotionally charged.

“Possibly,” Brandon said in a calmer voice.

Islog8 cocked his head. “Tell me, Brandon Foss, what have you been doing since you arrived at Dirg?”

“I met with come military commanders, including Admiral Hochob. Since then I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting in your ship the whole time?”

“No, General. I also had a conference with the Ulork leader here. The Dirg half-breeds.”

“I figured as much. You’re quite friendly with all the half-breed races, aren’t you? Getting secret messages in jewelry, and sitting around philosophizing about the fate of the galaxy, no doubt. But you know what I’ve noticed? They don’t fight. The half-breeds are great at telling us what to do, but when an attack occurs they stay nice and safe on the ground, and then run off to some neutral planet across the galaxy afterwards. All the while we natives die protecting all of our homes.”

Brandon was insulted now, and could no longer suppress his reaction.

“Maybe if we actually listened to them, there wouldn’t need to be any fighting or dying to protect our homes.”

“No,” Islog8 said. “There wouldn’t, because we’d all be dead—or slaves somewhere.”

“You’re wrong about them, General.” Brandon struggled to regain his composure. “They fight. I’ve seen them fight. Maybe they don’t fight in ways you can outwardly see or appreciate, but I’d say their fight is at least as important as ours. You cheapen their plight because you don’t understand—or respect—their ways. You don’t know, General. And you shouldn’t expound upon your ignorance in this manner. The fight for the Erobian Sphere is as much theirs as it is ours—maybe even more so. And it’s a fact that if it wasn’t for ‘the fight’ in the half-breed races, Cardinal-5 wouldn’t exist today.”

Islog8 stood, but Brandon beat him to it and stood up faster.

“You have a lot of nerve talking to me like that, and standing up before me.”

“Nerve is what it takes to meet threats before they arrive at your doorstep,” Brandon said.

At that moment, the sliding door to the room opened and a lieutenant ran in.

“Enemy vessels arriving starboard, sir!”

The general spun around. Brandon’s eyes moved to the right side video screen.

Brandon felt dizzy and began having flashbacks from five years ago as he watched fiery rings appear in space, followed by the stars being blacked out where the rings had been a moment ago.

He looked to Dirg. Nothing happening there yet. The Dirg fighters were making their normal patrols. No, wait. One squadron turned out from orbit and faced the threat. Then another. They saw it.

Brandon turned back to the right screen. Fire rings kept materializing, followed by dark spots. More of them. And more. There had to be hundreds of them now. And more kept appearing.

The general barked an order.

“Send a runner, Lieutenant! Get the rest of the fleet here, fast. And scramble all our fighters!”

“Yes sir!” The lieutenant ran out.

Brandon and the general watched the screen fill with more and more enemy ships popping out of distortion drive.

“It seems,” Brandon said calmly, “that the phantoms have showed up.”

*

The ship was rectangular and flat, rounded at the corners with circular adjusting hover pods. It wasn’t much more than a large hovercraft, obviously designed for local transportation and not space travel. Alan, Jumper, and Kayla found themselves ducking as it hung in place just on the other side of the ridge.

“We don’t need to hunch down,” Alan said. “They can’t see us in here.”

Jumper and Kayla relaxed a little at Alan’s words, which made Alan hope he was right.

The great hovercraft lowered and vanished behind the embankment. Its noise gradually subsided until it was nearly gone. Voices then came from the canyon.

Kayla was right. The voices were foreign and unintelligible. They didn’t sound like they were being spoken intentionally loud, but could still be heard. The three of them would have to be careful when speaking and remember how far echoes carry in this area.

“Why are the aliens stopping there?” Kayla asked. Casanova climbed up from the cave floor and curled up next to her.

“Yeah,” Alan said. “What’s over there, Jumper? What did you see? Were there more of those aliens who attacked us?”

“I only saw it from a distance, so I can’t be 100% certain.” But Jumper wasn’t convincing in his speech.

“Well what are you 75% certain you saw?”

Jumper shook his head. “Ask me any other question but that.”

“Were our friends there?” Kayla asked. “Did you see Fardo, Kush, or Threeclack’s party?”

No answer.

“Jumper,” Alan said.

“What?”

Alan only stared at him. Obviously, Jumper wasn’t going to talk about what he thought he saw down there. That was disturbing. It wasn’t good to be hiding in a cave scared and disturbed. Alan decided to change the subject.

“Why did you lose the semi-finals game in the second polwar tournament?”

That did the trick. Jumper chuckled.

“Good one, man. Always the opportunist.”

It was nice to hear some laughter from Jumper. He had been so somber since he came down the mountainside. Alan was glad he lightened the mood some, despite Kayla’s confused glare.

The noise of the hovercraft resumed. It shortly rose back up above the embankment, causing the three of them to resume more cautious positions in the cave.

Then it did something unexpected. A large laser beam fired from the ship to the ground. The beam stayed on for a full minute.

The laser shut off and the ship moved out to the middle of the canyon. After hovering in place for a bit, it began moving westward, towards them. Then it stopped. The huge craft now hung in place straight out from the cave entrance, several hundred meters away.

“Don’t peek now,” Alan said. “They’re straight out so can see the cave clearly if they look over here.”

Casanova chose that moment to move to the mouth of the cave. The noise must have made him curious. Kayla tried to grab his leash, but was too late. He went down and sat there, just inside the cave entrance, staring out.

“Casanova!” Kayla said. “Come here!” But he only turned his head and looked at her curiously.

The alien hovercraft sound grew louder. It had evidently started moving towards the cave.

“Extat!” Jumper said. “They must have been thermal scanning. Everyone get back.”

Kayla frantically called Casanova again.

“No Kayla,” Alan said. “It’s better if he stays there now.”

The three of them moved up against the inside wall and stood as flat as they could against it. The noise outside the cave became deafening and a bright light shined inside the entrance, which illuminated the lower half of Casanova’s body. He seemed annoyed by that, and finally jumped up to the ledge next to Kayla. In another minute, the hover noise abated some, and then grew more distant in an eastward direction. Alan popped his head outside.

“They’re gone,” he said. “Back down the way they came. What do you want to do?”

Jumper didn’t answer. Kayla broke the silence.

“Let’s go have a look at what they were doing.” She held the alien laser outstretched in her arm. “I assume this is the direction this thing fires?”