The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Two ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

Germany’s Minister of Special Projects within the KSA, Kommando Strategische Aufklärung, also known as the Strategic Surveillance Command, woke to the loud blaring of his departmental alarm system. He pushed himself out of the bed’s comfort as his domestic partner growled at him. He couldn’t blame her; the alarm was designed to be so unpleasant it could not be ignored. He sealed the soundproof transparent aluminum door to his study office and punched the desk button that would silence the sound now echoing throughout his residence.

“What?” Eric Felsen dropped into his ergonomically correct chair and reflexively began his routine of muscular stretching. It was clear he wouldn’t be receiving more sleep.

“There’s been an incident.” The voice of Command Security Lead Arjan Mazine spoke without inflection. The absence of any spin in the man’s voice coupled to Arjan separating the conversation from any Command surveillance brought Eric more fully awake. Tule Soc. His fingers flew across hidden sensors in his glassy desktop, passing through more than a dozen security checks in the process, before a large holographic display appeared to float at eye-level just above the desktop. The audio on the display had been actively silenced he noted, so what he saw was straight forward surveillance footage. In the span of seconds, the recording showed a city electronically wiped out.

The display showed him the event was less than an hour old. His guts froze. It had been a few years of ominous silence, a standoff between the Order and Tule Soc in a conflict spanning more than two centuries officially and unofficially.

“Any hints of this in intel?” He knew if there had been that Arjan would have led with a report. Still, he had to confirm that this event had not been telegraphed by any unusual activity.

“We are checking with renewed vigor.” Arjan answered, “But, this appears to be isolated.”

“Vrill trace?” Eric rubbed at his face, he needed strong coffee or a similar stimulant.

“Momentary spike only at the location of damage.”

“Have we traced the Channels?”

“No. The strike came through a domestic network path as if the grid were used to locate the generators. The path appears to initiate in a residential neighborhood known for its quiet disposition. No nearby cemeteries. Nothing.” There was the sound of Arjan clearing his throat. Eric stilled. “Sir, DireSec is prepping to fly.”

“They are chasing too?” Eric frowned. “It has to be one of theirs, right?”

“Not if they are chasing, Sir.”

Not if they are chasing. The sentence reverberated in Eric’s mind with terrible weight. If Tule Soc and DireSec were both chasing it suggested a worse-case-scenario, a Wild Ba’Neesh. It shouldn’t be possible, he had teams scouring the surface of the planet scanning for Vrill trace. He knew DireSec had similar equipment and teams. Two overlapping passes which in theory should find all of them except after the first three captured too many years ago to count, no other Ba’Neesh had been located. It had been decades once the large facilities maintained by the Order and Tule Soc had been clearly identified, the number of its occupants reasonably well known. Tule Soc had allowed itself to believe the absence of trace meant they had found all of them even when rumors persisted of non-identified groups in hiding. Rumors Tule Soc found impossible to verify. The alternative suggested that the Ba’Neesh had developed a way to defeat the equipment.

“Do we have formal contact with DireSec yet?” Eric pulled off the tiny device he wore inside his left ear. His naked torso altered, glyphs flowing across his skin as if released from prison. He could feel them pulling, rising up from his skin’s surface. They always did this when he released his Vrill blocker, the device inhibiting his personal display, a WiBo Tech device. He moaned knowing his office feeds didn’t show visuals unless he pressed down on the pickup and the audio was set to convey only words, not ambient sounds.

“No Sir. So far no one is talking. We saw a single secure message directed toward Citadel within a minute of the event, then nothing. They won’t pull out OrderSec until they have better intel. Likely Citadel will be casting at any time, Identifiers and maybe Seekers.”

“What have we got?” Eric massaged his glyphs. Tule Soc had taken their Ba’Neesh in a different direction, one more hospitable to its human overseers. Casting gave the Soek and Ba’Neesh too much personal power so Vrill use was developed to work through machinery controllable by humans. It left Eric handicapped yet it removed dependency on the erratic Ba’Neesh. Better in his hands than theirs. He believed in Tule Soc’s approach, even though he understood if they ever learned he was actually a Soek they would do their best to eliminate him with prejudice.

“The trail leads to a residence, to a bedroom in that residence. We are pulling data on the residents and rechecking for associations that possibly were missed.”

Eric slipped the device back inside his ear, his glyphs vanishing from view. As always he could feel his Vrill struggling to defeat the device. He forced himself to breathe deeply, calming his inner dissonance. He was Soek with all trace carefully removed, it was the only way he could be trusted by the hierarchy of Tule Soc.

“My aircraft is ready?”

“I have sent a vehicle to move you directly to the airfield.” Arjan answered. “I will join you there. I have instructed staff to provide properly caffeinated refreshments.”

Eric knew that Arjan would join him under his formal role as the Director of Command Security, Arjan’s association with Tule Soc nearly as carefully hidden as Eric’s true nature. The duality of their secret lives often provided Eric with some amusement, in a grim sort of way. He could never be sure how much Arjan knew about the Ba’Neesh issue. It was enough that each knew the other was of Tule Soc, a higher alignment of purpose beyond their official jobs. It created trust.

Perisee poked Lemista hard enough to elicit a glare. “We’re not allowed to do anything while the aircraft is in the air.” Perisee reminded her.

“Rules!” Lemista snorted, an odd sound coming from the beautifully dressed woman walking demurely from the tram coach to the aircraft. Her walk was perfect, as was her appearance. Perisee, on the other hand, managed to look disheveled even under the tight programming of the Vrill-based hologram that masked her true appearance.

Both looked human. Neither radiated the distinct Vrill signature of a Ba’Neesh but none of the human or Soek males near them got close enough to be within easy reach of their very real Ba’Neesh horns and antlers. Their appearance was an illusion carefully maintained so both of them could pass unnoticed by both surveillance and human observation. The devices used to perfect these illusions were top sellers of the Directorate or more precisely, of WitchBoard Technology, the primary technology corporation owned by the Directorate. Humans didn’t respond with fear toward what they couldn’t see. Although the Ba’Neesh use of the devices was not their intended use, most were sold to persons of significance and government individuals who used the power of the devices to change their appearance for security purposes.

“I detest these things.” Perisee said in Neesh knowing the security men nearby couldn’t understand her. DireSec had tried for nearly two-hundred years to parse the Neesh language but it wasn’t possible. What they discovered was that what humans or Soek heard was only a portion of what the Ba’Neesh communicated amongst themselves. They could guess at a few hundred partial words and get some of them right. Jordy had heard Perisee complain about the masking devices before so he recognized her complaint from the fragments of her speech.

“But, there will be goring and blood and explosions. Such fun.” Lemista countered. “I heard Jordy say they took out an entire city. I’m so excited I could eat old cook’s gruel and smile.” Both Ba’Neesh laughed.

Jordy Greiger, Head of Directorate Security, DireSec, gestured the two into the aircraft, staying well clear of their currently invisible head arrays. They had special seats that allowed them protective head space while still allowing them to touch each other. He waited respectfully until they were seated, then he moved forward to deploy the restraint devices that would keep them secure during the flight. Only a fool would fly with unrestrained Ba’Neesh. One of them poked him. It hurt. He gave Perisee a pointed look. “Save your fun for later, Perisee.” He said firmly. She giggled.

It looked odd on the human face masking her true appearance. He wished he could see her properly, it was much easier to judge a Ba’Neesh temper directly, but, he had men aboard unaware of the Ba’Neesh presence. He much preferred not to have to adjust the memories of any of his men should they realize the nature of the two women. The Ba’Neesh tolerated his attentions, snorting softly to ingest his male scent. He ignored this too. You didn’t work intimately with Ba’Neesh without becoming well educated on their natures. A little lust wasn’t dangerous, usually.

Jordy’s second, Elias Cross, waited until his boss was clear of the Ba’Neesh before he gained his attention and the two of them sat in seats immediately adjacent to the Ba’Neesh but well separated from the rest of the crew who were now loading in to the rear of the aircraft. “Eric is airborne.” Elias said. Both Soek knew that Eric meant Eric Felsen, head of German Command Security and far more importantly, of Tule Soc.

“How do we interpret that?” Jordy asked.

“They would chase their own, but they wouldn’t have any old enough to wreck this kind of havoc, would they?” Elias offered, knowing Perisee and Lemista were actively listening. Both Ba’Neesh nodded. It was well understood that Tule Soc prevented the Ba’Neesh in its care to age into full memory, it was how they maintained control, or thought they did. After a century of such nonsense both Ba’Neesh could guess that Tule Soc’s Ba’Neesh’s mutative processes would be correcting the problem from the inside out. It promised great fun and it was difficult for each of them to restrain their growing enthusiasm.

Jordy sensed their rising excitement and reached into his flight bag for the snacks he carried, knowing dried meat would keep the two of them occupied for some time. They snatched at the treats and happily twined their legs together across the aisle. Jordy deployed the privacy screen that offered a distortion field between his men and the section he and Elias shared with the Ba’Neesh. They simply couldn’t act like humans for any length of time and both were attractive enough for his men to watch them. It was best to make that difficult even though he could guess at the gossip the screening would create. He knew he would be lucky to survive the trip with any of his men’s memories intact, except for Elias. Both he and Elias were rated to live without limiters.

He could guess the Tule Soc team wouldn’t include any Ba’Neesh, they would trust their machinery and their mules, the low-level Soek they bred purely to interface with their Vrill-based businesses. Two different strategies and likely two different objectives as well.

“We are reasonably certain the adopted boy is a Soek?” Jordy played with his external device, an invisible device that clung to his right arm and could project a holographic screen or a privacy bubble and flat display. The distortion field allowed him to use the holographic screen so that the Ba’Neesh could see what he saw. A series of images showed a young man, although looking too young for his acknowledge age, another Soek indicator. The latest footage was a back-feed viewer from a life-size screen system. Newly installed the data reflected, a birthday gift from his adoptive parents. They saw the boy sprawled on his floor and behind the boy, a hole. All of them leaned forward but the hole remained just that. It was clear there was something between the back of the boy and the rest of his room. It simply appeared and with it, the hole absorbed light.

They listened to a one-sided conversation of the boy demanding help with his game. “You checked his speech for Vrill?” Jordy asked Elias as the footage continued. Then they saw an arc of light hitting the carpet, the boy flinching and turning to face the hole, complaining.

Perisee snorted, “He’s really rude, isn’t he?”

“What is that hole?” Lemista poked her holographic overlaid finger at Jordy’s display.

It was the question. Almost as soon as she asked the question the event happened and their access to surveillance died with it. What was the hole? They had expected to see one or several Ba’Neesh, or at least some functional Soek. What they were seeing was a typical Ba’Neesh orphan, a male offspring left in the care of humans, a practice so ancient it defied memory.

“Stupid Soek.” Perisee announced clearly. “He thinks he is human.” She laughed.

“Sir, there is unskilled Vrill caught on his words asking for help.” Elias reported.

“Yes, but where is the Ba’Neesh controlling him?” Lemista continued, using her finger to direct Jordy’s display back and forth over a series of images from a variety of devices. The boy was uneventful. To all of their eyes he looked boring. “He has no skills, no training. All he does is play games.” She snorted.

“And talk to a hole with Vrill-enhanced speech.” Elias added.

Jordy played a lot of online games himself and he knew Elias did too as they often teamed up in online environments to kick butt. He said nothing aloud, just shared a hasty glance with Elias. So, they were dealing with a raw Soek? Aloud he said, “A raw Soek and a hole?”

“Intel is showing the attack flowed through the house electronic network first. It took seconds.” Elias, who had a gift in analysis had been running scenarios for most of the hour since the event happened. “We have not identified the secondary target yet.” He announced. “But, with all of their surveillance down, the biggest banks and data systems in the city could be taken and we wouldn’t know it. Minimal function of emergency systems should be coming online in the next twenty minutes.”

“How soon do we get out of this flying box?” Lemista asked, a whine threatening her tone.

“Two-hour flight. I can provide ample refreshments.” Jordy answered, keeping his tone flat. In some ways Ba’Neesh were a lot like annoying children, until the moment they became devastatingly dangerous. He had to manage both sides with equal care.

“You know Jordy, this looks similar to Kirsan’s cast in San Francisco. Similar electronic damage. Authorities there were digging out for more than two years to restore total function.”

“That was a long time ago, Elias. And, do we register anyone casting near the event time?”

Elias shook his head. “No detection of a cast but they can be hidden. Channel use is a whole other thing. Kirsan was using over a thousand highly trained and focused Channels for that cast. That kind of activity today would register anywhere in the world. Yet, there’s nothing, a tiny Vrill spike at the moment of the event and then nothing.”

“Nothing but a hole.” Lemista sounded rather delighted with the mystery. She kept poking Jordy’s holograph as if it might magically reveal something in the hole. “I know she’s in there. Your equipment sucks, Jordy. It should be able to feel into the dark. Why doesn’t it feel into the dark?”

Jordy captured her question knowing it was exactly this type of statement that fueled WitchBoard Technologies cutting edge research. Feel. She. The Ba’Neesh was saying there was another Ba’Neesh present, as invisible as she was. That also caught his attention. Someone using a WiBo device?

“Run an analysis to see if someone is using our tech.” Jordy ordered Elias who happily pulled out his old-fashioned looking slate to summon it to life. It only looked old. He could damn near run the world from the slate, giving sufficient power and an aircraft had no such reserves. He kept it to a standard analysis. It was tricky looking for signatures while trying to hide the search from other snoopers both from Tule Soc and interested unaffiliated governments who had a healthy suspicion of any peculiar world events. Given the opportunity, some of those governments would happily destroy every Ba’Neesh and Soek on the planet and to that end they were constantly seeking intel. And, those connected to the Ba’Neesh and Soek worked equally hard to prevent that intel from leaking out. It took several long minutes before Elias announced, with some confidence, “No trace of our tech.”

While that was good news on some fronts, it deepened the mystery on others. How could a Ba’Neesh hide in plain sight?

“Run every spectrum you can from that existing footage.” Jordy fiddled with his own equipment running the same analysis while the two low-speaking Ba’Neesh, watched. It was one of those moments when he needed to understand Neesh and couldn’t. What were they seeing or thinking that he was missing? He knew he could ask, and they could lie or ignore him. It was doubtful they would tell him, not if they thought it might make things less fun for them. He groaned. Ba’Neesh fun, the world was never ready for such mischief.

“I have something, I’m not sure what.” Elias said, several steps ahead of Jordy. He transferred the analysis to Jordy’s larger display. They rolled the footage again. If anything, it was worse. The filter was able to see through the hole or it literally made the hole invisible too showing that the room was empty except for the boy. They all watched as out of nothing an arc of Vrill darted down to physically ignite a fire, melt plastic and smolder. All four of them recognized what had excited Elias. It wasn’t the absence of image as all light will vanish under the right filters. It was the Vrill. Elias slowed it down and blew it up to reveal a cascade of symbols cast as light, for effect. There was no reason for the Vrill to be made visible as a light effect, except, as Jordy reasoned, they were peering into the room of an online gamer with a serious hobby addiction. The lighting effect was unnecessary drama. The boy was being played with.

“Shit!” Jordy said, pulling back, his stomach now complaining loudly.

Perisee laughed. “I need to learn that one.” She announced and proceeded to try to arc visible Vrill toward the carpet in the aisle of the aircraft.

“No!” Jordy and Elias both leapt up. Elias to block the aisle from the view of the team, Jordy to hand Perisee a blood lollipop. It was an instant diversion from her attempts to replicate what was obviously a new Ba’Neesh trick. The two Ba’Neesh sucked happily on their suckers watching the Soek trying to strategize a way to prevent them from Ba’Neeshing the aircraft. Perisee leaned forward to hand-smack Lemista, a gesture they had picked up from observation of old human footage now being converted to Vrill-based capture making it tolerable for the Ba’Neesh to watch it, which some of them did obsessively and then they shared the content when they slept, although the non-Ba’Neesh around them had only a sketchy idea of how deep the memory-sharing went when they appeared so passively asleep.

Jordy knew he’d been suckered, literally. He groaned, they still had a full hour to fly. Was bringing these two along really necessary?