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

Mick woke to Elias shaking his shoulder, hard. His memory blurred. There were too many voices in his head. “What?” He snarled, “What?” He couldn’t position himself in the now or imagine who this man was shaking him when he was exhausted, so tired.

“We have to go!” Elias yelled at Mick again. He had woken as if pulled up by his brain stem. Everything hurt. He wanted to share that pain with his tormentor, this kid.

A hard thudding brought both their heads around to see a bio-suited figure pounding on the exterior door with a torch, or maybe that was a stunner. “I know you took him in there.” The figure yelled, “Let me in this instant Elias or I will melt this fucking door open.”

Point of fact, it wasn’t possible to melt the door open with either a stunner or a torch. Elias just stared, “Rojer?” He yelled back.

“Of course it’s Rojer you, meat head. I know he’s in there, that blue light thing probably took him.”

“Shit!” Elias rubbed at his face, struggling to grasp what was real and what wasn’t.

“Who the hell is Rojer and why is he yelling?” Mick managed to sit up. His brain was sending him panic signals, that was the only way to interpret his mental din, now added to by this noisy bastard. Something solidified, they had to leave, now. The urgency was overwhelming.

“What the hell?” Mick shoved off his blankets and punched Elias in the shoulder, “We have to leave like right now!” He yelled.

Elias nodded. The sensation was intensifying. He reached over and unlocked the door. “Ass inside and shut the fuck up, Rojer.”

Mick gaped, air was rushing in. Air full of contaminants. Was Elias insane? He watched the bio-clad figure clamber up the stairs followed instantly by Elias hitting the power door close.

“Going to blow the bolts.” Elias roared, his head felt like it wanted to explode. Only escape remained.

“Where is he?” Rojer yelled, waving his weapon around the small interior space.

“Who?” Mick asked.

“Grab hold.” Elias yelled.

Mick and Rojer both grabbed for the arms of the closest chairs and fell more than sat in them.

“My father.” Rojer yelled again, trying to see where they were hiding him in the small cabin. There really wasn’t anywhere to hide anyone.

“Meet Rojer Kirsan, he’s obsessed with his father because of a genetic mistake. Meet Serla, Second of his Name. Now, shut the fuck up, Rojer/Serla et. al.”

Mick was confused. He really didn’t like an armed DireSec operative barging in. Then more thoughts landed. All three of them said, together. “They are sending explosives down the overhead air shafts. We’ll be crushed.” It was a vivid image and the message appeared whole in all of their heads at the same time.

Concussive blasts followed Elias pressing the switch to blow the bolts.

“Hope the fuck we can get through that debris. Fuckity, fuck, fuck.” Elias powered up the floater, talking as much to himself as to them.

Rojer had turned his chair to face the screens, his weapon tossed aside. “Are there more bugs and shit?” He asked, his voice excited. He activated a third of the floater’s weapons, his training kicking in despite his failure to understand what was happening.

“What are you doing?” New voices came over the loudspeaker.

“Get out of the way of the tunnel entrance.” Elias yelled out. We got bogies in the air shafts. They must have waited till dark.”

“Crap!” Jordy’s sleepy voice penetrated.

“I’m flying manual, Jordy.” Elias yelled. “Tell Thorne we are all on manual and his aggravating third son is in here with us looking for him. Don’t diddle with our molcoms, you got it? No auto pilot. Form up on us as we emerge, if we fucking emerge. Mick, Rojer use your weapons to try to blow the tops off that pile of debris. We will be scraping the ceiling here. Dark Gods my head hurts. No more fucking all day and evening classes, Mick. I don’t care who is pushing for them.”

The five DireSec floaters came to life in a rush as its occupants threw their sleeping platforms back to seat positions and tried to grasp what had changed. Ground operatives raced to throw themselves aboard as the hatches closed.

Jordy yelled out, “Do we have eyeballs on airshaft intrusions? Why didn’t we think about those? Fuck. Brad, is there enough room for that floater above that blast debris?”

Brad adjusted his exo, his systems racing to calculate the exact size and shape of the remains of the tunnel. “They will be scraping the ceiling.” He confirmed. “Nice calc, Elias.” He stretched, trying to remember Elias’ grades from his upper math classes. Nothing stood out in his memory.

Mick and Rojer were blowing off the sharper tops on the debris pile while Elias slowly navigated them through the maze of broken tunnel materials. He wanted to race. He couldn’t. He swore loud and viciously. How much time? His inner clock was ramping up. “Can’t wait on you guys any longer.” He yelled, “We are plowing through.”

The floater hit the tops of the debris to horrible crunchy sounds but kept going, accelerating. They could see the tunnel entrance. All three of them hunched as if trying to make the floater duck under the edge. What was behind them was gaining. “Faster Elias, max us out!” Rojer yelled.

The floater punched past the last of the debris and hit the opening at max available speed as the mountainside behind them exploded in massive spectacular violence. The tunnel collapsed. Elias shot for the dead center of the DireSec transport floaters who were ramping up their own speed. The small floater, heavily scraped up but fully functional, blew past them like they were standing still and angled upward. Elias’ training kicked in fully. Up, hard and fast.

“Check for enemy ships.” Elias yelled at Rojer and Mick. Both of them were fumbling with the scanning systems. It was one thing to use weapon systems, another to shift over to technical. Both instantly felt inadequate.

“Let me fly this, Elias. You take the technical.” Mick yelled out. “Too many screens and my brain isn’t quite right.”

They switched function without leaving their seats. Elias yelled out. “DireSec will fall in along side you. We are damaged, try to get in between and stay there. Listen to Jordy from the Command ship.”

“Right!” Mick could see the DireSec transports gaining behind them. He eased off slightly to allow them to be caught faster. A part of his brain acknowledged the illogic of assisting in being surrounded. Then the thought slid away as his total focus transferred to a flotilla of ships cresting the horizon.

“Shit. You seeing this Jordy?” Elias yelled again.

“We are. You won’t do auto, Elias?” Jordy asked.

“Can’t. We remain vulnerable to Molcom limiters.” Elias answered. This elicited a shocked look from Rojer and equally startled comments inside the Command ship as the rationale gelled into understanding.

“Right.” Jordy nodded. He could understand that fear. But, Elias was ranked out, or was he? The thought disturbed. Was the situation truly endangering Elias’ right to molcom safety? Truth or paranoia? “Where are we going, Elias?” He asked.

Thorne was up enough to glare at the displays. Casting had taken a lot out of him earlier the day before. What the hell was Rojer doing on that floater and how had he managed to get inside? Irritation, the most common sensation he felt about everything related to Rojer, washed through him. By rights his son should be voced out somewhere, nowhere near anything important. Yet, here he was again, dead center in the middle of the action. He was a screw up. Why Mael had forced Rojer onto his personal security staff continued to rankle. The two of them, Rojer and Mael, had a long-standing antipathy towards each other, yet, Mael insisted Rojer was essential. Another mystery. Thorne rubbed his forehead. He needed more analgesic and to eat again. He hated the thought of both.

Mick was staring at the horizon where more ships than he thought could reasonably exist were altering direction toward them. His only thought was away. But, there had to be a place.

“Jordy, whose ships are those?” He asked.

“Most are running national identifiers and if you turn on channel twelve you can hear their demands for all of us to land as we are in their air space.”

Mick grunted. Fuck that. “And, the rest?”

“Tule Soc. Seems they got to the head-of-state. Temporary alliance.”

“What about my mother?” Mick said, scowling. “My parents had nothing to do with any of this.”

“We know.” Jordy answered.

It wasn’t really an answer though, just an acknowledgement.

“We need a destination, Mick.”

Mick was about to throw the question back to Jordy when his mind filled with an image of an island in the middle of nowhere. He looked over to find Roger and Elias looking back. “Where is it?” He asked aloud.

“Citadel.” Elias and Rojer answered together. They all felt the same thing, that was the destination but the decision didn’t come from any of them, it came from the presence hidden in plain site.

“Citadel? Are you crazy?” Jordy argued back.

“Calculate our distance to leaving this airspace, max speed of our slowest transport.” Mael’s tired-sounding voice filled the speakers. “Jordy, where are our reinforcements? Redirect on an oblique path, you know the direction. Get more. Get as many friendlies as you can. Prepare to be fired upon. Anya says to make absolutely sure we all guard Mick’s floater. It must not be hit or catch fire at any cost, even if we have to sacrifice others.” It was an extraordinary thing to say. Jordy blanched.

“Mind telling us why?” Thorne asked the question every DireSec operative on the Command ship was asking. Sacrifice ships and operatives for this small, damaged floater?

“There is a She aboard.” Mael finally answered. “We don’t want to accidentally complete the Lamentation of the Beloved before we know who She is.”

The only people not frowning in confusion were the Ba’Neesh and Xasper. They were nodding.

There wasn’t time to comment as all six ships started receiving fire. The distance was too great for the conventional weapons array Mick and Elias had been using to fire back. That left their larger armed drones and Mick yelling, “Where the hell are the Vrill activated weapons? Piece of shit. Who decides what needs to be on these floaters anyway, the Wuss King Thorne?”

Rojer snarled although he was in half agreement with the wretched young man. Their weapons were small and inadequate to this type of encounter. Wuss King. The name tickled some part of his psyche.

“Can the blue hand do some fly swatting?” Mael asked aloud. If they didn’t do something, they wouldn’t escape this airspace.

Both Elias and Mick stared over at the MagC, the Vrill magnifier. The gauge read three-quarters power. They shrugged at each other.

“Can you swat these ships?” Elias asked aloud while highlighting six of the lead ships closing in on them on the interior holoscreen above his chair.

“Who are you talking to?” Rojer said.

Their MagC made a sound. The MagC’s on all five of the other DireSec ships made similar sounds.

“Shit.” Elias said, echoed by the chaotic noises coming from the Command ship as their machine came to life on its own.

“What did you do?” Jordy yelled. “Our MagC is ramping up in spite of being set on low.

“Exactly.” Elias cringed. “Maybe we should all duck?” He suggested.

Energy leaped from MagC to MagC and then outward looking like an eerily reminiscent blue arm with a hand with long, too-many-jointed fingers. It balled up as the enemy ships started to bank away. The fist hit the last ship in the row and then snapped back off. That ship hit the next ship and like airborne dominoes they all watched the expanding mayhem as if it were in slow motion. She made it look easy to calculate the likely path of fleeing ships well enough to take out six, Elias’ six.

The MagC’s powered back down and laughter echoed through each ship, coming from the area of the device. It was the kind of laughter that made the skin crawl, a true and likely cruel pleasure in killing. They were trapped watching transport loads of men die in spectacular mid-air crashes. It was the kind of view that silenced and then created a kind of dark admiration. The enemy hadn’t stood a chance, overwhelming ship numbers or not.

Thorne, was fixated on only one thing, The Lamentation of the Beloved. It gelled. Mael’s warning was explicit. Don’t let the Lamentation begin. All of Thorne’s priorities shifted. Protect the center, at all costs, protect the center. Finally, he understood the stakes.

The six DireSec floaters altered direction to the closest border into open International territory. Their chasers were no longer firing; they were back far enough that the shooting stopped. It was clear they were being escorted out of the airspace in lieu of attempts to land them or bring them down.

The immediacy of the situation eased. Mick sagged back. He noted he had slept maybe three hours tops. That coupled to his lack of sleep the night before and a day of high stress defense, left him beyond drained. He knew he should find his own stunner, it was somewhere in the tangle of his blanket, now mostly on the floor. And, who was this Rojer guy who was now peeling out of the bio-suit to reveal a relatively young man of spectacular beauty, scowling. A Kirsan. Son of that Thorne guy with the name weirdness of the day before? Rojer’s stunner was up on the ledge of the curved counter that was fixed into the leading edge of the floater, the counter from which all of the controls were accessible by touch in front of each seat.

Elias felt equally drained. Mick’s choice to run classes well into the night had left him exhausted. He’d heard questions passing between mostly Mick and Brad and sometimes Mael and once or twice Jordy about this class detail or that. It was a cram session on steroids. How far had he gotten, five or six years in one marathon session? Somewhere in the midst of it he had lost his concern about Mick learning. What would he have done if thrust into the Order’s world of Soek and Ba’Neesh? He didn’t know that he would have chosen to steal another guys class material but it wasn’t a bad choice. Mick was treating this entire thing like a game he needed to learn fast. What remained shocking was how fast he absorbed it all. It was like hearing a starving man eat.

Rojer folded the bio-suit and looked around for somewhere to stuff it.

“Downstairs.” Mick pointed at the trapdoor.

Rojer glared at him with narrowed eyes, suspicious. Mick had the idea this mode was Rojer on normal so he just shrugged. Rojer glanced at his weapon and then at the damage to Mick’s face. It was clear the boy had been in a pretty good fight but his attitude was relaxed to the point of melt. The kid clearly wasn’t afraid of either Rojer or Elias. Even Rojer could guess he was missing critical information for that to be true. He gathered up his bio-suit and climbed down the ladder to shove the suit in on top of other gear in a locker.

He used the facilities while trying to figure out what had brought him out of his perimeter guard position, telling him to run into the tunnel. It was illogical. He hadn’t seen his father yet the impetus that his father was in danger felt so real. He scowled. Everyone knew about his genetic fuck up, his heightened to the point of easy paranoia reactions around his father. What had triggered him? He did a quick security examination of all of the lockers but found nothing out of place. Everything looked standard issue and properly stowed. No Ba’Neesh. Wasn’t everyone saying there was a Ba’Neesh on this ship? If so, where?

Elias had the floater following the directional advice from the Command ship. While technically they were not on auto, until that ship changed course they were flying level in a straight line. While he had to sit at the controls, there wasn’t anything special to do.

“What’s in your head?” Elias said to Mick, sitting across from him with a glazed expression.

“You mean beyond the absence of sleep, the shock of wakening not knowing where the hell I am, the realization I’m still in this fucked-up situation and voices that shouldn’t be there. She is in there.”

“Me too.” Elias understood exactly. “She wakened me. It was like she squeezed my brain in those blue hands with the extra long fingers. Gods my brain hurts. Vrill squeeze? That should be a new developmental weapon.”

“Pressure.” Mick nodded, watching the new guy Rojer step away from the trapdoor and shut it so none of them would fall into the hole. “How about you, Rojer. I’m Mick Huxley. I take it you may or may not be the son of that arrogant boss guy who likes to threaten and posture and glower.”

Rojer stiffened and was about to yell at the younger man, barely old enough to be a full-fledged teenager, when the words sunk in. Only his counselor ever really talked about his father to his face, everyone but Mael was too scared of him. “How about me what?” Rojer answered, processing Mick’s description of his father for future examination, in private.

Mick noticed that Rojer was impeccably dressed. His clothing was similar to Elias but the patch on his upper chest was different. Not DireSec? His clothing also looked expensive in a way Mick knew meant private provisions. “How about what is in your head right now?” Mick answered as Rojer found the non-broken table seat adjacent to Mick and sat down, leaving his weapon out but he avoided playing with it like a thug.

“What do you mean?” Rojer couldn’t decide what to feel or think. He didn’t want his father disappointed in him again. Leaving his assigned guard post in the middle of the night wouldn’t exactly please the man.

“What is in your head?” Elias repeated.

On the Command ship the conversation was captivating everyone although they had already screened it from the other transport ships. This was not battle sequence info that was an essential share.

“I don’t know.” Rojer hedged, his gaze wandering to note a full backpack under the counter at Mick’s feet, the broken table dangling from the seat no one was using, bruising on Elias’ knuckles and his somewhat unkempt appearance. The intent look both of them were giving him was upsetting. They knew something about what was wrong inside his head.

“You do know.” Mick said, one hand up to play with something hidden by his t-shirt.

“Yeah.” Elias nodded. “Give, you bastard.”

Mick discovered he trusted Elias’ opinion and for Elias to call Rojer a bastard added some confirmation to Mick’s first impression, the pretty guy was an ass. What had brought him into the floater? He could imagine both who and how, but why had Kiena collected Rojer, because he was beginning to suspect she was assembling Soek like pieces in a puzzle with him in the first position and Elias in second.

Rojer felt trapped. In spite of his family connections most Order-born avoided him, he had a reputation and it wasn’t a good one. He knew that everyone but Mael thought he was a broken elitist asshole and he had tormented Mael for years, before Mael became The Turtle. All of this added up to a rather sour life with few friends and mostly uneasy temporary companions. “I don’t know.” He hedged.

“Stop being a wuss.” Elias’ tone sharpened. “Tell us what ran you into a likely contaminated area to pound on the floater door.”

Thorne and Jordy both nodded.

“I had to find my father.” Rojer blurted. “I was certain the blue thing had him inside the floater and I had to save him.”

Mick snorted before saying. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“And, now? What’s in your head now?” Elias pressed.

“It’s gone.” Rojer admitted. “The pressure, I mean. I looked downstairs and he couldn’t be here. I know that. I mean…” Rojer paused and straightened up, “Director Thorne?” He asked aloud.

“I’m listening.” Thorne answered, trying to lean in the seat in a way that was resting while his brain was tightly focused on Rojer and this conversation.”

“See.” Rojer didn’t answer his father, he continued talking to Elias and Mick. “He isn’t here. I knew it even when I was running but I was still running and I felt compelled.” Rojer knew this was important, his father and Mael would need to know this stuff even if or particularly when it was embarrassing to him personally.

“Right. And, what’s in your head now?” Elias said again.

Jordy and Thorne shared a look. Elias was pressing hard. What was he getting at?

“I…I’m taken.” The two words tumbled out.

Jordy gasped.

Mael had made his seat upright so he could listen more closely with less risk of falling asleep. At his side Anya stood, her expression tight. “Right.” Mael said aloud.

“What does he mean, he’s taken?” Thorne turned on Mael.

“He means,” Mick interrupted before Mael could answer, “She’s collected him from among the Soek in your group. I would guess he’s as stuck in here as we are.”

“Collected?” Thorne was frowning.

“That’s how I’ve been thinking of it this morning, around my yawns and my jumbled brains. I feel collected, stuck here with some of my own wishes and desires and that blue hand gripping my spine just below where the spine goes into my skull. She has me. Of course, she’s had me for years. I got used to her light but constant touch until I mostly forgot it was there. But, when she wants stuff, it isn’t light anymore. It’s like a fist tightening around your brain. Her words in your mouth, her desires through your body. We are so screwed in here.”

It was the longest any of them had heard Mick speak. He continued, “She calls herself Kiena, but that’s not her name, that’s a lie.”

“Neeshatari.” Anya said aloud. Her word set off an echo with the word repeated by the many voices of the Ba’Neesh. “Neeshatari! Neeshatari!”

(Welcome back! Ahh, the Neeshatari. Such fun. Yes, Rojer is the ass he sounds like. ::grins::)