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

Mick woke restless. He had a low-grade, persistent header coupled to the uncomfortable feeling that Aenor may have assigned specific Ba’Neesh to watch him. Every time he walked across the cave he had a shadow. Finally, he snarled at them, “I don’t need a babysitter, okay? So, I have some gnarly memory turd lodged in my skull. It isn’t going to pop like a zit and trust me, if it does then what are you supposed to do? Protect my brain from my brain like how?”

Steffi, the taller of the two current guards shrugged in a fair estimation of a human shrug. “I told to not let you alone, fuck Mick, so you not alone.”

Mick glared at Aenor but she just gave him an indifferent look. His concerns didn’t bother her. When it became clear that she had no intention of rescinding her order, Mick got up into Steffi’s face and said, “Back off, Steffi. Nothing wrong with your eyeballs, right? Watching is with eyes, not with me tripping over you. I don’t want to know you are hovering. Okay?”

“Watching is more than eyes.” Aenor said from across the cave. Truth was, she was feeling restless too. “We understand nothing of enemy. We not spy. We not look. We afraid to find out. I tire of Soek fear.”

Mick couldn’t agree more. He was tired of feeling trapped. He felt like the answer had to be using their Vrill, but that made them vulnerable to the tracer devices. His chin lifted. “I say we go to our perimeter and see if we really can make it into a weapon that is useful, the Vrill, I mean.”

“You have a plan?” Elias asked. They decided to leave the packs in the cave with Mick and Elias rigging tool belts to carry their knives, torches and weapons. It was hard enough keeping up with the increasingly agile Ba’Neesh without the added weight. Both of them knew the Ba’Neesh held back when the Soek were with them. It was something both Soek were intent on improving, their own woodland and terrain fitness.

“An idea.” Mick said as they prepared, “You know I hate vegging on my butt letting Tule Soc have the initiative. It’s just not my style. Aenor is right, we have all these ideas and we are too scared to try them out for fear of registering on the Vrill tracers. It’s like being constipated. It’s super stupid. Aenor is right, we are letting fear limit us. We need to do something about that. Besides, we will be beyond the perimeter in a new area tonight, fresh territory.”

“I’m in.” Elias answered.

The Ba’Neesh, as usual, were already waiting to leave. The last hour before true dark was the worst time for them. Mick could guess that without having the Soek with them, they would roam earlier, risking more exposure. What he couldn’t determine was if Elias’ rule to wait for full dark was really the advantage he suggested.

The drones, he knew, could fly in any light so all of this was a nod to human nocturnal behaviors. Elias was targeting the men controlling the drones. Those were operatives, wouldn’t they hunt at night? Would he in their place? The answer was, he would, particularly if the drones had night vision capability and Elias said some did.

There was no way to know if the Ba’Neesh were actually nocturnal hunters. These Ba’Neesh had been in the woods just over a week and their behavior was being shaped by Mick and Elias. He hated when his thoughts circled like this and he was as ready to run as the Ba’Neesh when Elias finally gave the signal.

An hour later they were in an area of the Reserves closer toward both the river and the still distant lights. Elias said that likely the ground patrols were thicker closer to the facility and spreading out as they advanced.

“My idea is to try for the Vrill tracers.” Mick said. “All of us know what the pack ones look like and Elias has the visual on a drone kind. Aenor, can you receive that image from Elias?”

She seemed to think the transfer might be improved by her putting her hands on either side of Elias’ head. He eyed Mick with some regret, expecting another nasty header.

“You think exact image, Elias.” Aenor ordered. “At me.”

Elias took a deep breath and tried to relax. He built up what a Vrill tracer drone looked like in his head. He discovered it was surprisingly difficult to do. He had to think about every detail in order to make it real. He focused and tried to send the image toward Aenor on Vrill. Since he’d never tried that before he wasn’t sure what he should feel.”

“Stop chatter thinking. Shut up.” She snapped at him. “Image only.” This went on for several minutes before she dropped her hands. “Soek heads full of garbage.” She stated, shaking her head. “I have image. May or may not be right, he insecure. He think it is like this, not know. Must learn to see better.”

Mick shared a glance with Elias, commiserating.

Aenor turned on Mick. “Okay, I have visual maybe Vrill trace device in air. Now what?”

“We weaponize a Seeker like we accidentally did with Mael.” Mick said. “This device we target recognizes trace, that suggests to me that it has some Vrill too. I say we seek both the visual and the Vrill and when we find it, we add to the existing Vrill.”

“Internal slag?” Elias grinned.

“It won’t have a sigil, right?” Mick said. “No defenses?”

“Tule Soc doesn’t use sigil work in the way the Order does.” Elias said.

“We need an exit strategy.” Mick said. “When we seek it, likely it will triangulate on us here at the same time we locate it. If it were my device it would report to some central handler, right Elias? That means, while we focus on one, they will respond with force to our spike in Vrill noted by the same machine we are targeting. Maybe they will send other tracers, maybe operatives, maybe aircraft. We have to think they will come after us hard.”

“We need to run in all directions.” Elias said, “diffuse our heat signatures and make them choose who to follow. If they are forced to using tracers to follow us it would require one for each pair of us going in each direction. I think it is less likely they have that many tracers able to put into play that fast. If they use heat signals the woods are full of deer, we have seen them in hunts, look like deer running. If it works, watch for opportunity to laser down drones or aircraft. Change directions and go to high ground to watch. Teams of two. Don’t get caught. Meet up back at the bent tree in two hours or so. Okay?”

Everyone nodded. Mick discovered he was teamed with Aenor and her team mate Gisella while Elias was paired with Beate and Dinnah.

Aenor did the Seeker while everyone chained up behind her, Mick and Elias included. For a long moment there was nothing and then the Ba’Neesh, in unison, lifted their heads to ring sniff. Vrill. The ring sniff gave them a direction. Elias stepped forward to put his hand on Aenor’s mount when the first Seeker failed. He drew a second Seeker and aimed at the nature of the device as he knew it. Its shape, design, intention, users. It was all there. Almost instantly a device roared toward them and so shocked them that the chain broke with Ba’Neesh yelling out trying to see the device almost upon them in the visual.

Mick grabbed Aenor and Gisella by the mounts and yelled. “Again, Aenor. Duplicate Elias’ Seeker now! And, this time we go for it.”

The Ba’Neesh scrambled to return to their former positions as Aenor sent again, hands hitting horns awkwardly as the device appeared vividly with shocking suddenness. “I see.” Aenor yelled out. “Die you fuck trace.” She flowed juice toward it, toward it’s Vrill, in the last second recognizing a familiar taste to that Vrill. Flowing into that taste, knowing the bone of the Ba’Neesh housed in the device, trapped. “Freedom!” She screamed. The device blew outward.

“Mick yelled out. “Now, we run.”

Aenor and Gisella dropped to fours and he chased them, hearing the crashing of many hooves all around him and then that faded and there was only Aenor glaring over her shoulder at him and sending him a look that could only mean, faster you slow Soek.

He forgot to count. He struggled to breathe. He watched the Ba’Neesh’s radiance as his guide. He kept on until his legs gave and he crumpled with no idea where he was. He gasped. Aenor returned and gestured silently with her head. Further.

This time they moved quietly heading upward into a distant part of the escarpment far from their home cave. As his heart settled down he noted that both Ba”Neesh had their large ears swiveling, listening. They got to where the trees thinned out and he followed them down onto their bellies, each aimed in a different direction. In the moonlight there was movement in the air, too big for bats.

Mick reached over to grab one of Aenor’s horns. “I’ve got drones.” He said, calling up the laser to blast it. They got three more before Aenor pulled them up to walk another mile to another tall spear, to watch. They could see bursts of light here and there. And, something bigger went down in a flaming ball. Mick grinned. Someone got an aircraft. He counted ten other hits. They kept moving, shifting direction. He was lost. When Aenor finally stopped he was exhausted but elated. He looked around and realized they were at the bent tree. Others trickled in until everyone was accounted for.

“I hate to say this,” Mick said. “But, on the way back to the cave we have to hunt. No Vrill.”

“Need food.” Aenor agreed. “Hunger strong. Vrill weak.”

It seemed far further than the way out had been but the Ba’Neesh managed enough kills on the way to give everyone dinner. They crept into the cave as daylight eased up over the woods, a last glance showing a dozen small fires with smoke trails in the distance.

“Weapon hard work.” Aenor dropped to the floor. Mick fell next to her.

“Yeah.” He said, “Probably need double team of four or five Ba’Neesh for that kind of assault. “We won’t surprise them the same way again though.”

They decided five teams might work. No one argued. They struggled to get the food onto the fire and only roused enough to eat before collapsing into one huge pile.

Much as they wanted to see what they had done. Elias said there would be traps placed near all of the kills expecting just that kind of curiosity. They stayed close to the cave for the next three nights, just hunting.

Aenor told all of them that the tracer had some of a Beloved within, now burned. She told Mick she wanted to burn the rest of the Beloved so it could complete the ritual. He didn’t understand this ritual fully. But, the intensity of her desire was clear. What he did now know was that every Tule Soc Vrill tracer device had bones inside of it. Tule Soc was using Ba’Neesh bones to hunt the Soek, its own kind. It made an ugly sense.

It also gave him new ideas. Iiyiko in the graveyard. The puzzle of that teased at him. Elias said it was a low-Vrill human area, where they had met. Low-Vrill. Why would Iiyiko select that area with areas more rich in Vrill nearby? And, he could not ignore Iiyiko’s insistence on recovering her own bones. He was discovering that everything he’d experienced was related creating a sense of more questions than answers. Iiyiko knew more, but, they hadn’t seen or heard from her since that day in the transport aircraft and Norris. Mick imagined her following Norris. It irked him.

On the fourth day after the successful testing of the weapon, they split up into five and six person teams and crossed the escarpment to the side furthest from the river before heading out in five directions. Elias said this area should be of less interest to Tule Soc in their hunt so it might be a safer place for the second testing. This time they wanted to focus on taking out the backpack Vrill tracers. In theory, distance should be immaterial in deploying the Seekers, within around thirty miles. The idea was to attack from a position of greater safety. With luck, all of the Tule Soc operatives would be on the river side of the escarpment, searching close to where the last battle had taken place. Elias did warn that if it were DireSec, they would have aircraft standing by for instant launch. That made this attack more dangerous as response should be faster.

Mick was paired with Aenor, Gisela, Steffi and Irma. He discovered they were all good runners. He hated them as he gasped along in their wake, suffering their annoyed rear glances as they had to wait on him several times. Eventually, he found a seat on a rock and pulled out his water bottle to drink. They discovered he was no longer chasing them and they returned. They wanted to go further. He just looked at them. “So, you are faster in the woods. I get it. I’m sure we are far enough. No need to exhaust me completely half-way in, right? You want me to run again afterwards don’t you?” His argument silenced them.

All of them had seen the Vrill tracer backpack carried by ground searching Tule Soc operative teams. There was no need for building an image, they were also now familiar that they were hunting a Beloved. Aenor had told the Soek that the discovery of the Beloved inside the tracer made it much easier to find. Mick intended to try to ‘see’ in the Ba’Neesh way when Aenor made the first sending.

“We need to locate and destroy much faster with less Vrill use on our part.” Mick said. “Two for the Seeker. The rest of us save our Vrill and wait for the next one. We try for three backpack tracers tonight. Slag party. Right?”

Aenor nodded. “We trade off for each seeker kill. Mick right, save Vrill. Burn the packs. That our objective. Kill the device and burn the pack completely. We free the Beloved piece-by-piece, as necessary.”

It went off perfectly. In between each assault they ran. They ended up curving back toward the escarpment finding a higher place to watch for drones and aircraft. As they neared their intended watch point the color red slammed into them. Mick fell. He sensed it was Edda. It hit a second time. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

He hadn’t used his Vrill at all during any of the attacks. He sketched a Seeker in the air coupled with Edda. Aenor grabbed his hand and jammed it on her horn. The image that appeared was Edda crumpling, her eyes closed. As they watched there was a distinct, loud report and a red hole appeared in Edda’s forehead as the image faded.

Mick raced off to the bushes to throw up. A second, third and then fourth report hit him with hard punches, ripping at his guts. He didn’t need to see, the first kill resounded with each additional report. He waited on the fifth. Edda was teamed with Elias. There were five in that group.

“We run, Mick.” Aenor said, pulling him up.

“Trap, Aenor.” He answered bleakly. Four shots. Illegal weapons. Kill shots. Four. Who was alive?

“We know, Mick.” She said, “We still run. We at war. A good night to die.”

Mick howled his outrage, sound bursting out of him from some primordial place so deep inside he had never known such feelings or sounds existed inside of him. Edda, sweet Edda. He chased the Ba’Neesh back across the escarpment. Twice they drew Seekers on Edda, each time to see her laying in the dirt, clearly dead. The Seekers gave them her precise direction.

The run sucked his rage away, he couldn’t sustain both fury fueled grief and the energy to run. Eventually, he ran into the back of Aenor who was standing still with her hand up. Below, through the trees was a clearing. Just in view was a floater, a small six-man floater. Two men were dragging a third person up the ramp. Elias.

“Not dead.” Aenor whispered.

“Should be six men in that floater.” Mick whispered back.

Mick stilled his brain. Strategy. Too early for them to have mounted traps so close. How long since the gunfire? Ten minutes? Less? He couldn’t judge. He could see the dead Ba’Neesh and four men with dark bags getting ready to bag them. No, his mind hardened, they couldn’t have the Beloved.

He wanted to rescue Elias but the floater was a dangerous target with Elias aboard. They couldn’t just laser it as that could easily kill Elias too.

“They must have a broadcast stunner.” He whispered to Aenor. “They shot them before landing. They will shoot at us as soon as we fire on the men in the clearing.”

“Cowards.” Aenor said, nodding.

“We need to rescue the Beloved.” Mick said. “Can’t let them have Edda and the others.”

Aenor gave him a measured look. “We attack men, aircraft fly?” She asked.

Mick hated it. “We can’t blow the floater with Elias aboard. We go for the Beloved.” He made his tone firm.

“Yes.” Aenor nodded to the other Ba’Neesh. They could see four operatives and four Ba’Neesh bodies. Clearly that left two operatives, the two that had taken Elias aboard.

“You shoot the men.” Mick said, “I’ll try something else on the floater.”

All four of the Ba’Neesh lifted their arms and aimed at the operatives. Mick looked at the aircraft. He needed for it not to shoot them when the operatives registered the laser attack. He needed to drive them away. Humans. Would Vrill thought carrying raging fear reach them? He reached over and grabbed horn mounts to the uneasy glances of the Ba’Neesh as they fired on the operatives. He sent his outrage fueled fear thought at the ship. The laser bursts were fast. He kept focusing trying to drive the humans off with fear. The four Ba’Neesh, their kills dead, focused on Mick who was struggling with projecting fear and placed hands on his head, giving him what they had left to send fear and panic into the ship. “Fly.” They said collectively, “Fly in fear.”

The ship’s ramp dragged the treetops as the craft lurched away, taking Elias with it. The Ba’Neesh and Mick sagged, drained. A Ba’Neesh’ sharp whistle announced the nearby arrival of other Ba’Neesh. Aenor answered back. Her group and another headed into the clearing in a race to recover the bodies.

It was clear to Mick that each body was too heavy for any single Ba’Neesh to carry. Cut them? He was horrified but his stomach had no more to give.

He called the second team of six over and grabbed the first mount. The Ba’Neesh were getting used to his grabbing of them, like it or not. They chained up and watched grimly as he cut each body in half, using the laser to cauterize the bleeding. In silence the six took half a body each and Aenor and Mick took half each of Edda. They had to carry upright which slowed the Ba’Neesh further. Mick just blanked his mind, refusing to think about Elias, about the dead. It was enough to think about stumbling after the Ba’Neesh, hearing Aenor order target fires in their wake, burn their path. This time they headed into the light breeze so the fires would flow behind them. He noted they had reached the rocks of the lower escarpment, still far from the cave. They paused as Ba”Neesh ran down to finish starting the closer fires and to spread them along the ridge of stone, disguise their trail.

The way home staying totally on the stone was brutal.

(I am writing this late in the evening. I’ve been imagining this scene for some time. As I have, what’s to come. Enjoy my friends!)