The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Fifty-One ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

The first hundred yards or so, through the last of the trees wasn’t so bad except they had to stay in a group and wind around the widest path. Mick discovered he likely should have organized the cast taking this into consideration, a future note, if any of them had a future.

He knew Elias was giving him the side-eye glances although it was dark enough Mick doubted he was more than a shape in the moving shapes. Still, the persistence of his friend’s attention added to his nerves. Then the trees ended, chopped out by the Reserves Team along a survey line. Standard practice. It felt like skin being stripped away. What was left was a low growing ground cover. Reserves policy kept grasses out and favored some local plant that would remain close to the ground. Mick knew they were mostly plants identified by normal people as weeds. Often they had pricklers, made bad odors when stepped on or favored some other noxious trait. His foster father had often said if the plant made the animals and insects unhappy while overgrowing, it was likely a good choice.

The best Mick could say for this local plant was at least the ground beneath it had been graded to a flatness instead of like some he’d been on, which were rough churned and difficult to walk across. It appeared this nation/state liked their fire zones tidy. Big surprise, not.

They hesitated slightly in the now too-bright moonlight. A perfect night. Yet, the edge of the town glowed across the way and not from its windows and all of them could see the shapes of men walking back and forth. Likely they had already been seen and weapons were even now being trained on them, sighted in for distance and best effect.

“Go, go, go.” Karl hit the trigger that activated their feet forward.

This was way scarier for Mick than the other battles had been. First the floater had felt like he was protected, then in these same woods he had been busy and there had been woods. This naked exposure with untested defense running toward certain death turned his breathing into gasping, his running into a stumbling shuffle. Every instinct argued to run the other direction, every instinct but one. That lone sensation radiated from the core of Mick. Forward was the only option; no matter what alternatives might look like to others. He couldn’t say from where this certainty emerged, only that it pressed him forward.

The barrage waited until they were about a third the distance across the field. None of them could describe what the weapon was supposed to do exactly, nor what they madly hoped the cast shield might do to save them. What they experienced was two-fold, first they got cold, so cold Mick thought he might be freezing. Their run became a walk as the air they breathed became puffs of near frozen air. The shield, wasn’t the shock blanket, it was an invisible curved structure twice to three times their height, above the blanket.

Karl pointed at the next approaching explosive device. “Modified mortar shells.” All of them slowed to watch death arcing down toward them. Perfect range. Perfect shot. It was a bit like the shock blanket sigil might be a target they were waving at the enemy drones who were above, likely sending precise location info to the mortar shooters.

The shell exploded on impact with the invisible curving Turtle, throwing hot embers and what seemed to be shrapnel in all directions. They watched these continuing nasty bits reach the ground to catch the fire-break plant life on fire all around them. Mick realized, they had to walk over ongoing fire. Only, as they advanced, the cold which curved out in front of them quenched the hot embers first. It was like watching an invisible wall reaching forward.

All of them felt another sensation too, a hunger inside the shell of the Turtle they cowered under. That realization landed where the mortar shell had missed them. This Turtle sigil was embodied and it was beginning to accelerate, acting upon those it sheltered with an urgency to run. It wanted to hunt.

“What are those voices?” Aenor yelled over at Mick as she too accelerated. It was true, he too could hear conversations, snippets, advice, yelling and he could feel emotions within those words. German words. The flow of the Tule Soc ahead of them passing around the Turtle?

“Those it hunts.” Elias said, he was noting that this sigil made him feel stronger. As it accelerated, he found the means within himself to ramp up too. What was it? The only other Turtle Shell Defense sigil he had ever stood beneath was the precise fixed one painted on the underside of the common room in the Math Department at Citadel. It had a presence too, but it wasn’t the exact same presence to his mind. Similar but different. An individual?

It. Glances slipped from Ba’Neesh to Soek and back again. It. They were rapidly approaching the front, as Mick remembered was the word used in old-school style gaming when you encountered the enemy up close and personal.

He yelled back at Aenor, “Can you reach the Citadel Ba’Neesh and Akaitapi through this sigil?”

“They are close.” She answered.

“Can you yell for them to use true Speech and broadcast, throughout that town?” He said, “Something like, All local Soek, Emergency! Assemble at town center, full Reserves gear, weapons and food. Now.”

Several of the Battle Group Ba’Neesh raised their voices together.

“What are you doing, Mick?” Brad said aloud. He was hiding behind a building near the front choosing to watch the run live and the two Citadel Ba’Neesh with him heard the summons. “Fucking A.” Brad said, while Lemista and Perisee, already standing tall on his exo shoulders faced in different directions and made the summons.

Mael spoke by com to Brad, “What’s happening?” He asked.

Brad restrained his chuckle, sensing Mael might not be the best recipient at the moment. “With a guess, Mael? I think Mick is assembling an army. Didn’t our intel put close to five thousand low-level Soek in this town? A fucking army. Armed too. With Reserves supplies. By the Dark Fucking Gods, Mael, he is summoning an army to the town center. The Ba’Neesh are passing the word.” No one had armies anymore, not really as a standing army was against International laws. Brad was pulling up DireSec drone feeds from across the town to display on his devices, feeds showing men leaving businesses, their residences, off the streets, dressing on the run. It was the middle of the night; the streets should be empty. Well, except for the already massed Tule Soc and now the DireSec operatives and Ba’Neesh. A third player. The new emerging arrivals were wearing backpacks and about half carrying some type of weapon, even large knives and what looked like bats. All were headed inward toward the rapidly filling streets of the downtown area.

The lab was on the outskirts, and the perimeter where the Battle Group was approaching was away from the downtown corridor leaving only a small area of the town’s Soek unable to cross through the Tule Soc massed operatives. Footage showed these Soek running along the barrier, mostly toward the lab and circling round the back of that facility out closer to where nationals still had their temporary shelters.

Those national troops still undeployed to town directly were trying to turn these Soek back, but instead the Soek simply curved out wider to avoid the nationals, some running through other areas of the fire break they were out so far from the town.

The Battle Turtle hit the Tule Soc perimeter with unholy impact. The Battle Group watched men being tossed like debris up, over and behind the Turtle, into the still burning fires to either side of their path.

The Battle Group discovered their lasers were inoperable inside the Turtle pointing in any direction except the rear. Several of the Ba’Neesh twisted to fire through the rear opening, recognizing it was a vulnerability in the shape of the sigil’s streaming nose cone and cavitator design.

It took Tule Soc too long to understand this opening before the Battle Group was among them, the Turtle killing any Tule Soc operative that didn’t retreat out of its path. It wanted to head toward the greater massing Tule Soc but Mick told Aenor to yell through the sigil to nearby Citadel Ba’Neesh for the right direction for the downtown area, for the Soek.

Honks and trills directed them to the right, down a boulevard-type street. Clearly the city planners were boxy regimented thinkers. The group quickly saw the Soek.

The Citadel Ba’Neesh and Akaitapi not inside the sigil were busy lasering Tule Soc operatives in battles on both sides and mainly behind the Turtle, giving the Turtle further support as they continued to run forward as the Soek parted before the approaching strangeness.

Footage on Brad’s feed showed the shape of the nose-cone through deflected small weapons fire and explosive bursts ranging along its sides and top. This is what the Soek saw on the ground and wisely avoided. Something was closing in on them.

Aenor looked over at Mick, who was blinking furiously, one hand rubbing his eyes. She caught Karl’s attention and in German asked him, “You want us to compel Soek, right?”

Karl nodded after his own glance toward Mick. “Ja!” He answered. He was digging this entire impossible arrival. “Assist Mick. Molcom Encapsulate. Take Analgesic. Assist Mick.” He yelled back at her.

The voices of the Battle Group Ba’Neesh called out, to be echoed across the town in all directions. “Assist Mick. Molcom Encapsulate. Take Analgesic. Assist Mick.”

Karl grinned. How to make an army, 101. It was impossible. Yet, he was seeing through the nose cone hundreds of men, make that Soek, dressed not in Tule Soc uniforms, but in the greens of citizens called to service for the Reserves. It amused him. A Green Army.

They walked the Turtle through the crowd of Soek who crowded out to the sides not to touch it, to the center of the downtown area. The Turtle turned toward the massing Tule Soc and pushed on, dragging the Battle Group with it.

“How do we turn this thing off if we want to?” Karl asked Elias, pointing up. Clearly, the Turtle had its own mind. No one had told Karl sigils had intelligence, were entities. Mick seemed out of it.

“We don’t.” Elias answered, equally worried about the mobile Turtle nearly as much as for Mick, who was staggering and stumbling, acting like he was trying to climb out of his clothing. When Elias spoke to him, Mick was incoherent, clearly not able to lead this Army he had summoned. Delegation put that on the three of them, Aenor, Elias and Karl.

They instinctively formed up ahead of and on both sides of Mick with Gisella behind, upright, keeping Mick upright and within the safe bounds of their sub-group.

“Can we give those Soek mules lasers?” Karl asked.

“Yes, at least some. Don’t know what the Vrill we can access will support.” Elias answered, logic he understood. His position clarifying itself. He was Mick’s second in command. At Aenor he said, “Get the Citadel Ba’Neesh to organize boosters to strings of Soek, those closest to the Tule Soc first.

Karl interpreted. He yelled orders at Aenor and used his external to bring up a visual of what the overhead drones were seeing, the DireSec ones. Elias gave him the coding knowing Jordy would skin him later. Too bad, so sad for his future self. He didn’t work for Jordy anymore anyway; he was with Mick. That incongruity amused him.

“I think we need to stop, force the Turtle to hold position.” Elias said. “We need the intel.” All three nodded. It was incredibly hard to resist the forcible pull of the Turtle’s will but as a group they managed it.

“Do we take down the shock blanket?” Aenor asked, the local Ba’Neesh were holding the Soek in place with powered help from backpacks.

“Not yet.” Both Karl and Elias shook their heads. They brought Aenor in close to see the overhead view on Karl’s holo. The quick look told them Tule Soc still had around a thousand well-armed men between them and the lab facility. Even superior troop size wouldn’t defeat better weapons. How was this going to work?

They turned on grunting screams from Mick, now on his hands and knees. He was clawing at the modern cobble appearance of the boulevard, with claws.

“Oh shit.” Elias knelt down next to Mick. “What the fuck is happening to you, Mick?”

Mick looked up, his face truly visible through the sigil as they had paused near a streetlight.

There was a row of lumps where Mick used to have eyebrows, ridges from forehead to nose, an angling of his chin, double eyelids and that was just his face. It was as if his bones were being rebuilt from the inside out, while they watched.

“Mick?” Elias tried to deny what his eyes were seeing.

“He within the Lamentation of the Beloved.” Aenor said, “Rapid alter and growth, like us.” She pointed to her dramatically larger horns. “Too much Vrill, too fast. Edda let him inside. Should have known. He in there, just hurt a little bit.”

“A fucking little bit?” Mick’s voice, altered as well, roared out and then ended in a weird chirp. “Understatement on steroids.” He rapid blinked up at them, blurry in the light. “What are we waiting for? Expand the fucking Turtle and take the lab. Let Citadel and DireSec chase the Tule Soc. Make Brad lead the army that remains outside the Turtle.” Then he writhed and screamed again.

The idea the Turtle could enfold the Army hadn’t occurred to any of them.

“Expand it?” Aenor straightened. “How, Elias?”

On the spot, Elias glowered at Mick and then felt bad for doing so. No one knew this shit. How to expand a sigil from the inside?

“How about we push out.” Karl, ever practical, asked. “All sides at once we walk out from the center.”

“The Ba’Neesh, we tell the Turtle to expand as we walk out.” Aenor nodded.

“We cover our asses, turtles have holes in their defensive shells.” Elias pointed behind them to the hole they all knew was there behind them. It was their noisy ass end.

Aenor called out in Neesh, Karl in German and Elias and Gisela reached down to pull Mick upright. When they did they could feel his body burning, raging. He stood shorter than before and hunched a bit forward.

“Helewidis.” Elias yelled and then found the Ba’Neesh beside him, glaring not at him, but at Mick. She snorted. “Stupid Soek, changing too fast.” She lowered her single horn and Elias noted it was three to four inches longer than it had been, was it days or hours ago, his tracking of time seemed stretched. Too much Vrill, too fast? All of the Battle Group Ba’Neesh were suffering from it. She rammed Mick on the head, hard. The word thumping floated up in Elias’ memory, from stories about Old One Horn. Well, Helewidis seemed to be a young one horn, equally thumpery with her damn healing horn.

Mick stopped screaming and seemed intent on simply breathing.

“He hungry. Must eat. Starving.” Helewidis’ English was choppy when she wasn’t stressed, clearly worse now.

Karl interrupted. “That will have to wait. I am going to give the expansion order. Ready?” They all nodded, except for Mick, they couldn’t tell if he even understood, just that his horrible screams had stopped.

The outer ring of Ba’Neesh simply walked outward in teams and the Turtle stretched. The core of Soek holding the shock blanket remained exactly in place with the Turtle suddenly no longer trying to tug them. The expansion served the Turtle’s wishes, to move toward Tule Soc.

The Ba’Neesh walked between crowded confused Soek in green who felt the shock of cooler air and a massive presence overhead as they passed within the shelter of the Turtle. Weapons firing on them suddenly stopped. That alone was enough to keep the confused Soek inside, with the monsters.

“What’s happening?” One asked of the Soek holding the shock blanket up.

“Vengeance.” That Soek answered. “We are Mick’s Army. We assist Mick. Big Bad Karl is your superior officer. He is the one with Freya, the monster Ba’Neesh on his shoulders. Obey Big Bad Karl.”

These words flowed like a virus among the growing field of Soek the Turtle now sheltered. They continued the expansion all the way to the Tule Soc line where the Ba’Neesh stopped, facing the angry, terrified, operatives who continued to futilely shoot at them, point blank. The last few steps had been over the bodies of dead Soek and two Citadel Ba’Neesh, already being carried to the center. Mick was the center. The Ba’Neesh that remained tight to Mick and the four Soek carrying the sigil, received the dead Ba’Neesh and compelled the Soek carrying them into lasering the bodies in half and tying them around their shoulders so those Soek could still fight, if necessary.

This gruesome process sent new shockwaves through the Army, creating a new understanding that the Ba’Neesh army took their dead Ba’Neesh with them and in the process made a new version of Soek mules.

(Ahh. We have reached the Army. Poor Mick. I almost feel sorry for him, but not totally.)