Beyond the Shroud of the Universe (17 page)

Bright lights shining in Calvin’s eyes dragged him back from the depths of unconsciousness.

“Why, why, why—” Calvin stuttered.

Nightsong looked down on Calvin. “Why am I doing this?” Nightsong asked.

“Yeah,” Calvin said, breathing heavily. Every muscle in his body ached, including some he wasn’t aware existed.

“It’s all part of the process,” Nightsong replied. “I want to focus your spirit, so I get all of it, not just part. Electro-stimulation works wonders on focusing your attention.” He smiled. “Or, was this the part I do just because I like it? I can never remember which parts are meant to focus you and which parts are meant to focus me.” He shrugged. “Either way, I know it’s important.”

He threw the switch, and Calvin screamed again as the electricity flowed through his body.

One of the things Lieutenant O’Leary liked about leading an elite unit was he could count on everyone to be professional and get the job done on time. But sometimes accidents happened, so he stood in an alcove worrying about everything that could go wrong. He couldn’t transmit to see if everyone was ready; transmitting anything might give them away. Similarly, he couldn’t comm to see where everyone was or if they were ready, so he kept coming up with ways the plan might fall apart.

He checked the time on his in-head display; 30 seconds to go. He hoped everyone was ready. He hoped no accidents happened. He continued watching the countdown.

If nothing else, the Efreet at least seemed unaware of their impending doom. Invisible, the Terrans had encircled the town and were creeping ever closer toward the bank. Five of his troopers also waited outside the Efreeti compound north of town. Should the alarm be raised, he was confident no support would be coming from that direction.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t stop an orbital bombardment round.

15 seconds to go.

Everyone should have been in position for five minutes by now. Of course, his troopers had to dodge all the foot and vehicular traffic on the roads and what passed for sidewalks in the town. Invisible wasn’t immaterial, and any Sila inhabitants who bumped into them would know something was there. Happily, the walls of the adobe houses had enough imperfections in them that you could lean into them and almost be out of the way.

5 seconds. He aimed his rifle at the hinn across the street. Reptilian and hairless, the creature was dog-shaped and about the size of a medium Labrador retriever. Lieutenant O’Leary had decided to take it first and then its holder.

A woman screamed from around the corner, and the hinn jumped. O’Leary’s shot went wide, striking the side of the bank.

The Efreeti handler dropped the hinn’s leash and started to raise his weapon, a flechette thrower. Although O’Leary wasn’t worried about the weapon, much, he was worried about the Efreeti’s ability to call for help, so he switched targets and shot the Efreeti in the face.

The creature fell backward.

O’Leary looked for the hinn, but it had disappeared. He scanned back and forth with his rifle, looking for the animal, but it was nowhere to be seen. As O’Leary started to lower the rifle, the hinn appeared in full stride, five feet in front of him. Without breaking stride, it launched itself at O’Leary as if it could see him.

Instinctively, O’Leary brought his rifle up sideways in both hands to defend himself, and jammed the upper receiver assembly into the creature’s mouth as he fell backward. The hinn bit down on the metal, and O’Leary flung the rifle up, throwing the hinn over his head as he hit the ground.

The creature twisted in the air, and landed on its feet, facing Lieutenant O’Leary. The hinn’s momentum carried it a little further, its feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick surface of the sidewalk. As it started to gain momentum, Lieutenant O’Leary rolled to his stomach, brought up his rifle, and shot it through its left eye.

The hinn screamed, sending shivers down O’Leary’s spine, and kept coming.

O’Leary shot it in the head again, but the creature didn’t slow down. O’Leary fired a third time, but the creature jumped and the shot went below it.

The hinn’s jaws opened wide as it dove onto Lieutenant O’Leary, and he saw a mouthful of sharp teeth. O’Leary knew he didn’t have time to get his rifle back up to defend himself; the creature was
fast
.

He pushed off with his left hand, trying to avoid the hinn’s leap, and rolled to the side. He heard the creature’s claws scraping on the sidewalk again, and he spun around, raising the rifle.

The creature was already in the air, descending toward him, and O’Leary realized he was too late. As the hinn descended, there was a silver flash, and the beast’s head spun off to the side, separated from its body. A spray of yellow blood filled the air, most of which landed on O’Leary, as the creature’s leash flew free.

The rest of the animal landed next to O’Leary, and he watched in horror as it got back to its feet. The weapon struck again, this time severing the body into two pieces, with the noise of a machete going through a watermelon. The hinn fell to the ground, and Lieutenant O’Leary looked up to find a male Sila standing over the corpse with a small axe.

“Hate those damn things,” the Sila said, spitting on the hinn.

He turned to where Lieutenant O’Leary lay and said, “If you’re still there, its brain is in the main part of its body, making it hard to kill. Ya’ gotta hit it in the chest.”

O’Leary turned off his invisibility and got to his feet. He didn’t hear anything from the bank, so he figured he had a minute. “Thanks,” he said. “It was going to get me that time.”

“My pleasure,” the man said, pulling out a rag and wiping off the blade. He threw the rag into the street and strapped the axe to his back. “They’re nasty critters,” he added. “Don’t let ‘em bite you. It ain’t a matter of
if
you’ll get infected, but
how many
things you’ll get infected with.”

“Thanks again,” Lieutenant O’Leary replied. “You might not want to stay here in case the Efreet come back.”

“Oh, they’ll come back,” the man said. “They always do; however, it was right fun to see some of ‘em gettin’ what was coming to ‘em. But you got the right of it; it’s time to be gettin’ back to my farm a’fore they do. Good day.” He nodded, turned and left, humming a happy tune to himself.

Lieutenant O’Leary ran over to the building, just as Lieutenant Contreras came around the corner. “There you are, sir,” he said. “I wondered if something had happened to you.”

“One of the damned hinn almost got me,” he said. He turned and indicated the pieces of its body. “It’s over there. Let the clean-up crew know if you would, please.”

“Aye aye, sir,” replied Lieutenant Contreras. “By the way, the bank is secure. We didn’t take any serious casualties, but Spud Murphy’s suit is messed up. There was a woman about to get run over by a cart. He dove in front of it to save her. Turns out, the carts have spikes in their wheels…for traction, I guess. He took one through the leg but will be okay.”

“Are we in?”

“Yeah, no problem. All the Efreet were out here except for one. I shot him, and the bank manager was more than happy to let me into the vault.” He smiled. “We did pretty good; there has to be over 100 pounds of unobtanium in the vault.”

Nightsong held the vial up to the light and smiled; Calvin’s blood sparkled. “I’ll just run a few tests on this, and then I will be back for some more.” He walked over to a work bench where the testing instruments waited with flashing lights and began analyzing his latest sample.

Calvin hoped the platoon would show up soon; this was getting scarier by the hour. Chained to an alien hospital bed, he had more wires and tubes attached to him then he wanted to count. Ever. Nightsong had already run a series of tests on his blood and DNA. The only good thing about being the captive of an Eco Warrior was he could draw blood without it hurting. And the Aesir had stopped electrocuting him for the moment, which was nice.

“So, you’re not going to tell me your plan?” Calvin asked, trying desperately to take his mind off his current situation.

“Nope,” Nightsong replied without turning his head or looking up.

“Well, can you at least tell me one thing?” Calvin asked.

“Maybe.”

“How is it an anti-technology race like the Efreet is able to develop an advanced technology like the time bomb they hit the
Vella Gulf
with?

“Easy. They can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Calvin asked.

“You assumed we were fighting the Efreet in the 14 Herculis system. We weren’t. I just never corrected you.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Someone else.”

“You’re not going to tell me?”

“Nope.”

“You told us a lot of things about the Efreet,” Calvin said, trying a new tack; “was any of it true?”

“I’m sure there were random bits of truth in there, in order to make it believable,” Nightsong replied; “however, most was made up in order to get you to do the things I needed you to do.”

“And we fell right into your trap.”

Nightsong turned and smiled. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Lieutenant O’Leary, Gunnery Sergeant Stasik and Staff Sergeant Zoromski returned to their universe several hundred yards in front of the Doman Army’s training facility.

“The platoon is coming back!” the sentry yelled from the wall.

Lieutenant O’Leary and Gunny Stasik cleared the jump zone as Zoromski went back for the next group, and O’Leary saw Captain Smith hurrying toward him.

“We were starting to worry about you,” Captain Smith said as he approached.

“Yeah, I was starting to get worried about us, too,” O’Leary replied. He turned to Gunnery Sergeant Stasik. “Get the unobtanium to Lieutenant Bradford ASAP, and then get everyone ready for pickup.”

“Yes sir!” the gunny replied. He turned and began issuing orders to the next group that had just arrived.

“Can I talk with you a minute?” O’Leary asked.

“Yeah, let’s walk back to my office. I know the queens are going to want to talk with you when they hear you’re back. What’s up?”

“This whole officer thing,” O’Leary said.

“What about it?”

“It’s different.”

“Well, yeah, it is. Is there something specific you wanted to discuss?”

“Yeah,” O’Leary replied quietly. “We lost Sergeant Geisenhof.”

“Okay,” Smith said. “It’s not the first time you’ve lost someone. What was different with him?”

They walked for a few seconds, not saying anything. Captain Smith waited patiently for his friend to come to grips with what was obviously troubling him.

“It’s different because he was my responsibility,” O’Leary finally said. “Not only was I the person in charge, I got him killed. We’d been told that the Efreeti monitor electronics, yet I had everyone wear their suits. I should have done it differently.”

“How did your suits get him killed?”

“The Efreeti must have tracked our suits because they showed up where we were. There was a firefight, and Geisenhof was killed trying to defend some of the local civilians.”

“So they homed in on the suits? I don’t see how that’s your fault. The suits are part of your battle gear. They give you an edge the Efreet don’t have. I would have told you to wear them if you had asked me.”

O’Leary thought back. “You know what? I don’t think they intercepted our suits. They followed us when we commed. They must be able to pick up our transmissions.”

“See? It’s nothing to worry about,” Captain Smith said. “It’s not your fault.”

“No; it
is
my fault,” O’Leary said. “We knew they had some sort of intercept capability, and I was the one using the comm system. It’s my fault the Efreet picked us up, and it’s my fault Geisenhof died. I knew it immediately, and I froze when I saw him go down.”

“Froze? What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t stop looking at him as he lay there on the ground. I should have been giving orders to get the platoon moving, but all I could do was stare at his body.”

“Ryan, when you were in the SEALs, did you ever lead a mission when you lost someone?”

“Yeah,” O’Leary replied. “A couple of times we lost folks in the Sandbox. But that was different. I wasn’t the one in charge; I was just following our mission tasking.”

“No, it’s no different at all. You were in charge of those operations, the same as you were in charge today. It doesn’t matter if you’re an officer or an enlisted; if you are the leader, you are responsible for the outcome. The mission is more important than all of us; we’re talking about the future of our race here. If all of us have to die to accomplish it, then that’s what we’ll do. Geisenhof knew that, and you used to know it too. It doesn’t matter what rank you have. People under you have died in the past, and it’s an unfortunate truth people under you are going to die in the future. You accomplished the mission and brought back what we need to make the jump modules, so now we can go and kick their asses. While I am sorry for Geisenhof’s loss, you need to look at the bigger picture. We won today, and we need to keep winning, regardless of who we lose along the way. Anything else is less than irrelevant.”

Captain Smith watched as Lieutenant O’Leary processed his comments. With a sigh, O’Leary nodded as he accepted the truth in them. He stood a little straighter as he met Captain Smith’s eyes. “So, how long until we can go back?”