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

Brad funneled footage to national, indifferent to their complaints that they had their own footage. He ignored their repeated requests to recall all DireSec drones. Instead, he ordered up six on rotation so that there would be double coverage wherever the Ba’Neesh led them.

One of the techs manning a drone yelled out, “I’m locked on.”

A bright flash brought everyone around to look.

“I’m still here.” The same tech’s voice sounded disbelieving.

“They appear to be distinguishing between drone ownership.” Brad said, his curiosity rising rapidly. “How are they doing that, Mael?” He yelled without looking away from the still evasive footage giving him only peeks at the now mobile Ba’Neesh group, not as one large group, as he might expect. The Vrill spikes dispersed outward. “By the Dark Gods, they are in formation.” He yelled again. “Can you imagine Ba’Neesh in formation?”

It did bring everyone in to stare at the feeds, Ba’Neesh and Akaitapi included.

“Pairs.” Payoonihkaa said firmly. “They are running teams.”

This wasn’t normal, to anyone’s experience.

“Large dark group shadowed by a team, five males all wearing Tule Soc gear. Walking and slowly at that.” Brad continued.

“Direction?” Mael felt like he didn’t need to ask. They were coming for their youngers, as all of the Ba’Neesh now trapped in the aircraft had been demanding since arrival. Only, these Ba’Neesh weren’t asking, nor was Mick. Mael could see clear benefits to not being formally aligned with political groups. Rogue. He rolled the word around in his mouth, no wonder the Pirate was enjoying this.

“Schelklingen.” Brad said. “They are heading right at us.”

“Tule Soc will mount a strong offensive to prevent what would be utter failure for them.” Serla said.

“It’s their only choice, really.” Mael said. “With their violation of the Reserves, coupled to the unresolved questions at their labs and now they have been caught destroying national drones. If footage of the wild Ba’Neesh surfaces, it will negate their lab argument and our political argument will be validated.”

“We have that footage.” Brad said, pointing to the brief glimpses of running Ba’Neesh they were capturing with their drones.

“Yes, but we are DireSec, the terrorist organization. They will claim it is artificially produced.” Mael said. “One corporations attempt to undermine and ruin one of this nation/states top corporations. It is the stalemate we have suffered under since arriving.”

Mick paced Elias, wishing he could help his friend more directly as Elias forced himself into a steady, if slow walk. The mules took up positions with Karl up front and one on each side of Elias and Mick, a clear position of potential control. They were looking for an opportunity and everyone knew it.

After fifteen minutes, Karl said, “We are being followed by non-Tule Soc drones.”

“Yes.” Mick nodded. “DireSec is watching.”

“Tule Soc is not the enemy.” Karl stated.

“Do you believe they will fire on you if given the chance and with you identifying yourself?” Mick asked.

“No. I am a well-known, well-trained operative with excellent stats.” Karl answered.

“Easy enough, Karl.” Mick said. He knew Karl would continue pressing to overcome the compulsion and likely would die by Ba’Neesh. He was thinking he should try to save the Soek, belligerent or not. The guy was tough. A tank. That had to count for something.

“How so?” Karl stopped and faced Mick. Elias took the opportunity to sit on a log nearby and drink some water.

“Tule Soc is chasing us with drones too, right?” Mick asked.

“The monsters shoot them before they get near.” Karl answered.

“Okay. I tell the Ba’Neesh to let one in and you contact Tule Soc and identify yourself.” Mick said. “Either it fires on you or not. Right?”

“They won’t fire on me.” Karl sounded certain.

It was simple enough to tell the Ba’Neesh to hold off on the next drone. They positioned Karl and the other mules just under the canopy of some large trees adjacent to a small clearing.

Karl was already on his external engaging in an animated conversation in German. Mick and Elias were far enough away to be clear of any firing. There were Ba’Neesh nearby, well hidden.

The drone circled, it’s operator clearly wary. Then Karl stepped out from beneath the canopy and waved. The drone swiveled around to bring its weapons to bear. Karl stumbled back, yelling into his external, “Nein. Nein. Nein.” He dove for cover when the drone loosed its weapon, an energy disruptor.

It got off one shot before a Ba’Neesh lasered it out of the air. Karl slapped at his pants and boot where the disruptor had grazed him, leaving burn marks and smoldering fabric.

Mick walked over. “Any less stupid now, Karl?”

Karl glared at him. “They must have thought I was you.” He said.

Mick snorted and said, “Do you really think people who know you well would mistake my lanky teen build for your muscle mass? Really?”

Karl flexed and unflexed his large hands. He so wanted to correct this situation, return his world to its proper course. It all centered on this single kid. His mind toyed with what this kid had done inside a well-armed Tule Soc facility, surrounded by operatives. It couldn’t be real. Why had Tule Soc fired on him, Karl Rutger? He had spoken to the chain of command. He had properly identified himself and passed on intel about their location, numbers, direction, everything he had overheard from them, at least the stuff he understood. And, the kid had watched him, clearly understanding what Karl was doing and allowed it.

He tested the compulsion inside his head. It was still there. It had been there while he was trying to betray them. The conflict in his mind tore away at him. Logic told him that his attempt to betray had to be assisting Mick, conforming to the compulsion in some way. How?

Mick turned away from Karl to return to Elias’ side where he squatted. “You able to go on?” Mick asked

Karl shifted his focus toward the injured Elias. He was healing, far too rapidly based on Karl’s excellent understanding of human recovery. That monster creature, the one calling itself Helewidis had done something to Elias. He stared around, trying to see them, the lurking monsters. He could feel them watching him, wanting to kill him. He considered himself excellent in the field, these monsters should not be able to hide from him visually with such ease.

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“They will set traps now.” Elias said. “You have defined your direction as toward their heart, toward the youngers. They understand you are coming now, Mick.”

“I know.” Mick acknowledged. “While you were away, we encountered the style of their field work. Trip wires, odor devices and drones.”

“Away, right.” Elias cracked a grin. “I’m making you slower Mick.”

“Yeah.” Mick said, “You are fucked up, but, we need to hunt anyway. This whole feed your battle group thing is way harder on the ground. I’m hungry enough to eat a deer today, not that they will bring one in. They have a relationship with deer.”

“Food sounds excellent.” Elias said. “You should ditch me in the woods.”

“And, negate digging you out of that hole?” Mick grinned. “You know; you owe me now. You will have to dig me out of some future hole, that’s how this works.”

“The boots fit well enough.” Elias said. “That one Soek, Otto, he is walking funny. I bet he is wearing my blisters already.”

“Noticed that.” Mick agreed. “I never realized how seriously critical boots and shoes were in a battle group too.”

“Yeah. I never even thought of that while gaming.” Elias agreed.

Karl walked over, having listened to this almost reasonable exchange between the two enemies. Ridiculous but reasonable.

“Why do you call us mules?” He asked, his tone edged in bitterness. Clearly he had reached a point of believing Tule Soc might have fired on him knowing his identity.

Mick rose. “Time to walk on. How far are we from the town, Karl?”

“Schelklingen?” Karl asked. “They will destroy you.”

“Us, Karl.” Mick corrected. “They will try to destroy us. How far?”

“Nine miles, roughly.”

“I don’t understand. You should be running away.” Karl said.

“Yeah.” Mick helped Elias to his feet. “Did that. Earned my running from bad guy’s merit badge already. Time to bring it. Think of this like more training, Karl. You are the expert here on Tule Soc techniques, what kind of trap would you set for catching this battle group?”

Karl flinched. “Battle group? You are in the woods with monsters.” He said, as if challenging the designation of a battle group.

“Exactly.” Mick nodded, back to walking with Elias on one side and Karl pacing him on the other. The other two mules were trailing them and Elias was right, Otto was walking funny.

“What is a mule?” Karl redirected, back to his initial question.

“Exactly.” Mick said nodding, as did Elias. “They will send mules at us. I would. I have demonstrated a vulnerability by accepting mules into my battle group. Tule Soc will correctly interpret this as a weakness. Likely, they have already attempted to use your molcom and discovered it non-functional. After all, they recently wiped me so it is fresh in their arsenal, although, having wiped me and failed, which should now be clear to them, would they really try the same thing again with a mule or two?”

“They are desperate.” Elias said, analyzing the situation. “You got the nationals to see that illegal facility. Much as I detest politics, if DireSec had freed the youngers then Tule Soc wouldn’t be running this mission in the woods, it would no longer make sense. That means they have maintained the lie.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“What is a mule?” Karl’s tone escalated.

“What’s it sound like, Karl?” Mick didn’t pause. He felt the Vrill disturbance that was Aenor turning back to shadow them more closely, listening. He noted his ties to her were getting stronger, like an unused muscle.

“A mule is a cross between species of horse and donkey.” Karl said. “I’m not a cross.”

“Well, actually you are.” Elias answered. “You are the likely offspring of a human and Ba’Neesh to produce a low-level Soek. Aenor likely knows your mother lineage and she won’t care about your father lineage because it’s human. But, that’s only one version of a mule, what’s the other, Karl?”

“A smuggler?”

“Right.” Mick said. “Because Tule Soc is strongly pharmaceutical and develops disease weapon engineering, what would a mule smuggle, Karl?”

Karl was thinking about the way men vanished from Schelklingen. They were called in to the office and usually no one heard from them again. The upper management said they were transferred out of the area, but some left partners behind who were relocated to Munich, usually. He’d heard rumors that the men never contacted their domestic partners again.

“You are saying Tule Soc uses some of its operatives in clandestine smuggling of their products?” He was frowning. He had a memory of being trained on how to deploy specific medical devices. Everyone had that training, at least he thought so. It was called a Basic Medical Safety Class.

“Right.” Elias picked up the thread again. “They intentionally breed low-level Soeks, block all information about their cross-breed status from them and then use them to deliver weapons with the Vrill they can access. It’s all about control. Soek have certain mental features that make them uniquely amenable to obedience when low levels of Vrill are coupled to conditioning. Like you hearing Iiyiko and betraying your comrades when Mick rescued me. You couldn’t not hear Her.”

“I couldn’t not hear her.” Karl repeated. “I can’t not hear any of these monsters. They are inside my brain. I want them out.” He demanded.

Mick snorted. “That too shall pass, Karl. It is certain they will likely use mules, hoping I will try to save the Soek who is delivering the lethal whatever. Right, Elias?”

“I would.” Elias said.

“Me too.” Mick agreed.

Karl found himself in the strange position of discussing strategy, one of the features of being a lead that he excelled at, in normal circumstances.

“What’s the most likely operative team size?” Mick asked Karl.

“Six with a lead. Fits the small floaters.” Karl answered, still frowning.

“We encountered more of the larger teams.”

“Except for the one that stunned me.” Elias said, his tone stiff.

“Right. They were six. Small floater. We couldn’t shoot it down with you in it.”

“They could be bringing Early Death.” Elias said. “We are all adults, even you Mick, post puberty. It’s knock down is minutes from exposure.”

“Aenor?” Mick called out and she unmelted from the woods immediately adjacent to their small group. “Do you remember Early Death yet?” He asked.

Karl had tripped at her sudden arrival so close to him. It made Mick remember when he first saw the Ba’Neesh. He noted his memories were no longer painful about anything related to his experience with the Fels Ba’Neesh.

“Not much.” Aenor reluctantly admitted.

“Warn the teams to watch for Tule Soc Soek, individuals or as a group, between now and nine miles or a league. They will be walking death. Avoid and report when detected. Do not kill the Soek, that might be the mechanism of disease dispersal. Tule Soc knows we are all Soek here so they risk none of their own lives.”

Aenor pivoted and ran, emitting a host of peculiar chirps, whistles, and honks loud enough to penetrate the woods on all sides.

Karl gasped, he couldn’t reconcile these monsters as intelligent beings yet he had just watched orders being passed from Mick to this Aenor one.

“Karl?” Mick said. “Never show cowardice to a Ba’Neesh. She might kill you out of hand. Understood. She might kill you anyway, just for fun, but dying with cowardice will pound your remains into oblivion.”

Karl frowned over the idea he could be a coward and what did Mick mean, oblivion. Dead was dead.

They continued on at their slow pace.

“What is this Early Death?” Karl eventually asked. His gaze kept darting into the woods on all sides, hunting for sign of the enemy, although now he wasn’t entirely sure what the enemy looked like.

“A disease out of ancient times that Tule Soc rediscovered about forty years ago. It attacks adult Soek and only adult Soek. It kills adult Soek within about seventy-two hours. It makes immature Soek ill but they survive.” Elias answered.

“Explain this Soek you keep mentioning.”

Elias laughed. Same questions, different Soek. He described the separate species, using the same mule analogy and finishing with the comment, “I am Order-born, that means both of my contributors are clearly known. Mick here, not so much. He’s too high on the Vrill chart to have a human male contributor, that means he is Soek-on-Soek but the Order hasn’t sorted his lineage yet, or at least last I heard.”

“You say Tule Soc intentionally made me weak, so they could compel me to kill others as a carrier of disease contagions?” Karl asked after they had walked in silence for close to ten minutes.

“Vrill weak, yes.” Elias answered. “Kill others and yourself. Allows Tule Soc to keep their political hands clean. Mules become merely collateral victims of some disease outbreak.”

“Yeah, but Karl, you still have Vrill.” Mick said, “I’m betting on it actually. I’m guessing you’ve Vrilled your muscles and I’m guessing Hans and Otto here have something special that they Vrill. What? I don’t know yet.”

“Betting on it?” Elias asked.

The audio pick-up on the DireSec drone following the Soek closely had long since tuned in to this discussion and three ship loads of Ba’Neesh and Soek were avidly listening.

His question was interrupted with the sound of returning hoots.

Mick led Elias over to another downed tree so he could rest as they waited for the Ba’Neesh. Clearly, the Soek trap had been located.

(I considered alternatives for this chapter. However, sometimes the characters want what they want. Onward! I think it developed nicely once it came through.)