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

Eric and Arjan regrouped in their rented rooms, both of them stiffly silent until they could enter a privacy screened area.

“What the hell was that?” Arjan rounded on Eric. “Two Ba’Neesh, unfettered, undrugged, able to do anything they might want to any of us and we were powerless, absolutely powerless.”

“They didn’t. Stare, yes. But, they seemed mostly curious.” Eric said quietly.

“How did that boy get DireSec not to shoot him? You could see them from your position, I couldn’t. What did he do? He sounded like he didn’t know them but he walked right past us like we weren’t there.”

“We were immobilized by the weapon, Arjan. He didn’t seem to know how long it would take to wear off of any of us. He seemed excited and worried to me.”

Arjan took a deep breath, his insides felt ripped apart, his head hurt so much he wanted to cry and he didn’t cry. And, what was wrong with Eric, his boss. His behavior was off. Arjan couldn’t quite pinpoint how but he almost seemed to be apologizing for the loose monsters. He knew what they were. He knew that their freedom came at the direct risk of all of humanity. Why had Eric made an excuse for them?

“I don’t think the boy is of DireSec.” Eric continued, “He isn’t in the database of known lineage except as a distant ancestor hit. I think he used some kind of weapon on the DireSec operative outside of the immobility area. Two weapons.”

“Two? That boy took out a city. Are you saying he used one weapon there, a different one to immobilize us, a third to take the DireSec agent? That’s at least three or my math is bad. Who is this kid and why is he appearing out of nowhere?”

“He appears to be the one identified as Mick Huxley, regardless of what Anti-Terrorism is saying about that blood sample from the graveyard.” Eric shrugged, as much to himself as for Arjan’s benefit. “We have multiple direct observations in close proximity when he walked among us. Those identifiers all say he is this kid Mick.”

Arjan sighed heavily. “Sorry, I don’t feel well. My head feels like it wants to be blown off by a grenade.”

“I have medical bringing in some analgesic for all of us. They will be in here testing us soon. All of us are having the same symptoms to greater or lesser degree. It looks like that immobility weapon, whatever it was, didn’t operate evenly. That likely explains why there are men knocked out on meds in the other room due to suicidal expressions and why we are still functional, if painfully so.” Eric sowed the seeds of doubt, a weapon that struck unevenly. It was his best hope.

“I heard we have four knocked out.” Arjan nodded and then regretted it. He felt like every nerve in his body was inflated as if the immobility weapon had forcibly expanded each in some way. He dropped into a seat and cupped his head. He could barely think straight and somehow it was the hated Ba’Neesh’ fault. He equated the two monsters present with his physical state of misery. Somehow, they were causing his pain.

“Regardless, we have to work.” Eric firmed up his tone. “Our best bet initially is to piggyback DireSec as they likely have the inside track on tracing that stolen floater.” Eric talked to his Tech Ops experts back in Germany. They indicated a trace on the floater that had picked up DireSec, tailing it to a secured airstrip. That airstrip was well shielded by stationary distorters DireSec had brought in. The best Tule Soc could manage was to visually watch the airstrip and note any incoming or outgoing floaters. They were already actively screening for message traffic even though anything they got would be heavily encrypted or sigil encapsulated, technology they had, as yet, only solved in a rudimentary fashion. It was frustrating to be behind in such things when their Vrill trace and sensor technology was better than DireSec. Tradeoffs. Each corporate entity focused on different areas of Vrill development.

“The range of that floater is easily up to ten thousand kilometers.” Arjan forced his brain to cooperate.

“Right. I have Tech Ops starting drones in grids from the cemetery out as we don’t have a direction to focus on yet.” It was manpower and a rapid escalation of equipment. Eric knew his Ministers would be demanding results soon and he had nothing but failure to report. How had the boy escaped, not only the Anti-Terrorist Team, but all of them? It shouldn’t be possible.

Medical showed up with inhalers and ingestibles, short and long-term header relief. The promise. He could only pray that promise would be fulfilled. The exam produced other information, nerve damage. Both of them were showing alterations to their nervous system. Eric had blockers preventing himself and his close associates from Vrill testing as that would reveal his secret. So, the testing didn’t show other distortions to his energy, but, he could feel the odd taste of his own Vrill. He had a private tester back in Germany but it was too risky to bring into the field where another operative might find it. So, he had to guess at what he was sensing. He could feel his energy being enlarged but it also felt dirty or unclean in a way new to him. What had happened out there?

The medications did help in reducing the intensity of the hangover-like symptoms and both of them were told to eat bland foods and drink water to quiet their digestion. It made for an unpleasant food break but both of them obeyed. After a few hours it became easier and they flowed back into their training. They were here to both acquire or dispose of the Soek and to acquire all information possible about the event. That left them returning to the analysis of existing data which continued to come in from the Anti-Terrorism forensic department.

They were able to confirm the boy was Soek, although his area of lineage remained oblique. Where he had been left as an infant could be close to a hidden Ba’Neesh pocket or they could have travelled a great distance to disguise their presence. Their behavior in the wild was poorly understood. Both men considered the Ba’Neesh more elevated animal than full hominid with advanced functioning. It was easier. They were monsters. They could do monstrous things like what had happened to this city. Both were certain at least one Ba’Neesh was at the core of the situation, likely several. To what end? How did you fathom the reasoning of unreasonable alien creatures? That was the point. If the population of Ba’Neesh advanced or increased, humanity would suffer. The species, although they could breed together, were fundamentally incompatible to primary human goals.

Tule Soc used the species as an energy generating tool for weaponized disease delivery. Vrill had unique advantages over electricity and low-level Soek made excellent disease carriers. It was acceptable that these carriers died in the delivery of their weapon, usually to be discovered as unidentified male victims of the unknown disease source. Mules.

Eric carefully hid his true feelings about this policy. Things had to change. The Directorate was advancing beyond Tule Soc and the only potential to reduce that advantage was to kill off the Directorate Ba’Neesh and Soek. It had been tried. He shuddered. It was before his time that the last all out attempt had been made to kill off their competitors. They could never have anticipated The Turtle. He often thought the stories about those events were layered in myth, false words, but he had read the original reports, the impossible original reports. It continued to puzzle all of Tule Soc why this Turtle person had seemed to disappear after those events, becoming first a rumor, then a myth. Was he still alive? Had the Order killed him off for being too radical a deviation, after all, they were not innocent of their own control plans for the Ba’Neesh? It was the consuming desire of Eric’s life to find out the truth about the Turtle and the only way he could do so was by chasing DireSec and hoping clues would emerge, some mistake. It couldn’t all be true.

He had higher-level Soek moles planted into Order pick-up conditions, boys under the age of five. But, they were not yet old enough to find their way into the Order fully. It had taken too many years for the special program hidden within Tule Soc to produce Soek like him, they were collectively called ‘The Solution’. He tried, as he had so many times before, to sense the nature of the Tule Soc controls inside his brain. He had nothing to compare it to, this attempt to sense such a thing.

Stolen novel; please report.

His thoughts returned to the two Ba’Neesh, so very different from the heavily drugged immature Ba’Neesh kept by the Tule Soc. Their vibrancy. Their eyes. By the Dark Gods, those eyes ripping into his soul. He knew they knew, yet they seemed amused with his secret, unafraid of his duplicity. Did they sense he might become traitor to Tule Soc? He often wondered, where did his loyalties lay? Tule Soc was destroying his kind. He had a kind. How did he reconcile the knowledge that at some key point some distant handler would throw a switch and turn him into some kind of mule, a slave to the Tule Soc policy to destroy the opposition, once they had him in the place they wanted him. He kept seeing the amused Ba’Neesh staring into his soul. What did they know?

“Eric?” Arjan’s voice rose a bit.

Eric blinked, realizing it was the second time Arjan had called his name. “Yes?” He rubbed at his face. “I don’t feel normal, better, but not normal. How about you?”

“Improved but hating my head and nervous system with a passion at this moment.” Arjan answered. “I was saying, I think we need to retrieve a bone sample. They couldn’t have gotten all trace in their sweep. It is worth a look.”

Eric perked up. A direction. Arjan was right, that bone dust reported by Anti-Terrorism was inexplicable. Whose bones and where had it come from? Chase the details. Success was often hidden in the overlooked details.

“Get us a small floater. It is dark but there’s a moon. Plot in a landing as close to where the boy paused last night as we can get. Cloaked, of course. Pull a five-man support team. If we’ve thought of it likely DireSec has too. We might meet them.”

Both of them preferred the hustle of activity even with continuing headers. It was easier to ignore the pain if you were busy.

Elias tapped his torch against the side of the floater, ready to go inside for the evening. He was tired and a bit anxious, doing the minor sigil work caused him casting drop. He needed protein and some enhanced water to offset the depletion and he needed to evaluate what the boy had been up to. “Mick?” He yelled out.

Mick frowned. He wanted to leave Elias outside but that felt wrong. Inside he could watch the man, keep tabs on him. Outside he would just worry what the man was up to. It was a cross between indoor worry and outdoor worry. Indoor seemed more reasonable. He couldn’t predict how long Kiena intended to keep them together. From his perspective, she could do so indefinitely if she could block the molcoms so they couldn’t be shut down. Could she get inside his head and melt the thing, or something? It was a newly terrifying idea as molcoms were designed to wrap around the brain stem and grow into the brain tissue itself.

He ordered the door to unlock and eyed the Soek, he reminded himself, as the Soek entered and placed both torches in the charger slots. “What were you circling in the tunnel?” Mick asked, trying to be friendly without being too friendly.

“Dens. Mostly old and for smaller animals. Some bear trace but it isn’t fresh so likely the bear is out moving around for food and not hanging out inside, for the moment.” Elias was looking around carefully, doing a calculated survey of the interior. He saw two piles of laundry, one likely clean, the other still dirty. A scuffed mark on the floor with other dirt. He instantly wanted a sample. Clothing waiting to be removed from the laundry. The recycler had been used. He wanted the residue in that too, before it was incinerated. Evidence the boy had eaten and his pack was partially repacked, it’s lumps altered. What was in there if the boy’s clothing was not in there?

Then there was Elias’ slate, comfortably positioned on the fold-out table along with a bowl of water. He stared. What was that for? His mind raced. Perisee and Lemista often had bowls of water sitting around at odd times. More shallow bowls than this one but as he recalled, this was the only size in the cabinet. Ba’Neesh viewing? He sucked in a shaky breath. He could guess what they might have viewed.

He scanned the interior for other information and noted two of the mini-drones were in recharge mode. Spying on him outside. What had the boy seen? How had he known to look? His estimation of the boy increased.

“Mind if I eat?” He asked aloud.

“Go ahead.” Mick shrugged. He’d watched the Soek scanning and he correctly guessed the guy was noticing every little thing. He was trained at close detail analysis. Mick’s facial muscles tightened. He’d made mistakes then, things to be noticed. It made him feel inadequate. He instinctively knew that some advantage had been gained by the older Soek. He needed to adjust that. He looked down at the slate, open on old classes. Kiena wanted to learn, to study this guy’s guides, whatever that meant. He could guess she meant his teachers. Well great, he wanted to figure out these Soek secrets he seemed to be utterly deprived of. He felt cheated, like he always felt cheated. Second parents, second life, nothing of his own. Now he felt his possible super intriguing abilities had been hidden from him too. It all felt intentional. This had been done to him, by neglect. It felt bad. It made him mad. Revenge was likely held inside bland-looking class files. School, Soek style. He grinned on the inside. What would this Soek do to hear his old classes processing out loud?

He had explored the hand weapon enough to know the stun from the kill setting and to put it on stun and how to activate the trigger. He waited until the Soek sat down with his hands full of at least a double helping of food. Why so much? Mick stored that away too. Kiena seemed to be drained by elevated Vrill use, now this Soek eating hard and drinking from a container marked with a prominent E. What was it?

They were sitting across from each other. Mick made a play of drinking water from the bowl having noticed Elias staring at it earlier. Let him wonder if Mick was just using it as a crude drinking vessel. Deceit. Mick had played a lot of games against a lot of opponents both real and programmed. Sleight of intention was often valuable, never show your true hand until you had to. He would have to be much more careful of this spy guy going forward. Added pressure. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, it was a familiar gaming feeling.

When the older Soek’s hands and mouth were full, his muscles relaxed and seated. Mick sat down the slate and folded his clean clothing. Then he moved quickly to transfer his second clean load to the empty chair and load the third and last load. It only took a minute or so. He sat back down, the weapon leaning against his thigh. He’d already stowed the other devices that he hadn’t examined yet into the side pockets of his pack, folded the second load and stored the combined first and second load in on top of the bone bag. It left him with just the slate, the weapon and the empty bowl. He put the bowl on the empty seat.

Elias watched all of this, noting the boy was moving fast and smooth, he was thinking out his moves in advance. That gave Elias a clear understanding that the boy played virtual games that incorporated whole body coordination. Likely he had to clean his bedroom for the necessary room. A decent player then. Elias hadn’t had enough time to do more than note which games were listed in that initial forensic report. About half of them Elias had played enough to understand their strategy, the newer ones were less well known, he had less time these days for such fun. He continued eating his protein-rich dinner wondering what the boy intended to do next. He couldn’t have guessed.

Mick transferred the slate’s audio to the floater’s system. He programmed in Elias’ voice which the slate had in full and his earlier modified Jordy voice as the alternate allowing the computer system to use default voices for any additional requirements. He skipped the Gen Ed classes finding the class titles and descriptions matching up with Gen Ed everywhere. Rote. He stopped at the first class that he didn’t recognize, a Safety and Rules Class. It sounded boring. It was for five-year-olds. Mick didn’t know the rules. Time to learn. He ran the class program.

Elias nearly jumped out of his seat as the floater speakers began reading the class description on audio. His first instinct was to attack the boy. He noted the boy was watching, his right hand clasping the weapon. Even from his seat Elias could tell the weapon was off safety and primed. Why out loud? He calmed himself with difficulty.

Mick made no apology. The Soek’s sharp reaction told him this choice was unexpected and of concern to Elias. A good move, then. He smiled inwardly, acutely aware that Kiena was behind him and over his shoulder. Could she read? He guessed it could be possible she couldn’t read English. Convinced the immediate danger from Elias was reduced he adjusted the program to highlight each word as the voice read it. She could then see the words as she heard them. She noticed and silently approved. He was correct in guessing her grasp of written language in the human world was poor.

Mick sat back and listened as the Master’s voice admonished the five-year-old new student that living inside the Citadel was dangerous and they could die. What the hell kind of school frightened five-year-olds on the first day of class? He kept his surprise to himself, not realizing his surprise had been caught by Elias who was now watching Mick’s facial muscles avidly. His estimation of his guest was growing. A first choice, to learn what Elias had learned in school, aloud. Maybe he was better than a decent player. His Vrill could just pick out a slight suggestion of something behind the boy. The entity, listening and maybe watching his screen. He shuddered. What the hell was he into?

(How do you like Mick? I'm a fan. Did you ever want to get a sneak peak into a school for some kind of magical working? Of course, you know snooping is costly. :) Enjoy!)