Peace Army (14 page)

“No, conditions here are too harsh and the Telgorans are very territorial. I think it’s safe to say the Minith would not mine the agsel here if it could be taken more easily elsewhere.”

“You mean like Earth?”

“Exactly, Titan. Exactly.” Gee sat up and refocused on the screen. “Let’s find our landing spot, shall we? We can worry about everything else as it comes up.”

* * *

The landing went exactly as planned.

From the safety of space, the location had seemed perfect, or as perfect as it could be ten kilometers from the equator. But even such a relatively short distance meant landing in a frozen, ice-covered wasteland, barren of all life. Fortunately, a medium-sized enclave of Telgorans was only a short carrier ride away, and there were no Minith within several hundred miles.

The sound of the ship’s engines, which had been a constant companion for months, finally powered down, then stopped.

The silence was ominous.

The four humans stared with dread as powerful winds pushed blinding gusts of snow wildly across the viewing screens. Without exception, they wondered if the carrier vehicle’s protection would be sufficient against the hostile conditions that awaited them outside the mothership.

Telgora would not be a friendly place to live.

Chapter 19

Titan squeezed into the pilot’s seat of the carrier, started the vehicle, and prepared to pilot it from the mothership. He took note of Derk’s shaking hands and wide eyes as the interpreter strapped into the secondary seat, his right eyelid twitching noticeably.

“Just a little carrier ride, Derk,” Titan said as the carrier lifted from the deck and approached the open bay doors. He saw dancing columns of blowing snow enter the lighted bay. Beyond the doors, all he saw was darkness. He thought back to the last craft that passed through those doors on its way to the planet Minith.

“Nothing to it.”

They passed quickly into the blackness and were immediately captured by the intense crosswinds. The carrier pitched heavily to the left, then tossed upward like a leaf in a gale. The exterior lights illuminated a view of large, white flakes blowing horizontally across their path. They were flying blind.

Unable to see out the view port, Titan kept his eyes glued to the gauges in front of him. They made slow, but steady, progress southward. The temperature in the carrier, which had been the standard interior mothership setting of 72 degrees prior to their departure, dropped to 34 degrees soon after departing. A glance at the outside temp reading showed the external air to be -17.

Derk combated the sudden cold and the raging storm with a standard Peace mantra. Titan was glad for the soothing, monotone distraction.

“Yep, nothing to it.”

Titan hung onto the controls and struggled to keep the nose pointed south. His efforts were soon rewarded. Within two minutes, the blackness that surrounded the carrier gave way to dark gray, which soon gave way to twilight and the snow disappeared. Titan could finally see the ground passing a hundred feet below them. The outside temperature had climbed back up to a balmy 44 degrees.

A check of the internal mapping system told him that the Telgoran village should be just ahead. His eyes searched the ground below, but all he saw was windswept rock and a series of raised mounds. Titan continued south, but wondered if they had been pushed off course.

As they passed over the mounds, which varied from five to twenty meters high, Titan saw holes in them and understood. The village was beneath the ground, and the holes were cave entrances.

The wind continued to toss the small carrier back and forth and Titan realized it would not abate. The underground dwellings made sense in that regard. Nothing could withstand these strong winds for long. A quick check of the outside temperature showed it had already climbed to 36 degrees—and continued to climb rapidly.

They could not continue travelling south.

With no other choice, Titan banked the carrier to the east. Back to the caves.

As the carrier began a looping circle to the left, a mass of distant orange movement caught his eye. Intrigued, Titan eased up on the banking maneuver and settled on a course due east. A quick glance at Derk showed the other man staring intently ahead—he had spied the movement as well.

The orange mass undulated strangely. It reminded Titan of a large, colorful lake—a lake with no defined boundaries. A lake that flowed along the plain at will, unconstrained by banks. The lake moved rapidly, and Titan increased the carrier’s speed.

Now that they were flying east, the wind was at their tail and had less of a buffeting effect on the craft. The tailwind helped them catch quickly to the movement on the ground.

Titan’s mind was seconds from processing what his eyes were seeing when Derk spoke up.

“It’s a herd.”

As soon as Derk made the announcement, the vision fell into place, and Titan recognized the lake for what it really was—an immense herd of large orange creatures. And they were fast; faster than any Earth animal. He slowed the carrier to match and measured their speed. They were moving east at a clip of sixty-three miles an hour.

He increased the carrier’s speed, and a minute later they were directly over the herd. Titan could pick out individual characteristics of the animals below them. They were approximately the same size as the bovines he and his village had raised on the sub-farm where he grew up, but the similarities ended there.

These animals had no visible fur or hair. Their roughened hides were tinted a dull orange shade that blended well with the sand-covered soil over which they now traveled. Instead of dual horns, they possessed a single protrusion that extended nearly half a meter from the center of their foreheads. Strangest of all were the legs. The speed with which those legs churned made it difficult for Titan to pick out details, but they were obviously long, and each animal appeared to have eight of them.

“Amazing,” he whispered.

“Titan,” Derk said simply. “You have been working with Gee far too long.”

* * *

Titan selected one of the larger caves and set the carrier down as close to the entrance as possible without intruding. The last thing he wanted to do was land in someone’s living space. Still, the proximity of the mound, easily twenty meters high, offered significant protection from the wind. When the vehicle set down, the buffeting ceased.

“They built these entrances away from the wind,” Derk pointed out.

Titan knew the interpreter was correct. The location of the entrance on what Gee would call the “east” side of the mound was no coincidence. That told Titan that the winds blew prevalently, if not exclusively, from west to east.

Titan could not resist quoting the chubby engineer.

“Amazing,” he whispered.

The former Violent and the interpreter sat quietly for a minute. Each was glad to be safely on the ground. The short, but intense, trip from the mothership had been a white-knuckle experience.

Titan threw off his harness, made a final check of the exterior temperature—80 degrees—and made his way to the back of the carrier.

“Shall we venture forth and meet our hosts?” he asked.

“If they are at Peace,” Derk replied. His voice was so low, Titan wondered if the interpreter was speaking to him or to himself. Not that it mattered.

Both men knew what they had to do. And whether the Telgorans were at Peace meant nothing.

Titan grabbed the carrier door handle.

“Are you ready?”

He received a twitch, a swallow, and a nod in response.

“Okay. Here we go.” He turned the handle and stepped out onto the hard-packed, wind-swept ground of Telgora.

Despite the anxiety he felt at meeting a Telgoran, the knowledge that he was the first human
ever
to set foot on another planet passed through Titan like a fever. He was the strongest man he had ever known, but his knees weakened at the thought.

Even Grant Justice had never done
this
.

Titan regained his balance and took his first step on a foreign planet.

Another first
.

He helped Derk from the carrier, then closed the door. He watched the interpreter’s face for any trace of the excitement he was feeling. Did the man understand what an important moment this was?

Instead of excitement, all Titan saw on the interpreter’s face was trepidation. Derk’s eyes shifted to a point behind Titan, and trepidation turned quickly to alarm.

Titan had no time to turn around.

The next thing he saw was the ground as it reached up to slap his face.

He heard a series of grunts and wheezes as darkness began a tug of war with his consciousness.

Telgorans
.

Titan almost understood the words, but they were beyond his ability to comprehend. He was too busy wondering if he was going to the first human to ever
die
on another planet.

The darkness took control.

Chapter 20

Minith was destroyed.

Truk received the news from General Twoo with mixed emotions.

On one claw, Minith was his home world and the center of the Minith Empire. Billions of his race had just perished, including all three of his sons and their families. The loss of life, and the effects of that loss, would be felt by all the Minith who remained. They would want revenge. Someone would have to pay for the destruction of their home world. As long as the settling of scores did not interfere with his plans, he would do his best to give them what they wanted.

On the other claw, as the Governor of Waa, he was now the highest-ranking Minith alive. That he had no superior for the first time in his life was exhilarating. It was liberating. Though it was not in the manner or fashion he had planned, the ultimate prize was now his.

He was ruler of all Minith.

All
remaining
Minith
, he corrected.

Although Truk would never say it aloud, he would gladly trade his home planet, and all of those on it, for this feeling. He would do it a thousand times over.

He struggled to suppress a smile.

“What else do we know?” he asked the general.

“Sir. A… a mothership. It was an unscheduled return from one of our outer worlds.”

“An unscheduled return?” Truk asked. “Isn’t that unusual?”

“Sir, it has never happened.”

“And the fools just let it land on the planet?” Truk was pleased, but had to maintain a pretense of outrageous indignation.

“No sir, it was stopped well outside the planetary protection zone,” Twoo answered. “But it… it deployed the personal transportation craft of a high-ranking general.”

Twoo was having a much harder time coming to grips with the death of his home planet. Truk would use that to his advantage.

“Which was allowed to approach the planet.” It was not a question.

“Yes, sir.”

“And what happened to the mothership?”

“Sir. After it deployed the ship carrying the…” the general swallowed, pressed on. “It headed back into space. We’ve tracked it to one of our conquered planets.”

“Yes?” Truk asked. He wanted to hit the general. His inability to provide simple, complete answers was grating. “And which planet is that?”

“Sir, it appears to have landed on Telgora.”

The Governor of Waa paced along the back wall of his office. He gave an occasional glance toward Twoo as he moved, but his gaze was focused primarily on the floor in front of him.

“Telgora? Are you certain?” Truk’s initial pleasure at having no master above him was briefly curtailed.

“Yes, sir.”

“But there is no mothership assigned to that planet.”

“No, sir,” the general replied simply and bowed his head. It was apparent the bow was a halfhearted attempt at subjugation.

It was not sufficient.

Truk had grown weary of this particular officer. General Twoo was impertinent and smug. He gave impartial answers—answers that required Truk to dig for information that should have been readily forthcoming.

It was apparent the general did not understand the full impact of the recent events. The fool no longer had a protector watching out for him on Minith. That relationship had died with the planet. If the general could not grasp that shift, it was to his detriment.

As the Governor of Waa and leader of the remaining Minith on all worlds, perhaps it was time to install his own general, Truk thought. Like all Minith at higher postings, he surrounded himself with loyal, capable followers. They helped him succeed, were his eyes and ears, rode his coattails.

One such player came to mind. His loyalty was about to pay off handsomely.

Yes
, he thought.
Why not?

Being the supreme Minith commander was still new, but he recognized the possibilities—possibilities he was just beginning to fully consider.

Truk made the decision to end the general’s existence. He itched to act on it immediately, but held off. Anticipation would intensify the satisfaction. For the moment, he needed information. If he had to dig for it, so be it.

“So, good general, where did the mothership originate?” Truk asked the Minith officer.

“It came from Earth, sir.”

“Earth? The planet of weak-willed slaves?” Earth was known throughout the Empire. The most distant of Minith’s holdings, it was also the easiest to control. The humans were docile beings who made perfect slaves. They offered no type of resistance and they always met their quotas. The people of Earth gathered the required resources, prepared them as ordered, and loaded them without supervision onto the giant barges that visited the planet every few months. It was a perfect, self-sustaining operation that needed minimal supervision.

The perfection of the planet was so complete that it provided the Minith War Council with an ideal location for ridding itself of its most unwanted soldiers and officers. A posting to Earth was a multi-year banishment from the Empire, and every Minith knew it. The mere threat of being sent there was often sufficient to gain increased performance from poorly motivated workers and soldiers.