Like it or not, that was the game to be played. “The liquid teams are ready and able, sir.”
High Commander gave a single nod. “Cabal E’ssennet honors its ancestors.”
Mike couldn’t stop himself from puffing out his chest. Damned right E’ssennet honors its ancestors! All day; every day. His cabal would bring it to the Targolt hard and unrelenting. History would always remember cabal E’ssennet.
Their cabal’s commander, speaking for the first time at the meeting, said, “You can count on us, sir.”
The room again filled with the roar of the E’ssennet’s battle cry.
High Commander nodded and reached over to touch an icon on his control panel. The communications from Saturn’s rings ended with a scattershot of pixilated data and a darkening screen.
A quiet shush broke the room’s thoughtful silence as the communication unit lowered into its tabletop housing. In three counts of his heart’s beat, there was nothing to see on the tabletop but its gleaming metal surface.
The cabal’s commander stirred. “Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
“Process the orders for the liquid teams. I want a full report by day’s end. I want the chosen mobilized and ready to deploy by week’s end. That’s three days from now.”
What? Suddenly he didn’t know how to tell Earth time? “Yes, sir.”
He reached for Steve to relay the orders. ::Deployment Friday…Saturday latest. Evaluations and recommendations are due to command before moonset. Keep the best of the best on this base, ready to act when called. If the Targolt are going hot, so are we.::
::Understood.::
The cabal commander waited until the message had been passed between the two before he resumed delivering orders.
“Leave your pod-kin on top of that,” he said. “I want you hands-on with the volunteers and their training. I want you with them every step of the way, for their protection as well as ours.”
There was no need for further explanations. Mike understood the risks everyone was taking with this project. Politics and intergalactic relations aside, the Urilqii wielded planet-busting weaponry. It was not something anyone was willing to let fall into alien hands. They needed to develop their own technology at their own pace. If history had taught anything, it was that bad things happened when that reality went ignored.
“See to it, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Mike said and stepped away from the table.
Voices rose behind him in a low murmur as he departed the room. It was irksome not to be a part of the tactical discussions like he normally was, especially since he was tasked to nursemaid some noobs into and out of basic equipment training, but sometimes the top dog had to deal with shit. Such was life.
Steve reached for him. ::Am I getting any volunteers?:: Mike stopped and tugged his own personal data unit from a thigh pocket of his uniform. He ignored the personnel moving around and past him, intent on their own duties, and brought the unit to active status. A flick of his index finger moved him through his files until he found the updated one regarding volunteer skill sets and interests. The file informed him twelve of the volunteers had signed up for the liquid teams.
::Twelve.::
::Nice. Hopefully they won’t puke in the equipment.:: Questions spun in his mind. Could they handle the work?
Could their bodies handle the internal changes? How easily could humans cast off their gravity-dependant reality for a reality that included vertical movement in the same dynamics. They appeared to spend a lot of time moving left and right and with heavy reliance on gravity’s influence for confidence. How easily did they shift into a zero-G reality? Only training would answer those questions.
::Liam and Jace did unexpectedly well in the multiple dimensional game they called pool::.
::Thinking is one thing,:: he reminded the Envoy . ::Doing it is another.::
No reply came to him, so Mike considered his point made. The Envoy had many talents, but the training of soldiers wasn’t one of them. That was Mike’s strong point and why he excelled at his assignment.
::Well, that and your modesty.::
He ignored Steve’s taunt. ::Call up the ranks.::
With that, he thumbed off the unit, tucked it back into his pocket, and resumed his trek across the hall. He pushed through the door and exited into the bright, beautiful yellow sunlight.
There, he paused.
The slight breeze caressed his skin and tugged at his beard as he blinked against the glare. In moments, his eyes adapted and Earth’s vivid colors sprang into his vision. Greens. Browns. Blues.
Whites. Jewel shades and pastels touched nature’s canvas like they’d been refracted through a prism. Nebulae beauty on this small, blue planet.
In the middle distance, easy for him to see, but far enough away to constitute a zone of safety, the local fauna of Earth moved about on cautious, careful feet or leaped into the crystalline sky on proud wings.
This was such a pretty planet. Sure, it wasn’t his home world, but the Urilqii would fight until their last drop of blood to prevent its mutilation by the Targolt. Some things were too precious to let fall to the hands of greed’s rapacity. Some things were worth fighting to preserve.
He spent a long moment staring at the growing disk of darkness that slowly blotted out a section of this planet’s primary star. The menace of the Targolt approached. Mike forced himself back to business. He strode across the main grounds and sent a watchful gaze over everything in his line of sight, ensuring all was proceeding as expected. A Forward Operating Base was like a spoiled child. Too long without Daddy’s attention and it started to break things.
Noting caught his attention other than the shouted greetings, which he returned, as he headed for the flight lines. He did have a couple of pit stops to make, though. The mess hall was the first one that crossed his path.
Mike ducked inside and noted how the tables had been pushed to the walls to make room for the re-breather and thermal-maintenance equipment spread out across the center of the floor. A ring of personnel encircled
