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

The six DireSec ships took evasive action hoping to lose the disoriented national ships in the chaos.

“What do you mean, Mick’s wiped?” Jordy yelled at Elias over the com.

“He slumped when that ship approached, when the rest of us were busy throwing that light of confusion at the national fleet. He’s alive but unconscious. What do we do?” Elias said.

“That ship must have been targeting him. We should have anticipated such an attack. Logical really.” Jordy mused aloud, admiring the simplicity of the attack.

“Patch Master Kristo through, he’s en route, correct?” Mael interrupted, feeling a growing pressure inside his mind. He sat up fully. “Get out of my head!” He barked aloud.

Anya raced to his side, her eyes wide and tense, looking around for the source of the danger.

Mael jerked, his hands reaching to each side of his head with a flash of sudden punishing pain, then the sense of it was gone and he collapsed forward, breathing hard. The attack had been so fast he was reeling, as if his mind were tossed in a tornado.

“Jeffrey.” He said again.

“I’ve got Master Kristo.” Jordy answered, “Tight line encrypted, we can push him up to an avatar.”

“Jeffrey?” Mael got himself to his feet facing the holographic image of Master Jeffrey Kristo strapped in aboard an aircraft. He seemed to be adrift in the aisle.

“Mael. What’s happening, you don’t look so good?” Jeffrey asked.

“Not me, you ass. We have a person brain wiped by a distant activation of his molcom.”

“Sedate him and send him in for retraining.” Jeffrey answered, staring at Mael, noting the continuing changes to Mael’s facial structure. He was becoming more turtle-like. He wanted to run scopes and tests on Mael but knew the likelihood of that was remote unless he could sweeten the pot. “I brought Lal with me.” Jeffrey offered. He knew Mael was powerfully attached to Master Bartholomew Lal, the food expert.”

“Lal’s with you?” Mael’s tone perked up. He was regaining the normal path of his thinking. It had been too long since he visited with Lal.

“Yes. He was wanting to try some new recipes as a method for delivery of medication without the recipient knowing they are being treated.” Jeffrey switched back to the original subject. “Who is wiped?” Concern that the wipe had occurred to someone he knew and cared for wafted to life inside Jeffrey. Why were they making this call to him when they knew he would join them in a few hours?

“Mick Huxley.” Mael answered. “The boy in the middle of all of this.”

It was as if the boy’s name summoned her, maybe it had. A blue apparition appeared in front of Mael and then all of them heard the whine of the MagC and the apparition solidified into a tall oddly-shaped Ba’Neesh.

Mael stared in shock. He was used to seeing Ba’Neesh and understood their variations. This one was different. Her body was thick with muscle. Her lower body in particular. Her face was prominently elongated pulling her eyes into an angled oval shape. She had antelope ears and a pouch. That gave him the essential clue to her primary Chimeric aspect, kangaroo. It didn’t explain the prehensile tail that curled around her waist like a belt. Likely a secondary melding. She didn’t have hooves, she had the long extended feet of a kangaroo with five wide spread toes, viciously nailed. It was clear she hopped when running as her front arms were shortened. Her head was crowned with roe deer-like antlers whose mounts were thick with ringed bone. Kiena, Mick had named her, a false name.

“Who is that?” Jeffrey had watched the manifestation with the same shock as those in the room with her. He was desperately hoping the room’s scans would include bone structure. She was unlike any Ba’Neesh he had ever seen.

“Fix Mick.” Kiena stepped closer to Mael.

Those around him noted she seemed to see only Mael and the Ba’Neesh. The rest of them were unimportant.

Mael stiffened. She was about his height, taller if you measured the antlers. He could feel the Vrill washing off of her in waves. He understood one essential thing about Ba’Neesh, their disdain for cowardice. He stepped forward, well within her antler’s reach.

“I don’t have the Healer’s skillset, Kiena. I am Mael Strom, the Soek Turtle.” He dropped to his knees at her feet, lowering his face to the floor. “Welcome to the Command ship. I am at your service.”

The Ba’Neesh in the aisle near him collectively trilled, well pleased with his proper behavior.

Kiena blinked. It had been so extremely long since she had been properly addressed that she’d forgotten the feeling.

“Mael Strom.” She answered, gesturing for him to rise. “Fix Mick.” She repeated.

Mael pointed toward the seated avatar floating in the aisle nearby. The shocked figure of Master Kristo gestured in acknowledgement of the inclusion.

“This is the Soek Master Jeffrey Kristo. He is en route to our landing location. He is our Healer. He will attend to Mick.”

Kiena looked at the avatar, noting its fabric of construction was much the same as her own manifestation. That meant this Soek was not present physically.

“You will fix Mick?” She asked the avatar of Jeffrey.

Jeffrey’s brain was scrambling. She looked Ba’Neesh, but by the expressions and careful posturing of the Ba’Neesh behind Mael he could tell this wasn’t a normal Ba’Neesh. They were being very careful. “I understand he was brain wiped. The enemy activated the molcom in his brain and then used the limiters wipe function on him.”

“You will fix Mick?” She repeated, her tone rising.

“You mean recover his former brain function and memories?” Jeffrey felt a new kind of fear entering him. No one had ever successfully recovered a wipe. He’d always wanted to try but that had been a secret dream, not a horrifying reality.

“Yes. This Mael Strom, this Xasper, this Thorne, this Pirate. Their brain devices are non-functional yet their brains work properly. You correct Mick to no longer be vulnerable to this cowardly device?”

“It has never been done.” Jeffrey admitted.

“You fix Mick or I will pull these brains apart to understand how they are different from those with these cowardly devices. Do I begin now?”

The realization Jeffrey could read in Mael’s face that this Ba’Neesh could indeed examine the brains of his friends, horrified him.

“I’m coming. I’m the best there is. Is Old One Horn with you?” Jeffrey fell back on his psyche training, divert, gain time to think.

Kiena turned to survey the Ba’Neesh staring at her. Furred. She would be furred again, soon. She located an extreme Elder with a massive horn. She should be dead. Why wasn’t she dead? “She is here.” Kiena recognized the marks of a Healer on the old one. This suggested this Soek Jeffrey had a relationship of understanding with a Ba’Neesh Healer. “I will not kill one of these four until your efforts fail. I will experiment on the stupid Soek nearby, instead.”

As quickly as she had appeared, she vanished. The MagC slowed and finally stopped making noise.

“Kangaroo.” Mael said. “We should have guessed.”

“Very old Neeshatari.” Anya said. “We are in trouble.”

Mael had dropped back into his seat, fatigue hammering at him. This Ba’Neesh was so like his Anya, yet so powerfully unlike her as well. He sensed an iron fist, a mind strong and without much empathy or sympathy. She was used to taking, doing, being. What would she be like in the fur? His body was answering that with blossoming hungers unlike any he had ever felt. He could smell the rising hormone levels of all of the Soek on the Command ship.

“Explain.” Thorne had walked to the edge of Ba’Neesh territory, usually an area he avoided at all cost. He and the Ba’Neesh had an uneasy truce stemming from the moment the Turtle had interceded and changed all of their lives in the process. That defeat still rankled. He feared the Ba’Neesh. But, that was a past dream, not a present reality.

Anya, as usual, stepped between Mael and Thorne.

“Rude and stupid Soek.” She greeted him.

Thorne eased down onto his knees though it truly pained his ego to do so.

“Ba’Neesh Anya.” He answered back. “I am here to serve you.”

“Liar.” Anya spat to his side. “However, you are our liar, Kirsan.” She gestured for him to rise.

She looked around, “You will not memory adjust anyone in this room or on Mick’s floater. Likely the era of these molcoms is ending. Likely She will end it. A coward’s tool. We have been remiss in allowing it to continue so long.”

Thorne gritted his teeth. He had juniors in this room. Memory adjustment was one of the primary tools of a security team to keep its members focused.

“Agreed.” He offered with bitterness. He knew Mael agreed with her, the issue had been raised before, and carefully shelved.

“The Neeshatari are the ancestors. When we decided to become Ba, or move to the collective known to you as Ba, there were those who did not agree. We tricked them. When they died in honorable battle, we carried their bones into deep hiding where their plaintive wails could not be heard. We left them there alone for eternity. The Neeshatari are returning. Eternity has ended. Likely the spread of humanity triggered this. As there is one, there will be more, if not now, then soon.”

“What do we do about her, now?” Thorne pressed. “She isn’t alive, is she? Yet, we all just met her.”

“We comply.” Anya said simply. “We recover Mick. If we do not, we die.”

Thorne hadn’t expected that. The simplicity of the analysis was brief to the point of starkness. Their lives depended on recovering a boy from brain wipe? Why this boy? There were others. Hell, they could give Elias and Rojer to her although he already suspected she didn’t require such gifts, she already possessed them. Why Mick? The question persisted. Would this Neeshatari kill them all if they failed? His personal sense of the creature was tinged in awe-edged fear. It was beyond what should be real. She was already dead, what could they do to her? “What did she mean she would experiment on our other stupid Soek?”

That was answered by a scream as one of their techs toppled to the ground clutching his head. He didn’t twitch long and he wasn’t brain wiped, he was dead.

Mael regained his feet. “Kiena. I know you are listening. Don’t kill our people. We cannot fix Mick here. Stand down and give Master Healer Jeffrey time.”

There was no answer, only silence. But, Kiena had demonstrated the ease of killing individual Soek. The mood inside the floater became one of tense fear. She could strike any of them at any time.

“Jeffrey? What do we do about Mick, he’s starting to move a bit?” Elias interrupted. He had watched the scene in surprise and growing horror. What were they going to do if Mick didn’t recover?

“Sedate him.” Jeffrey answered, feeling relief at being able to do something. He struggled to process the suddenness of the technician’s random death. “Go to your med cabinet and look for the red container marked SED. Use the plunger type applicator. Dial in a one. That should hold him for about twelve hours or so. Recline his bedding and just watch him. When you arrive the medical team traveling with the unit will have a mini-floater that will place him in a secure environment. Put headphones on his body so he cannot hear anything. The less information going in to his brain, the better.”

Elias nodded, already grabbing the sedation and the plunger. It felt like they weren’t doing enough to save everyone. Rojer helped him move Mick to a sleeping position and then they drugged him, hearing his breathing shift to a deeper rhythm. So far so good. They found headphones used to working around high noises and fitted them to Mick’s head. He would hear nothing.

“Is She going to kill me too?” Rojer grabbed Elias by the forearm.

“And, how exactly do I know more than you do?” Elias answered. He knew Rojer was almost habitually an arrogant bully. It was an ingrained habit he hadn’t grown out of. He shook off Rojer’s grip. “We’ve got six hours or so according to the running timer Jordy posted. I suggest we sleep with this floater on auto. No need to stay manual at this point. She threatened retribution if anyone’s molcom is targeted. I bet that means us in particular. So, it keeps DireSec from fiddling for the time being. That makes us safe until we land, at least.”

Rojer nodded. He was tired too. He started up the exercises his counselor had taught him on how to reduce his state of anxiety. He went to the med cabinet and selected a mild calming medication which he self-administered. Let someone bitch at him later for using it without consulting a medic first.

They flew in to the floating port in formation with five ships surrounding the one. They knew they had been observed from the moment the national air force had picked them up at the tunnel. They knew the port was International and technically in alliance with no specific nation/state. That didn’t mean DireSec enemies would not be on the port hopeful of taking them out on landing. They’d prepared for that by sending teams in ahead of them to create a perimeter. Enough ready funds could purchase most things and space on a floating port was easy enough to arrange. DireSec had made those arrangements at this port many years earlier, only augmented now that the threat was real

The move from floaters into the port building took place at a run. Everyone surrounded the single personal medical floater. Most of the operatives were carrying backpacks and weapons. Although the gap between floater and building was small, footage was captured and the distant nation/state saw that an individual was being evacuated from the small, battered ship. A cheer went up in the Technical Ops room and Commander Harris received congratulations. They hadn’t gotten the DireSec floaters, but they had taken out the blue weapon. He watched the floaters already lifting off to disperse in different directions. He had taggers ready and the pursuit continued, until the exact moment each of the floaters individually exploded over open waters and he understood, DireSec had ended the battle.

The port spies waited for the arrivals to emerge into the central causeway, the location from which all boats and aircraft were accessed. No one emerged. They began running illegal facial recognition systems thinking the uniformed men had changed into civies, but the system recorded no such persons in the port.

DireSec rode the transport elevators down below the bottom level. They had long ago paid for the private access. The elevator let them out into a barren concrete room with a sealed maintenance tunnel. To all extents and purposes this underwater bunker was part of the underside of the port’s general maintenance. The tunnel hatch required DNA access. It led to a long, sleek submarine which received them, sealed and dove. They were off the port within eight minutes of arrival, leaving minimal trace that they had ever been there. The auto sterilization features inside the elevators were already running programs that would remove all genetic and forensic materials. By the time the elevators returned to their normal service, they were clean.

They brought Mick to the high-tech medical suite where Jeffrey was waiting. Elias walked on one side of the mini-floater and Rojer on the other. Jeffrey noted that Elias had a civie backpack and Rojer an operatives pack. Both Elias and Rojer were carrying stunners already primed.

“You can’t be in here.” Jeffrey gestured at his aide to move the two Soek outside.

“We can’t not be in here.” Elias answered, lifting the stunner. “Like it or not Jordy, we won’t leave Mick. There are two of us so that one can sleep while the other stands guard. If She needs more, she will take more. Don’t push Her.”

Jeffrey looked up at the surveillance imagers overlooking the exam table. “Got that Jordy?”

“Yes.” Jordy was back to staring at a holoscreen of one of his best friends, now clearly behaving counter to DireSec training and of all people Rojer Kirsan, guarding an unconscious boy. Clearly, all of them were still being held hostage by the situation. “Do we want to switch off and on too, Director Thorne?” He glanced over at where the senior boss was slouched in a nearby chair, still tired.

“I’m eating and then sleeping. Send Lal to me. Food that tastes good might make this slightly better.”

“I’ll join you.” Mael said. The Command Center filled with Mael, Xasper and Anya.

Thorne groaned aloud. What did he do to deserve all of this? “The Channels?”

“We moved all of them safely. Rojer has the only one still bagged. The crews gutted the MagC’s before we left the ships. It appears the Ba’Neesh were successfully masked while in the port. Everything seems to have worked.” Xasper answered. He would have preferred a private cabin but things were too tenuous to leave Mael with the Ba’Neesh or DireSec, momentarily well intended or not.

“Do we know what’s in that backpack that Elias carried out?”

“We do,” Jordy answered. “We got a scanner up close and personal. A single set of bones. Looks intact. Clothing and packages of what looks like food. Kid was ready to run.”

“A Channel?”

“Yes and no.” Jordy shook his head. “The energy reads on Mick and that pack just don’t add up. We need Brad to dive into what’s happening with the Vrill and where all the extra energy is coming from.”

“What extra energy?” Thorne sat up.

“There is something going on between the backpack, Mick and the onboard MagC unit in the main engine rooms of the submarine. The field is growing, not being depleted.”

“How is that possible?” Thorne asked.

“Exactly. Brad is sleeping. His timer is set for six more hours. He will look at it then.” Mael interrupted. “No one will bother his down time.”

Jordy nodded. Thorne understood too. The Pirate Brad was part of the group of people that surrounded Mael. They were friends and more. Brad was differently abled having suffered a casting incident before birth. If they hurt Brad in any way none of them had any doubt in the result. Mael would do something and it wouldn’t be good. Brad was as close to family as Mael had.

“It’s like being squished between the Turtle, the Ba’Neesh, this Neeshatari and the Directorate. How am I supposed to run this mess with any hope of success?” Thorne said roughly.

“We run it together, Kirsan. You’re not the lone ranger here to save the day.” Xasper responded. “No matter what your inflated head tells you. Survival will take all of us.”

(Welcome back. I hope you are having a good time with my characters and their issues. I am creating illustrations for this novel-in-progress so be sure to join me over at Fay Thompson Author on Facebook and friend up!)