Chapter 12

The following new characters appear in this chapter and others:

Eachna (AK-na)

Rebel child, older sister, a bit over 5’-0’’ tall, 14 years old, small breasts, long flaming red hair, more freckles than her sister, cute

Eavan (E-van)

Rebel child, younger sister, less than 5’-0’’ tall, 12 years old, - no breasts yet, a sprinkling of freckles on her face, cute

Captain Royce was on the first shuttle to touch down. He was needed to contract for the various services needed to inspect the hotel and the warehouse, such as heating and air conditioning, plumbing and electrical as well as pest control and the certification of the roof before we put the nest on it. There were also local people to be hired: kitchen help, and cleaning, but only the halls, lobby, and the offices. The personnel assigned to each room would be responsible for its upkeep.

There was also help required for the laundry in the basement, which we learned about later that day. Lastly, there was help in the warehouse, especially a forklift driver, and some temporary help with unloading and moving supplies and equipment. The young Captain from the Transportation Company advised us that a number of the former hotel and warehouse employees were available for hire, and they were already familiar with the facilities. They could be available as early as tomorrow.

It required six days to get everything unloaded. Our own vehicles were on some of the early shipments, so we were somewhat less dependent on the Army for vehicles. To move the cages and the nest, we needed low-bed trailers, and the Army was able to supply them.

For the first few nights, the Partners provided security over-night. Bob took the lobby and halls of the hotel, while Susie and Clare took the warehouse. The Partners scared the daylights out of several prospective employees, who arrived early for their interview. One of the Magic users was present at all of the employment interviews to check on the truth of what was said. Luther, Dixon and I checked the alarm system and made sure that it was working to our satisfaction. Several other Team members and their Partners checked out the other security arrangements.

After a week, we were reasonably operational and had contact with the Army units that we would be dealing with. General McJunkin had been here several times during that time period to rant about our not being operational yet. He was seriously surprised by the number of Partners that we had brought with us, and our operational set up. This didn’t keep him from cussing and fussing about us not being ready to operate. One of the main reasons that we were not ready was that the Army hadn’t supplied us with maps or data on the planet and most especially on the rebel held area. We weren’t about to try to operate blind on a new planet, that we knew little about.

Samson, Sara, and Millie had been flying around the area since the first day, and we had a fairly good composite map of the greater New Dublin area. They had created quite a bit of excitement for the first few days, as the residents here weren’t used to seeing birds that large flying in the city’s sky. The Falcons had been doing close up work on the more interesting areas, but hadn’t created the excitement the Eagles did. They had told us that bird life here was rather small.

The Eagles had been fishing and told us that the fish here tasted fine and there were large schools of them close to the city. The Falcons had commented on the rodents here being unaware of their presence until they swooped down on them to make a meal of them. All of the feathered Partners seemed to be happy with being here.

The structural engineer that Capt. Royce had hired had checked the plans for the hotel roof, and had approved moving the nest up there, after seeing the nest. Royce got a crane to lift it up on the roof the next day. He’d had them on standby awaiting approval by the engineer.

Finally, after nine days here we received maps, weather data, and information on the rebel held area. The conference that had been mentioned never did occur, and the information on the rebels was skimpy at best. The Colonel had a meeting with General McJunkin and his staff people. They agreed to take a reconnaissance Team out to one of the major access locations to the rebel area. The Team would consist of Luther, Samson, and me. We would be going in our operations vehicle and would follow the vehicle of the Army Commander of the area that we were going to.

We met the Army Commander, a Lieutenant Colonel, early on the morning of the twelfth day here. He was in an armored staff car, but he didn’t appear to be happy about escorting us out to his area, so we could do a visual reconnaissance of the entrance to the rebel area. He was a bit surprised that it was only Luther and me plus, as he put it, a big bird. He appeared to have no respect for our Partner. I was tempted to take Bob along just to scare him, but it had been agreed that we would only be doing a visual assessment of the area, and it would only be the three of us. After all of General McJunkin’s ‘talk’ about attacking the rebels since we met, this seemed a bit strange to me, unless there was something else going on that we didn’t know about, which I didn’t consider a good thing.

The trip was only about 50 miles, but took an hour and a half, since the armored staff car was so heavy that it could only do about 35 mph, and that was on level ground, which Parthas didn’t have a lot of. There were a number of bridges that we crossed to get from the crest of one corrugation to the next. We did travel a good distance on the crest of several corrugations. We finally pulled into a parking area that was fairly level and got out of the vehicles. Looking around, it didn’t appear to be near the rebel area that had been described to us.

“Where is the area that we are going to look at, sir?” I asked the Army Colonel.

“It’s not far. It’s over the crest of the next ridge. We don’t park our vehicles too close to the area, as the rebels have a tendency to knock out what they can see. Their mortars are very accurate. We’ve lost a lot of soldiers and equipment assaulting this area, as it is the easiest one. Most of our positions are on ground too steep to assault over, and aerial assaults are way, way too costly. That’s why the Air Force avoids this area and others near the rebels,” the Colonel told us, before leading us forward, and turning us over to a young Captain who took us to the area where we would be observing from.

Luther and I were on a ridge overlooking the long, broad valley where the main concentration of the rebels was supposed to be located. We had been told that it was 125 miles wide and some 350 miles deep but was surrounded by steep mountains for most of that area. The part of the valley below us at the foot of the ridge appeared to be very peaceful with nothing but mature trees for as far as the eye could see in any direction. We had been informed that there were a few small cottages in the distance, but they were only identifiable on the screens of our helmets by the thermal signature of the smoke rising from their chimneys. Samson was in the air above the valley at an altitude that was deemed to be safe from the snipers and antiaircraft lasers that we had been assured were hiding in those peaceful looking trees.

We had also been told that this had been the site of several major battles in the past couple of months. There were no signs that a battle had ever taken place, not just here, but anywhere within sight of our present position. Either someone was lying, or something out of the ordinary was going on here, and we needed to find out which was true, before we could begin work on this planet.

“Have you or Samson seen anything at all?” I sent to Luther mentally. We had been here observing for nearly an hour now and still had no more idea of where the rebels could be than when we had first arrived. The ridge that we were on was important because of the gentle slope leading from it into the valley, which was an extensive lowland surrounded by high mountains. The Parthas Army had an extensive perimeter in those mountains involving many units surrounding that valley. The Commander of the local Army Unit had assured us that this was a hot spot with many rebel positions because of the gentle slope. Most of the mountains, which were the results of the corrugations, were too steep to use the slopes to launch attacks from, and the only roads into and out of the valley had been cut when the rebels blew up the bridges across the rivers to stop all traffic. An invasion or attack by air had also been ruled out as too expensive on the invading force.

“Neither Samson nor I have seen anyone or any positions, Cleve,” Luther sent back to me.

“Do you think the Army Commander was lying to us or was he just mistaken?” I sent back.

“He certainly seemed convinced that there were multiple positions at the foot of the slope, and that there had been a number of battles fought here, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that, not in the last half dozen years at least,” he answered just before I felt a strange sensation, and two young women appeared, one on either side of me, startling the daylights out of me.

On closer examination as I recovered, I could see that they both were nothing more than girls. The one on my right appeared to be no more than eleven or twelve years of age. She had long flaming red hair and green eyes with a sprinkling of freckles visible on her face. She was certainly shorter than five feet tall, but it wasn’t possible to estimate her weight lying down as we both were. She smiled at me and said something in the Gaelic which was the language the rebels used instead of Standard.

“What did you say?” I asked in Standard.

“My Sister said ‘hello’,” the older girl on my left said in very good Standard, and I turned my head to look at her. She appeared to be perhaps fourteen or so. She too had long flaming red hair and green eyes also, but more freckles. I guesstimated that she was also only a tad taller than five feet, but it was obvious that she had breasts, which the younger girl showed no sign of.

“We were hoping that you spoke Gaelic, as we easily detected you and your friend up here quite some time ago. What are you doing?” she had continued while I looked at her.

“We are conducting a reconnaissance of the rebel positions in this area, but we haven’t seen anything yet,” I told her.

“Oh, we thought that you could at least see them. You have the Talent, but don’t appear to be able to use it yet. Here,” she continued, as she touched me on the arm, and the world in front of me swam into disarray and changed dramatically in an instant. Many of the trees vanished and others were broken or burned. There were bunkers all along the base of the slope, but back where the original tree line had been. There were rows of bunkers going back for quite some distance. They were connected by trenches that wound around the trees connecting them, and mortar positions were just visible behind them with more trees in the distance. The slope in front of us and the ground in front of the bunkers was torn up and there were holes where mortar rounds or grenades had exploded. There was mud and bare dirt everywhere, even up the slope and on the ridge, as well as more holes from mortar rounds. There were also metal bits and pieces of vehicles scattered about.

“How are they hiding all of this?” I breathed in shock at what I was seeing.

“Magic,” the younger girl answered in Standard. She was the one touching me now, as the older girl had moved over to Luther and had a hand on his arm. I had never felt her leave.

“We can’t do anything for the bird,” the younger girl told me, as if reading my mind.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Luther sent over our mental network.

“Yes, probably. The girl told me that they can’t do anything to help Samson though,” I sent to him.

“You can talk together, just like my Sister and I,” the younger girl said before getting a startled look on her face.

“We need to leave now,” both Sisters said, and suddenly the four of us were no longer lying there on the ridge looking down into the valley. Instead we found ourselves well back behind the ridge that we had been observing from.

“Sorry,” the older girl said. “The Elders discovered that we were countering their Magic so you could see the fortifications, and they were preparing to open fire on the ridge again,” she finished.

“But how did we get here?” Luther asked in a confused voice, as Samson swooped in to land on his outstretched arm.

“We used our Magic. We’ve been up here many times to check on the Army,” the younger girl told him.

“Who are you, and where did you come from?” I finally managed to ask.

“I’m Eachna (AK-na) and this is my Sister Eavan (E-van). We are running away from those in the valley, because the old men wanted us to marry some of their Sons who can do Magic, but we aren’t old enough to marry, and especially not to have children yet,” Eachna, the older Sister, told us.

“Why did you choose us to runaway to?” I asked, mystified.

“You aren’t like the others here who hate us and want our land for their cities. We thought we would be safe with you,” she told me. She had no more than finished telling us that, than the Area Army Commander appeared with a platoon of soldiers and all of them were pointing their weapons at us.

“Oh my, time to leave again,” she said, as both Sisters joined hands, and the five of us vanished again. We reappeared beside our vehicle.

“How did you do this?” I asked on recovering.

“You had a picture of where you parked your vehicle in your mind, so we came here. They will be here soon,” Eachna told us in a nervous voice.

“A good reason for us not to linger here,” I told them, as I opened the back door of the vehicle. Samson hopped in and moved to his perch here in the vehicle. I helped the two girls inside.