Chapter 21 - Infiltrators.
Shielded from view by the low bushes at the edge of the forest, Warlord Kellex waited with his squad of highly trained infiltrators. From that position, they had a clear view down the road that led to the estate of the Tymorean Triumvirate Governors. Soon, the youngest member of the squad would be returning.
Further into the forest was the gaggle of mutants chosen as servants by the alien warlord.
Kellex snarled as he heard them cavorting in a wild and noisy manner. Without their leader, they were a mindless mob – unpredictable, unruly and foul mannered. He briefly considered having them all killed, but this lot had an uncanny way of knowing when the Tymorean patrols were approaching.
Too bad that those with the so-called “inner eye” had proven useless at ambushing the patrol. It was no great loss over all, but he needed the help of the ugly ones and that help depended on their leader.
Kellex snarled again, noticing the nearest of his men shift position slightly and become very intent on the road towards the palaces.
The squad members shared his annoyance at having to act on behalf of the ugly ones. It was intolerable.
“Warlord, our rider is returning,” the squad leader reported.
Kellex lifted his distance viewer and focussed on the dust cloud in the distance. With his vision enhanced by the device, he could make out two riders on the horse. He continued to watch until the riders were clear to his unaided sight. The second rider was the mutant leader.
“Send Xan to me when he arrives,” Kellex ordered as he walked a short distance away from the rest of his squad. The damned ugly ones had stopped their cavorting and were crouched in a huddle behind his squad. They were already aware, it seemed, of their leader’s return.
The young outrider rode into the forest as the sun began to climb above the hills further east. When he was deep enough into the cover of the forest, he ordered his passenger off, before dismounting himself.
In spite of the annoying presence of the ugly ones swarming around their leader, Xan was grinning. He pulled off the matt black hooded cape and stuffed it in his saddlebag. That garment had, as intended, made him practically invisible. He mentally crossed his fingers. There had been one moment when he had been watching the dancers – particularly the red head that had the fancy head decoration - the one that reminded him, of that ward of Kellex’s. He’d had the feeling that they knew he was watching but nothing had happened. That was when he’d realised he’d better get back to his main task of freeing the mutant leader.
“Warlord wants your report!” Xan’s squad leader instructed brusquely. He grabbed the horse’s bridle from Xan and gestured to where the Warlord stood not looking in their direction.
Xan looked at Warlord Kellex and from his tense posture, he knew the Warlord was impatient. He pushed his way through the mutants, all dancing around their leader, and trotted to report.
“Warlord Kellex, Sir.”
Kellex turned. “Report,” he snapped, keeping his face hard and unreadable.
Xan stood his ground.
“I entered the grounds with one of the many groups of commoners,” Xan began. “Easy. The guards were slack. I could have bought a hundred guns in with me. We weren’t searched and I spent a lot of time wandering around – openly – and was never questioned.”
“You should not under-estimate the guards,” Kellex warned. “I doubt they are the simpletons they look. This planet has a reputation that I have not yet seen proved.”
Xan made his young looking face seem more sober. “I will remember that, Sir. The guards mostly stayed around the garden at the front of the palace. The one called Palace Gardens on the map you gave me.” He couldn’t help the disdain in his voice. “They were all intent on keeping the commoners from wandering. I kept with different groups and went into the guest room areas in each palace. They had servants watching them there, but I managed to look at the second floor of each palace.”
Kellex was impressed but he said nothing. Xan took his silence as an indication he should continue his report.
“Once it grew dark, I had no trouble slipping away from the commoners and I put the stealth robe on and walked between the guards circling the garden. The map was excellent. I was able to verify the location of all the buildings and that they had guards around the Isolation Building. I deduced they had the captured ugly ones there.”
“Were you seen when they released that Mithas creature?” Kellex demanded.
“No. I had gone to observe the guard routine at the Isolation Building. There was some distraction and the guards were watching the frenzy of point lights in the sky. I slipped into the building, found Mithas and we slipped out. I hid him with me under the robe.”
“How did you get out of the estate,” Kellex asked, hiding the intensity of his interest.
“The green force field worked on the gate guards,” Xan reported. “I checked the walls, but the multi-sensor you gave me detected some kind of force field just inside the walls.”
“That’s new,” Kellex mused aloud. “I wonder if they started that after my last visit.”
“What was that, Sir?” Xan asked.
“Never mind,” Kellex growled. “It won’t stop me. What else did you learn whilst you were there? Did you locate the entrance to the underground caverns?”
“No. Sir. I couldn’t get near that place during the day and there was no sign when I checked after dark.” Xan tried to sound apologetic.
“They may have blocked them,” Kellex mused. “There used to be a way onto the mesa through the caverns. Though I thought…there must still be a way. One of my little experiments took someone there.”
Xan had a feeling that he knew what his superior meant by ‘experiments’. Warlord Kellex took delight in corrupting unsuspecting Royals – playing with their minds. He could only do it with a few.
Kellex seemed to forget Xan for a few moments. He mused aloud, “Somehow my experiment’s prey got free. Resisted me. I heard it think at me that it was second rank. It might have been one of the governors’ brats. I would have liked to have that one.”
Xan felt a shiver run down his spine. Warlord Kellex was not like Warlord Xezir, who had sponsored him into cadet officer’s training. Xezir was straight and a fair commander. You always knew where you stood with him.
But then Xan thought, “I’m still getting used to Kellex’s ways. I’m his newest sub-commander.” Kellex was good. He knew his men so well that it was almost as if he read their minds and could sense what they were doing.
“I asked you a question, Sub-Commander Xan,” Kellex spoke sharply.
“I’m sorry Commander, I was thinking on something else,” Xan flushed red.
“Did you locate the rear entrance to the estate?”
“Yes, Sir. There is a very intense force screen there and a line of force along the top of the wall.”
“Does that force on the wall go all around?”
“I believe so though I did not follow it all the way around,” Xan reported.
“You’ve done good work,” Kellex finally acknowledged. “However, I expected you back sooner.”
Again Xan flushed, and he decided he had better admit to his moment of weakness. “I stopped to watch the dancing for a bit.” He felt the intensity of Kellex’s gaze on him. “I was trying to decide what makes the so called royals so great.”
Unbidden, the picture of the young red headed male, with the crystal and gold coronet came back to his mind. He had watched that one because he was very like his memory of Kellex’s oldest ward.
“And what did you conclude, Sub Commander?”
Kellex looked like an owl ready to strike its prey.
“They look much the same as the commoners except more expensively dressed and they look like us! I saw one there that reminded me of your ward, Sir.”
“What? Describe him!”
“Young, not quite adult, dark red hair, wore a glittering headpiece, and silver and gold clothes.”
“Where in all the frozen and dead worlds did he come from?” Kellex swore.
“Sir?” Xan queried.
“Go and bring our prisoner here,” Kellex ordered, and added, “Now!”
When that tone was used, it was prudent to obey immediately. Xan repressed a shudder. The prisoner was one of the Tymorean road patrol guards. Kellex had taken him a week ago and he had past the ‘experiment’ stage. He was one of Kellex’s ‘toys’.
Probably, the man had once looked very smart in his brown and silver uniform, but now he was dirty, dusty and unkempt. And very, very drunk.
Xan delegated two junior black clad soldiers to unchain him from the tree and drag him to his feet. The creature could barely walk.
“Bring him to the Warlord,” Xan directed.
He looked in disgust as the prisoner lurched and almost threw himself on the ground, gibbering and pleading. If Kellex managed to get anything useful from the creature, it would be amazing. The two soldiers threw the prisoner at Kellex’s feet.
To Xan, it seemed that Kellex merely glared down at the prisoner.
“Tell me about the High King’s brat.”
“Wha…,” the man tried to speak. “He don’t …don’t have any. His consort is about to have one…tha’s all.”
“Has had it,” Kellex corrected.
“Yeah, tha’s right. Heard the rockets,” the prisoner agreed. “Baby musta come.”
“I mean had one sixteen or so years ago,” Kellex insisted. “Where’d he come from?”
“Don’t know. No, wait…wait a bit…”
Kellex scowled, as the prisoner tried to think.
“My little bro said somethin’…no…I was told my bro did somethin’ to Prince Tymos. Was in deep trouble.”
Kellex’s attention intensified.
“What did he do?”
“Stuck him in a hole,” the prisoner tittered. “Didn’t know it was the prince. Whelp had brown hair, like a commoner, looked like a yokel. An arrogant snot of a missionaries brat.”
Kellex nodded thoughtfully. “My agent saw a red head with a coronet,” Kellex commented.
“Musta dyed his hair,” the prisoner said with drunken solemnity. “King hasta have an heir.”
The idea that this prince must have been kept hidden, possibly off world, occurred to Kellex, and it irritated him. They obviously decided it was time for the brat to be ‘educated’ or as Kellex considered things, ‘brainwashed’.
He thought back to when he had felt that ‘second rank’ mind. If that was the Prince, he had been strong enough to resist his attempt at mind corruption. However, if this prisoner’s brother had been his ‘experiment’…the drunken worm might still have more uses.
“What happened to your brother?” Kellex asked. He had received nothing from that ‘experiment’ for months.
“Got his power, what little he had, neutralised,” the prisoner said, sounding angry. “But then they put him in the Peace Corps, to stop him whining. He might be an officer one day, they reckoned. Not like me.”
And that, Kellex decided, had possibilities.
The drunken worm just earned an extension to his life – at least until he identified his brother, the lost ‘experiment’.
“Where would they keep the new baby?” Kellex asked, as if idly.
“Where you think? In the nursery.”
“How do you get there?” Kellex asked mildly.
The prisoner obediently explained in solemn detail. Kellex gestured and the soldiers took the prisoner back and chained him up.
“Go and bring team alpha here,” Kellex directed Xan. “We are going after the king’s brats.”
As he watched his new sub-commander trot off, Kellex quietly fumed. The High King’s whelp was already almost fully trained – if he had reached a stage where he was trusted with the common people. He must move to eliminate him before he became too powerful. It worried him that he had not known about this adolescent one until now. He knew more about the royalty on this world than any other of his kind did and he had successfully abducted three of the High Kings children long before they were this age. The other two had already been older, and had needed killing. Yet this one had been kept secret, to survive nearly to adulthood.
When his team assembled, Kellex had Xan reporting his observations in detail so that the team could visualise the estate, learn the habits of the guards, plan their raid and predict what weapons to use and defend against.
Xan then fell silent and listened as Kellex outlined the raid plan. “We will ride across country – make our move once it is dark, and be within the estate and in cover by morning. We will observe until the afternoon shift change. The older brats usually have outside classes in the afternoon and will be easier to get at. Two of you will go for the nursery and the baby. I want it alive if possible. Two of you will release the ugly ones. Their clumsiness will cover our activities and escape. The rest of you will go after the king’s brat. He will be well guarded I expect. Any questions?”
“Sir,” Xan interrupted, and was glared at. “I saw two red heads with coronet things. The other was a girl, much the same age as the boy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Kellex demanded.
Xan kept quiet. No use saying that Kellex hadn’t given him a chance to tell him.
“Sure there wasn’t any more?” Kellex went on, making Xan flush.
“I only saw two, Sir,” he stated.
Kellex adjusted his plan to allow for two adolescent brats. “Go get ready,” he dismissed the team and told Xan, “You go and keep the ugly ones in line. I need to think.”
Xan felt he had narrowly escaped a near death experience. Kellex felt like an unexploded bomb for some reason. Guarding the ugly ones seemed like a much better place to be – and now Mithas had returned, the rest had settled down.
While he leant back against a tree, watching the ugly ones, he thought over what he had told Kellex. He decided the mention of the adolescent prince had him simmering.
After a while, Mithas strolled over, passing the prisoner and spitting in that direction. “I never thanked you for freeing me,” the mutant remarked.
Xan shrugged. He had done as he was ordered.
“You could’ve got tribes folk out too? Before the royals torture them?” Mithas asked, belligerently.
“They’ll be freed,” Xan said. “You’ll have to wait.” He stared at Mithas to give him the hint to move away – but the leader of the ugly ones stayed.
“I only had one horse,” Xan said defensively.
After another moment of intense regard, the mutant ambled off. Xan breathed a sigh of relief. At least Mithas looked normal; he wouldn’t want to get too close to any of the others.
Team alpha rode off at a trot, taking with them two carts and a covered wagon. They looked like they could be Tymorean or off world traders. Kellex rode at the head off the group, as if he had a personal stake in the mission.
For a moment, Xan considered his commander’s intention to capture two children and a baby. Both the older children, who weren’t much younger than he was, had seemed to be nice enough. The commoners had flocked around them and they had smiled a lot. Then the cynical voices of his teachers came to mind. He thought, “The commoners were probably hoping for favours from them.”
From everything that Xan had been told about the planet – the rulers were a degenerate bunch – only concerned about their own welfare. And it seemed they thought themselves better than the rest since they lived in a walled enclave and when commoners came in they were not allowed to go just anywhere.
He had been told that the people were kept in ignorance of technology and labour saving machinery. The cities were where the brighter minds went to be educated, and the reformers became conformists. The people weren’t allowed to leave the planet and were convinced that a backwards existence was to be aimed for.
Then there was the leaders’ flat refusal to help the people of their home world. Xan came from Aerdna, and his distant ancestors had come from here. Now his world was in trouble, but they wouldn’t let his people return even though there was lots of empty land.
In fact, team beta had just returned from checking resources and doing some strategic sabotage. The people of Tymorea would learn what it felt like to be facing ecological disaster.
Team beta’s leader strolled up. “Reckon we will be doing the brats a favour,” the young officer reckoned aloud. “We’ll teach them better morals.”
Xan had no reason to disagree. Warlord Kellex had explained his reasons, and considering all he knew, they made perfect sense.
Kellex barely held his horse’s pace to that of the wagon horses. His mind was still furiously considering how the damned Governor’s had hidden two brats for sixteen years. They were nearly adult, strong minded, and if he couldn’t corrupt them and control then he would have to kill them.
He had known for over twenty years that the progeny of the High King would be the dangerous ones. The old Warrior, Sedgram, had seen it in a vision. Few had believed him, but the old man knew things, had seen other true previsions. Kellex had listened when Sedgram had said that if they were to regain the birthright of the Aeronite people, the High King’s progeny had to be dealt with.
So far, Kellex had done that – the two eldest sons of the King had been young men and were too inflexible to change. They’d had to die. The younger ones had been immature enough to mould and they were his creatures now – obedient, fully indoctrinated, and fully in his power.
And the power they had was the same as his. As a youth, Kellex had not understood the strangeness that had come over him at adolescence. However, after a week or two of illness, he had realised that his physical and mental abilities had improved dramatically. He had begun to be able to tell what people were thinking, manipulate their thoughts, and make them obedient to him.
Now he knew what it was – the same power that the so-called royals had. It proved to him that his people rightly belonged here. In fact, all his elite infiltrators had the same power, but to a lesser extent. It was a delicious irony that the power of the royals would be turned against them but it could only be done if the High King’s whelps were not allowed free action.
He didn’t know which three would wreck his plans, but the only safe way was to kill them – or neutralise them. He wasn’t sure about this other girl – but he wasn’t going to underestimate her. Her sister was highly skilled in fighting and strategy and had years of experience. He didn’t need another. If three of them would be all-powerful, he would make sure they were the three he already had.
The twelve alien infiltrators rode to the forest nearest the mesa on which the Royal Estate existed. They left the carts and their horses in the cover of the trees and used far seeing glasses to study the road that zigzagged up the steep side of the mesa. They could see the tiny figures of horses and carts coming down the road. No one was riding.
Kellex was sure there was another way in. Surely, carts that were heavily laden with supplies could not get up that way. He took from his pocket an electronic data pad with the geological survey of the mesa in its memory. The sensors on the mother ship had shown the mesa was honeycombed with caverns.
With a silent hand gesture, Kellex summoned his team leader. “Have two riders scout the base of the mesa and look for a way in at ground level. They should be able to see a trail.”
An hour later, he had the information. A road led from the farmlands to the mesa. It wasn’t an obvious road, since the surface blended into the surrounding ground and was hard enough to have no tracks etched on it. The rider had insinuated himself into a group of farmers bringing in a wagonload of supplies. His horse was out of sight around a slight outcrop of rock, and he had approached with his stealth suit turned on. He had climbed onto a wagon and was invisible to the farmers.
He had estimated the road to be about a quarter of the way around the mesa, and then his signal had cut out.
Kellex realised that it was probably due to being inside rock. He had to wait, and Kellex didn’t find waiting easy.
“We will move around. Use the forest as cover,” Kellex decided, as he spoke to the team leader. “Have your other rider continue around and wait near the entrance, unseen.”
What his eyes couldn’t see, his hand held sensor did. Kellex barely restrained a feral grin when his sensors detected the holographic field that hid the entrance. It detected a force field too, and he guessed that the guards, physical guards, lowered the field for the deliveries. The question was - did they have a way to detect people coming, from a distance.
In the stealth suits, his team would be invisible, but they couldn’t hide the horses. “We will leave the horses here and stealth our way to the bottom of the mesa, away from that road. We can inch our way along the wall. I cannot detect anything on the rock – they may think it is protection enough. That farm cart Alpha-three mentioned will have to come back out – we need to be in place to sneak in when the field is down.”
Kellex’s opinion of the royal guards made him gleeful. Once again, too many years of unchallenged dominance made them blind to glaring weaknesses in their defence. Perhaps since their enslaved servants had no access to technology…
The rest of team alpha was in position when Alpha-three reported his arrival at the top of the mesa.
“The road climbs sharply inside the rock tunnel. It comes out behind the estate – near the rear entrance. I had to get off the wagon as they run some kind of scanner over each wagon before they drop the force field. From what my detector shows, the suit should reflect it. Do you want me to go in?”
Kellex considered quickly. “Yes, if you are sure you won’t be detected. There must be controls for the force field inside the gate. Would it be better to sneak in when the cart comes out?”
He heard a crisp, “Yes, Warlord.” Kellex felt that the man was amused, not at having the Warlord tell him something obvious, but at the anticipation of fooling the guards. Something about how the guards will be still slack from after having to babysit the common riff-raff, and they won’t need to check an empty cart.
When Alpha-three reported briefly, “Inserting now.” Kellex ordered his men to be ready. The carts had taken three quarters of an hour to reach the top, but coming down empty would be faster. Kellex watched for the glow of the force field to vanish and signalled for his men to move. As the carts moved out, eleven invisible wraiths slipped into the darkness of the caverns, and used the lighting provided for the men and horses to move deeper into the caverns. When these lights went off, they switched to using the sensors in their headpieces to find their way.
Kellex thought to himself that he would have had sensors all along the way - possibly remote sensors for movement to switch the lights on and off. He looked for signs of pressure sensors and told his team to keep close to the walls. Pressure sensors would be where the carts travelled, he decided.
Arriving at the top wasn’t an anticlimax because he had a much better idea of the way these royal Tymoreans thought. Their defences were against bumbling peasants not skilled infiltrators.
The way out was in the centre of a vast cleared area of rock. Kellex thought in passing that a shuttle or scout ship could easily land there, but his immediate concern was to find physical concealment. Even though the sneak robes made them invisible, for a long wait, physical concealment was better. Alpha-two was still on lookout below and would report if another cart arrived to come up. Meanwhile, Kellex sent two infiltrators in each direction to scout around the outside of the walled estate to the front entrance, and to analyse the defences on the walls.
When they were ready to leave with their prey, multiple possible ways out would be an advantage. He considered requesting a cloaked scout ship to land here, and collect the prisoners, but decided it wasn’t wise. These royals had technology and close up, a cloaked ship could be seen not as its visible shape, but as an area of visual distortion.
Then he considered sending two men to investigate the caverns further, to see if they could find other ways through – side passages that might be hidden by holographic fields.
Alpha-three sent a microburst transmission that translated as, “In place, controls located, observing until full dark.”
When none of his men could see him, Kellex grinned. This raid was working perfectly. He sobered his expression and turned his attention to the extra sense he had – all his men were fully alert. He moved his sense further abroad. He couldn’t receive thoughts from every mind but he felt touches from perhaps a dozen minds – some very young – the thoughts were unsophisticated. He received occasional thoughts from older minds – commenting silently on work they were doing. His mind brushed against shielded minds – a timely reminder to keep his own mind protected.
At least his men were unable to sense minds, even if they all had some of this ‘royal’ power.
The afternoon wore on and no more carts arrived. His men alternately scouted and rested. Alpha-four, his tech expert, knew a way to neutralise the defence field on top of the walls. He would do that when they were about to leave. The ugly ones could climb the walls to escape and provide more confusion.
Kellex did not consider all the waiting to be dangerous. It gave them all the time to study their enemy. Rushing in w