Desperado (Murphy's Lawless: Watch the Skies Book 2) by Kevin Ikenberry (any book recommendations txt) 📕

Colonel Murphy had given her several key requirements on which to gain intelligence. Given the approaching Sear, outlying stations and militias were banding together in towns and gathering forces under individual satraps. Such was the case in Imsurmik. A growing militia was forming in the town itself, and she was determined to discover its strengths and weaknesses. She also needed to fully understand where the militia leaders were placing their weapons and how they intended to use them.

Murphy had also given her the task of locating credible intelligence relating to the efforts to lift items to orbit. The Harvesters were coming, there was no secret about that, and part of the farming and local mining seemed to be geared toward providing them a host of things to remove from the planet during the Sear. Aliza had observed several caravans arriving in the Outer City with large pallets heaped high with bushels of medicinal plants. Some of them she identified easily, and others were mysteries to her. She’d learned as much of the regional flora as she could, and the specimens she did not recognize indicated more distant origins. What else was she missing? That lack of knowledge gave her more than enough impetus to visit the Outer City as often as possible to learn exactly what was being harvested and why.

Finally, Murphy believed there were individuals gathering in the towns who knew the security procedures of the orbital operations. They would prepare the landing sites and storage facilities. He believed they might possess the tools and knowledge necessary for other Lost Soldiers to accomplish “an important operation in orbit”—and that was all he was willing to say about it. Identifying those persons of interest—what Bo called high-value targets—was the last piece of Aliza’s job.

The procession conducted itself to the eastern wall and through the opening where the aquifer and canal exited the glacis. Aliza and the other women emerged into the relative darkness beyond. There were several boys carrying torches to help them descend the steep, slick path by the waterfall. Negotiating the narrow path was difficult with the heavy pack on her back. More than once she had to grab an offered arm, but the young men apparently didn’t mind; they were there for that purpose.

When they had descended to the level of the pond itself, the women and children spread out to the left and right. There was no rushing, no competition. The procession was a concerted effort to ring the pond and begin their collection. No sooner had Aliza started along the edge of the pond, trying to move to an area as far to the southeast as possible, than she saw her first kr’it.

Despite everything she’d been told, it was actually much uglier. It was a robust creature and undoubtedly would provide what the locals needed nutritionally to survive the Sear. There appeared to be millions of them. Most of them hovered just below the surface, swimming back and forth, feeding on organisms she could not see with her naked eye.

Aliza and the women found their designated place on the southeast corner of the pond. After a few minutes of adjusting the baskets and their garments, they waded into the shallows and began the work of harvesting the kr’it. Women and children used quick hands to secure their prizes and toss them to others on the shore for processing.

Playing her designated role as just another worker, Aliza went through the motions, mainly, and grabbed one of the squirming creatures. They reminded her of snakes. Its skin was soft but had a sheen to it. Each of the kr’it possessed small, sharp claws. The triangular head and rows of tiny teeth were not sharp enough to do any damage to her skin, but it was just ferocious enough in her grasp that she was glad to be done with it. She bashed it over the head with a heavy rock and then passed it to another woman who used a sharp knife to decapitate the creature. Its squirming body was then tossed into one of the woven baskets. Each woman could expect to gather sixty to seventy of the kr’it in one iteration. They would fill their baskets three or four times during the nightly harvest.

As the women worked, they sang softly, an older song with an archaic dialect which Aliza could not fully understand, but that wasn’t its intent. The song was to cover Aliza sitting with her basket and bashing kr’it over the head with a rock while speaking on the radio. Carefully, Aliza brought up the handset and put the earpiece to her ear. She glanced at her watch, trying to see the luminous hands.

She was over thirty-eight minutes beyond her appointed contact time. Standard operating procedure dictated she try every fifteen minutes for one hour until they made contact. The lifespan of the irreplaceable lithium batteries for the radios was limited, and nobody wanted them to run out.

Aliza continued to work on the kr’it, staying occupied until the next call time. There was a peaceful routine to the work and the unfamiliar, yet beautiful song of the surrounding women. She tried to lose herself in both for a few moments. At forty-five minutes past the hour, she reached into her basket, turned on the radio by feel, and placed her thumb on the push-to-talk button.

“Desperado Six, this is Queen of Hearts. Over.”

* * * * *

Chapter Two

Assembly Area R’Bak

Across the narrow valley from Imsurmik, Major Bo Moorefield sat cross-legged atop an exposed outcropping overlooking the terrain below. The city itself reminded him of Mesa Verde, a place he’d visited in Colorado on several occasions. Built into the rock of a plateau, the city concerned him, but his worries were on other things at the moment. With the radio at his side, he turned it on to