My Kingdom Come book 1: The Saints We See

661 standard years after the signing of the Alliance treaty

Hathu stared out across the ocean for a long moment, letting the sound of the waves crashing at the bottom of the cliff wash over him. He was sure he had gone far enough from the prison and all its sensors. He had hiked five miles down the coastline.

He let out a breath and swung his bag off his shoulder. He set the plasma rifle he was carrying on the ground, unzipped his bag and pulled out one of the little walnut sized explosives he’d found in his father’s weapon’s bunker. He twisted the remote detonator that was attached to it, separating it from the explosive. He dropped the detonator in his pocket and hefted the little explosive in his hand. He looked out over the moonlit waves again, drew his arm back and flung the little explosive as far out over the ocean as he could. As he watched it arc out into the empty air he reached into his pocket for the detonator. The explosive hit the water. Hathu waited two seconds and pressed the detonator. A plume of water rose up in the air. Hathu let out a little chuckle, relieved the explosives were still good.

Next he pulled a recharge pack out of his bag and picked up the plasma rifle. He put the recharge pack into the rifle, just like his father had taught him to when he was young. He aimed out over the ocean and fired it. A small, sizzling red bolt shot out over the waves slowly arching down and meeting the water. The rifle and charge pack were good too. He hoped a majority of the other weapons followed suite.

He pulled a caffeinated drink out of his bag, twisted open the lid and gulped it down, then slung his bag across his back, picked up the rifle and began the long hike back down the coast. After an hour and a half of brisk travel he stopped at the cave where he was storing the weapons he’d taken from his father’s bunker. He hid the rifle in the back again. He also pulled six more little explosives out of his bag and a bottle of strong permanent adhesive that he had borrowed from school and put it all in his pockets. After a moment of hesitation he also got another of the little bottles of caffeinated drinks out of his bag and stowed that in one of his pockets as well. Then he squeezed out of the cave, leaving his bag behind.

From the cave he began to move through the woods much more slowly and carefully. The coast changed from rocky cliffs to a gentle slope down to the oceans edge. It took Hathu another forty-five minutes to get himself situated in some underbrush right where the woods met the beach.

Hathu lay there quietly watching the guard pacing the sand near the cargo shuttles. He felt a bit strange. He could feel the exhaustion in his body, but his mind was spinning; full of ideas and worries about the upcoming week. He couldn’t do any work on his datapad, because the light from the screen would be easy for the guard to spot. He could only lie there exhausted and wide awake, waiting.

He thought through his plans for the next stage of training blue team for the thousandth time. Blue team had gotten to the point that they didn’t question his reasons for drills anymore. He hoped that would continue to hold true as the drills got a bit stranger. Again his mind circled back to the same question he couldn’t fully answer to his satisfaction. I am doing the right thing?

The guard sat down in the sand and Hathu grew more alert. He waited for the guard to get up and make another round. After waiting another half an hour and watching the guard’s head nod till his chin was resting on his chest, Hathu decided to make his move.

He crept carefully through the sand down towards the cargo shuttles, his eyes never leaving the guard. He angled his path so that the cargo shuttles would be between him and the guard as soon as possible. Not that there would be much more than landing struts between them, but there would at least be shadows that Hathu could hide in. As he got closer, Hathu could hear the guard’s gentle snores. He grinned.

Cargo shuttles had powerful jet engines. The angle of the engines could be adjusted to allow the shuttle the take off or land vertically. This made cargo shuttles ideal for navigating any kind of tight space within a planet’s atmosphere, but they couldn’t leave it, since the engines relied on moving air through the engines to fly.

Hathu crept up beside the engine furthest from the sleeping guard. He carefully felt inside for somewhere to glue his explosives where they would be difficult to spot. His searching fingers found a lip, about forearm deep inside the engine, that was tall enough to conceal the explosives behind. He pulled two explosives out of his pocket, disengaged them from their detonators and stuffed the detonators into his other pocket. He carefully glued the two explosives inside the engine, waiting a bit to be sure they were secure. He double checked the guard, who’s breathing hadn’t changed while he worked, and found he was still in the same position.

Hathu carefully repeated the process on each of the other three engines, then snuck back off the beach and into the woods. He climbed back up to the cave and checked his datapad. He had six hours before he had to be up and on his way to school.

He had dropped off another bag at the cave earlier that morning before going to school. Inside he had a clean set of clothes and a couple of warm blankets. Hathu cleared a space on the cave floor of as many rocks as he could, pulled the blankets out of the bag and curled up on the ground with his datapad, going over training plans for the next day.

* * *

“Alright, today we are going to practice finding good places to hide.” Blue team was gathered outside the school today. “This is going to be important for parts of our strategy. You’ll have to know how to hide and stay hidden.”

“Hathu,” Bava called out raising his hand.

“Yes?”

“Why aren’t we doing this somewhere else? The teams who are working here at the school today will see us.”

Hathu smiled. “Good point, Bava. It’s alright though. This isn’t anything they haven’t seen before. The main reason we’re doing training here today is because I want our runners to work on their running times. I know exactly the distance from here to the prison, so it’ll give me something consistent to time them against.

“Novina, you’ll be taking your team on that run we talked about. Run it once, take a ten minute break and run it again. Arvah, you time them. Go.”

Novina nodded. She, and her team got up and left the group followed by Arvah.

“Okay,” Hathu continued. “The rest of us are going to play a modified version of predator and prey. I’m giving you all ten seconds to hide.”

There were dismayed mutters around the group. “Ten seconds?!”

“You think the opposing teams are going to close their eyes and count to one hundred while you get situated?” Hathu asked in an amused tone. “You need to be able to get hidden quickly. Once I find you, you become a predator and have to help me hunt. No chasing. Everyone got it?”

There were nods all around the group.

“Aright, your time starts, now!”

The members of blue team shrieked playfully and scattered. Hathu waited, his eyes on the ground, counting out ten seconds. The first game lasted only minutes. The next game took longer as Hathu’s team began to find better places to hide. By the third round they were getting pretty creative. Hathu had them play six games total and dismissed them. He wanted to do more with them, but he knew they could only retain so much from one day’s training and this was something he didn’t want them to forget.

Tanahsa and Ishmakah stayed behind and made their reports, then Hathu dismissed them. He started walking around to the other side of the school where Arvah would be timing Novina and her team.

“Hathu.”

Hathu stopped and looked back. Narish was walking towards him. Red team members were streaming out of the front of the school, making their way home.

Narish caught up to Hathu. “Did you guys take a day off training today?” He smiled quizzically.

Hathu let out a soft huff of amusement and shrugged. “Sure. What did you need?”

Narish’s quizzical expression didn’t change. He cocked his head. “I wanted to know if you were taking a day off training today.”

Hathu looked at Narish seriously. “No. We didn’t take the day off.”

Narish glanced back at the area of the schoolyard where Hathu and most of blue team had been practicing. “Should I have red team playing predator and prey to prepare for whatever mad scheme you have planned against us?”

Hathu nodded. “Yeah, you probably should.”

Narish shook his head. “Now I’m not sure if this isn’t just a mad scheme to make me lose a day of training. For a guy so determined to win, you sure are giving a lot away to your competitors.”

Hathu shrugged. “There’s going to be more than one way to win the game this year and if I’m just trying to trick you into losing training days…well I’m going about it in a pretty strange way. I would have lost a whole day myself.”

Narish’s frown deepened.

Hathu turned away. “I have to check in with the rest of my team.”