Lieutenant Andy Tobias stayed in contact with Riyad’s Exitor trailing the Juirean battleship. Aboard the ship were Navy Master-Chief Geoffrey Rutledge and Petty Officer First Class John Tindal, two of the SEALs who had accompanied Adam and his force from Earth. During the four strikes that team had made on Juirean recruiting meetings, Riyad and Tobias would alternate with the two SEALs to make the hits. However, for the three attacks Adam and Sherri had conducted, the two Humans were the only ones involved in the actual strikes. Kaylor and Jym simply manned the Exitor while Adam and Sherri were on-planet — killing Juireans.
Kaylor had cranked up the well-intensity for the JU-224 and plotted a course for Zinnol which would get them to the planet four days before the Juireans, while at the same time avoiding the warship as they drew near the planet. The energy required did deplete their own modules, but their final destination was a recharging station. Replenishing their own energy levels once they reached Zinnol would be the first priority.
Needless to say, by the time the JU-224 entered the Zinnolean stellar system, its tiny crew were climbing the walls, ready for some action. The fact that Adam’s rescue would be the result — hopefully — was a welcome bonus.
Riyad’s ship, The Secura, had confirmed that the Juirean ship was indeed headed for the planet. Throughout the trip to Juir, the Juirean warship had made a number of small course corrections toward Zinnol. About seven days before reaching the planet, Tobias sent the order for Rutledge to beat feet for Zinnol ahead of the Juirean and to meet the rest of the assault team at the main energy facility on the planet.
Exitors were small enough to land on the surface without too much difficulty, and there was an unbridled excitement aboard each ship when they finally joined up above the planet and began a slow tandem chemical descent for the sprawling, armpit of a city called Ragnor Lin.
Zinnol was located in a yellow star system consisting of eleven planets, of which only Zinnol was habitable. The system sat isolated from any nearby clusters, providing just the right mix of void and interstellar matter for the optimal functioning of passing gravity-drive starships. Zinnol had served as a crossroads for most of the traffic in this section of the Expansion for nearly a thousand years, although never during that time had it attained any great wealth of its own. Instead the planet’s population consisted of menagerie of transient beings, most just passing through hoping to make a quick fortune in the energy trade. But like so many others throughout history, most of their hopes and dreams went unfulfilled. What resulted on Zinnol — and Ragnor Lin in particular — was an incredible spread between the rich energy monopolies and everyone else. The dregs who remained as a semi-permanent population fed on the transients, running scams, engaging in robberies and often resorting to murder in their efforts to survive another day.
Riyad had made planetfall on over a dozen different worlds in his eight years in space, so even though Zinnol was bland and unimpressive from orbit, he didn’t really care. It was just another place other than Earth — and it didn’t even have a souvenir magnet he could buy to place on his refrigerator.
Throughout the years, Riyad had steadily built up a reckless self-confidence regarding his superiority to every new species he encountered. He knew this habit could be dangerous because somewhere in the galaxy there had to be a creature who could kick his ass. The fact that he had not encountered this being to date didn’t alter the possibility. Yet no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that it was better to be prudent than sorry, he still couldn’t make himself come to respect aliens of any kind. Maybe once he met a real challenge from them, he might change his mind. But until that time, he remained callus and unafraid when making a new planetfall.
Andy Tobias, on the other hand, always found landing on an alien world an occasion for celebration. It didn’t matter whether the world was a stunning beauty or a dust ball like Zinnol, Tobias could always be found in the pilothouse, his eyes wide and unblinking, a grin spreading his face, watching the planet grow in the forward viewport. Riyad tolerated the younger man’s enthusiasm as best he could. In a way his reaction was understandable, in another perplexing.
Tobias was an experienced Special Forces officer who had operated in nearly every corner of the planet Earth. He was constantly traveling to foreign countries and encountering other cultures. Making a new planetfall was very similar to this, in Riyad’s opinion. Yet to the American, every landing was still exciting and awe-inspiring.
Riyad sat in a rear seat in the pilothouse of the JU-224, studying the expression on Andy’s face, in a way wishing he shared that same child-like enthusiasm for new people, places and things. Yet from an early age, Riyad’s entire demeanor and personality had been one of pragmatic detachment. He used people as a means to an end, rarely developing any deep feelings for other living beings. In a way, he was the perfect space traveler. Nothing shocked him, nothing impressed him. All that mattered were the missions he executed, which to him were more like games, to be planned, played and scored. His survival — often at the expense of others — was how he determined the final score.
Lately, however, Riyad had spent a lot of time around others who lived their lives more magnanimously, at service to others. Again, he could understand their motivations. What he couldn’t do was relate. Riyad Tarazi, native of Lebanon, terrorist by training, warrior by choice, was dead inside. This he acknowledged; this he accepted.
And now here he was, descending toward another alien world, inhabited by beings he didn’t give a damn about. He was once again on a mission, and undoubtedly, aliens were going to die during its implementation. Riyad tried to make himself care. As usual, it just wasn’t happening.
Chapter 31
The two Exitors landed about three hundred meters apart in a tremendous cloud of red dust. An electrostatic charge ran through the main viewport of the JU-224 keeping the dust from accumulating on its surface, and when the cloud dissipated, the occupants of the pilothouse got their first glimpse at the surface of Zinnol.
It was nearing dusk, and a dull yellow light cast deep shadows on the dozen or so other starships parked randomly about. Beyond the monochromatic landscape, Riyad could make out a jungle of rusting towers, supports and other rigging of the energy generators about five kilometers away. The red dust was on everything, stirred by small dust devils dancing here and there. Now that the ships had landed, a number of beings were beginning to move about the spaceport once again, nearly all wearing hats and with cloth bandanas covering their mouths and noses, resuming their duties, tending to the ships in the port.
The two Exitor-class starships were themselves in desperate need of recharging. Although the range of most ships was measured in the hundreds of light years, eventually the cold-fusion reactors that supplied the power for the gravity drives needed to be recharged. The handling of nuclear material had been perfected thousands of years before, now able to be performed by barely-trained creatures. Yet still, the proper equipment was needed and procedures had to be followed. Riyad and his assault team had studied these procedures ad nauseam during the journey here. Now they would see them in action — as well as tighten up their plans for gaining entry to the Juirean battleship.
The crews handling the recharge of the Exitors would be land-based; the battleship’s recharging would take place in orbit. So for the next four days, Tobias and his team would have to locate an orbital recharging vessel, figure out a way that it would that ship that got the assignment to service the Juirean ship, and then find a way to subdue its current crew when the time came. That’s all. These were just a few of the details that still needed to be ironed out.