Chapter 9: Nuerjal

... on Nuerjal, in the city of Baleen, is a complex known as the Temple of the New Order to the adherents of the concerned quasi-religious sect. Their beliefs are based on the precepts of a secretive group known as the Brotherhood of Hyusio, a hierarchical organization similar in structure to Masonic orders, but not in origins. The priests of the New Order are spread throughout the effected sector and have gained a considerable number of converts from among the lunatic fringes of various systems. They are considered the most radical of the revolutionaries.

... like many other worlds in that area of the Network, Nuerjal was already inhabited before the official charter was delivered. It was quarantined for the mandatory ten years, but being such a world, its earliest history of colonization remains unknown.

- Excerpts of APA Council memo

"Background of Aurigan crisis"

The full moons shone pale on the tall grass, turning the plain to shades of misty gray and silver. The stillness was disturbed by the passage of a man on a tall beast of darker gray. Light shimmered off the heaving flanks of the thing. A constant spray of froth flew from its lips as the man mercilessly drove it on.

Far out on the plain they rode. Hard. If the beast slowed the man would torment it on with a flailing stick, whipping it on and on until it flew across the grass in nostril-flared frenzy, spraying moon-black blood in great heaving puffs of its labored breath. On they went, as the moons marked the hours of their flight across the sky. At the first glimmer of dawn the beast fell to the earth and died. The man was thrown into the grass at its sudden collapse.

Within seconds the sound of pursuit could be heard, a relentless pounding that grew and grew. Still the man lay on the ground where he was thrown, staring at the alien sky. Riders appeared on the horizon on the same ungainly beasts. They ringed him about, peering silently. He remained still. The last stars winked out above. He would not look at their faces, their identical fearsome faces and their inhuman garish scowls. One of them dismounted, apparently the leader, and walked over to him with an awkward stride not unlike that of the beasts.

"Human?" it said in perfect English. "Human, you were very foolish to run."

The man did not answer, nor did he look at this horror from humanity's past, this relic of children's nightmares. The Lakamites had been wiped out in a great battle some eighty years before, so the old men said. The man now learned too late that old men sometimes didn't know the truth.

"Whom did you hope to tell?" asked the leader, unholstering his weapon. The man looked over the endless grasslands, saying nothing.

"I find you humans most vain to think you could destroy a race completely."

The man looked then but did not speak again. The Lakosh simply killed the Terran hostage, with precise and economical bursts of his beamed weapon.

Crowds again filled the tarmac in front of the terminal, more people than the Port of Nuerjal at Baleen had seen in all the years of its existence. It was the first anniversary month of the Declaration of Aurigan Independence. Holiday had been called. Thousands were bussed in from the surrounding countryside, and more flown in from the planet's other continent. Thousands more, pilgrims of the New Order, had been shipped in from the other worlds of the Aurigan sector. There were many merchanter shuttles grounded at the Port. Too many.

It was also the first anniversary to the day of the taking of the Terran hostages.

Halverson jumped down from the small window. He wondered again what his captors might do if they found out who he really was. To them he was just another Terran, just another hostage. What would they do if they found out he was a citizen of Andur? Andur: that curious city-nation-culture-corporation that could dictate to the all-powerful Luna Republic, that possessed a stranglehold monopoly on technology that ensured its independence, that had ruled mankind in a tyranny of necessity during the dark early days of the alien war, that had given the hated oligarchs of Luna their power. Andur was both fable and dread out here, here on the edges of the human universe.

So ambiguous was the reputation of Andur in fact that Halverson himself was of two minds. Should he tell his captors he was an operative for Andurin Security? They might let him go to curry favor. Not the Earth Companies, not the Fleet, not even the Republican government messed with Andur É or they might kill him. Others had been killed he was sure.

When he had received orders to proceed to Nuerjal, on the pretext of heading up negotiations with local merchanters, he had taken it as just another business trip. He had been posing as an executive for Trans-Rayain LTD for the past ten years and did as much work for that large Earth Company than he did spying for Andur.

He had only been slightly surprised to find an APA mandate along with those orders with instructions on how to make a contact once he arrived at Nuerjal station. That packet, passed to him by that contact, had contained his mission objectives and background on the situation. It seemed the worlds of the Aurigan sector were aligned in some kind of conspiracy designed to shake off Sol's control. Nothing new except for the fact that the Aurigans were rumored to be building Nega-Grav ships. This was a matter of grave concern for only Andur had mastered gravitic technology and was jealous of that mastery. Only the Andurin Port Authority and the United Earth Fleet were supplied with such ships, and the Fleet only sparingly. Halverson's job was to find out if the Aurigans were indeed building such ships, and who was leaking the technology from Sol's end.

He had not learned very much though, having stepped off the shuttle to meet the leveled rifles of the Revolutionary Guards, who announced that all Terrans were pigs not fit to be free in the great Aurigan society. Then they had separated the Terrans from the other passengers, staged a mock trial before a howling mob, and then unceremoniously dumped them into the terminal compound. He had been there ever since.

He paced his cell and wondered about the escape. Parsins was the man's name, and one day he had simply disappeared from the compound. Rumor had it he had escaped in the night. Others said he'd been tortured and killed. Anyway, the next day they were all separated, each to a room. His was a janitor station, mops still hanging limp from the walls, and he wished he might have been put into one of the waiting rooms or at least some customs officialÕs office. Instead, he got the broom closet, and was not let out at all É for anything.

Parsins was the Embassy Consul, an important man, and as yet the Aurigans had said nothing. Just locking them up and perhaps forgetting about them. There were many nagging questions that he dwelt upon constantly to keep at bay the all-pervasive boredom of his existence.

Had Parsins, indeed, escaped? What was the government on Luna doing now? What was Andur doing? If Parsins had escaped and gotten away it must mean that he had had help from some quarter, for if anything they were guarded more closely before the escape. At least then they'd gotten to be outside and talk to each other. Parsins, after all, was the Consul, and was sure to have connections outside. They couldn't all be fanatics in Auriga. Halverson desperately wanted to get in touch with those connections, somehow, someway. He was sure they were there.

The possibility that Parsins had been run down and murdered less than ten miles outside of Baleen for some reason never entered his mind. He was only positive that since the escape something had to be happening on the outside.