Dave
The four worked the rubble alongside Anandur, the two cyborgs, and the slim alien male.
They were passing fractured slabs hand to hand down the slope, and things were moving at a good pace.
Above, the other four held the periphery, spread across the backyard, their awareness woven into the collective so that the four below saw the dark yard through the eyes of the four above.
The patrol that had passed by the back fence had been sent on its way to continue its rounds, convinced that everything was as it should be and there was nothing to report.
The alien male kept glancing at the four of the Eight as they worked, a quick assessing look that was faintly hostile, a warrior taking the measure of an unknown entity that he did not like having at his back.
The collective was curious about him and the three others of his kind. The constructs were also interesting. Skimming the thoughts of the immortals revealed nothing about the aliens or the cyborgs, so the only way to find out more about them was to start a conversation.
"You keep looking at us," Number One said, lifting a slab and passing it down. "Is there anything you want to ask?"
"I'm just curious. You are very strong for immortals. Almost as strong as we are."
"We are similarly curious about you, and how someone so slim can pack so much strength into those small muscles."
Anandur chuckled. "That's one of the things I love about the Kra-ell. They look so insubstantial while nothing could be further from the truth. They are built densely, and if you try to lift one of them, you will discover that they are much heavier than they look."
"The Kra-ell?" Number One asked. "What are they?"
"Might as well get the introductions over with, since we're all going to be elbow-deep in the same hole for the next day. The friendly one glaring at you is Pavel. The female who nearly put a round through your chest is Drova. The other two are Alexi and Jared."
"Nice to meet you," Number One said. "But we still don't know who and what you are."
"We are from the planet of the gods," the female said. "We are even more ancient than they are."
The collective reeled from what she said. "What planet of the gods?"
She rolled her eyes. "The gods, your ancestors. Don't you know anything about your own history?"
They didn't know enough, that was for sure. "We know that we are the immortal descendants of the gods, but we didn't know that they came from a different planet."
"You have a lot to learn," Yamanu said. "But don't feel bad about your lack of knowledge.
We didn't know where the gods came from either until not too long ago.
And since we have long hours of digging here, we might as well answer some of your questions regarding Kra-ell.
" He cast the female a glance. "Is that okay with you? "
She shrugged. "Not the best environment for a history lesson. Are you sure you want them to know about us?"
Yamanu let out a breath. "The cat is already out of the bag, so to speak, and it's too late to put it back in. Might as well answer their questions."
"Fine." She glared at Number One. "Ask your questions."
"You are a compeller."
"Yes, and?"
"But Pavel is not."
"So?"
"So, are many of your people compellers?"
"No."
She wasn't very forthcoming with information, and the collective didn't feel like squeezing it out of her drop by drop. The male wasn't saying much either, and the other two of their kind were in charge of hauling debris away from the excavation site and were not around to answer questions.
It was better to focus their inquiry on the marvel of technology that the cyborgs represented.
"What about those two?" Number One nodded toward the two human-looking, part-machine, part-biological beings, who were repositioning a shoring timber as if it were a table leg.
"Those are the Odus," Anandur said. "Okidu and Onidu.
And before you ask, yes, they're part machines, and no, the clan didn't build them.
They were built by the gods on their planet.
" He smiled affectionately at the two. "They usually function as butlers, but since they are super strong, we brought them along to help with the extraction, and it's good that we did.
If not for them, there would have been many more injured than poor Brody, who had both his legs smashed. "
The collective tried to absorb the information, which tied into what the female had said about the origin of her people. Planet of the gods sounded like a movie or a novel, not something real where real people and hybrid creatures that were part machine and part people came from.
Did Lord Navuh know about that, and had he been keeping the knowledge from the Brotherhood?
"How did they get here?" Number One asked.
"That's a long story," Anandur said. "And it needs to be told over a glass of whiskey and a cigar, not while digging. Do you smoke?"
The abrupt change in topic signaled that the commander didn't want any more questions about his strange teammates. Not now anyway, and the collective could understand that. Once they were away from the island, the Guardians might be more open about the origins of the Kra-ell and the cyborgs.
"We don't," Number One said. "We don't drink whiskey or any other alcohol either."
Anandur looked disappointed. "You are no fun."
"That is true," Number One said. "We are cerebral more than anything else."
Anandur frowned. "Does that mean you like to think a lot?"
"Yes."
He shook his head. "Once we get out of this hellhole, I need to take you under my wing and teach you how to enjoy life."
Was that an offer of friendship?
It was such a novelty that they didn't know how to respond. Even Dimitri and Mattie, who they considered their friends, had never offered to do anything with them that could be classified as fun.
"We would much appreciate any help you can offer us in that regard," Number One said. "Once we get free. We are looking forward to living a different kind of life than what we could expect on the island."
"You don't want to be soldiers anymore?" The female Kra-ell's enormous eyes got even bigger.
She seemed appalled by the idea of them rejecting that kind of life.
"We don't know what we want to do," Number One said. "We only know how to be soldiers. We don't know how to do anything else."
"You should read," she said. "You can learn a lot from books. And I'm not talking about boring school stuff. Read stories. You will learn more from those than anything else."
That too almost sounded like an offer of friendship, and the collective was eagerly absorbing it.
"Thank you for the suggestions. Once we are free, we would appreciate your book recommendations."
For some reason, she suddenly looked embarrassed. "Yeah. We'll talk on the other side."
For the next few hours, not much was said. Everyone other than the cyborgs was tired, and not in the mood for conversation.
The Eight kept it going inside their hive mind.
Sometime in the small hours, a group of Guardians arrived, entering the basement through the door leading to the lord's private stairwell.
The Eight assumed that they were the ones who had taken the chests and the injured soldier to the clan's submarine.
They brought with them fresh provisions and the physician, who was an exceptionally beautiful immortal.
In fact, the collective acknowledged that all the Guardians were good-looking in a way that the Brotherhood warriors were not, and they wondered whether the clan selected human breeders for their looks rather than brawn or smarts as the Brotherhood did.
"How's Brody?" Yamanu asked.
"Awake and complaining," the doctor said, setting down a case at his feet.
"Both tibias set clean and splinted. He'll be walking in no time.
" He glanced around the basement, taking in the state of the dig, the pile of fallen ground, and the four of the Eight working the rubble.
"I see that help arrived while I was gone. "
"These are four of the enhanced soldiers we've been in contact with," Yamanu said. "They came to investigate the collapse and stayed to help. The other four are topside, keeping us from being interrupted. This is Number One, their spokesman."
The doctor smiled. "I'm Julian, or the doctor. I answer to both." He turned back to Yamanu. "We brought the casings back. All three of them. We used one for the provisions."
Anandur frowned. "You didn't bring that much food." He gestured to the boxes the Guardians had carried in. "All that could fit in one case. You should have left the other two in the sub."
The doctor shrugged. "I had a gut feeling that they would be needed. We had Brody loaded in one of them for the swim out, which worked beautifully. I thought that if we had any more injured to transport, they could come in handy. If not, we just bring them to the sub empty."
A gut feeling was not data, but the collective didn't dismiss it as unimportant.
It was the mind running a computation below the level of its own awareness and surfacing only the result.
The Eight had their own version of that process, which they called the convergence, the moment when eight independent assessments arrived at the same conclusion without any of them being able to trace the path.
It was not mystical. It was eight processors agreeing.
"What happened here while we were gone?" Julian asked.
Anandur told the doctor a condensed version of the events, giving the Eight more credit than the bare facts demanded, and the collective cataloged it as another offering of friendship.
"Does this change your plans?" the doctor asked. "How does this affect your timeline?"
It was the question the collective had been circling for some time now, but they hadn't arrived at a consensus yet, and Number One did not answer it alone.
He let the silence stretch a beat while the eight of them conferred, the deliberation passing through the network faster than speech.
Their timeline had been built around the extraction of the chests, but those were the clan's problem now. They no longer needed to wait for the excavation to be done.
The situation had shifted because of the collapse. A new level of alertness would set in despite their efforts to prevent escalation. Compulsion and thralling only went so far. The situation might rapidly deteriorate, and they might miss their window of opportunity.
The convergence arrived unanimously.
"It changes the timeline," Number One said.
"We had intended to move the women in a few days, after the chests were aboard.
The chests are no longer our concern, which frees us, and the events of tonight make waiting unwise.
The island is disturbed. It will not settle.
We would rather act while our cover still holds than wait for it to erode.
We will leave early in the morning and get the women and children out of the enclosure. "
"How are you getting them out?" Yamanu asked.
"With a transport truck," Number One said.
"We bring it to the enclosure and load the women and the children as a transfer of new recruits, boys of age bound for the training camp.
No one questions boys going to the camp.
The truck turns toward the cross-island tunnel, and inside it the women change out of the transfer fatigues into guard uniforms, and we shift the thrall to match.
Recruits do not belong on the resort side, but a guard detail moving cargo does.
We come out of the tunnel as soldiers escorting supplies, collect the scientists and the women along the way, and put them in the hold of the ship. "
"It's a good plan," Yamanu said. "But I don't like the timing.
" He folded his arms over his chest. "My team needs another full day in this hole, maybe more, to get the last two chests out, and we can't move them to the sub until tomorrow night.
We need things to stay under control until those chests are out and we can leave.
Can you wait one more day? Move them tomorrow night after we're gone? "
It was a reasonable request, and the collective weighed it as such, but it arrived at the same insistent result as before.
"We understand the concern," Number One said.
"And if the only variable were your chests, we would gladly wait.
But our concern runs the other way. The clan's involvement is the destabilizing force.
There is a strike team on this island now, and a submarine off its coast, and however quiet you keep it, the probability of discovery climbs with every hour you remain.
We would rather have the women off the enclosure grounds and aboard the ship before that probability turns against us. "
"What happens if they're aboard the ship and the alarm goes off?" Yamanu pressed. "Then you've got people stuck in a cargo hold in a harbor that's just been frozen. They'd be trapped."
"Then they wait," Number One said. "We will ensure they have provisions, and that the ship doesn't sail without us, so there is no risk of it leaving with the women and without the means to protect them.
If your team requires us to remain on this island until the chests are extracted and you are gone, the women and the scientists can wait in the hold. "
Yamanu shook his head. "I'd still rather you waited. It's cleaner for everyone."
The collective turned the request over one final time across all eight threads, and arrived, again, at the same place it had arrived at the two previous times.
"It needs to be done tomorrow," Number One said. "Call it a gut feeling."