Eastern Expedition(Concluded)

[Haktiva]

Aside from the changing of the mercenary guards every few hours, there was little to tell that time was passing. Every now and again, the Captain would have Nirai brought to her chamber for another interview. Although her demeanor was one of unwavering power, she seemed to have developed a sense of familiarity with the young woman. Perhaps she had been in the desert too long. Perhaps she found something likable about her. Or perhaps she was just manipulating her.

"I take it you've started giving up hope?", the Captain asked, camera rolling.

[Page]

Nirai still held out hope, if that was really an appropriate word, that the Captain's refusal to open up to her with even inconsequential information might serve as an indication they didn't intend to kill her; for if they did then it would matter not what secrets she died with. But even if she wasn't to die, who knows how long she'd be trapped here?

"I still want to go home" she answered. "Whether I think I will or not really doesn't matter much, I think."

[Haktiva]

"I think that's all we need", the Captain replied, turning off the camera. She stood up and smiled calmly, her expression not as hard as it had been. "You seem to have handled yourself well enough", she said, approaching Nirai. "But tell me. What would you have done to get out of here?", she asked, stroking Nirai's cheek with her kevlar gloved hand.

[Page]

"I lean toward men, I think I mentioned that in one of the interrogations. Not that I can't take a compliment though" Nirai said, beginning to realize there was something a lot scarier about the Captain than any of the men who seemed to obey her like dogs.

[Haktiva]

"Like that glasses wearing guy we shot?", the Captain asked.

[Page]

"Max? Goddess no, he's not my type. He's really a prick, from the three days I've gotten to know him. Still, you didn't need to shoot him."

[Haktiva]

"It made a statement", the Captain replied. "Don't fuck with us".

[Page]

"The point was well taken from me since the start, so I hope you don't feel the need to shoot me too" Nirai told the Captain.

------

The glowing neon blue rabbit wasn't real. But somehow it was. Josef knew, even then, it was merely a byproduct of the chemical reaction in his brain, the lysergic acid diethylamide falsifying sensory input. Yet his unconscious mind had priorities, and survival was more important than entertainment.

Scratching at the door, the little guy desperately wanted out.
"Shhhhhh, you'll get us shot" Josef whispered.
The rabbit spoke back in a child's voice.
"We're safe because of the waterfall."

Josef's mind was racing, he wasn't sure how to decipher that. But then, with his ear pressed to the door, he listened. The sound of the man guarding him stepping away. He unfastened his belt.

"Ohhhhh, he's going for a piss" Josef thought to himself.
The rabbit scratched the door again, and he opened it as softly as he could. Josef favored walking stealthily over walking quickly, and new he'd be safe as he rounded the corner.

He could hear the Captain talking to Nirai in one of the rooms, but also knew it would ruin his escape to try to save her. He would have to come back for the others. Their pile of stuff was still right by where the four had breakfast. Josef snatched his vaporizer and pocketed it and then stuffed the same pistol Max gave him under his belt. He wanted to steal back his pills too, but didn't have time to look for them. Instead, he grabbed the keys to one of their hovercrafts.

Josef followed the rabbit until he could see sky above.
Climbing was hard on his aging body, but he made it out.
A stone broke at his boot, and fell back down below, echoing loudly with a resounding boom.

The rabbit jumped up and floated up to the stars. Josef would have to settle for sprinting as fast as he could to the hovercraft outside...

[Haktiva]

"The fuck?", the Captain asked rhetorically. She looked out the old window and saw the newly destroyed stone.

"Sound the alarm", she said into her mic. She turned to Nirai, pistol drawn. "Any idea what just happened?", she asked.

[Page]

"I've not slept in two days, I wouldn't even know what just happened if I were trying to" Nirai said frankly, though she was scared, being as much in the dark about what was going on as the mercs.

------

The entire galaxy seemed to be visible under the night sky, something Josef could appreciate even without the help of LSD, though while tripping, it felt like touching the divine. The engine of the hovercraft roared to life and Josef slammed the throttle forward.

He navigated by the stars, and began to look over the control panel, trying to decipher whether he had enough fuel to get back to the checkpoint where the Haktivan soldiers were.

A Kyylita, a Pagian word for an avatar of the Goddess, appeared in the passenger seat next to him.
"Will you do the math for me, my love?" he asked the apparition he was hallucinating.

[Haktiva]

"Fair enough", the Captain replied. One of her men came in, she gestured toward Nirai and she was lead out of the room with the gun pressed to her back.

The Captain sighed and grabbed her communication array, an oversized laptop really. She tuned in to her client's frequency, even with the superior power, the signal was weak.
"Sir, one of the group has escaped", she said.
"Any idea who?", the Client asked, his voice choppy from interference.
"No idea. Do we pursue?", the Captain replied.
"No, this may actually help our situation. Do you have the interview tapes?"
"Yes Sir"
"Good. Send a runner out to get them to me. You know my coordinates. Just make sure the poster child stays relatively intact and the others don't get any funny ideas", the Client said, disconnecting.

The Captain stood before the man who let Josef escape. She listened to his testimony with her weapon out, the mercenary sweating with fear.
"I should execute you", she said. "But I doubt there was any way we could have anticipated the way he escaped. Instead, I'll give you a chance to redeem yourself". She handed him the memory card from the camera. "Get this to the Client. If you survive the desert, consider your penance paid"
"Yes Captain!", the merc said, saluting and running for the exit, his objective clenched tightly in his hand.

Max, Esmerelda and Nirai were brought before the Captain, no trace of sympathy on her face. "Your friend has just made this situation much more complicated than it needed to be". She held up a detonator. "As consequence, I've had this dome wired with enough explosived to turn it all into sand. If you try anything, I wont hesitate to use this"
"That's abominable!", Max shouted. "You'd be destroying priceless history, not to mention killing us!"
"Such a shame to sacrifice a perfectly good hideout like this", the Captain mused. "But you know that old saying. 'If I can't have it, nobody can'".

[Page]

By sunrise, Josef was coming down from his cloud and coming back into reality. It made him a lot more on edge, but also more determined. He resolved that he would do whatever was necessary to rescue Nirai and his Haktivan friends. No, he didn't expect the Haktivans to put their lives on the line for Nirai, or even someone like him. But Esmerelda was someone of importance, and surely, he thought, there were people with guns who'd be very upset to hear she was abducted.

The hovercraft was running on empty for awhile now. The warning lights had come on twenty minutes ago and a loud alarm joined in not long after. Apparently there was no third and final warning, merely the vehicle crashing to the ground below.

Josef wished now that while high, he had found the concept of a seatbelt half as fascinating as the stars above. He was thrown violently out of it and rolled across the dusty ground, inhaling sand and hacking it out. Scrapes covered his left side from his shoulder down to his ankle.

"Fuck me" he said to himself as he staggered up to his feet.
There was a group of men surrounding him with guns drawn. Normally this would be bad news, but he recognized the basketball court and the tent formation. This is where they checked in before beginning their trek on foot.

Josef raised up his hands and said "don't shoot, I'm not a terrorist or mercenary or anything, I stole the hovercraft but it was justifiable grand theft... hover."
He stepped forward slowly and said "my name is Josef Saingir, I registered here four days ago. We were ambushed by mercenaries, in the Eternal City. They have my friend Nirai, and Max, and Miss Esmerelda."

He collapsed back down to his knees, his ankle stinging in agony.
"Owwwwwww."

------

Max seemed to be in horror that the place was rigged to blow, but Nirai was honestly apathetic at this point.
"Imminent death is imminent death" she thought, it mattered little how. She tried her best to hide how happy she was that Josef was way more courageous than she gave him credit for.

[Haktiva]

"So that's your plan", Esmerelda said.
"Yes. I like to think this would make a great mercenary haven. Who knows, maybe it will become a viable city again. So long as things go my way from now on".

The group was lead to a new section of the palace, one with much stronger doors. Max and Nirai were placed in the same room, which was a little bigger, but far more secure, what with the five mercenaries guarding the door. Esmerelda was placed in a new room as well, but her guard was even larger due to her disposition.

"I suppose there are at least thirty mercenaries here now", Max said, his tone bitter. "So much for discovering history", he lamented, lying down on the musty bed.

[Page]

"Their leader asked if you were my boyfriend" Nirai said scornfully. "Then again, she also seemed to quite enjoy watching me bathe so I don't know what the fuck to think."
Again, because of her frustration and anger at the situation, Nirai's nationalistic tendencies were coming out and she couldn't help but blurt out "this shit would never happen in Page, criminals don't run wild like this. We had a problem in Vandura but we cracked down hard on them, and that would have ended if people just stopped buying their drugs."

[Haktiva]

"I could argue with you about this, but right now, I'm just going to get some sleep", Max replied, taking up most of the bed.
--
"Are you absolutely sure this is it?", the Client asked the mercenary.
"Captain handed it to me herself", the merc confirmed.
"Very good. I thank you for your service", the Client said.
"It's nothi-", the merc began to say. He looked down and saw the knife deep in his gut, blood spilling on the sand. He looked back at the masked Client, then up at the stars as his vision faded. He fell to the ground, the sand barely covering him from the wind.

The Client placed the memory card into his PDA, the footage uploading to the MIB mainframe. He turned to the dead mercenary and crouched down. He shut his glazed eyes with two fingers, sighing as he did. "Go without fear, and meet heaven's embrace", he said. His earpiece beeped. "Yes?", he asked.
"We got the footage", a voice said.
"Good. Get it to the appropriate people in Page, make sure to delay it's arrival to whoever needs to know about it most", the Client replied.
"And our people?"
"Send it out now.

[Page]

Nirai laid on her stomach. She wiped away dust from the ancient bed as much as she could with her hand and then pressed her head down into folded arms. For the first time in three nights, she slept straight through from pure exhaustion.

[Haktiva]

"I can't believe you made it", the medic said to Josef. The soldiers had spent a few hours treating Josef, cleaning his wounds as well as his system.
"I don't suppose you have the coordinates from where you came from", the captain who registered them asked.
--
Max woke up to the room spinning. He was starting to lose it from hunger. Nirai probably had a better time of handling it. This was one of the situation where the high metabolism of the Haktivans was a disadvantage. His stomach growled.

[Page]

"Coordinates, not off the top of my head. However, I have an idea. Bring me a celestial sphere, some pen and paper, and if you could procure it, a cup of white tea with some organic milk, and I should be able to calculate them for you in two to four hours" Josef said with a wide grin.
"You know, I think learning to navigate by the stars is an extraordinarily useful skill that should be taught in schools. If there is ever a worldwide EMP attack - by aliens, perhaps, or a terrorist faction, the people who know will be a step ahead of everyone else."

------

"They're not going to let us starve to death, I don't think" Nirai said as she heard Max's stomach growling. "If they wanted us dead they'd have just shot us."

She stared at the door despondently and said "I hope Esmerelda is okay."

[Haktiva]

"This is a military outpost, not a sorority", the officer replied. He turned to one of his sergeants. "Get him back to Salkar, priority escort", he said.
"Yes Sir", the sergeant replied.

Josef was placed in a Quasi Modo, medics keeping him hydrated and semi-sedated along the way to the city. "Echo 5-7 this is Beetle 1-3. We have a HVT in bound with critical intelligence", the pilot said.
"Roger the Beetle 1-3", the comptroller said. "We'll have MIB personal on arrival".

[Page]

"The tea wasn't a requirement, though I don't think it's too unreasonable to assume someone has a celestial sphere on hand" Josef griped to himself.

[Haktiva]

The guards dropped in two plates of some sort of meat, pan fried by the looks of it.
"Oh isn't that a treat", Max said sarcastically.
--
The helicopter landed at Daedroth military base, a few miles from Salkar. An MIB officer dressed in the tell-tale black grey fatigues. "Let's get down to business professor", he said. "Who's ass is in jeopardy?

[Page]

"Miss Esmerelda, I believe she is someone important around here who you should already know. Max... oh what was his last name? Ferenz? It's on the docs. And Nirai Kanan, from the Pagian State Department. There were at least eight mercenaries, maybe up to a dozen. Their leader a female" Josef recalled, not making eye contact or even looking at anyone, as his thoughts were drifting back to his escape.

"I tried to tell them back there, I can use a celestial sphere, with a regional map laid against it, using the position of the stars against the approximated speed of the hovercraft and the direction I traveled to let you know where the Eternal City is. It's actually very basic mathematics, which isn't by any means my major but very simple."

------

"I was a vegan when I was a teenager. These days, I don't give a fuck" Nirai commented as she shoved a huge piece of food into her mouth.

[Haktiva]

"Oh this is big', the MIB man said, his tone restrained. "Get this man everything he needs"
"Yes Sir", one of the men said with a salute.
--
"Under normal circumstances I'd have a remark about a woman being so willing to devour a pair of fried goat testicles, but I'm much too hungry to judge right now", Max said, putting a small piece in his mouth. "Eastern delicacy. you can imagine Esmerelda is a fan".

[Page]

"King Daniel banned whaling after taking power, though I remember from being a kid, the Solstice dinners with my family where we ate whale penis. This is similar but less chewy, something I appreciate" Nirai replied.
------
In just an hour, Josef wrote down coordinates and threw up his arms in celebration, although immediately winced in pain - he had forgotten his body was still sore from being thrown from the hovercraft.
"Come have a look!" he shouted.

[Haktiva]

"Well that's disappointing", Max said. "Here I was hoping that you'll be disgusted and I can have a little humor in this pit", Max said, annoyed.
--
"Get a Spectre team out there now", the agent said.