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Juan hadn’t wanted to leave her here without him; Luz knew that. However, she also knew that, although he trusted his team implicitly, there were simply some things he needed to handle on his own. One of these things was the meetings that took place in the security and privacy of Sanglarka. Alliance officials had still not shaken off the betrayal of Guaray. They needed to know exactly who were at the meetings to eliminate the possibility that the private Alliance communications network might be compromised.
Luz had told Juan that it wasn’t much different than as if he stepped out of the house for a moment, gate travel being what it was and that if anything happened here, she would have Mustapha let him know right away. Juan had simply hugged her. “You’re right, of course,” he admitted. “If I can’t trust you to handle anything that might come, I don’t know who I could possibly trust in your stead. Just be careful, mi amor.”
“Of course, you silly man. Now go. You know Liliath will be there and punctuality is important to her.”
He kissed her fervently without another word and turned and stepped through the portal to the L.A. gate, where he would then go through the gateroom to the Sanglarka gate. For security reasons, only the official Gatekeeper gate could allow anyone to go to Sanglarka. There would be guards there to inspect him and be sure he was who he said he was, based on the Guardian Key he had around his neck.
The outside of Jenny’s little hacienda-style home looked like any other of the homes on Infinity Loop but the inside of the gateroom office and the gateroom itself was bristling with Alliance Troopers, handpicked by Gariel.
Luz sighed and entered into their large, bright, airy kitchen with its terra cotta tiled floors and immaculate white walls and cupboards.
On the large marble topped island in the center of the kitchen was her tablet. On it was her to-do list along with inventories, accounting data and other things necessary to run her mango orchard business. Deeper in an encrypted mini drive were the necessary parts of their true business for the Alliance. Her tablet, although it looked like any other tablet you could buy online or in an electronics store, had been “souped-up with DAT”, as Bob would have put it.
She grabbed the tablet and placed it into a special holster she had made for it. On her other hip was a holster of another sort. Anyone meeting Luz for the first time would think her the ultimate homemaker and hostess. Her home was always clean, the meals she prepared for her guests were delicious, and on top of that she ran a successful mango orchard with distribution of her fruit throughout the coastal towns of the main island of Puerto Rico.
However, from a purely superficial standpoint, they would have missed so much else about her. Besides being an avid reader and textile crafter of crochet, knitting, weaving and embroidery, she was also skilled in the martial arts and an accurate and deadly marksman. It was also her secret triumph that she had once defeated Arvid, his quarterstaff versus her kali sticks. It had been a private workout with no witnesses and Luz had been discrete about it, never telling anyone. As far as anyone else was concerned Arvid remained undefeated and she was ok with that.
She never went out into the mango grove or anywhere outside on the property unarmed. First of all, because the surrounding jungle was alive with native animals, many of them serious predators, and secondly, she knew that their particular gate was more vulnerable than many of them, such as Adelle’s lab high in the Swiss Alps or Sanglarka, also surrounded by mountains, or even Brendan’s gate deep in the forests of New South Wales, Australia. Even though their compound was in the inland jungle, the island was relatively small, and they were less than an hour’s drive from several large coastal towns. Their elevation wasn’t high enough for any real protection from an aerial assault.
Luz had always been a firm believer that it was far better to be over-prepared than to face the consequences of a lack of foresight. So, she also strapped on the special harness that gave her easy access to her kali sticks on her back and went out her front doors. Although this was her habit on any normal day, she was especially adamant that all her hired hands also were armed and well-versed both in martial arts and projectile weaponry.
She waved to Aliki, on his way to his workshop, where he and Leland continued to assemble the necessary supplies and equipment and vehicles into the MDPs they were preparing for the various Alliance forces. She enjoyed having Aliki and Leland on the property. Both were of a cheerful and optimistic mindset and evening meals were entertaining as both had some amazing stories to share.
They came and went through the gate office to the various dimensions that were supplying the Alliance in the war effort, but anyone watching would only see them going to and from the hacienda, seemingly unencumbered. Anything they acquired on their several trips each day was conveniently stored in their MDPs. Since all of the Earth gate guardians had taken to wearing the flesh like armbands to cover them, you wouldn’t have noticed the MDP even close up.
The skies had cleared from the storms of the day before and a warm light breeze stirred the leaves of the mango trees only slightly. The trees in the grove were well-spaced to allow the harvesting equipment ample room for the safety of her workers and the proper picking of the fruit. Her workers picked in teams, one operating the harvesting machine and the others using “picking sticks” to reach mangoes as far up as they could reach. In addition, mangoes in the top of the trees were picked by an individual in a cherry picker unit and dropped to deep pads where the others on the picking team would gather them and process them into the harvester.
As the containers were filled with the processed fruit, they were hauled off to a waiting truck and then to the harvest barn where they would be packaged for distribution.
Mangoes were tricky to work with. They grew on long stems, hanging down vertically. The picking sticks grasped the stem a few inches above the top of the fruit and cut the stem while still holding it. The worker then took the fruit to the nearby specialized harvesting machine.
At the machine, the stem was snapped from the mango and the mango was immediately put under running water that washed the acidic sap from the fruit. Even missing the tiniest drop of sap would damage the fruit, making it useless to sell.
On top of this, the sap was very dangerous to human skin. You could generally tell an amateur mango picker from the acid burns on their arms or legs. For this reason, even in the hottest weather, the pickers wore long-sleeved shirts and long pants and washed their hands frequently under the streams of water constantly flowing in the harvester.
Luz’s workers had one of the lowest damage and injury rates of any crew she had ever seen, and she gladly paid them top wages. Of course, their main purpose was as a security team for the hacienda and its precious gateway. Her workers didn’t know this, but Luz was aware of the speculation that occurred amongst her crew. She was a government spy. Juan was fleeing a government hit squad; and on and on...
She didn’t mind it. The little mystery added a bit of spice to their days and kept them alert and ready for action. She had provided them with workout facilities, but for the most part the work in the grove kept them fit and muscular. To all outward appearances, they were simply hired hands. But to Luz they could be the one thing that stood between inimical forces and the gateway she and Juan had committed to protect.
Currently within the gate office in the basement of the hacienda there was a constant guard of at least four armed troopers, but that didn’t prevent anyone from attacking from outside. Aliki and Leland’s shared workshop was even more vulnerable than the gate and crucial to the war effort.
In addition, in the library of the hacienda, Mustapha manned the communications network that coordinated communications related to the war. He had a couple of Alliance Agents also stationed there with him and the ability to completely fry every piece of equipment if it became necessary to prevent the compromise of the Alliance communication network.
But it was a beautiful day and Luz was determined to enjoy it as she could. She checked on the harvesting which generally ran like clockwork, but in large part because she took an active interest in the work, often pitching in alongside her harvesting crew, “just to keep my hand in” as she told them.
As she worked alongside them, she focused on drawing them out, listening while they talked about their families, their interests, local sports teams, not to mention their inner circle clean joke competition. There were several types of these, groaners, belly laughs, puns, and riddles. At the end of the week she would award them points and once a month they would add up the points to crown a new champion in each category.
Generally, the harvesting season lasted about six months out of the year, between September and March. During that time, it was a daily routine, picking, processing, packing, and shipping the mangoes. It was physical work, but with her crew it was also happy work. All of them loved what they did, and Luz was glad to pay them well for it, especially considering their additional duties.
Each of them pulled a night watch at least a couple times a week, rotating through the schedule. At one side of the main gate, which was shut at twilight, there was a watchtower capable of comfortably housing two guards. There were floodlights powered by solar charged batteries at each side of the gate in addition to infrared video cameras at intervals along the wall. The video feeds were monitored from inside the hacienda by Aliki, Leland, Mustapha, Luz or Juan in shifts day and night.
The video cameras had been added as part of the additional security required by the Alliance after it was determined that there was a small possibility that Sam might know where they were and what they were doing.
“Hey Victor!” Eduardo called from up on the cherry picker. “How much money does a pirate pay for corn?”
Victor looked up and scratched his head. “I dunno, Eduardo. How much DOES a pirate pay for corn?”
“A buccaneer!” Eduardo shouted down and the cherry picker wobbled with his guffaw.
Victor groaned. “That was pretty corny alright. But I think it was only a two pointer,” he remarked to Luz. “He’s behind on points. I’m guessing Diego has the lead again this month. The one about the monkey and the parrot still has me chuckling.”
“That was a good one for sure,” Luz agreed with a grin. “But this one might make it into the groaner pile. It was punderful to say the least.”
Victor rolled his eyes and Luz patted him on the back. “How is Catarina? Is she over that cold?”
Victor’s eyes always lit up when he thought about his newborn daughter. “She is fine. Aliana is a good mama. She treated her as her mother had done for her when she was little, and all is well. She got better pretty fast, for which I am grateful. She is growing so fast. She turns her head to look at you when you call her name now. It makes her smile.”
Later, when they were out of the grove, he would show her the latest photos his wife had taken. He went down the mountain for a couple of days every week. He missed his little family, but the pay was good, and Luz made sure that his family lacked for nothing. She was like an extra auntie to all of the children of her workers. She and Juan had discovered early on in their marriage that she was unable to bear children. So, she expended her maternal impulses in behalf of other children and found herself finally at peace with it.
Once a year she held an “unbirthday” party for the families of her workers with music, great food and, of course, presents which she took great delight in purchasing for each member of those families. And at Christmastime they all attended a parade and pageant in the local coastal town together, followed by a nice meal at a favorite restaurant and presents for all.
Jorge and Vittorio worked beside her and Victor, breaking stems from the mangos on a special tool at the back of the harvester and immediately plunging them under the constant stream of water that continued to run over the mangos as they moved down an open conveyor belt and dropped onto a foam cushion at the end of the harvester. At the other end of the harvester, Augusto and Manuel slid the cushion out from under a layer of mangoes at regular intervals so they rolled off into a draining area below. From time to time they would stop the progress of the belt to load the accumulated mangoes into boxes on a pallet which would be hauled with a small tractor to the storage area. Carlos and Sebastian had just taken a load a few minutes ago.
For her and her crew, this was just a normal day during harvest season. All of them took Sunday off to attend various religious services or just spend time with their families. On those days, Juan, Luz, and the other Alliance Gatekeepers in residence took turns at night watch and watching the video feed supplemented by humanoid Alliance Troopers. All in all, the increased security wasn’t as stressful as Luz had originally feared it might be.
The work had a soothing rhythm to it, chatting and joking and even occasionally singing as they worked. Luz was content with this part of her life as anyone could be, she mused.
Suddenly a shout from the direction of the harvest barn brought them all up to complete alertness. It was definitely a shout of alarm and was followed by a loud wail. Each of the workers carried a “shouter” with them, a simple device with a single button that let out a high decibel screech. These were only to be used in a serious emergency. They served two purposes, first to get the attention of all the workers and second to pinpoint the location of an incident. The shouter would not be turned off until help arrived. Where predators were concerned, the high pitched wailing sound also served to frighten them off, all but the largest and loudest of them.
The harvester was not turned off so the water could continue to circulate and prevent the mangoes from being spoiled. The cherry picker descended. Before it could reach the platform it rested on, the others had already dropped whatever they were working on, including their tools, and had pelted down the little road that led to the harvest barn.
As she ran, Luz pressed the little button on the armband that lay next to her MDP. This would alert Aliki, Leland and Mustapha that something was wrong. They would be able to track her via one of “Burt’s Bugs” as they referred to the little nanobots they had each agreed to host during this crisis. Their first priority would be to secure their particular areas and workspaces and then to come to her aid. They had drilled in this early on and found they could secure their stations and be out the door in a matter of a couple minutes.
Part of that security was to put any DAT into their MDPs and to remove the power supplies from anything else, as well as employing the shielding and locking mechanisms for each of their areas. She knew that her team was well trained, but she also knew from experience that you couldn’t plan for everything. The one thing she did know is that Sanglarka had also been immediately notified of a breach in security, which meant she could depend on help coming within minutes.
She didn’t dwell on this. She was running flat out. Her workers had immediately let the fastest runners get ahead while three of them paced Luz, one on either side and one behind. The main road leading to the harvest barn was level and led to a loading yard in front of a large metal building, roomy enough to be able to pull the large cargo trucks in at night and still store hundreds of reusable crates holding the harvest of the day. Each morning the trucks went out and delivered mangoes while the others got a start on the next batch of harvesting.
As they neared the building, suddenly the wail of the shouter cut off. Behind the cargo trucks on the loading dock, a scuffle was in progress between about a dozen hefty men and her security squad. How these men had gotten through the gates without detection was a mystery that Luz had every intention of discovering.
“Don’t kill all of them!” she broadcasted in mindspeech while shouting it vocally. She wanted the attackers to hear this and if, as she suspected, they were from off world, she was pretty sure they would understand what she was saying. “We want at least a few of them alive!”
The attackers, realizing reinforcements were near, renewed their attack with a frenzy. Evidently, they had come in without any type of projectile weapon, or at least they weren’t using them at the moment. Some of them wielded clubs, and some had a sort of flail made of chains. Luz couldn’t fire on them, as good a shot as she was, without the potential of hitting one of her own men.
As one of them turned so she could see his face, her heart sped up. In the center of the forehead of the intruder was one large green eye. These were obviously not from around here.
Leland and Aliki pounded up behind her. “All is secure!” Aliki sent to her. “Who are these Mea Uli? How can they even be here?”
“I don’t know, but we’re about to find out. Staffs out, my friends. We don’t want to harm our own. Let’s flank them. My team, to the right. Leland and Aliki, you’re with me.”
Luz pulled her kali from their sling on her back. She knew Aliki must be pretty angry. “Mea Uli” meant “black animal” and was considered a great insult among his people. Aliki nearly never swore, so there must be more to this than she realized, but her curiosity would have to wait until later.
The intruders had the dock workers backed up to the metal sliding harvest doors on the dock. Her men were holding their own, even as out-numbered as they were. Carlos looked injured, however, and Sebastian had a cut under one eye that looked as if it had come from a blow with a heavy fist.
Luz and her companions had their kali staffs out and were striking out with them, back to back. The dock was wide enough to allow them some movement, but fortunately it did restrict their attackers as not all could get to them at once.
Luz, Aliki and Leland raced up the side stairs on the left as her security team ran up the stairs on the other side. It was only six steps to the cement dock platform, and they ran up two steps at a time. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that instead of staves, Leland had a knobbed shillelagh in each hand.
“Alliance Aboo!” Leland shouted.
“Ou te fasioti oe!” shouted Aliki at the same time.
Luz had no battle cry, so she beat a quick tattoo on the metal door beside her which rang out with metallic booms, much like a kettledrum.
This got the attention of the brutes that had surrounded Sebastian and Carlos. At the same time her team shouted “Muerte!” from the other side of the dock. As the intruders were attacked from both sides they turned from Carlos and Sebastian. This was a mistake they soon discovered, as the apparently beaten security men immediately attacked them from behind. At this point, other than the fact that these attackers were tall, about six and a half feet, and heavily muscled; the odds had evened out considerably.
Luz took on the first man she came close to. The arrogant and disdainful look of her opponent would have angered a less experienced fighter, but Luz actually smiled her most winning smile at him. She could see the shock in his one eye, the single eyebrow raised as high as it would go and she didn’t hesitate to thrum his upraised arm with her kali sticks, even getting in a good whack at his elbow.
Now her grin became wicked as she ducked under a swing from his oversized club and thrust both sticks point first into his gut. Spinning around the arm that had instinctively clutched his stomach, she sent a rapid rat-a-tat to the bend of his knees. He couldn’t turn fast enough, and she attacked his ribs from behind under the upraised arm with his club in it.
Meantime, she could hear the battle around her, almost as something faint and far away. To her, every step in this horrible dance was in slow motion. Her dance partner was slow and clumsy compared to her quick and nimble footwork. The sticks never stopped, striking again and again at the most tender and vital parts of any humanoid body. It was as if his body had become a drum and she the percussionist. As she swung around again from his back to his club hand side, she swung with all her might at the man’s elbow.
With a cry he dropped his club and turned to face her, which was a mistake. This whirling, encircling move was much like a ballerina’s pirouette. Only instead of graceful arms artfully outstretched, Luz held pain in her hands. Once again she struck at the ribs on the other side of the man’s body. By this time, he was in pain and enraged, flailing out a large fist, but he never made contact. She thrust one staff hard under his raised arm directly into the armpit and as the pain bent him nearly in two, she followed through with a forceful blow to the back of his neck. He fell like a ripe mango onto the ground, still as death.
Luz sincerely hoped she hadn’t killed him; not out of any compassion on her part, but she really did want to know why these brutes were here on her plantation and if there were more on the way.
Panting, she looked quickly around her. Several of the brutes were either on the ground unconscious like their fellow or still fighting against greater and greater odds. For, as each foe was downed, the defenders instantly ganged up on an intruder who was already in a ferocious fight. At this point it was two on one and, in one case, three on one. She was about to join in with Sebastian and Carlos on a particularly large specimen when she heard shouts from behind her.
Down the harvest road pelted a large group of Alliance troopers with Mustapha and Juan at their head. When the brutes who were already outnumbered noticed the reinforcements rushing toward them, they immediately raised hands in surrender and plunked themselves down in a submissive seated posture on the cement floor of the dock.
Juan vaulted, pushing up with one muscular arm onto the dock. “Mi amor, are you ok?”
It touched her that his first concern was always for her. She let him pull her into his arms. “I think we managed. Fortunately, I don’t think we killed many of them. Shall we take them into the harvest barn and see what’s going on here?”
Already the troopers were securing the prisoners, those who were conscious. Victor rolled up one of the three large metal doors and some of the troopers began dragging the unconscious ones inside.
In the meantime, Mustapha was seeing to the wounds of Carlos and Sebastian. “Nothing too serious; nothing broken, but I think they should spend some time in the hot tub and then get a massage. Fortunately, I am trained in such. I will be glad to take them back to the hacienda in the golf cart to see to this, if you would like.”
“That would be very helpful, Mustapha. Thank you for your prompt action.”
Mustapha put both palms together in front of him and bowed slightly. “I am grateful to be of assistance, milady Luz.”
He was always so very humble and somber, Luz reflected. On the surface he often appeared stern, but the mask hid a gentle heart. Although, like all gate guardians, he was trained in martial arts he preferred to not engage in violent acts but was well versed in the healing arts using natural methods.
Aliki and Leland, on the other hand, were both still bouncing on the balls of their feet as if looking for someone else to fight.
“And THAT!” Leland, snapping his fingers, shouted at the backs of the prisoners as they trudged before the troopers into the barn, “for whatever pit ye crawled out of!”
He and Aliki high-fived one another and turned to Luz, still flushed from the battle.
“Thank you both for your assistance. I don’t think we could have held them long enough for help to arrive without you.”
“Ah, no, lass, ye could of taken them on with one stick behind yer back. Never mess with the mama bear. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
“You are tamaitai taua for sure,” agreed Aliki.
“I’m sorry?” Luz inquired.
“It means warrior woman in Samoan and with such a smile on your face, as if a sunny dandelion suddenly developed poisoned thorns without changing its sunny disposition.”
Luz ducked her head, embarrassed by what was obviously high praise from these two. “Thank you for your kind words. Now we must see to these alien dogs and find out what their orders were, although it appears to be pretty obvious who they are taking their orders from.”
They turned and went into the shade of the harvest barn, currently only lit by the windows high up on the fifteen foot high walls. It was somewhat cooler than outside, but not by much. Large fans circulated the air so that it wouldn’t get so hot as to impact the fruit they stored there.
The prisoners were sitting cross-legged against the back wall of the barn, staring straight ahead with their huge single eyes in various colors, their jaws set and their faces like so much stone. Troopers stood at parade rest facing them, one trooper per prisoner. The four unconscious ones lay on the ground next to their comrades, one trooper in front of each while one trooper checked each for pulse and breath.
At the fourth one he looked over his shoulder at Juan, shaking his head. “He didn’t make it. Blow to the face, crushed his nose into the brain. I’ll dispose of him after we take blood and DNA samples.”
Luz and Juan exchanged looks. “No,” she replied to his unspoken question. “That one isn’t mine.”
“We’ll put them into the back of the maintenance truck and haul them to the gate. I think maybe our scientists and security team at Alliance headquarters would probably like a chance at them. The infirmary will hopefully be able to revive them.
As for this bunch, if our trooper friends would be kind enough to keep an eye on them for the moment, I will check with headquarters and see how they would like to handle this. My first impression is, based on descriptions from Burt, Elizabeth and Jenny is that these are probably Norgoth, which means somehow the Insenium once again have access to Earth.”
Juan had every right to be concerned. They had sealed the Fleistian portal in the Amazon basin months ago and had it guarded night and day by the flying robots they had discovered in one of the five MDPs that had come in so handy during that conflict. These little bots could camouflage themselves and were tied into the Alliance communication network. According to their surveillance, the area around the portal remained deserted the entire time since they had cleaned it up.
In Luz’s opinion, this could only mean there was another undiscovered portal that was not in the gate network, but how this was possible, she had no idea. She sighed. Like a multi-headed beast of legend, it seemed that every time they chopped off a head, two would grow in its place.
