The officers all shrugged.
"Anything is possible," the lead officer finally replied.
The truce meeting took place on another peak located halfway between Silverine and the Plain of Stars.
Deaux was transported to the summit by a specially adapted HVV. With him were three of his biggest bodyguards. None of them were carrying weapons. Deaux was holding a green flag.
He had assumed that four enemy soldiers would be on hand when he arrived. But instead, only one person was waiting for him at the top of the windblown peak. He was holding a green flag in one hand, a large brass cross in the other.
A priest…
Deaux climbed out of the HVV and walked to within six feet of the diminutive monk.
"Are you lost, Father?" Deaux asked him snidely.
The priest just shook his head slowly. The wind was making his cassock crack like a whip.
"I am the one they choose to speak to you," he said.
Deaux handed the green flag to one of his security men and imperiously snapped off his gloves.
"So then, speak, Father. I'm a very busy man."
"This war is unnecessary," the priest told him simply.
"And why is that?"
"Because it's not your battle to fight," the priest replied. "You've been duped. Whoever is paying you has made a fool of you and your men and has been for centuries."
The wind began howling now. Smoke from the battle scene below was wafting up toward them, swirling in the mountain crosswinds. It was suddenly very cold.
"Father, I'm sure you are a more learned person than me," Deaux said. "So forgive me, but I don't understand what you are talking about."
The priest finally lowered his green flag to the ground.
"Answer me this," he began again. "When was the last time you were paid for this mission?"
Deaux didn't reply. Paid? He couldn't remember back that far.
The priest went on. "When was the last time you heard from your families? Or saw your superiors? You must have a command structure somewhere in the Galaxy. When did anyone from there visit you last?"
Again, Deaux could not reply. Besides Xirstix, he'd never seen any superior officers on the sentinel moon. For years the rumor around the base was that their superiors always visited in secret, which explained why they were never around. But Xirstix had once confided to him that it had been decades since the last real contact. Yet there was a reason for that: What they were doing out here was so secret, regular communication would have jeopardized the security of the mission. Or at least that's what Xirstix had been told.
"Don't you get it?" the priest asked him now. "Just like everyone else in this system, you're stuck inside a time bubble. You think you've been out here for just a few decades, but it's really been centuries. It is only noticeable to someone from the outside looking in. But take it from me, back where I'm from, those uniforms, those weapons, those little wings — they went out of date hundreds of years ago. The people who stuck you out here are probably all dead by now. Of old age, I'm sure. And that means there is no money waiting for you."
Deaux remained mute. His eyes darted back and forth, for him a sign that he was approaching something that passed as deep thought.
"I was told I'd be out here for fifty years," Deaux finally croaked. "I was told that it would be an isolated post, but I would be paid handsomely once my tour was done."
"Have you ever heard of Holy Blood, my son?"
Deaux shook his head no.
"It is a magical substance that keeps you alive a long time, so a friend of mine tells me," the priest said. "He thinks you were all given a bit of it and then sent way out here to serve for centuries, not decades."
"Nonsense!"
"Oh, really? Then why do you think they never came back to finish the other ninety-nine sentinel moons?"
Deaux was stopped dead in his tracks. He had no answer to that question.
"We could prove it to you, if you let us," the priest offered.
Deaux's face turned red. "I did not come up here to be educated by you," he snapped. "What you seem to forget here, Father, is, time bubble or not, I've got you at an advantage on the field — more than twenty to one! My job here is to crush you. That means you will be crushed."
"Even though there is a chance that what I've said here is correct? That you've in effect given up your lives out here? That your families are all dead? Your loved ones gone, assuming you even had loved ones? Think about it, man. It makes sense. Sure this is a secret place. Highly secret. It was built that way. And they didn't want anyone back there to know about it. They knew they had to keep their prisoners under lock and key, but they also had to keep the prison guards quiet, too. How best to do that than put them all in a time bubble and allow the years to pass like water dripping on stone. From that perspective, what's the point of all this?"
"What's the point?" Deaux roared back. "What do you want me to do? Just walk away, just on your say-so?"
"Yes! Exactly… Just walk away. Leave this planet. Leave the system. Pop out of the bubble and go do whatever it is you people insist on doing. No one will even know you've gone. Not for decades — and that's only assuming they'll actually come out here looking for you again someday, which they probably won't."
Deaux had had enough. He was starting to think too much, and it hurt. He wanted to go.
"Father, you are dulling my senses, and I have to be sharp for my victory celebration tomorrow. So my best to you and your Heavenly Creator or whoever, but I have things to do… "
The priest just shook his head sadly.
"Hear one more thing then," he said. "Honor binds me to tell you that my friends will have a secret weapon if and when you clash again. They will not hesitate to use it on you if you persist. This secret weapon will kill many of your soldiers. So many, that at the end of the day, it just won't be worth it for you."
"If your secret weapon is that flying maniac," Deaux retorted angrily. "We'll get around to destroying him eventually. I won't lie and say that his attacks haven't been… noticed. But he can't do it alone."
A very dark moment came now. "That flying machine is a weapon of awesome standards," the priest replied sternly. "But that is not the secret weapon of which I speak. This is something more brutal, and for your men, unstoppable."
"Please," Deaux sniffed. "I have nearly a half million men still under my command. You have fifteen thousand, tops. Now, really, I thought you wanted to talk — not bluff."
"It is not a bluff. We want to make a deal. You and your army go back to where you came from. You leave us alone. We leave you alone. We never have to meet again."
Deaux couldn't help it; he laughed in the priest's face. Even his security guards were laughing.
"You're bold, if anything, Father. I have to give you that. But your friends have sent a fool in their place. No matter what mumbo jumbo you want to fill my head, the facts are still these: Your friends have the smaller army, it is their planet that has been invaded. Their cities are under our domination."
He signaled for the HVV to come and pick him up.
"I have more important things to do than stay up here talking to a delusional priest," he said.
The HVV appeared, and Deaux climbed aboard.
The priest called after him, "Just think of the lives you could save, my son. Please…"
But Deaux was already gone.
27
They mere called whistles.
They were an ancient device that would produce a shrill, piercing sound when manipulated by breath. Every BMK field commander carried one; so did every officer down to the rank of captain. Through the centuries, their predecessors had discovered that if one blew hard enough, the whistle's song could be heard above all types of battle.