by C. F. Harris
At least I knew how long he’d been here now. There wasn’t a chance he was from my battalion. He probably wasn’t even from that world if he’d had time to turn into the terrified feral creature staring up at me now. He disgusted me. He twisted my stomach as much as this “research” the Kliks were undertaking.
It wasn’t research at all. They were throwing men into arenas to fight to the death with the promise of taking a female as an incentive.
I raised the barbed weapon and held it over my head, but hesitated. There was something new in the officer’s face.
Fear. He was terrified.
I lowered the weapon. Clicking and hissing noises filtered down from above, but I ignored them. Instead I reached down and offered the officer my hand. He eyed it warily before taking it.
I lifted him up.
“Not today,” I said. “I’m not going to kill you. We’re in this together.”
He seemed surprised. It made me wonder what this place was like that he was so far gone. It made me wonder how long it would be before I was the same as him.
“Thank you,” he said.
He turned and looked across the arena. To the girl who was rocking back and forth now. She wore the tattered remains of a uniform that identified her as a member of our fleet. I wondered when her ship had been taken and how long she’d been a prize in these arena fights.
I stared up at the Kliks. They looked much the same even without their powered armor, and they disgusted me. I wanted nothing more than to leap over the arena walls and use my weapon on them. It would be easy enough without their armor on.
Only it was impossible. The wall around the arena was too high. There was no way I’d be able to get up there.
“What is the meaning of this?” a voice boomed down into the arena with an air of command and irritation.
That same voice had gleefully announced the beginning of the “experiment.” My hands clenched around my weapon as I found myself wishing I could track down the owner of that voice and let them know exactly what I thought of their “experiment.”
“You will fight to the death,” the voice said.
“No,” I said.
I did something that might be stupid. I tossed the weapon down. I tensed as the officer beside me tensed. Surely he was thinking about what he could do with that weapon if he took it from me now.
He could kill me. He could take the girl. He could give the bloodthirsty Kliks exactly what they wanted.
Only he didn’t. Tension drained from me. Maybe I wasn’t going to be punished for my faith in my people. Not today, at least. I’d already been punished for it plenty leading up to being captive here.
“Whatever you’re planning on doing to us you might as well do it,” I said. “We’re not going to dance on your strings!”
“Winner is declared. Winner declines to take his rightful prize. Punishment will be doled out.”
“Wait, no!” I shouted.
I feared the worst. I was completely at their mercy. I had been since I was captured and thrown into this arena. The subject of an experiment that turned out to be nothing more than a bloodsport to satisfy their cruel bloodlust.
The hum of a plasma cannon charging overhead filled the air. At least I could take some solace in knowing there would be no pain when they killed me.
At least there would be no pain if their aim was good. Given the cruelty I’d seen on display since being taken aboard the Klik battlecruiser there was a part of me that thought they might deliberately miss to draw out my torture.
The blast hit. I looked to the officer beside me who looked surprised. A cauterized hole smoked in the middle of his stomach. He looked down at it in shock and then fell over. Dust rose up from the packed dirt underfoot.
Another bolt blasted out. I didn’t wince this time. Not because of any sense of bravery, but because I didn’t think that bolt was aimed for me.
Sure enough there was another cry. This time from the woman rocking back and forth on the other side of the arena.
It dawned on me just what sort of horror I found myself in. It wasn’t enough that they threw us out here to fight one another. If we refused to fight then they killed everyone but the person who defied them.
By refusing to fight, by sparing someone’s life, I’d taken two lives.
It was disgusting. It was everything I’d come to expect from the Kliks. An odd clicking noise that passed for cheering with them erupted from the stands all around us, and Kliks filed out as the bodies of my two companions in the arena smoked.
I fell to the ground and looked up at the arena walls. Thought about how I had no chance of escape. There was never a chance of escape.
I thought back to my life before all this. Before my ship was stopped by a Fleet battlecruiser and all our resources were “requisitioned” for the war effort right along with the crew manning the ship.
Sure some of the merchant dealings I had might’ve been less than legal which maybe had something to do with why we’d been detained and conscripted, but deserving my fate in the eyes of the law didn’t make me any happier about that fate.
That felt like a lifetime ago. Moving from station to station in command of my own ship. Being in charge of my own life. My people had taken that from me the day they took my ship and my crew from me. The Kliks had merely added insult to the injury that was my life.
I looked down at the smoking bodies and in that moment I swore I would have my revenge. On my people and the Kliks. I didn’t know how I was going to take that revenge, but I would break free of this place someday, somehow, and I would make them pay.
“The participant will move to the exit. Sustenance will be provided, but you don’t get a sweet dessert this evening because of your insubordination,” the booming voiced said once the room had mostly cleared out.
I laughed. What else could I do in the face of such indifference? They’d just killed two people I’d never known because of my actions and I was supposed to be upset because I wasn’t going to get a treat with my meal?
The chilling thing was what I’d seen from that officer would seem to indicate this sort of treatment, like we were animals in a zoo, did eventually work.
“Go fuck yourselves with your little clawed hands,” I shouted.
“I see,” the voice said, and this time it was less booming.
They must’ve turned off whatever voice filter they were using. Now it was simply the voice of the head researcher who’d promised to do great things with me. The one who’d started my torture.
“If you’re going to be uncooperative then you will have no meal. If you survive your next experiment then we will consider reinstating your meal privileges. Provided you cooperate.”
I held both my hands up and made an odd wiggling motion with my fingers which involved drawing them apart and together horizontally. It looked ridiculous to me, but it was the best approximation of a very rude Klik gesture that I could do with hands that weren’t pincer claws.
A boiling noise came from the speaker, followed by an energy blast that landed in the dirt next to me. For a terrified moment I thought I might’ve pissed the Klik off to the point that it was going to kill me, but no killing blow came. The smoking crater was a clear enough message.
I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been disappointed or relieved that they hadn’t killed me.
I sighed and made my way to the exit. Bars slid up with a hiss and I stepped from packed dirt to the sterile metal corridor that led to my cell. A Klik guard in power armor waited there with a pain stick crackling with energy, looking like it’d love any excuse to use that thing on me.
Sometimes they used them even when they didn’t have an excuse. It’s not like they needed one.
I didn’t bother to turn and look at the arena that had become my life in the short time since I’d been captured. The arena that was likely going to kill me eventually. Especially if I continued to defy them.
This was my life now. I was starting to understand why that
officer would act like he had. I wondered how long he’d been on this ship fighting for his life. Killing everyone who came at him because that was the only way to survive.
I wondered how long it would take before lack of food and constant fighting finally broke me and I found myself no better than that officer.
It was a terrifying thought as I marched back to my cell.
6
Dalia
I watched, helpless, as a tractor beam hit my ship and pulled me towards the big capital ship. My lights flickered and across my viewport I could see the telltale static flickering where the field made contact with my hull.
I wanted to beat my fists against that viewport.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!
I’d finally found them. I’d finally figured out how to track them down. We were thinking all wrong, only now that I’d started thinking right, started thinking like the enemy, I’d also managed to stumble right into them and get my stupid ass captured.
Beeping sounded off to my left. That meant somebody was trying to hail me. And it probably wasn’t somebody from the Fleet calling to tell me they had a couple of massive capital ships ready to come to my aid.
I ignored the signal. Instead I desperately tried powering up my weapons. I winced as several lights indicated the ship was trying its best, but none of the indicators had a healthy green glow.
They were all red. Not even an angry red. More like a dim impotent red because there was barely enough power to keep them going.
I looked to the only other option I had. The emergency teleporter. Not an option I relished considering they were emergency teleporters for a reason: good for transporting inorganic or dead material, but fraught with danger when transporting something complex like a body.
There were more than a few people who’d turned into puddles that’d been human goo when they used their emergency teleport, and I wasn’t eager to suffer that fate. Not to mention it’s not like there was anywhere for me to teleport but the Klik ship, and suffice it to say that was hardly ideal.
Apparently keeping me powerless wasn’t enough for the bastards. A quick blast shot out from the ship, a warning shot since it didn’t blow me to smithereens, and the message was obvious enough. They’d obviously detected that blip in my weapons systems, and they obviously didn’t want me thinking of powering up my weapons. Even if there was no way to actually power them up.
Clearly my enemy was taking no chances.
I briefly considered starting up the self-destruct sequence and going out in a blaze of glory, to quote that ancient ballad of my people, but didn’t.
I had important information the Fleet needed. I had to survive, escape, and get the jumpdrive info back to the Fleet.
It was myopic of the egghead intel pukes not to consider jumpdrives, but it would hardly be the first time a military was caught with their pants down because they were fighting the wrong war.
I needed to live. So I prepared myself for a boarding in every way possible.
I loaded up my belt with plasma grenades. I strapped every firearm I could find to my body in every position imaginable. I pulled out a pulse rifle and loaded it up, adding the grenade launcher attachment for good measure.
Then I got to the final and most important part of suiting up. I pulled out my trusty blaster, a weapon that’d seen me through hairier situations than this, and watched with satisfaction as it dematerialized in my hand.
Teleporters didn’t do so hot with living tissue, but it was just fine with my blaster thank you very much.
A small subcutaneous teleporter attached to a pattern buffer implanted inside my wrist allowed me to pull that trick. Hopefully the Kliks wouldn’t scan for a pattern buffer. Supposedly they didn’t even know that technology existed if some of the intel from interrogations was to be believed, but I was done underestimating the Kliks today.
The massive Klik capital ship loomed over my scout ship. I was being pulled towards some sort of launch bay. Already I could see troops scuttling around. And scuttling was a pretty accurate description. They resembled oversized crabs in armor, though it was hard to see how many legs they had from this distance.
I also saw several massive turrets trained on me through the shielding that kept their atmosphere inside the launch bay. It was obvious they were expecting me to try and pull something, though I don’t know what they were expecting since my ship was dead in space. The hangar bay contained what looked like fighters or transports of Klik design, but there were also several ships that didn’t look to be of Klik or human design. Odd.
My ship settled to the docking bay floor. Now that was also interesting. There definitely seemed to be a down on this ship which wasn’t always a given since gravity wasn’t the normal state of affairs in deep space. They had gravity inducers.
Troops scuttled around out there. Now that I was closer scuttling really was the appropriate word for the way the Kliks moved. They looked for all the world like oversized crabs with heads at the end of a long neck and three eyestalks protruding from that head. They all wore armor and had what looked like the Klik equivalent of guns pointed at me.
They didn’t actually carry those guns like any self-respecting sapient species. No, they had them mounted to their power armor where they manipulated them somehow. I’d never read up on those intel briefs because I’d never thought to find myself facing down that power armor.
Talk about a mistake.
The meaning behind those weapons was clear. I needed to get the hell out of my ship, and I needed to get out now.
I hit a button that put the ship into a secure sleep mode. Nothing would turn on unless I was the one turning it on since the ship was tuned to my bio patterns.
Time to go for a stroll. I opened the doors and stepped out, armed to the teeth and ready for trouble.
Not that I actually got a chance to do anything with those weapons. I was curious, not suicidal, and all those weapons were meant as a distraction so they wouldn’t look for a hidden pattern buffer.
Not to mention I was still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. For them to reveal the hyper advanced weapons systems that made them such a terror lurking around the edge of human space.
Surely it wasn’t just a case of using outdated but unexpected tactics and that power draining beam. That’d be one hell of an embarrassment for the Fleet if it turned out to be true.
And yet it was entirely possible. There were rarely any survivors to say what had happened in a Klik attack, and the Kliks we’d managed to take captive didn’t know anything or put on a good act about not knowing anything.
I shivered at that thought. I needed to work on becoming the first survivor with useful information, and that meant paying attention to the Klik troopers marching up to me in odd segmented body armor and pointing their weapons at me.
They walked on four legs and had the two arm-like protrusions. Only instead of hands and fingers like I was used to thanks to my comfortably familiar ape-descended evolution they had claws. Those claws had some sort of odd tendril thingies that moved out and allowed them to manipulate their weapons with the same manual dexterity as monkeys who managed to take over their planet after a couple million years of clever evolution.
I took it all in. I needed to remember as much as possible.
They stripped me of all my weapons. I smiled. So far the plan was working well enough. They were so intent on the obvious weapons that they never so much as glanced at my wrist.
Again I wondered if they even had teleportation technology. A lack of teleportation technology opened the door to some very interesting battle tactics that weren’t possible with species who had discovered it and knew how to shield against it. They were the kind of battle tactics that hadn’t been used by humanity in centuries, but then again everything about the Kliks seemed like a trip to at least a century back in terms of tactics and technology.
It became very easy to win a battle if you could teleport a nuclear warhead directly into a ship’s en
gine room, and I just so happened to have a couple of nuclear warheads waiting for a good home back in my scout ship. It was just a shame that I hadn’t been able to give them that present earlier when they were first attacking me.
The troops parted in front of me as soon as I was disarmed. Well, disarmed as far as they knew.
A new Klik scuttled forward. This one wasn’t in body armor. Instead it had elaborate paint running all over its carapace. Shell. Whatever the fuck the thing was called. I was more interested in exocombustion than exobiology.
“Damn you are one ugly motherfucker,” I said in English.
“Believe me,” the Klik said, its voice high-pitched and slightly squeaky, but still clearly English for all that. “I don’t find the aesthetics of your stalkless face pleasing either.”
I blinked. It could speak English. Although I guess that shouldn’t have been a surprise. Humanity’s encounters with the Kliks almost always ended with the humans disappearing. It made sense that the Kliks were carting at least a few of those humans off for research.
It stood to reason that they’d studied us and learned our languages. Hell, I could speak Klik thanks to what we’d learned from the few captives we managed to take, though I wasn’t about to let them in on that secret.
It also stood to reason that it would choose English. American cultural hegemony at the end of the 20th century when mass communication became a thing assured that English was one of the two official languages of Earth. Mandarin and Spanish came in a close second and third through sheer inertia and the number of people who spoke it at the end of said 20th century when mass communication started the consolidation and death of most smaller languages.
“What do you want from me?”
The creature pulled out a tablet.
“This one will do nicely,” the Klik said.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Do nicely for what?
I didn’t get an answer. It waved a claw and two guards to either side of me picked me up and carried me away.
I held my peace. Barely. What could I do? I was surrounded by a bunch of guards. Definitely not the opportune moment to try and make an escape. No, I was going to have to let this ride for a little while.
