“I wouldn’t know,” Klixx said. “I was not born into the enclave. I arrived here one month-cycle ago from Nova Hellas.”
Another surprise – Nal’ai hadn’t picked up that Klixx was a new arrival. She went back to her notes.
“So what was it that pushed you into abandoning your home and coming here?” she asked.
“There was… an infraction,” the martian said slowly. “I do not wish to discuss it.”
EXILE, Nal’ai wrote, underlining it. SELF-SUFFICIENT SOLDIER?
“Perhaps you can help me understand just how much the mindset of an independent enclave such as Borreal differs from the loyalist collective, then?” she went on.
“That is a question better suited for the elders. They are the ones who set policy.”
“So even though you’ve described the life of a soldier martian in Nova Hellas as…” she glanced back at her notes, “… vile, cruel and brief, the elders still exert full control over the soldiers of this enclave?”
“You seem to be operating under a misapprehension, krxix,” the martian said. “You assume that all those who abandon Nova Hellas abandon the core principles of what it means to be a child of Mars. I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of the great empire my race has built. Be under no illusions: martians are the galaxy’s supreme species, and one day all other creatures will know it. It is simply the case that those who claim the title ‘Nova Hellas’ are currently misguided.”
“You think that a reunification is possible, then? That, unlikely as it may be, the elders of independent enclaves and Nova Hellas could one day reach an accord?”
Klixx smirked. “I very much doubt the likes of Eyxyx would ever surrender their petty power. But as for the rest of us, who knows? If Nova Hellas repents, perhaps.”
More frenzied notetaking. COMPLEX IDEOLOGIES. MORE INDEPENDENT-MINDED THAN MOST SOLDIERS. ALLEGIANCE ONLY TO SELF? Nal’ai paused for a moment.
“Am I right in thinking that Nova Hellas would rather ignore these free enclaves than try to reach out to them… or attack them?”
“Perhaps,” Klixx said slowly, glancing at Kolli’s sleeping form, then back to Nal’ai. “But I doubt the elders of Nova Hellas would wish to waste their strength against an enclave with a fully functioning defense data core. Borreal is still a martian community. It has soldiery, automated weapons systems and shielding to spare, most of it controlled from the core.”
Nal’ai considered the answer for a moment before noting it down. It didn’t seem like a subject she should press too hard on – she moved on to the next topic, interactions and relations with non-martian groups in Hub City. To her surprise, Klixx showed only minimal reluctance in their answers. Nal’ai realized it was likely few, if any, had ever bothered to stop and ask the opinions of a generic martian soldier drone before.
“Sometimes necessity comes first,” the little soldier said when Nal’ai asked them how martians, with their culturally ingrained xenophobia, dealt with the many other species they were forced to interact with in Hub City.
“You mean like this interview,” Nal’ai dared suggest, the shade of her eyes dipping to a dark amber. The martian actually smiled.
“Perhaps. I’m sure this interview will be of some use to both of us. Eventually.”
“I hope so,” Nal’ai said, struggling not to beam with excitement. Clearly, she really had perfected her interview technique. She could practically see the A-plus grade on the final paper.
“Are you two still talking?” Kolli asked. She’d started awake, and was now looking around the storage space blearily. “I’m hungry. Is anyone else hungry?”
“Perhaps now would be a good time for a break,” Nal’ai allowed. Klixx agreed to leave them for long enough to source something that wasn’t ration bars. They even started to speak in the standard tongue, so that Kolli could understand them.
“See,” Nal’ai said brightly after the martian had left. “It’s like my brood mother used to say. Even the most intractable species lighten up once you get to know them better.”
“You krxix are just far too friendly,” Kolli said dubiously. “It’s that hive instinct, always helping and sharing with everyone.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Hey, I’m the one who usually benefits from it.”
Klixx came back with several trays of steaming sucrale, which both Nal’ai and Kolli devoured. The questioning resumed, focused now on standard martian foodstuffs, and carried on in a similar vein until a buzzing in Nal’ai’s pocket made her jump.
“Oh gack, sorry,” she said, cutting off Klixx as the martian described their clone mother’s favorite pre-battle stew back home in Nova Hellas. “I lost track of the time! Kolli, can you take over?”
“Take over?” Kolli stammered.
“Just note down what Klixx is saying,” Nal’ai said, fumbling with the alarm chip in her pocket. Klixx half-rose from their stool as Nal’ai made for the door, but she waved them back down.
“I’m going to stay in the barrack block, promise. I almost forgot, I have a scheduled uplink call with my supervisor. I need to check in and report my findings.”
Klixx looked at her with narrowed eyes, but slowly sank back onto their stool.
Cursing under her breath, Nal’ai hurried along the rows of bunks and fished the uplink from her rucksack under their commandeered bed. The screen blinked to life in her hands. She cursed again, paused to check her antennae were straight, then perched on the edge of the bed and established the vid connection with Longaard’s office. The professor appeared on the screen, still plugged in to his desk.
“I’m sorry, Professor Longaard,” Nal’ai said, all in a rush. “I was conducting an interview and didn’t notice the time.”
Longaard made a buzz that Nal’ai took to be the robo version of a huffing noise.
“Well, at least you have begun your interviews promptly,” the professor said. “I take it from that fact alone that you have been well received?”
“Yes,” Nal’ai said, pausing. Longaard buzzed again.
“My systems detect hesitation, Ms Nal’ai.”
“Our initial contact was… difficult,” she said slowly.
“Describe ‘difficult.’”
“Apparently the chief elder viewed myself and Kolli as some sort of threat. They thought we were… attacking the enclave.”
Longaard made a buzzing sound that Nal’ai took to be surprise.
“The chief elder is still Orix Veyy?” he asked. She shook her head.
“If it is, that’s not how they introduced themselves. They call themselves Eyxyx.”
Even over the fuzzy screen, Nal’ai saw the professor’s optic units refocus.
“Eyxyx is now the chief elder of the Borreal enclave?” he demanded, his words chopped by the uplink’s distortion.
“I believe so, yes. Why? Is that a problem?”
“Listen t… Nal’ai, this is v… clear?”
“Professor, you’re breaking up,” Nal’ai said, giving the side of the uplink an exasperated tap. The connection continued to deteriorate. Longaard’s picture had frozen. A blurt of words came through, all scrambled up. She only caught one. “Danger.” Then the screen went blank, replaced by a small, circular icon. Connection lost.
“Piece of junk,” Nal’ai hissed, her eyes going violet as she smacked the uplink once more. It made no difference. She snapped it shut and stuffed it back inside her rucksack.
When she returned to the storage room, she found Klixx gone.
“Said they were tired,” Kolli said with a shrug, offering her the pad she’d been digi-scribing notes on. They consisted of a quarter-page of illegible scribbles and a doodle of a bug-eyed martian hound.
“Did they give you any trouble?” Nal’ai asked. “I assume me suddenly disappearing didn’t go down well.”
“They made sure they could see you hadn’t left the dorm from the door,” Kolli said. “But that was about it. You know they have s
eventeen siblings? And half of them are clones? Apparently that’s, like, standard.”
“The things you know,” Nal’ai said, the violet hue of her changeable compound eyes giving away the sarcasm she’d tried to hide. Kolli didn’t seem to notice.
“They’re actually a pretty chill little tyke,” she said.
“Martian datemate confirmed,” Nal’ai smirked, eyes shifting to magenta. Joke-shade, as Kolli called it.
“Oh shut up, Nal. They’re too short for me. And that’s just for starters.”
“And probably too fond of exterminating non-martians,” Nal’ai pointed out. Kolli shrugged.
“Well they’re definitely a lot less aggressive than the lanky one. So, what did the prof say?”
“Oh, he seemed impressed with the start we’ve made.”
“Really? What about the whole ‘found guilty of besieging the Borreal enclave’ thing?”
“Just a classic martian misunderstanding,” Nal’ai lied. Now really wasn’t the time to be worrying Kolli with the professor’s apparent unease over Eyxyx. The first interview had gone far too well for her to back out now. It was surely nothing more than some old academic tiff.
“Looks like we’ve really turned this trip around,” Kolli said.
“Yeah,” Nal’ai replied with a smile. “Looks like we have.”
Nal’ai felt like she had barely closed her eyes before she heard the door to the barrack vault hiss open, followed by the clatter of dozens of armored feet invading the long, echoing space.
“What’s going on?” Kolli said blearily from below.
Nal’ai didn’t get a chance to answer. Figures were rushing between the rows of bunks, stab-lights probing the half-dark. She heard barked orders ringing out.
“Nyy ix!” Find them!
She threw aside her blanket and leapt down into the aisle, just in time to be lit up by one of the search beams. She raised her right limbs, cringing as the glare hurt her eye lenses. She got an impression of a cluster of armed martians pointing an assortment of ray weapons in her direction. Eyxyx stood among them, towering over the smaller soldiers.
“You,” the elder rasped, pointing one long, accusatory finger at Nal’ai. “Caught in the act!”
“The act of sleeping,” Nal’ai demanded, confusion warring with dismay. Kolli stumbled out of bed and into the spotlight next to her, groaning, hair an unkempt mess.
“What time is it?” she murmured.
“Bring them,” Eyxyx snapped to the swarm of martian soldiers surrounding them.
It took Kolli a while to grasp exactly what was happening, but when she had woken up enough to realize they’d both just been thrown into a martian prison block, she really began losing it.
“I knew I should never have switched courses,” she sniveled, eyes red, clutching her knees as she rocked back and forth in the corner of the featureless, metallic cube-cell the two students had been consigned to. “Only crazy people do martian studies. Really crazy people, or boring people.”
“Thanks,” Nal’ai said tersely, eyes black, pausing her back-and-forth prowl along the edge of the cell. Rather than a door, they were sealed off from the corridor outside by a row of crackling green energy bars. Their jailer paced outside, mimicking Nal’ai’s movements. It wasn’t a martian, but it was one of their hounds. Its stalk-eyes swiveled as it looked at Nal’ai hungrily. She felt as if the beast was staring into her soul.
“I hate martians,” Kolli snapped.
“Please be quiet,” Nal’ai said, doing her best to keep her own tone level. “I’m trying to think.”
“Why?” Kolli said. “Your thinking is what got us in here in the first place!”
“I’m thinking about how to get the keys from around that thing’s neck,” Nal’ai answered, exasperated. The martian hound wore a heavy lock-collar, studded with activation chips. If only she could reach it…
“I’m sure it would be happy to swap one of your arms for the collar,” Kolli said, unhelpfully.
Nal’ai didn’t respond. She’d just heard the sound of a hatch levering open. Moments later a trio of figures appeared on the opposite side of the energy bars. The key-hound shrank back, tail down, whining.
“You,” hissed Eyxyx. They were flanked by two other lugubrious-looking elders. “Tell us where you’ve hidden it!”
“Hidden what?” Nal’ai asked, all four hands on her hips.
“The enclave’s defense data core,” Eyxyx snarled, almost snatching hold of the crackling energy bars. “We know you’ve taken it for Longaard! Where is it?”
“We don’t know anything about a defense data core,” Nal’ai said. “We spent the whole of yesterday in the barrack block you provided. We haven’t left–”
“You think you can circumvent our defenses so easily,” Eyxyx said. “That we are blind and deaf to your cunning infiltration? Not so! If I return here without the core, you will wish we had cast you into the Pit of Hounds when you first arrived!”
Nal’ai began to reply, but the trio of elders had already turned on their heels and stormed from the cell block. She sighed.
“I guess we’re still in trouble,” Kolli said, nonplussed after the martian diatribe. She’d reached into her pocket and was trying to work free another wad of popgum. “Hey, you want one?”
“No,” Nal’ai said irritably, then paused. Her eyes flashed from black to orange. “Wait. Yes. I want the whole pack.”
“Greedy,” Kolli gasped, clutching the sliver of foil to her chest.
“Not to chew!”
“Yeah right, what else–”
“For once in your existence, K, please just do as I ask,” Nal’ai said. Kolli hesitated for a moment longer, but she knew that tone. Her roommate had reached her tipping point. Slowly, she held out the popgum packet.
Nal’ai took it and stripped away the foil, exposing the whole stick. Ignoring a final half-hearted complaint from Kolli, she knelt on the edge of the energy bars, and whistled.
The key-hound had been sitting quietly since Eyxyx’s visit, but now its head twitched. It snapped and snarled, and leapt onto its paws.
Slowly, Nal’ai began to feed her arm through the gap between the energy bars.
“Great gack, don’t,” Kolli cried out. “It’ll rip it clean off!”
“I’ve got three more,” Nal’ai said, mandibles clenched in concentration. Her eyes had gone black as jet.
The martian hound didn’t need further encouragement. It leapt for her arm, slavering. She tossed the gum stick into the air and threw herself backwards into the cell.
The hound’s hurtling jaws snapped shut over thin air. Nal’ai blinked, on her back, surprised to see her limb still attached to her body. The hound snarled and snapped again, muzzle inches from the crackling bars separating the cell from the corridor. Then it made an odd noise, like a grunt.
It half turned, shaking its muzzle, then made as if to snap at Nal’ai through the bars. Instead, though, it could only yawn its jaws half-open. Its terrible fangs were gummed up – quite literally – with a rapidly expanding ball of popgum. The beast snarled and struggled, but with every motion of its jaw the chewy snack was more furiously masticated, became more covered in saliva, grew more intractable. In a few seconds the stick had almost completely sealed the hound’s jaws together, bubbles popping and oozing past its suddenly impotent fangs.
Nal’ai leapt to her feet and thrust three arms back out past the bars, gritting her teeth as she focused on not making contact with the vertical energy beams. The hound tried to snap at her, but all it could do was bump its muzzle against one forearm. With two hands Nal’ai snatched it by the collar and hauled its bulk, with all of her strength, up against the bars.
There was a crack and a yelp, and she felt the beast go limp, knocked for six by the power discharge earthed by the bars.
“Oh my great gack,” Kolli said, staring at her roommate’s handiwork. “That was amazing!”
Nal’ai was too busy reaching through the bars aga
in to carefully free the hound’s collar. It was studded with key chips. She had no idea which one belong to their cell, but it wouldn’t take long to find out. She stood and reached round to the locking pad on the wall outside, inserting one after the other.
“We’re getting out of here,” she said as the chip pad beeped, and the energy bars flickered out of existence.
“Sounds like a plan,” Kolli said, grinning from one pointy ear to the other. “Left or right?”
“Left,” Nal’ai said on a whim. They made it as far as the hatch at the end of the cell block’s corridor. The portal slid open in front of them. Two martian soldiers, coming in the opposite direction, stopped mid conversation and stared up at them.
“Oh,” Kolli said as both pairs came to an abrupt halt. “Hi, guys.”
“Run,” Nal’ai said.
They went the other way, as ray beams and angry shouts pursued them along the cell block. Kolli yelped as one shot vaporized a section of wall beside her, and Nal’ai was almost blinded by another beam that passed a hand’s-width to the left of her head.
There was a second hatch at the opposite end of the row of cells. This one, however, was locked.
“Hurry,” Kolli pleaded as Nal’ai fumbled with the key chips, like she wasn’t going as fast as she could.
“Not this one,” she mouthed as more ray beams blossomed with furious pew-pew sounds in the air all around them. “Or this one, or this one, or…”
“It’s this one,” Kolli yelled, snatching the collar and pressing the last chip against the locking pad.
The hatch levered open. This time there was no one on the other side. In fact, it was the outside. They ran.
“There’s the hoverbus,” Kolli shouted. Nal’ai realized she was right. The cell block had been part of the outer structure of the dome primus. The open boulevard lay ahead, still deserted, and beyond it the street with its incongruous hoverbus stop. Nal’ai slowed down.
“What’re you waiting for?” Kolli all but screamed.
“My notes,” Nal’ai said. “I’m going to get my notes.”
“Are you insane?”
Tales From the Crucible Page 9
