The group mostly consisted of what was left of the Council, along with a few other senior members of the colony. Most of them already looked like mere shadows of their former selves.
“We shouldn’t do this,” said Abigail Petra, “we could attract their attention.”
“We’re here to get attention. Nothing we can do will make us of less interest,” Caple said bluntly. “We need to discuss what to do.”
“Do! There’s nothing we can do! They’re armed, we’re locked in a box!” Petra’s voice rose. Around them some of the sleepers stirred. Caple clamped a hand over her mouth and scowled.
“What are you suggesting? An attack?” Bielski asked, feeling both a weak stirring of hope and a terrible fear.
“If we time it right we might catch them by surprise,” said Mario Villeneuve. “Depends how many there are and whether we can get weapons.”
“If we get that kind of opportunity, we’ll take it,” Caple said without conviction. “But we won’t get that chance. We’ve been brought here for a reason. We’re lab rats now. We’re to be used for experiments.”
It was a thought that no one had dared speak before now. The idea of being taken by aliens was the subject of years of overblown films and books. But for them it was a frightening reality.
“No, no!” Petra replied. “No civilised people…”
“Civilised people? Civilised people wouldn’t have gunned poor Brand down! These are not people. They’re monsters and we’re in their power!” Villeneuve hissed before turning back to Caple. “Go on.”
“The way I see it we have a responsibility to save some of us, the only way we can.”
Bielski followed the other man’s gaze and felt his stomach twist. There weren’t many children left. Most had been lost with the harvester but eleven had made it this far, ranging from infants to early teens.
“Oh God!” murmured Bielski.
“No, we... we can’t do that! It’s monstrous!” Petra choked.
“They can go out easy at our hands... or slow at theirs.”
Caple turned away and leaned his head against the wall.
“No. we can’t even think such a thing,” Villeneuve objected. “Someone will come, someone will rescue us. The Battle Fleet…”
“The Fleet!”
Caple spun round and for a moment Bielski thought he would attack Villeneuve. He placed a restraining hand on Caple’s chest. The other man shook it off, but made no move towards Villeneuve.
“Where was the fleet when they came? Where was the feet when those of us who were not murdered, were taken from our homes? No, there is no one coming for us. No one knows where we are. We don’t know where we are.”
“We cannot ask mothers to kill their own children.” Villeneuve persisted as others nodded or murmured their agreement.
Caple looked at them, his expression grim. “We’ll wish we had,” he said.
A few hours later they came and took Villeneuve.
___________________________
Supposedly a man needed two thousand five hundred calories per day to maintain weight, a woman two thousand. Someone had worked out that while the human food from Junction provided that on average, they were now getting about fifteen hundred. No one on Junction had been fat. The station had been a working colony that kept people lean and as the weeks crept by, Bielski watched as what little fat anyone had wasted away. Faces became thinner and slowly people went from thin to looking starved. When the human food ran out, their captors began serving alien food. The stuff was fairly tasteless but the portion sizes went up, which raised morale for a few days. Then people started getting the runs. The alien food probably contained little a human digestive tract could recognise as nutrition. Although the portion sizes continued to increase, people began to realise that merely meant starving to death in the slowest way possible. The children were the worst to watch, lively little misses and mischievous small boys faded to ghosts of themselves.
Every few days, the aliens would come to inspect them. Most were dressed in blue sealed environmental suits, armed with shock batons that formed a perimeter around two or three individuals in yellow suits that Bielski assumed were some kind of officers or high ranking officials. On the third such visit, one of the younger men experienced a rush of blood to the head and attempted to attack one of the yellow suits. A strike from a shock baton floored him. The yellow suit issued some kind verbal instruction in a voice that sounded like a broken bellows. In response, six of the guards switched off their batons and methodically beat the young man to death.
That night Caple came to Bielski.
“The last of the mothers have agreed,” he said quietly.
Nastya had been sitting beside Bielski, now she got up and moved to the other side of the room. Caple watched her for a moment before turning back to Bielski.
“What do you need from me?” Bielski asked.
“They’ll probably try to stop us. I’m getting together a few people to block the hatch for as long as they can. Give us time to get this done. You understand you could get hurt or killed.”
Despite the warning, Bielski felt relief. He was afraid of what Caple might ask him to do. The other man must have seen it in his eyes because he clapped him awkwardly on the shoulder.
“I wouldn’t ask that of you. You are a good man Mateusz.”
Maybe he didn’t mean it or maybe he did, but the way Caple said good, sounded more like weak.
“The mothers then…”
“No,” Caple shook his head. “No child’s last sight in this world should be their mother hurting them.”
With half a dozen others, Bielski stood ready at the door and listened to eleven pitiful little sounds.
If they noticed, the aliens made no attempt to interrupt. Only hours later did one of the yellow suits enter. Caple stood, defiant in the centre of their room. Before him lay the bodies of the children. The alien looked at the bodies and then at Caple. Was it puzzled, angry or merely confused? It motioned forward several guards to remove the bodies, then after a few minutes the alien turned and left.
The days, weeks, months all trailed into one another. The deaths of the children marked the final end of any kind of community. Even if the aliens took the deaths of the children calmly, they weren’t prepared to see their lab animals all kill themselves. Shortly afterwards they were stripped of all remains of their clothing and fitted with a metallic bracelet. At a single press of a button, their mag-lock would pin them to the wall. They learned to either hold it until the guards released them to eat, or soil themselves then sit in their squalor all day. Some simply gave up and as they sickened the aliens took them. Finally they came for Bielski and Nastya, who along with four others were dragged out.
The chamber was both a medical room and horror show. The bodies of two of those who had gone before them lay on medical slabs, their chests opened up for study. A pair of aliens, this time dressed in green, awaited them. One of the men with them struggled and screamed as he was forced into one of six glass boxes, still determined to cling to life.
Bielski wasn’t sure whether to envy or pity him. But when it was his turn, he fought too. Not to delay the inevitable but to reach out to touch his wife, before the blue suited aliens pushed him in and closed the hatch. He could only watch and wait, as the others were each in turn forced in. From piping in the ceiling came the hiss of gas. This is it, he thought as he closed his eyes and breathed deep. But although his eyes began to water and his throat went raw, it was nothing beyond discomfort. From outside he heard a muffled scream. It was Nastya, her box was filling with a greenish gas and she was fighting for breath. Beyond her, in the end two boxes, the men in each one were already slumped to the floor and motionless. His own discomfort forgotten, Bielski screamed Nastya’s name again and again as he beat his fists against the sides of the box. She slowly sank to the floor, fighting for breath, and finally stopped moving. When they were all obviously dead, the alien took out the bodies. As Bielski and man in the
final box were dragged out, his last sight of his wife was of her being cut open for examination.
“What happened?” Caple asked.
Bielski and other the man were the first to ever return to the holding room. Bielski had no memory of arriving back there. He’d probably been catatonic for days, only slowly regaining his reason.
“You were right,” Bielski whispered to him. “We were just lab rats to them. They want to know how to kill us.”
“Then I think they’ve found it,” Caple said quietly after a while. “They’ve come and examined you several times but they have taken no one. They have learned all that they can learn from us and, God willing, we have reached the end of our usefulness to them.”
But as with so many other hopes, that wish remained unfulfilled. Apart from guards bringing food, they saw nothing of the aliens for weeks. Then once again they came for Bielski. He allowed himself to be dragged out and hoped that this time he would die. But instead of the medical lab in which Nastya perished, this time he was taken to a smaller compartment. Once secured to the wall, he was left alone. After a while he noticed the room was filled with things – human objects. Displayed on the far wall was an oil painting that had belonged to Alex Gibbons. It was hanging upside down. It wasn’t the only picture. Others were dotted about the room. They’d been taken from the cabins at Junction. Bielski let out a tortured groan as he saw one he’d known well, a picture that had decorated his own home, the one of him and Nastya on their wedding day. There were also dozens of old paper books, tools and children’s toys, scattered around the room in no discernable pattern, fragments of destroyed lives. Weeping, he didn’t hear the hatch open or the alien enter. It was only as the creature settled itself on a floor cushion that he caught sight of it. Sorrow turned to rage and with a wordless snarl of raw loathing, Bielski attempted to hurl himself at it. For all that he’d longed for death, in that moment he more than anything wanted to kill the alien. The manacle brought him up short.
“Damn you! What do you want! What is there left to take?” he screamed at it, before collapsing. Not even his seething hatred could sustain his starved body.
The alien quirked its head as it looked at him, then started to emit an odd wheezy rasp.
“Slower... of... speech,” said a computerised voice from the ceiling.
Bielski froze in place before exclaiming: “You can understand!”
“Slower... of... speech,” the computer repeated.
Bielski repeated himself, forcing himself to slowly enunciate the words.
From the sealing came alien speech. The alien listened carefully, then replied.
“Yes... with... you... speak... will... now...”
“Why have you done this to us?” It was the question that had burned them all these long months.
“To... learn...” it replied. “Young... ended... why... you... did...that?”
The alien waited patiently as Bielski worked out what it had said. Once he did his expression tightened.
“To save them from you!” he spat.
“Will... more... ending... of.... young...?”
“I do not understand.”
“Conflict... wasteful... progresses... continues...”
“A war is still being fought!”
“Correct...”
“You haven’t been able to beat us.”
“Yet...”
The brief elation he had felt was chilled by the single word. The alien took that as its cue to continue.
“Conflict... wasteful... seek... end...”
“Yes! We seek an end.”
“Positive... Require... that... to... end... bring... all... young... Produce... young... no... further... allow... we... shall... end... race... yours... without... conflict”
Kill your children! Have no more and the human race will be allowed to go extinct in peace. That was the alien’s peace proposal. He wanted to vomit.
“Why? Why do you want to destroy us? Why do you hate us?”
The alien quirked its head again, as if puzzled by the question.
“No. Hate...” it said. “Hate... wasteful... Conflict... wasteful... Galactic resources... finite... Your... resource... consumption... allowed... cannot... No hate... we... wish... to... survive... Your... existence... limits... our... time.”
The alien gestured around the room.
“Culture... history... that... is... yours... we... will... preserve... You... we... must... without... hate... destroy.”
It paused again to enter a series of commands into the computer beside it and a holo display lit up. It selected a computer file and a star map came up.
“Here... we... are,” it said pointing at one circle before moving its finger to point at a second. “You... origin... here. Speak... now... locations... of... human... worlds.”
“I will give you nothing!”
The alien pressed another control and two of the blue suited guards came in. Both carried shock batons, the nodes of each crackling menacingly.
“Resistance... wasteful,” said the first alien. The computer could give no emphasis to the words but the alien angled its head as if genuinely regretful. “Answers... must... give. False... answers... punished.”
Bielski lay on the floor. He could feel his mind working only sluggishly now. In the distance he heard an alarm sound and stirred. Caple was the only other one to move. He was now little more than a skeleton, covered by paper-thin skin. There were electrical burns all over his body where he had resisted the interrogator and his breath was raw and wheezy. There were only a dozen of them now, none more than a few days from death. The aliens continued to dole out food, but no one now had the strength to eat and the stuff simply rotted on the floor. The alarm continued to sound and he twisted to look at the hatch. Then beneath him he felt the deck give a faint shudder and the lights flickered. As Bielski raised himself up on one elbow, the deck gave a violent jolt. At the same moment there was a distant but distinct explosion. The lights flickered and this time blacked out completely, to be replaced with the dim green glow of some kind of emergency illumination. Bielski grunted. His arm had been pinned to the bulkhead by his mag-lock manacle and now, without warning, it fell away.
“What’s happening?” he whispered.
Caple shook his head in mute confusion.
Bielski lifted his hand curiously. The gravity seemed to be slowly but definitely weakening. Time passed, then in the distance they felt and heard more explosions, followed by the unmistakeable clatter of gunfire.
“It’s a rescue!” someone said in a tone of desperate hope.
The gravity was almost gone now and Caple dragged himself over the hatch to slap at it weakly.
“Help us! We’re in here! Please help us!” he called as loudly as his ravaged body could manage. Outside the sounds of gunfire continued, interspersed with the occasional bang of an explosion. Sometimes the sound of fighting seemed to diminish and they despaired, then it began to come their way.
Abruptly the hatch opened and one of the blue suited aliens loomed over Caple. In its hand it held not a shock baton but a gun, which it brought to bear. As it did so, however, there was a deafening rattle of gunfire and the alien shuddered as bullets ripped through it and blood splashed across the bulkheads. Its body drifted inwards through the hatch, beyond which Bielski caught a brief sight of a hand. A human hand – just before it threw a grenade into the chamber.
Chapter Twelve
Reconnaissance by Fire
1st April 2068
Willis stepped out of her cabin and was nearly flattened by a pair of dockyard workers trying to negotiate an environmental recycler down the passageway.
“Watch out!” one of them warned her in no uncertain terms.
Willis resisted the urge to bite back. They’d been waiting weeks to get Black Prince into dock for badly needed and extensive repairs. While not that many ships had been damaged, Black Prince was in the battered minority. Before the Siege of Earth began, most civilian pe
rsonnel had been evacuated back to the surface and it had taken time to return them into orbit. Of course, once they did get the ship into docks, it was suddenly swarming with civilians.
They’d need to remove at least some of the ship’s crew, but Willis needed to be careful about that. Crewmen who were even only temporarily without a ship, would look very available to other captains. Transfer requests fly into Fleet Personnel and before she knew it, all of her crew’s most experienced hands would be stripped away. So at least a portion of them would have to stay on board. Hopefully the dockyard workers would remember to check the cruiser’s compartments before they started opening up its hull. That last thought crossed her mind only half jokingly and she absently tapped the canister at her leg to ensure her survival suit was in place.
Making her way out of the centrifuge, Willis headed for engineering. Black Prince hadn’t taken a direct hit from a cap ship missile; she doubted the ship could have survived that, but there were plenty of signs that she had taken a lot of hits from smaller projectiles. Mostly the evidence was in the form of patches of sealing foam, which was the only reason half the ship’s compartments could hold pressure and loops of cable where repairs had been spliced in to cross breakages. She found Guinness in the port side engine room, talking to an older, heavyset man with dock manager’s stripes on his sleeves.
“Flooding on a starship,” the manager muttered as he looked around. “That’s a bloody new one on me.”
“It did in a number on our electrics,” Guinness replied sourly. “We been trying to run two generators – one of them bandaged back together I might add – on one control grid.
The Last Charge (The Nameless War Trilogy Book 3) Page 22
