Andy watched the pit. The lower half of the pit wall across from Paul slid away, revealing only a dark space beyond. He could hear a hissing noise that hadn’t been there before.
A small version of Kassresh stepped out from the darkness, wobbling and barely able to stay upright on two legs. It’s head was oversize for its body, like a bad cartoon drawing. It would have looked comical, wobbling along, if it wasn’t for the rows of sharp teeth it bared when it let out a little squawk.
Two more similar creatures followed it. Then three more. Andy wondered how many of them there were. In the pit, Paul’s moans had turned to rapid breathing as the little creatures bobbled their way over to him. One sniffed at Paul’s foot, and he kicked it away. It fell into one of the others, and they both toppled over but quickly regained their feet. All of them were sniffing now. And there were at least ten. Andy had missed seeing the others come out.
“God, Paul...” Andy whispered under his breath.
“Infant Naga,” Kassresh said, coming up alongside Andy to peer into the pit. “Voracious eaters. And not picky about their food.”
Two of them wandered over to Paul now. He pushed one away with his hand, but the second managed to take a tentative bite at his forearm before he could kick it clear.
“Andy!” Paul shouted, panicking. “You have to help me!”
Kassresh looked at Andy, staring him in the eyes in clear challenge. Andy refused to back down from his stare, refused to give this thing that victory over him. He let all his anger and frustration boil back through his eyes at the cruel being before him.
“You cannot help him,” Kassresh said. “But you can perhaps help yourself. I ask again: where are you from? And where did you come by your ship?”
In the pit below, the screaming began.
Twenty-Two
Andy stared straight ahead, trying in vain to ignore the horrible gurgling and slurping noises beside him. The screams had ended a minute or two ago, but the infant Naga had continued snarling and making crunching noises. Paul was a jerk, and almost got all of them killed. But if Andy could have done something to save him, he would have.
Being eaten alive was a nightmare he wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Kassresh, the alien who seemed to be the leader here, stepped back into Andy’s view.
“You do not watch?” it said.
Actually, it made a series of hissing and snarling noises, but the alien slug these creatures had shoved into his ear took everything being said around him and translated the thoughts behind those words directly to his mind.
“No,” he said. “I do not watch.”
“But I know you understand, at least. You know that the Naga can be cruel to our foes. Now, I wish you to see that we can be kind, if you would be our friend.”
Andy remained as still as he could, but when two of the Naga guards grabbed his arms, he struggled to pull away from his captors’ grasp.
“Relax, mammal,” Kassresh said. “I will show you what I mean. You will not be harmed.”
Kassresh took a device from the table Andy knew held a stockpile of assorted torture devices, and Andy gritted his teeth, prepared to deal with pain despite the alien’s words. When Kassresh walked back over to him, it was holding something about the size and shape of a cell phone in its hand. It tapped the surface of the device with a claw, then held it over Andy’s broken ribs.
The burning pain took Andy’s breath away. Sweat poured from his forehead. He ground his teeth together to keep from screaming. Then Kassresh tapped the device again, and the pain vanished. Andy sagged with relief.
“No permanent harm, anyway. It seems the healer is not...completely compatible with your neurology, perhaps.”
Andy realized that he could breathe easily again. The pain in his ribs was gone. He got his feet under himself, and the guards released him. “How?” he wondered aloud, running his hand over bones that had somehow knitted themselves back together.
The beast clicked its tongue, which the slug said to interpret like a human shrug. “I want answers. We’ve been unchallenged in this sector for a long time, mammal. But we remember the old war still. And the satellites we set to watch this place showed you arrive here bearing technologies that have not been seen for a long, long time.”
“Yet, you seem surprised by simple feats like the slug and the healing device. This is a mystery to me, that you have so much power, yet so little understanding.”
“Then too, your weapons,” Kassresh went on. He picked up Andy’s rifle from the table. “Effective enough, perhaps. But why such simple devices? For a race that has harnessed the power to leap from star to star, your science seems weak.”
“If you’d like, I’d be glad to demonstrate how effective my rifle can be,” Andy growled. He eyed the gun longingly.
“Ah, you want your weapon back?” Kassresh clicked in approval. “A warrior then. Odd, a mammal warrior. But I applaud your spirit. Alas, I cannot accept your challenge at this time. You are needed for other things.”
Then the alien put the rifle back down and held up the same small device he’d used to heal Andy’s ribs. But this time, when he pointed the device at Andy, the burning sensation was much worse. He felt like fire was pouring through every nerve in his body. Andy collapsed to the ground, screaming, his mind telling him that he was burning alive from the inside out.
“You see, this device can offer pain, as well as healing. You will tell me where you are from. You will answer for me the riddle of your technologies. Or I will burn you until you do.”
Dan settled the ship into a stable orbit. The Satori was still cloaked, and he saw no sign that the aliens could track them in space the way they had in the atmosphere. The larger vessel was still hovering a few miles above the ruined city, and the fighters were flying around it in an erratic pattern. The last of the larger shuttles had just docked.
He looked over to where John sat alone at his console, next to where Andy should have been.
Dan pushed his wheelchair back from his station and went to John’s side. He peeked over his friend’s shoulder to see what he was looking at on his screen, but it was blank. John turned to face him, and Dan frowned. He’d seen that hollow look in John’s eyes before, right after his wife’s death. That had been a...really bad time, for John. And the picture on John’s face now was hauntingly similar. He needed to snap John out of this fast. For all their sakes.
“We’re in a stable orbit,” Dan said softly. “What do you want us to do?”
“Just take us home,” John said, his voice flat.
That wasn’t the answer Dan was expecting at all. They had a crew member still down there. It seemed obvious to him that their next move ought to be to get him back, one way or another. Either with diplomacy - which seemed unlikely to work, given the little bit they knew about these aliens. Or more likely through violence of action. Giving up was the last thing he expected to hear John suggest.
“John, I’m pretty sure he’s still alive,” Dan said. He paused a moment. “They hauled him back to the shuttle, then immediately flew back to the main ship.”
Pain creased John’s face. He lifted a hand to his forehead, covering his eyes. Then he lowered it again and said, “Doesn’t change anything. The Satori can’t fight that thing, and I can’t risk any more lives or this ship on a rescue mission. I ordered Charline to let Beth suffocate, to save the rest of us. I can’t put you all at risk for one person.”
Dan shook his head. “You’re wrong. Your orders about Beth were the right ones. But this is different.”
“How is this any different?” John crossed his arms over his chest.
“Because they took one of your people,” Dan said.
“We don’t even know if he’s alive!” John shot back, his grief plain on his face.
“You don’t leave your people in enemy hands!” Dan said. Both of them had raised their voices enough to catch the attention of the others, who sat still, listening. Dan eyed both women, saw Beth give him a
small nod. That was enough for him. “Listen, if there is any chance of saving Andy, we need to try. It’s the right thing to do. Just like...just like your orders to Charline were the right thing to do.”
“For all we know these aliens are the ones who destroyed the base we found on the moon. The more we expose ourselves to them, the more we risk exposing the Earth to an attack. The less contact we have, the better,” John said.
“If we’re going to turn tail and run now, then we’ve already lost,” Dan replied. “And as for Earth? John, if Andy is still alive – and I think he is – then he’s in the hands of the enemy. Do you understand what that means? They’re going to tear him apart until he gives up every little detail about us, this ship, and where we’re from.”
John paled.
“Risk to Earth? Earth’s only chance to dodge these assholes a little longer might be us rescuing Andy. And finding Paul, too.” Dan could see the emotions warring in his friend’s face. “But we should do it anyway. And you damn well already know that. I know you do, John, because I know you.”
“I do know that, damn it! But how?” John stood up, pacing. “How can I risk this ship, and all of you? Even for Andy?”
“The big alien ship is doing something,” Charline broke in.
Dan turned back to the front windows, where he could just make out the shape of the hulking ship in the distance. It was still in the atmosphere, but had risen some and drifted away from the ruined city. He watched flashes of flight flicker around the ship.
“They’re firing! Majel, what’re they shooting at?” Dan asked, rolling back to his own console.
“Target appears to be the ruins on the surface,” the computer replied. “Impact in thirteen seconds.”
“Oh my god,” Charline said. “No...”
Dan watched, waiting. He was rewarded by small flowers of fire bursting into what had to be enormous plumes. The plumes merged as still more firepower was directed at the ruins, until they joined into a single blazing ball of flame.
John spent what felt like an eternity staring into those flames, though he knew it was only a few moments. That callous act of destruction, the annihilation of those last relics on the surface, the casual obliteration of what might be the last vestiges of an entire species – redoubled his fury at these aliens. His pulse was racing, and he took a deep breath, trying to regain his calm.
“OK,” he said, breaking the silence. Dan tore his gaze from the view, and he saw the others doing the same. “I want to go get Andrew as much as anyone. But how do we fight that?” He gestured at the ship, and the devastation it had wrought.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dan said. “The beam our wormhole drive fires out, the one which generates the wormhole? Beth, what happens to anything in the path of the beam?”
“We’re really not sure. It might go through the wormhole. Either that or it gets annihilated by the beam, and the energy release is used to help generate the wormhole. When we tested on Luna, there was no sign of whatever was in the way. Composition didn’t seem to matter, and...Oh!” Her eyes lit up as she realized what Dan was thinking.
“Yeah. It’s a wormhole drive, but it also slices, dices, and juliennes alien battle cruisers.”
John stared at both of them. “Can you make that work?” he asked, his voice quiet, his body still.
Dan looked at Beth. Beth looked at John and shrugged. “There’s not a lot to it. If Dan can pilot the ship so that it generates a wormhole without flying through that wormhole, he’s going to punch a big hole in whatever is in the way. It should work.”
John sat back down, rubbing his chin with one hand. So much was at stake here!
“Their ship is gaining altitude again. They’ll be out of the atmosphere in a few minutes,” Charline said quietly.
This wasn’t how he’d planned things. The mission was supposed to be a quick out and back from his base on the moon. Further exploration would take place later, after they’d had more time to figure things out. Instead, they’d been betrayed, sabotaged, and had ended up using the wormhole drive to travel to a distant solar system in a desperate attempt to keep everyone alive.
Andrew had saved all of them, more than once.
And then John had left him there, just abandoned him to those things.
They could jump home, tails between their legs, to hide back in their nice, safe solar system. Except it might not be so nice and safe now, because they’d lost two crew members. And any bit of information Andrew or Paul dropped, however inadvertent it might be, could clue these things in to where they were from.
“OK, let’s do this,” John said quietly.
All eyes were on him.
“Dan’s right,” John said, his voice gaining conviction with every word. “We have to begin this, here, now, as we intend to go on. If we run and leave our own at the first sign of danger, then we set that as our normal from here on out. I don’t know about you all, but that’s not how I envisioned exploring space.”
Dan nodded crisply. “Ready when you are.”
Beth gazed at John, holding his eyes a moment with the intensity in her own. “I’m not against trying. But assuming we can get in there, how do we find Andy in that huge ship?”
“Leave that part to me,” John replied. “Andy and I have something worked out.”
Beth looked a little dubious, but shrugged. John knew she was on board.
Charline turned back to her console, shaking. She was scared. John could see that. She also wanted to do the right thing – he knew her well enough to know that, too.
“Charline, we can’t let them make us afraid. They win, if we back away now.”
She looked over at him, surprised. “Oh, I know that,” she said, a weak grin on her face. “I just thought I ought to get a good count of how many fighters they have out there. I thought it might impact the rescue. Andy saved our butts. I’d be tempted to leave Paul, but Andy? No way!”
“So, how many fighters, Char?”
“Thirty-two. Open pattern, swirling around.”
“OK. Dan, get us in there. We’re going to need to be at knife distance to use the wormhole drive as a weapon. Beth, get the railguns ready. I’m guessing we’ll need them before this is done.”
“Alea iacta est,” he whispered, then “Hang in there, son.”
Dan was already bringing the ship’s acceleration up.
They were going back.
Twenty-Three
Andy lay gasping on the cold deck, barely able to draw breath. But he had to hang on, just a little longer. Soon, Satori would warp out. His friends would be home, safe, and away from these nightmares.
“Why do you still fight me?” Kassresh asked. “Your friends are gone. Your ship, fled. You have no hope for life except my magnanimity, which is fading fast. Would you rather become dinner for our hatchlings?”
Kassresh clicked a sound that the slug translated as exasperation, and Andy gave a half smile in spite of the pain he was in. Frustrated? Good.
The alien stood from where he’d been crouching, next to Andy’s head. “Bring it over here,” he said, and Dan heard something being hauled across the deck plates toward him. He looked up, saw something large and boxlike, made from a flat gray metal with something that looked like a pair of arches tilting away from one side.
“This device will pull the images I want directly from your brain. It is a slow method. I had hoped for your cooperation, so I might allow you to live. Hopeless struggle does you no honor.”
Two of the Naga guards hauled the machine over beside him. They flipped up a screen on the top, and pressed some buttons. Lights flickered alive on the arches, which were hanging over his head.
And then he could barely see it through the red haze that clouded his vision. The searing agony was back.
“But you see, it works best if the mind is distracted, and pain is a wonderful distraction. Now tell me about your ship,” Kassresh said.
An image immediately appeared on the screen. And
y simply couldn’t help but think about the Satori, how gorgeous it was, how amazed he’d been to embark on such an adventure.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving Andy gasping. Kassresh studied the image on the screen intently. “Interesting. I do not recognize this vessel. I know your technology, I have heard of it before. Read about it. But I do not know this ship. Nor do I think our computers will know it. I will learn more of this mystery. Where is your planet, mammal?”
Dan’s fingers danced over the Satori’s controls, straining to weave his ship through the enemy craft diving at them.
The fighters had detected them as soon as they’d hit the atmosphere, but the enemy mothership had already climbed so high that they hadn’t much time to respond. Dan tore through them at over ten times the speed of sound, taking his invisible ship through a series of complicated maneuvers to avoid collision with the enemy vessels.
It almost seemed like they wanted to crash into him, as erratically as they were buzzing about. And maybe they’d been ordered to do just that.
But he could see them, while they could only roughly approximate his location. That gave him just enough of an edge that he was avoiding those near collisions, although he heard someone behind him gasp after one particularly close call.
And then they were through! Dan waited to heave a sigh of relief, but it was too soon for that. They were still diving toward the enemy ship at high speed. He needed to hit the brakes as close as possible and hope the sudden stop didn’t overcome the ancient engine’s ability to overcome inertia. At ten thousand meters he started to slow the ship down, knowing he only had seconds before they smeared across the side of the alien battleship.
Three seconds later, he’d slowed them enough to match speed with the other ship, and started sliding sideways parallel to its hull. He kept the Satori aimed straight at the alien ship.
Adventures of the Starship Satori: Book 1-6 Complete Library Page 21
