“What do you mean?” I asked. “What events?”
But I wasn’t in control of this experience. I was back into a one-way recording, hearing through Silky’s ears as Chikune reported back that he’d driven away the sniper. I didn’t care about that slimy veck. I wanted to feel Silky’s playful side again.
“What did I do wrong in Tata?” I asked.
Plenty, Bahati answered, but you did right by Silky. More or less. Sanaa likes her. Maybe the Sarge too. But she doesn’t deserve you. You’re lonely, NJ. We all know it. Don’t let her invade the space in your heart.
I recalled, Corporal Xeene, the old Wolf woman back at the Revenge Squad training camp in Tata-West. She had warned me that Kurlei are adept at taking over a person’s soul and ripping them apart from the inside.
I think Xeene was speaking from experience, said Bahati.
Aliens. I always said I was fine with aliens, so long as they don’t come anywhere near me. Or drop bombs. The simplest philosophies are the most robust and maybe I should have stuck with that. What do you say, Sarge? Or you, Efia? Any wisdom to add? Especially you, Sarge, You always had the philosophy that the best kind of alien was one blasted into a thousand pieces.
Grow up, boy, thundered the Sarge. That’s because we were at war. The Human Legion only succeeded as much as it did because it expanded what it meant to be human to include all the dispossessed and downtrodden in the Empire, whatever the species. The Kurlei are legally human. And what’s more, as your senior NCO, it falls to me to speak the obvious truth. You connected with Sanaa when you were still young. Spent most of your lives together, and in that you were unbelievably fortunate. Since she died you’ve never been able to trust your heart.
Bahati’s anger burned like a plasma flume. Hey, what are you saying?
The truth, Lance Corporal Chahine. I’m not saying NJ didn’t love you truly because I believe he did. But his emotions were volatile before and during your marriage. And since your death he has been a mess.
I interrupted. The point please, Sarge.
The truth, boy, is that you are such an emotional basket case that you would be hopelessly out of your depth in an emotional relationship with another human. It is not her alien nature that makes this impossible, it is your–
My demons. Got it.
No, you haven’t. I can feel your thoughts remember. Take on board General McEwan’s idea and expand your definition of human. She’s very human in the wider sense, more than we ghosts are.
Hey! cried Bahati, the loudest voice in a chorus of protesting ghosts.
Well, it’s true, answered the Sarge. She’s a member of your unit, NJ. One you’re fond of, and that’s all she needs to be. Tell, me, NJ, do you trust her to have your back?
Yes.
And do you have hers?
Yes.
I can’t hear you!
Yes, Sergeant!
Then get to it.
I rose to my feet. I couldn’t do this, but neither could I let down the Sarge. I’d heard people on Earth say they had a special link to their mother. I never knew mine. For me it was my first sergeant.
The memory recording had ended, frozen at the point the naked prisoners were about to be escorted from the room and dumped near the station house.
“Please, Silky. I want the playful you back. Don’t leave me like this.”
I felt her disdain.
Do this right, shouted the Sarge. I always knew you could be a drellock, but never a coward.
I took a deep breath, and pretended to be Bahati, because she was the one in touch with her emotions and all that drent. How would she phrase what I felt? “Let me help you, Silky. I want to banish your loneliness, to illuminate the darkness in your heart with the light of my love.”
There. I’d said it. I hoped the Sarge was proud.
Silky’s image was still frozen, with her back half-turned to me, but she answered all the same.
“People died in Tata-West. A lot of people due to a vendetta between two men. Two human men. Magenta was one victim of this petty war, and I know you were fond of her. Why did she have to die?”
“Human territorial dispute. We get ugly.”
“Territory! How dare you?” The room heated up. This wasn’t the warmth of desert sands, but the angry heat of a furnace. “Two males fought over the affections of a woman,” shouted Silky. Her image was moving now, shaking with rage. “They went to war to possess her, and they continued that war after she was dead.”
“It could have been another issue between them.”
“But it was not.”
The furnace burned hotter. My skin burned and peeled.
“Women fight over men too,” I replied. “Men can fight over the affections of other men.”
“I don’t care about gender, Ndeki. The individuals of your species are all aliens to me, and it is the actions of your species, not your gender, that fills me with disdain. Tell me truthfully now. Have you ever fought over a woman?”
“Feel my brain, Silky. No.” Hnnnn. I collapsed to my knees, the liquid in my eyes boiling and my hair igniting. I forced a string of words out through lips that had caught fire. “I have never fought another man, or woman, for possession of a woman, or to monopolize her affections or deny her right to choose another over me.”
I felt her pull at my memories. The fire rose to a new inferno of intensity, and then was gone. A calming light breeze pacified the room, healing my burns.
“I was fortunate to have selected in you one of the better examples of your species,” she said. “Though that is a comparison against an extremely low quality threshold.”
Right on cue, Bahati popped up with a quip. Just as well she never asked if you’d fought over a man.
Shut up, I said, kicking her. But my foot went through her and Silky didn’t show any signs that she knew Bahati was with us.
“Know this,” said Silky, the anger rising in her again. “I am not a moon, or a fuel dump, or your Sijambo Farm. I am not a resource to be fought over and possessed. And though I am female, I am not a woman. If you truly mean your words, you will have to accept me on my own terms for who I am. I’ve tried to make myself resemble a human female, but I have reached my limit. Now it is your turn to adapt who you are. Will you do so?”
NJ! Bahati poked me in the ribs.
For frakk’s sake! What now?
Ndeki, please be careful. If Xeene was right, this is exactly what Kurlei do. Get inside your heart and play with you before ripping it apart. She’s an empath predator. It’s what evolution has honed her to do well.
You’re talking drent. I think she’s genuine.
And I think she’s an alien. How the hell can any of us really know how an alien thinks?
I returned my attention to Silky but… she had vanished!
“No! No, don’t go! Don’t go!”
Look what you’ve done, I shouted at Bahati, but she had left me too.
Real life began to leak back in. The bruising. The uncaring hardness of the floor I was sprawled across.
“Don’t go?” said a man’s voice. “They’ve never said that before.” He laughed, and it was the kind of humor that drew strength from someone else’s pain.
I looked into the countenance of a man whose face was covered in tattoos of skulls and skeletons. He’d shaved his head to reveal the demon image imprinted over his scalp. The Human Legion was an immense and diverse organization, but only Hades Division wore ink like that. They were Marines of my era bred with the psychopathic mad dogs of our earlier predecessors. Hades Division did not have a reputation for being nice to personnel from other units. Or amongst themselves for that matter.
“That’s better, you pathetic maggot. Yes, you know what I am. Welcome back. You’re just in time for your interrogation. And, believe me, you won’t be saying don’t go once I’ve started with you, boy.”
— CHAPTER 17 —
The Hades interrogator didn’t have my ass for his plaything just yet. After a
breathy snarl that lacked menace – perhaps due to the minty evidence of good dental hygiene – he backed away a little to allow a new face to peer into my hazy vision. She was a former space rat, face marred with old burns and chiseled into a humorless demeanor. Yikes! She was to be my good cop?
“You can still prove yourself to us,” she said. “Convince me and you will be permitted to live. Under scrutiny, of course. Loyalty is a fluid commodity when the world changes, as I expect you already know.”
She peered at me as if I were a specimen in a jar. In fact, I pictured her quarters lined with shelves heavy with body parts in jars taken from people who had disappointed her. The image didn’t help my state of mind. I wanted evil cop from Hades to come back. I searched for him in the room but he was lost in the crowd of people pointing guns at my head.
“What happened to our observers monitoring the Revenge Squad base?” asked the specimen jar woman.
“Last I heard…” I paused to spit out a gobbet of blood. “Last I heard, they were enjoying some female attention.”
She frowned, but she looked so stern to begin with that her expression was rearranged rather than hardened. “Whose?”
I gave a manic laugh. I don’t think I was actually mad, but if I gave them that impression maybe they would leave me alone. “Police Captain Rachel Silverberg,” I said. Actually, the police captain wasn’t the female attention I was thinking about. That would be Silky tying her pretty ribbons around the Leveler observers.
Then the Hades trooper punched me in the mouth, and I was thinking instead about how many teeth I had left.
“Your laughter is unwarranted for someone with a gun to his head,” he said.
I glared at him “Look, pal. I’ve had a gun to my head for three hundred years. Laughing is how I keep sane-ish. The police shot me with stun rounds, roughed me up, and threatened me. Just Captain Rachel’s way of saying hello to a new guy in town. I think she was giving your boys the same treatment. They’ll live.”
“I hope for your sake that you’re telling the truth,” said the space rat. “There are many ways to die, and some much more uncomfortable than others.” From behind her shoulder, Mr. Hades grinned at me. “But you could still live. Like your friends that we lured here. Ah, yes! I see you were not sure they still lived. We could let you see them, but first prove your loyalty and tell us how to find your Revenge Squad handlers. Tell us the access codes for your Revenge Squad HQ. How do we get in and access your facilities without triggering your defenses?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “One question at a time. Please! My head hurts. Where are my handlers? I imagine they aren’t far away. I’m supposed to scout out your base, locate Caccamo and his team, squeeze back up to the surface, and then start walking back to town. They will find me when they’re ready. As for access codes, do you really think they’d share them with me?”
Good cop and evil cop looked at each other cautiously but came to a conclusion and nodded. They bought my story. Good, the second part at least was the truth.
Just as I thought I was getting somewhere, a commotion from outside in the tunnel spooked them. Fingers tightened around triggers.
“I’d heard you had a new prisoner,” said a man rushing in.
The newcomer locked eyes with the Levelers. He was obviously not one of them, which I guess made him a HUBster. In fact, even in my dazed state I recognized this exchange for what it was. Someone on Earth once described this process to me as ritual sniffing. Animals do it the galaxy over. There’s a brief intake of each other’s scent, or posturing or barking or something to establish who is in charge. Maybe some biting, butting, and humping. Once a group hierarchy is established you get past this drent, but here the hierarchy was clearly still being disputed.
The HUB newcomer despised and resented the Levelers, but he couldn’t yet accept the implication of a key point here. The Levelers all had guns. He didn’t. It was obvious to me who was in charge here, even if he was in denial.
Then a Pavnix scurried over. It looked bluer and heavier than the alien who’d contacted us at HQ, but I took a wild guess and assumed it was the same individual.
“How many of you are there?” the alien asked me through its translator machine.
“Seven,” I replied. If HUB and the Levelers had been observing us, there seemed no point in lying.
Heated exchanges flared up between the HUBsters and the Levelers. It was all happening too fast for me to keep up and most of it was non-verbal anyway.
The Pavnix lost its rag and its face started flaring with red thunderbolts. “Your group are temporary allies,” it said to the space rat Leveler. “That is all. Soon you will be gone. And not soon enough.”
Most of the Levelers were contemptuous and looked about ready to attack the colorful alien, but the space rat in charge extended her arms and lowered them slowly in a calming gesture.
“We need not quarrel,” she said. It’s easy to be magnanimous when you’ve already won. “We shall share this prisoner.”
Reluctantly the HUB people agreed.
They conducted my interrogation with surprising civility. Maybe they realized I had been beaten so badly that it was an effort for me to stay conscious and focus on what they were saying. Brute threats wouldn’t work on a stubborn Marine anyway. It wasn’t just our bodies that had been toughened. Our masters had messed with our minds too, and if we decided that we didn’t want to talk, no amount of fingernail extracting, skin flaying, or genital smashing would loosen our tongues. Except to scream.
I told them everything.
That at least was the impression I tried to give. Actually, I left out a lot. I didn’t mention the bishop. I left out Sel-en-Sek’s scruffy old cravat and how bereft I felt when Silky left me, and how desperately I prayed that she would escape. Some things are private, after all.
They backed away a little and lowered their guns. Hades Man was sent to the back of the room like a bad dog. You could almost imagine we were all good pals, licking our wounds after an unfortunate misunderstanding had led to a brawl.
Until I said the wrong thing. As soon as I told them about the HUB and Revenge Squad symbols we’d seen painted on the warehouses, the atmosphere turned sinister. If the HUB and Leveler people weren’t so unevenly matched, it would have turned violent too. The Levelers had set up HUB. They’d also set up Revenge Squad. This wasn’t a complete surprise to the Pavnix, I surmised. But I guess my words left it nowhere to hide from the obvious unpalatable truth. Its flesh turned green. I don’t mean a greenish tinge, but a dark green like the jungles of Earth.
“Oh, dear,” I wailed. “Have I said too much?”
I didn’t think much of these HUB drellocks if they let themselves get conned by the Levelers so easily, but if they were going to do something about it would have to be soon. But they did nothing. Instead, they lowered their heads and slunk away.
My captors watched them go. As soon as their rivals were out of sight, the Levelers hurried away in another direction. I didn’t blame them. They had a takeover to get back to. I had to get out of here and fight it.
My next objective was to get back to Silky and rescue the other Revenge Squaders.
As the door bolts thudded home, securing me inside the room, I had a feeling that doing so might prove tricky.
— CHAPTER 18 —
I banged on the door to release a little of the pent-up frustration that was growing so hot inside that it threatened to melt me. I remembered that the HUB base was a former ammo dump that had blown up in the Legion’s liberation of the planet, and that I wasn’t in the purpose-built dungeon of an evil overlord. I thumped and kicked the door in a more purposeful manner, hoping to brutalize it into submission and let me out.
It did no good. By the looks of it, I’d been locked in a secure storage area for specialized munitions. Whatever had blown the roof out of the main part of the facility hadn’t reached this empty room, and this area had been designed to be blast proof because… Well, you work it ou
t.
And if this was blast proof, it was also Marine proof, doubly so when that Marine was battered and bleeding after a savage beating. My ability to recover from physical wounds (or temporarily ignore them) both scared and impressed the baseline humans I met on Earth, but I was feeling my years. I sank to my knees in the thick coating of dust, suddenly robbed of the ability to do any more than curl up and not die.
No! People were relying on me. I had to get out!
For a moment, I forgot my pain, caught in the irony that after so many years in which no one cared whether I lived or died, now that I mattered to other people I felt only pain that I could not help my comrades.
I took a deep breath and soldiered forward. “One step at a time, NJ,” I said to the uncaring cell. “Let’s start with an equipment check.”
I methodically ran my fingers from head to toe, checking all pockets and pouches. The Levelers had removed everything.
Everything except… My Aimee was still on my wrist, still able to connect directly to Silky if she had gotten away safely. I couldn’t believe how dumb these Levelers were. I’d heard of anti-tech cults, and maybe these Levelers were the kind of backward drellocks who sung the glories of living in disease-ridden holes in the mud.
Like we once did? said Sanaa gently.
Hush, I told her. I haven’t time for your riddles.
I don’t remember singing about the trenches or defensive warrens, said Bahati. We fought there because we had to.
“Fine! I have at several points in my history lived in a disease-ridden hole in the mud,” I told the empty cell. “But I didn’t do it for fun. Now shut up and let me think.”
Sorry, son, said the Sarge. These ignorant maggots are taking the long way around to tell you that your Aimee won’t help here. Secure munitions stores like these aren’t just shielded against explosions, but against signals too. You wouldn’t want an enemy transmitting a signal inside instructing whatever was stored here to blow itself up, would you?
The strength drained from my torso, and I fell forward onto all fours. The Sarge was right.
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