by Alex Oliver
"Kneel," he said.
Yas snorted, in his head. Typical. He didn't try to resist when the moving cage in which he was confined lowered him to both knees, but he noted out of the corner of his eyes when Harcrow was lowered to his right and Sasara to his left, both of them strapped into their own contraptions. This close he could see the bands around them were also black, chased with silver writing in symbols he didn't recognize. The sick feeling in his stomach eased slightly as more of the crew came into his view and were made to kneel next to him. They were alive, at least.
Keva was the only human not placed into a cage. Instead, one of those tiny cockroach robots had stuck itself over the input port of her exoskeleton and insinuated hair-thin wires into the controls, turning her own enhancements against her.
Desultory, by contrast, lay on top of a floating stretcher, his remoras tucked beneath his skirt. He was still unconscious--as shown by the smooth, gray, unmarked appearance of his skin. But pulses of thought had begun flickering around his eye-stalks like shadows cast by the storms outside.
Dr. Wakes was neither restrained nor unconscious. Instead, he was accompanied by a single guard, to whom he was chained by the wrist. Yas wasn't quite sure what to make of that, but it looked more like respect to him than the cage and the bit in his own mouth.
"Good," Kelkalyn nodded. Whatever he had done to his teeth had disappeared--the copper spikes of them had morphed back into something that resembled human teeth, and close to Yas was struck by how much he looked like Ruari. They might have been the photographic negative of each other. It was even more striking when the dark alf leader looked concerned, as he did now.
He approached Desultory's stretcher. Yas heard the cage around Harcrow shudder as the captain fought to move, trying to go to his crewmember's aid. But Kelkalyn didn't seem to have ill intent. He reached out a hand, and reached it out further, stretching it until it became a pseudopod like one of Desultory's, and he gently stroked one of the trembling remoras.
"Who stunned our guest?"
"My lord," Dr. Wakes's guard confessed. “It was me. He had poisoned everyone who tried to restrain him. I wanted only to keep everyone safe. I knew not that it would affect him this harshly."
"Were you not told to bring him with the least force possible? Were you not told that the lives of our allies deserved infinitely more consideration than your own?"
Allies, Yas thought, the idea curdling in his insides. Could the Ocuilin really have allied with these people? Just on the basis that their shapes were malleable? Surely not. The Ocuilin loved humans— they found their ability to make music magical, and their inventiveness a constant delight. They spent a fortune watching human foot races and athletics and particularly human dancing. The ballet had never been so popular. No, they had been constant and faithful friends for centuries. They wouldn't... no, they wouldn't.
The dark alf guard joined the crew on his knees. He reached up beseechingly toward Kelkalyn. "I have failed you, sir. I ask for punishment so I can atone."
Kelkalyn lifted what looked like a wand from the arm of his chair. Yas guessed it was as much a wand as the staff Sasara used was a wizard's staff—it might look simple but it was packed with complicated tech. When he waved it, a hissing beam of darkness shot out and punctured the guard's cheek. He cried out and clapped his hand to the wound—the beam had cut right through his face and emerged out the back of his jaw. Kelkalyn flicked it to one side and it cut through the cheek and the fingers pressed to it on its way out.
The guard's blood was a very faint silver, glowing. He didn't make a sound, just bowed forward until his forehead touched the ground and waited to see what would happen to him next.
Luckily for him, Desultory gave a muscular heave and his skin flooded with coral patterns, banded with black. Kelkalyn flicked off the beam weapon and tucked it in his sleeve—he wore a tight undertunic of silver-gray beneath a surcoat of sable. Then he lowered the floating platform to the floor and poured himself down beside it. In the next moment he wore the shape of an Ocuilin.
They seemed to talk for a while, but without his uniform and headset, Yas couldn't tell what was being said. Then there was a flicker all around him and every alf at every console took on Ocuilin-like forms. Yas found himself surrounded by soft-bodied, jelly-like creatures, tentacled and stingered, all flushed with a rainbow of colors, some of which he couldn't even see.
It was a very effective way of bringing home to him how isolated and threatened Desultory must have felt in the chariot. He hoped it wasn't anything more than that.
After a little while of this, Kelkalyn reformed in what Yas had begun to think of as his 'default' form. This seemed to be the signal for the rest of the bridge crew to do the same thing. Even the disgraced guard got to his feet again. He was no longer wounded, though the deck around his feet was still spattered with luminous blood.
"Take our guest to his own quarters," Kelkalyn directed, and the guard unlocked the chain around his wrist and handed it to Kelkalyn before guiding Desultory out.
Yas wanted to ask Dr. Wakes what Desultory had been saying during all of this. He didn't appear to be leaving unwillingly, but he might have been threatened. Or he might have simply thought it was best not to push his luck.
But it was Dr. Wakes's turn to be regarded with Kelkalyn's curious friendliness. "You are a remarkable machine," Kelkalyn said, taking the cuff and chain off the doctor and letting it fall to the ground, where it was lifted and carried away by the tiny roach robots. "Who made you?"
He gestured, and the shadows by the door seemed to bulge as two alfr clad in heavy leather aprons emerged from the shadows. One of them had Yas's welding rig on his back, and Yas made a garbled noise of protest as he feared they were going to use it to cut the doctor up.
"I was made by Technation. They are a company based on Mars in the Terran system."
"I meant, which person."
"Many," the doctor clarified. "Many humans working together created my prototype model and built the robotic production line that produced all the MA43 units. I am a group effort."
"If they can cooperate in a project such as this," one of the aproned alfr said, pushing a pair of red-lensed goggles up to sit in his pewter hair. "Perhaps they are not such barbarians as we—"
"They have always hunted in packs," Kelkalyn made a dismissive gesture, displeased. "All this means is that they are incapable of individual genius." He turned back to the doctor. "Will you permit us to study you if we do not harm you in any way? These are two of my best... what's your word? My best mechanical engineers. They find you fascinating and would gladly learn from you whatever it is possible for you to teach."
"Do I have a choice?" the doctor asked, his faceplate full of question marks as if his human expressions were not large enough for the incredulity he intended to express.
"Of course. We are not your enemy. Those who say we are random destroyers lie for their own twisted purposes, for we love constructs and we wish only to understand you better."
Dr. Wakes turned to look at the captain. A tiny scritching noise was the only indication that Harcrow was trying to turn his head to return the gaze.
"I need my captain's permission."
Kelkalyn straightened his glimmering cuffs. "No," he said. "I don't believe you do."
"I want it, then. I see what you're doing—trying to draw a wedge between us. Freya's people tried it too, the opposite way around, favoring the humans and excluding Desultory and myself. It didn't work for her and it won't work for you. I will have my captain's permission or I will not go at all."
Yas tried to smile. It didn't work, with the bit pinning his lips down at the sides, but he hoped the doctor could see it in his eyes anyway.
Kelkalyn huffed. He reached into his sleeve and withdrew the wand again, aiming it squarely at Harcrow's face. Harcrow's eyes widened—his wounds would not grow back. If he got a laser through the forehead, he was done for.
Kelkalyn smiled impishly and whispered
a command. For a sickening moment, Yas waited for the spatter and the sound of the body hitting the floor. There was a grinding, squeaking noise instead, and Harcrow coughed. "You wanna go?" he said, his voice roughened from the bit but slow and calm as ever.
"It could be a useful exchange of information on both sides," the doctor said. "I am not averse, antipathetic, to the idea."
"You can probably do more good there than here," Harcrow agreed. "Sure."
So the doctor and the two mechanical engineers strode off together, leaving only the humans kneeling at the foot of Kelkalyn's throne. It felt like a protection being withdrawn, and when he removed the gags from the rest of the crew too, that didn't feel like the good news Yas might have hoped it would.
Yas closed his mouth, worked his tongue and lips to try to get the numbness out of them, and was wondering what to say when a movement outside the great transparent wall arrested him. Across the half-lit city from them, the clouds were belling out and hissing from the descending form of a spaceship. As it floated down into the atmosphere like a massive feather, its friction-hot belly flash-heated all the hydrocarbons in the clouds. It lowered in a black rain with fire spilling out from its sharp edges and electricity spilling as lightning from its points.
Another split the sky. And then another two.
They settled into a holding pattern at equidistant points around the city, and Yas's dry mouth almost split from the force with which he yelled, "NO!"
Kelkalyn gave a delighted grin. The boiling clouds lit his face like blood and made the white gems twined in his hair glint like scattered gore. "I didn't want you to miss the final death blow. There are still humans in bunkers underground that I didn't have time to empty. Since I have gone, they have emerged by themselves, blinking in the light and telling themselves how lucky they were to have been spared. Telling themselves that they will mourn and rebuild and that I shall not have the last laugh."
He giggled, and around the room his officers snickered too. Yas hated them even more than he had hated Freya. Right now, if she was to descend out of the sky in her chariot to shoot them all down, he would gladly pledge her his life for real.
"Why?" he asked. "Why are you doing this? We aren't your enemies. We didn't even know you existed until this week. We could be your allies too."
"Yes," Sasara agreed. "Let's talk. Isn't that why you brought me on board? Things have changed since whenever it was you were last in contact with humans. We're a very malleable race, we--"
"Malleable!" Kelkalyn's laughter turned into a harsh scoff. "With your delicate meat-based bodies? You can't stretch a human more than a foot or so before it tears--"
"We're malleable on the inside," Sasara began.
Kelkalyn cut her off with a wave of the hand. "No, we tried that too. You stir up the insides of a human and all you get is goo. We tried all sorts of things, but they never managed to reconstitute. Useless, fragile, imperfect things. Who are you to be the favorites of the gods? We were here first! We didn't ask for you to be made, but no, the gods wanted more pets. They wanted children, and we were to have our worlds plundered and our inventions squandered on you, as if we had been deemed not good enough.
"We let you alone, didn't we? We let you be in your own little squalid galaxy. If you could have stayed there you would have had no argument with me, no matter how disgusting you are."
His lip curled and he turned to face his officers, "Have you ever smelled a human settlement? Dung in the streets, parasites in their beds. They use even each other as slaves. We would be doing you a favor if we decided to take your galaxy and domesticate you."
"We're not like that any more," Harcrow protested. "If you'd spend a minute listening instead of grandstanding, you'd--"
Kelkalyn whirled, aiming at him again. Yas held his breath. This wouldn't be a prank—if Kelkalyn let fly now it would be death, he could feel it. The creature's emotional temperature seemed to have plummeted in seconds from impassioned heat to ice.
"I shall grandstand as much as I like," he said with quiet menace. "It isn't often I entertain a captive audience and I intend to squeeze as much enjoyment as I can from the situation."
He flicked the wand, and for a moment Yas thought that nothing had happened. It was only when Harcrow started screaming that he realized the captain's metal bonds were tightening all over his body. Tightening, compressing, cutting in all over his body. "No!" he yelled again, "Leave him alone. Stop it!"
But Harcrow carried on screaming as the bones cracked in his arm and blood streamed down from the band cutting into his skull.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Attack on Kelkalyn
A discordant something pierced Yas's concentration on Harcrow's distress. Something was happening that had no place here. He struggled to place it for a moment, but then realized it was humming. A human voice was humming a single note over and over.
From the corner of his eye, he could see that Ambassador Sasara had closed her eyes and her face had smoothed out into a peace synonymous with deep meditation. Even though she was as tightly wrapped in metal bars as Yas was, she seemed to be relaxed and at ease. It was wholly inappropriate while the captain had gone from hoarse screaming to breathing in growling grunts as though he was three seconds away from fainting. Torture and relaxation shouldn't mix.
Then Yas caught sight of the wand-like device Kelkalyn had used to control the cages. He had left it on the arm of his throne while he paced and monologued. Now it was rising as if by itself, turning in the air to point at Harcrow again.
Yas had a moment of horror when he thought what more can you do to the poor man? But then he realized that it wasn't Kelkalyn doing this. It was happening behind the dark alf's back. Sasara, an adept of the NXA's psyonics division, must be doing it with her mind.
He had just reached this conclusion, when the wand shot its dark beam and Harcrow's cage separated down the middle. He fell out, just managing to break his fall with his left arm before his nose hit the deck.
Kelkalyn jumped like a gazelle, and in the moment of his shock the wand turned and released the rest of the crew.
"How are you...?" he said, but Yas was already up and throwing himself forward, determined to knock him down for Harcrow's sake and for the sake of the people of Ahoa Nda'iilniih.
Yas hit Kelkalyn with a shoulder blow, knocking him half way across the bridge. The alf was lighter than he expected, and the impact was softer, more like charging into a pillow than into flesh. Briefly he thought this is going to be easy, but then Kelkalyn got his feet back under him, put his head down and caught Yas's eye with a look like murder. His mouth shifted again into that eel-like jaw of copper teeth and his fingertips elongated into daggers. When he grinned with that mouth it was like watching a nightmare come to life.
Around the walls of the bridge, a similar transformation swept over the elven officers. There was a moment of stasis in which Yas wondered if the crew might have been more safe if they had stayed in their cages, and then Kelkalyn rushed him like a storm wind. A billow of black in the air and the alf was upon him. He tried hitting out, but it was like hitting a sandstorm-the alf's body parted around his blow and left him with grazed knuckles. A long, shallow wound opened on his shoulder from a blow he hadn't seen coming. He was in a cloud full of knives and there was nothing he could do to fend them off.
He'd never fought anything like this, didn't know how.
But then he thought about who did. Who had been fighting Kelkalyn's people for millenia? Freya. Damn. It grieved him to have to rely on her gifts, but not more than it grieved him to be cut to pieces by an enemy he couldn't touch. He plunged his hand into his pocket and grabbed the space-suit/forcefield bracelet she had given him.
The forcefield activated, and suddenly he was breathing summer-warm air that smelled of honeysuckle. More to the point, the ashy cloud that was Kelkalyn was outside the bubble, curling around it in angry tendrils.
Seeing it, the rest of the crew went for their bracelets too. Th
ere was a brief and angry standoff, the bridge a swirling cloud of darkness with the crew in light filled golden bubbles in the midst of it.
Then the darkness coalesced back into individual beings.
"'We are not your enemies,'" Kelkalyn mocked, brushing back a lock of his long glowing hair that had come undone from his severe plait as he fought. He had snatched back his errant wand and was otherwise completely unscathed, while Yas was cut on the cheek, the shoulder, the forearm and the thigh. "You come onto my ship carrying the rewards and blessings of service to a creature who would gladly wipe my people from the galaxy. One of a race of liars and thieves, who have used my people's genius in the past and refused to pay us for it, because she thinks everything should belong to her by right. 'We are not your enemies,' after you tried to blow my ship up from within. Not my enemy? Certainly not my friend."
He stepped aside, gesturing. Without a weapon that would penetrate the forcefield, Yas could do little against him. Maybe bump him into a wall. But before he thought of anything more useful to do, the walls of the bridged opened and the deck trembled as heavier armored creatures poured in. Like the beetles, these were mechanical, great self-propelling machines presumably governed by AIs. They looked like dragons, and something very old and visceral in Yas found their hissing, writhing movement horrific.
The creatures advanced on the crew in a slow reptilian sway. Sasara flung out both hands and some kind of psychic blast pushed one of them backward by five paces. Sweat trickled down her face and Yas would have bet his life she couldn't do that twice more.
He watched his own beast approach with the sinking feeling that yet again he didn't know what to do. Couldn't hit it from in here. The doors were shut and two lines of alfr guarded them. Several had now drawn wands of their own, which must be weapons of some sort. He wasn't sure he wanted to run straight at them.
