by Jean Johnson
(. . . Here come those weapons now, thank the Saints.)
The two men and four women each carried several large, thick-barreled weapons, slung over shoulders as well as cradled in their arms, all of them the heavy-duty laser rifles that the first dozen V’Dan soldiers had not brought down from the shuttlecraft. They had been left in the shuttle’s weapons locker at the request of the local government, in the belief that Au’aurrran would be a safe, peaceful colonyworld to visit. These were the weapons that would pierce Salik armor, and do so much more reliably than their fading, exhausted psi.
At a few barked orders from Shi’uln, some of the priests hauled over chairs to form impromptu weapon stands and gunnery seats, spaced to create cross-fire cover from both sides of the broken opening. Other chairs scraped across the floor, dragged to watch the three doorways into the Church sanctuary. More bodies moved forward to help urge Jackie and Li’eth to their feet, to pull them out of the firing line and deeper into the sanctuary. The temperature difference felt good once they moved; the building’s ventilation system struggled to compensate for the winter cold swirling in through the broken windows by blasting hot air down from ducts hidden beyond the galaxy-chandelier overhead.
“Sorry it took so long to get down here, sir,” Lieutenant Shi’uln apologized to Li’eth, following the pair to a padded bench they could share. “We had a lot of debris in front of the stairway. We also armed some of the other pilots with the biggest hand blasters from the armory after making sure they knew what to do with ’em. I hope you don’t mind. I had to make a command call when they begged for guns that could penetrate armor but didn’t feel right about giving rifles to civilians.”
“A good call,” Li’eth agreed, nodding. He shivered a little, his holy fire no longer available to combat the freezing draft trying to compete with the ventilation heat. “Any word on the V’Goro J’sta, of it coming to the rescue?”
“Not for another hour, most likely. Comm officers said the Terrans managed to get extra ships into the system, plus they launched every satellite they had to take out the three capital ships in orbit. One got through, but . . .” Shi’uln peered through the opening and off to the side. “I don’t know how the fourth came down, but I’m glad to see it is down.”
“Prophecy!” one of the nearby V’Dan priests asserted, his tone rather reverent, even awed. He lifted tanned arms scattered with burgundy crescents, his eyes wide with his revelations. “Holy Saint Wa’cuna foresaw not just holy Saints, but Great ones, a great Holy Pairing saving a major city on a most-valued world over twelve hundred years before—and I have participated in that very same Great Melding of these Great Ones here, casting fiery lances of holy wrath to bring down the Evilest of Evils on my homeworld . . . !”
“. . . That’s enough, Brother Mei’nar,” one of his fellow priestesses asserted, pulling down on the arms he had lifted in supplication to the heavens with his enraptured speech. She gently but insistently tugged him away from Li’eth, Jackie, and the lieutenant with the pink crescents. “They’re Living Saints, yes, and they saved us all, yes, but you don’t need to dive headfirst into hyperbole.”
Shi’uln quirked his brows in dubious amusement but let the woman guide her fellow V’Dan away. He glanced back at Li’eth. “I take it we missed something extraordinary while we were clearing out the stairwell access? Pity. At least from what we could see out the windows of the stairwell, it looks like most of the Salik are headed up to the cliffs to try to save their capital ship.
“From what I saw after it crashed,” he continued, “I think they lost two, maybe three of the uppermost decks, crushed under its own weight. Which means the bridge will still be intact, and some hope of finding some of the officers alive and available for questioning. If they can get the Generals out alive.”
Jackie, shifting a little closer to Li’eth to better share the robe still draped over their laps, quirked her brows. “Still intact? . . . Oh, right. That other ship, the bridge was down, not up. They’re amphibious, they’re used to diving for protection. We came from monkeys and apes, which liked to dwell up in the trees, so we think of climbing up for safety.”
“If those Terran troops coming in can switch from preparing to settle themselves and their gear on this planet, to tackling the task of boarding an enemy ship that’s been flipped upside down,” the lieutenant said, glancing at the shattered great window again, “then we just might win this battle. If we do . . . you will probably finally be able to work that holy-mind thing on one of them. Read their minds to find out who their leader is, and what they know. They’re rather resistant to the lesser interrogation techniques.”
(The Salik will strip off all signs of insignia when they’re being captured, so that no one can tell who the leader was. Not without torturing it out of them,) Li’eth informed her. He felt her flinch and shook his head. (We don’t trust confessions by torture, either . . . but you could go into their minds even better than our best alien mind-walkers. If we can pick out the leadership from the rest . . . maybe it’s not ethical to just take their thoughts and memories from their heads, but it would save a lot of lives, if even just one of them knows their entire set of preplanned attacks. They have to plan everything weeks and months in advance because it just takes that long to get anyone anywhere.)
She had wrinkled her nose more and more in distaste at what he was suggesting, until even her lip curled up in disgust. (I want to protest, but . . . If it ends the war much more quickly, it will save millions of lives. It’s not a pleasant burden to take upon my soul.)
(I’ll do what I can to help,) her partner promised, hugging her close. (Just . . . after we’ve both had a chance to recover. My brain still aches like it was bruised.)
(It was. We’re both perilously close to burnout,) she warned him. (So we shouldn’t even talk telepathically . . . except we’re Gestalt partners.)
(Thank the . . . thank the Saints for that,) he murmured, resting his cheek on her curly hair. (I almost said “Thank the Immortal,” except I don’t know what happened to her.)
(You don’t doubt she’s alive?) Jackie asked.
(I have no doubt she survived. The prophecies say she’ll be there at the Second Reformation, in five hundred more years. A hundred years after her own birth, in an era she has not yet lived.)
(Huh . . .) At his pulsed curiosity, she explained. (I wonder if that terrifies her, going into a future she doesn’t know anything about, not having learned of it in history lessons preparing her to actually live through it.)
(Probably. She struck me as fairly normal, despite being immortal.)
She nodded, nuzzling his cheek with the move. (Rest now, while we can. We may still have to fight.)
Reluctantly forced to agree, Li’eth closed his eyes and let the nonstunned members of their security escort handle the watch for another fight. Buraq . . . was badly injured. Paea as well. Either might live, or either might die, depending on how soon they could be rescued. Those Terran soldiers landing somewhere out there had been picked because they understood how to work in harsh winter climates. Had been meant to replace the Solarican and V’Dan ground forces on this world, freeing them up to be shipped elsewhere in the Alliance.
So let them fight, tonight.
OCTOBER 23, 2287 C.E.
JUNA 14, 9508 V.D.S.
TANNSNALL, AU’AURRRAN
Jackie had never seen a coffle line outside of a history book. But here they stood, hundreds of Salik prisoners with their backwards knees, backwards flipper-feet, froggish heads, all of them coffled together. Heavy manacles weighted down each ankle analog on the aliens, and their odd tentacle-hands had been forced into weighted-metal spheres.
Coffles back during the darker days of Earth’s past had included neck collars, but the Salik didn’t really have much of a neck; instead, their eyes sat on finger-length stumps that swiveled. Still, leg and arm chains connected the members of each ro
w to each other, forcing them to shuffle awkwardly along at a slow pace. Those that already stood in place flexed their thighs, their long, webbed toes, and muttered among themselves in quiet whistles and burbles.
Elsewhere on the planet, fighting still reigned. Pockets of Salik fighters struggled to overcome resistance, heavily armored compared to the civilians, able to knock out dozens at a time with their stun weapons, but the real victory had come at the hands of the Terrans. Someone in the 3rd Cordon Special Forces—also known as Research & Development—had managed to crack the codes used by Salik programmers and cobbled together “code bombs” that short-circuited the enemy’s mechanized armor. A different sort of freezing than the disturbingly effective version Li’eth and she had used two days ago.
Now they had hundreds of prisoners whom the Solaricans and V’Dan believed were high in rank. Potentially very high, given the size of those capital ships. Gathered in an underground gymnasium under the watchful eyes of Solaricans armed with Salik-inspired stunners of their own, they waited for the last of the coffled prisoners to take their place on the lines taped on the polished floor.
“Grrrand High Ambassadorr,” Naguarr, the Solarican War Prince of Au’aurrran, murmured. He flicked his bluish-gray ears as he did so. An emerald on a platinum chain swung and glittered for a few moments in the overhead lighting, briefly distracting Jackie.
Those ears boasted several ornate earrings, some of them connected to each other by chains. Li’eth had told her and her fellow Terrans before leaving Terran quarantine way back on the MacArthur that such adornments were actually rank insignia for both military and civilian matters. Meeting the Solaricans, he said, had changed V’Dan jewelry fashions as a result, banning certain combinations of metals and shapes and gemstones so as to prevent confusion among their felinoid allies. Apparently non-Solaricans could earn similar ranks through meritorious service to their empire, which was why most V’Dan didn’t wear earrings anymore.
“The prrrisonners are rready for yourr review,” he urged her.
Dragging in a breath, Jackie eyed the rows of aliens. With so many in the hall, they brought with them a sort of murky scent reminiscent of damp straw and lake mud. Not unpleasant, but not what she had expected to smell. Li’eth touched her arm, giving her silent support. Darian touched her other arm, unharmed by being stunned the other day, though a few shards of stone from the shattered column that had injured Buraq had left scratches on his face.
(You take the twenty on the left, I’ll take the twenty on the right,) she directed her fellow Terran. Li’eth, still psychically sore from his efforts, would be their backup, trained enough by now to pull their minds out if the enemies’ thoughts tried to get them lost from too much chaos, too much immersion.
(On it,) Darian agreed. (And cross-check if we think we have a possibility.)
(Of course.)
Focusing her mind, she stared at the prisoner on the far right of the front line. Cold, murky thoughts, alien thoughts with undercurrents and subtexts she didn’t understand. Things she wouldn’t understand unless and until she did a language transfer. That, however, would take far longer than a few mere hours. Fully sentient alien minds—as she had discovered in transferring Solarican in exchange for Terranglo, and so forth—took anywhere from four to eight hours the very first time. That, unfortunately, was with a willing mind.
Thankfully, all the aliens they had met so far shared similar visual perceptions. Colors were skewed, but a picture of a sphere still came across as a picture of a sphere. Both Terran psis had been briefed in advance with images of Salik insignia, of what bridges and officer quarters looked like. So both skimmed through the thoughts of each alien, looking for memories of seeing lots of bridge workstations, of seeing lots of high-ranking insignia on those around them, on seeing and interacting with lots of officers.
Raising his voice even as they started their scans, Li’eth called out, “We are looking for the security codes for the bridge on your ship! Any prisoner who volunteers that information will be given special compensations. We are looking for bridge officers . . . but we will give the compensations to anyone who can give us what we need. I repeat, we are looking for the security-code authorizations for all bridge systems: communications codes, engineering codes, life-support codes, weaponry codes . . .”
He paced his words, speaking slowly and clearly as well as loudly, so that any of the aliens who spoke V’Dan, the official Alliance Trade Tongue, would be lured into thinking about those codes. Lured into thinking about the conditions in which those codes would be used . . . and the appearances, the identities, of those who used such codes. He kept up a steady stream of requests, mentioning ranks, mentioning command structures, mentioning communications officers.
It took the other two until the fifth row out of twenty before Darian and Jackie cross-confirmed four prisoners as crew members who knew bridge officers, and one who might be a bridge officer. The seventh row held five more, and the eighth as well. Li’eth directed the soldiers to separate out those rows, to have all forty prisoners in each row shuffle off to the side to wait for further winnowing.
It took over an hour to get all the way to the twentieth row at the back. By silent, mutual consent, the two Terrans returned their attentions to the foremost rows and rechecked every alien brain. By now, they were both much more familiar with sorting through Salik thought-images, and thus faster and more accurate. That took another half hour. Li’eth, gauging their process, requested War Prince Naguarr to dismiss the thirteen rows that weren’t soldiers who had a lot of daily contact with their highest-ranked officers, or those highest-ranked officers.
That still left them nearly three hundred prisoners to sift through. Line by coffle line, they were examined silently, stealthily, while Li’eth again spoke slowly and clearly. This time, he attempted to get the remaining Salik to give up the identities of their highest-ranked prisoners.
Confusion and curiosity hampered some of their efforts, since the Salik were not sure of the seemingly random sorting process. Arrogance aided some of it, for the pair of xenopaths were getting rather good at picking out which aliens’ thought-images were smug in the belief that they would never buckle under the interrogation efforts of prey species. However, that arrogance eroded and gave way more and more to confusion. At a murmur from Li’eth, monitoring Jackie’s and Darian’s minds, sometimes an entire coffle line of ten were dismissed. Other times, individual prisoners were picked out, unshackled, and hauled off to join similar sentients, while the others were hooked back together in shorter lines.
(They’re getting worried, I think,) Darian sent to the other two. (They’re beginning to realize we are picking out their higher ranks. The emotions aren’t Human, but I’m getting a feeling of “how can they successfully hunt us like this” instead of “they could never successfully hunt me” from several of them.)
(Confirmed,) Jackie shared. (I’m getting it, too . . . along with horrible images of what they want to do to us, the more accurate we get.)
(Wait . . . that one . . . it’s not a bridge officer. I get the sense he’s just a lowly tech,) Darian stated. (He’s . . . if it were pack terms, he’d be the omega of all who are left in the hall. He might be, if not cooperative for a language transfer, then at least the least resistant.)
(Got it,) Li’eth told them, and murmured to the War Prince to separate out the soldier, second from the left, of the current line of ten under consideration.
(Ha!) Jackie crowed a few moments later. (They think we’ve made a mistake. The other separated ones know he’s not high-ranked.)
(I think he’s perking up a little, thinking he’s been mistaken for a higher-ranked prisoner,) Darian murmured.
(Don’t get sympathetic to them,) Li’eth warned the two. (Our best alien thought-readers among the Sh’nai have always claimed the deeper thoughts of the Salik are disturbing and distressing, even among the least of them.)
(—No, beloved, this has nothing to do with our skill. It has everything to do with their minds. If you learn their words for food like you learned ours, you will find yourself immersed in their thoughts and feelings while eating sentient beings alive.)
Chastised, Jackie subdued her thoughts, her inner arrogance in her skills. (. . . You are right. My apologies. I will not take that lightly.)
He nodded, satisfied that she understood a little better. They worked through the remaining rows, dismissing other nobodies. A final run-through of the remaining sixty-plus reduced their numbers to just seventeen, including the omega-ranked prisoner. At that point, Li’eth gave the War Prince a final set of requests. Under the prodding of the guards, the seventeen were marched to a different part of the capital’s underground military base, to be separated into individual cells, given nonsentient, nonliving food and water, and to await the leisure of the Terrans.
Darian and Jackie, debating under Li’eth’s warning, chose to have a light meal and to wait an hour and a half for their early lunch to settle before calling for the least-ranked of the seventeen.
Interrogation rooms did not differ much from race to sentient race. That meant the room had nothing but a door, plain walls, floor, and ceiling, a silvered observation window, cameras for recording every angle, a table, and a few chairs. Since the Solaricans ran most of the military base, and since the V’Dan could share similar furnishings, their version of chairs predominated. Each had a supportive span for the upper-back area and a divot cut out at the backs of the seats for tails to slot comfortably through if the sitter did not want to curl that tail along their sides.
