by Jean Johnson
Panting in shock, she forced herself to recenter her thoughts, then leaped forward, up, and to the side, to the deck with the cages. To the . . . five? Five! Five Human minds, most sunk into despair, anger, hopelessness—fear! Fear that . . . Wait, one is . . . one of them is a psi? Eyes wide, she stared at the airlock wall, then tried again. Fear, despair, hope, anger . . . and really horrible shielding skills, she realized. Maybe someone who was latent but who made a breakthrough under the stress of being captured?
She surged forward, projecting an image of herself knocking politely on the door of a home. (Hello, there. Who are you?)
(???)
For a moment, all she got was a return blast of startled, almost stunned confusion—then a mental garble of images interspersed with words in a language she did not know. A language she did not know.
Like her father, Jean-Jacques MacKenzie, Jackie had been a natural polyglot from infancy onward. She had been able to converse fluently in eight different languages before her powers had manifested with puberty at the age of twelve . . . and now as an adult of thirty-five years, spoke over ten times that, once her telepathy had been trained to interface with that part of her mind. A perfect match for serving in Oceania, in the subprovinces of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, where a large number of Earth’s languages—many of them low-population tribal dialects—were spoken. It had made her an outstanding Councilor because she hadn’t needed a translator to discuss in person the problems of her constituents, or anyone else, for that matter.
But this was a language she did not know, that was not related to any language she did know . . . Except maybe Euskarrian? The Basque peoples? A few of the root sounds, maybe . . . ? Or coincidence? There’s a bit of ancient Egyptian consonant patterns associated with his words, some Aramaic, old Han dialect, some Sanskrit and Urdu perhaps . . . ?
(!!!) The other Human’s mind, adult, male, and desperate, grabbed onto hers and tried to shake her mentally. He flung images at her, of a half-eaten arm in the alien’s grip, of piles of bleeding bodies, of being naked and caged like a herd beast locked up for transport. Images of him and her, hand in hand, running away, running through the stars with the other four prisoners, leaving their alien captors far behind. Far behind, and preferably dead.
It was all crude telepathy, half-trained at best, fading in and out as he stumbled along physically, arm wrapped in the grip of those horrid tentacles. The minds of the others burst with shock, fear, even pleading as he was led away. They were not actually telepathic like him, but their mental images and even their emotions were strong in their despair and their belief he was being led to his death.
Jackie did her best to project soothing, calming thought-images at the male. Once she got him somewhat calm, she pulled back. Or tried to pull away; he clung to her thoughts, surprisingly strong in his resurging fear spike. Shaping her thought-images carefully, she projected the need to consult with others, and that she would return. His grip loosened somewhat, but he didn’t completely let go. Not that she could blame him—whoever he was—but she needed to be more aware of her own body than of his, right now.
Her timing was good; two seconds after she came back to herself, breathing deeply to settle her nerves, Maria sent the two-tone chime through her headset and the speakers in her helmet. “I’m here. I’m good. What’s happening?”
“A couple of them look like they might be trying to shoot gun-like things, out there,” Maria told her. “We’re registering—there, did you hear that? Electricity and some sort of sonic pulse in one.”
The hull did buzz a little. “Is it getting through the hull?”
“We’re well grounded,” Brad told her. She could almost see his eyes rolling, given his tone. “This ship is capable of flying through an electrical storm. Remember the Councilor One?”
“Considering my grandfather died on it, yes, I remember the Councilor One incident,” Jackie retorted. “These are an alien race with alien technology. There are no guarantees until we’ve seen and examined what they can actually do. Besides, we have a bigger concern.”
“What would that be?” Ayinda asked.
“They have Humans on board. Five captives . . . and just like the precogs’ visions suggested, they are slated to be eaten by these frog-octopus things out there.”
“Some other crew was captured?” Robert asked, his tone startled.
“They’re not from Earth. They speak no language I’ve ever heard of—and I’ve heard many more tongues than I can speak fluently.” Chaos erupted in her ears, each of the other five trying to have his or her say. “Silence! That’s an order,” Jackie added sternly. “One voice at a time. At the moment, that voice is mine. Organize your thoughts . . . and keep an eye on what they’re doing to the hull.
“As far as I can tell, the frog-aliens are bringing one of their prisoners down to try to get him to tell them if his people have seen one of our ships before. I’m going to try to contact the Human again. Learning his language at a distance is very tricky, so only interrupt me if they’re making any sort of headway on our hull, or they look like they’re going to pull up something big enough to smash their way in.”
Thankfully, that got her comm silence. Or at least enough quiet that she could ignore the mutterings still coming over their pickups. Closing her eyes, Jackie concentrated on the tenuous connection she had been maintaining to that mind. Below the level of communication but still keeping herself aware of his movements through the ship . . .
(!!!) An image blasted at her, of himself and four other Humans, all spotted or striped in nonnormal colors, nonnormal ways, desperately needing to get out of there. A jumble of thoughts of weapons, of the current alien ship ripping open with them safely on another ship—her ship, presumably, but it came with a sense of artificial gravity in his mental assumptions and a configuration that wasn’t anything like either the five-lobed frog-people’s ship or the delta-winged OTL-to-atmospheric design of the Aloha series—and so on and so forth.
She projected a firm sense of calm upon him until his whirling thoughts slowed, then constructed an image of the frog-tentacled aliens gripping a weapon-like object, it shooting something, that something blasting a bulkhead into chunks of wall, of changing the object in the alien’s hands several times, with it sometimes setting things on fire, sometimes making things break up . . . and then sent him a pulse of inquiry. Asking him in images and feelings what sort of weapons his captors wielded.
A sense of a deep breath, and a shaky but determined projection in return of several carefully paced images. A weapon like some of the ones she had seen. Of its being fired at a fellow Human—with blue spots on their tanned face—and of that Human’s eyes rolling up and their body slumping down. They still breathed, but were clearly unconscious for some time, as the enemy came up, slung the Human over its shoulder—an impression that most of these aliens were indeed male—and carried it off to be stripped and chained up.
Some sort of stunning or tranquilizing weapon, then. One with an impression of electrical energy mixed with sonic energy. Like the thing they used on the Aloha’s hull. She sent a pulse of understanding, and a query. Another image, of a laser rifle shooting orange beams, burning things in lines. The Humans returned it . . . but again, the enemy shot well, the Human female collapsed in agony—still alive—and the alien came up, stunned the Human, and carried her off. A jumbled impression of the Humans being . . . eaten alive. Unpleasant.
A third image—an enemy killing a Human, coming up . . . poking and prodding and lifting and dropping the dead Human . . . and the alien pushing it away and walking off. So the aliens preferred live prisoners to dead kills, just so they could eat their prey alive. She sent another pulse of confirmation, of understanding. Then sent him an image of the cells he had been in, the other four Humans, and a pulse-question, followed by the bars vanishing. She constructed a backwards-kneed, flippered lump of an alien stepping up with weapons, with similar weapons dropping out of ceiling compartments, in the
style of questioning pulses asking what sort of security measures stood in the way of their freedom.
Stunner rifles, bulky security doors, and smooth panels marked with circles in different colors. It took both of them several tries of back and forth before he sent her a simple, drawing-style projection of a suction cup lifting up on a line. The security measures were physiologically based. She—according to him—would need suction cups of all sorts and sizes to get the bars open without blasting them down and burning the captives in the attempt, or risking lasering the occupants.
“Boot me,” she heard Robert say over the earpiece and the speakers. “They do have a Human on board!”
“A very naked Human,” Ayinda added. “He’s up there in that observation window overlooking the bay, port side.”
Jackie cleared her mind, slipping out of the male’s clutching mental fingers. Not dropping the link between them, but slimming it down to a nondistracting level. “Okay. There are a total of five Humans on board, not including ourselves. The true aliens, the ones looking like crosses between a frog and an octopus, I have managed to discern their intentions . . . and they confirm the precognitive visions. These aliens eat living sentient prey, which is what they will do to us as soon as they figure out we’re the same general biology as their current prisoners.”
“So what do we do, Ambassador?” Lars asked her, all trace of his usual oddball sense of humor gone. “If we attack, that would be starting a war. If we do not attack, we could end up being dinner. I do not wish in any way to be dinner.”
“I need to do one more sweep of the ship to be absolutely sure . . . and then I am going to go out there and I am going to rescue all five of them. Even if they are not our Humans, they are Humans. Any of their captors protest or get in my way, I’ll . . . just knock them down. Stun them, hopefully. I don’t know how durable their physiology is compared to ours, but it should be comparable if they have similar gravity, atmosphere, and so forth . . . so hopefully I won’t kill any. But I will not leave those five Humans in their grasp. We know from the precogs that the aliens are hostile. We haven’t seen much of that from our fellow Humans out there. This is my judgment as mission commander . . . and I accept full responsibility for any consequences that arise from it.”
“You?” Brad asked her. “Alone? On a ship big enough to hold thousands of these aliens?”
“Yes. I need the rest of you to ready the ship for departure. Since most everyone in the hangar bay is in a pressure-suit, it won’t be too much of a slaughter if we blast that . . . force-field thing out of our way, venting the hangar when it’s time to go. But only once myself and the others are on board.
“Maria, I realize this is going to put us into an automatic quarantine situation. We don’t know what pathogens they’re carrying, and they don’t know which we’re carrying. It could be like encountering one of those isolated Amazon tribes, so you’re going to need to break out the health-monitor bracelets,” Jackie said. She reached under her helmet to adjust her headset on her ear, then readjusted the helm, socketing it and giving it a firm twist to seal it in place. That activated the rebreather pack, and her heads-up display started greenlighting again for all of its functions. “I’m going out there sealed in the p-suit with the visor down, confuse the aliens a little bit longer.
“I may be Human-shaped in general, but if they can’t see that I don’t look exactly like the ones they have—no visible stripes or spots—it might slow them down, make them hesitate. After all, we know from the Greys that there are biometrically symmetrical aliens with two legs, two arms, a torso, and a head out there that aren’t actually Human. I’m going to keep my pickups wide open, video and audio both, so start recording as much of this as you can . . . but a lot of what I’m going to be doing is psychic, so don’t expect me to talk my head off.”
“You’re both brave and bootless, Major,” Brad told her. She didn’t know if he saluted or not, though his voice for the first time did have a slight edge of respect in its tone.
“Thank you. Cycling the airlock now.” She closed the inner door with a touch of the controls, then waited for the small chamber to suction its atmosphere out. No point in exposing the aliens to an excess of Human-based pathogens . . . or rather, not Human, but Terran, Jackie decided. She didn’t know yet what these other Humans called themselves, but her group came from Earth, and that meant they were Terrans. The Council had long ago decided that Terran was much more dignified as a label than Earthling, after all, even if it wasn’t officially implemented in their name for themselves. One could say they were from Earth, Mars, the Moon, a space station . . . but they were all Terrans in the end, as in originating from the same planet.
Which meant these new Humans came from Earth, too, and would surely be Terrans somehow. Escapees from a Grey experimentation project, maybe? That would be the most logical, and might account for the weird body paint and hair dye that isn’t actually paint or dye . . .
As soon as the lights switched from orange to red, then to green, Jackie tapped the button for the outer-airlock door. It hissed open, alien air whooshing in around her. They would definitely have to use the quarantine sectors now, either alpha or beta. Someone would have to pilot a ship to dock simultaneously with the far side to keep the torus counterbalanced . . . and she was getting ahead of herself in her thoughts.
First get the non-Terran Humans out of their suckered clutches, Jacaranda, she ordered herself, easing up to the doorway for a peek. And to do that, you have to catch every single one of those stunner guns and make sure they don’t go off while pointed at you. So . . . xenopathic awareness sphere . . . The impression I got was a short-range capacity on those stun guns, thankfully. Two aliens near the cockpit—I can sense Robert already activated the blast shields, preventing them from looking in, leaving them with camera scans. One alien at each wing . . . two more at the rear . . . half a dozen more just beyond them . . . wrap your mind around each weapon and get ready to shove any of them upward if their owner seeks to fire it . . .
The door’s hissing open had caught their attention, but they moved warily into view, using bits of equipment for cover. There were two other ships in here, vaguely shuttle-sized, a little smaller than the Aloha and very much more like bricks than the delta-winged Terran vessel. Bits of repair equipment, fueling pipes, that sort of thing. Stepping out onto the glossy, mirror-polished portside wing, Jackie looked around, quickly finding and identifying aliens with anything remotely like the weapons her panicked fellow psi had projected . . . and caught sight of him in the big viewing window up and slightly to her left, in the side wall of the hangar.
Naked indeed, with a golden tan, messy blond hair streaked in darkish red from the stripes that branched across his hide from scalp to toes, a somewhat short, reddish blond beard with a hint of red along one upper edge, on his left—no, his right cheek, her left.
(!! . . . You?) came the thought-image as he leaned forward, pressing one hand to the transparent material between them.
(Me,) she replied, and lifted a gloved hand, spreading her five fingers slightly, very much like he was doing but in mirror image. With every exchange of images, she was getting a grasp of his underlying language, cognitives, nouns, verbs, descriptors . . .
(They shoot you! Think you me!) The underlying image-pulse meant weak, prey, food.
(I know.) Pulling back mentally, she reached instead into the mind of one of the aliens by an airlock door not far from the window, on an upper level. The stairs they used were broader-stepped than Humans tended to build, but the alien was busy climbing them quickly, some sort of device in his tentacles, his mind filled with images of cold, precise scientific observations. The units of measurement meant nothing, but he had taken a scan of her body. The readings were fuzzy, but definitely one of them—and he placed his tentacle on the airlock, manipulating the suit’s suckers with his own inside, in a specific pattern, intending to make his report to the officer standing next to the striped Human.
&nbs
p; Jackie thrust off the wing, jumping into the air and soaring straight for that opening airlock. She bubbled, drawing in her arms and knees in reflex, mentally cushioning the blow of crashing into the technician. He sprawled across the floor with a muffled sound from inside his suit, and she landed inside the airlift, ship boots clunking on the metal floor. The alien rolled, trying to get himself into a position where he could stand; Jackie pressed him into the corner, squishing him lightly. A lift-press of telekinesis on the controls on the open side got the outer doors shut, a lift-press in a similar pattern on the inner controls got those ones open.
A force bubble slammed outward from the doorway the moment it cracked open, knocking over the ten or so aliens within twenty meters of her position. Darting out and to the left, toward the long alcove with the windows, Jackie firmed that telekinetic wall behind her and expanded the wall in front of her, parting it right around the Human even as she slammed the rest of her mental force into the true aliens, bowling them over. With telekinesis for her shield, she didn’t have to run as fast as Brad Colvers. She just had to be able to run, to stay ahead of the enemy.
Unfortunately, she had to run several decks and back, which would exhaust her, though not as much as if she kept flying the whole time. The striped male gaped at her, one eye burgundy-hued, the other a more normal gray, both wide enough that she could see the whites all around—then he whirled and pounced on the tangled, tumbled aliens next to him, yanked up a weapon, and quickly fired on the nearest aliens still struggling to right themselves on the floor. The weapon flashed in light and buzzed through the air, washing over the non-Humans struggling to rise with little snaps of static. They collapsed. He whirled once she reached him, one arm sweeping out to shove her past him, and shot the others.
Just in time, too. Four of them had been about to return fire. Whirling to face her, he said, “Sha-lou sha’ala fassou oua na’vikko chula f’sess. Fa-lou sou’kem?”
Definitely no language Jackie knew. Alarms started blaring and lights flashed around them, pulsing orange-red. She shoved at him an image of their location, an image of those barred cells, a dotted line that meandered, and a pulse of query. He blinked, narrowed his eyes as he mulled over her meaning, then nodded and pointed back the way she had come. Picking up a few more objects from the aliens, he thrust one of the stun rifles at her, clearly expecting her to take it.
