by Allen Ivers
“Yeah, it's the whole third person thing, it’s...” Aaron said, waving his hand nebulously in her direction, “It’s confusing. What can I call you? You have a name? A title? A collection of noises the rest of the clan associates with you?”
She looked out toward the cavern in a rather noble profile, with the light glancing off her cheek at just the right angle as to make her glow, “When you speak to one, you speak to all.”
He blinked, waiting for her to break the pose. She did not. “Alright, your Highness, exit stage left.”
She looked at him, brow twisted up. She knows how to look confused, at least. “We do not…"
"Overdramatic. You coulda just said 'Hive Mind', is all."
"Highness. Yes, one assumes everything is high from your… perspective."
Aaron nodded, "Okay, I deserved that one." He shook his head, and tried to brush away the entire exchange.
She took a couple meaningful steps toward him. They were ginger steps, fluid and soft, almost sensual. It was like she was trying to linger in each step before pushing closer.
He scoffed at the display; she was able to project more than just words, but posture and picture: every action was a calculated decision, nothing accidental. This was all in his head, his brain painting something for his eyes so that he did not go mad, and the brain was doing so under explicit instruction.
Almost by definition, she could not be genuine.
She froze at that, “You do not trust us?”
If what her story was at all true, about a desire for real peace... there hadn’t even been a discussion amongst the colonists. First contact with the Jergad had been down a gun barrel.
But of course, the person telling it shades the story to their light.
Aaron tongued his cheek, “Okay, whether… you’re in my head or I just have a shit poker face… no, I don’t trust you.”
“May we ask why?”
Not a topic she should have opened. “You’ve killed friends of mine,” Aaron seethed.
“As you have killed ours.” She responded with no hesitation.
“Then why haven’t you killed me?!”
Scar cooed from his dark post nearby, almost a purr deep in his throat. The Queen sat in that accusation, bathing in its implications. He had been a singular threat and a potent weapon against her. By all reason, she should have torn him to gooey bits and painted the walls with viscera.
What was staying her hand?
Aaron turned away -- no. Make her do it.
He whirled back around, “I am no one! You’ve been in my head, you know better than most. I’m a criminal, a murderer. I have no value. I have no rights. I am not special or interesting or important. I am only alive because they allow it!”
He softened at that pronouncement, taking a moment to absorb it himself. The truth hurts.
She actually smiled at him, "Those are their words. Not yours."
The Queen of the Jergad strode over to him. He recoiled as she reached for his face, but she did not hesitate, cupping his cheeks between her palms.
They were soft, warm. Real. No images came flooding in, but rather the soft comfort of a warm blanket toasty from the dryer. It almost drew tears from him.
Was he just that thirsty for human touch, or was this some power of hers to sap his will to resist?
She pulled his eyes up to meet hers, “You are alive. That simple fact makes you valuable. Life itself is the treasure."
"Wouldn't say that if you knew my life," he blurted. How absurd. She knew his life, every waking scrap of its pitiable path.
Her smile drooped, heavy with intent, “Ancient heroes are nothing more than myth… but they are about people. And when those people lived, they were not ‘heroes.’ It is in the crafting, in the telling of their deeds, that they are lionized and deified: their actions in which they are now remembered. But in their day, they were nothing more than 'alive'. Nothing more than you are now.”
Aaron snorted, “So, you guys do have stories, huh?”
“We have our history as we remember it.”
He swallowed all of his fear before he could speak again. “I can’t just get up and end a war,” he whispered to her.
Her hands dropped to her sides, a small smile edging on her face, “Who can know… until we try?”
“But I don’t have any power!” Aaron broke in, pulling away from those intoxicating hands, “Nobody will listen to somebody like me!”
The Queen straightened up, the motion pulling him up straight with her. “You know much of rank, of position, of the lower place they put you in? Who would listen to us?”
Aaron blinked.
Of course. She’d kept him alive all this time for information. She was buttering him up. He could provide intelligence on the humans’ fortifications, equipment depots, capabilities.
She wanted targets. He was a resource to be used and exhausted.
“A-ha,” he said dryly, “So you don’t care about me at all. You want the big fish.”
The Queen’s stoic facade twitched, almost like a video feed had skipped some frames, “What more could we show you to convince you of our cause?”
Aaron decided to test her, “Let me go, right now. No muss, no fuss.”
“And you will bring our case to the humans, ak’thun?”
“I can’t promise anything,” he jabbered, “I’m-I’m a Capital. But it would go a long way to show you mean business. I go back, I’m gonna tell ‘em how I survived...”
He sighed, computing the inevitable result of that conversation, “And they’re just gonna love that story. You know, the one where I held court with an alien shadow blob--” Aaron stabbed a finger at the shifting morass behind the regal Talania, “--and how the vicious natives showed me nothing but hospitality: smelly, rancid hospitality! I’ll be lucky if my CO doesn’t lash me to a big stick for target practice!”
“Why would they do that?” She asked, quizzical.
“Why…” Aaron gasped, barely able to understand the question, “I’ve been trying to tell you, I am a Capital! I surrendered my basic right to be ‘alive.’ Those people down there don't owe me shit! I have no value to them! My word is nothing!” His voice echoed off the walls of the cavern, punctuating his point.
Futile, as the nest continued its work unabated. It was like shouting at the rain.
The Queen was similarly unenthused, barely reacting to the outburst. She took a bracing breath, an unabashed bit of theater for his benefit, “We shall stay our hands.”
He blinked, “Stay your hands?” It finally clicked, lightbulb moment, “No more attacks on the Wall, on the farmlands… you’ll stop attacking Vanguard?”
“Our assault will cease. You can bring them this news. Surely, then they might be willing to listen,” she made this declaration with a soft voice but a firm stare, “That is our trust in you.”
“That…” Aaron fumbled for words, “I’m touched by the confidence you have in me but… you should just know, it’s a tall order.”
“Yes. Ak’thun may even have to jump.”
Oh my God, stop.
Part 3
Lodestone
17
Riley
He had arrived one dry morning, stumbling out of the horizon a ghostly mirage.
Despite the roiling heat of the day and the peeling sunburns that lined his hands and lips, reports read that he was shivering. The sun damage had sent him to heatstroke, rendering him completely unable to regulate his body temperature.
His clothes hung off him, made looser by a few key rips, either from battle damage or abuse. He had pulled up his tunic to shield his face from the blistering wind, but it did little for his nose, the skin already peeling back.
Dehydration and exposure had nearly finished him.
The guards took him into custody without a thought. Their basic thinking had been limited to purifying silhouettes on a horizon.
They couldn’t be expected to know what Riley knew. If he had seen that gh
ost walk out of the desert, he’d have ordered a marksman burn two symmetrical holes in center-mass before they could make out his face. Human or not, all friendly forces were accounted for and rules of engagement were quite clear.
At the very least, Aaron should have been held in quarantine to await a battery of tests -- where he would most assuredly have been found contaminated by some hostile pathogen, forcing Riley to purge said threat. It would have been a tragic but altogether necessary end for the Capital and safety precautions exist for a reason.
Instead of reducing Aaron to a slag heap from two hundred yards, the Regulars lent him a blanket, their food, and their ears. The detachment of Capitals and the Regular fools listened as the walking dead man droned on about his experiences, about how genuine hell demons nestled in the foothills actually bore us no ill will, that these bladed monstrosities that could not be manufactured in a mad scientist's lab to be more horrifying, creatures that had slain hundreds of their kin, sought only an end to the bloodshed.
Aaron made outlandish promises, how the creatures were going to cease their offensives and retreat back into their holes to await our response.
How did he know all of this?
They talked to him, he said. The critters barely capable of strategy were sapient enough, civilized enough, to trade words with an entirely different species? It was far more likely the governor’s daughter would personally anoint Riley with oil and crown him Regent than there was any truth to Aaron’s outlandish aspersions.
He was a POW held by an enemy force during a time of war, released without negotiation or trade, and Riley was supposed to accept this gift without inspection?
The room was barren, just an empty storage closet the technicians had hastily converted to an interrogation space. The Wall’s fortifications were capable of hosting triple the standing troops and munitions, so a half hour of heavy lifting freed up a small space at the Prefecture.
Two technicians plugged up the single air vent with sealing foam, allowing only minimal refreshment, and barred up the one open window, reducing the light to a single slit that draped across Aaron’s bare back.
They bolted two empty shelves to the floor and walls, securing them as racks for Aaron’s restraints. The ropes lashed to them were drawn taut and bit into Aaron’s wrists, pulling his arms wide to match the ankle-bar that locked his legs open. This spread eagle position kept him open to the litany of abuses at Riley’s disposal.
All in good time.
Riley observed Aaron through a camera from the room next door, along with a half dozen doctors and officers – it looked like a collection of professors had brought their children out of Academy and directly to a slave box.
Holmst leaned against the back wall, unblinking, as he studied Aaron’s stripped form. His pale eyes traced the lines of the man on camera like he was looking at a ghost.
Or was he looking at a stinging rebuke of his talents? The lieutenant's deep-socketed eyes betrayed more guilt than frustration.
The Capital hung against his restraints, letting his flesh bear his weight; the cords on his wrists were already cutting into his flesh, letting little rivulets of blood drop down his arms. Riley had seen this before: the prisoner was using the pain to keep himself awake and cognizant. Aaron was more than a simple slave with a gun.
Caution was never too high a price.
Aaron glanced up at the camera lens, letting out a sigh and a raised brow. Oh, was Riley’s deliberations an inconvenience to the prisoner?
“Any theories?” Riley asked the room.
A murmur rolled through the group as they all debated who should speak first. Riley rolled his eyes. No executive function to be found, high nor low.
One doctor finally chirped up, a wiry little woman, “He claims the Jergad Queen spoke to him through a projection… this would indicate some kind of non-linear connection between the Queen and the rest of the hive mind, their gestalt consciousness.”
Her eyes danced up and left, as she started to fabricate the rest of the reason for opening her mouth, “Perhaps she uses some inaudible low-frequency sound or an electrical current -- something that could influence brain activity with enough sophistication to create and manipulate such an illusion.”
“Impossible,” another egghead spat at his colleague, “Basic commands to simple creatures is one thing, but complex audio-visual hallucinations in a hostile cerebellum?”
“That’s assuming he actually saw what he claims he did.”
“Precisely! It’s far more likely he’s lying.”
They were about to break down into a full committee on biological markers and entomological implications if Riley didn’t recapture their focus.
He pressed his knuckles against the wall, giving them a ripping crack like he was rolling them over nutshells. This redirected everyone’s attention.
An ambitious little dissenter stepped forward, “Sir, our physiology is just not evolved for such things. It’s much more likely he’s fabricating this story.”
“So,” Riley cut off the debate, “There’s absolutely no reason at all behind the lack of Jergad attacks on forward positions? Zero contact for seventy-two hours? That’s just a happy coincidence?”
“...Yes?”
Riley peered at the original scientist, a mousy little woman twice his age positively withering under his gaze. He took a moment to soak in her embarrassment, what self-abuse must be running through her head. He threw her a rope, “Talk it out, Doctor. There's a ration card in it for you if you make my day.”
She swallowed hard, feeling the pressure for a heavy moment, as all eyes came to rest on her. The older the eyes, the more dismissive they were.
But Riley's eyes were the only ones that mattered, “It is generally accepted that, uh… the Jergad drones receive instructions through a combination of pheromones, sound, and chemical markers left by their comrades. But they achieve actions far too complex for what these elements can likely achieve. A more… fringe theory… involves their cerebrospinal fluid.”
The whole room shifted at the mere mention, with her dissenting partner loudly scoffing at the words. “I’ll be the judge of its merit,” Riley scolded the man into silence. "What's your name, Doctor?"
She coughed the nerves out of her throat, "Lisa- Womack. Dr. Womack."
"Dr. Womack," Riley smiled, nodding to her, "Room is yours. Give us a show."
It took her a solid few seconds but she was able to get in gear, “In Jergad skull cavities, we have found an abnormal amount of nickel and iron -- magnetic metals -- suspended in the fluid. It’s possible… microfluctuations in a magnetic field could transmit communications by vibrating those compounds.”
“We did it for nearly a century,” Holmst chimed in, the idea piquing his interest, “Morse code. Tapped out electrical signals across wires in a universal cypher, you could send… petabytes of data that way.”
“More or less,” Womack agreed, “But this would be over the air, using the planet’s own magnetic field. All she has to do is influence that in minor ways.”
The doctors collectively sneered and scoffed, until Riley leered back at them, “That’s more outlandish than the drivel you spin every other day?”
“Sir,” the leader of the dissent brigade stepped forward as if to present himself for further punishment. Perhaps he had a fetish for it, “Our instruments would certainly have detected any such shifts in the magnetic field near or around Jergad hordes.”
Holmst perked up in the back, stiffening at some notion in his head. Riley glanced over, “Lieutenant. You’re doing that thing with your face.”
Holmst lifted himself off the wall and into a parade rest, “Colonel, Aaron’s first symptoms of alien intrusion began after he stabbed one in the head with his quick knife… his steel quick knife.”
The Doctors immediately huddled up, running equations and wild hypothesis as easily as Riley could put on his shoes. Murmurs of electromagnetic influences, the metallic composite of the knives, amplit
udes of current across the human body and a dozen other terms were tossed into the open air, but Riley gathered what he needed.
Aaron had rather crudely - and literally - hacked into the aliens’ comm-net. And now, they could talk to him.
So was it possible? Could the aliens really be suing for peace for the first time because they were finally able to? The last two years of tactics had hardly betrayed a defensive stance, let alone one seeking to minimize conflict.
But new opportunities present new choices.
“Thank you, Doctors, that’s all fascinating. Womack?" Riley tapped a command into his wrist, "Lunch is on me. You?" Riley pointed at the lead dissenter, "Don't get to have lunch. Let that be a lesson."
"But-" It was Womack speaking up for her rival. How quaint.
"That'll be all, Doctors. You have patients to tend to.” Riley declared, choosing instead to stare into the camera feed of their guest.
The Doctors funneled out of the small room muttering and grumbling at their female peer, like she had somehow unduly undercut their prestige simply by being correct. Or maybe they just wanted her meal.
“Due respect, sir,” Holmst cajoled his commander, “This could be a Godsend. We could turn our attention back to the Empire and--”
“You really think it possible these things won’t come for us in our sleep?”
Holmst’s face twisted and froze, caught between two equal impossibilities. His eyes darted to the screen and their irenic prisoner.
Aaron’s return upset a very basic principle of the aliens’ behavior: they hadn’t butchered him with a hateful fixation. Either of the conspiracy theories -- of a peaceful resolution to the conflict, or a human operative for a hive mind -- would have born the same rolled eyes from him not a week before.
Now, olive branch or dagger, everything they’d taken for certain had been shot to shit by one solitary wanderer in the savannah.
“Why don’t we ask him?” The lieutenant finally said, turning his eyes back to Riley.
He could swear, the aide de camp might actually have had a glimmer of hope somewhere behind those ice blue eyes, a lightness under his brow.
