Peace Army

by Steven L. Hawk

  Upon hearing Titan’s name, he gasped, stumbled backward, and began chanting a Peace verse. Without appearing to know what caused his reaction, Gee and Ceeray reacted immediately to help placate the distressed man. Gee whispered his own Peace mantra, intertwining his verses expertly with the ones whispered by Derk. Ceeray held her partner’s left hand, stroked his back affectionately, and made soft, cooing noises in his ear.

  Titan surmised that Ceeray, like Gee, had already been a captive on the ship when Titan had become worldwide news. Apparently Derk, on the other hand, knew exactly who he was.

  Disgust, exasperation, and anger fought for dominance over Titan’s emotions as the dramatic show continued. Fortunately, a lifetime of practice made him an expert at masking those feelings. It wasn’t the first time his name had caused such a reaction, and he knew the best thing he could do was to appear patient and calm, but after a few minutes, he’d had enough.

  “Are you finished now?”

  The question set off a new round of whimpering. Titan merely shook his head, turned on his heel, and headed back to the command center. The other three could work out their issues and come find him when they were ready. Or not.

  Twenty minutes later, he saw them approaching on the video screen. He turned to face the door as they entered.

  Gee did not look at Titan when the trio entered the room. Instead, he looked at the floor. Titan understood that Derk had filled the other two in on his history and knew that the dynamic between him and the engineer had changed. It was unfortunate, but it was what it was, he supposed. Unless they could figure out a way to destroy Minith without killing themselves, it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  “Not that it matters,” Titan addressed the three former captives, “but I didn’t do what everyone thinks I did.”

  “What…what did you do?” Gee looked at Titan for the first time since entering the room.

  Titan sighed and pointed to several of the newly cleaned chairs. He waited as Gee led Ceeray and Derk to two seats, then took one himself. He gathered his thoughts and began.

  “Okay, this is the only time I am going to talk about this. Ever.” Gee nodded in understanding.

  “I know what they say. ‘Titan killed dozens of people.’ ‘Titan is a crazy Violent who cannot contain his anger and aggression.’ ‘Titan murdered his family and friends.’ Am I right?”

  Gee looked toward Derk, who was nodding slowly. Both Derk and Ceeray appeared ill, apparently at the thought of such actions. Neither of them spoke, though.

  “Never happened. Any of it.” Titan watched as all three perked up and gave him their complete attention.

  “Oh, I was violent. That’s true. Most of my life, from the time I was a young child until they tossed me into Violent’s Prison, I fought when I thought fighting was necessary. And I don’t regret any of it.

  “But outside of prison, I never killed anyone, especially not my family. They are all alive and doing well, I suppose. At least, they were the last time I saw them, eight years ago.”

  The acknowledgment that he had killed inside the prison did not seem to bother Gee or the two interpreters. That discovery surprised Titan. He had often wondered how those outside Violent’s Prison felt about the men, women, and children who lived inside its massive walls. Now, he thought he knew. As long as the violence was kept within the walls of that poisonous palace, what went on inside the prison did not matter to society. He felt sadness at the thought; wondered how those he had left would be treated by society now that the Minith had been banished. He hoped Grant would be able to keep his promises about their treatment.

  Titan was no longer leader of the prison, but he still felt responsibility and fondness for the inmates. They were his people, more than anyone else on Earth. And his actions on this ship were as much for their well-being as for the rest of humanity.

  Titan pushed on with his story.

  “I had my first psych-retraining when I was five.”

  Ceeray gasped at the revelation. Gee and Derk shook their heads in what looked like sympathy. He wasn’t sure.

  Most of those who underwent the procedure for the first time were teenagers. Their hormones were almost always the cause of whatever violent outbursts required the mental re-training.

  “By the time I was eighteen, I had been referred to re-training more than a dozen times.”

  Ceeray put her hands over her mouth. Derk hung his head and Gee looked on in shock. All of them knew the statistics. One procedure was effective enough to re-train 95% of violent teens. Few ever needed a second or a third procedure. The process was excruciatingly painful and highly efficient.

  “By my eighteenth birthday, my parents knew it was only a matter of time before I would be sent to Violent’s Prison. The law states that anyone over eighteen who cannot be rehabilitated after three procedures has to be imprisoned.

  “So they planned a party. Can you believe it?

  “It was as much a going-away party as it was a celebration of my adulthood. We all knew it, but we didn’t think it would mark the occasion of my final outburst. We thought we’d have more time together.

  “What we did not know was that the Minith would visit the fields outside our village that day. Or that they would kill my brother as he was gathering apples for the celebration.”

  Titan’s voice grew low. The sadness was evident, but he managed to hide his anger from the others as they listened to his story.

  “He knew how much I loved apples.”

  Titan paused.

  Took a breath.

  Continued.

  “When the first survivors reached us, the Minith were still there—killing anyone they found. Man, woman, young or old, they didn’t care. It was a sport for them. They were killing people who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. And they were doing it for fun.

  “So I set out for the fields.”

  Titan looked directly into Gee’s eyes. He wanted the engineer to understand that he would not be counted among those who could not fight back and that he would not apologize for his feelings.

  “My father, my uncles, my mother—they asked me to be at Peace. They knew what would happen to the town if I made it to that field. But I wouldn’t listen.

  “It took most of the town to do it, but they stopped me. Turned me in to the Peace Council authorities for the final time. I was eighteen then, so I got no more chances.

  “I lost my brother and my freedom on the same day.”

  Gee, Ceeray, and Derk sat quietly. Ceeray rocked back and forth in her seat. Titan noticed wet tracks running down her cheeks. Derk seemed to shake off the fear that had surrounded him since hearing Titan’s name in the corridor.

  “So, that’s why you agreed to fly the mothership to Minith? Revenge?” Gee questioned.

  “Ha!” Titan snorted. He shook his head and laughed. His hand still hurt from clobbering Grant, but he had kept his promise to Avery to protect the soldier.

  “No. Not really. It was more like a compulsive decision than anything else. If I had stopped to think about it for longer than a half second, I probably wouldn’t be here.”

  Chapter 15

  The four fell into a rhythm as they hurtled through space. Titan spent most of his time exploring. Aided by Derk and Ceeray, Gee spent most of his time studying the engines and the systems that controlled their passage through space. His previous duties aboard the ship had rarely involved the flight systems—they had never been needed, and Tlak had offered only cursory overviews.

  Even after two weeks, Gee understood little about faster-than-light travel. The technology that ran the engines was as much a mystery to him as they seemed to the Minith.

  Gee wondered what had become of the builders and original owners of the mothership. Tlak had mentioned that they were from a planet called Waa, but he had never discussed them beyond that. Perhaps the Minith had wiped them out. More likely, they kept them in chains. It seemed the Minith way.

  Although the drive systems remained a myster
y, Gee made good progress unraveling the control and guidance systems. They were still two months out from their destination, but he was confident that within the next few days, he could take full control of the ship.

  The question was: where would he take it?

  Minith? Or somewhere else?

  Gee was torn. For the sake of his race and his planet, the mothership had to reach the alien planet and do its intended work. On the other hand, the thought of dying in the blast was not pleasant, to say the least.

  The last dozen years had shown him that Peace was possible, but only when all parties agreed to the principle. As the Minith had proven, when one entity did not subscribe to the ideals required for Peace, the concept could be a fragile house of cards, ready to tumble with the least gust of wind. And the Minith were a hurricane of wind.

  Titan had offered the idea of destroying the planet and saving themselves at the same time. Gee like the idea; thought it was possible. First, he had to gain control of the ship. Then he could focus on the next step of the puzzle.

  Gee was a ball of concentration and worry as he worked out the problem. He had a good reason for his efforts.

  Self-preservation is a highly effective motivator.

  * * *

  Ceeray was enjoying life on the alien ship.

  She walked the corridors as she pleased, without fear. And the time she spent helping Gee work out the mystery of the control room and its myriad of panels, screens, and data streams was… well, exciting.

  For the first time in a long while, she felt alive. Her work was rewarding. Her talent with the Minith language was appreciated. She was contributing to a task that was important and worthwhile.

  She felt… special.

  Ceeray had been an interpreter for the Minith for more than a decade. With Avery and three other women, she had accepted a Leadership Council offer of freedom from Violent’s Prison in exchange for working for the alien invaders. At the time, she had felt that nothing was worse that Violent’s Prison, and had jumped at the opportunity to leave its rough, uncivilized life behind.

  Unless you could fight, or had some talent that made you valuable to the Square in which you lived, life for a woman in the prison was harsh.

  It was especially hard for someone raised by a loving family. Someone who had always heard, from a very young age, that she was special.

  At the core of her being, Ceeray knew she wasn’t any more special than the other girls in her school. But when you hear it over and over, you begin to believe it—or at least, try to make others believe it.

  As a teen, Ceeray did things others never did. Acted in ways others would never act.

  She stole things because no one she knew would ever think of stealing. She showed up late to class. She refused to complete work assignments and stopped showing up for shifts in the fields. She ignored the confused pleas of her parents and the teachers who tried to help her.

  Ceeray pinched, poked, and tapped the prettier girls when no one else was around. She never left a mark, and she never really hurt anyone, but the idea of doing something so unexpected and forbidden made her shudder with delight. Just hearing one of her targets squeal as she pinched a rib made her feel… special.

  What Ceeray failed to consider was that society did not do special. The world in which she lived was built on the premise that everyone was equally un-special. Nonconformists were not tolerated. They either conformed or they were re-trained. When re-training failed, there was only one solution.

  Ceeray was sent to the place built for and run by nonconformists.

  Violent’s Prison.

  After a week in her new home, Ceeray never wanted to be special again. But it was too late.

  Life in Violent’s Prison was ruled by a simple premise: survival of the fittest. For a woman, that usually meant attaching yourself to the fate, mercy, and wishes of the toughest, smartest male you could find and hoping no one stronger and meaner came along to take you.

  Ceeray had been an inmate for six months when word filtered through the prison that volunteers were needed to live with the aliens. She hesitated for less than a minute before traveling to the Outer Square where she joined hundreds of others, mostly women, who were willing to leave a life of known hazards inside the prison for one of unknown hazards with the Minith.

  Unlike those who were born inside the prison, Ceeray knew the aliens were cruel and ruthless. But she did not care. She jumped at the chance to get out.

  Ceeray waited in the Outer Square for two days without food and water for the representatives of the Leadership Council to arrive. By the time they did, the assembly had grown to more than two thousand hopefuls.

  The crowd was immediately thinned when the representatives announced that only N’mercan women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four would be considered. It took an hour for the men and women who did not belong to that group to disperse. When they did, a crowd of roughly two hundred women remained. They were directed to a cordoned-off area between the outer wall of the prison and the Outer Square building, where tests were performed.

  Ceeray did her best to provide what the testers requested. She submitted to a rigorous physical, underwent a battery of mental tests, and even wore a transference-educator device for several minutes. After her time with the educator, Ceeray could speak passably in an obscure Afc’n dialect. Some who underwent this testing could converse with her in the new language; others could not. The ones who could not were sent on their way.

  At the end of the tests, Ceeray and four other women were selected. They were placed on a carrier and transported to the alien mothership.

  Upon arrival, the Minith conducted their own tests. It didn’t take long for Ceeray to realize that life with the Minith was more dangerous than life inside the prison.

  Of the five women sent to the aliens, only Ceeray and Avery, a lifelong resident of Violent’s Prison, survived the testing and became interpreters for the aliens.

  Ceeray was glad that Avery had escaped. They had survived the Minith torture as a team. When she was ready to give up, Avery helped pull her through the pain. As a result, they shared a uniquely strong bond.

  Unlike Gee, Ceeray had no qualms about giving up her life in exchange for destroying the aliens’ planet. If it took her death to ensure Avery’s future—a future without the presence of the Minith—then so be it. It was a price she would gladly pay.

  It made her feel special.

  Chapter 16

  “Do you think it will work?”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” Gee asked. The lack of sleep over the past six weeks was obviously taking its toll. The engineer looked tired—and he was definitely irritable. “This will work. We can accomplish both our primary goals.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been listening,” Titan replied.

  He was amused at the change that had come over the chubby engineer. Just weeks ago, Gee would have been frightened to look him in the eye. Now, he was chastising him for not listening.

  “I just want to be sure we aren’t missing something,” he continued. “This is one of the most important decisions any human being is ever going to make.”

  “We can’t mess this up,” Ceeray agreed.

  The four sat in the same chairs they had occupied on the first day of their journey. They took the same seats every time they gathered in the command center.

  “I’ve run the simulations,” the engineer countered. “We have a ninety-eight percent probability of success.”

  “Is that a ninety-eight percent probability that we can destroy Minith? Or ninety-eight percent that we can destroy it and escape?”

  “That is the percentage of getting the bomb to the planet and activating it. I don’t know if it will destroy the planet. The Minith say it will, and the database describes two successful tests, but who knows for sure?” Gee explained.

  “What about our safety?” Derk asked. Titan knew where Derk’s priorities rested, but he let the comment pass.

  “That�
��s anyone’s guess,” Gee continued. “We should be safe from the explosion, but we do not know how the Minith will react.”

  “If we blow up the planet, can they chase us?”

  Derk’s question was valid, but it still irritated Titan. He did not feel Derk was fully engaged with what they were trying to accomplish. The quiet interpreter would be happy to turn the ship around and scurry back to Earth. Titan refused to consider the consequences of that action. If they didn’t act to stop the Minith, the aliens would eventually send a larger, more heavily armed force than the previous one.

  It’s one thing to send a hundred soldiers to watch over a Peace-loving population that refuses to fight back. It’s quite another scenario when that same population has shown the desire and the ability to kill those hundred soldiers.

  From the messages that had come to the ship from the alien home planet, it was evident that the aliens were curious about the unexpected but impending return of the mothership. Although there was significant lag time between when they were sent and the time it took for the messages to reach them, they all carried the same general question.

  Why did the mothership leave Earth?

  The single, vague message Ceeray returned to the aliens promised explanations and answers upon arrival. It was a straw house at best, and the group felt increasingly more exposed the closer they got to Minith.

  “Derk, we don’t know if they will allow us to come near the planet,” Ceeray patiently explained. “They could send out ships to intercept us before we can get the device to the surface.”

  “Which is why this plan makes the most sense,” Gee interjected. “If we send the smaller carrier to the planet, the Minith will be much less suspicious.”