by Steve White
“There are a great many questions—a very great many questions—that we want to ask you, beginning with words like who and where and why. But we have to start somewhere. So . . . what should we call you?”
“Oh, you may as well continue using Zoltan da Silva. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my true name correctly, any more than I can pronounce your language properly when in my natural form. The vocal apparatus is too different. For that reason—and also the inconvenience and discomfort involved in a transformation—I will retain my present form.”
Zhygon was right, Andrew mentally filed away. After the initial transformation, the mental effort required to sustain it must become pretty much automatic. “All right. Next question: What is this object on the desk, and why are you so interested in it?”
Da Silva shook his (her? its?) head in an altogether humanlike gesture. “No. I won’t answer any of your questions here.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to refuse.”
“No? As you’ve pointed out, you can kill me. But that won’t get you any answers.”
“We have ways of getting them,” said Taylor darkly.
“Do you? You’ll find that none of your truth drugs work on me, due to differences in body chemistry. And as for torture . . . well, as you’ve deduced, we are very resistant to physical traumas that aren’t extreme enough to kill us. But aside from that, we’re basically a very fragile species—our nervous system will take very little abuse. I don’t believe you’d be able to torture me without killing me and therefore learning nothing.”
“I would be willing to try,” said Reislon. Even through the medium of the translator his voice was chilling. “But there is another method: imprisonment under conditions of sensory deprivation. I don’t think you could stand up under that for long.”
“Probably not. But you would have no way of verifying the truthfulness of my answers.”
“Still,” Rachel spoke up, “I’m sure you’d just as soon avoid it. And . . . if I recall your exact words, you said you wouldn’t answer any of our questions here.”
“You are very alert, Ms. Arnstein. Yes, I have every intention of telling you what you want to know—but only on my own terms, which involve going to the locale where I can demonstrate this device.”
“Fine,” said Taylor. “Let’s go.”
“No. I don’t trust you.I have no intention of allowing this cruiser, with its firepower, into the region to which I am referring. I will take you, Commodore Roark.” (In a certain corner of his mind, Andrew managed to be amused by the use of the traditional “courtesy promotion” extended to anyone with the rank of captain aboard a ship commanded by someone else, who alone could be addressed by the sacrosanct title.) “And you, Ms. Arnstein. We will use City of Osaka’s gig. I can perform all nonautomated piloting functions.”
“Either you’re insane,” said Taylor, “or you think we are.”
“You can follow in your cruiser, Captain, just out of range of your ship-to-ship laser weapons, with no fighters deployed. If anything untoward happens, you’ll be able to obliterate me immediately thereafter.”
“Along with Captain Roark and Ms. Arnstein. They’d be your hostages.”
“My entire crew is in your hands, Captain. You’ll have more hostages than I will.”
“I’m willing to chance it, Jamel,” said Andrew.
“So am I,” added Rachel.
“I can’t put you at risk, Ms. Arnstein,” Taylor protested. “You’re a civilian.”
“I’m here of my own free will, Captain Taylor. You’re not responsible for me or in authority over me.”
“Actually, Ms. Arnstein, I am. As long as you’re on this ship, you’re under military jurisdiction.”
“I think she’s earned the right to decide for herself, Jamel,” said Andrew. “Anyway, remember that I’ll be armed and he won’t be. I ought to be able to control the situation.”
“I would also like to go, Captain,” said Reislon, “as a representative of Borthru and his organization, who seem to have become partners in this enterprise. There will be room for me—barely—in the gig. And I, too, am armed.” His implanted gauss needler had been reactivated, as a gesture of trust. It wasn’t lethal against the shape-shifters, but it had proven it could be useful.
“I have no objection,” said Da Silva.
Taylor glared. “If I tried really, really hard, I might be able to think of something I care about less than your objections or lack of them.” He turned contemptuously away and addressed Andrew. “All right. Against my better judgment I’m going to allow this. Just remember, Andy, you’re in command of this crazy little expedition, with full enforcement powers. Remember also that Broadsword will be shadowing you.”
“One other thing,” said Reislon with a smile. “Don’t tell Persath about this.” The old Lokar was still in sick bay, having been shaken up by the maneuvering involved in the trap they’d sprung on City of Osaka. “He would insist on going, out of sheer curiosity.”
A very short, precisely calculated overspace hop brought the two ships back to a point within the outer solar system, closer in than the orbits of Neptune and the demoted one-time planet Pluto but well outside the plane of the ecliptic. (“Above,” in the arbitrary terms of the nav plot.) Their exact destination was a set of coordinates provided by Da Silva, who said it was in an orbital position trailing their mysterious objective.
The gig detached and accelerated ahead. Broadsword and City of Osaka followed, just barely outside the range at which the former’s shipboard laser weapons could have promptly reduced the gig to a rarefied gas. If Da Silva was disturbed by Taylor’s very literal-minded interpretation of his terms, he gave no sign.
In the course of the voyage, Andrew and Rachel tried various tactics to draw out their pilot/prisoner. None had the slightest effect. They eventually resigned themselves to the fact that Da Sliva was only going to share information in his own good time. Reislon seemed to accept that from the outset, as though recognizing a fellow professional.
Finally there came a time when Da Silva cut the gig’s drive and turned to the Cydonia artifact, which he had resolutely refused to discuss. “I must now perform certain operations with this device. It is, to some extent, voice-activated, so it will be necessary for me to give commands in my own language, within the limitations of my present form.”
“Go ahead,” said Andrew. “But just remember that Broadsword is out there.” He let his hand rest on the grip of his M-3 for additional emphasis.
Without comment, Da Silva proceeded to activate the photonic controls and manipulate them too rapidly to follow, in a meaningless flickering and flashing of tiny lights. He then spoke in an equally meaningless series of sounds, in a language clearly never intended for a human throat. Something about it sent a chill sliding along Andrew’s spine. Then came more fiddling with the controls, after which a few of the little lights continued to glow steadily. Nothing happened, as the gig coasted on in free fall.
“Well?” said Andrew, his voice brittle with a sense of anticlimax.
“Be patient.” Was there, quivering beneath Da Silva’s expressionlessness, a kind of gloating anticipation? Andrew’s hand closed on the M-3’s grip.
Rachel was the first to sense it. “Andy! What—?”
There was an indescribable sensation of gravitational flux and sensory wavering, almost too brief to register. And then the universe of stars, including the tiny, distant sun, was gone, and they were in blackness. Dead ahead, filling most of the view screen, was a titanic space habitat, oblately spheroidal and festooned with weapon blisters and instrument pods.
They were shaken out of their stunned immobility by a shudder whose origin Andrew recognized. Remote applications of artificial-gravity technology—“tractor beams” as they were called, to the prissy disapproval of the purists—were inherently impractical beyond very short ranges. But that was precisely the range at which the impossible space station had somehow materialized. The gig
was in the grip of such a beam . . . and no sooner was it gripped than a sideways jerk sent all of them, including Da Silva, slewing sideways in their seats.
Andrew righted himself, drawing his M-3 and aiming it at the center of Da Silva’s face, which now wore an unmistakable smile of triumph. He wanted nothing more than to wipe out that smile with an autoburst. But he needed answers.
“What happened? Where are we? Where did that space station come from?”
“All will be made clear. For now, all you need to know is that we are totally invisible and undetectable to your cruiser.”
Andrew gave a shaky laugh. “Is this an application of your cloaking device? You yourself found out how much good that does against weapon fire. And Broadsword knew exactly where we were and what our course was at the time we vanished.”
“You have surely noted the lack of incoming laser fire. No, this is something else—which, as I say, will be explained. In the meantime, it goes without saying that resistance is useless. I might also add that my comrades will not take kindly to any harm done to me, or any attempt to use me as a hostage.”
“He’s right,” said Rachel dully.
“Yes,” agreed Reislon, slowly lowering the arm that held his weapon implant.
Andrew could not disagree. He holstered his M-3 and watched as they were drawn into the space station. A docking bay seemed to engulf them as they slipped through an atmosphere screen and were deposited on the deck of a hangar so vast as to induce vertigo.
“Shall we?” smirked Da Silva, extending his hand. Andrew surrendered his M-3. “And,” he added to Reislon, “I know you won’t try anything foolish. Besides which, you are aware that we are effectively impervious to the extremely small-caliber needles your implanted weapon fires.” He opened the hatch, and they emerged from the gig. A squad of armed guards appeared, wearing nondescript light-duty space dress and armed with what appeared to be laser weapons, doubtless on a stun setting. For the first time they saw living, active Shape-Shifters—no, Andrew mentally corrected, Kappainu—au naturel.
There was something unpleasantly insectlike about the way the diminutive beings moved, and beneath the translucent pale-lavender skin whatever they used for blood could be seen to circulate. Andrew had never had a problem with aliens per se, but there was something about these things that made his gorge rise.
Da Silva had a short conversation with the leader of the security detail. The language had sounded, and continued to sound, strange as pronounced by him. But the sounds produced by the Kappainu vocal apparatus were positively eerie. Da Silva turned back to the prisoners.
“The leader of our operations on Earth recently arrived here. He is still in human form and wishes to interview you. Come.”
They departed the hangar and proceeded through a series of passageways. Andrew and, to an even greater extent, Reislon, had to crouch to avoid head injuries. Nevertheless, Andrew’s eyes were in constant motion as he observed fixtures, machinery, controls, and all the rest with the same attention he had already given to the hangar deck and the guards’ gear.
Ascending a couple of flights of steps, they left the areas that were starkly functional and entered precincts where decoration, following esthetic precepts Andrew’s mind could not grasp, was in evidence. The executive level, he thought. Some things are universal. They came to a final door, behind which iridescent hangings parted for them as they entered a chamber so large as to constitute ostentation in a space habitat—Reislon could even stand up straight. Two of the guards accompanied them in and took up station flanking the entry.
Between two doorways in the opposite wall was a long, low desk—so low that it must have been uncomfortable for the human figure behind it, who was bending even lower to peer at a display screen. He abruptly switched it off, raised his head, and smiled at them.
Rachel gave a small shriek, immediately choked into silence.
Afterward, when he had the leisure to look back over his reaction, Andrew realized that he hadn’t really been all that surprised that the face was that of Franklin Ivanovitch Valdes y Kurita, Rear Admiral CNEN (ret.) and Legislative Assemblyman.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Valdes—or whatever his true name was—stood up with apparent relief and sat on the desk. “I’ll retain this semblance. It facilitates communication with you, and, as you’ve undoubtedly deduced by now, after the initial transformation the mental effort becomes automatic and effortless. Besides . . . after all these years, I’ve come to actually enjoy the human form.”
“I hope you continue to enjoy it,” said Andrew, “in the brief time remaining to you before CNS Broadsword locates this rather large station and proceeds to reduce it to space junk unless you release us and surrender.”
“Not a bad bluff, Captain.” Andrew could have sworn that Valdes’s expression held something like pity. “But you’re thinking in terms of our ships’ cloaking system. It employs a field that channels radiation of various wavelengths—including that of visible light—around it. This station uses a more advanced approach, too energy-intensive to be practical for mobile installations. Without going into the technical details—in which I’m not a specialist anyway—it is a combined spinoff of the cloaking system and the artificial-gravity technology used to produce deflection shields. Instead of channeling the radiation, it absorbs it on one side and recreates it on the other. The area within the field—actually a pair of near-concentric fields with variable, harmonic properties—is effectively nonexistent as observed externally. The device, which unfortunately was aboard one of our ships that crashed on Mars in 2055—we call it the ‘access link’—is able, by means of dimensional distortion, to detect the field from outside and communicate through it. By the way, we observe the outside universe by means of remote sensor-equipped buoys with their own access links. Even now, they are observing and reporting on your cruiser.”
“Which,” said Reislon thoughtfully, “explains why you have been so very concerned with recovering the device. It might have fallen into the hands of competent scientific investigators, rather than that ridiculous pseudo-religious cult. Research into it might have eventually led the humans to the right conclusions. After which they could have located your base. Would this have a connection with the brief sighting of your ships in this system by the Harathon just after the access link was lost?”
“Yes. We were searching for it so frantically that we let our usual precautions slip. It was an understandable lapse, given the gravity of the situation. The access link is the only way the field can be detected. All our ships carry them—although,” Valdes added casually, “any time a ship carrying human Black Wolf personnel is forced to use one, they have to be eliminated. City of Osaka, for example, has one, concealed where no one would ever look for it or guess its function. Otherwise, the only way the field can be penetrated is if a material object blunders through it. And as soon as we had gravitically captured your gig, we shifted the station, including you—perhaps you noticed the sensation—away from the gig’s vector. Broadsword is even now searching along that vector, to no effect. Your Captain Taylor is very persistent.”
“All right,” said Andrew doggedly. “So you’re extremely well-hidden. But you’re forgetting something. Captain Taylor knows about you Kappainu now. If he can’t find us, he’ll go back to Earth with evidence that can’t be ignored, however hard you try to use your influence to suppress it.”
“True. It will therefore be necessary to destroy Broadsword. Even as we speak, this station, inside its field, is being maneuvered back into a position across Broadsword’s course—a process which takes a good deal of time, as we are not very maneuverable—so that the ‘blundering through’ I mentioned earlier will occur. Broadsword will then find herself in the same position you just did—and will be destroyed.”
Andrew laughed scornfully. “I know this is a damned big space station, and obviously armed. But Broadsword is a Confederated Nations Navy strike cruiser! Not a single consideration went into her de
sign except efficiency as a fighting machine. But of course you know all about that . . . Admiral.”
“Granted. But our hangar decks house a number of armed ships, which we are now deploying inside the field. They are admittedly no match for Broadsword, at least not individually, and probably not even collectively. But their combined firepower, added to the station’s, against a ship that is stunned by surprise . . .” Valdes let the sentence trail off.
“You’re forgetting City of Osaka. Her prize crew also know the truth.”
“Fortunately, Captain Taylor is keeping her in very close formation with Broadsword. She too will be destroyed.”
“But your own crew is still aboard her, as prisoners!” Rachel cried.
Valdes’s expression was puzzled, as though he honestly couldn’t see the relevance. “But they are only humans. Da Silva, here, was the only one of us aboard her.” His voice took on a tone of mocking irony. “It is unfortunate that we must take these measures to maintain secrecy. After all, as will soon become clear, we are the best friends the human race has ever had!”
“What in God’s name do you mean by that?” demanded Rachel.
“Especially,” Reislon interjected, “considering the rather extraordinary lengths you have taken to conceal yourselves from your human ‘friends’ here in the outer Solar system.”
“Speaking of which,” said Andrew, “I’ve been observing things carefully since the moment we came aboard this station. I’ve reached certain conclusions about your technology.”
“Oh?”
“Nothing I’ve seen here looks any more advanced than what we’ve got, if that. And it’s certainly not as advanced as cutting-edge Lokaron stuff. Yet your ships’ cloaking system—let alone the system you’ve described for this station—is beyond anything any of us have. Why this discrepancy?”
