Alien Enigma

by Bain, Darrell; Teora, Tony

  "So ..." Dunaway began to say something but his voice trailed off.

  "Hence the Doc Travis." Keane furnished.

  "Odd name for an interstellar space ship, isn't it?" Dunaway commented.

  " Doc Travis is the nickname of a science fiction writer. He was very popular until he retired from writing about twenty years ago. He was also a damned fine physicist, and probably still is. He popularized the Casimer phenomena which gave Rex Wannstead the first hints of how the quantum drive he ultimately developed might work," Keane explained, drawing a raised brow from the admiral, but he made no vocal comment.

  "How many of the crew will be military other than the Marines?" Dunaway asked.

  "It will be about half and half. Most of the operational crew will be military personnel, experienced ones. Almost all your officers and enlisted personnel have served aboard an interstellar ship. The rest of the personnel will be mostly service techs and scientists. I understand you've met Lieutenant Fred Jergens, your electronics warfare officer. All the others will be top notch scientists and technicians, the best we could enlist for a dangerous mission. You're going into the unknown so we want to give you every advantage we can."

  "What do we know about the Bolt Cluster, sir? Other than it contains a planet that appears to be adverse to exploration," Keane asked.

  The admiral shrugged and grinned. "Succinct way of putting it. Not much. It's mostly obscured from our solar system so the stars in it haven't been studied that much. Your astrogator knows as much as anyone. She'll brief you in much better detail than I could. And by the way, you'll be leaving in sixty days."

  Chapter Four: Sinchik Slavery

  Life without the courage for death is slavery.

  - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

  "Toug! Come!"

  "Shit!"Douglas Trevanne cursed, wondering what the sonofabitch wanted now. It wasn't as if he was called on to perform onerous chores very often but he still resented having to answer to the bastards. In fact, his status as a household slave gave him a life considerably better than most other humans here on this world, but he absolutely hated the aliens he was forced to obey. Nevertheless, he got quickly to his feet from where he had been lounging in his Wah, the Sinchik term designated for his living area, a tiny single room with a faucet for washing and a hole for sanitary use. He hurried out into the passageway that led to Frang's den. He stopped at the open arch and stamped his foot and said " Jah!" in a loud voice. Even after fifteen years he still wasn't sure of its exact meaning other than as a term of respect humans were forced to use toward Sinchiks of whatever gender or status.

  Frang turned both turreted eyes toward him. The alien motioned with one of his second tier appendages for Doug to enter. He walked forward until he was two steps distance from the alien and bowed, gritting his teeth as he did. The furry creature looked somewhat like a large, fat, ten-legged caterpillar except that its upper four appendages were used for manipulation.

  "You are to be bred for the next week. A favored female of the Stronge Welshass has been selected and is in fertile status. Report to Stronge's den. Carry on well."

  "Jah! Where is Stronge's den?" Stupid fuck!

  Frang leaned forward as if he was on the verge of rising on his two heavy rear appendages and cuffing him. He braced himself to accept the reprimand stolidly. The alien apparently decided he wasn't being disrespectful and resumed his previous position with his middle two limbs on a rest in front of him, his bottom four on the floor and upper four free for use.

  "It is located in the Beta section. Ask any Sinchik when you arrive. They will instruct you further."

  "Jah! I obey." He turned and departed, walking slowly as became a human in the presence of a 'Sinchik'. That wasn't the exact pronunciation but it was as close as humans could come to the name the species used for themselves.

  It was raining outside, a slow dripping he knew wouldn't quit soon. No help for it, he would get wet. It was never a good idea to delay in carrying out an order, no matter what the weather was like outside.

  The Beta section was a long way off, on the other side of the central city area reserved for crops. Some of it was being allowed to lie fallow. For reasons unknown, the number of Sinchiks had been decreasing since construction of the last part of the city was completed. He had rarely been to Beta section but he could see the Stronge spire in the distance, probably two miles from where he stood outside the domed enclave of Frang's family, or ' Welshass' as the Sinchik called it. Frang's family consisted of it, two other males of indeterminate status, and a dozen or so females. Plus a half dozen humans. He had yet to decide whether Frang or one of the females was the ultimate honcho of their Welshass, not that it really mattered. He was bound to obey them all, just as other humans in the family were.

  They were all slaves, pure and simple, although he suspected the Sinchik had never owned slaves before they encountered humans. After the surrender they worked at it clumsily, using up a number of humans in the process until arriving at a system that seemed to suit them. The humans hadn't been asked. Nor were they consulted when occasionally one of them was taken away and never seen again. Many were originally questioned on the location of Earth, but Wannstead had a ship failsafe that deleted all star charts and records-and that made explaining the exact location of home difficult, if not impossible. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the astrogators from each ship had died. Some speculated they were imbued with a hypnotic compulsion that required suicide if questioned about Earth's location by aliens. Doug thought the death of the Jeane Baptiste astrogator Helmsley was strange-rumored to be a heart attack soon after crash landing. No one knew for certain, though.

  As he walked through the crop-growing area over the heat-glazed trail toward Beta section, drops of rain filtered through the canopy of fern-like trees above the path. They dripped on his head and ran beneath the collar of the remnants of his Wannstead uniform. It was in a sad state of repair but he stuck with it as a matter of principle, one of the few the Sinchik allowed. It was just about all that was left to remind him of who and what he had once been. He thought again of the events that had led him here, he and the other surviving crew of the Jean Baptiste, the Wannstead starship that had been disabled by the Sinchik almost two decades ago. It had been on an exploratory voyage to the Bolt Cluster, a group of stars with a relative plethora of earth-type planets discovered on a preliminary voyage by Wannstead's first experimental interstellar ship, the Liberty.

  The Jeane Baptiste had been the next ship entering the cluster, intending to stop and cautiously explore some of earthlike planets along the way, but landing on the planet Xanadu, near the alien city given the same name, was the primary mission. Instead, the ship had been disabled then caught in a tractor beam and brought down. Hard. He and the other security specialists aboard had fought the aliens that boiled out of Xanadu after their ship was captured, leading the surviving crew in the battle. It had been hopeless from the start, and contrary to the Captain's orders. They were outgunned, outnumbered and overwhelmed quickly. When Captain Susan McDevitt again ordered them to surrender they had done so. As a previous pilot of the elite Air Force X-Vulture squadron, it went against his grain and that of most of the crew, but they had seen that resistance was hopeless. Many times since he and others wished they had disregarded her order because surrendering wound up making slaves of every surviving human, including himself. Those who didn't submit were beaten and not infrequently killed for being slow to recognize their new status.

  An underground resistance movement had been formed but it was a fragile thing, with only about a quarter of the survivors belonging to it because of the punishment if caught with weapons or any other rebellious paraphernalia. It took only one example to keep the underground well and truly in check. He still shuddered when he remembered how he and all the other humans had been forced to watch Seegers being flayed alive. He screamed and cried out in horrible agony. Soon he was begging them to kill him and be done with it.

  Doug still c
ouldn't decide if it was deliberate cruelty, for he had also caught a glimpse of a Sinchik having the same thing done to it. At the very least, he could see that the punishment wasn't something designed specifically for humans - which didn't make the idea any more pleasant. It wasn't even possible to escape into the forest and live there, not without proper weapons. The carnivores had no fear of humans and they were fierce, not something you ever wanted to tackle with anything less than a heavy caliber rifle.

  He wondered why he was being sent to Beta section to breed. Families might mix but they rarely took their humans along. In fact, he wondered why they were attempting to purposefully breed humans in the first place. There had been enough viable pregnancies already, especially after the contraceptive implants for both sexes ran out, although many women refused to have sex because they didn't want their children to grow up as slaves. Others did, holding out hope of rescue someday or for other reasons of their own. Perhaps the Sinchik had decided to breed for one trait or another-perhaps obedience? But if that were the case they were making a mistake with him! He simply pretended to be submissive while very carefully fomenting rebellion, preparing as well as he could if the chance ever came.

  Or maybe the Sinchik wanted even more slaves to replace their reduced population? Sometimes he wondered about the alien psychology. He thought the status of humans on this world was more a matter of the Sinchik colonists taking opportunistic advantage of the surviving humans, rather than slavery being an ingrained institution of the species. No one even knew why they had fired on the Jeane Baptiste in the first place, and the Sinchik not only didn't talk about it, but questions were expressly forbidden.

  For weeks after the surrender all the humans were held in one of the city's domed buildings and forced to learn the language of their captors. After that they had been parceled out to different Sinchik families with no compassion at all about separating married couples or lovers. Bastards. He hated their very guts even though he supposed he should consider himself lucky to be alive at all, along with the others. The food they were given, while generally tasteless, seemed to supply all the nutrients humans required. Perhaps those first ones who were taken away had been used to find that out. He shuddered at the thought of how the Sinchiks might have gone about it.

  The trail widened out into a regular yellow-colored passageway marking the end of the central crop area of the city. He had to travel almost two more miles before reaching his destination. It was all a mix of spires, domes and rectangles with passageways between and among them, and with numerous arched openings into the interior of the buildings. Beta section, the home of several different families, was composed entirely of the one huge spire he was finally standing in front of. He had no idea where to begin looking for the Stronge den. He walked hesitantly through the nearest arched entrance and was immediately hailed by a Sinchik female holding out a balled appendage, an order to halt. It was easy to tell the gender. Females always had solid brown fur while males ran a gamut of colors and mixes, but never brown.

  "Jah! I have been sent to the Stronge den," he said quickly to avoid being cuffed.

  She hit him anyway, although not hard. He took it as stoically as possible. Females usually didn't strike very forcefully. It was the degradation he hated.

  "Go there." She pointed a three-fingered middle arm toward several arched entrances in the courtyard into which he'd entered. One of them must lead into the bowels of the place or more likely directly into the Stronge den, The name didn't imply a den in human terms, but a series of rooms and cellars, living and working areas and all else that occupied a family. Including the human quarters.

  "Jah!" he said and hurried that way before she decided to really let him have it. The courtyard was bare except for benches along the walls and a pool in the center. His bare calloused feet left marks on the surface of the floor which he knew some human would later be scrubbing off but there was nothing he could do about it. His boots had worn out long ago and his owner declined to furnish replacements of any sort.

  He halted at the first archway, uncertain of how to proceed. He waited a moment, hoping someone would come. He was rewarded by a prepubescent boy dressed only in a worn loincloth coming into sight from the interior hallway. He stopped suddenly at the sight of Doug.

  "I'm looking for the Stronge den. Can you tell me where it is?" he asked in English.

  "This is Stronge," the boy said in Sinchik. It made Doug wonder if he even knew English. He might not and have only recognized the Sinchik family name.

  "I've been sent here to be bred," he told the boy.

  The youngster stared dumbly at him for a moment then motioned and turned away. Doug followed him down the hall and to another arched entrance, this one curtained. His eyes tracked the boy as they walked, feeling sorrow and compassion for the youth, growing up with little inkling of the glories of the home world or even its colonies, if Earth had colonies and hadn't been conquered by now. He certainly had no idea, but the Sinchik had originally been very curious about the location of Earth. If they had been told anything, no one knew what they had done with the knowledge. That was one of the worst things about their situation, not knowing what might be happening back on Earth.

  "Here?"

  "Jah," he answered as if Doug was his superior.

  Doug grimaced at the way the boy spoke but it wasn't his problem other than in a broad sense. "Hello!" he called and parted the curtains. He stepped inside.

  A naked woman with flowing red-blonde hair rolled off the low lounge she had been sitting on and came to her feet. She took one look at him and turned her back.

  "Buster, if you came here to get laid, you may as well go back where you came from. I'm not raising a kid to grow up as a slave."

  ***

  "I don't know where we're going," the tall rangy NCO with six stripes and a diamond in the middle of the chevrons and rockers said. He was answering Corporal Dan Bullet's question, the first one after his short brief on the alert the unit had just received. First Sergeant Ian Watkins spoke with a very slight lisp from a scar that began near the corner of his mouth and ran up the left side of his face to near the hairline. "All I can tell you at this point is that it'll be an extra-solar mission."

  The corporal nodded his thanks soberly but Watkins could see how hard he was trying not to grin with excitement. It made him nostalgic for a moment, remembering when he had been that young and enthusiastic about going off on hazardous missions, having not a thought in the world that he might die in the process. All youngsters thought they were immortal. It took seeing the bloody carcasses of friends and comrades to remove those deep-felt thoughts that it could never happen to you.

  And of course, Watkins did know where they were headed. The clandestine network of senior grade enlisted marines had passed that bit of intelligence on to him but he'd never reveal the source. He was more likely to turn his back on an enemy than do that. They were going to the area of a small cluster of stars where interstellar ships regularly disappeared, three so far, a potential clusterfuck, or so he figured. Otherwise, why the need for six hundred marines? He'd also heard there was something unusual on a planet within the cluster but that was as far as it went. What it meant to him was that he needed his troops even more prepared. Lots of bullets, bombs and extra weapons, Watkins thought as he looked out at the marines in the base gymnasium. The gym also served as an auditorium.

  As he continued answering such questions as he could, he couldn't help wondering what might be waiting for them out there. He, like all the others here, had volunteered for this particular unit, a strange bob-tailed battalion of two companies, consisting of three platoons each, and with a heavy weapons platoon and a headquarters platoon added. It counted a shade over six hundred troops overall and was top-heavy with combat-experienced NCOs and junior officers. Each platoon registered eighty of the toughest and most experienced marines available, drawn from all over the Corps.

  A few navy Seals and Black Op Special Forces were aboard, b
ut they seemed to stay out of the way and kept to themselves. Watkins once had a bar fight with a Seal which he'd won by finally smashing a beer bottle over the man's head; he'd never really appreciated the attempt to steal his lady. But that was when he was younger and a little less wise. Whatever the mission entailed on this extra-solar excursion, he thought it would be a fitting capstone to his career. He had volunteered for exotic-world training shortly after the quantum drive opened up their little corner of the galaxy to exploration and gone on to see action on a number of planets. He read incessantly about the colony worlds and what was being found on them and how other marine units had fared during initial explorations. Some worlds were wimps while others had been very tough customers indeed, with high casualty counts. But this trip seemed different.

  First Sergeant Watkins noticed that Corporal Barbara Zembra, a rifle expert and backup loader for the heavy machine gun of the second squad in the first platoon of A Company, was sitting up front near the podium, listening attentively. She was also sitting rather closer than necessary to Corporal Bullet. He smiled, but only to himself. Opening up the combat arms to females added a bit of extra elan to the special units, but also gave senior sergeants such as himself extra worries as well. Zembra had a nice-looking if rather plain face but her exquisitely curved body more than made up for any deficiencies there. He saw her and Bullet in a relationship and knew it probably wouldn't be long before those two were an item. Mixing the sexes in combat had worked better than even the enthusiasts had predicted and if it caused a few extra problems as well, it was no more than any new innovation in the military did until the bugs were worked out.

  "Do you know what ship we'll be on, First Sergeant?" A young PFC who had just joined the unit asked.