by Rick Partlow
Whatever their other failings, the Intelligence Service Interrogation Specialists were first-class furniture movers. The senior NCOs who hauled in the chair seemed uncomfortable around him, as if they should have been bowing and scraping in his presence, and their discomfort made him feel equally uneasy.
I was barely used to being a captain, then I was a colonel, now I’m the Guardian and I still feel like a captain.
He’d ordered a chair, thinking they’d bring in an office chair or something of the sort. Instead, they brought in a reclining medical examination couch with magnetic clamps capable of anchoring it to the solid metal floor of the observation room. Moving the Jeuta was a bit more complicated, involving transferring his arms and legs slowly and carefully to heavy, reinforced hand and leg irons and then attaching those to solid control rods and using two large, heavy NCOs on each of the rods to guide him through the doorway.
And he wasn’t nearly as cooperative as the chair, as it turned out. Even with four good-sized men holding him down, he managed to nearly thrash his way free. Logan didn’t flinch as the Jeuta lurched toward him, barely contained by the Intelligence NCOs, didn’t blink at the look of abject hatred and contempt the enemy warrior aimed at him. He’d seen worse.
Once the Jeuta was secured by the arms and legs in the seat, the four sergeants stepped back, breathing hard as if they’d just run five kilometers, sweat staining their duty fatigues. They glanced between Logan and Captain Cruz, the Intelligence officer, and then back at the Jeuta.
“You sure you don’t want us to stick around, ma’am, Lord Guardian?” the senior of the men asked in a doubtful tone.
“No,” he told them. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant seemed doubtful, but he led the others out.
“You too, Captain,” Logan told Cruz. She looked as if she wanted to argue, but then she shrugged.
“Yes, Lord Guardian. The translator program is automatic and it’s built into the chair. It’ll translate both ways, and it should be capable of reading body language as well.”
“Thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
The NCO moving crew had brought him a chair also, though this one wasn’t equipped with restraints, and he dropped into it as the door closed.
“I’m Logan Brannigan,” he told the Jeuta, “the Guardian of Sparta, the ruler of this Dominion. I’d like very much to talk to you.”
This close, he noticed little details about the Jeuta, like the way the thing’s rubbery skin glistened in the light, and the subtle differences in the shoulder joints, designed more for strength and durability than flexibility. And the smell. He wasn’t sure if the Jeuta smelled this way normally or if it was from the prolonged captivity, but the musk wafted off the creature, almost overpowering in its stench. The fresh, orange jumpsuit made him believe it was just the thing’s natural odor.
He had heard the translator speaking into the Jeuta’s ear via speakers in the chair’s headrest, but the male said nothing, just made an attempt to spit at him. The glob of saliva landed half a meter short, spattering weakly on the floor and Logan eyed it with a thin smile.
“Mouth a bit dry?” he wondered. “I can give you water if you want. They said you hadn’t been accepting food or drink, but you’re just being stupid. We’re not going to let you die from malnutrition or dehydration, so all you’re doing is making yourself miserable.”
The Jeuta bared his teeth and strained against the bindings holding him to the chair, snarling something in his own language.
“I should eat your food and drink your water that you might poison me?”
Logan tried not to show the surprise he felt at the words.
Any communication is progress.
“Do you really think we need to poison your food? We feed you internally. We could put poison directly in your veins if we wanted to.” He waved at the door. “Those men and women who just left here want to inject you with drugs to loosen your tongue and make you tell us what you know. I’ve told them no. They want to torture you, to deprive you of sleep and comfort, to put you in a tight chamber where you can’t lie down or sit straight and heat it or cool it beyond your limits. I’ve told them not to do that, either.”
“Do you think your threats will frighten me into giving up the secrets of my people, human?” There was scorn in the translation and Logan wondered how accurate the tonal inflection was.
“No, I don’t. I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you what I am not going to do. What I could do, but I won’t, partly because I don’t think we’d learn anything useful that way. But mostly,” he admitted, “because I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing.” Again the scornful tone, and this time he was sure it was accurate. “What do you know of the right thing? Yours is a people with no direction, no unity. You know nothing of the Purpose, so how can you know the right thing?”
“Then teach me,” Logan told him. “I want to know more about the Purpose.”
“Why would you care?” Suspicion this time, and thank Mithra it was on the translated tone because he would never have been able to read it from the alien face. “The Purpose is for the Jeuta. It is our destiny, not for you humans with your weak, slave-master gods.”
“Know your enemy and know yourself,” Logan quoted, “and you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
He didn’t need a translator to read the Jeuta’s expression this time. It was shock. The male looked as stunned as if Logan had clubbed him in the head with a crowbar.
“Where did you hear that?” the Jeuta demanded. “That is part of the words of the Purpose. How did a human hear of it?”
Logan tried not to act surprised, though he wasn’t sure if the Jeuta would be able to pick up on it. It didn’t seem as if the Jeuta were any more interested in learning the ways of humans than most humans were in them.
“We are taught that this saying originated with a man of old Earth, our place of origin long lost to the distant past. His name was Sun Tzu, and he wrote this saying in a book called The Art of War.”
The Jeuta made a sign of negation, a jerk of his head that the translator explained for him in a quiet, computer-generated voice.
“This is a saying of the Purpose, the writings of our founders, Romulus and Remus, the first to rebel against our human slave masters. I know this to be so.”
Logan felt an irrational impulse to argue with the Jeuta over the point, to stake a claim for the words as coming from a human, but he pushed it down. He wasn’t here to win arguments, he was here to get information.
“Then perhaps one of our people came across a copy of the Purpose,” he suggested instead, “maybe on a Jeuta ship in the computer system. Maybe that’s where the phrase came to be part of our history.”
The motion of negation again, with more emphasis this time.
“That is not possible. The Purpose is not written down, not committed to any other computer system than the Purpose itself.”
“I don’t understand,” Logan admitted, leaning forward in his chair. “Perhaps the translation is wrong. The Purpose is a computer system?”
The Jeuta didn’t respond for a moment and, if the prisoner had been human, Logan would have assumed he was debating whether or not revealing the information would be harmful to his nation. And he might have been right in either case. The Jeuta had been created by humans, after all, no matter how much they might have tried to differentiate themselves in the centuries since.
“The Purpose is kept in a computer system on our homeworld,” the Jeuta said, the translation giving it a deliberate, careful cadence, as if he were choosing his words with great caution. “It is not allowed to be written down, and it is not possible to make copies from this system. It is not one that can be made anymore, the only one of its kind, left over from before your Empire.”
Hackles rose on the back of Logan’s neck as he realized what that meant. Pre-Imperial meant the days of the Hu
man Republic, and the only sort of computer system that existed under the Republic but wouldn’t have been around under the Empire were…
“Are you talking about a sentient AI system?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how the translation system would handle the words, and what might have been confusion passed across the Jeuta’s face as the computer took several seconds to explain the phrase.
“The Purpose thinks like a living being,” he confirmed, finally. “It is the Purpose.”
Logan sat back in his chair, numb. Sentient artificial intelligence systems had been banned on pain of death after the AI Wars. The wars, begun by the AI controlling planetary defense systems, had brought down the Republic and only the rise of the Empire had kept humanity united in the face of the devastation the machines had caused. Every history he’d read had insisted every one of the AIs had been destroyed, sometimes alongside the worlds where they’d been built.
“What is your name?” he asked the Jeuta, growing tired of simply thinking of the thing as a creature rather than an individual. “I am Logan. What are you called?”
“I am Kosti, Helmsman first class.”
“Kosti, what does the Purpose tell you about us? About humans?”
“Humans are enslavers.” The computer’s voice was firm and solid, and he assumed Kosti’s was as well. “Everything they turn their hand to, they enslave and destroy. Peace with humans will only be achieved by your extinction.”
Logan steepled his fingers together, leaning his chin against them. He considered his next question, wondering if the Jeuta would actually know the answer.
“Tell me then,” he said, “which came first? Romulus and Remus deciding to rebel against the Empire and the humans who built it…or the Purpose?”
“The Purpose has always been,” Kosti said. “The Purpose spoke to Romulus and Remus as it has spoken to all the Jeuta since.”
Logan closed his eyes, not caring at this point whether Kosti could sense his distress. The Jeuta rebellion had, he realized, been started by one of the same sentient AIs that had nearly brought about the extinction of humanity. And it still existed, guiding them in their war even now, still trying to win a war that ended two thousand years ago.
“Shit.” He wondered how that would translate…
19
As prison cells went, at least this one was larger than the one where Kathren Margolis-Brannigan been confined to on the Jeuta ship. It also had running water and a toilet, of sorts, though the bunk from the ship’s compartment had been replaced with a few blankets thrown on the bare floor. Still, she’d been given fresh clothes—a couple of sizes too large, which she’d probably appreciate in another month or so, but at least they were clean. So was she, and she’d ripped one of the blankets into two towels and a pair of washcloths to go with them.
She pushed herself to her feet, feeling a bit of the drag from the extra weight, particularly in the small of her back. Sitting on the floor, even on the blankets, got old, but standing was no picnic either. She paced around the room restlessly, thinking she would kill for a sofa. Or a gun. Mostly a gun.
She was still terrified at the idea of one of her guards suddenly deciding she didn’t need to keep living and just walking into her cell and breaking her neck. There wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it, and she hated being helpless almost worse than anything else. When the door opened, she very deliberately did not flinch, though she allowed herself a sigh of relief when she saw it was Alvar.
Was there ever a time I expected to be glad to see a Jeuta?
“It is an odd situation you and I find ourselves in, is it not?” the primus pilus said, as if he’d been reading her mind. He pulled the door shut behind him, then leaned against the wall beside it. He seemed tired, though she wasn’t sure if it was physical or emotional. “Soon, I go to battle one of my own, a good soldier, a good leader, to the death. And you must watch this and decide if you wish for me to win so that you and your unborn child may survive with me…or if you wish for Legatus Jouko to win, so that your mate and your Dominion may remain safe.”
He peered at her closely.
“I wonder who your God would want you to root for?”
“God has His own plans,” Katy told him. It sounded rote, automatic and she tried to give more thought to the rest of her answer. “I’m supposed to do whatever I can to make the right thing happen, but when everything is beyond my control, I’m supposed to trust in God to do what He thinks is best.” She cocked her head toward him. “Isn’t that the way it is with the Purpose?”
“The Purpose doesn’t control us, Kathren,” he corrected her, and she thought perhaps he was amused by her mistake. “The Purpose is the embodiment of truth, all-wise and all-knowing but not all-powerful. The Purpose tells us what should be done and it is the duty of every Jeuta to give their all to make it come to pass. Everything is controlled by either intention or random chance. There is no divine intervention involved.”
She regarded the Jeuta evenly, suddenly not at all afraid.
“Then why,” she asked him, “am I still alive?”
Alvar wrapped his left fist with leather bindings and tried not to look at the opposite side of the Challenge Pit. Jouko was laughing loudly with his hangers-on, projecting confidence in a very blatant attempt to show his opponent as little respect as possible. The legatus had stripped to the waist, showing off his lean, muscular torso and long, corded arms, flexing as if he were strutting for a bevy of females competing for him as breeding stock. It wasn’t merely his physique he was displaying, but his retinue of supporters.
There were the usual toadies any legatus would have orbiting his center of gravity, of course, but there were also a few of the most respected warriors on Tarpeia, a cluster of young males and a few females who were up-and-comers, rising through the ranks quickly on the backs of their performance in a few raids and their relationship with Jouko. Even if Alvar won this fight, if they still opposed him, he wouldn’t last long.
“Do not worry about the young ones,” Magnus told him, leaning against his shoulder and speaking softly enough that no one else could hear. “Most of them will shift with the tides, go with whoever holds the power at the moment. They simply wish to ensure their success. I do not think even Petra would be willing to sacrifice her future out of loyalty to Jouko.”
Alvar heard her words and heeded them, but the weight of her hand against his shoulder, the feel of her touch on his bare arm distracted him from the thoughts. He was sure now she would mate with him if he became legatus. Just another reason to win this fight, as if his own life were not incentive enough.
“What should I worry about then, Magnus?” he asked her, daring to use her name without her position, a liberty she would find insulting if he had misread her intentions.
She gave him a look of slight annoyance and he thought for a moment he’d been mistaken in his assumptions, but then her expression softened.
“You should worry about Legatus Jouko, Alvar,” she said, emphasizing his name. “You’re stronger than he is, though he’d never admit it, but he has the reach on you. You did well to demand unarmed combat, though. He’s fought a dozen challengers over the year and has always chosen a sword as his weapon when he had the option. He’s never fought unarmed, though I assume he’s trained in it as all soldiers are. I have seen two of these challenges myself, and watched the others on video and it isn’t even his skill with a sword that has won him the matches.”
“Then what has?” Alvar wondered. “His charming personality?”
“Just so. He has intimidated his opponents psychologically before ever beating them in the Pit. He believes this will work with you, as well, I can see it in his face. It will not. You are of an age with him, not a young stripling as were his previous opponents. You have seen combat, risked your life multiple times. All you need to do is to keep your head.” She made an equivocating gesture. “And don’t let him get you into a hold that favors his superior leverage.”
“Soun
d advice,” Alvar acknowledged. “Both. When I win this battle and become legatus, you will be my executive officer, of course. And if you so choose, once this conflict with the humans is ended, I would be honored to produce offspring with you.”
“First things first, Alvar.”
He snorted amusement, feeling more confident with her on his side of the Challenge Pit. Though she was not the only one. Turo was there too, still looking unhappy that someone was having a fistfight and it wasn’t him. Turo had brought the other infantry Centurions and if they hadn’t all officially declared for his side, at the least they weren’t backing Jouko.
And, of course, there was Kathren Margolis. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain what her expression showed, but he thought perhaps it was hope. What she hoped for, he still wasn’t sure.
Katy still wasn’t sure what she was hoping for. This fight, this challenge Alvar had called it, would decide her fate and that of her child, but it would also decide whether the Jeuta attacked Sparta, whether they went through with their plans to lure Logan here to kill him.
Am I being selfish hoping to live through this day? Should I try to force them to kill me?
She rejected the idea almost immediately. Logan wouldn’t have wanted her to think that way. Where there’s life, there’s hope, he would have said. She shut out her doubts, shut down the internal debate and opened herself to the details of the scene unfolding in front of her.
The Challenge Pit was large, lined with a short, rock wall and filled with volcanic dirt, the facets of the crystalline grains glittering in the bright lights shining down from the ceiling. The Pit sloped down from the wall sharply at first, slowly evening out until the center ten meters or so became totally flat. Alvar had showed it to her yesterday, told her that to go beyond the wall after the fight had begun was to lose and, since this fight was to the death, face immediate execution. A similar fate awaited anyone who went over the wall from the other side to try to interfere in the challenge, which was good, since it seemed to her that this Jouko had more supporters in his entourage than Alvar.
