The Kursas

by George Willson

  Blake considered a moment before noting, “You know, when they were speaking to us, they said they would wait patiently for the return of our ship for its teleportation technology.”

  “Are they tech thieves?” Michelle asked.

  “Sounds like it,” Blake said. “This forswight is probably not Kursas technology, but something that ship found and was bringing back home when it went down for some reason. Must be exceptional.”

  “It doesn’t sound like much,” Darvin said.

  “I know,” Blake agreed. “Which means that our friend Pyrhinia kept some information to herself. Can’t have you knowing what it does. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very interested to know that as much as anything.”

  “But we don’t know where it is,” Retinda said, “and with that, we’re where we started.”

  The two soldiers, Janders and Folen, returned, and Retinda’s attention went to them.

  “The Kursas have returned to their ship, ma’am,” Janders said. “At this time, we’re in the clear.”

  “It was a good effort,” Retinda sighed, “though completely ineffective. We had hoped to disable their ship and raid it. Have you seen the people they’ve taken?”

  “We have,” Blake said.

  “It was horrible,” Michelle added.

  “If they only wanted to wait until we found this forswight thing, that would have been fine,” Retinda said. “They could have sat out there until the end of the world for all we cared. Then they started taking people.”

  Retinda looked away for a moment, her face angry at the thought. “They took officials who might have known about the dig. They took scientists who examined the items. They took civilians who did not even know anything. They captured entire groups of people just to torture until we give them what they want.”

  “We saw where they keep your people,” Blake said. “I hope you never have to.”

  “I know I need to,” Retinda said. “That’s why we attacked them. We wanted our people back. They’re too strong, though. They probably killed a few dozen for what we did to them. It is a winless game we play. For now, however, we need to regroup. If you think there is the slightest chance that you can help us, I welcome it. Grab your things, and follow me.”

  Darvin gestured to where he had placed Blake’s items, and Blake put them back in his pockets before gathering at the door with Michelle and the rest of Retinda’s people.

  Cautiously, they left their momentary safe house and looked up and down the street. When they had first seen this road, it was in good shape, untouched by gunfire, but now, scorch marks littered the street and buildings. Civilian vehicles hit by the energy weapon fire were either damaged or destroyed. It had changed from a quiet street into a war zone in a matter of moments.

  Retinda signaled to her soldiers to move, so they led the way down the street a short distance to where a row of identical vehicles awaited them. They were four-wheeled and shaped like a bullet with a rounded front and square rear. Retinda led them to the back of one of the vehicles where the door was and pressed a button near the side of the back. The door was square and opened like a ramp, hinged at the bottom and controlled by what looked like hydraulic arms on each side.

  Inside, there was an instrument panel and seat for passengers, but no visible way to steer. Retinda sat in one of the two forward seats, which swiveled, while Blake and Michelle took a place with four other soldiers at the back in seats positioned along the side walls so that they faced the three seats on the other side.

  “Mover seven seven seven four two,” Retinda spoke to the vehicle. “Travel to base one five. Go.”

  The vehicle moved without any further interaction from either Retinda or the other soldier in the front. The troops in the back looked at Blake and Michelle now and then, but no one said anything as they traveled.

  “Four fingers,” Michelle suddenly said to Blake. “Their hands only have four fingers instead of five.”

  “Told you you’d already put your finger on it,” Blake smiled.

  Michelle tried not to stare, but it was difficult considering that a line of very real people sat directly across from her with their hands resting on their legs, each with only three fingers and a thumb, like something out of a cartoon. Even acknowledging it finally, she could see how it took so long. Her brain kept telling her that it could not be real, but her eyes kept insisting it was.

  This time, they had encountered two species of actual, not-from-Earth aliens.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Perry felt like he had been crawling through the endless maintenance tunnels on the Kursas ship for hours even though it had not been more than a single hour at most. After trying several offshoots of the first tunnels where he had entered, he eventually found one that led downward, but he was not certain it was the distance he had observed being above ground when the side had been ripped off the ship. The hard part now was going to be finding some kind of airlock or exit to the ship’s lower hull, which since it was firmly on the ground, meant that it would be an exit. The danger, however, was that he might exit right into a group of the Kursas creatures and end up right back on the ship, this time without Blake’s electronic lockpick to bail him out.

  He decided he would have little choice but to try several of the maintenance hatches to see where they came out and if there might be an airlock or exit nearby. He would wait patiently at each one to listen for any sound at all from the other side before trying any of them.

  The first one he came to initially he decided against opening since he heard some conversation between a couple of Kursas behind it, but only one set of footfalls left. Part of him was uncertain that he heard only one set, but he decided it would be better for him to err on the side of caution rather than risk being caught by a random crewman who happened to be standing near. He reasoned the ship would not have stationed guards since such a thing would make no sense as the Kursas would not expect anyone to be wandering freely around the ship.

  Unless they had discovered that the trio had escaped, that is, and then they would most certainly have a reason to post guards around the ship. Of course, if the Kursas were too conceited, they would assume that there was no way that the trio could escape, but then what would they think once they went back to the holding cell where the trio was kept? Still better to be safe in this case and not open any hatches where he could not be confident that the way was clear.

  He finally reached a hatch where he heard no movement directly outside, nor did it sound like anyone was standing close to it. Slowly, he turned the latch and opened the door. He found himself on a walkway that spanned the upper level of the massive room that housed the humanoid prisoners that they had seen from the ground level when they had first arrived at the ship. He was so close to the ceiling, he could touch it, and the heads of the prisoners closest to him were only inches from the walkway.

  He was finally able to see these people up close, and it was terrible. He wagered they were not being fed at all judging by the emaciated look of some of them, and the Kursas made no effort to give them any method to eliminate waste as he finally noticed the streaks under each person that would have deposited their waste on the floor below. To make that even worse, the prisoners were only mostly staggered in the room, meaning the ones near the top were much cleaner than the ones at the bottom due to gravity. He wondered how many simply died on the wall without the torture he had seen earlier.

  Witnessing this horror against an intelligent race, his original goal of finding an exit and leaving began to waver. He knew that Blake had managed to disable the metal bars using the lockpick which he said was controlled by transmitting some kind of frequency. The Kursas used some kind of technological headband to “tell” the metal what to do, and he wondered if he could, first, get one of these controls, and second, use it. After all, he could not simply disable the metal in all of these panels because the fall of the sudden release would kill the people they were holding.

  Perry wondered where h
e might find one of them, and so, at considerable risk to himself, he knelt down on the walkway where he could watch the Kursas below while minimizing the chance that they would see him. The walkway went all the way around the top of the room, but it did not appear to directly intersect any other, so there seemed little chance that anyone would walk up here and catch him by accident. All the same, he stayed within reach of the maintenance hatch just in case he needed to get away quickly.

  At this point, there was negligible activity regarding the Kursas and their prisoners other than a couple of guards who disinterestedly “watched” the prisoners meaning they spoke to each other while sitting down and occasionally looking around. At one point, another Kursas walked into the room, and the pair suddenly became alert and scanned the room for any trouble. Once that one left, the guards returned to their seats. Of the places where he had seen the headband in action, this was the only place where he figured he could guarantee seeing one again.

  As he waited, he considered several flaws in his plan so far that he needed to work out. His main issue was not whether he could acquire or use one of the headbands, but how to get everyone out once he managed to do it. After all, they were not next to an exit, and once the Kursas on guard saw what was happening, they would have the ship on them before they could go anywhere. Additionally, due to the state of health of many of the people he saw, some of them would have trouble walking once freed.

  A steady beep sounded from near the guards, and one of them looked at a nearby panel and then said something to the other. That one disappeared for a moment to return with one of the headsets strapped to his head. They walked to the platform where he, along with Blake and Michelle, had earlier witnessed a Kursas forcefully interrogate a prisoner only to kill him.

  They looked to a plate along the wall where a man was slumped over, and Perry feared the worst for him. The panel extended from the wall, attached with a long metal arm that somehow continued to hold its weight. The Kursas looked the man over briefly, nodded to the other, and the panel suddenly lit up which caused the man’s body to disintegrate. His ashes dropped through the grates to wherever it led below. He figured the alert meant that the man had died, and they simply needed to dispose of the body.

  It was unfortunate for the prisoner, but the incident allowed him to get an idea as to where they kept the metal-controlling headsets. The Kursas who had worn it removed it as he walked back to a room on the far side of the massive prison area. Perry hoped that the maintenance tunnels would exit somewhere close to it. As much as they snaked through the ship, he guessed they might.

  He disappeared back into the tunnel and tried to keep his orientation straight as he made his way across the ship toward that little room. He knew he would have to go down at least another fifteen or twenty feet and make his way around that massive prison room to reach it. He would also have to risk a look out of a hatch or two to sort out how far he had come and how far he needed to go.

  Perry knew that once he had the device, he would have little choice but to leave the ship in an attempt to find Blake and Michelle before he could hope to sort out the headset or free anyone. However, the headset would be a significant find for him and allow them some considerable flexibility when they made their way back to the Kursas ship to free the prisoners.

  Sounds echoed through the tunnel, and Perry stopped crawling and listened. It was entirely possible a Kursas engineer was in the tunnels to check on some ship function, and he had nowhere to go. The sound did not appear to be coming his way, so he just stayed put and hoped that the person would go on their way without needing to come his direction. After a few minutes, whoever was in the tunnel ahead of him moved away, and the sound faded followed by the opening and closing of a hatch.

  He continued his trek pausing to peep out of one hatch long enough to note that the prison room was down the hall from him. He guessed he had come halfway around by that point, but he was at the correct level. He crawled back into the tunnel that continued around the room, and as he moved, he had looked down another tunnel that went down some distance but decided to crawl past it, for now, vowing to check it out later. When he looked ahead of him again, he came face to face with another humanoid who had crawled out of a different side tunnel. They had almost run into each other but stopped short only to give each other a shocked look.

  “Where did you,” Perry began, but the person, who appeared to be a woman in her twenties with unkempt hair and well-worn clothing held her hand up to silence him. She held a finger over her mouth and shook her head, which was when Perry noticed she only had four fingers. She gestured for him to follow her.

  He figured since she was not a Kursas and looked to be in only slightly better shape than the other prisoners, she was likely not a danger. She led him down the tunnel away from his destination to what appeared to be a large junction point within the maze of tunnels that branched off in five directions. The floor of that area consisted of an exit hatch, and as soon as they dropped from the tunnel above, the woman knelt down and listened intently for any sound from the other side of the door as Perry climbed down and knelt beside her.

  After a moment, she sat up and looked him over. “Where did you come from?” she whispered. “Your clothes are strange.”

  “I’m not from this planet,” Perry whispered. “My friends and I arrived recently, and we were picked up by these Kursas almost immediately.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “About?” Perry inquired.

  “Last year, someone talking about aliens only got ridiculed,” she explained. “Then, we have these lizard things and now you too? How do I know you’re really an alien?”

  Perry held up his hand displaying his five fingered structure. She stared for a moment before her eyes widened, and she looked at her own hand. Comprehension of the difference took a moment as her mind struggled to accept it.

  “Wow,” she said. “I guess I have to believe you. You weren’t coming to attack us too were you?”

  “No, we only ever come to explore and see what’s going on,” Perry said. “You know, check out the people and culture and such.”

  “Like a vacation?”

  “I wish,” Perry chuckled.

  “Well, I’m so sorry you had to see us like this,” she said. “Normally, I think we could be called a nice place to visit.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Most places we visit we tend to come at an inconvenient time.”

  “Did you come to help us then?” she asked.

  “Probably,” he replied. “I was just looking for a way to free your people in there.” Perry thumbed back to the prison room. The woman shook her head in despair.

  “There is no rescue for them,” she said. “They’ve been in there too long. Besides, you would need to be able to use one of their metal control devices to do anything.”

  “I know,” Perry said. “I was just looking to try and get ahold of one.”

  “I already tried,” she said. She reached over to a panel on the wall and opened it. Behind the panel was a series of circuits and inner workings of the ship, but there was also a space just large enough to hold one of the Kursas’ headsets. She held it out to him, and he took it. It appeared to be exactly what he was looking for.

  There was a small oblong box that would sit on top of the Kursas’ temple, and a metallic band extended from the box in a semi-circular pattern which would keep the headset in place. He found that relating it to a headset was fairly accurate considering its appearance.

  “Where did you get it?” Perry asked.

  “That torture chamber,” the woman replied. “I managed to sneak in and out of where they keep them.”

  “That was exactly what I was going to do,” he said. “Nicely done. What happened when you tried to use it?”

  “I put it on and climbed to one of the catwalks above the prison chamber,” she explained. “I didn’t know how it worked. I figured it was by thinking about what you wanted, but I couldn�
�t get it to do anything for awhile. Just when I was about to give up, I looked directly at the restraints of one of the people in there and - sort of - wanted it gone. I guess I thought less hard about it. Anyway, the restraints went away.”

  Perry nodded. “Well, that was good.”

  “No, it wasn’t, “ she continued. “I was at the top of the room. I don’t know what I was thinking trying something like this on someone at the top of the room.”

  “Oh,” Perry said, realizing what had happened.

  “Yeah, he fell. He should have fallen to his death, but…” She paused for a moment and took a deep breath as she remembered the incident. Perry said nothing as he watched her. “You see, I still had it on, of course, and I didn’t think. I realized what I had just done, and I gasped. You know how you instinctively reach out for something you want to catch whether you can or not?”

  Perry nodded.

  “Well, I did,” she said. “But when I did, the headset reacted too, and this shaft shot out of the metal plate, and…” She looked frightened and swallowed as she glanced away from Perry, ashamed.

  “It went right through him,” she whispered. “I mean, right through like he was nothing. It was horrible. I took it off and hid it in here. Haven’t tried it again since.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Perry said looking at the device in his hands. It was the answer to his problem, but he was hesitant to try it without help.

  “I killed someone,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident, but I still did it. If we’re able to save them, that could have been someone who survived, and I killed him.”

  “I wish I could say something to make it better,” Perry said, “but I’m not sure what. It was an accident, and you were doing the best you could. Sometimes, all you can do is accept what happened and move on as well as you can.”

  “I don’t know if I can,” she said.