by Chris Walley
“What did you tell her?”
Vero rubbed his nose. “I mentioned that the monitoring camera in his room—room five I told her—was going to be switched off. I also said Azeras said little and that he was heavily sedated. In a rather loud voice I told the man who was guarding her that we were going to the beach and that he ought to go for lunch.”
“If we ever survive all this, I can see our actions being endlessly debated in ethics classes. ‘Evaluate the morality of D’Avanos and Enand in their dealings with the Allenix unit. Use no more than five thousand words.’”
“My friend, I’ll take that risk in order that people have the luxury to discuss ethics. Ah, here she comes.” He pointed to the left-hand screen, where a green figure walked down a corridor on four legs. “So she defeated the lock. Not surprising; our technology in that area is rather simple.”
Betafor’s head swung from side to side with an oddly regular motion and Merral was surprised at how delicate her movements were.
“Zoom in,” Merral commanded. Soon he could see that she walked on extended digits.
“On tiptoe,” Vero muttered and tapped a microphone button. “She’s on her way,” he whispered.
A green acknowledgment light flashed and, a moment later, Vero said, “Entering the room now.”
The green light flashed again.
“Full wall,” Vero ordered. “Give us sound.”
The image of the ward suddenly took up the whole screen. There was the sound of heavy breathing and—far harder to hear—soft footfalls.
Betafor stopped, moved into her crouching position and with her right forelimb reached inside her tunic. She pulled out a small silver packet, split it apart with a faint pop, and pulled something pale out of it.
“Now!” Merral ordered.
With remarkable speed, the figure on the bed flung the sheet off, swung his feet onto the floor, and pulled out a big double-barreled gun.
Betafor gave a strange mechanical squeal and bounded back.
“Put your hands up, you evil little machine!” Lloyd’s voice echoed in the room. “One move and you are dead . . . recycled . . . whatever.”
“We’d better intervene,” Merral said, and as he followed Vero out of the room, he heard Betafor’s voice squealing in protest, “That is not fair! A nasty trick!”
They raced down the corridor and burst into the ward. Lloyd, still seated on the bed, glared at Betafor, who sat on the floor with her forelimbs held up high. Her thin tail swept from side to side across the floor in agitation.
“Keep them up!” Lloyd snapped.
“Betafor, what are you doing here?” Merral asked.
“Visiting my officer. I was . . . bored. No . . . anxious. Sentinel Vero said you were going to the beach.”
“Did he? And what’s this?” Merral slipped a surgical glove on his hand and picked up the plastic disk on the floor.
“Medicine. A . . . vitamin supplement.”
Merral stared at her, but read nothing from her expression. “Really?” He picked up the foil casing and stared at it. “I can’t read the writing, Betafor, but the image is that of a skull. An unusual image for a medicine.”
Merral slipped both items inside a medical sample bag and passed them to Vero.
“Betafor, if, as we suspect, this is poison, then you will be accused of attempted murder and punished appropriately. In the meantime, Sergeant Enomoto is going to take you to a new room—a storage room without windows where you will be more securely guarded and kept under surveillance. And please don’t give the sergeant an excuse to fire.”
Lloyd gave her a tight smile. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
“Sorry, Lloyd?”
“It’s an ancient threat, sir. Very effective under such circumstances.”
“I see. Now, Betafor, we want to see what else you have in your tunic.”
“You cannot do that.” The pupils of the eye contracted into tight black disks. “It is unethical. My pockets are private.”
“Tough,” Merral said, feeling unsympathetic. “People caught in the act of attempted murder lose their rights. We need to see what’s in them. Please give us your jacket.”
“I refuse to take my clothes off. I am female. It would be sexual harassment.”
Lloyd gave an explosive snort.
“Ah.” Merral looked at the other two for help and found none. “Well, go behind the screen there and hand it to us.”
“No.”
“Or else, I will order Lloyd here to shoot you and then take you to bits.”
“Slowly, with a very blunt screwdriver,” Lloyd added.
“No need to overdo it, Sergeant.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“As you wish,” Betafor said. She walked behind the screen and a moment later passed the jacket around the side.
Merral put the jacket—it was surprisingly heavy and there was some sort of electronic link on the inside—on the bed and went through the four inner pockets emptying the contents onto the table. There were a few small bottles and some small containers.
“What are these?”
“Lubricants, spare parts, adapters.”
“We will check them and return them to you,” Merral said, and handed the jacket back.
A minute later the creature emerged, with what seemed to be some sort of test pattern flickering across the sides of her tunic.
“Betafor,” Merral announced, “Azeras said you would do this. You are no longer bonded electronically to him, but if he dies, we’ll consider you the prime suspect, and you will be . . .”
“Terminated, sir?”
“Thank you, Sergeant. The exact word: terminated.”
17
After making sure that Betafor was secure and handing the disk in for med-lab analysis, Merral and Vero found Perena, who had returned from Isterrane, and brought her up to date as they went to room six.
Azeras sat up in bed as they entered.
Merral introduced Perena.
“A lady captain,” Azeras said, and gave Perena a long and intense look.
She flushed, and taking a chair, moved it so that she was out of his field of view.
Merral looked first at Perena and then at Azeras. What’s going on?
Azeras turned to him. “So, have you decided on your verdict?”
“Not yet; it’s a hard decision.” That’s an understatement. “We want to hear more. And I wanted Perena to be present.”
The gray eyes gazed at Merral. “Without a decision there is a limit to what I can tell you about what you face.”
“We need to know more before we decide what to do with you,” Merral replied. “Let me start with the Dominion. You say they are coming?”
“Yes. They followed us into your system as far as they dared. But they will be back.”
“It would help us if we knew the background here, about the Dominion and the Freeborn and why you came to Farholme. All we knew is that Jannafy’s Rebellion ended at the battle at Centauri. But we now realize that our understanding is not accurate.”
“The word rebellion would be disputed.” There was an undercurrent of annoyance in Azeras’s voice. “But as we found out when we accessed your Library, you and we have different histories.”
“Fill us in with your version.”
“As you wish. According to our history the Freeborn peoples escaped from the Assembly after moves were made to have their ideas and freedoms suppressed.”
“That is hardly—,” began Merral and then stopped. “Sorry.”
“‘Hardly true,’ you were going to say?” Azeras flashed a cruel smile. “Indeed, but what is true in history? But what is a fact is that what you call ‘the Rebellion,’ we call the ‘War of Separation.’ And our tale runs in this manner. After taking Centauri in 2104, Jannafy and his leaders debated what to do. They had been driven from the solar system and were now on the defensive.”
Azeras paused to sip from a glass of water and as he did, Merral recognized that Azeras
’s language had shifted to an older form of Communal. What I am hearing now is a tale that has been told and retold for well over a hundred centuries. He felt a sense of awe.
“Some of the Freeborn, as they now styled themselves, wanted a new all-out onslaught on Earth, but Jannafy’s counsel was this: they would flee the vicinity of the Assembly altogether. He knew from their research that they could go deep into the Nether-Realms and emerge many light-years away. He was aware that an assault by the Assembly was inevitable, but as his forces held the Centauri Gate, he knew the assault could not be for some years. Calculations suggested that not even the fastest sublight-speed ships could reach them from Earth before the last months of 2110. His counsel prevailed and a desperate project was undertaken to prepare a migration fleet to take the Freeborn toward the edge of the galaxy. There were already seeder and colony vessels at Centauri; from them Jannafy constructed a fleet of seven ships. The calculations were performed and the ships were prepared for launching. But there were delays and the launch date slipped again and again so that it was midsummer of 2110 before the ships were ready.”
Azeras paused. “And then, just as embarkation was only days away, the Assembly force arrived and attacked. Jannafy’s forces were caught by surprise and in the fighting, he was fatally wounded. The Assembly forces planted some sort of massive bomb and began to retreat back through the Gate. Knowing they had only hours, the surviving leaders of the Freeborn launched the ships deep into the Nether-Realms.”
Azeras sipped water again, cleared his throat, and winced slightly.
“Seven ships were launched, one after another, but only six emerged at the other end. The last—the seventh ship—was lost, presumably caught in the blast. That was another bad blow; the ship had much that was needed for making worlds habitable. Nevertheless, just over five thousand people made the passage safely. They checked their stars and realized they had come out over six hundred light-years from Earth. They knew they were safe for a long time.”
He paused again and Merral was aware of Vero and Perena, leaning forward with wide eyes, utterly engrossed in this extraordinary and unexpected tale.
“But they faced many troubles,” Azeras continued. “With the loss of the seventh ship they couldn’t seed worlds as the Assembly did; they had neither the equipment nor the luxury of time. They had to use such worlds as they could find. But all they came to were poor ones; those with any oxygen were nothing more than slime worlds.”
“The algal scum worlds we sterilize before Seeding,” Merral interjected, too immersed in the account to keep silent.
“Exactly. And there were internal problems. Jannafy’s death had left a gigantic void that was not easily filled. There were many disagreements. Some honored him, keeping his body in a mausoleum and praising him as the ‘Great Leader’ and the ‘Father of the Freeborn.’ Others felt that he had misled them and dragged them into a bitter wilderness. And there were differences on the way forward. Some wanted to create an utterly new culture and bury the past. Others wanted to preserve what had been good in the Assembly. Neither side won entirely, so the Freeborn worlds were a mixture of old and new. There was a new language, but the old Communal was not lost. And . . .”
Now Azeras fell silent for a moment, his worn face darkening. “There was something else. The stories do not speak about it plainly, but there are dark hints. In going through the Nether-Realms something became linked with our people. There a shadow fell on us, a shadow from which, alas, we have never been able to set ourselves free.”
“The steersmen,” Merral said, in the charged silence that followed. “Is that what you refer to?”
“Yeah. The steersmen and other extra-physical beings like them. The Freeborn people learned to travel Below-Space by using the steersmen. But those creatures drove hard bargains.”
Azeras sighed and from his expression Merral realized that he did not wish to say more on that topic. He continued, “And soon the Freeborn became divided and from then on there were always disputes and wars between them. They barely survived. There were never more than twenty-five worlds and the total population was almost never more than thirty million. Indeed, after some wars, our numbers were much less.”
He paused again and Merral caught a glimpse of Perena’s face and noted the look of anguish and horror it bore.
“Then five hundred standard years ago things changed. A line—a lineage—began to take control of the central Freeborn worlds. Around the star we call Sarata, there are four habitable worlds. On one of them—Khalamaja, the most populated—a lineage, the House of Carenas, rose to power and began to crush its opposition. The Dominion had arrived. Soon there was order and stability in the inner worlds. But it came at a price.” Azeras shook his head. “Everything comes at a price. The stability the Carenids brought allowed them to create mighty armies that made them almost unstoppable. Their rule spread outward until the outer worlds united in resistance as the True Freeborn. Then, about fifty standard years ago, a new ruler of the Carenid dynasty appeared: Nezhuala.”
Azeras grimaced and with his right forefinger made an odd, circular gesture. “Nezhuala set himself up as lord-emperor and imposed his will on the Dominion. He began a new phase of expansion. One by one, the worlds of the True Freeborn were besieged, defeated, and brought into bondage. A year ago, my own world, Tellzanur, was attacked. We fought hard, but there is a power behind Nezhuala’s forces that cannot be resisted. In the end . . .” A hard expression slipped across his face and he turned to stare at the sea.
“In the end . . . ,” he repeated, his voice faint, “Tellzanur fell and . . . was burned. Some ships escaped. How many, I do not know. I do not know whether the True Freeborn cause still exists or whether I am the last survivor.”
He paused, as if momentarily overwhelmed by his memories, and then continued. “We escaped, commandeered a Dominion vessel, Rahllman’s Star, a freighter—”
“Freighter?” Merral asked in surprise.
“Yes, a freighter.” Azeras looked at Merral, as if puzzled at his surprise. He glanced at the others and then a hard smile broke across his face. “I see. You thought you had won against a military ship. No, merely a freighter with light armor and even lighter weapons.”
Merral, appalled at the revelation and its implications, looked at the others and saw expressions of dismay. They realize the same thing. Threatened as we are, we had, at least, the small consolation that we had already defeated a military vessel. Now that most slender of comforts has been lost.
Azeras continued. “We were pursued by a warship. In desperation, we headed toward the Assembly.”
Vero raised his hand slightly. “You knew this world existed?”
“Yes, the Freeborn had long watched and listened to Assembly signals. We had always feared discovery and a new attack from the Assembly, although we have known for millennia that this world was the limit of your expansion in this direction. One or two expeditions were mounted to observe the Assembly. But they all failed; we could not enter your space. The steersmen spoke of a wall that they could not—or would not—go beyond. The steersmen lie, but on this they seemed to speak the truth. A few attempts to use ships without steersmen also failed.”
Azeras paused before continuing. “But we had no choice: we were prepared for death and we knew that death was preferable to what Nezhuala had in store for us. We prayed to our gods—to Fate or to Destiny. So, we fled headlong toward the Assembly, chased by the warship. I remember the steersman’s screams shaking the ship. Then, somehow, we were through this barrier.”
Azeras drank water before speaking again. “We found the nearest inhabited system and drifted in carefully. We were pursued, but the warship kept its distance. We didn’t really know what we were up against. But we knew we were likely to be followed sooner or later and we decided to hide somewhere uninhabited. Damertooth was good when it came to piloting—too bad his luck ran out—and we landed in good shape. We hoped we were unseen and tried to hide.”
; “The last bit we deduced,” Merral said, “but go on.”
“Well, the good landing was the last bit of luck we had. It soon began to go sour. The crater was too cold. We had a dozen men on board and a hundred or so chimpies and bug boys.”
“‘Chimpies’? ‘Bug boys’?” Vero’s voice sounded distant. “What we call ape-creatures and cockroach-beasts?”
“Yeah, I guess so. In hindsight, we should have voided almost all of them into the vacuum, but we didn’t. Anyway, Damertooth tried to use them for recon to see what it was like to the south, but they bungled it.” Azeras shook his head. “Well, Captain—wherever in the Nether-Realms your soul is now—you paid for that decision. And we knew that you had discovered us. That’s why Damertooth had the Gate blasted. Another bad move really.” He waved a finger. “I think toward the end, Damertooth’s judgment was shot. He would go and talk with the steersman. That’s not the way; everyone knows not to get too close to creepies. You simply tell them where you want to go, promise them something tasty, and you get out. But to listen to them?” He pursed his lips and for a moment Merral thought he was going to spit. “Nah. Everyone knows that sort of stuff rots your brains.”
“What sort of something tasty?” Merral said, remembering again the horror of crunching bones underfoot in the steersman chamber.
Azeras’s expression was unreadable. “Prisoners, people who cause trouble. Relax! I never did it. I don’t agree with steersmen, remember. And we fed no locals to him. None of yours. That was policy. We gave him a bug boy or a chimpie every dozen days. It wasn’t what they wanted.”
Merral saw Perena’s face pale and felt she wanted to be sick. I sympathize.
“In the end, we men made a decision to take radical action. We decided to kill all the chimpies and bug boys, blast the steersman and the slitherwing, and put the Krallen pack on self-destruct. Then we’d take the ship, the men, and the two Allenix units and go south. The original landing zone was badly chosen. It was too cold and too exposed. We knew that when the Dominion came, they’d would find us. And after the encounter between you and the bug boys, we guessed you would be hunting us as well. So we planned a move to a better place to hide—some nice warm cleft covered in jungle.” He shrugged. “And ultimately, there was an idea of at least of some us merging with the population.”
