by Chris Bunch
‘Go on, you two!’ Joshua said.
‘No.’ The voice belonged to Thetis.
Joshua turned his head. She had her small pistol out, aimed at his head.
‘No,’ she said again. ‘We do just what that man wants.’
‘Thetis -’
‘That’s my grandfather! Do what I said!’ Her voice was shaking, but it was very determined. Candia started to say something.
‘Shut up,’ Thetis snapped.
Joshua stared at her, then grunted, spun his pistol out into the open, and stood, lifting his hands.
The two men pushed Joshua into the room. He stumbled, nearly went down, regained his balance. He was naked and blindfolded.
He felt four others in the room, but none of them spoke. After a moment a woman laughed deliberately.
For a moment Joshua felt comfortable. That was very much part of the familiar basics of interrogation.
The woman spoke. ‘Is it agreed that I speak for the Order?’
Three voices agreed.
‘Joshua Wolfe, we desire certain information from you. It is expected that you will not cooperate. Unfortunately, we have but a limited period of time to secure this data, and so we shall be forced to use methods that are normally abhorrent to us, save in the most extreme cases.
‘This is such a time.’
Wolfe barely had time to sense the blow before it hammered into his diaphragm. He gasped and staggered, and he was hit twice more, once in the kidneys, then in the side of the head.
He went down, curled, protecting his privates, smelling pine oil from the floor, tasting blood and vomit in the back of his throat.
A kick thudded into his back, another into his ribs. A hand grabbed his neck and twisted it, and three times a fist smashed into his face.
‘That is enough. Remove him,’ the woman said.
This time Joshua had been permitted to wear a thin pair of pajama pants that might once have been white but now were soiled with bloodstains, filth, and dried excrement, none of it his. His eyes were uncovered.
He was pulled from the room they’d picked for his cell, a large, windowless storage room at the back of the mansion. He had no idea where the others were.
One man held a blaster on him; the other two strapped his hands behind his back with plas restrainers. They frog-marched him down the corridor into what had been the dining room. Wolfe saw his own bloodstains on the polished wooden floor. Now the windows had been covered, and the long table had been moved to the side. There were four chairs behind it. Two of them were occupied, one by a woman, not unattractive, in her thirties, hair worn in a convenient pageboy cut. The man was some years older, with gray close-cut hair and a neat goatee. Both wore quiet clothing that came close to being a uniform. There was a gun on the table in front of the woman.
Two of the guards left. The one who remained was squat and heavy-muscled, with narrow eyes that never left Wolfe.
‘Is it agreed that I speak for the Order?’ the woman said, no question in her voice.
‘It is.’
‘Joshua Wolfe, I require you to answer certain questions. You will answer them fully and completely.’
‘To whom am I speaking?’
‘You may call me Bori. It is not my name but will give you a symbol to use.’
‘Where are my friends?’
‘They are still alive and are being kept secure. You should be aware that their safety depends on your cooperation, of course.’
‘When you have what you need, what do you intend doing?’
‘I do not think that pertains to the moment,’ Bori said. ‘I am the one with the questions.’
Wolfe half smiled.
‘You find something funny?’
‘I was just remembering something I told Sutro a few hours ago.’
‘We know a great deal about you, Joshua Wolfe. About your war record, about your time with the Al’ar, even your activities here in the Outlaw Worlds, although you’ve done an excellent job of remaining nearly invisible.’
‘Since you know everything, then what’s the point of our . . . chatting?’
‘Tyrma!’
The squat man slashed a knife hand sideways into Wolfe’s upper arm. Joshua winced and bit his lip to keep from crying out.
‘We have little time or appreciation for humor,’ Bori said. ‘Now, you will please answer our questions. First, the most immediate matters:
‘Are there other bombs set in the casino, as the police believe?’
‘No.’
‘The reason we asked was because if there was going to be further upset to the order of things, it might be well to immediately go offworld before continuing our interrogation. I suspect you are telling the truth and that first bomb was merely to create a diversion.
‘Do you have other associates beyond the ones we secured?’
‘No.’
‘Where is your ship?’
‘Offworld. In a parking orbit.’
‘Then you lied. There are others in your team.’
Tyrma struck again, this time with a side kick to Wolfe’s ankle. Joshua almost fell, recovered.
‘How many are there in your crew?’
‘Two,’ Wolfe said.
‘How will you summon them?’ Bori held up the bonemike from Wolfe’s gear, and he experienced a faint moment of hope. ‘This device appears of too limited a range to reach beyond the planetary surface.’
‘I use a conventional com,’ he said. ‘I place a call through the offworld connection to a certain party on a certain world on a certain link. My ship’s computer monitors any com that’s broadcast of that nature, and the crew’ll land at whatever point I told them to.
‘If the pickup point has changed, then I can use any microwave transmitter to tell them where to get me once they’re in-atmosphere.’
‘Complicated,’ Bori said. ‘But careful, so I am not surprised. We shall require you at a certain time to summon them.
‘But not at the moment.
‘Who are you working for?’
Joshua said nothing, stiffening for the blow.
‘No, Tyrma. Not now. We shall outline our needs to Joshua Wolfe before we apply further stress.
‘Are you working for the Federation? Specifically, are you working for Federation Intelligence? If so, we shall need to know all the details of your mission, including controlling agents and when and how you report.
‘Are you working for the Outlaw Worlds’ own law enforcement?
‘Are you working on a matter of personal concern?’
‘I’m following my own trail.’
‘Which is?’
‘When the Al’ar trained me, they used a Lumina stone,’ Wolfe said. ‘When I served the warrant on Innokenty Khodyan, I discovered the stone.
‘I wanted to know where it came from and where I could find others. That is why I went to Penruddock.’
Bori stared at him, reached under the table, took out the Lumina, and set it in front of her. ‘We shall return to that line of questioning again. I am not sure I accept your story.’
Joshua waited.
‘There are stories that not all the Al’ar departed . . . or did whatever they did at the end of the war. Have you heard such tales?’
‘I have.’
‘Do you believe them?’
‘No. I checked on a few of them, found they were gas.’
‘We are fairly sure you are wrong,’ Bori said. ‘Next question: Have you ever heard of the Mother Lumina? Perhaps you would have known it as the Overlord Stone. It would have been some sort of controlling or recording device for all Luminas, perhaps.’
‘No.’
Bori considered. ‘I am not sure I accept that answer, either. We shall ask it again . . . under different circumstances.
‘What do you know of the Secrets of the Al’ar?’
Wolfe lifted an eyebrow. ‘Bori, are the Chitet going mad? Secrets of the Al’ar? Like what? Like where they went?’
‘Tyrma!’
Again the squat man struck Joshua.
‘I was referring to the curiosity show called The Secrets of the Al’ar. It is scheduled to perform, or do whatever it does, in a few weeks here on Trinité. It also appeared on Mandodari III not long before we learned, through some of our friends who have not yet joined us openly, of Judge Penruddock’s acquisition of the Lumina.
‘We are wondering if this is a coincidence or not. We have, as a matter of course, close-sieved all matters dealing with the Al’ar.’
‘The first I heard of it was seeing something on my com after I landed,’ Joshua said. ‘I don’t know anything about it other than it sounds like a freak show.’
‘Let me ask you something,’ he continued. ‘If your pet goon won’t flatten me for it. What do the Chitet want with Luminas?’
‘We do not particularly care about this stone or the others that have surfaced. However, there are matters far bigger and more sensitive behind them that we must deal with. We believe our duty is to all humanity, and we know, and you need not ask how, that the matter of the Al’ar is not over and settled.
‘I will not explain further, except that the questions I have must and shall be answered and answered truthfully. ’
‘And then what happens?’
‘To you? We shall give you a quick and painless death. It is necessary. At one time, perhaps even after the war, you had ties with Federation Intelligence. They must not learn of the Chitet’s activities.
‘As for your companions . . . we haven’t decided what logic dictates must happen.’
‘You sure give me a lot of encouragement.’
‘Oh, but we do, Joshua Wolfe. It has been a long time since the war, and perhaps you forget just how wonderful the thought of death ending agony can be.
‘Return him to his room. Deal with him as I ordered.’
Tyrma jerked Wolfe toward the door.
In the cell he and one other guard coldly beat Wolfe into unconsciousness while the third man kept his gun ready.
It was hot, hot like a fever dream, when Joshua came back to awareness. The light glared down at him.
He tried to clear his muzzy head, looked about for water.
There was none.
A man’s agonized screams sounded, and Joshua thought that might have been what had brought him back to awareness.
He thought the screams came from Sutro.
After a moment, his head lolled and he heard no more.
Again he woke, with no idea of how long he had been senseless.
Again he heard screams.
A woman’s voice.
‘No. Please. Don’t do that to me. Not again. Please. Oh, gods, it hurts too much!’
The words faded into agonized cries for mercy that would not be granted.
The voice was Candia’s. Then came a man’s guttural laughter.
Wolfe staggered to his feet, stumbled to the door, was about to pull at it, then caught himself.
Breathe . . . breathe . . . the earth reaches out, holds you . . . slowly . . .
His hands moved in patterns through the air for a time. Then he went back to the far wall and sat down. His expression was calm.
‘It is not working,’ the technician said. ‘The sensors in his clothing show complete normalcy, tranquility.’
‘Shut it off,’ Bori said.
The technician touched a sensor, and the screams ended as the voice synthesizer shut off.
‘We shall try another method,’ she said. She seemed undisturbed.
Wolfe’s body contorted against the straps, his face writhing in pain. There were tiny receivers hooked to his nipples and his lower legs.
‘It is a simple matter for the pain to stop,’ Bori said, her voice sympathetic, friendly. ‘All I need is what you know, and then all of this shall go away, and you will be given water, food, be allowed to sleep.
‘Or I can increase the level of pain. Or move the receptors. Men have far more sensitive areas than the ones I am currently having stimulated.’
Breathe . . . breathe . . .
She motioned, and the tech moved a slidepot.
Again Wolfe shuddered, then his body went limp, his expression still.
‘Shut it down!’ For the first time urgency entered Bori’s voice.
The technician obeyed.
‘Does he have a suicide block?’
The tech looked at another machine.
‘I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘I can’t tell. But he’s under some sort of control. Look, here on the screen. All synapses were responding as a normal human male should under the applied stimuli, then suddenly it stopped . . . before you ordered me to!’
Bori thought for a time.
‘Disconnect him. We cannot take the chance of finding out what kind of mind/body power he is using.
‘Would drugs be an option?’
‘I’m not sure,’ the technician said. ‘We couldn’t just hit him with a hard dose. I’ll bet the same thing would happen. Maybe if we started with a small dose, then worked our way up . . . maybe.’
Bori turned to Tyrma, who stood behind her. ‘You saw what happened. Physical stress techniques, whether like this or of the sort you are trained to practice, will be of no benefit. I’ll devise another approach.’
The squat man looked disappointed.
Tyrma and the two guards woke Joshua Wolfe from his stupor and dragged him out of his room and through the ruins of the mansion’s living area.
Wolfe wondered what they’d been looking for, decided anything, and concentrated on what would happen next. Breathe . . .
Waiting on the dock were Candia, Thetis, her grandfather, Sutro, Bori, the goateed man, and two other Chitet. All the Chitet wore holstered guns.
Wolfe noted that a starship lay in the shalIows about fifty yards away and that the hatch was open.
The guards marched Wolfe out onto the pier. He could feel the hot boards under his feet, feel them creak as he walked, and he could smell the sunlight.
‘Joshua Wolfe,’ Bori began. ‘You appear to be impervious to most conventional questioning methods, and we do not have the time for further delays. Nor can we chance taking you offworld with us. Therefore, I am giving you one final option:
‘Tell us what you know, now, or else your companions will die one by one.’
‘Not my granddaughter,’ Libanos bellowed, lowering his head, hands stretching for Bori. A guard had his pistol out and snapped its barrel against the back of his neck. Libanos’s knees caved, and he slumped to the dock.
Melting . . .
‘Will you talk?’ Bori drew her gun.
Wolfe did not answer or move.
‘We shall start with the least important, to prove our . . . sincerity, if you will.’
Sutro had time to bring up his hands, shielding his face, before Bori shot him neatly in midchest. The blaster made a half-inch hole in his chest and blew most of his back in a bloody spray across the water. Sutro fell back, splashed into the crystalline ocean, lay motionless. The water around him turned brown, then red.
‘Will you talk?’
Again Wolfe made no reply.
The air takes me . . .
The gun swung to Thetis. She flinched, waiting for the blow she’d never feel.
Tyrma shouted a warning in an unknown language.
For an instant Joshua Wolfe was not there but was a shimmer in the soft tropical air.
Bori’s fingers touched the trigger stud far too late. The bolt crashed out into the ocean.
Tyrma was the first to die. Wolfe temple struck him, then tapped his chest with the heel of his hand; he felt the squat man’s heart stop and shoved the falling corpse into Bori, who stumbled back, dropping her gun, almost going into the water.
The guards behind Wolfe fumbled for their pistols. Joshua moved easily, without hurry, a blur, around the first one’s side, blocking the second’s aim; he drove a knife hand into the first guard’s carotid and never heard him gurgle death as Libanos, still ly
ing on the boards, swept the second guard’s feet from under him, roaring, grabbing the Chitet in his great old, strangling bear hands.
Bori was scrabbling for her gun, and Thetis kicked her, sending her sprawling onto her back. The woman rolled as she hit, had Thetis’s foot, twisted it, and sent the girl spinning, crying out in pain.
The goateed man’s gun was lifting as Wolfe came in on him; a fist smash into his biceps paralyzed his arm, sending the pistol clattering to the decking. Wolfe’s hand curled oddly, cobra touch, and darted into the base of the goateed man’s throat. He tried to scream and sprayed blood through his shattered larynx for an instant before Wolfe’s forearm jolted up, snapping his neck.
A blaster went off, blowing a hole into the deck as Candia kicked out, a dancer’s kick, and knocked the gunman into the water.
The last guard’s fingers opened nervelessly, his eyes cavernous as the world changed about him, and his mouth opened, perhaps to cry for help, as Libanos shot him in the face.
Bori was the only Chitet left alive on the dock. Wolfe could hear shouts of alarm from the ship’s open hatchway but paid them no mind.
The woman rolled to her feet in an attack stance, facing him. Her face was as it always had been, calm, controlled, and then most of her head vanished as Thetis shot her once, then again in the body with her own pistol.
‘The house,’ Wolfe shouted. He scooped up two of the pistols and shot the guard in the water who was floundering toward the ship, and they went running down the dock as a bolt impacted in the water beside them, steam boiling, curling in the clear air.
Wolfe knelt, aimed, weak hand curled around his gun butt, touched the stud, and blasted a smoking hole inside the Chitet ship’s lock. Then he ran after the others.
Libanos was overturning couches, pulling tables up for barricades. Joshua paid no mind, running into the mansion’s dining room.
The Lumina was still sitting on the middle of the table. Wolfe went around the table, saw his bonemike on the floor behind the chair, grabbed it.
‘Ship!’
