Through this unique symbiont, the healers could “see” the bodies of the aliens down to the sub-cellular level. While the purpose of the healers here was primarily to learn all there was to know about the aliens’ physiognomy, they also employed the gel to seek out any pathogenic organisms and compounds that could be harmful to Her Children. At the same time, the gel immunized the aliens against potentially harmful pathogens carried by the denizens of the Empire, and also did for them what it was normally meant to do: heal disease and repair injury.
Once the healers had finished their task with the living humans, they communed with another group that had studied the remains the warriors had left behind. Pooling the gel together, each symbiont exchanged its information with the others. The healers, their minds conditioned to assimilating such information, now understood the human body and its inner workings far better than all of humanity’s physicians combined.
In the human sphere, such information would have to be communicated elsewhere by technology. But an outside observer would have seen no technology in evidence here: once the symbionts had digested the information about the aliens and been merged together, other symbionts throughout the Empire began to spontaneously mutate, reflecting this new knowledge.
The final task of the healers was to transfer the genetic knowledge from the symbionts to the members of their own race to immunize them. This was accomplished for the warriors and other castes simply by placing a small piece of the symbiont on any convenient patch of skin: it merged into the flesh of the patient and made any necessary alterations. The symbiont regenerated itself by merging with its parent healer, whose body provided the necessary nutrients for recovery. This immunization was accomplished quickly throughout the Empire, not just to those here in this system.
For while the final test of the aliens had yet to be performed, the Empress had sensed enough through the blood of Her Children here to know what lay ahead: war.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Lord of All,” McClaren breathed as the alien gently shoved his naked body through the perfectly circular hole, about three meters across, that they’d cut in the side of his ship. He had thought at first that they were going to push him into hard vacuum through some sort of invisible barrier, for there was nothing visible between the Aurora’s hull and that of the enemy vessel that now stood very close alongside. But he had seen that there were warriors at a few spots along the invisible gangway that somehow linked the ships, and that had held his fear in check. Barely.
But my God, the view, he thought as he crossed over the threshold from the metal deck into the void. Suddenly leaving the ship’s artificial gravity behind, his stomach momentarily dropped away as he became weightless. He could see down the Aurora’s flank, noting the holes where the enemy warriors had burned through the hull to board his ship.
Then there was the enemy ship - huge! - that didn’t look a thing like any spacecraft ever made by humankind. The smooth metal (he assumed it was metal) of the hull gleamed a deep but brilliant green, with contoured dark gunmetal-colored ports and blisters where he assumed some sort of hatches or weapons were mounted. Unlike a human ship, which was a patchwork of plates, the surface of the alien ship’s hull was as smooth as a still pond: he couldn’t see any joints or welds, rivets, screws or other fastenings as he got closer. It was as if the hull was one gigantic sheet of...whatever it was made of. The craft was all graceful curves, as if it were designed to fly in an atmosphere, with none of the boxy fittings and other angular projections typical of human ships. Looking forward, he saw that giant runes were inscribed along its raked prow, perhaps proclaiming the ship’s name, whatever it might be.
And all around him: the stars. As if his hand had a will of its own, he reached out to touch them. He knew they were billions of miles away, but they seemed so close. The alien sun burned brightly mere millions of miles away, and a point of light far brighter than the other stars proclaimed itself the planet from which the four warships had come. He had been on plenty of spacewalks, but this wasn’t the same. Maybe it was the emotional exhaustion of the last few hours since the alien ships had been spotted. So little time on the scale of his life, but an eternity for those who had lived through it.
The stars. Part of him knew that this would be the last time he would ever see them. He looked outward, and the unfeeling Universe returned his gaze.
He felt one of the warriors take his arm, amazingly gently, he thought, to propel him onward to his destination. With one last heartbroken look at Aurora, he turned toward the open maw of the alien ship that awaited him.
Behind McClaren, the other survivors of the Aurora were ferried along, naked and still dazed from the emotional and physical trauma of the healing gel. Even though a number of them had performed spacewalks countless times, they gawked in awe at the great Void around them, and felt a deep tremor of fear at the huge alien warship that seemed in their eyes as big as a planet.
As McClaren approached the “hatch” of the alien ship, he looked closely at the smooth petals of the material (he was less and less convinced that anything on this ship was metal as he understood it) that had irised open. He had no doubt that when this aperture was closed, it would be totally invisible against the hull. Or maybe the aliens could open an aperture like this anywhere, if needed.
His professional curiosity warred with the fear of what would happen to humanity if these creatures were able to trace the path Aurora had taken here. His failure to ensure the navigation computer core had been destroyed ate at him like a bitter acid in his gut. And with his crew now removed from the ship, any opportunity - Not that there really had been any, he thought bitterly - to somehow break free of the warriors and destroy the core had been lost. His only hope now was that the Aurora’s computer technology was sufficiently alien that they couldn’t figure it out. But after seeing what the aliens with the goo did with his body, and the heart-stopping technology he saw in this ship, he knew that hope was truly a vain one. It was a disaster of literally stellar proportions, and he knew his name would go down in history as the man who had unwittingly opened the human sphere to invasion. The thought was a crushing blow to his soul.
He floated across the threshold into the alien ship, and a gentle artificial gravity gradient allowed him to land gracefully on his feet. There was a phalanx of warriors waiting for the humans to arrive, and a pair escorted McClaren down the connecting passageway that, like everything else on this ship, was huge: it could have easily accommodated a pair of elephants walking side-by-side, with room to spare.
As on the Aurora after the aliens had attacked, the walls themselves gave off a soft light. Unlike the dark blue glow on the Aurora, however, this was near the color humans viewed as normal sunlight, although tinged with magenta. It gave him the impression of an everlasting sunrise, a thought that struck him as supremely ironic given the very questionable nature of his fate.
The deck felt soft and warm to his bare feet, its dark gray surface pebbled to provide a superior grip. Like the rest of the hull, he had the impression that this wasn’t any sort of metal, and he was struck by the thought that perhaps the ship was semi-organic. The thought of such radically advanced technology chilled McClaren to the bone.
By contrast, the walls and ceiling appeared to be nothing more sophisticated or high-tech than stone, perhaps a type of granite that was a very pale rose color. He thought for a moment of the ancient burial places like the Pyramids on Earth, where the walls and rooms of the dead were decorated with ancient writing. For that’s exactly the way these walls appeared: there was writing everywhere in the form of alien runes, as if the walls and even the ceiling were part of a giant book that someone had written. Chancing that his guards wouldn’t notice or perhaps care, he drifted to one side of the passageway and stretched out a hand to touch the wall’s surface. While it could certainly be artificial, to his touch it felt like nothing more sophisticated than very finely polished granite. But how the aliens made it give off light to illuminate th
e passageway, and why they would have something like stone for the interior of a starship, he couldn’t even guess.
Making sure he kept pace with the warriors, who seemed content not to harass him, he glanced back to check on the other members of his crew. Like him, each of them had a pair of warriors as escort, except for Yao Ming, who was surrounded by four warriors. McClaren’s people were spaced out evenly behind him at five meter intervals. Those who saw him looking nodded back, fear written plainly on their faces. After the slaughter on the Aurora, there was no reason to think anything pleasant awaited them here.
* * *
Like the rest of the crew, Yao Ming had been appalled at the wanton murders of the rest of the crew. But unlike the other survivors, he had seen such horrors before. The colony world on Keran where he had been born and raised had been settled by an unlikely mix largely made up of ethnic Chinese and Arabs. The two communities, while maintaining distinct cultural identities, interacted peacefully and had rapidly expanded from the original towns they established on landing to intertwining cities and villages. While not a rich world compared to many, it was prosperous and generally peaceful.
But when Yao Ming was eleven years old, an ethnic Chinese gang that had been brutalizing the local Arabs and that local authorities in his town had been unable to control finally went too far: they kidnapped, gang-raped and murdered three young Arab girls. What turned out to be the final insult that made a violent confrontation inevitable was that they stuffed the girls’ mouths with pork before they killed them.
Citizens of both communities were shocked and horrified. A local mullah wasn’t satisfied with the claims by the police that the gang would be brought to justice, since they never had before. He led the grief-stricken worshippers in his mosque, nearly two thousand of them, including the parents of the murdered girls, on a rampage through the adjacent Chinese district.
While the violence was localized and didn’t affect the overall population, Yao Ming’s neighborhood became a killing ground as the frenzied mob surged through the narrow streets. Armed with everything from fists and knives to assault rifles (authorities later determined that more than a few of the perpetrators had gone to the mosque bearing concealed firearms), they grabbed, mutilated, and killed anyone in their path who couldn’t run away fast enough. They surged into shops, homes, and apartments, leaving a trail of bloody carnage: nowhere was safe. Some of the Chinese tried to stand and fight, but they were simply overwhelmed by numbers.
Yao Ming’s parents were among the victims, caught in the local marketplace as they did their daily shopping. Both of them were masters of t’ai chi, a skill they had been passing on to their only son, but even that couldn’t save them from the mob. As Yao himself had told the midshipmen to run when he turned to face the aliens who had boarded Aurora, his parents had said the same to him that day before plunging into the seething mob, fists and feet flying. His escape had been a harrowing flight through blood-filled streets that still haunted his dreams. He never saw his parents again, for they were among the hundreds who died that day.
Now, walking through this alien ship, he had the honor of having not just two, but four warriors as escort. Unlike those escorting the others, these had their swords drawn and were exceptionally alert. Having killed three of them in close combat earlier, the first with his hands and the other two with the sword from the first one, Yao took some measure of grim satisfaction that they felt he was more of a threat than the others. But he had no illusions about what probably awaited them. Just like McClaren, he had taken a last longing look at Aurora before stepping aboard the alien warship, because he knew in his heart that he would never see her again.
After moving through what Yao estimated to be nearly half a kilometer of twisting and turning passageways, they came to a huge door. Like most of the other doors they had passed, this one was deep black in color, polished to a reflective shine, with runes similar to those carved in the stone-like material of the passageway walls. However, these runes were much larger, and inlaid with a material similar in appearance to lapis lazuli.
The door stood partway open, and Yao’s guards ushered him in, following the remaining human survivors. Inside, there were more aliens of what he assumed was another caste. Like the ones who had applied the healing gel earlier, these wore robes, black, this time, and also lacked the lethal claws of the warriors.
This group, numbering perhaps fifty individuals, wasted no time carrying out their task. Two quickly approached each human and began to take measurements with what Yao realized was nothing more ominous than a tailor’s cloth measuring tape. While these had no numbers or other markings that he could discern, the way the two aliens stretched it along various parts of his body left no doubt. After his parents had been killed, he had gone to live with his uncle, his father’s only brother, who worked as a tailor and taught young Yao Ming his craft, along with continuing his education in t’ai chi.
“Mister Yao...” he heard young Sato call to him quietly from off to one side.
“Kazh!” one of the boy’s escorting warriors hissed. The aliens hadn’t harassed the humans coming here, but they had refused to allow them to speak to one another.
Yao met the young midshipman’s gaze and nodded, adding a wry smile as a small gesture of reassurance. Whatever was to come, at least they would not have to die naked.
* * *
The armorers worked quickly, as was their custom. While their caste was known for its great skill in handling the living steel from which their weapons were forged, they also created the other clothing and accessories in which their race was attired. Ignoring the strange coloring and pungent scent of the strangers, but welcoming the fact that they were amazingly similar to Her Children in form, they measured their bodies in the time-honored fashion. Like their sisters throughout the Empire, in all the castes, perfection was the goal toward which they strived from birth until beyond death, and they allowed themselves no room for error. Measuring several times, they left the main hall for a series of anterooms where their materials waited. The strangers would not receive any armor, for the priestess had determined that they did not wear such things, and thus would not be accustomed to it.
Instead, the aliens were given only the undergarments worn by all the castes, be it beneath armor or robes. Like virtually all things made by the hands of their race, it was the essence of perfection and would last indefinitely if given a small amount of care. The armorers fashioned close-fitting long sleeve shirts and long pants of a black gauzy material that was perfectly smooth against the skin. It would keep the wearer cool in the heat, and warm when it was cold, and this batch of the material had been specially prepared to accommodate the strangers’ unique thermal requirements. Each piece would fit the individual wearer perfectly, tailored only for them. It would stretch effortlessly, but would never bind or lose its shape. Since it had been created to be worn under armor, it never interfered with a warrior’s movements when in combat.
Once the armorers finished covering the aliens’ pale bodies, they shod their feet in traditional black sandals, open-toed with wraps that secured them above the wearer’s ankles.
* * *
Amundsen wasn’t sure what bothered him more, the overt advanced technology such as the ship, or the almost supernatural craftsmanship of everything the aliens made. The clothing in which he now found himself, as the humans were once again herded down the labyrinthine passageways, fit, literally, like a custom-made glove. He had owned tailored clothes, but they were nothing like this. The material itself would be worth a fortune for its clearly advanced properties, and the fit was astonishing. The footwear, in particular, felt like part of his body. This was no small achievement, for Amundsen had a slight deformity in his left foot that required custom-made shoes. But, like his tailored clothes, they were nothing compared to this.
The reason it bothered him was that these aliens seemed to do what they did, be it healing or making clothes, almost by instinct. They did it perfectly,
every time, apparently without the assistance of anything he could recognize as technology as he understood it: there were no machines, no computers; only simple tools like the cloth measuring tape. From the looks he had exchanged with the other members of the crew, particularly the captain, it was clear that everyone else was equally awed by the clothes they now wore. Most of them even wore smiles at the incredibly pleasant feel of the garments, at least until they remembered how they had come to be here.
The warriors, certainly, had more advanced technology available to them, such as whatever device they used to stun a number of Aurora’s crew. Yet their preferred weapons would have been at home on any battlefield on Earth before the widespread use of gunpowder weapons.
That and the lack of claws among the robed castes, which appeared to be natural, and not a surgical modification, as best he could tell, made him think that this species was likely far older than humanity. Yet how much older, and how much more advanced, he couldn’t hazard a guess.
But the biggest puzzle was that they had seen no males. He didn’t want to make any assumptions about why that might be. They knew almost nothing about this species, except for their predilection for violence, but he found it extremely curious. Since he and his shipmates hadn’t exactly had a chance to do a full physiological examination of the aliens, perhaps they were hermaphrodites. But something in his gut told him otherwise: even though their paths of evolution had followed somewhat different courses, his own race and the aliens shared far more similarities than differences. He was convinced that all of the aliens they had seen so far were biologically female.
His internal analysis was interrupted when the humans were herded through yet another massive door, far larger than the others they had passed. Inside was a gigantic compartment hundreds of meters across that reminded him of an amphitheater, with concentric rows of steps for spectators to stand on so all could clearly see what transpired on the “stage” below.
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