by Mason Adgett
“I don’t have a registration number,” I said. “The pilot is here. Wilam is here. We’ve been attacked.”
There was a pause on the other end, then the voice picked up again. “We will speak to Wilam Skis, immediately.”
“He can’t,” I said. “We’ve been attacked, I told you. They knocked him out.”
We had a different angle from the display in the cockpit, equally large but more head-on to the approach of the enforcement vessel. As we watched it stopped its motion and the light display changed from the “stay-where-you-are” pattern to the exploding red circle that indicated an emergency situation. A higher level alert, but for us it still meant pretty much the same thing. Stay where you are.
The voice came back to inform us they intended to board. “Please gather all passengers in a single location. Please remove all wearable technology. Please unhand all weaponry. Please keep all limbs visible and empty of any device. Please remove yourself from the cockpit and stay clear of the boarding portal.”
“What about the pilot?” I asked.
“Please remove yourself from the cockpit. Please stay clear of the boarding portal.”
“Should I leave him here? He’s unconscious.”
“Please gather all passengers in a single location.” I could hear in his voice he was getting irritated with me so I let it go. I stripped off the headset and put it on the console, then led Charles back to the cabin. Once there I repeated the instructions we had been given.
Jack and Jerry exchanged a look.
“I know, you need footage. Listen, leave them recording if you want, that’s on you, but don’t challenge these guys, okay? They’re here to help. Just take off the cells and put them here on the floor.”
I threw mine down first as an example, then took off my shoes. Charles did the same, yelling at Mike when he hesitated. “Come on! All limbs visible and empty of device, you heard him!”
In under a minute we were all standing in the center of the cabin, barefooted, hands free, having moved the drink table to create an open space large enough for the five of us to gather. Our cell phones were all on the floor on other side, well out of our reach, with the seats acting as a barrier between.
This is how the guvian law officers found us two minutes later. There were five of them all dressed in combat gear, not too different from what law-men wore back home but all in one piece like a jumpsuit. Unlike an earthen law force there was no consistent uniform. Two wore black but the others were two shades of green and an orange. The only thing the same was that they all wore helmets and thick armor pads that made it impossible to see their faces or make any real sense of their physique.
They entered carefully, coming through the same airlock we had walked through on the ground, slowly entering the room one at a time with firearms in hand. I had no doubt their helmets were also equipped with assault capabilities. The last one to enter waved his hand in a chopping gesture and they all stopped, then he removed his helmet to reveal he was a not a he but a she. Guvian. Long, flowing hair like an Earthen magazine picture. One big, strange, creepy eye covered with a bright yellow lid, the other hidden behind her cell still attached to her head.
She inspected us carefully one by one and head to toe. I was impressed by her thorough patience but I could sense it was making Jack in particular sweat bricks. I wanted to remind him we were the victims, we had nothing to worry about, but truth was she intimidated me too. Or maybe it was the assault weapons. Anyway, I kept my mouth shut.
Finally she spoke in anglish, clearly uncomfortable with forming the words. “We are interested in finding out who has disabled the pilot. Why are there less passengers than on the manifest? We will take one statement. It must be brief. Who will make it?” This seemed a prepared translation. She breathed a sigh of relief when she finished so I assumed my entire statement would be tediously fed through a translation app on her cell and probably recorded for later analysis.
“We have been attacked,” I said, “and some of our party has been kidnapped. Others have been killed. We have left all the deceased as we found them.” I could have said more, but the purpose of our trip was a part of the manifest. I assumed they knew why we were here.
I waited as she worked on a translation, all of us tensely silent, the other four law officers like statues with their weapons trained relentlessly on us. Better safe than sorry, I guess, but it felt rough, all of us already shook up being treated like the bad guys. No sense of sympathy came through the thick security helmets.
As she listened to the translation app – which none of us could hear, of course – she took her time examining the room. The three laser cutouts were of particular interest, it seemed. First she checked out the panel over the service door, then the square I had cut through to the passageway, and finally Charles’ unfinished circle on the other door. She waved at the others to lower the firearms, though they all still stood attentive and at the ready. She then gave instructions in guvian to one of the other officers who moved to the pile of cell phones and began going through them. “We are sorry for your loss,” she told us. No doubt this had been offered by her translation app as the appropriate social nicety. “Show me the deceased, please,” she said to me. “Others, remain here.”
I nodded and climbed through into the short passageway between cabins. She followed and I walked her through the same gruesome discoveries I had made only minutes ago.
It was interesting to watch her make her inspection, her eyelids flicking, sometimes rapidly, between a number of different shatia. I tried counting but I couldn’t really keep up. It seemed like she must have at least eight or nine.
As she knelt by the two bodies in the coach cabin – Gina and her assistant Susan from the 3V crew – she gave me a puzzled look and consulted again with her translator.
“You did not inform others were as well unawake.”
“What?” I said, a step slow in making sense of the bad translation.
“The pilot unawake. Also these. Where are the deceased?”
I shook my head, confused. “They are deceased.”
“No,” she said. “She breathe.”
“What?” I said. “That’s impossible.” I stepped closer to check for myself but she raised a hand in warning, the other dropping to the firearm at her hip. “Sorry,” I said, backing off.
She spoke in guvian, calling one of the others on her cell I assumed, though her eyes never left me and her hand never left her weapon. She then carefully moved Susan’s body from atop Gina’s so that they were side by side. I offered to help – it didn’t look easy – but she gave me a warning look and I left it. When she was finished she checked something on her cell – or so I gathered from a series of quick hand gestures – then began loosening the clothing around the women’s collars. Both the director and her assistant had been wearing the same sort of high throated jacket, magnetic buttons all the way up to the chin. I could see now from where I stood how Gina’s chest rose and fell – she was indeed alive. How had I missed it?
I remembered then the attendants who had been left the same way. “The others,” I said, pointing at the service door. “They may be alive too. Unconscious?” I said. “I don’t know how it’s possible. I thought they were dead. Maybe it was some kind of drug?” I was thinking of Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, something like that. Had our madman used a poison that slowed their metabolism, left them in a comatose state?
The law officer looked at me through three consecutive shades of shatia then slowly approached the service door. She opened it with the automatic sensor and waved me through first. I guess she wanted to keep an eye on me.
On the other side Adula still lay atop Ruisha as though whoever had arranged them was trying to save on floor space. I saw no indication they were alive, but I stood well back and let the officer check. I could tell from her expression they were fine. She moved Adula, though in this case there was no need to loosen any clothing as both had been wearing very revealing tops already. Inst
ead the guvian officer took a moment to check their pulses, pressing against each of their necks for fifteen or twenty seconds, no doubt timing it with her cell. She looked up when the door opened and two of the other officers joined us. One had removed his helmet and the two exchanged brief incomprehensible dialogue.
“Come,” she then said to me, and we went back through to the coach cabin. “Here?” she said before opening the security door. “Unawake? Or deceased?”
“Deceased,” I said. I didn’t see how they could not be.
She did not make me follow her this time, but instead left me standing there as the other two officers moved back and forth between coach and service cabin, administering to the unconscious as best they could, carefully moving them from the floor to the couches, elevating their heads slightly with pillows.
“Are they okay?” I asked, but they ignored me. I was sure they had all the latest medical sensors on their helmets at least, if not built into their cells, but they had taken mine and all I could do was watch. A moment later the first officer returned from the security cabin, shaking her head grimly.
“Deceased,” she told me. She spoke to the other officers and both disappeared into the security cabin. She turned back to me and gave me a long look, again flipping through a series of shatia. It was disconcerting; I’d come later to learn it was common in gobo interaction and eventually get used to it but right then as rattled as I was already it made my stomach turn, whether with nervousness or disgust it was hard to say.
“What now?” I said, because I don’t like tension.
“Do not resist,” she said, and I didn’t as she grabbed both my wrists – gently – and secured them behind my back with some sort of rubber wrist-cuffs. At least they felt like rubber. As quickly as she moved I never got a look at them.
“You come with us,” she said. “We talk to you at our base.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I guess. What choice do I have?” But I stopped before we went back through the passageway. “But you need to send someone after those murderers. They have taken India Phoenix.”
She nudged me forward, her expression never changing. “We will talk to you at our base.”
····6····
Six hours later they finally released us. It was a grueling experience but they did not treat us badly. They were thorough, clinical, and professional. I had worked with enough behavior enforcement on Earth to see that procedurally it wasn’t that different though we were never offered access to counsel.
They kept us all in separate rooms, tiny cells with chairs, cots, and toilet facilities but nothing else. I waited quietly, staring at the red light above the door since there was nothing else to look at.
I think they interrogated me last. I waited a long time at the beginning, several hours at least, though I didn’t have any real way of tracking the time. It was an agonizing period of interminable thinking which I will not bore you with but understand I had no idea what to expect, and the worse the possibility I considered the more time I spent perversely fleshing out its reality. Finally the light turned green, the door swooshed open, and a white-shirted gobo who looked too skinny to be a law officer led me into another room where three much heftier gobos waited at a table.
These guys would have been intimidating even if they were trying to be friendly, which they weren’t. But the questioning was straightforward enough and I answered everything honestly – including a very uncomfortable moment when they threw my cell phone down on the table and asked me about my laser application.
I should mention here that two of the gobos did all the talking, and they were excellent – and I mean excellent – in their anglish, and the other seemed to follow without a problem. Maybe it was a mistake to try to read their body language the way I would a human but I couldn’t help it, and they certainly seemed humanlike in their activity. The silent one hardly moved, keeping one hand thoughtfully at his chin, his eyes never leaving me. If I had found the single officer fluttering her shatia at me nerve-wracking what can I say about these three, with me in the bright interrogation light and them half in shadow, glittering their pupil-less, ambiguous screens above eerily human snarls and frowns, wringing my own words around my neck like piano wire? I was a gibbering mess and frankly I’m glad they didn’t let the 3V crew in to catch any of it.
Anyway, I threw Charles under the bus. This seemed like the right approach. I figured Charles had told the truth and it was up to him to explain where he got the app. In the end this proved the most difficult part of the interview – or interrogation, it’s hard to say which – and my answers must have gibed with everyone else’s. So finally, they released us.
“Vavaka as’Tatim has come personally to receive you,” one of them told me, which from the way he said it I took to be a great honor. Then the silent one led me down the hall to a waiting room where the others were all seated. By others, I mean everyone including the pilot, the flight attendants, and the 3V crew, who all looked exhausted. Jack and Jerry started filming the moment I came through the door and Charles and Mike both stood up like they had been expecting me.
“Finally!” said Mike.
“How did it go?” said Charles. “They just told us to come in here and wait.”
I was about to answer when a door on the opposite side of the room opened and a small procession of people came in, mostly gobos but led by a human who was looking right at me.
“Mr. Lewis! We are so sorry you have been embroiled in this disaster.” I shook his outstretched hand, a firm but friendly exchange, and looked past him to a figure I recognized from my dossier. The human saw my glance and immediately stepped to the side. “Allow me to introduce his excellency Vavaka as’Tatim.”
Vavaka was shorter than I had expected – about my own height – and wore a long robe, his hands clasped behind him. He inspected me with yellow shatia that faded to orange at the edges. His, unlike all the others, stayed steady, never flickering to another.
I stepped forward and offered him my hand. He regarded it for a moment then grasped it briefly and politely.
“My name is Offman,” said the human, slipping between us. “Yuli Offman. Please, call me Yuli. I will be translating for Vavaka when necessary and I can also serve as a guide for you and your team while you are here.”
“Our pleasure to meet you both,” I said, trying to diplomatically speak for the group. “We appreciate the hospitality.”
“I thought his excellency spoke anglish,” said Charles rudely, but the translator grinned.
“I do,” said Vavaka, giving him a cold look.
“Please,” said Yuli, “allow us to take you to your rooms. His excellency is most upset about this tragedy and as soon as you are rested we will discuss our options. His excellency is obviously very disturbed by the kidnapping of his fiancé and desires no delay. Please, we have a taxi waiting. We are not far from the estate.”
This was directed at me, but I turned to look at the others to see what they thought. Everybody looked tired, especially the five who had been found unconscious.
I really wanted to interview them myself, to be honest, since as yet no one had shared their account of the experience with me. I hoped Charles had gotten a chance to feel them out a little bit since it seemed I would have scant opportunity.
“What about medical attention?” I asked the translator. “I’m fine. We weren’t personally attacked, but what about the others? Have they been checked out?”
“They have been examined by the halikari,” said Yuli. “Our medical scans indicate that they were anesthetized with a light tranquilizer, nothing that will do any permanent damage. After you have all rested we will be happy to share everything we know.”
Vavaka leaned in to murmur something to him, then quietly left the room, never looking back at us. The procession that had entered with him followed, all except Yuli who waited for us patiently.
“We had baggage,” I said, “on the shuttle.”
“Yes,” said Yuli. “I’m
sure it has been taken care of.”
The pilot, Wilam, looked up, his face slack and devoid of energy. “The baggage was stolen. All of it, taken.”
Yuli lowered his eyebrows, frowning. “I am most sorry, I was unaware.”
“You mean those bastards took all our stuff?” said Charles. Then he sighed like he didn’t have the energy to be upset. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I didn’t pack anything important.”
“At least they gave us back our cells,” said Mike, and I nodded agreement. I had been a little worried about it – all the questioning regarding the laser app had concerned me – but one of the officers had handed it back after the interview without saying anything else about it.
I put the cell on as we followed Yuli to a taxi. I checked to see if the laser app was still installed – it was – and to see if I had any new messages. I did. Too many. Over two hundred. Most of them were probably just junk my spam filter had missed, but any of them could be important. I took a seat next to Charles in the cab and started to go through them.
You might think, by the way, the taxi was something like you might find in an earthen polyplex, but you’d be wrong. The translator called it a taxi for the same reason I called it a cab – because that’s what you took to get from place to place in the city – but I would have called this, colloquially, a “limousine,” and still that would have given the wrong impression. Get the image of a stretch shuttle out of your mind and instead picture a floating room with carpets and picture windows and you’d get more of the idea. The seat I took next to Charles was a cushioned recliner, comfortable enough I almost fell asleep before I opened even the first message.
It was a credit offer. I deleted it and also the next two, a museum membership renewal and an advertisement for some new mental ability mod promising permanent increased intellection for half the price of a university degree. Delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, then finally one was legit, a vid from my brother asking if I had arrived all right. He was worried since he hadn’t heard from us on schedule. I deleted it too. I knew Mike would have given him a rough update right away.
