Alien Rogue's Captive

by Viki Storm

  “Because Phuru always shared technology with us, always sent us on mercenary missions to keep us busy. They placated us with a ready stream of gadgets and battles. Kept us too happy and busy to consider invasion. After our planet was destroyed, they kept the survivors on an even shorter leash.”

  “Kept you on a short leash,” Kothar says, and Anax can’t hide the wince at being called out by his friend.

  “Yes, me,” Anax admits. “And others. We had nowhere to go, so we entered Phurusian service. Eagerly at first. They promised us vengeance. Promised us glory in battle. Promised us all the things Hilf is promising the settlement now.”

  “And that’s why you don’t trust him,” Kothar says.

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Anax says.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Kothar says. Anax grunts and pulls me away. We’re going back to Hilf, and I can’t help the growing hope that this is it, that my collar will finally be removed. Anax is walking so fast I can hardly keep up. It’s like he’s the one with the explosive device around his neck.

  Maybe whatever that bond is, it’s connecting us, making him sensitive to what I’m feeling.

  “Enough fucking around,” Anax says and snatches the comm-panel from Hilf and slams it on the table.

  Or maybe he’s just an impatient jerk.

  Anax puts his hand to his weapon but does not draw it.

  “It is a trial dealing with you Kenorians,” Hilf says. “Your alliance is hardly worth the trouble.”

  “You said you would remove the collar, so do it,” Anax says.

  Hilf puts his hand around the collar’s edge, fingering a few of the buttons and lights. He’s standing close to me and pushing my head to the side. I don’t like this, having this strange alien in my personal space, his skinny fingers roaming over my skin. It occurs to me then that I did not feel this way when it was Anax this close to me. There was none of that awkwardness.

  “Lucky for you,” Hilf says to me, “I was able to get in touch with the technician I spoke of earlier.”

  “Excellent,” says Anax. “Did he give you the passcode or the deactivation sequence?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Hilf says. “He gave me some valuable information.” Hilf’s fingers probe underneath the collar. They’re cold, and I remember what Anax said about the Phurusians and how they cannot regulate their body temperatures. It’s a terrible sensation, like a curse of frost spreading across my skin to entomb my soul in a frozen prison.

  “Should we go to him?” Anax says. “Can he meet us somewhere? I can compensate him handsomely for his time.”

  “Oh, no,” Hilf says. “He was quite methodical and explained everything to me perfectly.”

  Hilf’s fingers finally find what he’d been looking for, and he reveals a hidden panel underneath the outer casing. He flips it up and begins to enter a sequence of keystrokes. My eyes are straining to look down and see what he’s doing, but I can only see the barest edges of his actions.

  “He explained how the locking mechanism works,” Hilf says. “On and on he went about electromagnets and passcode encryption.”

  Thank God, I’m getting out of this thing. It never chafed as much as right now, the seconds before I’m released.

  “And he also explained about the manual detonation option,” Hilf says. “How it’s hidden in a panel next to the main processor chip. How you just flip up the lid and key a few buttons and—boom—you can set it to explode. Comes in handy for disposing of those unruly slaves who just can’t be brought to heel.”

  He presses one last button and I feel something inside engage, a small click. Then faint buzzing that was never there before.

  “No!” Anax screams. He points his weapon at Hilf, but Hilf takes out that small saltine cracker glass panel and in an instant vanishes before our eyes.

  My collar speaks in a sinister, computerized voice: countdown to detonation, seventy-three hours, fifty-two minutes.

  There’s a minute tick, like the haptic feedback vibrations when you tap a button on your cell phone. Tick, tick, tick, the vibrations against my skin, not quite at the one-Mississippi interval of an Earth second, but close enough.

  The countdown is on.

  And Hilf is gone.

  Chapter 12

  Anax

  I’m gambling the life of my mate—the most priceless treasure in the known Universe—on the existence of a ghost. A phantom.

  A legend.

  Hollyhock13.

  Rumored to be the most brilliant systems hacker in the connected Universe. His exploits are so well known that even a technologically illiterate warrior like me has heard of him.

  He stole thirteen million credits from a fuel company and gave them to an orphanage.

  He published salacious emails between a top Federation official and his mistress.

  He programmed a telecommunications company to broadcast footage of an illegal, state-sponsored execution when it was supposed to broadcast a sporting event.

  “But does he exist?” Brooke asks for the hundredth time.

  “I hope so,” I answer for the hundredth time.

  “He’s probably like ten guys spread out all over the place. Or he’s no guy and all those stories are just urban legends. We’ve got a lot of those on Earth. Rumors, you know, stories that people tell. They say that Eskimos have a hundred words for ‘snow,’ but they don’t. People just repeat stuff if it’s a good enough story, and stealing thirteen million bucks is a pretty good story.”

  “I know.” And I do. I know this is a wild chance, one in a thousand, that this Hollyhock13 actually exists, let alone is capable of the feats for which he is known.

  “Are we there yet?” she asks for the hundred and first time.

  “No,” I answer for the hundred and first time.

  Udos used a fragment of the Phurusian behavior forecasting model to run a neural simulation for Hollyhock13, entering newswire data as well as postings and writings supposedly penned by the infamous hacker. The modeling program ran its simulations and determined the most probable location for Hollyhock13’s residence based on all the available data.

  And that’s where we’re going.

  It’s a tense flight. I can’t concentrate, but I send a comm to the planet and get clearance to land, and somehow I’m able to land the ship despite my trembling hands.

  Hollyhock13 is supposed to be in the capitol. Using the behavior forecasting tool, I follow the coordinates, almost dragging Brooke along. She’s moving too damned slow, and I bend down to pick her up and carry her, but she shoots me a look that says I’d better let her walk on her own. I constantly check my comm-panel, making sure we’re on the right path, because we’re walking farther and farther away from downtown. This is a Federation planet, not a lot of industry or manufacturing, just a bunch of bureaucrats and office workers who sit in climate-controlled buildings, send comms to each other, and somehow make a ton of money. On Phuru, those bastards at least develop useful technologies and sell the software and schematics. I’m not sure what people on this planet do to earn so much money and live such a decadent lifestyle.

  The coordinates tell us to turn left, so we do, and then the directions suddenly stop.

  We’ve arrived.

  “Here?” Brooke asks. It’s a dilapidated old building about to be condemned, by the look of things.

  “According to the forecast,” I say, “yes, here.”

  “Yeah, the same forecast that says I’m a murderer?” she reminds me.

  “It says you’re going to be a murderer,” I counter. “I think you could probably take someone’s life if the situation demanded it. Everyone could.”

  “Well, yeah, if it’s self-defense or something. But then why would the Phurusians arrest me for self-defense? They seem to think I’m going to commit some cold-blooded, unjustified murder. Which I assure you, I’m not.”

  I just shrug. You never know what people are capable of when they’re pushed—especially humans, who are hot-blood
ed and irrational. “Let’s go inside,” I say.

  “It’s probably infested with AIDS rats,” she says. I plumb the depths of my knowledge of her human language. As usual, what she says makes no sense.

  “AIDS is a disease affecting the human immune system, and the virus responsible for the syndrome cannot live outside a human host. Therefore, it would be impossible for rodentia to incubate any of the various strains. Furthermore, rodentia are not found on this planet, but they could survive if imported. They are commonly plagued by insectoid parasites that cause all manner of other diseases, notably Yersinia pestis, which decimated one-third of the human population several centuries ago. We could theoretically become infected by something, but this AIDS is unlikely.”

  “Good grief,” she says. “Do you know how annoying it is to always be proven wrong?”

  “Then quit being wrong,” I say. She blows air through pursed lips in a gesture of irritation. I try to open the door, but it’s locked.

  “There’s no way anyone lives in there,” she says, trying to peer through one of the dusty windows. “All I can see is a few old boxes. There’s probably not even electricity for Hollyhock to run the computers.”

  “He can beam electricity from somewhere,” I explain. “Tap into the system and reroute a beam.”

  “A beam?” she says. “You mean that electricity can travel without cords or wires or anything?”

  “Of course,” I say. “An Earthling invented the technology at least a century ago.”

  “I guarantee you that one did not,” she argues. “We have big ugly power poles all over the place, and there’s a tangled web of cords underneath my television that says otherwise.”

  “If your manufacturing processes do not incorporate the technology into your electronics, then you humans are more foolish than I first thought. An Earthling named Tesla invented wireless electricity transfer a hundred years ago. The Federation bureau that monitors your planet was impressed—thought that Earth might even be technologically ready to enter the Federation—but after more deliberation, they decided against it.”

  “Nicola Tesla?” she asks. “I don’t know about that, but if you say that Hamhock is inside, let’s go get the bastard and make him take this collar off.”

  “Hollyhock13,” I repeat. “But I do agree with you. Let’s go.”

  I pull my weapon and blast a hole in the door large enough for Brooke to walk through. I have to crouch down a little, but I manage to squeeze through. It stinks inside, like urine and decaying organic matter.

  “Jesus,” Brooke says. “No way a genius computer whiz lives here. He should have taken his thirteen million credits and bought a nice place in… well, I don’t know where. You have tropical beaches here?”

  I’m not in the mood to give her a geography lesson, but I do agree with her sentiment. This is an unlikely base of operations for a genius who supposedly has thirteen million credits. Then again, the sort of hacker who would steal and make mischief through such cowardly means would probably run through the money and end up destitute in a condemned building like this.

  “I’m sure he’s here,” I say. I am not sure, not by a long shot, but I have to believe it. Have to believe that we’ll get Brooke’s collar removed before it detonates. I swear, when I find Hilf—and I will find him—he’s going to wish for an exploding collar. An exploding collar would be very, very kind compared to what I’m going to do with him.

  Brooke only touches the collar, running her finger around it as if feeling for some hidden release button. That damned thing, it’s a disgrace.

  The musty old smell of the building is unpleasant to me, but I fear that it’s much more dangerous to Brooke. She starts sneezing almost immediately. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Allergies,” she says. I frown, knowing that some proteins can cause an immune system response dangerous to the host.

  “Will you survive?” I ask, panicking at the thought that we might be able to unlock her collar only to have her life taken by an allergic reaction to foreign dust particles. “Are you experiencing symptoms of anaphylaxis?”

  “Uh, no, I’m okay,” she says. “Although some Benadryl would be nice.”

  “We can find a healer in the city,” I say.

  “I’m joking,” she says and sneezes again. She wipes her nose on the sleeve of her shirt.

  I clear the first floor of the building, sweeping each room carefully with my weapon drawn, the way I was trained. No Hollyhock13. As we climb the first flight of stairs, I go slowly and listen carefully for the hum of a computer system or the tapping of fingernails on a keypad. Nothing.

  “He probably heard your sneezes and jumped out the window,” I say.

  “Well, excuse me,” she says. “But trust me when I say I want this thing off more than you do.” A tear is sliding down her face, and I wipe it away with the tip of one finger. She lets me, and as much as I want to take her in my arms, I force myself to keep going up the stairs, force myself to concentrate on the task at hand.

  On the second floor, I start to clear the rooms as methodically as I cleared the downstairs, but then I hear a sudden shrill beeping from the opposite side of the building.

  “The hell is that?” Brooke says, but she’s already running towards the noise. It sounds like an alarm, like we tripped someone’s security system.

  “Stop, Brooke,” I shout, not wanting her to run right into a booby trap or, worse, right into a delusional hacker armed with a laser blaster.

  But she doesn’t listen, the damned stubborn female. I catch up to her quickly enough, and this time I do pick her up and restrain her. “We can’t go storming in,” I say. “There’s a good chance he’s insane.”

  “I’m not insane,” a voice says. It’s not a human or Kenorian or any other humanoid race—and it’s obviously a female. “But you are if you take one step closer to me.”

  I look up and see a Jirdie female, a juvenile, leveling a laser blaster right at us.

  I stop, not wanting to test her. Jirdies are generally stout and squat, barely a meter high. The juveniles are the same height but haven’t undergone the metamorphosis that provides sexual maturation and the iridescent scales over the tough hide that signal adulthood and receptivity to taking a mate.

  “Are you Hollyhock13?” Brooke asks.

  This creature obviously is not. There is no way an immature Jirdie is Hollyhock. I don’t even think Jirdies are capable of complex logic. They inhabit ice-planet caves, spending most of their time hibernating until it’s time to spawn. Brooke doesn’t know the difference between the alien races, probably they all seem advanced, but Jirdies are one of the few out there in the Universe that actually rank below humans.

  “Maybe,” the creature says. I’m surprised she can speak coherently.

  “Are you or not?” Brooke says, then sneezes.

  “Is this your master?” the Jirdie says, pointing at me. “Are you here to conscript me into reproductive servitude?”

  “Hell no,” Brooke says. I decide to let her do the talking. She seems to be comfortable enough talking to this Jirdie child. “I’ve escaped, but they detonated my collar. It’s set to go off in like twelve hours. I was hoping that Hollyhock13 could get it off with their renowned genius and technological expertise.”

  “Your attempts at flattery are transparent and pointless. Hollyhock13 is not motivated by vanity or altruism.”

  “What is Hollyhock13 motivated by?” Brooke asks.

  “Things. Credits. Sometimes a good challenge and the pride of accomplishment that follows success.”

  “Well, this is a challenge, let me tell you,” Brooke goes on. “A Phurusian convict collar, a ticking clock, set to explode in mere hours. What could be more challenging than that?”

  “Almost anything,” the purported Hollyhock13 says. “Electronics don’t interest me.”

  “What do you want?” I ask. I do not have the patience to negotiate with this strange creature who may or may not possess the technolo
gical skill to save Brooke. “We’ll pay your price if you can deactivate it and remove it.”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I will do it in exchange for a barrel of purple aranthius,” she says.

  “What’s that?” Brooke asks.

  “Purple aranthius?” I say, now more confused than ever. “The fabric dye?”

  “Yes,” she says. “That is my offer. If you have only hours until expiration, I do not need to remind you of the dire need to hurry.”

  “Where are we going to get a barrel of purple aranthius?” I ask.

  “That’s your problem,” Hollyhock13 says. “Now go.”

  I briefly consider rushing her and taking her laser blaster. I could do it without much trouble, but I know that in this situation, brute force will not be enough. I can subdue her with force, threaten her with death if she doesn’t cooperate. But will that ensure Brooke’s survival? No, it will not.

  “We’ll return,” I say.

  “With one barrel,” she repeats, “minimum volume of two hundred liters.”

  I take Brooke’s hand and lead her back down the stairs.

  “I’m not sure if this meeting was a success or a failure,” I say when we’re back on the street.

  “Well, we found Hollyhock13,” she says. “At least, I think that was her, right?”

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if the Phurusian forecasting model hadn’t confirmed it,” I admit. “A Jirdie? And an immature female at that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What are Jirdies?” she asks.

  “It would be like if you were on Earth,” I explain, “and you had a cellular replication disorder.”

  “Cancer?” she asks.

  “Is that what you call it?” I ask. “Anyway, you have a deadly disease and seek out the best healer on your planet.”

  “Doctor,” she corrects, but I ignore her.

  “And you step into their office and the healer is a dog. He speaks your language and insists he can perform the surgery.”

  “Aww,” she says. “How cute. Can he wear a little white coat and carry a clipboard, too? Ooh, and have one of those little head mirrors around his forehead?”