Drake cut the line without further comment. He turned to Tolvern, who drew in her breath to see the anger still burning. When he spoke, there was no disgust left in his voice, but his tone was as grim as an executioner’s.
“Send Captain Pearson a message. She is to secure her forces, remove herself from the bridge, and confine herself to quarters while she awaits a court-martial.”
Chapter Six
Nils Oolmena stood rigidly while the Adjudicator popped the helmet on its mech suit. It dropped the helmet onto the ground, and one of the insectoids scurried up on its chitinous legs to pick it up. The creature squatted and held the helmet aloft, waiting for the owner to demand its return.
The Adjudicator turned its gray, snout-like face about to take in the edge of the camp through a hollow gaze. It studied the excavators, the growing pit in the ground, the barracks, the waste trenches, and the heap of fallen workers. Nearly six hundred devotees had died in fewer than twenty turns of the planet, but the work force continued to grow with the arrival of fresh shuttles.
The Adjudicator sniffed the air, closed its nostrils in disgust, and cast a longing glance toward the perimeter of the camp, only a hundred yards or so distant. Just beyond the barriers, the sterile ground turned to waving green savanna.
After this perusal of the camp, the Adjudicator turned slowly toward Nils Oolmena, who trembled under its gaze.
This was the same Adjudicator who’d landed on the planet with the enslaved work crew a few weeks earlier. Nils Oolmena didn’t know the creature’s name, only the hateful voice in his head, but had come to think of him as the Slave Master. It was the only alien they’d seen since landing, and it mastered four thousand workers and counting, but they were all beasts, unable to resist or rebel.
“This place stinks of savagery.” There was death in its voice.
Nils Oolmena felt like a worm crawling at the feet of the Adjudicator, and recognized how easily he might die here and now. On several occasions, the Slave Master had casually burned workers to death while his shuttle was landing or departing, and whenever a worker angered him, he produced a metal spike on the fist of the mech suit’s third arm, and he rammed it through the skull or chest cavity of the offender.
Nils Oolmena often felt a pure, distilled terror when the Slave Master approached. Even when the implant had flooded his underbrain with chemicals of joy and worship, speaking to the alien was like groveling at the feet of a vengeful god.
He bowed his head in submission before his enemy produced a killing metal spike. “You’re smelling the dead bodies and biological waste.”
“That stench is a blight upon this otherwise pure land.”
Nils Oolmena couldn’t help but cast a glance around him, at the torn-up ground, the heaps of rock and soil they’d piled into a mound to one side of the excavation. It looked like a crater, forty meters deep and three hundred wide. That was the blight, not the poor fools dying and defecating while they dug for their cruel masters.
“Your work is slow, Overseer. You’re losing workers at an unacceptable pace.”
I’m not losing them. You’re murdering them with your demands.
“Yes, Lord of Life. I am.”
“I would kill you and find another who would better suit my needs, but I am harried. We are thawing emergency vaults and bringing out workers intended for other projects. If I put another in your place, he will no doubt die quickly, and I’ll be left training others to take your place.” The Slave Master studied him. “Why is it that the Hroom survive, and humans and Cavlee die in great numbers?”
“We are more accustomed to heat and humidity.”
The alien gestured down at the insectoid still holding its helmet. “These vermin are from a planet even hotter than yours—they turned it into a furnace with their disgusting habits—but they are also perishing.”
“We’ve run low on the hive paste that keeps them alive.”
The Slave Master let out something like a grunt or a hiss. “There’s more of it. You won’t have that problem any longer.”
“And sugar for my people?”
“This sugar substance is harder to obtain. And I am told that it’s a human product, not Hroom. So why do you need it?”
“Not every Hroom needs it, only the eaters. They’re accustomed to it. The humans addicted them.”
“Humans are a blight, a curse on the universe, and must be exterminated.”
At one time Nils Oolmena would have agreed. The hateful sugar trade and Albion’s aggression had dealt terrible damage to the Hroom over the centuries since contact between the two races. But this alien creature spoke the words with no irony, condemning the humans for mistreatment of Hroom even while they planned the extermination of Hroom civilization, the enslavement of its people, and the reduction of a few survivors to a subsistence level.
Against that, the humans seemed like warm, eternal friends of the Hroom.
“Nevertheless, the eaters need more sugar or they’ll die.”
Several workers trudged up switchbacks leading out of the excavation, carrying buckets of soil and rock. They were carving a road by hand so that the bigger vehicles could haul up loads. They stared at the Adjudicator as they approached. There was a Hroom in the group, and she hummed worshipfully. The humans shouted praise. The Cavlee squealed.
The Slave Master paid no attention to this behavior. Something hummed in Nils Oolmena’s head, and there was suspicion in the creature’s voice as it spoke to his implant.
“You told me before that they could survive without it.”
“They won’t die directly. But they’ll collapse into withdrawal, stop eating and drinking, and then die of exhaustion and exposure.”
“All?”
“Not all,” the Hroom admitted. “But even the survivors will do no work until they recover. That could be weeks.”
“We always lose workers. That is our purpose.” The Slave Master didn’t even sound indifferent, it sounded pleased.
“Yes, but losing the workers who accomplish the most work will slow the excavation. The humans and Cavlee are fragile, and these insect creatures cannot operate machinery.” Nils Oolmena cast a significant glance at the insectoid still crouched pathetically at the Adjudicator’s feet, mech helmet in its trembling claws, then looked back up and forced himself to meet his enemy’s gaze. “They’re useful for gathering waste and distributing food, and little more.”
“True.”
“Do we have more Hroom to wake when the sugar eaters die?” Nils Oolmena asked.
He knew that they did not, or that they had few. The Adjudicators had not yet reduced a Hroom planet, had only picked off several hundred from ships and human colonies. That they’d brought up long-frozen specimens like Lum Gee indicated that they needed what Hroom they had.
The Slave Master didn’t answer the question. “Are you lying to me?”
“No, Lord of Life and Keeper of the Holy Dwellers.”
Of course he couldn’t lie, not directly. He was incapable of uttering a human-style falsehood. If the Adjudicators bothered learning anything about the people they reduced, they’d know that the simplest way to suss out Hroom motives was to ask direct questions and activate the pleasure and pain receptors until the Hroom under questioning gave a direct answer.
But the aliens didn’t bother to find out. And so Nils Oolmena deceived in his own way.
“I sense no lie in your primitive cognition centers. But I sense uncertainty. Something that you know, but haven’t told me.”
Nils Oolmena could only remain silent.
“Very well. You will have your sugar. Ration it well. We are running short of the substances the condemned races demand to stay alive.” It gave the insectoid a hard stare. “And in some cases, there is more demand than supply.”
The Slave Master swung its third arm from behind its back. A spike snicked out from the end of its armored fist. Nils Oolmena watched, ashamed and unable to move, as the insectoid looked up without moving.
The Slave Master rammed the spike down on the creature’s head. It drove through the glossy black plate into its nerve centers. Green liquid spewed out, even as the creature shuddered, its limbs convulsing, its mouth parts opening wide. It let out a shriek of pain and flopped down.
Two insectoids were nearby, dragging a bucket of dirt between them. They skittered nervously, but did not intervene as the Adjudicator twisted the spike about and pulled it out again. The creature tucked its limbs, rolled onto its back, and went rigid as it died.
The Slave Master picked up its helmet. Green, slimy ichor had splattered across the faceplate and dripped like mucus to the dirt.
“Clean it,” the Slave Master ordered, and held the helmet out to the Hroom overseer.
Nils Oolmena took it obediently. The murdered creature’s blood and brains were still warm where they touched his hands. It smelled like bile.
“I’ll fetch water from the barracks.”
“No time—I’m expected in orbit. I am told the Hroom have long, flexible tongues. Lick it clean.”
#
That evening, after the sun descended below the horizon, the green sky turned into a brilliant emerald sunset, and the inky blackness of night spread above the camp, Nils Oolmena worked his way to the perimeter of the scorched zone.
The human-dominated daylight workforce had retired and Cavlee had taken their place. The squat, big-eyed aliens were semi-nocturnal and died at a lower rate when the air had shed some of its heat. Nils Oolmena’s own kind was more heat resistant, but his best equipment operators were Hroom, and some of them would work all night at the trucks and excavators.
When he arrived at the perimeter, he found Lum Gee sitting on the ground, staring at the sky, her long legs tucked beneath her. The clouds had cleared to reveal a vast swath of stars cupping the world like a bowl. Strings of glowing lights from ionized particles lit the northern horizon.
This system had collided with a neighbor, that one containing a neutron star, and the system’s original star was slowly bleeding gasses into its heavier counterpart. This world only had a few million years left before it was destroyed, which was presumably why the Adjudicators had felt it was permissible to corrupt it with their presence, instead of staying clear and leaving it pure.
A cool breeze rustled off the savanna to the west. As it picked up strength, it brushed the shoulder-high grasses into the invisible barrier that stretched between the poles marking the perimeter of the dead zone. The grass charred and smoked where it touched.
Heaped in a pile between the edge of the grass and the barrier was a grisly harvest of leathery birds, dead flying insects, and other creatures that had stumbled, flown, or crawled into the energy field and lost their lives as a result.
“For a species so concerned about the purity of the natural world, they cause a lot of destruction,” Nils Oolmena said.
“Did you bring my sugar?” Lum Gee asked. She used the old word for sugar, more chirped than spoken.
He ignored her question. “I believe the Adjudicators would argue that the purity of this world depends on shielding it from the dead zone. No doubt they would have preferred the Dweller to live in space, on an asteroid or one of the Adjudicator bases. Since it is here, they had no choice but to clear the space around and above it.”
“By all the holy sites, don’t make me wait. Did you get it or not?”
“I have your sugar.”
Lum Gee sprang to her feet and came at him so eagerly he thought for a moment she’d murder him for it. She was taller than him and stronger, but he was prepared to defend himself.
She pulled up short and stood trembling. “Please, in the name of all that is holy, let me have it.”
Nils Oolmena didn’t relax his guard. “Move back. Out of arm’s reach.”
“I won’t attack you.”
“I believe you think you won’t attack me. But it has been several days, and you’re desperate. No, two steps back. Right up next to that barrier. Careful! You almost touched it.”
He removed a small white packet from his pocket. It didn’t say sugar on the paper, but Authorized Use Only in English on one side, and smaller text on the reverse warning of dire consequences for illicit sale.
You had to acknowledge the efforts of Admiral Drake and the new Albion king—they were trying. But no doubt the sugar had been seized from one of the New Dutch smugglers the Adjudicator fleet had reportedly snared in a raid near Mercia.
He held out the sugar packet and Lum Gee snatched it. Practiced fingers tore it open while it was already poised above her open mouth, and she carefully tilted it onto her tongue, which glistened with saliva.
For some reason, Nils Oolmena remembered the bitter taste of the insectoid’s bodily fluids as the Slave Master forced him to lick the helmet clean. He shuddered.
Lum Gee let out a long, gurgling sigh. “The gods rest my bones. I needed that. Give me more.”
“I didn’t bring any more.”
She jerked her head toward him. “That’s all you have?” Her whistled question at the end came out in a shriek.
“I didn’t say that. I only said that I didn’t bring any more with me.”
“Why?”
“I need you alert, not in a swoon.”
“But I need it. I’ll die if you don’t give me more.”
“No you won’t. Not tonight.”
“Damn you, Nils Oolmena, you are more cruel than the Adjudicators.”
He waited for the moment to pass, and soon enough she was staring at him more lucidly. “Our enemies are stupid, aren’t they?”
“Because they haven’t figured out that I’m trying to destroy them?” he asked.
“All they have to do is hit your pleasure receptors and ask. You will confess at once and then beg them to kill you for your treachery.”
“They’re not stupid, only arrogant,” Nils Oolmena said. “And why shouldn’t they be? This site was prepared tens of thousands of years ago, long before the humans took to the sky, when the Hroom Empire itself was a future dream. When the Adjudicators last came through the sector, it was a pristine wilderness. To their annoyance, new species took to the stars and spread. But in their minds, this is nothing but a cleanup operation.
“And that arrogance will cost them,” he continued. “Humans and Hroom are working together. Shared technology, shared tactics. The resources of dozens of systems pushed together by necessity.”
“And you trust these humans?” Lum Gee said.
He’d tried to convince her that things had changed from her day—and from his, for that matter—when the proud, but decadent Hroom and the aggressive, colonizing Albion settlers had been locked in battle, with every encounter proving the humans’ treachery.
“It doesn’t matter if I do or don’t. What matters is the Dweller. It can’t be unleashed on our people or they will be destroyed. Our entire civilization will collapse.”
“We’ll die on this planet,” she said.
“We’re going to die here anyway. They won’t be hauling us back up once we’ve finished.”
Lum Gee was growing more lucid by the moment, though her words came out with a harsh burr. He’d given her enough sugar to calm her terrors, but her head would be buzzing, torn between desire for more of it and a need to obey their masters. He hoped he’d struck the perfect balance. If she failed him, he had nobody.
There must be others, maybe even humans. Those whose implants didn’t take completely. Others like Lum Gee with damaged brains that hold their willpower.
Yes, maybe. A handful of them, at least. But he had no way to find them, and the rest, the vast majority of the devotees, would turn on him in an instant if they thought he was scheming against the Adjudicators.
“I can bring it down,” she said. “I’ve been studying the field generators, and that part is easy. There’s a control panel on each portion of the perimeter barrier, you tap in a simple sequence, and that segment fails. There’s no security.”
&nb
sp; “They don’t need security. All the security they need is up here.”
He touched the nub of metal emerging from his skull. It was raw and painful where they’d drilled through, and still seeped fluid.
Lum Gee gestured toward the northeast. “I’ll start here and move around the perimeter, bringing them down one by one, and then cut wires to keep that sector from coming back on line. Unless the enemy is run by idiots, they’ll figure out what’s going on sooner, rather than later, and send someone to stop me.”
“I don’t need you to bring it all down, only for you to clear this side.”
“How will I know when it’s time?”
“I’ll tell you. You’ll get a little notice, not much.”
“And once it’s down? What exactly are you planning to do? Not escape, surely.”
He managed a bitter sound through his nose slits. “Believe me, this plan is not about running into the wild and leading a bunch of worshipful slaves into revolt. Do your job, Lum Gee, and let me worry about the rest.”
“Right,” she said. “I’ll be dead anyway.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said, although she was right. Most likely she would be. The ones sent to stop her wouldn’t be interested in taking prisoners. “But the less you know, the better.”
“I can already betray you,” she said. “And I will, if you don’t bring me more sugar. I’ll betray you, my addiction will fail anyway, and then I’ll betray you a second time when I help them dig up the Dweller. I need that sugar.”
“You’ll get your sugar.”
A despairing sound. “Tomorrow? By all that is holy . . .” Lum Gee took a deep breath and seemed to get hold of herself. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Time is running short.”
Nils Oolmena glanced toward the excavation, a rapidly expanding pit. Growing larger, day by day.
A few more weeks and they’d have the Dweller excavated, and the Adjudicators would wake its systems to life. And then it would rise into orbit, where it would move against the humans and Hroom.
The Dweller was unstoppable, a destroyer of worlds. The Alliance would be helpless before it.
The Alliance Trilogy Page 32