Vendel Rising Omnibus

by L A Warren

  After Elise’s harsh introduction to the Vendel, her first day continued with more reminders of the vileness of her new life. A WOR-guard, specifically assigned for the day, explained the rules of her new home. Dubbed Initiation Day, she shadowed the hulking form as he moved her from one activity to the next.

  All around her, the wide, helpless eyes of other women, other captives, reflected the same terror swirling in Elise’s gut. One glance around the impossibly huge space and all Elise could think about was there was no escape. Did any of these women realize they were no longer on Earth?

  They had to know. Right?

  When she opened her mouth to say hello to a frightened woman, her escort yanked her hard, spinning her against the wall.

  “You are not permitted to speak.”

  “But…” She looked at him, mouth agape, wondering how she was to learn if she was not allowed to speak, but he clarified.

  “Conversation with any of the other WOR is not permitted. You may, however, ask any questions of the WOR-guards, the Tenders, or your professors.”

  “Professors?”

  “Yes.” His grim expression slid into one of reassurance.

  It made her gut churn to see kindness on the face of one of her captors.

  “10-2, we want your acclimation to be as easy as possible. To that end, questions are encouraged. However, you’re not permitted to speak to the others.”

  He used the designation she understood had replaced her name. More twisting in her gut followed. They’d stripped her identity. Names had become numbers. It was as if she didn’t exist. Their tour continued as bile rose in her throat.

  The introduction to her new home came with a long list of rules. Infractions would bring correction if she failed to obey. The purpose of the black rod hanging from the belts of the WOR-guards didn’t take long to manifest as the shrieks of a woman broke through the somber silence of the Confinement Deck.

  Her WOR-guard never gave his name, but he drew her toward the commotion with one hand gripping her arm. Another WOR-guard stood over the trembling woman who had been forced to her knees. Three long tentacles extended from the end of the black rod. With a dispassionate expression, he whipped the woman while her cries littered the air. Elise wanted to go to the poor thing, but the firm grip of her WOR-guard escort prevented her from helping.

  “You’re not to interfere with the correction of another.” His free hand stroked the whipstick attached to his hip. “Obey the rules and there will never be a reason for the whipstick to be used on you. We only want to welcome you to your new home and help you acclimate as quickly as possible.”

  “By torturing us?”

  “The whipstick ensures obedience. You chose whether its use is required. Obey the rules and…”

  “Yes, I know, obey and life will be easy.”

  “Exactly, 10-2. You chose your fate.” He echoed the words bandied about by Gregor.

  “I didn’t choose this.” She gestured toward the crying woman. Ten welts decorated the pale flesh of her back. “This doesn’t make sense.”

  “We’re here to help and guide you.” He droned on in a monotone voice, not understanding, or not caring about her feelings. “Our entire purpose is to look after your safety and assist in your transition to your new home.”

  Arguing with him came as a waste of effort. Elise chose to ignore whatever else he had to say, but that left her with Gregor’s words echoing in her head. Obey and life will be easy.

  After seeing what the WOR-guard had done to that woman, she understood better what Gregor had meant. Refuse to conform and her life would be miserable.

  Her tour continued.

  The wor-guard ensured she understood her class schedule. In the morning, she would begin her indoctrination into Vendel culture. Tardiness to any activity was only one of many infractions she would be punished for, but the most damning had to be the ban on speaking with the other prisoners.

  The Vendel had gathered over a thousand woman and housed them together in what they called the Confinement Deck. In the most elegant of all horrors, they forbid communication between the women. A standard punishment consisted of ten lashes. She’d been forced to watch three women punished during her tour, but to speak to another? That brought double lashes.

  “Why can’t we talk to one another?”

  Her guide gave her a side-lined glance. “Your focus is to assimilate. There is no need to speak.”

  “But…”

  “Speaking to another WOR is a serious infraction. Continue to disobey, and the Tenders will deal with you. I suggest you do not break that rule.”

  She’d wondered at the oppressive silence. One thousand women occupied the expansive Confinement Deck, but not a single one of them spoke. At least not to one another.

  With her head spinning, her day finally wound to a close. Her WOR-guard escorted her to her sleeping cubicle and waited for her to climb into bed. With her emotions a tangled knot, her body was an exhausted shell after the events following her capture. Sleep did not come easily, however. The cries of those subjected to the whipstick rang through the Confinement Deck. Elise found little respite in sleep.

  Exhaustion finally pulled her into a restless slumber, but her first full day with the Vendel began in agony when she failed to wake to the morning bell. The stinging burn of the whipstick pulled her from deep sleep and left her gasping for breath. Ten strikes. Ten lines of fire marked her back and still burned as she stood in line for her first meal with the Vendel.

  Tardiness to her first class brought another session of the whipstick with another unnamed WOR-guard. She made it through the rest of the day in a fog, and barely paid attention in class until she realized what they planned.

  Gregor hadn’t been kidding. The Vendel intended on fully assimilating their Earthly treasures into their world. She’d thought they restrict the subjects taught, but that didn’t seem to be the case. From lessons in the Vendel language, to social class structure, they also taught the basics of Vendel technology.

  The rules were simple. Obey, listen, and learn.

  Elise made it through her first day, and then settled into an odd routine of avoidance. Whatever she needed to avoid the burn of the whipstick drove her every decision.

  And as the days passed, she reflected on Gregor’s disappearance. She thought he would have checked in to see how she was adjusting, but he didn’t. His absence unsettled her, because in some messed up way, she missed him. That upset her even more.

  The High Tender, however, was a man she saw several times a day. Tenders trained, they explained, but what they would train the women for wasn’t clear. Scores of Vendel professors taught the women everything they needed to know about their new home and assisted with the process of assimilation. The Tenders weren’t involved in their new education, which had Elise wondering. What exactly did a Tender do?

  That question found no answer in the following days and weeks. A rigid routine ruled her life. She avoided the whipstick as best she could. Days and nights blended together into one endless hell as the insidiousness of the Vendel’s plan worked against her resolve.

  The normalcy of her day and the strict routine slowly worked to numb her mind. She, along with the others, moved through the motions of living until those motions became commonplace. Memories of Earth and the death of loved ones disappeared beneath the monotony of daily life.

  The Vendel were slowly winning, and Elise fought a losing battle. Alone. Because, despite being surround by a thousand victims, she suffered in silence. They all suffered in silence.

  Chapter Six

  Gambit, Day 21

  Three damn weeks! Twenty days without any sign of Gregor and every single one of those days had been spent under the watchful tutelage of High Tender Marcus.

  The Confinement Deck messed with Elise's mind. The Vendel executed an extraordinary strategy of pacification which wore her resistance down. Each day she woke and struggled against the urge to give in. Pathetic as her effort was
, however, she did find the energy to fight.

  Sitting in her round sleeping quarters, she dressed in the scarlet gown provided sometime during the night. She slipped the layers of silk and gauze over the towel wrapped over her hair and secured the belt around her waist. Each day a new gown was provided, some variant of red or green. She preferred yellows and blues, but her favorite colors never appeared.

  The Vendel’s skill in subjugation was admirable, but her will surpassed theirs. She had to give them credit, though. They began by drowning her and her fellow captives in elegance and smothering them in kindness. From the beautiful gowns, to the silken sheets of their bedchambers, and even to the delectable food they ate, they luxuriated in Vendel grandeur. As long as the rules were followed, life was easy, pleasurable even.

  When the captives failed to comply, the whipsticks came out. She hadn't asked Gregor about the whipsticks when he'd mentioned them. She inferred their use and hadn't wanted to know more, but she soon knew more about those long black rods than she ever wanted to know.

  Wielded by the WOR-guards, rule infractions were ruthlessly dealt with through a swift application against bared flesh.

  Consequences Gregor had said. It explained all the backless gowns.

  A chime rang overhead. The ten-minute alarm pulsed in the air, warning the women to begin making their way toward their next scheduled activity.

  It was one of the few sounds present on the Confinement Deck. Despite the presence of a thousand women, the most oppressive tactic of the Vendel was the silence. Insidious in its application, the speaking ban was their most ingenious. The women could answer the Tenders, converse with their professors, and respond to the commands of the WOR-guards, but speak to another woman? That brought a WOR-guard and his whipstick running.

  They'd been effectively gagged. Not being able to commiserate was the worst torture inflicted upon the women. Touch was forbidden as well. There were no hugs to soothe the sobs that sounded day and night. They had nothing but the briefest of looks to ease the overwhelming grief of the loss of their loved ones, survivor's guilt, and the shock of captivity.

  Even their names had been taken. Numerical designations based upon the order in which they'd been collected had been assigned. Hers was 1002, shortened to 10-2. She hadn't caught the significance in the white room, but High Tender Marcus had used the-number-that-was-not-her-name. In the twenty-one days since, not once had her name spilled from his lips. They'd been dehumanized.

  Which was why it was the first thing she took back, their humanity. Modifying a code based off a cypher used by soldiers interred in prisoner camps decades ago, she devised a secret code. It was clunky and frustrating to learn, but determination did things to people. It made them strong.

  In the first week, she braved beating after beating to teach the code to those tenacious enough to bear the pain of the whipstick. They learned. They kept it secret, and the knowledge spread. Unified by resistance against their captors, and by the beginning of the third week, they'd taken back their names.

  Rebellions didn't have to begin with a bang, they just needed to start.

  Her grandfather's words spun in her mind. To make the impossible possible, he would say, you don't need to move the mountain. Chip away at it. Begin by moving grains of sand and, before you know it, boulders will fall. Soon, the mountain will come crashing down.

  He'd been a brilliant man, but she was stuck moving her mountain without any tools. The task was insurmountable…impossible even, but she was resolute. Perhaps this secret code was that first grain of sand. And the cost had been low. A whipping was child's play compared to what she'd endured with the braklav.

  The five-minute chime sounded. A stronger warning, louder and more insistent.

  Unwrapping the towel, she shook out her long, brown hair. If she didn't get a move on, she would be late for breakfast, but she had to tie her hair into the mandatory braid. Even it didn't escape captivity. The WOR-guards refused to have anything covering the blank canvas of a bare back.

  A tapping sound jerked her head up. One of the goliath WOR-guards in his imposing black uniform stood at the entrance of her enclosure. Not only did their sleeping quarters lack ceilings, they also didn't have doors.

  "10-2," he said, calling her by the-number-that-had-become-her-name.

  "Yes, sir?" She didn't know his name. Didn't care what it was. It didn't matter. One WOR-guard was like any other.

  "I suggest you hurry. You don't want to be late." The WOR-guards were generally helpful and supportive, urging their charges towards assimilation. That they administered corrective punishment didn't register as something abhorrent in their minds, at least not that she could tell.

  Reaching for the five arm bracelets designating her Rank, she slid them on her arms and completed her daily outfit. They were a constant reminder of why she was here.

  "Yes, sir, I was just finishing getting dressed." She dodged around his large frame, exiting her room, and ran to the dining facility to join the others queuing up for the morning meal.

  Arriving at the dining facilities, she said nothing to greet the other girls in line.

  Words were forbidden with the whole no-speaking ban.

  It didn't mean she didn't say hi. Her fingers fluttered using the code, telegraphing a generalized Hi to those in line. Her greeting was repeated back with smiles, nods, and the briefest blinks of acknowledgement.

  A brunette with a short-cropped hairstyle tapped out encouragement to a woman in front of her with fresh whipstick marks on her back. Strength, Mira. She turned to Elise and gave a nod of hello.

  Paula, Elise tapped. Hi.

  Ex-military, Paula, had been one of the first to learn the code. She was Fifth Rank, and like Elise, had an inherent strength of personality. She wasn't afraid of the whipstick, not if it meant spreading word of the code. They shared something else as well, or rather, someone else. High Tender Marcus belonged to both of them as their designated training Tender.

  The woman standing in front of Paula tapped out, Mira, be brave.

  Elise smiled. The code was rudimentary, but the message came through like a beacon of hope. Solidarity brought them closer. Such a small thing, but it mattered.

  The sound of a whipstick striking flesh sounded behind them. They all flinched when the cry of the woman split through the air. Muffled sobs followed the beating as a WOR-guard hauled a woman in blue silks past the food line.

  Strength, Laquita! The message fluttered down the line in a series of taps, encouraging support. Even now they adapted the code, shortening it and making it more efficient.

  A WOR-guard drew up beside Elise. He darkened the space around her in his black uniform. "10-2," he said in a harsh clipped voice.

  She shrank away from him. "Yes, sir?"

  "High Tender vlor'Vardhal is unable to meet for your training session. He has instructed you to attend the yoga session scheduled at that time instead."

  Her head snapped up. High Tender Marcus was the only Tender who met one-on-one with any of the girls. There were four others he made special time to take aside, all Fifth Rank, but he spent twice as long with her.

  With his message delivered, the WOR-guard continued on.

  Breakfast passed quickly and she moved to her first, and favorite, class of the day. In Tech, she navigated through the Vendel artificial neural network, or am-net, feeling more and more at ease with the new technology. Gregor had been right. She took to their technology easily. Her eidetic memory helped in that task, because she only had to see something once to know it forever.

  The am-net was the equivalent of an Internet, only it's computing power and capabilities far surpassed anything Earth had yet imagined. She'd already hit several security walls she was certain she hadn't been meant to find. Clearly, the Vendel were limiting access.

  She pulled up histories on the design of the am-net and devoured the content, looking for weak spots to launch an attack, while simultaneously teaching herself the equivalent of Vendel
coding language. Two hours passed in what seemed like minutes.

  After Tech, she moved to her language classroom.

  While waiting for the professor to arrive, she plugged into the am-net system and pulled up a piece of code she'd been working on. She'd grown up hacking computer systems almost from the moment she learned to read. Right now, she worked recreating a rudimentary game, Pong. It amused her professor to see her work on something simple, but the project served to teach the fundamentals of their systems while appearing innocuous.

  Logic was logic, and electrons worked the same whether they sat in an earth microchip or the biologic gel of the Vendel systems. Phase two, cracking the bio-gel scanners, was underway, buried in a simple game of Pong.

  She didn't think about getting caught. Gregor and his consequences rattled in her mind. Whipsticks she could handle. It was the braklav she feared, but he said he wouldn't let High Tender Marcus use that silver rod on her. So, she pushed, learned, and chipped away at the mountain.

  Professor Ziddak entered the room, and behind him 312 and 234 walked in.

  She paused to tap the edge of the console in greeting. Hi Chandra, Aomi.

  Chandra jerked her chin in acknowledgment. Aomi smiled a greeting.

  Their professor took his position at the front of the room and raised his hand to give the gesture for the ritual greeting.

  Her voice melded with those of the twenty other women in the room, speaking in unison. "Good day, Professor Ziddak." She stumbled over the Vendel syntax. Eidetic memory was her strength, not auditory recall. Learning the Vendel language proved her greatest challenge.

  Professor Ziddak clasped his hands in front of his chest. He was a small man with beady little eyes, but his smile lit up the room. "Good day, ladies."

  Aomi and Chandra took their seats to either side of Elise.

  Chandra, Fourth Rank, scowled and sat down, as her blonde curls bounced.

  Five bands of Rank encircled Aomi's arms. Her fingers fluttered, tapping out the code on the folds of her dress. She pointed to Chandra. Wog's.