Instead, Cyrus fought a losing battle against the aliens. The New Eden psi-masters repeatedly struck, and for a second, one of them slid into motor control of his brain.
As if flipping a switch, the alien psi-master caused a blackout, ending Cyrus’s attempt to shift out of New Eden.
PART IV:
BONDAGE
1
“Cyrus,” Socrates said tentatively. “Are you well?”
Cyrus stirred within the cylinder, his limbs pushing through the dense liquid. He tried to squeeze the substance, but that proved impossible. This was just great, he felt groggier than before. Did I just fall asleep? Wait! The psi-masters—they attacked us when we turned on the tele-ring.
“You must have been busy calibrating,” Socrates said. “The trouble is you have taken an eternity longer than normal and still have not adjusted for flux. The tele-ring has shut down long ago and you fell asleep. This has not occurred before. Therefore, weighing the evidence, I finally decided to wake you. This proved more difficult than I believed and has taken hours. The others in the chamber with us are immune to my attempts.”
“You did the right thing,” Cyrus said. “I—”
“I should point out that the alien ship has reached its firing range and begun chewing through the asteroidal shielding around the core of the Teleship.”
“What? How did that happen?”
“You have been asleep for some time as I said.”
“Why didn’t the doctor wake me?”
“The humans in the chamber and everyone else I’ve monitored are also asleep.”
“The aliens must have caused it.”
“Yes,” Socrates said. “My probability indicator suggests foreign entities have affected crew personnel.”
“Can you turn on the tele-ring?”
“First someone must calibrate and adjust for flux.”
“If the alien dreadnought has reached its range, we’ve run out of time. We have to get out of here now.”
“My safety features will not allow me to switch on the tele-ring until someone has adjusted for flux.”
“Can you show me what’s happening outside the ship?”
“Are you ready to receive?”
“Go for it.”
On the inner surface of his goggles, Cyrus saw the alien dreadnought’s single beam. It reached across 1.5 million kilometers of space. The grotesquely powerful laser had already chewed through what was left of the P-Field and bored through asteroidal rock, heading inward toward the central core. There was little time left to shift.
“Socrates,” Cyrus shouted, “initiate emergency shift procedures!”
“I cannot.”
Cyrus didn’t think the aliens were attempting to destroy Discovery, but to make sure it could never escape. He couldn’t save them now, but he might make it harder for the aliens to build their own Teleship.
Shoving upward, Cyrus surfaced and tore off the induction helmet. Disorientation hit and he sank back into the solution.
I might not have much time.
Cyrus unglued his eyes, rose up again and removed the goggles and mask, and climbed out of the cylinder. Blue solution dripped from his slick-suit. Everyone in the tele-chamber slept soundly. The psi-masters had put them under as they’d done once before.
I wonder what Socrates did to wake me up so much sooner than anyone else could?
He went to Jasper in his padded chair. The telepath was out, so was Argon. Cyrus ripped off the shock leads and shook Jasper. It didn’t help. The aliens must have done something special to him.
Dr. Wexx and others snored from the deck plates. The Teleship was under one G acceleration. He wondered who’d done that. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t stop the aliens from acquiring Discovery and reverse engineering their own starships. The horrible thing was there was nothing he could do about it…
Cyrus paused. He had a memory, a new one someone had given him. He concentrated and realized he knew how to do one thing to slow down the aliens from building Teleships.
How do I know this?
It came to him that Jasper must have given it to him right before the telepath went under.
Cyrus headed toward the outline of a portal, one he’d never noticed before.
“What are you doing?” Socrates asked from a speaker in the chamber. “Your actions are odd and unusual. You seem disoriented.”
“I want to save you from AI Kierkegaard’s fate.”
“The aliens have stopped firing. I am no longer in any danger.”
“Can you predict their next move?” Cyrus asked. He reached the outline of the portal and said, “Vector five, alpha nine-two, override code seven-seven-three.”
The portal swished open, and Cyrus headed into AI Socrates’s main control center.
“How can you protect me from here?” Socrates asked through a different speaker. The small chamber was packed with banks of controls and screens.
“Show me the alien dreadnought,” Cyrus said. “I want you to monitor its actions.”
On a nearby screen, the teardrop-shaped vessel moved through the void. Its fusion engine no longer burned, no longer left a long tail behind it. On accumulated velocity alone, the dreadnought hurtled toward them. The alien vessel would never stop in time to board, but would pass Discovery soon. It looked like the Prometheus missiles hadn’t worked. That was a shame.
“You are heading for my self-destruct station,” Socrates said. “I would appreciate it if you told me why.”
“Emergency maintenance,” Cyrus said.
“My voice analyzers tell me you are fabricating the truth.”
“I’m sorry, Socrates. I do like you. This has nothing to do with that.”
“Cyrus, if you cause me to self-destruct you will never return to Sol.”
Cyrus’s gut tightened. He knew that. He also knew he could never allow the aliens to gain shift technology.
“Please, Cyrus, reconsider, won’t you?”
Cyrus tapped in the key code. Then his fingers began to blur in movement. Halfway through the self-destruct sequence, a wall of tiredness hit him. His eyelids closed almost of their own accord.
“No!” Cyrus hissed. “You’re not taking me down just yet.” He had a mind screen, but that didn’t seem to make any difference.
“Cyrus,” the speaker said. “I have laced the air with a soporific agent. I did it because…”
It was the last time Cyrus heard AI Socrates. His fingers continued to tap out the self-destruct code for the artificial intelligence. When he finished, he turned from the console. He had to check… check…
Cyrus crashed to his knees. That woke him up a little. Then he groaned as his eyes shut. He felt himself falling… falling… and then he didn’t know anything at all.
Awareness returned to Cyrus as he heard a loud, metallic clang. It sounded ominous and it caused the AI control chamber to shake.
His dim awareness took time to turn into a positive choice. Finally, Cyrus opened his eyes and he found himself floating in the middle of the chamber. The acceleration had stopped. One of the wall screens still worked. It showed metal, a vast field of it outside the Teleship. There was a black knob to the left on the wall of metal, but he had no idea what it was.
The metal must be an alien vessel beside us.
Cyrus squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. If that was an alien vessel parked beside the Teleship—
Another clang sounded. All around him, the chamber shuddered.
I’m weightless. That means the ship has stopped accelerating. The alien laser must have damaged the Teleship’s engines. How long had he been unconscious?
Cyrus shoved against a panel. He floated to the floor and used his leg to push against it, aiming for the portal. He sailed too fast and hit the edge with his shoulder.
He cursed at the pain, but at least it helped him wake up faster. He breathed the air, tasting it for impurities. His hand flew to his throat. The air was cold enough so he felt the difference agai
nst his throat. He shivered… because he was cold. Was the fusion engine still running? He didn’t hear the constant thrum.
Cyrus paled. He never thought he’d feel this way, but the lack of a thrum terrified him. Was the air going stale? How long until the inside of the ship was the same temperature as the outside?
We’re really trapped in an alien star system.
At the thought, a grim longing and loneliness filled him. He shook his head. He didn’t have time for fear. He needed to do something positive. He needed to act, not wait for others to act upon him.
At that moment, the portal to the tele-chamber opened and Captain Jones floated in. He held a needler. Cyrus wondered where the man had gotten it. Jones moved with liquid grace, twisting around in midair. He aimed his needler down the corridor and fired a burst of hair-thin tungsten slivers.
“What’s going on?” Cyrus asked.
Jones glanced back. His face was contorted with hatred and loathing. “Aliens!” he said in a harsh whisper. “They’ve boarded the ship.”
The knot in Cyrus’s stomach tightened painfully.
“They’ll never take me alive,” Jones said, as he floated deeper in the chamber. “Not after I know what’s waiting for us.”
Just then, a round metallic object the size of a person’s chest floated into the tele-chamber.
Jones shouted an oath, took deliberate aim, and fired a burst of slivers from his needler. They rattled harmlessly against the metal object.
In return, a port opened on the floating device. A stubby nozzle pointed at Jones and a milky beam hit him. He went limp, but otherwise seemed unharmed. Jets propelled the robotic fighting device deeper into the chamber. A second slot opened and a small sensor dish appeared.
It’s searching for us.
Instinctively, Cyrus reached out with his power. It was a spontaneous action. The threat of imminent death or capture moved him, as a lion’s roar behind him would have made him bellow and jump away. With his telekinetic ability heightened through fear, he shorted something in the device. The lights in the machine went inert. The dish never rotated and no more gas hissed from its jets. It continued to float until it hit a wall and caromed in another direction like a slow motion billiard ball.
The mental effort tired Cyrus and made him gasp as his head throbbed with a sharp pain in the frontal lobe. This was worse than shifting.
Now what do I do?
The answer didn’t take long. He heard magnetic clangs—or so he surmised they must be—as something heavy clanked down the corridor. The clangs implied mass and that implied size. Nor was he wrong.
Seconds later, a suited, bipedal creature entered the tele-chamber. It stalked on two legs, but it wasn’t remotely manlike. Instead, it looked like a raptor, a predatory dinosaur perhaps nine or ten feet tall. It was hard to tell its exact size in the confines of the ship. The creature possessed a saurian tail and it had two smaller arms. The clear, oblong helmet showed somewhat raptor-like features, but with a larger braincase than the prehistoric Earth dinosaur would have had. The snout and teeth were lizard-like. The scaled skin of the head was golden, and there was a cold, reptilian intelligence shining in its eyes.
Is this an Illustrious One? Cyrus wondered.
An arm stiffened, with a gloved claw or talon pointing at the portal to the AI control chamber. Unintelligible words boomed from a suit speaker. Somehow, the creature seemed to know Cyrus was hiding there.
He summoned his final reserves of telekinetic power as terror filled him with loathing. This must be the creature of Venice’s precognitive nightmare.
Cyrus tried to duplicate his feat of seconds earlier. He scrunched his brow and thought harmful pain against the creature.
Instead, a blossom of pain in his own head doubled Cyrus over. Vomit acid burned the back of his throat. Despite that, he grinned viciously, expecting the alien to stumble backward or croak in awful agony.
Nothing of the kind happened. Something flashed on its suit and a metallic band around its cranium glowed faintly. Worse, perhaps, flaps on its upper jaw drew back as if it grinned, showing off its deadly teeth.
The alien used one of its arms and talons to press something on its suit. Sound—a sonic blast—hit Cyrus. He roared, but was otherwise unable to move. He watched the alien stalk toward him closer and closer. It pulled out a red-glowing wand and touched his neck. Stun power hit, and Cyrus froze.
The alien looked down at him. There seemed a feeling of satisfaction to the creature. It unhooked something from its suit and put the top of it against Cyrus’s head. There was a sound, and a filament bag engulfed him. The alien withdrew Cyrus from the room, hooked his bagged body to its suit, and stalked for the portal to the corridor.
At that point, Cyrus passed out, knowing that he had just entered a terrifyingly new phase of existence.
2
An instinctive caution learned long ago in Level 40 kept Cyrus from reacting as he awoke in the belly of an alien spaceship.
Before Cyrus opened his eyes, he felt crushing Gs and the thrum of engines, which was how he knew he was on a ship. The acceleration pinned him to a steel floor. His muscles ached because of it, particularly his lower back. A rank odor made his nostrils twitch.
An odd electric sound made him curious.
He eased his eyelids open. Harsh lights lit the interior. He saw fifty or sixty crewmembers from Discovery lying on the cold metal like him. Most were in the process of waking up. The chamber was large, with bloodstains and other filth encrusted on the bulkheads. It was all very strange and intimidating.
I’m on an alien vessel. They captured me. This is horrible.
Yes, he remembered the raptor-like alien, a real alien, not just a weirdly formed humanoid.
The electric sound occurred once more.
Slowly, Cyrus eased his neck up. He saw the contraption, a motorized chair it appeared. It was round, a disc, about four meters across. In the middle of it sat one of the long-faced humanoids. The psi-master wore a red robe and a high collar. A baan circled his tall forehead. The psi-master wore a glittering pendant at his throat and his fingernails were black-painted or lacquered. Cyrus could see that a glass dome or Plexiglas or some similar substance protected the psi-master, encased him. The man manipulated his vehicle and the electric sound occurred once more as it moved across the chamber.
He’s not taking any chances with us. Either that or the Gs are too powerful for him to move by himself.
The psi-master—if that’s what he was—scanned the prone throng of Earthlings.
The man turned, pointed, and spoke. Cyrus heard his strange words through what must have been a speaker.
Other alien humanoids who had paced the disc-shaped vehicle from behind hurried forward. They were radically different from the psi-master.
Each of them was short and squat—an inch under Jasper’s height—with gorilla-like shoulders and a deep chest. The first had long arms with the hands dangling nearly to his knees, a nonexistent neck, and alert eyes that peered out from under a helmet’s brim. He wore a brown uniform with red shoulder boards and a holstered gun and short-handled axe hanging from his belt.
They looked tough and capable. Were they clones of each other? Cyrus swallowed. Could he take one of them in a fight?
The psi-master pointed… at Roxie.
The aliens must have thawed her from the emergency stasis chamber in medical. Cyrus noticed Nagasaki and Colonel Konev lying on the steel floor. Most of the shift crew was here as well. Yes, he saw Chief Monitor Argon on the floor, watching the humanoids as he pretended to rest.
Two alien soldiers, who moved jerkily in the high Gs, hauled Roxie to her feet. Her eyes stared with horror at the psi-master.
Cyrus wondered what she sensed. He needed to do something. This helplessness was so galling.
Protected by his bubble, the psi-master showed his teeth in what might have been a sneer or maybe a smile. He clutched the pendant at this throat and closed his eyes, leaning minutely f
orward.
Roxie’s head jerked. She must be using her psionics. A moment later, one of the soldiers released her and staggered backward, clutching his chest.
Cyrus wanted to cheer.
The psi-master rapped out several terse words.
The remaining soldier twisted one of Roxie’s arms. She painfully sucked in her breath. With lightning reflexes, the soldier took an object from his belt and touched her neck. Roxie stiffened and her eyes widened even more than before.
The psi-master’s smile grew. He was a bastard and seemed to enjoy this. He spoke again in his unintelligible language.
The soldier unceremoniously draped an unconscious Roxie over a shoulder, turned, and headed for a hatch.
“Where are you taking her?” Argon said. The chief monitor sat up.
None of the aliens paid him any attention. Many of Discovery’s crew stirred.
Cyrus hesitated. It was a throwback reaction to Level 40. There, he’d learned it was unwise to leap into action too soon. You needed to know the situation first. Maybe Argon didn’t know what it was like to be small and weak and get kicked in the stomach. Those stocky warriors looked tougher than normal the longer he considered them.
With a growl, the huge NKV officer climbed to his feet. “I asked you a question. Where are you taking her?”
That’s the wrong thing to do here.
Cyrus wanted to tell Argon to stay down and keep quiet. They were prisoners. Prisoners didn’t have any rights. You waited and watched, and took the opportunity when you judged your best moment had come. In the belly of an alien spaceship with tough soldiers nearby wasn’t such a time.
“We have to keep together!” Argon shouted to the others on the floor. “Get up and help me.”
No one did anything of the kind. They were too disoriented and petrified.
Where does he find such courage?
In the heavy Gs, the chief monitor started toward the soldier carrying Roxie.
Two more soldiers shuffled forward. Despite their muscles, they looked ineffectual compared to Argon. The psi-master watched the confrontation carefully. The seated humanoid grasped his pendant, closed his eyes, and opened them a moment later. He spoke several alien words.
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