Cyrus cried out, and would have bent over, but the soldiers held him in place.
“You will radiate love toward me,” the inquisitor said, “or at the very least accepting obedience. Do not stare mulishly at me or mutter your answers. I am superior. Therefore, you must cast your gaze down. Your pretense at being able to meet my excellence on an equal level is insulting. Chengal Ras would never approve and I honor my master by applying his standards rigorously.”
Cyrus quit staring the inquisitor in the eyes and looked down at the man’s hands. They were smooth, fastidiously clean. Then, deciding that might not do, either, he looked down at the edge of the desk. It was some kind of metal.
“That is barely tolerable,” the inquisitor said. “I still fail to sense any love from you, but you are an invader so allowances will be made—at least for the moment. Now, I asked about your status aboard the invasion vessel. Quickly, tell me your rank.”
“I am a first sergeant,” Cyrus said.
“Your words are meaningless. Elaborate your function.”
“I was to repel boarders.”
“You are a fighting creature? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I am.”
The inquisitor laughed. “A scrawny and obviously weak creature like you was supposed to fight? I cannot believe it. Apply pain.”
For a second time, Cyrus twisted in the grip of the Vomags touching him with the pain device.
“For the third hurt, the Vomags will escort you to the punitive box,” the inquisitor said.
Cyrus barely kept himself from saying he understood. What was wrong with these people?
“Do you persist in the notion that you are a fighting creature?” the inquisitor asked.
“I am… sad that you do not believe me,” Cyrus said. “My function is fighting. What I lack in strength I make up for in speed and agility.”
“Chengal Ras may decide to test the quality of your fighting powers. He is curious at your abilities. This is the second time your Imperium has seen fit to send vessels to Fenris. Why were the crew components so different from the original assault?”
“I…”
“You hesitate, and yet you have received two punitive pains. This is interesting.”
Cyrus hesitated because he wondered what kind of “Imperium” had attacked New Eden. What did it imply? Many things, but maybe most importantly, he could possibly mask Sol’s existence by pretending to belong to this Imperium. That might be risky, though. He’d have to feel out the inquisitor first.
“I hesitate to answer because I’m unsure how to reply,” Cyrus said.
“You are a poor dissembler,” the inquisitor said. “Do you think I am unskilled at my task? Do you believe you are the first of your inferior species I’ve grilled?”
“The Imperium has… ah…”
The inquisitor clicked the switch. “Look up at me.”
Cyrus complied.
“You have received pain twice. I cannot apply pain again except to kill you. You are inferior to me, but I sense a hidden agenda upon you. There is a stink of subterfuge in your words and possibly in your thoughts. You might be near to me in rank upon your strange vessel. It is why I allow you to look into my eyes. But this I know: You are no fighting creature. Chengal Ras marked you, and yet he allowed you to remain with the common ruck. Do you understand any of what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I don’t think so,” Cyrus admitted.
The inquisitor drummed his long fingers on the desk. “The Imperium—” He shook his elongated head. “Look down, invasion creature.”
Cyrus hurried to obey.
The inquisitor clicked the switch again. Cyrus was certain the man turned a recording device on and off. He wondered why the alien bothered.
“What is the source of your illumination?” the inquisitor asked.
Cyrus had no idea how to answer because he didn’t know what the man asked. He didn’t know if he shouldn’t ask for clarifications, either. So he said, “Captain Nagasaki ran the ship.”
“You foolish creature, I am not asking about your commanding officers. Who gave direction? Who propounded the directives to give ultimate guidance?”
“Oh, I see what you’re asking. Premier Lang—”
“Go on, finish your thought.”
Cyrus recognized his mistake even as he made it. He spoke about Premier Lang, Sol’s ruler. He needed to switch topics or at least make certain to leave out any mention of Sol. He mustn’t ever give the aliens the route home.
“Premier Lang is our ruler,” Cyrus said.
“What manner of being is he?”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“The question is simple and direct. Is he a Web-Mind of the Imperium or—”
“What did you say?” Cyrus whispered. Web-Minds were cyborgs. Or Web-Minds had run the cyborgs a hundred years ago. Cyrus hadn’t studied the Cyborg War like Captain Nagasaki, but everyone in Sol knew about Web-Minds. Could the alien’s use of the word be a mistake?
The inquisitor stiffened and his skin darkened with mottled patches appearing unevenly on his face. “He has dared to query me,” the man said to no one in particular. “I am a Rarified of the Third Order and he addresses me like a lackey of the Pits. I am soiled and he has profaned Chengal Ras. This insult cannot stand. He must undergo rehabilitation.”
The inquisitor focused on the two soldiers.
Cyrus wasn’t sure how to carry on, but he had to change tactics. The inquisitor was arrogant and unrelenting. Instead of being submissive to the man, maybe he should be arrogant in return. Yes, Cyrus decided to take a risk because the inquisitor had told him two pains were the maximum. Alien rehabilitation sounded bad, so what did he have to lose?
“I find your language tiresome and oddly constructed,” Cyrus said, trying to talk like Dr. Wexx.
The inquisitor’s attention snapped back onto him. “You profane Chengal Ras’s gift?”
“Hardly,” Cyrus said. “Is the tongue his native language?”
The inquisitor stared at Cyrus, and his skin darkened worse than before, increasing the spotted appearance of his features.
“I will be blunt,” Cyrus said, thrusting his words like a knife, seeing an opening and taking it. “My rank aboard Discovery placed me high above the ordinary run of affairs. Earlier, you indicated I was near you in rank. I held my words in check because my shock forbade me from pointing out your gross error.”
The inquisitor switched off the recording device. His words escaped as from a limp balloon. “You may be beyond rehabilitation.”
Cyrus forced himself to laugh and shake his head. “How you strive to understand me. Your attempts are quite amusing.”
One of the soldiers glanced at Cyrus. It was a momentary thing. Then the soldier became an automaton again, looking forward and awaiting orders.
The inquisitor’s eyebrows twitched. Clearly, he noticed the Vomag’s reaction. He clicked the switch back on and leaned minutely forward.
“The subterfuge in your brain whirls away in attempts to baffle our Illustrious One and the Glorious One Hundred. It is futile, as the Kresh are superior to all forms of human resistance. The defeat of your abnormal vessel proves the truth of my statement.”
“The defeat was nothing more than an application of numbers,” Cyrus said. “Ours was clearly the superior vessel.”
The inquisitor’s eyes seemed to glitter with malice as he narrowed them. “You will not hinder the investigation with your subterfuge. You will tell me what source gives you illumination or I will have no option but to send you away.”
“Your phrases are like gongs and clashing cymbals in my mind,” Cyrus said, wondering if he was laying it on too thickly. “They make noise, but it is difficult to decipher your meaning. If you would receive my answer, I need clarification.”
The bleakest of smiles twitched at the corners of the inquisitor’s lips. “You strive to compose your utterances. I am not deceived. There is something you hide
but I have determined to root it from you despite your feeble trickery.”
“Okay,” Cyrus said. Trying to talk like Dr. Wexx was giving him a headache. “You win. I don’t know how to talk like you and I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
“The sun provides brilliance,” the inquisitor said. “It illuminates existence. You understand that, yes? In a similar way the Kresh provide the Races with guidance.”
“Who are the Kresh?”
The inquisitor blinked rapidly and his features mottled with dark splotches again. It appeared as if he would explode with rage, but slowly, he hooded his anger and whispered, “Chengal Ras is Kresh.”
Cyrus shook his head.
“You doubt my words?” the inquisitor asked in obvious disbelief.
“No. I don’t understand you.”
The inquisitor put both palms on the desk. “I cannot tolerate any more of this deviousness and disrespect. It is beyond the pale and unacceptable. You will enter rehabilitation. I am marking you down for a full scope—”
The inquisitor stopped speaking and his eyes widened in shock. Then he looked down and bowed his head. At the same time, a soft sound occurred behind Cyrus.
He twisted his neck, looking back.
The wall had disappeared and a dry, musky odor almost made Cyrus gag. His eyes widened. The raptor-like alien towered in the spacious hall. The creature was huge but graceful. It was poised on the two large legs, each ending in curved talons. It wore metallic streamers from its waist and neck, and wore smaller streamers from its two arms. The arms ended in smaller talons like large fingers, three of them. The alien—the Kresh, Cyrus assumed—wore a belt around its dinosaur-like waist. A weapon one would presume was holstered on the belt, along with other devices.
“You speak of rehabilitation?” the Kresh hissed in an odd, snakelike manner.
Cyrus shuddered.
The crocodilian snout, teeth and the thick pick tongue—they moved and formulated words that he understood. The effect was much like seeing a crocodile rise from a lagoon and begin to speak intelligibly. It was horrifying and yet fascinating all at once.
The words transformed the inquisitor. He collapsed onto the desk, casting his arms and head on the metal.
“I am illuminated by your presence, Illustrious One,” the inquisitor said in abject humility.
The soldiers no longer held Cyrus, but lay on the floor, covering their heads with their long, muscular arms.
In the high Gs, Cyrus shuffled around to regard the alien, the Illustrious One, the Kresh, he would suppose.
“You are intolerably vain,” it said. “And you reek of defeat and stupidity.” The Kresh turned its head. A small cylinder attached to its scaled neck sprayed a pink-colored mist. It inhaled with its nostrils on the end of its snout. The nine-foot frame shivered, with delight perhaps. The long tail swished, hitting the bulkheads of the corridor.
“Should I bow like the others?” Cyrus asked it.
The inquisitor raised his head. “You vicious freak of the void, cast yourself down in the glorious radiance of our Illustrious Master. Are you so lacking that you cannot feel the essence of supremacy in the mighty Chengal Ras?”
“Silence!” the Kresh hissed.
The inquisitor’s head thumped back onto the desk.
Cyrus bent down onto one knee and he bowed his head before the raptor-like creature. One thing was obvious. The humanoids were subservient to the dinosaur-like Kresh. How had this occurred and when? No matter how it had happened, these humans needed freeing from the aliens. Hmm, was this the same alien that had been aboard Discovery?
“Creature,” Chengal Ras said. “Your vessel achieved greater than light speed. Were you instrumental in the process?”
“No,” Cyrus lied.
“You were in the… tele-chamber upon my arrival. Why were you there?”
So this was the same alien. Cyrus had tried to hurt it then, but failed. The alien must have tagged him somehow. Why had Chengal Ras put him back with the others? Maybe that was the wrong question. How did it know about the tele-chamber? Logically, one of Discovery’s crew must have told a different inquisitor the right answers. No.
You’re not thinking, Cyrus told himself. The aliens knew about the tele-chamber through Jasper when they had communicated.
“I have tolerated your insolence too long,” Chengal Ras said. “You will administer answers or you will expire before your fellow herd beasts in a most excruciating manner. Your passing may teach them the cost of disobedience.”
“Master, may I assist?” the inquisitor asked.
Chengal Ras shifted its attention to the inquisitor. “Speak, but if I find your words useless, you will expire for my amusement during the Docking Ceremony.”
“It would be to my great delight if my passing could provide you with entertainment, Master,” the inquisitor said. “Yet I hope my words may assist in your radiance.”
“Speak, and do it quickly,” Chengal Ras said.
“Master, I have found this one hiding a secret agenda. It reeks of subterfuge. If I could perform an extraction—”
“The Attack Talon lacks the facilities,” Chengal Ras said.
“At High Station 3 I could—”
“Yes,” Chengal Ras said. “You will extract his memories at High Station 3. He practices subterfuge and I detected a psionic assault upon my person in the alien tele-chamber. It may have come from him. Until we reach High Station 3, keep him in isolation. These creatures are not from the Imperium. That is decisively critical.”
“Illustrious One, this is mighty news indeed,” the inquisitor said.
“The Random Equation has fallen to the Hundred,” Chengal Ras said, as if quoting a saying. “The time of our exaltation draws near. I have spoken.”
Chengal Ras thereupon continued down the passageway, lurching in its raptor-like gait, causing another cloud of scented perfume to squirt from its neck tube.
“The inquiry is ended,” the inquisitor said. “Return the outlander to his cell.”
4
Cyrus began to plot as soon as the wall appeared behind him, locking him in the cell.
What could he do to change his fate? He didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to give these alien pricks any help defeating Sol or help them learn how to shift.
The days passed and the crushing acceleration never stopped. He exercised harder, doing squats until his knees ached. The Vomags had walked the passageways with ease. If he was going to escape, he would need to be able to do likewise.
Unfortunately, the impossibility of his plight nearly drove Cyrus to despair.
No, no, that’s the wrong emotion. There’s too much you don’t understand. You have to keep trying until they kill you.
He made a mental list of things to give him hope. He needed hope. Once this particular journey ended, they would extract his memory. That sounded ominous.
Concentrate, Cyrus. Start using your brain.
He didn’t know what was happening to the others, but he couldn’t dwell on that. He needed to take what he had—the data, as Argon might have said—and see what conclusions he could reach.
From his time in the Teleship’s observatory, he’d discovered that someone had carpet-nuked AS 412 III, the outermost Earth-like world. A ring of lasers around AS 412 II, the other Earth-like world, showed him the Kresh had enemies. The Imperium—whoever they were—had attacked New Eden from outside the system, or so it appeared. This Imperium had Web-Minds. Now that could have been a coincidental turn of phrase, or it could mean that Sol-created cyborgs had attacked the Kresh.
Nagasaki had told them before that the cyborgs at the end of the Solar War had possessed proto-Teleships. If cyborgs had escaped Sol in a Teleship, might they have tried to set up an empire way out here? He couldn’t know. But if they had, might they have encountered the Kresh?
Naturally, no one on Earth would have seen any of this. Probes traveled slower than the speed of light, and they sent messages back at light
speed. The only way to find this was how they had, in a Teleship.
If the cyborgs attacked the Kresh that meant cyborgs had Teleships or something like Teleships. And from Chengal Ras’s questions, the Kresh likely didn’t have Teleships or shift technology.
How can any of that help you here?
Cyrus figured it helped by giving him something to think about other than his coming memory extraction. The rest of the time, he endured. He inspected every inch of the cell. He had no idea how they made the walls appear and disappear and he could see no way they recorded or watched him in here. Didn’t they care what happened to him? Would they know if he tried to commit suicide?
Some of the time, he practiced mental exercises. He even used his psi-power aggressively, probing, trying to remove a wall. It didn’t work. He tried to contact Jasper or Roxie and failed to sense either. He practiced using his mind shield. He squatted, did thousands of sit-ups, pushups and found his already whipcord frame becoming even more lean.
Once, a moment of weightlessness came unexpectedly. It was such a relief, but it didn’t last long. If anything, the crushing Gs worsened afterward.
What does that tell you?
It wasn’t hard to figure out. The ship had accelerated, building up velocity. Now it must have turned around and decelerated, slowing the velocity so it could dock at High Station 3.
Are we nearing one of the gas giants?
When he slept, his dreams worsened. Loneliness ate at him and his resolve hardened. He wasn’t going to enter the memory-extractor. No. He would make them kill him first. Thoughts of his death made him listless, and for several sleeps he skipped his exercises.
What are you doing, Cyrus? You’re giving up. Well, stop it! Get ready for the fight of your life. You may be the last one left from Discovery.
Sometimes, he wondered if he should just kill himself. No, he couldn’t do that. He had to fight. He’d never given up as a child. Why should he give up now that he was mentally tougher and in the best physical shape of his life?
He ran in place for as long as he could. Each step jolted him so soon the back of his neck hurt. He went over plans, practiced jabs and kicks, and patiently waited.
Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) Page 22