Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel)

by Heppner, Vaughn

  The second gunman straightened his slumped shoulders. “Follow me,” he said.

  The man took them to the portal and tapped against the wall. He didn’t use controls, but the portal opened. A fat woman in a draped robe sat on a stool within. Glowing controls on the wall illuminated her disease-spotted features. She must have opened the portal. Without a word or a nod, the gunman passed the woman and beckoned them to follow.

  They walked past others sprawled on the deck plates, each on his or her rug. Soon, though, they walked through a narrow corridor of stainless steel. It branched and they turned left, right, and left. A slight thrum began, intensifying by degrees until Cyrus felt vibrations against his feet. They must be near engines of some kind. Finally, they walked through a dark corridor until the gunman tapped on a wall again.

  A new hatch opened to a different place and the gunman said, “I hope this ain’t a trick.”

  “Me too,” Cyrus said.

  Skar went through first and Cyrus followed. The gunman stayed behind and the hatch closed. A long maze of pipes and tubing ran for kilometers here and the machine noises were louder. They were in a vast, cavernous area, and it seemed to curve into the distance, almost to the horizon.

  A short, bald woman with strange red eyes regarded them.

  “I seek the Reacher,” Skar said.

  She turned without a word and they followed, marching for three hundred meters. “Is he the one?” the woman asked, pointing at Cyrus.

  “I am a soldier,” Skar said.

  She halted and pointed at a closed portal. “The one you seek waits within.” She stared at Cyrus. Her red eyes were unsettling and she seemed to measure him.

  “You are strange,” she said. “But you do not seem special.”

  Cyrus couldn’t help but grin. “I am, though, Special Fourth Class, in fact.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “We have no time,” Skar said. “The Kresh hunt for him.”

  “Has he slain a master?” she asked in a hushed voice, her face alive with an eager hope.

  “The Maze still survives,” Skar said.

  “Too bad,” she said. “I wish you’d slain a master,” she told Cyrus. “Once I loved them like everyone else. Now I hate the Kresh.”

  “Those are blasphemous words,” Skar said.

  “You should try them someday,” the red-eyed woman said. “They are sweeter than honey.”

  Cyrus frowned as Skar led him toward the hatch, leaving the red-eyed woman behind. The gunman earlier had said something interesting: that he hoped this wasn’t a trick. Had Skar used him? Was this an elaborate trick by the third order Rarified to find the Reacher?

  Cyrus drew his heat gun and pointed it at Skar’s back. He was tired, but he attempted to reason this through. If the Kresh knew the Reacher lived in the Maze, would they need an escaped Earthling as an excuse to find him? Maybe the trick went deeper. Maybe this was a setup to get him—Cyrus—to talk, to spill his guts to the Reacher, a Kresh puppet. Yet why would the aliens do that if they had a memory extractor?

  Skar reached for the hatch. It slid open before he touched any controls. A psi-master regarded them. He wore a baan and a long white robe, although without a collar. Cyrus looked more closely. This one was old, with lines in his elongated face. The eyes—there was power in the man, and great weariness, too.

  “Reacher?” Skar asked.

  Cyrus readied the heat gun.

  “You won’t need that,” the psi-master told Cyrus.

  Skar turned around and spied the weapon. He looked up in surprise.

  “I’m not sure if this is a trick or not,” Cyrus explained.

  Skar stared at him, and finally, he nodded. “That was a wise precaution. I should have expected it from one who could best a Rarified.”

  “Put away the gun,” the psi-master said. “The soldier is genuine and so are the Resisters. You are from the alien vessel?”

  “I am,” Cyrus said. He hesitated but finally tucked the gun in his waistband.

  “Enter,” the psi-master told Cyrus. “Will you wait here, Vomag?”

  “My life is at an end,” Skar said. “I have no more purpose.”

  “That’s not necessarily true,” the psi-master said. “Remain here. You may soon have another task as honorable as the one you’ve just performed.”

  Skar paused before saying, “I will wait.” He turned, crouched, and sat before the portal like a guard dog.

  “Enter please,” the psi-master told Cyrus. He turned and retreated into the room.

  Cyrus followed, with the hatch closing behind him. The chamber was about the size of Venice’s quarters aboard Discovery and was crammed with items. Some were old and worn—a stool, a table, and an old computer screen. Others looked new—a heat gun, a device with two prongs curving up and shiny discs on the end. There was another portal; Cyrus figured it must lead to a bedroom, as there was no place to sleep in here.

  “You’re the Reacher?” Cyrus asked.

  The psi-master sat stiffly on a stool. The old man kept his spine erect. He indicated a softer, backed chair. Cyrus sank into it. The old man pointed at the table, indicting food and drink. Cyrus helped himself, guzzling bitter tasting water and devouring something like stale crackers.

  “It is poor fare, I know,” the psi-master said. “But it sustains me in the dark hours of existence.”

  “Why do you want to see me?” Cyrus asked.

  “Questions, questions, so many questions,” the psi-master said. “Yes, I am the Reacher. I suspect you have no idea what that means.”

  “I don’t,” Cyrus said, polishing off several more crackers. They reminded him of the gritty clots aboard the alien shuttle.

  “I am the heart of the Resisters on High Station 3. My guile keeps me hidden from the Kresh.” The psi-master laughed bitterly. “It is a vain belief, but it has sustained me for many lonely years. The Kresh care nothing about the Resisters or me. Hmm, that is incorrect. Ormdez Ree cares nothing about me. Some of the Hundred worry about us. The other Kresh believe those who worry have become addled.”

  “Uh, you’re not making much sense,” Cyrus said.

  The old man studied him. “You are weary and have expended your mental powers. Still, you have escaped from the Kresh during the Docking Ceremony. It was an inelegant maneuver, but you took a chance and beat the masters for a moment in time. That is a feat for a human. Finder has told me about you. He was very excited.”

  “Finder?” Cyrus asked.

  “The Rarified who interviewed you for the Kresh,” the psi-master said.

  “Oh. So what happens now?”

  The old man continued to stare. Finally, he blinked and turned away. “For many, many years I have hoped for this day. Now it is here and I cannot believe it. Worse, I look at you and know it is impossible for us to defeat the Kresh even with Earth’s help. Our Resistance is futile, but it has been better than bowing to the enslavers of humanity.”

  “How do you know about Earth?” Cyrus asked.

  “That is a penetrating question, even though I do not think you understand our plight.”

  “If you won’t answer that, tell me this: Where do you come from?”

  “You wish to know my spawning place?”

  “No, not you specifically,” Cyrus said. “Where did all you humans come from? Why and how have the Kresh enslaved you?”

  “We originally come from Earth, of course,” the psi-master said. “How otherwise do I know about Earth and expect help from you?”

  Cyrus laughed. It sounded shrill to his ears. “That’s impossible. We’re from Earth. You can’t be from Earth, too.”

  The psi-master smiled sadly. “Why should it be impossible?”

  “Do you have a Teleship?”

  “What is that?”

  Cyrus sat back in his chair and it creaked. How could this strange human be from Earth? Look at the man’s head and body. No one on Earth had a similar shape.

  “If you
don’t have Teleships and claim you’re from Earth… when did you get here?”

  “ ‘Here’ meaning the Fenris System I presume,” the psi-master said.

  “Yeah,” Cyrus said.

  The psi-master closed his eyes and folded his arms. He seemed to be thinking deeply, almost as if he were retrieving stored knowledge. “Ah, yes,” he said, opening his eyes. “We arrived according to the old calendar in 2225 A.D. That would be one hundred and seventy years ago. The Kresh enslaved us upon our arrival.”

  Cyrus stared at the man in shock. “So what happened to you?”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “I don’t know of anybody on Earth or in the Sol System that looks like you psi-masters.”

  “Psi-masters?” the old man asked.

  “That’s what we call you, ah, guys with the baans. Your bodies are quite different from the Vomags.”

  “Oh. I think I understand. We are the Bo Taws. The Kresh created us in their gene labs, just as they created the Vomags to storm the tunnels of the Chirr.”

  “The who?” Cyrus asked. This was too much information to sort through all at once.

  The old psi-master or Bo Taw raised a long-fingered hand. It caused the wide sleeve to slide down, showing his bony, veiny arm. “We’ll take forever if I randomly feed you bits and pieces of data. Let me start from the beginning. I think you’ll understand better then. We lack time and soon you must leave or the Kresh will recapture you. We cannot afford that, as this is our greatest chance yet. Ah, I’m still confusing you, yes?”

  “I’m for hurrying,” Cyrus said. “The Kresh have threatened to put me in the Grand Agonizer.”

  “A horrible and sickening end,” the psi-master said. “Therefore, I’ll be as brief as I can. Still, I believe I should tell you the full story. You may never get another chance like this. Besides, we need Earth to know as much about us and the Kresh as possible.”

  “Ah…” What was the best way to tell the Reacher the bad news? Maybe to just do it. “I don’t think Earth is going to find out about either of us for a long time.”

  “Fighting and struggling against an alien tyranny is much better than submitting,” the Reacher said. “Our actions prove we are men. Now let me compose my thoughts. I want to get the facts right. My memory isn’t what it used to be. Are you listening?”

  “I sure am,” Cyrus said. Didn’t he hear what I said about Earth?

  The old psi-master studied one of the walls, blinking slowly. He pinched the bridge of his nose with a long forefinger and even longer thumb. “I do not know all there is to know about the Great Trek. I have heard bits and pieces, and through my long and lonely years, I have connected the stories into a pattern, searching for the truth. We are scattered throughout the Fenris System, slaves to the Kresh.

  “I know very little about the ancient Earth of long ago, its politics and the happenings that forced our ancestors to attempt the journey across time and space. There is an ancient tale of Bernard Attlee, an extraordinary visionary. How he knew about the Fenris System remains a mystery to this day. I suspect he had mental abilities, a clairvoyant perhaps who saw the Earth-like planets here in their pristine glory. In any case, he persuaded the leader of the expedition to chart a path to this system.

  “The mighty starship Winston Churchill held eleven thousand desperate souls. It used nuclear bombs as fuel, an Orion vessel, building up velocity. Once out of the solar system and with sufficient speed, they turned on the Bussard ramjet. I do not know the specifics of such an engine. It is sufficient to say that it built up to near light speed. The journey took two hundred and thirty-seven years to complete, at least to an outside observer. Because of time dilation, much less time passed for the travelers. The hopes and dreams of beginning anew in what Bernard Attlee promised would be Earth-like conditions… there was great fanfare as the ship approached its destination.”

  “Didn’t they use telescopes to study the system?” Cyrus asked. “Didn’t they see it was already occupied?”

  “That is a clever question,” the Reacher said. “I should know the answer, but I don’t. Hmm, that is interesting. In any case, the great visionary Attlee hadn’t foreseen the Kresh, nor did the passengers discover them until too late. The Kresh inhabited the star system, had for countless generations as they battled their great enemy the Chirr. As far as I know, the Kresh never used star-drives like a Bussard ramjet. They never had or have psionic talents. They did have Attack Talons that dreadful day. The aliens attacked Winston Churchill, capturing what was left of the crew and passengers. Perhaps I should tell you a little about the Kresh. You’ve seen them, yes?”

  “I have,” Cyrus said.

  “They’re dinosaurs, or they look as we supposed dinosaurs must have in the olden times on Earth. Well, the Kresh are warm-blooded, so in that way they’re unlike reptiles as the old books tell. They are inhuman in their thought patterns. Each Kresh strives for perfection in his or her chosen fields of study and contemplation. The hundred highest-ranked Kresh make up the Hundred, the ruling body, if one can call it that. Ormdez Ree, the Master of High Station 3, is ranked 30,231 in the Kresh hierarchy. That means in their way of looking at things, he is the 30,231st most impressive Kresh of the species. I estimate there to be something like eight or nine million Kresh in the Fenris System. So as you can see, Ormdez Ree is quite impressive indeed.”

  An odd smile flickered on and off the Reacher’s face. “The Hundred view themselves as philosopher kings, and they are passionless, driven by cold reptilian logic. In any case, one hundred and seventy years ago, the Kresh captured a ship full of humans. Seven thousand people survived the journey and the battle. The Kresh tested them and found the humans intelligent enough to use. The Kresh scooped every female ovary clean of eggs and began their genetic warping.

  “The Vomags they created became fodder for the war against the Chirr. The Chirr are intelligent insects and control the three inner planets. Before Winston Churchill arrived, the Kresh had annihilated the Chirr of the most inward planet. The Kresh personally fought in space, driving the Chirr spaceships from the void. On the planetary surfaces, the Kresh sent their fighting machines down to dig out the Chirr. But the so-called masters failed to drive the insects from any nest. With the coming of the Vomags, events changed radically. The soldiers in their millions—”

  “Wait a minute,” Cyrus said. “Millions, you’re saying there were millions of Vomags?”

  “The Kresh were busy in their gene labs, bringing eggs to maturity in record time. One hundred and seventy years have passed since we arrived in the Fenris System, but the Kresh have already bred hundreds of generations of mutated humans.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Cyrus said.

  The Reacher shrugged. “Millions of Vomags have perished on the third planet. They drove deep into the nests, battling the Chirr in their underground hives. Finally, the Chirr exploded thousands of nuclear weapons, saturation-bombing their entire planet.”

  “They committed suicide?” Cyrus asked.

  “No. The Chirr demolished thousands of Vomag bases, hundreds of thousands of combat flyers and tanks. They made a dead zone on the surface, no doubt burrowing deeper into the planet to escape the radiation.”

  “Chirr still live on the third planet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t the Chirr do the same thing on the second planet?” Cyrus asked.

  “They try from time to time, but the Kresh space lasers are always tracking, always firing and destroying.”

  “It sounds like an alien war to the death,” Cyrus said.

  “The war is greater than that,” the Reacher said. “But listen. Let me finish the tale. You must soon be on your way.”

  “Where are you expecting me to go?”

  “Listen!” the Reacher said sternly. “I’ve not waited these long years for an impatient young man to ruin everything because he cannot listen. You are a link in a great chain. You must do your part.”

 
Cyrus raised his eyebrows.

  “The Vomag soldiers were simply one branch of humanity, a newly created race. The Bo Taw became another form of man. The Kresh do not possess psionic powers, as I said. Yet they tested the captured passengers and found that an infinitesimal number of humans do possess such talents.”

  “How did they know to test such a thing if they didn’t have it themselves?” Cyrus asked.

  “The Chirr are strongly psionic and have used their abilities against the Kresh for thousands of years.”

  Cyrus massaged his forehead. “This is incredible. It’s too much to take in all at once.”

  “Let me speak the words. Your mind will work on sorting out the facts later.”

  “I guess,” Cyrus said. He was comfortable in this chair. He doubted he would know such ease in the Grand Agonizer. “You’re right. Keep talking.”

  “The Kresh bred the Bo Taw for psionic ability. There are hundreds of thousands of us now, and we are a special problem for the Kresh. I suspect that is when one of them came upon the solution, and that was love.”

  “What does love have to do with anything?” Cyrus asked.

  “The Kresh do not love, but one among them deciphered its meaning in their alien symbols. He is high among the Hundred now, having gained rank through the discovery. That is how Kresh climb the hierarchy: through feats of mind, feats of rationality, anything that adds to their Codex of All Knowledge. I believe that is how he stumbled upon the human idea of love—the Kresh longing for greater knowledge. Their quest is a form of love, I suppose, though more like obsession. Most of them concentrate their minds and efforts on some area of expertise. They particularly prize practicality, the use of applied knowledge.”

  “I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with love,” Cyrus said.

  “The Kresh wished to leash the Bo Taw to them. What better way than to make the psi-masters, as you put it, loyal creatures? They would enforce loyalty by making us love our masters. The Kresh rule us through devotion, and when needed, through harsh and brutal discipline.”

  “To gain love,” Cyrus said, “doesn’t one need to love also?”