“Patricia, I need to know everything they’re saying,” he hissed to the translator.
“Yeah, I’m hip!” she responded.
Alacea pointed at Ben.
Ramirez and Burgers raised their guns again at the gesture. An uninvited enemy pointing a finger at your commander and yelling angry things never boded well as far as they were concerned.
Ben waved for them to lower their guns as Patricia, unwilling to interrupt the byplay, whispered quickly into his ear. “She’s asking about you!”
He looked at her in near-disbelief. “Really?” he asked sarcastically.
The interpreter turned red. “Sorry, I mean she’s asking if you’re the guy in charge.”
Kasshas cleared his throat again, his tail moving a mile a minute now.
Alacea angrily broke into the old man’s prose.
The Va’Shen mayor’s tail and ears flattened as he saw Patricia whispering translations into Ben’s ear.
Kasshas sighed.
Alacea turned to Ben and fell to her knees, bowing her head until it hit the mat in front her.
<… stupid,> Kasshas finished deadpan.
“Mikorin?” Patricia asked, the familiar word triggering a million questions.
“What did she say?” Ben asked calmly.
“Oh! She says her name is ‘Alacea,’ and she surrenders,” Patricia explained.
Ben eyed her for a moment longer. “Something else?” he asked.
Patricia nodded. “She said she’s the ‘Mikorin Na’Sha.’” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t know the term, but Ramirez, Baird and I met a Va’Shen woman yesterday at the temple who used it.” She bit her lip, not sure how far on the ledge she should go. “I can’t be sure, but I think it’s really important.”
Ben turned and leveled an irritated gaze at Kasshas. “Good news, Kasshas!” he exclaimed theatrically, his artificially happy tone doing a poor job of concealing how incredibly angry he was at the mayor. “One of your people is still alive! Patricia…”
Patricia cleared her throat and pointed at the genuflecting Alacea.
The elderly Va’Shan looked incredibly uncomfortable at the sudden turn of events, events which could not have been timed worse.
Ben shook his head and turned his attention to Alacea. “Tell her to get up. She doesn’t have to surrender to anyone. The Articles of Va’Shen Surrender already apply to all Va’Shen on- and off-world.”
She turned to Alacea and waved her hands in front of the alien’s ears, trying to get her attention.
Alacea raised her eyes at the human woman.
“She says she is responsible,” Patricia translated cautiously. “You are searching?” she added, unsure of her translation.
“Ask her about the people,” Ben ordered.
Alacea blinked at the question in confusion, and Kasshas jumped in to fill her in.
This statement filled the Va’Shen woman with panic. She threw herself on the ground again.
“Patricia, what is going on here?” Ben asked, thoroughly losing the thread of the conversation.
The terp shook her head. “I… I can’t tell. She’s talking too fast!” She held her hands out to the woman.
“She says she’s… responsible for attacks?” Patricia translated in an uncertain tone.
Ben rubbed his temples as the noise from two aliens and one human trying to talk over one another battered against his eardrums.
“Okay, enough!” he yelled, holding his hands out. He pointed at Kasshas. “Where. Is. Everyone?!”
Patricia translated for him, but Kasshas offered no answer. Hearing the question again sent Alacea back into hysterics. She rose to her feet and went toe-to-toe with Ben.
Ben looked to Patricia, who was shaking her head and quickly reconsidering her career choices. “She said… something about crimes and punishment for her.” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Sir.”
“What does she mean by ‘crimes?’” Ben asked evenly.
“She says her people fought us and it’s her fault,” Patricia said, exasperated.
Ben sighed and rubbed his temples again. “This is getting us nowhere. Tell Kasshas he can help us find his people or we can find them ourselves.”
It wasn’t a very artful translation, and Kasshas hissed between his teeth at the insinuation that Ben would send soldiers after his people. Alacea’s tail poofed in alarm.
“Tell him,” Ben growled, “We’ll try again tomorrow.” He turned to go as Patricia began to translate.
Alacea rushed forward and grabbed his arm, and once again Ramirez and Baird raised their weapons.
“Patricia, tell her to let go of me,” Ben told her, utterly bored of this game by now.
Alacea cried in panic.
Patricia stopped talking mid-translation. “Um… she says she ordered killings.”
she cried, tears in her eyes.
“She said she ordered her people to continue killing until gone,” Patricia said.
Ben pulled his arm away and turned to leave.
she yelled at his back.
“She ordered attacks on…” Patricia stopped again in mid-translation as the implication of what the woman was saying dawned on her. “… our cities,” she finished.
Ben stopped walking. He turned suddenly, and Alacea backed up a step at the sight of his gaze boring into her.
“That wasn’t smart,” Burgers whispered, his tone almost
sympathetic.
The Ranger captain stared at the woman, but he now no longer saw a beautiful, if unkempt, slightly dim but otherwise harmless alien woman. Instead he saw the Va’Shen in his dreams, an alien that slinked into your home in the middle of the night to kill you in your sleep because they lacked the courage to face you on the battlefield. He saw a Va’Shen officer who ordered her ships to nudge a giant rock out of orbit to kill women and children with no hope of escape because it was easier than facing soldiers. He was in her home only because they had taken his.
“Oh?” Ben asked her quietly, dangerously. “So you want to take credit for that, huh?”
Patricia swallowed nervously as she felt the temperature in the room cool by a good ten degrees. “Sir!” she stepped between them. “Obviously, this woman didn’t…”
“Didn’t what?” Ben broke in. She looked up at Alacea and Kasshas. “You know, after all these months and all the interviews with Va’Shen high command, we never did find anyone willing to cop to ordering the Persephone attack.”
The terp swallowed again. She had known that. The Defense Department, the President and Congress had been demanding that particular Va’Shen’s identity, but the Va’Shen had been elusive about it.
“Sir,” Patricia began again carefully. “I’m just saying… it’s very unlikely that… that a dirty woman in a provincial backwater could have had anything to do with it.”
Kasshas couldn’t understand what the two were saying, but he could tell the tone had changed. He stepped forward.
Ben didn’t need to hear the translation. “You have done nothing but lie to me from the beginning!” he shot at Kasshas. “So I don’t need to know what you’re saying right now to know it’s a lie!”
Patricia translated the statement for Kasshas, whose tail went limp and hit the floor.
“And you,” Ben growled as he turned back to Alacea. “You’re under arrest. Under Section Seven, Paragraph Three of the Articles of Surrender, you will be held pending investigation of possible involvement in crimes against humanity, specifically the targeted killing of three hundred, seventy-three thousand civilians on the Persephone colony. Patricia, translate!”
Patricia turned to Alacea and cleared her throat.
Ben bit his lip but wouldn’t look at Patricia. “I get the feeling that your translation wasn’t nearly as meaningful as the original,” he accused.
The terp officer shrugged helplessly.
“Ramirez! Baird! Take her into custody!” Ben ordered.
Ramirez and Burgers jumped. Ramirez leaned over to his friend and whispered frantically. “Dude, I didn’t bring zip ties!”
“You are the worst Ranger!” Burgers hissed back.
“You don’t need to cuff her,” Ben told them in exasperation. “Just put her in an LTV.”
“Yes, Sir!” Ramirez replied, and the two stepped forward, each taking hold of one of Alacea’s arms. They led her out the front door.
Kasshas rallied one more time.
Patricia gave Ben the gist, and the Ranger turned back to him. “You can come visit her to check on her condition tomorrow,” he told the Va’Shen. “With my maps.” He gave Patricia the nod, and she translated his statement as best she could.
With that, the two turned to leave. Kasshas, wide-eyed, fell to his knees.
Alacea, her head lowered, her ears drooped and her tail brushing against the ground as she walked, allowed the two Dark Ones to lead her outside where several other Dark Ones awaited her. She had wanted this, all but begged their Overlord for this, over the objections of her own people and the village chief, but now that she had it, fear gripped her heart. This was her role, one she knew she would play for her community, if not in this life than the next, all her life.
But Great Ones be merciful, she was so afraid.
What were they going to do with her? The legends she knew told her the Dark Ones’ depravity was matched only by their creativity when it came to wielding that depravity. They could do anything to her.
And she would accept it. That was her role.
The dark-skinned one kept hold of her arm while the lighter-skinned one opened a door in the back of their wheeled vehicle. She leaned forward to look inside, her curiosity momentarily outweighing her fear. Inside was a sparse and gloomy chair a sick greenish color.
“Okay, Miss, in you go,” Ramirez told her.
She didn’t understand his speech, but his gesture was obvious. Alacea looked again and immediately saw a complication. The seat-back was straight and space was cramped. There was no opening for her tail.
He didn’t.
“That’s right, Ma’am,” he said. “Butt in the seat. Let’s go.”
Alacea cleared her throat and resigned herself to the coming indignity. Carefully, she reached inside and grabbed the back of the front seat to steady herself before pulling herself inside. She turned, her tail poking out of the LTV’s door, and she tried to get it situated so she could sit without hurting it. She finally managed to fit in the seat by pushing herself as far forward against the back of the front seat as she could, her tail bending uncomfortably to rest in the space between her seat and the next.
Ramirez finally figured out what her complaint had been and cleared his throat sympathetically. “Sorry, Ma’am,” he said. “They’re all like this.”
Alacea ignored him. She pushed her face against the front seat-back and tried to hide her terrified eyes.
“Sir,” Patricia began as she and Ben approached the lead LTV. “About the girl…”
“She confessed to a war crime, didn’t she?” Ben snapped at her.
Patricia didn’t answer immediately, and Ben gave her a pointed look, waiting for her to say something. “Well, yes,” she finally relented. “But surely you don’t believe that some farmer’s daughter or something is secretly part of the Va’Shen high command?”
“Let’s turn the situation around,” Ben told her as he opened the passenger door. “Let’s say the Va’Shen suddenly turned the war around after we nuked their cities and invaded Earth. Now, if I work at the Pentagon, and I had something to do with those nukes, I think I’d probably make myself scarce. Like take my family and hide in the deepest darkest coal mine in West Virginia or something.”
“We’re not authorized to investigate war crimes!” she cried.
“No, but we can hold her until we can get someone from Jamieson who can,” he shot back.
“Yeah, but is this really the best way to handle the situation?” she asked. “I mean, for all intents and purposes, we’re basically taking this woman hostage! We’re supposed to be making friends here, not taking revenge against our enemies!”
“Look, what do you want from me?!” he snapped at her. “I’m not some State Department whiz-kid, all right?” He lowered his voice as he continued. “I’m a Ranger. I kill people and I break their stuff. That’s what I’m trained for. That’s what I know. But one thing I do know for sure is that that guy…” He pointed back at Kasshas’s office, “… has been playing me for a damn fool since we got here! Now, he seems to really care about what happens to this girl. Maybe she’s a daughter, or a niece or something, I don’t know. But if taking her claim seriously for a little bit shakes a little cooperation out of him, I’m for it.”
He stopped talking and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Patricia didn’t reply.
“I can’t get a village back on its feet without villagers,” he told her quietly. He straightened and turned from her, taking a moment to look at the sky and take a breath.
“They’re in a cave,”
Patricia told him quietly.
He turned back to her, surprise plain on his face. “What?”
Patricia nodded. “I didn’t catch everything she said when she first busted in,” she explained. “She was talking real fast, and I was surprised, but I did recognize the word ‘cave.’” She nodded as if to agree with her own conclusion. “Not only do I think she knows where they are, I think she just came from there. She’s obviously been in the wilderness for awhile.”
Ben looked at his lieutenant with newfound respect. “That’s a heckuva catch, LT,” he said. “You should play for the Browns.”
The terp smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
“Interro…” He paused and switched words. “Interview her and see what you can find out.”
“And if she did have something to do with Persephone?” she asked, a touch of trepidation in her voice.
“Then we turn her and your interview notes over to the CJTF for action,” he told her. “By the book.”
Mollified, Patricia nodded. “Yes, Sir.” She turned and started to circle the LTV to find her seat.
Ben turned to enter the vehicle himself but stopped as Ramirez trotted up to him. “Sir, about the prisoner…”
The captain sighed. “Ramirez, if you’re about to tell me she couldn’t possibly have done it because she’s too cute, I’m gonna lose it…”
“No, Sir, not that,” the NCO assured him. “It’s just… where do you want us to put her? We don’t have a stockade.”
“Put her in the Distinguished Visitor quarters,” Ben told him, climbing into the LTV. “Find four female Rangers for guard duty and keep a watch on her. See to her needs and make sure she’s comfortable.” He closed the door and continued speaking through the window. “Treat her with respect, Ramirez. Got it?”
“Yes, Sir.” Ramirez gave him a jaunty salute and jogged back to his LTV.
Well, Ben thought, That could have gone better.
It could have gone worse, he thought back.
The day is young…
Chapter 4
As the vehicle she rode in bounced down the dirt track, Alacea managed to turn her head to see a little out the window. She had not yet seen the Dark Ones’ encampment and was alarmed to see just how many of them there were in her village. Vehicles rumbled through the camp, and new buildings were being erected. She gasped as she suddenly realized she knew this area, had played there as a child, but the big purple guum trees were gone, taken by the Dark Ones’ military needs as she was.
The Vixen War Bride Page 6