And now this.
“Nicole,” Seana said, taking a step closer to her friend and gently putting a hand on her shoulder. “A report came in across the op’s desk. A week ago, something happened… on Hallmark.” She paused, unsure as to how to continue, her mouth working as if she were chewing something unpalatable, indigestible.
“Dammit, Seana,” Nicole lashed out, her heart thundering with dread, “what is it?”
“The Kreelans attacked Hallmark, Nicole,” Seana said softly, ready to break down in tears herself. Then she went on with the brutal truth, knowing that Nicole would not tolerate any of the candy coating so many others needed to take with their dose of tragedy. “They used something – some kind of new weapon, or so the rumor goes – that burned away the planet’s entire atmosphere. The surface…” She shook her head. “There was nothing left.” Her voice had fallen to a whisper as she watched the blood drain from Nicole’s face.
José finished it for her. “There were no survivors, and no record of what happened during the attack, except some debris from the orbital defense network. That’s the only reason they’re sure it was an attack instead of some bizarre natural disaster or something.”
“That’s enough, José,” Seana told him. “I think she gets the picture.”
Nicole did not hear her. The flight bag that she had been clutching so tightly in eager anticipation of her departure fell to the floor with an empty thud, the precious books and chocolates now dead weight without destination or purpose. The image of Hallmark boiled into her mind, the planet’s atmosphere burning away, incinerating the surface as it blew off into space. Tens of thousands of human bodies swirled in its wake.
“Non,” Nicole murmured, shaking her head slowly as first Reza’s, and then Wiley’s face swam out of the maelstrom, the flesh burning away until there was nothing left but a charred husk, the jaws locked open in an unending scream of agony. “Mon Dieu, pourquoi?” she whispered, her hands pressed tightly to her eyes to shut out the living nightmare. The only family left to her had been torn away like a tender sapling in a brutal whirlwind, spinning away into darkness. “Why? Oh, God, why?”
But God had no answer. He stood silently by as she collapsed into her friends’ waiting arms.
CHAPTER FIVE
Reza awoke with a blinding headache, waves of pain pounding inside his head in a symphony of agony. He was not sure how long he had been floating on the edge of consciousness, but bit by bit he came to the conclusion that he was still in one piece, alive.
He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids were solidly gummed shut. With a seemingly Herculean effort, he managed to pop them open with a sickeningly loud crackle. Mercifully, the light in this place, wherever he was, was turned down low, the features around him lost in shadow, blurry. He felt some sort of bedding underneath him, hairy and thick like an animal hide, its faint musky odor reminding him of the real leather coat he had seen Mary Acherlein sometimes wear to the library before she went out on a date.
As his hands probed his surroundings, he incidentally discovered that he was completely naked. Any other time he might have tried to be modest. Right now, however, he was still in too much pain, and the memories of the attack on Hallmark filled him with dread.
He sensed movement to his right. Much to his regret, he tried to turn his head. The resulting typhoon of pain threatened to render him unconscious again, but after a moment it began to subside. He stifled a groan and tried to keep himself from recoiling as the Kreelan who had been silently sitting next to him applied a cool, moist cloth to his forehead.
“Who are you?” he murmured at the blurred shadow with blue skin, the sound of his voice reverberating painfully in his skull. His forehead tingled from whatever the cloth had been soaked in. The Kreelan held it there for a few moments, watching him with the inscrutable expression of a reptile.
She reached to her side to pick up a wide-brim cup holding a foul smelling concoction. She lifted his head with one hand, careful not to scratch his skin with her talon-like nails, and put the cup to his lips. He vainly tried to turn his head away. The smell of the cup’s contents forced him to the brink of vomiting.
“Drink.” The alien’s command, spoken in Standard with the husky voice of one used to being obeyed, caught Reza completely by surprise. He involuntarily gaped at her, never having heard of a Kreelan speaking in a human language, and she used the opportunity to toss the oily liquid down his throat. That left him with no choice but to swallow it quickly or drown. He decided to swallow, as his benefactress looked in no mood to try and resuscitate him.
“Ugh!” he croaked, trying with all his might to keep from throwing up. The alien pinned him with one silver-nailed hand and forced him to drink the dregs that remained in the cup. “Oh, God,” he gasped, “what is that?”
Not surprisingly, she did not respond. Instead, she gave him a cup of water to chase down the offensive brew. After he had drunk it all, she released him, taking the cloth and wiping his face and neck free of the liquid that had spilled from his lips. She threw the cloth into a small earthen bowl and returned her gaze to Reza.
“What is your name?” she asked in eerily accented Standard, her white fangs glistening as she spoke.
Reza saw that her skin was as smooth and sleek as the handmade porcelain he had seen in a spaceport shop once, with lips that were a very deep red and lustrous as satin in the soft light. Her silver-flecked cat’s eyes, perfectly spaced above a sleek nose that probably was much more adept at its job than his, were clear and bright, taking in everything in an instant. The talons on the ends of her fingers were short and silver, and stood in marked contrast to the gold-trimmed ebony neckband with its hanging pendants that was a trademark feature of every Kreelan ever observed by humanity. Had she not been the enemy, she might have been considered beautiful.
“Reza,” he said, choking back the pain in his head. “Reza Gard.”
She gave a quiet huff at the information. “This,” she held up the cup that had held the horrible liquid, “will relieve your pain and allow you to begin soon.”
“Begin what?” he asked. He looked around again. “Where am I? And who are you?”
His warden narrowed her eyes. Then she reached forward with one hand and flicked a single finger against Reza’s still-throbbing skull. He gasped at the pain.
“Animals do not ask questions,” she growled. But after a moment she went on – whether in answer to Reza’s questions or as part of a prepared speech, he did not know – in near perfect Standard, spoken slowly as if Reza were a complete imbecile. “I am Esah-Zhurah.” She considered him silently for a moment. “You, and those like you, were chosen by the Empress to come among Her Children, that you may be shown the Way, so that She may know if animals such as you have a soul.”
For a moment, Reza was simply shocked, but then her words gave rise to anger. “Of course I have a soul, you–”
She flicked his head again, harder this time, and Reza let out a yelp of pain.
“That,” she hissed, “you will have ample time to demonstrate, human.”
She suddenly stood up. “You will rest now,” she ordered. “When I return, you will be ready to begin. We have much to do.” With that, she disappeared down a dim hallway, her black armor and braided jet hair melding into the shadows.
Shaken and confused, Reza wondered what new Hell he had fallen into, and if anyone else from Hallmark was still alive.
* * *
In the days that followed, Reza found himself clothed in animal skins and introduced to the “apartment” (he had no idea what else to call it) that was to be his world for the foreseeable future. There were no windows, nor could he open the door he thought might lead to the outside world, whatever it was. There was a single main chamber in which he himself slept, as well as an atrium (with walls too tall to climb) containing an open pit fireplace that served as a kitchen. The second door in the apartment led to the Kreelan girl’s room. Both doors were kept firmly locked.
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Air vents, much too small for his growing body to negotiate, were arrayed about the apartment and kept the air from getting stale, although it was always either too hot or too cold. This did not bother his keeper, and he decided not to let it bother him, either. He had lived through much worse in the fields, and even the Kreelan girl was more socially palatable than Muldoon had been.
Each day began with the same ritual, a portion of roasted meat brought to his bedside by the Kreelan (she apparently did not trust him in the kitchen) and however much water he chose to drink. She did not eat with him, but watched silently, as if she were observing a rodent in a psychology experiment, taking notes in her head. The only time he asked her if there was anything else to eat – vegetables or fruit, perhaps – she had grabbed his meat from him and disposed of it somewhere, refusing to feed him for the next two days.
He did not make that mistake again.
Once the morning meal was over, she sat him down in the atrium and began to teach him their language and a seemingly endless series of obscure customs and protocols, grilling him mercilessly on what he had been taught as they stopped for the mid-day ration of meat and water. The language came to him quickly, but many of the other things she tried to teach him – so much of it based on a hierarchical symbology of Kreelan history that was often totally beyond him – were difficult to understand at all, let alone absorb and remember. But he tried, and quickly he learned.
During these inquisitions, her reactions to his answers varied from thoughtful contemplation to severe beatings that left him with bleeding welts and horrendous bruises that did not go down for days. He had learned to accept them quietly, as protest or complaint only seemed to make the treatment more severe, and he did not feel quite strong enough to challenge her. Yet. Survival was paramount, but his pride ensured that he looked her in the eye, even if he had to pry them open from the swelling to do so.
When the endless hours of study were over, she returned him to his room where she directed him to exercise. She did not care what he did, as long as he expended energy doing it. He did pushups, sit-ups, and chin-ups from the rafters in the ceiling, or just jumped up and down on the pad of skins that was his bed. He did this for as long as he had to, for to stop before she ordered was to invite anything from a scolding to a beating, generally depending on how well he had done during the preceding learning period.
After that, she made him wash himself from the cold water that dribbled from an open pipe in one wall of his room that provided water for drinking, washing, and sanitation. This was also when he discovered that modesty was something the Kreelans apparently did not believe in. After the first few times he had to stand naked under the frigid water and Esah-Zhurah’s equally frigid stare, he stopped feeling embarrassed. His haste to get dressed was more to get warm and dry than to conceal his nakedness from her alien eyes.
Then there was the evening meal, consisting of yet more meat and water, after which he was allowed to collapse into an exhausted sleep.
He was able to keep this up for what he thought must have been several months before he realized that he was becoming ill, and he was fairly sure of its cause: malnutrition. He knew that his body could not survive on meat alone. While it was adapting as well as it could after the trauma of the voyage to wherever he was now, given enough time his present diet was as lethal to him as poison. He knew of rickets and other diseases caused by malnutrition, and knew that if he was to live for much longer, he needed more than just the stringy red meat served to him three times a day from an unclean plate.
The only problem would be to convince his keeper of these facts. With him being a mere animal in her eyes, that wasn’t going to be easy. Reza had to act.
When the girl came in one morning with his hunk of meat and water, she found Reza already awake and clothed, standing near his bedding. She usually had to rouse him from his exhausted stupor with a rap on the head or leg, whichever happened to be protruding from the skins, and actually showed surprise that he was awake.
“So, my animal is eager this morning, is it?” she commented as she plopped the meat down on his bed and stood back to watch him eat. Reza did not glance at the meat.
“My name is Reza,” he said firmly in Standard, an offense that itself warranted a beating, for he was only to speak in what she called the Language of Her Children, or not at all, “and I’m not your pet animal.” He gestured at the smoldering meat. “My body needs more than just meat to survive. If you want me to keep playing your stupid little games, you’re going to have to give me some fruit and vegetables and let me out of this hole to get more sunlight.”
For a moment, she simply stood there, utterly stunned. Her eyes went wide and her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides.
When she finally reacted, Reza was ready for her. Another resolution he had made in the night while he contemplated his failing health was that he was going to make her earn the right to beat him, because if he waited much longer, he might not have the strength to defend himself at all.
She hissed an alien curse between her teeth and stepped toward him, her right hand reaching behind her to the short whip clipped to her back armor, the instrument she used to deliver the worst of the beatings she meted out.
Predicting her move, Reza rushed her the moment she was committed to working the whip’s catch. Her surprise was such that she simply stood there as he launched himself into the air over the short expanse between them, bowling her over onto the floor where they struggled in a desperate embrace.
Reza held her from behind, pinning her arms so that she could not lash out at him with her claws, but he was unable to hold her for long. She was larger than he was, taller and stronger, and several times she bashed his head by flinging her own back and forth.
Realizing the precariousness of his failing grip, he let go and rolled away, barely avoiding her talons as they gouged the floor centimeters from his spine.
The two got to their feet, and Reza noticed that the whip lay on the floor near his bedding, practically at Esah-Zhurah’s feet. But she had no need of it. Her claws were all she needed to kill him.
“Well, come on then!” he shouted, adrenaline surging through his body. He knew that if he died now, at least he would die fighting, which was better than many could ever hope for in this war.
Esah-Zhurah moved toward him slowly, her eyes fixed on his and her fangs bared in rage. Her nails were spread in a calculated pattern that would do the most damage should they make contact with her prey. The small room gave little opportunity for maneuver, and Reza saw his options evaporating with every cautious step she took.
But then he saw with slow-motion clarity her mistake, the mistake he needed. She stepped onto the hide rug, the edge of which lay at Reza’s feet. Suddenly dropping to the floor, he grabbed the rug’s edge and yanked it up and back with all his strength, snapping it like a magician pulling the tablecloth from under a full setting of priceless china.
Esah-Zhurah gave a startled yelp as she flipped backward, her arms flailing in a futile attempt to balance her fall. Her head made a sickening thump as it hit the stone floor, hard.
She lay dazed, moaning, and Reza snatched up the whip. Rolling her over and leaping onto her back, he wrapped it tightly around her neck above the neckband. He held the whip’s ends in his hands and planted one knee in her back, putting his full weight behind it. As her senses returned, she began to struggle, weakly at first, and then with growing strength at the realization that she had been fooled. But Reza tightened his grip, forcing her to the brink of unconsciousness before she stopped struggling.
She lay there gasping, her hands reaching feebly for the black leather whip. Her eyes bulged, and saliva ran from her gaping mouth.
“Stu…pid animal,” she rasped, straining against the dark clouds of unconsciousness that loomed over her.
Reza leaned close to her ear. “Listen to me,” he said, his own breath coming in heaves from holding her at bay, his arms beginning to burn furiousl
y from the exertion, “I want to live. But I’m not going to live as an animal in whatever experiment you’re running here. I am something more. I need more to survive: more food, more light, more freedom, and you’re going to give them to me.” He tugged savagely on the whip, eliciting a gag from Esah-Zhurah. “And you’re not going to beat me anymore. If you don’t want to see me as your equal, that’s fine. I know I am, and that’s enough for now. But if you want to go on treating me like an animal, then just nod your head and I’ll kill you now and take my chances.” He paused a moment, catching his breath. “What’s it going to be?”
She hissed and strained against him, and then finally gave up. She laid both hands on the floor, palms down.
“Kazh,” she said softly, bitterness evident in her voice. “Stop.”
“All right,” Reza said warily. He let go of the whip with one hand, then uncoiled it quickly from her neck before she could get hold of it. “I think I’ll keep this for now, if you don’t mind,” he told her, quickly backing away and making ready for a renewed assault, “as a reminder of the bargain you just made.”
She made no move to strike out at him. Instead, she lay gasping for a few moments before finally rising to her feet, turning toward him as she did so. He could see that she was still dazed from hitting the floor, but she surprised him with what she did next. He thought for a moment that she was collapsing. Instead, she knelt to the floor, bowed her head to him, and crossed her left arm over her breast in an alien salute. Then she stood up, without lifting her gaze, and unsteadily made her way out of the room.
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