Silent Songs

by Kathleen O'Malley

  "But suppose they aren't funneled to this one spot?" Abdul worried. "They aren't deer or fish, they're intelligent."

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  Idoto said nothing, just kept towing the balding chemist till they'd slipped behind the maze of crates and entered the pylon elevator. "It'll work, it'll work," she reassured him, once they were safely behind its doors.

  They could hear feet, lots of feet, pounding on the floor, echoing wildly around the cargo. The elevator started to descend, bringing them back to the body of the ship.

  They both turned to their voders, watched the scene the small sentry camera relayed back to them. Idoto shivered at the sight of the alien troops searching for them. The elevator descended placidly, as if they were in a department store, not a spaceship, fighting for their lives.

  Soon, their screens were so filled with soldiers, they could see nothing else.

  "Now!" she said to Abdul. "Now! Now!"

  He waited two more seconds, then punched the last command into his voder. Suddenly their voders went gray as thick, cloying smoke engulfed the camera. Alarms in the elevator clanged raucously and lights flashed.

  "Attention!" the computer voice intoned. "Attention! There is a fire in B wing, cargo area sixteen. The wing is sealed; fire containment protocol is being enacted."

  Abdul and Idoto grinned at each other and hugged, giddy with their success.

  Every lock and bulkhead in the entire wing would be impossible to raise now without special override codes punched in by the Captain herself. The elevator stopped, opening its doors into the body of the ship, near their quarters.

  Abdul spoke into his voder. "B wing is secure, Captain Stepp. Tell the crew to detach." Now if only the team in A wing was as successful.

  Javier and Carlotta tied another invisible trip wire across a wide space framed by a cluster of chairs in the observation lounge. The chairs were a decent anchor for the wires, and the other chairs would block the area so this would seem like the only logical path. He scanned the lounge, hardly believing he'd been killing time here just a few hours before.

  He glanced at the nearby airlock, its framework, computer system, and controls all decorated to meld in with, the lounge's decor. The innocuous-appearing airlock was now framed by the strategic placement of chairs. That lock had been the entrance through which Javier had first boarded this ship from the Terran space station that orbited Earth's moon. This lounge had been his introduction to the Brolga; it was where those destined to 179

  travel to Trinity had first been assembled for introductions and an orientation to the beginning of their new careers. And now, aliens in one of the Singing Crane's own shuttlecraft were hovering outside it, working doggedly to breach it and invade the Brolga.

  Noriko Imanaka sat beside the control panel with a full array of computer equipment, as the software specialist counteracted and overrode the electronic invasion from the other side of the lock. In the last few minutes her intent expression had turned positively grim. Javier nodded to Carlotta.

  "Are they going to get in?" the linguist asked bluntly.

  "Not if I can help it," the Asian woman grumbled.

  Suddenly the lock's lights began flashing, warning that it was about to cycle.

  Noriko's fingers flew over her equipment, shutting the cycle down. How long could she keep that up?

  "You can't stay here," he said softly. "Put in some codes and come with us."

  Noriko shook her head. "You go on. I'll keep them out for as long as I can. I'll leave before they get in. Go ahead!"

  He knew she was lying, and by the look on Carlotta's face, the linguist did, too. They'd done all they could here. Their poor traps were all set; Javier and Carlotta's job was finished.

  Leaving Noriko in the lounge, they traveled through the halls, closing and locking every bulkhead, running more trip wires, some at ankle height, some at the knees, some at eye level. They attached them to anything they could find. If the invaders entered through the observation lounge lock, they'd have to go through the passenger decks and the dining room to find their way to the bridge.

  Javier told himself they'd never get past Noriko as he and Carlotta opened every cabin door on all four decks, even ones that had never been occupied.

  Good soldiers would have to check and secure every room ... and some of them held surprises.

  Captain Stepp ordered Renata to detach A wing--the second one to go--then sagged against a hibernation unit, exhausted. She couldn't believe what her chrono told her--that it'd only been eighty minutes since they'd docked with the Singing Crane. At least they'd managed to disable most of the cumbersome safety programs; the Brolga was moving faster now. They were almost at the big moon, and still broadcasting their alarm--though Bruce's had stopped, she wasn't sure when.

  The detached wings had large companies of soldiers trapped inside them, and that pleased her. But the Patuxent was attached

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  to the Brolga's body like an engorged tick, ready to send its virus into her vessel. Well, once they were past this moon they'd really pick up speed. She wondered how her uninvited guests would feel about an unprepared jump into metaspace. She pictured them all appearing in Mizari space, with ships full of League Irenics waiting for them.

  Her voder flashed and she glimpsed Renata's latest message. The aliens had breached the observation lounge lock. They were in. Actually in her ship. Her beautiful, new ship. She blinked, shaking off the sick feeling inside her.

  The hibernation area stood between the bridge and the tail, and the invaders were coming from the head. Even so, aliens traveling through the upper decks of the passenger cabins could go over the bridge and end up in the hibernation area. So, two of her crew, Brian, the hardware specialist, and Misha, a steward, had unlocked and darkened each and every one of the hundred empty hibernator units. Each unit had a cabinet beneath it, and each of those had been unlocked. And each one would have to be checked by an invader before it could be secured. Having finished, the three of them collapsed together behind one of the sleepers.

  Misha handed Jane a makeshift bolo, but she waved it away. She'd never been much good at throwing. He'd secured a medical scalpel onto a sturdy plastic pipe, and Brian hefted a makeshift club. She found herself wishing that she and her crew knew Grus Sign Language, so they could

  communicate over their voders in silence, the way the passengers did.

  They were sitting near an air vent, and suddenly a Simiu roar echoed out.

  "Oh, no," Stepp whispered. She should be with the passengers. How had she ended up here, behind the action?

  Her voder flashed, seeming impossibly bright.

  "Captain," Renata's voice said tiredly, "they're in the passengers' quarters.

  We're still not past the outer moon."

  Still within the solar system, Jane realized. We still can't go to stellar velocity.

  ¦ "Okay," said Stepp, trying to think of what else they could do. She felt incredibly helpless.

  Suddenly the harsh mechanical sound of a crude, artificial translator voice blared from the ship-wide intercom. "Passengers and crew. Your ship has been conquered by the Chosen. Avoid injury. Surrender now. You will not be harmed."

  The startling announcement lent an air of unreality to everything that had happened, as if those words were more powerful than invading ships, soldiers, or anything else.

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  Jane tried to get her voder to bring in an image from some of the safety cameras in the passengers' area, and finally found herself staring at a full-blown battle. A surge of soldiers charged a handful of passengers, then some of the aliens went down. The aliens charged over their fallen comrades, shooting at the passengers with some odd weapon. Other aliens entered into individual cabins, only to have cabin doors slam shut behind them. Fire alarms sounded. There were screams, alien and human.

  More troops came into view.

  Where are they all coming from? she wondered frantically.

  Just then, Stepp felt a ha
nd on her shoulder and turned to face the deaf ethnobotanist. He'd startled Misha and Brian as well.

  "The aliens are in the passengers' quarters," Javier told her.

  "Yes, I know. How's it going?"

  He paused for a moment. "We lost five people in A wing. They didn't get to the elevator in time. As the aliens go through the cabins, whoever's been captured has been removed."

  "Killed?" she asked, but he only shrugged.

  "We were badly outnumbered to start with," he said. "But soon, there'll be only a handful of us left. We need to talk about.. . what will happen if they take the bridge."

  If they take the bridge before we get into metaspace, we're finished, Jane thought. This Wasn't a battleship, it was a passenger and supply vessel, not as fancy as a cruise ship, but with more amenities than a tug. There was only one bridge, no real weapons, and--contrary to popular fiction--no auto-destruct sequence.

  "You went to all the trouble to come out here to talk to me, so you must have a plan," Stepp said hopefully.

  Javier gave her a half smile. "We've got maps of the service tubes. If they take the bridge, they'll probably call on you to surrender again. The rest of us can storm the bridge through the tubes after you give yourself up, while you're pretending to persuade us to submit." He watched her, waiting to see what she thought. "While we engage them, you can evacuate the air from the rest of the ship, killing the troops outside the bridge. Without their army, the few left on the bridge will have to yield."

  Stepp watched him, her mind working furiously. Suppose the other passengers weren't dead? Suppose they were holding them in the

  observation lounge? She could scan the holos that showed the ship's interiors. If she didn't see any humans ... it could work.

  Stepp glanced at the men flanking her. "What do you think?"

  "Giving up doesn't feel right to me," Misha said.

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  "I want to keep fighting," Brian agreed.

  Stepp faced Javier. "Take these two with you, you'll need them. If the aliens ask me to surrender, I'll follow your script. You'll have to move quietly."

  "We can be quiet, Captain." Javier reached over and shook her hand. "Good luck."

  The two crewmen followed the ethnobotanist around a hibernator and disappeared.

  The minute they were out of sight, the Captain regretted her decision. There had to be a better way, a plan that made more sense . . . but she'd been wracking her brain since this whole thing began and hadn't come up with anything better. There was nothing in her training that prepared her for this kind of emergency. She shook her head, trying not to second-guess her decision. Not fifteen minutes later, her voder flashed, grabbing her attention.

  "Jane, they're outside the bridge," Renata said breathlessly, her composure fraying. "We're just about ready to come around the back of the moon . . . we should really be able to increase our speed then . . . ."

  Chris called her, and the navigator turned her back to Jane, responding to her crew, trying to keep them together. She left her station, and Jane watched her lean over Moshe's console, and rapidly punch in some codes, while glancing at the doors.

  I should be there, Jane thought guiltily, wanting to bolt from her hiding place.

  "We're okay," Renata told the crew loudly, sounding as though she were trying to reassure herself, "we're okay!"

  "No good!" Chris called out. "It's not working!"

  Jane's stomach clutched as the sealed bridge doors lurched, then opened.

  She watched, mesmerized, as a dozen bodies poured through the doors.

  Renata worked mindlessly, as if there was still something she could do to keep them out. Chris leaped from his chair, grabbing the red-haired woman by the shoulders and yanking her away from the console. But it was useless; they were surrounded. Moshe sat at his station, wide-eyed, as the aliens loomed over him.

  Stepp pressed her forehead against a hibernator, wishing she could just wake up.

  "Captain Stepp," the mechanical translator voice rang out tonelessly over the ship's intercom, "your control place--your 'bridge'--has been secured. We wish to cause no harm. Please surrender and order your crew and

  passengers to do the same."

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  Jane shook her head, wondering how she should respond.

  "Captain Stepp," the bodiless voice intoned, "we have your . . . navigator.

  She will persuade you."

  That'll be the day, Stepp thought contemptuously. Renata and she had served together for years. She'd like to see anyone make that woman do something she didn't want to.

  Renata yelled out, loud and clear, "Don't give up! Stand your ground!" Her admonition was abruptly cut off, and instantly replaced by a long, pain-wracked scream. Jane covered her ears, and turned to the voder, but she could only see the backs of aliens, everyone moving, scrambling.

  Renata's screaming stopped, and Stepp could hear a sob, but then the navigator called out raggedly, "Don't give up, Jane!"

  Then Taylor screamed again, and again, and yet again. Moments later, her shrieks were joined by a male, Moshe, Jane thought.

  "No!" Jane yelled helplessly at the voder, forgetting the sounds were coming over the intercom, that no one was paying attention to their voders. "Stop it, damn it! Stop it!"

  "Captain Stepp," the hated mechanical voice intoned, as if it had heard her,

  "listen to your staff." The screams stopped, but she could plainly hear muted sobbing in the background. "It is wasteful and unnecessary for you to make us abuse them in this way. You are in a damaged ship, with no hope of rescue. Meet with us, and negotiate instead."

  "No," Renata whimpered in the background, "don't, Jane."

  "You have five . . . minutes ... to consider our offer," the mechanical voice intoned. "After that, your staff will persuade you again. They will continue to persuade you until you come forward. This persuasion causes no corporal damage and can be administered indefinitely."

  That's it, the Captain thought bleakly. I can't make them go through that.

  The short walk to her bridge seemed interminable. Once outside the bridge doors, she had to compose herself before facing the beings that had raped her ship, and captured and tortured her crew. Finally, she touched the controls, and the door slid smoothly up in its tracks.

  That smell hit her again, the same odd odor she'd noticed when the airlock to the Crane had started to open. Her gorge rose, and she forced it down.

  She made herself face the nearest soldier. "I'm Captain Stepp," she said softly.

  "No," moaned Renata through clenched teeth. Her face was red and blotchy, and she was restrained by two of them, as were

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  Moshe and Chris, but otherwise they all seemed unharmed.

  "It's okay, Renata," Stepp murmured. She scanned her bridge, staring at the strange aliens who'd totally changed her life. "So, who's in charge?"

  A rotund, green and gold being stepped forward and trilled oddly. "I am Dacris, Second-in-Conquest, and new Captain of this vessel," its translator rasped.

  Not yet, buddy, Stepp thought angrily.

  "Captain Stepp," Dacris said, "there are still passengers and crew unaccounted for. They must come forward or . .."

  "I know, I know," she said anxiously. "I was cut off from them, completely alone. They must be scattered all over the ship. Let me talk to them. They'll surrender, but it'll take time for them to get here."

  Dacris stared at her with his bizarre, marbled eyes. "Tell them to hurry ... or you will have to persuade them."

  Renata paled as he said that and Jane felt a flush of goose bumps travel over her skin. She stepped over to the intercom. "Before I call them. .. please tell me ... why have you done this? What do you want? We are only interested in peaceful interactions with other intelligent beings."

  The alien moved close to her, and she had to force herself not to flinch.

  "Your people have caused the death of over twelve of my soldiers, while I took the space station and this
vessel without a single death on your side.

  You talk of peaceful interactions? Your people aren't fit to live."

  "Is that what's going to happen to us, now?" Stepp asked worriedly. "Will you kill us because we resisted you?"

  "We are a civilized people," Dacris said. "We don't waste resources, and now, that's what you are. A resource, to be trained, cultivated, bred .. ." he ran a clammy digit over her face, "consumed. .. . Your offspring and their offspring will serve my house and my table. I'll look forward to that."

  Jane took a deep breath and pulled her eyes away from him, trying not to think of the foolhardy group creeping through the service tubes. It had to work. It had to.

  She turned to the intercom. "Attention . . . Attention .. . All passengers . . . All crew .. . This is Captain Stepp . . ." She swallowed. "I am asking you to give yourselves up. Come to the bridge, and give yourselves up. You won't be harmed. Just come to the bridge as soon as you can." She paused, then repeated it over and over, assuring the empty rooms and hallways that there was no choice, that it was time to give up.

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  Twice her voice cracked, while Renata's quiet sobs sounded as bitter background music to her speech. Dacris moved to the bridge doors, waiting for the first person to appear.

  "Do you command so little loyalty," he asked Stepp, "that you can get no one to obey you?"

  "I told you, they're scattered . .. it'll take a while."

  "Hold her," Dacris commanded his troops casually. "Give her the rod. They'll move faster if she persuades them."

  The nearest soldiers grabbed Jane's arms as a third pointed a short, black club at her.

  Renata shrieked, "NO! DON'T DO IT! NO!" distracting everyone on the bridge.

  At the same moment, the two service doors slid open, and four enraged Simiu leaped out, teeth bared, roaring their battle challenge. Behind them, humans poured through the doors armed with clubs, scalpels, garrotes, and chains.

  Renata lurched, freeing herself from her distracted captors. Grabbing a keyboard, she wielded it like a bat, attacking the soldier nearest her, smashing its skull. Taking advantage of the sudden confusion, Stepp slammed her booted foot down on the instep of the alien holding her right arm. She felt delicate bones snap, and the being screamed and released her. Swinging her fist with all the power born of desperation, she plunged it into the huge eye of the guard holding her left.