“Where was home?”
“Neeber’s Knob.”
“It took a direct hit from a twenty-megaton bomb.”
“I think she knew that,” the pilot said evenly.
“Yes,” Norwood replied. “I suppose she did. So why stay?”
The pilot ran a mental systems check. It came up clean. “Different people react in different ways. She wanted to go home. I want to grease some geeks.”
“Yeah,” Norwood agreed. “So would I.”
The pilot sent a thought through the interface, felt the G-forces pile on, and arrowed up through the smoke.
Baldwin screamed, and screamed, and screamed. Not with pain, but with pleasure, for the Hudathan machines were capable of dispensing both. He lay naked on the metal table, muscles rigid under the surface of his skin, gasping for air as another orgasm rippled through his body. His penis was so rigid that he thought it would explode. Sometimes he almost wished it would.
Part of the human sex act involves release, but the aliens had bypassed that function in order to prolong his pleasure, and in so doing were unknowingly torturing him.
But there was no alternative. The Hudathans believed that it was important to dispense rewards and punishments in a timely fashion. By associating pleasure or pain with a particular event, they hoped to reinforce or discourage the behavior in question. Since Baldwin had provided them with some excellent advice concerning the attack on Worber’s World, he deserved a reward. Never mind whether he liked the reward, or wanted the reward, he deserved the reward and had to receive it.
So Baldwin screamed, the technician waited, and a timer measured the seconds. Finally, when the allotted amount of time had passed, the pleasure stopped. His body tingled all over. The human was only vaguely aware of the 350-pound alien that stepped in to remove his restraints. The straps were intended to protect rather than punish.
There were no wires or leads to disconnect, since all of the necessary circuitry had been surgically implanted into his brain, and was radio-controlled.
That was the part of the bargain that Baldwin liked the least, the knowledge that the aliens were in total control of his body. But it was absolutely necessary if he wanted to continue his relationship with them. If a single word could be used to describe the Hudathan race, it would be “paranoid.”
Except that humans classify “paranoia” as aberrant behavior and Hudathans considered it to be normal. Normal, and desirable given the nature of their home system.
Baldwin knew that Hudatha, their home planet, was fairly Earth-like, and rotated around a star called Ember, which was 29 percent more massive than Terra’s sun.
So even though both stars were about the same age, the gravity generated by Ember’s greater mass had compressed its core, which led to higher central temperatures and more rapid nuclear fusion. That in turn had shortened the star’s life span and caused it to grow significantly larger, redder, and more luminous over the last few million years. The result had been warmer temperatures on the surface of Hudatha, the loss of some species, and increasingly bright sunlight that hurt the eyes.
Having observed these changes, and being scientifically advanced, the Hudatha knew that their sun was headed for red-gianthood and that they would have to move.
Making things even more complicated was the fact that the planet Hudatha was in a Trojan relationship with a jovian binary. The jovians’ centers were separated by only 280,000 kilometers, so their surfaces were only 110,000 kilometers apart.
If there had been no other planets in the system, Hudatha would have followed along behind the jovians in a near perfect circular orbit, but there were other planets, and they tugged on Hudatha just enough to make it oscillate around the following Trojan point. The upshot of it all was a wildly fluctuating climate.
Hudatha had no seasons as such. Major changes came in response to the ever-changing distance between Hudatha and Ember. The chances took place on a time scale of weeks, rather than months, and that meant that at any given time of the year it could be searingly hot, frigidly cold, or anything in between.
And that, Baldwin knew, explained why the Hudathans felt the universe was out to get them, because in a sense it was.
All of which accounted for the implant. If the Hudathans could control a variable, they were sure to do so, knowing that control meant survival. And, to a race like the Hudatha, the very existence of another sentient species was an unendurable threat. A threat that must be encountered, controlled, and if at all possible, completely eliminated.
It was this tendency, this need, that Baldwin was determined to exploit. The only problem was whether he could survive long enough to do so.
The technician released the final restraint and Baldwin sat up. The alien backed away, careful to protect his back, always ready to defend himself—a reaction so ingrained, so natural, that the Hudathan hadn’t even thought about it.
He was seven feet tall, weighed about 350 pounds, and had temperature-sensitive skin. It was gray at the moment, but would turn black under conditions of extreme cold, and white when the air surrounding it became excessively warm. He had a large humanoid head, the vestige of a dorsal fin that ran front to back along the top of his skull, a pair of funnel-like ears, and a frog-like mouth with a bony upper lip, which remained stationary when the creature talked.
“Do you have needs?”
The human swung his feet over the side and addressed the technician in his own tongue, a sibilant language that sounded like snakes hissing. “Yes. A cigarette would be nice.”
“What is a cigarette?”
“Never mind. May I have my equipment, please?”
The Hudathans had no need to wear garb other than equipment such as armor, which explained why the word “clothing” had no equivalent in their language.
The alien made a jabbing motion that meant “yes,” and disappeared. He was back a few moments later with Baldwin’s clothes.
“The war commander requests your presence.”
Baldwin smiled. The humans had arrived, just as he had predicted that they would.
“Excellent. Inform the war commander that I am on my way.”
The Hudathan made no visible response, but Baldwin knew that his message had been subvocalized and transmitted via the technician’s implant.
He zipped the uniform jacket, wished that he could see himself in a mirror, and made his way out into the corridor. It was taller and wider than a human passageway.
His guard, a huge brute named Nikko Imbala-Sa, was waiting (still another precaution to make sure that the human-thing remained under control). Baldwin moved towards the core of the ship. Imbala-Sa followed. The Hudathan equivalent of argrav had generated a rather comfortable 96.1 gee.
This corridor looked exactly like every other passageway on the ship. There were evenly spaced light strips on ceilings and bulkheads, identical junction boxes every twenty feet or so, and gratings that could be removed to service the fiber-optic cables that lay beneath them. Baldwin thought the sameness was boring, but knew that the Hudatha found comfort in the uniformity, suggesting as it did a well-ordered universe.
They arrived at an intersection, waited while a lance commander and his contingent of bodyguards passed by, and approached the lift tubes. There were eight of them clustered together. Four up and four down.
Baldwin waited for an up platform, stepped aboard, and knew that Imbala-Sa would take the next. Each platform was intended to carry one passenger and no more. The human had noticed that Hudathans had a tendency to avoid unstructured group situations whenever possible.
The platforms never actually came to a stop, so it was necessary to watch for the deck that he wanted and jump. Baldwin made the transition smoothly, waited for Imbala-Sa to catch up, and headed for the battleship’s command center.
There were four sentries outside the war commander’s door. All were members of the elite Sun Guard and were heavily armed. They made no attempt to bar Baldwin’s way but omitted the gesture
s of respect that would be afforded to a Hudathan officer. Baldwin ignored it. He had no choice.
The airtight hatch disappeared into the ceiling and Baldwin strode through the newly created opening. Imbala-Sa was right behind him.
The command center was oval in shape, with fifteen niches set into the outer walls, one for each member of the war commander’s personal staff. The cave-like seating arrangements gave the aliens a sense of security and served to protect their backs. Seven of the seats were , filled. Baldwin felt fourteen sets of cold, hard eyes bore their way through him.
The fifteenth seat, the one that belonged to Niman Poseen-Ka himself, was empty.
The center of the room contained a huge holo tank, presently filled with a likeness of Worber’s World and the surrounding system. The holo was at least twenty feet in diameter and looked absolutely life-like. Baldwin knew that if he watched the simulacrum closely enough, he would see tiny fighters strafe the planet’s surface, lights flash as nuclear bombs were detonated, and cities glow as they were burned to slag.
But his eyes were focused on a far more satisfying sign of victory, a woman in the uniform of a full colonel and a man dressed in a flight suit.
Indescribable joy filled Baldwin’s heart. This was it! The moment that he’d been waiting for, the moment when they groveled at his feet, the moment when his revenge was complete! He looked to the right and left.
“Where are they?”
The woman was about his age, pretty, with gray-streaked auburn hair. She was small, five-four or five-five, and very shapely. She projected an aura of strength.
“Where is who?”
“The admiral. The general. The officer they sent to surrender.”
The woman shook her head sadly. “That would be me. The rest are dead.”
Baldwin felt the joy drain away like water released from a dam. “Dead?”
The woman frowned. “Yes, dead.” She gestured towards the holographic likeness of the planet below. The cloud cover was streaked with black smoke. “What did you expect?”
Baldwin struggled to forget long-harbored fantasies and deal with things as they actually were. “Yes, of course. I’m Colonel Alex Baldwin. And you are?”
“Colonel Natalie Norwood. This is Flight Lieutenant Tom Martin.”
Baldwin nodded to Martin and turned back to Norwood. “You had a pleasant trip, I trust?”
“No, we didn’t,” Norwood replied. “Two of your fighters jumped us in the upper atmosphere. We managed to shake them off. Now, let’s eliminate the small talk and get down to brass tacks. You attacked and we lost. What do you want?”
Baldwin smiled. The line came straight from his fantasies. Never mind the fact that the governor or an admiral should have uttered it, the words were perfect.
“Nothing.”
Norwood’s eyebrows shot up. “Nothing?”
“That is correct,” a new voice said. It spoke standard with a hissing accent. “Colonel Baldwin desired nothing more than the satisfaction derived from your arrival.”
Norwood turned to find herself face-to-face with a 450-pound Hudathan. He wore a belt and cross-strap. The strap bore a large green gem. It sparkled with inner light.
Baldwin made a sign of respect. “Colonel Norwood, Lieutenant Martin, this is War Commander Niman Poseen-Ka.”
Norwood held her hands palm-out in the universal gesture of peaceful greeting. She looked the Hudathan in the eye. She saw intelligence there, plus something else. Curiosity? Empathy? A little of both? Or were his emotions so different, so alien, that she could never understand them? But she must try. An entire world was at stake.
“It is an honor to meet you, War Commander Poseen-Ka. Am I to understand that there will be no discussions? No opportunity for a cease-fire?”
“That is correct,” the Hudathan replied evenly. “There is no need to negotiate for that which is already ours.”
Norwood felt a heaviness settle into her stomach. She chose her words carefully.
“But why? Why attack that which you have sacrificed lives to conquer?”
Poseen-Ka blinked, and for a moment, and a moment only, she saw what looked like doubt in his eyes. But was it? There was no way to be sure. His answer was measured and seemed empty of all emotion.
“We will attack as long as there are signs of resistance. Resistance cannot and will not be tolerated.”
“And it’s good practice for the troops,” Baldwin put in cheerfully. “Sort of a warm-up for battles to come. We let all the message torps through, you know. Here’s hoping the Emp responds.”
Norwood looked at Baldwin the same way that a scientist might examine a not altogether pleasant specimen. She saw thick brown hair, parted in the middle and swept back on both sides, a high forehead, intense eyes, patrician nose, and an expressive mouth. A handsome man except for what? A weakness of some kind, which, like a flaw within a metal blade, reveals itself when stressed. Her eyes narrowed and her voice grew hard. “So this is a game? A sop to your ego?”
Baldwin’s eyes flashed with pent-up emotion. A vein started to throb just over his left temple. “No! It’s proof! Proof that they were wrong! Proof that I’m fit for command!”
Suddenly she had it. Colonel Alex Baldwin. Of course! She should have remembered earlier. His court-martial had been big news on Imperial Earth, and even bigger news in military circles, where it was widely believed that he’d been railroaded. Something about a massacre on a rim world, drug addiction, and the Emperor’s nephew.
“Yes,” Poseen-Ka said, as if reading her mind. “Colonel Baldwin betrayed his people in order to prove his competence. That is what he claims anyway. There is an alternative explanation, however. Some of our best xenopsychologists have examined Colonel Baldwin and concluded that his true motive is revenge.”
Norwood didn’t know which surprised her the most. The Hudathan’s calm, almost clinical description of Baldwin’s psychology, or the subject’s lack of visible reaction.
It was as if the war commander had never spoken, as if Baldwin could filter things he didn’t want to hear, as if he was not entirely sane.
Norwood looked at Poseen-Ka. There it was again, that ineffable something that she couldn’t quite put a finger on. Sympathy? Understanding? What?
“Well, that about covers it.”
The voice belonged to Martin. They turned. Norwood frowned. “Covers what?”
Martin shrugged. His eyes were dark and flashed when he spoke. “What we came for. You heard the geek ... no negotiations until resistance ends ... and that means we have nothing to lose.”
“Now, Martin, don’t do anything . . .”
But the flight lieutenant closed his eyes, activated his implant, and sent a thought towards the shuttle. And, on a deck half a mile away, relays closed, power flowed, tolerances were exceeded, and an aircraft exploded. It was Martin’s ace in the hole, a little surprise that he and a crew chief named Perez had dreamed up.
It worked like a charm. The first explosion caused a Hudathan attack ship to blow as well, which triggered more explosions, which caused the deck under Martin’s feet to shudder in sympathy. A series of dull thuds followed moments later and served to confirm what had happened.
Martin opened his eyes and a lot of things took place all at once.
Imbala-Sa put two low-velocity darts through Martin’s heart.
Klaxons began to bleat, orders were issued over the ship’s PA system, and the surviving humans were dragged from the room.
Norwood tried to memorize the maze of seemingly identical corridors but was soon lost.
Crew members ran in every direction, shouted orders at each other, and did the multiplicity of things that they’d been trained to do.
It was hard to think in the midst of all the confusion, but one thing was clear. Martin had managed to kill some Hudathans, and in doing so, had unintentionally reinforced their xenophobia. It would be a long time, if ever, before the Hudathans would agree to meet with human beings again. Other th
oughts might have followed, but were lost when she was shoved into a freight elevator and herded into a corner.
Then, after a very short ride, she was pushed, pulled, and prodded into a hallway, led to a small compartment, and secured to some wall-mounted rings.
Baldwin was stripped, forced to lie on a metal table, and strapped into place. He said something in Hudathan and the technician made a hissing reply.
Norwood was very, very frightened but did her best to hide it.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
Baldwin tried for a nonchalant grin but wound up looking sick instead.
“The Hudathans believe that immediate reward or punishment can alter subsequent behavior. And, since I was the one that brought you here, responsibility for your actions rests with me.”
“What will they do?”
“They forced me to accept an implant. Through it they can dispense pleasure or pain.”
Norwood thought about that for a moment. “You deserve some pain.”
Baldwin nodded understandingly. “Yes, from your perspective, I suppose I do.”
The technician started a timer and touched one of the lights on his control panel.
Baldwin screamed, arched his back in agony, and started to convulse.
Norwood thought of the planet below, of the people he had killed, and tried to take pleasure in Baldwin’s pain.
But the screams went on and on, and no matter how much she tried to do otherwise, Norwood couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man who made them.
2
Louis Philippe, King of the French
To all present and to come, Greetings. In view of
the Law of 9 March 1831; On the report of our
Secretary of State at the Department of War; We
have commanded and do command as follows:
ARTICLE 1
Legion of the Damned Page 2