V06 - Prisoners and Pawns

by Howard Weinstein

  "Revive him," Lydia ordered. "Increase power for the next treatment."

  "He needs some recovery time," Margaret said. "If he doesn't have it, he could die the next time he loses consciousness."

  "I don't care—I want answers and I want them immediately. "

  "You won't get answers from a dead human," Margaret shot back.

  "Follow your orders or you'll be replaced, Lieutenant."

  Margaret clenched her jaw. "Yes—Commander."

  "It's time to make a move," Julie said to the small group of resistance members gathered in Club Creole's downstairs hideaway.

  "I'm with you," Kyle Bates said eagerly. He stood behind Elizabeth, resting a hand on her shoulder.

  "Fine," said Maggie Blodgett, brushing a wisp of honey-blond hair off her cheek. "But make a move where and how?"

  "Julie," Willie said gently. "I know how important it is for us to get Mike and Ham back safely, but without knowing what we're up against, would not it be like spitting under the wind?"

  "Into the wind, Willie," Maggie said, patting him on the arm. She was several inches taller than the little Visitor; and she smiled down at him.

  "Doesn't matter;" Kyle insisted. "We have to do something."

  Julie raised a hand, asking for quiet. "Look, everything this bunch does is voluntary. This mission is my idea, my responsibility. Anyone who disagrees with my decision to go ahead with it isn't bound to be a part of it."

  "Hey, it's not that, Julie," Maggie said. "It's just that personal feelings have to be kept in check."

  Julie turned sharply. "Is that what you think this is, some brave gesture on my part to save Mike?"

  "Julie, I've been there," Maggie said softly. "Remember; I had to leave Brad behind when we blew up that water-treatment plant during the first invasion. Nobody can totally block out feelings—we're only human. Sorry, Willie."

  "That's all right, Maggie. I had the same feelings for Harmony when she—she died on the Mother Ship."

  "Hey, I don't want to interrupt this encounter session," Kyle said, "but we've gotta make some decisions."

  "Kyle's right—and so are you, Maggie," Julie said. "I'm aware of my feelings. They may be part of why I want to do something, but they're not clouding my judgment. If any of you think they are, 1 trust you to tell me. I also trust you to listen to me if I can convince you that's not the case." Julie paused and looked around. "Anybody seen Elias?"

  Before anyone could answer; they heard footsteps from the secret passageway leading down to the old speakeasy from the street above. The door panel slid open and Elias came in—with the young alien Zachary.

  "We got us a visitor—-so to speak," Elias announced. "And we didn't even hit him upside his head this time."

  Zachary gave them an uneasy smile. He'd always envied Barry and some of the other fifth columnists. They were so relaxed around humans. But they'd had much more exposure to them. He was annoyed with himself that he couldn't shake the feeling of being with aliens. Intellectually, he knew these resistance fighters would never harm him, not without reason. But it was hard to forget all the propaganda that had been used by Diana on the crews of the Visitor fleet, enforcing over and over how treacherous humans were, how they were an implacable enemy prone to barbarous acts of terror and butchery against Visitors taken prisoner Zach had heard all that, seen the tapes—which he later learned were created by Diana's production team— showing the camps where captured Visitors were taken, the torture devices used on them, the victims of those devices. He'd been thoroughly exposed before he'd ever actually spoken to a human on this reinvasion of Earth. Like most Visitor technicians, he'd stayed aboard the Mother Ship on the initial mission, when he and his fellow crewmen had been indoctrinated to think of humans as lower life forms to be harvested for food. And that was the only condition in which he'd seen a human on that first voyage to Earth, inside food storage pods in the ship's great cryogenic holds.

  "Not so bad once you get used to them," was the way Barry had put it, adding, "Don't forget, they have to look like this for their entire lives. Maybe it explains some of the way they behave. But on the whole, they're not a bad species."

  "What brings you back?" Julie said now.

  He held out his copy of the cassette containing Barry's report to Lydia. "This."

  He went on to show them the whole plan on his holo-reader, and explained Barry's fears leading him to entrust someone else with a duplicate. "It seems his fears were well-founded," he said sadly. "If you haven't heard from your team and Barry hasn't been able to return to the Mother Ship—"

  "Don't say it," Elias interrupted. "We all feel bad enough without going over and over it. We gotta do something positive, man."

  "Like what?" Willie asked.

  "Like take a trip up north and see what's been happening," Julie said. "We know the coordinates of where they were all supposed to meet."

  "But we can't get there," Kyle said.

  "Not all the way up to the mine, maybe," Elias countered, "but we can get as far as that dinky little town— what's it called?"

  "Crow's Fork," Julie said. "And we can get up to that mine. We can use Zach's transportation."

  "Hey, man, that's right!" Elias said. "We got wings!"

  "Uh, Elias," Willie said softly, "skyfighters don't have wings."

  "It's an expression, Willie, just an expression," Elias said happily, tweaking the Visitor's cheek. His mood was lifting for the first time in what seemed like a century.

  Julie rubbed her hands together "This is good, very good," she said almost to herself. "Not only can we make great time, but we'll have some firepower too—Nathan Bates or no Nathan Bates. Okay, everybody, let's go!" The group of more than a dozen began to rise as one entity. Julie stopped and two of them bumped into her "Hold on—we can't all go. We need some people to hold down the fort in case we hear from Tyler and Donovan, or in case anything else goes wrong. Let's see. Kyle, you and Elizabeth stay here. Um, Elias, Willie, you come with me and Zach. ..." She continued splitting them up, taking eight along for the trip to Crow's Fork, including Maggie to pilot the skyfighter. Willie assured Zachary that she was as good as any pilot in the fleet. And they loaded their most powerful firearms. Julie hoped they wouldn't need to fight, but if the situation came up, she wanted to be ready. "Everyone in Visitor uniforms," she ordered.

  As they hurried through the passageway out of Club Creole, Elias stopped Julie. "Hey, what are we gonna do when we get there?"

  "How am I supposed to know? We'll do what we always do—improvise the best damned tap dance we can think of!"

  Chapter 16

  Alone in the town clinic, now the interrogation station, Lydia looked down at the unconscious form of Mike Donovan. His face twitched in pain every few seconds while hers remained impassive.

  "Why do you humans insist on fighting us?" she said quietly. "When will it occur to you that resistance is futile. Power will prevail—that's the rule of the universe, yet you ignore it. I'd rather do this without inflicting pain, but you're not giving me any choice."

  Donovan's eyelids fluttered open and Lydia sucked her breath in, caught off guard for a moment.

  "You've got a choice," Donovan mumbled through cracked and dry lips. "You can leave. This is our planet, and we'll all die before we just hand it over to you and walk into your frozen-food holds."

  "You weren't supposed it hear what I said."

  "Yeah"-—Donovan swallowed, wincing—"well, I did, Lydia. Why are you doing this? I know why Diana's doing it. She's power hungry and probably psychotic too, by our standards anyway. But I think you're different."

  "Make no mistake, Mr. Donovan," she said coldly. "I'm just as dedicated to this mission as Diana. There's nothing—"

  "Bull," Donovan whispered, "You're dedicated to protecting your own turf, grabbing more of it if you can. But you're not dedicated to killing four billion people on this planet just to satisfy the personal vanity of that great leader of yours nine light-years away from here.
He's not the one risking his neck—you are, lady." He peered up at her through the plexiglass and thought he caught the barest tug of doubt at the corner of her mouth.

  "We're here on a mission of survival, Donovan," Lydia answered harshly. "Nothing can get in the way of that. Are you going to argue that your people wouldn't do the same if your existence was at stake?"

  He tried to shrug, but the restraints on his arms and shoulders kept him pinned down to the examining table. "I don't know, Lydia. Maybe we would. But we'd look for another way first. I don't think you have. I think your great leader cooked up this scheme, probably to make you all forget about the lousy job he's done, and you all believe every word he tells you. Don't you ever question anything?" He paused. "Besides, our existence is at stake. That's why we're fighting."

  "You're very smug for a member of a race very near to being exterminated."

  "What the hell's the difference?" he asked. "If we're going to lose, we're going to lose. But I don't have to help that ending come along. We both know damn well if we humans wind up winning again, it'll be because enough of you Visitors realized your leaders are wrong—that you've been doing their dirty work just to save their lizard hides."

  "What makes you such an expert on Visitor psyches?"

  Donovan shook his head. "If that surprises you, you're not as observant as you think. All the time you've been learning about us, we've been learning about you too. I've gotta say it's surprised me a little, but intelligent beings just don't seem to be that different. At least Visitors and humans aren't. We've had plenty of instances in our history of bad leaders grabbing powei; fooling people into following them. But sooner or later the lies come out, the tides turn." Donovan's throat gave way and a racking cough shook his body.

  Lydia avoided looking at his face as she tipped a bottle attached to the interrogation cage and water flowed down to a tube near Donovan's mouth. "Drink it," she said neutrally.

  He narrowed his eyes at her for a second, trying to figure out if this was really an act of kindness or if he was reading things into Lydia's response. It didn't mattet; he decided, and angled the tube into his parched mouth and gulped the cool water

  Four Visitor guards entered the room, forcibly escorting Frank O'Toole, his hands bound behind him.

  "Get him ready," Lydia ordered the guards.

  Margaret led four technicians in from a side area, wheeling in two more of the tube-shaped confinement devices. One was empty—Donovan presumed that was for O'Toole—but he was surprised to see Alex inside the other; sealed in with the electrodes and sensors already attached to his body.

  Pale and shaken, O'Toole looked around. Donovan waved weakly at him, but Alex lay on the table without moving. Blood trickled from his nose and the corner of his mouth. The young guide's face was bruised and his clothing tattered as if he'd been severely beaten before being brought here.

  "Why are you doing this?" O'Toole said to Lydia, his voice a hoarse whisper

  "Because I need information and I need it now. You and your young friend, Alex, are more expendable than Donovan, so you're going to be questioned before him. As you can see, Alex has been rather badly treated. I am sorry about that, but he evidently provoked some of my guards into losing their tempers. Now I'm going to let you watch what he goes through. If he's foolish and refuses to tell me what I want to know, you'll be next. I do hope, if it comes to that, that simply observing the interrogation of Alex will be enough to convince you to be less stubborn, Mr O'Toole. I warn you, my patience is growing very thin."

  The security commander nodded to Margaret, who threw the series of switches on her console to start the machines. O'Toole looked on as Alex's body tensed involuntarily. The young man seemed to be beyond conscious behavior O'Toole felt a queasiness welling up in his stomach, and he glanced quickly around the room for a basin, just in case he had to vomit. A guard stood ready at either side of him to prevent him from escaping, but for the time being, they let him stand free.

  Lydia moved around Alex's clear cocoon, like a cat circling prey that wasn't quite disabled. "The pain grows worse, doesn't it, Alex? You can make it stop, make it go away. All you have to do is answer the questions."

  Donovan tried to lift his head. From his prone position in the isolation tube, he could barely hear the Visitor commander's voice from across the small room, but he couldn't make out exactly what was happening.

  "Where can I find Ham Tyler?" Lydia asked soothingly.

  "Don't know. ..."

  O'Toole swallowed hard at the sound of Alex's voice— thin as a thread, distant as if coming from the bottom of a well. He shifted his eyes to the guards—they'd edged a half step closer to him, prepared to move if necessary.

  Lydia continued to prowl, crouching so that Alex could see her face. "Maybe you're telling me the truth, maybe you don't know where Tyler is now. Is that right, Alex?"

  "Y-Yes . . . don't know now. . . ."he whimpered.

  "That's a good boy. Your reward for telling the truth is no more pain. Isn't that good?"

  The trail guide smiled through puffy lips. "Good."

  "I'm your friend, Alex. You know that, don't you?"

  "Friend? No. . . ."

  Lydia frowned. "Yes, yes I am. I want to stop the hurting. I keep telling you how to do that, but you won't listen to me. Please listen to me, Alex."

  His head nodded almost imperceptibly. "Y-Yes . . . listen."

  "Good. Now tell me where Tyler was the last time you saw him."

  "No—n-n-no. Can't tell. Swore not—"

  Pressing her lips together angrily, Lydia looked over at Margaret. "Now—do it."

  Margaret's mouth curled defiantly as her hand poised over the augmentation control. "He's weak—life functions barely register."

  "Do it," Lydia repeated sharply.

  The technician's hand turned. Alex's body arched up, but the only sound he could make was a keening echo.

  Alex's cry, soft as it was, sliced into O'Toole's gut. He felt his stomach heave. I have to do something, he thought, and he started forward. Instantly, two impossibly strong hands clamped onto his upper arms, squeezing with enough pressure to make him yelp. He could imagine they would be able to snap bones if they chose to. They lifted him off the floor and placed him back down hard where he'd started from.

  Ignoring everyone else in the room, Lydia now draped herself over the tube, glaring down directly into Alex's face, her words coming with a guttural intensity. "Time is running out, time is almost gone—your time, your life. Talk now or you'll lose your chance, lose your life. Tell me where Ham Tyler is. Tell me—tell me—tell me!"

  She looked back at Margaret. "Full power" she hissed.

  The technician obeyed and O'Toole braced himself. Alex's torso twisted, his breathing came in short rasps, and then his whole body jittered in its restraint straps. The face contorted in a silent scream, and O'Toole wanted to look away but couldn't, riveted by his own horror and feat

  That'll be me.

  And then Alex was still, stiffly frozen in an arched-back position, a mannequin in some madman's window advertising torture. A soft, steady tone emanated from the tech's console.

  "That's it," Margaret said. "This human is dead—no chance of revival. All autonomic neuromuscular substance destroyed."

  Lydia straightened. "Get rid of him." Then she turned to face O'Toole. "You see the result of prolonged interrogation. I sincerely hope you decide to cooperate quickly. Put him in."

  Donovan watched helplessly as the hulking guards lifted O'Toole off his feet and inserted him into the third glass chamber

  "We haven't covered much territory," Ham Tyler said as he, Annie, and the Visitor; Barry, stopped to rest in a shady spot. They'd left the other horses at the mine.

  "More than you think, Tyler;" Annie said.

  "Far enough to call my pilot to pick us up?" Barry asked.

  "Well, that's the big question, ain't it?" Ham said. "That's something we're just not going to know for sure until we try i
t."

  "We're heading east," Annie said, drawing a line in the dirt with a twig. "Lydia and her skyfighters are west of us. If we arrange to meet Barry's ship even farther east of here, we should have a pretty good chance of its getting there without being spotted."

  Tyler licked his lips, then took a swig from his canteen. "Pretty good chance may not be enough, Halsey."

  "It'll have to be when it's the only chance we got, Tyler. We can't get very far on foot. And what worries me is, the longer Donovan and O'Toole are in Lydia's hands, the more chance she's gonna have of breaking 'em and getting 'em to talk about where we went. So we face a future of diminishing returns, if you get my drift."

  Ham nodded. "Okay. Good point." He nodded to Barry, and the Visitor took his communicator out of a pocket.

  "Teri, this is Barry. Come in, please."

  "Yes, Captain," the pilot replied after a second or two.

  "We think it's time. One of the humans with me will give you the coordinates where you should meet us. Are you ready to record?"

  "Yes, sir. But aren't you where you were before?"

  "No," Barry answered. "We had to move. When you take off, fly as low as possible. We don't know what Lydia is doing or whether she knows we're out here. We don't know whether she'll be looking for another skyfighter. Proceed as if you are being hunted. Understood?"

  "Understood," Teri said. "What if I'm spotted?"

  Tyler grabbed the communicator from Barry. "If you're spotted, forget about us. Get the hell away from us and don't come back." He handed the transmitter back to the alien.

  "Who was that?" Teri asked.

  "Follow those instructions," Barry said. He turned to Annie. "Ready?"

  She nodded and spoke into the communicator. "Okay now, I'm also going to describe the terrain and give you some landmarks to look foe ..."

  Perhaps twelve years old, the child watched the Crow's Fork clinic building from the woods behind it. With mocha skin, eyes that were nearly black, and curly dark hair; the slim child could have passed for a boy or a girl. The name on her blue sweat shirt, "Jacqueline," stitched in script across the chest, was the only certain giveaway.