The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative

by Mark Terence Chapman

  Cap was still on edge. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

  “When we had the chance to go home, I voted to stay out here. If I’d been smart and voted to go home we’d all be safe and spending time with our loved ones. Instead, we’re about to be captured by bloodthirsty aliens.”

  “Swede,” Cap said softly, “as I recall, Sparks and I voted to stay, too. Any of us could have voted to go home. It wasn’t just your decision.”

  I was inconsolable. “Maybe not, but I had the final vote. All I had to say was ‘Let’s go home.’”

  “It doesn’t really matter why we’re here, does it? We have to make the best of the situation—figure out a way to survive. Sitting there feeling depressed and guilty isn’t going to help anyone.”

  I knew he was right, but it didn’t lift my depression.

  “You know the worst part about all this?” I continued. “We didn’t take all the knowledge we acquired from the Seat back to Earth. They won’t know anything about the advanced technology we now have—or the Stromvik. If they have to defend themselves from the Stromvik or some other unfriendly aliens, they’ll be helpless. Even if the Stromvik don’t attack, Earth will probably collapse under the weight of overpopulation within a few decades. We could have prevented all that! I could have prevented all that.”

  Apparently Cap had run out of comforting things to say.

  I watched the holoscreen as an immense bay opened in the Stromvik ship and we were swallowed into the belly of the whale. A black hand closed over my heart at the thought of what the Stromvik would do to us—and what they would do to Earth if they found out our connection to the Progenitors.

  CHAPTER 26

  They marched us at gunpoint to a holding area. Had the circumstances been less dire I might have laughed. The five of us were escorted by eight hulking Stromvik. We knew from experience that two of them barehanded could tear us to ribbons. Yet these eight were armed with some sort of short-barreled rifle-like weapon. Was this standard operating procedure for the Stromvik, or did the weapons signify some measure of respect? There was no way to know and I didn’t think they’d tell me if I asked.

  There was nothing much to say about the décor. The passageways were bare metal—no paint, no carpeting, nothing. The guards escorted us to individual nonadjacent cells, so there was no hope of conspiring on an escape plan. My cell contained nothing but a metal cot, welded to the wall, and a bowl-shaped depression in the corner with drainage holes—some sort of toilet. That was the sum total of my furnishings. There was nothing that might be used as a weapon; nor was there anything on my person that would be of the slightest help. The Stromvik searched us when we were taken captive and took everything from us but our skintights and undergarments. I was surprised that they left us even that much. Perhaps they didn’t have any prison garb small enough to fit us.

  I hadn’t wished to be a secret agent since I was a child, but the idea of being able to pull a hidden garrote wire, explosive thread, or some other weapon from my clothing was appealing right then. There had to be some way to escape. I briefly considered trying to strangle a Stromvik with my underwear but quickly dismissed that idea as the ravings of a deeply disturbed mind. The Stromvik, or his buddy by the door, would have torn off my limbs long before I could suffocate him.

  They left me alone for hours to ponder my fate. I paced for a while to burn off nervous energy, until I was good and tired. Eventually it dawned on me that I should be conserving my strength in case an opportunity to escape presented itself. I stretched out on the metal bunk to wait. It was grossly uncomfortable, but marginally better than lying on the floor.

  I’m sure the intention was for me to get good and frightened as I waited, to soften me up for interrogation. If so, their plan was having the desired effect. Had they fed me, I couldn’t have kept anything down, anyway.

  I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until I was awakened by the barely audible hiss of the door sliding open. Two Stromvik grabbed my arms and yanked me to my feet. Then they hustled me to the interrogation room.

  The room clearly was designed by the same interior decorator that did the cells—bare metal walls, a small metal table in the middle, and one uncomfortable-looking metal chair. I guessed I’d be the one sitting. I guessed right.

  “Glrsizp mfersxt?” my inquisitor began, leaning over me. There was a translator gizmo on the table between us. His words came out as “What are you called?”

  I didn’t need a translator to understand the threat of dozens of needle-sharp teeth only centimeters from my face.

  “My—my name is Jan Johansen,” I replied.

  “You fought well, Jan Johansen. For such a small ship, your weaponry is impressive. Your ship, your engine, are primitive, yet you carry advanced weaponry and shielding. How is this possible?”

  “My people have a long history of warfare. Our weapons scientists are very, very good.” I replied. No sense telling him anything useful.

  “They must be quite good indeed.” The Stromvik straightened.

  I sensed he didn’t believe me. Big surprise. I wouldn’t have believed me either.

  “You and your crew managed to break through our shield array and destroy several of our most sophisticated weapons and kill more than one hundred of our people.”

  “Hey, you attacked us. We were just defending ourselves.”

  The Stromvik jerked his head in what I took to be a nod. “You fought valiantly against superior forces. You knew you could not win, yet you fought anyway. We Stromvik respect that in an adversary.” He began walking in slow circles around the table and me.

  “Yeah, well, we’re stubborn that way. We hate to lose, and we hate even more to be picked on by a bully. We had no idea that this planet was claimed by anyone or that we were trespassing. We were here peacefully, just visiting the Seat of Power, and we were willing to leave without a confrontation, but you had to pick a fight. Maybe we didn’t win, but we sure bloodied your noses!”

  “You persist in your ridiculous story that you were visiting the Seat of Power? Why? It is nothing but a stone building containing a simple bench. There is nothing there worth journeying many light years out of your way. Do not annoy me further with such an absurd tale. If you are not illegally mining minerals, why else would you be here?”

  He didn’t believe the portion of the truth that I had told him, and I wasn’t about to tell him the whole truth—that we were extracting billion-year-old knowledge that was in advance of much of what the Stromvik had, at least in terms of shield and weapons technology. So what could I tell him that he would buy?

  “Okay, you’re right. We weren’t just visiting a boring old tourist attraction. We were hoping to find advanced technology to use. Our scientists aren’t all that advanced in weapons and shield technology. What we have is all stuff our people acquired from other scavenger hunts like this one. But we didn’t find anything useful here. As you said, there is nothing down there but an old building and a stone bench. As for the illegal mining charge, that’s easy enough to disprove. All minerals have tiny impurities that are unique to the sites where they’re mined. If you compare our cargo to whatever iron and tesserene deposits there are on this planet, you’ll find that they don’t match. We got the iron from an asteroid and the tesserene from another asteroid and a moon, more than three thousand light years from here.”

  The Stromvik continued to walk in circles around me. “We attempted to access your computer records but we were unable to break through the encryption scheme you use. Why does a simple cargo vessel require such sophisticated encryption?”

  “We like our privacy.” What else could I tell him, that the encryption was courtesy of the Progenitors, installed when I downloaded the data from the Seat of Power?

  The Stromvik glared at me, and a deep growl emanated from behind his clenched teeth. I nearly wet my pants.

  “That is the second lie you have told me. Tell another one and you will be made to suffer!”

&
nbsp; I had no doubt of that.

  The Stromvik bared his teeth and leaned over me again, this time across the table—a terrifying sight at a distance of eighteen or twenty centimeters. My mouth instantly went dry and my throat constricted. It was a good thing my life didn’t depend on swallowing just then.

  He was wrong though—it was actually the third lie—but I wasn’t about to correct him. I licked the sweat from my upper lip. What could I say that wouldn’t give anything away while sounding wholly truthful?

  I sighed heavily, as if in defeat. “Our employer installed the encryption algorithm because our computer contains the locations of many valuable ore deposits. We can’t take the chance that any of our competitors might get their hands on the information. It could cost our company a fortune in ore.”

  It was all true, except for how we came to have this particular encryption algorithm instead of the one the Company originally installed. But let the Stromvik try to disprove it. I had to hope that they were as bad at reading human faces as we were at reading their crocodilian ones. I was walking a thin line. I couldn’t say anything that my crewmates might contradict if asked the same question. But as I was the only one who knew about the change in encryption, I wasn’t worried about this one.

  “Very well. Return to your cell. We will speak again.”

  Gee, I couldn’t wait. He—I assumed it was a he, though I had no way of knowing—nodded and the same two guards grabbed me, shoved me out the door, and herded me back to my cell.

  I hadn’t learned anything useful from the interrogation, but I hoped neither had my inquisitor.

  Many hours later, I heard a prolonged wailing and moaning through the ventilation duct, as if someone were being tortured. I prayed that it was some other poor S.O.B. and not one of us.

  * * * *

  Just as I began to think the plan was to starve us to death, one of the guards arrived with food—although calling it food was being generous. It was some sort of grayish slop, vaguely like porridge, with no discernable taste. I suppose it could have been worse. It might have tasted like ground up worms and beetles in a rancid blood sauce.

  I considered not eating it. After all, it might have been drugged. Eventually, I decided that drugs were too subtle for the Stromvik. They seemed to prefer the direct approach—torture and intimidation. Besides, I needed to keep up my strength.

  Any hopes I might have entertained about using the food as a weapon were quickly dashed. The porridge was tepid, as was the water. That ruled out the old “throw the scalding coffee in the guard’s face” ploy. I could also forget the “slip the knife up your sleeve and threaten the guard later” trick, because there were no utensils provided. Presumably I was to eat with my fingers. That eliminated the “dig your way out of prison with a spoon” option—although the metal walls, floor and ceiling made that plan problematic anyway.

  There was no hope either of using the dishware or the tray as a weapon—there was no tray, and the food and water were served in a paper-like bowl and cup. What was this, some kind of sick joke? What was I supposed to do, give my two-meter-tall, two-hundred-kilo jailer a paper cut? Couldn’t they at least have given me a drinking straw? Then I could have made a mad dash for the door, spraying the guards with a deadly hail of spitballs. Perhaps if I played my cards right, I could make a paper airplane and fly it out of here. Yeah, and if pigs had starflight drives….

  Clearly, the Stromvik had experience handling prisoners, because they were extremely good at it. These mental diversions were getting me nowhere. I was going to have to get serious if we were to survive.

  * * * *

  Once again the guards woke me and dragged me to the interrogation room. Apparently the Stromvik ascribed to the same interrogation doctrine as many Earth societies: never let prisoners get enough sleep and feed them a diet poor in nutrients. All the better to break down their resistance.

  The guards plopped me down in the metal chair and held me there by my shoulders. The interrogator, whose name I still didn’t know, approached the table and placed a small, oblong, silvery box on the table before me. (In fact, I didn’t know the names of any of the Stromvik we’d met. It’s funny the things that come to mind in times of stress.)

  Then he waited.

  Was the box supposed to mean something to me? It was unfamiliar. Moe, as I decided to call him, just watched me as the guards, Larry and Curly, hovered over me.

  “So?” I asked, after an awkward pause. “Am I supposed to recognize that?”

  “Open it.”

  “Why?”

  “Open it!”

  Hesitantly, I complied. I didn’t see a catch, and the lid didn’t just lift off, so I picked it up and turned it around, squeezing here and there. Without warning, the lid popped open. Inside was a finger.

  A human finger.

  Startled, I dropped the box on the table. The finger bounced out and rolled on the table, ending up pointed at me, as if in accusation for something. It looked to be an index finger, torn off at the knuckle, rather than cleanly cut.

  The screaming the other day! Oh dear God. This must have been the cause of the screaming. But whose finger was it? The skin color was too light for it to be Cap’s or Tom’s. That left Guido or Sparks.

  I looked up at Moe in horror, which, I’m sure, was his purpose in showing me the finger.

  “One of your fellow…“explorers”—Sparks, I believe you call him—was reluctant to talk. I was forced to…demonstrate the futility of remaining silent.”

  I swallowed. Funny how torturers are always “forced” to do their evil deeds.

  These guys weren’t fooling around. The more I thought about it, the angrier I grew. How dare they do this to my friend? But I knew that defiance would only get me the same sort of treatment and wouldn’t help anyone but the Stromvik. Instead, I had to appear cowed, submissive. I slumped my shoulders and lowered my head. I looked down at the table, as if mesmerized by the accusatory finger.

  “Look,” I said, with a bit of a whine creeping into my voice, “I answered your questions. Please don’t hurt me.” I raised my head and tried to appear pitiful. Moe’s expression changed subtly. I couldn’t be sure, given his alien physiology, but it looked suspiciously like a smirk. Good. Overconfidence was a weakness I might be able to exploit.

  “If you continue to answer my questions truthfully and completely you will not be harmed.”

  I believed that. Sure I did. Like I believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

  I nodded. “Of-of course. What do you want to know?”

  Moe smiled—I think. Perhaps that was supposed to set me at ease, but it was like staring at a running chain saw held centimeters from one’s face. It didn’t exactly encourage relaxation. But that, in fact, was good. The last thing I wanted to do was relax and get caught in a lie. I had to stay focused. One little slip and it could be over for all of us.

  “What is the encryption key for your computer.”

  Shit. That was one thing I couldn’t tell him. They would find out what we learned from the Seat. I had to lie, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that couldn’t be easily refuted. If I gave Moe the wrong encryption key, it wouldn’t unlock our database and he’d know right away that I’d lied.

  I also couldn’t take forever to answer his question or he would know I was prevaricating. So I took the coward’s way out.

  “I—I’m just the engineer. I don’t know much about computers. I don’t know the encryption key.”

  “Who does?”

  There was only one answer I could give, and I knew it would haunt me forever. “Our computer expert, Sparks. He’d know.” There was no way that Sparks could give away the key, even under torture, because he didn’t know it. But at least, then, they wouldn’t torture it out of me.

  It wasn’t the torture I was afraid of. It was giving away Earth’s future that terrified me. I still held a faint hope of being able to escape and take the Progenitors’ knowledge home with us. But my lie would l
ikely cost Sparks his life, and I knew that would consume me for the rest of my life.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be very much longer at that.

  “Very well. I will ask Sparks. Return to your cell.”

  The guards dragged me from my chair and out the door.

  * * * *

  Although my guards brought me more so-called “food,” I couldn’t eat. The screams I’d heard coming through the ventilation duct still echoed inside my head. I had already vomited once and I was on the verge of doing so again. My stomach spasmed; my head throbbed like it wanted to explode. I half-wished it would. The knowledge that I couldn’t help Sparks, that I couldn’t even apologize and beg his forgiveness, was killing me.

  I would have given anything to take the pain from him. Likewise, I’d have preferred the pain of torture to the mental anguish I was experiencing. Sparks was my friend, my brother, and I was the cause of his pain. Worse, I’d made the conscious choice to cause his pain.

  I imagined him holding out as long as possible, not wanting to give up Shamu’s secrets, and then finally breaking and giving Moe what Sparks thought was the valid encryption key—the old one—only to have an enraged Moe confront him later with what Moe had perceived as a lie. Moe wouldn’t be happy—not a bit.

  I don’t know how long I’d listened to Sparks’ cries, but eventually my psyche had had enough and I passed out, cursing my cowardice.

  CHAPTER 27

  As usual, it felt like I hadn’t been asleep long when the guards came for me. It was almost a relief, as they probably spared me from a nightmare about Sparks. With no obvious day/night cycle and irregular meal schedules, it was difficult to tell how long we’d been prisoners, but my gut feeling was that it had been several days. With each passing hour, I grew weaker of body and slower of mind.

  The guards half-dragged me to the interrogation room and threw me into the chair. I feared what was coming, but there was nothing I could do about it.