Walking slowly, leaning heavily on Paolo’s shoulder, his arm wrapped around her slender waist, Damais came to him. “I promise you, my son, I will stand between you and those who wish to break and then enslave your soul with their torture device. Do you trust me?”
Nick’s gaze locked onto her deep, dark, tired, blue eyes. He then found he couldn’t break their link, not even to blink. “I trust you, my lady, but to what end? What good is delaying the inevitable? I can’t allow myself to be taken alive by the Mawreg. I know too much that would be of value to them, believe me.” A quick vision of his last mission into Sector Seventeen flashed across Nick’s thoughts. He remembered the peculiarity of the Mawreg defenses, a weakness his team had used to sneak into the targeted compound, obtaining the high-value information they’d been sent for. That data alone, the one chink in the Mawreg defensive cordon, which could be used again, is worth dying for. I can’t betray it, much less any of the other accumulated knowledge I hold. The bleak but undeniable truth served to break the tie binding him to Damais’ will. Nick looked at his tightly bound hands. When he glanced over at the elderly woman, he realized she knew what he’d decided.
Nick intended to give voice to his denial of what she wanted him to do. “Lady Damais –”
“Delay will win us all. Your order allows for that.” The old woman cut his words off flatly, imperious as always. She beckoned to the girl, who had curled up on the bins furthest away from the door and the potential return of the nightmarish Shemdylann. “Gianna, come to me for a moment.”
Nick expected the child to protest or resist the command, but Gianna slid easily from her perch and came across to stand next to her brother, reaching uncertainly for his free hand, carrying her stuffed bear by the remaining ear, dragging and bumping on the deck. The once-glossy brown synthfur was now matted and grimy from all their adventuring.
“Show the captain again what game Mara and your sister have played, Paolo. But only a glimpse,” Damais warned as the boy took his sister’s toy. Sniffling, Gianna popped one thumb in her mouth and watched without fuss.
Opening the well-concealed slit in the bear’s seam, Paolo tugged and tugged, finally bringing the handgrip of the missing Mark 27 blaster into view.
“She likes to hide her treasures in the bear,” Paolo said. “I told you when we were in the hold, remember?”
“When the pirates were busy tying you up, I slipped the blaster into the bear,” Mara whispered to Nick. “Khevan surrendered his, and they were satisfied.”
“Shemdylann don’t regard females as warriors,” Khevan said in a low voice. “They had no suspicion she’d been firing at them.”
Nick laughed without humor. “Brave and smart. I’ve come to expect nothing less from you. But too little, too late for our current predicament, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about? It’s a blaster, for space sake! Oh my god, Mara, get him, and get Khevan, get them loose then, and let’s get out of here.” Twilka’s words tumbled over each other in her eagerness. “What are you waiting for?”
But Damais and Nick were shaking their heads in unison. Mara leaned over to help Paolo shove the weapon more securely, deep inside the bear’s stuffing, and reseal the seam so it was invisible.
“The pirates come at this minute.” Damais was matter of fact, as if she could see through the walls. “We’re not ready to attempt an escape.”
“To try too soon is to lose all.” Khevan directed his words at the rebellious, unhappy Twilka. “We have no choice but to wait.”
Hard on the heels of his statement, Nick heard the pirates fumbling with the recently installed locking mechanism of the storage room now converted to a prison.
“Easy for you to say,” Twilka said. “They’re going to take him first.”
Damais placed one wrinkled hand gently on Nick’s cheek. A faint hint of her perfume wafted around him. “I will be there. You’ll come to no permanent harm, I swear. No secrets will be revealed, no information compromised. But you must let them know what you are when I ask you to do so.”
Struggling with the dilemma of his oath as an SF officer, versus his faith in her Mellurean powers, Nick stared at her. He had an intense aversion to taking the simple, painless way out for himself and leaving all of them – leaving Mara – defenseless.
The hidden blaster had the potential to change the situation, if he survived the first round of interrogation. But how much can I rely on Damais? And how much can I endure, before the suicide would have to occur to preserve my sworn oath, to carry out my overriding orders?
Leaning over, Mara kissed him on the cheek. She seemed to have an instinctive understanding of the argument he was waging with himself. “Do whatever you must,” she said, in a low voice meant for him alone. Intense, shining with unshed tears, her turquoise eyes locked with his, her gaze every bit as unbreakable as the Lady Damais’s had been, but for a different reason. “Do your duty if that’s the path you have to take. Don’t worry about us.”
Miserably, he stared at her. “How exactly am I supposed to abandon you, Mara? I’d give anything to get you out of this mess. I’d gladly die to save you.” He glanced at the oddly assorted band, as important to him now as any team of Special Forces operators had been in the past. “All of you.” Closing his eyes, Nick swallowed hard. “What a voyage to hell this trip has been.”
A loud metallic sound signaled the lock releasing. Three pirates marched into the room, one backing the small group of women and children away from Nick, holding them at blaster point, while the other two released him from the webbing, yanking him to his feet, dragging him into the corridor.
“Courage, brother,” Khevan shouted, his words abruptly cut off as the door clanged shut behind them.
Nick was hustled into the captain’s dining room. Most of the tables and chairs had been shoved against the bulkhead, leaving a large clear area, in the middle of which stood a complicated, ominous apparatus. Two Shemdylann techs were in the final moments of assembling the device. The struts and straps were pitted and stained in spots with the blood, and other fluids, of previous victims.
First, the pirates laid him on a large table, holding him pinned with their huge, clawed hands. One of the Shemdylann techs came over and shot him full of some medication from a crude inject. Burning through his veins like acid, the stuff spread inexorably through his body with each beat of his heart. As they dragged him off the table to tie him down and begin the torture, Nick considered the suicide code, buried in the far reaches of his subconscious. He could trigger his own death in the blink of an eye.
He was as brave as any man, trained to resist physical and psychological torture, but was he prepared to risk betraying the Sectors because an old woman had said she could protect him? What if she was wrong? How can I let my feelings – for Mara, for the children – overrule the most stringent and unbreakable order of the Sectors Special Forces?
The acid burning through his body threatened to tip the balance. I can’t let personal considerations jeopardize operation security. There’s no rescue coming. I can’t rely on Damais. What was I thinking? Shaking his head slightly, Nick visualized the first in the necessary sequence of oddly assorted symbols making up his personal suicide code, planted there by the Mellureans against exactly this kind of contingency.
“No, my son, do not.” The voice of Damais was so clear, so close, that he tried to turn his head, pushing against the padded clamps, fearing they’d brought the aged woman into the dining room to watch his suffering for some sadistic purpose. Distracted, Nick lost track of the symbols, which had to be visualized in a certain order. Fighting to concentrate, he began again.
The pirates were tilting the apparatus, to make it easier to work their well-honed torture techniques on him. Shemdylann were renowned for their interrogation expertise.
Convulsing violently, Nick contorted as a cold chill spiked through his body. The wave of crystalline cold drove out the acid pain, moving upward from his toes, leaving hi
m clear-headed, calm. It was as if he had invisible armor covering his body. All at once his left hand, restrained though it was, felt as if Damais had taken his fingers firmly in her warm, dry clasp, to offer comfort, as she had the first night in the observatory. He caught the faint whiff of her perfume, distilled from flowers growing only on Mellure.
In the next breath, Nick realized his body and his mind were no longer under his control, but rather moved, spoke, and yelled in agony as Damais willed it, while he – the essence of what and who was Nick Jameson – was held safely out of harm’s way. Crouching in a corner of his mind, watching, ready to act if she asked, but not touched by the combat she was waging, unbeknownst to the pirates torturing him. She shielded him from detailed awareness of what they were doing to him, to his body, stretched out on their rack.
The torture continued for hours, that he did know.
Trapped in his own mind, Nick was galled to have the elderly woman fighting his battle, all the while keeping him neutralized. Who’s the warrior here, her or me? But on the other hand, he had to admit, the interrogation techniques the pirates were using were so macabre and excruciating, the torture would most likely have forced him to admit defeat and use the checkout code, as it was known in the teams.
At times, he was sure the other prisoners must have heard his agonized cries, as the pirates brought more of their highly developed information extraction skills to bear. The Shemdylann were puzzled, excited, frustrated by their inability to break through Nick’s self-control with their infliction of pain. The torture was real, was happening to him, but Damais met it at each nerve ending, each muscle fiber, before the damage could be done, or actual pain created. Remaining firmly in control, Damais healed destroyed tissue, not allowing the agony to reach Nick where he waited in his own mind, behind the barrier she’d established to defend him. From time to time he heard himself gasping out small bits of information, true and false, when and as she willed it, but only after the enemy had labored to break him far longer than any other prisoner had ever resisted.
Tell them who you are, Nick. The command floated through his head in Damais’s voice. Nick found he couldn’t disobey her. “Special Forces, I’m Special Forces,” he heard himself revealing in a voice barely recognizable as his own. “Captain Nicholas Jameson, ID number 12171931427, Terran descent twice removed.”
At this announcement, his torturers exclaimed in astonishment, some edging away from the table for a moment, as if he was going to suddenly go on the offensive. It was well known that SF operators were never captured alive, or died immediately under interrogation rather than risk betraying secrets. Suspicious, even at this juncture, the chief interrogator came to the rack, adjusted a control here and there to ratchet up the pain he imagined Nick was enduring, and demanded in pidgin Basic to know why, if he was Special Forces as he claimed, he had not committed suicide long before now.
“Thought – thought I could resist you,” Nick whispered out, at Damais’s command, giving words to her carefully constructed scenario. “You – you have my wife and children in there. I couldn’t leave them alone, at your mercy. Do what you want with me, but spare my family. Don’t – don’t torture them.”
He was sure the pirates could understand his plea, since they’d encountered the sentimental humans before. It was a source of much amusement to the Shemdylann, who were known to eat their own young at times.
All activity ceased for five long minutes while the pirate captain was summoned, in light of this unprecedented coup – the capture and apparently successful initial interrogation of a Special Forces operator. Concentrating on breathing, Nick lay on the framework, trying not to think, trusting Lady Damais to handle whatever was going to happen next.
The pirate captain yanked the technician away from the torture rack with such force the struts shook and threatened to collapse. Leaning over Nick, his scaly face only a few inches away, his breath like rotting fish, the Shemdylann said, “I’ll keep your wife and children alive, as long as you behave and obey us. You understand me, Special Forces Captain Jameson? I’m sure your authorities will want to ransom your cowardly husk.”
Weakly, Nick nodded. “And the others, the old woman, the D’nvannae, the girl – her father is rich. You’ll ransom them, too?” he asked, voice barely audible. His throat was raw.
Considering the request, his enemy licked leathery lips with a flickering yellow tongue and then nodded slowly, eyes nictating. “Yes,” he said. “I think I’ll do as you suggest, human. I’m strictly cruising for my own profit this trip. Certainly the plunder in this hulk will enrich me beyond the biggest dreams of most hatchlings. But there may be other value to be found in you, beyond the obvious.” He paused, seeming to consider alternatives, all of them pleasing.
Nick focused on breathing again while his enemy contemplated.
“Perhaps I’ll barter your lives for concessions from the Sectors, rather than mere credits. I must evaluate this development.” Like a whip, his tongue flashed across Nick’s cheek, tasting the human’s sweat as if it were a delicacy. “There are things in the Sectors I might prize.”
Cheek burning, Nick recoiled against the clamps and shackles as best he could. Old tales about certain Mawreg client races said they found humans to be good eating. At this moment, Nick was a believer.
The pirate straightened, apparently satisfied. Hypno-trained in Shemdylann years ago for a clandestine mission, Nick was able to catch most of the crisp instructions the officer gave his subordinates. “Enough for now. Return him to the cell. We must get in touch with certain parties, negotiate for a transfer to them. Oh, this one will bring us even greater rewards than we reap by sacking this vessel. This human prisoner shall bring us honor and standing in the Councils, the rare kind bought only by drinking the blood of the most deadly enemies.”
“Shall we bring out the other male to interrogate now?” Eager, excited, the subordinate’s neck frill pulsated.
“No, fool. We do nothing more with any of them until we’ve made contact, negotiated, gotten instructions. The masters may want the D’nvannae to experiment on, as well as this human. Torturing the Brother when the masters would never hear of it was permissible, but if they come to take the greater prize, this traitorous Special Forces weakling, they’ll learn from him we also had a D’nvannae. The masters have long posted a special request for one of the Brotherhood to be captured for their close examination. They won’t be happy if we preempt their express wishes.”
The pirate captain actually shivered, skin flushing a pale red at the idea of the implacable Mawreg wrath falling on his head. “No, take this man to the others. Let him think my offer of ransom holds good. He’ll tell his loved ones the same lie for me, which will keep them all easy to control, unsuspecting, until the Mawreg get here and take him on board their own ship. They have ways to keep him alive, and the D’nvannae, too, despite whatever it is these humans do to kill themselves.”
Flooding through Nick in a rush, excruciating pain tore a shout from his already ravaged throat. Agony in every extremity signaled sudden, inexplicable abandonment by Damais. He couldn’t focus on translating the alien dialect, couldn’t do anything but convulse in the grip of the torture device’s emanations as it cycled down. Hanging on to sanity and consciousness with grim determination, using all the techniques he’d been taught, Nick swore to himself he’d make it through this last few minutes.
The pirate captain gave the hoarse, barking noise that was his equivalent of a laugh. Flicking his tongue across Nick’s cheek one more time, he savored the taste of the fear and pain in the beads of human sweat. Still laughing, the alien stood aside while his crew released Nick from the rack to fall on the deck, unable to control his nerves and muscles in any way.
Carrying Nick to the prison chamber, the aliens threw him in, face down, not bothering to restrain him, apparently assuming the torture had so destroyed him that he’d remain virtually helpless.
As soon as the door clanged shut, Mara rushed
to Nick, rolling him over, like a breakable piece of statuary, and then a minute later helping him sit up. She hugged him, obviously trying not to cry. Her red eyes and blotchy face showed the emotional storm she’d endured while he was under the pirates’ torture.
And she was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.
Her touch brought fresh pain since his nerve endings were raw all over, but he knew she needed the skin-on-skin reassurance that they were together again. And so did he. Reaching to hug her awkwardly, finding it hard to command his muscles, Nick took a deep breath of her perfume, and then another. It helped somewhat to clear his head.
“Oh Lords of Space, I knew they must be killing you.” Mara wept on his shoulder. Raising her head, she kissed him. “I thought I’d never see you again. I finally prayed you would let yourself die, rather than go on enduring whatever they were doing to you.”
“We could hear you yelling,” Twilka said. “The poor children were so scared. Well, so was I.”
“It was the Lady Damais, she had total control over everything I did or said.” Nick’s voice was raspy, but he was more in control of his body with each passing minute, the residual pain receding. His throat, however, felt as if he’d swallowed the acid they’d injected into him. “Where is –”
He looked across the small chamber, seeing Twilka weeping also, the two children huddled against her, both crying. More skeletal than he’d ever seen her before, Lady Damais lay stretched out on the bins, pale, eyes closed. The stuffed bear was beneath her head as a pillow.
Nick felt a flash of panic. I have to talk to her, thank her. “She’s not –”
“No, not yet,” Mara caught at his arms as he attempted to rise. “Slowly, soldier, let me help. She may have shielded you from the full brunt of whatever they did, but you’re not exactly yourself.” As Nick regained his feet, she reached up a gentle hand, tentatively touching the two ulcerated marks on his right cheek. “What –?”
“Venom burn. I’ll explain another time,” Nick promised. Grateful to be holding her again, he kissed her quickly, a brush on the lips. “The Lady –”
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