Resistance: Hathe Book One

by Mary Brock Jones

  “So we’re back to prisoner and warder again. May I ask why?” She regarded him warily, one hand surreptitiously feeling for her back. She’d taken to wearing a blaster concealed in a skin pocket there, so natural in feel that not even Hamon in their most intimate moments could detect the pad of matter condensing material.

  “You may ask, but I’m not free to answer.”

  “Can you at least tell me how long this imprisonment is to last? Will I be allowed rations this time?” she asked caustically, nerves on edge.

  “Certainly. You have, after all, earned them.”

  “In what manner?” She kept her face carefully devoid of expression and switched her patch to record.

  “You haven’t been as discreet as you thought. I will tell you that we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough, one for which I have you to thank. It will halt, once and for all, whatever it is your fellow conspirators are planning.” His eyes raked her, daring her to flinch, to throw at him the wild thoughts swirling through her.

  “So we’re back to that old plot again. Your story lines lack imagination, Hamon.”

  She spoke with such precision and control that Hamon was compelled to applaud silently. As an agent provocateur she would be superb. Was superb, he corrected himself. But two could play that game, and his experience was the equal of hers. Or so he hoped, wondering, as so often before, exactly what she had been up to over the last five years. He let none of these thoughts show as he strolled toward her.

  Marthe watched him come towards her. The planes of his face had sharpened, throwing the whole into a harsh cast. It was a face she’d almost forgotten, one she’d not seen since the early days of her captivity. The eyes of brilliant cut emerald challenged her from beneath hooded lids as he dropped into an adjacent cube, leaning over to flick her chin with one iron finger.

  Startled, she jumped. Briefly, she knew her fear showed in her face. She hid it as quickly as she could, but too late. Hamon had seen it. She saw the knowledge of it in his suddenly darkening eyes, and the pain of self-hatred as he drew back and lapsed into an awkward silence, his hand abruptly drawn back and clenched at his side.

  Then his face changed. She recognized it too easily. It was the mask of Major Radcliff, just as she wore the mask of the Haut Liege. Inside, she wept as Major Radcliff broke the silence, in a voice that said nothing of moment had happened between them. He was thinking of asking his mother to return to Hathe for a longer visit, he said, and when would be convenient to Marthe.

  She studied him, all senses alert. Just as Hamon had, she forced Marthe to the background and made herself become only Agent an Castre.

  Why the switch of subject? It was innocuous enough, but after the fiasco of their last meeting, he must know there was little warmth between his mother and her. Was he concerned for the baby? Or was this something else. Was he in fact asking her how safe were the Terrans on Hathe? When would the resistance act? And did he actually believe she would give him an answer?

  She had to admit it would be very advantageous to have the Administrator here on F-day. Madame MacDiarmid knew all the details of Earth’s food distribution system and would be a valuable hostage. Dare she attempt to arrange it? She settled for a noncommittal reply, avowing her delight at his mother’s visit whenever it should suit the Administrator’s busy schedule. His brows lifted in spurious disbelief.

  “You’re sure it won’t be too much for you?” He was staring lazily out the window, his fingers playing idly through her hair.

  “Not at all. Make it as soon as possible, if you like,” she replied, swallowing nervously. Goosebumps jumped to life under his caressing fingers.

  “Probably within days, then. She’s currently on an audit of our base at Outer Georgia, as it happens, so it’s only a short hop to here in this phase of the Hathian system’s gates. Mother said that she didn’t have enough time to get to know you on her last visit, so hopefully she can stay longer this time. Or would you rather we left it a few weeks?”

  She hastily began calculating interstellar times and possibilities. It could be done, just. “Within a few days would be fine,” she said, falling badly into the open pit.

  The hand stopped suddenly and he turned back towards her, a cynical twist to his lips. “Thank you, my dear. That was all I needed to know. You’ll be happy to know that your own imprisonment will last only a matter of days also. How long, would you say—three, five, or maybe nine?”

  By all the Pillars! What had she done? She dragged back a lock of hair falling in her eyes, hastily scrabbling the alert code on her patch as she did so, then tapped out ‘re-run recording’.

  He watched her, amused at this habit of hers of pulling on her ear lobe whenever his words hit too close.

  It was the only sign she let him see of the turmoil he’d aroused. “Whatever you wish. I hadn’t planned to be going anywhere for the next three months,” she said, looking pointedly down at the bulge of her waistline.

  “I hope it will also be possible for me to remain here that long,” he tossed back at her, both a question and a challenge in his hard, green eyes.

  “Why ever not?” she said in a flash, daring him to bring into the open what lay beneath their words. In the event, he only grinned as if in applause, before quixotically reverting to the playful lover she knew so well, holding her easily and planting a light kiss on her brow. As if the past moments had never been. She reached up to inactivate the alert code, pensively listening to her husband as he asked her what she wanted for dinner that evening. Almost banished was the stranger of the last few minutes.

  Or was he? This easy chat tore more at her nerves than the hard-eyed, interrogating officer ever could. This man she almost knew. She said little through dinner, unable for once to copy Hamon as he hid behind a chorus of banter. What had he discovered? What had changed everything so suddenly? And how was she going to distract him from some unknown event? God, there were but four days to go. Surely all would not be lost at this last moment, just because she’d failed.

  Restless, plotting and weaving still as they retired for the night, she was finally defeated by sleep.

  Hamon lay beside her, watching the machinations flit across her unusually expressive face. He did nothing, could not move to comfort her. Just lie here on guard, closed off and silent, torn between triumph and dread. How many more nights would they have?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Marthe devoted the next day to serious socializing. Fortunately for her cover, Hamon had put out that he was worried by the increasing threat to the two Hathian Haut Liege from the peasants’ violence, telling anyone interested that Marthe and Jacquel had chosen to keep to the security of their quarters. She knew he did it only to stop other Terrans from interfering with his imprisonment of her and Jacquel, but his story meant he couldn’t stop them using the vidphones, barring calls to each other. Marthe made full use of the privilege while it lasted.

  Her first call was to Helen Ravensbot, the Terran woman she was most friendly with … but not close to. The hardness at the core of the Terrans always repelled Marthe, but in Helen she sensed one who, if reared under different circumstances, would have been a delight to know, full of the joy of living. As it was, she retained a delicious sense of fun which insisted on bubbling up through the careful cynicism displayed by all the Terran troops—a cynicism understandable in her case. Daily, Helen’s Stores department faced a battle to keep enough of Hathe’s bounty on-planet to supply the garrison, in spite of ever more avaricious calls from her crowded and desperately needy home world. Simultaneously, she had to somehow wring the equipment the Hathe-based troops needed from an Earth reluctant to grant anything to a colony from which had leaked back unbelievable tales of wealth and luxury.

  Marthe had listened in surprise when she’d first heard Helen complain. Privately, she judged the Terran quarters and rations to be merely adequate. To her, they lacked an element—call it style, finesse, whatever—but the years of scrabbling for every last necessity had
stripped something from the Terrans.

  It was only in Hamon’s rooms that Marthe felt truly comfortable. The other rooms were furnished as expensively, enhanced with personal fripperies, but it was as if some basic essence of life was absent. Or perhaps buried, to burst forth occasionally in the elegance of Hamon’s rooms, or the cheeky laughter of the pretty brunette now grinning at her from the Tri-D chamber.

  Her use of the chamber was one more thing to mark Marthe as different. She persisted in using the most energy expensive mode of the vids whereas Helen used the small vidscreen only, considering the life-size, full projection of the chamber as wasteful for a mere chat.

  “Helen, you can’t tell me there’s an energy shortage on Hathe.” It was an old argument, a ritual of every vidcall, without which neither would have felt comfortable.

  “Marthe, that’s restricted data, as you’re well aware—even if I did know the answer,” remonstrated the other, completing the formula. “Tell me instead of this dreadful threat to you. I can’t believe the peasants are capable of causing any real harm.” She shivered theatrically, the hint of danger bringing a delighted sparkle to her eyes.

  “I shouldn’t think so,” said Marthe soothingly. “I don’t know what Hamon’s so stirred up about. I suppose the threat is from the natives.”

  Helen stared. “Marthe! You can’t think it comes from our own forces.” Marthe smiled to herself. If only Hamon could hear that ‘our’. He seemed to be the only Terran who always remembered that she and Jacquel were not from Earth.

  “I don’t know what to think. Hamon would surely have told me all the details if the threat came from the peasants, so that I’d know how to keep safe, but he’s said nothing.”

  “But who would do such a thing, and why?” Helen leant forward, deliciously mystified.

  “Who knows? Mind you, silly jealousies often surround a woman able to wear beautiful clothes and do them justice, as you of course know. Maybe that’s all this is.”

  Marthe was amused to see Helen’s glow at the flattering inference. All her life, Marthe had been forced to listen to comments about her vaunted beauty. Only her twin Bendin, equally blessed himself, had treated such talk as it deserved, and even he had admitted she ‘didn’t look half bad … if you like squirty little midgets’. Today, though, Marthe needed any advantage offered, and if comparing the looks of the pretty but not uncommon Helen to Marthe’s more dramatic beauty would help her, she’d swallow her embarrassment and do it.

  Helen giggled, then stretched in pure, sensuous joy. “Marthe, dear, I know exactly what you mean,” she replied, in a languid drawl, clearly borrowed from their other friend, the sultry Jocelyn Harp. The effect was ruined by the grin that rapidly followed. “Just imagine, fisticuffs in evening gowns. How luscious.” She laughed out loud and Marthe sighed ruefully. Helen was right. It was ludicrous to think any Terran would endanger her favored position on Hathe for such a trivial emotion as envy.

  “If that’s not it, then what is the problem? Why the big mystery? If it’s restricted data, why doesn’t Hamon just say so? He always has before,” she added with considerable force of feeling. “What’s so different this time?”

  Helen didn’t answer immediately and Marthe cursed. She’d been too vehement, showed too much of the anxiety that racked her. She watched Helen study her and saw the instant that recognition hit the Terran woman: Marthe was not, in fact, from Earth.

  She’d muffed it. Worse, she was suddenly forced to excuse herself, overcome by a wave of nausea.

  When she returned, she saw the shock on Helen’s face. Marthe had pinched her cheeks before she left the bathroom, breathed deeply and scrubbed at her cheeks. Anything to disguise the washed out face she’d seen in the mirror. It didn’t work. She couldn’t hide the haggard planes, the deep shadows beneath the eyes, the skin stretched taut over barely covered bones, all too starkly defined by her sudden pallor.

  “Stars, Marthe, you look like a lower level, non-producer on Earth. When did you last eat?”

  “It’s merely the pregnancy,” said Marthe, a touch too offhand. “I’m one of the unlucky ones who get stuck with nausea right through, the doctor says.”

  “Pregnant women don’t usually look as bad as you.”

  “Thank you very much. It’s so nice to be reminded that I’m am starting to look frumpy and bulging.” She made herself laugh, one hand protectively over the gentle swelling of her belly.

  “You want that baby very much, don’t you?”

  Helen smiled, but Marthe wasn’t fooled into thinking it was sincere. Helen was too much the product of a planet where a baby was but another mouth to feed. She doubted expectant mothers on Earth openly displayed the joy Marthe felt at the thought of her baby. Yet she couldn’t deny it.

  “Of course I do,” she said now. Then changed the subject before she might further remind Helen of the differences between them.She put on her brightest face, and threw herself into the normal gossip of their chats: talk of friends in common and those not so well liked, of trivia and scandal and all the small doings of the fortress, anything to dredge up some clue to the strange happenings of yesterday.

  Helen joined in, but Marthe could see much of her mind was busy elsewhere. When Helen excused herself soon afterwards, Marthe contacted Central and got them to plug her into Helen’s vidlines.

  She had been right to worry. Helen almost immediately put a call through to their other friend, Jocelyn. And the topic of conversation? Marthe and Hamon, of course. She listened with growing dread as she heard the two women indulge in a half hour of mutually enjoyable character shredding.

  Helen couldn’t wait to tell Jocelyn of her chat with Marthe and described her loss of looks all too vividly. From there, it was a very short step to the kind of speculation Marthe least needed. Was all not well between Hamon Radcliff and his beautiful Hathian? Could Radcliff be cooling?

  “He’s already kept her far longer than any of us expected,” she heard Helen say. “It’s been nearly six months now. How romantic.”

  “And how stupid,” replied Jocelyn, as they both laughed cruelly.

  From there, it didn’t take long for the two women to move on to wondering about the sudden confinement of the Hathians. Could there actually be some truth to Radcliff’s scare mongering? Marthe couldn’t listen to any more. She left the rest for central to record and analyze. She’d heard enough.

  From this tiny ripple, the damage quickly spread in ever widening circles of distrust. Increasingly, she noticed a new coolness, a tightening of the Terran ranks signaled by ever more frequent apologies and refusals to talk when she put through a vidcall. Jaca was soon on to her as well, demanding to know what was going on. He was getting the same treatment, and neither could do anything to stop the ripples gaining momentum. By the following evening, her reports told her, they lapped at Hamon’s feet.

  A sharp salute from a soldier was Hamon’s first sign that his position was changing. It was so unusual, so different from the normal half-hearted hand jerk he got these past months that he was shaken rudely from his current worries. It was obviously time he took as much notice of the Terrans as he did the Hathians that threatened them. And once he did, the new air of alert readiness among the troops was unmistakable. Even more unsettling was their growing willingness to cooperate with his staff’s orders. That was almost frightening in its novelty. Nevertheless, he used the change to his full advantage, grateful for any help.

  The presence of Johne’s ferrets hanging around his office signaled that the Commander was finally taking an interest in the changes. Or more probably, thought Hamon cynically, Johne was worried that if he didn’t take action, he was in danger of losing all authority to his so-called ‘junior’—something the man would never countenance.

  So it seemed he was no longer the joke of the garrison. He smiled sourly to himself amidst the growing confidence of his men. At least, he reflected, you can take comfort in the knowledge that you have done your duty. For along with growing
awareness of his own success, he couldn’t miss the worsening tension in Marthe, sapping the life from her. From the surveillance vids he knew that scarce enough food passed her mouth in a day to feed the child, let alone the mother who nurtured it. Nor was the little she ate much use to her. The digester records showed that her nausea led to vomiting more than once each day. The hope emanating from Ferdo’s workshop fuelled a rare excitement in the professional part of him, but he kept it from her and never told her of the signals they were picking up regularly. Why trouble her further, when none had yet been decoded? She guessed too much already and it was literally killing her.

  He entered his apartment on the third night of her latest confinement beset with fear and was immediately aware of a new aura of desperation surrounding her. He stopped a moment in the doorway, watching her taut figure curled up in one of the cube chairs, her head sunk beseechingly into her cupped hands as she stared out the window. In silence, he studied the stark etching of her bones through the translucent skin, the grey smudges filling the deep hollows of her eyes, the softly swelling belly pushing on her gown sharply contrasting with the dangerous angularity of the rest of her tired body.

  She was so thin, wasting away before him. The records showed that when not calling acquaintances, she spent her days sleeping. The number of calls had decreased as the coolness in her Terran confidantes grew. Des Trurain had likewise spent his time calling on hoped-for allies, but the change in atmosphere among the Terrans had given Hamon all the excuse he needed to transfer his nemesis back to a security cell, stopping any further outside contact.

  Hamon made no attempt to deny the dark thrill he felt at knowing the Hathian was once more immured in the gloomy prison wing. He wondered if Marthe knew of it yet. Probably, he concluded sourly. From the coincidental nature of their calls these last days, he had to assume they were still in contact. Despite the complete lack of any sign of it on the surveillance records.