by B. V. Larson
Startled, my crew didn’t need any more urging after that. They fired their weapons. Five gravity grenades flew out, thumping and clanging on the deck like ball bearings. They went off a second later, surprising the enemy.
All six of the armored hulks crumpled, crushed inward by the sudden intense weight of the very armor they wore.
We leapt out of the ship, spraying disruptor fire at those of the enemy who were still struggling to rise or lift a weapon. They shuddered in agony.
The captain’s fine hand twitched then, and we all fell onto our faces.
I couldn’t move. My body felt as if it had gone to sleep. Every limb tingled with numbness, even my cheeks were numb. My eyes were locked open and unable to blink.
The captain walked near to stand over me. My eyes couldn’t even close to shut out her image. They were beginning to sting, but I was helpless.
She examined me closely.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” she said calmly. “I’m Captain Lael, Rebel. Welcome aboard my ship Splendor.”
She looked at me expectantly, but of course I couldn’t move or speak.
“Ah, not in talkative mood? We’ll fix that soon enough.”
My eyes shifted to a wand-like device she was holding. I could swivel my eyeballs now, but not blink. Tears ran down my face.
She put held her wand close to my face. I wanted to shy away, or even just to close my eyes, but I couldn’t.
“This is a neural paralyzer,” she said, holding the thin metal rod an inch from my left eye. “I considered using it the moment you came aboard, but I wanted to gauge your responses first. I’m impressed. You attacked without hesitation. It’s the same vicious behavior pattern you exhibited when you shot-up my ship’s stern.”
I looked up at her, and she stared back curiously. I felt some of the numbness wear off, allowing me to blink. That was a relief.
Captain Lael was lovely, in an ethereal way. She didn’t look quite human. She looked… beyond human. Her limbs were all shapely, though slightly elongated. Her cheekbones were high, her chin narrow, her ears small and perfectly shaped.
Her eyes were the most enchanting part. I’d met a thousand women who spent time in front of a mirror every day to make their eyes look like that—but she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all.
“You’re an interesting specimen,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve encountered your type before. Very much like an Imperial, but squatty and built with dense bones... there’s so much body hair...”
Captain Lael spread her long fingers over my scalp. They were cool to the touch.
“The cranium appears to be small,” she said, “but not so small as to suggest impairment.”
More armored soldiers had appeared by this time. I could see them as I could now move my eyes freely. The paralysis effect was slowly wearing off.
“I’m intrigued,” the captain said, standing again on her long legs. “Bring this one to my private chambers. Put the rest into the algae tanks.”
They lifted me and my crewmates up, taking us away as if we were children riding upon the backs of athletic fathers. This level of strength surprised me because the Imperials appeared to be slight—even frail. It occurred to me that their strength had to come from their armored suits. Inside them marched long-armed Imperials like the captain, aided by the powered constructs they wore.
I was placed inside a cube of force. There was no escape—I couldn’t even touch the walls without a stinging sensation burning my fingers.
The Imperials seemed to be physically weak as individuals, but their technology made them powerful. I thought that over while I waited inside my shimmering cage for the captain. Perhaps I could use my superior strength to my advantage.
It seemed like a long time before she showed up.
“You will now answer my questions,” she told me when she finally did.
“Where’s my crew?” I demanded immediately, glaring at her.
I stood as tall as I could inside the force cube, but I couldn’t straighten my back fully without zapping the top of my head. Perhaps that was by design.
“You demand punishment already?” she asked. “I thought you were capable of understanding your situation. Perhaps I was wrong.”
Her steel wand-like device came out again. She’d used it as a neural-paralyzer before. She made a motion with it, and I found myself falling into a crumpled heap on the deck.
This time, I hadn’t gone limp. She’d done something with my muscles, however, making them spastically contract. Struggling against the effect, I lifted my head and my body, pushing up off the deck. My throat made an angry gargling sound of effort.
She threw me back down again and laughed.
“You don’t learn quickly,” she said. “We usually eliminate slaves of such poor quality immediately. But I’ve held back so far because you amuse me.”
I began to rise again, slowly. This time I was ready to catch myself in case I was thrown down again.
“I’m not a slave,” I said, “I’m a prisoner of war.”
She laughed. “Such wild claims! You’re no such thing. You’re a beast of the field. An insect that apes its betters. A mongrel in the shadow of an Imperial.”
“We’re at war. I’m your prisoner. Therefore, I’m a prisoner of war.”
Captain Lael shook her head. “I see you don’t understand. In order for two creatures to be at war, there must be an opportunity for both creatures to harm the other. If you catch a fish, are you at war with all fish? If you shoot down an air-swimmer, are you at war with the entire species?”
Before I could respond, she went on to answer the question herself.
“No,” she said firmly, “no one says the huntress makes war upon the rodent in her sights. War requires equal participants.”
“Agreed,” I said. “But by your own definition, we’re at war.”
“How so?”
“I destroyed one of your carriers personally. If my full squadron of fighters had been here, I could have taken out your ship. You’re talented and well-equipped, but your ship is nothing I couldn’t handle under the right circumstances.”
She tilted her head in a manner I found enchanting, despite my discomfort. I warned myself not to go easy on her if I was to get the upper hand somehow. Just because she was pretty didn’t mean she wasn’t a deadly enemy.
“You’ve made that claim before,” she said. “There was a carrier knocked out at the rear of our formation…”
“Now that we’ve settled our definitions,” I said, “I require that you treat me—”
“And what about physical combat?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard me. “Do you think you could defeat my warriors?”
I shrugged. “Of course,” I said with certainty. “I’d love to have the chance to prove it.”
“I’d enjoy watching that. Whip-blades would flay that attitude off your face.”
“No weapons,” I said quickly. “No false skins of exoskeletal armor, either. Just two people in a fight to the finish.”
“No weapons?” she asked, scandalized. “Why should I honor any of your requests?”
“Because, your way would prove nothing. Your weapons are as unknown to me as mine are to you. Send out your champion—or would you dare to take up my challenge yourself?”
My speech had made her increasingly unhappy with every word. It seemed that suggesting I could beat her in a fight had thrown her into a rage.
She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at me through the force-walls of my cube prison. She was tall, almost as tall as I was—even taller when I was left hunching inside her glowing cage.
“This talk of duels is a fantasy,” she said. “Let’s get to business. I’m not interested in your bravado. I’m here to gain answers from a captive. You’ll be coerced with pain until I hear what I want to know.”
“So this is an interrogation?” I asked. “Why me? Why not some admiral or other?”
“I don’t have an admiral
on hand, but I do have a wild-thing that attacks without warning or hesitation. I want to know what you know. Will you answer my questions, or shall we begin with a session of unpleasantness?”
She tapped on the force-walls with her wand. Each time the handheld device made contact, a buzzing sound came to my ears, and my body tingled. Her slightest movement created nausea and pain.
“I’ll answer every question I can,” I said, “if you’ll accept my formal challenge to—”
She lost patience and zapped me. My balls shriveled into my body, and my knees came together. A feeling of intense electrical shock ran through me.
There were no visible wires, but I was being electrocuted, nonetheless.
Summoning what little self-control I had left, as soon as the pulse let up I showed my teeth in a savage grin. “Sitting safely outside a cage, tormenting people? Does this sort of thing get you off?”
She made an exasperated sound and cranked up the power. I fell to the floor of my cage and lost consciousness.
I felt heat spreading throughout my body as I lost consciousness. I hoped my bladder hadn’t let go, but I thought that it might have.
=38=
When I awakened, I knew why everyone aboard Killer had hated my kind so much. We were too similar in appearance to Imperials.
Apparently the original Kher, the base stock of all our races, were primates. Smart, technologically capable—and ruthless.
No one had ever shown me a picture of an Imperial, but the officers had to know what they looked like. They’d leaned on me because of the resemblance, even if they weren’t doing it consciously.
None of that mattered now. I found myself on a cold metal deck. The surface was rippled with hard ridges, and they’d caused red painful lines to appear on my slack cheek.
I staggered up and looked around. I was still inside a force-cube in the Imperial captain’s bedroom. The captain herself was gone.
Taking stock of myself, I found no weapons, but I had something else I could use: my sym.
Closing my eyes, I willed the synthetic lifeform that resided in my body to contact its brothers wherever they were. I had to know what was happening to my crew.
There was a pause. The sym never talked to me directly, but it could be encouraged to do complicated things. It was especially good at communications tasks. As I understood it, the nanites that formed part of its structure were powered chemically by my body. They allowed it to send radio transmissions.
After a long time, I thought I saw and heard something. A snatch of a scream. An echoing conversation. Was that Samson’s face?
Then, the vision came to me in full-force. My sym had hacked into the ship’s network and found a pathway to my crew through the ship’s surveillance system. Unfortunately, the vision it presented wasn’t a happy one.
At first, I thought they were drowning. They were in cold-looking water up to their necks. They were all splashing and pushing away growths of some kind—could that be the algae the captain had mentioned earlier?
“Dr. Chang,” I said, pressing to make contact. “Can you hear me?”
He twitched and frowned, but he seemed too distracted to talk. He dragged a patch of green-black seaweed-looking stuff from his arm. It left a red weal behind. Could the algae be consuming them?
“Doc!” I shouted, forcing the sym to carry my urgency.
He reacted as if startled, and he looked around. His sym tipped him off to look for a camera eye somewhere, and he spotted it.
“Is that you, Chief?” He asked. “Get us out of this tank! This organism is carnivorous!”
I felt a surge of worry in my gut. My crew was my responsibility. I had to get them out—but how?
The following few minutes I tried to hold a conversation with the group and to explain my situation. It didn’t help much. They were too distracted to talk or think. My tortured crew didn’t know the layout of the ship, but they thought they were in the lower decks, in what we might have referred to as “the bilge” back on Earth.
After reassuring them I’d do something to save them, I cut the connection and pressed my sym further. I urged it to “see” beyond Splendor’s hull.
My perception tricks were really generated by mass data input through a ship’s sensors which were filtered into a form my mind could take in directly as visuals. Accomplishing the same thing aboard an Imperial ship might have been impossible—but it wasn’t.
After a few minutes of trying, perhaps driven to greater concentration by the fact my crew was dying below, I broke through. It felt strange, as if a plug had been pulled out of my skull and the contents of the ships sensors were being poured inside.
The heavy cruiser was in flight. Splendor was no longer in the same empty patch of space where we’d been captured. We’d jumped to somewhere new. A group of five vessels had gathered here.
There was a planet, the target of the hunting party. They were circling the target like sharks. Bombs were being readied. Gravity-bombs that would crush the inhabitants to pulp when they fell.
My mind was brought back to my body with a sudden shocking sensation. I opened my eyes to find myself confused and writhing on the deck again. My muscles had contracted, and I’d crumpled to the floor.
The captain was back. She was breathing hard, standing tall.
“I see it,” she said, “but I don’t believe it. You hacked our networks? From inside a force-cube?”
I looked up at her, deciding how to play the situation. Slowly, I got to my feet. I lifted my chin and shrugged.
“Of course,” I said. “Are you surprised? I thought since you left everything open—”
“Shut up,” she said dangerously. “Drop your device on the floor of your cage, and your life will be spared.”
“Device?” I asked, as if confused. “Oh, I see you don’t understand. There is no device. You can scan me if you want to. It’s an innate ability.”
I was gambling hard, but with my crew in jeopardy, I felt I had to. My sym was mostly biological, with only trace amounts of metal. I hoped the nanites wouldn’t show up on an electromagnetic scan.
She paced around the cage angrily. She obviously didn’t like the idea that I possessed any kind of tech that she didn’t.
“We’ll have to dissect you. The lot of you.”
Captain Lael lifted up her hand and spoke to her wand. “Remove the prisoners from the tanks. Feed the bloom some other kind of protein source. I need to study all of these vermin.”
I felt relief, but I didn’t show it. I looked at her blankly. One of the keys to getting away with any con was to look like you didn’t know what was happening.
She studied me in return.
“This can’t all be a coincidence,” she said. “A vicious streak. A mad assault on my ship—wanting to be captured, perhaps? Now, you invade my networks from inside a force-cube? No, this has been carefully planned.”
“You’d best kill me now, then,” I said. “It’s the only safe thing to do.”
Her face tightened. She was paranoid as well as arrogant, and I was feeding her worst concerns.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she asked. “The only reason you’d make such a request is because you’ve already finished your mission. Have you downloaded and transmitted any design information? Force intel?”
Her eyes widened as I continued to stare at her with my best innocent-rabbit expression.
“A trap!” she said. “This is a trap! You’ve called Rebel forces here. I’m reporting this immediately—and don’t worry, all your secrets will be torn from you in time.”
Turning, she left the chamber. I heard her say something about the bridge as she marched down the passages. A squad of clanking troops in heavy armor followed her at a jog.
It was time to do my worst now, I figured. I reached out with my mind and tried to get my sym to engage the ship’s controls.
It was easier this time around. I’d thought they might have put up a firewall or something, but whatev
er work-around the sym had figured out was still functioning unabated. I continued to browse their ship’s network with impunity.
It would probably be only a matter of time before they shut me out, so I knew I had to do something drastic, and do it fast. When you’ve got an advantage, it’s best to work it hard while you can.
Skipping weapons, communications, sensors, life-support… I went to the security systems.
Things were difficult there, but I found what I was looking for at last: the force-field generator and its all-important control unit.
I thought about switching them all off. That would surely mess things up—but it might be deadly, too. The warp core was contained by a force-wall on Rebel ships. I figured that might be true on this ship as well. Singlehandedly destroying a heavy cruiser would be an impressive final act, one I’d been willing to settle for a few hours ago—but now I was becoming ambitious. I wanted more.
Figuring out exactly which force-wall was surrounding me right now was too difficult, so I killed all the security walls at once. Every prisoner on the ship was instantly released, including me.
The first thing I did was stand tall and stretch out my spine. That felt good!
A moment later, I walked to stand to one side of where I knew the door had been. The ship’s doors were like those on Killer, they simply vanished and reappeared when you touched them.
I considered exiting the chambers, but I knew that was likely to end in death. The guards would spot me. I wouldn’t stand a chance against those guys. They were well-armed and armored.
Instead, I walked to the captain’s bed. I gathered up all her bedding and threw it on the floor where the force-cube had been. Then, I stood against the wall again near the entrance and waited.
It was a long wait, but she showed up at last. Behind her, guards were clanking. I could hear them in their metal suits. This was going to be tight, if it could be done at all.
Holding my breath, I saw the door vanish to reveal the passageway and the captain—and then I made my move.
=39=