by Timothy Zahn
In contrast, the aliens’ chests and arms below the helmets were completely bare, with no armor or even shirts, showing the bulging muscles beneath their pale red skin. At their waists they wore thick brown belts, with loose purple trousers beneath, the bottom ends tucked into heavy brown boots.
Hanging from the right side of their belts were brown scabbards holding two-foot-long swords.
The group left the reeds and walked through the loose sand onto the wet sand along the ocean. The Shipmaster turned to stay out of the lapping waves and led the way toward Nicole and Jeff. Jeff touched Nicole’s arm and nodded, and together they walked to meet them.
The Shipmaster walked to within ten feet of them and stopped. “Protector,” he said stiffly as the two humans also stopped. It was, as Nicole had suspected, Fievj’s voice. “Your warriors seem unfit for battle.”
“We don’t have warriors,” Nicole said. “Like I told you before—and like Plato and everyone else told you—humans don’t fight.”
“You have fought,” Fievj said, leveling an armored finger at her. “As have you,” he added, shifting the finger to point at Jeff.
“I’m a Sibyl,” Nicole reminded him. “My brain was already damaged when you brought me here. That’s what being a Sibyl means. The drug in the inhaler has only made it worse.”
“And him?” Fievj asked, the finger still leveled at Jeff.
“His brain is also damaged,” Nicole improvised. “Just not the same way.”
“Yet we’ve heard him say he was once part of a military group called the Marines.”
Nicole felt her breath catch in her throat. Hell—how had Fievj found that out? An overheard conversation? Allyce?
“You misunderstood,” Jeff said calmly before Nicole could come up with anything. “I’m not a warrior.”
“You were a Marine,” Fievj countered. “Marines throughout the galaxy are warriors.”
“You’ve got some kind of mistranslation going,” Jeff said, shaking his head. “On Earth the people with my mental problems are sent to an island so they won’t be a danger to anyone else. The word for that is marooning. The group of people who are marooned are called maroons; the singular form of that is marine.”
“Why would the Wisps have brought someone mentally unsound to serve the Fyrantha?” Fievj demanded.
“Why not?” Jeff countered. “I mean, really, what do Wisps know about Earth?”
For a long moment Fievj stood silently. Nicole held her breath, wondering if he was actually buying into that ridiculous story.
Still, Trake had always said that if you told a lie with enough confidence people would believe you.
“You carry a weapon,” Fievj said.
“What, this?” Jeff hefted his trident. “I picked it up because I didn’t want anyone tripping on it and poking himself.” He took a step forward and held it out in front of him. “I figured you’d probably want to collect all of them before you sent us back to work.”
“Perhaps there will be no more work.” Fievj stepped partially to the side, and gestured back toward the Wisps and their burdens. “Behold your enemies.”
Nicole threw a quick look at Jeff. “Behold our what?” she asked carefully.
“These are the Koffren,” Fievj said. “They’ve been taken forcefully from their homes. That’s made them angry.”
“They can join the club,” Jeff muttered.
“They’ve been told you humans are the reason for their abduction,” Fievj continued. “They’ve been told your defeat and destruction will be the price for their return to their homes.”
A shiver ran up Nicole’s back. “That’s crazy,” she said, silently cursing the sudden tremor in her voice. “You can’t let us get killed. You need us to fix the Fyrantha for you.”
“There are plenty more humans,” Fievj said. “A world full of them. The Wisps may not know much about your world”—he paused, his helmet faceplate turning pointedly toward Jeff—“but they can easily bring more if the Fyrantha so requires.”
He looked back at Nicole. “Whether it requires more this day will be your decision. Either you will kill the Koffren, or they will kill you.”
“But we don’t fight,” Nicole protested, trying one last time. “You said yourself that none of the others can do anything.”
“Then they will all die,” Fievj said. “Or perhaps you and your brain-damaged companions will teach them, or will fight on their behalf. The choice is yours. You have two hours.”
“Two hours until what?” Jeff asked.
“In two hours the Wisps will release them, and the battle will begin,” Fievj said. “Decide well. Decide quickly.”
He turned and circled around the silent Wisps and their frozen burdens and headed back the way he’d come.
Nicole looked at the Koffren. She could just make out the outline of their heads through the perforations in their helmets, with their actual faces completely hidden. Not that she would have been able to read their expressions even if she could see them. But if her own experience was any guide she had no doubt they were fully conscious and fully aware of the situation.
She also had no reason to doubt Fievj’s statement that they were mad as hell about being here.
She lowered her gaze to their swords. Resting in their sheaths, their blades were hidden. But the hilts looked pretty solid. Way too solid to be part of the toy weapons the Shipmasters had given the Thii and Ponngs back in the Q3 arena.
Still, no matter how sharp the swords were, they were still a lot shorter than the humans’ tridents. If she and Jeff could gather everyone together, they could easily surround the Koffren and keep them back.
Except that every human in the arena was doped out of his mind with Setting Sun.
Jeff had said the drug would wear off in two or three hours. If it was only two hours, they might be functional enough by then for her idea to work.
If it was three hours, the Koffren would slaughter them where they stood.
Unless she and Jeff got to them first.
An unpleasant thrill ran through her, crinkling at the edge of her soul. She was talking murder here, pure and simple. She could call it self-defense—she could even call it defense of the others—but it boiled down to killing creatures who had no way of defending themselves.
Unless the Wisps let go at the first sign of any attack. Fievj hadn’t said they would do that, but he also hadn’t said they wouldn’t. On top of that, she had no idea where Koffren hearts were located inside those bulky bodies.
Furtively, she looked at the trident in Jeff’s hand. As long as the Wisps held the Koffren steady, poking enough holes through all that muscle would sooner or later hit something vital.
And even if the Wisps let go as soon as she or Jeff attacked, they would at least have cut the enemy’s numbers in half.
But murder?
“Come on,” Jeff said quietly, touching her arm. “We need to talk.”
Nicole braced herself. She suspected he wouldn’t take well to her idea. But someone had to make the suggestion. “Jeff—”
“I said we need to talk,” Jeff said, his touch becoming a soft but unbreakable grip around her upper arm. “Inland—under the trees—where the Shipmasters can’t watch us.”
He turned his back on the ocean and started walking, towing her along beside him. “Okay,” he said when they had made it through the reeds and were under the tree cover again. “What were you going to say?”
“I was going to say that we have to do something,” Nicole said, bracing herself. No, he definitely wasn’t going to like this. “If we don’t, they’ll kill all of us.”
“And you think slaughtering them right there on the beach is the right thing to do?”
Nicole stared. “How did you know I was thinking that?”
“Please,” Jeff said with a snort. “Aside from you looking at their swords and then looking longingly at my trident?”
“Well—uh—”
“More importantly, I think it�
�s exactly what Fievj is hoping we’ll do,” he interrupted. “It’s a classic games theory ploy: hold a big fat threat over us, with a big obvious solution staring us in the face.”
Nicole closed her eyes, feeling like a complete fool. Of course that was what Fievj wanted. They’d messed up his plan to make the humans kill each other, so now he wanted to see if humans would kill aliens.
And especially if they would kill helpless aliens.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Skip the regrets and embarrassment,” he said grimly. “We’ve got two hours until the Wisps turn them loose on us, and it’s two of us small fry versus two hulking behemoths. We need to work out a strategy, and fast.”
Nicole looked back at the ocean, trying to push her shame out of her mind. What in the world had she been thinking? Killing helpless people was—
Was like something Bungie would do.
In fact, they’d gotten caught up in this whole Fyrantha thing in the first place because Bungie had murdered someone and gotten shot in response. The realization that she was thinking like Bungie was somehow worse even than the thought of murder itself.
But the fact remained that Bungie was here … and unlike everyone else in the arena, he hadn’t been drugged.
“Three of us small fry,” she corrected. “We’ve got Bungie, too.”
“No,” Jeff said flatly. “I don’t trust him. I especially don’t trust him with something pointy in his hands.”
“But—” Nicole gestured toward the beach.
“Besides, we’re trying to prove we’re not warlike, remember?” Jeff reminded her. “Bungie staying wrapped up like a Christmas turkey is the best contribution he can make to the cause.”
“I suppose,” Nicole said with a sigh. To be honest, she didn’t really want to work with Bungie, either. “Then the only thing we can do is get everyone out of here. Take them back to Q4 where the Shipmasters don’t control the Wisps.”
“But where they can just walk around?” Jeff countered pointedly. “Remember, that’s where you first met Fievj. Not just walking, but lugging a rack of greenfire weapons behind him.”
“Oh,” Nicole said, wincing. “Right.”
“Anyway, running won’t solve anything. Fievj will keep at us until he knows one way or the other whether Earth can be sold into slavery. No, we need to end this here and now. One way or the other.”
Nicole’s stomach tightened. “Are you saying we let the others die?”
Jeff’s expression was tight, but his nod was firm. “I don’t like it any better than you do. But I don’t see any other way. In warfare, you sometimes have to sacrifice the few to save the many. And with the whole world on the line…” He gave a small shrug. “I don’t see any other way.”
Nicole closed her eyes, her teammates’ faces flashing in front of her eyes. Carp, Tomas, Levi. Men she’d worked with. Men she’d shared a hundred meals with. Men she’d sometimes even laughed with.
Men who’d trusted her when she first came up with this insane Setting Sun drug idea.
Could she just stand by and let the Koffren kill them?
“No,” she said, opening her eyes again. “We can’t.”
“Nicole—”
“Besides, like you said, it doesn’t fix the problem,” she cut him off. “Sooner or later Fievj will try again, and the next time there won’t be anyone mixing up a drug to keep everyone peaceful. The next team they put together will fight, and then we’ll lose everything.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “They’ve gone this long without suspecting anything.”
“That was before I came along and screwed up everything.”
“Not your fault—the whole thing was unstable to begin with,” Jeff said. “Let’s focus on the here and now. Do you have a plan?”
Nicole shrugged helplessly. “I don’t even know where to start.”
Jeff pursed his lips, then gave a small shrug. “You start by assessing the enemy. Make a list of his strengths and weaknesses. Once you have that, you figure out your own assets and work up a strategy.”
“Yeah. Right,” Nicole said, thinking back to the aliens frozen in the Wisps’ grip. “What weaknesses?”
“Well, for starters, limited protection,” Jeff said. “Only their heads are armored. That may suggest their heads are especially vulnerable.”
“You mean like they’re soft or they bleed easily?”
“Or they can’t handle bright lights,” Jeff said. “They’ve got a lot of eye holes, but you saw how small they are. Or maybe it’s loud noises—the helmets will block a lot of sound, too.”
“And a lot of the view,” Nicole said, her brain starting to get into this. “Lots of holes, but metal in between them. And the holes don’t go very far around the sides.”
“Limited peripheral vision,” Jeff said, nodding. “Good point. On the down side, it would be hard to get into one of those holes with a weapon. A single prong of our tridents would probably fit through, but the other two prongs would be blocked by the rest of the helmet.”
“Maybe that’s why Fievj gave us tridents instead of spears.”
“Maybe,” Jeff agreed. “That’s another good point—he came up with a Plan B awfully fast after we drugged everyone. Maybe he was always thinking about throwing the Koffren at us.”
“Or maybe Allyce told them about Setting Sun in time to change their plans.”
“Again, we can leave the blame game for later,” Jeff said. “What other strengths and weaknesses do they have?”
“They’re not wearing any shirts.”
“Is that a strength or a weakness?”
Nicole frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a strength in that we can stab through without anything getting in the way,” Jeff said. “It’s a weakness in that there’s no cloth to grab onto in a fight.”
“Oh,” Nicole said. She hadn’t thought about that. “Oh, and the nets, too. They grab on to our jumpsuits pretty good, but not onto our skin.”
“Right—I’d forgotten about that. And of course, their swords are shorter than our tridents. Anything else?”
“I can’t think of anything,” Nicole said. “You?”
“Nothing significant,” Jeff said. “They should be easy to sneak up on from behind, but that comes under the general heading of limited vision. Our turn. What are our assets?”
“You,” Nicole said, her stomach tightening. “Me, I guess.”
“How about Kahkitah?” Jeff suggested. “The Ghorfs swim better than any of us knew. Maybe they do other things better, too.”
“You mean like fight?”
“They’re certainly built for it.”
“Maybe they fight good enough for the Shipmasters to want their planet?”
Jeff hissed out a breath. “Yeah. Point. Okay, so Kahkitah’s out. Then you’re right—it’s just you and me, and tridents and nets.” He lifted a finger, his face suddenly thoughtful. “And one paintball gun. You sure you used up all the paintballs when you were practicing?”
“Yeah. I wish now I hadn’t.”
“Any chance we can get more?”
Nicole thought about the Ejbofs and the tree-eating slugs. “I don’t know. Maybe. But Fievj knows I got it in Q2. He’s bound to have all the ways across watched. Isn’t he?”
“Probably,” Jeff conceded. “Frankly, if I were him, I’d watch every exit from this arena, to Q2 or anywhere else. Someone as good at throwing monkey wrenches as you are needs to be contained.”
Nicole felt her throat tighten. “Or killed.”
“We’ve already shown we’re not going to kill each other.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nicole said. “Never mind. What about—?”
“Whoa—wait a second,” Jeff cut her off. “If that’s not what you meant, what did you mean?”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Nicole said, her stomach churning with an echo of the utter helplessness she’d felt as that Wisp carried he
r toward the heat-transfer duct and her death. “What about the drug balls? We still have a few of those left. Can we use them?”
“I don’t know,” Jeff said doubtfully. “The balls themselves are too big to fit through the eye holes. Breaking a paintball against the helmet would throw some of the stuff inside, which could be useful, but I doubt there’s enough Setting Sun in the drug balls to bother them. There’s not that much liquid in there to begin with, and it evaporates pretty quickly. Most of it would just splash against the helmet.”
“And that assumes the drug affects Koffren the same way it does us.”
“Which would be way too convenient,” Jeff agreed. “No, if we can’t get real paintballs, I don’t think there’s anything we can do with the gun.”
Nicole looked back out toward the ocean. The ocean, where she’d almost drowned before Kahkitah rescued her and took her to the Ghorfs’ special hideout.
The Ghorfs had secrets, all right. Big secrets. One of those secrets could very well be that they could fight.
But she couldn’t put them in that position. Not after they’d saved her life. She and Jeff and her whole team were walking the razor’s edge, and at this point it looked like it would get them all killed. She couldn’t do that to the Ghorfs, too.
She frowned. Kahkitah and Ghorfs. Ejbofs and paintball guns.
Assets.
“You’ve got something,” Jeff said softly, peering closely at her face. It hadn’t been a question.
“Maybe,” she said slowly. “You said the Shipmasters and Wisps were probably guarding all the exits from here.”
“They are if they’ve got any brains at all.”
“But if I did get out, would they be watching for me to come back in?”
“If they saw you leave, probably,” Jeff said, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “If they didn’t see you leave … hard to tell. But the typical sentry line tends to work better in a single direction, either keeping people out or keeping people in. Are you saying you have a way out that they don’t know about?”