by Rob Buckman
“Why … why have you brought us here?” Arden bin Riza demanded. “You have no right !”
“Right? Hiro asked. “What right did you have to attempt to take the life of my lord and his lady?” He spoke in a deceptively soft voice.
“I … we know nothing about that.” Stuttered Abdulla Penman, Arden bin Riza’s companion.
“You lie, dog. You and your friend here were the last two people to work aboard the shuttle our lord and his lady took to fly to the moon. The one that exploded upon landing.”
“We know nothing of this, I swear,” Arden bin Riza protested.
“And yet the video record of the shuttle bay showed you were the last two people inside the shuttlecraft, and you were caught attempting the same thing tonight.” It was thin evidence, yet there was nothing else on the recording to indicate any other suspects. “So, we will discover the truth.”
“Please … we know nothing.”
“If that is true, you have nothing to fear, yet you stink of fear. Take them,” Hiro said in Japanese. “Do you know what happens if an unprotected hand or foot passes through the plasma curtain?”
“What! No … please … wait … it wasn’t us,” Abdulla Penman begged.
“Do not beg these infidels. Allah will protect us,” Arden said.
“Your strange god will not protect you here,” Callie Fukushima snapped while she helped drag the two struggling men toward the shimmering, blue curtain.
“Unhand me you godless whore!” Arden bin Riza yelled, fear sweat beading his forehead. In answer, Callie dug a stiff finger into a nerve center in the man’s left armpit. Arden groaned in pain and felt the strength leave his arm.
“Now we will find the truth in your statement, dog. Put his left hand through the curtain, slowly, so he knows what real pain feels like,” Hiro ordered.
“Please… no… I didn’t do anything… I swear.” Arden screamed as the man and the woman slowly pushed his limp hand against the cold blue screen.
“I hear that if a man loses his hand in your culture that he is forever branded as a thief, and must eat and clean his ass with the same hand.”
Please … no … I know nothing.” Seeing Hiro nod, he screamed as his left hand was forced through the curtain, and the biting cold of space instantly started to freeze his skin. They held him there, despite his struggling. He looked at each, seeing only their devil faces, devoid of any hint of compassion.
“I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you,” he shrieked, feeling the cold eat into his hand, but it was too late. They pulled him back, and he screamed even louder as he saw his black, frost-covered hand. He dropped to his knees again, holding out his forearm, looking at it with horror. He never saw the katana, just heard the hiss of razor-sharp steel before it sliced cleanly through his outstretched wrist. At that point he fainted from pain and shock.
Abdula Penman looked on in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. At first, it was so easy to fool these people into believing that he was one of them. They’d taught him to repair the shuttlecraft, certified him as a repair technician so he had access to all their secrets, and passed on the plans and specifications to their team leader. He’d been scared at first when they’d rigged the shuttle of their leader and his whore, receiving the blessing of the imam on what they were about to do. This was to be the blow that would decapitate their leadership and sow fear and confusion among them. But even after the shuttle exploded as planned, nothing was said. No one came to accuse them until now. Even so, when asked to do the same thing again, he didn’t think twice, and he should have. These people were so devious, and he and Arden had no idea they were walking into a trap. The late watch was playing cards, or watching their filthy videos as he and Arden made their way to the shuttle bay. Neither suspected anyone else was there until two black shadows silently came up behind them and slipped bags over their heads. He’d tried to fight, but in the hands of these strange men and women, they were like children fighting adults. Now it was his turn to face these cold-faced oriental men and women.
“I think feet this time,” Hiro muttered. “Remove his boots and socks.”
Abdula screamed as the two women reached for him. “Please no … I’ll tell you everything.”
“Speak, dog.”
“I … I and others were sent here to spy on you … and … and to sabotage your equipment,” he stuttered.
“This we know. Who else?” Hiro asked. Even as he spoke, the two women pulled his boots and socks off and started dragging him toward the plasma curtain.
“Please … let me write the names down for you … please.”
It took three tries before he could scribble out the names of the other members of his team, all technicians of one specialty or another. Hiro looked at the five names on the list and nodded to himself. These men all worked in divisions where most of the annoying sabotage was taking place. Walking to a corner, Hiro spoke into his wrist comp for a few moments before walking back.
“If you have spoken the truth, you will live.” At least for a short while longer was his unspoken thought. “Drag this garbage over to the bulkhead.”
They only had to wait an hour before the five men were dragged into the hangar, hands bound to their ankles. After pulling the hoods off, Hiro looked into the eyes of each, seeing only hatred and fear. Two of them spat at him, and he smiled thinly. He walked over and grabbed Abdula.
“Which of these men is the imam you spoke of?”
“Say nothing, Abdulla,” one man called.
“That one,” Abdulla said, pointing to the man next to the one who spoke. Hiro let go, and walked over to get down on one knee so he was eye to eye with the man.
“You have offended me and my brothers and sisters. You dare try and take the life of my lord and his lady, and for that you will pay.”
“Allah the all-merciful will protect us, heathen devil,” the man spat. “And if I should die in his name I’m assured a place in paradise.”
“Yes, I have heard of this paradise you speak of, but we shall see where you will go in the next life.” Hiro motioned to the men who’d dragged the betrayers here.
Without a word, two men grabbed the imam and forced his head back. One held his nose while another forced a plastic funnel into his mouth. A third man waited a moment for the prisoner to start breathing through the funnel before pouring a stream of liquid into the open end. The man spluttered and choked, but gradually, he swallowed more and more of the liquid. A lot of it spilled down his front, and Hiro smiled slightly. One by one, they did the same to the rest, even Abdulla and Arden, who was now awake, got their share.
“What is this you do, heathen?”
“Just a little going-away present.” Hiro laughed. “Pig fat.” The imam’s eyes opened in shock. “Now let’s see where you go … oh yes, if you should see this Allah you speak of, tell him Hiro Naguchi sent you.” With that, he nodded to the rest of his brothers and sisters and followed them out of the launch bay, closing and dogging the hatch behind them. The moment they departed, the men started to break free from their bonds, which strangely weren’t that tight.
The imam spat to clear the foul taste of the pig fat from his mouth, shuddering with disgust. “Soon we will be free, brothers, and we will take revenge on these heathen devils.” Just then, there was a cracking sound, and they all turned to look at the source.
“Allah preserve us!” one screamed as the plasma curtain began to fail. As it did, air started to leak through, making their ears pop as the air pressure dropped.
“Merciful Allah …” was all the time he had remaining before the curtain vanished. They held on to whatever they could, but one by one, the outrush of air sucked them into space. No one on this plane of existence heard their last screams, and Hiro watched dispassionately on the screen as the last one vanished into the blackness of space. He had kept his promise and avenged his lord, and he was content.
* * * * * *
Six hours later, Scott and his party lande
d on the roof of an imposing hotel in the center of New Mecca, once called Bangui in the Central African Republic, where he and the rest were conducted down one flight to the presidential suite. The entire floor and the room had been cleared, much to the annoyance of the high-level bureaucrats, flunkies, and guests who had to move out, and have their private vehicles removed from the roof. For the duration, these two areas were off limits to everyone except Scott and his people. Thankfully, an unexpected rainstorm swept over the city as they arrived, so they managed to hide their weapons under their rain capes.
“Security sweep!” Janet snapped, and the twenty men and women of his escort team spread out in two groups to search the place. Hardwick began sweeping the room with a scanner, looking for listening devices, but the scanner showed nothing. After that, he took a black box out of a case and set it on a table in the center of the room, touching a button on the side. A green light came on, and he nodded.
“If anyone was listening, they’re brain dead now,” he commented. The black box, a little something R&D had cooked up, put out an extremely high-pitched assortment of electronic noise across the whole spectrum of radio frequencies for a radius of fifty feet. Anyone who’d been tuned in to them would have received a burst of noise that shattered their eardrums. The box would also prevent them listening in on private conversations until it was switched off. The drawback was, they couldn’t use any communication equipment themselves, a small price to pay for privacy.
“All right people, you know the drill,” Scott said. “We go the World Council Building in the morning and I talk to the brass, then back here, or directly home from the capital building, depending on the outcome of the meeting. Any questions?”
“Yes, sir.” Janet had put up her hand. “Any possibility of getting a look at this place? Never did get the chance the first time.”
“Don’t see why not. We have transport at our disposal, and a few hours to kill.”
“Wouldn’t be a bad idea if we all took a look, skipper,” Janet added. “Better to keep the group together, we’re less vulnerable that way.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. Let’s get changed into something a bit more presentable first. Janet, comm the lobby and have our transport standing by.”
“Aye, skipper.”
“We meet back here in fifteen minutes.”
With that, they scattered to their rooms and changed into their dress uniforms. Not that they were any less deadly in formal clothing. The security team had hidden their hand weapons under their jackets in twin shoulder holster rigs. Scott nodded in approval and led the way. Besides Scott, Kat, Janet, Hiro, and Hardwick were four members of the security detail; two men, and two women, plus the two Japanese female ‘language instructors’. To round out the picture, Janet had picked one Japanese and one Brit to give the group balance. This was more than just a normal diplomatic meeting, but Scott wanted to show the World Council who was fighting for them, and hopefully draw in some more recruits. People wanting to sign up with them had fallen off in the last few weeks as interest in this new phenomenon waned, and the Grand Ayatollah had placed a ban on anyone else joining. Not that it stopped a lot of young people sneaking aboard the shuttle at night. Part of this trip was to revive interest, and Scott was thinking this might be a way.
The elevator doors opened, and the group marched out into the lobby, two marines out front, Kat next, with Scott, both flanked by the two female ‘language experts’. Janet, Hiro, and CPO Hardwick were behind them, with the remaining two bringing up the rear. People, mostly men, stopped in shock, a few making whistling sounds Scott interpreted to be wolf whistles. Of the women he could see, all were covered from head to foot, appearing as indistinguishable lumps instead of human beings. It irritated him to think these people had turned the clock back five hundred years for nothing. One foolish man who obviously hadn’t got the message cut across the lobby and deliberately walked in front of Kat, his hand reaching out to touch her. He should have been watching Janet, because her fist shot up, catching him on the point of the jaw, and he flipped backwards and slid across the marble floor. The group simply stepped over him and carried on as if nothing had happened. And to them, nothing had.
“Thanks Janet, I hope I can return the favor,” Scott quietly said to her.
“Favor! What favor? You meant that heap of dog shit back there? That was just brushing an irritation away, think nothing of it.”
The two front team members shot forward as they approached the lobby doors, holding them open for the group to pass through without breaking step, then fell in behind. As promised by the president, three official limousines were waiting for them at the curb, the nervous drivers holding the doors open.
The driver had been warned by the president’s secretary what to expect, yet nothing prepared him for what walked out of the hotel lobby. He’d heard stories, and whispered, snickering comments from other chauffeurs, that the females living in Zealand didn’t wear the appropriate dress, and walked about in public barefaced. He found that hard to believe. State Security wouldn’t have permitted it, in the first place. And in this restricted society, what family would dare let a female family member go out into the street where people could see her like that? Yet the eleven people he saw, half of them female, were just as the stories said. Even the clothes they wore were similar to the men’s, including men’s pants. He swallowed hard, and snapped his mouth shut as they approached.
“Which one, Admiral?” Janet asked.
“The middle one,” Scott answered, not that he expected an attack, or bomb under one of them.
This was too close to home, and too hard to explain, but there was no sense in taking chances. But there again, all three limos could be mined, so it didn’t matter which one he took. Janet did a sweep of the vehicles, but the scanner came up blank. After he’d entered, the team piled in, Janet sitting next to the driver, Kat beside Scott, and Hiro in the jump seat. The others divided themselves up between the other two limos. Scott could see a faint smile on Hiro’s face, so he was pleased about something. The little finger of his left hand was covered with a clear, spray-on bandage, and he wondered what Hira Yamaguchi had to say about that. So far, Hiro hadn’t said a word, and Scott wondered if the two of them had an opportunity to talk yet.
“World Council Building, sir?” the driver asked over his shoulder as he slid into the driver’s seat, looking at Janet out of the corner of his eye. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life, not that he’d seen that many beside his mother, sisters, and a few cousins. None looked anything like the female sitting beside him.
“No, take us for a drive around this city, and drive slowly,” Janet said, her tone hard. The driver did a double take, looking over his shoulder at Scott. He wasn’t used to taking orders from a female, but he had his orders.
Then his normal rancor subsided as he thought about his instructions for this assignment. He’d been asked if he had a problem with taking instruction from a female, and he’d answered no, but he never suspected it would be like this. He imagined she would ask him in a polite, condescending tone, much as his mother asked his father, not simply ordering him straight out like that.
“Yes …” He wasn’t even sure how to address her, but she ignored him, “is there,” he coughed to clear his throat, “is there any particular place you’d like to go?” Again, he looked over his shoulder, but the two men back there were looking out the window, and talking in some strange language he couldn’t understand.
“Do you have a hearing impediment, little man?” Janet asked in a deceptively soft voice.
“No, no I don’t!” he frowned at her, his voice sharp.
“Then just do what you are told. Take us for a drive around this city.” The driver pulled back slightly as the woman leaned toward him, her beautiful face drawn back into a hard frown.
“I … I …”
“That is almost the correct answer. It’s, aye-aye, sir!” The driver gulped. The woman’s tone was as far from p
olite and condescending as it was possible to get. Even though he’d been instructed as to what to expect, the reality was something of a shock.
Pulling away from the curb, he maneuvered into the midtown traffic, reaching to switch on his traffic control system. A hand like a steel trap encircled his wrist, squeezing hard.
“What are you doing?” Janet snapped, and he almost lost control as he found himself looking at the hole in the end of the device she was pointing at him.
“I … I was just switching on the traffic control system,” he stuttered, certain his wrist was being crushed.
“All right, but from now on, you tell me what you are going to do, before you do it, understand?”
“Yes … yes, I understand,” he answered, feeling sweat standing out on his forehead. He suddenly had the feeling this would be a long day.