But there was another issue, one that had bugged him when the ‘Prime Directive’ had been debated during his officer training. The primitive society might want to be contaminated. What sort of idiot would want to refuse medical treatments that might keep them alive for a few more decades or technology that would spare them years of backbreaking labour? And what sort of monster would deny them the technology, choosing instead to leave them to suffer and die in the mud? Just for the sake of preserving a primitive culture? It wasn't an argument he regarded as valid. How could he?
Howard cleared his throat. “The probe has spotted a section of prefabricated buildings here,” he said, tapping his console. A red light appeared on the display. “The Russians have set up a base next to a large alien settlement.”
“A city,” Richards mused. He looked at John. “Captain, I think we must assume the Russians have broken the non-intercourse edict.”
“It certainly looks that way,” John said. The Russians couldn't have avoided being noticed by the aliens, not if they’d landed there. They had to have made contact with the locals and then ... and then, what? What did the Russians gain from making contact? “But why?”
“They may wish to dominate the planet for their own safety,” Richards speculated. “Or they may be merely playing games.”
John shuddered. He’d heard stories about wealthy westerners who’d chosen to live in the Third World and done precisely that. Money talked, particularly if it came from the West; someone with enough money could set up a small army of their own, then set out to get their kicks by starting a war. In some ways, he thought, it was worse than sex tourism. It got thousands of locals killed for someone’s sick amusement.
And the aliens would be completely incapable of resisting, he thought, as the alien city came into sharp focus. They’d be unable even to appeal to us to do something about the rogues.
“Mr. Howard,” he ordered, slowly. “Show me the aliens.”
Howard altered the display. An alien appeared in front of him, standing on top of a giant building. John had half-expected a Tadpole-like creature, but it was clear the alien bore a closer resemblance to humanity. His - or her - skin was scaly, suggesting reptilian ancestors; his head was covered in feathers, although John couldn't tell if it was a fancy piece of headgear or the alien version of hair. The body seemed to be largely humanoid, yet it flexed in odd ways. John had the impression that, if forced to run, the aliens were capable of moving faster than any human.
Armstrong coughed. “Is that a he or a she?”
“Unknown,” Howard said. His voice sounded torn between amusement and disgust. “But would you want to take that to bed?”
“Gentlemen, please,” John snapped.
The alien looked up, as if it could see the watching probe. His - John decided to assume the alien was male, at least until they learned how to tell the difference - eyes were beady, like a bird. Or a lizard, his own thoughts added; it was quite possible, he figured, that the alien could focus on two different objects at once. The nose was flattened against the scaly skull, the mouth was full of very sharp teeth. There was no sign of any ears.
Howard pulled back the camera, showing him a large section of the city. It looked primitive, as if it belonged to Imperial Rome or Greece, but it teemed with aliens. Some of them were clearly soldiers, carrying weapons that looked like blunderbusses; others looked like workers, or slaves. A shot outside the city showed a camp, crammed with aliens; John had no difficulty in recognising a slave pen. The aliens, it seemed, had yet to abolish slavery on their world.
“I don't know how much more we can pick up from orbit, sir,” Howard admitted. “We really need a team of sociologists.”
“I know,” John said. He tried to imagine how the alien society might be governed, but drew a blank. Human history suggested kings or emperors; the aliens, though, might have come up with something new. “But it can wait.”
He turned to look at Richards. “The pirates didn't breathe a word about the aliens, did they?”
“No, sir,” Richards confirmed. “The only mention in their logs of something even remotely relating to non-human life was a note about a life-bearing world.”
And they meant it too, John thought. He hadn't realised it referred to actual aliens. No one had.
“I have a focus on the Russian camp,” Howard said.
John turned. The Russian settlement looked more like a fortress than a permanent home, a handful of prefabricated buildings surrounded by high walls and farmland. Only a handful of humans could be seen, most of them women. They looked as if they were prisoners, John noted; beyond the walls, chained aliens worked the fields. They were very definitely slaves.
And the women can't run, John thought. If they did, they would be killed by the aliens themselves.
“My God,” Richards said.
“I don’t think God wants anything to do with this,” John said. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Howard, draw as much data as you can without alerting the Russians. Mr. Armstrong, hold us here. Mr. Richards, you have the bridge.”
He keyed his console. “Major Hadfield, it’s time we had a long chat with our guests,” he said, shortly. “Bring Captain Nekrasov to my quarters, in chains.”
“Aye, sir,” Hadfield said.
John rose. The presence of alien life changed everything. There could be no half measures any longer. One way or the other, he would have answers. And then they would come up with a plan.
“Lieutenant Forbes, work on the Russian women,” he added. “See if they could be convinced to tell us something too.”
“Aye, sir,” Forbes said.
John took one last look at the alien world, then turned and left the bridge.
Chapter Thirty
John looked up as Captain Nekrasov was escorted into his cabin by Lieutenant Hadfield and two burly Marines. They weren't really necessary - the Russian had his hands cuffed behind his back, while his legs were shackled - but it did help to remind the Russian that he was a helpless prisoner. John studied the man for a long moment, then motioned for the Marines to push him into a chair. The Russian looked old, old and worn. Life as a refugee, then a renegade must have been hard.
But John felt no sympathy. How could he?
“Captain,” he said, shortly. “We found your camp - and the aliens you forgot to mention to us.”
Nekrasov shrugged. “So what?”
John felt his temper fray. “You and your men not only fled the war, which wouldn't be our problem, but captured a British ship and its passengers,” he said. “And, if that wasn't enough, you broke the non-interference edict by landing on an alien world and introducing human technology to the natives. I don’t believe our original deal covered meddling in an alien society.”
The Russian shrugged, again. “I don’t believe it didn’t,” he said, dryly. “Or are you that keen to break your word?”
“The women and children you kidnapped were scheduled to go to Cromwell, where we planned to take you as prisoners,” John pointed out. “All we’d have to do is tell the locals what you did and wait for them to butcher you and your men. If they were prepared to risk an uprising, they certainly wouldn't hesitate to kill you.”
“I don’t think my government would approve,” the Russian said.
“No,” John agreed. “They’d want to hang you themselves.”
He met the Russian’s eye. “Your nation is in deep shit,” he said. “I don't know why, I admit, but they’ve been on the outs with the other spacefaring powers. Your government is struggling to regain control of New Russia, your economy is in the shitter and large numbers of skilled personnel are leaving. I don't think anyone in the Kremlin would seriously consider picking a fight with us over you. They’re much more likely to thank us for hanging you from the nearest tree.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” the Russian said.
“No,” John said, although he knew the Russian had no way to know it. “And even if I was lying, what about the laws
you’ve broken? Your government will set a new record for repudiating you when they find out what you’ve done to helpless natives. You’ll be put on trial in front of the World Court, then hung. Whatever deal we made with you won’t last when Earth finds out what you’ve done.”
The Russian’s eyes narrowed. “Can your authority be overridden so blatantly?”
“I would hate to have to find out,” John said. “But it really doesn't matter. You and your men won’t survive Cromwell unless you talk to us, now.”
For a moment, he thought he’d won. But then the Russian set his face in stone and stared at him, defiantly. “Do your worst,” he said. “We’re dead anyway.”
You overplayed your hand, John thought, crossly. You can't threaten a man who knows he’s dead whatever happens.
“We shall see,” he said, sharply. He looked up at the Marines. “Take him back to his cell.”
“He doesn't have anything to lose,” Hadfield said, when the prisoner had been marched through the hatch. “And he’s been treated, sir. I don't think truth drugs will work on him.”
“Crap,” John said. He looked down at his desk, then back at the Marine. “Do you have any ideas?”
“I doubt his subordinates know that much,” Hadfield said, “but it’s hard to see how they can have avoided learning of the aliens. One of them might talk, if we offered a chance to escape punishment completely.”
John considered it. In theory, he could make whatever deals he liked with the Russians and the Admiralty would accept it. They might be furious with him, when they found out about it, but they wouldn't want to cast doubt on a Captain’s authority when his ship was light years from Earth. It might cost John his career - commanding officers had been quietly sidelined when they overstepped the bounds, even if they weren't formally punished - yet the deal would have been kept. But with aliens involved ...
He shook his head. The Admiralty might back him, but the Prime Minister would be furious and the World Court would want to try the Russian pirates for blatant defiance of International Law. It would set off a major political catfight that might well tear the Earth Defence Organisation apart, perhaps even bringing down multiple governments. No one would thank him for bringing such a nightmare home.
But did he have a choice? There was no way he could hide what they’d found, or what the Russians had done. Captain Nekrasov had been right; no matter what he did, the Russians were dead anyway. They had nothing to lose by keeping their mouths shut ...
“We might be able to get away with making a deal with a subordinate,” John mused. “They could not be expected to disobey orders.”
He sighed, inwardly. It was the old question of when obeying orders became, in itself, a crime. Soldiers and spacers were meant to obey orders, but what should they do when an illegal order was issued? Disobedience could mean death. And the whole issue of what was a war crime had never really been settled. John had been told, during his training, that the only way to know was to lose the war, in which case the victors would happily put the losers on trial for war crimes. It had never been anything other than a form of victor’s justice.
“See if one will talk,” he ordered. “And be ready to move him to the remaining brig cell if necessary.”
His intercom bleeped. “Captain, this is Forbes,” a voice said. “One of the Russians would like to talk.”
“That’s lucky,” John commented, dryly. “Have her brought to my office, under escort.”
“Aye, sir,” Lieutenant Forbes said.
Five minutes later, Forbes and a Marine escorted a young woman into John’s quarters. She looked as thin as her male counterparts, her face pale and worn. Long dark hair hung down around her face, suggesting that she was trying to hide behind her hair. She looked, very much, as if she was trying to project an attitude of helplessness, as if she was someone in need of protection. If John had been interested in women, he admitted privately, he had a nasty feeling it would have been effective.
“Captain, this is Tatyana Yevgeniyevna Bodrova,” Lieutenant Forbes said. “She’s a doctor - or she was, before her ship was captured.”
John wasn't too surprised. The Russians tended to leave women out of combat roles, even though they had always been willing to use women as spies, assassins and support staff. It wasn't something he understood, although the near-catastrophic population decline Russia had suffered during the Age of Unrest had probably had something to do with it. The Russian Government had handed out bounties to each ethnic Russian woman who had at least three Russian children - there had been no room for mixed marriages in Russia - and used it to boost their population. Like so many of the other steps taken during the same period, by all manner of governments, no one was sure if it had been justified or not.
“Captain,” Tatyana said. Her voice was low, almost seductive. “I ... I need to know what will happen to me.”
“If you tell us everything, without hesitation, you will be allowed to work as a doctor on Cromwell,” John said. Doctors were in too short supply for one to be lynched, particularly if she happened to be young, fertile and beautiful. The cynic in him was sure it wouldn't be long before Tatyana picked up a husband. “Or, if you don't want to live there, we can take you back to Earth and determine your future there.”
Tatyana lowered her eyes. “Would I be away from the others?”
“If you want,” John said. He felt his patience grow thin. “But we need answers now.”
“Very well,” Tatyana said. She took a long breath. “General Rybak was in command, when the shit hit the fan at New Russia. He thought the aliens would be easy meat for the Multi-National Force and loaded a hundred soldiers onto the assault transport, ready to board the alien ships after the battle. Instead, the aliens cut the fleet to ribbons and the General ordered us to flee. So we jumped through the tramlines, heading as far from the aliens as we could.”
She looked up at him, pleadingly. “The General said we would find a place to rebuild and then set out to recover our lost worlds,” he said. “None of us thought Earth would last more than a month after New Russia. We all agreed that the only thing we could do was run and hide. We slipped through Boston and through a tramline listed as unexplored. And then we discovered the aliens.”
Hadfield leaned forward. “Do they have a name?”
“We can't speak their language,” Tatyana said. “There’s something about the shape of their mouths that makes it impossible. We call them the Vesy.”
“Scales, in Russian,” Hadfield commented. “Why not Lizards? Or Reptiles?”
Tatyana eyed him. “Does it matter?”
John shrugged. “Carry on,” he said. “So you found the Vesy and then ... what?”
“We studied their world long enough to pick up the dominant language,” Tatyana said, after a moment. “The General was quite happy to kidnap a handful of the aliens so we could study them. Once we had a grasp on their tongue, we landed the shuttle near one of the city-states and made contact. The God-King saw our arrival as a gift from the gods and welcomed us to his city. It wasn't long before he struck a deal with the General. We would help him unify his world in exchange for help and supplies.”
She paused. “I think the General honestly thought we would need their help to rebuild our fleets,” she added. “Given a century, we could help the Vesy to build their own spacecraft and shipyards, then take the war to the aliens. We would unite their world, then lead them to the rescue of the human race.”
Hadfield leaned forward. “What sort of assistance did you give him?”
“Some troop support, orbital reconnaissance, that sort of thing,” Tatyana admitted. “Most of our supplies were quite limited, but we were able to help his armies lunge out and conquer most of the surrounding city-states. Those that submitted quickly and accepted the God-King’s right to rule were allowed to pay tribute, provide troops and suchlike. And those that didn't were crushed, their populations enslaved or sacrificed ...”
Her voice trailed off.
“They’re monsters,” she said. “And the General encouraged it.”
“They sound very human,” Hadfield observed, dryly.
John nodded in agreement. It was impossible to be sure, but the God-King’s state sounded like something akin to the Aztec Empire. The smaller cities were permitted some degree of freedom, provided they bent the knee to the Aztecs, while anyone who dared resist was crushed mercilessly. But the Aztecs had always had limits on their military power, he recalled, vaguely. The Vesy had the advantage of human help and support. Even the introduction of Napoleonic-era human tech would change the balance of power, without turning the aliens into a threat to humanity.
“Maybe they were,” Tatyana said.
She took a breath. “The General kept his two frigates watching the tramlines,” she continued. “One day, a freighter came along the tramline from Boston and was snatched. The crew discovered that humanity had actually won the war. I thought the General would be delighted, that we could go home, but instead he grew madder. None of us could go home, he said, without being executed. And he was right.”
[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite Page 31