by B. V. Larson
Abruptly, he realized one was Carla Engels, He hadn’t seen it immediately, what with her shapeless jumpsuit and baldness. “Carla!”
“Derek!” She flung herself at him, clinging to him in a desperate embrace.
He held her tight. “It’s good to see you,” he whispered in her ear.
She drew back, running a palm over her buzz cut. “I look terrible.”
“You look amazing.”
They simply stared at each other for a time, ignoring the other people looking on.
“We should see who’s in here with us,” Engels eventually said.
“Yeah.” Straker rose and turned. “Listen up!”
The people in the room fell silent and turned to look.
“I’m Assault Captain Derek Straker, First Mechsuit Regiment. Does anyone here outrank me?”
No one replied. They only stared. One man, who had been hidden on the floor behind others, opened his eyes from sleep, and then raised his hand from where he sat against the wall.
“Derek? It’s me, Loco. I guess we survived.”
Loco gestured, and Straker realized his friend’s legs were hidden by thick, crude casts.
“Damn, Loco. You look like shit.”
“You don’t look so good yourself, boss,” he replied. He rapped on the casts with his knuckles. “At least they treated me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll get us out of here somehow, and we’ll get to a regen center.”
“Yeah... Sure we will.”
It worried Straker that Loco wasn’t cracking jokes. “We have to get out of here.”
“Where’s here?” Loco asked. “Does anyone know?”
“We’re on a ship, and we’ve left sidespace.” Engels said. “We’re probably inbound to a planet or habitat. Take it from a pilot.”
“I thought so,” Straker said, turning to the others. “Is everyone else here military?”
Most of the people nodded, though tentatively.
“Anyone not? Any civilians?”
No one replied.
“Any other mechsuiters? How about pilots? Come on, speak up!”
A man raised his hand. “I’m a Panther gunner, sir.”
Another said, “Hover driver.”
“Sergeant Banden Heiser,” said the biggest man in the room. “Home Guard, sir. Infantry.”
Engels nodded at him. “I remember you. You helped me when I landed.”
“How about the rest of you?” said Straker.
They identified themselves as local troops from Corinth, captured when the city was cut off.
“So they’ve separated us from the civilians,” Straker said. “I presume that means we’re being treated as POWs and they have something special in store for us.”
“I think we’re about to find out what’s so special,” Loco muttered as the tramp of booted feet approached the door.
“Should we fight?” Heiser asked, balling his fists.
Straker shook his head. “Not yet. They’ll be ready. Let’s be smart. Watch and wait for an opportunity. Besides, where would we escape to?”
“We could seize the ship.”
Engels spoke up. “Not likely. This feels big—at least a heavy cruiser. We can’t fight so many. Not without weapons, or some kind of edge.”
Their conversation cut off when the portal swung back and bristled with stun guns held by armored Hok troopers. They appeared to be taking no chances this time as the weapons’ ultrasonics pummeled Straker and the others into unconsciousness.
Chapter 15
Enemy-controlled space, unknown location.
When Straker awoke, he found himself alone in a hot, humid cell. No vibrations thrummed underfoot, and there was a solidness to the gravity and the floor that indicated he wasn’t on a starship any longer.
A tiny window, too small to fit his head through, let a shaft of sunlight in from up high on one wall. That cinched it—he was on a planet now.
The place smelled different, too. Instead of the disinfectants, lubricants and metal of a warship, the noxious aromas of feces and fear assaulted his nostrils.
He saw little in the cell. No toilet, no sink, no pallet. Nothing but old-fashioned concrete and, in one corner, the filth of bodily wastes. That had presumably been left behind by a former occupant. Straker wondered what had become of him.
Or her.
Or it? The Hok attacked aliens and humans indiscriminately, which was probably one reason the Hundred Worlds still stood. A little less xenophobia and a little more politicking would have served the Hok better.
After a time, perhaps an hour, he began to hear noises. Footsteps and voices. The voices seemed human, and the rhythms and intonations could almost be understood.
Straker pressed his ear to the metal door and strained to hear.
“Come on out, traitor. Come out! Get up, you crapping piece of shite!”
The guard spoke Earthan! The primary Hundred Worlds language, but with an accent that rang oddly in his ears. What the hell were Hok doing speaking Earthan?
But of course, they had to use a human language to communicate with their prisoners. Still, the few times the Hok had spoken to him had been through synthesizers. This was different, sounding as if it came from a human throat.
“What do you want?” said a female voice.
Straker recognized Engels speaking.
“Come with us, you whore, unless you want a baton shoved up your ass and then our cocks after.”
Straker’s hands clenched and scrabbled at his door, but found nothing to grasp. He growled with rage and kicked the portal, rattling it. “Leave her alone, you sick Hok bastards!”
He heard cruel laughter. “Hok? Funny! You’ll get to know the Hok soon enough, unmutual turncoat lackey,” said the voice. “Don’t think only the bitches get it. Some of my boys aren’t picky.”
Turncoat lackey? Unmutual? What the hell did that mean?
The noises diminished as the tormenters led Engels away. Straker kicked at his door until he’d exhausted himself and bruised his bare feet, but it did no good. The cell was built to keep a strong prisoner inside. Without tools, he had no chance. No hinges, no mechanism was accessible, and his hands, mere flesh, were no match for steel and concrete.
Steel and concrete… more proof he was on a planet. Ships were built from expensive high-tech alloys, not steel, plus light, super-strong cryscrete. The gravity here seemed low to him, perhaps one half a standard G, indicating a small planet or large moon. He leaped for the tiny window, eventually catching the bars by his fingertips to lift himself to see out.
He saw a bleak, concrete courtyard, separated from others like it by metal fences topped with barbed wire. Men and women in prison garb shuffled dispiritedly around a small circuit under a hot white sun. Beyond barriers, towers stood, and still farther, the green of a jungle. That was all he could take in before he lost his precarious grip.
Half an hour later more boots returned.
“Carla?” he called. “You okay?”
“Derek?”
“Shut up, bitch!”
Straker heard the sounds of slaps and blows, then a slamming door.
The boots approached. “Your turn, traitor,” said the man—the human—who opened Straker’s door.
“What’s all this about being a traitor?” Straker asked, facing half a dozen big prison guards, humans in simple unpowered body armor.
The leader sneered and glanced at his fellow bulls. “Funny how all criminals say they’re innocent. ‘I have no idea what happened, officers! I just happened to kill hundreds of my fellow humans while defending rebel outposts.’ Well, nobody believes your lies here, unmutual shitbag.”
“You’re the traitors for working for the Hok!” Straker yelled.
“Working for the Hok!” All the men laughed. “That’s funny.”
“No, boy,” one said. “The Hok work for us.”
“I hear your exploiter leaders brainwash the weak-minded,” said another to Straker.
The leader gestured. “Don’t matter. He’ll confess and self-critique soon enough. After that, he’ll join the fodder. Take him.”
Straker made ready to fight them. If he could get one of their shock batons, and with his speed…
They didn’t give him a chance. One of the men lifted a stunner and shot him. He collapsed.
As they dragged him down the corridor he realized his mistake. He shouldn’t have engaged them in conversation. He should have simply jumped them, tried to take the stunner. His genetically enhanced reactions might have made the difference.
They manacled and strapped him securely to a bolted-down crysteel chair in a brightly lit room. Another, more comfortable chair sat in front of him, along with a table that held a plastic pitcher, plastic cups, and plastic plates with real food, bread and cheese and meat. He salivated, unable to stop himself.
A man entered the room, slim and stiff-spined. He had a hatchet face, dark hair and lizard-black eyes. Not old, but not young, he was dressed in a simple outfit that looked vaguely like a uniform, but without accouterments or insignia. The cloth draped his frame like fine silk, and the shoes the man wore were polished like an Academy cadet’s display boots.
“Who the hell are you people?” Straker snarled. “Are you working for the Hok?”
The man smiled coldly. “You misunderstand. The Hok work for us—as will you. It’s my sincerest hope you will grasp this in time.”
“I’ll never work for you!”
“That’s what you all say,” he said with a regretful chuckle, “but once you hear the truth, and your options, you’ll change your mind.”
With economical motions the man poured liquid from the pitcher into a plastic cup and capped it with a lid and straw. He held it out so Straker could take it in one manacled hand. “You should have enough play in your chains to drink,” he said.
Straker threw the cup onto the floor with his fingertips. “I don’t want anything you have to offer.”
The man looked down sternly at Straker. “There’s no need for such dramatics. Grow up and act like a man, not some pampered war-slave.”
“Go to hell.”
His captor shrugged. “Your loss.” He sat and took out a smokestick, lighting it with elegant, long-fingered hands and taking a deep drag. “Smoke?”
Straker shook his head. “Those are unhealthy.”
“So is being a mechsuiter, but you did that.” With his free hand the man poured himself a cup of whatever it was and sipped, no straw.
Straker didn’t answer, merely glared. Whatever this guy’s game was, he wasn’t going to play it.
But… the longer he had to think, the more the incongruity of the situation nagged at him. He’d been captured by the Hok. Now some urbane human was interrogating him and the Hok were nowhere to be found.
Something was seriously out of whack. He had to get some kind of answers. Grudgingly, he said, “Okay, I’ll take that drink.”
The man recovered and refilled the fallen cup, setting it in Straker’s manacled hand. “A wise choice. It’s fruit juice. Nothing harmful, I assure you.”
Straker sipped, and after so many days of water and processed rations, the flavor exploded in his mouth. He recalled all the good things, the luxuries he took for granted, and was ashamed at feeling grateful.
This man was trying to manipulate him, he realized. He’d had resistance training, and now he brought to mind the various methods that might be used against him. But one of the things he’d been taught is, when you can get something with no strings attached, take it and use it to survive with honor.
So he drank. He didn’t worry about being drugged. After all, if they wanted to drug him, they could simply shoot him with an injection gun.
The man spoke. “I am Inquisitor Lazarus, though I have to say, I’ve never needed to be resurrected from the dead. Not personally, anyway.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“Didn’t they even educate you on basic humanities? Literature, mythology? No—I suppose they wouldn’t. I’m surprised you even speak Earthan.”
“Why wouldn’t I speak Earthan? My ancestors were from Old Earth!”
“As were mine.” Lazarus sniffed as if he smelled something bad. “You know, we’ve been trying to capture a mechsuit pilot for a long time. Now we have two, and your unit has been wiped out, praise to the Mutuality. What I want to know is how you justify your actions.”
Straker set his empty cup precariously on the arm of his chair. “Justify what?”
“Fighting against your own people.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve done nothing but defend the Hundred Worlds my whole life.”
“So you admit it?” Lazarus asked excitedly.
“Admit what?”
“That you’ve fought against us your whole life?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
“Confession recorded! Good. That’s your first step toward rehabilitation, admitting you killed so many of your fellow humans.”
“You’re crazy. I’ve never killed a human. Not intentionally. Not in the war, I mean.” Unless you counted Skorza, he thought, but he doubted Lazarus cared about that. He seemed to be talking about Straker’s military actions.
Lazarus’ lizard-face sighed. Apparently he’d missed Straker’s slip. “Going back on your confession already, Mister Straker? So very unmutual. But, not surprising. You’re still confused by your transition to reality.”
“Reality?”
“Yes. Your Hundred Worlds isn’t the paradise you think it is, and your government has been lying to you.”
“I never thought it was a paradise, but it’s what we’ve got, and it’s my job to defend it against the Hok. And what’s the story with the Hok? That’s what I really want to know.”
The man smiled without humor. “Of course you do.” He sat forward, his burning smokestick still pinched between his fingers. “I suppose you think the Hok are aliens?”
“Of course!”
“But they’re not. They’re as human as you or I. Or at least they were, until we inject them with biotech that turns them into the perfect soldiers. Human Organic Commandos, they were originally called. HOC.”
Straker’s mind whirled. “But… but…”
“So you see, you’ve slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands of humans in your career.”
“But that was war! It doesn’t matter if they were humans or aliens, they were attacking my people.”
“Sometimes the Mutuality attacks the Hundred Worlds, sometimes the Hundred Worlds attacks the Mutuality. Do you really think your side is filled with pristine virtue and mine is evil?”
“I…”
Lazarus waved a hand as if shooing flies. “But I agree with you.”
“With what?”
“That killing in war is justified. It’s natural. It doesn’t matter if they’re humans or aliens, you just said, and I agree.”
“It matters if you’re the defenders or the aggressors,” Straker said. “We have a hundred systems. You—what did you call yourselves, the Mutuality? You have over a thousand. We would live in peace with you if you’d stop attacking us.”
Lazarus shook his head sadly. “We’ve tried that. After a time, the exploiters that run your lives get greedy and try to take what we have again.”
It all sounded so reasonable. What if what Lazarus was saying was true?
Could Straker have been hoodwinked his whole life? He’d always felt something was off. As a kid, his parents and teachers hadn’t told him the whole truth, especially about the Hok. On Academy, they’d continued the indoctrination, and during his career, they hadn’t ever let him go home, sending him and his comrades to Shangri-La between battles instead of letting him have a real life.
No. This man was a liar, trying to use him somehow. Even if there were things about the Hundred Worlds that didn’t add up perfectly, even if some of what Lazarus said was accurate, it didn’t
mean the man was really being honest with him. The best lies were partly true.
“I want to see the Hok, then,” Straker said. “Prove to me that they’re human.”
“Of course. I imagine you never had a chance to really see one up close.”
“Close enough to kill me.”
“But your underlings cleaned up the battlefield while you pampered mechsuiters relaxed on vacation with the best of everything, I’m told.”
Straker shrugged uncomfortably. “That wasn’t my job.”
“I know. I don’t blame you for being a dupe.” Lazarus stood and opened the single door to the room, and spoke to someone outside.
A few moments later, a uniformed Hok strode into the room. He halted and saluted.
“At ease,” said Lazarus. “Take off your uniform,”
Straker stared as the creature stripped to the buff. He’d never seen one this close, face-to-face.
Though humanoid, it had grayish-green pebbled skin. No hair adorned its head. Instead, its cranium was covered in something that looked like turtle shell, and ridges of bone protected deep eye sockets. Its hands had thick nails, almost claws, and it was heavily muscled. It was also obviously male, though it seemed to have no testicles.
“Trooper, this is Captain Straker,” said Lazarus.
The creature immediately saluted Straker, with no change of expression.
“Captain Straker would like to know your function.”
The creature’s voice was raspy, but intelligible. “I am a Human Organic Commando, rank one, designation BX-1277.”
“So you’re human?” Straker asked.
“I was human. Now, I am HOC.”
“What’s your name?”
“I have no name.”
“What was your name before?”
“I have no name. I serve the People.”
Lazarus ground out his smokestick in a tray. “You won’t get much more than that. The Hok were either volunteers or enemies of the State. In either case, the biotech wipes their memories clean and makes them completely obedient and fearless. It also gives them strength and fast healing.”
“It’s immoral!” Straker said. “You’ve stolen their humanity.”