His enemy stood a moment, his face viciously hopeful; then, seeing there would be no satisfaction today, he turned and gestured to his men to lead Hamon away. He did, though, check the strength of the restraining force, turning it up till it felt like a tight band about Hamon’s chest that made each breath an effort. Coupled with the previous treatment, he was in real danger of collapsing before he got to wherever they were taking him. Des Trurain would succeed better than he hoped in rendering him amenable, Hamon mused grimly. It was this thought alone which kept his head high and his shoulders proudly straight, but he thanked the stars when he found their destination wasn’t too far. He barely recognized Colonel Johne’s office, now turned into the hectic and crowded headquarters of the Hathian forces. He was hurried through a horde of people in the outer room to the large inner office.
Here, he would have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so serious. Behind the huge desk of the Terran commander sat a gnome-like figure—short, balding, a ready grin coming to the hoary features. Only the man’s eyes gave the lie to his appearance, alive with intelligence and coolly assessing his Terran prisoner. The guardsmen secured Hamon by a field in the center of the room, then all except des Trurain left. Hamon had hoped for a chair, but allowed none of the deadly weariness dragging on him to show in his face. Especially not to des Trurain.
“Major an Radcliff. A pleasure to meet you at last.”
Hamon gave the briefest of nods in recognition. “Councilor deln Crantz, I assume. You have the name wrong, though. Major Hamon Radcliff, of the Terran forces,” he said, emphasizing the word Terran. As he was speaking, a figure moved into view from the edges of the room, unseen till now. For a second, Hamon hesitated, not sure that he was up to this. Then collecting himself, he bowed again. “The good Dr an Castre. Welcome.” The words were fair, but his tone was infused with warning.
Unfortunately, the older man ignored it, smiling warmly. “Thank you. I have been looking forward to getting to know my latest son-in-law.” The warning in Hamon’s voice was equaled now by the tension in his body. He scowled at the man, but an Castre chose to plunge on regardless. “You do not ask after Marthe, Major Radcliff?”
A dark cloud swept across him as he fought for control. “I hope both your daughters are in good health.”
An amused smile played about the doctor’s eyes. “My youngest has had to be admitted to hospital, but I am certain she will be glad of your good wishes when she recovers. It seems she has been over-exerting herself lately. Your fault entirely I understand, Gof,” he added, glancing at the councilor. “However, I am assured that both she and her son will be fine.”
The words knifed into Hamon’s gut. A son. Stars, couldn’t they finish this!
“Shall we get on with the real business of the day, gentlemen?” Hamon spoke tersely but with restraint. “I am sure you’re both far too busy to spare the time for idle family gossip.”
“Not so idle, Major,” returned deln Crantz. “It is your marriage to Councilor an Castre’s younger daughter that concerns us.”
“It need not.”
“I think you misunderstand us. We are not at all displeased. Your marriage places you in a unique position—one from which you can act for the betterment of both our peoples.”
“I fail to see how,” said Hamon coldly.
“It’s quite simple. As the husband of a member of a highly respected Hathian family, you have acquired a number of influential Hathian connections, and may thereby, if you wish, approach the Hathian forces from a position of trust and respect.”
“You forget that I am also associated with the imprisonment and occasional death of your people.”
Deln Crantz’ eyes were too intelligent. Hamon shrugged his shoulders, legs apart, hands in pocket and let the challenge show on his face. Yes, I’ve done all that, and I don’t give a damn. It didn’t deter the Hathian commander.
“That may be, but our people will make allowance for the necessities of war.”
Hamon raised an eyebrow. This man believed that about as much as Hamon did. The corners of Deln Crantz’ mouth lifted in recognition, the barest of movements only. But the man wasn’t finished. “There is also the matter of your widespread influence among the Terran forces. In the present change of circumstances, their attitude and actions will depend on whatever lead you choose to take. Either way.”
“Exactly.”
Hamon was surprised to find he could yet inject such precise malice into his voice. For the rest, it had been rather too long a day.
The two Hathian councilors eyed him guardedly, clearly uncertain whether to plough on regardless or gracefully concede. Eventually, the fires within Hamon won, bursting forth in angry denial.
“Why don’t you spit it out, gentlemen? You want me to keep the filthy Terrans cooperative and amenable.” He spoke softly, but it was the quiet of an anger so great he could taste it—the venomous, bitter fury his tongue etched into every syllable. “Sorry. I don’t feel like playing your game. I will say it once and once only. I have no intention of cooperating with the Hathian regime. Not now, not ever. I am a citizen of Earth alone, the affairs of which are quite sufficient to occupy me. Find someone else to be your go-between.”
“And Marthe an Castre?”
“Severed her connection with me by her own actions.” To say her name was more than he could bear. They persisted still.
“What about the child?”
“Is mine,” he yelled from the unthinking depths of his pain. Wrenching about, he tried in vain to break free of the force field and quit this hateful room. It took too long, but finally the Hathian leaders accepted defeat. The field was deactivated and the guards directed to return him to the Terran compound.
He barely suffered their rough grasp in his rage; but his weakness defeated him, their cruel hold alone keeping his feet on the correct path. At least they finally freed his hands and removed that cursed patch—regrettable, though, the loss of it for Ferdo’s study. If only he were fit enough to fight his captors. Pain, anger, hate, all swirled within. These Hathians … were they all machines?
Again he saw her face as it had looked in that dread moment of time when he had turned. His wife, his own one. Bleak, narrow-eyed, facing him down the deadly length of that sleek weapon.
Her eyes: they were the worst. Shuttered, their color the non-reflecting black of ebony, taking in all but releasing nothing. For once he couldn’t even begin to read her emotions, only that other affairs concerned her. Somewhere behind that stony facade, her brain was pitched on high, busy with hearts not his own. He had been callously struck out, no longer worthy of concern. And he remembered his anger—the rage, the frustration and the betrayal.
Furiously he fought to shut out the tormenting vision. Throughout the night, her face had returned to haunt him, but he’d managed to chase it away. Now, overtaxed and worn out, he could banish it no more. She stood forever frozen in time, those dead eyes gazing soullessly at him. The guards were all but carrying him now, his defenses assailed once too often. One night only and the mighty Terran crumbles, he heard them scoff as they flung him into the Terran compound, a sad heap in an isolated corner.
Only for an instant. Even as they turned to leave, he started to rise, the dark memory of her eyes driven away by the jolt of landing.
As soon as the Hathians had gone, a worried figure broke from a nearby group to hurry over. Ferdo looked down at him in consternation.
“Stars, what have they done to you?” breathed Ferdo.
He glanced down and saw his dusty clothes, the bruising showing already where his torn jacket gaped.
“There was a minor difference of opinion.”
All he could produce was a cracked whisper, but Ferdo caught it.
“Can I get you anything? Food, water, a change of clothes?”
“Yes, yes and yes.” He managed a kind of smile this time. “Water first, then food. Then, I’d better get myself cleaned up. Can I do that?”
“We
have all the amenities available, as they say in the holiday ads. We’ll soon have you fixed up as good as new. Hold on here a minute and I’ll be right back.”
Ferdo rushed off to organize his needs and Hamon sagged back into a heap. He’d managed to hold on in that dreadful office, but now that his defenses were down, he had no resources left. For now, he let the facade crumble, giving in to the pained cries of his body. When Ferdo returned, he was nearly asleep, but not so deep that Ferdo’s blundering attempts at light footedness didn’t rouse him. He lifted a sleepy eyelid.
“What took you so long? I could have passed away while you grew that stuff.”
It was a weak attempt at humor, but the old joke worked, easing the concern on Ferdo’s face. “The queues here are longer than on Earth. Makes me quite homesick,” he grinned back as he passed over the bowl of broth.
Hamon eyed the container of brown sludge. Benign and unexciting odors drifted upwards. “Is it quite safe?”
“They tell us it has a high nutrient quotient, and no one has died yet.” ‘Though soon will, of boredom,’ said the amused grimace on his face.
Feeling very courageous, Hamon threw back the mess, gratefully chasing it down with the offered water. Surprisingly, it did refresh him, restoring some of his lost vigor. Soon, he could even ignore his hurts enough to rise and walk among the various groups of Terrans, talking and probing as he went.
“I must find out what happened,” he explained desperately to Ferdo.
The stories were all depressingly similar. A sudden interference with their instruments and the failure of their machinery. All exits had been locked. Then, the strange soldiers had arrived and they had been brought here, to finally learn the identity of their captors. The officials had coldly advised them that Hathians once again ruled Hathe.
“But you? You were outside in the streets.” Hamon stared accusingly at one of his own men, a soldier.
“Same story, Major. We were suddenly surrounded by a group of peasants, all pointing those strange blasters at us. We ordered them back; they just stood there. So we took retaliatory action, but none of our weapons worked and they carried field generators. Within minutes we were rounded up, bound and stripped of arms, and they toted us back here like so many trussed borsch. Razzing humiliating it was. The weirdest part, though, was the silence. No jeering, no celebrating our defeat. They didn’t so much as glance at us, all too busy with their own affairs.”
“And the village. What about that?” said a second trooper, pausing dramatically. Hamon raised one eyebrow and the man hastily continued. “We were on duty outside the wall, so we got to see the changes in the town as they brought us through. It was incredible.”
“Do you think you could be more explicit, soldier,” prodded Hamon in the voice he reserved for parade-ground dressing downs. Did the man think they were on a holiday excursion?
“The whole village was a fake,” the trooper quickly explained after wiping the look of asinine amazement from his face. “The sides of the houses rolled back and out came hordes of soldiers, with carriers, aerial scooters, and more. A full scale, armed invasion. There was even a spaceport. A short-hop craft came down over one of the shacks in that slum on the eastside. The roof rolled back, and it disappeared right inside.”
“What do you know,” exclaimed another. “All that right under our noses and we never guessed a thing.”
“No, you didn’t.” Hamon turned the full force of his bitter contempt on the soldier, who rapidly acquired the sense to slink away.
“You were rather hard on that man, sir. You can’t blame the rest for not believing you earlier. Not even we were aware of the magnitude of the resistance.”
Hamon swirled around. The new speaker was one of his agents, one of the many who had so miserably failed to pierce the native facade.
“Johnson, how kind of you to join us. Did the luxury of life in the new regime pall so quickly?”
Johnson suddenly assumed the blank face of the common soldier. “They pulled me in at the same time as all the rest, sir. One minute, we were all working together; next, the leader of my gang, Griff they called him, straightens up, points one of those new blasters at me and motions to another man to tie me up. Then he says, in precise and fluent Standard, ‘My compliments to the husband of my cousin, but we no longer require your services, Sergeant Johnson.’ And with that, I was led back here.”
Hamon hadn’t thought he could feel worse. He was wrong.
His sergeant coughed cautiously. “Do you know the man Griff, sir?”
“Griffith an Castre, I know of him.” That was all Hamon could bring himself to say.
For long minutes he fought against it—against what must be. He’d done enough for Earth. Given five years of his life to this wretched undertaking because he couldn’t face knowing what would happen to his home planet if he didn’t. It was no use. The decision had been made before he’d even started considering it. He straightened to his full rigid height and looked at his sergeant.
“Tell Jones, Markham, Hawarth and Hector that I’ll see them in the far corner, in exactly twenty minutes.” Johnson stood undecided a second. “Well? Or have you, too, forgotten on which planet you were born?”
The man scurried off, but even before Hamon’s select officers had gathered, he knew the news was spreading through the hall. Radcliff was moving … but in what direction, the looks cast his way said. The past twenty-four hours had been shock enough for the Terrans. So far, they were relatively unmolested and had all they needed. What kind of a ruckus was he contemplating?
They grossly underestimated him, as his men could have told them. Bloodthirsty and angry he may be still, defiant even. But foolish? No. Or so he hoped.
In short order, he gathered together all that the Terrans knew of matters so far and set clear in his mind the identity of the various groupings in the hall. More importantly, he took stock of the mood of the confused mob. Then, he tersely gave his instructions. Not for all out assault and mayhem; any junior officer knew the time for that was not yet. By noon, he had the auditorium discreetly organized, and had ensured each man and woman was once more secure in the routine of assigned duties. It was a start.
By late afternoon, he saw a change in the attitude of the previously contemptuous Hathian guards posted outside the perimeter field. They were talking almost continuously into their patches, hands roughly tapping on ears. He smiled bleakly. If he guessed right, the native troops were becoming seriously disturbed by the rapid change to orderliness among their captives. Which was just what he’d intended.
He moved from group to group, ticking off his internal list of tasks completed. No longer was food distribution a matter of individual pushing and scurrying in endless queues. His staff had put in place a roster system of collectors based on the various occupational groups, a management system familiar to the Terrans from the previous five years. The amenities had been set up to give some degree of privacy and hygiene procedures put in place. A sick bay had been set up for minor injuries and overly shocked Terrans, though he stayed well away from it. He didn’t need anyone stopping him from working.
Most helpful to him were the improvements to the sleeping areas. They were now properly furnished, with screens of whatever was at hand set up to give each person a much needed space of their own, free of the constant surveillance of their captors.
Fortunately, the Hathians were as secure in the effectiveness of their interning arrangements as he’d hoped. He looked over the growing collection of personal gadgets in Ferdo’s group area with grim satisfaction. Timers, recorders, vids—innocuous enough in themselves but, together, they made up of an array of very useful components. With them, there was a good chance that Ferdo could once again link into the Hathian communication network. He almost felt a trace of a smile on his face as he strode from group to group.
The Hathian councilors, watching on the vidscreens, were too far placed to catch any smile but couldn’t miss the arrogant spring in his ste
p or his defiantly erect stance.
“We’ve lost him,” concluded deln Crantz. While the man’s efficient organization of feeding, sleeping and hygiene arrangements made it easier to confine the Terrans, the speed with which he’d achieved it left deln Crantz decidedly uneasy. He turned to look at his friend, Sylvan an Castre, also watching the blazingly vibrant man.
“A pity, a pity for us all,” was the Doctor’s quiet reply. And deln Crantz didn’t have to be told that it wasn’t only of the Hathian nation he spoke.
Chapter Two
Marthe woke to the familiar smell of starch and antiseptic. Something inside her relaxed, then tightened. Had she fallen asleep on night shift again?
She opened her eyes to an even more familiar sight. The soft cloud paintings decorating the wards of First Hospital in The City. It was a standing joke amongst all the interns that if a city had to have such a prosaic name, then the hospital ought to be the same. So had decreed the first head doctor, changing the fanciful name honoring an unknown past hero to First Hospital and every medic since had followed her tradition.
Then Marthe realized where she was. In a patient’s bed in a private room, and wearing a hospital gown. Now she did sit up, then just as urgently slumped down again as waves of dizziness threatened to engulf her.
“What do you think you’re doing, Madame an Castre?”
A strange woman bustled through the door, dressed in the First Hospital nursing uniform. “Trying to get up,” said Marthe, quite reasonably she thought.
“You’ll be doing no such thing, Madame. Not today, and not for many days yet. Your doctors have worked too hard to undo the mess you’d made of yourself for you to spoil it by being silly.”
Marthe felt all of two years old … and a dawning suspicion was taking root.
Pay the Piper: Hathe Book Two Page 2