“Jazz, open up!” she ordered.
It was pointless to let the Sirgan be damaged for the sake of a few miserable minutes.
Without missing a beat, the aliens entered the transport ship. The Saharj carried guns, oddly elongated heavy revolvers, and daggers with curved blades.
They explored each cabin and the Sirgan’s cargo hold methodically, imprisoning the Vohrn who were not with Mallory and Torg. The captives were escorted out of the vessel and lined up against a wall in the huge maintenance bay. Finally, the Saharj went to the cockpit.
After watching the boarding on the feed from the ship’s security cameras, the pilot got up and stood between Torg and Losnuk. When the first biogenic entity appeared, she couldn’t repress a shudder. The bony alien, with its skin like old leather, seemed born of the worst human nightmares.
“Looks like a mummy without its bandages,” Mallory whispered to Torg.
The frightening creature focused its attention on Losnuk. “Vohrn! Join your peers on the dock and instruct your slaves to follow you. This ship belongs to us now.”
Jazz could not help but react to this statement. “Forget it! You’re dreaming. I’d rather fry all the systems!”
The Saharj turned its gaunt face and glowing eyes from side to side, trying to figure out where the Natural Intelligence’s voice was coming from.
Mallory noticed a detail that told her a lot about what the Saharj thought of their prisoners: it wasn’t even wearing a translator box. Those worn by Losnuk and the pilot’s navcom were only working in one direction. Pointing this out to Torg, she concluded, “Apparently, we won’t have the opportunity to express ourselves.”
The Saharj pointed a gun at them and stepped to the left, clearing a path to the Sirgan’s passageway. Losnuk moved forward silently. Mallory accompanied him, her mood black, followed by her bodyguard.
Once outside, they joined the other Vohrn under the Saharjs’ watchful eyes. Mallory stared at the huge bay and its rocky walls. Regardless of its size, the place was clearly a prison. The confidence she felt earlier appeared to have been misplaced. She was really angry with herself: in the end, she had walked right into the lion’s den. She was going to pay dearly for her arrogance, which she had based on the Vohrns’ technology and their presence on the Sirgan.
“Losnuk, how long will it take the Urkein’Naak to receive the signal from the micro-beacon?”
“One or two cycle fractions, or perhaps three.”
Rather on edge, Mallory stifled a touch of annoyance, “And in Earth time, how long is that?”
Losnuk thought. “About a week.”
Laorcq, his limbs heavy and frozen, awoke to discover he was lying in a kind of sarcophagus. His wrists and ankles were shackled by straps made of braided steel cables, so tightly he could hardly move. No sound, no light, no sensory information reached him. He could be buried underground on a planet or drifting in space, for all he knew.
His first instinct was to test the strength of his bonds. He succeeded only in bruising his flesh where it came into contact with the metal bands. Abandoning these useless contortions, he tried to calm himself down.
He shouldn’t waste his energy. Better to stay alert and wait for an opportunity to break free. With growing concern, he recalled the final seconds before falling into nothingness: the Antarian jet, Vassili and his incredible speed. Alrine, beaten, then on the ground, unconscious. Refusing to consider her potentially gruesome fate, he clung to the idea that she must also be imprisoned.
A harsh light forced him to open his eyes slightly. The box had just opened, and his throat and lungs were already burning. The atmosphere isn’t breathable!
He had a moment of panic until he felt a mask placed over his mouth. The pain in his chest subsided.
When his vision adjusted, he saw an extremely strange alien: its body had one long segment, a stem about three inches in diameter tipped with a slight bulge that housed dozens of yellow eyes. Leaning over, the creature stared at him with its myriad eyeballs. The unfamiliar alien withdrew as suddenly as it had appeared.
Maybe this walking stem will free me, Laorcq thought with vague hope. Given how frail the creature was, he was sure he could defeat it, even with his bare hands.
The “stem” was a quadruped: its slender lower body, covered with short black fur, was divided into four limbs that could bend in all directions. The number of limbs seemed to have dictated its development. The creature’s arms sprouted along two-thirds of its body, waving like tentacles. They also branched out twice into four smaller stems, forming hands with sixteen tiny fingers each. Located just below the cluster of eyes, a little round mouth emitted a shrill voice.
“Oooog. Uiiiiz chhh plo?”
Laorcq couldn’t check to see if his navcom watch was still working, but he doubted that the language in question was included in its database. Through the breathing mask, he said, “Sorry, but I don’t understand a word you’re saying, mate.”
The alien’s appearance was so comical and fragile that it was hard for the human to see him as any kind of threat.
He changed his mind when the alien withdrew again and returned brandishing a small white cube, one side of which bristled with fine needles. “Chhh plo?” he repeated.
“No! No chhh plo! You wanna put that thing away?” Laorcq retorted, frowning.
The alien did not comply. He approached and examined Laorcq carefully. Then, with a gesture almost too fast to be seen, he planted the spikes in his shoulder. Laorcq uttered a grunt of pain, and the object turned red. Finally, just as quickly, the “stem” withdrew the weird syringe.
“Chhh plo!” he seemed to confirm before turning away from the human.
The latter heard a series of noises, ending with the sound of pneumatic actuators. The same sound that had accompanied the opening of the sarcophagus. He understood and said, “Alrine? Are you there?”
To Laorcq’s relief, a familiar voice responded.
“Yes, but… a respirator? And where did that alien that looks like a coat rack come from?”
“Careful, he will probably…”
“Chhh plo?” the alien interrupted.
“…give you…”
“Ouch!”
“…a shot.”
Alrine, stretched out and strapped down just as her companion was, sighed. “This looks bad.”
She was going to ask Laorcq if he had any idea where they were, when she felt a slight vibration as she rocked forward.
The “stem” triggered a mechanism that rotated the sarcophagi vertically.
Gradually, as the box straightened, the policewoman could see the room. The hemispherical space was cut from dark, purple-veined quartz. Alrine saw a single opening that seemed to lead to a particularly dark portal, so dark that the light seemed unable to penetrate it.
The curved wall was lined with furniture upholstered with a material that looked close to plastic, as well as a long worktable on which instruments were arranged for analyzing the fluids taken from the humans.
The thread-like alien was busy with one of the machines. While watching him, Alrine wondered where she and Laorcq had ended up and how they had gotten here. In all likelihood, Vassili had handed them over to this unknown species. But this made no sense: what was the point of taking hostages only to get rid of them at the first opportunity?
The explanation came in the form of a tall humanoid with a body whose muscles were as prominent as its skeleton.
Although different from the old pictures found by the Vohrn, Alrine immediately recognized what kind of alien she was dealing with. “A Saharj!”
The thin quadruped had an intriguing reaction: he rushed to the other side of the room and pressed himself against the rock wall, taking care to look away from the newcomer. She could hardly tell, but he seemed frightened by the mere presence of the Saharj.
The latter approached the box containing Laorcq and stared at him with bright red eyes. The woman noticed that the alien wore a harness, a cross
between a holster and a belt, from which several knives hung. Slowly, the Saharj grasped a blade and removed it from its sheath. A wave of terror seized Alrine when the Saharj bent over Laorcq.
XIX
SEWER
IN the asteroid where the Sirgan was docked, the Saharj began to search the prisoners, stripping them of any weapons or means of communication. A thought struck Mallory, and a shiver ran through her: she had used a telepathic link to damage the Saharjs’ collective mind, which led to their defeat in the Aldebaran system. If they recognized her as the entity that had caused the gestalt’s suffering, they’d kill her on the spot!
Fear knotted her stomach as one of Saharj came toward her.
“Torg. Even with my mask on, they’re going to figure out who I am. Can you deal with these six mummies?”
The cybrid leaned toward her. “Two or three maybe, but six…”
The pilot’s anxiety went up a notch, making breathing through the filter difficult. The Saharj examined Torg carefully before saying to its comrades: “This one’s dangerous. Put him in supergravs.”
One of the warrior aliens approached Torg. This Saharj held what looked like rubbery thongs that emitted a faint yellow glow between its skeletal fingers.
Once in front of Torg, it simply opened its hand, and the strips sprang up and wrapped around the cybrid’s wrists and ankles. Mallory saw him slump suddenly, as if a terrible weight had fallen on him. Despite his powerful muscles, he seemed to be almost unable to take a step. Her bodyguard shook with his increasingly violent efforts to make the slightest movement. She was worried and forgot her own circumstances. “Torg! What’s going on?”
He growled in response. “These bracelets are gravity multipliers! With these on, I’m as weak as a human newborn.”
The Saharj then turned to Mallory and scanned her with its red eyes, lingering over the jufinol. As usual, the colorful worm was wrapped around the pilot’s left arm like a rainbow serpent. She thought she was in trouble: she seemed to see a spark of recognition in the scarlet eyeballs, which lacked both pupil and iris.
She wouldn’t go down without a fight, even one she knew she’d already lost.
Her sensitive tattoos transformed into a jumble of black brambles until a soothing feeling filled her. Squish was trying to reassure her. She appreciated the gesture but tried to push the little animal’s thoughts away: she had to remain lucid. He chirped and insisted, suggesting another idea: let him deal with the Saharj.
On her arm, she felt his usually soft body tense with effort.
The Saharj froze, and the intensity of its gaze diminished. When it reached a hand towards the pilot, it just took her navcom before turning toward Losnuk.
Mallory let out a long sigh: she had been holding her breath during the entire brief episode. She clutched the jufinol, stroked it, and whispered, “I adore you, Squish…”
The animal responded by sharing a soft, light sensation that felt like friendship and warmth.
The Saharj didn’t give them the opportunity to savor the small victory. As soon as they finished disarming the Sirgan’s crew, some of them escorted the Vohrn to the other end of the gigantic maintenance bay.
The Saharj ordered Losnuk and his soldiers to line up along a set of steel-working machines, near a stack of panels ready to be shaped and cut. The Saharj stepped away, leaving a thirty-by-thirty-foot area around the Vohrn. One holstered its gun and walked toward one of the machines in the area. It stood before a kind of console. Mallory had a very bad feeling. Her guts turned to liquid when she saw Losnuk turn to her and raise his hand in a goodbye that was as unexpected as it was human. All too aware of the significance of the gesture, she returned his salute.
With a suddenness that stunned her, a number of blue rays shot down from the high ceiling and danced over the space where the Vohrn stood. A cloud of vaporized blood shrouded the scene as the lasers sliced them into hundreds of pieces.
A cry of horror caught in the pilot’s throat. The cruelty of the act rendered her mute with shock.
After the summary execution, she sat down on the floor in a near-catatonic state, her back against the surface of the hollow asteroid. She barely heard Torg when he warned her that communications with Jazz had been disrupted: the Saharj had disabled the Sirgan’s Natural Intelligence.
The cybrid sat down beside her and became as motionless as a statue, not wanting to let the supergravs wear him out unnecessarily. They waited for hours under the cadaverous looking aliens’ watchful eyes without moving an inch.
Although bolstered by the jufinol’s soothing purr, Mallory was struggling to resist both emotional and physical fatigue when a dozen aliens appeared. Despite the circumstances, she couldn’t help smiling: the newcomers had a funny threadlike appearance and moved by leaping comically on their four paws.
The Saharj who were still present left immediately, as if irritated by the intrusion. Only one of them lingered for the time it took to gesture toward the arrivals and to say, “Go with the Dva.”
The Saharj disappeared, and the group of aliens referred to as the “Dva” rushed toward them. She had never met creatures with so many eyeballs.
“Look at them, Torg—they have at least twenty eyes!”
She saw the giant shrug and immediately regret it: his bonds reacted by increasing the load. He grunted in spite of himself but seemed reassured by Mallory’s enthusiasm about the Dva. She tried to maintain this state of mind: feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t do any good.
Unfortunately, the threadlike aliens spoke an unintelligible language. A quick conversation with Torg told her that even the navcom implanted near his cortex was unable to translate the Dvas’ words. With gestures, they made them understand that they had to get up and follow them.
The small aliens that looked like hopping poles led them to an opening in the rock wall. Seeing the portal, which looked like it was filled with black ink, Mallory and Torg froze, but the Dva ahead of them entered without hesitation.
Pressing their myriad fingers into the prisoners’ backs, the remaining Dva urged them forward. “Valpak! Vlaaaak!”
Despite the handicap caused by the shackles, Torg passed the short pilot and went through the dark door first. To Mallory, it looked as if he had fallen into a puddle of nothingness.
She didn’t have time to worry about it: Torg came back and said in his deep voice. “There’s no danger. It’s just weird.”
With this enigmatic explanation, he grabbed Mallory’s hand and pulled her through the portal.
Disoriented, she had the impression of moving from one holographic scene to another, becoming completely submerged in each one.
They found themselves in a confined space lit by phosphorescent stones placed at irregular intervals in the bare, grainy rock walls. Behind them, the Dva congregated as they arrived.
A foul stench filled Mallory’s throat, despite the respirator. Growing accustomed to the low light, she discovered that they were standing in a small cave, crisscrossed with streams of liquid trapped in force fields. Deep black lines were drawn on the rock walls. The fluids emerged from them and then ran around the room in a precise path. The pilot’s eyes followed them: they invariably plunged into another circle. The strange place reminded her of a giant junction box. She let out an expletive, “Fuck me! Am I wrong or are we in the sewers?”
Torg, whose sense of smell was even more acute, confirmed her suspicion. “You’re unfortunately right. I hope these force fields are reliable.”
To emphasize his words, he raised his blue eyes toward the ceiling. Mallory did the same and was horrified to see a brown stream that transported every possible kind of waste.
Mallory and the cybrid understood the Dvas’ status very quickly: barely above slaves. After a day in their company, they also concluded that interactions between them and the Saharj were kept to a minimum.
Their days in captivity were filled with discoveries. Mallory eventually realized that the habitat hidden in the asteroid bel
t was composed of thousands of sections, all connected by the portals.
She had had trouble believing it, but the Saharj seemed to have succeeded where all others had failed: they were able to create and stabilize wormholes at will.
The Earth woman and the cybrid were assigned to the same tasks as the Dva. In a tiny room where dozens of flows of all colors intersected, they were ordered to clear a stinking gelatinous mass obstructing an eight-inch wide conduit. Under the supervision of a Dva, they tried to remove the plug. The alien had a large clip he used to catch the flows in the force fields and deflect them temporarily to another wormhole. The two “apprentice plumbers” were only given long rods barely strong enough to sink into the slime without breaking. The jufinol took refuge on one of the cybrid’s huge shoulders, refusing to be apart from Mallory.
The Saharjs’ absence surprised the pilot. While using her stick as a lever, she growled through her respirator. “I wonder if the mummies come to check in from time to time. Why do the Dva kill themselves to do the work if no one’s watching?”
“They must be controlled somehow,” Torg suggested. “For example, no work, no food.”
Mallory smiled slightly in spite of the situation. Withholding food was probably the only threat that could influence her bodyguard. However, with regard to their “hosts,” she doubted the explanation was so simple.
With a dry crack, the tool she was using broke. Knocked off balance, she felt forward and hit her head against the rock wall just over the clogged drain. “Shit!” she blurted out angrily.
Squish expressed his compassion by humming with a sad intonation. Torg raised a hand and stroked his captain’s forehead, where a bump was starting to rise. Frustrated, she threw the broken stick to the ground and turned to the Dva. “If only we could communicate with them!”
He stared at her with his cluster of yellow eyes and uttered a “Gzaaak!” before giving her another stick drawn from a box on wheels that he dragged behind him.
Aldebaran Divided Page 19