07. Ghost of the Well of Souls (27 page)

The fact that General Mochida was clearly enjoying himself in this was a little harder to comprehend. Warrior class be damned, generals didn't put themselves on the firing line, and security chiefs didn't do the operations they planned themselves. Mochida had clearly missed being out in the field.

They didn't need a clock to tell them that the twelfth hour was looming. They could feel it, and just that sensation and the fear it raised was enough to undermine their confidence.

Ihate to say this,
Ari commented ruefully,
but I think the old bastard really knows his business.

The sensations began as waves of nausea that increased in power and frequency with each incidence. When it seemed that the nausea was so awful you couldn't imagine it getting any worse, the pains started, first in every joint, then joined by regular but not constant muscle spasms that caused their tail to jerk and their back to twist.

It wasn't a fast descent, but a slow one, taking quite some time to build but making you aware of every second of it and dreading the next wave of horrors, which you knew would be worse.

They held out as best they could, but after another long period the hallucinations started. They were every nightmare either of them had had as a Terran or a Kalindan, every fear made apparent flesh, every guilt suddenly rising from the deepest of two subconscious minds and attacking them both jointly and individually. Every negative thought was recalled, every negative emotion relived and doubled and redoubled.

There was no question in either of their minds that the continual build of this round would come close to driving them both mad. Couple it with whatever had to come next, considering it took days to replace the missing enzymes, was the greatest fear of all.

The only thing making them hold on was a deep down dedication not to be the first one to break. But as things went on and on and they were writhing and shrieking in terror, and in one case convulsing so severely that one of the locked-down restraining straps actually broke, both of them began to wonder if they weren't being more than a little stupid.

They were almost at a consensus that this had gone beyond the point where either could tolerate it, and the only choices were death or surrender, when they felt everything melt away and that feeling of pleasantness return. It did not, however, wash away the memory of the pain and terrors they had been undergoing for so long.

They did not lapse into a euphoric state this time, but they did feel much, much better, and they shivered as the effects of the withdrawal ebbed from the physical part of their body.

"Not too bad at all," General Mochida commented. "I am actually impressed. I suspect that both of you were quite impressive in your original bodies and native habitats, as it were. That's almost an hour you held out. Most Kalindans who have been introduced to our cute little friend's bodily juices are simpering fools within ten to fifteen minutes. Still,
everybody
breaks, you know. There is no such thing as the person who cannot be broken in one way or another."

"You included," Ming snapped.

He didn't take it personally. "Almost certainly, although it's never been put fully to the test. Maybe it will be, but it will be by some other method. And, from now on, it will not be you who will do it."

"We didn't break," Ari answered proudly. "We
might
have, but not when the new dose was given. Not by then."

"Actually, you did," the General responded. "At least
one
of you did. You screamed out a plea for it, and as you were in no condition to be rational enough for me to follow it up, I gave what you asked for. I'm very good about that, you see. Just keep me happy and I'll keep
you
happy. Nothing major. I'm not talking of enslavement or degrading stuff or even killing your friends. You simply remain with us, you help us out on minor housekeeping matters, and you don't feed information back to Core or anyone associated with the creature without letting me know first. Otherwise, for now, I want you just as a cooperative observer. I'm not asking that you change sides to mine, only that you switch from the old side to, shall we say, a friendly neutral. It is understood, though, that if you betray me, if you do things against our interests, there will be a price. In
that
case I
may
ask you to kill someone, or betray someone, or something equally unpleasant to you. And if you screw up my operation in any substantial way, I will cheerfully nail you to the nearest wall and watch you go completely and utterly mad, and then I'll send you home as an object lesson. Clear?"

"Clear," Ari responded.

"Now, the reason for all this is that, obviously, I haven't the personnel nor the method of restraining you. I need to let you go but to be able to count on your presence here and your friendly cooperation. Even when we are a much larger force, which will be quite soon now, I will not be able to guard you. Now, you
may
be the type to take a chance. Get out, take the pneumatic express back to Kalinda, hop a speeder, get to a central hospital, and plead for help, all in twelve hours. It would be difficult, but you might make it, and we're not going any farther from your capital than we are now. If you
did
get there, they'd hook you up to all these dehydration and liquid feeding tubes and such and then they'd put you unconscious for a week or so until your system was back to normal. It might work, but that three-day period can have strange effects on the brain. Misfirings, permanent memory loss in some areas, all sorts of things. You'll certainly lose
something,
but you're almost certain to wind up merging into a single individual. When the brain is forced to rewire, it is hardly going to maintain this neat division. It's up to you, but I offer it to you as a sporting man. I won't spare anyone to chase you down, but if you lose your nerve, you'll get nothing more from me if you fail."

General Mochida was a very good security chief indeed.
Hit us right where it hurts the most,
Ari noted.

You said it,
Ming responded.
Damn it! It's not
fair,
at least not to me,
she grumped.
I mean, I was already violated in just about every way by your damned uncle, and now here I am, a victim again!

Hey! I'm in the same boat, remember!

Yeah, but you
deserve
to be! If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have had to go through all that shit the first time!

Like I could have done anything about it? Besides,
you
were the cop, the big hero type. It was your job to stop him. And remember, no matter what, if I hadn't knocked you out and gotten you into that lifeboat, you'da been dead when it blew up!

This is supposed to be an
improvement?
It's more like a continuation of the same thing! I mean, for all we know your uncle's still out there someplace cutting throats for fun, and there's old Josich apparently right on his, her, or its schedule for whatever the bastard had planned in the first place, even if he did get rushed a bit. And here we are, still the victims.

Yeah,
Ari agreed, giving a mental sigh.
Here we are, all right.

A couple of hours later they finally got around to undoing their bonds, and they'd been restrained so long and undergone such a physical ordeal in the forced withdrawal that it was very hard to get moving again and regain full control of their muscles. They knew they were going to ache for days.

Mochida was either supremely confident in his judgment of them and their willpower, or he didn't care anymore. They watched as the three large soft-shelled creatures shifted carton after carton until they seemed to have them in a definite order.

In a way, this is almost funny,
Ari noted.

I don't see the humor.

Consider
—
what would we be doing if we hadn't been captured? Trying to find an easy way into Sanafe to find out what Chalidang was up to, right?

Yeah? So?

And what are we doing now? Watching the Chalidangers prepare to move to Sanafe and pull whatever they're going to pull. And for all that drug business, what could we tell Core even now that we haven't already told her?

It did seem ironic, but considering their situation, Ming could not feel amused.

Two days later they assisted in returning some frozen calamari to life.

"The process isn't all that unusual," the sergeant major explained to them. "The difference is that we had to adapt to a semitech hex where the normal computer controls just weren't going to work. We used the highest tech cryogenic gear to create their state of suspended animation, but instead of putting them in the normal storage cells, our design team came up with these. The materials and workmanship are beyond anything a semitech hex could produce, but they weren't produced here. The same way as you Kalindans have built that pneumatic railway of yours, we can make things there and, if they don't require any of the forbidden technological sources to work, they come in and function just fine. Now, though, comes the tricky part. We've tapped into the steam vents used in the pneumatic system, and by doing so we've got fairly good control of our storage water temperature, but each of these must still be warmed slowly to a precise point, then the liquid drained into tanks and replaced with regulated steam."

"Do you think this kind of thing will work?" Ming asked skeptically.

"Oh, yes. It worked on me, didn't it?"

There was no good reply to that, so they did what was asked of them in hooking up various hoses and pushing forward needed equipment, and let the sergeant do his business.

Still, Ming was skeptical. "Even if this works," she noted, "it's gonna take
weeks
to properly thaw out this crowd."

"Not at all," the General responded behind them. "Once we get a few out and restored to functionality, they will be able to handle more of it, and so on. We allowed an extra two days over training for full recovery from the process, but other than that we were able to have everyone treated and functional within five very crowded or seven much less crowded days. We will do it as quickly as we can for the simple reason that we have limited supplies and even more limited space here. These are among our best, but they are not among our nicest folk, and while they can go hungry for days and days under highest stress conditions, that level in a hex like this, full of easily available and totally vulnerable food, would make it difficult to control them. No, we move as quickly as possible. We must be in Sanafe in seven days."

To their fascinated observations, the process did indeed seem to work. It was amazing how large a creature they could get out of those boxes, considering that they all had rigid exo-skeletons, but these were soldiers born and bred, and probably genetically engineered. And if Mochida and the others had nasty mouths and cold, huge eyes, this crew, once it regained full consciousness and movement, seemed to hate everything and everybody they looked upon, even each other.

But they clearly feared General Mochida.

"Let me make a few things clear here," he told each group after a dozen or so at a time were being thawed out and put into recovery exercises. "First, you eat rations, you eat nothing else. The Kalindan over there, for example, is my personal assistant in this region. Anyone who eats her will discover that she will be extracted from his gullet—
through the shell.
Other lapses in discipline should recall not only our military traditions in such matters but also those of your families back home. This is not a game. You were chosen because you were right for this job, but none of you have really gone head-to-head against an alien foe before nor spent much time in alien nations. Our allies lost thousands dead battling in a strategically placed semitech hex, and they lost. We are but three hundred when we are done, and this is a semitech hex, and our objective is a nontech environment. Our task is hard enough. We don't need you adding to the burden. Follow orders and this could be an easy task that covers us all with glory. Decide that the enemy is a bunch of silly, soft, inferior primitives who couldn't possibly do you harm, and you will join the dead of Ochoa. Believe me. As many exercises, war games, and simulations as you have been on, and as long as your training was, it pales before the real thing. I do not believe you can be beaten if you stick together, work as a team, and follow orders precisely. I
do
believe you can just as easily beat yourselves. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" they would chant, and go off to help thaw out the others.

The reason for the infiltration method was clear: the Yabbans would never have permitted a large military force to come through their domain. The Yabbans were trying to play both sides and hope to stay out of it, but there was a limit after which they would indeed fight, and the math was on their side. Millions of Yabbans, a few hundred Chalidangers. Yabban losses could be massive, and the Chalidangers would still be wiped out.

But now they were here, and with only two exceptions appeared to have survived the process with no ill effects. The two that didn't make it were from separate causes; one had a container that clearly leaked out the sustaining cryogenic fluid, and the other was botched in revival.

Mochida seemed quite pleased. He had actually allowed for up to fifteen percent fatalities. Two put him well ahead in bodies.

And their presence was now a fait accompli. The Yabban government was informed as soon as the thawing was well enough along that stopping it would have been a moot point. A surface supply ship from Jirminin was directly overhead and had sufficient supplies to maintain the Chalidang force for the period that they required, and also provide a cover and a conduit for the force below.

Faced with this, the natives were not the least bit pleased, but felt they had little choice in the matter. The force wasn't big enough to threaten Yabbo or its immediate neighbors, and there had been assurances that no weapons would be provided the force until they were leaving the nation. A Kalindan commission, at Yabbo's request, had actually boarded the ship above and verified that it contained only food and medical supplies of use only to Chalidang. No weapons.