Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) (30 page)

“Should I bow like the others?” Cyrus asked it.

The inquisitor raised his head. “You vicious freak of the void, cast yourself down in the glorious radiance of our Illustrious Master. Are you so lacking that you cannot feel the essence of supremacy in the mighty Chengal Ras?”

“Silence!” the Kresh hissed.

The inquisitor’s head thumped back onto the desk.

Cyrus bent down onto one knee and he bowed his head before the raptor-like creature. One thing was obvious. The humanoids were subservient to the dinosaur-like Kresh. How had this occurred and when? No matter how it had happened, these humans needed freeing from the aliens. Hmm, was this the same alien that had been aboard
Discovery
?

“Creature,” Chengal Ras said. “Your vessel achieved greater than light speed. Were you instrumental in the process?”

“No,” Cyrus lied.

“You were in the… tele-chamber upon my arrival. Why were you there?”

So this
was
the same alien. Cyrus had tried to hurt it then, but failed. The alien must have tagged him somehow. Why had Chengal Ras put him back with the others? Maybe that was the wrong question. How did it know about the tele-chamber? Logically, one of
Discovery
’s crew must have told a different inquisitor the right answers. No.

You’re not thinking
, Cyrus told himself. The aliens knew about the tele-chamber through Jasper when they had communicated.

“I have tolerated your insolence too long,” Chengal Ras said. “You will administer answers or you will expire before your fellow herd beasts in a most excruciating manner. Your passing may teach them the cost of disobedience.”

“Master, may I assist?” the inquisitor asked.

Chengal Ras shifted its attention to the inquisitor. “Speak, but if I find your words useless, you will expire for my amusement during the Docking Ceremony.”

“It would be to my great delight if my passing could provide you with entertainment, Master,” the inquisitor said. “Yet I hope my words may assist in your radiance.”

“Speak, and do it quickly,” Chengal Ras said.

“Master, I have found this one hiding a secret agenda. It reeks of subterfuge. If I could perform an extraction—”

“The Attack Talon lacks the facilities,” Chengal Ras said.

“At High Station 3 I could—”

“Yes,” Chengal Ras said. “You will extract his memories at High Station 3. He practices subterfuge and I detected a psionic assault upon my person in the alien tele-chamber. It may have come from him. Until we reach High Station 3, keep him in isolation. These creatures are not from the Imperium. That is decisively critical.”

“Illustrious One, this is mighty news indeed,” the inquisitor said.

“The Random Equation has fallen to the Hundred,” Chengal Ras said, as if quoting a saying. “The time of our exaltation draws near. I have spoken.”

Chengal Ras thereupon continued down the passageway, lurching in its raptor-like gait, causing another cloud of scented perfume to squirt from its neck tube.

“The inquiry is ended,” the inquisitor said. “Return the outlander to his cell.”

4

Cyrus began to plot as soon as the wall appeared behind him, locking him in the cell.

What could he do to change his fate? He didn’t know. But he wasn’t going to give these alien pricks any help defeating Sol or help them learn how to shift.

The days passed and the crushing acceleration never stopped. He exercised harder, doing squats until his knees ached. The Vomags had walked the passageways with ease. If he was going to escape, he would need to be able to do likewise.

Unfortunately, the impossibility of his plight nearly drove Cyrus to despair.

No, no, that’s the wrong emotion. There’s too much you don’t understand. You have to keep trying until they kill you.

He made a mental list of things to give him hope. He needed hope. Once this particular journey ended, they would extract his memory. That sounded ominous.

Concentrate, Cyrus. Start using your brain
.

He didn’t know what was happening to the others, but he couldn’t dwell on that. He needed to take what he had—the data, as Argon might have said—and see what conclusions he could reach.

From his time in the Teleship’s observatory, he’d discovered that someone had carpet-nuked AS 412 III, the outermost Earth-like world. A ring of lasers
around AS 412 II, the other Earth-like world, showed him the Kresh had enemies. The Imperium—whoever they were—had attacked New Eden from outside the system, or so it appeared. This Imperium had Web-Minds. Now that could have been a coincidental turn of phrase, or it could mean that Sol-created cyborgs had attacked the Kresh.

Nagasaki had told them before that the cyborgs at the end of the Solar War had possessed proto-Teleships. If cyborgs had escaped Sol in a Teleship, might they have tried to set up an empire way out here? He couldn’t know. But if they had, might they have encountered the Kresh?

Naturally, no one on Earth would have seen any of this. Probes traveled slower than the speed of light, and they sent messages back at light speed. The only way to find this was how they had, in a Teleship.

If the cyborgs attacked the Kresh that meant cyborgs had Teleships or something like Teleships. And from Chengal Ras’s questions, the Kresh likely didn’t have Teleships or shift technology.

How can any of that help you here?

Cyrus figured it helped by giving him something to think about other than his coming memory extraction. The rest of the time, he endured. He inspected every inch of the cell. He had no idea how they made the walls appear and disappear and he could see no way they recorded or watched him in here. Didn’t they care what happened to him? Would they know if he tried to commit suicide?

Some of the time, he practiced mental exercises. He even used his psi-power aggressively, probing, trying to remove a wall. It didn’t work. He tried to contact Jasper or Roxie and failed to sense either. He practiced using his mind shield. He squatted, did thousands of sit-ups, pushups and found his already whipcord frame becoming even more lean.

Once, a moment of weightlessness came unexpectedly. It was such a relief, but it didn’t last long. If anything, the crushing Gs worsened afterward.

What does that tell you?

It wasn’t hard to figure out. The ship had accelerated, building up velocity. Now it must have turned around and decelerated, slowing the velocity so it could dock at High Station 3.

Are we nearing one of the gas giants?

When he slept, his dreams worsened. Loneliness ate at him and his resolve hardened. He wasn’t going to enter the memory-extractor. No. He would make
them kill him first. Thoughts of his death made him listless, and for several sleeps he skipped his exercises.

What are you doing, Cyrus? You’re giving up. Well, stop it! Get ready for the fight of your life. You may be the last one left from
Discovery.

Sometimes, he wondered if he should just kill himself. No, he couldn’t do that. He had to fight. He’d never given up as a child. Why should he give up now that he was mentally tougher and in the best physical shape of his life?

He ran in place for as long as he could. Each step jolted him so soon the back of his neck hurt. He went over plans, practiced jabs and kicks, and patiently waited.

What would a Kresh space station be like?
Chengal Ras called us herd beasts.
That meant something important. Cyrus lay on his cot and thought it through.

First, from what he’d seen, the Kresh treated their servants horribly. Second, the inquisitor wondered who gave Earthlings illumination. Might the man mean the Kresh gave the humans here guidance? That seemed right from what he’d seen. The Kresh figured humans were beasts. You didn’t expect much from a beast, except that he or she acted like one. So they must think some other creatures ruled Earth’s humans.

From his days in Level 40, Cyrus had learned that pride often came before a fall. The alien’s arrogance might help him.

Three more successful seconds in the tele-chamber and I would be on my way home, a hero.

He hadn’t thought about that for a while. He realized that now wasn’t a good time to renew it.

The moment came when the acceleration lessened, lessened more, and then almost felt normal.

Are we almost there?

Cyrus felt mentally sluggish and he realized he’d been lax practicing his mind shield. Part of him never wanted to leave the cell because when he did leave, it would mean an ugly and brutal end. He started jeering himself, calling himself a coward and a weakling. Cowards deserved to die. If he were a man, he’d give the aliens something to remember.

He concentrated on the thought. He came up with a hundred scenarios about what he could do. That was funny in a way, because none of it happened how he expected.

He was lying on the cot, staring into space. His thoughts were empty, although his automatic mind shield was up. Maybe that’s why he was aware of a subtle difference. It was a tiny thing, but he was so bored that he noticed it in a detached manner.

The wall he was staring at disappeared because the aliens did it and he happened to notice the mental procedure.

Oh, so
that’s
how they do it
. In that instant, he figured it out. Sure, it had to be the right kind of wall in order to do it. But now that he’d “seen” the aliens do it, he was sure he could duplicate the trick with his telekinesis.

He was so pleased with himself and his find that at first he didn’t notice the inquisitor and Vomags standing in the corridor.

“Are you unhinged from reality?” the inquisitor asked.

Cyrus blinked in surprise, sitting up. The inquisitor looked like the same individual who had questioned him days or weeks ago. He had no idea how long it had been.

“Are we at High Station 3?” Cyrus asked.

The inquisitor stiffened and snapped his long fingers. The Vomags darted into the cell and dragged Cyrus to his feet. They gripped his arms just as they had last time. Their fingers felt like iron digging into his flesh.

“Proper decorum is critical at High Station 3,” the inquisitor said. “Therefore, you will refrain from speech unless you are directly asked a question. Nod if you understand.”

Cyrus nodded.

“Proceed,” the inquisitor said, waving his long-fingered hand in a shooing motion.

The two soldiers marched down the passageway, taking Cyrus with them.

You’d better wake up and start thinking. This is it, and the aliens know it, too.

Instead of quailing at his plight—guarded by two fierce soldiers—Cyrus decided this was a good thing. It showed him escape must be possible. Otherwise, why bother with these precautions?

He began to observe, using his senses and thoughts to catalog the situation and to see what was there and what was missing. For instance, there was no background thrum. The engines must be offline. That would imply the ship had docked in some manner. Of course, that made sense if they’d reached High Station 3.

They entered the larger passageway and soon turned onto an even broader corridor, a huge passageway. Cyrus’s heart leaped in his chest. He spied Argon, Dr. Wexx, and Captain Jones, each of them guarded by two Vomags and trailed by an inquisitor. None of the inquisitors wore
baans
.

Wexx squinted badly as if she could hardly see. The aliens must have stolen her sunglasses. Jones’s features were slack as if he’d suffered brain damage. Argon glanced around and noticed him. Something powerful flashed in the chief monitor’s eyes. Argon nodded at Cyrus. The trailing inquisitor gave the chief monitor a verbal reprimand.

Cyrus couldn’t stop himself. “It’s good to see you.”

His Vomags tightened their grip.

“Silence, you fool,” the inquisitor whispered. “This is the docking procedure. We give thanks for another successful journey into the void and back. You sully the purity of the moment.”

“It’s good to see you, Cyrus!” Argon shouted.

The inquisitor behind the seven-foot giant pointed a clenched fist at him, pressing a switch. The chief monitor groaned, with his head arching back. The two Vomags gripping the arms held up the big man. Argon’s inquisitor relented and the chief monitor continued to march, but in subdued silence.

Cyrus seethed at the sight. He was sick of these aliens, sick of the Kresh and their arrogance. He wanted to strike back, to act. How could they have lost to these vicious bastards? It was as if he’d returned to a demented Level 40 Milan.

The Vomags marched their captives through the corridor until they reached a large hatch. When Cyrus’s turn came, the soldiers marched him out of the ship and down steps into a monstrously huge, steel hanger.

Cyrus cataloged what he saw. Looking back, he noted that their vessel was a squat and bulbous ship about five stories high. It couldn’t have been what had attacked
Discovery,
it was too small for that. No, this must be a massive shuttle.
Yeah, look at the size of the engine ports.

He spied other bulbous shuttles. One moved on a sliding section of hanger, coming toward the others. The hanger was unbelievably massive. Lights went off into the distance farther than he could see. High Station 3 had to be the largest habitat he’d ever heard of. The number of vessels in here… he counted over three dozen.

The line of Sol captives and Vomag guards threaded toward a truck-sized entrance about half a kilometer away. There were other entrances, many vehicles, and humanoid workers.

Cyrus kept rubbernecking, looking around. Humans drove the various vehicles, hauling stuff from some massive shuttles and bringing containers to others. He didn’t spy any Kresh doing work, just people, hordes of laboring people. Everyone wore a uniform and seemed Earth-normal in form. The most divergent people were the Vomags and the inquisitors.

What had his inquisitor called himself before, a Rarified of the Third Order? As Cyrus mulled that over, a raucous horn blew. Then several other horns blared mightily in a louder version of the first.

“They actually come,” the inquisitor whispered. “Oh, this is exceptional. We are about to catch a glimpse of several Radiances together. This is glory, glory for their mighty feat of victory over you outlanders.”