An Officer’s Duty (58 page)

If I’m lucky, they’ll have Terran ration packets, which are tolerably edible if nothing else. If I’m not…I cannot afford to starve to death, however terrible Salik prisoner rations might be. I need to be healthy when we get to the Salik homeworld.

At least I know from the timestreams that they won’t waste good sentient flesh by offering it to their livestock. I’m not sure I could stomach adding cannibal to my list of crimes committed for the Future.

…Heh.
“Stomach…”

At least she had her sense of humor to keep her from getting bored, warped though it was.

AUGUST 23, 2495 T.S.
SALIK VESSEL
SIC TRANSIT

They took away her clothes of course, and hissed and burbled in puzzlement over the smooth mineral permanently encasing her shin. But that was alright; Ia had never been body-conscious, not growing up with two brothers in her family’s small home. The clothing had been more to keep warm in the cool, dry environment of her first set of captors, and shield herself from the gaze of certain male members of the pirate crew.

Salik vessels were kept several degrees warmer and very humid for the biological comfort of their crew, which for a Human meant clothing wasn’t necessary. As far as her alien captors were concerned, clothing could be used for self-strangulation, which would ruin the purpose of taking prisoners alive. Having paid so much for Ia, she was given an “honor guard” of two Salik males to watch over her, the sole prisoner on the first of the ships bringing her via circuitous routes to
within OTL-jumping distance of Sallha, but otherwise she was left alone in her cage.

On the second ship, there were five Humans, two Solaricans, and three Gatsugi, all kept in tight-gridded cages that were just large enough to stand up in or stretch out and sleep. Like sentient-sized pet cages, they came with a waste bucket and a water dispenser permanently fixed to the interior. More prisoners arrived every day or so, including two K’katta, filling up the long, cargo hold–style brig.

Ia didn’t talk to the other prisoners. There was nothing she could say to them, nothing she could do for them. They were meant for the various regional governors to eat, celebrating elsewhere across Sallha. Ia would be taken to their greatest underground military citadel, to be served with the rest of their most important war-food.

This mission wasn’t about rescuing people. It
hurt
, knowing there was nothing she could do for them. No false hope she could give the others. Their fates were sealed. As the second Salik ship slipped its way carefully through the gaps between stars to the rendezvous point, all Ia could do was sleep, exercise to keep herself in shape, and meditate on the many needs of the future. Submersing herself fully onto the timeplains was the only way to block out the furtive whispers, the dull curses, and the different kinds of species-specific weeping of the others.

The captain of the ship came to see her on her second to last day aboard. So did the ship’s medical personnel, performing tests through the bars to make sure she was biologically safe to eat. After they burbled their findings to their commander and moved on to the next prisoner, he moved up to the bars of her cage. Ia didn’t pretend to ignore him. She didn’t have the refuge of retreating into her own private mental madness, like some of the other prisoners had done; the timeplains were even less pleasant than reality, but they were necessary.

“Hhhew are a strrange Hhewman,” the captain hissed in Terranglo. “Hhew do not cry, hhew do not curssse. No ssstressss. No fffearrr. Yet hhew ssseem to be hhhere, rathhher than lossst.”

He uncurled a pair of tentacles, writhing them slowly to indicate the reality around them.

“Where else should I be?” Ia asked, meeting his bulging-eyed gaze calmly. She didn’t move from her position,
seated with her back against the bars that butted up against a cage holding a nervously chirping K’katta. They had taken away the alien’s translator box, leaving it unable to communicate clearly with anyone but its own kind.

“Nnnot hhhere.” Crouching easily, since his backwards-bending leg joints permitted it, he ducked his head a little and gazed at her more directly. First one eye, then the other. “Wwwhat do hhew wwannnt, Hhhewman?”

“What do I want?” Ia repeated. “What do you expect me to say? Should I say that I want your head on a pike, as a warning to the rest of the galaxy to never let one kind of hunger spill over into the other? Is that what you want to hear?”

“Yessss,” he hissed, baring the points of his front teeth. “
There
isss the annger I exsspected…annger for my kinnnd.”

Shifting forward onto the balls of her feet, Ia shuffled up to the front of her cage. “There’s only one problem, meioa. I
don’t
feel anger when I think of you. I
don’t
feel rage when I look upon you.”

His slit-pupiled eyes flicked in their sockets, shifting around before refocusing on her. “Wwwhhhhat, thennn, do hhew feelll?”

Looking into those eyes, Ia gave him the truth. One that she had carried inside of her since that fateful morning as a teenager, when everything had changed.

“Pity.”

He hissed and reared up, finger-tentacles flailing wide as if in preparation to grapple and strike. It was, she knew, the worst possible insult she could have given from a xenopsychological view. Salik pity was not based upon any sense of compassion, unlike the kind of pity found in most of the other sentient races. Pity was not gentle regret, in their lexicon.

No, the Salik lived for the hunt and the kill. They valued the tough, the difficult, and the dangerous as their most worthy opponents. Pity, to the Salik way of thinking, was what one felt for a foe who was discovered to be unexpectedly weak. Pity was a disgusted dismissal on top of disgusted regret for any effort wasted upon their unexpectedly pathetic target.

In a twist of irony, Ia meant it purely in the Human sense, yet his reaction in the Salik sense was the one she needed. Hissing at her again, he backed up and dismissed the very idea with
a curling spiral of one tentacle-hand. Rage widened his pupils and his leg muscles flexed beneath the fitted material of his species-equivalent of a p-suit, as if preparing to leap. Recovering after a moment, he hissed again, this time in satisfaction.

“Yyyessss…It isss said in your ffiless that hhew hhhunt yyour opponnents psssychollogically. Hhew are a mmmore cunning ffoe thannn I exsspected,” the captain observed smugly.

Ia gave him a sardonic look. “Eat me.”

A strange sound gurgled out of his throat. Salik laughter. “Ssssuch a prize iss nnot for me. Hhhew are meant for genneralss, Hhewman.”

“Good. I look forward to it.” Ia knew their conversation was drawing the attention of the other captives. “I have a few things I want to say to them before I die.”

“Hhhhow bravve the bite you will be,” he mocked,
pop-pop-popping
in lip-smacked mockery.

“How starved for a decent meal
you
will be,” she mocked back. “I’m glad you know your
shallow
rank.”

He almost reared up again at that, but subsided. “Hhhew will
nnnot
provoke mme.”

Turning, he left, smacking his lips occasionally to the right or the left as he passed the rows of cages. Shuffling back to her former position, Ia rested against the bars. She had passed his test. Ia couldn’t be anything
but
calm despite the gravity of her situation; she had trained herself long and hard to suppress and set aside her fears so that she could act in the right moment and the right way without hesitation. Such calm was unnatural, however, and had called into doubt her worthiness of being Salik prey.

Now the captain had no doubt of her prize-value, and would report as such, permitting her to be passed along. Now she would be in the right moment to be able to do things in the right way. Now she could relax in truth, awaiting the transfer to the hypership that would jump them down to the Salik homeworld unseen by Blockade forces.

…I wish I could have seen the surface of their homeworld. We named ours after the dirt and the ground upon which we walked. They named their world Fountain, and decorated it with a million gorgeous waterworks. What a real pity it will all be laid to waste, soon.

The medical techs continued their scan of the various prisoners through their cages. The K’katta in the cage behind her chittered something, then fell silent again. The Solarican to her right rumbled and spoke.

“Is it wise to prrovoke them, meioa?” he asked her.

“I’m not afraid, if that’s what you mean. I really wish I could rescue you,” Ia replied, glancing his way. “All I can wish you is a swift death, and maybe the chance to break free and take some of them with you.”

He
huffed
in mirthless laughter. “You mean, alll I can hope is to give them a massive hairrrball when I die.”

Ia chuckled. It was gallows humor at best, but it was funny. “Whereas I, ungrateful guest that I am, forgot to bring my very own bottle of
fllk
dipping sauce. How ‘tasteless’ of me.”

Caught off guard, he sneezed in laughter, lips pursed in the smile of his kind. Grinning, she rested her head against the bars, enjoying the rare bout of mirth, until it faded with a sigh. Closing her eyes, Ia returned her mind to the timestreams, making sure she knew all of the steps to be taken in the days ahead.

There was another blank spot coming, one in the banquet hall itself. One which worried her, though she knew there was a high probability that she’d achieve her objectives—most of the good potential-probable stream paths led out of the mist, of the ones she had marked as necessary to achieve. The more she probed at it, however, the more it felt like that capital ship had felt, like a headache from too much noise. What
that
meant, she didn’t yet know, which meant she had to be ready for almost anything.

I just hope whatever it is that’s generating these mistbubbles is something I
can
deal with. This banquet is too important for me to fail.

AUGUST 27, 2495 T.S.
BANQUET HALL OF THE GRAND COMMANDERS
SALLHA

They chained her up about a third of the way back from the dais holding the highest-ranked members of the top brass. Everything else she had done would have earned her a frame at the back of the room, but blowing up a capital ship as she had, well…she was up here. Ia wasn’t “worthy” enough to be their most prized meal, a fellow Human who would be set free in a contemptuous gesture of superiority to “fight” for survival against their Grand High General, but she was worthy enough to be here. That was the important part.

She did her best to ignore the swerving eyes and licking, smacking lips of the Salik generals nearest her while the others were brought into the hall and chained into the eating frames. They hissed and burbled in quiet little comments, studying her limbs hungrily, but none of them uncurled a tentacle-hand her way. No one would eat any of the prisoners until the Grand High General—the actual term in Sallhash was difficult to translate—had caught and taken the first bite out of his prey.

Instead, she filled the time by closing her eyes against the vision-straining hues of the blue green light shining down from the great glass globe overhead. Turning her attention inward and up, Ia focused on the locks of the manacles holding her arms straight up, her feet barely touching the floor. Some of the others struggled, some sobbed or hissed, and a few chittered. Announcements of each captor’s “crimes” against the Salik gurgled through the hall, inducing temporary lulls in the aliens’ various incidental conversations. The noise of nearly a thousand nostril-flaps whistling and all those lips smacking followed each introduction, since the Salik had no hands to clap in applause like some of the other races.

The headache came back as the first psychic captive was led into the chamber. Wincing slightly—the pain wasn’t serious, but it was noticeable—Ia peered over her shoulder, trying to find the source of the annoyance. The Solarican being carried into the room, wrists and ankles tied to a pole like some sort of primitive tribal sacrifice, had a strange contraption strapped to her head. It was connected via cables to a heavy box
being wheeled by a Salik guard behind her. Warily, Ia probed toward the box electrokinetically. Her headache immediately increased.