Shades of Gray (51 page)

“They’re fanatics, every last one of them,” said Kezule. “There is no talking to them.”

“I can see why you nearly killed him. He’s taking control of the situation,” said Kusac, his own hackles beginning to rise. “Have you one of those punishment collars handy?”

“There’re several in the guardroom, with a couple of control bracelets. K’hedduk used them on the Council members.”

“Good,” he said. Pushing his chair back, he got to his feet and headed out to the guardroom for them.

Stopping only long enough to put the control bracelet on, he knocked on the cell door. Kho’ikk opened it, standing back to let him in.

Reaching inside himself, he fanned the anger he knew was still there and triggered his fight response. Where his hair wasn’t braided, it rose up like a cloud around his face. His hackles, visible because of his sleeveless summer tunic, stood up along his shoulders, and his tail bushed out to nearly twice its width as it began to sway more quickly.

“You have a prisoner here for me,” he drawled, stalking into the room, the very epitome of a Sholan about to go into the kzu-shu red rage. “He’s lacking a collar. Why hasn’t he been collared?” he demanded of Banner.

“We don’t use the collars, Captain,” Banner said, getting slowly off the chair.

“All my prisoners wear them,” purred Kusac, moving around behind Lufsuh.

One hand snaked out to grasp the Prime around the jaw and jerk his head up while the other snapped the collar in place. He released him as abruptly, making a few hand signals to Banner, telling him to play along with him.

He came around in front of the Prime, kicking Banner’s now vacant chair aside.

“Why is he still dressed in his robes?” he demanded. “He’s a prisoner. Have him stripped and given something more suitable to wear.” When neither Kho’ikk nor Banner moved, he raised his voice to a roar. “I mean now!”

“You think to intimidate me . . .” began Lufsuh.

Kusac depressed the pain button on the control bracelet, holding it down for a count of ten. He watched dispassionately as the Prime’s cry of pain filled the air and his limbs jerked convulsively, sending the chair tumbling over on its back.

“I’m waiting,” said Kusac mildly, looking at Banner and Kho’ikk.

Banner left the room at a run as the commando rushed to where Lufsuh lay gasping and began to untie him.

“I expect you’re very familiar with this kind of collar,” said Kusac, picking Banner’s chair up and setting it back in place. “You’re mine, Lufsuh, mine to torment or reward as I see fit. You thought you had nothing to gain by cooperating? Think again. You cooperate, and you’ll suffer less pain.” He sat down, legs sprawled at ease in front of him as he allowed his hair and pelt to return to normal.

“I’ll . . .”

He hit the pain button again, this time for a count of fifteen. Kho’ikk had to move back quickly to avoid being hit by the thrashing limbs.

“Did I ask you to speak?” asked Kusac. “I know this game well, Lufsuh. I’ve played it with one of your kind. You cannot win. You will tell me everything I need to know, and then you’ll die, but not until then. Do you hear me?”

Lufsuh lay there making small noises of pain, which grew louder when Kusac gestured Kho’ikk to continue stripping him.

The room seemed to fade around him, taking him back to his time on the
Kz’adul
when he was J’koshuk’s prisoner. The collar sent signals through the body’s central nervous system, creating wave after wave of agonizing, fiery pain. He knew exactly what Lufsuh was experiencing.

He blinked, pulling himself out of the memory to look at the now naked Prime lying at his feet.

“Rules, every encounter has rules, doesn’t it, Lufsuh? Mine are that you answer truthfully every question I ask. If you do, you will be rewarded with less pain and something halfway decent to eat and drink. If you give me the information I need sooner, I’ll even see that you are decently buried, not left for the wild beasts or burned as a traitor. Is that understood?”

“I have rights . . .”

Kusac just touched the button again, sending a brief jolt of pain through him.

“Rights? What rights?”

“Alliance . . .” Lufsuh gasped.

“You forfeited those when you and K’hedduk withdrew from that treaty. A new one hasn’t yet been signed. I told you, you’re mine, Lufsuh. You betrayed your legal ruler, helped to murder him and his offspring and imprison his wife, and you performed her illegal marriage to the usurper! Your crimes are many, Lufsuh.”

“Captain,” said a voice quietly from behind him. He turned his head just enough to see the medic without taking his eyes off Lufsuh.

“What?” he demanded.

“I must protest . . .”

“Tell it to the General. I’m busy here,” he snapped, turning back to his prisoner. “Do you understand my rules, Lufsuh?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then we’ve made some progress. Tell me what K’hedduk promised you to betray your predecessor.”

“He didn’t,” said Lufsuh so quietly Kusac had to prick his ears forward to hear him.

He triggered the collar again, aware that any feelings of sympathy or compassion he might have for the male before him had fled deep within him.

“I’m not lying!” screeched Lufsuh. “He offered me this post or death!”

“So, our first truthful answer. Good. What else did K’hedduk promise you for leading the Inquisitors?”

“I’d be First Inquisitor when he united the two worlds,” Lufsuh gasped, the nails on his fingers leaving deep furrows in the dirt floor of the cell as he clenched and unclenched them.

He sensed Banner returning with a pair of pull-on shorts for their captive. Seeing them, he raised an eye ridge questioningly, getting back the reply in hand signals that this was to reward him.

“We make progress at last,” he drawled, taking the shorts from Banner and throwing them down in front of Lufsuh. “Here’s clothing as a reward for cooperating.”

Trembling, Lufsuh pushed himself up into a sitting position, grabbing for the shorts.

“The General asked that you use this, Captain,” Banner said quietly, handing him a headset.

He took it from him and put it on.

“Yes, General?” he asked, subvocalizing.

“Find out how K’hedduk got onto K’oish’ik in the first place. There’s a security breach somewhere that we know nothing about.”

“Aye,” he said then turned to Kho’ikk. “Give him a small amount of water before we continue,” he ordered.

Kho’ikk filled a pottery bowl from the tin jug of water that stood on the cell’s small table and handed it to Lufsuh.

Greedily, he drank it down.

“So you were in K’hedduk’s confidence then?” Kusac asked

“As much as anyone was,” said Lufsuh, handing the bowl back.

“How was he able to land here without detection?”

Lufsuh squatted on the floor, pulling his legs close to his body to present as small a target as possible.

“Some of the Emperor’s Council contacted M’zull several years ago. They offered help in exchange for a coup against the Emperor. Their offer was accepted, K’hedduk said, and he chose to come here and build his own empire.”

“Which councillors?”

“Ghoddoh, Zsiyuk, Schoudu, and Noshikk.”

“You’re lying,” he said, activating the collar for ten seconds.

“No! Stop, please!” shrieked Lufsuh, thrashing uncontrollably on the ground. “No more!”

“Pick him up and put him back in the chair,” Kusac ordered, knowing that the slightest touch would compound the agony for the Prime. He sat up in his own chair, all traces of relaxation gone.

“You will not lie to me again, Lufsuh. Never forget I am a telepath and can tell when you fail to speak the truth. Now name the Directors who were in league with K’hedduk.”

“Ghoddoh, Zsiyuk, Schoudu, and Zhayan,” wept Lufsuh, cringing away from Kho’ikk’s touch as he was roughly hauled upright and shoved into the chair.

“The first two are dead,” said Kezule’s voice in his ear. “The other two are in the barrack cells.”

The questioning went on for another hour, by the end of which, Kusac was exhausted. He left the cell only to walk into Kaid waiting outside for him.

“What’re you doing here on your Link day?” he asked, pushing past him to get to the guardroom.

“Banner sent for me when you ignored his request that you stop torturing the prisoner.”

He stopped dead and turned back to face him. “Of course I’m torturing him! You were doing it yesterday because we need information they refuse to give us any other way!”

“He believes you were carrying it too far.”

“How far is far enough?” he asked, continuing down the corridor to the guardroom, where M’zynal was waiting for him.

He pulled off the control bracelet and threw it to the young Prime, then did the same with the headset. “The session was recorded, wasn’t it?” When M’zynal nodded, he continued, “Then have the other prisoners questioned the same way. It will get us results in the fastest possible time, as you saw.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Kusac, torture leaves scars, both on those tortured and those doing it,” said Kaid. “Leave it to the others now. If you don’t, it’ll leave a mark on your soul that you can’t get rid of, and one day, you’ll never forgive yourself for what you did.”

“Do you agonize over everyone you’ve had to question or kill?” he demanded.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Just because I was a telepath first, don’t assume I don’t have what it takes to be a Brother, Kaid. You have no idea what I had to do on Kij’ik!”

“You’re wrong about the Captain,” said M’zynal. “He taught us how to be hard yet have compassion when it was needed.”

“I’ve seen too much of the hard recently,” said Kaid. “If you keep it up, you run the risk of desensitizing yourself to normal emotions. I know, it happened to me,” he added quietly.

“It’s not happening to me, Kaid,” he said, keeping an eye on the corridor he’d just come up as the guards led the thug, Zoshur, out to be executed.

Heavily bound, he was still managing to struggle against his captors, but when he caught sight of Kusac, he renewed his efforts, managing to send one guard caroming off the wall.

“I see you, you piece of shit! If I die, you going with me!” Zoshur yelled, dragging the other guard with him as he headed toward them.

“Down!” Kusac yelled, pulling his pistol and aiming.

As one, the commandos hit the ground, the guard rolling clear of his captive as Kusac’s pistol gave a cough. Zoshur’s momentum carried him forward another couple of steps before he crashed to the ground. Kezule came running out of the office, his own pistol drawn and ready.

The General slowed to a walk, nodding to Kaid as he passed him to check the supine thug.

“Nice shot. Got him right between the eyes. Get this piece of trash out of here,” he ordered the guards as they got to their feet. “If we get any more of them, execute them in their cell.”

As he holstered his gun, Kusac saw the look on Kaid’s face. “Now what? I was only doing what you trained me to do—execution duty. Remember?”

Kaid had the grace to wince as he said that.

“Kaid, go back to Carrie,” Kusac said quietly, his anger suddenly evaporating. He took his sword-brother by the arm. “You’re broadcasting too much. I’m not turning into some monster. I knew how to get the information from Lufsuh because I’d had that done to me. Though,” his face took on a thoughtful look, “I did last a lot longer than he did, but, then, you trained me well.”

Go, please,
he sent.
I don’t need to feel what you’re projecting.

Kaid hesitated, then nodded. “We’ll talk tomorrow sometime,” he said then left.

Kusac sighed inwardly. Though Kaid was wearing a damper, and he’d been able to block out most of the raw sensuality he was projecting, what he was picking up was like rubbing salt in the wound that had existed since he’d lost his Link to Carrie.

“I’m going to see Giyarishis, Kezule,” he said as the General came over to him. “I want to find out if he has, or can make, some kind of drug we can use on the prisoners to make them tell the truth.”

“I’ll send someone over to the Summer Palace to find the blueprints of the M’zullian Palace.” said Kezule. “It makes sense that the Emperor would want those on hand in case of any rebellion.”

“Lufsuh said he couldn’t find them when K’hedduk sent him to destroy them.”

“He didn’t know where to look. I spent several days there looking for the location of Kij’ik. I know where it’s likely to be. Give me a minute to send someone there, and I’ll accompany you to the labs.”

 

Giyarishis had been given a lab on the second floor, in the main research area. They found him in his office, talking to Zayshul. It was a small room, made even smaller because the desk chair had been pushed to one side to make room for Giyarishis’ pile of cushions behind the desk.

His leg was beginning to ache by now, so Kusac limped over to the easy chair.

“We need a drug to make the prisoners talk,” he said to the TeLaxaudin. “You’ve got the one taken from me, the la’quo. Can you adapt it?”

The spindly alien began to hum, then the translator cut in. “Cannot. Memories it will affect as well as damage organs for strength and ability to heal.”

“That’s irrelevant,” said Kusac. “We need them to talk; nothing else matters.”

“Could it be mass-produced and delivered on a planetary scale?” demanded Kezule.

The lenses of his eyes whirled as he adjusted his vision to look from Kusac to Kezule. “Raw materials we have not. Much needed. There be deaths from workers as well as injury. Affect all castes, Primes, Ch’almuthians, and M’zullians. Delivery system needed, have you one?”

“Not yet,” Kezule admitted. “But we can devise one, I’m sure.”

“Insects infected with it,” said Kusac. “They pass it on when they bite. And there are plenty of the la’quo pellets on Jalna.”