They’d gathered in the observation room. Raen had not allowed the level to be flushed because he didn’t want the natives to know, yet, that the Atlantis was slowly rising. As long as they were convinced they were too deep to make an escape possible, there would be no need to confine them to less comfortable accommodations, thereby creating a potential for more problems.
So far they’d managed to hold them and interrogate them without having to resort to methods that could create enemies of people who didn’t, at the moment, feel like enemies.
He knew there was nothing wrong with his logic. They might need allies among the humans.
He also knew that wasn’t entirely his reason for taking care not to alienate them.
Sentinel Javik?
She stepped forward.
The one assigned to me is James ‘Jimmy’ Rider. He is
convinced that we are aliens and resisted all attempts to seduce him
. She grinned.
I am
fairly certain he thought that I had an ulterior motive—not to question him, but to
somehow maim him. I believe he thinks I have teeth in my vagina.
Several of the other sentinels chuckled but broke off when Raen sent them a quelling look.
Javik cleared her throat, conquering her own amusement.
He was far more
interested in questioning me than talking, but when I asked him why he would think we
were aliens he told me there had been many visits by peoples of other worlds to observe
and test humans over the years. The descriptions he gave me of both the crafts and the
species that had been spotted didn’t match any known intelligent races with interstellar
capabilities, but I suppose it is possible.
Raen frowned.
You think he made it up?
Javik considered it thoughtfully.
I think he believes it. He spoke as if there were
a great many humans who believe it. He said that he belonged to a ‘chat group’ that
shared information about these alien visitations and that many of the members were
abductees who had been subjected to frightening experiments.
Apparently there are also many reports of ‘strange’ happenings in this particular
area of the sea that have been attributed to aliens, which is why he is convinced that we
are, and also that we have been responsible for the disappearances over the years of
many ‘airplanes’ and ships.
Raen studied her in grim faced silence when she’d finished speaking.
This is not good, is it, my lord?
That depends on how many of them believe and whether there is any truth to it.
Make a notation to put the question to the commander of the mother ship. If there have
been others here, they will know. I doubt it, but we will have to deal with the negative
publicity regardless. It might be helpful to have knowledge of other visitors … if in fact
there have been others here.
51
A question, my lord?
Sentinel Aureleous asked.
Raen nodded his permission to speak.
Aureleous frowned uncomfortably.
Is it possible the periodic systems flush might
have caused the disasters this human spoke of?
Raen sent him a hard look.
I do not think that would be something we would want
to mention, do you?
he asked pointedly.
Aureleous flushed.
No, my lord! Certainly not.
Because?
Because it might lead them to believe we have hostile intentions.
Exactly—when, in fact, we do not. Would you like to report now?
Aureleous saluted.
Yes, my lord! The woman, Linda Sanchez, was also resistant
to seduction. However, I recalled that she had spurned the one name Mark and accused
him of having ‘no balls’ so I resorted to more forceful persuasion, which she found to her
liking. She also seemed far more interested in interrogating me, but I convinced her to
talk about herself and she said that she was from a city with nearly half a million people
that is located at the tip of a land mass she called Florida … which sounded from her
description to be the land on the eastern tip of the gulf.
Half a million? In one city?
Raen asked, startled.
You are certain that is what she
said?
Aureleous nodded.
Yes, my lord. I was stunned, but I am certain that was what
she said. I asked if she had a man and she said she did not, that she lived in a city with
almost half a million people and
still
had never found the right man for her.
The information the others had gleaned was no better, Raen discovered. The picture that had begun to emerge was not a comforting one, and he wondered if the council would even believe the full scale of their problems. He was as certain as he could be that the crafts he had spotted were military in nature, fairly sophisticated, and determined upon war. It seemed doubtful that it would do any good to relocate the Atlantis, even supposing it could be repaired … and the repairs would be a massive undertaking even if the mother ship had brought the wherewithal to so.
He assumed they had. Otherwise, there would have been no point in them making the trip at all, but even with everyone working on repairs it was liable to take weeks or months before the Atlantis was stable once more.
Very likely the mother ship could move them to a less hostile area, but there was no saying that would pacify the natives—likely it would not if they were bent upon attacking.
The council would have their hands full. He was no longer in any doubt at all about that.
He dismissed them when he’d heard all of the reports, sending them back to entertain their ‘guests’.
He was less inclined to return to his own guest.
Regardless of her suspicions, he couldn’t ‘read’ her mind. He’d caught
‘whispers’ several times when she had undoubtedly been focusing very hard on her thoughts, but she had no projection and he hadn’t been near enough to catch more than bits and pieces. If he could have he might have a better understanding of how to handle her.
Then again, perhaps not.
52
As much as he hated to admit it, even to himself, he was attracted to her. That being the case, he was wary of getting close enough to get burned himself. That on top of a non-existent understanding of her people and their customs made it all the more difficult to breach her defenses. He’d set himself an impossible task he realized—to encourage her to trust him enough to open up about herself without a willingness to expose himself.
It
rankled
that she’d not only
not
attempted to seduce him, she’d managed, somehow, to throw up a defensive wall that he had no idea how to breach. It would have made his life far easier if she had initiated intimacy. One could not experience pleasures of the flesh without relaxing one’s guard to begin with and the act itself relieved tension.
The
sharing
of one’s physical self required a certain amount of trust.
He could have used those moments afterward, when she was totally relaxed and receptive, to forge a bond of trust at least strong enough to overcome some of her wariness. Not all, certainly, but he didn’t need total capitulation. He didn’t need to know her deepest, darkest secrets. He only needed for her to be comfortable enough to reveal the more public aspects of her life. He only needed for her to relax enough to allow him to lead her where he wanted her to go.
At this point, he was not certain, despite her response to him before and the glimpse he’d gotten of her inner thoughts that had led him to believe she did not find him unappealing, that
he
could seduce
her
—not without the aid of some drug to lower her defenses—like
fermentè
. That, of course, would work to loosen her tongue, with far less risk to himself in getting entangled. On the other hand, she was bound to remember enough afterward that he would lose more ground than he’d gained.
He was uncomfortably aware that part of his reasons for not wanting to use that were purely personal, some of it pride and some the uneasy feeling that he might later regret it. He would still have been willing to ignore that reluctance, though, if not for the fact that there were solid political reasons for handling her, and all the others, with care.
They were ordinary citizens. He’d learned nothing to indicate otherwise—which was both a good thing and a disappointment in so far as leverage went—but they were still citizens and they would matter to the common man even if their leaders considered them of little or no importance.
If, when they were released, they had nothing more to complain about than the fact that they were detained by the Atlanteans—treated well, questioned, but not mistreated—it wasn’t likely to cause much more than a ripple. If they emerged from the experience actively disliking their captors, distrusting them, it could cause serious repercussions. Whether they were important citizens or not, everyone would relate them, would expect the same ‘treatment’, would hate and distrust without any desire to learn more.
He couldn’t risk that in his pursuit of information. The council of elders would not appreciate him making their task more difficult by his clumsiness.
Mayhap, he thought, it would be better to simply allow her to rest? There was the fact that her weariness would make her more vulnerable, but he was as loathe to take advantage of that as he was to use wine to breach her defenses and for the same reason—she would not remember it with fondness later.
His interrogators, as much as it irritated him to admit it, were making far more headway than he was. Of the eight they’d taken, Cassie and Jimmy were the only hold 53
outs—maybe for the same reason. Three of the other six, Mark, David, and Shelley, had succumbed with little more than token protest. Ben and Linda had been harder to coax, and Carl hardest of all, but in the end they’d still yielded to the lures he’d thrown in their path.
After further consideration, he decided to allow Cassie to rest for a few more hours before he tried again. Summoning a contingent of sentinels, he went out to scout the threat beyond the impenetrable field created by the mother ship. The Atlantis, he discovered when they emerged, was already beginning to surface—the tallest of the city’s structures, at any rate. He viewed the progress with mixed feelings.
His sense of urgency increased. He was running out of time to complete his tasks before he was called upon to report his findings.
The time was rapidly approaching, as well, when he would be forced to release Cassie and the others.
The reluctance he felt at that realization appalled him. It was warning enough, if he’d managed to ignore everything before that, that he, at least, would be better off once he had. If he was reluctant now, the likelihood was that he would only become
more
reluctant, not less.
The discoveries he and his scouts made effectively pushed personal matters far from his mind. There had been a notable build up of military presence in the hours since he’d first observed them. The magnetic field created by the mother ship’s propulsion units and the anti-gravity force of the tractor beam together created a dome approximately five hundred miles in radius that prevented the natives from coming any closer, but they circled the perimeter in a thick stream now, enormous floating, flat topped vessels bristling with artillery. Flying vessels lined the decks of these and there was an almost constant stream of these airborne vessels taking off, circling the dome and returning, apparently to refuel. The sky itself was thick with flying machines, also bristling with weapons, and below the surface of the water, amphibious ships also prowled the perimeter threateningly.
He was not particularly perturbed about the show of military might on one level.
The mother ship, although not specifically designed for warfare, was not unarmed. In its time, the Atlantis had been the most technologically advanced vessel of its kind in the known universe, the pride of the people of Andromeda. Two hundred miles in circumference, it had not only carried the colonists and soldiers who’d first settled on this world, but the greatest minds, the latest in scientific research equipment, and the most advanced weaponry available to protect the pride of the Andromedans.
The mother ship that had arrived to help them was hundreds of years more advanced even than the Atlantis and almost five hundred miles in circumference. They didn’t need an armada to protect their interests. Crippled as the Atlantis was, between the Atlantis and the mother ship, Andromeda Prime, they had more than enough fire power to protect themselves from an army ten times the size of the one circling them—enough to destroy the world itself.
Neither side would win if it came to that, however.
This was not a situation that could be resolved militarily or everyone would lose.
The best way to prevent it from coming to that, he knew, was to make certain the politicians, who would be negotiating a peaceful solution, knew everything there was to know so that they couldn’t be blindsided by the natives.
54
Deciding after a time that the military presence was more for show than anything else, and because they were also testing the strength of their opponents and trying to gather information, Raen summoned his scouts and returned to the Atlantis. Engineers had emerged from the ship when they returned and were in the process of assessing the damage to the city to determine which structures, if any, were still sound enough they might be candidates for renovation. From their cheerful demeanor, he assumed the news, thus far, had been fairly good.