24
Spacer’s never stayed stunned very long
by anyone’s standards, and Naero revived faster than most. Her mind started working before her body could respond.
Tarim checked her over when they dumped her back into their holding cell. He felt her pulse and looked for any injuries.
This one is not a jerk…not an enemy. You think of him as a friend, a fellow prisoner. We should not eliminate him.
No. Don’t harm any of my friends. Don’t eliminate anyone without my permission.
Our defense is primary. I will not always be able to comply.
Then Tarim knelt over her,
praying quietly until she awoke fully and started to move. He and Gallan had put on their coveralls at some point.
Gallan was pretending to be asleep again.
“You’re...you’re alive?” Tarim said. “Thank God Almighty. When those meks threw you back in, I th-thought maybe you were dead.”
Naero shook her head. “It’ll take more than that.”
Except for thirst, hunger, and a stun headache, she felt like a million creds.
“You had this goofy smile on your face.”
She half-smiled again. “Yeah. Just
like that.”
Lexicon. What is g
oofy?
“
I’m okay,” she said “They bring us any food? Drink?”
Tarim
shook his head and tried to smile. “They haven’t brought anything yet. It’s just like rationing onboard the mining transports.”
“
Great.” She could smell her friends.
Hell
. She could smell herself.
Lexicon. What is stink?
They all needed to get clean. She guessed there were no mist showers on this pleasure cruise either. “Maybe I shouldn’t have pissed off old nubs so much.”
Is a nub an extremely minuscule, ineffective, and impotent penis?
Bingo, Om.
Gallan
suddenly sat up suddenly, smiling. “What’d you do now, N?”
Tarim jumped.
“God bless it! Don’t do that. I never know if you people are sleeping or awake. You guy’s are so damn creepy.”
Gallan laughed and clapped Tarim on the shoulder. “
That’s the idea.”
Lexicon. Accessing creepy.
Briefly, quietly, Naero summarized what happened with Kattryll.
Gallan
laughed until he couldn’t stay upright.
Tarim
paled and looked very worried.
He
sat down, hugged his scrawny legs close to himself, and buried his face in his knees, shaking his head.
“
Th-they’re gonna k-k-kill us for sure. Help me, Jesus. I’m worth less than nothing to these vile monsters. This is worse than the mines. At least there you had some chance at staying alive if they didn’t single you out for something.”
“
Live with it,” Naero told him. “Unless we can find a way to get out of here, it’s gonna happen, just as soon as they think we’re of no further use to them.”
Gallan
reached over and shook the lander’s arm. “Spacers have a saying: See the truth of things for what they are and move under your own power.”
“
These bastards are our enemies,” Naero said. “Look at what they did to you and your family. Your people.”
“Rain. Mom and Dad. Everyone I knew,”
Tarim said, hugging his knees and looking over his elbows, his eyes burning.
H
is face flushed scarlet; he clenched his bony fists. “Damn these evil fiends to hell.”
What is a fiend? Is it like a jerk, only incrementally worse? What and where is this hell?
Hell’s a bad place to be, Om. Like the place we’re in right now.
Very well. Then we should escape and get out of hell. Slang. Get the hell out of here.
Exactly. I’m working on it. We need a plan, and we need an opportunity. But it looks pretty bad right now.
“
Don’t give them the satisfaction of showing fear,” Gallan said to Tarim. “Piss in their faces and laugh. How many times can they kill you?”
Lexicon: pissing is urination, correct? I cannot piss.
Tarim shuddered, his mouth tight. He leaned his head back onto his folded arms, sniffed, swallowed hard, and was silent for a time.
Naero stood up again and stretched, unfurling her wings behind her back and–
She gaped. Neither Gallan or Tarim made any notice of her new creased, bat-like wings.
Great. Another hallucination.
Om, are you causing this? Are these hallucinations your doing?
Continuing attempts
to activate defensive protocols ineffective. Attempts to interface with our mind and form activate your imagination in unusual ways. We are both doing this. You are wishing you could escape our current hell. You wish you could fly away. The delusion of wings is a manifestation of your desires. I cannot control them or what form they take.
T
arim finally looked up, his face impassive. “Okay, so what’s the plan then? How are we going to get out of here?”
Naero shrugged
and lay back, staring up at the ceiling, folding her imaginary wings under her. “I have no idea. Better get some sleep for now.”
Tarim gaped and threw up his hands.
“Sleep? They’re going to torture and kill us tomorrow and you want me to sleep?”
Gallan
stretched out again and sighed. “Not much else we can do. We still have a few hours before morning. Have to keep our strength up.”
Tarim
’s mouth still hung open. Naero reached up and pushed it closed.
“
They’ll make a mistake,” she whispered to him. “Just be ready to move when they do. Follow our lead. If nothing else, do as much damage to them as you can before you go down. I wish I had something better to offer you, but that’s about it.”
Tarim nodded, still looking somewhat wide-eyed and pale.
“Just like the mines,” he said. “There isn’t a way out, no matter how bad you want one.” He went back to praying, something about committing his soul into someone’s hands.
Before she drifted off to sleep, Naero reached over, and gently patted him on the back.
He was crying and shaking so hard he could barely control himself. Poor kid. He’d been through a lot, and was about to go through even more.
*
A handful of hours later, nine security bots arrived to seize them and take them away. All three prisoners still hungry and thirsty.
Their hosts made no effort to offer them anything.
They did not bother to ask. Their hands were secured in front of them.
The
adjoining interrogation room lit up, looking more like a medical lab. Naero watched as Gallan and Tarim were secured on medbeds.
Naero
’s three guards led her out of the chamber for another happy visit with Kattryll.
“
What’s going to happen to my friends?” she said. She could smell Tarim’s fear.
“
They will be interrogated,” the lead bot answered, its soothing AI voice a mockery.
“
But they don’t know anything.”
“
The director believes in being thorough. You may discuss the matter with him.”
The doors snapped shut behind her. She didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Her three bot escort gained clearance to a secured mover that took them somewhere else in the ship. Naero could only guess.
They stopped.
“Error. Incorrect destination,” the lead bot remarked.
The doors
snapped opened.
A large blur ripped into the three bots.
Naero dropped to the floor.
Unknown force attacking security drones,
Om howled.
. Defensive protocols still offline. Unacceptable.
She
caught the flash of twin, blazing green disruptor blades that arced through armor and vital systems.
In less than a second,
all three sec-bots lay all about Naero in pieces, busted up and oozing fluids.
Sparks flew from the pieces
internally.
Three silver spheres rose up over the bots
and sucked up the pieces and every trace of them, like bizarre null collectors disposing of junk.
The doors closed. T
he mover on its way again.
Her hands were still bound.
A blazing green blade sliced through her restraints like a scalpel through flesh.
Baeven revealed his grim face beneath his strange, shifting black cloak and hood
.
He shut down his
disruptor blades and smiled. “Well, hello again, Naero.”
She could have hugged him, but her mind raced.
Threat is known to us? Is this an ally?
Yes, Om. He’s trying to help us escape…for now. I don’t know what he plans once we get away.
“We have to get Gallan and Tarim,” she told Baeven. “They’re being tortured.”
“
I know. We can’t do anything about that right now.”
“
Those sec-bots–their central control will know someone took them out. They’re probably on the way to retake us already.”
Baeven tapped one of the floating silver spheres
They purred like pets at his touch. They glowed brightly for a moment and then phazed away.
“The enemy will detect nothing, and to them I’m not even here. I do not exist.
“Temporal shifting emulators,” he said. “They’re a few seconds out of phaze with us. But they’ll imitate the signatures of the sec-bots for as long as we need. The ruse will last long enough for us to complete our business here and get you and your friends to safety. Then they’ll explode...quite spectacularly.”
“
Where are we going?”
“
You still have a date with a Mr. Kattryll. Shall we keep your torturer waiting?”
Naero half smiled. “Certainly not.”
“Function Sigma-Mirra-47,” he commanded the shifters.
Holos of the three
sec-bots shimmered over each of the three small spheres. “Marcron emulators. They can simulate almost anything.”
“I’ll pretend my hands are still bound. Let me give nubs a little surprise.”
“Play along at first.
We need to find out what form the Kexxian Data Matrix takes and how they can detect it. Why they think you and your brother might have it. They possess key knowledge that we do not.”
“
My parents weren’t transporting any kind of alien tek data.”
“We can’t be sure of that. Our foes seemed pretty determined and adamant about the matter.”
“Even if they did, if I know my parents, they dumped or destroyed it somehow before they went down. But the Corps still think Jan and I might have it.”
“
Do you? That would explain a great deal. How can you be certain, one way or another?”
“So, even the great renegade Baeven’s at a loss? You don’t
know anything more about this mess?”
“Nothing but
rumors through several contacts. We don’t even know how the data is encrypted or transported. You or Jan may in fact be carrying it with you and not even know it.”
“
Great.”
The mover stopped.
“So, what’s our plan?” Naero asked.
“
Keep Mr. Kattryll distracted while I disable his security and search his files. Then we’ll have a few kind words with him.”
“What do you mean, keep him distracted
? The bastard wants to rape and torture me.”
Baeven
phazed away with a vanishing smile.
Naero
wondered if she was going to be sick.
She marched in with the phony
sec-bots just as expected.
Kattryll stood with his back to her, completely naked.
“I
am
going to vomit,” she muttered.
Once illuminated more
, the strange room was fully revealed to be a bizarre jumble of furnishings and decorations from many worlds and time periods.
But
the most striking thing was a beautiful, naked young man floating in the air off to one side, his wrists and ankles stretched painfully in grav-restraints.
He
formed an obscene X in the air with his nude form, his superbly toned young body scarred with cuts, large purple welts, blisters, and burns.
His battered, chiseled face slumped down on his chest, still dripping blood
beneath his long dark blondish hair.
Then she saw the young man
’s long triple braids hanging down his back.