He felt too many things to sort out easily. His feet, bumping over some surface with regular obstructions. His shoulders, painfully cramped from the traction on his arms. His head throbbed, with occasional flashes of brighter pain that left ghostly spikes across his vision. Other things hurt too—his ribs, his left hip, his wrists—but
where was he?
He tried to ask this, but choked on the gag in his mouth. Something soft—cloth or another soft material, that he could not spit out, though he tried. The part of his brain that could think suggested caution . . . waiting to see what happened . . . but between the choking and the dark his body's instincts opted for action. He flared his nostrils, trying to suck in more air, and twisted as hard as he could. Someone laughed. Blows crashed into him, from all sides; he tried to curl up defensively, but someone yanked his legs out full-length, and the beating didn't stop until he had passed out again.
"You're a Serrano," the voice said.
Barin concentrated on breathing. His nose felt like a pillow-sized mass of pain, and no air went that way; his captors had loosened the gag so he could breathe through his mouth. It had been made clear that this was a privilege they could revoke at any moment. He could barely see through his eyelashes, which seemed to be glued together. When he tried to blink, his eyelids hurt, and his vision didn't clear.
"We don't like Serranos," the voice went on. "But we do recognize your value as a hostage . . . for now."
He wanted to say something scathing, but the noise in his head didn't allow for creative endeavors. He wanted to know where he was, who his captors were, what was happening.
"You might even be valuable enough to let live past the capture of this vessel," the voice said. "It's possible that you'd even make it to Aethar's World . . . a Serrano in the arena would be a profitable attraction."
His remaining intelligence smugly pointed out that these must be Bloodhorde soldiers . . . the hostiles that everyone was searching for . . . and wasn't there something about the arena combats on Aethar's World? Slowly, grudgingly, his memory struggled through the haze of pain and confusion to find the right category and index . . . and offered a precis of what Fleet Intelligence knew about the arena.
Barin threw up, noisily.
"Well, that's one reaction," his captor said, running something cold and metallic up and down his spine. Barin couldn't tell if it was a firearm or the hilt of a knife. "I always look forward to Fight Week. But then I've never been on the sand myself."
"It could be that knock on the head," said another.
"No. He's a Serrano, and I have it on good authority that they are solid granite all the way through."
It was not a good sign that his captors were talking so much. Barin struggled to think what it meant, in all permutations. It meant they felt safe. They must be somewhere they did not expect to be found . . . or overheard, which meant they'd done something to the ship's sensors. The stench of vomit made him gag again; it didn't seem to bother his captors, who kept on chatting, now in a language he didn't understand.
They left the gag loose, which argued that they didn't want him to choke on his vomit if he heaved again. He blinked, and one eye cleared suddenly, giving him a view of uniforms that looked exactly like his own, only cleaner. A
Wraith
ship patch on the arm nearest him, with the stripes of a corporal. He couldn't see the nametag. Another beyond . . . he blinked again, and his other eye came unstuck.
Now he could see that one was watching him closely, cool gray eyes in a broad face. The nametag read Santini; the stripes indicated a pivot-major. The expression said killer, and proud of it.
Barin struggled to regain the moral high ground. He knew what was expected of a Serrano in a tight fix: triumph, despite all odds. Escape, certainly. Capture the bad guys, ideally. All it took was brains, which he had, and courage, and physical fitness—both of which he was supposed to have. His grandmother could do it in her sleep. Any of the great Serranos could.
He didn't feel like a great Serrano. He felt like a boy with no experience, whose nose was at least as big as a parpaun ball, who hurt all over, who was surrounded by big dangerous men who intended to kill him: helpless, that is. He hated feeling helpless, but even that resentment couldn't wake the surge of defiant anger he needed.
Do it anyway, he told himself. If he couldn't feel brave, he could still use his brain. He let his eyelids sag almost shut again. That man was not a pivot-major named Santini, but he had a name . . . and perhaps his companions would use it. He might learn what it was even though he didn't know their language. At least he should be able to figure out the command structure of this group, just by observation.
The man he was watching said something, and Barin felt a sharp tug at his hair. He stifled a groan, and opened his eyes again.
"You don't need to sleep, boy," said the man. His accent was no stronger than others Barin had heard within the Familias, but it had a hard contemptuous edge that even his first Academy instructors had not used. They had not cared if he passed or failed; this man did not care if he lived or died. "You need to learn what you are." A few words in that other tongue—Barin didn't even know what to call the language the Bloodhorde used—and someone behind him laid something cold and hard along the side of his neck.
From behind, another gabble of the strange tongue; the man across from him grinned. Pain exploded in his neck, down his arm; he felt as if it were bursting, as if his fingers had disintegrated into shards of pain flung meters away from him and still hurting. Before he could scream, the filthy gag was back in his mouth. Tears streamed from his eyes; his whole body shuddered. Then it was over.
"That's what you are," the man said. "Entertainment. Keep it in mind." He said something else, and they all stood. Barin was yanked to his unsteady feet, and dragged along with them as they moved off down a passageway he had never seen before. And not a single vidscan pickup in sight.
"Bad news," Major Pitak said as she came in from a briefing. Esmay looked up. "Security's found a body stuffed in a utility closet on Deck 8, T-2, and it was someone who'd had a pink tag. Neck broken, neatly and professionally. Also, they've got a hostage—maybe. Ensign Serrano."
"Barin!" That got out past her guard; she told herself it was no time for silly embarrassments.
"He was sent to get something out of inventory—none of the automated systems are running—and never came back. When his unit went looking for him, they found a harness tucked into the rack he'd have been on, and a smear of blood—as if there'd been more and someone had been careless wiping it up."
"They'd have had to knock him out to take him," Esmay said.
"So you'd think. Commander Jarles and Commander Vorhes are both furious, and nearly got into a flaming row right there at the briefing. Why was he sent alone, and why didn't someone raise the alarm sooner, and so on. The admiral was not happy with them, to put it mildly. The captain . . . I don't even want to discuss. Scuttlebutt has it that he got crosswise of a Serrano twenty-odd years ago. If that kid gets killed aboard his ship, he's going to have the whole family down on him."
"But Bar—Ensign Serrano is surely more important than any feud." Even as she said that, she knew it was wrong. Family was family, but a family would not jeopardize its standing for a single individual. Hers hadn't.
Pitak shrugged. "He's one ensign, on a ship with over 25,000 personnel. The captain can't let concerns about Serrano affect his primary concern: the safety of his ship." Her gaze sharpened. "You've spent some time with him recently, haven't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Mmm. Something going on there?"
Esmay felt her face heating up. "Not really . . . we're just friends." It sounded as lame and false as it felt. What
had
she been feeling, around Barin? She hadn't done any of the things that regulations prohibited between senior and junior officers in a chain of command, even though they weren't in the same chain of command. But she had . . . if she was honest . . . wanted to do some of those things. If he did. He had never indicated that he did. She forced herself to look Pitak in the eye. "After he helped me at that briefing for the senior tactical discussion group, we talked a few times. I liked him, and he knew a lot of things about Fleet which they never taught us in school."
"I'd noticed some changes," Pitak said, without specifying their nature. "Coaching you, was he?"
"Yes," Esmay said. "Admiral Serrano and others had mentioned that I . . . confused, I think was their term . . . people because of mannerisms which are normal on Altiplano. Barin was able to define what I was doing wrong—"
"I wouldn't say exactly wrong," Pitak murmured.
"And show me what the Fleet customs were."
"I see." Pitak rocked back and forth in her chair for a long moment, staring past Esmay's elbow. "Suiza, everything in your record says you're level-headed and not a troublemaker. But you've never had a partner, that anyone knows about. Have you?"
"No." Direct challenge had gotten the answer out of her before she realized she was giving it. The blush came afterwards. "No, I . . . I just didn't."
"Umm. And you're not on any medication that would explain it. Are you?"
"No, sir."
Pitak sighed heavily. "Suiza, you're ten years too old for this advice, but in some ways, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were ten years younger. So try to take it as well-meant. You're ripe for a fall, and Barin's the only male you've spent more than a work-shift with. Whether you know it or not, you're on the slide now . . ."
"No." That came out in a low whisper. "I won't . . ."
"There's nothing
wrong
with it, Suiza," Pitak said sharply. "You're only a lieutenant; he's an ensign—that's a fairly common level of difference. You're not his commander. The only problem is . . . he's now in enemy hands, and we've got an emergency. I need your brain clear, your emotions steady. No racing off to do useless heroics and try to rescue your lover."
Lover? Her heart pounded; her stomach was doing freefall into her boots. "He's not . . ."
Pitak snorted, so like a lead mare that Esmay was startled into a grin. "Young woman, whether you have actually been skin to skin or not, he is the first man you've cared about since you were grown. That's clear enough. Admit it, and you'll deal with it better."
Could she admit it? Was it true? She had had those vague wishes, those inchoate fantasies . . . Barin's hands would not be like those other hands. The uniform was different. She dragged herself away from all that, and fought down the flutter in her diaphragm. "I . . . do care . . . a lot . . . what happens to him. I—we hadn't talked about—anything else." She almost said "yet" and saw that Major Pitak had added it without hearing it.
"All right. Now you've faced it, and now you have to face this: you and I have nothing to do with the search for Barin, for the intruders, for anything else. It's our job to get
Wraith
back in service before a Bloodhorde battle group pops out here and blows us all away—or worse, captures us. Whatever happens to Barin Serrano cannot be as bad as the capture of this ship by the enemy. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir." It was clear, in the part of her mind that was free to think clearly. The word "capture" rang in her mind with the finality of steel on stone. If they did not do their work, they might all be captives . . . and she knew she could not handle that. The vision sparkled in her mind—the quiet, competent, ordinary Lieutenant Suiza going completely and irrevocably crazy, the moment she became a captive again. However much she cared for Barin . . . she could not let that happen.
"Good. I didn't think you'd do anything foolish, but the little I know about Altiplano suggests that you might have triggers set which would push you into some stupid rescue attempt."
"They are going to try one, though, aren't they?" Esmay asked.
"I don't know." Pitak looked away. "The most critical thing is to find the intruders before they do any significant damage. Rescuing one ensign has to be a lower priority. What's really twisting the captain's tail is the fear that they'll disable the self-destruct."
"The self-destruct?"
"Yes. The captain is not about to let us be captured by the Bloodhorde—they could build cruisers with this facility and the expertise of our people. He's told the admirals that he'll blow us up first."
"Good," Esmay said, before she thought. Pitak looked at her oddly.
"Most of us aren't happy about that," Pitak said. "We admit the necessity but . . . you like it?"
"Better than captivity," Esmay said. The tremors were gone; the fear receded.
"Well. You never cease to amaze, Suiza. Since your brain seems to be working well enough, I'll answer some questions you'll no doubt ask in five minutes if I don't. We aren't jumping out of this system, because we can't. I don't know why. It might be that the intruders sabotaged the FTL drive . . . it might be that the fast-sequence jumps we did coming in shook something loose. Drives and Maneuver is on it. I need you to do a search, since you're good at that: if we assume that the fast-sequence jumps caused some structural damage or shift, what would it be?"