Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (37 page)

I pray it was only children playing that attracted the Overseers’ attention, Moodri thought, Just as I and the others did when we first came aboard.

He walked on. More than ever the rebellion needed Buck. He was certain of that. He reached the intersection and turned down the corridor that led to the infirmary. He staggered in shock.

The Overseer’s prisoners lay on the corridor floor, arms and legs bound in coils of memory wire. Moodri recognized the patterns of their spots at once. They were those of his nephews, Ruhtra and George.

And if George had been caught in the tunnels, if George had learned the secret of the rebellion, then it was only a matter of heartsbeats until the Overseers tortured that secret from him.

Moodri stood before the two bodies on the deck. Both of his nephews were still breathing, obviously only stunned by the prods. He found himself wishing that both had died.

“What are you staring at?”

An Overseer grabbed Moodri from behind, spun him around, and tore the hood from his head again. Moodri blinked vaguely at the Overseer. The Overseer pushed him on. “This one’s got one foot in the vats already!” he called to his fellow traitors. They laughed as Moodri stumbled forward. One tried to pull at his robes and trip him, but Moodri pulled away with a move that looked like a simple clumsy misstep rather than the graceful pivot of self-defense that it was.

He continued on his way to the infirmary. His hearts mourned the loss of his nephews, but they were in the hands of the goddess, and there was nothing more he could do for them. Now, more than ever, everything was up to Buck.

The infirmary door opened to reveal chaos. But Moodri could not turn back. He entered and was immediately caught up in the midst of cargo specialists rushing in all directions, and his ear valleys were assaulted by the cries of the wounded.

Along one wall three Overseers lay in treatment harnesses, the bands of soft fabric keeping their bodies suspended above the sleeping platforms beneath them. All three had had some part of their black uniforms ripped away. All three were spattered with pink blood and glittered with heavy sprinklings of antiseptic crystals. They were not attended by the gray-uniformed cargo specialists, though. Instead, two other Overseers worked on them with glowing, sparking medical devices much more compact than any Moodri had seen before.

Other Overseers toiled at the main stations, hastily preparing bandages and medicines. A hand grabbed Moodri’s arm and pulled him away from them. Moodri turned to face Cathy.

“They do not need your blessings, Elder. They—” Cathy Frankel stopped talking as she recognized Moodri’s features despite the disguise of his false spots. Admirably, she concealed any shock she felt. “The boy is over there,” she said curtly, indicating a smaller sleeping platform away from the frantically working Overseers.

Moodri looked over and saw Buck lying on his side, groggily conscious, staring at the Overseers with dazed attention. “What has happened?” the Elder asked before Cathy could rush away.

“Jabroka,”
she said as if pronouncing an obscenity. “Mine workers must have smuggled it on board at the last port world. The Overseers broke up some sort of suicidal gathering in a ’ponics chamber, and . . . some of the workers took triggering doses.”

If not for his camouflage, Moodri’s spots would have vanished from his scalp in reality. “How many dead?” he asked. The
jabroka-
enhanced workers were to be the assault force that would take the circuitry key to the bridge.

“Among the Overseers, I think six,” Cathy said. She checked nervously to see if any Overseer had yet noticed how much time she was spending with the Elder. “Among the workers, I don’t know. They disposed of some of the bodies before I arrived on shift.” She looked over at the medical recycling vat. Moodri followed her gaze.

The large transparent tub of bubbling, heated salt water was stained a gruesome rose. Corroding bones danced along its bottom surface, bumped by the circulating liquid that slowly ate away at them. The flesh would have melted in minutes.

Moodri counted eight skulls that he could see. Melgil had said that there were to be twenty workers in the assault force. Now there would only be twelve.

“Go to the boy,” Cathy said. “I must help them.” She began to move toward the injured Overseers.

“Must you?” Moodri asked.

Cathy looked at him with hatred. “If I do not, then this infirmary will be closed, and I will be able to help
no one.
Including you.” She turned to pick up a stack of rolled bandages to carry over to the Overseer medics.

Moodri went to Buck.

The child looked up blearily and tried to smile as he recognized his great-uncle. Moodri could see that whatever drug Melgil had had Cathy give the boy to prevent him from telling the Overseers about the rebellion’s plan was still strong in his veins. He took the child’s hand. “No need to talk, Finiksa. Melgil told me of your concerns.” Buck squeezed Moodri’s hand and nodded. “But look closely now. Are these the people you truly wish to help?”

The infirmary door swept open again, and a group of Overseers and workers charged in. Two Overseers carrying a third colleague rushed the limp body of their fallen comrade to an open treatment harness. A single Overseer with an oversized prod pushed a convulsing, shackled worker forward. Following them all two more Overseers dragged a blood-covered body behind them. The body was so large, with such a massively pronounced rib cage, that Moodri knew it was the genetically transfigured body of a worker who had taken a triggering dose of
jabroka.

The two Overseers dragged the body to an area of the metal floor beside the seething recycling tank. One focused his prod to full strength, then held it to the transformed worker’s temple and discharged it. The massive worker cried out as his brain was instantly destroyed, then flopped unmoving against the floor. With that, both Overseers stepped back, and one pressed a control surface near the tank. The section of the floor that held the worker’s body rose up on twin hydraulic mounts until it was level with the edge of the tub. Then both Overseers shoved the body into the raging waters.

Instantly the caustic liquid turned deep pink as the worker’s skin peeled away in fluttering tatters. Moodri did not look away, and he would not let Buck turn aside either. Those who took
jabroka
lasted longer in the salt, but the end result would be the same.

“He was one of those who were to have taken the key to the bridge in your place,” Moodri said quietly. Buck was confused by the Elder’s statement, but that was as Moodri wished it to be.

The two Overseers lowered the floor section until it was halfway down, creating a large step up to the tank. Then a third Overseer dragged over the still trembling shackled worker.

“I told you what you wanted,” the worker screamed, twisting in vain away from the bubbling tank. “I told you
everything!”

“Remember, Finiksa. All things come from the Mother,” Moodri whispered.

The three Overseers grabbed the worker by his shoulders and his legs.

“They’ve got more
jabroka!”
the worker shouted. “They’re going to take over the bridge!”

The Overseers threw the worker up to the raised deck.

“All things return to the Mother,” Moodri said.

“I
helped
you!” the worker shrieked. “You
promised!”

Moodri touched his hearts. Gently he helped Buck touch his own hearts, too.

The Overseers spun the worker around and flipped him feet first into the tank.

The worker’s screech of agonized terror overpowered all the other sounds in the infirmary. The salt water came up to his waist. For a few moments he stumbled back and forth, trying to keep his footing on the slippery mound of fleshless bones that lay on the tank’s bottom as all the while the skin and muscle of his legs were dissolving.

Finally he fell against the edge of the tank and held himself up only by hooking his elbows over the side. Whatever he said was incoherent, lost in great bubbles of blood that flooded out through his mouth and nose as his internal organs were pierced.

The three Overseers laughed, then one used her prod to unhook the worker’s elbows and send him sliding down the side of the tank. His face stayed pressed against the transparent surface all the way down, his eyes staring out in eternal horror as what remained of him slowly dissolved into a pink sludge smearing the tank wall.

Only then did Moodri avert his eyes and silently push Buck back onto his platform. It would not do to have the Overseers notice they were being watched by a useless Elder and sick child, not with the scent of blood so fresh in the Overseers’ nostrils.

Moodri bowed his head over Buck as if delivering a blessing. “There is much you do not understand yet, Finiksa. Things you have not learned, stories you have not been told. But even in your brief years you must know that what you have just seen is wrong.”

Buck stared up at his great-uncle, and Moodri saw in the child’s eyes reason to continue.

“Do you remember when you were first taken by the Overseers? Only a child of eight, and they took you to the chamber of your worst fears.”

Buck’s eyes flickered with the memory.

“It is their way, Finiksa. To find that which is deeply hidden in all of us. Our greatest fear, our greatest love, whatever is most fundamental to our being, and then to use it against us.”

Moodri carefully found two spots on Buck’s neck and massaged them tenderly.

“Do you remember what your greatest fear was, as a child of eight?”

Buck’s voice was restored from the effects of the drug by Moodri’s manipulations. “To be alone,” he whispered.

“To step into that room was to step into loneliness,” Moodri said. “You would have no friends. You would have no family. No one to care for you. No one to care for.” Moodri took Buck’s hands in both of his. “It is not just the fear of a child,” he said as he continued to bend over Buck, as if ministering to him spiritually. “But do you remember what happened when the door to that chamber opened and the Overseer beckoned you in?”

Buck’s eyes stared up at the lights, looking into the past. “You were there,” he said with a look of wonder. “I was alone, but you were there for me.”

“As I will always be,” Moodri said. “You do not need the false family of the Overseers. You do not need the false friendship of those who have yet to meet their fears.” He squeezed Buck’s hands in a grip of iron. “Believe what I said then. Believe what I say now.”

Buck looked deep into his great-uncle’s eyes. There was no spinning crystal, no trick of mind control. There was only the purest incarnation of the one power that had enabled a race to survive more than a century of unspeakable slavery and horror.

Buck looked deep into his great-uncle’s eyes and saw love.

“Fear no more, Finiksa,” Moodri said. “It is your time.”

S
IKES COULD HEAR
his mother yelling at him to get up. He was going to be late for school again. He would have to stand outside Sister Mary Agnes’s office door. He would have to reach out to that gleaming brass doorknob. He could feel the slicing sting of her ruler on his wrist. He could hear the righteous anger in her voice. He didn’t want to wake up. He didn’t—

“Daddy?”

He heard his daughter’s voice, and his eyes flew open. The entire right side of his head throbbed as if every one of his teeth had had a root canal. His surroundings were indistinct, hazily lit, and out of focus. But he saw his daughter’s face close to his and ignored all other distractions to learn her condition.

“Are you all right?” All the nightmares born in parents on the day their child is born welled up in his heart.

“I’m okay,” Kirby said, but he could hear the thickness of old tears in her throat. “You’ve got blood all over your head, and I thought you weren’t going to wake up, and . . .” Fresh tears came.

Sikes moved to take her in his arms and found his hands were tied behind him. He twisted against the wooden chair in which he was trapped. His ankles were tied to the two front legs of the chair. Every movement sent sparks of pain down the right side of his neck. But none of that was important.

“Did they hurt you?” he asked.

He saw Kirby shake her head. She was tied to another chair in front of his, facing him. Her dark hair hung flat and lifeless. Her eyes were shadowed, her skin pale. “They put something over my head,” she said weakly. “They told me if I did anything that . . . that they’d kill you.” She lost control and began to sob with wrenching gasps.

Sikes pulled on the ropes that bound his wrists, but nothing gave. His only thought was that someone would pay for this. Someone would
die
for daring to harm his child.

But who?

He stopped struggling. He tried to remember. He had been hit from behind in his garage. Someone had held a gun to his head and said his name and—

“Oh, shit,” Sikes said. Instinctively he knew that whoever had come for him was connected to Randolph Petty’s murder. And if they had already killed once . . . “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said to his daughter. He doubted if she could hear him over her crying, but he kept speaking, trying to calm her. Through it all he checked out the room they were in. It smelled new. A large window was obscured by a heavy curtain, but light shone in around its edges, giving a soft daylight glow to the air. The soft beige broadloom was thick, the matching walls unmarked. Another band of light entered from beneath the single shut door. Sikes was certain they were in a house, but he could hear no noises that would confirm or deny his guess. There was only the gentle rush of an air-conditioning system. The room was cold.

Eventually Kirby exhausted whatever terrors had gripped her as she had sat watching her unconscious father. Her breathing returned almost to normal.

“Do you know where we are?” Sikes asked her when he felt she was ready to speak.

She shook her head, then tried to wipe her chin on her shoulder. Her face was streaked with tears and mucus.