Dark Beneath the Moon (35 page)

Paixon didn’t stir, even when the alien pressed the injector to her forehead. The captain slept on. The alien turned to study me, seeming puzzled. It chattered what I assumed must be a question, but I had about as much chance of understanding it as I did of turning into a butterfly and fluttering out of the cell. The alien’s speech sounded like birds chirping and insects clicking and I don’t know what else. It sure as hell wasn’t Esper.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand you.”

The blue eyes fastened on me as the alien left Paixon’s cell and returned to its medical cart. It wheeled the cart along to the cell next to Paixon’s. The fall of blonde hair made it easy for me to identify Maja, out cold like everyone else from the
Tane Ikai.

The ship. What had they done with the ship?

And then,
Pita.
How would I manage without her? I glanced around my cell, but I wasn’t really expecting that my datapad had come along with me. I hadn’t even had it when they’d knocked us out—Paixon had, and she’d been in the grip of one of her crazy paranoid episodes. If we’d had Pita, at least we might have a chance of communicating with the Chron. They hadn’t killed us outright. That had to be a good thing, didn’t it? In the war, the Chron had never taken prisoners. They simply killed.

Maja yelped from her cell, and I knew she’d been awakened as I had. As I watched, though, she slid off the cot and into a defensive crouch. Much more presence of mind than I’d shown, I thought jealously. There was more to her than I’d thought.
Megero.

As it had done with me, the alien backed out of the cell. What would it do, I wondered, if one of us woke up with even more sense, and attacked it?

“Mother?” Maja called through the bars of her cell to Paixon.

“She didn’t wake up,” I told her.

She turned to me, blue eyes appraising. “Maybe it didn’t do—whatever it just did—to her yet.”

“It did. I watched it. But she didn’t come out of it like we did.”

“Mother, wake up!” she tried again, turning her attention from me. No response.

“Maybe it’s her illness—the nanos,” I said.

“What do you know about that?” Maja asked me impatiently. “It’s none of your business, anyway.”

“I know plenty,” I told her. “And it’s my business if it gets us killed or stops us from getting home. Like I keep saying, I’m stuck in the same situation as everybody else.”

“Well, whose fault is that? You—”

Whatever else she might have said was interrupted by a yell from the cell next to mine. The alien had crossed the hall again, and applied the device to Viss. He had the best reaction yet, though. After his initial startle, his right hand shot out to grasp the alien’s arm.

At least, that was his intention. About an inch from the chitinous skin, his fingers stopped as if they’d hit a wall. Yellow light flared from the point where his skin had contacted—what? Some kind of protective force field, I guessed. He hissed and snatched his hand away, shaking it as if he’d been shocked. The alien withdrew fromViss’ cell even more hurriedly than it had left mine or Maja’s.

That answered the question of why the alien felt safe to wake us up all on its own, anyway. We apparently couldn’t touch it if we tried.

One by one it went like that, as far and farther down the line than I could easily see. Maja kept trying to rouse her mother, to no avail. Everyone who woke had the same questions, remembered succumbing on the bridge of the ship, and then nothing. We all had the same hard greenish sheath on our left arms, covering our chip implants and making communication via them impossible. Baden Methyr, Paixon’s husband—Gramps, as I thought of him—and the Protectorate officer Yuskeya all had their datapads in their cells with them, for all the good they did them. The devices were standalone functional, but couldn’t establish a connection to the
Tane Ikai’s
comm.

“Why would they leave us these?” Hirin said.

Rei answered him. “They probably know they’re harmless—I mean, you couldn’t even hit someone with one and leave much of a dent.”

“Looks like they brought along anything we had with us,” Hirin agreed. “Maybe they don’t know what they do.”

“I think we have to assume they understand a lot,” Maja said, gesturing to her encased arm. “They made sure we’re cut off from outside communication.”

Viss tapped his sheathed arm against one of the cell bars. It made only a dull thud, not the sharp sound I expected. “Hey, look at that,” he said. He repeated the motion, harder this time. “The material softens on impact, absorbing the energy. Then it solidifies again right away.”

“So you could hit someone with it, but it wouldn’t hurt them?” Maja asked.

The engineer sounded glum when he answered. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The alien paid no apparent attention to the discussions between the prisoners. I casually slid a hand in my pocket and rubbed the cool metal of the multi-tool the aliens hadn’t bothered to take away from me. Maybe they’d left it on purpose—it wasn’t much of a weapon, to be sure—or maybe they’d missed it. Either way, I kept my mouth shut about it.

The Erian pilot, Rei, was in the cell beyond Viss. There was some mild scuffle when she was awakened as well, but after she’d recovered from the initial disorientation, she said, “Where’s Cerevare?”

Maja turned from her fixation on the Captain and peered down the lines of cells. “She’s not here. I thought she must be in that cell beyond Gerazan—”

Yuskeya was at the secured door of her cell. “No, that one’s empty,” she confirmed. “Cerevare’s not here.”

“Was she here when they woke you, Sord?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I assumed that everyone from the ship was here. If they took her out of here, it was before I was awake.”

Once Baden, at the end of my row of cells and the last to be woken, had been revived, the alien returned to Paixon’s cell. It stood outside, one hand resting on the door, studying the Captain or thinking or doing something alien and inscrutable. Then it went into her cell again. It appeared to take readings or scans, then returned to the corridor, collected the medical cart, and wheeled it through a doorway and out of sight. A door somewhere beyond opened and closed.

Maja sagged against the bars of her cell, leaning her head against the cool material. It wasn’t metal, but it had been smooth and slightly chill under my fingers. By this time, I’d investigated my cell thoroughly. The only piece of furniture in it was the cot. There was also a device that seemed to be for the collection of waste, but I didn’t consider that furniture. The rear wall held a gadget that dispensed cold water. I’d also examined the casing on my arm. It appeared to be seamless, but had one small wavy-shaped opening on the underside. I assumed the right sort of key would open it.

“What did you mean,” she asked finally, “when you said you knew plenty about my mother’s illness?”

I shrugged. “I knew someone else who had the same thing.”

“It couldn’t have been the
same
thing,” she argued. “No-one else—well, hardly anyone else—has the same nanos.”

“So, maybe not the exact same thing,” I said, shaking my head, “but damned close. Sweats, headaches, nosebleeds, paranoia, irrational anger—and she had nanos in her system, for years. The symptoms came on when the nanos’ programming failed.”

She was quiet for a long moment, staring at Paixon’s still form. “Who was it?” she asked finally.

In a weird way, it felt good to tell someone about it after all these years. “My mother.”

Maja turned to me, a puzzled frown scoring her forehead. “Who are you, Sord?”

I spoke before I thought about it. “Your grandmother wasn’t the only person who worked for PrimeCorp, you know.”

She stared at me, still frowning, then her face softened and she asked, “What happened to her? Your mother?”

I studied Captain Paixon for a long moment. I’d started out wanting to hurt both of these women. I’d wanted to use them to get to Paixon’s own mother, to get a payback that had never been really clear to me and seemed even less clear now. When had things changed? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t say anything for a long moment, but when I did speak, it wasn’t to hurt Maja, or anyone. It was only the truth.

“She died.”

THE DOOR DOWN
the hallway opened again, and this time two of the aliens came into view. Their uniforms seemed identical to the first one, but one had pale raspberry-coloured skin, and their bone crests showed noticeable variations. The medical cart had been swapped for a wheeled gurney. They stopped outside Captain Paixon’s cell and opened it.

“What are you doing?” Maja demanded.

They ignored her. It was pretty obvious to me what they were doing—they were taking the captain out of here.

Hirin called from down the line of cells. “What’s happening?”

“They’re taking Mother,” Maja answered, her voice hovering on the edge of hysterical. “Stop! Where are you taking her?”

But the aliens were clearly not interested in conversing with Maja or anyone else here—or they couldn’t understand a word we were saying anyway. With businesslike efficiency they transferred Paixon to the gurney, lifting her, I noticed, with care. What really caught my attention wasn’t their bedside manner, though. Along with the Captain, they picked up and deposited on the gurney with her . . . a datapad.

My
datapad.
Pita
.

If I could get her back, we might have a chance.

“
WE HAVE TO
do
something,” Maja said again. Frankly, I was getting tired of listening to her. She wasn’t whining, but she wasn’t coming up with any concrete, workable plans, either. She paced her cell like a caged animal, sparking with anger and frustrated energy.

In the cell next to mine, Viss Feron had prowled and investigated every inch of floor, every bar that formed the walls. I’d sat on my bed, nursing my sore knee and trying to stay calm, and watched him check under the cot, investigate the water dispenser built into the rear wall, and examine the waste-collection device. He was the picture of control, but a muscle worked at the side of his jaw, betraying . . . something. His search apparently yielded nothing of use.

“We have to get out of here, is what we have to do,” I told Maja. “But I don’t see a way to do that, do you?”

She glared at me. “You don’t seem to be trying very hard. At least the rest of us have searched the cells. All you do is sit there.”

“Did any of you find anything useful?”

She didn’t answer.

“I already looked, when I first woke up. I’m more interested in this: what do you think controls the force fields? Hey, Engineering, did you notice anything when you tried to grab that one and got zapped?”

Viss eyed me coldly—I suppose I could start calling him by his real name, now we were captives of an alien race together. I’ve never been that good at social etiquette.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t know what generated it.”

“Does anyone else think they might be listening to us?” Yuskeya said from down the corridor. “It might be wise not to let them know everything we’re thinking.”

I chuckled. “What are we going to do, play a game of
m
esaĝo
? I’ll whisper to Viss, and he can whisper to Rei, who’ll whisper to—”

“Oh, shut up, Sord. Does everything have to be a joke to you?” I couldn’t see Baden very well through the intervening cells, but his words stung a little. I’d heard him cracking jokes at stressful moments. But oh, no, don’t let the outsider play.

“Well, let’s put it to the test, shall we?” I said. “The next time one of these aliens comes into my cell, I’ll make a grab for it and see what happens. Viss, you’re close enough to observe, so you can tell us afterward if you notice anything. And if they seem to be taking more precautions the next visit, we’ll know they heard me.”

“That’s crazy. You don’t know what they’ll do. They might kill you,” Maja said.

“Well, that’ll be one less thing for you all to worry about.”

It wasn’t that I felt particularly brave—or suicidal. But I wasn’t prepared to tag along like a little kid, either. If we were going to escape, I wanted a piece of the action. I wouldn’t sit here and wait to be rescued.

Silence descended then, except for someone having a low-voiced discussion through the bars of their adjoining cells, somewhere down the row. Yuskeya and Baden, maybe. Across the corridor from them, the Protectorate cryptographer sat on his own cot, his head resting against the wall, eyes closed. It was possible he understood some of the language, but if he did, he was keeping it close to his chest. Maybe whatever they’d said troubled him. No, I thought, he’d share it if he knew, with Yuskeya if no-one else. She was technically his commanding officer, so he’d feel bound to report. I figured he must not have had enough time to learn conversational Chron.