Trial by Fire - eARC (17 page)

“Might as well—aim at—head.” There was a grunt of extra effort in Trevor's voice.

“As if we have any indication that’s where its brain is. And I thought you said you were all right. Your voice: you can hardly breathe. That damn thing is crushing you.”

“No—not the—the reason.”

“What do you mean, not the reason?”

“Not the r-reason for my—voice. Shock;—everything stiff. Hurts. Hard to talk. Can't m-m-move well, either.”

Caine looked for and found clinical signs consistent with the aftermath of electrical trauma. A small, but high-speed tremor in Trevor's right arm was visible even though the Arat Kur's claws held it in a viselike grip. There was also a faint intermittent twitch in his friend's left arm and more pronounced involuntary motions in his right leg. At least there was still movement, but that didn't preclude more serious internal damage. “Trevor, read off your biomonitor values.”

“Already—checked. Pulse and temperature high. All—all others, nominal. I'll be—okay. J-just get—get this guy—off me.”

Caine extended his arm, pushing himself a meter back from the tethered amalgam of human and alien. Detaching the Arat Kur necessitated an initial inspection of its physiology—or, rather, of its bulky, podlike vacuum suit.

The fabric of the suit was tougher and more rigid than that used in human suits. Each limb covering was comprised of separate, well-articulated segments, making it unnecessary to ensure mobility by using more pliable materials. Reasonable. The Arat Kur body seemed to have no waist, no hips, no long limbs: in short, it was only capable of limited movement. With less of a demand for flexibility, Arat Kur garment designers could focus more on strength and durability.

It also seemed that Arat Kur didn't have heads, simply a cluster of sensory organs on their front-facing surface. Accordingly, the alien's spacesuit was topped by a wide, shaded dome, flanked by a brace of small, highly distorting mirrors. Caine considered his own fun-house reflection for a moment. No head meant no neck. No way to reposition the visual sensory organs without repositioning the whole body to face the object to be observed—unless the visual field was expanded by using mirrors.
Hmmm. I’ll bet these bastards spent a lot of evolutionary time worrying about, and being terrified by, threats from their rear.
Possibly a useful tactical and psychological factor.

Mounted just beneath the Arat Kur helmet-dome were two well-articulated sleeves, each ending in a set of cruciform mechanical claws. The claws were heavier and blunter than he would have expected in a tool-using species, but then he reconsidered his conclusion. Vacuum gloves turned even the slenderest human hand into a clumsy, bloated paw. The same could certainly be expected of alien space garments.

There were a few external control surfaces visible, all of which were in recessed pits ringing the rim of the helmet-dome. Glyphs were visible under each touch-sensitive panel. More were printed on the small, dorsally-mounted life-support unit. All of which were absolutely meaningless to Caine.

Not discovering anything particularly useful to the purpose of prying the Arat Kur apart from Trevor, Caine started with the most basic approach: brute force. However, repeated attempts to lever open the alien's claws, or to cause its limbs to relax, were completely unproductive. “Maybe it’s died. Maybe rigor mortis has already set in.”

Trevor's voice, sounding somewhat more relaxed, disabused Caine of that notion: “No, it's alive.”

“How can you tell?”

Trevor’s teeth chattered once before he replied. “It's sh-shaking s-slightly.”

Trevor sounded like he was growing cold, probably going into shock. And the exosapient was obstructing access to the manual overrides for Trevor’s suit thermostat—

—Suit thermostat? Hmm. That might be a better way of getting the Arat Kur to move: fiddle around with the life-support unit on its suit.
But adjusting the alien’s life-support pack might also kill it. The device was a mystery of orange and green lights, recessed indicators, and small access panels, all linked to the rear of the helmet-dome—

Wait. The rear of the helmet dome. Of course. That gives me an even simpler option.
Caine maneuvered to a position behind the exosapient, keeping his gun trained on the center of its thorax as he produced a pry bar from his own toolkit.

“Wh-what are y-you doing, C-Caine?” Trevor did not sound good at all.

“Conducting a psychological warfare experiment.” Keeping the handgun tight against the exosapient's midriff, Caine ran the pry bar along the center of the alien's life-support unit. Then again, slowly, softly from the bottom up to the top.
Let’s see how you feel about having a hostile alien constantly tapping and bumping at your back.

There was no immediate reaction.
Might be time to increase the implied threat from behind.
On the next pass of the pry bar, Caine let it graze the rear edge of the helmet-dome.

The exosapient’s limbs flexed convulsively, released Trevor in its attempt to scrabble away along other, nearby wires.

But, anticipating that, Caine clung to the alien's back. Avoiding the grabbing legs, he pulled himself forward until the top half of his visor was level with the alien's helmet dome. He still couldn't see anything inside; the material was too dark. No matter; obviously, the Arat Kur could see outward. Well enough, at least, to make out the ten-millimeter handgun that Caine laid against the helmet-dome. The alien's movements became more frantic. Caine tapped the muzzle against the dome twice and then left it pointing directly inward. The alien's movement ended abruptly; all six legs went limp. Caine smiled. It was nice to know that some concepts—such as a loaded gun—were capable of transcending even the barriers of species and language.

He looked over toward Trevor, who was making adjustments to his suit’s life-support unit. “What’s wrong?”

“Just setting the temperature a few degrees higher.”

Caine bound their prisoner with lengths of cable and wiring. Meanwhile, Trevor haltingly moved to hunch in front of what appeared to be the wreck's central computer console.

“Anything interesting?”

“G-God, no. This writing looks l-like tortured s-spa-spaghetti trying to m-mate with cock-eyed d-d-dominoes. Be-besides, we don’t speak their language. That’s why-why I h-h-had to sa-save the little b-bastard. Whoev-ever he is.”

“An Arat Kur?” ventured Caine. “We’ve seen the Hkh’Rkh already, and the Ktor live in those big tanks on treads. And no other species seemed hostile at Convocation.”

“Arat Ku-Kur sounds r-right.”

Caine helped Trevor to drift away from the enemy ship’s bridge console. “So, we’ve caught an Arat Kur. Maybe. But whatever he is, you’re right: we have to find a way to communicate with him. Until we do, we can’t even dock this wreck with the Auxiliary Command module to pool the two vehicles' resources. And without those combined resources, we’re just a pile of a junk heading into deep space.”

Caine stared past Trevor’s tremoring nod and trembling shoulder. The trussed exosapient was once again motionless.
Maybe even smug.
And perhaps it had a right to be. The alien might be their prisoner, but they were now hostages to its knowledge.

Chapter Twelve

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

Caine’s voice startled Trevor out of his daze. “You feeling any better?”

“Sure. Fine.” Trevor clenched his torso against the shiver that coursed through him.

Caine frowned. “Even though your temp and pulse are back to normal, you’re still cold from shock and exhibiting impaired movement, particularly in the left arm.”

“You done, doc?”

Caine leaned back. “I’m just trying to help.”

And that is of course true, and I’m just pissed that I had to depend on a rookie to get back here to our module.
That impairment had made for an interesting return from the alien wreck: semiconscious EVA veteran Trevor Corcoran riding piggyback on EVA neophyte Caine Riordan for more than a minute.
If my old SEAL instructor Stosh had seen it, I’d never hear the end of it.

Fortunately, what Riordan lacked in training and experience, he had made up for in common sense. Or so it seemed to Trevor, who closed his eyes and tried to recall what had happened after he had started to mumble and stumble on the Arat Kur ship. He vaguely remembered Riordan linking several tethers and reeling the exosapient across the gap between the wrecks after he and Trevor were secure on the module: a suitably undignified transit for the murderous overgrown cockroach.

After cycling through the airlock, he recalled Caine removing his spacesuit and examining him, talking as he went. “Trevor, I want you to hear what I’m seeing, so you can tell me how best to help you. Minor burn marks on the right palm, apparently where the current entered. Seems like the suit’s anticonductivity layer helped considerably. Your fine motor control still seems poor. Are your ears still ringing?” Trevor seemed to recall nodding, or maybe he had just intended to do so.

In the three minutes it took Caine to conduct his layman's examination, Trevor had felt himself relapsing into shock. Caine hustled him back into his emergency suit, set the internal temperature to twenty-five degrees centigrade, and threatened mutiny if his superior officer attempted anything more strenuous than closing his eyelids.

Which Trevor may have done for a while; he wasn’t sure. However, his next memory was of Caine dragging the alien—still by the tow line and none-too-gently—down to the lower level of the module, the ponderous creature floating lightly through zero-gee like an improbable, lopsided balloon on an industrial-strength string. After sealing the presumed Arat Kur in one of the deactivated rooms, he had returned to the control room and instructed the computer to restore minimal environmental functions in the makeshift prison cell: heat, air, and light.

Meanwhile, Trevor had slipped back into the doze-daze from which Caine had now just solicitously roused him. And for which Trevor’s expression of gratitude had been a facetious jibe about his amateur doctoring. Trevor sought a conversational olive branch: “You're getting better at your zero-gee turns. A little awkward yet, but that will come with time. How's our pal?”

“Some pal. He's all right I guess, but who can really tell? He just lays—well, floats—there.”

“Which is a bit of a problem, since getting him was only step one. Now we've got to correct the ship's two-axis tumble. Also, we took too many rads today. We’ve got to reach some shielding soon or we’re cooked. So we’re going to need to learn how to communicate with our pal pronto. Fortunately, I think we’re off to a good start. Your one message to him so far got through loud and clear.”

“You mean ‘stop being troublesome or I shoot’? That got through because it was simple and universal.”

“I disagree. It got through because the alien was motivated—highly motivated—to understand it.” Trevor removed his helmet, ran a gloved hand through his hair. “I think we have to maintain that level of motivation if we're going to get anywhere.”

“If you're wrong, however, then all we're going to do is widen the current rift between us.”

Trevor shrugged. “If the creature has genuine cause to believe that it will die unless it cooperates, then it will be sure to find a way to bridge that rift.”

Caine frowned. “That assumption is predicated upon human behavior patterns.”

“So? What else do we have to work with? We have to proceed from a known commonality—self preservational instincts—and aggressively exploit that.”

Caine shook his head. “I don't think it's going to be that simple. Even if we use intimidation, and I'm not ready to, fear won't work unless it's placed within a meaningful context.”

Trevor stopped in the middle of removing a glove. “What do you mean, ‘context’?”

“Let's say we employ threat and it works. The alien is scared. Scared for its life. Then what? How do we tell it what we want? We still have a critical gap in communication. It doesn't know what it must do to alleviate the negative stimuli. More specifically, it doesn't know how to communicate its intention to cooperate, because it doesn't even know our words or gestures of propitiation.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“I suggest we try to learn more about our prisoner.”

“And how are we going to learn more about a creature that won't, or can't, talk with us?”

“Let's start with the basics: physiology. What you said about their ship architecture also holds true for living things, too: form follows function. Maybe a detailed look at what we suspect to be an Arat Kur body will give us some insights into the species’ psychology.”

“Maybe. Maybe it will simply give the bastard another opportunity to attack us.”

“I doubt it,” Caine disagreed. “We still have the gun, and it's displayed a thorough understanding of what that means.”

“Yes, but perhaps it's had time to formulate a new strategy. Suicide, for instance.”

“Trevor, if the Arat Kur wants to commit suicide, then we're done for. Neither positive nor negative stimuli will compel it to cooperate.”

“That’s not necessarily true.” Trevor chose his next words carefully; he was sure that the idea behind them would not be popular. “Negative stimuli can produce results even when a subject wishes to die.”

Caine looked up. “Trevor, are you talking about torture?”

Trevor tried to find the carefully oblique phrases that were the stock-in-trade of official milspeak, gave up. “Yes, torture. If necessary.”

Caine shook his head. “Trevor, leaving ethics aside for a moment, let’s recall our intel and survival objective: that the alien communicates with us. Sure, if you use pain, you might make him talk. Or, on the other hand, because the alien’s psychology and physiology cause it to have radically different reactions, it might clam up for good. Then instead of having the possibility of getting answers, we find ourselves facing the certainty of death.” Caine stared straight into Trevor’s eyes. “Besides, we might owe him.”

“We
owe
him? What and why in hell do we
owe
him anything?”