The Price of Conquest

"Come on, Bryant. Get up."

The gruff voice came to Kressa from far away, down a deep well or echoing through silent city streets. Something nudged her side.

"Get up." The voice grew more insistent, and the prodding continued.

Kressa squeezed her eyes shut and tried to roll away. The movement reminded her of her injuries, and she groaned. Her head felt thick, filled with cotton; her belly ached. Her arms and shoulders were numb, and her wrists burned where the security cuffs held them.

"Bryant!"

She pried open gummy eyes. She lay on the floor of her cell; a pair of booted feet filled her vision. Her gaze drifted up the uniformed body. It was the guard who had held her for Betz. He used a toe to prod her again.

She cringed and tried to speak, to ask him to give her a moment, but her mouth was dry, caked with the bitter taste of stale blood.

With an impatient scowl, the guard grabbed her arms, jerked her to her feet, and thrust her face-first against a wall. The security cuffs bit into her wrists, her shoulders burned with the pain of sudden movement, and then her arms were free. She turned around slowly, using the wall for support.

The guard nodded to a tray sitting atop the stool. A bowl rested on it, filled with the gray-green gruel of raw food-processor paste.

"You've got fifteen minutes," the guard said, then took up his position at the door.

Kressa rubbed the creased red flesh of her wrists and grimaced at the pins-and-needles prickling of her awakening arms.

How long had she been unconscious? Her stomach rumbled. Long enough to build up an appetite, she realized.

She stumbled toward the food. As unappetizing as it looked, she knew it contained the calories and nutrients she needed to regain her strength, but her abused insides threatened a revolt as she drew near, and she staggered to the washroom instead.

The room's odd fixtures made her pause, perplexed, but after a moment she remembered where she was and centered her mind on her surroundings. She willed the cold water on and let it pour over her face and hair. The shock of the icy liquid cleared the thickness from her head and calmed her protesting stomach. Relieved, she stopped the flow of water with another thought, and then glanced out of the washroom. The guard was watching her intently. She glared at him and slammed the door shut.

She emerged from the washroom several minutes later, feeling almost human again.

The guard was waiting for her. "You gonna eat?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He shrugged. "Your choice." He turned her to face the wall and secured her wrists with the cuffs.

Something cool touched the side of her neck. She recognized the sting of a drug pad and gasped.

"No…" Her vision blurred.

The guard released her. She turned carefully, putting her back against the wall. Her legs gave out, and she slid to the floor. The guard watched her for a moment, and then turned away. He touched the control device at his belt, and the door opened.

Half conscious, Kressa thought how easy it would be if only she could get to her feet and follow him through the door to freedom.

It was her last thought for a long time.

* * *

The guard kept up his visits. Each time, he went through the ritual of a few minutes of freedom, an offer of a meal, and then the recuffing and administration of the drug. By his third (or was it fourth?) visit, Kressa had recovered enough to eat. The food-processor goo had little taste and an unpleasant gritty texture, but it gave her stomach something to work on while she mulled over her dilemma.

The air tingled with the faint energy of a hyperspace field, or something like it, so the ship must be on its way to deliver her to Eminence. Rumor placed the Patty space station somewhere near the Azaran system, a four-day hyperspace journey from Vsuna. Lieutenant Satra had estimated that the Patrol's new drive—a th'Maran drive, Kressa now suspected—cut a standard hyperspace jump in half. That put it at only two days. How much of that time had passed already?

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She tried to work it out, but quickly realized she didn't know how long she'd been aboard the asteroid-ship and doubted she could count the guard's visits as an accurate passage of time, even if she could remember how many times he'd returned. The simple fact was she had no clue how many hours, or days, had gone by.

The guard approached, and she sighed in resignation. He removed the empty food tray from her lap, stood her up to bind her arms, and pressed a drug pad against her neck. She collapsed to the hard floor, aware she could do nothing but hope her captors made a mistake. So far, they had been far too efficient.

* * *

Saunorel sat in the small conference room, her gaze riveted on the human seated across the table from her. Outwardly, she kept a calm expression, but inside, behind tightly held mental barriers, she seethed. Her people knew no hate, yet she knew of no other term for her feelings. She hated this Patrol Captain Olun Betz.

She thought back to her encounter with Kressa. Betz had perceived none of the intimacy that passed between the human woman and herself. He could not know that she had sensed everything he did to Kressa after she and Ciroen left the holding room or that she knew he did not speak the truth when he later assured her that Kressa had not been and would not be harmed.

This human propensity for telling falsehoods, something they called lying, filled Saunorel with a fearful respect. Few of her people could even contemplate such behavior; the natural mental bond between them would reveal any misinformation or untruth. Admittedly, if one felt some fallacy to be true, others could not detect the difference, and perhaps if one mind were much stronger and much more disciplined than another, one might be able to lie without being discovered. But humans willingly and knowingly gave false information on a regular basis, and they were so adept at it that only a mental probe could detect the untruths.

Saunorel continued to watch Betz. How many other lies had he told her? And how many had the humans of the Patrol told her people? She had never considered such things before; she was not sure she wanted to now. But someone had to. Someone must let her people know the truth. If only she could be certain of their reaction. The violent emotions of the humans had touched so many of her people that she did not know how they might respond to the information, or if they would even listen. Even she had not avoided the unsettling taint of human emotion, she realized as she sat so firmly shielded to conceal her fierce new feelings from Ciroen and the others.

An uncomfortable shudder passed over her. So much had changed since her people first found the humans…

"Saunorel!" Betz's heated call pulled her from her thoughts. "Saunorel, are you listening to me?" He glared at her from across the conference table, annoyance pouring in uncontrolled bursts from his mind.

She shut out his anger and met his eyes. "Yes, Captain, I am listening."

"You got into Bryant's mind the other day. Will the Triad have trouble?"

"There is no need for the Triad," she said. "Let me speak with Kressa. I—"

"You will not go near her! I forbid it."

Saunorel said nothing.

"Did you hear me?" Betz asked, his anger undiminished.

"Yes, Captain, I heard you. May I go?"

Betz ignored the question. "Ciroen thinks the Triad may have trouble getting the information we need from Bryant."

Saunorel nodded. She knew Ciroen's opinion on the matter.

"Can something be done?"

Saunorel gaped. "You are asking me? I have no—"

"Why shouldn't I ask you? You're the same damn race as the Triad. You understand all this mental shit!" He paused, and Saunorel sensed him fighting to control his emotions. "Damn it, Sauni, if you feel that Bryant's mind is too strong…"

"No mind is too strong for a Triad," she said with assurance. "They can do what is required."

Betz watched her for a long moment, frowning thoughtfully, then he nodded. "All right. You can go."

Saunorel rose and hurried from the room. The door closed behind her, and she collapsed against it, trembling.

She remembered what she had seen in Kressa's mind. At the time, the feelings had been strange, yet some seemed shockingly similar to those she was experiencing now: anger, resentment, fear. And there had been another emotion, one even more foreign, a feeling of self-sacrifice she had not understood until this moment. Life was precious, too precious to wish for its end; she had sensed a similar belief within Kressa: her love of life and drive to succeed. But beyond that, she recognized the human woman's resolve to die before betraying her friends or her cause. What could be behind a cause that incited one to sacrifice self?

She probed deeper into the memories of her encounter with Kressa, and glimpsed an answer. Behind Kressa's rebellious attitude, she desired peace, belying the Patrol's claims of the violent nature of the Guard. Yes, the Guard fought, and they killed, but they fought for unity, not against it.

Saunorel did not know how to tell her people of her discovery or if it would make any difference if she did, but she had to do something.

She pushed herself away from the door and started down the corridor at a fast walk.

She knew what that something was.