Extinction (30 page)

“They might be embarrassed by it or just
want to forget about it all together”, Bloom said as he continued searching
through the database. “Also, just because they’re called the Detrill and Nortes
now, doesn’t mean that they didn’t have a different name while they were
enslaved and that’s why we can’t find them in the database. Maybe they just
barely got away from their captors when these outer perimeter posts were
destroyed. And they were so frightened that after they fled, the survivors
changed their species name and have been hiding out ever since.”

“Possible. As soon as we can communicate
with the Coalition again, we’re going to send a priority message back to the
nearest star base and get some answers.” Emily had a look of determination on
her face that Bloom hadn’t seen on her before.

The team was past the cargo bay and
sixty meters into the main passageway when they came to an intersecting
hallway. “Which way?” Fang asked.

“The passageway to the left goes to
sickbay and the quarters for the enslavers.” Bloom scrolled a map on his VR
goggles. “The one to the right goes to the command center and the docking bay.”

Emily had linked her imaging system to
Bloom’s and was seeing the same map as he was. “Bloom, scroll up to the docking
bay and give me the distance from our current position. Belay that, make it the
estimated distance in a straight line from the second survey site to the
shipyard and then overlay that image with a plotted course from site two to
site one.”

“That would be approximately three point
five clicks, el-tee. And when you overlay the two…the docking bay is directly
underneath the primary survey site.” Bloom looked at his CO with wide eyes.

Vengeance’s Pride
–
Decisions, Decisions

The new captain sat in his seat on the
bridge awaiting orders from Supreme Command. “What is taking them so long?” he asked
no one in particular.

In the background, the faint scream from
the former captain rose from the torture tube one deck below. The sounds were
piped into the ship’s intercom system for the whole crew to hear, and allow
them to contemplate what it meant to disobey orders from Supreme Command.

“Ensign,” the captain looked to his
junior officer, “you have the bridge. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Your orders, sir?” the officer timidly
asked.

“I don’t care what you do as long as you
don’t crash us into that planet”, he said, pointing to the view screen. “Besides,
it seems as though the captain’s job on this mission is to just sit in that
seat and do nothing.” He turned his back and headed for the lift door. “Think
you can handle that?” he asked over his shoulder, not bothering to wait for a
response.

Once in the lift, he keyed the torture
tube as his destination. The lift doors opened and the guard on duty looked
dryly from his former captain screaming in agony to his new one.

“I need to speak to the capt—” he
paused, “prisoner about our current mission. Turn off the tube and leave the
room. This is top-secret information we will be discussing.” The captain had to
look away from his former commander.

“Yes, sir.” The guard obeyed as he
turned the device off and stepped into the lift. Regulations stated that two
officers were to be present during an interrogation of a prisoner, but the
guard had seen his great captain suffering for too long and had to leave. He
had tortured many of his shipmates before but none had been his captain. To him,
it was as though he were torturing his own father, or at least his idea of what
he thought a father was.

The lift doors closed and left the room
empty of prying ears and eyes. “Don’t even try to escape”, the junior officer
began. “The launch bay is undergoing routine maintenance right now and you
wouldn’t get very far. Besides, it’s the mid-meal rotation cycle and most of
the crew is awake. You would be recaptured quickly if you tried to leave. Now,
I have some questions you must answer for me.”

The former captain looked into the eyes
of his operations officer. He knew what he was getting at when the new captain had
finished speaking. The launch bay was undergoing minor repairs, which meant
that it held no atmosphere and the artificial gravity was cut while it was
worked on. The conditions allowed for easier access to high placed circuitry
for the work crews and due to lack of oxygen offered less chance of an
electrical fire starting. The area would also be devoid of personnel at feeding
time. The route to the launch bay would most likely be clear of personnel at
this time also. He was supposed to escape. That’s why his friend was here now.

“Now,” the interrogation continued, “why
did you load up a secondary shuttle with weapons prior to the assault on the
planet?” The former captain had done no such thing. “And why was this
environmental suit in your ready room?” The prisoner had never seen that suit
before; it even looked a little big for the man.

The prisoner knew that his time was now.
The young captain had set up the whole escape for him. He looked down at the
ground and covered his face with his two upper hands. If the escape didn’t look
genuine, his friend would be filling his place in the torture tube from where
he had just been released.

The prisoner reached up with his lower
hands and hit his friend in the jaw with both fists. The younger officer flew
backward. He jumped up from the deck to face the escapee and attacked. The much
older combat veteran was more than his junior’s match and would’ve been able to
kill him easily, even if the new captain hadn’t already planned the escape for
him.

The attack was easily side-stepped and
four fists plunged into the young officer’s back. The captain fell into the
torture tube. The prisoner quickly turned the device on. The tube automatically
latched its new prisoner into place and began to probe for weaknesses. The
process would take about fifteen minutes. After the machine decided on which
nerve endings were more susceptible to pain and which ones were more likely to
lead to unconsciousness and even death, it would begin torturing its new
victim. Every victim was different in its tolerances and weakness and this
device could be counted on to figure out where each one was. He hoped that
someone would find his friend before the torturing began, or before it had gone
on too long.

The prisoner took the lift to level ten,
where he peered cautiously out the doorway. With no one in sight, he ventured
out towards the launch bay with his pressure suit in hand. Once he reached the
airlock, he donned his suit and made his way to the shuttle craft and entered
the vehicle.

The craft was loaded with weapons and a
battle suit with full armor. The personal shield emitter was missing from the
stash, but those had to be checked out from the armory. The rest were personal
weapons from his own quarters.

He began the start-up sequence and
launched before it had finished. He gave the engines just enough time to come
on line and then the prisoner was out the launch doors and had effectively
completed his escape.

The young captain had made the right
choice of who to leave in charge. The even younger ensign was sitting on the
bridge when the display alerted him to the shuttle launching. He had no idea
what to do.

“Lock weapons on target and hold fire.”
He punched the intercom button. “Bridge to the captain, red alert—I mean, to
the bridge at once.” He wondered whether he should’ve ordered the captain in
that way.

“I have target lock. Shall I fire?” the weapons
officer asked.

“Not until we have orders from the captain.”
The shaking officer had no desire to end up in the torture tube for disobeying
orders or affect orders that were wrong. Especially on his first day of sitting
in the command chair.

Warrior Interrogation Base – At Last We Meet

The general looked at himself in the
mirror that his captor had placed in front of him. It was as though he were
back in college, sitting in one of his science classes, learning about the
human anatomy.

The torture tube that he had been placed
in seemed to be finished with the first part of its task. After probing the general
for almost twenty minutes, it began to remove the flesh from his right leg. He
was actually quite astonished at how the procedure produced no more pain than a
scraped knee might have.

The device used a micro laser to cut the
flesh into a thousand different puzzle pieces, after which ten small claws
proceeded to remove the layer of flesh that protected the muscle tissue
beneath. After the muscle was exposed, the claws returned to liberate the
delicate nerve bundles that resided deep within the general’s leg.

The same procedure was performed on the general’s
left arm and the right rib cage. It was all very fascinating to watch. The general
was quite amazed at the lengths his captors had gone to get him to the state he
was now in. He wondered whether the aliens had created this technology for
medical purposes and then realized how well it could work for information
gathering. He shook his head, knowing that most likely not one person had ever
been saved by this technology; it was created explicitly for this purpose and
it would never have another.

The alien who had supervised the process
pressed a button on his console and spoke to whoever was on the other end of
the comm system. A door behind the operator’s console opened and shed light
into the interior of the room. The general realized that he was in a circular
room and figured that some of his men were going through the same process in
other tubes around him. He could hear the faint humming of another laser to his
right.

The two aliens spoke to each other for a
moment before the second came to the general. “You are different from your
companions.” He spoke in English. “The others,” he gestured with a sweeping
motion to the area behind the general, “could not stand to look at themselves
being opened as you have. Although almost no pain was caused by our methods,
most screamed in agony at just the sight of the procedure. Why have you not?”

The general wasn’t prepared to give
answers to a science survey. What could he say? That he had been tortured seven
times in his life and that he was used to it? Or maybe he could tell the story
of how he cut off his own left foot after it got caught in a pneumatic airlock
door when he was just a midshipman at the academy.

The general was not the slightest bit
disappointed in his men for their reactions to the live autopsies they were
forced to be a part of. His decision not to answer encouraged the alien to make
a decision of his own.

He pulled out a small board, which had a
schematic of the general’s body on its display. After keying in a couple of
commands, the alien moved the board closer to the general’s leg and compared
the map on the display to his prisoner’s anatomy. The alien reached out with
one hand and pinched a nerve bundle that protruded from the general’s shin
between two of his fingers. The general winced slightly.

The alien frowned and looked at his
display a second time. Reaching out again, he gripped a second set of nerve endings
in his other hand and twisted. The general could not keep from screaming. “Ah,
that’s what I was looking for”, the monster said as he typed in some notations
on his pad. “It seems that you have answered the question for me after all. You
have an unusually high tolerance for pain. In fact, my scanner has found that
you have many nerve endings that are damaged and even destroyed. It leads me to
believe that you have been questioned before?” He let the query hang for moment
before he touched the second bundle of nerves again.

“Yes!” the general let out. “If you
promise not to do this to any of my men, I will tell you everything I know.”

“You’ll tell me anyway. Besides, I have
a new class of students who need the practice. They tend to over-stimulate
their subjects too quickly, resulting in a premature death. So your men will
come in handy, and such good timing, too. We had just run out of the last few
prisoners from one of your colonies.”

The alien stopped and thought for a
moment before speaking in his own language to the technician who was still
behind his console. The technician walked out of the room and returned a moment
later with a small viewing screen, which he set down in front of the general.

“If the sight of your own flesh being
pulled away doesn’t bother you,” he began, “then maybe seeing it happen to your
men will. I’ll be back to continue our discussion later. One of my students has
accidentally killed the ship’s second in command during the exposure process.
This is a good chance for me to review the error with my students.”

“You son of a bit—” As the general began
to lunge towards his captor, three claws simultaneously reached out and gripped
exposed nerves in his chest. The pain reduced the general to a quivering ball
of flesh.