Aten Randt swung the light beam back to Cainen. “Stay there, Administrator,” Aten Randt said. “You’ll be safer.” The light beam dipped to the rails. “Those may still have current in them.” The light beam trailed off again, back to the caved-in walls of their new holding pen. Whether by accident or design, the bombardment that struck the rail line had securely closed in Cainen and Aten Randt; there were no openings in the wall of rubble. Cainen noted to himself that suffocation had once again become a real consideration. Aten Randt continued his examination of their new perimeter and occasionally tried his communicator, which seemed not to be working. Cainen settled in and tried not to breathe too deeply.
Some time later Aten Randt, who had given up his examination and cast them both into darkness while he rested, flicked his light back on, toward the wall of rubble closest to the base.
“What is it?” Cainen asked.
“Be quiet,” Aten Randt said, and moved closer to the wall of rubble, as if trying to hear something. A few moments later, Cainen heard it too: noise that could have been voices, but not of anyone local, or friendly. Shortly thereafter came the blasting noises. Whoever was on the other side of the wall of rubble had decided they were coming in.
Aten Randt moved back from the wall of rubble at speed and came up on Cainen, weapon raised, blinding him with the light beam. “I’m sorry, Administrator,” Aten Randt said, and that was when it dawned on Cainen that Aten Randt’s orders to get him to safety probably only went so far. On instinct more than thought Cainen twisted away from the light beam; the bullet intended for his center mass instead went into his arm, spinning him around and slamming him into the ground. Cainen struggled to his knees and caught his shadow splayed before him as Aten Randt’s light beam fell on his back.
“Wait,” Cainen said, to his shadow. “Not in the back. I know what you have to do. Just not in the back. Please.”
There was a moment, punctuated by the sounds of rubble blasting. “Turn around, Administrator,” Aten Randt said.
Cainen turned, slowly, scraping his knees on the rubble and putting his hands in his coat pockets, as if they were manacles. Aten Randt sighted in; given the luxury of picking his shot he leveled his weapon at Cainen’s brain.
“Are you ready, Administrator?” Aten Randt said.
“I am,” Cainen said, and shot Aten Randt with the gun in his coat pocket, aiming up into the light beam.
Cainen’s shot coincided with a blast from other side of the rubble wall. Aten Randt didn’t appear to realize he had been shot until blood began flowing out of the wound in his carapace; the wound was barely visible to Cainen through the light. Cainen saw Aten Randt look down at the wound, stare at it for a moment, and then back at Cainen, confused. By this time Cainen had the gun out of his pocket. He fired at Aten Randt three more times, emptying his projectile cartridge into the Eneshan. Aten Randt leaned forward slightly on his front legs and then fell back an equal amount, the bulk of his large body settling on the ground with each of his legs splayed out at angles.
“Sorry,” Cainen said, to the new corpse.
The space filled with dust and then light as the rubble wall was breached, and creatures bearing lights on their weapons flowed through. One of them spotted Cainen and barked; suddenly several light beams were trained on him. Cainen dropped his gun, raised his good arm in surrender and stepped away from Aten Randt’s body. Shooting Aten Randt to keep himself alive wouldn’t do him much good if these invaders decided to blow holes in him. Through the light beams one of the invaders came forward, jabbering something in its language, and Cainen finally got a look at the species he was dealing with.
His training as a xenobiologist kicked in as he ticked off the particulars of the species phenotype: Bilaterally symmetrical and bipedal, and as a consequence with differentiated limbs for arms and legs; their knees bent the wrong way. Roughly the same size and body plan, which was unsurprising as an inordinately large number of so-called intelligent species were bipedal, bilaterally symmetrical and roughly similarly sized in volume and mass. It was one of the things that made interspecies relationships in this part of the universe as contentious as they were. So many similar intelligent species, so little usable real estate for all their needs.
But now the differences emerge, thought Cainen, as the creature barked at him again: A broader torso and abdominal plain, and a generally awkward skeletal structure and musculature. Stump-like feet; club-like hands. Outwardly obvious sexual differentiation (this one in front of him was female, if he remembered correctly). Compromised sensory input thanks to only two small optical and aural inputs rather than the optical and aural bands that wrapped nearly entirely around Cainen’s head. Fine keratinous fibers on the head rather than heat-radiating skin folds. Not for the first time, Cainen reflected that evolution didn’t do this particular species any great favors, physically speaking.
It just made them aggressive, dangerous and damned hard to scrape off a planet surface. A problem, that.
The creature in front of Cainen jabbered at him again and pulled out a short, nasty-looking object. Cainen looked directly into the creature’s optical inputs.
“Fucking humans,” he said.
The creature swiped him with the object; Cainen felt a jolt, saw a multicolored dance of light and fell to the ground for the last time that day.
“Do you remember who I am?” the human at the table said, as Cainen was led to the room. His captors had provided him with a stool that accommodated his (to them) backwards-facing knees. The human spoke and the translation came out of a speaker on the table. The only other object on the table was a syringe, filled with a clear fluid.
“You are the soldier who knocked me unconscious,” Cainen said. The speaker did not give a translation of his words, suggesting that the soldier had another translation device somewhere.
“That’s right,” the human said. “I am Lieutenant Jane Sagan.” She motioned at the stool. “Please sit.”
Cainen sat. “It was not necessary to knock me unconscious,” he said. “I would have come willingly.”
“We had our reasons for wanting you unconscious,” Sagan said. She motioned to his injured arm, where Aten Randt’s bullet had struck him. “How is your arm?” she asked.
“It feels fine,” said Cainen.
“We weren’t able to fix it entirely,” Sagan said. “Our medical technology can rapidly heal most of our injuries, but you are Rraey, not human. Our technologies don’t map precisely. But we did what we could.”
“Thank you,” Cainen said.
“I assume you were shot by the Eneshan we found you with,” Sagan said. “The one you shot.”
“Yes,” Cainen said.
“I’m curious as to why you two engaged in a firefight,” Sagan said.
“He was going to kill me, and I didn’t want to die,” said Cainen.
“This begs the question of why this Eneshan wanted you dead,” Sagan said.
“I was his prisoner,” Cainen said. “I suppose his orders were to kill me rather than to allow me to be taken alive.”
“You were his prisoner,” Sagan repeated. “And yet you had a weapon.”
“I found it,” Cainen said.
“Really,” Sagan said. “That’s poor security on the part of the Enesha. That’s not like them.”
“We all make mistakes,” Cainen said.
“And all the other Rraey we found in the base?” Sagan asked. “They were prisoners as well?”
“They were,” Cainen said, and felt a wave of concern for Sharan and the rest of his staff.
“How was it that you all came to be prisoners of the Eneshans?” Sagan asked.
“We were on a Rraey ship that was taking us to one of our colonies for a medical rotation,” Cainen said. “The Eneshans attacked our ship. They boarded us and took my crew prisoner and sent us here.”
“How long ago was this?” Sagan asked.
“Some time ago,” Cainen said. “I’m not exactly sure. We?
??re on Eneshan military time here, and I’m unfamiliar with their units. And then there’s the local planetary rotational period, which is fast and makes things more confusing. And I am also unfamiliar with human time divisions, so I can’t describe it accurately.”
“Our intelligence does not have any record of the Eneshans attacking a Rraey vessel in the last year—that would be about two-thirds of a hked for you,” Sagan said, using the Rraey term for a full orbit of the home world around its sun.
“Perhaps your intelligence is not as good as you think,” Cainen said.
“It’s possible,” Sagan said. “However, given that the Eneshans and the Rraey are still technically in a state of war, an attacked ship should have been noted. Your two peoples have fought over less.”
“I can’t tell you any more about it than what I know,” Cainen said. “We were taken off the ship and to the base. What happened or didn’t happen outside of the base in all this time is not a subject I know much about.”
“You were being held prisoner at the base,” Sagan said.
“Yes,” Cainen said.
“We’ve been all through the base, and there’s only a small detention area,” Sagan said. “There’s nothing to suggest you were locked up.”
Cainen gave the Rraey equivalent of a rueful chuckle. “If you’ve seen the base you’ve also no doubt seen the surface of the planet,” he said. “If any of us tried to escape we’d freeze before we got very far. Not to mention that there’s nowhere to go.”
“How do you know that?” Sagan said.
“The Eneshans told us,” Cainen said. “And none of my crew planned an excursion to test the proposition.”
“So you know nothing else of the planet,” Sagan said.
“Sometimes it’s cold, other times it is colder,” Cainen said. “That is the depth of my knowledge of the planet.”
“You’re a doctor,” Sagan said.
“I’m not familiar with that term,” Cainen said, and pointed at the speaker. “Your machine is not smart enough to give an equivalent in my language.”
“You’re a medical professional. You do medicine,” Sagan said.
“I am,” Cainen said. “I specialize in genetics. That is why my staff and I were on that ship. One of our colonies was experiencing a plague that was affecting gene sequencing and cell division. We were sent to investigate and hopefully find a cure. I’m sure if you’ve been through the base you’ve seen our equipment. Our captors were kind enough to give us space for a lab.”
“Why would they do that?” Sagan asked.
“Perhaps they thought if we kept busy with our own projects we would be easier to handle,” Cainen said. “If so, it worked, because as a rule we kept to ourselves and tried not to make any trouble.”
“Except for when you were stealing weapons, that is,” Sagan said.
“I had them for some time, so apparently I didn’t arouse their suspicions,” Cainen said.
“The weapon you used was designed for a Rraey,” Sagan said. “An odd thing for an Eneshan military base.”
“They must have taken it from our ship as they boarded,” Cainen said. “I’m sure as you search the base you’ll find a number of other Rraey-designed items.”
“So, to recap,” Sagan said. “You and your crew of medical personnel were taken by the Eneshans an indeterminate time ago and brought here, where you’ve been prisoners and out of communication with any of your people. You don’t know where you are or what plans the Enesha have for you.”
“That’s right,” Cainen said. “Other than that I suppose they didn’t want anyone to know I was there once the base was invaded, because one of them tried to kill me.”
“That’s true,” Sagan said. “You fared better than your crew, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Cainen said.
“You’re the only Rraey that we found alive,” Sagan said. “The rest had been shot and killed by the Eneshans. Most of them were in what appeared to be barracks. We found another near what I imagine was your lab, since it had quite a bit of Rraey technology in it.”
Cainen felt sick. “You’re lying,” he said.
“I’m afraid not,” Sagan said.
“You humans killed them,” Cainen said, angrily.
“The Eneshans tried to kill you,” Sagan said. “Why wouldn’t they kill the other members of your crew?”
“I don’t believe you,” Cainen said.
“I understand why you wouldn’t,” Sagan said. “It’s still the truth.”
Cainen sat there, grieving. Sagan gave him time.
“All right,” Cainen said, eventually. “Tell me what you want from me.”
“For starters, Administrator Cainen,” Sagan said, “we’d like the truth.”
It took a moment for Cainen to realize this was the first time the human had addressed him by his name. And title. “I’ve been telling you the truth,” he said.
“Bullshit,” Sagan said.
Cainen pointed to the speaker again. “I only got a partial translation of that,” he said.
“You are Administrator Cainen Suen Su,” Sagan said. “And while it’s true enough that you have some medical training, your two primary areas of study are xenobiology and semi-organic neural net defense systems—two areas of study that I would imagine mesh together well.”
Cainen said nothing. Sagan continued. “Now, Administrator Cainen, let me tell you a little of what we know. Fifteen months ago the Rraey and the Eneshans were fighting the same off-and-on war they’d been fighting for thirty years, a war that we encouraged since it kept the two of you out of our hair.”
“Not entirely,” Cainen said. “There was the Battle of Coral.”
“Yes, there was,” Sagan said. “I was there. I almost died.”
“I lost a brother there,” Cainen said. “My youngest. Perhaps you met him.”
“Perhaps I did,” Sagan said. “Fifteen months ago the Rraey and the Enesha were enemies. And then suddenly they were not, for no reason that our intelligence could figure out.”
“We’ve already discussed the shortcomings of your intelligence,” Cainen said. “Races stop warring all the time. After Coral, we and you stopped fighting.”
“We stopped fighting because we beat you. You retreated and we rebuilt Coral,” Sagan said. “Which is the point—there is a reason we stopped fighting, at least for now. You and the Enesha don’t have a reason. That worries us.
“Three months ago the spy satellite we parked above this planet noticed that for an allegedly uninhabited world, it had suddenly begun to receive a lot of traffic, both Eneshan and Rraey. What makes this especially interesting to us is that this planet is claimed neither by the Enesha or the Rraey, but by the Obin. The Obin don’t mix, Administrator, and they are strong enough that neither the Enesha nor the Rraey would think lightly about setting up shop in their territory.
“So we placed a more advanced spy satellite above the planet to look for signs of habitation. We came up with nothing. As a defense specialist, Administrator, would you like to hazard a guess as to why?”
“I would imagine the base was shielded,” Cainen said.
“It was,” Sagan said. “And as it happens, by the very sort of defense system you specialize in. We didn’t know that at the time, of course, but we know it now.”
“How did you find the base if it was shielded?” Cainen asked. “I am curious, in a professional sense.”
“We dropped rocks,” Sagan said.
“Excuse me?” Cainen asked.
“Rocks,” Sagan said. “A month ago we salted the planet with several dozen seismic sensors, which were programmed to look for seismic signatures that suggested intelligently designed underground structures. Speaking from experience, secret bases are easier to shield when they’re underground. We relied on the planet’s natural seismic activity to narrow down areas to investigate. Then we dropped rocks in areas of interest. And then today we dropped several right before our attack,
to get an exact sonic image of the base. Rocks are good because they look like naturally occurring meteors. They don’t scare anyone. And no one shields against seismic imaging. Most races are too busy shielding against optical and high-energy electromagnetic scans to consider sound waves much of a danger. It’s the fallacy of high technology; it ignores the efficiency of lower orders of technology. Like dropping rocks.”
“Leave it to humans to bang rocks together,” Cainen said.
Sagan shrugged. “We don’t mind when the other guy brings a gun to a knife fight,” she said. “It just makes it easier for us to cut out his heart. Or whatever it is that he uses to pump blood. Your overconfidence works for us. As you can see because you are here. But what we really want to know, Administrator, is why you are here. Eneshans and Rraey working together is puzzling enough, but Eneshans and Rraey and Obin? That’s not just puzzling. That’s interesting.”
“I don’t know anything about who owns this planet,” Cainen said.
“And what’s even more interesting is you, Administrator Cainen,” Sagan said, ignoring Cainen’s comment. “While you were sleeping we did a gene scan on you to tell us who you are, then we accessed ship’s records to learn a little of your history. We know one of your primary areas of xenobiological interest is humans. You’re probably the Rraey’s leading authority on human genetics. And we know you’ve also got a particular interest in how human brains work.”
“It’s part of my overall interest in neural nets,” Cainen said. “I’m not particularly interested in human brains, as you say. All brains are interesting in their way.”
“If you say so,” Sagan said. “But whatever it was you were doing down there, it was important enough that the Eneshans would rather see you and your crew dead than in our hands.”
“I told you,” Cainen said. “We were their prisoners.”
Sagan rolled her eyes. “For a minute, let’s pretend we’re both not stupid, Administrator Cainen,” she said.
Cainen moved forward, leaning closer to Sagan from across the table. “What kind of human are you?” he asked.