Captivate (Alien Cadets Book 2) Page 6

  Eventually, mostly dry and very hungry, Claire ventured out of her room, hoping to find one of the aliens she'd talked to in the loading bay.

  In the hall, which seemed both too narrow and too tall, another Spo crew member sent her along to a mess hall.

  The hall was pretty clearly divided between Merith and Spo, with Spo food on a counter against one pale green wall, and Merith food against the opposite wall, a violent orange. Small round tables filled the middle space, with the kind of stools and squats favored by both species.

  She sat alone, feeling the weight of antagonistic stares the whole time she scarfed down the food. It tasted strange, but anything solid and textured was bliss after years of mush.

  After dinner, she returned to the room she’d been shown to, and gave some fruit to Kit. He climbed onto her shoulder and his fur tickled her ear.

  “We made it, Kit. This is better, right? You didn’t want to stay with Faal and be bred and studied and exhibited. Of course not.”

  He finished his slices and slid down in front of her, to be cradled like a baby.

  “You are ridiculous,” Claire said. “You must have been genetically engineered to be cute, and I love you anyway.”

  She stroked his furry belly and he purred.

  But then her roommates began to arrive, and Claire’s stomach began to churn. They gave her brief nods, but no one tried to talk to her, and she didn’t want to antagonize anyone by trying to make small talk.

  She tried to lie down and sleep, and the weskit curled up on her chest, but it was no good. Her stomach felt horrible. Claire sat up quickly and the weskit slid off onto the floor. She grabbed the recycle bin between her bed and the next one and vomited into the small container. Her throat burned and her head felt like it would split open behind her eyes.

  “It’s sick,” said the Merith in the next bed. “Foul.”

  “I’m sorry,” Claire choked out, spitting into the square container. Another wave of nausea hit her, and she threw up again, the last of her dinner leaving her system.

  "I apologize," Claire said again, when she could speak.

  She would be sharing the cabin with these three Merith females, and she didn’t want them to resent her.

  “Are you done, bruck?” said the Merith next to her. She was the crew chief who had gotten Claire this spot, and when she'd introduced herself Claire had been so muddled she hadn't quite caught her name. It sounded something like Kitten, which Claire thought was faintly amusing. She’d never seen such a heavily-muscled Merith. If they had weight lifting competitions, she felt sure Kitten could win.

  “I’m done,” Claire said. Her stomach felt weak, but better. “I think I ate the wrong things. I don’t know what to eat here.”

  “I’ve seen your kind,” said Kitten, casually. "I bet it was the rain. Your skin is too thin for it."

  Another Merith woman spoke up, the one who had changed out of a wet jumpsuit when she got there. "And ours isn't? Only the Vel are unaffected by the alkaline rain. And still we were sent to load in the storm!" The Merith woman took out a bottle and began to cleanse her eye, which looked red and swollen.

  Suddenly Claire looked back at Kitten. “Wait. You’ve seen my kind? Where? How long ago?”

  Kitten lay back against her bed again.

  “You’ve been in the Council news. The Spo sponsored you into the Council, yes?”

  “They were supposed to... But no one seems to recognize me, so I thought perhaps they failed.”

  “No, your species won their trial,” Kitten said. “You didn’t know?”

  “Then humans are part of the Council, one of the ten?” Claire asked.

  “Yes, but it isn’t ten any longer,” Kitten said. “Thirteen? Fourteen? There are a lot of new species these last few years. The Rik, you Humawns, the Melifleurs. Now there are new species in the reports every circuit.”

  “Do you know where my planet is?” Claire asked.

  Kitten rolled over in bed. “Don’t you know where your own planet is?”

  “Well...no. I didn’t know much about space travel when the Spo took me. And their ship took us to Spo mainspace, but I don’t know how close that was to Earth.”

  “Well, I have no idea. Our cycle begins and ends at Selta, and I don't think it's anywhere near there," Kitten said. Her arm muscles rippled as she gestured to the recycle bin. “Clean that out before you sleep.”

  Claire didn’t sleep any better after that, and when she did doze off, she kept waking with a heart-pounding jerk. When she finally dropped off for good, she had the dream again.

  It wasn't so much a dream as a memory, but then, it was a memory she'd dreamed so often that sometimes she wondered if she still remembered the details or created them.

  The dream started in the Spo barracks, where she'd lived during her one year as a cadet. She'd slept badly that night too, and woken in the middle of the night with a pounding headache and overwhelming thirst. In her dream, she climbed down from the top bunk in the dark and slipped between the rows of beds towards the communal bathroom.

  She was sweaty from tossing and turning. Her hair stuck to her neck and forehead and the stone floor felt blessedly cool against her bare feet.

  She made it to the bathroom and almost to the row of sinks, when she heard scuffling in the outer hall. The Spo had put mirrors on the floor and walls of the bathroom, not understanding human mirror usage, and she saw her reflection below her as she walked to the hall door. It held out hands, trying to stop her, but she couldn’t stop. She walked past the sinks and swung open the door.

  The first thing that met her eyes was another cadet, Jenelle, struggling with their mentor.

  Jenelle was a pretty, red-headed girl. Claire had spent time with her in the past year, but she was reserved and Claire still didn’t know her very well.

  Their Spo mentor had stuffed a rag in Jenelle's mouth. With one clammy hand he held her right arm, twisted up behind her back, and in the other hand he held a gun.

  Claire had frozen, taking in the scene that she clearly wasn't meant to see.

  “Jenelle?”

  The Spo's arms tightened with anger and frustration, and Jenelle panicked. She struggled, kicking backwards and trying to claw his face with her left hand, but the Spo was much stronger than her. He planted his four legs and wrapped his arm around her torso, capturing both her arms, and lifting her completely off the floor. He shoved the rag deeper in her mouth with the gun, and then pointed it at Claire.

  “Go back to bed, Claire. Right now.”

  Jenelle’s eyes were huge, the whites reflecting like milk in the pale light of the hallway.

  “But where are you taking her?”

  “Go back. Or you will go instead.”

  Claire had felt stricken, unable to look away from the gun. She knew what the pellet gun could do, they’d been target training this week.

  “But where will she –” Claire tried once more, but she hadn't been able to look Jenelle in the eyes again. Some part of her had already decided to walk away.

  “Stop speaking,” the Spo hissed, his voice commanding but not loud. “Step through the door.”

  Claire never did look Jenelle in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and stepped back into the bathroom.

  She listened to the nearly silent tussle as Jenelle was carried away, only once hearing a squeak, as if Jenelle had gotten her feet down and was trying to pull against her captor. The sounds retreated down the hall and around the corner, and then it was silent.

  Claire leaned her head against the bathroom wall, shivering uncontrollably. She kept licking her lips with her tongue, feeling the rag that must be nearly suffocating Jenelle. She wanted desperately to do something for her, and she wanted desperately to go back to bed and pretend she'd never gotten up.

  But who would she tell? There was no authority here except the Spo. She could tell the other cadets, but what good would that do? Or more accurately, what bad would it do? They were all
completely subject to the rules and discipline of their mentor. His command was literally law. Claire went with shaking hands to the sink and cupped her hands to get a drink of water. What should she do? She splashed water on her face and tried to still her shaking. In the mirror, her reflection was crying.

  Claire never found out whether she would have found her courage or not. The bathroom door swung open again and Claire gasped. Her mentor was back.

  He grabbed her arm before she could run. "You've caused a problem.” He pointed the gun at her this time, and motioned to the hall. His large hand wrapped around her upper arm and his claws brushed her skin.

  In her surprise and horror, Claire said the worst thing that had ever come out of her mouth. "Take Jenelle! Not me. Take Jenelle.”

  Sometimes the dream stopped there, sometimes it kept going.

  The Spo clapped a hand over her mouth and this time she was the one dragged down the hall, and her feet squealed uselessly against the smooth floor. She was spared the rag in the mouth, and when he threw her into his private office she saw why.

  Jenelle lay on the floor, eyes open and glassy. There were bubbles around her nostrils and her lips were blue. Claire flinched away, refusing to take in any more of the details that indicated the girl was dead.

  "You killed her," Claire whispered.

  "Apparently she had breathing difficulties," her mentor said coldly. "If you had not come upon us, I would not have gagged her so severely."

  “But what are you – why?” Claire gasped for breath. "Why either of us?"

  She saw a crate in the corner, one of the large ones used to carry Spo trouncers. It was dark inside the cage, and still smelled of bleach.

  Claire was so terrified by then, she didn’t even have the strength to resist as he pushed her head down and shoved her into the crate.

  “You can’t do this!” she said.

  "Of course I can. Cadets die. Sometimes even two at a time, though that will be harder to explain." He washed a frustrated tangerine color. “But that is my problem.”

  He sprayed her with something that smelled floral and wrong and the last thing she saw was Jenelle’s red hair against the stone floor. When she woke up, she was securely tied with rope in a space ship she'd never seen before.

  Faal sat before her, studying her intently.

  Sometimes the dream stopped here, but sometimes it kept... “Bruck, wake yourself, wake!”

  Claire opened her eyes, and lashed out at the Merith leaning over her, going for the large, vulnerable, blue eye.

  Kitten blocked her with a solid strike to Claire's forearm, and caught her hand in a massive fist. Claire jerked her hand free and rolled off the other side of the bed. She ducked beneath it, to put something between her and...and...

  Claire closed her eyes.

  After a moment, she slowly scooted out from under the bed and looked up at Kitten.

  “I’m sorry,” Claire said, between gasps. She had probably yelled in her sleep just then. She stood up slowly, her heart still pounding. The other Merith women in the room were staring at them.

  “You are violent in your sleep,” Kitten said. “Is it the space sickness?”

  “No,” Claire said, scraping her sweaty hair away from her neck. “I’m just... I don’t know.” Faal would say she was broken, and he was probably right, but she wasn’t going to say it out loud. Claire looked at her hands. No blood, but she still shuddered, glad to be spared the end of the dream.

  Kitten nodded. “Perhaps you ought to learn to fight. Going for my eye was good, but predictable to a Merith. Going under the bed was very bad. Your movement is limited and you cannot run. You should study some form of self-defense. If you fight while you’re awake, perhaps your mind will rest when you sleep.”

  Claire nodded tiredly and crawled back under her thin blanket. That was good advice, but she hadn’t had much chance to learn in the last few years.

  The other Merith went back to sleep, but Claire lay awake.

  Claire didn't exactly blame herself for Jenelle's death. She hadn’t known when she stepped into the hall that it would end with Jenelle’s suffocation. But she did blame herself for offering Jenelle up at the last moment. Sometimes her mind got stuck on a litany of excuses for what she’d done: I was startled, I was terrified of our mentor, I was trapped in a situation that no one should ever have to deal with...

  Claire moaned and rolled onto her stomach. Maybe if Jenelle had just disappeared Claire could have lived with her self-justifications. But instead, Claire had ended up living the life she would have doomed Jenelle to. Everything that happened to Claire, every time it got worse or more unbearable, she knew it was what Jenelle would have suffered. Every time she had the dream, she remembered... I would have done this all to her.

  “You’re free now, Jenelle.” Claire whispered into the darkness. “We escaped. Maybe you can forgive me now.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Several days later, Basher found himself once again in the central shipping caverns of Upper Selta. He’d been informed that an incoming ship had declared a crewman of ‘unspecified’ species. That was sometimes used innocently, usually by aliens who’d been excommunicated from their home planet or were fugitives and didn’t want to state their name and species. Those ones didn’t matter to Basher, but occasionally it was used to avoid saying, “Rik in a human body.” So whenever that particular phrase popped up, the Seltan authorities grudgingly informed Basher of it.

  As he got closer to the elevator shafts that led to the ship, there were crowds of alien crew disbursing into the huge chamber. Most of them headed into pedestrian tunnels that led to commercial parts of Upper Selta, while a few went towards the trading cafés that pigeon-holed the rim of the cavern.

  The majority of the crew were Merith, with a decent smattering of Spo, Tergre, and Vel. As the crew flowed past him, Basher failed to spot a human. It didn’t help that the Merith and most of the Spo were taller than him. There was one Tergre whose fur was a pale pink instead of the usual brown or black. Perhaps it was the ‘unspecified’ species? He still didn’t see any human figures. Basher read the information on the screens. This ship, Blinking Star, had arrived from Merith II by way of Comboda, which was not unusual.

  Now he had to decide whether to wait around for the crew to trickle back in, at least six to eight hours from now, or whether to go up to the ship and ask the crew chief whether they employed any Rik or humans. Technically he didn’t have any authority on a Merith ship as they were considered private property and subject to the laws of their homeworld.

  Basher was still debating when he saw a heavily guarded Merith heading his direction. This one was definitely not crew. He was short for a Merith, but heavily robed in dark red with the subdued sparkle of rubies sewn into the seams. His eye was the golden color of a tabby cat with a hazy red overtone, and he walked with a pronounced limp.

  Basher quickly realized that the entourage was not headed toward him after all, but rather toward the elevator behind him, which led up to the Blinking Star. However, as they passed, the richly dressed Merith paused and scrutinized him carefully.

  “Good day,” Basher finally said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” For a moment he thought the Merith was going to ignore him and keep walking, but instead it clicked its beak.

  “Indeed. I am Faal of Merith II, and I believe you are the hound employed by the Spo here on Selta.”

  Basher nodded. Some of the aliens on Selta had nicknamed him ‘the hound.’ He liked to think it was because of his stellar tracking, but he suspected it was more derogatory than that.

  The Merith continued, “I have come to Selta in part to help the human delegation as they investigate the sabotage of the space station. That is why I was informed of your presence here on Selta.”

  “Ah, I see, thank you for the explanation. I’m not here on that business, however. I believe there may be a Rik on this ship, but it could not be one of those involved in the space station.” Basher gestured a
t the screen on the elevator, indicating the ship’s origin.

  “Yes, most unlikely to be related, but I am also here to investigate the ‘unspecified’ crewmember.”

  Basher raised his eyebrows, but then realized the Merith wouldn’t see that as a question. “With all due respect, why are you personally looking for a Rik? They have no relationship with the Merith.” He phrased it carefully. What he really meant was that Faal had no right to detain a Rik. It was only humans, and to some extent the Spo, who had the jurisdiction to interrogate and penalize them for their crimes.

  Faal clearly understood the subtext of his question. “There is a particular... fake... who was my guest for some time prior to the trial. After the trial, it apparently decided to dispense with my generosity. It stole from me and in the course of the theft, injured me. I believe the thief may be on board this ship.”

  Basher had the distinct impression that Faal was phrasing his words just as carefully as he himself had done, but he had no idea why.

  “I’m planning to extradite the thief to Merith II where it may have a proper trial,” Faal added. “I trust that will not be a problem.”

  Basher hesitated. The sentience trial had left humanity and the Rik in a strange relationship. In its simplest form, it could be viewed as a sponsor/sponsored arrangement, and that would mean that any fakes prosecuted by a foreign species would have certain rights to representation and protection. On the other hand, the Rik were also on probation for past crimes, and currently the human policy was zero tolerance for violations. He wasn’t sure if that would apply to this case or not.

  “Personally, I respect your desire,” Basher said. “But I’m not certain of the legal ramifications. I would be happy to look into it for you, if you care to provide me with a way to contact you.”

  “I would have contacted you in any case, regarding the sabotage investigation.” Faal jerked his head and one of his assistants (bodyguards?) took a small scroll out of a hidden pocket and handed it to Basher. It felt like some kind of animal hide and was tied with an emerald green ribbon.