Points of Departure (The Robert Fenaday and Shasti Rainhell Chronicle Book 3) Read online

  “So,” hissed Fenaday, “at last. At last we meet, you son-of-abitch.” He began shaking and his right hand cupped the handle of his pistol, half-pulling it. “Bastard!”

  Telisan and Mourner exchanged alarmed looks. Mourner reached for Fenaday’s gun arm. “Captain,” she began, only to be roughly shaken off.

  “I ought to kill you,” Fenaday spat at the uncomprehending alien. It could not hear him, isolated behind centimeters of metal and ceramic.

  “Robert,” Telisan said, “you’re not recovered enough for this. Leave the alien to me.”

  Fenaday turned a strained face to him, as if he had not heard him. “Do you know all they took from me?” he said, eyes bright and mad. “I was a rich man. I lived well, with a family, a home of my own. No sins on my head. No deaths. I was in love with a woman. They took it all.”

  “Yes, yes,” said a soft, understanding voice.

  Arpen, thought Telisan,

  thank the gods. He turned to see his other fiancée behind them. Short and curvaceous to his and Sharla’s tall, angular height, Arpen was a true female of his species. She walked over to the shaking human, holding his eyes with her own. Arpen’s eyes expressed the empathetic power of a Denlenn female, the power that made them great healers. Gently, she removed his unresisting hand from his weapon, pushing the pistol back into the holster.

  “They have much to answer for,” she said, “though this one seems to be merely a functionary, some sort of scholar. Old I believe, and somewhat helpless.”

  “I know that he probably had nothing to do with it himself,” Fenaday said reluctantly, “but he’s of the kind that has her, the ones who wrecked my life.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Telisan is right though. You should leave this to him.”

  “I ought to…” he began, turning back toward the cell.

  “Rest,” interrupted Arpen turning him back firmly with a surprising strength for her small, plump form.

  A spasm of rage flashed into Fenaday’s face, then faded under her steady gaze. Deprived of the strength of his anger, he suddenly felt weak. Emotions seemed far away. He swayed. Telisan and Arpen supported him.

  “Yes,” he muttered to Arpen. “You’re right as usual.

  “Telisan, I’m going to leave that creature to you. I can’t trust myself to think straight around it.”

  “I believe his name is Henlesch,” added Arpen.

  Fenaday nodded, “Henlesch.”

  Telisan watched his fiancée with rueful admiration. There’d been murder in the human’s eyes only a minute ago. In that minute, Arpen turned the alien from a faceless monster into a person, someone with a name. Pitiable even: aged, alone and not a warrior. It was easier to hate and kill the unknown.

  “Arpen’s right,” said a subdued Dr. Mourner, “we should get you back into sickbay.”

  “No,” Fenaday said more firmly. “I’ll be in my cabin off the bridge.”

  “Well,” she said, “rest some, wherever you are.”

  Fenaday looked over at the little half-Japanese woman. He put a gentle hand on her arm. “Sorry, did I hurt you?”

  “No,” Mourner replied, “but your good patient discount is revoked. No lollipop for you either.”

  Fenaday smiled sadly. “Sorry,” he repeated. Mourner just waved it off with an airy gesture.

  “I’ll take you back to your cabin,” Telisan said.

  “OK,” Fenaday started for the exit. “I’ll want to review everything we have on this alien, also the ship’s manifest. Have Dobera update it…”

  “Already done,” Telisan said.

  “You’re good,” Fenaday said. “What do I pay you?”

  “Actually,” Telisan said, “you don’t.”

  Chapter Two

  Shasti Rainhell stretched sore and stiff muscles in a tai-chi exercise. Her long limbs flowed through the form till she finally stretched back up to her full height of six feet-nine inches. Her glossy black hair chose that moment to escape the pins she had swept it up with and fall in her face. The surgeons who’d worked on her fractured skull had only disturbed the hair around the actual injury. Still, the irregular cutting made it difficult to deal with. Annoyed, she turned to her mirror to recapture it. Her waist-length hair was impractical, despite all the genetic improvements that made it cleaner and stronger than a regular human’s. It was also a banner of challenge to Pard, her creator and ex-husband, who forced her to keep it cut short. Even with him dead, she still refused to return to a more practical style. She finally settled for a ponytail.

  She had sufficient vanity to check her face. Her ivory skin had regained its flawless complexion. Her jade-green eyes were no longer blackened. Looking at her reflection now, it was hard to believe she had been nearly beaten to death only days before.

  The sensor she always set to cover the area outside her cabin chimed and flicked up a screen. Her heart froze for a moment until she saw it was only Telisan. She composed herself and waited for him to hit her door chime. She opened the door to find him standing there, looking up at her.

  “How is he?” she asked softly.

  “In pain, both of the body and the soul,” the Denlenn said. “In a fury for information and to gain back his strength. Even Arpen’s best efforts could not keep him in bed till he is at least minimally healed. I left him in his space cabin.” Telisan hesitated a second, then looked her in the eye. “You are the first person he asked of when he awoke in sickbay. I think he was hurt that you were not there.”

  “Leave it alone,” she warned.

  “As you wish.”

  “Was that what you came to say?” she continued.

  “No,” he stated. “We are embarked on a rescue mission. For us to have any chance of success, we need information. More than Mr. Vaughn gave us.”

  “Vaughn?” she asked.

  “Yes, he came out on top after Pard died and Dominici took over. He seems to take a special interest in you. He gave me a data crystal for you, as well as one loaded with useful information on Denshi and Voit-Veru operations. The one for you—forgive me, but for reasons of both ship and your security, I scanned it—contains mostly medical records.” He handed her two crystals. “I have copied all we need from the one meant for us.

  “What I need to know now is, how fast you can learn the language of this new species?” he continued.

  Shasti shrugged. “It should be the matter of only a few days, perhaps less. Engineered have eidetic memory; I forget nothing. Sometimes it’s a curse. I can learn the sounds and the book meanings easily. Understanding is something else. That will take time.”

  “We have a prisoner of these Voit-Veru aboard,” added Telisan. “He needs to be thoroughly interrogated and that it is not a skill I am trained in. The captain is still too weak, and I fear his temper might overwhelm him. Mmok, with his augmentation could do it, but I do not trust him, especially this side of starjump where he might believe he could still scuttle the mission. Rigg, perhaps. I have similar reservations there. Though he owes us his life, he is a serving Confed officer. Until we pass the point of no return, I judge it safe to rely on only a few.”

  “I’ll handle it,” she said easily. “Making people talk is an art in Denshi; I was trained on actual prisoners.”

  Telisan looked at her and shuddered, thinking of her, barely a teenager, doing such things. “I would prefer to avoid physical duress, but if it must be, it must be. These people have made themselves our enemies. We must educate them in the error of their ways.”

  “I’ll prepare,” she said.

  “Good. Thee are well enough to return to duty?”

  Shasti almost smiled at his switch to the archaic formal. Denlenn had three forms of speech, reserving the formal for important matters. Even speaking standard, Telisan stuck to the tradition.

  “Don’t worry. Engineered have two settings, dead and healed.”

  He turned to leave, then over his shoulder said, “Shasti, find some time to see Robert.”

  “At t
he proper time,” she said, “not before.”

  He nodded and left.

  ***** Henlesch of the Voit-Veru surveyed his surroundings with a mixture of dim despair and terror. It had all gone so wrong on Olympia. His so-called allies were wiped out, and he had no idea of the identity of the faction holding him. Perhaps if Sommel had survived there might have been some hope. The agent was one of the best of the Secret Service, but he too was gone, killed in a gun duel with the yellow-eyed leader of these people.

  He owed Sommel his life. When their erstwhile allies in Denshi were attacked, the Engineered Humans moved to eliminate evidence of the secret alliance by wiping out the delegation. Assassins shot down poor Gerder and Ambassador Hosh. They had not reckoned on Sommel. The big warrior male bowled over the Denshi, administering lethal kicks with legs capable of bouncing a full-grown Voit-Veru over two meters in the air. Sommel seized a weapon and shot their way out. Henlesch followed, numbly obeying orders. He was not a Veru of action, just an old professor, drafted by the military government when the first contact occurred. His intense study of the few surviving tribes of his species’ ancient enemy, the Mon-Veru, or sea people, was presumed to give him some edge in the study of true aliens. So he became an aide.

  Aide, he thought bitterly, not much help, too old to fight, never learned how to shoot. His vaunted studies of the Mon-Veru did not help him puzzle out the nature of the species he was dealing with. Mass murder came as a surprise. He did not even know who was attacking the Denshi headquarters. At first, he imagined it to be the Army, General Dominici or her people. That no longer made sense. He was in the belly of a warship. She had gone through several burns and an extended period of high gravity acceleration that the vessel’s artificial gravity system could not quite cancel.

  His best guess was that the vessel was from the Confederacy, the allegedly tyrannical government Denshi was so determined to break from. There were no less than four species of aliens on the ship, perhaps more. It was impossible to tell if some were different races in the species or different genders. Yet the vessel did not have the feel of a standard warship. It was difficult to explain the difference. Still it was there, or perhaps he was just seeing Veru patterns where he should be looking for alien ones.

  He had not been mistreated. After a medical exam, administered by an ugly little alien with large but somehow kind eyes, they put him in a cell. She adjusted the heat, humidity and oxygen level for his comfort. Food came at three intervals. It was tolerable, not much more. She gave her name as Arpen, a medical doctor. Beyond that, he could get no answers.

  Trembling overcame him, lost, alone, among aliens he could not hope to fully understand. He longed for home, to see his daughter at least once more. Emotions made his ears droop forlornly, and he fought total collapse.

  The door to his cell suddenly cycled open. He scrambled up in alarm, facing a leveled weapon.

  “Sit,” commanded the soldier. Two more aliens entered his cell. The first he recognized as the leader of his captors. Tall as Sommel had been, his skin had the look of tanned animal hide, making the piercing yellow eyes all the more startling and predatory. The other was new to him. A human, he judged, female and possibly Olympian from her size. She towered a head over the other alien. Her fur…hair, he reminded himself, was a shimmered black and cut irregularly.

  The yellow-eyed alien gestured for him to sit. None of the furniture was designed with a Veru in mind, so he simply squatted in a three-point stance on the floor.

  “I assume you speak Confederate Standard,” said yellow-eyes, speaking slowly.

  “Yes,” he replied. The language was difficult, but not much more so than Mon-Veru. “I speak it.”

  “I am Acting-Captain Telisan, of the Confederate Private Warship Sidhe, sailing under letters of Marque and Reprisal for the Confederacy. Do you understand?”

  “No,” he said.

  “That means this vessel is the private property of a citizen of the Confederacy, Robert Fenaday. It is a warship and operating under military authority.”

  Henlesch nearly jumped at the name Fenaday. No, he thought, impossible.

  “Fight/flight reflexes,” the female said, in badly accented Veru, “are the same in all species we have met. That was a startle reflex. You have heard the name before.”

  “Yes,” he said thinking quickly. “An enemy of the Denshi, he had a ship.”

  “Before that,” Telisan said. Henlesch realized the alien’s hair concealed a translator.

  “No,” he said.

  “Lie,” said the female, baring her teeth. They were not formidable, but combined with the look in the eyes, betokened slow death.

  “Commander Elizabeth Fenaday,” continued Telisan, “also known as Lisa. Her vessel was the four-man scout Blackbird. Crew: Asa Drok, Caitlin Barrett and Fontel Ki Teska.”

  He took out a hand comp and projected a tri-dee holo on the wall. Henlesch studied the figures. Oh my Gods, he thought, looking at one face. It had not been so young and confident when he met it, but there could be no doubt. He said nothing.

  “That ship and crew fell into your people’s hands nearly eight years ago,” added the female. “We are on a mission to recover the crew. We are not hostile to your government beyond that, but we will do all that is necessary to recover those people, including use of deadly force. Blackbird was a Confed vessel on a scouting mission. Your people’s capturing of the ship constitutes an act of war against all seven species of the Confederacy. Perhaps the one truth Pard told you was how we dealt with the last hostile species that warred on us.”

  “You will tell us all that you know,” said the female. “All that is asked, you will answer. You are not listed by anyone as having been found or recovered. No one knows you are here. You depend on us from second to second for light, food and air. If you wish to survive to be exchanged at some point in the future, you must cooperate now.”

  Henlesch stared at the aliens, his stomach weak. I am not a coward or traitor, he thought. I can die well, if it comes to it. There seemed to be no oxygen in the room.

  “My friend Rainhell speaks harshly, as is her wont,” Telisan said. “Olympians are a stern people, as you know, given to much cruelty.”

  “You have no idea,” said the one named Rainhell.

  “Like as not,” continued Telisan, “much of the information is of no military significance. For the most part, we simply need to learn about your people. It is possible your information can save lives while not compromising a military secret. We already know the current codes and IFF signals used by both sides. With Pard dead, Vaughn gave us these freely.”

  “So you see, Being Henlesch,” said Telisan, “you harm no one but yourself by not speaking. We already have your military secrets. From what Vaughn said, you were merely a professor and not privy to them anyway.”

  “He might have learned,” growled the female.

  “No,” Henlesch appealed to the male, who seemed reasonable and less prone to violence. For the female, he suspected, violence was an end in itself. “You are correct. I was an academic. I studied the ways of the Mon-Veru, the other intelligent native species of our world. It was felt I could add something to understanding your kind.”

  “Why don’t you leave for a while,” Rainhell said to the other. “We are wasting time.”

  Telisan leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “Tell us about these Mon-Veru. Surely there can be no harm in that?”

  Henlesch’s brain worked feverishly. The alien was right, there could be no harm in giving him such simple information, available in any child’s book.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes, I think that I can answer some of your questions. Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement...”

  Hours later they left the Veru’s cell. Telisan felt weary and a little unclean; this was not work he had ever faced before. Conchirri were impervious to interrogation. You just killed them. Even that was outside his experience. He was a fighter pilot. All he saw of the enemy was th
eir machines. With a sigh, he looked up at the Olympian. “I used your script and stuck to it as best I could.”

  “You did well,” Shasti said. “Henlesch will not present much of a challenge. Now he thinks he can reason with us, negotiate, even outwit us by giving information he sees as harmless. At this point he is congratulating himself on how well he handled the situation. Tomorrow, I will destroy all that by hurting him. Nothing major, just enough to destroy his sense of well-being and reason. You will appear and demand I stop. You’ll explain that he needs to be more forthcoming, as Captain Fenaday is demanding answers, and if you cannot get them, then I will be given free rein. Continue with subjects that will seem harmless to him. With the stakes raised, he will gradually reveal more information, hoping to control his situation.

  “Once someone begins to talk,” she continued, “it’s hard to find places or reasons to stop. Oh, that was good work getting him to lecture us on the Mon-Veru. Inspired even.”

  “Not so difficult,” Telisan said. “I just remembered how easy it was to get Belwin Duna to talk on his subjects for hours by expressing even a little interest. The professorial mode is almost seductively safe and familiar. Ah,” exclaimed Telisan in sudden pain, “what would he think of me now?”

  Rainhell looked at him curiously. “Duna was an admirable creature, but he never once hesitated to lie, or put others in danger for a cause he regarded as sacred. Don’t forget that.”

  For a second, Telisan’s yellow eyes held a look that gave even her pause. “Well,” he said finally, “there is truth to that, bitter though it is to accept.”

  “Telisan,” she said, before he could turn to leave. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand tact even with my own species. I never learned how.”

  “Yes.” He put a gentle hand on her arm, a liberty only a handful of people could venture with her. “I do not forget these things. I was only angry for a second and only because it was true. Do not worry. We are friends. For all that we hardly understand each other. No, it is you who are right. We are still on a quest and we must be ruthless in pursuit. Duty demands no less.” With another gentle squeeze on her arm, he turned and left.