Alien Caged (4 page)

Impatient with thoughts of what could not be, he set aside thoughts of the little darling to attend to the conversation.  “So to what do we owe the pleasure of your company today?”

Walker shrugged.  “I am only checking on your welfare.  Having men like Remington under my command makes it necessary, as was so obvious just now.”

Zemos fixed him with a steady look.  “The war is over, Captain.  You need to surrender your vessel.  I’m not telling you to give yourself up to Kalquor.  Go to the Galactic Council and surrender to them.  You and your crew will be treated fairly in their custody.”

Despite the growing number of worry lines etching his features, Walker was still very much a young and unsure man.  Right now, he looked like a child to the Dramok as he shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.  “It would make life simpler wouldn’t it?  I let that option go back when the war ended, though.  It’s too late.”

Miragin spoke, his tone gentle.  “It is never too late to listen to your conscience, Joseph.  It’s obvious you’re a good man with high values.  You can still end this useless madness of fighting our destroyers and taking us prisoner.”

Zemos added, “Earth is dead.  Your people are scattered.  Why are you still fighting?”

Walker scowled, his shoulders hunching defensively.  Yes, at just over 30 years of age, he was only a boy compared to Zemos.  He certainly looked the part right now. 

He muttered, “Because that’s what a man who’s backed into a corner does.  He fights or he dies.”

Miragin’s tone was gentle in its probing.  “It’s not just that, though.  Somehow we’ve become a weapon for you.”

Walker gave him a startled look.  “Why do you say that?”

Zemos stepped close to the containment field so he could be closer to Walker.  He folded his arms over his chest and looked down on the Earther, doing his best paternal attitude.  The youngling needed guidance in the worst way, and that role was second nature to someone of the Dramok breed.  “There is no other reason to keep us alive, Joseph.  You plan to use us somehow.  As weapons – or as bartering objects.”

Walker’s gaze skittered away. 
Aha
, thought Zemos. 
That’s what’s going on then.  We’re some sort of bargaining tool for the Earthers.

Unfortunately, his discovery had rattled the Earther captain.  Walker took a step back and glanced down the corridor, apparently ready to leave.

He said, “I’ll see what I can do to have the tactical officer move personnel around so you don’t have to deal with Remington anymore.”

“Joseph—” Zemos started, trying to keep the young man from leaving.  He needed to know what the Earthers had in store for the survivors of his crew.

Walker interrupted, talking in a rush even as he walked away.  “I have to get back to the bridge.  I’ll check on things again soon.”  He nearly ran out of the cell block.

Miragin sighed and tossed his empty food tray towards the containment field.  It would be picked up later by Remington, and they would have to endure more of his asinine comments.  Being cowed by Walker wouldn’t last long with that one. 

The Imdiko asked his clanmates, “What can be going on to keep a man pursuing such a course?  He has to know this will only lead to destruction in the end.”

Oret’s tray joined his.  “You’re the one with all the insights, ‘Conscience of Kalquor’.  You tell us.”

Zemos walked over to the others’ dishes and dropped his on top.  He thought perhaps Walker was the least of their worries right now.  “I think he’s losing control of the crew.  That business of him saying he’d
try
to get Remington out of here rather than actually doing it tells me he’s in trouble.”

Oret scowled.  “If that’s the case, the crew will eventually turn on him or he’ll make a run for it.  And then we’re fucked because fools like Remington will kill us for sport.  I can’t figure out why we were kept alive in the first place.”

“It must be for bargaining power with someone.  Otherwise, it makes no sense that they took us prisoner.  If they were still trying to fight a pointless war, they would have killed us right out.”

“But bargaining with whom?” Miragin asked.

Zemos had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.  It was an instinctual, almost animal knowledge that trouble was about to reach a critical point.  He knew better than to ignore it. 

He muttered, “There are too many questions and no answers.  Once we know the answers, it may be too late.  It’s time we found our escape.”

Oret looked from him to Miragin and back to Zemos.  In a careful tone, the Nobek said, “I’ve had an idea on that for some time, but I know you won’t like it.  Hell, I don’t even like it, which is why I haven’t mentioned it before now.  I was hoping to come up with something better.”

Zemos thought he knew what Oret might be up to.  It made him wince, but he faced up to his concerns anyway.  “Out with it then.”

“I think the lovely one might be the key to our release.”

Miragin stood bolt upright.  “Matara Elisa?  Is it really necessary to involve her?” 

A flash of anger stabbed Zemos, but he controlled it.  He was a Dramok, the usually even-tempered breed that led his fellows.  However, he also possessed strong violent Nobek tendencies, almost to the point of being a dual-breed.  His Nobek father and grandfathers had taken great care to train him to not give in to temper.

Zemos’ tone remained steady as he said, “She could get hurt, Oret.  You can’t tell me there won’t be risk to her life if we involve her.”

Oret’s shoulders sagged, letting Zemos know how much the solution weighed on him.  “I know, I know.  She’s also the weakest link and our best chance, especially if Walker is sending Remington away.  I would have loved to get my hands on him instead.”

Zemos couldn’t help but pace, the tension getting to him.  The food he’d eaten, prepared by Elisa herself, curdled in his gut at the thought of putting her in peril.  Yet he’d noted Remington wasn’t the only Earther getting more aggressive lately.  Walker’s passive control over the crew was fraying.  Zemos had the fear that even if he could convince Walker to surrender his vessel to the Galactic Council of Planets, the more militant members of the crew would kill the Earther captain. 

It was obvious that Zemos and the rest of his captured crew must soon make their attempt to escape and take over the ship.  It had become obvious after three months of captivity that the Empire’s fleet had no idea where Zemos and his men were.  Rescue was not coming.  Outnumbered and unarmed, the Kalquorians would have to find some way out of the predicament they were in.  Sweet, lovely Elisa, the most vulnerable of the Earthers on board this flying horror of a ship, a woman that Zemos had begun to think of with more feeling than he wanted to, was their best chance of securing that escape.

Zemos snapped out the words he didn’t want to say.  “If we have no choice, then we’ll have to use the girl.”  He added with feeling, “Damn them for putting me in this position.”

And damn his heart for falling in love with a woman he might have to hurt in order to do the right thing.

* * * *

The end of Elisa’s workday was made up of equal parts relief and fear.  It was nice to get out of the kitchen where she spent most of her time, cooking and figuring out how much of their carefully hoarded resources could be used on a meal.  It was never enough, and the kitchen staff groused every bit as much about it as the people they fed.  The atmosphere was one of toxic anger, and Elisa looked forward to escaping it as soon as possible.

That meant traversing the corridors of the battlecruiser to get from the kitchen to the safety of her quarters.  Only a miniscule fraction of the ship’s crew remained on the hulking vessel, just a few souls over 250 men.  It should have been a relief to have far fewer potential attackers to fear.  Unfortunately, it also made it easier for those remnants to get Elisa alone, where cries of help would not be heard.

Despite such dangers, Elisa preferred to navigate the lesser-used corridors of a nearly abandoned part of the ship.  It was a roundabout passage to her quarters, but she liked the privacy and the lack of stares.  Almost no one used her route.  It was isolated and therefore more likely for an attack, but it was also the best way to avoid being seen by others.  Weighing the risks, Elisa found hurrying through dimmed and silent corridors the least frightening of her options.

Life kept getting scarier on the ship.  Pretending otherwise was foolish.  Not so long ago, Remington would have never dared to say the things to and about Elisa he had today.  His act of groping her and making her touch him a week ago would have been enough to get them both beaten, at the very least.  He’d shown no fear of that happening.  Discipline was waning for the most part despite how brutal Lieutenant Commander Robards’ punishments had become.  Desperate men were taking off in shuttles and fighters every week now.  They abandoned the battlecruiser for open space, choosing potential death over the faltering operations of their ship.  Robards’ threat of execution if they were caught was not empty, but it was weak.  There weren’t enough men left to both run the ship and guard the bays where the fighters and shuttles sat.

There was a sense that the veneer of civilization was ready to be wiped away at any moment.  Elisa knew as the one woman on board, she was at the greatest risk.

Yet she still preferred to use the nearly abandoned corridors to the ones that most kept to.  She carried her dinner container in one hand as she set off.  It was nothing she could threaten anyone with unless the assailant had a stir-fry phobia.  However, she also held her open container of hot coffee in a death grip, ready to fling it right in any attacker’s face.  That would definitely slow a would-be rapist down.

Elisa sighed as she navigated the route that would see her locked in her quarters soon.  She knew she should have left the ship long ago.  The clock was ticking down on either her being raped, Kalquorians or bounty hunters capturing the ship, or the food and power finally running out for good.  But where could she go?  What greater threats waited away from the known dangers of the renegade battlecruiser?  Did it make sense to exchange being frightened in a familiar setting to being terrified in an alien environment she knew nothing about?

Elisa could only come up with one answer:  to carry on as the remainder of her shipmates did.  They lived as if the war with Kalquor still went on, performing their duties as they always had.  Yet she could feel the tension rising among the crew.  Captain Walker was a good man, but she didn’t know how much longer he could hold them together.  At the rate men abandoned the ship, they wouldn’t have enough people to fly it in six months.

Elisa didn’t want to think about the precarious situation they were in.  As usual when shying away from grim reality, her thoughts turned to the prisoners in maximum security.

Zemos, Oret, and Miragin.  The Kalquorians were certainly not what she had expected.  All the propaganda vids had proclaimed the aliens were demons, sex-crazed beasts looking to enslave Earther women for their horrible, insatiable lusts.  The first time she’d delivered meals to the detention area, Elisa had been shaking from head to toe in terrified dread of them. 

From the first day, she’d realized the captured destroyer’s crew was just as civilized as her own kind ... maybe even more.  In the general population brig, the alien men had stared at her with stunned expressions, apparently astounded to be in the presence of a female.  Many of the Kalquorians had never met a woman outside of their own mothers and grandmothers.  Even the most primitive-looking Nobek had bowed with respect.  They thanked her profusely for bringing them food every time she set foot in the detention area. 

Three months later, the Kalquorians were still unfailingly gracious to her.  Zemos’ clan in particular conducted themselves with manners becoming gentlemen.  Even Oret, who looked like leashed carnage, was as courtly as a knight with a lady.

Elisa had been trying for some weeks now to convince herself she was only infatuated with Clan Zemos.  She had admitted to herself early on that she liked them.  They had always treated her with respect and kindness.

That would change in a hurry if there wasn’t a containment field between you and them.  Then you’d see the monsters everyone says they are.  Then you’d find yourself in a real hell; and I’m not talking about that stupid myth the Church tried to bore into your head from the moment you drew breath.

Somehow, it didn’t ring true.  Elisa had seen the kindness in their eyes, even Oret’s.  If she hadn’t felt positive the three men would never hurt her, she wouldn’t have flirted so outrageously with the Nobek earlier today. 

The thought of what she’d said –
out loud
– about him lying on her nearly brought on a nervous fit of giggles. 

Damn it, Elisa had too many thoughts when it came to being alone with the Kalquorians.  Not just fantasies both profane and provocative, but thoughts of simply sitting around and talking to the trio, of sharing thoughts and spending time.  Too often Elisa would be alone in her quarters or working in the kitchen, and she’d catch herself imagining sitting on her porch back on Earth, having coffee and talking with Zemos’ clan.  She thought of spending nights in front of a fireplace in a cozy home, of sitting at their feet while they spoke of the things they’d done as younger men.  She thought of lying in a bed big enough for all four of them, snuggled between their big, hard bodies and drifting off in safe warmth.