Reclamation (Book One of the Art of War Trilogy), page 34
‘Get out of the car,’ Vondur said, pointing the pistol at him. ‘Commander Halder, I have him,’ he said over the EFFECT link. He could see in the distance agents already racing towards them in small, one-man Habsec Wasps.
‘We’re en route,’ Halder growled in reply. ‘Good work, Captain.’
Vondur kept his pistol trained on Iyadi. ‘Get out the car,’ he repeated.
Iyadi mumbled something in Argish. The door bolts popped, and Iyadi slowly unfolded himself from the cruiser. The kaygryn took a wobbly step towards him, baring his teeth.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Vondur said. Iyadi took another step, then crumpled to his knees, sinking into the soft, refined soil. Unthinkingly, Vondur leaned forward to check the alien wasn’t about to die, and found himself disarmed in a matter of split seconds.
‘Fuck!’ he shouted as Iyadi smacked the gun from his hands. It sailed a good ten metres and jabbed barrel-first into the soil. Vondur instinctively brought his fists up, his IHD automatically running a martial arts program, but Iyadi was too fast and strong. Two punches and Vondur was dazed and on the floor with a broken nose, trying to stop the kaygryn from shattering his ribs.
He rolled over, taking in a mouthful of soil in the process, and pressed himself back up to his feet. Iyadi roared and took another swing at him, which he dodged. Blood spilled from his nose as he crouched and launched himself bodily into Iyadi’s midriff, powering them both to the floor. He managed to land three good hits to the kaygryn’s leathery face before he was thrown off. He rolled over and righted himself into a crouch, fists up. Somewhere in the back of his mind floated a distant memory of UNAF martial arts training.
He never got to use it. Seconds later, three Mantix-clad EFFECT agents ploughed into the alien from the side and tackled him to the ground, and the crack of high-voltage shock pulse zapped through the air, setting Iyadi to flopping and spasming about like a fish. They immediately cuffed him, gave him a thorough kicking for good measure and then knocked him out with a dart to the neck.
One of the agents approached Vondur. He could see in the Mantix mirror visor just how badly mashed up his bloody, soiled face was.
‘I have orders from Commander Halder,’ a woman’s voice said from the shoulder-mounted speaker. ‘If you want to come with, you’re going out cold.’
‘Where are we going?’ Vondur asked stupidly.
‘Can’t say. You in?’
Vondur nodded, his breath rattling in his throat. ‘I am.’
‘Your people?’
Vondur followed her finger to see ZEN and Lyra walking towards them, flanked by EFFECT agents.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I should imagine so.’
‘Good,’ the agent said. ‘Let’s go. We’re running out of time.’
BLACKWORLD
‘The successes and failures of the United Nations are controlled directly by the willingness of this government to break the same rules which we insist the other nations of this galaxy abide by.’
President Jan Jiao, giving evidence at the Clemens Inquiry into the massacre at Beng’Tusk
NV-[Tier-One/Non-Sentient]-1509a/UN010, known colloquially as Sophia, was the chosen blackworld for Iyadi’s debrief. UN Joint Intelligence Command maintained a dozen such worlds throughout the colonised galaxy, on a register bearing a classification that far exceeded top secret. Habitable but entirely uninhabited by anything above Tier One, the planet was a black hole on all UN star charts, the only technological presence a solitary Janitor satellite tracing a lonely high orbit, maintaining a silent, morose vigil.
Almost all full-spectrum scanning would reveal Sophia to be a perfectly, boringly ordinary planet. The lower hemisphere of the world was covered in one massive saltwater ocean, and the upper a terrestrial-analogue string of temperate continents, both crowned by polar ice. The atmosphere was a breathable mix of oxygen and nitrogen, supporting millions of species of Tier-One fauna. The planet existed on an axial tilt of nineteen degrees and traced a circular orbit around the local M-class star of close to one hundred and twenty-eight million kilometres distant.
Sophia had once been a candidate for colonisation before the need and inclination to inhabit new worlds had slowly died. The UN had already claimed many terrestrial worlds in the galaxy, often co-habiting with the kaygryn who both flourished in the same atmosphere and, more importantly, were much less able to refuse UN settlement fleets. Indeed, the Expansion lasted the most part of a century before the enormous cost burden of seeding a fully self-sustaining colony forced the industry into public hands. The immediate consequence was a comprehensive downsizing and multi-phase sale of territories which, in its most recent incarnation, had resulted in the much-maligned Treaty of Hadan’s Reach. In the wake, UNIS had filled the vacuum. Blackworlds were useful, after all, and, Solar Operations Command argued, necessary for the abduction and interrogation of foreign citizens. Sophia, like other blackworlds, was completely off the grid and utterly deniable, knowledge of its existence limited at any given time to a handful of personnel within the UN.
The only manmade feature on Sophia was a bunker hollowed out of a seam of limestone that ran a kilometre underground, beneath a temperate forest that ran unbroken for a thousand kilometres beneath the northern steppes. Its location was not marked by any electronic beacons. The only electronic equipment in the bunker consisted of a few old-tech sodium lamps and a generator, and they were buried beneath a kilometre of rock. The only way one would ever be able to locate and access the bunker was if they knew its exact physical whereabouts.
Fortunately, Commander Halder knew its exact physical whereabouts.
They reached Sophia on their fifth jump, having traced a highly erratic course from Navem Sigma to throw off anyone attempting pursuit. Their ship was a modified voidbreaker shaped like an arrow, its FTL drives a massive trio of cylinders that completely eclipsed the tiny, non-rotating life-support module. Crammed inside were thirty VR capsules and a small hangar containing one VTOL space plane and a five-man jeep.
The moment they were through the wormhole terminus, Halder broadcast a very specific code to the Janitor satellite. The Janitor received the code and relayed another, corresponding code to the Beta Thani Mission Station thirty-five billion kilometres away, who passed on a third code to the Fleet Comms Array at Halo Arch. Someone, somewhere in SOC Vargonroth was informed of the voidbreaker’s arrival.
The Janitor watched the voidbreaker every centimetre of its hour-long journey through the solar system, scanning and recording every conceivable aspect of the ship. Even the Janitor, however, with its incredibly powerful LRIS, couldn’t pull up any information on twenty-four of the twenty-five occupants. Only Captain Ben Vondur showed up, but with his UNAF-encrypted files even he was a partial portrait. The rest, not counting the unregistered alien or unregistered alien robot, were complete ghosts.
The voidbreaker reached low orbit and smoothly positioned itself above the bunker with directed blasts from its attitude thrusters. It took twenty minutes to bring the landing contingent out of VR sync, into Mantix and into the space plane. Halder and two of his men, Cole and Takach, as well as Vondur, ZEN and Lyra, would escort Iyadi to the bunker.
The journey to the surface was brief and smooth, though the weather was miserable. The air was cold and filled with drizzle, and it evaporated off the space plane’s glowing thermal panels in great clouds of steam. They landed in a fern-filled glade which perfectly accommodated the small craft, and Vondur assumed, as he walked down the landing ramp and into the cool alien air, that it had been manually cleared many years before. The fact that the vessel’s wingtips sat just shy of the perimeter gave the lie to it having occurred naturally.
The Mantix he had been given immediately analysed the air, declaring it breathable after a few seconds, and he removed his helmet and relished in taking a few deep breaths. He had been breathing artificial atmosphere for nearly two days, and the cold air of Sophia’s forests was pure joy in his chest.
‘This way,’ Halder said, marching through the glade and into the wood. Vondur followed. It was an unsettling feeling, being on a world which he knew to be completely devoid of sentient life. The only sound was the wind-driven rain against the leaves. Even the floor, carpeted in green and burgundy moss, softened their footfalls so as to preserve the forest’s silence. It felt like they were trespassing on sacred ground.
His fingers traced waist-high ferns as they marched on, Cole and Takach dragging the unconscious Iyadi through the undergrowth. In doing so, they left a channel in the leaf bed and traces of ripped moss and torn ferns, but the forest would soon repair. Not that it even mattered; Halder had told Vondur on the voidbreaker, after he had finally been apprised of their intended destination, that the Janitor satellite hadn’t picked up any activity around Sophia for over a century.
They spent twenty-five minutes traipsing through the forest. Vondur replaced his helmet after a few minutes, but no one spoke. The spectre of war loomed over them, even out here on this cold, empty world. It seemed a shame to Vondur that no one had colonised it. It was practically a twin of Earth, much more so than most other worlds. Even Vargonroth, the capital of the UN, was darker, wetter and generally more unpleasant than Earth.
They reached the hatch without incident. It was a small lump of moss-covered rock, easily missed and completely unremarkable. Halder had to scrape off most of the moss to get to the analogue entry panel. His gauntleted fingers manipulated the code rolls to their correct configuration, and the hatch swung open with a clicking sound like that of clockwork.
‘Impressive,’ Vondur muttered.
‘All right, everybody in,’ Halder said, climbing down the rusty iron ladder and into an antechamber three metres underground. ZEN followed with Lyra, then Vondur and finally the two EFFECT agents, who managed to manhandle Iyadi down using their Mantix exoskeletons to take the kaygryn’s weight.
Inside the bare stone antechamber was an iron cage elevator, which operated via a simple yet painfully loud generator system. Cole, Takach and Iyadi went down first, the cage rattling and echoing unnervingly down the kilometre-long tunnel. Vondur and ZEN went next, though Vondur was not entirely comfortable sharing the elevator with the very heavy combat VI. At the bottom was the bunker proper, a much wider space covered in large, bioluminescent white tiles and lit by the generator-powered sodium lamps. A row of chairs lined one wall, and a door led through into the interrogation suite where there were three cells, each replete with a desk, four chairs and old-fashioned two-way mirrors.
Halder was the last down. ‘Take him to number one,’ he said, and Iyadi was dragged, still unconscious, into the interrogation room. ‘Take Agent Staerck into the observation room,’ he told Vondur. ‘We’ll have your ZEN.’ He wasn’t asking.
Vondur nodded, irritated but powerless, and took the armoured holdall into the smaller, darker observation room which looked into the interrogation cell via the mirror. There was no need for recording equipment; they would all be recording the interrogation via their Mantix helmets.
‘May I access ZEN’s optic feeds again?’ Lyra asked, as Halder ushered the VI into the interrogation cell.
‘Mm,’ Vondur grunted absentmindedly and ordered ZEN to grant her access. He watched Cole set down a plain black holdall and extract a number of chain-linked manacles, which he and Takach used to shackle Iyadi to the chair and floor. Once they were satisfied, Halder angled one of the sodium lamps so that it shone directly into Iyadi’s face and had ZEN stand at the back.
‘Fold your arms,’ the EFFECT commander told the VI, who obliged. Takach and Cole stood at the back as well and unlocked their railguns, aiming them at Iyadi’s head. Once Halder was satisfied that everything was just so, he extended his index finger and pressed it into Iyadi’s arm. A small filament stabbed out from the finger tip, and a second later the kaygryn was conscious.
It took them a good five minutes to stop the alien from screaming and crying. It was not the reaction Vondur had been expecting. He watched, wincing slightly as the kaygryn tore at his bonds, the chains rattling intolerably loudly inside the interrogation cell. Iyadi babbled interminably in Argish, hands clasping and unclasping, tears streaming from his eyes. He looked about him frantically, at the Mantix-clad men with their frighteningly unreadable mirror-visors, at ZEN, at the railguns aimed at his head. If he kept it up they were going to have to knock him out again before he started damaging himself.
Eventually Halder lost his patience and through his Mantix speakers bellowed at Iyadi to shut up. The kaygryn did fall silent, more out of shock than anything else, though quickly resumed simpering. Vondur almost felt sorry for him.
‘I know you speak Terran,’ Halder said. He held up a hand to silence Iyadi before he could speak. ‘Please do not deny it. I have personally heard recordings of you speaking fluent Terran.’
Iyadi nodded, deflated.
‘We have some questions for you.’ Halder’s voice was neutral and informative, with no hint of aggression. It demonstrated, to Vondur at least, a fairly staggering indifference to the illegal abduction and interrogation of an alien citizen. ‘If you answer truthfully and comprehensively, you will come to no harm. If you do not, or I suspect you do not, I will hurt you, and I will hurt you badly. Do you understand what I have just told you?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Iyadi said, tears still streaming from his eyes. ‘Please, I don’t know why you have brought me here.’
‘You do, Commander Iyadi. You do and we know you do. We have been watching you for a long time. We know about your activities. We know about your associates. You know why you are here, and nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.’ Halder spread his arms. ‘We are off the grid, Commander. Blackworld. We are light years away from all traces of civilisation. Your compatriots have no idea where you are. They would not be able to find you even if they did. We are alone and time is on our side.’
‘I don’t know anything!’ Iyadi repeated and fell to crying again. Halder shook his head and clasped his hands on the table in front of him. ‘Stop it. Immediately. You are embarrassing yourself. Be straight with me, save us all the time. The sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you can go.’
Vondur knew that they would never let Iyadi go. The best thing the kaygryn could hope for was lifelong imprisonment in some EFFECT dungeon. In all likelihood, he would be summarily killed.
‘Please, please, please,’ Iyadi was saying, rocking back and forth in the chair, the manacles tinkling. ‘Please, I don’t know anything.’
‘I’m going to start asking you my questions now,’ Halder said. There was no movement from the Mantix suit, nothing. It was like watching a statue talking. ‘Easy questions to get started. Where are you from?’
‘Please, I don’t know anything,’ Iyadi wept. ‘Please let me go, please.’
‘He’s convincing,’ Vondur said to Lyra in the next room. ‘Do you think we have the wrong man?’
Lyra snorted. ‘They all do this. This act. It’s nothing Halder won’t have expected.’
‘You’ve interrogated kaygryn before?’
‘Yes. A long time ago. We used to pick them up and hand them over to the provar.’
‘Christ,’ Vondur said, eyebrows raised. ‘That’s brutal.’
‘Yeah,’ Lyra replied. ‘As you can imagine, we didn’t see many of them again.’
‘You don’t know where you’re from?’ Halder asked Iyadi. ‘Come on, that’s an easy one.’
‘Ashan,’ Iyadi said, after a period of reflection, in one long exhalation.
‘Vos’Shan, yes? We call it Vos’Shan.’
‘Yes.’
‘How long have you lived there?’
‘Years.’
‘How many years?’
Iyadi shrugged.
‘You used to live on Phaetonis, yes?’
‘How did he know…’ Lyra trailed off. ‘Even I didn’t know that.’
‘How long were you watching him for on Uvolon?’
‘Months.’
‘Yes,’ Iyadi replied. The alien’s fear, at least partly authentic, was slowly evaporating. Wariness, a pan-cultural vocal inflection, had crept into his voice in its place.
‘You were involved in the insurrection there,’ Halder pressed.
‘No! I–’
‘Cole.’
Cole shouldered his railgun and stepped forward, producing a large knife from a pouch at his waist.
‘Ash, ash!’ Iyadi said, holding his hands up. He sighed again. ‘I was in the militia on Vantona, yes.’
‘You were involved in the insurrection on Phaetonis,’ Halder repeated more forcefully. His façade of neutrality was slipping.
‘Call it what you want,’ Iyadi said in a flash of animation. ‘It was self-defence.’
‘Your people murdered four hundred UN civilians.’
‘Where is this going?’
‘I don’t know.’
Iyadi shrugged. ‘I do not grieve for them.’
For the first time, Halder moved. It wasn’t much, a slight shift of his arms. Iyadi’s comment had riled him.
‘What do you know about the Treaty of Hadan’s Reach?’ Halder asked.
Iyadi made a low, growling noise. ‘Your compact with the provar that doomed my race to oblivion? All there is.’
‘That is why you left Phaetonis.’
Iyadi’s hands clenched. When he spoke, it was through bared teeth. ‘After my family was killed, I had nothing to stay for.’
‘You left for Vos’Shan.’
‘Yes!’ Iyadi exploded. Both railguns trained on him twitched. ‘Why are you asking me these things? Why am I here?’
‘We’ll come on to that,’ Halder replied casually. Cole had resumed his place at the back of the room; now Halder summoned him forward again. This time Cole produced a small syrette from a panel on his vambrace and handed it to his commander.
‘What is that?’ Iyadi asked, suddenly visibly nervous. Once more he began to strain against his bonds, muscles flexing against the unbreakable chains. Wordlessly, Halder leaned forward and grabbed Iyadi by the throat.
