“Women and children first,” Charles ordered. Thankfully, the POWs didn't seem inclined to argue. “Get into the shuttles and strap yourselves down. Hurry!”
A team of Marines swept the camp as the naked women and children made their way towards the shuttles. The medic — the closest thing they had to a war crimes assessor — reported that the camp’s water contained a combination of various drugs. One of them would make the POWs listless and biddable, another heightened their fears while dampening their other emotions. At least that explained why the POWs had been able to endure their nakedness, the medic concluded, but he had no idea what the long-term effects of such treatment would be.
“The drug has some similarities to a number of penal drugs,” he said. “They may well have taken them from our supplies, perhaps from New Russia.”
Charles shuddered. Before discovering a suitable world for housing dangerous criminals and lacking the political backing to execute them, the human race had experimented with various forms of drugs to control their behaviour. Some of them permanently dampened sexual ardour, others encouraged compliance and obedience. But none of the drugs had been completely effective, he recalled, or they turned out to have thoroughly unpleasant side effects. He found it hard to care about murderers or child molesters who’d been forced to take the drugs, but it was alarmingly easy to imagine them being used for less savoury purposes.
He turned to watch as the remaining women were shoed into the shuttle by the Marines, then looked back at the medic. “Can they be purged of the drugs?”
“I imagine they’re in for a rough few weeks,” he said, shortly. “Like all such drugs, they can be quite addictive if taken regularly. But after that they should be fine.”
Charles had his doubts. Back during his first year of training, there had been a young recruit who had been a drug addict before trying to join the military. Somehow, he’d stayed clean long enough for routine drug screening to miss him, but eventually his body’s demands for the drug had become overpowering. He'd fallen off the wagon and he'd fallen off hard.
“Make sure the doctors on the carrier know the situation,” he ordered. “And you can detach yourself to assist them if necessary.”
He strode through the rest of the camp, examining it quickly. It was actually nicer than some of the camps he’d seen on Earth, complete with hot and cold running water, surprisingly comfortable beds and regular food. A quick check revealed that the aliens were feeding their captives proper meals, rather than nutrient mush or something edible, but tasteless. Charles couldn't help frowning as he walked back out of the building, wondering at their odd behaviour. One moment they attacked mercilessly, the next they treated their captives with a curious mixture of kindness and ruthlessness.
The remaining POWs started to panic again as the shuttles took off, clawing for the sky. Some of the Marines attempted to calm them, but it was impossible until the shuttles had vanished into the wild blue yonder. Charles looked at the panic in their eyes and found himself wondering, despite the medic’s words, if they would ever be normal again. The drugs had clearly influenced their behaviour… and not for the better.
His radio buzzed. “Sir,” one of the Marines said, “I think you should take a look at this.”
Charles located the Marine on the datanet, then walked back to one of the buildings in the centre of the camp. Corporal Glen was standing by a hatch, pointing to it with an armoured hand. Charles followed the pointing hand and frowned as he saw English letters written on the metal. Robert A. Heinlein. For a moment, he puzzled over it before recalling one of the endless briefings he’d had to attend before boarding Ark Royal. The Heinlein had been a colony ship, owned by a consortium of settlers who wanted to leave the rest of the human race far behind… and they’d done it too. They’d left human space before Vera Cruz had been settled and had never been seen again, until now.
“Interesting,” he said. Had the settlers gone far enough to encounter the aliens? Had that been First Contact, not the attack on Vera Cruz? Had the settlers somehow provoked the war? “Take all the recordings you can for the analysts.”
He stepped backwards, staring at the buildings. Now he knew about the Heinlein, it was clear that the POW barracks were little more than prefabricated human buildings from a previous era. The aliens, for whatever reason, had given humans human buildings. It was yet another oddity for the social scientists to puzzle over, he decided, making a mental note to see to it that some of the more reliable researchers received a full report. Some of the civilian ones made mistakes, misreading situations… and then refused to confess to their errors. And some of those errors had cost lives.
His radio buzzed, again. “Sir, we captured a handful of aliens,” Captain Jackson reported. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”
“Understood,” Charles said. He couldn't help a flicker of excitement. “I’m on my way.”
James watched in horror as the first POWs stumbled out of the shuttles and onto the deck. They were naked — drawing the attention of most of the shuttlebay crewmen, he noticed — but they walked like zombies, rather than human beings. Even the children, young girls and boys, stumbled about as though they needed to be prodded in the right direction to keep them moving. The reporters, who had hoped to make history by conducting the first set of interviews with alien POWs, stared in horror.
He'd been worried that the POWs might pose a threat to the carrier. As XO, it was his job to worry about such possibilities. But right now, looking at their blank faces, he knew that they posed no threat. The real problem was keeping them alive long enough to get to a proper medical facility. Ark Royal’s sickbay was huge — frigates and other smaller ships were meant to ship their casualties to the carrier — but it wasn't large enough to handle three hundred former POWs.
“Get them sedated,” the doctor ordered, briskly.
“Move them to another room first,” James ordered, silently grateful for the over-engineering Ark Royal’s designers had indulged in. There was plenty of space for the POWs, once they were away from the shuttlebay. “The shuttles have to go out again.”
His communicator bleeped. “You’ll need to secure the brig,” the Captain ordered. “They caught some aliens.”
James nodded, grimly. Aliens… aliens might well pose a real threat.
He turned and directed the reporters to help the doctor and her staff urge the POWs out of the shuttlebay and into their new quarters. For once, they didn't argue.
The alien buildings were right next to the shore, Marcus saw, as he followed Major Parnell towards the odd-looking buildings. Human prefabricated structures were ugly blocks — designed that way to encourage the inhabitants to work towards building something more aesthetic for themselves — but there was something oddly attractive about the alien buildings. They glimmered an eerie green and gold, shimmering faintly in the sunlight. But it was the aliens themselves who really caught his attention.
He'd seen images of the bodies that had been recovered from the wreckage Ark Royal had left in her wake, but this was different. Up close, the aliens were a shimmering multitude of colours, some bright green, others orange or even yellow. Compared to them, the difference between white and black humans — or even his father’s brown and his mother’s yellow — looked imperceptible. He felt a chill running down his spine as he saw one of the aliens staring at him, his — or her — black orbs meeting his and refusing to look away. It was impossible to escape the feeling that he had been weighed in the balance and found wanting.