“Is this right?” asked Lycon.
“Yes, Highborn. My team awaits your orders whether to bring them around or not.”
“Meaning what?”
“They’ve been given Suspend, Highborn. Both are very much alive.”
Shocked, Lycon wondered what this meant to him. Maybe nothing at all or maybe— He nodded. “Yes, revive them and let me know when they come around.”
“Yes, Highborn.” The monitor saluted and marched away.
Lycon thoughtfully rubbed his jaw and then he turned back to the reports and kept on reading.
An hour later Lycon stood in a sterile medical center. A gnomic doctor in a green gown stared meekly at the floor while nurses hurried by. A level down was the Neutraloid surgery room. This level saw to burn and revival victims.
“Are they both lucid?” asked Lycon.
“Yes, Highborn,” said the doctor, a wizened old woman with bad breath.
“Have either made any statements?”
“Both were cautious, Highborn, and were clearly terrified. They raved, in fact, one of them trying to break free to kill the other. At my orders, both were been given tranquilizers. They are heavily sedated.”
“I’ll see them anyway.”
“Yes, Highborn.” The old doctor opened the nearest door.
The room was small, with two steel-lined beds, each holding a white paper-clothed occupant. Short, broad-shouldered Ervil lay strapped to his bed. He stared at the ceiling with blank-looking eyes. Hansen kept testing his straps, until he noticed Lycon. He paled considerably.
“You may leave,” Lycon told the doctor.
“Yes, Highborn.” She hurried out.
Hansen managed to pry open his lips. “You-you-you.”
Lycon cocked his head. As a former Chief Monitor Hansen should know better than to speak first, even drugged he should know. Why was it that both the Praetor’s chief monitors lacked proper protocol skills?
“You are an odd species,” said Lycon, moving closer, putting his hands on the bed’s stainless steel railing. “Given rank and trust you turn around and practice the worst kind of deceit. Whatever motivated you to manufacture dream dust?”
“Motivated me?” croaked Hansen. “What about you?”
Lycon shook his head. Hopelessly deranged this one. He had scanned the report of the 623 Prowler’s find. It had been a hanger of some kind, and by the particle traces in the hanger, a spacecraft had left within the past few weeks. These two had probably planned to escape and been double-crossed and left behind. As Chief Monitor Hansen had an enviable life ahead of him, Lycon couldn’t understand why he would make drugs and then try to flee to who knew where?
Hansen drooled and spoke in sly undertones. “You killed Bock for a reason. I know that much.”
“Highborn,” corrected Lycon. “When you speak to your superiors you must use the correct protocol procedures.”
Hansen blinked several times before he asked, “If you’re so high-born how come everyone’s been able to trick you so easily?”
“Explain.”
Hansen’s head lolled back and forth across his pillow. “No, no, no. Nothing for nothing is my motto. If you wanna know then you gotta promise to help me.”
“Don’t trust him,” warned Ervil.
Lycon was surprised that Ervil meant the warning for him. “Why shouldn’t I trust Hansen?” he asked, bemused by these two.
“Because he’s a double-dealing bastard. I’ll kill when I get the chance.”
“Be quiet, Ervil,” slurred Hansen. “We gotta use Lycon and get him to help us.” With his long, sly face, Hansen regarded Lycon. “You’d better deal with me. It would be in your long term interest.”
Lycon snorted at their audacity. Two hopeless buffoons that had no idea of the danger they were in. The best way to use them surely was as a lever on the Praetor. It seemed incredible that these two had been the masterminds behind the dream dust operation.
“So do we have a deal?” asked Hansen.
For their lack of proper protocol, he should discipline the premen. But what was the use? Lycon strode from the room and found the wizened old doctor.
“Yes, Highborn?”
“Transfer those two downstairs,” he said.
“To the Neutraloid section, Highborn?”
He checked his chronometer. “Do it immediately and inform me when the operations are complete. Oh, and by the way, tell no one about this, not even the Praetor’s people. I want to surprise him.”
“Yes, Highborn, it shall be as you say.”
27.
The cell door slid open and a shock trooper shoved Admiral Rica Sioux in. She staggered and collapsed in a heap, the front of her dress uniform spotted with blood. She’d been captured during the fighting and later had the privilege of watching the shock troopers break her officers. A brutish monster named Kang had laughed as he’d used a shock rod on the First and Second Gunner. Both had died under the shock trooper’s caresses, revealing nothing about the beamship’s functions. The Pilot however had broken after the third shock-rod stroke.
Thus, the enemy had been able to turn the Bangladesh and now braked at two-Gs. Kang had then continued to torture the others for further information, turning the command-capsule into an abattoir.
“Are you all right, Admiral?” asked the Tracking Officer. They were in a security cell, six of them packed in a room built for two.
Rica Sioux spit blood from her mouth. They had knocked out her false teeth and had given her drugs to keep her tripping heart from quitting. Her chest thudded, knotted and it made breathing a dreadful chore. She knew that at best she only a few hours left.
“They’re monsters,” said the Tracking Officer, as she knelt over the Admiral and carefully blotted blood with a dirty rag.
“It doesn’t matter,” whispered Rica Sioux.”
“Yes it matters,” said the Tracking Officer.
Rica Sioux closed her eyes. The Bangladesh was doomed. The monster in the command capsule was doomed. Sadly, so were the last of her officers. She’d seen the dead shock troopers laying in their battlesuits. Too bad, they hadn’t been able to kill all the enemy space marines. She’d asked to speak with the cunning leader who had foiled them, the one who had called her and had led the smaller team. None of the enemy had looked at her then. That’s when her beatings had really started. So she’d asked only once more, and Kang had knocked her teeth out one by one, telling her to mind her own business.
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” asked the Tracking Officer.
Rica Sioux opened her eyes and closed them again. The Tracking Officer had only been a blur. Anyway, it hurt her head too much trying to see. She wouldn’t tell why it didn’t matter because she was afraid the officers had all cracked. They knew she planned something and worked no doubt for that monster in her command capsule. The Highborn had trained him well. That monster, Kang, he was much more clever than he looked. He understood about breaking people. It was an art with him. Her officers should have let her blow the ship.
“Admiral!”
“Leave me alone,” whispered Rica Sioux.
“She’s dying,” said someone.
“Better tell Kang.”
Rica Sioux smiled. There! Now she knew they had been cracked.
“Admiral!”
“Good-bye,” said Rica Sioux. Her old heart defeated the drugs trying to keep it going. The ancient organ quit and Admiral Sioux stopped breathing.
28.
Marten woke up outside the beamship, secured to the underside of a blasted particle shield. He’d slept nineteen hours. It didn’t repair his extreme exhaustion, but he’d woken with an idea. That’s how it usually went with him. He had a problem. He wrestled with it and then he went to sleep. When he woke up or during a shower, the answer just popped into his head.
He could use a shower now. His jumpsuit was grimy and he itched all over. As he sipped water from his tube and relieved himself—a battlesuit’s waste-disposal system reverted a shock trooper back into a baby with diapers. He went in his suit and the battlesuit flushed the body wastes for him. A handy feature, Marten supposed, but he always felt strange using it. In any case, he slurped concentrates and began the journey back into the beamship.