"Tell your men to relinquish their weapons, Captain," the Edra holding me hissed, his words coming out with a slight slur, as if he were making sounds he wasn't used to. "Tell them to do it now, or I will order my soldiers to execute them."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Kyle still had his pistol. Though he was on the deck, and had an Edra rifle in his face, he was still in the game. His pistol was pressed against his attacker's stomach. At that range, if he fired, he would tear the Edra in half, armor or not, and probably kill the one behind him, too.
I glared at the Edra holding me. "Kiss my ass. I'm not telling my men shit."
The Edra seemed confused by my reply. He cocked his head to the side quickly. It was odd to watch, like seeing something happen at double speed. I remembered that from a briefing I attended years ago; the Edra naturally move faster than humans, much faster. It also meant they had reflexes humans couldn't compete with. That's how they hit us as fast as they did.
The Edra holding me hissed and clicked at another soldier, who was standing in the shadows. I could see that the other soldier had several pieces of equipment that the others did not, including an odd band of light which extended from a small device attached to his skull, and wrap over his eyes. Edra used neural interface technology, and this stuff was wired directly into his brain. Why he needed a screen in front of him wasn't something I had ever heard explained properly, but apparently it had something to do with the way their eyes worked. It wasn't something the Edra discussed with other species. They kept their technology very close to their chest.
After a moment, that Edra hissed and clicked at my captor, who turned back to me.
"Your words are intended as a show of strength," he hissed, "in an attempt to intimidate me, and force me to change my course of action. I am not impressed, nor frightened. I will ask one more time. Order your men to relinquish their weapons, or I will order my soldiers to execute them."
"My man fires," I said slowly, "and your guy goes home in two bags."
He cocked his head to the side again, that same rapid movement. "If your soldier fires, he will kill his target. Two of my soldiers will return fire, and kill him. I will execute you, and others will kill your remaining soldiers. My mission will continue, but yours will not."
"Say the word, Jack," Kyle said, never taking his eyes off his target, or his finger of the trigger.
I took in a deep breath, and held it. The commando was right, unfortunately. I looked to Kyle and sighed. "Stand down, Kyle."
Kyle slowly lowered his pistol, and his assailant tore it from his hand. The Edra handed off the pistol to someone else, and with one hand, lifted Kyle to his feet in a single motion. Kyle was two hundred and fifty pounds on his own, over three hundred altogether with his suit and gear. The Edra was his height, perhaps a bit taller, but far thinner. He looked utterly frail by comparison. He lifted the man like he was a ten pound mannequin, and threw him against the bulkhead beside me. Kyle hit the wall with a thud, grunting from the pain. A moment later, Raj and David were standing beside us.
The Edra, ten of them, lined up in front of us, their rifles up. I was starting to get the impression that we were on the business end of a firing squad. The Edra held very still, their red-black slit eyes looking down the barrels of their slim rifles at us. The Edra at the center, the one who had spoken to me, looked right at me. I stared right back at him, sizing him up.
Unlike his soldiers, who wore close-fitting helmets which covered all but their face, this one was bare-headed. The Edra looked almost human, but not quite. Humanoid, or so went the term. No hair, no ears, no nose, no eyebrows. The skin was a dark gray. The Edra's body was very thin, and the scaled armor covered everything from neck to toe. Even the hands were gloved. He had a ridge above his eyes that gave him a permanent scowl, the thick scaly skin shining in the flickering light. When he spoke, his sharp, black teeth gleaned. He had long, sharp fangs, though his lips moved only slightly when he spoke, so they barely showed.
He watched me closely, not my eyes, but my body language.
"You're trespassing aboard Earth military property," I said evenly. "What are you doing here?"
"The same thing you are, Captain Jack Mallory," he replied as he continued to look me over. "You and your men were deployed to the Saturnus to halt the temporal experiments."
"What I'm doing here is none of your fuckin' business," I replied. I nodded toward his men. "You and your men need to leave this ship right now."
The Edra blinked slowly, his red-black slit eyes staring at me. It was unnerving. He stepped closer, almost toe to toe with me, and looked very closely at my face, as though he were studying it.
"I wonder if you humans understand just how easily your intentions and thoughts can be read, based solely on your facial expressions." He breathed in deeply. "In addition, your pheromones practically broadcast your current state of mind. Looking at your soldiers, I know they are angry, frustrated. You are all of these things, and something else besides."
I shook my head. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"No," the Edra replied. "I do not suppose you do, not yet. You will, though. All of you will. However, I lack the time to explain further. We have others subjects to discuss."
"If you're gonna kill us, don't talk our ears off first," Kyle said with a snarl.
I shot him an annoyed glance, but the sentiment was true enough.
The Edra did not even look toward Kyle, though he was obviously annoyed at his words. "Why does your soldier address me, Captain Jack Mallory? It is not appropriate for a soldier to speak on behalf of his commander. None of my soldiers," he said, gesturing to the nine Edra behind him, "would dare to speak in my stead. Please instruct him to remain silent."
"Why don't you look him in the eye and tell him, yourself?" I replied.
The Edra seemed perplexed, cocking his head once more. He turned back to the other Edra, the one with all of the extra gear. They conversed for a moment.
"It would be inappropriate for me to give orders to your soldiers," the Edra explained. "It would not be respectful, which is why I asked you to order them to relinquish their weapons, instead of doing so myself. I expect the same courtesy from you. Obviously, this is a custom your planet has failed to learn. I find that quite chaotic, and rather barbaric."
"You've got us up against a wall," I said with a huff. "You want me to be polite to you before you shoot me? Really? Kiss my ass."
The two Edra spoke again. The one in front of me nodded. "You are operating under a false assumption. I will not order my soldiers to fire, so long as you take no action against us while we talk."
I looked to my men, and I could see that they were as shocked as I was. This was a first. Edra commandos were not known for sparing lives. In the century or so since becoming aware of the Edra, neither our diplomats nor intelligence agents had ever come across a single account of survivors from a raid by Edra commandos. They tended to appear suddenly, kill everyone, and then leave quickly. The Edra rarely flexed their muscle, but when they did, it was not a partial job.
"You're not going to kill us?" I asked, suspicious.
The Edra shook his head. "No, Captain Mallory. If my orders included killing you, we would have done so the moment we captured you."
"Then what do you want?"
"I wish to converse with you, and exchange information," the Edra replied.
"And then?" I wondered out loud.
"And then you and your soldiers will be free to leave the ship," he explained. "Is this acceptable to you, Captain Mallory?"
"How do you know my name?" I demanded.
He nodded. "I will interpret that as a 'yes' to my question." He reached behind him, and one of his men handed him my rifle. "If I return your weapons to you and your soldiers, do I have your word that you will not fire on us while we speak? This is what you would call a show of faith."
I wasn't sure how long this little truce would hold, but for the moment, ten against four was hardly good odds. I nodded, and the Edra handed me my rifle. Once all of our weapons were returned, the Edra motioned for me to step away from the rest of the group.
"My name is First Soldier Esaal," he explained, extending his hand. When I did not take it, he cocked his head again. "It has been explained to me that this is how humans introduce themselves formally. While I do not understand the custom, I have been ordered to show this courtesy when applicable."
I looked back and forth between his eyes and his hand, wondering exactly what sort of game this creature was playing. I slowly reached out and took his hand. His grip was tight, almost painfully so. I did my best not to show it as we shook. When he released me, he put his hands behind his back.
"I am told that this posture helps to indicate that I will not harm you," Esaal went on. "I am explaining these things, Captain Mallory, in order to ensure that you understand my intentions. I have never dealt with humans directly until now, and I do not wish to make an error which will lead to unnecessary violence."
"Again, how do you know my name?" I asked.
"I am entirely aware of you, your marine reconnaissance squad, and the details of your mission aboard the Saturnus," Esaal replied. "Of course, I will not explain how I know this, and I suspect you will not bother pushing on a question you know I will not answer. Like me, you are a soldier, and that profession is not very different for us than it is for humans."
I decided to cut to the chase. "Well then, soldier to soldier, why don't you tell me something? If you aren't here to kill me, who was shooting at us, earlier?"
"That was us, Captain," Esaal said plainly. "To be clear, my orders are not to spare your lives, nor are they specifically to kill you. My orders are to halt the temporal experiments aboard this vessel, recover the ship's time core if possible, but destroy it if necessary. Now that you are neutralized, I have no need to kill you and your men. I can continue on with my mission."
"I see," I said with a nod, turning to look at my men. "And now that we're neutralized, what happens to us?"
"I am in need of information you possess, and I am certain you require information from me. After this exchange, we will escort you to an emergency escape pod a short distance from here. I believe you are scheduled to be rescued in five days, and human escape pods aboard military vessels can sustain a full compliment for twenty three days."
Esaal spoke with such a matter-of-fact tone; I knew it was useless to argue. That was something else I remembered from the briefing; Edra were very clear and direct when they spoke. Of course I had no intention of leaving this ship, outnumbered or not, but he didn't need to know that at the moment. Edra were not used to being ignored or refused, so I had no idea how he would react. Well, maybe I did. After all, the Edra objected to these experiments, and when the government ignored them, they sent in commandos.
"So," I prompted him, "ask your questions."
"I wish to know if you spoke to Commander Hall, the ship's Chief Engineer," Esaal asked, consulting a small device he pulled from a hip pocket.
I nodded.
He consulted with the pad. "Did she explain to you the time fragmentation being experienced by this ship?"
I nodded again.
"Excellent," Esaal said with a sharp nod. "This saves me having to explain the concept to you. I doubt that I could do so in terms you would understand. Now," he consulted his device, "what does she predict the state of the central core to be?"
I stayed silent. I was not in the habit of divulging secrets to the enemy. Technically, the Edra were not enemies of Earth, but considering the current circumstances, they were hardly here as friends. Esaal sensed my hesitation.
"Captain Mallory, I am only interested in confirming my own predictions. I am not interested in your petty secrets. I assure you, I know far more about this vessel's design than you, Commander Hall, or the people who designed it."
"Then why do you need to ask me about it?" I replied.
"Very well, Captain Mallory," Esaal said with a grumbling hiss that I took to be an Edra sigh. "I assume Commander Hall predicts that the central core has suffered an extreme fragmentation of time. Also, she has likely predicted that the fragmentation across the rest of the ship has definite, clear borders. Can you confirm that?"
I felt my face go just a little red, partly out of surprise, but also from annoyance. How did these people know so much? They had names, mission details, and they seemed to know a great deal about how that Saturnus worked. I said as much.
"How do you know all of this?" I asked again.
"I see you enjoy asking the same questions repeatedly, even when told you will not receive an answer." The Edra seemed more dismissive than annoyed.
"Both of us want answers to our questions," I said.
"Indeed, we do," Esaal said with a slow nod. "In truth, we know exactly how the Saturnus' time core is supposed to function, even if your own scientists do not. We are here to fix the problems you have created."
"We have everything under control, but thanks anyway," I said, trying to dismiss him.
"Control is the one thing, Captain Mallory, which is entirely lacking in this situation. You have no control over what is occurring on this ship. The crew of the Saturnus lacked control over their temporal experiments, and the time core they used to conduct them. Your government lacked the control required to properly focus your research into areas more suited to your species' rather basic understanding of the universe, Finally, at the very heart of the matter, your long-range explorers lacked the self-control required to suppress the temptation to steal this technology from our derelict ship to begin with."
I felt my eyes go wide, though Esaal's placid express remained.
"Had your exploration vessel not taken what clearly did not belong to it," the Edra continued, "or had your government chosen to return it to us when we asked for it, this emergency would not have happened. No, Captain Mallory, control is the one thing your species lacks. This lack of control has led directly to my mission. We are here to take control of matters before things become worse."
I was about to reply when I heard commotion from around the corner. Esaal and I both turned toward the sound. Two engineers, their uniforms clean and pressed, jogged down the passageway past where my men were standing. They didn't seem to notice us at all, with the light above us blown out. Everyone held perfectly still and quiet until the sound of their feet faded in the distance.
Esaal called out to his troops as he ordered me back to my men. They exchanged hisses and clicks that became increasingly loud. Several of the Edra were consulting pieces of equipment that I took to be scanners. One of them pointed down the passageway where the damage control team had come from.
"This conversation is over, Captain Jack Mallory," Esaal explained firmly. "You will now exit the ship through the emergency escape pod down that passageway." He pointed with his long, slender fingers.
"I thought you had more questions," I said.
"I asked the required question, and despite your refusal to vocalize it, you did provide me with an answer. Therefore, we are done."
"Hey," I said, taking a step forward, "now I have questions."
The moment I stepped forward, the Edra soldiers all had their weapons pointed at us again, including Esaal. My guys raised their weapons, too. They stepped forward, going toe to toe with the commandos. Esaal cocked his head, and glowered at me.
"This conversation is over, Captain Mallory," he insisted, baring his fangs. His tone took on a dangerous tone. "You will comply with my instructions, or I will order my soldiers to fire."
A scream from our left startled us, and we all turned to find two security officers jumping back from the scene in surprise. One of them dropped his flashlight as he fumbled for his sidearm.
"Whoa, what the hell?" the other man yelled.
Before either of them could get a handle on the situation, the Edra turned and opened fire, cutting both men down in a sudden burst of fire. It was over before I could say or do anything. Their smoldering, shredded bodies fell to the ground with loud thuds.
Esaal started to hiss orders to his men, and I acted. I stepped out of his line of fire, flicked the power switch on my rifle, and tilting it upward, fired once. The plasma bolt tore through his rifle with a spray of fire and sparks. I felt my hair singe from the blast. The blast was small, but blinding. I had to shut my eyes, with my last image being Esaal stumbling backward. That was something else I remembered from the briefing on the Edra, all those years ago; they had a real problem with bright flashes of light.
Before I could open my eyes again, I felt a pulse of energy wash over me. My ears rang loudly, and I fell backward. My head hit the deck hard, and when I opened my eyes, I was looking up at the ceiling. Everything was circling and blurred. I looked to my left, but all I could see was the flashing of weapons fire, followed by a silent, blinding light and another pulse which forced my eyes closed again.
Through the deafening fog, I felt two hands grab me and violently drag me to my feet. I squinted, and saw Kyle and David holding onto my arms and pulling me along. Raj was firing, and I was sure I saw two Edra go down.
"Come on, Jack!" Kyle yelled through the ringing in my ears. "Move!"
We all hurried around the corner, and I felt my rifle shoved into my hands. Still rattled, I hurried along, following Kyle at our front. David pushed me along from behind. I could hear Raj swearing loudly as he fired from our rear. We dashed down the passageway, turning left and right too fast for me to follow. After a moment, we came to a dead end. There was a reinforced hatch on the deck, at the end of it.
I was set against a bulkhead, while the guys did their best to sort out the situation. I tried to catch my breath, and focus. My ears still rang from Raj's stun grenades, and there was a bright spot in the middle of my vision from my own contribution to our escape. I held my hand out in front of me. I was still seeing double.
"Nice suntan," Kyle said, looking back to me. He wasn't smiling.
"Bad?" I asked, feeling my raw skin. At least I still had my eyebrows.
"Like a really long day on the beach," Kyle replied. "You're almost as dark as Raj."
"Great," I grumbled, still trying to shake off the blur and bright spot.
"You're still not as pretty as me," Raj said. "You are turning a nice lobster-red, though. We should get some burn gel on you."
"Later. Are they following?" I asked through the haze in my head, trying to focus all of us back on the task at hand.
"I don't think so," Raj replied, keeping his eyes on the end of the passageway. "We gave them a very bloody nose, back there. They'll think twice before charging after us. I got two that I'm sure of."
"Two for me," Kyle added.
"I think I got one," David said as he worked the control panel beside the hatch. "They still outnumber us, though. And that assumes we saw all of them."
"How many troops can a squid ship carry?" Raj asked.
I gave my head another shake, desperate to clear my vision. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to make the spots go away. I put my hand over my closed eyes, doing my best to keep any light from getting in. Still, the spots pulsed away. I felt a hand on my arm.
"Hey man," David said quietly, "are you going to be okay?"
I nodded. "Yeah, but if you don't open that hatch, we can ask the Edra about their ship's capacity when they catch up with us."
David went back to his work, while I moved up to Raj and Kyle. The passageway was dark. Most of the lights were out, but at least the few working lights didn't flicker. My eyes were thankful for that small bit of mercy. I looked around. No damage. The deck plates were all sitting properly. The wall panels were all in place. No scorch marks.
"Where are we?" I asked, looking for a location marker on the bulkheads.
"Just above the central core," David said from behind me. "This hatch leads down into a decontamination compartment, and from there into the core itself."
"Hang on," I said, moving back to David. "You heard what Commander Hall said."
"Bah!" he said to the control panel. "The access codes Bishop gave me aren't working."
He pulled a small device from his butt-pack, and set it down beside the panel. Using a small powered screwdriver, he removed the cover from the panel, pulling away the small screen and keypad, and exposing the wiring underneath. He pulled two small leads from his little device, and connected them to the panel's innards.
He continued on as he worked. "I heard her, but I think she's wrong," he said.
"How do you figure?" I asked. "I thought you didn't understand this shit?"
He shook his head. "I don't, but the Edra obviously do." He smirked. "One of their people had a hand-pad with a map of the ship."
"He showed it to you?"
"Not really," he said as he watched his device display endless combinations of letters and symbols as it tried to open the hatch locks. "They're transparent, and with the way he was holding it, and trying to keep his rifle on me at the same time, I got a pretty good look at it."
"And so?" I prompted him. "What's the deal?"
"The deal, oh captain my captain," he said with a wider smirk, "is that based on what I saw, the core isn't any worse off than the rest of the ship."
"You're sure of that?" I asked.
"Pretty sure," he replied, as he changed the leads around on the panel. "That doesn't mean it won't be an ugly place to be with all that radiation, but it isn't the 'cloud of broken glass' that Commander Hall said it was."
"How sure are you?"
"Sure enough to prefer checking for myself than to waiting for the Edra to catch up with us," he said. "We're already here, so we might as we see if we can shut things down from here. Probably not, since all of our access gear is wrecked, but who knows? It's worth a shot." With that, the locks clicked and opened. "I'm in."
As David packed up his gear, Kyle and Raj hurried to the hatch, and with some effort, opened it up. I gasped at the strong antiseptic smell that blew up at us from the hatch. The small white room at the bottom of the ladder was as clean as modern technology could manage. Pointing my rifle down the hatch, I moved around it, trying to see as much as I could. I didn't want to jump down into an ambush, whether that was the Edra or the crew.
"Alright, helmets on," I ordered. "Down we go."
"Cool," Kyle said, stepping up to the edge of the hatch. "Nice to see part of this fuckin' ship that isn't falling apart or burning down."
With that, he took a single step forward and dropped down into the small compartment. He leveled his sidearm and turned around the room, checking out every corner. After a moment he waved us down.
"Clear," he called up to us and stepped out of the way.
"You're sure about this?" I asked David. "You're sure the core is safe?"
He nodded. "I heard what Esaal said to you, and he's right. This technology is way out of our league. I knew that the moment Commander Hall gave me the map of the time fragmentation."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because I watched her input the figures as she calculated the fragmentation" he said with a shake of his head, "or at least pretend to. She lied to us, Jack. I watched her closely enough to know that she typed in utter nonsense, nothing but gibberish. She doesn't want us seeing the core."
I sighed. "What the hell is wrong with these people?"
David shrugged. "Let's get in there and find out."
I sighed. "Yeah."