Captive's War 1: The Mercy of Gods

Nine

Five days. The war for Anjiin lasted five days.

Now, Dafyd lay on the paving stones of the plaza, face down and arms out at his sides. His kneecaps ached where they pressed against the ground, and he shifted from time to time, changing the angle of his legs to search for a position of comfort. The relief he found only lasted for a few minutes before he started to hurt again. His shirt clung to his skin. He’d been wearing it for the whole five days since the invasion. He didn’t think he’d ever worn something for five continuous days before. Never in his life. He wished he could go back to his rooms and get something clean.

The ground was cool, but sunlight warmed his back. With his head turned to the left, he could see the coral stairs that led to the hospital and the narrow streets of the old district. The stones beneath him were dark, but with a translucent depth to their surface. The brightness brought out a subtle rainbow sheen like oil on water that he’d never noticed walking across them. A handbreadth from his shoulder, four blades of grass grew out of a crack, the first of them thicker than the others and ridged. Different species vying for the same tiny patch of soil and sunlight.

On the other side of the grass, out past the tips of his fingers, a woman lay with her face turned away from him. She had thick, dark hair that stood out from her head like a cloud. Her blouse was blue with embroidery the color of marigolds, and she had only one shoe. In the hours since they’d all been placed there, she hadn’t moved except for the slow rise and fall of her breath.

Beyond her, there were others. If Dafyd turned his head, there were more. The whole plaza was filled with people lying on their bellies, arms splayed. The morning breeze murmured and huffed in his ears. People wept and cried out. The monsters or aliens—he didn’t know how to think about them—walked among the bodies and around the perimeter, talking to each other in their eerie, fluting voices. Most were the pale centipede-like things that called themselves Rak-hund with footsteps that clicked like hail falling on slate tiles. A few were Soft Lothark: squat-bodied things with their unnaturally long limbs. Twice, he’d seen the massive creatures that seemed to be in control of everything. Dafyd’s mind tried to make them into giant shrimp or unthinkably vast cockroaches that bent up at a right angle in the middle, and then gave up trying to find an analogy. None of those had spoken around him. He assumed they were the Carryx.

He needed to urinate, but he was afraid that if he asked, they’d kill him.

Four of the team had managed to stay hidden in Else’s rooms through the worst of the violence: Else, Tonner, Irinna, and himself. Else had tried to find Jessyn and, despite Tonner’s contempt, Rickar, but the communications network was already failing. After the first attack, Campar had gone out to retrieve Nöl and Synnia and he’d never come back. When the power failed, they stayed in the darkness. When the hydraulic systems went, they used an old cleaning bucket as the toilet.

Then the aliens found them. Dafyd hadn’t seen Tonner or Else or any of the team since then.

Dafyd had been taken to a holding corral like an open-air prison built in the loading yard of a quarry west of the city. A square of fencing as long as a city block and half that wide with hundreds of people milling around under the glare of work lights or sitting or curled up and asleep on the dust. The ones who weren’t silent were asking each other the same questions: What was going on? What were these things? Had you seen someone in particular who they knew and loved? There were very few answers.

Every hour or so, Rak-hund or Soft Lothark soldiers brought a few dozen more to add to the crowd, and then gathered some up and led them away. The night sky was all stars behind the glowing, regular grid that still surrounded the planet like the bars of a jail cell. The haze wasn’t clouds, but the smoke of planet-wide fires. But what caught Dafyd’s attention was the fence.

It was taller than a man, and made of a semisoft polymer he didn’t recognize. The mesh was just about big enough to poke one finger through, and perfectly uniform except for an almost invisible seam every so often where it looked like sheets had been fastened together. The poles that sank into the ground appeared to be thicker, more solid expressions of the same material. If it was something manufactured on Anjiin, he’d never seen it before. If it was prefabricated and brought here along with the invaders, that meant they’d known the kind of organism they’d be trying to control. An elephant or lauzhin-elk would have pushed over the barrier with ease. Octopuses or rats would have passed through the mesh maybe without realizing that it was supposed to mark a border. So the invaders had already known the size of the animal they were going to corral.

That fit with the efficiency the aliens were showing in processing them all through whatever judgments they were making. The way they’d translated their chittering and wet smacking and deep bass birdsong into human language. They’d known what lived on Anjiin before they’d come. It was a data point. He didn’t know what he could do with it, but his mind clung to it like a life raft on a storm-tossed sea. If there were patterns, he could make sense of this. He could learn what was going on. Understanding was both his only entertainment and the only power he had now. Having any power at all was the comforting self-delusion he clung to.

Just before dawn, one of the big aliens—the Carryx—arrived, hauling itself along on two massive forelegs while four others on the abdomen hurried along behind and two thin arms near its face manipulated a small black box. When it whistled and chirped, the device made a series of sounds like two pieces of meat being slapped together, and three Soft Lothark turned and walked to it. So there was some kind of simultaneous translation going on, maybe. The same system that let the aliens speak to humans also overcame differences in their bodies and semantic systems. The Soft Lothark muttered among themselves, turned back to a gate in the fence, and lumbered through on their stilt-like legs. One of them found Dafyd and put its claws on his shoulders and lifted him to his feet, leading him out with a dozen others.

The prisoners were tied neck to neck with a length of what seemed like the same material the fence was made from. Someone at the head of the line started shouting and waving his arms; aggressive, angry, frightened. You can’t do this. I will see every single one of you fuckers dead. The Soft Lothark conferred among themselves, removed the man from the line of prisoners, and watched while a Rak-hund stomped him to death with its knife legs.

When the man stopped begging and screaming and breathing, the Carryx took the end of their leash and started walking a little too fast for comfort. Dafyd and the others had to trot to keep from choking. Someone was weeping and moaning. Someone else telling them to shut up and keep walking. Dafyd’s mind remained weirdly blank, turning over the sight of the man being killed like it was still happening. Like it would always be happening. He felt detached from it, except that he was nauseated and his throat felt almost too tight to breathe. That could have been the leash.

When they reached the plaza, the Soft Lothark had taken the prisoners off the rope one by one, pushing them to their knees, and then their bellies, and drawing their arms out to the sides like they were being crucified on the stone. They did this gently, but insistently. He kept waiting for them to murder someone, but by the time it was his turn to lie down, they hadn’t. He took his position on the stone next to the four blades of grass and the woman in the blue-and-marigold blouse.

In time, the sun came up. His knees ached. He wanted to change his shirt.

He lay prone and aching. The sense of urgency in his bladder grew more immediate, and then a little more bearable, and then almost painful in a rising spiral that couldn’t end well for him. The ground seemed to be throbbing under him as if there were some silent construction project nearby sending shock waves through the earth. It might just have been his body.

The woman coughed, or maybe sobbed. A Rak-hund slithered through the lines of bodies, and someone cried out. Dafyd braced himself for the wet ripping sound of its legs sliding in and out of someone’s flesh, but it didn’t come. A new, unfamiliar being trotted down the stairs from the hospital looking equal parts goat and cuttlefish, and one of the massive green-and-gold overlords lumbered behind it. He steeled himself to rise up to his knees and ask for permission to piss somewhere besides here.

Before he could, sirens rose. A moment later, a human voice amplified through a bullhorn cut through the air.

“This is an Irvian Security Service action. Shelter in place. If you are on the street, leave it now. This is an Irvian Security Service action.”

The hiss of ground transports speeding across pavement was like an angry swarm of bees. Dafyd took the chance of lifting his head. Across the plaza, a dozen other heads were also up. A few people had even risen onto their elbows. That seemed to Dafyd like a terrible risk.

The aliens had paused, their collective attention turning toward the noise. Dafyd didn’t sense any fear in their movements, but he also knew that he might not recognize it. The sirens grew louder.

Two emergency-service transports slalomed around the corner, blazing in from the direction of the old town. Their lights flickered white and red. Dafyd was afraid they would try to cross the plaza, maybe not recognizing the people laid out there until they’d already crushed them under their wheels. But the security force skidded to a halt in time.

“Alien invaders,” the voice from the transports said, “you have five seconds to lay down your weapons.”

But looking at them, Dafyd didn’t see anything he recognized as weaponry. The aliens didn’t seem to carry guns or blades. If they did, he didn’t know what they looked like, or even how anyone would be sure they’d put them down.

A dozen Rak-hund boiled forward, making a barrier between the transports and the huge green-gold carapaced one—the Carryx—with their bodies. The goat-and-cuttlefish scampered back up the steps. Apparently it wasn’t a fighter.

The Carryx shifted. Its four back legs splayed out like a wrestler lowering their center of gravity. The two thin arms at its front folded in and away, vanishing into its body or its armor or its shell. The thing reared back, and the two massive forelegs lifted and spread out. It reminded him of a spider raising its front legs or a bear hoisting itself upright. A threat display. Not a surrender.

The transports opened and figures in riot armor spilled out, rifles in their hands. Dafyd felt a surge of hope grab his throat. He rose to his knees before he was aware that he meant to. He could sprint to the edge of the plaza and to the south. He knew the streets and alleys here. He could get to shelter. Find a place to hide. The pale thousand-legged beasts shuddered and surged, but they didn’t move forward. Not yet.

At the edge of the plaza, the air began to thicken. Like a cloud of gnats appearing from nowhere, tiny dark bodies swirled around the security forces. At first, the armored people seemed not to notice them, then sparks began to appear, glittering on the armor and the transports, tapping like tiny firecrackers. Shouts of alarm rose from the security forces, and they charged. The report of gunfire was deafening—the crack of hypersonic rounds, the bright flashes and stink of chemical propellant floating through the air. The Rak-hund flooded forward in a counterattack.

A voice in the back of Dafyd’s mind screamed Run, but his body didn’t move. The violence at the plaza’s edge was as hypnotizing as a fire. A Soft Lothark pointed a small device and the air sizzled the way it had when an eighth of their world died. One transport’s roof was struck a dozen times by projectiles from the sky. The vehicle interior flashed brightly, and thick black smoke poured out of its open doors. The pale things surged around the security team, bone-thin legs cutting through their armor and the soft bodies beneath.

A soldier broke free of the tangled mass and sprinted toward the Carryx with rifle chattering. Dark holes appeared in the green-and-gold shell, and some dark liquid—blood or oil—gouted out. The alien’s back feet shuffled it forward as fast as its enemy was running. When they came close, the huge arms slammed together too quickly for Dafyd’s eyes to follow. The lone soldier dropped to their knees, then folded in a way unbroken spines didn’t fold, fell in a way intact rib cages didn’t fall, and slumped to the stone in an undifferentiated lump. The air around the soldier’s body still carried a faint pink mist, which Dafyd realized was atomized blood. Their rifle clattered to the stones.

The transport sirens barked once and died. Silence washed over the plaza. The Carryx lowered its forelegs, settling onto the pavement in repose or triumph or death. The security forces were barely recognizable as human: They’d become meat and bone and cloth. The bodies of four Rak-hund lay scattered on the ground, their blood as pale as water and stinking of vinegar, but a dozen more were pouring down the stairs from the hospital, two more of the huge green-and-gold Carryx lumbering behind them.

Dafyd lowered himself back to the pavement and spread his arms. The woman in the blue-and-marigold blouse had turned her head toward him at last. She was older than he’d expected. She had her eyes squeezed shut, and she was repeating something to herself over and over with the intensity of prayer. It took him almost a minute to realize she was saying Please wake up. Please wake up. Please wake up.

He didn’t notice the goat/cuttlefish until it was standing by his left shoulder. Its three pairs of what he assumed were eyes seemed unfocused, like it was looking past him.

The thing’s voice was the same as the one that had made the first announcement, that all the aliens spoke in. It came from a small square that hung around the thing’s neck. “I am of the Sinen. We serve the Carryx. Confirm that you identify as Dafyd Alkhor.”

“Yes, that’s my name.”

“Your assignment is research assistant.”

“Yeah. Yes. It is.”

“Your place within the moieties has been determined. Follow me.”

As Dafyd rose to his knees, he said, “I have to piss. Urinate. Do you understand what that is?”

The alien turned its unfocused eyes back toward him. Its grunts and sighs sounded weirdly human. The voice from its neck repeated, “Follow me.”

It led him to one of the hospital’s public washrooms and stood by the sinks as if it had forgotten him. He closed the stall door behind him. As his pain ebbed, Dafyd felt grateful and ashamed for being grateful. He’d taken enough psychology courses to know what motivated gratitude for small kindnesses from an abuser, and he felt his shame shifting into a deep anger.

Afterward, he washed his hands and face, pausing to drink as much water as he could from his cupped palms. He considered taking off his shirt and squeezing some soap and water through it, but he had the sense that he’d stalled enough already. He didn’t know what would happen if they decided he was taking too long.

The Sinen led him through the city, passing streets that Dafyd had walked through for years without really noticing. Every now and then, one of the familiar buildings was gone, replaced with a glowing pit in the ground. His legs ached and he started getting lightheaded, but he didn’t complain.

After almost an hour, they reached a civilian landing pad where an alien ship was waiting. It had the same bronze color as the devices he’d seen encircling the planet. An archway stood open, a half dozen of the green-and-gold Carryx beside it.

“Is this a transport?” Dafyd asked. “Are you taking me somewhere?”

His guide didn’t answer, but waddled ahead. Inside the ship, a dozen people stood or sat or lay on the floor. A few looked at him, incurious and exhausted, but most ignored him. He even recognized a few of the faces. The woman whose poetry had won the Lannin grant last year sat in the corner, resting her head against the wall. The old man standing beside her was Virem Tzobar, who had led the project that the research colloquy had singled out the year before. Something about fluid dynamics. And across the wide, low space—

“Campar!”

Campar looked up from where he was sitting on the floor. His hair was oily and lank. His shirt was scorched all along one sleeve, and a jagged gash marked his cheek. When he smiled, he winced. There was a warmth in his voice. A relief. “Ah, Dafyd. Good to see you. I’m sorry I didn’t rejoin the party, but I was unavoidably delayed.”

Dafyd crossed through the thin crowd and sank down beside him. Without thinking, he took Campar’s wide hand in his. The other man clasped him back. For a moment, neither one could talk. There were tears in Campar’s eyes.

A dozen questions pushed their way toward the front of Dafyd’s overstretched mind. What happened to you? Where are they taking us? There wasn’t enough left of him to choose one.

“What’s going on?” fell out of his mouth.

Campar nodded, scowling as if taken by some profound thought. He was quiet for a long moment,

then leaned his head close, his voice low and conspiratorial. “I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”