The Ascent

Chapter 30

The Swords were a strange looking race. For one thing, they had no foreheads. The tops of their heads ended just above insane looking glittering golden eyes, giving them a deformed and unintelligent look somewhat like a micro-encephalitic. They had tiny flat noses that rested on something that looked like a beak or a bill with tiny sharp teeth and no chin. Their little round bodies stood on long skinny legs and had short arms with ridiculously long hands and fingers that moved in quick sudden jerks. They had some sort of short natural covering like feathery down across the back of their limbs, bodies and heads, the latter of which seemed to hang down behind their shoulders in a boney extension. They wore clothing in bright solid colors made from some material like velour or velvet.

"Weird looking things." Smith watched the trooper yell at the alien on a monitor which displayed the nearby room.

"Apparently fragile too," I said. "A couple have already died from rather ordinary treatment. Kouvaras tells me they have to treat them like eggs."

"Do they talk?"

"Apparently they understand Indweller. No telling what their gibberish means. The interrogators are using machine translators."

Kouvaris' man, a Psy-Ops Specialist by the name of Stafford was in the room with two of them asking questions. He had interrogated them for hours.

Kouvaris entered our observation room and stepped up to the monitor.

"Don't you have any more persuasive ways of getting them to talk?" Smith asked.

"Yes, sir. If we need to, we can—intensify—the interrogations. We're concerned because of their delicate nature."

"You have spares, don't you?" Smith asked.

I shot him a dark look, surprised by his apparent blood thirstiness.

He looked a little taken aback at the accusation in my eyes. "We don't have time for this," he explained. "The entire fleet is trapped at the edge of the system. More of their scattered tribes may come at any moment and we have nowhere to go. We have to find another way around them. We have to do it now."

Kouvaras gave me a raised eyebrow.

Smith was right. The longer we delayed the greater the chance The Swords would gather enough forces to destroy us. They had used other paths to get around us, we could use those same paths to get around them, we just had to know where they were.

"Do what you must," I said.

"It may require that we kill one or more of them," Kouvaras warned.

I reminded myself they had destroyed several of our ships, killed hundreds of our crew and, if they had their way, we'd all be dead.

I nodded.

Kouvaras turned and left the room. I saw him reappear in the interrogation room and speak quietly in Stafford's ear. Without missing a beat, Stafford turned around and pulled on something like a set of surgical scrubs. He wheeled over a cart bearing rows of sharp implements and carefully arranged them on a tray.

I looked at the aliens strapped to their chairs, but they didn't seem to take any special notice of the tools. They didn't seem to have any idea of what was about to happen and I wondered if they had ever seen anything like what was going to happen next.

"You have told me there are no other routes beyond the next system," Stafford continued. "I know that is a lie. If you do not tell me the truth I will have to hurt you."

The alien squawked something back at Stafford, but I couldn't hear the translation on the audio pickup.

Stafford pushed the cart up next to the chair and turned the alien's long hand over palm up. He held it down on the cart, leaning on it as he took a scalpel and drove it through the alien's hand.