In Extremis Read online

  The most immediate of Vasiht’h’s fears did not manifest, though: the pirates never molested them. They were fed and otherwise left to their own devices. They had a small bathroom, robbed of anything they might use as a weapon, even soap, and a single bare mattress. Computer access had been locked down, and there were no objects in the room, or windows; they had nothing to distract or entertain themselves with but each other, and panic made it difficult to contemplate conversation. On Vasiht’h’s part, at least. The Slave Queen did not seem inclined to initiate anything, but it was hard to accuse her of panic given her perfect patience.

  Thus, several days. Maybe. There was no way to tell without a chronolog or a computer. Vasiht’h struggled not to scrape his fur off with the paw-rubbing, and took one too many awkward showers in the tiny shower compartment with no soap, and paced, or slept. He didn’t think he would have been capable of sleep, but anxiety was exhausting and so was boredom.

  There was no warning when everything changed. One moment, the enervating sameness of their captivity, edged with sour apprehension… the next, the door opening, and guards taking them by the arm and shoving them out. They and the other prisoners were marched down the corridors of the vessel and out of it, and finally Vasiht’h realized how wrong the Slave Queen was. She’d told him there would be a way out of this, when they’d first met. That they would rescue themselves. But the scene before him was so beyond such naïve hopes that Vasiht’h forgot how to be frightened.

  They stood now in rows, chivvied there by the slavers, in a dock so enormous he couldn’t see its walls, and its ceiling was poorly defined to his sight. There were other slave vessels unloading or loading cargo alongside them, facing the vastness of space with only a forcefield between them and its vacuum. But the ships took up only the smallest part of that space, because the rest of it was taken up by cages.

  So many cages.

  So many cages they were organized into grids, like city blocks. By species, he saw. Thousands of people, catalogued and kept like merchandise. Each person had a cube to themselves, and as Vasiht’h watched from his position beside the Slave Queen, slavers forklifted individual cubes out of the blocks and drove the slaves in them to different vessels for loading.

  The wave of misery and despair rolling from these cages was almost physical. The susurrus of their sounds a gloss over it: weeping, pleading, sighing, moaning. There were, he saw among them, children.

  Vasiht’h was neither hero nor soldier. For all he’d courted Fleet personnel as clients for their private practice, he’d never felt the passions that motivated them to volunteer for the military. And this war with the Chatcaava… he hadn’t considered it frivolous, precisely. But some part of him had secretly believed it to be unnecessary. That somehow, somewhere, there was a way to end the fighting with a diplomatic summit, a retreat. It was all a misunderstanding. He was a xenotherapist, expert in psychology and communication; he could have explained how to circumvent the whole mess, he was sure.

  His claws inched from his feet, scraping against the metal deck. Faced with the impossibility of their escape, he should have been terrified. Instead, he was possessed of an anger so towering it would have scared the him of a day ago.

  He hadn’t understood. He did now. There were things more important than his personal survival. It didn’t matter if he died or not, if he could die making sure this place stopped existing.

  Goddess, he whispered. Hear me. Help me change this. Help me make it not be.

  “All right, separate them out,” one of their captors was saying. “You know the drill.”

  Kill me, if you must, but let my sacrifice help stop this.

  “What about that one?”

  They were pointing at the Queen.

  “Not her. She’s for the Admiral.”

  They were dragging him away from her now, his claws squeaking on the metal deck. Her eyes were on his, solemn orange. He willed her to hear his resolve.

  We might not get out of this. But I am going to die fighting. Not for myself. But to end this forever.

  A tiny dip of the end of her nose.

  That trip through the maze of corridors, surrounded by the anguish of his fellow prisoners… his ribs ached, flexing so hard, and it wasn’t sobbing, it was hyperventilation, as if he was straining toward a great effort. He was trying to break away from his captors, and trying not to. To rampage amid this hell—he couldn’t. Not yet. They would put him in a cage of his own, but he had to go. He didn’t know enough yet. He had to prepare. He had to use the time he spent imprisoned here carefully.

  They shoved him into a transparent cube barely large enough to turn in, so small he could lift his arms and touch the ceiling. And all around him were other Glaseah though not, he saw, many. The cubes in their block were only partially filled. Maybe Glaseah made poor captives, or there was little demand for them as slaves. Or maybe there had been a run on them, like some product in abrupt demand—ludicrous idea, to talk of people like products, and yet. Here he was. There was no one to either side of him he could talk to. No one above him. And no one strong enough for him to sense through the fire of his anger.

  Ordinarily he would have felt isolated and terrified. The resolve that filled him instead was strangely devoid of panic or pleasure. It felt disconnected from every emotion he’d felt before. Looking up at the bay’s distant ceiling with its exposed ductwork and the enormous lights, Vasiht’h found himself thinking of Lisinthir in the Empire.

  Had this been what he’d felt? This terrible composure? This sense of anticipation?

  Sitting sphinx-like, Vasiht’h composed himself to wait. To listen. He folded his forepaws over one another and did not chafe them against one another at all.

  It did not surprise the Queen that aliens were also capable of cruelty. Following her captors out of the bay, she reflected that the true surprise in her life had been that there were people in the universe who weren’t cruel. Of any species. That in fact the universe might be composed of mostly good people, and that what she’d witnessed all her life had been the aberrations.

  There were a great many aberrations. But then, there were a great many sentients in the universe.

  Outside the bay the corridors could have belonged to any alien ship. They did not strike her as poorly maintained; the people passing her walked briskly, and their gazes did not waver. Only one sneered at the sight of her, and by then the fault surprised her. From the conversations she’d overheard in Second’s and Third’s presences, she’d assumed pirates to be lacking in discipline, but she could detect no such lack in these pirates. Even their clothing was impeccable.

  That gave her the first pang of disquiet she’d experienced since accepting her capture.

  The trip to their destination took a great deal of walking. She stopped trying to remember the turns and the number of lifts they took. But she was satisfied: surely no mere lackey would be so far into the base.

  She was not disappointed when at last her captors brought her before the Admiral. Not in the room, at least, which was enormous, lavishly appointed—many furs, she noticed, perplexed by them—and punctuated by what was obviously a throne despite its soft cushions and modern materials and the translucent displays floating around it like a mandorla of glowing blue and green light.

  The person they were there to see, though. A female, and tiny. Not a Seersa, like Laniis, but similar in build, with smaller ears and a longer, thinner tail. She was the cream of clouds at sunrise, with cold eyes despite their golden hue. Wearing… a uniform? The uniform puzzled the Queen, because it looked much like the one she’d seen Laniis in during their communications. But surely no member of the Alliance’s military would be permitted to live in the stronghold of pirates and criminals?

  “Admiral,” said the one holding her left arm. “This is the personal gift from the dragons.”

  “Good. Bring her closer, I want to see.”

  The Queen expected to be dragged, so when the two guards shoved her she stumbled to
her hands and knees, spreading wing-arms that no longer balanced her with the weight of their vanes.

  “Did you do this?”

  The menace in the woman’s voice froze the Queen in place.

  “No, ma’am,” said the guards. “She came that way. Check the viseo records, you’ll see.”

  “So the dragons sent us this. As a present. A mutilated female. When we know they don’t value women.”

  Nothing from her guards. The Queen didn’t blame them. She wouldn’t have been eager to answer the seething cold in that voice either.

  “You may go.”

  Their boot-steps receded rapidly. The Queen heard the door open and shut, leaving her to the silence of the vault with its angry occupant. She didn’t lift her head, concentrating on the fur under her hands. Very soft. Silvery. She wondered what animal it had come from, and why the female bothered with it. She lived in a climate-controlled environment and had fur of her own. Surely she didn’t need additional warmth?

  A small hand grabbed her by the tip of her nose and lifted her face by it. Some things remained the same, the Queen thought. No matter their species, those in power always felt they could make free with the faces and bodies of their captives.

  “So,” the female said. “You’re the former Chatcaavan Queen. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You speak our language. Impressive.” Her small alien eyes thinned, their bright irises and slit pupils reminding the Queen uncomfortably of a Chatcaavan’s gaze. “Tell me. Did they intend to insult me?”

  Strange how quickly some decisions made themselves. It took only the memory of Second gloating over the defeat of the Emperor, and the casual way the Usurper had ordered the deaths of those on the field, for the Queen to choose her path. “Yes.”

  “I thought so.” The alien smiled crookedly, showing the gleaming teeth on that side, one of them pointed. “You have no lost love for them, do you.”

  “Why would I?” the Queen replied, following her course with increased serenity. Pain had taught her silence… but love had taught her how to lie. “They have beaten, raped, and abused me all my life. They mutilated me so I could no longer dream of flying.” She met the pirate leader’s eyes and said, calmly, “I hate them. And they intend to use you until you have served their purposes… and then kill you.”

  The female laughed. “I’m sure they do. I have different plans, though.” She let go of the Queen’s face and strutted to her throne, perching on its mounded furs. “I don’t let anyone insult me. I don’t let anyone betray me. And I don’t let anyone tell me what to do. Not anymore.” She spread her bare foot on the fur at the base of the chair, each separate toe kneading the pelt until its hairs bristled. “So they gave you to me, thinking I would believe this a great gift.”

  “They certainly thought you a male who would enjoy the use of an alien female,” the Queen offered, to see what this alien would think of her interrupting. “As Chatcaava do not believe a female capable of wielding power.”

  “Maybe,” the female said, eyes glancing off the displays floating in front of her before focusing again on the Queen. “Or maybe they know I’m a woman and they wanted to pacify me with a gift of someone like me. Another Queen. Because I am one, you know. A queen of pirates. An admiral of criminals.” She grinned, showing all her teeth.

  “I do not doubt it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No,” the Queen said. “I have seen faces like yours before.”

  That put the alien’s ears back and narrowed her unblinking eyes. “Like mine… you mean other Pelted women’s? Cute? Small? Furry? Like pets?”

  What word to choose? Warrior? Lord? She went with her instinct. “Other killers.”

  The other female sat up slowly. “Killers.” And a smile spread over her face like a wound spilling. “So. You recognized the furs.”

  The Queen did not glance down, despite her sudden desire to do so.

  “They say serial killers take trophies,” the female resumed, relaxing into her chair. “I don’t think of myself as a serial killer. These aren’t trophies. They’re warnings. I’m done letting other people decide my fate for me. People who get in my way… die. And they don’t escape me in death. I strip them and use their skins for pleasure, so they can never be free.”

  The calm that descended on the Queen felt familiar, liberating. The world that the Ambassador had drawn her into, where kindness and compassion made people unpredictable, where love saved worlds through mechanisms she could not fully understand… she had left it behind, and re-entered a world populated by the callous, the sociopathic, and the insane. And for once, there were no hostages for her to worry over. Only herself.

  And she knew, very well, how to deal with the insane.

  Bowing her long head so that her mane fell over her shoulder, the Queen shivered and waited, and as she expected the madwoman said, “Oh, no. Don’t do that. You don’t have to bow. You were a victim, just like me. But they made a mistake giving you to me and pretending it was a gift. Not just by insulting me. But they’ve set you free. And you… you hate them. Don’t you.”

  “Yes,” the Queen answered, fixing her thoughts on Second and the Usurper. “With all my beating heart.”

  The pirate queen laughed. “Oh… you and I. We have so much to talk about. Won’t we?”

  “Yes, my-better,” the Queen answered, chancing the honorific’s translation into Universal.

  “They taught you to grovel so well, didn’t they,” the female said. “Those days, though. Those are over. Later. Later, you and I will discuss our mutual enemies. For now…” She waved a hand. “You can make yourself comfortable in my bedroom.”

  In the end, they were all the same, the Queen thought, as she walked on the pelts of the female’s vanquished foes into the adjacent chamber. The bed was mounded with furs and pillows, and on a table by the bed smoldering incense accentuated the musk scent rising from those trophies. It was always ‘wait on my pleasure.’ And almost always ‘wait in my bedroom.’ But that bothered the Queen not at all. Practice in these endeavors she had in plenty.

  They called you passive, my lady, but they mistook endurance for passivity.

  I understand now, she thought to him. I know my own strength. And I will not fail you. Either of you.

  The fur on the floor by the bed was tawny with splotches of brown and orange. She chose it because it reminded her least of anyone she’d met and kneeled on it in an attitude of subservience. She did not trust the female’s show of camaraderie. Best this Admiral believe her to be beaten down in spirit, the better to be underestimated. She would not make the mistake she’d made with Second again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mounted on the wall—down and shoved into what amounted to a closet in the suite—and then up again the following morning, after a turn in a lavatory, barely long enough for him to struggle with the alien fixtures. The second day of Jahir’s work as the Usurper’s decoration started in an empty office with darkened screens and a neat desk. There was no sign of breakfast; his body’s craving was so intense it was nauseating, and he felt a headache building behind his brow. Tempting to use the time alone to sweep the palace with his mind, get some sense of the number of people in it and their allegiances, but knowing how much energy that took… no. He had to wait until he’d been fed, or the roquelaure would kill him before his enemies did. Would that not be ironic?

  The wall behind him was stone and he was naked, and the chill was already seeping from his back to the rest of him. Lisinthir had never allowed him to grow cold. He let his head loll to one side, watching the gooseflesh rise along one white arm. Sensed the tremor of skin wasting energy in an attempt to keep him warm. So much for his attempt to minimize his calorie usage. One thing, he thought to his absent cousin, that you did not plan for.

  At length, he heard the door open. Not for the Usurper, however. The golden male who entered sat in the chair on the near side of the desk and turned to face Jahir. Setting an el
bow on the desk, he cupped his cheek and studied the Eldritch with luminous turquoise eyes, silent. There was no need to read his mind to know his thoughts: this was Second, who had preferred him dead; who had called him and all his kind a disease. He would give nothing willingly to Jahir that could be used against the Chatcaava… nothing save this scrutiny that revealed his wariness.

  Jahir didn’t bother with any contest of wills. He closed his eyes and waited, willing his skin to forget the cold. Food first. Then all the rest. Perhaps he could end it before it began. Would killing the Usurper accomplish that? Or was that wishful thinking?

  “You’re early, Second,” the Usurper said from the door. “Don’t tell me you came to admire my wall-hanging.”

  “I am not admiring it,” Second said. “I am assessing it.”

  “Is assessment necessary?” Jahir opened his eyes, watched the Usurper walk around the desk and sit in the chair there. “The freaks are ugly. They are improved by objectification.”

  Second squinted at Jahir, as if seeking some reaction. When Jahir remained silent, the male said, “You should put him away while we’re talking.”

  “But I want him to watch the destruction of his nation. It should be instructive.”

  “Yes,” Second said, baring his teeth. “Exactly. He doesn’t need instruction. What he sees, he can reveal—”

  “To whom, exactly?” The Usurper twisted his head to stare at Jahir. Unlike Second’s, his eyes were a greasy yellow-green, too cloudy for any of the usual gem-like comparisons the dragons’ eyes invited. “I don’t plan to release him from the tower.”

  “It’s said they can read minds…”

  The Usurper laughed. “Let’s say they can. Is there something in yours you don’t want me to know about?”

  A sudden pause as all of them wondered why the Usurper had chosen that particular example. Jahir held his breath.

  Second exhaled sharply, annoyed. “Dying Air, don’t be ridiculous. No, of course not. But he could learn things and tell them to his keepers. Unless you’re planning to wash him yourself? Feed him? Doctor him when his health starts failing?”