Peace Army (12 page)

* * *

Ceeray was enjoying life on the alien ship.

She walked the corridors as she pleased, without fear. And the time she spent helping Gee work out the mystery of the control room and its myriad of panels, screens, and data streams was… well, exciting.

For the first time in a long while, she felt alive. Her work was rewarding. Her talent with the Minith language was appreciated. She was contributing to a task that was important and worthwhile.

She felt…
special
.

Ceeray had been an interpreter for the Minith for more than a decade. With Avery and three other women, she had accepted a Leadership Council offer of freedom from Violent’s Prison in exchange for working for the alien invaders. At the time, she had felt that nothing was worse that Violent’s Prison, and had jumped at the opportunity to leave its rough, uncivilized life behind.

Unless you could fight, or had some talent that made you valuable to the Square in which you lived, life for a woman in the prison was harsh.

It was especially hard for someone raised by a loving family. Someone who had always heard, from a very young age, that she was special.

At the core of her being, Ceeray knew she wasn’t any more special than the other girls in her school. But when you hear it over and over, you begin to believe it—or at least, try to make others believe it.

As a teen, Ceeray did things others never did. Acted in ways others would never act.

She stole things because no one she knew would ever
think
of stealing. She showed up late to class. She refused to complete work assignments and stopped showing up for shifts in the fields. She ignored the confused pleas of her parents and the teachers who tried to help her.

Ceeray pinched, poked, and tapped the prettier girls when no one else was around. She never left a mark, and she never really hurt anyone, but the idea of doing something so
unexpected
and
forbidden
made her shudder with delight. Just hearing one of her targets squeal as she pinched a rib made her feel…
special.

What Ceeray failed to consider was that society did not
do
special. The world in which she lived was built on the premise that everyone was equally
un
-special. Nonconformists were not tolerated. They either conformed or they were re-trained. When re-training failed, there was only one solution.

Ceeray was sent to the place built for and run by nonconformists.

Violent’s Prison.

After a week in her new home, Ceeray never wanted to be special again. But it was too late.

Life in Violent’s Prison was ruled by a simple premise: survival of the fittest. For a woman, that usually meant attaching yourself to the fate, mercy, and wishes of the toughest, smartest male you could find and hoping no one stronger and meaner came along to take you.

Ceeray had been an inmate for six months when word filtered through the prison that volunteers were needed to live with the aliens. She hesitated for less than a minute before traveling to the Outer Square where she joined hundreds of others, mostly women, who were willing to leave a life of known hazards inside the prison for one of unknown hazards with the Minith.

Unlike those who were born inside the prison, Ceeray knew the aliens were cruel and ruthless. But she did not care. She jumped at the chance to get out.

Ceeray waited in the Outer Square for two days without food and water for the representatives of the Leadership Council to arrive. By the time they did, the assembly had grown to more than two thousand hopefuls.

The crowd was immediately thinned when the representatives announced that only N’mercan women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four would be considered. It took an hour for the men and women who did not belong to that group to disperse. When they did, a crowd of roughly two hundred women remained. They were directed to a cordoned-off area between the outer wall of the prison and the Outer Square building, where tests were performed.

Ceeray did her best to provide what the testers requested. She submitted to a rigorous physical, underwent a battery of mental tests, and even wore a transference-educator device for several minutes. After her time with the educator, Ceeray could speak passably in an obscure Afc’n dialect. Some who underwent this testing could converse with her in the new language; others could not. The ones who could not were sent on their way.

At the end of the tests, Ceeray and four other women were selected. They were placed on a carrier and transported to the alien mothership.

Upon arrival, the Minith conducted their own tests. It didn’t take long for Ceeray to realize that life with the Minith was more dangerous than life inside the prison.

Of the five women sent to the aliens, only Ceeray and Avery, a lifelong resident of Violent’s Prison, survived the testing and became interpreters for the aliens.

Ceeray was glad that Avery had escaped. They had survived the Minith torture as a team. When she was ready to give up, Avery helped pull her through the pain. As a result, they shared a uniquely strong bond.

Unlike Gee, Ceeray had no qualms about giving up her life in exchange for destroying the aliens’ planet. If it took her death to ensure Avery’s future—a future without the presence of the Minith—then so be it. It was a price she would gladly pay.

It made her feel special.

Chapter 16

“Do you think it will work?”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Gee asked. The lack of sleep over the past six weeks was obviously taking its toll. The engineer looked tired—and he was definitely irritable. “This will work. We can accomplish both our primary goals.”

“Yeah, I’ve been listening,” Titan replied.

He was amused at the change that had come over the chubby engineer. Just weeks ago, Gee would have been frightened to look him in the eye. Now, he was chastising him for not listening.

“I just want to be sure we aren’t missing something,” he continued. “This is one of the most important decisions any human being is ever going to make.”

“We can’t mess this up,” Ceeray agreed.

The four sat in the same chairs they had occupied on the first day of their journey. They took the same seats every time they gathered in the command center.

“I’ve run the simulations,” the engineer countered. “We have a ninety-eight percent probability of success.”

“Is that a ninety-eight percent probability that we can destroy Minith? Or ninety-eight percent that we can destroy it
and
escape?”

“That is the percentage of getting the bomb to the planet and activating it. I don’t know if it will destroy the planet. The Minith say it will, and the database describes two successful tests, but who knows for sure?” Gee explained.

“What about our safety?” Derk asked. Titan knew where Derk’s priorities rested, but he let the comment pass.

“That’s anyone’s guess,” Gee continued. “We should be safe from the explosion, but we do not know how the Minith will react.”

“If we blow up the planet, can they chase us?”

Derk’s question was valid, but it still irritated Titan. He did not feel Derk was fully engaged with what they were trying to accomplish. The quiet interpreter would be happy to turn the ship around and scurry back to Earth. Titan refused to consider the consequences of that action. If they didn’t act to stop the Minith, the aliens would eventually send a larger, more heavily armed force than the previous one.

It’s one thing to send a hundred soldiers to watch over a Peace-loving population that refuses to fight back. It’s quite another scenario when that same population has shown the desire and the ability to kill those hundred soldiers.

From the messages that had come to the ship from the alien home planet, it was evident that the aliens were curious about the unexpected but impending return of the mothership. Although there was significant lag time between when they were sent and the time it took for the messages to reach them, they all carried the same general question.

Why did the mothership leave Earth?

The single, vague message Ceeray returned to the aliens promised explanations and answers upon arrival. It was a straw house at best, and the group felt increasingly more exposed the closer they got to Minith.

“Derk, we don’t know if they will allow us to come near the planet,” Ceeray patiently explained. “They could send out ships to intercept us before we can get the device to the surface.”

“Which is why
this
plan makes the most sense,” Gee interjected. “If we send the smaller carrier to the planet, the Minith will be much less suspicious.”

The presence of a smaller, space-worthy vessel in the mothership’s bay was a real boon. The carriers in the bay were not capable of space travel, so were useless for their needs.

“So, the real question remains,” Titan summed up the crux of the conversation, “can we program it to work?”

Gee straightened in his seat and bobbed his head.

“With a ninety-eight percent probability of success.”

* * *

“Gee, are we close enough?” Titan asked. The engineer consulted a readout on the console and nodded. “Okay, then. Halt the ship’s progress. Ceeray, send the message to the Minith.”

Titan felt the aliens had reached the end of what little patience they still had. The incoming messages from the alien War Council were arriving with increasing regularity as they approached the planet. The last one announced the impending arrival of a contingent of Minith fighter craft and demanded the immediate halt of the mothership.

Ceeray keyed in the message they had worked up days before and sent it. It informed the Minith that there were problems with the communications system, but everything was fine. It also alerted the aliens that Commander Brun, the former commander of the Minith forces on Earth, would be boarding his personal vessel within minutes for a final approach to the planet.

Without waiting for a response, Titan sent Derk a message over the ship’s internal comm system. Titan, Gee, and Ceeray all watched the video feed as the interpreter went about his task. It took him less than two minutes to prep the small ship and exit the bay. A few seconds later, he gave a wave to a video feed from the adjoining corridor, indicating that the passage to the bay was secured.

“Send it on its way, Gee,” Titan ordered.

“Here goes,” the engineer replied as he pushed several buttons.

Three pairs of eyes were glued to the video feed coming from the launch bay.

The seconds crawled by.

The gap between the bay’s top door and bottom door grew from a thin crease into a smile, then into a gaping yawn as the doors opened fully to the vacuum of space.

A moment later, the ship carrying the Minith bomb lifted off and exited the mothership. As one, the group released their breath and looked at each other.

“Well, let’s hope we can avoid your two percent margin of error, Gee,” Titan remarked.

* * *

Vantgo slapped the lone button on the gray metal console and growled at the incoming barge.

“Proceed to the right.”

A single tone of acknowledgment was returned by the barge. It veered to the right and lumbered away. Where it was headed was anyone’s guess. Vantgo did not care where it went as long as it followed his instructions.

“A ten-year-old pre-recruit could do this job,” he hissed and pounded the console again.

His request to transfer from the Minith home world to the secondary planet of Waa had been denied, and Xrla was not pleased. As every Minith knew, when the female was not pleased, the male was not pleased.

Xrla had not been pleased for some time.

The looks of disapproval that had once motivated him to work harder and strive for higher positions had stopped long ago. They had been replaced by blistering, verbal assaults against his competence as a male. She blamed her lack of status on his lack of aggressiveness toward peers and superiors. He suspected she was courting other males and wondered when he would be tossed aside for a more suitable partner.

He slapped the button harder this time.

“Proceed left!” he shouted into the communication unit. The incoming troop transporter ship sent the obligatory blip and proceeded left.

He acknowledged Xrla’s right to push him toward advancement—and to seek another mate if he could not meet her expectations—but acceptance of her prerogative did not dampen the rage he felt, a rage fueled by the suspicion that she was correct.

As a race, the Minith were experiencing an unprecedented period of growth. They had captured and enslaved more than a dozen worlds over the past thirty years and had established trading agreements with a half dozen others. The raw materials and wealth they took from their conquests were used to fuel the Minith expansion to other worlds. What they could not use themselves, they traded or sold to other, lesser worlds. Worlds they had not yet conquered.

Vantgo knew that his inability to improve his standing and position was unacceptable. He and Xrla were being left behind as more capable males seized the best housing, won the best positions, obtained prized relocations to less-populated worlds—worlds where opportunities were even greater.

Vantgo’s new posting was the final act that tipped the scales against him. He, Xrla, and every other Minith above the age of eight knew this job was given to the lowest dregs of workers. It was awarded to those who could not fight, who showed no promise as a leader, who displayed no ability to trade, sell, or administer.

He was an Incoming Ship Director.

Vessels carrying cargo were sent to the right. All others were sent to the left. The senior Ship Directors took over down the line, passing the vessels
along the system until each reached its destination. The responsibilities of those males were no greater than his—most still just provided “proceed left” or “proceed right” instructions—but the Incoming Ship Director was the low male in the pecking order.