A Learning Experience

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ying System

It was a curious fact — Cn!lss attributed it to the stubbornness of the average Hordesman — that stunners didn’t have quite the same effect on them as they did on most other races. They were immobilised, sure, but they could still hear and feel what was going on around them, even though they were helpless. He could hear the Hordesmen chattering as they picked up their victims and carried them off, then picked up Cn!lss himself.

An odd sense of fatalism fell over him as he was carried away. Maybe he hadn’t been captured — recaptured — by his own Horde, but he had no reason to expect anything other than an inglorious death. Hordesmen who were captured were expected to kill themselves — and Hordesmen who didn’t kill themselves were generally killed anyway by their captors. No one would seriously believe a Hordesman to know anything worth sparing their lives.

He listened, carefully, as they were carried through the city. He knew better than to expect rescue; part of the reason he’d recommended Ying in the first place was because it was almost completely lawless. No one would object to the humans scanning the libraries for information, but no one would move to protect them too. They were captives now… where were they going? And why had they been targeted?

Cn!lss found it hard to believe, as he heard the sound of a door opening ahead of them, that the Hordesmen had been watching for humans in particular. Had they been watching for the missing starships? But they weren’t a part of Cn!lss’s Horde… he pushed the thought aside and waited, feeling a brief spurt of pain as he was dropped on a stone floor. Moments later, his entire body jerked as someone zapped him with an shocker. His eyes snapped open, revealing five armed Hordesmen and a single small blue alien.

There was a groan from beside him. Cn!lss turned to see the human — Kevin, he reminded himself — sitting upright, clutching his head. The small alien snapped his fingers and another alien appeared from the shadows, carrying a bottle of water. A servitor, Cn!lss realised, someone from yet another race that had no hope of standing on its own two feet. He would be a servant all his life, just as the Horde were nothing more than brutish mercenaries, slaves to the races that could and did build their own technology. Would the humans, too, end up like that?

“I believe we should talk,” the small blue alien said, addressing Kevin. “We may have made something of an error.”

Kevin had been concussed once before, during a mission in Afghanistan that had very nearly been the end of him. It wasn’t an experience he’d enjoyed. Now, he had to fight hard to keep from throwing up as the tall green alien offered him water to drink. The alien was oddly cute, pretty much a green-skinned alien space babe. But the genitals, if they were genitals, were completely different from anything human. Staggering slightly, he managed to pull himself to his feet and stared at the smaller alien confronting him.

He couldn’t help thinking of a mutated Smurf. The alien was short, barely taller than Yoda, with bright blue skin, no hair and eyes that were as dark as the inky blackness of space. He — Kevin assumed it was a he — wore a loincloth and nothing else, revealing a bare and utterly hairless blue chest. He couldn’t help thinking of the alien as a child, yet there was no doubt that he was the one in command. The Hordesmen clearly deferred to his authority.

The Horde are mercenaries, he thought. I’m looking at one of their masters.

“An error,” he repeated. Beside him, Romford was still stunned. “What sort of error?”

“It was our assumption that you were allies or slaves to the Varnar,” the alien said. “Their willingness to use your people as cannon fodder suggested the latter. We were therefore prepared to go to some distance to locate your homeworld and recover samples of your people for analysis. It simply did not occur to us to attempt to contact you openly.”

Kevin felt his eyes narrow. That showed an alarming awareness of events on Earth. Had the aliens hacked the starship database? Or was it simply a coincidence? Or a deduction?

“We maintained a watch for all traces of human life,” the alien continued. “When you arrived, you were noticed. The fact you had a Hordesman with you suggested that you took one or more of their ships.”

“Indeed,” Kevin said, feeling sweat pouring down his back. “And who, might I ask, are you?”

The alien leaned forward. “My name does not fit well into any galactic tongue,” he said. “I am called Master by the Hordesmen, but I hope you will come to think of me as Friend.”

“Right,” Kevin said, doubtfully. “I need to call my ship, Friend, and inform them that we are safe.”

Friend made an elaborate bow. Kevin hesitated, then reached for the communicator and tapped in a code to signify that they were alive and well, but the situation was as yet uncertain. There was a brief response, then silence. Kevin nodded, then turned back to the alien.

“We clearly have a lot to tell each other,” he said. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“We should move to a more comfortable location first,” Friend said. “This building is not entirely… friendly.”

Kevin nodded, but allowed the aliens to shock Romford awake and then lead them through a set of twisting corridors into a large dining room. Everything seemed designed for children, he realised, as the alien motioned them to a table. One of the stools was barely large enough for an adult human man. Two more of the green-skinned aliens appeared from nowhere, carrying trays of food and drink. Kevin eyed it doubtfully, then picked up something that looked like a potato wedge, just to be sociable. It tasted rather like fish and chilli.

“I will start at the beginning,” Friend informed him, as he took a swig of something that looked rather like green beer. It smelt faintly unpleasant. “The Varnar were appointed” — there was a pause as the translator struggled to provide a translation — “satraps of this region of the galaxy, as the Tokomak didn’t care enough to do it for themselves. Since then, they have waged war on the remaining spacefaring races.”

He paused, significantly. “We believe that the Tokomak deliberately chose to start wars that would prevent us from becoming a major threat to their beloved status quo,” he admitted, thoughtfully. “The race they chose as their representatives didn’t have the strength to do more than fight, rather than crush us all like bugs. Even if that wasn’t their desired outcome, it was what they got. For the past” — another pause — “three hundred years, this sector has been locked in a bitter war.”

Kevin frowned. There hadn’t been that much mentioned about the Tokomak in the datafiles they’d captured, apart from the fact they’d developed FTL and used it to bind large sections of the galaxy together. There was no hint they were an empire, let alone that they assigned other races to serve as their subordinates in certain parts of the galaxy. But then, given that the files had been intended for the Horde, it was possible that large parts of galactic history had simply been overlooked.

Friend scratched his right ear. It took Kevin a moment to realise that it was intended as a smile.

“Things have changed, recently,” Friend continued. “The Varnar have been deploying a new set of cyborgs, constructed from human brains, flesh and blood. Those cyborgs have proven distressingly effective on the battlefield, allowing them to finally start making gains against their enemies. In short, the war might be lost in as little as two hundred years.”

Kevin sucked in his breath. Humans had fought the Hundred Years War, but it hadn’t been an endless series of military campaigns. Indeed, there had been long periods of peace between bouts of fighting. And besides, the technology for decisive advances and battles simply hadn’t existed at the time.

But, on an interstellar scale, two hundred years was nothing.

“We decided we needed to recover samples of our own,” Friend admitted. “We chose to use deniable assets for various reasons.”

Ensuring that the Varnar didn’t know you knew, Kevin guessed. The story did seem to match with what they’d been told, although he wasn’t sure how much of it they could take for granted. Friend might have his own reasons for telling a version of the story that wasn’t entirely true. But he had to accept it, for the moment.

He leaned forward. “Why us? What makes our brains so special?”

“We believe, from what little intelligence we recovered, that the Varnar did not need to do much modification of your brain tissue to turn you into combat cyborgs,” Friend said. “It is possible that your race is unusually comparable with standard neural interfaces, or that that the Varnar performed genetic modification on the samples they captured and then force-cloned tissue from them. Or it is vaguely possible that they did something else and convinced us that your race was particularly special to hide what they’d done.”

“Humans would prefer to believe that,” Kevin said. The thought of seeing Earth turned into nothing more than a reservoir of genetic livestock was terrifying. Or destroyed. The Varnar, if they realised that humans were breaking out into space, might strike first. “Let us cut to the chase then, as we humans say. What do you want?”

“Your assistance,” Friend said. “We would like humans to fight with us against the mutual foe.”

“Human mercenaries,” Kevin said. There were humans who would volunteer to fight, he knew, purely for the adventure. Hell, if worst came to worst, he had authority to discuss the prospect of selling human military services. But this… this would get them involved in a war they knew next to nothing about, even if Friend was being completely truthful. “And what would you offer in exchange?”

Friend pressed his fingertips together, then spread them out. “What would you like in exchange?”

Kevin took a breath. “Starships and technical support,” he said. “And help in developing a modern industrial base.”

There was a long pause. “You wish to become more than just soldiers?”

“Our race is very — very — inventive,” Kevin countered. “But we can only be inventive in your favour if we have the tools to do it.”

“So it would seem,” Friend said.

Kevin could understand the alien’s fears. They might be exchanging one enemy for another… but, even so, it would take years for humanity to match the Varnar as a threat. The aliens had to know that, didn’t they?

“We wish the services, then, of five thousand human soldiers,” Friend said, finally. “As a down payment, we will provide certain forms of support right now.”

He paused, again. “We will provide you with five large freighters, fifty shuttles and ten unlocked fabricators. And some technical advice you can use to start producing your own technological base. Would that be sufficient?”

Kevin gambled. “Twenty unlocked fabricators,” he said. How desperate were the aliens for human help? The longer they delayed, the harder it would be to stave off defeat. But would human help really prove decisive? “And we want some warships too.”

“We can extend you a credit line so you can buy older ships,” Friend said. “There is no shortage of vessels comparable to the one you captured. But we cannot sell you modern warships.”

“Understood,” Kevin said. “And the fabricators?”

“They will be provided,” Friend said. “In exchange for this, we want the humans on this planet within” — another pause — “four months, five days. Once they are here, they will be transported onwards to the war front. We will provide weapons, care and feeding.”

“They’ll want to be able to write home,” Kevin said. He couldn’t help wondering what was he sending humans into. What sort of role would a mere five thousand humans play on the battlefield? Or were the aliens thinking that they would serve as shock troopers? “And go home from time to time.”

Friend blinked at him. It was a disconcertingly human gesture. “Why?”

“Because they need that lifeline to fight,” Kevin said. He gambled, again. “It will make them far more effective soldiers.”

“Then it will be done,” Friend said.

There was a long discussion over the precise terms of the agreement. The humans would serve for five year terms — the aliens had wanted twenty years, but Kevin pointed out that few humans would be prepared to make a lifetime commitment. Then the aliens wanted the humans to become cyborgs; Kevin countered by pointing out that they’d need volunteers for that, but there would probably be no shortage. Steve had already created quite a few from volunteers. Combat intensity was up for discussion, but Friend noted that there could be no promises. Kevin wasn’t too surprised.

“Health care will become a major issue,” he added. “And pensions.”

That sparked another debate. The alien seemed confident that anything that wasn’t immediately fatal could be cured — and they would pay for it, if necessary. Pensions puzzled him, but he eventually agreed that human mercenaries would be paid a large lump sum upon their departure. And dead bodies would be returned to Earth if conditions permitted.

“Thank you,” Friend said, when he had finished. “We will honour your terms.”

Kevin hoped he was telling the truth. It would be difficult for Earth to haul the aliens into a court of law and sue them.

Friend stood. “Your supplies will be delivered to your ship, while the promised starships will be sent directly to your star system. And then you will send the troops here.”

He turned, then walked out of the room.

After a moment, one of the green aliens motioned for them to walk out of the building and back onto the streets.

It isn’t rude, Kevin reminded himself, as they started to walk back to the hotel. It’s just how they do things, really.

He said nothing until they were back at the hotel, where they stripped down and swept their bodies carefully for surveillance devices. Nothing was found, but as he reminded himself — again — that didn’t necessarily mean anything. The tools he’d used against the Taliban were primitive compared to the latest cutting-edge technology the Galactics deployed regularly. Grimly, he reminded himself to be careful what he said, then called the ship and made a full report.

“We will be sent the down payment,” he concluded. “I think we should spend several more days here, then head back to Earth.”

“We have to offload the other supplies anyway,” Jackson reminded him. “I’ve had to pay out quite a few bits of currency just to hire the shuttles. If we’d brought our own…”

“We would just have been charged for the landing pads instead,” Kevin said, rolling his eyes sardonically. Somehow, he doubted that Ying would become a noted holiday destination for human tourists. Or maybe it would. People went on vacations to dangerous places all the time. Some of them never came home. “Finish offloading the goods, then keep an eye on things.”

He looked over at Cn!lss. “Are you all right?”

“They could have killed me,” Cn!lss said. It was always hard to tell, but the Hordesman looked miserable. “They could have ended my life right there and then.”

Kevin felt a flash of sympathy. He’d never been the weak and friendless nerd — growing up on a farm had given him muscles and homeschooling had allowed him to avoid the worst of High School culture — but he understood just how intelligence could isolate someone from the less fortunate. Steve and Mongo were hardly stupid, yet they had a directness about them that Kevin lacked. But then, that very directness had worked out in their favour more than once. Kevin wouldn’t have had the sheer nerve to set up his own country, no matter how much he wanted it.

“They didn’t, though,” he said. “They won’t hurt you, ever again.”

He had a sudden impression of what life must have been like for the alien techie. He was needed, desperately, and yet he was also disdained, because the Horde weren’t smart enough to realise how much they needed him. It had never surprised Kevin that so many intelligence officers — particularly the lower-ranked ones who never left America — were so socially stunted and awkward. Or that they were easy prey for manipulation by outside intelligence agents.

They want to be part of something — anything — greater than themselves, he thought. But they lack the skills to make themselves part of that something, to pretend to blend in with the crowd.

He shuddered. It was impossible to be sure, but most intelligence officers Kevin had spoken to had believed that Edward Snowden was a Russian agent, no matter what he claimed to be. There were just too many KGB-style fingerprints over the whole affair to suggest otherwise, ending with Snowden’s flight to Russia. Had he chosen Moscow because he believed the Russians would never surrender him… or had he been pushed into choosing it by his masters? There was no way to know.

The isolated children, the outcasts, had always been easy prey for manipulators. And it was far too hard to counter it in each and every specific case. He felt a twinge of bitter guilt. What, if anything, had they done to Cn!lss? They’d practically made him the same offer of a home where he didn’t run the risk of dying because some Horde Commander was having a bad day. To him, it had to seem like an offer of paradise.

But it had to be worse than any merely human intelligence coup. Americans and Russians were human. Humans and Hordesmen were very different races. Cn!lss might never see his own kind again. He would never have a mate… well, he probably wouldn’t have had one anyway. Horde society assigned mates to the strong, not to the intelligent. And abducting wives was considered good sport.

“We will make a home for your people and change their society,” he said. “There will be Hordesmen raised in a very different culture, one that values intelligence rather than brute force and stupidity. And you will have a home there.”

“Thank you,” Cn!lss said. It was always hard to be sure, but he seemed unconvinced. “But my people do not change.”

Kevin had his doubts. The tests had suggested that most Hordesmen, like humans, shared the same basic level of intelligence. It was just stunted, quite deliberately, by their upbringing. Given a very different upbringing, there would be more Hordesmen learning to use their intelligence, rather than fighting their way through a finishing school that looked absolutely murderous. And who knew what they would become then? Perhaps, instead of building their own empire, the human race could build a United Federation of Planets.

He smiled. If nothing else, laying plans for the future would help to pass the time on the voyage home.