Tenacious

22

Kris Longknife paced the brig. The alien woman was in one cell, a padded cell made up to specs found in Nelly’s records. It turned out that the Wasp’s standard configuration didn’t include something so archaic as a padded cell.

The baby was fussy again. Penny had fed her the last bottle a bit ago. She and Amanda had considered pumping some more breast milk from the drugged mother, then thought better of it. There was a reason Kris had put the woman behind bars.

The look of hatred on her face as the sleepy dart took effect would chill the blood of a granite gargoyle.

The woman stirred. Her eyes opened. ~You again,~ she mumbled.

~I am still here. You are still on my ship.~

~You lie,~ she said, her mouth twisting in hatred. ~Vermin do not have ships.~

NELLY, COULD YOU MAKE EVERYTHING BETWEEN HERE AND THE OUTER HULL TRANSPARENT?

I’M NOT SURE I COULD DO THAT, KRIS. IT’S NEVER BEEN DONE. AND IF IT WENT BAD, I MIGHT JUST BE OPENING A HOLE IN THE SHIP.

LET’S NOT DO THAT AND SAY WE DID, Jack suggested on Nelly Net.

YES, LET’S, Kris agreed.

~You will not believe anything I say,~ Kris said.

~You are vermin. You should not say anything. Only people talk.~

Kris turned to Jacques and Amanda. “Any suggestion how we get past this?”

Jacques shook his head. “You might put her in a space suit and force her to take a look at our fleet.”

Jack shook his head. “Not unless we sleepy dart her again. I wonder how many times we can do that in one day?”

“Besides,” Jacques said, “her programming may be so hardwired, it’s unbreakable. Even if she saw it, would she believe it? The Black Hats she talks about threw her ass off their ship as an example to terrify the others, and she still thinks it’s her fault, and she needs to make amends. They killed that one guy for talking sense.”

He scrubbed at his face, then finished in frustration. “You’ve talked to her, but a lot of good it’s done you. Kris, until us vermin earn the right to talk in the presence of these Enlightened Ones, all that’s gonna happen is a lot of dying.”

“I don’t like what Jacques just said,” Amanda said, “but I can’t disagree with him, either. Trying to talk to them is like smashing your head against a brick wall. Jacques has gone to an extraordinary extent to get them talking, and this woman is still a brick wall. Give it up, Kris.”

Kris turned back to look at the woman. “I guess that’s all I can do.”

I’m a Longknife, but this woman’s invincible ignorance has beaten me. The society that bred her has made her blind to anything they don’t want her to see.

~Give me my baby. Minna is hungry. I am heavy,~ the woman said, lifting one breast.

Everyone looked at Kris. She nodded.

Jack pulled out his automatic, and the woman backed away from the barred door to sit down on the elevated block that passed for a bed. Penny entered the room and handed the child gently to the woman, future mother to mother.

The woman took the child and immediately brought it to her breast to suckle.

Penny just as quickly backed out, and Jack shut the door with a firm click.

Kris went to stand just outside the padded bars. ~We will take you back to your people tomorrow.~

The mother did not look up from her baby, so intent was she in rearranging her mussed hair, stroking her face. ~Why take me back? They will be able to smell vermin on me and Minna.~

~You can wash in a stream,~ Kris said.

~You cannot wash vermin off. I’ve slept with a vermin,~ she said, looking daggers at Jacques.

~All the women have slept with a vermin and gotten up none the wiser,~ he said.

For a moment, that seemed to break through the woman’s walls. For a second, Kris thought she might be open to considering just what that proved.

But only for a moment.

The woman shook herself. ~I have been surrounded by vermin. The stink of it will never wash off. They will never take me back.~

Kris puzzled on that for a moment. Then she made an offer. ~You can remain on our ship. We will care for you and your child. Two babies survived the destruction of one of your ships. We are raising them with care.~

The woman looked at Kris bleakly, then turned her back to her and began to sing a song that Nelly could not translate. “It makes no sense. It is just a lot of words that rhyme.”

“Maybe it’s a nursery rhyme,” Jacques said.

They left the woman nursing her child and made their way back up to Kris’s day quarters. There, they sat around the couch and chairs and stared glumly at the floor.

“I can’t believe,” Kris said, “that anyone would be that blind to . . .” She ran out of words.

“The brainwashing on their ships must be pretty extensive,” Jacques said. “It must have started early and been all-inclusive.”

“But,” Kris started, then twisted her thought in midflight. “Even the Alwan elders with their egg check didn’t keep their people on that tight a leash.”

“Rebel Alwans could still run for the deep woods,” Penny said. “Where can you run to on a ship? It’s huge, but it’s just a ship. If you breathe their air, they own you, body and soul.”

“But for a hundred thousand years? For Christ’s sake,” Jack exploded.

But a moment later, he shrugged. “We don’t know their story. Has a ship gone rogue and been hunted down by the others. Has a crew mutinied and gone to planet? We just don’t know.”

“These people don’t even know how to live on a planet,” Jacques said. “Look at those below. Hell, you say those that destroyed the planet we found didn’t know to dig latrines. Neither did those fools. They’d piss in the water they were about to drink.” He shook his head.

“What are our choices?” Kris asked. “If we keep the woman, can we, what would you call it, deprogram her?”

“It would be a long process, and we might lose a few fingers,” Penny said.

“Or eyes,” Jack said.

“And if we send her back?” Kris asked.

“She will tell them the moment she sees her clan that she stinks of vermin, and they will kill her,” Jacques said. Then winced. “And if she tells them who I am, the men will likely kill all the women who slept with me.”

“But they’ve eaten the food you found for them,” Amanda said.

Again, the anthropologist could only shrug.

The room got very silent. Even Nelly seemed silent in Kris’s head.

Then Jack’s face got hard.

“Hon?” Kris said in question.

“I’m getting a report from the brig,” Jack said, his words distant and hard.

Kris gave her husband a puzzled look. “And.”

“The alien woman smothered her child with her own breasts as she lay in her bunk, then bit her own tongue clean off and bled out without our watch being any the wiser.”

“No!” Kris’s gut was plummeting even as she jumped to her feet, but Jack stepped between her and the door out of their quarters.

“You are not going down there, Kris. My Marines will take care of what has to be done.”

“But the baby!”

“Was killed by her mother.”

Kris’s gut had been in free fall before. Now her whole self was empty as space. And just as cold. Kris bent over, clutching for her belly. Clutching for herself. “Oh my God, I’ve killed them both.”

“You did not kill anyone,” Jack said, pulling her close, forcing her to stand, her cheek on his chest. “She killed her child. Then she killed herself.”

“But if I . . .”

“If you and our team hadn’t gotten involved,” Jacques cut her off, “they would have died soon enough. They were starving to death in a land full of food. But food they didn’t know how to reach out for. Food their training didn’t teach them could be there. They were stupid. Pissing in their own drinking water. Shitting there, too. Kris, most of them were already running a low-grade fever. One had already lost her baby, and the others would likely lose theirs to sickness or hunger before their first birthday. Kris, they didn’t know how to survive down there. I’ve helped them. Maybe those that are left will do better.”

Kris listened, but she didn’t believe a word of it.

“Kris. Look at me,” Jack said, pulling her face close to his. “Listen to what Jacques just said. Yes, these two died, but the others have a lot better chance of living because of what you did.”

“I should have seen this coming,” Kris said, tasting the cold darkness that was trying to engulf her.

“Yes,” Amanda said. “We all should have seen this coming. Jack, did your Marines have her on a suicide watch?”

Jack stared at the ceiling, thinking. “The guards were watching her. She was the best show in town. They didn’t see anything strange until the blood dripped out past her body and onto the floor.”

“That may not be a suicide watch, but it was just as good as one,” Penny said. “Kris, what were we supposed to do? She bit her own tongue out and just lay there as she bled to death.”

Now it was Kris’s turn to give herself up to a hopeless, helpless shrug. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Did any of us see this coming when we decided to haul her in?” Penny asked.

As one, they all shook their heads.

“Do any of us disagree that it is far better to try to talk out a conflict than just start killing everyone in sight and keep on doing it until there is only one left standing?” Penny went on doggedly.

“Is that a trick question?” Kris asked, trying to find some humor somewhere.

“Kris.” Penny, Kris’s best friend, came to stand beside her and Jack. She spoke her words slowly, as if she were hammering them into a stone wall. “You may not be as crazy as the Alwans are, demanding a ‘talk talk’ even as the aliens are shooting at us, but you’ve done everything you could to talk to them. This woman is not your first try. Knowing you, she won’t be your last. You’ll get better, and maybe, before too many more billion aliens get themselves killed, they’ll learn they need to talk to us because we are not vermin prey.”

“Dear God, I hope so,” Kris said, as all breath left her.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jack said, “if you will excuse me and my wife, I’d like some quiet time with her.”

Without a word said, the others left.

Kris found herself shaking. Shaking hard. “Jack, I need you to hold me.”

He folded his strong arms around her and settled onto the couch with her half in his lap. “That’s what I’m here for.”