The Fifth Civilization: A Novel (15 page)

Morning. Oh six hundred.

 
Roan hoped to
find Kel in the cockpit. She was a notoriously early riser—he remembered
that well. But when Roan arrived at the front of the ship, Kel’s cot and yoga
mat were leaning against the wall, bed sheets tied in a roll beside them. She
sometimes slept outside the cockpit, away from the distracting beeps but still
where she could be awakened by an alarm.

Roan knocked, thinking she’d already be at the controls of
the ship. The cockpit door creaked open—a very tired and surprised Joseph
was at the other side. The African crewman, busy doing a diagnostic on the
flight controls, said Kel had gone to the cargo bay.

There weren’t that many things she could be doing in the
cargo bay, except visiting the prisoner. For a month they’d kept the Kotaran
locked up there.

Roan jogged through the quiet corridors of the
Colobus
. Most of the systems on the ship
could be automated for a short period, so apart from one or two people who
grudgingly volunteered for the night shift, there wasn’t much reason for people
to be up at this early hour. And with most of the crew dead, it wasn’t
reasonable to expect a night shift to even exist. He shuddered as he thought
back to the carnage of a month ago. The blood and gore was long ago cleaned up,
and the Kotaran bodies jettisoned out the airlock—but the presence of
death remained.

He entered the cargo bay and descended a gangplank to the
bay floor, where the container crates were neatly stacked and ordered. Low
voices were coming from the prison crate. It was a red one that had been
emptied of its cargo of pulse generators before being converted into a holding
cell.

Jasper nodded as Roan passed. Jasper was one of the few
crewmen willing to stay up at night and keep a pistol squarely trained on the
doors of the crate. He and Roan had gotten past the days where they would scowl
at each other as they passed in the hallways. Jasper was no longer just a thug
with a wrench. Roan replied with a nod of his own and stepped on the crate,
which had a ceiling barely high enough for him.

Kel turned and let out an exasperated sigh. She had been
conferring with the doctor, Moira Kazen. They looked as though they’d just been
dragged out of bed. Kel had her captain’s jacket pulled over a tank top and the
leggings she wore to sleep, while Moira wore a crumpled lab coat half-buttoned
over her body.

“Roan,” Kel sighed. “We don’t have a crate ready for you,
but we can have one prepared later today.”

“Hardy har.” Roan couldn’t help but frown. Kel looked worn
out. A month of being captain on a severely understaffed ship had added lines
to her face and eroded the glint that first Roan to her. She’d become the
mother to thirteen men and women and a Kotaran in four weeks, often acting as
both captain and copilot and even rolling up her sleeves to do maintenance. They’d
both kept their distance during this time.

“Look, Kel, I wanted to talk with you.”

Doctor Moira rolled her eyes, which were deep set and dark
against her stern face. She and Roan hadn’t gotten along very well, and Roan
couldn’t help but think this was because of her frequent talks with Kel. Being
the only women on a month-long voyage kind of brought you together. Obviously,
Roan had interrupted the two in the middle of such a conversation, and neither
handled interruptions well.

“Talk, Nick?” Kel asked. “About what? What can we talk about
at six in the morning?”

Roan shot a glance at Moira. He didn’t want to speak in
front of company, but he might as well improvise. “Well, for starters, you
could tell me what you’re doing here.”

“Ship’s business,” Moira said, a bottle of pills crinkling
about as she waved her hands. “Nothing that concerns you.”

“I’m a crew member on this ship.”

That made Moira chuckle. “Oh? So part-time engineer and
full-time stowaway counts now?”

Kel threw her hands up. “Please, everyone! No fights this
early.” Kel was skilled at playing the negotiator by now. “Nick, we can talk
later. Honest. I’m in the middle of something and it would be
extremely
helpful if you came back at
another time.”

Roan did his best to peek around at the metal door behind
them, partially open, into the Kotaran’s chamber. He thought he saw movement in
there but the room beyond was dark. “No, really,” Roan persisted, “I want to
know what you’re doing here. You’re not, you know…
seeing
the Kotaran in there, are you?”

Moira rubbed her forehead. Kel just glared. “
Seeing
him?” Kel spat. “You’re very
persistent, Roan. Yes, I am trying to make you jealous with this
seven-foot-tall demon alien. How did you know? Since you’re a captain, can you
do us the honor of marrying us?”

“Maybe the good doctor could help you out. Moira could even
give you some advice about Kotaran physiology, I’m sure.”

Now Moira was glaring.

“You’ve had enough time to study him,” Roan continued. “Or
have you been too busy pumping him full of drugs?” He gave a long, hard look at
the pills Moira was hiding in her left hand, the pills she had now slid into
the pocket of her lab coat.

“You know, I could call Jasper in here.”
 
Kel began to circle Roan. “Maybe you
could have a chat with him.”

Why did he even come down here, Roan thought? The hostility
continued. “Jasper’s got my back, Kel. Come on. Tell me why you so urgently
need to see the Kotaran. Does he know we’re near Bauxa?”
 
A groan and a clang rattled from the
part of the crate where the Kotaran had been sealed off. Roan turned quickly to
the door, wondering what had become of the prisoner since he’d last seen him
weeks ago.

Moira clucked. “Shush, you idiot!”

“What?”

Kel held her finger to her lips, like a teacher shushing a
student. “Haven’t you seen how big their ears are?”

“Oh, right. So he can hear me?”

“Yes.”

“No point in having him eavesdrop, then.” He’d come here
wanting to talk to Kel, but the pull of the Kotaran was too great to ignore. Leaving
the two women behind, Roan made a move for the doorway to the prisoner’s room.
Both women grabbed his arms before he could cross the threshold.

“Wait!” Moira cried. So something
was
going on. He threw a bemused look back at the women preventing
him from crossing into the unknown. Moira’s face indicated she knew Roan was
going in there with or without an explanation, and she sighed. “I value human
life, Mr. Roan, so I might as well say this to prevent you from doing anything
stupid. We’d rather you not visit the prisoner now.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, we have him doped up pretty good. He’s in no
mood to talk coherently.”

“He sounds pretty coherent. For a Kotaran.”

Moira crossed her hands and picked up an electronic medical
board. “Well, the effectiveness of our drugs fluctuates. We gave him a bunch of
shots last night, pills crushed in his food. Diprivan, flunitgen,
govinic.”
 
Moira pushed the board to
her chest. She lowered her voice. “We’ve been doing this for some time now, in
order to keep him from escaping.”

“How’d you do that? He could probably tear your head off.”

Moira flashed a look at Kel. “Well, he hasn’t really been
lucid for a month now. We’ve been constantly drugging him. We had no other
choice, really.”

If that was so, Roan thought, the guy’s mind was probably a
pile of mush now. “Shouldn’t he kill himself so as to not give away
information? Isn’t that the Kotaran code?”

Kel shook her head. “That would mean weakness, because it
would imply he
could
give up
information. Instead, from what I’ve been able to read about their race, he
wants to stay alive because he wants to complete his mission of killing us.”

It may have been early in the morning, but the news was
still sobering for Roan. He needed to talk with that Kotaran, these ladies be
damned. Since none were grabbing his coat sleeves anymore, he made for the
door. Moira started to protest but Kel shushed her, and Roan pushed aside the
metal hatch and stepped into the prisoner’s chamber. He yanked a chain to illuminate
a bulb dangling from the ceiling.

Roan knew what to expect from his previous visit three weeks
ago: a grimy third of a container outfitted to hold an alien of such large
stature, a place where thick metal bars would have come in real handy. The
Kotaran himself was manacled to hooks in the wall with chains meant to tie down
valuables. This setup seemed to work well in the container, but if those chains
were ever broken, only two doors stood between him and the rest of the
Colobus
.

The Kotaran was sitting on the floor, his eyes boring into
Roan. The drugs, Roan thought, appeared to be having a mild effect at best. He
appeared not only aware of his surroundings but also angry: his nostrils were
flaring rapidly, his teeth were bared, and his tail was thumping every few
seconds under his feet. He was resting his arms on his knees, leaving the
chains in full view. If he were anything but a Kotaran, Roan would’ve thought
he was doing so in order to demonstrate the cruel conditions he was being held
in. His tunic and vest were the same since the day he boarded—the
Colobus
had no spare clothes, let alone
anything that would fit the prisoner. In the air was the vaguely-mango scent of
a freshener that masked the Kotaran’s odor as well as the smell from his
chamber pot.

Roan stood in the doorway, hoping the Kotaran would speak
first. He stood there for a few moments, watching the alien, and realized that
Moira and Kel were waiting behind him to see what he would do.

“Does he have a name?” Roan asked, to no one in particular.
If the Kotaran answered, all the better.

“No idea,” Kel said.

“He had a datapad and a communicator on him,” Moira said,
“But we can’t unlock either one. David could probably read them if we
could.”
 
No name, no decipherable
identification. No way to begin a friendly heart-to-heart.

“I know he speaks English,” Roan said. He lifted his chin up
in the direction of the Kotaran, believing that would indicate he was talking
to the alien. “You speak English, don’t you, Kotaran?”
 
Nothing. “Answer me!”

All the Kotaran did was grunt and jerk on his chains. In the
enclosed container, the rattling was deafening.

“I know he speaks English,” Roan reiterated to the women.
Moira rolled her eyes like this was another in a line of things that Roan
needn’t blather about.

“We know that, too,” Moira said. “He’s talked to us every
time we’ve been in here conducting our…interrogations. Mostly he speaks
Kotaran, but that doesn’t stop him from dropping a few threats or curses our
way in English.”
 
The prisoner
growled again, apparently aware, despite the drugs, that the three were
discussing him.

“Why don’t the drugs seem to be working?” Roan asked.

Kel shook her head. “Actually, that’s why I came down here
this morning. I wanted to get him talking before we reached…well, I guess he
already knows. Before we reach Bauxa. We’re going to hand him off to the
authorities there.”

“We are?”

“You bet. We got into close com range of the planet a few
days ago. I sent a message—along with David’s help—to someone we
think can help us on that planet. It was encrypted, of course, in case our
friends behind us listened in. The Bauxens have agreed to take the prisoner.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“What else would we do with him?”

Roan regarded a tray near the Kotaran, with biscuits and a
meager slice of ham sitting untouched by his feet. “Feeding time already?”

“We fed him early today. He only eats when we’re not here,”
Moira said.

Roan took a few steps forward, inching his way toward the
prisoner. He imagined himself to have crossed into the prisoner’s “kill zone,”
the personal space where it was dangerous to stand. Since there could be an
attack at any moment, Roan kept his hands clasped in front of him, ready to
defend his body.

“Kel, what information did you expect him to provide?”

“Well, I don’t really know. I hoped he could tell us who
exactly was chasing us, and what they knew.”

“Did you ask nicely? Or pump him with more drugs?”
 
The Kotaran’s eyes followed Roan’s every
move.

“I
asked
him,
while he was under relaxing drugs. No response. So I had Moira here put him
under some anti-inhibiting stuff—Pablinol, mostly—but he started
talking in gibberish…excuse me,
Kotaran
.
And then I wasn’t able to get anything from him. He talked too fast for David
to translate.”

Now barely four feet from the Kotaran, well within the range
for getting his nose bit off, Roan crouched and faced the alien, who met his
eyes. He heard deep breathing from the Kotaran, almost wheezing but possibly
just his normal breathing. There was the faint beating of a heart, too, and
Roan wondered if it was his or the Kotaran’s. In truth, no sane man would do
what Roan was doing. He wanted to impress Kel with his courage, and the women
were allowing him to—well, the women probably wanted to see what his plan
was.

“Tell me,” Roan said to the Kotaran, “Why do you want to kill
us?”

First, Roan felt the lightning-quick chop of the Kotaran’s
hand. He would’ve been knocked back had the Kotaran not grabbed Roan’s ears and
held the human’s head firmly in front of his face. As the Kotaran lunged, his
chains rippled to the wall and rattled the sides of the container. Moira and
Kel’s yelling was muffled by the Kotaran’s grip on his ears.

“Blasphemer,” the Kotaran growled. It was more of a
statement than a designation. “I
remember
.”
 
Roan recalled what he’d said a month ago
over the engine room intercom, about the Kotaran gods being bull. Oddly enough
didn’t regret a word of it. He was terrified about its repercussions, though. And
at the thought of his skull being crushed in this guy’s claws.