Warrior Chronicles 5: Warrior's Curse (20 page)

As Cort was about to pull the trigger, an unfamiliar voice in his head said,
Why can’t I stop you?

It was nearly the same sensation Cort felt when linking with Bazal, so he knew the alien was communicating with him. He looked as his HUD and saw that the jammer used to insulate Marines from Bazal’s influence was active, so he waited to pull the trigger, thinking
I will let you live only as long you stop fighting me.

The headache was gone.
You are different. Does your clothing protect you from us?

I ask the questions. You can answer them or you can die. Do you understand?

Yes. What do you wish to know?

Cort’s proximity alarm sounded just as three Marines burst into the room. He yelled, “Hold your fire!” just a moment too late. The lizard’s head exploded, thanks to Corporal Voss’s weapon.

“Are you okay, sir?” Voss asked.

“Yeah. But catch me one alive. Notify units everywhere. I want a live lizard to interrogate.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was three hours before a live prisoner was pushed off a shuttle. Cort was still in his CONDOR and had ordered all humans out of the area. There were six old-brood Jaifans, including H’uum, surrounding the alien, and all of them appeared ready to kill their prisoner at the slightest sign of Cort’s discomfort.

Cort felt the familiar headache as the creature looked at him. In his mind he heard,
Why don’t you do my bidding?
The lizard gestured toward a Jaifan.
I know they will not, but you should, human.

This ain’t my first rodeo, lizard. I know your trick. Now you have to convince me to let you live.

Your species has called us crocodiles, alligators, skinks, frogs, and lizards. Are we so similar to so many of your kind?

I ask the questions. You answer. What are you called?

You are asking my species or my personal name?

What is your name?

I am called
Skinback Windtail.
What is your name, human?

You will call me Ares. What is your species called?

We are the
Gryll.
Why are you immune to me? Please take off your armor.

That’s not going to happen, Skinback
.
Tell me about your telepathy.

How many times have I interrogated a prisoner?
Cort wondered idly.
I hope it’s not necessary to torture Skinback.

It will not be, Ares. I will cooperate. But do you not take pleasure in inflicting pain?

Cort wanted to maintain control of the conversation, so he ignored the question and asked his own.
How do you abduct us?

I don’t know. We were abducted ourselves. Some ten thousand suns ago. The species which abducted us was susceptible to our minds. Please take your armor off.

Cort felt just the slightest urge to do just that, so he told George to lock his armor and weapons down and to take it over if he fell to the alien’s influence.
I’m not going to do that, Skinback
.

Who is George, Ares?

Can you speak aloud?

We cannot. Your ability to is intriguing to us. Who is George?

What did you do to your captors?

We broke their minds. The same way we broke those of your… Marines.

How did you break my Marines? They were blocking your telepathy.

To understand that, you would need to understand our anatomy. It harmed us to do so.

Cort’s head was starting to hurt more. He ordered the Jaifans to put a hood over Skinback’s head and turned around to walk away.

“I only want old-brood Jaifans near him. He can have water for now. Nothing else.” After George unlocked his armor, he took his helmet off and said, “H’uum, walk with me.”

As they walked away, H’uum clicked, “Are you well, Pledge Father?”

“Cut that crap, you damned cockroach!” Cort rubbed his temples. “There’ll be none of that bullshit between you and me, H’uum. Not anymore.”

H’uum’s mandibles flexed into a smile as they walked away from the prisoner. “You know better, Cortland. When my people are near, I am required to address you as such. Why can’t you accept that?” The question was clearly rhetorical and he went on. “But you seem to be in pain. Are you okay?”

“Communicating with Skinback is painful. We need to establish a protocol for it.”

“First we need to make sure you are okay.”

“The med panel in my suit says I’m okay. It’s just a headache.”

“What is a headache? I’ve never heard the term.”

“That is because humans are not supposed to have them anymore.” Ceram fell in behind them as he answered H’uum’s question. “It is a stress of the blood vessels in the human brain.”

Cort stopped and turned. “What are you doing here, Doc?”

“George noted the stress you were under and notified your wife, who insisted I join you. Now stand still.”

Ceram ran a light across Cort’s eyes, then plugged a flexpad into Cort’s CONDOR. After looking at it for a moment, he echoed Cort’s earlier words, clicking, “We need to establish a protocol for human and new-brood interaction with the enemy. Had you been exposed to him much longer, it would have caused permanent damage to your pineal gland.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. But it would certainly affect your melatonin production, and thereby your sleep patterns and reproductive system.”

The group started to walk again as Ceram clicked out his instructions for how to protect humans from Gryll influence.

--

All told, more than ten thousand humans were found in the camps around the planet. All of the camps were run by the Gryll. Very few prisoners were taken in first hours, and none were taken after the second grisly discovery of the day.

“Voss to Ares. We need you inside the plant, sir. We’ve found something you need to see.”

“Send me a vid feed, Corporal. I’m in the middle of something.”

“Yes, sir.”

Cort looked down at his flexpad as he listened to Voss speak. The vid showed a vat filled with small human organs that was under what appeared to be a faucet.

Voss pointed at a grinder. “The remains from the babies are processed here. It’s cleansed, ground up here, then dried and pressed into a meal.”

Voss held a handful of pellets up to his camera. “It’s the same stuff they were feeding the breeder humans, sir. They’ve been eating a food supplement made from their own children.”

Cort interlocked his fingers behind his head and leaned back closing his eyes.
Soylent Green.
“This just keeps getting better.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

After meeting with Voss, Cort went first to the
Mare’s Leg
, where he got the results of the alien autopsy from George. The species appeared to be genetically engineered, having only six diploid chromosomes, compared to forty-six in humans, or thirty-two in alligators. George told Cort that nearly every part of the Gryll DNA was relevant to the creatures’ physiological profile.

“Humans,
modern
humans, Father, only use about nine percent of their genetic material. The rest is leftover from earlier stages in evolution. We have found similar statistics in Nill, Jaifan, and Centipod DNA analysis.”

“Okay, so what does that mean about the Gryll?”

“It means they have not evolved. They are exactly the same as they have always been. The only noncoding DNA I have discovered in their genome exists only to link and bond other genetic material.”

“So someone built them?”

“Yes, Father. They were engineered as they are now.”

“By who?”

“Unknown.”

“Try and find out.”

“I cannot unless I interact with one of them, Father.”

“Then no. Give me a list of questions you want asked, and I will ask them.” Cort turned to look directly into the young man’s eyes. “George, under no circumstances are you to communicate with the Gryll. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

Cort shuttled to the
Remington,
which was being used to house most of the rescued humans. Liz Thoms reported Homo
Neanderthal
,
Heidelbergensis
, and
Erectus
had also been found in the various breeding facilities around the planet, and that many of them had produced children with Homo Sapien females. All Jaifans had been temporarily transferred to other ships to minimize the shock to the humans, and the
Remington
’s munition holds were being converted to temporary quarters for the newcomers.

“Cort, it’s like a living history book. We have people who were taken throughout human history. We have Roman gladiators in there! Ancient Egyptians, Huns, but those are the little ones, Cort. You won’t believe the mysteries we’ve solved.”

Liz was acting like a schoolgirl. “Settle down, Admiral.”

“I’m sorry, Cort. It’s just I thought you were being silly when you asked me to investigate disappearances from Earth’s past. So a lot of these people you have sent up to me are people I know about.”

“You mean I was right? Some of the abductees are from famous disappearances?”

“You might say that sir,” Liz grinned. “Ever hear of the
Lost Colony
?”

“Liz, I just walked through a plant that turns the remains of slaughtered human babies into a protein supplement for their parents. Just tell me what you’ve learned.”

Liz’s smile dropped. “I’m sorry, General. We’ve been insulated from what the Marines are seeing. Up here, there is a lot of jubilation and excitement.” She looked up at Cort and repeated, “I’m sorry, sir.”

“What have you found?”

“The Roanoke colony that disappeared in the late 1500’s. Over one hundred were originally  missing. We’ve got sixty-two of them. We also have three hundred and forty Brazilians who disappeared from Hoer Verde in 1923. The Lake Anjikuni Inuit village disappeared in 1930. We have almost two thousand Inuits, sir.”

Cort sighed. After looking at Liz silently for almost half a minute, he said, “Show me.”

All of the human newcomers that were being housed aboard the
Remington
were wearing simple Ares Federation tunics. Cort remembered Quinn had reported that all of the human adults were nude when they were rescued.

As they walked between the rows of newly-printed rooms, Liz said, “I’m giving everyone private quarters if they want. From what I have gathered, they haven’t had privacy since they were abducted.”

“That’s good, but keep an eye on them, Liz. After prolonged communal living, they may need company. You might find that a lot of them decide to bunk together anyway.”

“Kim said the same thing. She’s been studying the psychology of this whole mess. The walls between the quarters can be lowered on three sides if they want open space or company.”