Ends, Means, Laws, chapter 6 (Patreon)

Tyce woke when his cell door opened. He expected to see John, even if that would have been the most illogical move for him to make. Instead a huge soldier with a baby-face and cold eyes filled most of the door. Shadows moved behind him, so the mountain had friends. Before Tyce could decide what a cooperative prisoner might say, the mountain stepped back and said to one of his buddies, “Get him out of there.”

If John was testing his resolve to play nice, he couldn’t have chosen a more difficult task. Tyce had never been comfortable obeying when he didn’t understand the reason behind the order. However, he pressed his lips together as two soldiers rushed in and grabbed his arms. The rough handling sent stabbing pains through his shoulders, but he said nothing as they half-dragged him into the corridor. Tyce would have happily walked, but he got the impression they didn’t want to give him the chance.

A fourth soldier waited in the hall, a short man with red hair. He kept glancing over to the woman who had Tyce’s right arm. “The commander is not going to be happy,” he said.

Tyce dug his heels in. “What?” His two guards jerked his arms, and he stumbled forward. They used that momentum to keep him moving deeper into Command-held territory. There was a definitely lack of guards in the hallways. None of the explanations Tyce could imagine boded well for John.

The leader of the motley group shoved past the soldier holding Tyce’s left arm. “He’s just a sub-commander.”

The red-head was not happy with that. “Yeah, well he’s the highest ranking officer to survive the attack.”

“He’s not a fucking officer at all. He’s a pencil pusher—a fucking chair-back. He doesn’t know what the front is like. Assholes like that didn’t win the fucking war.” The leader glared at Tyce.  

With Tyce’s shirt gone, his Ribelian tattoo covered one entire shoulder. The long, curved lines didn’t have a single flaw, a testament to Tyce’s concentration. Hell, the size of the marking impressed even those from Ribelo. To them, it proved Tyce’s worth. But these assholes—Tyce might as well wave a flag in front of an enraged bull, and words wouldn’t calm them.  

If these assholes had reached the point of mutinying against John, they would rather kill Tyce than look at him. He only hoped they planned to shoot him before spacing him. Most spacers developed nightmares about dying in vacuum—the air pulled from the lungs, the blood boiling, the skin freezing and cracking off. In the few minutes it took the mind to die, the body would suffer unimaginably.

The red-head chased after them. “But assholes like that will bury you under the prison if you cross the line.”

Tyce put his comment together with his early glance at the woman. He didn’t want his lover being arrested for mutiny. He wouldn’t stick his neck out to help Tyce, so appealing to the rules for the treatment of prisoners would fall on deaf ears.

“I’m not crossing any fucking lines.” The head honcho whirled around and yelled at Mr. Timid. “I’m getting us home when that asshole is too stupid to see the real solution. We should have kept the first two. It would have doubled the changes of this succeeding.”

Tyce’s blood ran cold. These assholes had wanted to do something to the boys. Tyce started having fantasies of Yoss getting access to this section. Yoss and a big-ass weapon could do a hell of a lot of damage.

“Burden said Command wants this one more.”

“Rice, enough,” the woman snapped. The red-head closed his mouth so fast his teeth clicked.

The leader shifted his gaze to Tyce. “I doubt there will be much of him left for Command. They can chop off the bits they want.”

Tyce raised his chin and stared back. Whatever they planned, Tyce would rather endure it than send two children who couldn’t grow facial hair to suffer for him. That would be enough for him to hold onto his sanity during any torture. Clearly they had something more creative in mind than tossing him out an airlock.

The woman soldier said in an admiring tone, “You’re a cold bastard.”

“Look at that tattoo. He deserves everything he’s about to get.” The bastard strode down the hall, and Tyce’s guards forced him to follow. If they’d run into a single guard, Tyce would have taken his chances and started a melee, but not a single soldier stood guard at one of the many intersection. Either most of the Command soldiers had died on their ship or they had chosen to absent themselves because they approved of this even if they didn’t want to get involved.

John was in serious shit. They reached a place where the floor bulged. “Wait until I’m up,” the leader said before he moved into the center of the strange floor. The sides of the bulge started to inflate like a balloon and then the platform rose up into the air. It was an elevator. A dangerous as hell elevator. One wrong move and the rider would side off the side. The platform disappeared into the ceiling.

“Em, don’t do this,” the red-headed pleaded.

The woman rolled her eyes. “At least Robins is doing something. We’re dead in space. No food. No supplies. No engines. What the fuck should we do? Pray?” She scoffed. “I’d rather save myself.”

Rice moved in front of her. “Give the commander a chance.”

“Sub-commander,” she said, echoing Robins’s earlier comment. This was a true believer.

The man holding Tyce’s left arm joined the conversation. “He’s doing the best he can, but the commander would have done whatever was required to survive. He still has the polish from the academy staining his pant cuffs.”

That wasn’t true. John had graduated years ago. Had he gone back as part of a promotion opportunity? Had he been posted at the rear? His scores had not been the strongest, so the latter was a possibility.”

The new guy continued. “I feel better about using him than those two kids from earlier.”

“Give me a break,” Em said with an inelegant snort. “Those two are going to grow up and fight to earn a tattoo just like the one our traitor is sporting. And if we’d kept them, we’d have twice as many chances to make this happen.”

What the fuck did they have in mind? Tyce might be able to talk the soldier on his left around and Rice would rather run for it that stay, but he couldn’t work on either as long as the woman was here. They would both side with her over him, and he had no chance to move someone that entrenched in her hatred.

Rice tried again. “If Burden catches you, he’s going to throw you in there.”

Her grin was predatory. “I’d like to see him try. Fucking rule monkey. Shit gets done when you break rules.”

“Or someone gets thrown in prison.”

“Yeah, well if someone doesn’t do something, we’re going to starve to death out here. I’d rather be in prison.” She tightened her hold on Tyce’s arm.  

The balloon elevator started deflating. The wrinkled edges of the leather-like material appeared before the round top and platform. Robins crouched down to look at them. “The path is clear. We have about fifteen minutes.”

That meant delay was another viable tactic.

The woman called up to him. “Hey Sarge, tell Rice that any real commander would make the required sacrifice to save his ship.”

“Fuck yes,” Robins answered. That was one more piece of the power dynamic in place. John had lost the faith of the enlisted crew. Sergeants had enough authority with crew to move ship politics, but they were not as deeply entrenched in the legal culture of Command—not that officers stuck to the law. When they wanted something, they had an ability to look the other way that had driven Tyce to kill. 

Robins didn’t wait until the balloon completely deflated. He stepped over the bulging side and slid down to the floor. Moron. They had no idea how old these materials were, and that could have caused a catastrophic breech of the lift system.

The one man Tyce had not identified said with some weariness in his voice, “Command forgives rule breakers if they get the job done. Did you read that biography of Lieutenant Munson?”

Robins dismissed that with, “Fucking little whiner.”

“Yeah, you say that, but did you see what he got done?” Em asked. “He broke every rule. He walked into the center of their town unarmed and unescorted. He carried a weapon knowing that violated the treaty. And Command gave him a promotion, even without Officer Training School.”

Rice looked at them like they were all insane. “You don’t think they’d make you an officer, do you?”

“They might. They made that little pipsqueak Munson one. He was a sergeant before that.”

Tyce made his move. He looked at the woman, but his words were for Rice. “Command loves its rules. If you break rules, they won’t forgive you. They would have buried Munson under a jail only the Rownt protect him. Who will protect you?”

Robins punched Tyce in the gut hard enough to send him to his knees. “Shut up.”

“He has a point,” Rice said.

“Maybe if we failed,” Robins said, “but you get forgiven when the risk pays off. The problem is that Burden never takes a fucking risk. He’ll die with his fucking finger up his fucking ass, and he’ll take all of us with him.”

That was accurate. Harsh, but accurate. Command was far too quick to forgive success. As far as John’s leadership went, they weren’t entirely wrong. At the academy, John and Tyce had talked about the fact that John was unlikely to make commander because the quick decisions gave him heartburn. Tyce had admitted that he was most likely to get busted back a rank or two for pissing someone off. Of course Tyce had overshot that mark by a considerable amount.

The platform elevator settled onto the floor. “Get him on,” Robins ordered. Em and the unnamed man dragged Tyce up and hauled him to the center of the platform. Rice stood in the corridor staring at them. The platform was so small that Robins pressed up against Tyce’s back, so maybe he just didn’t think there was room. Or maybe they had just lost a co-conspirator.

Robins leaned forward and whispered in the woman’s ear. “O’Conner, if your little boyfriend rats us out before we can finish this, I’m going to skin you.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, and he’ll keep his fucking mouth shut.” She said the last part loudly enough for Rice to hear. John had inherited a crew of morons. Whoever had led the ship before had clearly not had them in hand if the crew was this out of reg days after losing their commander.

The lift rose, and everyone rocked as the center of the floor gave a little. It wasn’t a true platform, which made the footing tricky. Good.

“He would sit on guard duty as we all starved,” Robins said. “You shouldn’t have brought him.”

“I thought we might need more muscle,” she said in her own defense. Tyce stayed very still until the elevator was almost to the top. Whatever else he knew about these aliens, they had some damn good footing. Humans... not so much.

Tyce stepped back and thrust his ass out. Robins stumbled and fell back on the pillowy side. It immediate deflated and Robins started sliding toward the edge.

“Robins!” The man let go of Tyce’s arm and grabbed to save Robins before the edge of the hole in the ceiling could cut him in half.

“Adams!” The woman tried to force Tyce to his knees, but she didn’t have the leverage. He tried to kick the side of her knee, but the unstable ground sent him tumbling onto the pillowy side. She gave him a contemptuous look before turning her attention to saving Robins. Tyce squirmed. He didn’t care if he got to his feet and kicked the assholes off the elevator or if he could throw himself off to the ground below. Either would slow this operation down enough for a real guard to find them.

Unfortunately the fabric of the elevator sides was almost velvety in texture. It grabbed at him like Velcro and with his arms bound, Tyce couldn’t maneuver. The edge of the ceiling hole grew closer, and Tyce expected his head to get cut in half. Instead the hole was padded, and the soft edge pushed him farther into the pillowy edge. The elevator reached the next level, and they all tumbled off the edge.

Unfortunately his kidnappers had their hands free, which made recovering easier. They were on their feet and grabbing him before he could get his limbs untangled.

Robins chuckled. “Never underestimate an asshole from Ribelo.” The smile he gave Tyce was enough to make a cold shiver go down his spine. “They’re all dangerous bastards. And now this one is going to fix what they did by getting this ship to open fire on us.”

“You’re insane. It fired on us too,” Tyce said, but his two guards had his arms and then dragged him after Robins. The corridors were wider here, but they still curved. And there were more spirals and swirls in the walls.

“Here,” the male guard said.

Robins stopped next to a wide door. “I know it’s here, you idiot.”

Tyce was starting to think he’d been kidnapped by the keystone cops. These idiots didn’t project any sort of authority or even competence.

One of the idiots opened a door, and this time it revealed an enormous room. For the most part, these aliens liked curving spaces, the sort that made Tyce think they liked to drive these ships in gravity wells or they had unreliable gravity fields that caused left to turn into down on a semi-regular basis. At least that was true in the outer areas where the shuttles had latched on.

However, this was a large room with mechanical panels everywhere. At least Tyce assumed they were the biological equivalents of engineering structures. To the left were curving raised surfaces that looked like instrument or control desks. Several had panels pried off the front to expose more biological piping. To the right was a wall of criss-crossing pipes that throbbed as fluids rushed through them. Most were in various shades of green with a few of the yellow ones ___ had deemed highly toxic and two red ones that made Tyce realize he had an instinctive fear of red fluids.

“You got him!” An older man had been behind the instrument panels, but now he stood. He looked at Tyce. “I know this seems unkind, but the ship needs it. I wouldn’t have asked for this if it weren’t an emergency.”

“He’s a traitor,” Robins said. “Don’t bother apologizing to him.”

“Command is going to call you a traitor and a mutineer if you go against your sub-commander,” Tyce said.

Robins scoffed.

The idiot brigade shoved Tyce past all that to the back where an alcove stood open with dozens of hairlike wires hanging down. The alcove was shorter than a human, but much wider. As they came close, the male guard moved to Tyce’s back and held his arms as they shoved him forward.

Fear made words spill out before Tyce could edit them. “No need to push. Use your words.”

O’Conner kicked him in the back of the leg. “Shut up!” Tyce fell to his knees and froze in horror. The hairlike wires slowly undulated and then reached out for him.

“What if this doesn’t work?” The unnamed man asked.

The older one who had just joined them answered. “Then we grab another rebel—someone younger or a female.” He wanted to test different variables by shoving different people into a hole like a fucking battery. He was a fucking monster who hid behind science and never considered that he was essentially suggesting that Command shove a child from the Dragon into this nightmare.

The words spilled past Tyce and he no longer tried to keep track of who spoke. He kept his gaze and his attention on the wires that reached for him like hungry fingers. Each began to glow with a green light, and now Tyce could see the sharpened end of the wire and the filaments that dangled from each. The fucking things were trying to reach him.

Tyce struggled to get to his feet, but hands held him down. Sharp tips skittered across his skin, his forehead, his lips. Tyce closed his eyes tightly and prayed for the nightmare to end quickly. However, the wires continued to slide over his skin. His chest. His shoulders.

One set of restraining hands vanished. “Get that fucking thing away from me!” O’Conner yelled.

Robins cursed and then ordered, “Grab him!”

“Fuck no. Those things almost caught me. I’m not getting used for fucking spare parts!” The panic in O’Conner’s voice was unmistakable. This was not the fear of the unknown. They knew what was going to happen, and it terrified them.

Tyce screamed as a needle pierced his neck. He lurched back and broke away from the man holding him. Fuck being cooperative. Fuck John. Fuck these assholes. Fuck all of Earth. A goon cursed and Tyce rolled to the side and kicked at someone’s knee. Someone fell screaming. A weapon clicked and then charged with a whine.

“No! We need him for the fucking machine!” the scientist screamed, and hands grabbed Tyce. Chaos reigned, and he didn’t even know who he was kicking or who was kicking him, but eventually several of them pinned him to the floor and held him so tightly that Tyce couldn’t get leverage to free himself.

“Yeah, attack a man with his hands tied. Does that make you big shots?” he demanded.

Robins hissed words in his ear. “You’re not a man. You’re a fucking terrorist who would have left us to die in space if you had your way.”

They were fifty percent right.

“Give me that,” Robins said. Tyce screamed when he drove a thumb into Tyce’s jaw. Before Tyce could argue, rough hands shoved a thick belt between his teeth. Robins looped it around Tyce’s head again before locking it in place.

“Get him up.”

“We can’t push him in without that thing getting us too,” O’Conner protested. She was a true believer, but she wasn’t willing to put her life on the line. Fucking coward. Fucking bully. Tyce tried to jerk away, but he was tired and sore and restrained. He never had a fair chance.

When Robins spoke, he sounded amused. “It was trying to reach his spine and the back of his neck. We just need to plug him in the right direction.” The asshole grinned at Tyce.

Tyce narrowed his eyes, but he couldn’t do much but suck in the drool already forming in the corners of his mouth. They grabbed his arms and pulled him around, and Tyce exploded in action again, kicking at his captors.

“Grab his legs!” Again, Tyce ended up stomach down on the floor, and this time they tied his knees together. Any last chance he had to make them kill him was gone. He couldn’t do anything as they dragged him toward the alcove.

“Close enough,” Robins said. They dropped him on the floor, and Robins put his boot on Tyce’s groin, pinning him in place. Wires brushed across Tyce’s hair, and he leaned forward to escape the touch, but the asshole took the butt of his gun and slammed Tyce in the forehead, driving him back. Tyce screamed and arched his back as something drove deep into his neck and up into his brain.

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So, has anyone recognized the alien ship yet? A similar model may have appeared in a book you wouldn’t expect to be part of the Claimings universe, but it is.