Page 59 of Infiltration

Fitch was still screaming as Selt took him away. King’s head had come up, and he stared in obvious fear at the half-open door they’d exited through.

“Mr. King?”

The Earther’s attention jerked to Kuran. Despite the Nobek’s soft tone, he shook visibly, and his vital signs were climbing. He was terrified.

Good. He deserved to be afraid after what he and his asshole pal had tried to do.

“Mr. King, you strike me as the intelligent member of your team, so let me spell out the situation your companion refused to hear. This facility doesn’t exist as far as regular Earth authorities are concerned, including the governor and lieutenant governor. In this place, I can do what I damned well want to you until you tell me what you did. I can make it so you never leave, and no one will ever find you. Including your wife and three children back on Mercy. I’m speaking of Esther, Kevin, Joy, and Ian. There are also your parents: Adelle and Zachariah. Yes, I know about them, Mr. King. What they look like, where they go to school and work, where they live.”

King was weeping now. Though Kuran wouldn’t have touched the man’s family even if he’d succeeded in harming Stacy, the Nobek was perfectly fine if his prisoner thought he was issuing a threat against them. Let the bastard feel the stomach-churning anxiety he’d given Kuran.

Let him feel ithard.

“Let’s talk, Mr. King. Let’s discuss the lieutenant governor hiring you to make and plant bombs.”

“He didn’t, though.” King’s rough voice was thick with desperation. “He hired us to do some work on his house. We’re builders on Mercy.”

As if on cue, a distant scream floated down the corridor.

Pain inflictors didn’t do actual physical harm to those they were used on. They were flat discs adhered to the skin, and they sent signals to their wearer’s nerve endings to elicit a pain response, the level of which could be adjusted by an interrogator.

No doubt King knew the inflictors wouldn’t injure him. The fact of how they operated had never been hidden, but his eyes widened anyway. He whimpered as a second agonized scream traveled to the room.

“One last chance, Mr. King.” Kuran kept his tone unfeeling.

“I swear that’s what Bryant paid us to do! But he told us he’d brought us all the way from Mercy because of our group.”

Another scream.

King was blubbering. “He said we could earn a little extra if we’d put a scare into the governor and you Kalqs. Fitch said we’d do it for free, because Kalqs and Kalq-lovers deserve to have their faces blown off.”

Kuran waited for the next scream before leaning close to King. “Tell me exactly what Bryant wanted as far as the attacks were concerned. Word for word.”

“Was it bad?” Kuran asked Selt in his bunker office an hour later.

The other Nobek shrugged. “Maybe it would have been if we weren’t so sure they’d been behind the explosives. Though no one was hurt by their actions, they could have been. As crude as the devices were, the governor could have been killed. No, I had no problem using the inflictors to give the asshole incentive to confess.”

“Hearing Fitch react worked well on King. Two statements of guilt, and both in agreement it was Bryant who got them to do it.”

“What happens now?”

“We’ll turn over King and Fitch to the next set of operatives for the second stage.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not sure. It’s hush-hush, but the spy department might brainwash them into forgetting the whole thing. At the very least, they’ll alter their memories so they can’t out us. Maybe scramble their minds so they turn friendly to Kalquorians.”

“Huh. Heavy shit.” Selt went silent as he considered.

Kuran agreed such measures were possibly more disturbing than torturing their enemies. Yet when he called to mind the robot that had been blasted by the explosive meant for Stacy, he couldn’t summon an iota of guilt for King’s and Fitch’s fates.

“They weren’t terribly smart,” Selt said following a lengthy pause. “Funny about the lieutenant governor using the cover of home improvement to bring in a pathetic pair of goons. I mean, he had to realize it would look bizarre as hell to hire help from Mercy instead of on planet.”

“Yeah, unless he felt he couldn’t trust the locals. Even then, it doesn’t quite add up.” Kuran shut off the computer he’d filed his report on and pushed away from his desk. “Hold the fort for the rest of the afternoon, okay? I’m going up to the station and talk to the admiral.”

* * * *

Alpha Space Station

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