Marathon: The Complete Series (Books 1-9) (Complete Series Box Sets), page 71
part #1 of Marathon Series
“Bing!” Clifton whispered after the soldiers left. “How bad is it?”
No one answered, and Clifton heard Bing cursing out of sight. “It doesn’t matter if he’s alive or dead,” Alice snarled. “If the Regiment did this, they can defeat the whole fringe army.”
“Are you saying the Regiment can defeat Silent Death?” Innyria shook his head. “I’ll never believe that.”
“How do you explain us coming here, then?” she fired back. “No one could accomplish that.”
“Akkek could have,” Innyria replied.
She snarled something about idiots her breath, but Clifton wasn’t listening. He strained his ears to hear something across the aisle.
As soon as the soldiers appeared, more prisoners exploded in noise all the way down the aisle. They banged the bars and hooted and whooped in wordless bellows and screeches. Clifton couldn’t see any reason for it except to raise a ruckus.
The other prisoners quieted down after the soldiers left, but it took a while. Clifton waited for silence before he tried again. “Bing!”
“Shut up!” Bing fired back. “Can’t you see I’m trying to work here?”
Clifton waited for what seemed like an eternity, but neither Bing nor Eckhart appeared or made a sound. “Bing?” Clifton ventured. “Are you still there?”
Bing didn’t answer at all this time, but a moment later, he slouched into view helping Eckhart. Bing moved Eckhart over to the wall and helped him sit against it.
Bing said something to Eckhart and Eckhart opened his mouth. Bing spat a large dollop of Eplite onto Eckhart’s tongue and Eckhart swallowed it. He was still alive, and he’d be all right as long as he had Bing with him.
“How you doing, Eckhart?” Clifton asked.
Eckhart turned his face toward the aisle, and Clifton’s stomach turned when he saw the state of Eckhart’s head. The Regiment must have done one hell of a number on Eckhart if he looked like this after receiving Bing’s treatment.
“I’m okay,” Eckhart rasped between broken lips. No part of his face functioned the way it should, and Clifton couldn’t even tell if Eckhart could see. “I’m great since they decided not to hang me.”
“Hang you!” Innyria interrupted. “What do you mean?”
Eckhart chuckled and ended up coughing. “I guess I’m still too valuable as a coercion tool against the fringes. Rixby thinks I’m behind executed.”
Clifton glanced over at Bing for some explanation, but Bing only stared down at Eckhart. Clifton couldn’t read the Yakit’s expression.
“So how do we get out of here?” Innyria asked.
“We don’t, asshole,” Alice spat. “First they kill Eckhart and then they get rid of us. That’s how it works.”
“We can’t just give up. What do you say, Eckhart? There has to be a way out of here.”
Eckhart faced front. His features didn’t change, but his body relaxed. “I don’t know any way out of here, and I’m not in any condition to think about it. Why don’t you ask Alice about that?”
“I just did,” Innyria replied.
Bing finally turned his attention to his friends across the aisle and noticed the gash on Alice’s face. Bing couldn’t reach her, though. “Where’s Dallas? He was with us on the Marathon.”
“No one knows where he is,” Alice growled. “Maybe they took him off to be salvaged for scrap.”
“That isn’t funny,” Bing countered.
“Do I look like I’m joking around?” she fired back. “Of course they wouldn’t put him down here with us. He’s too strong. They wouldn’t want him helping us escape. Use your brain.”
“How did they get hold of you, anyway?” Eckhart asked. “How did they capture you? Is the Marathon a field of space junk floating in the atmosphere now? Remind me not to give you any more ships, Alice.”
“The Marathon is just fine,” she muttered. “It was perfectly intact when we left it.”
“There’s no guarantee that it still is, though,” Innyria added. “The Regiment might have blown it up after we left.”
“They couldn’t blow it up with Akkek and DeWalt guarding the fleet,” Bing ventured.
“Are you really that stupid?” Alice cut in. “The Regiment captured us right under Akkek and DeWalt’s noses. Akkek and DeWalt couldn’t do anything to stop it, and now we’re here. Quit living in a fairy tale, Bing. Akkek and DeWalt can’t do jack shit to get us out of here.”
Bing’s eyes rotated over to meet Clifton’s, and they both looked away. Clifton didn’t want to think about being trapped in a Regiment prison on the prisoner side of the bars, but he couldn’t argue with Alice’s bleak outlook.
“How did we get here?” Innyria asked no one in particular.
“Don’t you know?” Eckhart asked.
“No idea,” Clifton replied. “We just…appeared here.”
Eckhart cocked his head to one side and winced. “That’s weird.”
“What was that you were saying about them hanging you?” Innyria asked.
Eckhart shrugged and coughed again. “They’re trying to mess with Rixby. They made it look like they were going to hang me. Then they brought me back here.”
“If she thinks they hanged you, she must think you’re dead,” Bing replied.
“Not quite. They cut the feed before they actually showed me falling through the trapdoor.”
Everyone stared at him in shock. Clifton felt sick to his stomach.
Eckhart forced a laugh. “Don’t worry. They didn’t do it. I’m still alive.”
Those words startled Bing, and he gave Eckhart another dose of Eplite. Some of the swelling in Eckhart’s face appeared to be going down, but that could have been the dim light playing tricks on Clifton’s eyes.
Bing finally sat down next to Eckhart, so his condition couldn’t be too serious. “I guess we might as well get comfortable. We aren’t going anywhere for a while.”
Eckhart started to say something, but a sudden hissing sound cut him off. Clifton turned around. Alice sat in the same place, but instead of complaining about their situation, she turned her hollow eye sockets on the walls around her.
“What is it?” Innyria asked. “What do you see?”
“They’re disintegrated!” Alice croaked. “They’re in the walls. They’re watching and listening from inside the walls!”
“Who is?” Eckhart asked.
“I don’t know, but they’re definitely there. They keep moving around from cell to cell. They’re concentrating on us because we’re the newest arrivals. They’re listening to our conversation.”
“Disintegrated…like Akkek?” Clifton asked.
“Of course like Akkek,” Alice fired back. “She developed those powers in a Regiment lab. The Regiment perfected the virus or whatever it was on her. They did it years before they ever thought of using DeWalt.”
“If that’s true…” Clifton broke off.
“Are you saying there are more Akkeks running around here?” Innyria frowned at the wall, but there was nothing to see.
“They aren’t Akkeks because they’re male,” Alice returned, “and they aren’t running around.”
“Shit!” Bing groaned. “This is bad.”
“They aren’t a danger to us as long as we’re in here,” Alice told him. “They’re just watching us.”
“That explains how we got here,” Innyria replied. “They disintegrated us out of the ship and brought us here.”
Before anyone could say anything else, the same soldiers came back. They came to Clifton’s cell instead of Eckhart’s, and they unlocked the bars right in front of him. “You!” one of them snapped. “Come with us.”
“Me?” Clifton glanced behind him at the other two. “Why me?”
“How should I know? Admiral Keating wants to talk to you.”
Clifton started to protest, but the soldiers only grabbed him and yanked him out of the cell. His four friends watched the soldiers march him away.
Clifton didn’t fight them. Some part of his brain still deluded itself that he might be able to help them somehow—as if someone might be able to reason with Admiral Keating.
The soldiers led Clifton up several flights of stairs, down a few corridors, and eventually pushed him into an office.
Both admirals stood by a large wooden desk, and they turned to face Clifton when he entered. Admiral Keating wrinkled his nose in a way that Clifton recognized only too well. It was the usual expression of disgust most Earthlings used when dealing with anything alien.
Admiral Ferris studied something on the instruments in front of him. “You’re Captain Blake Clifton, retired.”
Clifton straightened up to confront these two men. “That’s right.”
“You were working for Eckhart when we spoke the other day,” Admiral Keating added.
Clifton pursed his lips. “Did you bring me here to tell me things I already know?”
“We brought you here to offer you a compromise.”
“You mean a chance to bitch out on my friends? Thanks,” Clifton replied, “but I’m not interested.”
Admiral Keating only smiled. “I see you haven’t lost your Regiment attitude. That’s good to see, Captain. We can work with that.”
“I’m not a captain anymore. I’m your enemy.”
“I don’t think so.” Admiral Ferris turned his display around so Clifton could see it. “The aliens you call friends are prisoners here. Those that are still at large on the fringes will be dead soon…unless you decide to help us.”
“I will never help you,” Clifton countered. “You plan to kill billions of aliens. You poisoned DeWalt and God knows how many other people with your experiments. You’re evil.”
“We might be evil, but you’ll still help us.” Admiral Keating did something on his display. It showed Clifton both cells: one with Alice and Innyria, the other holding Bing and Eckhart. “You’re the only person who can keep them alive, Clifton.”
“Don’t forget your friend Dallas Eldridge.” Admiral Ferris made another adjustment to the feed.
The screen showed Clifton a picture of some lab somewhere. Dallas stood in the center hooked up to a million wires. A bunch of technicians in white coats worked on every part of him.
“Would you really stand by and watch us kill them all?” Admiral Keating asked. “You could save them, Clifton. All you have to do is help us.”
“You’re human,” Admiral Ferris went on. “You can still come back to Earth restored to your old position. You don’t have to go down in flames with these aliens. You can still choose to do the right thing.”
“Eckhart is human, too,” Clifton pointed out. “Are you offering him the same option?”
“Eckhart will die. He has to be executed as an example before the fringe aliens. They have to see that we would even kill one of our own to win this war. They have to understand that we would retaliate so much more harshly against any alien who took his place.”
Clifton flashed back to what DeWalt said on Churata. If the Regiment killed Eckhart, the aliens would only react by attacking. Eckhart’s death would galvanize the fringe aliens and bring them together to seek revenge.
Then Clifton remembered what Eckhart had just said. The Regiment made it look like they’d already executed Eckhart. They put on some show to screw with Rixby so the aliens would think Eckhart was being hanged. Was this another trick to mess with Clifton’s head?
Admiral Ferris answered Clifton’s thoughts for him. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to your friend DeWalt, either. You’re his bodyguard. It would be terrible if you turned out to be the cause of his death.”
“What about him?” Clifton asked. “He isn’t here.”
Admiral Keating smirked even more triumphantly. “You’re thinking about his immense powers—the powers he got from us. His powers no longer exist. We implanted a shutoff switch in all our experimental assets, and we shut down DeWalt when he turned against the Regiment. He’s powerless now.”
“We also implanted a remote kill device,” Admiral Ferris added. “We can shut off his life the same way we shut down his powers. We can kill him at a moment’s notice if we choose.”
“You can save him, Clifton,” Admiral Keating went on. “All you have to do is cooperate.”
“You can tell us everything about the aliens who took over the rebellion after Eckhart’s capture. You can tell us their plans and you can explain their dispositions. You’ve been with them long enough. You know them better than we do.”
Clifton opened his mouth to tell them where they could shove their cooperation, but at that moment, the display in front of him revealed the same soldiers trooping into the prison. They went to Eckhart’s cell, opened it up, pushed Bing out of the way, and wrestled Eckhart out into the aisle again.
Clifton’s stomach dropped. Were they going to kill Eckhart right now? Was this another manipulation?
What could Clifton tell these men that they didn’t already know? Telling them about Rixby wouldn’t help them fight the aliens. Whatever Clifton knew about Rixby’s plans would have gone down the crapper after the Marathon crew disappeared.
Telling them whatever meager scraps of insight Clifton could give them…wouldn’t that be worth his friends’ lives? Clifton had risked a lot to keep DeWalt alive. Could he really turn his back on the Marathon crew, now that he had a chance to save them?
He might be able to save Alice, Innyria, Bing, Dallas, and DeWalt. Clifton would never be able to save Eckhart. Not all the information and cooperation in the world could accomplish that.
The two admirals didn’t have to tell him so in so many words. Eckhart represented the rebellion, and everyone knew it on both sides of the war.
The Regiment wouldn’t be playing these deadly games with Eckhart’s life if they didn’t understand loud and clear what Eckhart meant to everyone on the other side. They had to kill him. It was only a question of when.
“I can see you have a lot to think about,” Admiral Keating mused. “You can go back to your friends. We’ll give you twelve hours to make up your mind.”
Clifton hardly noticed when the soldiers led him back to the cells. His conscience told him never to compromise with the Regiment. He’d be tainting himself for all time if he made a deal with his enemies.
How could he turn it down, though? How could he live with himself if he didn’t do everything possible to save their lives?
The soldiers pushed him into the cell and the bars clanged shut in Clifton’s face, but he hardly heard them. He only half-heard Bing ask, “What was that all about?”
“They probably gave him a home-cooked meal and a bubble bath,” Alice snarled. “Earthlings love their Earthling buddies.”
Innyria laughed, and amazingly, so did Eckhart. He still sat in the same place where Bing had put him. So the admirals had tricked Clifton by showing him the guards taking Eckhart away.
“What did they want, Clifton?” Eckhart asked. “Let me guess. They want you to switch sides and sell out the fringes by telling them everything you know.”
Clifton jolted alert. How did he think Eckhart wouldn’t know?
“They did, didn’t they?” Innyria muttered. “The bastards!”
Clifton shrugged, but he couldn’t look at anyone. “They say they’ll kill all three of you…and Dallas…and DeWalt. They say they implanted a kill switch in DeWalt and they can kill him remotely.”
“Did they show you Dallas?” Bing asked. “Is he here?”
“I guess so. They have him in a lab. It looks like they’re studying him.”
“Tell me you aren’t actually considering this,” Alice hissed. “Tell me they didn’t wring your precious little heart with their hollow threats.”
“How do you know their threats are hollow?” Bing asked. “We don’t mean anything to the Regiment. They could kill us all.”
“I swear I never met anyone as cowardly as you, Bing,” she snarled. “You’d cave to any threat, no matter how small.”
“Watching the five of you die is hardly a small threat,” Clifton choked.
Alice snorted. “You’re as bad as Bing over there. They’ll kill all of us anyway. Do you honestly think they’ll make good on their promise to spare us once you give them whatever information you give them? You’re a patsy, Clifton. You always were.”
“You should do it,” Eckhart chimed in. “You should take this deal.”
Clifton spun around with a gasp. “You are not serious!”
“I am. You should do it.”
“Dear God, Eckhart!” Alice grumbled. “Not you, too!”
“You should take it, but not because you want to keep all of us alive. That’s impossible. You should take it so they take you out of here.”
“Are you insane?” Clifton fired back. “I’m not helping them! What’s the point of waging a war against them if I’m going to cooperate with them?”
“You might want to watch your mouths.” Alice nodded toward the nearest wall. “Those things are listening.”
“What difference does it make?” Eckhart replied. “The admirals would be stupid to believe Clifton suddenly changed sides. They’ll already suspect him of duplicity.”
“I am not cooperating with them,” Clifton announced. “Forget it.”
“Tell them whatever they want to know,” Eckhart went on. “It won’t help them against the aliens.”
“They shut down DeWalt and Akkek,” Clifton told him. “They’re both powerless. The Regiment has more of these experimental assets. Alice has seen them. The fringes don’t stand a chance against them. The whole rebellion is finished.”
Eckhart only shrugged. “I choose to hold a more optimistic view of our chances.”
“That’s because you’re a fool, Eckhart,” Alice growled. “You’re a dreamer.”
Eckhart turned his puffy eyes on Clifton, and now Clifton knew with no doubt that Eckhart could see him. Eckhart looked right at him. “Do it, Clifton. What you tell them and how much you cooperate with them won’t make any difference, but it will do one thing that will help the rebellion.”
“What’s that?” Bing asked.
“You’ll be outside these cells. The admirals will keep you upstairs with them. That will give us one man free to help us when the shit goes down.”
