Ship of the Line - Diane Carey [51]
“We know.” Dan comforted Mark. “Some of them ended up here. We’ll have to compare notes and see who’s still alive. The merchant captain’s name is Brent Atherton, I’ll bet?”
“Right, Atherton! You mean he’s here?”
“Yes, along with some of his crew still alive,” Dan said. “A dandy resourceful one, kept us going many times.”
“Sure has,” Steve agreed. “Out of our crew, we’ve still got Jack Seneca, David Rankin, Sarah Stockdale, Wattanakul—a handful of others who showed up, one every couple of weeks. Not everybody has survived, though, Mark. Cole and Webb, Kelly … Barth, Garland—”
“They’re dead?” Mark murmured.
“We’ve killed Cardies too,” Jack established. “They’ve killed some of ours, but we’ve done in a fair few of them as well. It’s not a game. Sometimes we’re the defenders. Sometimes we have to be the aggressors. Every few weeks, a new scenario, some new thing they want to learn from us.”
“All this,” Mark gulped, “so they can figure out how humans think?”
“How we think,” Steve said, “how we fight, what makes us flinch, what doesn’t, how much we’ll protect each other, do we protect friends more than strangers—” Dry heat from the shelling outside baked the moisture out of his body as he spoke. He felt strangely cold. “But … at least … at least we get the illusion of fighting for our lives.”
Dan put a hand on Steve’s knee—a gesture of solace for that tone of voice. “Now and then the Cardies throw somebody fresh into the pot to see if anything changes.”
Disheartened, Mark sagged back against the tool chest. “And I’m it?”
“You’re it for now.”
Even in the smoky dimness, Mark’s eyes were still gingham blue, but had lost the youthful glitter Steve had clung to in his memory all this time. Probably would never return.
Mark was looking back at him the same way. The exact same way. God, it hurt.
“What …” Mark seemed to be formulating questions, trying to distill all this. He struggled, and the others let him go through it. “They … provide food and water? They keep some of you alive?”
“Alive enough,” Steve told him. “They make us fight for it. If we get it, we have to fight to protect it. They want us alive, if we can stay that way, but … for one thing, they don’t see to our medical needs. They want us to take care of each other so they can see how we do it.”
“We’re being watched?”
“Most of the time,” Dan said. “We’ve neutralized most of their on-site recorders, but they’ve still got pinpoint satellite visuals and infrareds. We can sit and talk, but if we move five feet or so, they can figure out what we’re doing. Every now and then, they get an audio device in here, but we eventually find those. I’m making m’self a necklace.”
“I don’t understand,” Mark moaned. “What does this get them?”
“They’re trying to get their guys to think like humans,” Steve said. “We’re being used to train their operatives. We’ve got to fight, try to outthink them, so they can see us do it. They set up situations, and we have to try to win.”
” ‘Win’? What do you get if you win?”
“Few days’ rest. Maybe extra food. Some medical supplies if we can demonstrate a need, if we catch them in a good mood.”
“Chance to tidy up,” Dan said, scratching at the day’s growth of blond beard. “Shave, haircut, bit of a toenail manicure, you know—”
“What if you lose?”
“Then we get treated to the subcue. The ‘zapper,’ you called it.”
“What if it’s a draw?”
Dan shrugged. “Then we fight till it isn’t a draw anymore. We’ve got to keep up some level of success. If we stop being useful to them, we’re dead.”
Anger flared in Mark’s eyes. “I won’t do it! I won’t help train their soldiers. Forget it!”
Dan nodded, weary of that old song. “If you don’t, they’ll walk right out here and kill you. We’ve seen them do it. Remember Lieutenant Garland?”
“Hell, yes, I remember him!”
“Wouldn’t participate. Absolutely refused and stuck to it. Now, peer out through the crack in this flashing. See that thing hanging up on that light post?”
“That burned rag, you mean? Is that his uniform?”
“Not just his uniform, my friend.”
“Oh … God …”
Mark