Ad Noctum: Chapter 3

“It’s going to be a long, bad day,” Telford whispered.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Abduction. Anxiety. Panic. Purposefully insensitive discussion of mental health issues. Boundary problems. Manipulation. References to torture. References to suicide.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 3

Volker woke with a start as Telford dropped off the upper berth. He blinked as the room lights came on, bright and strong. He pressed a hand to his bad shoulder as if to brace against the pain of a sudden awakening.

Telford, clad only in boxers, leaned against the wall. He shielded his eyes from the glare of the lights. “You slept. That’s a minor miracle—” he broke off as he got a real look at Volker.

“Hi,” Volker said.

“Damn it.” Telford sighed. “I thought you were Rush.”

“Nope,” Volker said. “Still me.”

“How’s the shoulder?”

“Pretty painful, actually.”

Telford’s head was bent. His shoulders sloped as though the press of artificial gravity was weighing him down. “It’s going to be a long, bad day,” he whispered.

The other man’s defeated stance killed the sarcastic comment Volker’d been about to make. “Why?” he asked instead.

Telford shook his head. “Help him as much as you can, as efficiently as you can, for as long as you can stand it.”

“Okay.” Volker fought down the dread churning in his chest.

Telford shook himself, straightened, and pulled on his shirt.

Volker sat, careful not to jostle his shoulder. He’d been too exhausted to strip off his jeans and dress shirt from the previous day.

Telford stepped into his pants. “Put on the leather stuff.”

“Is there a shower on this—“ Volker made a loose gesture at the walls, “—ship?”

“It’s a tel’tak,” Telford said. “And yes. There’s a shower. But no showering until tonight. You already look too clean. If you brought any shaving gear, don’t use it. In about fourteen hours we’ll need to pass you off as a low-ranking member of the LA.”

Volker’s anxiety spiked. “Seriously?”

Telford nodded.

“There’s no way I can hide or—”

“Not an option.” Telford knelt to lace up his boots. “Believe me, I’m not happy about it. I’ve worked out a way to play this, I think. We’ll go over everything a few hours ahead of time.”

“But—”

“This is unavoidable.” Telford gave him a hard look. “We’ll deal with it as best we can. In the meantime, get dressed. Help Rush.”

“He’s terrible at explaining things,” Volker said. “I still have no idea what he wants from me.”

Telford swung his jacket over his shoulder. “He wants you to help him find a planet. A planet with so much fissile material that it itself could serve as an energy source to power a stargate.”

Stargates. Wormholes. The whole thing was too immense to believe.

“Why is this his job?”

“It shouldn’t be,” Telford admitted. “He’s supposed to be doing something else. We had a planet.”

“What happened to it?” Volker asked.

“Its location was leaked to Stargate Command,” Telford said, neutral and cool, “by parties unknown. After a pitched battle, the LA lost control of the planet. Now we need another one.”

“That doesn’t explain why this is his job. He’s a cryptographer, not an exoplanetologist.”

“The Alliance doesn’t treat its scientists well. They have a habit of ruining their minds. They have no scientists who can do what Rush does. If any of them ever could have, which I doubt.”

Volker felt a thrill of dread, but when he spoke, the words landed dry and mild. “So glad I’m here.”

“Also,” Telford said, looking away, “he and I—individually or in conjunction—are suspected of leaking the location of the naquadria-laced planet to Stargate Command.”

“Did you?” Volker asked.

Telford smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling with what looked like genuine good humor. “Don’t ask questions like that. They’ll only get you killed.” He hit the door controls and left the room.

“Right,” Volker said to the closed door.

As if in answer, the door hissed open again.

Telford was backing away from something in the hall.

Volker flinched. He flung his good hand in front of his face in anticipation of some horrific thing on the other side.

“What the fuck?” Telford said breathlessly, steadying himself on the doorframe. “Seriously. What. The fuck?”

Around the colonel’s broad shoulders, Volker saw Mendelssohn looking inquisitively up at Telford.

“Oh,” Volker said. “Yeah. That’s my cat.”

Telford turned, staring at Volker as if he’d spoken a language other than English. He opened a hand, palm up with fingers spread, and looked toward the ceiling, as if asking for a divine answer to a question he couldn’t verbalize.

“Um?” Volker offered.

“No. Don’t say anything.” Telford drew in what was probably supposed to be a calming breath.

Mendelssohn meowed politely.

Telford edged past the cat and into the hallway.

Mendelssohn watched him go, his tail twitching. He regarded Volker with a reproachful expression.

Out in the hallway, the sound of Telford’s hand hitting the door controls was so loud that Volker suspected he’d punched them. “What the hell are you—” the last thing he heard before both sets of doors shut with almost synchronous swishes.  

“Rush let you out, I suppose.” Volker eyed his cat. “Didn’t he tell you to keep a low profile? Hmmm?”

Mendelssohn rubbed against his ankles.

“All right. Let’s go.” Volker picked up the cat.

Once he was in the hall, the shouting turned a little more audible. He headed for the cargo bay.

“—a cat on board? How the hell am I supposed to explain a cat? We’re in enough trouble as it is. Cats aren’t exactly common on tel’taks unless you’re fucking Bastet, which isn’t an excuse we can fucking use—”

Telford’s rant turned muffled as the door to the cargo bay shut behind him. Volker knelt and gently deposited Mendelssohn on the floor. He wrapped his good arm around his chest to support his injured shoulder, then stared at the floor.

A long, bad day.

Sounded about right.

Mendelssohn meowed softly.

Volker roused himself enough to dig a hand into the bag of cat food and spread a small amount out on the floor next to the water. Someone had refreshed the water in the bowl.

Rush. It had to be. 

Volker began pulling on his new clothes. The pants were tight, but it didn’t look as if caloric excess would be a problem for him. The jacket was loose across his shoulders, but otherwise fit okay.

“What do you think?” he asked Mendelssohn. “Do I look like a Space Pirate?”

Mendelssohn didn’t pause his methodical crunching.

“Oh, I see how it is,” Volker said. “You don’t care as long as you’re getting fed. Is that right?”

The cat ignored him.

“Fine.” Volker tucked his black T-shirt into his leather pants. He gave the cat a stern look. “But I’m warning you now, if you end up liking Rush better than me, I won't forgive you.”

The cat continued to eat.

“Are we clear on that?” Volker knelt and ran a hand over his back.  

The cat looked up long enough to delicately sniff the sleeve of Volker’s new leather jacket before going back to his food.

“Good.” Volker steeled himself, then returned to the central corridor, feeling more confident in his new outfit. There was something about it that felt like armor.

He hit the controls to the workroom. The sound of Rush tearing into Telford rose about ten decibels in volume as the door swished open.

“Explain to me in a rational manner why you fuckin’ hold to this, David. It’s not sustainable, it’s not logical, it will ruin us both and, if you want to know, I’m more than a little concerned you’ve already—” Rush broke off as Volker entered the room.

The pair of them stood close, their weight shifted forward, their gazes locked. Volker’s entry into the room seemed to defuse the situation. Rush stepped back and swept a hand through his hair. Telford walked to the window and pressed a hand against glass that had been covered with equations sometime during the night, as though the window were a dry-erase board.

The symbols stood out, dark against the streaked white lines of passing stars.

Rush looked pale and exhausted and miserable. The mathematician stood in the midst of the utter disaster he’d made of the room over the course of the night. The wall to the left of the door was covered with scraps of notebook paper fastened to the metal. They created a grid-like pattern, probably a rough version of a matrix. Or maybe a matrix of matrices. The central table was a mess of crumpled paper, linked computers and—

Oh, hey! 

Rush had rescued Volker’s computer and brought it with him before he’d set fire to the lab!

That was a huge plus.

“You brought my laptop?” Already Volker was closing the distance. He ran his fingers over the keys, traced the edges of the screen.

It was a little piece of home.

Rush elbowed him aside, dropped onto the bench in front of Volker’s laptop and…started typing on it.

As though he owned the thing.

Maybe he thought he did.

Maybe he actually did, per Space Pirate Law?

If someone kidnapped you and stole your laptop at the same time, to whom did the laptop belong?

On one of the linked laptops, a rasterized map was coming to life, line by line. It looked like it was maybe thirty percent complete.

Volker raised his eyebrows. “Is that the superimposed data?”

Rush favored him with a look that seemed to be equal parts incredulity, annoyance, and disdain.

Volker dropped onto the bench next to Rush. “I’m gonna take that as a yes.”

“Yes,” Rush sighed. “It’s the superimposed data.”

“That’s incredible.” Volker angled the laptop screen to get a better look at the nascent heat map. “How did you—”

“Integer programming.” Rush braced his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.

“Were you up all night?” Volker asked.

Rush nodded.

“Why?” Volker asked.

Rush pulled a hand away from his face and made a fluid, circular gesture.

“Not sure what that means.” Volker shot an edgy glance at Telford. The colonel hadn’t moved from the window, his gaze locked on the streaks of hyperspace or on the fluid curves of Rush’s math; it was impossible to say which.

“For every point,” Rush said, speaking indistinctly into his hands, “that local anisotropies and radio emissions overlap, I want you to look for evidence of a star system in the vicinity. Compile a list of candidates.”

“You want to find one of these naquadria planets?”

Rush took a breath, dropped his hands, and said, “So you were listening.”

“Well, y’know.” Volker shrugged. “I try.”

They were quiet. Volker shot another glance at Telford.

“I don’t ‘want’ to find one,” Rush muttered. “I ‘need’ t’find one.”

The line of Telford’s shoulders hardened. His head dropped.

Volker returned his attention to Rush. “Get some sleep. I’ll get started on this.”

“Are y’sure you can—”

“Rush. It’s my data.”

“Yes yes.” Rush sighed. “I suppose it is.”

Telford turned away from the window. He sat across from them at the worktable.

“Nick.” Telford fixed his attention on Rush.

Rush shook his head. Looked away. “I—”

“It’s not about the damn cat. Or the knifing. Or the shipment of kassa you ‘inadvertently’ lit on fire.”

“What, then?” Rush demanded.

Telford looked at Volker, stalling for time. “There’s food in the crates under the window if you want it.”

“Thanks.” Volker opened a crate and found himself faced with an array of identical, silver-wrapped packages.

“David,” Rush said, pressing his fingertips into his temples, “I’m fuckin’ exhausted. I—”

“I know,” Telford replied.

“Does everything have to be so fuckin’ ominous with you? So fuckin’ drawn out and officious? Get t’your point, if y’bloody have one.”

“Kiva called a meeting,” Telford said.

Rush slammed his hands, palms down, against the gold tabletop.

Volker jerked in surprise and dropped his silver-clad breakfast.

“Don’t panic,” Telford said, low and calm.

Rush surged to his feet and paced the length of the room. He swept a hand through his hair, then turned, his expression livid. “When.”

“I said don’t panic,” Telford replied.

“And I,” Rush gestured at his own chest with an elegantly curved hand, “said when? Which I will fuckin’ reiterate for you now. When.”

“I don’t think—”

“Today, then.”

“Yeah.” Telford nodded shortly. “Fourteen hours from now.”

Volker returned to the table, his rectangular meal in hand. He kept his attention on Rush, trying to figure out who Kiva might be and/or why the idea of a meeting bothered Rush so much.

Rush turned away from Telford, hands clenching and unclenching. “This is ridiculous. This is intolerable. Do y’have any idea, any idea at all what kind of timetable this level of scientific or mathematical or technical progress requires? Do you? It takes years. Years, David. Not months. Not weeks. What they’re asking is impossible to the point of farce. This is why they’ll fail as a galactic power. It’s why they already have. They have the patience of a pack of illiterate Visigoths.”

“Tell that to Kiva,” Telford said darkly.

“Oh, I did.” Rush looked like he was on his way to hyperventilating.

“And how did that go.” It wasn’t a question, and Rush didn’t answer it.

“I don’t have anything.” Rush’s gaze was locked on nothing.

“You have fourteen hours,” Telford said. “And an astrophysicist.”

“We’ll not have anything after fourteen hours,” Rush breathed.

Telford looked at him steadily, then got to his feet. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.” He turned and strode out of the room.

Rush pulled his glasses off. He stood frozen, staring into the air as if it could save him from whatever was going to happen when he met Kiva. He pressed a hand against the nearest wall.

Volker had never seen anyone so clearly terrified. He couldn’t help the sympathetic thrill of horror that closed like a band around his lungs.

Rush didn’t seem like the kind of person who would scare easily.

“What—” the word was inaudible. Volker tried again. “What’s Kiva going to do to you if we don’t have a planet?”

Rush didn't reply, just continued to stare into nothingness. Like there was something there he could see.

“Rush,” Volker insisted. “What's she gonna do to you?”

“I suppose we’ll find out.” Rush slipped his glasses back into place.

“You’ve met her before?” Volker asked.

“Oh, yes,” Rush murmured. “We’re well acquainted at this point.”

“What are you afraid of?” Volker asked.

Rush shot him a complicated look, full of speculation and warning.

“Telford said the LA ‘ruins’ their scientists,” Volker said tentatively.

“They do,” Rush confirmed.

“What did he mean by that?”

“The nature of scientific inquiry doesn’t mesh well with the governing philosophy of the Lucian Alliance.”

“But it ruins them? Ruins them?”

“They place a premium on loyalty,” Rush said. “The means they use to achieve that loyalty—well, suffice it to say that coercive persuasion doesn’t allow for the conceptual latitude required by scientific thought.”

Volker swallowed.

“It constrains insight,” Rush continued. “It cripples one’s capacity to construct and apply a logical framework.”

“Yep, okay.” Volker found himself struggling to take a deep breath.

“It creates bias.” Rush’s hand curled into a fist against the wall.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“It destroys accurate estimations of uncertainty and, when used to its full extent, obliterates understanding of uncertainty as a concept.”

“Rush. I get it.”

“It leaves personality intact but tears away empirical instinct—”

“Rush.”

Finally, Rush turned to look at him.

Volker wondered if his fear was written on his face. He tried not to imagine what it would be like to have his thinking constrained, compartmentalized in a manner that wasn’t observable—like missing a leg without the awareness or understanding of that loss—simply knowing that, for some reason, one couldn’t walk across the room anymore.

“Either they accept it,” Rush continued, his eyes locked on Volker, “and they become part of the marginally productive LA science staff, which is equal only to small-scale technical problems, or they fail to accept it.”

“What happens then?”

“What do you think?” Rush murmured. “What would you do, if you knew it had happened to you?”

Volker didn’t answer. He looked down at his silver-wrapped breakfast and found he didn’t much feel like eating it. “Do you think they’ll do it to you? Whatever it is that they do?” he asked.

“I think they can barely fuckin’ contain themselves,” Rush said with a humorless smile. “But perhaps if we can land on a few candidate star systems, they’ll defer the destruction of my mind until next time.”

“Yeah,” Volker said. “Okay.”

Two hours before the scheduled meeting with Kiva, Telford summoned Volker to the bridge for a “briefing.”

Volker’s palms were damp as he followed the other man to the bridge. He tried wiping them on his leather pants, but that didn't seem to help much. The lights had dimmed. Volker supposed that meant it was technically “night.” At least by ship-time. Tel’tak-time. Whatever.

“Shouldn't Rush be involved in this conversation?” Volker asked.

Telford dropped into the pilot’s seat. “It’s a briefing.”

“Shouldn’t Rush be involved in this briefing?”

“In a perfect world, yeah. He’d be a help. In the actual world, no.”

“Okay,” Volker said.

“I won’t lie to you.” Telford met his eyes. “This will be rough.”

“Great.”

Telford shot him a sharp look. "If you can't pass for an insider, things will go south very quickly. For all of us. So. You need to bring every single god damned intellectual asset you have to bear on this situation, you understand? Your PhD means fuck all out here. So scrape every ounce of street smarts and common sense you had into the front of your mind. Cut it out with the sarcastic asides and internalize the information I give you.”

“What happens if I get caught?”

“Best case scenario: you’re executed immediately; Rush is tortured; I’m tortured then executed.”

“Um, that's best case?”

“Worst case: you get tortured and brainwashed; Rush gets tortured and brainwashed; I get tortured and executed. Later, you both kill yourselves to escape your miserable lives. But there’s a caveat, which is: it’s hard to anticipate an accurate worst case scenario. That’s usually what makes it a worst case scenario. The fact you didn’t anticipate it.”

Volker felt too stunned to be really afraid. “Thanks for the disclaimer.”

“And that,” Telford said, “is exactly what I'm talking about. Cut it out. Ideally in general, but especially when you’re around anyone other than Rush and me.”

“Right.”

“You’re an uneducated, minor member of the Sixth House of the Alliance. A bastard nephew of a contact who owes me. He happens to be cousin of Kiva’s. That should help us, presuming he keeps his word and doesn't tell Kiva I’m trying to pull one over on her, in which case, nothing you do matters, because we're all fucked.”

“Okay.” Volker took a breath and tried to focus. “And Kiva is?”

“Kiva is the daughter of Massim, head of the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance. Kiva is his most powerful lieutenant.”

“Um—”

“She’s ruthless. She’s beautiful. She’s practical. She’s terrifying.” There was more than a hint of admiration in Telford’s tone as he described her. “You’ll know her if you see her; hope you won’t.”

“Okay. But you trust this guy? Your contact?”

"As much as I trust anyone in the LA.”

"What's my name supposed to be?"

"We'll stick with Dale. It'll work as a Sixth House name, and it’ll make everything easier.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll tell you how I think the meeting will go, so you know what to expect,” Telford said, his face expressionless. “Once we make the rendezvous point, we’ll dock with a large ship. We'll ring aboard. There will be confusion about your presence. Kiva’s people will be upset and mistrustful. We’ll tell them who you are. They’ll verify your story with my contact. While they’re verifying, they'll likely separate you. You'll be questioned.” Telford paused, and then added, “You may be roughed up a little.”

“What?” Volker stared at Telford.

“They won't have long.” Telford seemed like he was trying to be reassuring. “They’ll worry about your family connections. They won't get inventive, and once they confirm your identity with my contact, they'll stop working you over. They may even apologize, as you're a member of Kiva's House. If they apologize, wave it off. Like it’s no big deal. If you have to say something, say you understand why it was necessary.”

“This is, like, a normal procedure?” Volker’s voice was pitched higher than usual. “A normal thing they do?”

“Yes. I'm sorry, but it's unavoidable. Initiation is much worse, but you'll be spared that.”

“And when you say ‘roughed up,’ you mean…” Volker trailed off, waiting for Telford to fill in.

“Electrical current, probably. It’ll come via a device that's about three feet in length.” Telford held his hands apart. “Looks like a stick. Extremely painful, but won’t do any structural damage. You’ll be fine, presuming you don’t have any congenital heart problems. You don’t, do you?”

“No?” Volker’s incredulity made the word come out as a question rather than a statement.

“You'll know it's only likely to last about twenty minutes or so, which should help you to make it through and stick to your story, which we'll work out ahead of time. We'll give you a standard line you can repeat when you start to get tired, but ideally, it won't get that far. Like I said, you're a member of the Sixth House. That will give you protection.”

“Won’t Kiva realize she hasn't seen me at all the House Reunions, or whatever?”

“No. Houses populate worlds," Telford said. “Hopefully you won’t be considered worth Kiva’s time. You’ll likely be interrogated by Dannic or Varro.”

“Can't I just hide on the ship?”

“No. We’re going to have a hard enough time hiding your cat.” Telford glared at him.

Volker shrugged guiltily.

“If you're going to be with us long term, you need to get through this.”

“Can't you just—” Volker hesitated. When he spoke again, all the strength was gone from his voice. “Can’t you just take me home?”

Telford looked down at his hands. “Maybe. Eventually. With a lot of luck and a lot of work. Until then, if you want to stay alive, you need to trust me.”

“Okay.” Volker felt a hot ache deep in his shoulder.

Telford drilled him on his backstory for two hours before they were interrupted by the trill of an alarm Volker had never heard before. Telford studied the slow strobe of flashing foreign text.

“What’s that?” Volker asked.

“Proximity alert,” Telford said. “Go put your cat in the wall and wait with Rush.”

Volker nodded. He felt a dryness in his throat and a tightness in his chest. He went to the cargo bay and moved Mendelssohn’s food, water, and litter box into a hidden compartment in the wall of the ship. It was colder in the space than he would have liked, so he shoved a few of his shirts inside to make a cat bed before depositing Mendelssohn in the small, dark chamber.

Telford had told him the space had originally been an access point to the shield generator, which was located beneath the cargo bay. Telford and Rush had modified the small space to be sensor-opaque for purposes Telford hadn’t been inclined to elaborate on. It was open to the ventilation system, but the panels would muffle any meows.

Hopefully.

“Stay quiet, buddy,” Volker whispered. He snapped the panel back into place.

He listened for a few seconds.

Nothing.

Anxiously, he removed the paneling again.

Mendelssohn stared at him, curious.

“Shh,” Volker said needlessly, trying not to feel like an idiot.

“Dale,” Telford called from the hallway, “let’s go.”  

Volker knelt on the floor of the cargo bay and tried to pull in a long, slow, deep breath.

He was about to walk into a situation where he might face torture.

The prospect was something he’d never faced, nor had he ever anticipated facing it. It was as far removed from his normal life as the alien ship that vibrated beneath his stolen boots. He placed a hand over his injured shoulder.

He felt delicate and poorly put together, aware of his own transient biological nature.

He wasn’t prepared for this.

He hadn’t asked for it.

It was, however, inescapable.

That realization did nothing to loosen the knot in his chest. It didn’t warm his hands or slow his breathing or make it any easier to stand up and hit the door controls before stepping into the hallway where Telford and Rush waited.