Chapter 12

Benni had three more interrogation sessions with a man who called himself "Lieutenant" and who carried himself with a stifling arrogance. His nose was flattened and his cheeks were scarred. Benni was fascinated by his unnaturally shiny white teeth, which were crooked and chipped. With little else to occupy his mind, he could have stared for hours.

Lieutenant asked silly questions. Did Benni know so-and-so? What was the family business of this family or that family? Who manufactured this particular stimstick or distributed some product of which he had never heard. Question after boring question was asked and then darkness descended.

Awaking for a third, fourth or fifth time — he was no longer sure — Benni was pleased to discover that he was lying unbound on a soft floor. The small room was rectangular with a door at one of the narrow ends. Opposite the door was a pipe no more than half a meter in diameter with a cap and a handle. He pressed on the handle and the cap popped open. The smell made clear the purpose and Benni realized his bladder was more than full. Although he was uncomfortable that his back was to the door and, therefore, vulnerable, he relieved himself for a good, long time.

The walls of his narrow cell were pink and warm to the touch, while the floor was white and rubbery. His bare feet felt a slight adhesion to the floor. Benni was as naked as the day he was born, which didn't much concern him. As he sat down and leaned against the wall, he wished mightily for his blades and his strop to keep his mind busy.

He thought about Shasa and Ceema. His thoughts turned to Dember and his den mates. Surely they knew of his heart-friend's fate by this point. Had they given Benni up for dead and offered his room up for rent to a new den mate?

He had slain two Enforcers but Lieutenant hadn't asked him about that incident. He was perplexed. If not for that, why had the Enforcers "disappeared" him? He had no answers and the walls weren't talking.

The door opened and a plasma rifle came into view first, aimed at his torso. "What is the sport of shooting a rat in a cage?" Benni called out.

"Sport, indeed," Commander Gravis said. He stepped into view beside the guard. "I wish to have a conversation with you. Are you willing to cooperate?"

"Why not?"

"Captain Tokin-Re is under the impression that you are an irrational and unreasoning barbarian who cannot comprehend civilized behavior and is prone to attacking without any provocation."

Benni gave a weak bark of self-indulgent laughter. "This captain of yours is a weak man and, as I told you before, a coward. That which he cannot conquer he has to disparage."

The commander cocked his head. "'Disparage' is a rather civilized word. Are you educated?"

"This monkey can read and write just fine."

"Well then, perhaps we can have a civilized conversation," the commander said.

Benni stared at his toes as he continued to sit with his back against the wall. "You want information from me. What do you have to trade?"

"Is everything business to you?"

Benni felt like Nagala lecturing him for a moment. "In the Temperdis, information is a valuable commodity that can be traded like for like or bought for slugs. I don't need slugs here so you had better have information that I need."

The commander nodded. "I have information you want. We have a deal?"

"We haven't sealed the agreement," Benni said.

"How do we seal?"

"Hold out your hand palm up."

The commander held out his hand and Benni sucked in his cheeks for a good wad of saliva and spit into the outstretched hand. The plasma rifles whined as the soldier powered up to fire.

"Stand Down!" the commander ordered. "Point that muzzle towards the floor."

"Sir, my orders are..." The soldier started to speak but the commander cut him off with a downward slash of his hand.

"Obviously your orders are incomplete. I have negotiated a deal with this prisoner. I am going to step inside his cell and complete our business. Shut the door behind me and do not open it until I knock three times."

"Sir, it is not wise to be alone in any closed space with one of them."

"Your advice is duly noted. Now shut the damn door and go cry to your captain."

The door shut, leaving Benni alone with the commander in the small pink room. The commander went to speak and Benni held up his index finger and wiggled it back and forth as a warning. Holding the commander's attention Benni touched his ear and then waved his finger in a circle to indicate the entire cell.

The commander nodded and removed a small cube from his pocket. He squeezed two sides of the device and the top of it glowed red. He pressed the sides again and, after a moment, the top glowed green.

"We cannot be overheard," the commander announced. "As much as you wish not to be overheard, I have the same desire and came prepared. My business does not necessarily mesh with the concerns of your Enforcers."

"What do you want, Zylis?" Benni asked simply.

The commander looked a bit taken aback although Benni couldn't understand why. Whatever the reason, the older man let it pass. "I need to know more about those packages for 'Hephaestus Galactic.' Do you know what was in them?"

"It wasn't fertilizer like the package said."

"How do you know what the package said? Did you handle the packages?"

Benni stared at the man for a moment considering if he was giving away too much information. "I built the labels for the three packages. They didn't travel Upstairs by the usual means."

"But did you know what was in those packages?" He was insistent.

"Bio-Chem," Benni said. "It was something so nasty that they had to take extra precautions and bury the factory at the bottom of the Hole."

"Do you know what happened to the rest of the packages after the three you handled?"

"There was an explosion below, probably from the bottom. We were in lockdown for three shifts, which is unusual, and the Enforcers 'disappeared' me before I could learn what had happened. I saw the Enforcers send down a company during the third shift of the lock down to investigate. Ask them."

"There are issues of communication with the Enforcers."

"How remarkable that we have something in common. You have my answers, what do you have for me?" Benni asked.

"Ah, I have for you the origin of the word 'Temperdis', and with it the history of your people."

Benni gave a slight grimace as he weighed whether he could sell this information. Then he chided himself for thinking that he could return to his home and family.

The commander said, "The name 'Temperdis' is a compacted set of words just as I suspected. It stands for 'Temporary Personnel Displacement Facility' and was created during the first Human-Vizz War for refugees from conquered worlds. You are the descendents of those refugees."

Benni was suddenly full of questions. "Why did they put us in the Hole and not let us out? Who are the Vizz? What... ?

The commander held out his hand to stop the questions. "I can't answer for the planetary authorities and their actions over the last three centuries. There is a lot to answer for, though. As for the second, the Vizz is short for an incredibly long name that I cannot begin to pronounce, only that it begins with a vibrating of a human lower lip like this: vzzp. They were decimating us rather well when they suddenly turned their ships and went off in another direction. It wasn't a retreat though and we expect them to return to finish us off."

Benni mulled over the information for a moment while he bit his lower lip. He made a leap of intuition and took a chance. "Is the bio-chem canister for humans or for the Vizz?"

The commander snorted. "You seem to take me by surprise every time I speak with you. We found a wrecked Vizz ship with corpses aboard. My mission is to find a lab to create a biological super weapon that destroys our enemy's DNA on our defeated planets, leaving the conquered planets open again to human habitation."

"You don't have enough." Again the commander looked surprised.

"No. I need the other packages, quickly. I need to go down to that lab and secure those canisters," Zylis said.

"Take a company of Enforcers and go. Take a battalion while you're at it."