Free Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen

had crumpled to the floor, either exhausted or unconscious, the Badgers had delivered a few more jabs before giving up and retreating from the room.
    Some among the Fant referred to themselves as the Dying. Perhaps the harsh physical interrogation and torture dispensed by the Taxi counted as something the living suffered, making it just one more thing that the Dying could endure.
    Was this Fant an isolated case or a representative one? Were the females more resistant than the males, the Lox more than the Eleph? Or did the interrogation fail because she simply didn’t have the answers to the questions Krasnoi had been charged to pursue?
    The Badgers had a yard full of prisoners upon which to test these questions. The Urs knew that none among the squad would be at all troubled that their tasks marked yet another violation of Barsk’s Compact, the execution of another unlawful command.
    A pair of Ailuros guards borrowed from the orbital station entered the room and dragged the Fant to her feet. Krasnoi shut off the vid. He put the details out of his mind but could not shake the brutal inefficiency of what he’d seen.

 
    SEVEN
    PARENTAL DISAPPOINTMENT
    SOON after he became a Speaker, the quality of Jorl’s dreams changed. The skills he developed in crafting a venue for his conversations were what his unconscious used every night to create the images of sight and sound and touch in his dreams, same as everyone. It was obvious, in hindsight, that as he became a better Speaker his dreams would become more vivid. So, too, his recurring nightmare.
    He was back in the Patrol. Jorl knew he was dreaming because he remembered being sent home to Barsk soon to stand Second at Arlo’s planting. He had to be dreaming because his friend hadn’t yet died. He and his crewmates had arrived in a system beyond the edge of known space to perform a routine mission of cataloging and mapping. The Alliance wouldn’t be seeding any colonies there. It wasn’t a place where anyone could live comfortably; the only planets were gravitationally challenged gas giants, all too far away from their star. But a couple of these had moons, and one of these satellites looked like it might do. An outpost could survive, albeit only with regular supply drops. Unlikely ever to happen, but making that decision wasn’t the purview of the mission, just data collection.
    Missions change.
    As Jorl’s ship approached the moon for a closer look they heard the voice. A message originating where no one from the Alliance had ever traveled.
    Kengi, the Myrm communications officer, looked up from her screens, her tongue tasting the air as she announced, “That was a targeted scan, Captain. Telemetry suggests the signal originates beneath the ice sheath.” Jorl had wanted to like Kengi; her long and narrow snout bore the closest resemblance to a trunk of any of the races in the Alliance. That, more than anything, was probably the reason she’d distanced herself from him when he joined the crew.
    From his duty station, he glanced at the Anteater and counted off the seconds before the captain replied. On a typical day, a full minute could pass. One learned to live with the delays when one’s captain was a Sloth. Brady-Captain Hrum’s quick response just confirmed he was dreaming.
    â€œAn automated signal? Something we’ve tripped? Seems far-fetched. That ice must be thousands of years old. Morth, do you concur?”
    Brady-Lieutenant Morth was the cousin of Hrum’s sister-in-law, but a fine science officer despite the obvious nepotism that garnered him the best work shifts. “More like tens of thousands,” he said, “I mark the origin point as a small hollow about half a kilometer down that might once have been a cave, back before the moon’s magnetic pole last moved and everything got buried.”
    â€œAh, the rigors of cataloging. Well, never let it be said that a little bit of frozen water