Free Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann

He knew he was too weak to make a run for it, even though the doors were still open behind him.
    As he watched, two of the toga-clad aliens closed the doors.
    Nate looked back at the desk facing him and realized that he was the focus of attention. He called out, “What do you want? Just let me go and you’ve got it.”
    No one responded. At this point he didn’t expect them to.
    Another pair of cronies left Scarface’s side, taking a small box, and walked over to Nate. They set the plain-looking box down at the foot of the chair Nate sat in, almost under his feet.
    One of them opened the box to reveal a metallic sphere about the size of a softball. It sat, cushioned by black velvet. Nate stared at it and realized that it was the most elaborately engraved thing he had seen here. Like the cuts in Scarface’s skin, the sphere’s engravings were repeated square rectilinear symbols. Only, in the sphere’s case, the individual characters—Nate was becoming convinced that these symbols represented a language of some sort—were vanishingly tiny, little more than a few millimeters across, wrapping the metal ball in a tight spiral.
    Scarface chanted something in that liquid second language.
    Everyone around the desk repeated the words, if that’s what they were.
    At his feet, the sphere was vibrating. Nate could hear a high-frequency hum coming from it. The two masked characters next to him backed away.
    Nate pushed himself upright and muttered, “This is getting fucking weird.”
    The sphere resonated with his voice. It almost seemed to speak in the strange common language these people spoke.
    Scarface said something.
    With a tone rather like overstressed metal and fingernails across a blackboard, Nate heard the sphere speak.
    “UNDERSTANDCOMPREHEND YOUUSME.”
    Nate looked up at the masked people and whispered, “Holy shit.”

CHAPTER NINE

    M ATE STARED at the sphere as he heard its vibrations resonate in the guttural tones of his captors. What a wonderful impression that’s going to make. How’s that going to translate?
    Scarface barked something, and Nate could tell that he didn’t like what had come through his end of the sphere. “ANSWERRESPOND YOUUSME.”
    Nate looked up. The sphere was weak in carrying tone, inflection, or emotion, but Nate had heard Scarface speak and the words out of his mouth, incomprehensible as they were, sounded terse.
    “Yes, I understand you, somewhat.” Nate looked at all of them in turn. Who were these people? What was this place?
    “NAMEIDENTITY TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUUSME.” Who are you?
    “My name’s Nate Black. Look, I don’t have anything against you people. Can we come up with—”
    “QUESTIONSREQUESTS TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUUSME NOCANNOTBAD. QUESTIONSREQUESTS TELLCOMMUNICATE MEUSYOU YESWILLGOOD.” We are the ones asking questions here.
    Nate looked up at Scarface’s mask and felt afraid in a way that made him ashamed at the same time. “Please, just tell me what you want from me.” Nate’s voice cracked, and he felt dizzy. It was a good thing that they set him in a chair, because the effort of speaking might have made him collapse.
    Nate saw the masked figures deliberating in whispered tones. He wondered if what he said made any sense to them.
    Scarface’s voice was threatening even before the sphere got hold of it. When the words rang off the metal orb, they were dry-ice cold. “LIFEEXISTENCE YOUNATEBLACK HEREWORLDMANHOME VIOLATIONFORBIDDENDANGER. DESCISIONCONTROL LIFEEXISTENCE YOUNATEBLACK MINEOURS. DECISIONCONTROL PAINDEATH YOUNATEBLACK YOUYOURS.”
    Nate could tell a threat when he heard one. He also managed to glean one nugget of information, a name to call this place.
    “HEREWORLDMANHOME”
    Manhome.
    “EVENTSSEQUENCEPROCESS ARRIVALENTRANCEINVA-SION YOUNATEBLACK TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUUSME.”
    “I’m not an invasion. I’m not a spy. I was just minding my own business—” running from the cops, “—everything blacks out, and I end up here. I don’t want to