"Time."
Witner paced the room, his back to me. He relished this. He could fain humility well, but I was a Sensitive. In one pulse of his single heart I could sense that he was, as nonchalantly as a human could, lie, but, at the same time,
knowingly lie to a sentient that could read him. In my race, there is nothing that I cannot know, especially from a human. With little offense, they simply cannot mask the impulses in their axons.
He either knows he is lying to sway me away from an actual objective, or, he has been instructed to do this. Either way, Witner is playing treachery. I scanned the room again for any other Sensitives: none. There could be electronic eavesdropping devices, but the point would be groundless. I have no need to lie. I found myself on guard. What would be considered baseless otherwise, I will call upon the grounds that there were points of contention in the logic of this moment. There was a game being played, the only benefit in my favor is that I was facing Witner alone.
I didn't give him anything he could use - although he ached for it - I just repeated his statement as flatly as possible, "Time."
He lightly placed his fingertips upon the console in front of him. It was a basic communication console here in the human outpost. Nothing tactical: purely made for the purposes of this consulate ship. (I use their term,
neutral, although we were actively at war.) The humans
were cunning, more cunning then we realized. Not so ironically they attacked first, so we returned in kind. Now they fain we provoked
them. We quickly realized that was a ploy to throw us off, they understood our sensitivities and exploited them. Sadly, most of their populace believed it to be truth.
"How long have we been at this now, Garcers?"
"Eleven of your Sol years."
Witner placed a wrinkled hand from a crystal decanter of some sort and allowed the stopper to clatter in place. The room filled with the sound of glass. He was attempting to annoy me. It did nothing.
"Eleven years. Countless dead." Witner had anguish in his heart, but of a kind that I had not sensed before. I am but of the race of sentience that feel empathy, but, he was driving at something below the surface. My communicator had already sent out benign messages to make sure they were not being jammed. They sent successfully. My second, Delor, was awaiting any command that could be sent to our attack ships. Our armada was concentrated near the Aiemsee Exoplanetary Mass in preparation for a large human attack.
"We have fought a conventional conflict, no?" He scanned the console in front of him and swung around to face me. I immediately communicated out to look for unconventional response. He turned to me and leveled his icy blue eyes. I furrowed my brow and scanned him with my single grey eye.
Something was different here. I latched on the use of the term 'unconventional'.
What does he mean by this?
"You have something, Sensitive, that we don't have and we could never win against you, not in the long term. You are aware of this. You can read our minds. You can instinctively sense organics. This makes surprise an utterly worthless endeavor." He cocked his shoulder to his left and moved in closer; his physical gestures outlined that he wanted to display or underscore his next statement. I continued to hold my communicator behind my back and ready to give the order. I awaited a flash of insight to show me where they were actually going to be. But Witner was blank. The furrows in my brown hardened.
"
That won't help you." My hearts stopped for a moment, but forbearance brought me back quickly. "We have done much research with your species for some time."
Human arrogance. "We had our play. We learned about the structure from your deceased."
I sent out a wide alert that the humans have figured to graft our mental structure into pre-existing bodies. Witner nodded slowly as I concluded the message. "Yes. You are correct there, Garcers. But that is not all."
So swiftly and without betrayal by his system, Witner stabbed a hypodermic into my chest and the communicator dropped to the floor. It was a sedative, but he must know that it wouldn't last more than ten minutes. I fell to the floor. Ten minutes is all he may need.
The humans had not only figured out the substrates of the Sensitive mental system and incorporate it into their own, there was more. They can use the ability
as a weapon. Sensitives are passive in their nature, but Witner incorporated a new biochemical structure to use the telepathy in an aggressive way. To lie. To lie and to be believe in the lie: it makes the Sensitive's particular gift worthless.
The human face hovered above me, smiling in a way that had confirmed everything I believed. He had read me from the beginning. "At the console, I sent my message regarding the Aiemsee Exoplanets. Don't worry, we're not going to be there. I had waited for the insight. I was surprised how quickly it flashed in your memory."
He rose and went out of my view. I would be paralyzed for several moments. I tried with all my might to read him, but I reached out and I only saw darkness from his body. I had only ever seen such a feat by our best and brilliant.
"As to what else we are capable of, I am particularly proud of. Realizing that you could sense us by the organic nature of our brains and automatons are simply overcome by technology of your own, we have created an army, and forgive the name, of the undead.
"See, in the first fruits of the war, the Black Skull Recon team were decimated by your race. You buried them at your capital, in so much as a potter's field. But we found a way, we did not forget. Captain Hargrove and his team detested your kind. It was his singular passion that caused his undoing. The two dozen men and women of the team were cut down, but not without the realization of your inherent abilities.
"Out of our need to defeat you, we looked for alternate ways. What if there was the passion and undying hate of a human, but without the heart or without the brain? The alchemy is lost to me, and only our most brilliant scientists and AI would take years to make me understand it; I only concern myself with the effect.
"Right now the two dozen soldiers, without warning, are killing the peoples of your home world in their sleep. They have no brains, no organic matter, their bones have petrified. The construct of your society is being broken apart by ghosts. Black Skull will kill and lapse into the shadows, repeatedly, until thousands are killed. Apart from these, there are millions more of our dead. I am sending a legion out to intercept your armada. You are being attacked within and without."
Witner walked out of the chamber and the only way I knew was I heard him do it. I reached out to a mind that was nothing more than air.
...
