The Swords were a strange looking race. For one thing, they had no foreheads. The tops of their heads ended just above insane looking glittering golden eyes, giving them a deformed and unintelligent look somewhat like a micro-encephalitic. They had tiny flat noses that rested on something that looked like a beak or a bill with tiny sharp teeth and no chin. Their little round bodies stood on long skinny legs and had short arms with ridiculously long hands and fingers that moved in quick sudden jerks. They had some sort of short natural covering like feathery down across the back of their limbs, bodies and heads, the latter of which seemed to hang down behind their shoulders in a boney extension. They wore clothing in bright solid colors made from some material like velour or velvet.

"Weird looking things." Smith watched the trooper yell at the alien on a monitor which displayed the nearby room.

"Apparently fragile too," I said. "A couple have already died from rather ordinary treatment. Kouvaras tells me they have to treat them like eggs."

"Do they talk?"

"Apparently they understand Indweller. No telling what their gibberish means. The interrogators are using machine translators."

Kouvaris' man, a Psy-Ops Specialist by the name of Stafford was in the room with two of them asking questions. He had interrogated them for hours.

Kouvaris entered our observation room and stepped up to the monitor.

"Don't you have any more persuasive ways of getting them to talk?" Smith asked.

"Yes, sir. If we need to, we can—intensify—the interrogations. We're concerned because of their delicate nature."

"You have spares, don't you?" Smith asked.

I shot him a dark look, surprised by his apparent blood thirstiness.

He looked a little taken aback at the accusation in my eyes. "We don't have time for this," he explained. "The entire fleet is trapped at the edge of the system. More of their scattered tribes may come at any moment and we have nowhere to go. We have to find another way around them. We have to do it now."

Kouvaras gave me a raised eyebrow.

Smith was right. The longer we delayed the greater the chance The Swords would gather enough forces to destroy us. They had used other paths to get around us, we could use those same paths to get around them, we just had to know where they were.

"Do what you must," I said.

"It may require that we kill one or more of them," Kouvaras warned.

I reminded myself they had destroyed several of our ships, killed hundreds of our crew and, if they had their way, we'd all be dead.

I nodded.

Kouvaras turned and left the room. I saw him reappear in the interrogation room and speak quietly in Stafford's ear. Without missing a beat, Stafford turned around and pulled on something like a set of surgical scrubs. He wheeled over a cart bearing rows of sharp implements and carefully arranged them on a tray.

I looked at the aliens strapped to their chairs, but they didn't seem to take any special notice of the tools. They didn't seem to have any idea of what was about to happen and I wondered if they had ever seen anything like what was going to happen next.

"You have told me there are no other routes beyond the next system," Stafford continued. "I know that is a lie. If you do not tell me the truth I will have to hurt you."

The alien squawked something back at Stafford, but I couldn't hear the translation on the audio pickup.

Stafford pushed the cart up next to the chair and turned the alien's long hand over palm up. He held it down on the cart, leaning on it as he took a scalpel and drove it through the alien's hand.

The alien gave a high pitched shriek and his companion, in the next chair, jerked his head around toward them.

Stafford wiggled the knife loose and pulled it out of the creature's bleeding hand. He placed one hand on the thing's thin boney shoulder and showed the knife to the alien. Blood cover the tip of the bright silver blade. It was red like ours.

"I don't want to do this," Stafford said. "I find no enjoyment in this." He sounded like he meant it, but he said it in a tone that clearly implied that he wouldn't hesitate to continue to hurt him. I'm certain the alien had no way of understanding that. "I will keep hurting you until you tell me the truth."

He busied himself with his tools, carefully washing off the scalpel, giving the alien time to catch his breath. It sat panting and crooning in pain. He picked up something like a mallet and walked over to the alien and showed it to him.

"Have you decided to tell me what I want to know?"

The alien, who had been squawking his replies only hours earlier decided to keep his mouth shut.

"I'm sorry you are still resisting," he paused with seeming infinite patience, waiting as the machine translated each sentence. "This is only going to get worse." Stafford held up a mallet. "I don't know why you are making me do this. Your silence will not protect any of your friends. It will only buy you pain. Do you know what I'm going to do to you next?" He held up the mallet. "I'm going to break your leg." He tapped the creatures left leg with the mallet. "That one right there."

Stafford looked over at the other alien who sat tied to his chair, watching him. Its large mad eyes stared back at him, glittering like lifeless buttons.

"You can help your friend, you know," Stafford said. "You can tell me what I need to know. You're as much at fault for your friend's pain as he is."

The machine translated his words into Indweller speech. If I hadn't heard them reply earlier to Stafford, I might have thought they couldn't understand the translations. Neither responded, yet they didn't seem defiant. It almost seemed as if they didn't understand what was going on. I am told that the majority of our communication takes place through body language and other non-verbal cues. Even with the machine translators, it didn't seem to me that we were communicating. It may be that they understood perfectly and were terrified, but that The Swords' body language was so alien, we couldn't pick up on those non-verbal cues.

Stafford's intentions were clear, at any rate. With a sudden violence that made me and Commander Smith jump, he slammed the mallet into the alien's leg, shattering it.

The creature screamed a piercing shrill scream, its voice cracking, but not, apparently, its will.

Stafford put away the mallet and walked over to a chair next to his table of tools and sat down, sipping on a bottle of water. The alien warbled and screamed and Stafford just sat like an irritated parent waiting for a wayward child to finish his tantrum.

The alien next to the one being tortured grew agitated. His head jerked around and he lurched back and forth as if testing its bonds, all the while making a low intermittent squawking sound.

Sherman and I watched the monitor in horrified silence.

Stafford sat watching the alien as its squawking slowly subsided into a continuous keening sound. With an irritated sigh, he rose and picked up something that looked like a pair of garden shears from the table. He walked over to the alien who sat panting heavily, his head hanging low. Taking the creature's uninjured hand, he wrestled one long finger loose from its clenched fist. Placing the finger between the blades of the shears, he practically begged the alien to not make him hurt him. He didn't want to do this he insisted, though his face remained as calm and emotionless as it had throughout the interrogation. The creature raised one crazed glittering eye. Aside from his labored breathing, he didn't make a sound.

Stafford snipped off the finger. The alien screamed and tried to wrench his hands from the bonds. Stafford examined the long severed finger quizzically then waved it in the alien's face accusing it of trying to upset him out of pure meanness.

To my surprise, the alien croaked out a denial.

The response, any response, seemed to surprise Stafford, but he hid it well. "Then, why won't you tell me what I need to know?"

The alien stared back in silence.

Stafford shrugged and flung the finger at his neighbor who gaped wide-eyed as the bloody finger bounced off its chest. "I'm going to start asking you next," he said.

The alien trembled.

Stafford walked casually back to his tray, and cleaned his shears. Then he picked up another knife that looked like a long-bladed scalpel and walked back to the alien who sat hunched and moaning in his chair. He shoved it against the seatback, shouting demands that it tell him what he wanted to know. He didn't bother waiting for the translation, just brought up the blade and began carving furrows into its chest. It screamed and his neighbor strapped into the next chair screamed in echo.

"Do we need to watch this?" Smith asked.

I turned to the pale-faced Smith who looked as if he might be ill. I started to switch off the monitor, then hesitated. This was my ship. I could stop this right now. It was my responsibility. How could I order this and turn my back on what was happening. It seemed, somehow cowardly. I tapped the volume control instead and turned the screams down, but not off.

Stafford walked back to his table and washed his scalpel. He began ordering his tools as if he were finished with the job or starting a new one. Returning to the alien, who sat silently hunched in his chair, Stafford bent and pulled his service knife from his boot. It was a trooper's knife. It had a nine inch blade of complex carbon. Strong as diamond but less brittle, it had an edge that narrowed to a single skinny molecule in thickness.

Holdingthe knife where the alien could see it he slowly walked around behind thechair. Wrapping a meaty hand under the creature's bill-like mouth, he wrenched the alien's head back and put the blade to its throat. He made a last demand, muffled by the low volume. The alien remained silent while its companion began making a strange hooting sound as it quivered in its chair. 

Stafford sliced into its throat. Red blood sprayed out, covering all three of them. He kept sawing deep into its neck until the head came off.

The remaining alien shrieked a shrill, high, panicked sound.

Stafford stepped back looking at the head he held in his hand. The mouth gaped, its small sharp white teeth stained red, the crazed yellow eyes still open, not yet dulled in death. He placed it carefully in the other alien's lap, face up so he could look into the face of his friend.

The alien jerked violently in its chair as if trying to dislodge the bloody thing rolling in its lap.

Stafford walked back to his table and stripped off his blood-soaked gown. He cleaned his face and hands, then cleaned his knife and stuck it back in his boot. He dragged the chair over in front of the remaining alien and sat, leaning forward, listening intently.

The machine had difficulty keep up with everything the alien said.