Unsurprisingly, even though the enemy soldier was quite surprised about this linguistic advantage we’d suddenly acquired, he stayed silent. And so began an incredibly long period of interrogation. After three hours we switched the first enemy soldier for the second, and after another three hours we switched that one out for the third. But still, everyone stayed quiet. It almost made me doubt if they even had the capabilities to speak. If Ellie hadn’t assured me that they could, I’d have been a lot less determined.

In the meantime, I’d also got the message that Gunny and the other teams of marines had pretty much cleaned out the rest of the ship and had taken up positions at the breaching points to avoid any further intrusions. They had also taken care of all of the booby traps.

“Can’t we do something about their silence, Commander?” Jacky asked me while we were alone in the storage room.

“Well… I’d like to just continue talking to them… there are more extreme kinds of interrogation but I’d like to not get into those…”

Jacky looked like he didn’t really understand what I was getting at.

“Right, you people don’t really know violence. The methods I’m talking about require certain acts of bodily harm to the prisoners.”

“That sounds… bad?”

“It is.” I agreed. “It is not unheard of during times of war… it actually occurred quite a lot during the Unification War but I’ve never liked the practice so I’d rather not do something like that.” I then looked at the door behind which the hangar was with the three enemy soldiers. “However… considering the time we have and how pressing this matter is…”

Jacky nodded. “I understand.”

“But, before that happens… I’d like to continue for just a bit longer.”

A knock on the door surprised the both of us.

“Yes, come in.” I called out.

“Commander?” It was Luna who stepped in.

“Oh, Luna. Is something wrong?” With the ship completely under control, she’d probably just made her way over here by herself.

“I heard from the soldiers you were having some issues with the interrogation.”

“Might we suggest something?” Grayson walked in behind her.

Luna looked at the floor while explaining. “Grayson and I looked at some bodies together and found a couple of personal belongings.”

“Mhmm?” I nodded. “Is there anything we can use?”

“The personal belongings of some of the soldiers all point to a very, very religious society.” Grayson answered my question.

“Furthermore…” Luna continued. “It seems like that their connection with their god is one that mainly revolves around fear rather than respect.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because all depictions of that deity were in some kind of incredibly tough kinds of cases.”

“Doesn’t that just mean they don’t want their depictions to be destroyed?”

“That’s what I thought but your XO… The Lieutenant-Commander appears to think otherwise.”

I looked at Luna, who was still just looking at the floor. “And why do you think so, Luna?”

“Hmm… I-I don’t know… a…. a hunch?”

I definitely got the feeling that she was hiding something from me, but it wasn’t the first time she was being shy, nor was the situation at hand good for anyone’s state of mind. So I just nodded. A good hunch had saved me a couple of times in combat as well. “We can definitely give it a try. We don’t have anything to lose.” I then walked towards the door but before I could Grayson stopped me.

“Commander, it will only possibly work on one of the soldiers, though.”

“How so?”

“We’ve only found those items on the soldier belonging to one specific race, and there’s only one of them outside of this room.”

“So what you are saying is that if it doesn’t work on that soldier, that we are shit out of luck?”

“Pretty much.” Grayson nodded.

“Alright… then let’s prepare to get the biggest bang for our bucks.”

I sat down on one of the boxes I had pointed out to my marines earlier today. “I suppose the two of you don’t have a game plan?”

“We showed the image to Ellie.” Grayson replied.

“Ellie?” I looked up at the ceiling.

“With the images the XO and Doctor Grayson have gathered, it should be possible to make a very believable holographic image of their deity.” Ellie answered.

“And a holograph will work? Won’t he see through it?”

“....” Ellie said nothing, neither did the others.

“What? Oh… that was not meant to be a pun, I promise.” I was totally serious, I didn’t even realize it myself that I had made one…

“We hope it will.” Luna replied. “It’s actually more believable that we would be able to communicate with their deity, rather than it being directly aboard this ship.”

“Hmm… If you put it like that… So we just lug a holoprojector into this room. Let Ellie’s render of the deity play while she puts some kind of scary voice over it, forcing the soldier into giving us information?”

“Punishable by eternal doom or something like that, yes.” Grayson nodded.

“And if it doesn’t work, Commander?” Jacky asked.

“I suppose we should be prepared to do things we would rather not. So let’s hope it does.”

Jacky gave me a knowing nod, while Luna looked at me with concern. Grayson didn’t look like he cared much, or he just wasn’t following our train of thoughts.

I commanded Grayson and Luna to leave the room again to bring in a holoprojector. In the meantime, Jacky and I pulled in the soldier Grayson and Luna had designated into the room once more. As part of the charade we just had him sit down on the floor, on his knees while Jacky and I just silently looked at him.

This went on for about half an hour before Ellie notified me that the preparations had been completed and that I should walk to the door to let the holoprojector be brought in.

I did as she said, and in came two people who I recognized as marines, carrying in the holoprojector. Both the marines and the holoprojector had been dressed up in ceremonial decorations. I definitely hadn’t expected them to go this far but it did seem to impress the prisoner. Luckily, Jacky and I managed to hide our amazement pretty well.

The marines placed the holoprojector further into the room, right in front of the prisoner’s field of vision, after which they both headed towards the opposite walls to the side, as a way to show they were guarding the projector.

“Have fun watching the show, Commander.” Ellie sounded way too happy about this all as the holoprojector came to life.

A huge, dark figure appeared, with the only thing visible being six menacing red eyes. The prisoner almost fell backwards out of shock.

“What do we have here?” The fake deity spoke in the prisoner’s language. The tones it used were deep and guttural.

The prisoner tried to crawl back, his movements filled with fear. Sadly for him, his path was blocked by my legs. I just looked down and smiled at him, while he looked up, terrified. It looked like the plan was working.

Realizing he literally had no place to crawl too, he got back on his knees and groveled towards the holograph. “Oh Great Devastator, forgive me!” The soldier spoke for the first time. He actually sounded a lot squeakier than I had expected. The contrast between the holograph deity and the squeaky voice was especially humorous. At least we already knew what they called their God now. Progress is progress.

“How dare you attack a vehicle that is under MY protection?” Ellie continued under the Deity’s disguise.

“We didn’t know! We didn’t know! Our ship is led by unbelievers, Great Almighty Devastator!”

“That is no excuse!!” You could not hear it, but I bet Ellie was having a blast with this.

“Forgive me! Forgive me! Please, forgive me!” The prisoner groveled even more. “Please tell me how to redeem myself! I do not want to go to the eternal fires!” I assumed that was close to what we know as hell.

“These faithful servants of mine need information. I expect you to hand it to them without question. Understand?!” -Oh ye, Ellie is definitely enjoying this.-

“I will! I will tell them everything they want to know!”

“Good. I will stay here to watch over your responses. If you lie… things will not end well for you.”

“I won’t! I won’t tell any lies! I promise!”

That honestly went a lot better than we could have hoped for.

The prisoner crawled around to face Jacky and me. “Please! Fellow believers! Ask me everything you want to know!” He did not raise his head at all.

Jacky and I looked at each other and he gave me a nod.

“First of all. I would like you to tell us everything you know about your ship’s cloaking systems and how they work.”

“I will! I will!”

Now, let’s hope this soldier actually knows how it works on a technical level.