When he noticed that her legs were strapped to the corners of the gurney, and they cut her prison jumpsuit off and removed it from under the straps in pieces, he broke out in a cold sweat.
The medic bent close to her ear, but the pickups in the room caught his voice clearly, playing it into the observation area.
“Why don’t we avoid this part? What’s your name?”
She tilted her head slightly away from him, staring up at the ceiling. She looked… bored.
Her expression didn’t change when the chief motioned the first man on top of her.
Stewart started making a list of people he really needed to kill. The first man seemed to be having some sort of trouble. In any case, he was swearing in one of the Asian languages. The automatic, literal translation from the AIDs was fairly colorful. Something about monkey vomit.
The medic finally waved him off and moved between her legs, checking something before injecting a local of something into her thigh, checking his watch, waiting a few moments, reaching between her legs.
“Obviously, miss, you are not immune to muscle relaxants. What’s your name?” he said.
After a few seconds of silence, he motioned the hapless sailor back into place.
The prisoner made eye contact with him and spoke.
“Sorry this is going to be about as exciting for you as screwing a soggy washcloth,” she said.
“I like blondes.” He grabbed a breast crudely.
“If you ate strong mint gelatin after the kimchee, you might meet more of them.” The boredom on her face was absolute. He stilled suddenly, swearing again before backhanding her, scrambling off and back, his face flushed as he zipped and turned away. Her cheek reddened, but her head had never moved.
She laughed.
“Aw, too bad! Next?” If her sarcasm had been a liquid, it would have eaten a hole in the floor.
To say that the next sailor singled out by the chief looked unenthusiastic would have been an understatement.
“You’ll need rape survivor therapy after this. The tongs can put you in touch with someone discreet,” her voice was clinical.
“Chief, make her stop!” He looked to his NCO in rather embarrassed desperation.
Above, in the observation lounge, Baker spluttered into his coffee. Stewart had so far managed to keep him under control with a hand on his arm whenever he looked in danger of losing it.
The Darhel were virtually panting like overheated dogs, over by the glass. Stewart was glad he’d elected not to wear a sidearm.
The chief grabbed her chin and wrenched it around by main force. “You’re being raped, you stupid bitch, don’t you get that?! What’s your name!”
“I’m not being raped. He’s being raped. I’m just lying here watching amateur night.”
In the lounge, one of the Darhel twitched suddenly, towards the glass, before rising and withdrawing smoothly from the room.
Below, the goon squad was withdrawing from the room, leaving “Mahri” where she was. Obviously, they were reevaluating their tactics. Poor hapless bastards. His heart just bled for them. Not.
Tommy was smacking his head against the heel of his palm, repeatedly, when Papa O’Neal came up for air from the Detention Center blueprints.
“Sunday, what in the hell is your problem?” The older man patted his pockets and finally came up with an empty pouch, sighed, and began digging through his backpack.
“Papa, I fucked up. I fucked up big time. It’s been so long, I just never recognized him.” His skin had gone a strange, sick shade of gray.
“Recognized who? Run it back to start, I’m not tracking it.” He found a fresh pouch and absentmindedly cut himself a plug, turning and regarding his teammate with a patient expression.
“I should have known it was a setup. We would have known, if I’d been on the ball. Oh my God, did I ever fuck up.”
“Son, if you don’t start from the beginning, I’m gonna have to hurt you. Come on, take a deep breath and tell me about it.”
“The beginning. Okay. Sarah, display the hologram of Lieutenant Joshua Pryce from our initial briefing.” The AID obediently put the requested image in the air in front of them.
“So?” O’Neal’s hands motioned for more.
“So I know the sonofabitch. Served with him in ACS forty-some years ago. It’s just, after forty years… We were both in the Triple-Nickle with Mike Junior. He was the S-2 of the battalion in Rabun. If I had recognized him, we wouldn’t have lost Cally.”
Papa O’Neal was silent for a few seconds.
“That’s a big one.” He was silent for a long moment. “But after forty years… Besides, if you had recognized him, we wouldn’t have pulled Jay out into the open. Then we would have lost no telling how many other people, possibly the whole ball game, with whoever else Jay gave up,” he reminded quietly. “So, who the hell is he, really? Obviously a juv, of course.”
“He’s Major General James Stewart, now. He just took command of the Third MP Brigade. He’s the bastard who caught her, and he’s the bastard who’s in charge of whatever they’re doing to her. And Mike is a fucking father to him!”
O’Neal stared coldly into the distance for a few minutes, jaw working. He took a long breath and released it slowly.
“That’s mostly right. Don’t tell me you don’t know by now that the Darhel are in charge of whatever they’re doing to her. Stewart is probably just now experiencing for the very first time how very closely they’re pulling his strings. I mean, he has to have known it. But knowing it and experiencing it are two different things.” He spat into his cup, tilting his head a bit as if something had just occurred to him.
“Don’t beat yourself up, Sunday. You may have just handed us the break that’s gonna get her out of there. Just… give me a few minutes, okay? And I mean that, no more beating yourself up.” As the older man walked aft and began to pace, Tommy could actually hear him begin to hum tunelessly.
James Stewart had long since numbed out to the additional indignities being visited on Sinda. He supposed the numbness was composed of equal parts shock, rage, and the necessity of keeping a poker face if he was ever to get the opportunity of avenging Sinda. He wouldn’t call her “Mahri” — that was the name they were using. Sinda wasn’t her name, but it was what she had called herself to him, and that was the best he had.
He had seen some indescribably horrible things as an ACS trooper, things done by Posleen to humans, things done by humans to Posleen. In the gang, he thought he had seen some pretty horrible things done to humans by humans. A few murders, anyway.
But he had never seen anything like this done by a group of humans to another human being. He had thought he was hardened to anything. He was wrong. Still, without the ability to click on and move his mind to that cold, efficient place that built a temporary barrier against the horror, he probably would be in a cell now, or shot — well, shot again — and no use to anybody.
The Fleet chief, Yi, was currently giving an end-of-day report on the status of the prisoner. The list of injuries — smashed and “merely” broken bones, cuts, bruises, and burns replayed vivid images in his head. The first thing they had done, of course, had been to finish gang-raping her after resorting to the simple expedient of an improvised gag. It rendered her incapable of providing information, but the bastards had apparently decided it would have been bad form to let her win that psychological battle. And in a total bastard kind of way, he could see their point. He was still going to kill every last one of them, but he could see why they did it.