She shrugged, and Honors face went harder than stone. Benson gazed into her one good eye for a second, then nodded.
"Exactly," she said harshly. She looked away and drew a deep breath, and Honor could feel the iron discipline it took for the older woman to throttle the rage which threatened to explode within her.
"I was the senior officer in our old camp, which made me the CO," the woman from Pegasus continued after a moment, her voice level with dearly bought dispassion, "and there were two other prisoners there, friends of mine, who both helped me with camp management. They were twinsa brother and a sister. I never knew exactly what planet they were from. I think it was Haven itself, but they never said. I think they were afraid to, even here on Hell, but I knew they were politicals, not military. They really shouldnt have been in the same camp as us military types, but theyd been on Hell a long timealmost as long as meand InSec hadnt been as careful about segregating us in the early days. But they were both good looking, and unlike me, they were second-generation prolong."
One hand rose, stroking her blond braid. At this close range, Honor could see white hairs threaded through it, though they were hard to make out against the gold, and Bensons tanned face was older than shed first thought. Small wonder, if she was first-generation prolong, like Hamish Alexander. Now why did I think about him at a time like this? she wondered, but it was only a passing thought, and she kept her eye fixed on Benson.
"At any rate, aboutwhat, six years ago, Henri?" She looked at Dessouix, who nodded, then back at Honor. "About six local years ago, one of these new Black Leg bastards decided he wanted the sister. He was the flight engineer on the food run, and he ordered her onto the shuttle for the flight back to Styx."
Honor shifted her weight, eyebrows quirked, and Benson paused, looking a question back at her.
"I didnt mean to interrupt," Honor half-apologized. "But it was our understanding that no prisoners were allowed on Styx."
"Prisoners arent; slaves are," Benson said harshly. "We dont know how manyprobably not more than a couple of hundredand I guess its against official policy, but that doesnt stop them. These sick bastards think theyre gods, Commodore. They can do whatever the hell they likeanything and they dont see any reason why they shouldnt. So they drag off just enough of us to do the shit work on Styx for them... and for their beds."
"I see," Honor said, and her voice had the frozen edge of a scalpel.
"I imagine you do," Benson said, her mouth twisting bitterly. "Anyway, the son of a bitch ordered Amy aboard the shuttle, and she panicked. No one ever comes back from Styx, Dame Honor, so she tried to run, but he wasnt having that. He went after her, and Adam jumped him. It was stupid, I guess, but he loved his sister, and he knew exactly what the bastard wanted her for. He even managed to deck the Peep... and that was when the pilot stepped out of the shuttle with a pulse rifle and blew him apart."
She fell silent once more, staring down at her hands.
"I wanted to kill them all," she said in a voice grown suddenly distant and cold. "I wanted to drag them off their frigging shuttle and rip them apart with my bare hands, and we could have done it." She looked up at Honor with a corpse smile. "Oh, yes, its been done, Commodore. Twice. But the Peeps have a very simple policy. Thats why I was so upset when I thought youd attacked one of the food runs, because if you hit one of their shuttle flights, then no more shuttles ever come to your camp. Period. They just" her right hand flipped in a throwing away gesture "write you off, and when the food supplies dont come..." Her voice trailed off, and she shrugged.
"I knew that, so I knew we couldnt storm the shuttle, however much the twisted, murdering pieces of shit deserved it. But I couldnt just let them have Amy, eithernot after Adam died for her. So when the Black Legs started after her again, I blocked them."
"Blocked them?" Honor repeated, and Dessouix laughed harshly.
"She stepped right into the bastards way," he said with fierce pride. "Right in their ugly faces. And she wouldnt move. I thought they were going to shoot her, but she wouldnt back off a centimeter."
"And neither would Henri," Benson said softly. "He stepped up beside me, and then a couple more followed him, and then a dozen, until finally there must have been two or three hundred of us. We didnt lift a finger, not even when they tried butt-stroking us out of the way. We only stood there, with someone else stepping into the same place, and wouldnt let them past, until, finally, they gave up and left."
She looked back up at Honor, gray eyes bright, glinting with the memory of the moment, the solidarity of her people at her back, but then her gaze fell once more, and Honor tasted the bitterness of her emotions, like lye in Nimitzs link.
"But they got even with us," she said softly. "They cut off the food shipments anyway." She drew another deep breath. "Youve noticed mine and Henris accents?" she asked
"Well, yes, actually," Honor admitted, surprised into tactlessness by the non sequitur, and Benson laughed mirthlessly.
"They arent accents," she said flatly. "Theyre speech impediments. You probably havent been on-planet long enough to realize it, but there actually is one plant we can eat and at least partially metabolize. We call it false-potato, and it tastes like Well, you dont want to know what it tastes like... and Id certainly like to forget. But for some reason, our digestive systems can break it downpartially, as I sayand we can even live on it for a while. Not a long time, but if we use it to eke out terrestrial foods, it can carry us. Unfortunately, theres some kind of trace toxin in it that seems to accumulate in the brain and affect the speech centers almost like a stroke. We dont have a lot of doctors here on Hell, and I never had a chance to talk to anyone from one of the other camps, so I dont know if theyve even figured out humans can eat the damned stuff, much less why or exactly how it affects us. But we knew, and when the food flights stopped, we didnt have any choice but to eat it. It was either that or eat each other," she added in a voice leached of all emotion, "and we werent ready for that yet."
"They were in the other campsthe other two the Tiges-Noires let starve to death," Henri said softly to Honor, and Benson nodded.
"Yes, they were," she agreed heavily. "Eventually. We know they were, because the Peep psychos made holo chips of it and made all the rest of us watch them just to be sure their little demonstration was effective."
"Sweet Tester," Honor heard LaFollet whisper behind her, and her own stomach knotted with nausea, but she let no sign of it show in her face. She only gazed at Benson, waiting, and felt the older woman draw composure from her own appearance of calm.
"We lasted about three months," the blond captain said finally, "and each month the bastards would fly over as if for a supply run, then just hover there, looking down at us. We all knew what they wanted, and people are people everywhere, Commodore. Some of us wanted to go ahead and hand Amy over before we all died, but the rest of us" She sighed. "The rest of us were too damned stubborn, and too damned sick of being used, and too damned mad. We refused to give her up. Hell, we refused to let her give herself up, because we were all pretty sure how theyd treat her once they got her back to Styx."
She fell silent once more, brooding over the cold poison of old memories.