An oversight I will rectify as soon as I get back to the spaceport, I promised myself angrily, trying to keep my mind off the betrayal. Suki had led us right into a trap, at considerable personal risk, which meant that she had worked for the farmers all along. That suggested a remarkable degree of forward planning — or, perhaps, collaboration. I had suspected that she belonged to the Progressives, not to the farmers, or anyone else. My suspicions hadn’t been focused enough.
Or had someone from the Progressives set us up? I asked myself, as the vehicle drove onwards. I could feel the cold metal floor of the truck, and the tight cuffs around my wrists, but I still couldn’t see. It made sense, though; there were plenty of Progressives who were opposed to Frida’s program, the program I’d convinced her to create. They might have regarded me as the power behind the throne and sought to remove me and Frida in one blow. Without me, would Frida carry on the programs or would she seek to undo what we’d created? Without me, Ed would become Captain-General… and he barely knew Frida, or what we’d created. He’d have to get up to speed very quickly while fighting both sets of enemies; internal and external.
There was no way to know and I concentrated on our surroundings. I could hear voices talking in a native dialect I didn’t recognise; both of them were male, which meant that Suki was… where? In the rear with us, or had they killed her and dumped her? It was a capital mistake to theorise without evidence, as even the United Nations Peace Force had agreed, but I couldn’t help it. Endlessly, I ran through possible combinations in my mind. Who knew what had happened just before my captors fled the city?
I heard a series of gasps and realised that Muna was staggering back to wakefulness. Our captors snapped to one another in their dialect and the world went blue-white again as they used their stunners. Evidently, they didn’t want to risk us breaking loose and alerting the army, even though I couldn’t see a thing, let alone feel. I hoped they took us for supermen — some civilians thought of soldiers that way — even though it would make escape harder. It would be good if the bastards were scared of us. The blackness came for me and swallowed me up again; this time, they’d stunned me enough to knock me out completely.
When I opened my eyes again, we were no longer in the vehicle, but sitting in what looked like a dimly lit cellar. I looked around as best as I could — they’d handcuffed my hands and feet to the chair — and saw Muna sitting in the other chair, also cuffed and secured. I met her eyes and winked at her, seeing the dull anger burning there, even though I knew she had to be furious. This was the second time enemy forces had held her prisoner on the damned planet. I knew something that I hoped the enemy didn’t know, however; after the first time, we’d taken a handful of precautions.
My mouth felt dry as dust, but somehow I managed to speak. “Muna,” I asked, “are you all right?”
She shook her head slowly, barely able to move. She was shorter and slimmer than me and the stun blasts would have had a worse effect on her. Her eyes looked crusted over, as if she’d been crying or simply slept for days, and her face looked gaunt. I privately promised her revenge for her suffering, even though I was in no position to make good on that promise, not yet.
“No,” she said, finally. Her voice sounded worse than mine, as if she were rasping as she tried to speak. “I can barely move or think.”
“I know,” I said, as reassuringly as I could. “Me neither.”
Where were we? I asked myself. I couldn’t see my wristcom — and they’d have taken it away anyway — but it couldn’t have been that long, unless we’d been sedated after we’d been stunned into darkness. That wasn’t recommended, I remembered, because the drugs might have an adverse effect on a stunned person, but it was quite possible that our captors wouldn’t care. We were both reasonably fit and healthy; I doubted that either of us had a heart attack pending that might be brought on by the drugs. If it had only been a few hours, we were logically in one of the near-countryside farming towns or villages — more likely, an isolated farm well away from anyone else. If it had been days, we could be in the mountains, well away from any hope of rescue. I mulled the question over and over in my mind, remembering Suki. Had she known about the precautions, or had we successfully deceived her? My brain felt as if I were trying to think through cotton wool. I couldn’t remember what she knew, now, that would be used against us.
I hadn’t noticed the door until it creaked open, revealing three men and a woman. I had hoped that the woman was Suki, but it was someone else, a redheaded girl whose eyes looked older than the rest of her body. In some ways, she reminded me of Muna, although I hoped that she had had an easier life. There was something about the way they both carried themselves that was alike, somehow.
“Good evening, gentleman and lady,” the lead man said. I studied his face, but saw nothing I could use to identify him from the records of known enemy fighters. He was middle-aged and going bald, but making a definite attempt to hide it. His blue eyes — blue eyes seemed to be fairly consistent among pureblood natives — seemed humourless, but there was an unpleasant cast to his smile. “Welcome to our little home away from home.”
The woman spoke into the silence. “This is the mercenary leader?” She asked. Her accent… her accent was not a native accent! It was oddly familiar, but it took me nearly two minutes, with my brain feeling like mush, to place it as a Heinlein accent. The clipped, precise tone came from nowhere else, as far as I knew. “You are certain that you got the right person?”
“Of course,” the lead man said. I watched the woman with new interest. I didn’t know her, but unless I was very much mistaken, this was the Freedom League’s representative on the planet. It was odd; either they hadn’t expected me to recognise her accent, or they had no intention of letting us go — somehow, that didn’t surprise me. “This is their leader.”
The woman gazed down at me. “Your name?” She demanded, in an imperious tone. Up close, the Heinlein accent was stronger, more pronounced. “What is your name?”
“Captain-General Andrew Nolte, Legio Exheres, serial number LE-4637363-7578,” I recited. The UNPF had stated that all soldiers were required to tell their captors name, unit and serial number and that was it. I suspected that the Freedom League wouldn’t follow the same conventions. The stories about what had happened to some prisoners on various planets were enough to chill the blood. The UN didn’t have a monopoly on mindless brutality.
“You are our prisoner,” she said, icily. “How many men are in your Legion of the Dispossessed?”
I said nothing. It was the beginning of a standard interrogation cycle. They would know just how many men had come with me to Svergie and, by asking questions to which they already knew the answer, would use it to get a baseline on my reactions. Later, when they asked questions covering other matters, ones that weren’t public knowledge, they’d be able to pick up on a lie. If I stalled as long as I could, I would buy time for Ed to get a rescue mission on the way.
The woman sighed. “One way or the other, you are going to tell us everything you know,” she said. “Beta?”
One of the men stepped forward and slapped me right across the face. The pain was shocking, but oddly dulled; the effects of the stunner hadn’t quite worn off. Another slap followed, and another, making me gasp in pain. I was tempted to scream, just to convince them that they were hurting me more than they were, but I doubted it would have fooled them. They knew what they were doing.