"I know, Mai-ling. I know you did," Honor said through her own tears, hugging the brutalized young body, and the ensign relaxed convulsively. Her head rested on Honor's shoulder, and her voice was broken and dead.
"W-when they were ... done, they ... threw us back. The CaptainCaptain Alvarezdid what he could, b-but he hadn't known, Captain. He hadn't known what they were going to do."
"I know," Honor whispered again, and the ensign's teeth clenched.
"T-then they came back, a-and I couldn't fight any more, Ma'am. I-I just couldn't. I tried, but" She dragged in a ragged breath. "Commander Brigham could. I-I think she hurt some of them really bad b-before they got her down, and then they beat her and beat her and beat her!" The broken voice climbed, and a medic stepped in with a hypo as she trembled violently in Honor's arms.
"The Captain tried to stop them, Ma'am. H-he tried, and ... and they knocked him down with their rifle butts, and then they ... they" She twisted in agony, and Honor covered her mouth with her hand, stilling her voice while the hypo took effect. She'd already seen the huge, dried bloodstain on the cell floor and the ragged streaks where someone's heels had been dragged through it to the door.
"And then they raped us again," the ensign said at last, her eyes hazy. "Again and again, and ... and they said how nice it was of their CO to ... to give them their own whores."
Her thready voice faded to silence, and Honor eased her back down and bent to kiss the filthy, bruised forehead, then tucked the ensign's limp hand under the blanket and rose.
"Take care of her," she told the senior Marine medic, and the woman nodded, her own face wet with tears.
Honor nodded back, then turned towards the door of the cell. As she stepped through it, she drew her sidearm and checked the magazine.
Major Ramirez looked up as Captain Harrington came up the corridor.
"Captain, what shall I?"
She brushed by him as if he hadn't spoken. There was no expression at all on her face, but the right side of her mouth twitched violently, and her gun was in her hand.
"Captain? Captain Harrington!"
He reached out to grasp her arm, and she looked at him at last.
"Get out of my way, Major." Each word was precisely, perfectly formed despite her crippled mouth. "Clean up this section. Find every one of our people. Get them out of here."
"But"
"You have your orders, Major," she said in that same, chilled-steel tone, and twitched out of his grasp. She started up the corridor once more, and he stared after her helplessly.
She didn't look up when she reached the Marines in the passageway. She just strode straight ahead, and they scattered like frightened children. Sergeant Talon's squad started to fall in around her, but she waved them back with a savage chop of her hand and kept walking.
Lieutenant Tremaine stared after her, biting his lip. He'd heard about the discoveries the Marines had made. He hadn't believed it at firsthadn't wanted to believe itbut then the medics had carried Commander Brigham's stretcher past him. He'd believed it then, and the Marines' fury had been dwarfed by his own, for he knew Mercedes Brigham well. Very well, indeed.
The Captain said she wanted to be alone. She'd ordered everyone to leave her alone. But Scotty Tremaine had seen her face.
She turned a bend in the corridor, and his own face tightened with decision. He laid aside his plasma carbine and went hurrying after her.
Honor climbed the rubble-strewn stairs, ignoring the labored breathing of whoever was trying to catch up with her. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. She vaulted up the stairs, using her long legs and the light gravity, brushing past an occasional Marine, stepping through an occasional puddle of Masadan blood, and her single eye glowed like molten steel.
She walked down the final corridor, gaze fixed on the open mess hall door, and a voice was calling her from behind. It was distant and unreal, immaterial, and she ignored it as she stepped into the crowded room.
A Marine officer saluted, then flinched back from her in shock, and she went past him as if he didn't exist. Her eye swept the lines of prisoners, searching for the face she sought, and found it.
Captain Williams looked up as if he felt her hatred, and his face paled. She walked towards him, shoving people out of her way, and the voice calling her name was even louder as its owner pushed and shoved through the crowd behind her.
Williams tried to twist away, but her left hand tangled in his hair, and he cried out in agony as she slammed his head back against the wall. His mouth worked, gobbling words she didn't bother to hear, and her right hand pressed the muzzle against his forehead and began to squeeze.
Someone else's hands locked on her forearm, shoving frantically, and the sharp, spiteful explosion of a pulser dart pocked the mess hall roof as her pistol whined. She wrenched at the hands on her arm, trying to throw whoever it was off, but they clung desperately, and someone was shouting in her ear.
More voices shouted, more hands joined the ones on her arm, dragging her back from Williams while the man sagged to his knees, retching and weeping in terror, and she fought madly against them all. But she couldn't wrench free, and she went to her own knees as someone snatched the pistol from her grip and someone else gripped her head and forced it around.
"Skipper! Skipper, you can't!" Scotty Tremaine half-sobbed, holding her face between his hands while tears ran down his cheeks. "Please, Skipper! You can't do thisnot without a trial!"
She stared at him, her detached mind wondering what a trial had to do with anything, and he shook her gently.
"Please, Skipper. If you shoot a prisoner without a trial the Navy" He drew a deep breath. "You can't, Ma'am, however much he deserves it."
"No, she can't," a voice like frozen helium said, and a trace of sanity came back into Honor's expression as she saw Admiral Matthews. "I came as soon as I heard, Captain," he spoke slowly and distinctly, as if he sensed the need to break through to her, "but your lieutenant's right. You can't kill him." She stared deep into his eyes, and something inside her eased as she saw the agony and shameand furyin his soul.
"But?" she didn't recognize her own voice, and Matthews' mouth twisted in contemptuous hate as he glared down at the sobbing Masadan captain.
"But I can. Not without a trial. He'll have one, I assure you, and so will all the animals he turned loose on your people. They'll be scrupulously, completely fairand as soon as they're over, this sick, sadistic piece of garbage and all the others responsible will be hanged like the scum they are." He met her eye levelly, and his icy voice was soft.
"I swear that to you, Captain, on the honor of the Grayson Navy."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Honor Harrington sat staring out the view port, her soul cold as the space beyond the armorplast, and Admiral Matthews, Alice Truman, and Alistair McKeon sat silently behind her.
Nineteen. Nineteen of Madrigal's people were alive, and that figure had been enough to crack Commander Theisman's reserve at last. There was no record of any survivors in the Blackbird data base. Apparently Williams had erased it, but it was Theisman who'd picked up Madrigal's survivors, and there had been fifty-three of them. Twenty-six had been women. Of that number, only Ensign Jackson and Mercedes Brigham were still alive, and Fritz Montoya's face had been terrible as he described Brigham's internal injuries and broken bones.