by Becky Black
I remembered my lessons, and started to search systematically. It took me hours. The sun had dipped low by the time I found the eagle's shattered body. My tears had stopped hours ago while I searched but now they came back. The blood that soaked its feathers had already dried to rusty brown. The feathers looked darker down here on the ground, out of the sun that turned them gold.
Well, now what, Jadeth? If I took it back to barracks they'd put the body in the incinerator and send me to the shrink. So I did the only other thing I could, since leaving it for scavengers to rip apart was not an option. I dug in the earth with my hands, slicing my flesh on stones, not caring. Eventually I made a hole big enough to lay the eagle in and I lifted the dead weight into it. The weight of the bird surprised me; it seemed to try to pull me into the ground with it. I tried to arrange it with something like the grace it had displayed in the sky, tried to fold its smashed wings. Then one handful at a time I replaced the earth, covered the body, until I'd filled the small grave.
After I finished I sat, filthy bloodied hands with torn fingernails resting in my lap. I had stopped crying. No tears left. I kept looking at the ground because I never wanted to look at the empty sky again. I decided I would never play in the meadow again. I would never cry again. And I would never look at the sky again.
At last I stood up and trailed slowly back to the barracks. The duty officer gave me punishment detail for a week, for staying out beyond curfew. And then another week for giving her the DILLIGAF look. "Do I look like I give a fuck?" I never gave a fuck about anything or anyone else again. Not for a long time, not until...
The dream changed, and once again I knelt by a grave. A cold, dark hole in the long sweet grass. But this time my hands were full-grown and Ilyan lay in the grave. I covered him one handful at a time, until the dark earth hid even his blue eyes and golden hair. As I worked, the tears I thought had dried up long ago streamed down my face.
The sky is empty. Blue is grey now. And as I filled in the last handfuls of earth I woke up crying out his name and sobbing with rage.
Because I was still alive.
Chapter 24
I woke in a cage. A cage too small for me sit up or to straighten my legs while lying down. It hung five meters above a stone floor, suspended by a single steel cable. Not stone, I realised, after looking at the floor, walls and ceiling for a while. Rock. A cave. Man made though, carved out into a rough cube. A couple of electric lamps on the walls provided me with some dim light.
A stab of pain reminded me about the wound in my leg. I pulled up the loose grey trousers I wore to find a bandage and a glance under that showed me the wound had been fully treated and looked to be healing well. Shame. The extent of the healing told me several days must have passed since...
Since.
I lay down again, curled up, the only semi comfortable position possible. I let my right arm dangle down between the bars of the cage floor. Perhaps something lurked down there in the shadows and would leap up and bite my arm right off. That would be pretty funny. Then I'd bleed to death, which would be A O--fucking--kay with me.
I looked up at the cable supporting the cage. It ran though a pulley wheel, fixed into the rock by a single bolt. If I started swinging the cage maybe it could rip the bolt right out of the ceiling. Would the fall kill me? The cage had no apparent door. I must have been welded in to it. I couldn't expect to leave in a hurry then. Maybe I'd be left up here until I wasted away and my bones fell between the bars to plunge down and shatter on the rock below.
I'd never thought a lot about dying before. I'd thought a lot about making sure I didn't die. Could I really welcome death? Shouldn't I be grateful that I'd survived?
No, because I hadn't 'survived'. I survived that time the assassins came into our camp, because I'd still been alive after the assassins died. That's not how it happened this time. This time I'd been allowed to live. So no, I wouldn't be left up here to waste away. Someone had plans for me. Once they put them into effect, I got the feeling I'd soon wish for death.
Death. Ilyan's dead. My brain still found it hard to let the thought in. All of them dead. Jia, Rish, Maiga... I wondered if my still being alive would have ticked Maiga off. Scoring more points off her. All my friends. Dead.
And I failed. I failed to protect Ilyan. I'd pledged to protect him and, at the moment of greatest danger, I'd left his side. Could I kill myself by shoving my hand right down my throat and choking myself? Or maybe I would I bleed to death if I ripped out my tongue?
I was so full of shit. If I really wanted to die I'd be dead or making it happen right now. So why did I want to live? There could only be one reason. I had a new job now. Pretty simple job description.
Revenge.
A grinding noise started somewhere above me and the cage began to move. Instinctively I grabbed at the bars. But it didn't fall. Rather it descended slowly, in a controlled way, until it stopped, hanging only a meter or so off the floor, swaying gently. I waited, in a crouch, coiled up, expectant. As if I could do actually do something.
A door in the rock wall opened and I saw a man framed in the doorway. The lights in the cell brightened as he walked in. He was a tall, thin man, in his thirties, wearing a dark blue one piece. He had mid-brown skin, neatly cropped dark hair and a refined face with a slender nose and delicate mouth.
No point in wasting time. I started to hate him immediately.
Three guards followed him in. Two took up position either side of me. Another brought in a chair and placed it facing my cage.
"Good day, Sergeant Jadeth," the man I hated said. "I am Major Imtiaz. I trust your wound is not troubling you too much."
Good thing I'd got that head start on hating him.
"Hello, Major Imtiaz. Excuse me not standing up, but you seem to have me sealed into a small cage here. Perhaps instead I can just tell you to fuck off and die."
Imtiaz gave a small smile. My hatred found a new level.
"I will be conducting your interrogation," he told me.
"So we get to spend lots of time together? Oh goody."
There was something about him that brought out the major sarcasm reflex in me. I couldn't help it. Even Maiga only had about a tenth of the effect.
"How much time we spend together depends on how cooperative you're willing to be." He sat in the chair. He didn't look for the chair. He didn't even glance around to make sure he wasn't about to put his skinny arse onto a whole lot of nothing. He just expected the chair to be there for him when he wanted to sit.
"I expect you're wondering why you are still alive."
"No, I'm wondering how long you'll be alive after I get out of this thing."
"I'm afraid that won't be for some time."
"Oh no." The needle broke off my sarcasm meter. "Please don't leave me here in the Steel Cage of Doom. Whatever shall I do?"
Imtiaz frowned and bent forward, apparently not enjoying being my straight man.
"Perhaps you don't understand the gravity of your situation, Jadeth."
"You know it's funny, ever since I woke up in a cage dangling five meters above a stone floor I've been thinking about gravity quite a lot."
"Very well." He stood up. "Since you seem determined to be so stubborn perhaps you need a reminder of why we are all here." He walked out of the room, taking one guard with him.
I glanced at the two soldiers left behind.
"So what's the food like around here, mates?"
They just stared straight through me. I noticed they both carried long insulated rods with prongs on the end attached to their belts. Oh lovely. I knew I'd be getting a nip from those later.
Imtiaz came back in and a moment later the third soldier followed him, pushing a large monitor screen mounted on a trolley. He placed it where I could get a good view and my stomach knotted as I realised what must be coming.
Imtiaz didn't speak. He touched a couple of panels on the back of the screen and a video playback started up. Wobbly, someone using a hand held recor
der. Voices sounded in the background. I recognised the room at once. The auditorium at the hospital. The room where we all died.
"Make sure you get them all." The order came from somewhere behind the camera operator.
The operator obeyed, sweeping the camera over the bodies on the floor. Some of them I didn't know, they must have been medical officers from the hospital. But I barely noticed them anyway as the dead bodies of my friends passed across the screen in front of me.
Diliph, Akil, Esha - the world's most enthusiast people. Tanashi, our precious doc. So smart, so cool. At least she didn't know Rish bought it too. Vimal, our brave young knight. And Jia, looking almost peaceful, as if she was sleeping. My princess.
Imtiaz paused the picture on Jia.
"You were hot for her, weren't you?"
I glared at him, glared pure burning hate.
"Did you ever get to screw her?"
The vulgarity coming from his refined mouth somehow made it more vile and I wanted to smash his face until his own C.O. wouldn't recognise him. He smiled as I grabbed at the bars thrusting forward, desperate to get at him.
He resumed the playback and moved on to... I turned away. I couldn't look at Ilyan's dead face, without it bringing back the moment his blue eyes turned grey. Without it bringing back the dream of burying his grey and cold body in the heavy, chilled earth.
He's gone. Ilyan is gone. All for nothing.
"Did you ever get to screw him?"
I snarled and this time threw myself in earnest at the bars of the cage, reaching for Imtiaz. If I could grab him, pull him close, I could crush his forehead against the cage. Smash jagged bits of skull into his brain. Even if it didn't kill him he'd spend the rest of his life being spoon-fed. That would wipe the smug bastard smile off his face.
But I couldn't reach and he just laughed at me as the cage swung around.
"That's what you wanted, isn't it? To fuck him? Is that why you couldn't get along with his woman?"
How did he know about that? About any of it? Is this... this gossip what Military Intelligence spent hours extracting from poor Rin before they killed him? You'd think they'd have had more important things to ask about.
Then I found out. I found out where they got all the gossip. And how they found us. I'd assumed someone at the hospital had betrayed us.
I was wrong.
On the screen, I saw myself lying unconscious beside Ilyan's dead body. The camera focused on my pale face, as a couple of medics bent over me, working on my leg. And somewhere away from the camera I heard a voice. A voice I knew.
"What are you doing? You should kill him! He's very dangerous!"
I gasped and stared at the screen, I wanted to yell at Imtiaz to replay the moment, but he didn't need to. The camera viewfinder swung around and showed who had spoken.
Tesla.
Chapter 25
Tesla looked pale and nervous, but very much alive. He had blood on his clothes, but I knew it must be Rish's blood. Rish. He'd tried to tell me, but I just hadn't understood, because even seeing Tesla standing alive and unhurt among the bodies, I could still barely accept the truth.
Tesla? Incredible. Impossible. He'd followed Ilyan from the start, called him a friend. How could he turn on Ilyan? And for what? Money? Had he sold us out to High Command for a big bag of cash?
The camera operator addressed Tesla, answering his plea to finish me off.
"Orders. We need one alive. Of course, there's an alternative--"
"No!" Tesla snapped, looking scared. "No! I was promised!"
"Then get out of here and stop trying to interfere. Your transport is waiting."
Tesla cast a last worried look at the floor and turned away. Imtiaz stopped the playback and turned to me.
"Are you ready to be more sensible now, Jadeth?" He looked all po-faced and severe. Like an instructor who'd just beasted me for taking the piss. "Are you ready to learn why you are still alive?"
I already knew and I no longer wished to die, because I now had a new reason to live. Find him. Hunt Tesla down and make him pay. Make him feel the pain of every one of their deaths twenty times over, one hundred times. Make him feel the pain I had in my heart. With one difference. His pain would end. When I decided to end it. He'd be grateful then, for death. He'd beg for it.
I looked up at Imtiaz, who seemed taken aback for a moment. Perhaps afraid of what he saw in my eyes. He had reason to be afraid, stood there between me and Tesla. However, he gathered himself and started talking, pacing around. I noticed he carefully kept well out of my reach.
"The effect of Ilyan's campaign is causing High Command severe problems. We need to persuade all those people who fell for his ridiculous prediction to return to their posts."
"It's too late for that and you know it."
"High Command thinks otherwise."
"High Command couldn't pour sand out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel."
He ignored that remark and kept pacing. He's nervous, I realised suddenly. He doesn't really believe the words he's mouthing any more than I do.
"We need someone who was close to Ilyan to denounce him."
"Well you've got weasel boy," I said, nodding at the paused playback that still showed Tesla's retreating back. But Imtiaz shook his head.
"Not part of his deal. We need someone else." He stopped and looked at me. "We need you. The ordinary soldiers will listen to you. They'll believe you more than any officer." He smiled. "I believe Ilyan found you useful for the same reason."
"Listen, pal, if you think I'm going to denounce Ilyan you can shove that idea up your arse right now. I know the truth, I've seen the data."
"And I'm sure you're fully qualified to understand complex intelligence data."
Oh, so he could be sarcastic too, huh? I could beat him at that game.
"He explained it to me. But hey, maybe you're right, maybe he got it wrong. Maybe they're actually planning a surprise party for us! Instead of 'massive fleet of warships' maybe it should actually say 'ice cream and cake'?"
He ignored me again. "High Command suggests you say the following. That Ilyan had ambitions to seize power from High Command. That he considered himself a religious figure, messianic. That he made everyone call him The Prophet."
I almost laughed at that last part.
"He hated being called a Prophet!"
Imtiaz glanced at me and went on. "That he was sexually involved with all of the women in your group, perhaps the men too. That he insisted they had to have sex with him to increase his mystical power and energy. That he solicited donations from the soldiers he preached to and used this money to travel in luxury."
Standard stuff to tear down a man's reputation, smear his name. The idea of him taking money from the common soldiers though, that might be the one that made me sickest. He wouldn't even take money from me.
"Major." I interrupted as he took a breath to go on. "Don't waste your breath. If you think you can make me stand up and say all that shit to a court or in front of a camera, you need your fucking head examined. Tesla's the traitor, not me."
Imtiaz gave me a thin smile. "We will see, Jadeth." He glanced at the guards on either side of the cage. "Soften him up. I will return later." He turned and stalked out.
One of the guards followed him and came back a few minutes later, carrying a bucket of water. I knew what he'd brought that for and I cringed back instinctively. Sure enough, a second later freezing cold water soaked me. The other two guards stepped up and poked their long, pronged staffs through the bars.
The first jolt of electricity slammed me hard into the cage bars. I banged my head and fell into a darkness full of stars.
****
Routine. My life had been all about routine from the get go. School and basic training. Even on active service a lot of it is still boring routine, get up, eat, clean stuff, eat, clean more stuff, eat, play cards, sleep. Sometimes some fighting or sex showed up to break the routine, but less often than you'd think. Or i
n the sex case, less often than you'd hope.
With Ilyan's group I'd been in a routine most of the time too and that had suited me fine. Get up, eat, hike around, eat, hike some more, eat, talk to soldiers, sleep.
Now I had yet another routine. Wake up, get tortured, get tortured a lot more, slump into unconsciousness.
And routine is the reason I knew it wouldn't work. You can get used to anything they say. Anything, even including being zapped with an electric prod. If they really wanted to break you, they didn't let a routine get established, they wrong footed you at every turn to keep you off balance.
These guys weren't really trying. Major Imtiaz, he seemed like he had plenty of experience at this game, enjoyed it even. But somehow his heart just wasn't in it now. He showed up every day and between the electro shocks, he kept on demanding I denounce Ilyan and telling me about the fabulous prizes on offer if I did it. But he seemed worried. More than once, he was interrupted in the middle of a session and hurried out of the room, only to return a short time later looking even more distracted.
I could only guess at why and hope I guessed right. High Command's world had started to fall down around its ears. Even if I gave in and stood in front of a camera, told everyone that Ilyan shagged horses and sacrificed babies, it would make no difference now.
****
One day, after an unknowable number of days, the routine broke.
I woke to rumbling noise and the room shaking hard enough to set my cage swinging on its cable and make some gritty dust fall from the bolt securing the pulley into the rock above me. I swear the cage actually slipped downwards just a bit, making me look up nervously.
The vibration and the noise died away. A ship, I thought. A ship just took off. And a sudden panicky feeling hit me.
"Hello?" I yelled. "Hello? Hey, come in here, you fuckers!" Usually when I yelled they came in lowered the cage, threw water on me and maybe zapped me a couple of times, just for a laugh, then left me to shiver cold and wet. Not this time.
I waited for a while, not ready to face the truth. I got hungry, thirsty, and hoarse from yelling and I finally accepted it. They'd gone. I was alone. Alone and welded into a small cage five metres off the ground. Peachy.