Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Come on,” I said. Suki had already revved up the engine and was waiting for us impatiently. Not for the first time, I cursed the agreement that had put control over security in the capital in the hands of a wholly-Svergie unit. I could have contacted the spaceport and demanded reinforcements, but what good would it have done? I helped Muna into the rear and slipped into the jeep’s passenger seat, one hand reaching for the pistol I kept on my belt. “Suki, we’d better get moving.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Suki growled, spinning the jeep around and taken off like a bat out of hell. Behind us, the mob reached the gates and spread out around them, howling slogans into the air. Their words all seemed to merge into an eerie cry of CHILDREN, CHILDREN, sending shivers down my spine and chilling my very soul. There was little individuality left in the mob now, just howling animals. “Oh, hell.”

  I saw them at the same moment she did; other rioters, running up to join the riot, or to try to suppress it. The entire situation seemed to have billowed way out of control – indeed, it had never been under my control. I keyed my earpiece, contacting the spaceport, and wasn't entirely surprised to hear that the Svergie Government had asked for help. The riot seemed to have been carefully prepared; I remembered Frida’s comment about others in the Progressive Party trying to move against her, and I worried about it being intended as an attempt to unseat her. If that was the case…

  “We’ll just have to deal with it when it comes,” I muttered, as Suki took us down the street fast enough to force oncoming rioters to jump out of the way. I’d thought I’d seen bad driving before, but Suki was treating the jeep as if it were a tank, complete with armoured covering. A handful of glass bottles smashed off our bullet-proof windows and shattered – it would take more than that to damage them – followed by more junk and debris. Behind us, someone had started a fire. I wondered about Molotov Cocktails for a second, and then pushed it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on staying alive.

  “Boss, this is Robert,” my earpiece buzzed. The tone was sharp and very insistent. That didn’t mean good news. “Find somewhere safe to hide until we get the reinforcements into the city. There are riots breaking out all over. This is looking very bad…”

  The jeep spun around a corner and right into a barricade someone had constructed across a side-street, barely wide enough to allow the jeep and a handful of other vehicles to pass. Suki snapped something in a language I didn’t recognise as men wearing dark clothes materialised around us and slashed at the tires, before pulling at the door and trying to open it. I drew my pistol and kicked it open, firing a single shot into the first man’s head. I saw him tumbling backwards and hoped that the others would see sense and run, but instead…

  Suki grabbed my right arm and yanked it back, just as I fired a second shot, which ricocheted harmlessly into the distance. A moment later, one of the men knocked the pistol out of my hand and pulled me out of the car. I dimly realised that Suki had driven us right into a trap – on purpose – as I allowed him to pull me forward and kept coming, lifting my knee and kicking him right in the groin. He yelled and staggered, then collapsed as I slammed a fist into his throat. It had been too long since I’d fought for my life, but I’d drilled every day with Peter and the others on the spaceport. Part of me was almost enjoying it, somehow.

  Muna had grabbed Suki’s neck and was making a valiant attempt to strangle her. I couldn’t remember how good Muna was as I lashed out at another man, who came at me with a club…which suggested that they wanted us alive. Not good. Anyone who wanted us alive probably had unpleasant plans for us. I snapped a punch right into his throat and sent him choking to the ground. I turned to face the next man, only to see that he was holding a stunner. I barely had a moment to catch my breath before he pulled the trigger and blue-white light sent me crashing to the ground.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Treatment of prisoners varies among the different armies and insurgent groups present in the Human Sphere. Some believe in treating prisoners fairly decently, others will regard prisoners as the lowest of the low and simply execute them out of hand. Captive soldiers are therefore to be trained in resisting interrogation techniques as long as possible, bearing in mind that the enemy may see no use for them after their brains are sucked dry.

  -Army Manual, Heinlein

  I hate being stunned.

  The UN, which invented the stunner in the first place, claimed that it put the target completely out for at least two hours – longer, depending on the target’s body mass, clothing and a handful of other factors – allowing the captor to transport the captive to safety. Like so much else, the UN’s claims are nonsense; I couldn’t move, or see, but I could still hear. I couldn’t feel, which was something of a relief – I’d hit the ground hard enough to hurt without the stunner’s effects – but I could definitely still hear. My mind shimmered in and out of awareness as they transported their two prisoners away from the ambush site. I could hear them talking.

  “Good work,” someone said. There was a hint of a cough. “The mercenary and his whore in our hands.”

  “She’s not a whore,” Suki said. I guessed that she meant Muna. She had betrayed us. The thought raced through my mind and refused to fade. She had betrayed us! “She’s one of his chief assistants; she handles logistics and other background work for him.”

  “And a black-ass at that,” a second unfamiliar voice said. “Do we take her as well?”

  “We’ve no choice,” the first voice said. He came closer and I heard his hands touching my uniform. I could hear the clink of handcuffs as he cuffed my hands behind my back. “Help me get them into the truck and search them for anything that might be dangerous. You, bitch; check the girl for anything that could be used to follow us.”

  “Of course,” Suki said. I heard the annoyance in her tone and wondered if she had really realised what she was working for. They didn’t sound like honest and decent farmers to me. “I’ll do it at once, shall I?”

  Sensation shimmered in and out as they dumped me in a vehicle and started the engine. The loud roar of the vehicle made it harder to listen for their voices, but I struggled enough to learn that the truck was designed to block all transmissions, preventing my radio or any other form of communications system from calling for help. I couldn’t blame them for the precaution, but I did wonder how they intended to get out of the city…and then remembered the riot. By the time the Quick Response Force arrived, they could be halfway across the city, or even heading out into the countryside. If they’d managed as much as they had, it wasn't hard to believe that they had papers allowing them to leave the city without being inspected; hell, a careful drive would keep them away from all checkpoints. We hadn’t been so concerned with vehicles leaving the city.

  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 di
alect 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.

  “We will keep hurting you until you give up the answers,” the woman said. Her voice was softer now, almost seductive. “You will not be able to resist us indefinitely. Why not give up the answers now and save yourself the pain.”

  Another slap. I wondered, vaguely, if they were going to knock out a few teeth. I wanted to come out with a smart answer, but that would just be another chink in my armour, another opening they could use to beat me. I thought I heard Muna snarling in the distance, unable to help me or even help herself, as slap after slap rained down on my face. I wasn't going to be such a pretty face afterwards, part of my mind whispered, and I almost smiled. It was too painful to smile. The effect of the slaps were burning through the effect of the stunner. A final slap sent my chair flying over backwards and I knocked my head against the hard stone floor.

  “Get him back up,” the woman ordered. I felt my head spinning as the two men lifted the chair up and placed me back facing the woman. In one of the cheap entertainment vids the UN produced, the fall would have broken my cuffs or perhaps the chair, but I tested them and the links were as strong as ever. She seemed to come closer to me, whispering into my ear. “This won’t help you in the long run, my dear.”

  I gathered my energy and spat right into her face. She didn’t squeal, or order my immediate death; she showed no reaction at all. Her two goons looked ready to pound on me until my head was crushed into powder, but she held up a hand, preventing them from acting.

  “We could hurt your friend,” she said, wiping the spittle off her cheek with a paper towel. “Beta?”

  Beta – a thuggish man – stepped forward and slapped Muna’s face. I saw a trickle of red blood spilling down from her lips, contrasting oddly against her dark skin, and winced inwardly. I met her eyes and saw her shake her head, j
ust slightly, at me. She didn’t want me to tell them anything. I didn’t want to tell them anything either.

  “Don’t,” a voice said. It was the first man speaking. “Hurting him is fine; do it, but don’t harm the girl.”

  The woman rounded on him. “This is no time for half measures,” she snapped. I wondered, suddenly, if the farmers and the Freedom League had their disagreements. I hoped that that was true. It would give me – or my successor – a weapon to use to pry them apart. The farmers would regard Muna as a breeder – now there was a joke and a half – and would be sensitive to any harm inflicted on her, or any other woman. “This is our one opportunity to get the intelligence we need before the ship returns and I will not waste it.”