by J. L. Doty
She frowned. “No doubt you think you can get around this punishment in some way. But you need to learn I have absolute power over your life, your very existence, and I will tolerate nothing less than absolute and instant obedience from the likes of you. And to teach you that lesson, I sentence you to fifty strokes of the lash.”
York frowned. “What’s the lash?”
Jarwith’s eyes turned almost sympathetic, and there was no joy in her voice. “The lash is a strip of hardened plast two millimeters thick, one centimeter wide, and two meters long. Its method of use is … well … it’s really quite impossible to describe.” She looked at the female marine guarding York and nodded. “Sergeant.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the marine snapped crisply, then literally picked York up by the manacles on his wrists. He struggled, but she cuffed him once across the jaw, then dropped him on his feet between the girders supporting two bulkheads. Two marines helped her manacle his wrists separately to the girders. York heard the unmistakable hum of a power knife as she cut away the back of his fatigues, then left him standing with his back exposed and his arms spread wide.
An ominous figure stepped into York’s now-limited field of view. It was human in shape, but encased head to foot in mottled gray-black plast, with a face hidden behind the silvery glare of a helmet visor. It was the first time York had ever seen a marine in full-combat plast armor. Someone had made judicious use of black tape to obscure all identifying insignia, as well as the name stenciled on the marine’s chest plate.
The marine saluted Jarwith crisply. She returned the salute and handed him a long strap of transparent plast. He doubled it up in his right hand, then struck it against the armored gauntlet of his left. It cracked against the plast with a sharp snap, and York suddenly understood the lash.
The marine walked around him, behind him, out of his field of view. Jarwith remained in front of him, standing at arm’s length, her eyes filled with sadness. That scared York even more than had the whip crack of the lash against the marine’s gauntlet.
“I’m sorry,” he pleaded. “I didn’t mean to do it. I won’t do it again.”
Jarwith shook her head and spoke without rancor. “Yes, you did, and yes, you will, though I do believe at this moment you are truly sorry. But if I let you go now, you won’t learn the lesson you need to learn.”
She looked over York’s shoulder, nodded at the marine, and said, “You may proceed.”
The metallic voice of the armored marine’s helmet speaker answered her. “Aye, aye, ma’am.”
There came no real warning beyond that, only a momentary delay, an infinitesimal instant during which York had enough time to hope he was mistaken about the nature of this punishment. Then he heard a loud snap, and a pencil-thin line of searing, white-hot fire etched itself with infinitely painful slowness across the back of his shoulders. His universe exploded, expanding like the fireball of a warhead in deep space, then shrinking again to that thin, narrow line of incandescent pain. He screamed and pulled violently at his restraints, had a nightmarish vision of his back splitting open to disgorge gouts of fire.
The instant ended, and the metallic voice of the marine’s helmet speaker said, “One.”
There came no delay now, no moment of respite. A second line of pain cut into York’s back, burning its way this time across his ribs, and he disappeared for an instant into a gulf of black nothingness.
“Two,” the marine barked.
The lash struck a third time and a fourth. Each time the marine voiced the count, and each time the blackness of an unknowing vacuum swallowed York for a longer and deeper moment, while between the strokes he screamed and cried and begged for mercy. For a few strokes, he screamed almost continuously, until finally he was unable to scream at all. Then the black gulf devoured him and he felt nothing more… .
Awareness returned slowly. He still hung by the manacles between the bulkheads, too exhausted to whimper or cry. His back was a smoldering cauldron of fire, and he could no longer distinguish the pain of the individual strokes. In front of him, the ship’s doctor stood facing Jarwith, an injector in his hand. “That’ll keep him conscious,” the doctor said to Jarwith.
Jarwith nodded. “Any chance of permanent damage? It’d be a shame if he died.”
The doctor shook his head. “He’s young and strong. Probably be okay.”
Again Jarwith nodded. “Thank you.”
The doctor stepped out of York’s field of view while Jarwith came closer and filled it completely. Her eyes were now deeply sad. “The count stands at twenty-three,” she said. “I can’t let you pass out. You have to feel every stroke for it to do you any good, and you have to know I’m a hard woman with a hard job to do. And I want you to understand in the depths of your soul that I will do it.”
He saw lines of strain around her eyes as she looked at him, and he felt oddly sorry for her. She reached into a pocket, pulled out a length of some odd, brownish material about as big around as her thumb and a bit longer. “This is leather,” she said. “Real leather, the kind you no longer see, braided strips of treated cowhide. But then you probably don’t know what a cow is, do you?”
Without another word, she thrust the plug of material edgewise into York’s mouth. It tasted strangely unfamiliar. “When the lash strikes again,” she said, “bite down on that. Bite down hard. It helps a little. Not much, but a little.” Then she turned her back on him, walked a few paces away, turned to face him again, and called loudly, “The count stands at twenty-three. Continue the sentence.”
Chapter 7:
The Marines
Lying face down on a bunk in a cell—a cell was a cell—York drifted in and out of consciousness, his back burning with the memory of the lash. When he finally came fully awake, a medical orderly stood over him, applying some sort of salve to his back.
“In case you’re wondering,” the orderly said, “no speed-healing for you. Captain wants you to remember the lash.”
The orderly kept up a constant chatter as he worked. “Chewed your back up pretty bad. But we got you shot so full of meds there won’t be any infection.”
York didn’t say anything. The salve—or whatever it was—cooled the burn a little.
“This stuff will help with healing, reduce scarring a little—only a little.”
They let York recuperate for two days, then he went back to scrubbing decks in the cellblock. He scrubbed cells, toilets, everything. At least, in the brig, he didn’t have to constantly look over his shoulder to see if Sturpik and Tomlin were coming his way.
He didn’t go to the mess hall for meals with the other prisoners. He sat in his cell and choked down the unflavored, untextured protein cake, then washed it down with water. They gave him some free time each day, and he was allowed a small reader tied to Dauntless’s central library. He spent his time trying to improve his reading by studying the regs or the pod operations manual, though he’d probably forfeited the opportunity to become a lower-deck pod gunner.
From the regs, he learned that by committing an intentional act of violence against the NCO in charge of his station on a ship in a designated combat zone while under an elevated watch condition, he had committed a capital offense. Had the captain chosen to press charges and put the case before a formal court-martial, he would have been sentenced to death. The navy had no restrictions on age and left the means of execution up to the captain’s discretion.
On the morning of the thirtieth day of tasteless food and confinement in the brig, the door to York’s cell clattered open and a female marine stepped in. York didn’t know much about marine rank, had glanced at it briefly in the regs, but knew enough to recognize sergeant’s stripes on her sleeves, and the stencil above her shirt pocket read COCHRAN.
She tossed him khaki coveralls and said, “You ain’t a prisoner no more. Put that on.”
She marched him up a couple of
decks, then they stepped out into a large open space. “This is Hangar Deck,” she said as they walked past a shuttle craft like the one that had carried him up from Dumark to Dauntless. “Pretty much marine country.”
She led him to an office with a marine officer seated behind a desk. He had a thin face, dark hair cut short, and piercing brown eyes that appraised York carefully as he stood there. He shook his head and said, “They didn’t teach you shit, did they?”
York said, “I studied the regs.”
The man continued to shake his head as he said, “I’m Cap’m Shernov. The marine rank of captain is different from the naval rank captain. It’s equivalent to naval lieutenant, senior grade, but to make sure it’s never confused with the captain of this ship, you never call me captain. It’s cap’m. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Jarwith wants me to teach you manners.” He looked at Cochran and said, “Show him how to do it proper.”
Cochran led York out of Shernov’s office, stopped there, and said, “When you enter an officer’s office, you first knock politely. If the door is closed, you may open it a crack, announce your name and rank, and request permission to enter.” She then walked him through an elaborate exercise. York had to repeat it several times, but eventually he learned to knock politely on the open door and wait for Shernov to say, “Enter.” Then he marched into the cap’m’s office following a purely square path, using parade-ground steps that were completely new to him. Two steps straight in, turn right, take one step, turn left, take one step forward, and stop facing the man squarely. York threw his shoulders back, saluted, and said, “Spacer Ballin reporting as ordered, sir.”
“That’s better,” Shernov said. “Still not good enough, but better. At ease, Spacer.”
York relaxed. Shernov and Cochran shared a look and frowned. York learned then that “at ease” meant a very specific stance. Cochran showed him how to put his hands behind his back and spread his legs slightly, but still stand squarely.
“Okay, Ballin,” Shernov said. “You fucked up really bad. But us marines, we’re different. You fuck up like that here, Captain Jarwith is never gonna hear about it. But you won’t survive, probably just have a fatal accident. Got it?”
Bad situations frequently turned out that way on the streets. “Yes, sir.”
That prompted another lesson about the difference between “Aye, aye, sir,” and “Yes, sir.” York also learned that while under Shernov, he was supposed to answer a question like that by screaming at the top of his lungs, “Sir, yes, sir.”
Shernov leaned back in his chair and gave York an appraising look. He looked to Cochran and said, “He ain’t stupid.” It sounded more like a question.
York didn’t look her way, but he heard Cochran say, “I’m guessing they just didn’t pay any attention to teaching him anything.”
Shernov asked York, “Did they teach you anything, Ballin?”
York screamed, “Sir, yes, sir.”
Shernov grimaced and muffled his ears with his hands. “Tone it down, Ballin. What did they teach you?”
“How to work a pod, sir.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Shernov said. “Cause we need another gunner for our boats. Lost one last trip out. That’s one of the reasons the captain’s lending you to us.”
Under the marines, York spent a little time scrubbing decks but not that much. He spent a lot of time running simulations in one of the gunboat turrets. Many of the turret’s systems were identical to those of a pod, and York took to it immediately. It had local systems for gravity, environmental control, targeting, and fire control. The biggest difference was that he had to wear a vac suit as a safety precaution against the turret taking a hit and losing pressure. It also had some limited external gravity control, which allowed for independent maneuvering if it was ejected from the gunboat. York didn’t want to think about that.
He also had some fun doing a few runs in the gunboat pilot simulator, though Cochran told him it would be some time before he got a chance to put that to use.
The shuttles weren’t shuttles, they were gunboats, and Dauntless had three of them, named One, Two, and Three. Each had four gun turrets, and the gunboat’s system didn’t carefully allocate targets to a particular gunner. It just flagged them in his display as green for friendlies and red for foe. “If it’s red,” Cochran told him, “and you got a shot, you take it.”
Cochran turned York over to Corporal Mike Bristow, and Bristow kept York quite busy. If he wasn’t parade marching up and down Hangar Deck to Bristow’s shouted commands, he was lifting weights or pumping calisthenics with some of the marines, or running simulations in a gunboat turret, or practicing weightless maneuvers in a vac suit. They taught him how to use a grav rifle and sidearm, and he spent an hour on the firing range every fourth watch rotation.
One day, after running York up and down the deck for an hour, Bristow let him take a break. York sat down on the deck near a group of marines running maintenance checks on their combat armor. “Them pod gunners give you the talk about the lowest of the low?” Bristow asked.
“Ya,” York said. “Nothing lower than a pod gunner.”
Bristow shouted at one of the marines working on the armor. “Hey, Cath. Is it true, nothing lower than a pod gunner?”
A small woman with short, blond hair looked up from working on the armor and grinned. “Not true at all. There’s us marines.” York thought she was rather pretty.
Allship blared, Down-transition in ten minutes and counting.
The marines all agreed that they were lower than any pod gunner, and they appeared to take pride in that. It was an odd sort of camaraderie.
Bristow said, “Ain’t nobody lower than you, Cath.”
She returned fire. “At least I don’t have a limp dick like you, Bristow.”
Down-transition in one minute and counting.
“You could make it not limp,” he said. “’Course you couldn’t handle it.”
“Probably because it’s so small I couldn’t find it.”
As allship started the final countdown to transition, York wondered if the two of them would come to blows. But the other marines were grinning, and York got the idea they had this conversation quite regularly.
Down-transition.
York felt that little tickle in the back of his spine, and he shivered.
Bristow frowned at him and said, “What was that, Ballin?”
“Transition,” York said. “It gives me a weird feeling.”
The marines stopped what they were doing and looked at him oddly. Cath frowned and said, “You feel transition?”
“Ya,” York said. “Don’t you?”
The silence grew uncomfortable, then Bristow said, “Ah, he’s full of shit.”
Cath quizzed York about the sensation he felt, and when he described it they all agreed he was full of shit, though apparently no one held that against him. York was relieved when Shernov marched out of his office and their attention turned away from him.
“Two boats,” Shernov said. “Squads one and two, light combat harness. Milk run, going to evacuate some sort of spook team from the embassy.”
He looked at York and said, “Ballin, today you get your cherry popped. You’re riding side turret.”
York jumped to his feet, wasn’t sure if he was supposed to scramble or not. But everyone else sat or stood without moving.
Shernov said, “Calm down, Ballin. We’re still outside of heliopause.”
At York’s blank look, Shernov gave him a quick lesson in interstellar navigation. A ship like Dauntless ran blind while in transition, could only detect stellar and planetary masses, or another ship nearby if it maneuvered hard. But gravitational fields and solar wind perturbed a transition course, so when approaching a solar system, Dauntless down-transited just outside heliopause to take a nav fix
and do a quick system map. Then they up-transited and drove in-system at ten or twenty lights, down-transiting again at a safe distance from their destination. After a bit of sublight maneuvering, they’d be in orbit. The process usually took a couple of hours.
They ran all three boats through a thorough pre-flight check. It was determined that Two’s grav drive needed some maintenance, so they decided to use One and Three for the drop. York was in the bunk room closing the seals on his vac suit when three young marines, a girl and two boys, also wearing vac suits, approached him. None of them could be more than three or four years older than York. They stood there just staring at him while he finished sealing his suit. The girl stood in front of the two boys, her hands curled into fists, the fists resting on her hips, elbows out. She had a hard look about her, black hair just long enough to cover one ear on one side, shaved down to the scalp on the other side, a little too much makeup. York thought she would be pretty if she just smiled a little.
The boy behind her and on her left was a little overweight, round face, head shaved. The boy behind her on her right was medium height and rail thin, unruly brown hair sticking out in odd spiky tufts, some sort of pierced metal studs in his cheek.
Their body language said gang.
The girl nodded toward the fat boy and said, “This is Chunks.” She nodded toward the tall, skinny one. “That’s Jack and I’m Sissy. We’re Three’s gunners, and we just want to make sure you’re not going to fuck this up, because we heard about you, heard you’re a fuck-up. Are you a fuck-up?”
York said, “I won’t fuck up.”
She dropped her fists from her hips, relaxed her hands, and stepped toward him, closing the distance between them. He wasn’t sure if she was going to hit him.
“We’ve all fucked up at one time or another,” she said. “So that don’t make you no different. Just don’t fuck up now.”
The three of them then encircled him and carefully went over his vac suit seals, made sure he’d done it right. Chunks said, “We take care of each other.”