She went over, knelt down, and cut a two-centimeter-wide gash in the guy's butt. Then she peeled back a good three-centimeter-long strip. Blood welled up in it.
He screamed in agony.
"Sorry, I ain't got no salt to pour into your wound, but maybe this will help." She stood up and pissed on his bleeding butt.
He sobbed and wept as he dragged himself another few centimeters to his death and release.
One of the other unarmed women was right behind her. She eyed Vicky.
The Grand Duchess shrugged without batting an eyebrow. No question that worse had been done to these women, or the women whose mangled bodies had been hauled out of there.
There was little Vicky would say no to.
The first woman handed off the knife to the next one, then came to stand beside Vicky. She accepted the machine pistol when the woman with it wanted to join the line. The two working machine pistols stayed several meters back from the struggling man.
One by one, the women took their strip of skin. His butt, his back, and a thigh all made their contribution to these women’s’ revenge. One took a strip off of his bleeding arm just below the shattered break. She was sure to piss on the bloody pulp.
The last one stood in front of him, grabbed his hair to hold him in place and then took her slice from his forehead.
The wailing man's head dropped to the graveled roof as she pissed in his face. "Why don't you just kill me?" he pleaded.
The women were unmoved by his plea. "Hurry up or we'll start another round. I'm thinking I should have scalped you."
The women were truly hard-hearted. Vicky could almost feel sorry for the bleeding wreck of a man in his agony.
However, in his case, "almost" and "any actual" regret were a hundred kilometers apart.
He continued to slowly drag himself to his death.
As he did, the women taunted him. That was how Vicky learned just how horrible it had been to be a hostage to the likes of this bastard. He'd held all the power, and he'd delight in the corruption it bestowed upon him. He hadn't been content to just take his pleasure. No, he had to have the women around him suffer for it.
Vicky thought she knew the depravity of men. The stories these women told opened the doors to a new meaning of hell. She was revolted by it. Her stomach went sour, then nauseous.
As she listened, a realization dawned on her.
She sought power.
A Peterwald chased after power the way a tiger chased after fresh red meat. She'd been revolted by her father's folly and the abuse of power that he wallowed in the last few years while the Bowlingame girl lead him around by a chain wrapped around his prick.
That was sickening enough.
Father had never sunk this low, but there was nothing to keep him from going here. There were no limits on his power.
The Bowlingame family had taken up the power he left lying on his wife's bed and used it to lay the Empire to waste. They'd murdered and raped and pillaged their way across the Empire, taking what they wanted, tossing aside the rest.
This man, with his four or five thousand willing and eager thugs had weaseled their way through the cracks in this disaster to find their own private hell and fill it with helpless victims.
There had been nothing in place to protect these people from this rapacious wolf.
Now Mannie's mania for self-government under the rule of law began to make sense to her. His insistence that the local government have its own police force, and even an armed guard took on an immediacy that she could now understand. These people needed a defense from the likes of the Peterwalds. They also needed protection from those wolves that skulked among them. Trash the likes of which she'd executed yesterday out in those two far hangars.
Democracy wasn't just something that was nice to have. It was a necessity for the survival of a decent people.
The demented pirate prince was getting close to the balustrade around the roof. He'd have to pull himself up a half meter before he could roll himself off the roof and begin his ten story drop to blessed oblivion. Several of the women weren't willing yet to let him slip away.
One woman approached him. "I hear tell that one guy just loved to slug his women in the kidney. Hurt like hell." She kicked him in his lower back.
He groaned.
"I guess I missed. You didn't scream nearly loud enough."
Another woman went to a knee beside him and slugged him on the other side.
The guy screamed that time.
The women now stood on either side of him, his side boys to hell. He'd pull himself a few more centimeters toward his death, and one of them would slug him in a kidney.
At first, he screamed at every blow, but before long, all he could get out was a croak of a groan.
It was taking him longer and longer to work up the strength to pull himself along. The women took to nudging one of his shattered knees or his broken arm to encourage him to make the next pull.
Vicky found the entire effort exhausting in body and soul, but the women never tired.
Finally, only the low parapet blocked him from his death. However, even though it was only a half meter high, it might have been a hundred.
His knees were shot. Literally. A dart had demolished both, turning them into bloody pulps. He could not push up on them. He had to slowly draw himself up on the broken wrist until he could get that elbow up on the low wall. He screamed in pain as he whipped his broken arm around to get that elbow up as well.
He pulled himself forward until he hung there, whimpering and sobbing, on his arms and shoulders. But it seemed he could go no farther.
He shouldn't have done that. Hanging there, he was vulnerable like he hadn't been before. His prick, bloodied and torn, hung down for all to see.
One of the women took that moment to apply the knife and totally castrate him.
From some pit in the hell within him, he found one final scream. The women around him grinned as the woman with the knife plopped his bloody sex down right before his eyes.
"What can you do worse to me now?" he somehow managed to get out.
"Is that a challenge? Do you really want to ask any of us if we've got something more we'd like to do to you?" the woman with the knife said and began nudging it between his butt cheeks.
That was all it took. He began struggling to swing his hips up on the ledge. He rolled himself flat on the low wall and paused. His ruined front, with embedded gravel, showed every centimeter of his slow progress to that moment.
Around him, the women exchanged glances, licked their lips, and eyed each other with one question. Did they let him go now, or did they take one last ounce of flesh?
The woman with the knife, slashed down, aiming for a kidney though she had to slice him from front to back.
She must have hit it because the man let out a blood curdling scream.
The woman handed off the knife to another.
Now the man was struggling to roll over. To roll off the roof to his death.
The women got to him first, stabbing deep. He screeched in agony as he rolled away from her, taking the knife with him as he hurtled down the ten floors, shrieking all the way until it ended with a dull thud.
Vicky sighed, not for his death, but for the end of her ordeal, watching him die.
She'd shot men between the eyes, telling herself she was preforming her duties to justice, that she was executing them under the law.
This torture and enforced suicide was something else. She felt an urgent need for Mannie. For a hug. For a chance to talk. For someone to help her scrub herself, her mind, her soul from this.
For someone to tell her she didn't have to go the way of this piece of shit but rather could return to the way of the gracious Grand Duchess.
The eight women collapsed onto the roof like puppets whose strings had been cut.
"I'll get you some help," Vicky said as she stumbled her way toward the stairwell.
"Water," one cried.
"Something to ea
t. It's been days," another muttered around a moan.
Vicky shook her head in a nod. These women had been in such physical need, yet their need for vengeance had driven them on.
People were strange that way.
36
Vicky found the Marines waiting nervously for her on the first landing down. She doubted they'd missed any of the screaming.
"You done?" one asked her in a shaky voice.
"Yeah. We're done. Listen," Vicky said, glancing over her shoulder up the stairs, "the women are in pretty bad shape. They need water and some food. Then they need help."
Vicky paused trying to organize her thoughts back to the task at hand.
She nodded at the smaller of the Marines, "You, go get help. Female aids, corpsmen. You know what I mean."
He nodded.
"You, help the women."
Before Vicky even had to dredge out the next order, the Marines were doing it for her. Both of them were detaching their water tanks from their suits. Both were rummaging around in their rucksacks for emergency rations, energy bars, whatever food they still had with them. Vicky added her stores to those they were giving up.
The runner also handed his off to the other Marine and took off down the stairs. That Marine turned and began to trudge up the stairs. Vicky had a strong sense that he was scared of the women he'd been sent to help.
With a sigh, Vicky made her way on shaky knees down the stairs. Somewhere along the way, tears began to stream down her face. She hated her leaking eyes. She didn't know why she had gone all blubbery. She willed herself to stop, but that only seemed to make it worse.
She held on tight to the handrail as she put one foot in front of the other, going down each step as if it might not be there. As if a great abyss threatened to engulf her.
Almost to the bottom, it was so tempting to collapse onto a step. To sit there for a bit of a rest or for the next eternity. She couldn't face her general or the troops with herself so at loose ends.
She turned the corner at one landing, stared blankly, and halted. On the next landing was Mannie.
Holding onto the railing with both hands, she asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I heard that you were having a hell of a day. I thought you might like a hug."
Vicky gasped for a breath and let it all out in a rush, "I'd love a hug."
Mannie was up the stairs like lightning. In a moment, he held her, even as her legs let go and she settled to the step behind her.
Now she surrendered herself to large wracking sobs. Mannie soothed her with words that meant nothing and arms that seemed to shield her from the world for the moment. His soft stroking of her hair seemed to strip away a little bit of the hell that surrounded her.
Not much, but enough.
A long time later, he asked, "Have you had anything to eat?"
Vicky shook her head.
"They've set up mess facilities in an abandoned restaurant a couple of blocks from here. They've brought down scrambled eggs and bacon, ship-baked biscuits, and coffee. It's amazing how they've kept it fresh. Come on. Let's get some chow into you."
"I can't go out there looking like this."
"What? The troops can't see that their Grand Duchess is an honest human being? Remember, I saw you naked, your body covered with bug bites and scratched by thorns. I saw you as human and love you."
"But I can't fit all of them in my bed," Vicky snorted a kind of laugh.
"Your assassins would love to try," Mannie said, keeping up the inane jokes.
Slowly they made it to the bottom floor and its exit to the street. The sun was up, bringing warmth that penetrated the chill inside Vicky's battle armor. Troops went about their duty, hurrying here or there. They saluted Her Imperial Grand Duchess Victoria, and ignored the woman with tearstained cheeks in the battle armor of a four star admiral.
None objected when she failed to return their salute.
Mannie supported her as they made their way two blocks up to a derelict building marked only by the flow of Marines in and out. Mannie found her a chair at a small table. He turned to head for the chow line, but a private already had a plate full of bacon and eggs, two biscuits and jam ready at his elbow.
"Give me a second and I'll get you some coffee, Ma'am. Sir, do you want anything to eat?" he asked Mannie.
"I've already eaten," he answered, "but I'd love another cup of that coffee. How do you make it so good?"
"It's the pinch of salt, sir."
Mannie settled back into his chair and stared at Vicky.
She stared blankly at the food in front of her. The lovely smell of bacon made her mouth water.
"Do you think I could have some orange juice and a glass of water?" she asked Mannie.
He passed it along to the trooper who brought two cups of coffee and he immediately trotted off to find some.
Still, Vicky could only stare at the lovely meal in front of her.
"You want me to feed you a few spoonfuls?"
"I'm embarrassed enough. No need to humiliate me."
"Yeah, but I can't have you starving to death sitting here in front of that delicious chow. The cooks would never forgive me for that. It would likely scare off their paying customers."
Finally, Vicky found a chuckle. She managed to retrieve one stick of bacon. She took small bites and chewed each one slowly. Just as slowly, her body seemed to stir to life.
She began to dredge up words. She let them crawl from her mouth without thought or reflection.
Mannie listened intently to her every word she spoke. He only interrupted her to remind her to take a bite. The palace rules of not talking with your mouth full was suspended for the duration of this meal.
The words spilled out of her. An entire night's worth of words. She knew she was babbling. Trying to keep the story of the early morning going to avoid having to talk about the ending.
She tried, but there was no way to avoid the final assault on the roof, the attack, and the judgement that followed.
She finally ran down to emptiness and ended up just staring at her empty plate. Somehow, her coffee cup was filled again. The Marine who had been so helpful appeared again at her elbow with another plate of bacon. He offered Mannie a piece, then Vicky.
She took two.
Mannie wolfed down the bacon then leaned close, and put out his hands, palms up.
"What about this morning frightens you?" he asked softly.
"Frightens me?" Vicky echoed, dumbly.
"Yes. You sound frightened."
Vicky wanted to snap back at him that she was many things, but frightened wasn't one of them. But she paused, held her tongue . . . and let Mannie's words roll around her muzzy brain for a minute.
It was only then that she realized that Mannie was right. She was terrified.
"I'm terrified," she said slowly, "of being both. Of being the leader who became a beast and abused power over the people, and like the women, who also went down the same path, becoming beasts howling for revenge. The thing is," Vicky said, looking deep into Mannie's eyes. "It was their right. He deserved all they did to him. But it was wrong. Not because of what they did to him, but what they did to themselves."
"And what have you done to yourself?" Mannie asked.
"I thought I was doing justice." Vicky said, choosing each word as if it cost her blood. "I was really just one of them, demanding vengeance."
Mannie gave her a soft nod. "Okay, now, tell me, my Gracious Grand Duchess, what have you learned about yourself?"
Vicky leaned back in her chair. She picked up another piece of bacon and slowly munched it as she thought. The bacon was delicious, a reward for this painful self-reflection.
"I am no better than my father and my grandfather. Given absolute power, I can be corrupted. I pray to whatever god will listen that I never become as bad as that piece of shit, but I am capable of losing control and doing horrible things."
She leaned forward to fix Mannie with a firm stare. "You are right. I need
the rule of law."
He responded to her with an understanding nod.
"I have learned that I need help distinguishing justice from revenge. I think as a Grand Duchess I should limit myself to choosing wise men and women to dispense justice and reserve only the most difficult of decisions to myself. And maybe not even then. I may need further reflection on this."
"The search for justice always requires more reflection. When do you apply the rule of law, and when is the law an ass?" Mannie said, ruefully.
Vicky found herself chuckling at her husband's ever-dry wit.
"Do you think we could somehow do this . . . and keep our bed to ourselves?" Now it was her turn to draw a chuckle from them both.
"I certainly hope so. I certainly hope that I can help you and your subjects establish a rule of law that will outlast us all."
"And you can begin planning for elections of a senate or house or whatever it is you think that should make the laws."
"And an Ultimate Court to define, protect, and apply those laws."
"Good God, Mannie, isn't there any limit to your scheming?"
Mannie gave her the cutest shrug. "Dearest, you are hard to replace. Let's see. I'm dividing you up into a First Minister to be your chief minister and lead your government. At least two deliberative bodies, although the moneyed interests think they should get one to represent capital if the people get one to represent them, and the planets get one for them as well."
"Is there no limit?"
"We're trying to keep the guild halls from getting their own. You'd think one for the people would be enough."
"One would," Vicky said with a deep breath. This was fun. So much more fun than executing criminals herself.
They talked on until it was time for lunch. The cooks served up meatloaf sandwiches with a choice of several potato or pasta salads. Many of the men and women who had been working with Mannie showed up to join them for lunch. They moved to a much larger table in the back.
Vicky sat back quietly and just listened as they plotted both her downfall and her hope for a future for herself, her children and them all.
Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 19