The robot waved at me as I left. “Have a nice evening, sir,” she said. “I hope to see you soon.”
I was still laughing to myself when I boarded the shuttle to return to the Devastator.
Chapter Twenty
The UN’s position on rape is somewhat mixed, depending on the exact circumstances. On one hand, it’s a crime against the victim and all of womankind. On the other, there are times when it is accepted as a legitimate form of social protest, or even part of a working society. A young black man who rapes a white woman has the defence, assuming that he is ever brought to trial, that he is merely avenging slights committed against his race in ages past. A woman from a tribal society can be raped by her husband, after being married off by her father, and the UN regards it as part of their culture and therefore acceptable. The irony is that the UN has created perhaps the most racist community in centuries…and that is not unacceptable. The military principle of divide and conquer remains strong.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
The books made fascinating reading each night, I discovered, as I lay in my cabin reading. I’d made the decision to tell Kitty almost as soon as I returned to the ship – I couldn’t have her wondering why I wasn’t interested in her any longer – and we read them together. I swiftly came to realise that reading them all would take my entire life-time, if not much longer. There were thousands upon thousands of books on the reader, most of them banned by the UN. I didn’t understand why at first, until I realised that many of them talked about revolution against legitimate authority. That was exactly the kind of thinking the UN wanted to suppress.
And they were part of humanity’s heritage. The more I wondered about it, the more I wondered why the library hadn’t been looted, or simply destroyed outright. Could it be that the Generals commanding on the ground hadn’t given the library any thought? As far as I knew, no such treasure trove of information existed on Earth…might they have completely missed its significance? Or, perhaps, the building had been off-limits and I simply hadn’t realised. There certainly hadn’t been any guards there to stop me from entering.
Or, perhaps, they wanted the library for themselves. I owned the reader and merely owning it made me feel like I had a privileged insight into humanity, even though very little had actually changed. The Generals might feel the same way, or perhaps they might even be considering using the library themselves, perhaps to advance their own careers. There was no way to know and, as long as no one knew I had the reader, it wouldn’t matter. If someone realised what I had, they’d probably report me, which would mean – at least – the end of my career.
“Then keep it locked at all times,” Kitty said, when I confided my fear to her. “As long as no one has any reason to go searching your baggage, no one will find it.”
The days passed slowly in orbit. The fighting on the ground seemed to fade away for a few weeks – long enough for the Generals to declare victory – and then it resumed with equal or greater violence. The resistance had clearly taken advantage of the pause to rearm and prepare new positions, because Lazarus itself came under heavy attack and the government compound in the secure zone came within an inch of falling. It turned out that the resistance had been using the sewer pipes under the city to gain ingress to pretty much anywhere and finally they risked a mass offensive. The UN only won by the skin of its teeth. The declaration of victory was never mentioned again.
I spent a brief week on one of the orbital stations, watching the native workers. It wasn't a good week. Nothing happened to me personally, but the natives watched us all sullenly and were compelled to explain everything at great length to their Infantry or Marine supervisors. The delays were not inconsiderable. The Infantry came from the inner cities and knew even less than I did about high technology. A set of defective components, when finally traced back to their source, turned out to have failed because the Infantry officers supervising the workers had forbidden them to include a certain chip. Their faces were carefully blank, but I was sure that they were laughing at us inside. It was hard to blame them.
And there were the damned reporters. The Captain had, I decided, found a subtle way to punish me for my attempt to report the war crime. I had already detested the reporters, now I hated them as well, reading their smug articles that bore little relationship to reality. Apparently, a million Heinlein insurgents had died in the last month of fighting, which struck me as rather unlikely. If we had killed as many locals as we claimed to have killed, we’d have exterminated the entire planet’s population several times over. It wouldn’t seem so strange on Earth, where there were billions of civilians living in cramped cities, but here it was just a sick joke. I didn’t even know why they’d been allowed to come on the invasion. They could have made shit up back home and no one there would have known the difference. Perhaps their enemies were hoping that the insurgents would dispose of them. Several reporters had been killed and another couple had been kidnapped for ransom, which had promptly been paid. The reporters were apparently worth more than the infantrymen. No one tried to ransom them.
And then there were the logistics problems. Devastator had been built for long-term operations and, in theory, we could have remained in the Heinlein System permanently, but in practice it wouldn’t work out that well. We needed food, fuel, weapons and other supplies and our sources were limited. After a near-disaster with a locally-produced KEW, we had become dependent upon supplies shipped in from Earth and more loyal systems, if there was such a thing. The Captain wanted me to square the circle without requisitioning more supplies from Earth, but it was impossible. The pre-invasion planners had claimed that we would be able to supply ourselves from Heinlein, but how could we do that when we couldn’t even trust the food? The planners had probably gotten rewarded back home for launching an invasion on the cheap, while we were short of all supplies and starving. I’d heard of infantry units using enemy weapons and ammunition because they were so plentiful.
It was a nightmare that never seemed to end.
I was on Deck Seven when I heard the screaming. Deck Seven was the main residence deck, including the Ensign’s Wardroom and the various sleeping quarters for Marines, Specialist Officers and the crew. Inspecting it regularly was technically part of Anna’s duties, but with her spending much of her time on the surface, the Captain had passed it on to me. It wasn't as much as a punishment as working with the reporters. Unlike some ships I’d heard about, Devastator wasn't commanded by a Captain who didn’t care about conditions in the crew quarters and everything was kept neatly in order. By long tradition, the crewmen bunked with whoever they pleased, but I had to inspect everything, learning where two lovers had become careless. The screaming, however, was unprecedented.
The deck clanged under my feet as I ran through the corridors into a smaller maintenance corridor. The noise grew louder as I turned through the corridor and stopped dead when I entered the supply room. A man had a woman firmly bent over the small workbench and was fucking her from behind. It took me a moment to overcome my horror and realise that Frank Wong was raping Ensign Gomez. Her screams proved that, if nothing else. She struggled, but couldn’t escape. He was too strong for her and she, unlike me, had had no training.
“Let go of her, now!” I snapped, reaching for Frank. Everything moved very quickly. I saw him pull out of her and draw back a fist to hit me, so I punched him in the side of the head. He staggered, but didn’t fall. My fist hurt, so I kicked him in the chest and sent him gasping to the deck. “Ensign, are you all right?”
Two crewmen and a Marine had appeared behind me. Frank was lucky that he was already down and out. Ensign Gomez was popular and their expressions promised bloody vengeance for her treatment. I looked at her and realised that she was shaking, trying to cover herself with the remains of her uniform, and looked away. A moment later, one of the crewmen passed her an overall and she pulled it on gratefully.
“Corporal,” I said, catchin
g myself and remembering that I was supposed to be in charge, “take this piece of shit to the brig and throw him in, then stay on guard. Don’t let him talk to anyone until I’ve had a chance to speak to the Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” the Marine said, and picked Frank up by the collar. “Come along now, you fucker.”
Frank staggered out, half-dragged by the Marine. I watched him go, hoping he’d try to resist, and then turned to Ensign Gomez. She was shaking, holding her hands wrapped around herself, her eyes wide with fear. I touched her shoulder and she flinched back. Frank was luckier than he knew. If he’d still been there, I would have killed him personally.
“It’s all right now,” I said, as softly as I could. “He can’t hurt you any more.”
With a little help, I escorted her to Sickbay and handed her over to Doctor Choudhury. She was a small brown woman with an air of brisk competence and I trusted her completely. The Ship’s Doctor wasn't a commissioned officer, nor was she in the chain of command, and younger officers and crewmen had a tendency to talk to her about their problems. I hoped that Ensign Gomez would talk to the Doctor, even though she would probably have to talk to the Captain later. Frank wasn’t a crewman, worse luck, but a guest with powerful connections. I wished Anna was onboard. It would be so much easier if I could drop it all in her lap.
“She’s not that badly injured, physically,” Doctor Choudhury said, twenty minutes later. She’d taken Ensign Gomez into an examination room, leaving me waiting outside pacing like an expectant father. It was all I could do to remain patient for two minutes. “There are some bruises on her thighs and neck, where he apparently held her, but she’ll recover from that quickly. There are no signs of internal damage, luckily. Mentally…”
Her face twisted bitterly. “Her confidence has been completely destroyed and…well, she’s not in a good state,” she added. “I’d prefer it if she were fighting back, frankly. We don’t have a proper team of psychologists here who could help her recover and…shipboard life is no place for anyone who has been raped like that. She thought the ship was safe.”
“I thought the ship was safe,” I said, bitterly. Rape was very common where I’d grown up, but I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. My sisters had never been raped – or had they been raped after I’d left. I remembered some of the bull sessions we’d had back as teenage men, talking about women and how sometimes you had to push them…had they led to rape? The bile welled up in my mouth and I had to swallow hard to prevent vomiting. “What are you going to do with her?”
Doctor Choudhury looked down at her terminal. “I’ve got her sedated right now,” she said. “I’ve taken samples from her skin and vaginal area and can prove that she definitely had sex with him, but it may come down to his word against hers.”
I stared. “And the screaming? The physical wounds?”
“There are two crewmen down in Engineering who inflict far worse on each other and love it,” Doctor Choudhury said. “I actually had to speak to one of them quite severely about how they were treating each other. I’m sure that some people get their thrills by being beaten with a rattan cane, but they were risking putting one of them here for longer than a day or two.”
“Ouch,” I said, wondering who the couple were, before returning to the important issue. “You can’t swear that she was raped?”
“I can swear that force was used,” Doctor Choudhury said. “I cannot prove that it was rape.”
“Shit,” I said. The last thing I wanted to see was Frank getting away with it. He might well get away with it. I couldn’t recall a single conviction for rape back home, despite thousands of complaints to the police. The police were more likely to dismiss the issue completely. They might even have their fun with the girl themselves. “Is there no proof you can offer?”
Her dark face was all the answer I needed. For a moment, I considered just walking into the brig and strangling Frank myself, but what would have been the point? I’d just have been charged with murder myself, perhaps even a war crime, which would have been ironic beyond belief.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “I’d better go report it to the Captain.”
The trial, such as it was, was a farce. I had forgotten how little power the Captain had over guests on his ship, particularly guests with political connections. The Political Officer served as the presiding judge and allowed Frank to conduct his own defence, facing Ensign Gomez herself. She wasn't allowed a lawyer of any kind, despite UNPF Regulations stipulating that anyone involved in a court martial of any kind needed a lawyer, and it was easy to cast doubt on her testimony. The Doctor had to admit that there was no direct proof that she had been raped and I…I was told, by the Captain, to keep myself out of it. The ending was inevitable. Frank Wong was declared innocent. The only upbeat news was a conversation I overhead between Frank and the Captain, where he warned Frank in no uncertain terms that another rape would mean his instant death. Frank came out of that meeting sporting a black eye.
And Ensign Gomez? She never recovered from her experience, despite all the help that we could give her. At the end of our deployment, she was transferred to a research centre in deep space, well away from anywhere else. I pitied her more than anyone else. She’d once been full of promise, until a bastard with too many political collections had got his hands on her.
***
The remainder of the deployment – two years, mostly spent in orbit around Heinlein – went slowly. I ended up remaining on the Devastator most of the time – Frank had apparently asked for my removal from the reporter-babying duty – handling the duties of three other Lieutenants. I also spent more time on two other starships, replacing officers who had managed to get themselves transferred, or killed in the line of duty. Actually, one of them had been killed in a local brothel, but it had been recorded as a combat death. Heinlein being Heinlein, it probably was.
I had the faintest glimmerings of a plan before we started to prepare to return to Earth, but even with Kitty’s help, it would have to wait until we had some shore leave to ourselves. We also knew that we might not be together for much longer. I suspected that the Captain would approve my transfer request and Kitty might not be able to go with me, even though she wanted a transfer as well. She was technically senior to me. She might well be sent to another starship. I studied the lists of opening posts and tried to make a good case for us to be sent as a couple, but there were few openings for two lieutenants. There were plenty of possible posts for a single officer – and, of course, they might have been filled before I returned to Earth. Roger even offered to put in a good word for me with the Admiral, but the last thing I wanted was a post on the battleship. It was just too large.
The only peace of good news came in a week before we departed for Earth, having been finally relieved by the Annihilator. Frank, who hadn’t set foot on the starship since someone – not me – had played merry hell with the stateroom’s life support systems, had been finally sent out of Lazarus to report on the countryside and the ‘Heinlein Improvement Project’s’ progress. The insurgents located his convoy and attacked it. No one survived. The infantrymen who finally reached the convoy’s remains reported that someone had cut off his penis and stuffed it up his ass. I couldn’t help, but laugh when I heard the news. Never let them give you to the women…
“Serve the bastard right,” I gloated to Kitty. Ensign Gomez had perked up a little when she heard the news. Anna had convinced the Captain to allow her one of the spare cabins for her bunk, just so she wouldn’t be surrounded by male Ensigns, but it hadn’t helped. We’d even looked for a Rape Trauma Specialist down on Heinlein, but found none. Heinlein seemed to believe that the only good rapist was a dead one. How could I disagree? “I wonder how that’s going to be reported.”
I should have known. The reports claimed that he had been killed after a heroic struggle that killed hundreds of insurgents. I doubted that there was anyone in the system who was impressed with the UN’s propaganda any longer, even the UN
PF Generals. No matter what they said, it was always proved spectacularly wrong soon afterwards.
As the ship headed for home, I had to force myself to relax.
Back at Luna Base, the real work would begin.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Lieutenant has more choice of where he serves than an Ensign or newly-minted Lieutenant, but often the choices are very limited. A term of planet-side duty can kill a career as surely as having the wrong political opinions. The political interrogation is often stronger as an officer creeps closer to the ultimate goal – command of a starship, master under God – not that the UN believes in God, of course.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
“Well,” Ellen Nakamura said. “You’ve had an interesting couple of years, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, carefully. Ellen looked as hauntingly beautiful as ever, but I wasn't fooled. She had a razor-sharp mind and full knowledge of everything that had happened on the deployment. I wouldn’t forgive her for sacrificing Ensign Gomez on the alter of political expediency, but I wouldn’t underestimate her either. She could break my career. “I have learned a great deal.”
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 20