by B. V. Larson
“You’d rather we lock up our criminals in prison to rot, or execute them?” Lazarus demanded. “This way, they serve the People and the State.”
Straker rattled his manacles. “What’s to keep your regime from doing this to anyone, not just criminals?”
“We have laws and procedures. Every Hok is properly tried and convicted, never fear.”
Straker wondered about that, but didn’t see the point in arguing. Trials could be manipulated… and how serious a crime would it take to turn you into a Hok? Shoplifting? Jaywalking? Criticizing the State that Lazarus seemed so fond of?
“So what do you want from me?” asked Straker. “Why not just inject me with the biotech and add me to your slave armies?”
In truth, this idea terrified him in a way mere death never had. To lose his free will, to be forced to kill his own… these Mutuality people were monsters.
“That’s the last resort. But Mister Straker, you’re special. You and your comrade are the first two mechsuiters we’ve ever captured, and we’d like you to work with us to establish a mechsuit program of our own.”
“Go fuck yourself!”
Lazarus sighed. “I expected you to say that. I told my superiors that your conditioning wouldn’t be bypassed by simple persuasion. As you proceed through your inevitable re-education and rehabilitation, remember that I first treated you with respect, and you chose your own path, a path you can always give up. Just say you’ll cooperate, and you’ll be treated well.”
“Never.”
Lazarus opened the door and spoke to the guard. “Take him.”
They took him to another room with bright lights and a steel table, strapping him to it before the stun wore off. Metal cuffs clamped onto his waist, neck, wrists and upper arms. They were snapped onto his ankles and thighs and kept his feet projecting over the edge of the table into space. Then a white-coated man stabbed him in the thigh with a syringe, sending some kind of drug burning into his muscle tissue.
Lazarus stood by, watching without expression.
“There’s no point in torturing me,” Straker said. “I won’t cooperate.”
“What’s your name, traitor?” the man with the white coat asked.
“I’m not a traitor.”
He dug a thumbnail into Straker’s ribs. Pain shot through his body. “Name!”
“Straker. Derek Straker. Assault Captain, mechsuiter. Service number—”
“I don’t care about your lackey number, fool. I simply wanted to know what to call you. Maybe if we can cut through the conditioning, you’ll learn how to be mutual. But first, you must confess everything.”
The man ran a fingertip down Straker’s cheek, then his neck. The pain was unexpectedly severe. Straker took it almost without flinching.
Then a different man, a big man with cruel eyes, stepped forward holding a length of heavy plastic hose. He flexed it in his hands, eager.
“You’re about to experience pain therapy,” said the white-coated man in a voice that was almost bored. “The drug I administered will enhance the sensations. Eventually, you’ll beg to confess. Once you admit your crimes in full, you can be welcomed into the community of the Mutuality. Nothing will be held against you, if only you’ll confess.”
“I have nothing to confess! I haven’t committed any crimes!”
“Of course you have. The fact you were a mental weakling and tricked into slaughtering your fellows changes nothing. You must accept responsibility for your atrocities, embrace reeducation, and set your feet on the path to Mutualist rehabilitation.” The man paced, hands behind his back and addressed the air. “But fools never confess right away. Resistance must be demolished first. We shall begin now. Corporal?”
He gestured, and the larger man approached—his lips spreading into a grin.
Straker fought down fear. Whatever they did to him, he could take it. That’s what he told himself.
He wasn’t entirely wrong, but he wasn’t entirely right, either.
The corporal took the length of hose and whipped it across the soles of Straker’s extended feet, and his world exploded in utter agony. He’d never felt such pain. It crawled up his leg and occupied every nerve in his body, advancing to the base of his brain in a wave that he could feel, could track with precision, as if the anguish were composed of red ants traveling his veins, chewing as they went.
As bad as the first blow was, the second was worse… and the third even more so. Impossibly, each strike to the bottom of his feet brought a new level of anguish, until his consciousness filled with nothing but animal torment. He heard screaming and realized the sound came from his own throat, but found himself powerless to stop it.
Lazarus stepped forward. “Confess, Mister Straker! Admit your crimes against the Mutuality and the therapy will stop.”
“Therapy? This isn’t therapy, it’s torture!”
“Take care when making false accusations!” the Inquisitor boomed, suddenly angry. “We do not use torture here. Torture is immoral. Pain therapy, on the other hand, is designed to cut through your denial and allow you to come to the saving knowledge of the Mutuality. Come now. Give up your foolish individualistic resistance. Admit your crimes against the Mutuality.”
Straker choked out, “I only fought to defend humanity!”
“Ignorance of your crimes is no excuse. Confess! Purge yourself of resistance to the collective will of the People and the State! Only then can you rejoin the community of the Mutuality!”
Straker refused to confess to crimes he didn’t commit. Fighting in a war wasn’t a crime. And shouldn’t he have passed out by now? It must be the drug, something that wouldn’t allow him the surcease of unconsciousness.
Lazarus droned on, speaking similar phrases, over and over, as if trying to hypnotize Straker into surrendering his will. He lost focus, drifting. He couldn’t have confessed even if he wanted to.
The place where his self resided, the tiny kernel of his identity, floated on a lake of fire, a sea of hell that threatened to drown him. In that moment, he might have told them anything just to make it stop. He’d thought himself superior, a warrior, but this was a battle like nothing he’d ever envisioned.
Battle… warrior… warrior…
Slowly Straker separated his mind from the horror surrounding it. The pain had finally reached some kind of limit and, faced with a plateau, he found he could fend it off.
His mental processes limped, barely capable of holding one thought at a time and moving on to another, like a man hanging from bars above his head that were spaced barely close enough to grasp. It took everything he could muster to create a bubble around his core and push the agony away.
He wanted to quit, but refused. He wanted to give up, but something within him would not.
I shall not yield, he thought. I shall never surrender.
“This all can end, if only you confess,” Lazarus whispered close to his ear. “You’ve already admitted you fought for the enemy and murdered our soldiers. Confess the rest! Tell us how you enjoyed the slaughter. How you bragged about it. Unburden yourself! You will feel so much better! Only then can you rehabilitate.”
Two paths lay open to Straker. The smart path, or the hard path.
Nobody’d ever called him a brainiac. Not that he was stupid, but he didn’t think he had the raw intellect to duel wits with Lazarus, not from the position of being strapped to a table.
Something within him crystallized instead. The hard path it would be.
He’d give them nothing.
Deep within himself, he resolved to fight back, escape, and eventually stick it to all of these devils.
Somehow...
“Do your worst,” he rasped out. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Lazarus’s face grew long, and he shook his head as if at a child. “How unfortunate. You are only making it hard on yourself. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I enjoy this, but it is necessary. Corporal, you may proceed with the second phase.”
The
“pain therapy” began again. This time, they burned him in random places on his body. He never knew where the agony would manifest next. They continued to insist he surrender his will, but their window of opportunity had closed.
Perhaps the drug wore off, or perhaps the pain overcame its effects, but eventually Straker lost consciousness. When he came to, he found himself in his cell again.
When he tried to rise, he failed. Even if he could withstand the pain, he didn’t think he could make his ankles and knees work. His feet swelled like slabs of meat and his skin had split and oozed with hundreds of tiny burns.
Instead, he crawled to the door and pressed his mouth and nose to the crack beneath, inhaling. The air he sucked in seemed slightly fresher, though he smelled disinfectant and death.
“Carla, can you hear me?” he said in a low tone. Receiving no answer, he said, slightly louder, “Loco? Anyone?”
Chapter 16
Facility Alpha Six, day two.
A surge of relief shot through Carla Engels when she heard Derek Straker’s voice from down the corridor. The sentiment may be nonsensical, but she felt much better knowing he lay in the next cell. That she was not alone. “I’m here, Derek.”
“Did they try to get you to cooperate?”
“Yes. Some asshole called Lazarus did—but I refused.”
Straker spoke again. “Did they…?”
Engels’ mind shied away from the session on the table. “They tortured me. Beat me, burned me.”
“Nothing more?”
“They didn’t violate me, if that’s what you’re asking. Not yet anyway. That Lazarus creepo touched me, though. I’m probably supposed to be afraid they’ll rape me.”
“Or I’m supposed to fear that for you. I remember our resistance training. This is all a mind game. Lazarus is smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did they beat the soles of your feet?”
“Yes. It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life, worse than the burns, even. I still can’t walk.”
“Did they ask you any questions?”
“Not really. Just kept ordering me to confess.”
“Me too. So this isn’t about information. It’s about breaking us.”
Engels thought for a moment. “Get prisoners to confess, and they’ll have betrayed their integrity. After that, they’ll do anything.”
Straker remained silent for a moment. “He said something about conditioning. Do you think we were brainwashed?”
“No,” Engels said. “Sure, there was always that simple rah-rah patriotic stuff they fed us as cadets, but we were kids. Nothing really changed when we went to war. We had to fight. The Hok kept attacking us.”
“Yeah, about the Hok… did he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Straker explained to her about the Hok, or HOC, he’d seen. Then he told her how they were made.
“A nightmare…” she said quietly. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Engels sighed. “We’re going to have to talk to these people. Give them something to get something. It doesn’t do us any good to keep getting tortured. We’re not denying them information, because they’re not even asking.”
“Carla, no!”
“Derek, I didn’t say I was going to crack, and I’m not going to give them anything that matters. But we need to know more about what’s really going on.”
“Who cares?” he demanded. “What can we do with information as prisoners?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but at some point they’ll give up on getting us to turn traitor and simply inject us with the biotech. Then we’ll be mindless Hok and...”
“No, I think that’s an empty threat. They want to use us for our skills.”
“You mechsuiters, maybe. You’re rare and valuable, but not me. I’m a simple pilot. No doubt they have plenty of those.”
“Shit… You’re right. We can’t let you be turned into a Hok. Okay. You have to cooperate, enough to keep from being injected. But how will you convince them?”
“They want to believe. They want me to confess. Besides, I’m a woman. They’ll sooner believe a woman cracked than a man.”
Derek’s voice conveyed puzzlement. “Why?”
“Because women are more sensible, which means less stubborn. Actually we bend instead of breaking, but the guards won’t tell the difference. Did you notice nearly all of them are men? I’m going to bet they still have unconscious biases, and I can use that against them. I can play weak—enough to make them believe it, anyway.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Play weak?” she asked.
“I can’t,” he growled.
“You’re not strong enough to play weak?” she asked.
“Don’t twist my words. It’s not who I am.”
“Fair enough. You be the tough guy. It’ll make the contrast look even better.”
Straker fell silent for some minutes, and Engels relaxed, letting him think. The man was a pure ace in a battlesuit, but he was too much of a thoroughbred racehorse, a one-trick pony. Pilots had to have a wider view, multitasking and shifting their attention among ground and orbit and space.
But it wasn’t Straker’s fault he was so stubborn. Right now she figured he was hoping to find a problem to attack using his fantastic combat skills. The problem was, as the saying went, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. At some level Straker was trying to force their current predicament into the shape of a battle he could fight and win, head-to-head.
Maybe if she put things into his terminology…
“Derek…?”
“What?” he asked.
“You’ve studied a lot of military history, strategy, that sort of thing, right?”
“Sure.”
“When you fight, do you just shoot what’s in front of you? Especially when there are too many of them?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I look for the enemy’s weak spots, move around his flanks.”
“What else do you do to win?” she asked.
“Umm… I get ahead of their decision curve. Predict what they’ll do and frustrate them. I try to get them tangled up. Make them cross their lines of fire. Use one to shield me from another. Come at them from an unexpected angle. Use the distraction from one weapon to give me the chance to use a different one. Pick my battles.”
“And you access recon nets for more information, right?” she asked.
“Sure,” he agreed.
“And you call for fire when you get into trouble,” she said, “or have to take out a concentration you can’t handle yourself.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And if you’re outnumbered and outgunned,” she said, “you hide and wait.”
“Not often,” Straker said with pride.
“In principle at least?”
“Yeah…”
“So,” she pressed him, “you need to start looking at our problems like a whole battle, not just a fight between you and a couple of enemy tanks. Think strategically. Use all your resources. Coordinate with everyone on our side. Only take a shot when it will count. Don’t let the enemy know where you’re lurking or what you intend to do.”
“Yeah, that’s smart. But how?” he asked.
“We’ll all have to develop new skill sets, Derek. I read something once about every struggle being a part of the same spectrum. Espionage, ground combat, space combat, politics, resistance in captivity—it’s not even about killing. It’s all about two sides struggling to impose their wills on each other.”
“Like me and Skorza—but I had to kill him.”
“Maybe. Because he was stubborn, exactly like you, and wouldn’t bend his will. But I’m not starting that old argument, Derek. I’m just saying brute defiance isn’t the only way to fight these people.”
“Okay,” Straker said. “I can see that, but I still think it’s a bad idea to give them any
thing. It feels wrong.”
“I’ll do my best to make sure my cooperation is worthless. Just… Derek, you have to promise me something.”
“What?” he asked.
“No matter what you see or hear, no matter what they tell you, I’ll never truly collaborate. It will always be me trying to play them. But they might point at me and say, ‘Hey look, she’s cooperating, why don’t you?’ Or, ‘She turned against you, so why not turn against her?’”
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “I promise I won’t believe them–Carla?”
“What?”
“You’re still…”
Engels waited long seconds. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Derek. I get it.” Engels knew he’d been in love with her ever since his earliest days on Academy Station, but he couldn’t find a way to admit it to himself. He treated her like a sister. Some kind of honor thing, as if she were a goddess on a pedestal instead of a living, breathing woman.
For the rest of their time at Academy, she’d been angry with him for what he’d done to Skorza. After graduation, she’d been afraid to break through his reserve. What if the distraction got him killed? What if he was thinking about coming back to her instead of having his mind on the battlefield? That was one of the rationales for strongly discouraging fraternization.
But all that hardly mattered now. Maybe if they escaped together, she could finally make him see her as a woman, not just a comrade.
She enjoyed these fantasies for some time, but all too soon, their captors came for her again.
* * *
Straker shifted within his tiny metal cage, trying to find relief for his half-folded limbs. The closely spaced bars kept him from straightening his legs, and the dimensions of the box wouldn’t let them fold up completely either. Agony shot through knee joints that couldn’t fully extend, a slow, wearing torture of a sort different from the burns, the foot-beating, the wires shoved under his fingernails, the electrodes attached to his genitals, the thumbscrews…
His prison sat with others in the middle of a separate fenced yard. All were built atop struts that held the cages a meter off the ground and two meters from each other. No shade gave the prisoners relief from the direct sun, no blankets in the chill of night. Insects swarmed on their sores and in the daily bowls of what could only loosely be termed food.