Alexander cleared his throat. “I don’t know that it would have stopped them. Junia hid when they came. There was no point in taking chances.”
Mona nodded. “I wish I’d been able to hide. My parents had a place all ready, but they came so quickly, I never had time to get there.”
“What about Frederick?” Alexander asked, remembering that he hadn’t seen her older brother on the flyter.
She shook her head. “He wasn’t home. He’d gone fishing with a friend. I think they must have known about him, because they were angry that he wasn’t there. My father tried to protest when they took me, but the sergeant told him he deserved to lose a daughter for hiding his son from the Emperor.” She gave Alexander a curious glance. “How about you, Alex? How did they come to get you?”
Alexander shrugged. “The same as you. I didn’t have time to get to a good hiding place. They caught me trying to run away.”
“I was hiding in the barn,” Mona said reflectively. “If I’d known what it would be like, I’d have stabbed myself with my father’s pitchfork.”
Alexander didn’t know what to say. Mona kept talking, as if she felt a need to unburden herself to someone.
“When they took us off the flyter, they put us in a building like a big barracks. We were there for two days, with a lot of girls from other parts of Gaulle. The first thing they did was to give each of us a birth control implant. That told us right there what was coming.
“The next day, a man in a fancy suit came and inspected us once, and after that, they took the prettiest girl away. She was very beautiful, and everyone knew she was to go to the Emperor. And then the next day some soldiers came through. They were different from the other soldiers we’d seen before. They were all big and tall—as big as you—with black uniforms, and they all had this funny tattoo thing on their faces,” she sketched a swirling motion with one hand. “They lined us up,” she went on, “and then they went up and down the line picking girls as if they were shopping for groceries. That one they’d say, and that one, and that one. I was one of the four chosen. And then when they took us off to another flyter, I found out who they were—the Emperor’s Own Corps of Guards, they were called. The elite. The very best soldiers in the whole Imperial Army. Filthy pigs, every one.”
She shuddered and then went on as if she couldn’t stop herself. “They took us to Montmartre, to a building in the palace complex. And then they split us up and put each of us in a room all by ourselves, a little room, with just a bed and a chair and a toilet in the corner. And after half an hour,” she said, her voice going wooden, “this sergeant came in. He was big, like all the others, and older than me—they were all older than me. He smiled and explained to me that I was one of the lucky ones, because I would be allowed to serve the Corps. He told me earnestly what a great honor it was, and how fortunate I was to be able to serve the Corps and not be a whore for the regular army, because with the Corps I’d have only three or four clients a day instead of a dozen. And then he told me to take my clothes off.”
She was no longer looking at Alexander. She no longer seemed to see anything in the room at all.
“I didn’t want to take my clothes off,” she said. “So he ripped them off of me. And then he held me down on the bed and raped me, just like that. I screamed again and again, it hurt so bad. He talked to me the whole time, as if he were making conversation over a meal. He explained that it was very important for me to understand right away that I no longer owned my own body. The Corps owned me for the next ten years. He was pleased when he discovered I had been a virgin, because it meant I hadn’t picked up any bad habits. Nothing to unlearn, he said.
“Then he sat down on the chair and began to chat, as if he had never raped me at all. He told me his name was Louis Merot, and that he came from the Aquitaine, like I did. He told me it was his job to break in the new whores when they arrived from the provinces—to teach them their paces, he said. And then he told me I wouldn’t leave that room until I knew how to behave with a guardsman.
“Over the next five days he used a nerve stimulator to teach me that I wasn’t a person anymore. Instead I was a possession. His technique worked very well. Eventually, I let him do whatever he wanted. I didn’t fight or cry. I did everything he told me to do with a smile on my face, as if I were a doll with no feelings.
“And then on the fifth day, Merot brought another guardsman in, a younger man, and he told me to service him, and I did, with Merot watching the whole time. And from then on I was a whore. I lived in a brothel there in the palace grounds; it was actually very luxurious compared to a farmhouse in the Aquitaine. We had servants and a lot of nice things, but we were never allowed to go anywhere, and we never saw anyone but the guardsmen, the servants, and each other.
“The guardsmen could come any time they wanted and ask for one of us, and we’d have to do whatever they said. Some of them didn’t bother to go into a back room; they’d screw us right on a table in the hall, with everyone else watching, as casually as if they were picking their teeth. We never taunted each other about it, though. We were all in the same boat, you see, every one of us. We all had to do what we were told and we all had to act as if we liked it.
“I was there for two years and it felt like forever. I’d be there still, except one day there was this shipment of new girls that came in. There were always new girls coming, because after five or six years, unless a woman was really good as a whore, the guardsmen would get bored with her and give her to the regular army. Or sometimes a girl would go crazy and kill herself. Anyway, this group was from Perrault, in the south, and they were even more naive than I had been. This one poor girl, even after five days of conditioning she just didn’t get it. She cried every night, and she still pleaded with them not to make her do things. They’d hit her, of course, right in front of the rest of us. After a while, I couldn’t take it. I said something to Sergeant Merot. He hauled off and whacked me hard in the face. I tried to hit him back, and he beat me, and then the other girls jumped to my defense. They punished the lot of us, and then they sent me here. It’s considerably less luxurious, but all in all I have to say I like it better. At least no one beats me if I don’t smile.”
Alexander waited to be sure she was finished. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally.
She gave him a cynical smile, as if she had been offered sympathy before and found it false. “Oh, well,” she said, “I’ll be out in five years. A whore only has to serve ten years instead of twenty. They like them young, you see, and this life ages you pretty quickly.”
“Have you heard anything from your family?”
“No. I never tried to send a message. What could I say? ‘Hello Mother and Daddy, I’m alive but they make me do disgusting things with men.’ I’d rather they thought I was dead.”
“I think they’d want to know you’re alive.”
She stared straight at him. “Your father was in the army, wasn’t he?”
He nodded.
“That’s why he cut Junia,” she said. “He knew what it was like for a woman who gets taken away. My father didn’t. He’d heard stories, but he couldn’t quite believe them enough to make himself do it. There are days I hate my father for not cutting my face.”
Alexander stood up hastily. “How long do I need to stay in here?”
She smiled at his nervousness. “I suppose this is long enough. Your time is almost up, anyway.”
“Goodbye, then,” he said, starting for the door.
“Goodbye,” she said. “Come again soon.”
It was the standard farewell from the prostitutes on the station, Alexander knew, but coming from her it sounded almost nostalgic. He took one last look at her before he went out the door. He wanted to say something comforting, but he couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t an outright lie.
It was only a week later that the ship arrived from Gaulle, and Alexander heard the rumor that the Emperor’s Own were looking for recruits on the station.
He
was at work when he heard it, and he ignored it as inconsequential. The Corps were soldiers, pure and simple. They guarded the palace, the imperial person, and any locations that were considered essential. They had no use at all for systems experts.
After he finished his shift, Alexander stopped by the gym for a hour’s workout before dinner. He had changed to workout clothes and was warming up when the room suddenly went silent. Alexander looked around in surprise at all the soldiers who were standing motionless in their places, and then he saw the line of big, tall men in black uniforms, unrelieved by any touch of color except for the gold Imperial seal on the belts across their chests.
There were four of them. They sauntered through the gym as if they owned it, looking over each man as if he were there only for their inspection. No one moved or spoke or asked them to account for themselves.
They walked quickly, their magnetic boots clicking on the gym floor. From the way they moved, Alexander knew they weren’t used to low gravity. The one in front had lieutenant’s pips on his collar. The man behind him wore sergeant’s stripes. The other two were privates. All four of them bore the distinctive holographic tattoo on their cheekbones. Alexander had never seen it before, but he had heard about it many times on Lubar.
The lieutenant frowned as he looked around. “They seem very puny for soldiers, sergeant,” he complained loudly. “Wasn’t there supposed to be one big enough to bother looking over?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered. He glanced around the room and his eyes found Alexander. “There he is, sir. Napier.”
The lieutenant followed his subordinate’s pointing finger and raked Alexander with an appraising glance.
“Not too bad,” he said grudgingly. “At least he isn’t puny.”
The sergeant shook his head. “Size isn’t everything, sir. We need to know if he’s tough enough, and we need to see if he can fight.”
The four of them approached, and unconsciously Alexander stood at attention. He found it hard not to stare at their tattoos. The holographic effect made it seem as if there was a knotted swirl of golden wires floating a centimeter in front of their faces.
“Well, now,” the lieutenant drawled, “he stands up nice and straight, like a good little boy. Check him out, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sergeant walked around Alexander slowly, looking him over carefully, even feeling his biceps and bending down to grip the muscles of his calves and thighs.
“Seems sound, sir,” the sergeant said, straightening up.
As he stood, he tensed his shoulder muscles, and Alexander suddenly guessed what he would do. Just before the sergeant punched him forcefully in the stomach, Alexander tightened his abdominal muscles. He let out a small oomph as he felt the pain, but he didn’t flinch or double over.
“Very good,” the lieutenant said approvingly. “Better than the other one, at any rate. Perhaps this trip won’t be a total loss, sergeant?”
“Perhaps not, sir,” the sergeant agreed. “Shall we try him with Gergly?”
The lieutenant nodded, and one of the privates stepped forward.
“Very well, Napier,” the sergeant said pleasantly. “This is Private Gergly. He’s going to try to kill you. If you survive, you’re in the Emperor’s Own Corps. If you don’t—well, your family still gets the pension.”
Alexander swallowed hard. He had no ambition to join the Emperor’s Own, but on the other hand, he didn’t think this sergeant was a joking man.
Alexander had been taught to fight hand to hand on Lubar. Every soldier received such training, and the commander of Station du Plessis encouraged sparring as a way to stay in shape in the gym. Still, Alexander doubted he had been taught the things this guardsman knew. He faced off against Gergly, trying hard not to sweat.
He was right to be apprehensive. The other man swiftly hit him several times, on the face and in his gut. Alexander backed off, reeling, and took the time to appraise his position. The only advantage he could see was that he was more used to maneuvering in the low gravity of the station.
He swiftly put that advantage to use by almost leaping over the other man’s head and lashing out with a kick as he did it. His gym shoes were lighter than the standard magnetic boots they wore on duty, but they still held enough metallic edging to make contact painful. Private Gergly grunted in pain and put one hand to his face where the toe of Alexander’s shoe had left a red mark.
Alexander followed up on his initial success with several flying kicks, being careful to get enough push from the floor that his kicks had some force when they hit. He managed to inflict considerable damage on his opponent’s chest and gut. Gergly was enraged now, but he staggered as he tried to catch up to Alexander. He blundered a little, unused to the increased effects of inertia at forty percent gravity. Once he was reeling, Alexander switched to punching him in the jaw, and actually managed to drop his opponent to the floor.
“That’s enough,” the lieutenant said in a pleased tone. “Bring him along, sergeant.”
Alexander attempted to suggest that he was honored by the invitation, but he declined to join the Corps. No one paid him any attention. The sergeant and the other private took him by the arms and led him along, leaving Alexander’s erstwhile opponent to cope on his own.
“Wait,” Alexander said desperately. “I don’t want to go! Really! Take someone else!”
The lieutenant stopped in his tracks and turned to face Alexander, his face contorted into a scowl. “Let me tell you something, Private Napier,” he said, his voice cold. “No one gives a damn what you think or what you want. You belong to the Emperor now. If you live through training, you’ll get His mark. But in the meantime, shut your trap and mind your betters, or you’ll find there are worse things than dying in a fight.”
The sergeant reinforced his officer’s pronouncement by pulling a mailed glove onto his right hand and hitting Alexander a blow to the jaw, powerful enough to knock him down.
“And that,” the sergeant said pleasantly, “is for being impertinent enough to beat a guardsman in a fight.”
Alexander pulled himself to his feet and followed them with further protest.
They took him to Sahn Denie, to the training base the Corps maintained outside that remote town. And in the isolation of a controlled environment, away from every other influence, they took him apart, mentally and physically, and then put him back together in a way that suited them.
The training was rigorous enough that several men died over the course of it. Alexander had considered slacking off, but he discovered that there was no such thing as washing out of training for the Corps. You either made it, or you died. Instead, he concentrated on keeping himself somehow hidden. He never fought what they made him do, but he always kept a small piece of his mind fenced off from what was happening to him. He tried to keep Alexander Napier from becoming Private Napier of the Emperor’s Own Corps of Guards.
He only partly succeeded. He discovered that there was just so much you could do to separate yourself from your actions. When he beat a weaker guardsman in a fight and continued to pound away on the man until the drill sergeant gave the signal to stop, he knew what he was doing. When he used a vicious blow on a fellow trainee and brought the man to his knees in pain, he felt shame, but he did it as often as was necessary. And when the day finally came when he stood in front of the assembled officers and recited the oath of absolute loyalty to Emperor Lothar Edward Antonio du Plessis, he knew he would have to live with the choices he had made to survive.
Alexander stirred in his sleep as he remembered being led from the assembly hall to the surgery. He remembered the cold feel of the surgical table under him, the metallic taste of the steel bar they gave him to bite down on, the relentless grip of the clamp that held his head steady as the laser bore down on him. Alexander whimpered in his sleep as he relived that first moment when the laser cut into his cheek, and then continued drilling through skin and flesh and finally bone. He was so obsessed wit
h not screaming that he woke up in a sweat, his teeth clenched painfully as he sat up abruptly in his bed.
He felt a sense of relief that it had all been a dream, and then he touched his cheek under the tattoo and remembered that tomorrow he would help in the assault on the palace. Alexander lay down to try to sleep again, and sighed. Nothing in his life had been easy since the moment he had felt the all-encompassing grip of the press gang’s tangler catching him in its web.
Chapter Eight
Thaddeus felt a peculiar mix of emotions as he boarded the Queen Bee. He had lived aboard the ship for two years and knew every square centimeter of every deck. He knew everyone aboard except his replacement. And yet, when he walked into the docking port and felt the subtle tug of increased gravity as the iris closed behind him, he also felt just a little bit like he was going to jail.
Niels Trudeau was waiting for him with a quizzical expression on his face. “Hello, Thad,” the first mate said as they started for the lift. “I’d say welcome aboard, but it seems a bit hypocritical.”
Did this mean he that he didn’t want any ThreeCon agents aboard or that he hadn’t wanted Thaddeus in particular to come back? “Does it? Don’t bother, then. Where can I put my stuff?”
Niels’ face twisted in a grimace that was half amusement and half worry.
“Well, now,” he said, as he set the lift control for level two, “that’s a damned good question. No one’s quite got the nerve to ask Maddy where you’re bunking.”
Thaddeus hid a smile. “All right. How about if I ask her?”
“You go right ahead,” Niels said with obvious relief. “She’s in her cabin.”
• • •
Thaddeus pushed the buzzer, and Maddy’s voice called out for him to enter.
“Well, well,” she said. “So you made it?”
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