Enhanced audio detection picked up the depression of a blaster trigger clicking on an empty charge pack.
“You come in here and I’ll shoot,” whined the man inside.
“No you won’t,” said Rechs tiredly. He ripped off the sled door, reached inside, and dragged Rattclopp out. Or if he wasn’t Rattclopp, he certainly should’ve been named so based on his features.
He was human.
But he looked like a sweaty, fat, rat.
And there was real fear in his eyes.
37
They dragged her back through the door to the holding cell and left her in a heap. For a long while she just lay there, shuddering. Panting. Gasping when she moved in the slightest.
Yeah, they’d gone to work on her. And they didn’t ease up until she started talking. Telling them everything she wasn’t supposed to.
“You a-a-alll r-right?” stuttered Lopez.
He was doped to the gills. She’d traded everything she knew about the command structure on Detron just for that. Painkillers for the leej and a little more medicine to treat his burns and open wounds. They wouldn’t give her more skinpacks, though. And that’s what she really needed.
But in answer to Lopez’s question, she wasn’t all right. They’d been terrible to her. But she’d held out, not giving them the satisfaction of an answer. Not at first. Not even when her interrogator pulled one of her teeth with a pair of pliers after straddling her as she was strapped to the chair.
But then they threatened to make sure Lopez didn’t get his next round of pain meds. They told her how bad that would be, because he would be in a lot more pain than he already was.
All because of her.
So she told them. She traded. But not cheaply. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten as much as they’d given. Every second she could keep Lopez alive was a second closer he got to getting rescued.
And then, Amanda, maybe that makes this mess worth it. Maybe you buy yourself some grace.
Maybe.
She lay there on the cold floor of the cell, panting. The torture was over, for now. Yeah, they might come back and try to get another pound of flesh out of her, but for now, just lying on the cold floor of the cell was like heaven. A kind of paradise where someone wasn’t punching, cutting, or hitting your pressure points with a hammer. The opposite of the unending moment of pain. It always seems endless when it arrives. Like it becomes the entire galaxy.
And then there was the stunner. Or at least, that’s what it looked like. Except it didn’t incapacitate via shock charges. It just lit up the central nervous system like a grease fire and did something to her mind. She really believed it was going to go on forever and ever, never-ending.
Like hell.
Hell. The forever kind.
And if that was what hell was really like… then she was cured of whatever might send her there. She wanted no part of something like that.
So yeah, she talked.
You always talked.
She remembered the E-and-E instructors saying that. That it was just a matter of time. The trick was to give up as little as possible. Buy time, and maybe even trade for something valuable.
Like painkillers, meds, and life.
So she traded details on the Reaper program for more painkillers for Lopez. She gave them the command structure in exchange for an IV drip to hydrate the wounded and blaster-burned legionnaire. And she figured that was something they already knew anyway.
A confession on the number of kills she had was traded for some form of protein, a meal, for Lopez. To keep him alive and with enough calories to get to the marine medevac that had to be at the end of this.
She dreamed Kirk was out there, flying it, waiting for the dustoff loc.
“Yeah,” she mumbled to herself through swollen lips. “Kirk will fly it.”
Her ribs were busted. Her nose broken. Stuff that would eventually heal. But the memory of that living grease fire running across every nerve ending… she’d never forget that for the rest of her life. As long as she lived. It was like your entire body was subjected to the worst toothache imaginable while passing a kidney stone in the same moment. And covered in flaming oil burning and crisping your skin, melting your eyelids and lips. Ears too. Hearing yourself crackle.
That’s what the little stunner had felt like.
Not fun.
“You…” Lopez began, and then paused. “You… all right, Marine?” he said slowly. Trying to articulate his words. He was clear enough to know they’d given him some heavy-duty painkillers. The food and hydration had helped too. When they’d dragged her out of here, he’d been pretty bad off. Now… better. But not by much.
She, on the other hand, felt wrung out.
“I said,” belted Lopez suddenly. NCO that he was. “You…” Then he began to cough. It sounded wet, and she knew there was blood in it.
“I’m good,” she groaned, just to stop him. “I’m good, Sergeant.”
She felt Lopez’s hand on her back. A weak tap that only managed to rise once and then land like a feather again. She had to fight hard not to cry. Because as bad off as he was, he was trying to comfort her.
She tried to fight it, and…
She lost.
She lay there whimpering because of the pain and everything else. So softly he couldn’t hear her. Or so she hoped.
“’S’okay, girl. We gonna… make it. Hang in there.”
38
Gussavo Rattclopp found himself on the gritty rooftop of one of the smaller buildings beneath the wagon-wheel towers that loomed up into the smoky skies of Detron. He’d passed out while the armored figure had dragged him from the high-end sport utility sled the Soshies were using as the official messenger service for the organizers.
That’s what the pros called themselves.
The organizers.
As in, they made sure the long-brewing grievances of the galaxy turned into demonstrations, then resistance, and finally full-scale riots. The goal was civil war. But no one expected that on any
