Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Thirty-Three

I hate being stunned.

The UN, which invented the stunner in the first place, claimed that it put the target completely out for at least two hours — longer, depending on the target’s body mass, clothing and a handful of other factors — allowing the captor to transport the captive to safety. Like so much else, the UN’s claims are nonsense; I couldn’t move, or see, but I could still hear. I couldn’t feel, which was something of a relief — I’d hit the ground hard enough to hurt without the stunner’s effects — but I could definitely still hear. My mind shimmered in and out of awareness as they transported their two prisoners away from the ambush site. I could hear them talking.

“Good work,” someone said. There was a hint of a cough. “The mercenary and his whore in our hands.”

“She’s not a whore,” Suki said. I guessed that she meant Muna. She had betrayed us. The thought raced through my mind and refused to fade. She had betrayed us! “She’s one of his chief assistants; she handles logistics and other background work for him.”

“And a black-ass at that,” a second unfamiliar voice said. “Do we take her as well?”

“We’ve no choice,” the first voice said. He came closer and I heard his hands touching my uniform. I could hear the clink of handcuffs as he cuffed my hands behind my back. “Help me get them into the truck and search them for anything that might be dangerous. You, bitch; check the girl for anything that could be used to follow us.”

“Of course,” Suki said. I heard the annoyance in her tone and wondered if she had really realised what she was working for. They didn’t sound like honest and decent farmers to me. “I’ll do it at once, shall I?”

Sensation shimmered in and out as they dumped me in a vehicle and started the engine. The loud roar of the vehicle made it harder to listen for their voices, but I struggled enough to learn that the truck was designed to block all transmissions, preventing my radio or any other form of communications system from calling for help. I couldn’t blame them for the precaution, but I did wonder how they intended to get out of the city… and then remembered the riot. By the time the Quick Response Force arrived, they could be halfway across the city, or even heading out into the countryside. If they’d managed as much as they had, it wasn’t hard to believe that they had papers allowing them to leave the city without being inspected; hell, a careful drive would keep them away from all checkpoints. We hadn’t been so concerned with vehicles leaving the city.

An oversight I will rectify as soon as I get back to the spaceport, I promised myself angrily, trying to keep my mind off the betrayal. Suki had led us right into a trap, at considerable personal risk, which meant that she had worked for the farmers all along. That suggested a remarkable degree of forward planning — or, perhaps, collaboration. I had suspected that she belonged to the Progressives, not to the farmers, or anyone else. My suspicions hadn’t been focused enough.

Or had someone from the Progressives set us up? I asked myself, as the vehicle drove onwards. I could feel the cold metal floor of the truck, and the tight cuffs around my wrists, but I still couldn’t see. It made sense, though; there were plenty of Progressives who were opposed to Frida’s program, the program I’d convinced her to create. They might have regarded me as the power behind the throne and sought to remove me and Frida in one blow. Without me, would Frida carry on the programs or would she seek to undo what we’d created? Without me, Ed would become Captain-General… and he barely knew Frida, or what we’d created. He’d have to get up to speed very quickly while fighting both sets of enemies; internal and external.

There was no way to know and I concentrated on our surroundings. I could hear voices talking in a native dialect I didn’t recognise; both of them were male, which meant that Suki was… where? In the rear with us, or had they killed her and dumped her? It was a capital mistake to theorise without evidence, as even the United Nations Peace Force had agreed, but I couldn’t help it. Endlessly, I ran through possible combinations in my mind. Who knew what had happened just before my captors fled the city?

I heard a series of gasps and realised that Muna was staggering back to wakefulness. Our captors snapped to one another in their dialect and the world went blue-white again as they used their stunners. Evidently, they didn’t want to risk us breaking loose and alerting the army, even though I couldn’t see a thing, let alone feel. I hoped they took us for supermen — some civilians thought of soldiers that way — even though it would make escape harder. It would be good if the bastards were scared of us. The blackness came for me and swallowed me up again; this time, they’d stunned me enough to knock me out completely.

When I opened my eyes again, we were no longer in the vehicle, but sitting in what looked like a dimly lit cellar. I looked around as best as I could — they’d handcuffed my hands and feet to the chair — and saw Muna sitting in the other chair, also cuffed and secured. I met her eyes and winked at her, seeing the dull anger burning there, even though I knew she had to be furious. This was the second time enemy forces had held her prisoner on the damned planet. I knew something that I hoped the enemy didn’t know, however; after the first time, we’d taken a handful of precautions.

My mouth felt dry as dust, but somehow I managed to speak. “Muna,” I asked, “are you all right?”

She shook her head slowly, barely able to move. She was shorter and slimmer than me and the stun blasts would have had a worse effect on her. Her eyes looked crusted over, as if she’d been crying or simply slept for days, and her face looked gaunt. I privately promised her revenge for her suffering, even though I was in no position to make good on that promise, not yet.

“No,” she said, finally. Her voice sounded worse than mine, as if she were rasping as she tried to speak. “I can barely move or think.”

“I know,” I said, as reassuringly as I could. “Me neither.”

Where were we? I asked myself. I couldn’t see my wristcom — and they’d have taken it away anyway — but it couldn’t have been that long, unless we’d been sedated after we’d been stunned into darkness. That wasn’t recommended, I remembered, because the drugs might have an adverse effect on a stunned person, but it was quite possible that our captors wouldn’t care. We were both reasonably fit and healthy; I doubted that either of us had a heart attack pending that might be brought on by the drugs. If it had only been a few hours, we were logically in one of the near-countryside farming towns or villages — more likely, an isolated farm well away from anyone else. If it had been days, we could be in the mountains, well away from any hope of rescue. I mulled the question over and over in my mind, remembering Suki. Had she known about the precautions, or had we successfully deceived her? My brain felt as if I were trying to think through cotton wool. I couldn’t remember what she knew, now, that would be used against us.

I hadn’t noticed the door until it creaked open, revealing three men and a woman. I had hoped that the woman was Suki, but it was someone else, a redheaded girl whose eyes looked older than the rest of her body. In some ways, she reminded me of Muna, although I hoped that she had had an easier life. There was something about the way they both carried themselves that was alike, somehow.

“Good evening, gentleman and lady,” the lead man said. I studied his face, but saw nothing I could use to identify him from the records of known enemy fighters. He was middle-aged and going bald, but making a definite attempt to hide it. His blue eyes — blue eyes seemed to be fairly consistent among pureblood natives — seemed humourless, but there was an unpleasant cast to his smile. “Welcome to our little home away from home.”

The woman spoke into the silence. “This is the mercenary leader?” She asked. Her accent… her accent was not a native accent! It was oddly familiar, but it took me nearly two minutes, with my brain feeling like mush, to place it as a Heinlein accent. The clipped, precise tone came from nowhere else, as far as I knew. “You are certain that you got the right person?”

“Of course,” the lead man said. I watched the woman with new interest. I didn’t know her, but unless I was very much mistaken, this was the Freedom League’s representative on the planet. It was odd; either they hadn’t expected me to recognise her accent, or they had no intention of letting us go — somehow, that didn’t surprise me. “This is their leader.”

The woman gazed down at me. “Your name?” She demanded, in an imperious tone. Up close, the Heinlein accent was stronger, more pronounced. “What is your name?”

“Captain-General Andrew Nolte, Legio Exheres, serial number LE-4637363-7578,” I recited. The UNPF had stated that all soldiers were required to tell their captors name, unit and serial number and that was it. I suspected that the Freedom League wouldn’t follow the same conventions. The stories about what had happened to some prisoners on various planets were enough to chill the blood. The UN didn’t have a monopoly on mindless brutality.

“You are our prisoner,” she said, icily. “How many men are in your Legion of the Dispossessed?”

I said nothing. It was the beginning of a standard interrogation cycle. They would know just how many men had come with me to Svergie and, by asking questions to which they already knew the answer, would use it to get a baseline on my reactions. Later, when they asked questions covering other matters, ones that weren’t public knowledge, they’d be able to pick up on a lie. If I stalled as long as I could, I would buy time for Ed to get a rescue mission on the way.

The woman sighed. “One way or the other, you are going to tell us everything you know,” she said. “Beta?”

One of the men stepped forward and slapped me right across the face. The pain was shocking, but oddly dulled; the effects of the stunner hadn’t quite worn off. Another slap followed, and another, making me gasp in pain. I was tempted to scream, just to convince them that they were hurting me more than they were, but I doubted it would have fooled them. They knew what they were doing.

“We will keep hurting you until you give up the answers,” the woman said. Her voice was softer now, almost seductive. “You will not be able to resist us indefinitely. Why not give up the answers now and save yourself the pain.”

Another slap. I wondered, vaguely, if they were going to knock out a few teeth. I wanted to come out with a smart answer, but that would just be another chink in my armour, another opening they could use to beat me. I thought I heard Muna snarling in the distance, unable to help me or even help herself, as slap after slap rained down on my face. I wasn’t going to be such a pretty face afterwards, part of my mind whispered, and I almost smiled. It was too painful to smile. The effect of the slaps were burning through the effect of the stunner. A final slap sent my chair flying over backwards and I knocked my head against the hard stone floor.

“Get him back up,” the woman ordered. I felt my head spinning as the two men lifted the chair up and placed me back facing the woman. In one of the cheap entertainment vids the UN produced, the fall would have broken my cuffs or perhaps the chair, but I tested them and the links were as strong as ever. She seemed to come closer to me, whispering into my ear. “This won’t help you in the long run, my dear.”

I gathered my energy and spat right into her face. She didn’t squeal, or order my immediate death; she showed no reaction at all. Her two goons looked ready to pound on me until my head was crushed into powder, but she held up a hand, preventing them from acting.

“We could hurt your friend,” she said, wiping the spittle off her cheek with a paper towel. “Beta?”

Beta — a thuggish man — stepped forward and slapped Muna’s face. I saw a trickle of red blood spilling down from her lips, contrasting oddly against her dark skin, and winced inwardly. I met her eyes and saw her shake her head, just slightly, at me. She didn’t want me to tell them anything. I didn’t want to tell them anything either.

“Don’t,” a voice said. It was the first man speaking. “Hurting him is fine; do it, but don’t harm the girl.”

The woman rounded on him. “This is no time for half measures,” she snapped. I wondered, suddenly, if the farmers and the Freedom League had their disagreements. I hoped that that was true. It would give me — or my successor — a weapon to use to pry them apart. The farmers would regard Muna as a breeder — now there was a joke and a half — and would be sensitive to any harm inflicted on her, or any other woman. “This is our one opportunity to get the intelligence we need before the ship returns and I will not waste it.”

The farmer didn’t back down. “Use the drugs on him, if you must,” he said, “but don’t harm her.”

I wondered if the woman would lash out at him — she seemed mad enough to want to hurt him badly — but instead she just turned back to her goons. “Get the drugs,” she ordered, before she looked down at me. “With these drugs, you’ll give up everything you know.”

She was wrong, I realised, and seriously considered telling her so. The UNPF drug immunisation program wasn’t worth a quarter of the money the UN had spent on it, but the Legionaries — including Muna and myself — had been injected with Heinlein-grade immunisation drugs. The irony was almost laughable; unless the Freedom League had come up with something completely new, there was a good chance that they were about to kill me, or at least make me very sick. A dead captive couldn’t tell them anything.

“Here, Alpha,” one of the goons said. His voice wasn’t a Heinlein accent; unless I was much mistaken, it was a Russian accent from Rodina, the Russian-ethnic world. It suited Fleet’s impression of the Freedom League being a group that wasn’t backed by any particular planet — which made sense, as if Fleet managed to pin down a single supporter, the response would not be kind — but it was odd meeting any of them on Svergie. They tended to stand out in a crowd. “I’ll inject him now.”

I felt him push the needle into my arm and winced as he injected me with the drug. The reaction was not long in coming. I felt a wave of dizziness, followed by a burst of violent spasms against the restraints and finally throwing up all over the floor. My head was ringing as I retched again and again, trying to get some of my vomit on the bitch. I knew that it would probably get me killed, but I no longer cared. I just wanted the pain to end.

“Shit,” the woman hissed. I could barely hear her as my body convulsed one final time. I wondered if I was going to die, before realising that the worst was probably over. The immunisations I’d had when I had formed the Legion had rejected the drug, but unless I had plenty of water to drink — and soon — I was going to feel worse. My kidneys would have problems cleaning my blood after that. “No, don’t try to inject the girl; she’s probably got the same counter-drugs in her body.”

She came to a decision and stood up. “Beta, get the spy and get her to give him — give them both — as much water as they can drink,” she ordered, coldly. I felt a wave of relief that I tried hard to keep off my face. At the moment, water sounded like a very good idea, worth an answer or two. She probably knew it. “If nothing else, the results of today’s experiments will weaken their resistance for the future.”

I couldn’t resist. “Keep dreaming, bitch,” I said. I coughed and spat up more vomit. My throat felt as if I’d been on a nine-day bender before returning to barracks, as I had more than once as a young soldier. “I won’t tell you anything.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “Come on.”

With that, she swept out of the room, leaving us both alone.