John Scalzi - The Sound of Rebellion

Heather Lee heard the whisper of the slap’s approach before she felt it, a strike designed to bring her back into consciousness. With the hit, she took a sharp intake of breath and tried to get her bearings.

She quickly became aware of three things. One, she was nude underneath a rough blanket that draped her body as she sat in a chair of some sort.

Two, she was restrained, with her wrists, ankles, neck and waist strapped down to the chair.

Three, she was blind, with something tightly binding and covering her head and face.

None of these were positive developments, in Lee’s opinion.

“You’re awake,” said a voice, weirdly modulated. It jumped around in pitch and timbre.

This interested Lee. “What’s going on with your voice?” she asked.

There was a brief pause before the response. “That’s not the first question we got from your two compatriots,” the voice said. “They were more concerned with where they were and why they were being held.”

“I’m sorry,” Lee said. “I wasn’t aware there was a protocol.”

This got a chuckle. “My voice is being modulated because we know you have one of those computers in your head,” the voice said. “And we know that if you’re not recording me already, you will be at some point in time, and that you could use that to record and identify me. I would prefer that not to happen. For the same reason we’ve blindfolded you, so you cannot record any visual things that would give us away. And of course we’ve also restrained you so that you stay put for now. We’ve taken your combat uniform because we know it provides you with strength and defense advantages, and we don’t want you to have that. I do apologize for that.”

“Do you,” Lee said, as dryly as she could in the circumstance.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Although you have no reason to believe me at the moment, you should understand that we have no interest in abusing you, either physically or sexually. Removing your combat uniform was a defensive procedure, nothing more.”

“I’d believe you more if you hadn’t slapped me awake,” Lee said.

“You were surprisingly resistant to waking up,” the voice said. “How do you feel?”

“I have a headache,” Lee said. “My muscles are sore. I am dying of thirst. I have to pee. I am restrained. I’m blind. How are you?”

“Better than you, I will admit,” the voice said. “Six, water.”

What? Lee thought, and then there was something at her lips, a hard plastic nipple. Liquid came out of it; Lee drank it. It was water, so far as she could tell.

“Thank you,” she said, after a minute. “Why did you say ‘six’?”

“The person in the room with you is called Six,” the voice said. “The number has no significance; it’s randomly selected. We change them for every mission.”

“What number are you?” Lee asked.

“This time I am Two,” the voice said.

“And you’re not in the room with me,” Lee said.

“I am close by,” Two said. “But I have no interest in having my own voice leak in so you can isolate it. So I listen and watch, and Six takes care of everything else.”

“I still need to pee,” Lee said.

“Six,” Two said. Lee could hear Six move, and then suddenly a portion of the hard bottom of her chair disappeared. “Go ahead,” Two said.

“You’re kidding,” Lee said.

“I’m afraid not,” Two said. “Again, apologies. But you can’t honestly expect me to unbind you. Even naked and blind, a Colonial Defense Forces soldier is a formidable opponent. There is a pan underneath your chair that will catch your waste. Six will then deal with it.”

“I feel as if I should apologize to Six,” Lee said. “Especially because eventually I will have to do something else than pee.”

“This is not Six’s first time doing this,” Two said. “We’re all professionals here.”

“How reassuring,” Lee said. Then she made an inward shrug and relieved herself. After she was finished, there was a scrape as a pan was removed and another scraping sound as the bottom of her chair was replaced. There were steps, followed by a door opening and then closing.

“Your compatriots told me that you are Lieutenant Heather Lee, of the Colonial Defense Forces ship Tubingen, ” Two said.

“That’s right,” Lee said.

“Well, then, Lieutenant Lee, let me tell you how this is going to work,” Two said. “You have been captured and you are my prisoner. I am going to ask you questions and you are going to answer them truthfully, as fully and completely as you can. If you do so, then when we are done I will have you released, obviously very far away from where we are now, but released all the same. If you do not do so, or if I catch you in a lie even once, I will kill you. I will not torture you, or abuse you, or have you raped or violated or any such nonsense. I will simply have a shotgun put to your head, in order to kill you, and to destroy that computer in your skull. It’s old-fashioned but very effective. I regret to say that one of your compatriots, a Private Jefferson, already tested me on this score and learned to his misfortune that I am not joking. The lesson does him no good at this point, I’m afraid. But I hope his example might be useful to you.”

Lee said nothing to this, thinking about Jefferson, who was always too enthusiastic for his own good.

The door opened; presumably Six was coming back into the room. “Six will now feed you and bathe you if you wish and will then leave. I have other matters to attend to for the next few hours. In that time, if you wish, you may consider what I’ve just told you. Do what we ask, and no harm will come to you. Do anything other than what we ask, and you will be dead. It’s a binary choice. I hope you will choose wisely.”

Left to herself, Lee reviewed her situation.

First: She knew who she was. Heather Lee, originally of Robeson County, North Carolina. Mother Sarah Oxendine, father Joseph Lee, sister Allie, brothers Joseph Jr. and Richard. In her past life a musician: a guitarist or cellist, depending on the gig. Joined up with the CDF six years previous, stationed with the Tubingen for the last two years six months. All this was important. If you were fuzzy on who you were, there were going to be other critical gaps in your knowledge base and you wouldn’t know what they were.

Second: She knew where she was, in a general sense, and why she was there. She was on the planet of Zhong Guo. She and her company on the Tubingen were dispatched to quell a separatist rebellion in the provincial capital city of Zhoushan. The rebels had taken the local administration headquarters and broadcast media, securing hostages as they did so, and started airing screeds declaring Zhong Guo independent of the Colonial Union and seeking a new union with Earth, the “native and true home of humanity,” as they put it. The local police had moved in to clear them out and were surprised when the rebels had more and better firepower than they did; the rebels killed two dozen police and took several more hostage, adding to their store of human shields.

The success of the rebels sparked a series of “Earth Rule” protests in other cities and towns including Liuzhau, Karhgar and Chifeng, the latter of which experienced severe property damage as rioters marched through the central business district, burning shops and buildings in an apparently indiscriminate fashion. By this time, the administration in the planetary capital of New Harbin had had enough and requested CDF intervention.

Lee and her platoon did a standard drop from high altitude at night with cloaking on; they were inside the administration and broadcast buildings before the rebels knew they had even landed on the roof. The fight was brief and lopsided; the rebels had only a few good fighters with them, the ones they had put out in front when the local police had gone at them. The rest of the rebels were recruited from the ranks of the young and excitable and had rather more enthusiasm than skill. The genuinely skilled rebel fighters engaged the CDF and were quickly subdued or killed, being no match for trained Colonial soldiers with superior physical and tactical skills; the rest surrendered without too much resistance.