Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

As if in answer to my concern, a mortar round hit fifty meters to my left, orange flash and muted thump. I linked with the flyboy in the chopper and sensed a short argument she had with Command. Someone wanted us to drop the body and do a regular snatch. As the flyboy came over the horizon, another mortar round hit, maybe ten meters behind me, and we got the modified order: line up for a regular snatch and she would come in as slowly as practical.

We got together in file with our left arms up, and I had one second to wonder whether I should hold Madero tightly or loosely. I opted for tight, and most of the others agreed, which might have been wrong.

The bail snatched us with an impulse shock of fifteen or twenty gees. Nothing to a soldierboy but, we found out later, it cracked four of the woman's ribs. She woke up with a shriek as two mortar rounds hit close enough to hole the chopper and damage Claude and Karen. Madero wasn't hit by the shrapnel, but she found herself dozens of meters off the ground and rising fast, and she struggled hard, beating at me and screaming, writhing around. All I could do was hold her more tightly, but my arm had her pinned just below the breasts, and I was afraid to press her too hard.

Suddenly she went slack, fainting or dead. I couldn't check her pulse or respiration, hands full, but there was not much I could have done in any case, other than not drop her.

After a few minutes we landed on a bald hill, and I confirmed that she was still breathing. I carried her inside the helicopter and strapped her into a stretcher that was clamped to the wall. Command asked whether there were any handcuffs, which I thought was kind of amusing; but then she elaborated: this woman was a true believer. If she woke up and found herself in an enemy helicopter, she would jump out or otherwise do away with herself.

The rebels told each other horror stories about what we did to prisoners to make them talk. It was all nonsense. Why bother to torture someone when all you have to do is put her under, drill a hole in her skull, and jack her? That way she can't lie.

Of course, international law is not clear on the practice. The Ngumi call it a violation of basic human rights; we call it humane questioning. The fact that one of ten winds up dead or brain-dead makes the morality of it pretty clear to me. But then we only do it to prisoners who refuse to cooperate.

I found a roll of duct tape and bound her wrists together and then taped loops around her chest and knees, fixing her to the stretcher.

She woke up while I was doing her knees. "You are monsters," she said in clear English.

"We come by it naturally, Senora. Born of man and woman."

"A monster and a philosopher."

The helicopter roared into life and we sprang off the hill. I had a fraction of a second's warning, and so was able to brace myself. It was unexpected but logical: what difference did it make whether I was inside the vehicle or hanging on outside?

After a minute we settled into a quieter, steady progress. "Can I get you some water?"

"Please. And a painkiller."

There was a toilet aft, with a drinking water tap and tiny paper cups. I brought her two and held them to her lips.

"No painkillers until we land, I'm afraid." I could knock her out with another trank, but that would complicate her medical situation. "Where do you hurt?"

"Chest. Chest and neck. Could you take this damned tape off? I'm not going anywhere."

I cleared it with Command and a foot-long razor-keen bayonet snicked into my hand. She shrank away, as much as her bonds would allow. "Just a knife." I cut the tape around her chest and knees and helped her to a sitting position. I queried the flyboy and she confirmed that the woman was apparently unarmed, so I freed her hands and feet.

"May I use that toilet?"

"Sure." When she stood up she doubled over in pain, clutching her side.

"Here." I couldn't stand upright in the seven-foot-high cargo area, either, so we shuffled aft, a bent-over giant helping a bent-over dwarf. I helped her with her belt and trousers.

"Please," she said. "Be a gentleman."

I turned my back on her but of course could still see her. "I can't be a gentleman," I said. "I'm five women and five men, working together."

"So that's true? You make women fight?"

"You don't fight, Senora?"

"I protect my land and my people." If I hadn't been looking at her I would have misinterpreted the strong emotion in her voice. I saw her hand flick into a breast pocket and caught her wrist just before her hand made it to her mouth.

I forced her fingers open and took a small white pill. It had an odor of bitter almonds, low-tech.

"That wouldn't do any good," I said. "We'd just revive you and you'd be sick."

"You kill people and, when it pleases you, you bring them back from the dead. But you are not monsters."

I put the pill in a pocket on my leg and watched her carefully. "If we were monsters we would bring them back to life, extract our information, and kill them again."

"You don't do that."

"We have more than eight thousand of your people in prison, awaiting repatriation after the war. It would be easier to kill them, wouldn't it?"

"Concentration camps." She stood and pulled up her trousers, and sat back down.

"A loaded term. There are camps where the Costa Rican prisoners of war are concentrated. With UN and Red Cross observers, making sure they're not mistreated. As you'll see with your own eyes." I don't often defend Alliance policies. But it was interesting to watch a fanatic at work.

"I should live that long."

"If you want to, you will. I don't know how many more pills you have." I linked through the flyboy to Command and brought a speech analyzer on line.

"That was the only one," she said, as I'd expected, and the analyzer said she was telling the truth. I relaxed slightly. "So I'll be one of your prisoners of war."

"Presumably. Unless this has all been a case of mistaken identity."

"I've never fired a weapon. I've never killed anybody."

"Neither has my commander. She has degrees in military theory and cybernetic communication, but she's never been a soldier."

"But she has actually killed people. Lots of us."

"And you helped plan the assault on Portobello. By that logic, you killed friends of mine."

"No I didn't," she said. Quick, intense, lying.

"You killed them while I was intimately connected to their minds. Some of them died very horribly."

"No. No."

"Don't bother to lie to me. I can bring people back from the dead, remember? I could have destroyed your village with one thought. And I can tell when you're lying."

She was silent for a moment, considering that. She must have known about voice analyzers. "I am the mayor of San Ignacio. There will be repercussions."

"Not legal ones. We have a warrant for your detention, signed by the governor of your province."

She made a spitting sound. "Pepe Ano." His name was Pellipianocio, Italian, but her Spanish converted it to "Joe Asshole."

"I take it he's not popular with the rebels. But he was one of you."

"He inherited a coffee plantation from his uncle and was such a bad farmer he couldn't make a radish grow. You bought his land, you bought him."

She thought that was the truth, and it probably was. "We didn't coerce him," I said, guessing. I didn't know much about the town's or province's history. "Didn't he come to us? Declare himself – "

"Oh, really. Like a hungry dog would come to anybody who put out food. You can't pretend to think that he represents us."

"As a matter of fact, Senora, we were not consulted. Are your soldiers consulted before being given orders?"

"We ... I don't know anything about such matters." That one set the bells off. As she knew, their soldiers were in on the decision-making process. That cut down on their efficiency but did give some logic to calling themselves the Democratic Army of the People.