John Ringo: Cally's War

Below, “Mahri” was still dancing frantically, nonstop, in the fluorescent orange jumpsuit that had replaced her grays. It made his chest hurt.

When the Fleet team came trooping back in, Stewart watched them from behind his best poker face — and his best was very good indeed. Tartaglia, perhaps anticipating his new CO’s likely needs, had sent Baker home for sleep around zero hundred, electing to stay in command of observation through the night. Consequently, when the medic wheeled him in this morning, Baker had been here, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to brief him in person. Experientially, Beed’s paranoia hadn’t been a total loss. Following Baker’s lead, Stewart had handed his AID to the Medic and ordered the visibly unhappy man to take a walk.

At that point, Baker had been free to fill Stewart in with a complete no-shitter on each of the Fleet personnel, the Darhel delegation, and events of the night before. Which meant that when the Fleet platoon, plus fresh meat and Dr. Mengele, came trooping in, he knew who was who.

Baker was in his forties. Old enough to think he’d seen the world and be mostly right, but remarkably sheltered in some ways. In Baker’s world the MP’s and the good soldiers were the good guys, and the tongs and the scumbags were the bad guys. You prosecuted one, and the other helped you. Well, more or less.

Baker had no idea what was coming. Or if he did, it was just at the level of a slight foreboding that he shrugged off. Stewart, with his considerably more complex understanding of the world knew exactly what was going to happen, and exactly how little power he had to stop it.

He was also going to have to watch Baker and protect his ass. Underneath an agent’s gruff exterior, Baker really was the boyscout Pryce had pretended to be. It had been an asset in his work with the tongs, rendering him amazingly incorruptible. In the present situation, it was more likely than not to get him killed or at least ruin his career when he decided he needed to Do Something.

Preventing that from happening was just one of the extra little complications life just loved to throw his way. In this case, he welcomed the distraction. He’d been sent to catch the spy, and he’d caught her. What he hadn’t expected was to be involved. On the other hand, getting involved with anybody in the office, in the circumstances, had been damned stupid and his current feelings were his own damned fault. Including the guilt. The girl had sacrificed herself to save his hide, and wasn’t that a fine thing for a man to have to live with.

He couldn’t help swallowing heavily as the goon squad disappeared around the corner towards the lifts, reappearing shortly in the room below.

He saw immediately why the SP’s had one in the infirmary and two in the morgue already. Whether she’d heard them coming or was just in a favorable position, her departure from the dance was so fluid and seamless, there were two SP’s on the floor before his brain had even registered that she’d stopped dancing. Well, sort of stopped.

This time one of the SP’s was either a bit smarter or a bit quicker and managed to club her over the head, dropping her so they could strap her to the gurney while she was still groggy from the knockout.

It meant the guy hanging his head and taking a few sharp words from the chief, presumably for endangering her life.

Stewart didn’t realize his hand had curled into white-knuckled claws against the arms of the chair until he felt his babysitter jab him with a hypo.

“General Stewart, sir, if you don’t tell me when you’re in pain I won’t be able to manage it properly. Please tell me next time before it gets that bad,” the medic said.

“Do you have something in that pack to counteract the wooziness, son? You’d better.” Great. All I need is to have my inhibitions to saying something indiscreet, stupid, and entirely truthful dropped in this political minefield. The ache in his gut disappeared. The one in his chest didn’t, but then, it had damn-all to do with his physical injuries.

The medic stuck something else in his arm and his head cleared almost immediately.

“Thank you. Son, if you ever again stick a mind altering drug in my conscious body without my permission, you can be prepared to receive your hypodermic as an enema. Sideways. Are we clear on that.”

The man’s lips tightened and it appeared he only just restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but he said, “Yes, sir,” and his eyes dropped before Stewart’s did.

When he noticed that her legs were strapped to the corners of the gurney, and they cut her prison jumpsuit off and removed it from under the straps in pieces, he broke out in a cold sweat.

The medic bent close to her ear, but the pickups in the room caught his voice clearly, playing it into the observation area.

“Why don’t we avoid this part? What’s your name?”

She tilted her head slightly away from him, staring up at the ceiling. She looked… bored.

Her expression didn’t change when the chief motioned the first man on top of her.

Stewart started making a list of people he really needed to kill. The first man seemed to be having some sort of trouble. In any case, he was swearing in one of the Asian languages. The automatic, literal translation from the AIDs was fairly colorful. Something about monkey vomit.

The medic finally waved him off and moved between her legs, checking something before injecting a local of something into her thigh, checking his watch, waiting a few moments, reaching between her legs.

“Obviously, miss, you are not immune to muscle relaxants. What’s your name?” he said.

After a few seconds of silence, he motioned the hapless sailor back into place.

The prisoner made eye contact with him and spoke.

“Sorry this is going to be about as exciting for you as screwing a soggy washcloth,” she said.

“I like blondes.” He grabbed a breast crudely.

“If you ate strong mint gelatin after the kimchee, you might meet more of them.” The boredom on her face was absolute. He stilled suddenly, swearing again before backhanding her, scrambling off and back, his face flushed as he zipped and turned away. Her cheek reddened, but her head had never moved.

She laughed.

“Aw, too bad! Next?” If her sarcasm had been a liquid, it would have eaten a hole in the floor.

To say that the next sailor singled out by the chief looked unenthusiastic would have been an understatement.

“You’ll need rape survivor therapy after this. The tongs can put you in touch with someone discreet,” her voice was clinical.

“Chief, make her stop!” He looked to his NCO in rather embarrassed desperation.

Above, in the observation lounge, Baker spluttered into his coffee. Stewart had so far managed to keep him under control with a hand on his arm whenever he looked in danger of losing it.

The Darhel were virtually panting like overheated dogs, over by the glass. Stewart was glad he’d elected not to wear a sidearm.

The chief grabbed her chin and wrenched it around by main force. “You’re being raped, you stupid bitch, don’t you get that?! What’s your name!”

“I’m not being raped. He’s being raped. I’m just lying here watching amateur night.”

In the lounge, one of the Darhel twitched suddenly, towards the glass, before rising and withdrawing smoothly from the room.

Below, the goon squad was withdrawing from the room, leaving “Mahri” where she was. Obviously, they were reevaluating their tactics. Poor hapless bastards. His heart just bled for them. Not.

Tommy was smacking his head against the heel of his palm, repeatedly, when Papa O’Neal came up for air from the Detention Center blueprints.