[21] and [22]

[21]

Sister Gwen Gless died on 213.738.M41, sometime between 04:40 and 08:00 Velgrad local time. She was twenty-two years old. I loved her. She was my friend.

[22]

213.738.M41

Near Velgrad

Morning

When I woke up, our wargear was gone. The four of us were together in a room with thin sleeping mats on the floor and a sink and a toilet against one wall. Verity was still unconscious. Tara was washing Verity’s face, positioned at a careful angle that would keep her out of reach of panicked waking hands. Gwen’s body looked like what it was.

There were plain laborers’ clothes in a pile by a chain-link wall dividing the room in half. We don’t wear much under our armor. Tara had already dressed in the clothes.

There was a woman in a chair facing the cage, on the other side.

“Gwen?” I asked Tara.

I crawled to Gwen. She was cold.

“Dead,” said Tara. She made the sign of the Aquila. So did I.

Gwen was obviously dead. Lasgun wounds gone cold and black. No bleeding, no pus. I checked for a pulse and breathing anyway. She was obviously dead.

“Resuscitation?” I asked. Stupid.

“Tried,” said Tara. She smiled faintly, like she knew it was stupid, too. I saw her starting to cry. I went to her, wrapped my arms around her.

“Verity?”

“Sleeping. Breathing fine.”

“You?”

“Fine. You?”

I pressed on my ribs where they were turning purple and blue. It hurt, but they didn’t seem to move wrong.

“I think I’m fine,” I said. “Who’s she?” I tilted my head towards the woman in the chair.

“Heretic,” said Tara. “We’ll kill her later.”

I searched the clothes that the heretics had provided for five minutes. I’d go naked before I wore something with some symbol of theirs. There wasn’t anything. I put on the tunic and trousers. There weren’t shoes.

Verity woke up and asked all the same questions. She held Gwen and wept. I would cry later. I thought about killing ourselves before they could do anything to us. They had left us plenty of tools. The woman probably couldn’t stop us. She had a pistol in a holster, but it looked like a laspistol, not a needle-gun or a sting-blunt.

We had things to do before dying, anyway. We covered Gwen with a blanket. We prayed the rites. We sang her requiem.

The heretic stood for the prayers. She bowed her head and made the sign of the Aquila at the end of a verse. Something tore lose in me. I don’t remember crossing the little room, but suddenly I was up against the cage, clutching the chain, face pressed into the links, screaming, sobbing.

“Blasphemer! Apostate! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you. God damn you, God damn you, come here, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.

“Die,” I said.

“I hope she finds her way to the Emperor.”

“Die,” I said. “Die. Die.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She stood and waited for a while. Tara and Verity pulled me away from the cage into an embrace.

The woman asked, “What do you want for the body?”

I started to say something angry, but I made myself stop.

“Burial. Not cremation. Don’t pray at the grave. Your prayers are no good.”

“It will be done.”

I hated her with all my heart.

I wept.

❖ ❖ ❖

The walls and ceiling were rockcrete. The floor was the same under dilapidated tile. The fence was a new addition. The posts weren’t emplaced in the floor and ceiling, they were mounted on square metal feet bolted into the rockcrete. We might chip the rockcrete through with a piece of metal and enough time. Except that the sink’s fittings were plastic and ceramic. Or maybe we could stress the metal of the cage’s gate again and again until something snapped.

The light came from two lamps in the part of the room outside of our cage. Around the toilet and sink, a pale unaged stripe of rockcrete pocked with rust-stained bolt holes marked where a wall used to be.

The best chances would come if the enemy made mistakes. There were three of us, so a single guard might be rushed and overpowered. One of us would likely die, maybe two, but then we would have his weapon and a chance. And of course, if we decided to die, guards might be forced to kill us.

We didn’t have a chance when they took Gwen’s body. They made us stand in the far corner with our faces to the wall before they would open the door, and they had webguns, so we wouldn’t even die.

They fed us, so we made ourselves eat. The woman had a box of Army ration bars. She shoved three under the gate, standing back and nudging them through with the tip of her shoe. We kept the foil packets and used them for cups. Drinking water came from the sink.

We prayed. We huddled together and tried to plan in whispers so she couldn’t hear. She didn’t stop us. It seemed unusually unskilled of them not to separate us.

We debriefed ourselves about the ambush and our prison. We didn’t talk about Gwen, except for that. Any more would have felt like sacrilege, I think.

The floor and walls were cold, but we were warm enough together on our mats. There were three blankets. They let us sleep, so we slept. Maybe we were too easy to accept what the enemy offered. But strength and health are weapons I would not lightly discard.

We had some intelligence about our location.

The state of Gwen’s body proved that we were within a few hours of Velgrad. Yet Velgrad was warm this time of year—and the walls and floor were cold. Therefore we were probably underground.

The enemy claimed that they could bury Gwen. At first I thought that might mean they had land and privacy, but I decided it didn’t mean anything. We already knew they could move bodies unseen.

The enemy had at least six personnel on site and they came and went through the single door on the far side of the room. They had evaded the Enforcers, and the Sisterhood, which would be looking for us. Therefore we were somewhere accessible by a well-traveled route, blending into early-morning traffic.

Somewhere on a well-traveled route, within four hours of Velgrad, with a basement, power, water, and enough space for six people. It wasn’t much, but it was what we had.

Sometimes there was a man, when the woman left to do something, but mostly it was just her, sitting in her chair, watching. She didn’t try to talk. She just sat and watched us, like we were the most interesting thing in the world. Except when we used the toilet—then she politely looked away.

After some number of hours, she fed us again. She said, “Twenty minutes to lights out. It’ll be a man watching overnight.”

In case we wanted the toilet before he was here, I guess.

I guess that when the lights came on again, it had been about a day since they killed Gwen, but I don’t know.

❖ ❖ ❖

In the morning, they came to take me away. I thought we had made a mistake, not killing ourselves. We could have done it in the night, easily. Smash the sink for sharp pieces of ceramic. Arteries. Death. Too late now.

They did it the same as taking Gwen’s body. Three men with webguns. Two for the up-close work. They moved like soldiers, but that meant nothing. Most men on Gaervalt had served their years.

They cuffed my hands behind my back and hobbled my ankles with leg irons.

I learned that the building we were in was big. The door didn’t lead to stairs, but into a hall with three doors on the left and one at the end. They took me to the third door. The room was much too big for its furniture, nothing but a long metal table and two chairs. The woman from the day before was in one chair. They took me to the other one and sat me down. They fastened the leg irons to the table. They left.

The woman still had her laspistol in its holster. I thought: None of them are Enforcers or provosts. They would know better. I couldn’t use the mistake yet, but I thanked the Emperor for it all the same.

It didn’t begin like I expected. No needles, no blades, no vile crawling things. We get a small amount of counterinterrogation training at the Schola. What the alien does to captives. What the heretic does. How to keep your soul when they associate all that you cherish with defilement and pain. How to find a chance to die.

She asked me if I wanted a toothbrush and a shower.

I decided that the best thing to do was to not answer at all.