Her clothes had been removed, she realised, although nakedness didn't bother her after spending several years in various barracks. The room smelled of piss and shit and blood, suggesting that she was in a torture chamber. She’d watched some of the entertainment channels, enough to tell her what was likely to happen. No doubt the interrogators thought that her anticipation would help weaken her resistance. Jasmine remembered her first CAC course and scowled, inwardly. She'd known that it wasn't real and it had still pushed her almost to breaking point.
Of course, they were limited in what they could do, she thought, sourly. They couldn't cause permanent harm.
Silently, she started to meditate, drawing on the mental disciplines she'd been taught to help her get through intensive training. Her sense of timing had been completely screwed up, but she had a feeling from the aches and pains that it hadn't been long since her capture. The enhanced healing sequenced into her genes should have taken care of the aches and pains by now, unless it hadn't really been that long since she’d been captured. Blake and the others would have realised that she was missing by now, surely. They would already have put the contingency plan into operation.
Back at the Slaughterhouse, she’d been forced to memorise a chunk of seemingly-useless information. It hadn't been until they’d been chased over the landscape, captured and shoved into an interrogation cell that the recruits had realised that the information they’d been given was what the interrogators wanted. All they'd had to do was keep it to themselves ... which hadn't been easy when one had been starved, beaten, drugged and threatened with far worse, before the session had finally come to an end. Jasmine recalled one recruit, a young man who had fought his way through Boot Camp and the early stages of the Slaughterhouse, losing his nerve during the interrogation session. The last she’d seen of him had been when he’d boarded the shuttle to go home.
A smarter recruit, who had worked for the local police before volunteering to join the Marine Corps, had asked why they didn't use stronger truth drugs. The Drill Instructors had pointed out that such drugs would trigger their protective implants, killing the captives. They’d followed up by pointing out that any interrogator who knew what they were dealing with would work hard to pressure someone while trying to avoid triggering the implant. Psychological tools, they’d said, would work better than violence and drugs.
“Good morning,” a voice said. It was strongly accented – and not, she noted, with any accent she recognised. “I know you’re awake.”
Jasmine kept her eyes closed, refusing to move.
“The monitors recording your brain activity say that you’re awake,” the voice said, with what sounded like excessive patience. “You may as well open your eyes.”
Jasmine sighed, but did as she was told. She was in a surprisingly large room, utterly bare apart from the table she lay on and a glowing light beaming down from high overhead. The speaker, a man so pale that she couldn't help wondering if he ever saw the sunlight, gave her a thin smile as he looked up from the datapad in his hand. Jasmine tried to raise her arm and discovered that she couldn’t move it at all. She was solidly bound to the table.
“Good morning,” the figure said, again. He sounded almost obscenely amused. “I’m afraid that you’re in a great deal of trouble.”
He paused, as if he expected her to say something. Jasmine, who had been taught that keeping one’s mouth shut was often the strongest counter-interrogation tool in the universe, said nothing. Maybe she was in trouble, maybe she was about to be tormented until she broke ... but she was damned if she was going to make it easy for the bastards. Besides, the longer she held out, the longer the others would have to hide and regroup somewhere unknown to her.
“You were captured in the act of trying to force one of my superiors to serve you,” the man said, dryly. “Your only hope now is to throw yourself on my mercy.”
His face twisted into a smile. “Cat got your tongue?”
Jasmine kept her mouth firmly closed.
“You will change your mind,” the man told her. “You see, you are buried deep underground, in a sealed chamber that no one can even enter without the right permission. Any friends you might have on the outside” – he watched her closely as he said that – “are lost to you. There is no way that they will be able to save your ass from us. If you talk, we can make your life more comfortable. If not ...”
His smile grew wider. “We can make your life very uncomfortable indeed.”
Jasmine watched as he turned and strode into the darkness, then looked over at the manacles. They looked distressingly solid; she tested them anyway, just in case, and discovered that they were definitely immoveable. One of the easiest mistakes to make when keeping someone prisoner, she knew, was to tie them to something that could be broken, given the right leverage. They hadn't made that mistake. The table was solid metal, uncomfortable and unbreakable. Even a Pathfinder couldn't have broken free.
She glanced up as she heard something hitting bare flesh, followed by the sound of a woman crying in pain. The sounds grew worse as she listened, each one suggesting horrible tortures being meted out to victims ... she shuddered as she heard male grunting and unpleasant little squeaks, suggesting that someone was being entered against their will. Raped, she realised numbly, before remembering the horrific sounds that had been played to the recruits as they sat in their holding cells. They’d been intended to soften them up before the captors returned to start interrogating them properly.
Jasmine closed her eyes, wishing that she could somehow turn off her ears. On the Slaughterhouse, she’d always assumed that the sounds were made by actors – although, she recalled, they’d never been explicitly told that the sounds were faked. Here, they were all too likely to be real. The girl she could hear gasping in pain had been no actor, but someone who had offended Admiral Singh. And she was quite likely to be dead by now ... Jasmine kept that in her mind, but it didn't make it any easier to hear.
It seemed hours before she heard someone else entering the room. She opened her eyes and saw a grim-faced woman, bleeding from a dozen slashes across her chest, staggering over to the table and leaning on it desperately. It was the only way she could stand upright, Jasmine realised, as she took in the other places where blood was flowing from the girl’s body. Just what had they done to her ...?
Or was it just an act?
“They captured me,” the girl said. “I used to think that I could defy the Admiral. And then they caught me and ...”
Jasmine studied the girl’s body. She’d seen wounds – real wounds – and the more she looked at the newcomer, the more convinced she became that the wounds were fake. How could she lose so much blood without fainting? It smelled right, but all that meant was that they’d hired a good chemist – or had drawn blood from another victim.
She looked away, refusing to give them the satisfaction of opening her mouth.
***
“She wasn't fooled,” the doctor observed.
Horn nodded. Most civilians would have taken a look at the actress – she had been a real actress before Horn had hired her – and started to spill their guts. The woman was good at looking like someone who had been savagely beaten and then raped by a gang of interrogators, even if the blood was artificial rather than real. But their mystery captive hadn’t seemed impressed at all.
“So it would seem,” Horn said. He allowed himself a cold smile. Breaking someone stubborn enough to hold out against threats and intimidation, however presented, was one of his pleasures in life. “I think she’s had enough softening up by now.”
The doctor gave him a sharp look. “I don’t think she was impressed by the taped sounds either,” he pointed out. “And ...”
“I noticed,” Horn said, happily. “This is going to be fun!”
Human imagination was such a wonderful thing, he knew. Draw a bare-bones image for someone – or, in this case, play them a few pre-recorded sounds – and their imagination would do the rest. Later, perha
ps, they would see if the captive had the internal fortitude to withstand watching as children were tortured in front of her. It wouldn't bother Horn to watch – he’d enjoy himself – but most people would spill their guts to prevent a cute little child from being hurt. Should it be a girl or a boy? People became very talkative when a red-hot poker advanced towards a child’s privates.
He pushed that thought aside for the moment. “Send in the first team,” he ordered. “And we will see if that breaks her.”
“Yes, sir,” the doctor said, reluctantly.
Horn ignored his concerns. The priority might be getting information out of the captive, but there was no reason why he couldn't enjoy himself at the same time.
***
The door opened again, revealing three burly men carrying leather bags. Jasmine watched as they strode into the room, pushed the crying actress out and then surrounded the table, looking down at Jasmine with leering eyes. One of them reached down and grabbed a breast, squeezing it tightly enough to hurt, then sent his hand trailing down towards her thighs ...
“That will do, Sid,” one of the other men said. “There is an order to this, you see.”
Jasmine scowled inwardly. Good interrogator, bad interrogator? One to torture and humiliate her, the other to pretend to be her friend? Or was she reading too much into the situation? It was designed to upset her, to make her lose her balance and eventually to force her to talk. She had to bear that in mind at all times.
But her breast still felt filthy where he’d touched it.
“Good evening, young lady,” the speaker said. “How are you feeling right now?”
Good evening? Jasmine wondered. The previous visitor had claimed that it was the morning and she was sure that she hadn't lost that much time. Her time sense might have been battered, but it was still intact. They were probably just trying to disorientate her.
She kept her mouth closed and had the satisfaction of seeing a flicker of irritation on the man’s face.
“We are going to ask you some questions,” the man explained, as he pulled some electrodes out of his bag. “Should you lie to us, we will know about it – and then you will be hurt.”
“So please lie,” Sid said. He reached out towards her other breast, his hand hovering just above the flesh. “It is so much fun watching people screaming in pain.”
Jasmine gritted her teeth, but said nothing. She’d been through worse, she kept telling herself, remembering the horrors of the Crucible – and the inescapable feeling that she’d failed to complete the test in time. It had only been when she’d been escorted into the hall and presented with her Rifleman’s Tab that she’d realised that she’d actually passed – very well, according to the Drill Instructors. Everyone had been utterly shattered when they’d completed the final exam, but they’d kept going anyway.
She winced as the speaker pulled away her wig and attached one of the electrodes to the side of her head. They’d found out that she’d been wearing a wig at some point, she realised, although she had no idea why they’d left it in place. Perhaps they’d thought that she would be psychologically broken when it was taken away, just before the interrogation began. It seemed absurd, given that she was already naked, but people did cling to the oddest things when they were captives. The human brain, she’d been told, found its own way of coping with stress.
Mandy was a pirate captive, Jasmine reminded herself. I can endure this.
“The interesting part about monitoring a person’s brainwaves is that one can tell if they’re trying to lie,” the speaker said. “Or, for that matter, if they’re trying to conceal the truth without directly lying. And it is extremely difficult to fool the monitors – certainly not on any long-term basis. You will have no choice, but to tell us the truth.”
Not if I keep my mouth shut, Jasmine thought, defiantly.
“We will start with a simple question,” the speaker continued. He held a blue rubber duck in front of her. The sight was so incongruous that Jasmine smiled, despite herself. “What colour is this duck?”
Jasmine stared at him in disbelief. After all the build-up, they were going to ask her that? It was pointless! A moment later, just before she could open her mouth, she realised what they were doing. Answering a question – any question – would weaken her resistance when the time came to answer the real questions. And, for all of her determination to resist, they’d almost found the first chink in her armour.
“There is no point in keeping it a secret,” the speaker said, almost paternally. “We already know the answer. Why not tell us and save yourself some pain?”
He shook his head, almost sadly. “Sid?”
Jasmine had barely a moment to prepare herself before Sid jabbed something into her chest. The pain shocked her, despite her training; for a long chilling moment she thought that he’d stabbed her with a knife. A modified neural whip, she realised, as he pulled it back from her flesh, his face twisted into a leer. Something designed to cause pain without actually inflicting physical damage.
“That was just a taste,” the speaker said. He held the duck up in front of her face. “Will you now tell me the colour of the duck?”
Jasmine gritted her teeth, but shook her head.
“Ah, a defiant one,” the speaker said. “But you will break.”
Sid leaned forward again. This time, he jabbed the neural whip into her left breast. Jasmine couldn't help herself; she screamed in agony, despite all the blockers her implants should have released into her bloodstream. The pain faded, then renewed itself as Sid allowed the neural whip to walk down her body towards her thighs. Jasmine fought to close her legs as he touched her most private of areas with the whip, sending horrific agonies running through her body. The pain was agonising ...
And then it was gone.
“Everyone breaks, eventually,” the speaker informed her. He sounded almost as if he cared about her – an act, Jasmine realised, as much as the wounded and bleeding girl had been earlier. If she was so badly weakened, no doubt she’d respond well to kindness. “You do realise, don’t you, that the damage will eventually become permanent?”
Jasmine knew he was right. Neural whips, if overused, could burn out nerves or inflict mental damage on the victim, no matter how strong they were. The damage might be enough to prevent her from returning to duty, to see to it that she was invalidated out of the Marine Corps ... she gritted her teeth as terror threatened to overwhelm her. She was not going to break.
Sid let out a chilling sound and pushed the neural whip against her foot. Jasmine’s body tried to spasm, only to be held down by the manacles. For a long moment, she was convinced that she had broken her own legs before the pain finally faded away. Why hadn't her implants killed her? Couldn't they tell that she was being tortured?
“There is no escape,” the speaker said. “Talk now and you may escape permanent damage.”
“Go to hell,” Jasmine gasped.
The speaker smiled at her words. “You will talk,” he assured her. “Now, what colour is the duck?”
And then the pain began again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eventually, we settled on a federal decentralised power structure. Each star system would have internal autonomy, with near-complete control over its internal affairs, as long as they honoured the Bill of Rights. This failed to settle every issue – a number of systems had several political entities, not counting the RockRats – but if it was a step forward.
-Professor Leo Caesius, Authority, Power and the Post-Imperial Era
Internal Security was taking no chances, Blake realised, as he walked past their headquarters wearing a stolen guardsman’s uniform. The building was heavily guarded, protected by a large detachment of troops – and, he couldn't help noticing – had only a handful of entrances. Assaulting the building would not have been particularly difficult with a company of Marines in powered armour, but he had no powered armour or other heavy weapons at his disposal. Instead, he had thirty teenagers who h
ad grown up on the streets, Sergeant Hampton and Carl. It didn’t seem like enough, somehow.
He’d wracked his brains looking for a way to sneak into the building, before realising that it was likely futile. They’d blocked off the sewers and everything else that could be used to sneak inside unobserved, while he didn’t dare wait for nightfall. Besides, they’d probably scattered security sensors everywhere, just in case someone tried to slip over the wall and into the grounds. They would have to go with the desperate plan.
Blake gritted his teeth as he walked away from the building. He liked fighting, but he disliked sneaking around. And yet, if they failed to sneak around properly, they didn't have any hope of recovering the Lieutenant before she either died or was forced to talk. And if that happened, the mission would fail. Blake liked to avoid thinking about the context of what they did, but Sergeant Hampton had put him straight. If the mission was aborted, Admiral Singh would have all the time in the world to finish scouting out the Commonwealth and then attack.
He met up with Sergeant Hampton as he waited with the van. “Plan B,” Blake said, feeling oddly tired. “I think you were right.”
“I told you so,” the older Sergeant said. He picked up his datapad. “Luckily, I have a lead on what we need.”
***
Jasmine hurt. Every inch of her body hurt, it felt, apart from her face. Sid had threatened to turn the neural whip on her skull, but his superior had forbidden him from trying – either because he wanted to show Jasmine that there was a way out or, more likely, because he knew that using a neural whip on someone’s skull could prove fatal. It was probably, she forced herself to remember, another piece of scripted acting for her benefit.
The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi Page 31
