The Fighter Queen

by John Bowers

"If it ever comes from the SE," Krieger said, "I'll have no choice but to deliver. Fortunately, the KK is a civilian agency." He ripped the document in two and dropped it on the floor. His eyes met Landon's again.

  "I don't work for the KK," he said.

  * * *

  Capt. Easton was waiting for him by the center fountain at the edge of the parade ground. The fountain was actually working at the moment, clear water gushing straight up and spreading a cooling mist on the breeze. Easton had four noncoms with him, standing around insolently like so many juvenile delinquents. As Landon approached, Easton straightened and put a scowl on his face.

  "I've been waiting for you, Colonel," he said grimly.

  Landon stopped walking and waited. They were almost equal height, Easton just a hair shorter. Easton had sandy hair and blue eyes, his face tanned and leathery, his muscles hard and sinewy; he was about thirty. Over a hundred of the prisoners had been under his command when they were captured during the second invasion of Beta Centauri.

  "I understand you threatened some of my men," Easton said testily. "You care to tell me about that?"

  Landon glanced at the other men and shook his head.

  "Not in front of enlisted personnel," he said. "You know the rules."

  Easton snorted, casting an amused glance at his friends.

  "You still worried about the rules?" he said. "Seems to me there's no JAG around here to enforce any rules!"

  "Yes, I still follow the rules, Captain. One of the rules is that we salute superior officers. Maybe you forgot that when I walked up?"

  "Fuck, Colonel! We're prisoners of war! This ain't no army any more."

  "Didn't you go to command school?"

  "Nope. Got my commission on the battlefield. Only place that counts."

  Landon grimaced. "Well let me fill you in; we are still officially listed on Federation rosters. We will remain there until we're either liberated or dead, whichever comes first. And in case you haven't been watching the news, the Federation is winning the war."

  Easton grinned without humor.

  "Big deal. So we took Beta Centauri. We still got to invade Vega, we still got to invade Sirius. No guarantees we'll win either of those battles. And even if we do, we might all be dead of old age."

  "We might be," Landon agreed. "But if we should live to see liberation, every single man will be held accountable for his conduct in captivity. Now, if you want to dismiss your enlisted men, I'll discuss the other matter with you."

  Easton glared for a moment, then nodded to the others, who drifted a few yards away. Easton turned steely eyes on Landon again.

  "I don't appreciate you disciplining my men," he said. "You're Fighter Service, we're Infantry. I don't need your interference."

  "You play poker, Captain?"

  "Sure. So what?"

  "In poker there are four suits — spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds."

  "So?"

  "In each suit, every card is ranked, one higher or lower than another."

  "What's your point?"

  "A king of one suit outranks a queen of another. It doesn't matter which branch of service you're in, Easton, rank runs from top to bottom, all the way down the line. I outrank you and I am therefore in command of your men, even if I wear a different uniform."

  Easton sneered. "We'll see about that."

  "No, we won't. It's official doctrine. You should have gone to command school."

  "Fuck that!"

  "I have the names of seven of your men who raped a young woman today. When liberation comes, they will be charged under the military code of conduct. Even if I'm no longer alive, I've made arrangements to see that they get charged. And you should know, Captain, that I will add more names to that list if any more rapes occur."

  Easton's face flushed scarlet.

  "Goddammit, Colonel! The Sirians rape these women all the time! It's not like they're virgins! Hell, we have orders to fuck them! You gonna charge all of us with rape? Even yourself?"

  "I understand the orders," Landon said patiently. "I've worked hard to get them rescinded, but Krieger won't budge. But we don't have to be brutal about it. When a girl is crying and begging a man to stop, he goddamn well better stop!"

  Easton's jaw muscles clenched and unclenched as he stood breathing heavily. Landon waited, not sure which way it was going to go. Finally the infantry captain took a step back.

  "In the future, Colonel, if you see my men doing anything wrong, I would appreciate it if you'd let me handle it. Chain of command sort of thing. All right?"

  Landon nodded agreement. "If you'd been there today, Captain, I would have done exactly that. But you might want to explain to your people that rape will not be tolerated. If you're going to be in command, then command, and we won't have any more problems."

  Easton nodded, still angry. Landon started to walk away, then stopped and turned back.

  "Aren't you forgetting something?" he demanded.

  Easton ground his teeth again, swallowed — and saluted.

  UFF Anwar Sadat, Deep Space

  May 2, 0237

  Dearest Onja,

  I wanted you to hear this from me first. We lost Rosemary Sunday night. She died peacefully and without distress. Her heart just gave out, in spite of all the medics could do. I don't think she ever really recovered from the shock of losing John, and these last few years she's been fading gradually into nothing. Now she's gone to a better place, and perhaps she'll be with her son again. God knows she loved him.

  I guess it seems strange to you that a hard‑bitten old man like me would say this, but I want you to know how much Rosemary loved you. John was her whole life, and she knew how much you loved him, too. That made you more special to her than you will ever know, and I'm eternally grateful to you for keeping in touch with her these past few years. I know it hasn't been easy for you, because you have plenty on your mind.

  Johnny is taking her loss pretty hard, because they were very close. He's young and he'll recover. I'm not so sure I will.

  You be careful, Onja. You're a pretty special girl, and I don't want to hear any more bad news. You're still a part of the family, and you always will be. You'll never know how proud I am of you, or how much you've meant to Rosemary and me.

  Love,

  Oliver

  Camp Hope, Missibama, Sirius 1

  As the highest rank of the eight hundred prisoners in Camp Hope, Landon had the nicest accommodations, two rooms in the east end of Barrack 1. Unlike most prisoners, who scrounged whatever they could find to decorate their meager quarters, Landon's rooms were spare, with only the original furniture — two narrow bunks, a wardrobe, footlocker, and in the second room, a table and two chairs. He had an electronic unit for heating food but preferred to eat with the men in the mess hall. The second bed had never been used, as Landon didn't keep a woman.

  Waukena slept like the dead for two days, mentally and physically exhausted. When she recoiled in terror the first time Landon roused her to feed her a little soup, he commandeered two other slave girls to take care of her. By the third day she was sitting up and able to walk around a little. Landon dismissed the girls.

  Waukena wasn't the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, but she did exude a powerful sexual magnetism. Landon didn't ask, but guessed her age at around twenty. Slender and willowy, she stood barely five feet tall and weighed in at probably ninety-five Terra pounds. Her face was oval, her lips full and sensuous, her slanted eyes dark and mysterious, her skin the color of charcoal. Her crowning glory was her luxurious black hair, which billowed out on all sides like a fountain; when she brushed it, the effect was spectacular. Landon knew, without question, what would happen if she returned to the camp population.

  "You don't have to stay here," he told her when they finally sat down to chat for the first time. "But if you don't, I can't promise that you'll be safe."

  "How will I be safe here?" she asked in a low, sultry voice.

  "My quarters are locked when I'm not
here," he said. "No one has ever tried to come in."

  "Then I will stay," she said simply.

  "There is one problem," he said, and she turned inquiring eyes on him. "How long have you been a slave?" he asked.

  She shrugged. "My whole life."

  "Have you been to other camps?"

  "No. I belonged to a Sirian officer. When he died his wife did not want me, so I was sent here."

  "But you know about the policy for girls? The medical checkups?"

  She lowered her head with a worried frown. "Yes. They explained it. I will be beaten if I do not have sex with the men." Her eyes glittered. "What will I do?"

  "You can go back into the main camp and take your chances. Or I can arrange for one or two men that I trust to come here. I promise I'll pick men who will respect you. You won't be raped again."

  She sat in thought for a moment, then met his eyes again.

  "What about you, Colonel? Do you have a woman?"

  Landon shook his head.

  "I don't approve of the policy." He hadn't slept with a woman in years.

  "But you would do it for me?" she asked hopefully.

  "No. I'm much too old for you."

  "My Sirian officer was sixty. He did not mind my age."

  "The simple truth is this: if the Sirians didn't force you into this situation, you would never choose a man my age. I'm not going to take advantage of you just because I can.”

  Landon left his quarters then, to make his daily rounds. The situation with Waukena troubled him. It reminded him too much of another woman, that one half his age, who'd also wanted to sleep with him — and succeeded. But that girl, much more beautiful than Waukena, hadn’t been under any coercion. She'd simply fallen in love with him, and he with her. It had been the briefest love affair of his life, and the most memorable. To this day, sixteen years later, he still carried the pain of losing her.

  She had become known as the Fighter Queen.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday, 14 June, 0237 (PCC) — FSS Robert MacNamara, Deep Space, 2 days out from Beta Centauri

  Disoriented, Capt. Ursula Negus opened her eyes and lay in the dark for a moment. Something had wakened her, but she had no idea what. No one else in the cabin seemed to be awake; gentle snores issued from the other racks.

  Ursula squinted at her wristwatch — she'd been asleep barely two hours. What was it? Something she heard? Something she felt?

  She listened.

  She heard nothing. No alarms, no shouts, just silence.

  Her gunner's instincts brought her upright in the rack. The star drives had stopped!

  The freighter had left Terra only five days ago, and wasn’t due at Beta Centauri until the day after tomorrow. Something must have happened.

  Pulling on her utilities, Ursula left the crew cabin and hurried down a companionway toward the wardroom. Someone was always there having coffee, taking a break from duty, shooting the shit. They might know what was going on.

  But the wardroom was empty.

  She passed on through, taking the lift to the command deck. Only merchant spacers were allowed up here, but the worst they could do was throw her out. She stepped out of the lift and looked both ways. A small knot of officers stood ten yards away, bent over a schematic console, studying it worriedly.

  "Excuse me?" Ursula said, approaching the trio.

  They looked up. Annoyance passed over the ranking mate's face.

  "You aren't supposed to be on this deck, Lieutenant," he said, deliberately demoting her because the ship could have only one "captain". She ignored the sleight.

  "I know," she said, offering him a smile as appeasement. "And I'm leaving right now, but — can you tell me what's going on?"

  "What do you mean?" Innocence dropped over his annoyance.

  "The star drives have stopped," she said. "Have we dropped out of hyperspace?"

  "Everything is normal," he said. "I assure you …"

  Ursula's smile vanished. "Don't bullshit me, Mister! The fucking star drives have gone silent. We can't be at Beta yet. Tell me the truth!"

  He grimaced unhappily. Merchant spacers had little love for military types, and it showed.

  "We do have a small problem," he admitted. "But we're working on it. I'm sure we'll have the problem fixed shortly and be on our way again."

  "I hope so," she said. "I'd hate to get stuck out here. We don't have a military escort, you know."

  "Thank you," he said acidly. "I wasn't aware of that."

  They exchanged glares for another heartbeat.

  "And now," he said, "if you will return to your own deck space …"

  Ursula returned the way she'd come, stopping in the wardroom for a cup of coffee. She sat down alone at the table, sipping it without really tasting it. For some reason she had a bad feeling about this. Call it instinct, call it intuition — this wasn't going to end well.

  Camp Hope, Missibama, Sirius 1

  Confederate Cpl. Bruno Turner wasn't a typical Sirian. He was one of a special class of Sirians that had emerged after the Vegan war of 0195, when extraordinary losses had convinced the Sirian military that a special breed of shock troops was needed. The army had tried using serf troops — forced conscripts of non-Aryan men — against the Vegan Guard, throwing them against Guard positions to soak up enemy fire and wear down the defenders. But the experiment hadn't been a complete success.

  Something else was needed.

  One of the little-acknowledged consequences of the Sirian class system was a steady stream of unwanted babies, children resulting from the unbridled abuse of serf and slave women. As these children grew to maturity, many, especially the boys, became social problems; much of the violent crime on Sirius was committed by such youth, and law enforcement responded harshly.

  Then someone had recognized the military value of such angry and mistreated young men. State orphanages had opened across the planet. Tens of thousands of unwanted infants were collected and became the property of the Confederacy. Girls were prepared for an eventual life of servitude, boys for the military.

  Bruno Turner was raised in the Texiana Boys Home, a pleasant enough name for a hellhole that had filled him with hatred and driven him to despair for as long as he could remember. His father had been a citizen teenager, his mother a forty-something serf of mixed heritage; he knew nothing about either of them, or even what his real name was.

  Bruno Turner hated everybody, especially serfs and slaves. He loved to fight, lusted to kill, and had trained as a soldier since he was ten years old. When he reached military age, he'd been inducted into the shock troop program, but never made it into a combat unit. Instead, he'd been assigned to prison camp duty, which shamed and insulted him.

  Camp Hope was his third assignment; his excessive brutality had enraged his previous commanders to the point they'd transferred him, but never to a fighting unit. More than anything, Bruno wanted to kill, and if he couldn't kill on the battlefield, he would kill whenever he got the chance.

  Killing was what he lived for.

  * * *

  Star Marine Cpl. Kevin Willis looked up from his databook as Rocky Yamaguchi entered the quarters they shared in Barrack 23. Rocky had recovered from his Periscope Harbor wounds, though he still suffered occasional pain. They'd been at Camp Hope almost five years now, with no end in sight. Unofficial reports claimed the Federation was winning the war, but it was taking a long damn time.

  Rocky sat down on the edge of his bunk and rested his elbows on his knees. His face looked flushed, and he was breathing heavily.

  "What's the matter with you?" Willis asked, frowning slightly.

  "You remember that little slave girl you like so much, the Rukrainian?"

  "Irina? Yeah, what about her?"

  "She's dead."

  Willis sat upright, alarm in his eyes. "What happened?"

  "Take a guess." Rocky's dark eyes burned feverishly at him.

  It only took Willis a second. "Bruno?"

  "Yeah. Tha
t motherfucker has raped every girl in this camp, only that ain't good enough for him. He tortures them, too. He left that Siriochinese girl with brain damage last year, and that gorgeous little black number has a claw for a hand after he broke all her fingers. And I've heard other stories, too, things he did before we got here."

  Willis swung his feet to the floor, anger burning in his chest.

  "Why doesn't Krieger get rid of him?"

  "Krieger's a pussy. He's got it good here. Doesn't have to fight, lets his men manage the prisoners — he's got it made. Anyway, Bostwick told me Bruno's already been transferred twice from other camps because he was too hard on the prisoners. Bostwick thinks Krieger's afraid to transfer him again, in case the Confeds will decide Bruno's a lost cause and just shoot his goddamned ass."

  "What's wrong with that? Fucker deserves to die."

  "No argument here."

  Willis sat thinking for a moment, then glanced up at Rocky again.

  "What did Bruno do to Irina?"

  "Beat her head against the floor until her skull cracked."

  "And Krieger's gonna do nothing about it?"

  Rocky shrugged. "I dunno."

  They wandered out of the barrack and joined a growing knot of prisoners who'd heard the news. An undercurrent of suppressed rage ran through the men. The slave girls were important to the prisoners, the only relief they had from the boredom and the uncertainty of their future. Many had favorite girls and a few had fallen in love. Except for some of Capt. Easton's men, most of the Infantry and Star Marines felt protective toward them.

  "I tell ya," one Infantry sergeant said to no one in particular, "that Bruno has got to go."

  "I say we ambush the motherfucker," someone else said.

  "We should talk to the Colonel."

  "Fuck that. Landon has no suck with Krieger, at least not when Krieger's men are involved. We got to take care of this ourselves."

  "Yeah, and then what? They lock the whole fucking camp down and take the girls away! Is that what you want?"

  "Better than letting Bruno murder the girls."

  "Bullshit. Best thing to do is just make sure the girls are never alone around him."