Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (58 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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Ia snatched her sword out of its scabbard again, this time flourishing it on the other side of his head. Whirling it back to the sheath, she slid it back into place. Again he blinked, and again a moment later, hesitantly shook his head. More locks fluttered down.
If he hadn’t been leaning against the wall as he was, chained so firmly in place that he couldn’t really move much, she wouldn’t have dared. While she had taken the time to repaint the flaked-off spots silver again, her blade was still what it was, beneath the gilt disguising its nature: Deadly sharp.
He swallowed and lifted his chin again. “I’m not scared.”
Again, she smiled slowly. “You should be.”
“Of what, a big-asteroid razor?” he countered.
This time, she drew her sword slowly. Bringing the pointed tip of the schlager down on the spreader bar resting in front of his shins, she tapped it with a
ting-ting-tinngg
. “This bar—indeed, the whole setup confining you—was crafted for us by the station’s machine shop while you were unconscious. It’s made from solid steel.”
Whipping the blade around, she whacked the bar with a
TANG
that echoed through the cell and out into the rest of the brig. It bounced against its bindings with a clatter of loops and eyelets . . . and something else
tingtinged
onto the floor. Point now hovering close to his throat, pinning him in place without a word, Ia slowly bent and scooped up that sliver. Eyes locked with the prisoner’s, she rose and displayed the slice of metal. It was nearly ten centimeters long, slightly oval and pointed and both ends. Her blade descended, tapping the spreader bar once more.
“Solid. Steel.”
The bar looked like it had been flattened in a narrow, pointed oval roughly ten centimeters long. Brown eyes wide, he stared at the shaved section between his knees, the sword in her right hand, the sliver in her left, and her face. Back to the bar, to the blade, the sliver . . . and her face.
“What the
shakk is
that thing?” he whispered, watching the tip of the blade rise with visible fear in his gaze.
“You know, I’m really not quite sure,” she quipped, tucking the sliver of metal into her shirt pocket. “I just like to call it the Reaper’s Blade . . . for it will cut down anything, and anyone, that gets in my way.”
“So, what does that make you?” her would-be assassin challenged, regathering some of his attitude. “Death?”
Ia shook her head at the sneered word, her tone soft, almost gentle. “No. I am not Death. I am merely Her herald. I stand before you now, ahead of the coming of Lady Death, singing a warning to all to get out of her way. And you,” she murmured, tapping the tip of the blade very, very lightly against the flat section of the bar in between each phrase,
ting
, “—are in—”
ting
, “the way.”
Ting . . . ting . . . ting . . .
The slow, rhythmic tap was barely audible. Quiet enough, they could all hear the ventilators whooshing faintly, feel the faint
thrum
of the ship’s generators. Sense the soft intake and exhale of each person’s breath. Like a wind chime in the distance, it seemed almost sweet, each tap somewhere between metallic and crystalline. She kept tapping the bar, tap . . . tap . . .
ting
. . .
ting
. . . and stopped.
Silence stretched. Her eyes never wavered, though her eyes itched with dryness from holding his gaze.
“Ohhh, Death. Ohh, ohhh Death. Ohhh Death . . . The herald came, the herald said, Death is comin’ to claim Her dead. No wealth, no weapons, no silver nor gold, nothing will stop Her hands so cold . . . Ohhh Death,”
she sang softly, quietly, paraphrasing an old Appalachian dirge. Bracing her knee on the edge of the cot, she stared him down, and pinned him down, with the ancient melody.
“Will She spare your soul another year?”
Ting.
Ting.
Ting.
The blade stopped striking the bar, suspending sound, song, and everything for a long, long moment.
“I am Her herald,” Ia whispered, lifting her free hand toward his face. “And
your
death is near.”
Her fingers skimmed over his skin. Slid. Stayed.
Ia dragged him into the future, and forced him through Time itself. Force-fed him just a fraction of what she herself endured, in a fraction of the time he needed to consciously comprehend.
His breath hissed inward in a long, pained inhale, then hurled outward again in a scream, body bucking to try and get away. An unending, repeating, breath-catching series of screams. She jerked her sword arm back and away, as much to keep her two startled superiors out of the room as to prevent the prisoner from injuring himself. Her left hand stayed glued to his cheek, riding through his frantic thrashing.
“Enough!”
The shout came from General Sranna. Gentling her touch, Ia hauled her target’s mind out of the timestreams. She mentally shook his dripping, chilled soul dry, and settled him back into his body. Pushing off from the cot, she released the prisoner. He shuddered and panted, eyes blinking rapidly without seeing. Ia waited patiently while he recovered.
Finally, he focused on her with a last trio of blinks. Ia tapped the spreader bar with the tip of her blade, once more sending that cold, cold chime ringing through the cell.
Ting . . . Ting . . . Ting.
“You will tell me . . . everything. And you will tell it to me before I open the gates to hell.” She let the implications otherwise sink in, blade shifting but not quite touching the partially carved bar. “Who your masters are.”
Ting.
“Why they stole our soldiers.”
Ting.
“Where they were being taken.”
Ting.
“What is to be done to them.”
Ting.
“And when it will be done.”
Ting.
“Everything,”
she commanded, and spread the fingers of her left hand, not quite reaching for his face.
Pale and shaking, swallowing hard under the implacable weight of her gaze and the unspoken threat of her touch, he complied.
 
“How the
hell
did you do that, soldier?” General Sranna demanded as soon as they were outside in the corridor. At least he had waited until both cell and brig doors were shut, but this wasn’t the place for that question.
Ia held up her right hand, stalling his own interrogation. With her sword re-sheathed, she was free to do so. The sliver of steel was still caught in the fingertips of her left hand. “With respect, sir, I’d rather wait until we were somewhere private?”
Sranna looked at Sudramara, who lifted his chin at the nearby lifts. “My office.”
They held their silence all the way up to Deck 3 and into the captain’s quarters. Only after Sudramara ordered the petty officer on duty in the front half of his office to hold all requests and sealed the door to the back half of his office did Ia speak.
“You wanted to know how I got him to talk?” she asked both men. Sudramara nodded and gestured for them to take a seat in one of the quartet of chairs grouped in the corner across from his desk. Sranna nodded and spoke.
“That, and how the hell you cut off a chunk of solid steel with a flimsy little blade,” the lieutenant general stated, settling into one of the seats. “Unless you prepped it somehow beforehand, like a magician readying a stage trick?”
Sudramara gestured toward the caf’ dispenser in the corner of his office. Sranna nodded. Ia shook her head. She remained on her feet as Sudramara fetched two mugs of the hot drink. As much as Ia wanted to claim it was just a trick, she knew she had to be honest with her superiors. Lying outright in this moment would come back to bite her on the backside a few years down the road. Even if technically she was protected by precog’s law, she knew she had to tread a lot closer to the truth than that.
“For the first part . . . you heard what he said,” Ia reminded them. “This ‘Lyebariko’ has been gathering information on the TUPSF’s actions in this corner of space, and specifically on all the ships involved in thwarting their attempts at taking over the Oberon Mining & Refinery Consortium. They knew enough, and were powerful enough, to bait their trap not only with the best and brightest in live entertainment, but they came
prepared
for me.
“The fact that I am resistant to electrosonic shocks, including stunner grenades, sirs, is buried in my military file. Deep in my files,” Ia emphasized. “At the insistence of the Department of Innovations and the Department of Military Security. They don’t want that information out in the general public, as much to give the Marines an ongoing edge as to keep people from taking random potshots at me with other weapons. Yet these people tracked me down with an air gun loaded with tranquilizer darts. Not with a stunner pistol, or another stunner grenade. They came after me with tranquilizers.
“That flunky came into this
knowing
my reputation. Or rather, having heard about it thirdhand.” She shrugged her shoulders, hands resting lightly on her hips. “Hearing about it, and being faced with the reality of it, are two different things. Even in the criminal undergalaxy, it’s rare to be surrounded by literally a body’s worth of spilled blood. Never mind the blood from two bodies. I just . . . used that reputation. Played psychological games with him, which I reinforced with the tapping of my blade. Sort of a . . . a death knell sound effect, if you will.”
“And the screaming when you touched his face?” Captain Sudramara asked.
Ia smirked. “My hands can sometimes get a bit cold and clammy. Particularly when I’m nervous. It was an important interrogation. I used it, hoping that those lines about Death’s cold hands reaching for his soul would still be lingering in his brain. Which they apparently were. Combine the song, the sound effects, the fact that I am one scary-crazy bitch by reputation . . . and it all combines into one pure punch to his gut from psychology.”
“Either you are one lucky meioa, or you really
are
one cold, crazy, calculating bitch.” Sranna saluted her with his mug. “Not bad, meioa. Not bad at all. If you ever want to change branches, the Special Forces just might want to snatch you up for their Intelligence Division.”
“I’d rather indulge in a clear-cut fight, General. More blood upon my hands, but less blood upon my soul. Speaking of which . . .” Drawing her sword, she carefully balanced the blade between her hands. Turning to first the captain, then the general, she let them have a close enough look, but pulled the blade back before Sranna could touch the edge. “Please don’t touch. It’s far sharper than you think.”
“It looks like it’s cheap, chrome-coated plexi up close. There’s even some chipping in the metal coating a short distance from the tip,” Sranna observed.
“That’s because it
is
coated.” Shifting her grip carefully, mindful of the double, sharp edges, she scraped her fingernail over the blade, peeling back some more of the paint. The patch she revealed was an odd transparent gold, as if the blade were made of glass. “Silver gilt, to make it look like plain steel.”
“What lies underneath?” Sranna asked.
“We don’t know, exactly,” she hedged. At their chiding looks, she shrugged and straightened, blade still cradled lightly in her hands. “It’s a native mineral on my homeworld. Geological, mineralogical, and chemical scientists have been trying to make heads or tails of it since the planet was first accidentally discovered by its colonists. They were supposed to be headed for a heavyworld of 2.73gs, and ended up at Sanctuary instead. Since Sanctuary has an atmosphere, and their original plans were for a dome colony, they decided to settle there instead. That’s when they found this stuff.
“The planet is dusted with patches of giant crystal sprays. Most of them grow in octagonal patterns, with many of the shafts looking almost square and growing as thick as a Human’s thigh or head. But a rare few grow these thin, diamond-shaped shafts. Some of the locals call them Devil’s Sticks, but the official term is
crysium
.”
Sranna blinked. “I believe I’ve heard of that stuff. It replaced the compound trinium lonsdaleite as the hardest known substance by . . . what, twenty times? Plus there was something about how they couldn’t actually break off a sample, and had to chip off an entire spray to ship it to a lab?”

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