“Over there, in the bag,” he said. “There should be something for prisoners. Careful.”
She pulled out a roll of fluorescent-yellow nanopore tape used to bind wrists. It leached its bright color into the skin, creating a visual trace that announced you’d been nabbed; the substance was also rumored to be traceable by Directorate sensors.
In the red light, the tape glowed bright, and it unrolled silently as she began to bind his left wrist to the honeycombed aluminum base of one of the jump seats running along the interior of the carrier.
“Whoa, I thought we were going to tie you up,” he said.
“Are you scared?” she asked. “A big guy like you?”
She stepped back, tape still in hand, and slid out of the dress, now fully naked. “Frisk me if you want, there’s no weapons on this insurgent.”
“Okay, but only my left hand,” he said. “Leave the other free. You may be beautiful, but you’re still an American.”
She responded by stepping forward, kneeling before him, and placing a kiss on his navel. Seeing him nod in pleasure, she continued to tie his left wrist to the seat post. She kissed him again and then abruptly stopped. A look of pity came over her face, followed by her gleaming smile washed in the red light.
She reached back into the bag where she’d found the nanopore tape and pulled out a folding knife with a five-inch blade.
His right hand started to reach out fast, but before he could grab her wrist, she placed the knife in his open palm, the blade still locked shut.
“See, nothing to fear,” she said.
She kissed him, starting with his ears, then his chin, and then his neck, drawing out her progress until she stopped at his belt buckle. She reached up and held his free hand, still holding the closed knife. The metallic snap of the blade flashing open was easily heard above the rhythmic piano.
“What are you doing?” he said. The knife was open in his right hand, and her fingers wrapped around his, closing his fingers around the handle.
Their two clasped hands together, she raised the knife to right in front of her eyes, admiring the sharp edge from up close, its black anodized blade reflecting none of the red light.
Then she drove their clasped hands down, directing the blade’s tip toward her chest.
She stopped the blade’s descent when there was just the faintest pressure on the skin right above her heart. A light prick drew a single drop of blood. It happened so quick, he was too surprised to scream, and he sucked in air that should have come out in a howl but could not. She closed her eyes and breathed deep, seeming to savor the moment.
“See, it’s okay,” she purred. “You can trust me.”
“I don’t think so…” he said.
“Don’t be scared, you’ll always have the knife to do whatever you want. I just need my hands free now for something else, a little more fun. See, I’ll even make sure you don’t lose your long knife in all the… excitement.”
He nodded. And she began to wrap the tape around the hand that held the knife, the blade emerging out along the pinkie finger. Then she took that hand and pointed the knife at her neck, poised just above her jugular vein.
“See, just like your army, you’ll be in control,” she whispered.
The blade in his hand then followed her down the same path she’d taken before, always an inch from her neck, until she stopped at his belt buckle. She looked up at him and smiled.
With a movement so fast it was hard to see, her hands brought the knife in toward him, and the blade slashed through the leather of his belt; his pants fell to the APC’s floor.
“You’re going to have to explain this one to your commanding officer,” she said.
He laughed. “Let’s stop the games. Come here.”
She slid forward and up again onto his naked body. Leaning with all her weight, she pressed her body onto his, his arm with the blade now wrapped behind her, pulling her in close. Her hands caressed his face, and he started to say something.
“Shhh, now the fun really starts,” she said.
In an instant, Carrie slapped a strip of the nanopore tape over his mouth and nose.
Instinct took over and he didn’t even try to cut her as she slithered quickly down to the floor and then just out of reach. Instead, he began frantically trying to cut the tape binding his hand to the chair. The tape held. He grunted, sucking the tape over his mouth as he tried to breathe, and he looked at her, his eyes angry and then almost begging.
Carrie tilted her head slightly and studied him, watching silently as he awkwardly turned the taped hand with the blade back at himself, the angle just not looking right, almost like a toddler trying to feed himself holding the utensil the wrong way.
He poked the blade at first, tentatively trying to create a holes in the bright yellow tape that covered his mouth. But when he couldn’t cut the tape and instead just pushed it inward against the bubble of air trapped beneath, he quickly grew more desperate.
He looked at her and gave a piteous whimper as he saw her expressionless study of him. He stabbed harder, and the sharp blade finally sliced through the tape and into his lower lip and tongue.
He grunted with pain, unable to fully scream. A spray of blood marked with the yellow leaching color shot outward from the slit in the tape. He tried to suck in air through the half-inch-long slit, but the blood welled inside his mouth, choking him, and another burst of yellow bubbles and red blood spouted from the gash in the tape. He tried to use the blade to widen the opening in the tape, gasping through the thin slit. In his frenzy, he didn’t even notice the weight of Carrie’s hand, now back again on the knife.
USS Zumwalt, Rail-Gun Turret
Two hundred years ago, a wind like this would have played on a sailing ship’s rigging with a wonderful harmony, thought Mike. On the Zumwalt, the twenty-five-knot wind merely sounded like someone had turned up the air conditioning. Just another reason to hate this ship.
He snatched another glance at Vern, worming her way inside the rail-gun turret to double-check the wiring harnesses that kept shaking loose. She had not spoken once during the past hour. Somewhere above them, Secretary of Defense Claiburne was glad-handing the crew, speaking in the easy, confident drawl that to Mike always sounded like she had just finished a modest glass of neat bourbon.
The tension Vern carried in her shoulders made her look like she was bracing for a crash.
Mike shook his head and eased his way into the turret. Wordlessly he opened the turret hatch and let the rush of salt air fill the small area. For a moment, the space smelled of somewhere far away in his imagination he rarely visited, the scent of a woman and the sea. Then the acrid smell of hot plastic and ozone returned.
“Three minutes, Dr. Li. You best wrap things up.”
Ship Mission Center, USS Zumwalt, eBay Park, San Francisco
The bridge had been the command center of ships going back to the time of Noah, but like so much else in the Zumwalt class, the Navy designers had decided to make something new, different, and big. The ship mission center stood two stories high, the bottom level filled with four rows of sailors seated at computer workstations, and a second level with a balcony for the officers to watch down, almost like an interior bridge of the ship. On the walls were massive liquid-crystal screens that displayed the ship’s location and systems’ status and, at the moment, the third inning of the Giants game. It was that particular screen that held Secretary Claiburne’s attention, a pitcher’s-cap-cam focusing in on the squinting eyes behind the catcher’s faceplate. The pitcher then pivoted and threw out the runner on first, ending the inning.