“Come on, punkins,” she said. The girls were staring enormous-eyed at the two Draka; Iris’s lips were caught between her teeth as she fought rhythmically against her sobs. “We have to do what the man says.”
“Mom!” Janet said, scandalized. “Those—those are strangers!”
The red dot settled on her daughter’s face. Shoulder blades crawling, Cindy put herself between the gun and Janet, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Come on, you silly girl,” she forced herself to say, harshly. “Quickly.”
The Draka in the doorway held up what looked like a medical injector. “Docilize?” he said to the other.
“Na, quicker if we let her handle the sprats,” he said. “Don’ have time to fuck around.” He looked at her, up and down, and grinned. “Pity. Maybe latah.” Reached out, quite casually, and grabbed her crotch.
Cindy closed her eyes and gritted teeth. Then something windmilled by her and struck the Draka with a thump. It was Janet.
“You bad man! Leggo my mom! Leggo!” The five-year-old was clinging to the man’s harness with one hand and trying earnestly to punch him with the other, while her feet flailed at his stomach. “You let go, or I’ll kill you!” Iris started to scream, shrill high-pitched sounds like an animal in a trap.
The Draka snarled, rearing his head back and raising the arm with the gun to club at Janet. Cindy felt a great calm descend as she readied herself; reach down and immobilize the left hand, strike up with the palm under his nose . . .
A hand snaked in with the injector and pressed it against Janet’s side. It hissed, and the girl slumped; not unconscious, just drifting with her eyes half-closed. The Draka with the drug gun laughed and reached around her to plant the muzzle against Iris’s neck.
“Dociline,” he said to her as the screaming stopped. “Trank. Haa’mless.” To his companion: “Let’s get on with it.”
She huddled back with her children as they ransacked the cabin, giving the comfort of skin against skin that was all she had to offer. The two warriors went systematically through the tiny closet and the bulkhead containers. Cindy noticed what they took: books, letters, data plaques, her new Persimmon 5 portable perscomp that Fred had got from the PX, all stuffed into a transparent holder. One of them came across her jewelry, but that went into a pouch at his belt.
“Right,” the one with the face painting said when they had finished. “You. Hold out y’arms. Togethah.” A loop went around her elbows, painfully tight; she could use her hands, but awkwardly. “Now, listen good. You take the picknins, an’ we’re goin’ up to the top level. An’ wench—any trouble an’ we kill you spawn. Understand?” She gave a tight nod. “Go.”
Cindy gathered her daughters with slow care; they had curled into fetal positions floating near her, and it would be easy to bruise them if she moved too quickly. She kicked her feet into the ripstick slippers on the floor and began to step out into the corridor. The man who had groped her earlier reached out one hand and stripped the briefs off her with a wrench as she went by. “Later,” he said.
“Is that the last of them?” Yolande asked, as the woman steered the two children into the lounge.
“Yes, ma’am,” the Centurion said. “ ’Cept fo’ the one who gave us trouble.”
“Number Two,” she said, “target secured. Reel her in an’ run a tube over to the airlock on this level.”
“Makin’ it so, Cohortarch. Twenty seconds to commencement.”
“Silence!” she called to the crowd of prisoners through the exterior speaker on her helmet. “Everybody brace themselfs.”
There were about eighty of them, milling about at the far end of the grubby lounge. Most had been wearing skinsuits, and so were nearly stripped; she looked at them with disgust. This is the enemy? Flabby, soft-gutted rubbish, she thought. A few had been docilized. Those thumped painfully against the wall when the ship lurched again, and so did a few of the fully conscious ones. Sheep. There was an almost imperceptible feeling of sideways acceleration for a few minutes, and then the cables went slack; the Subotai would be backing off with her attitude jets, to reestablish zero relative motion.
“Line them up,” she continued.
Her troopers moved in, prodding with their gauntlet guns. A moment of trouble from two young men, stocky-muscular; they looked like they played—what was that absurd Yankee sport? Football? A flurry of dull thudding sounds and they were against the wall with the others, one clutching his groin, the other a flattened nose that leaked blood in drifting red globules. Three more figures floated up through the central batch. A wounded Draka with a long cut through the belly section of her armor, hands to a pad over the wound, helped by a comrade. Then a prisoner trussed hand and foot. Hand and elbows, rather; one forearm ended in a frayed stump covered in glistening sprayseal, typical gauntlet-gun wound.
“What happened with him?” the Centurion asked.
“Had a fukkin’ sword,” the wounded Draka said, between clenched teeth. Soft impact armor gave excellent protection against projectiles, but very little against something sharp and low-velocity. “Under his pallet covers. I blew his hand off on the backswing.”
“Careless,” the Centurion said. There were clanging noises and voices from the background, as the tube was secured and the airlock opened on the temporary seal between the two vessels. “McReady, get her back to sickbay. Bring up the rest of the bodies.”
Yolande reached up to remove her helmet, wrinkling her nose at the proof that some of the prisoners had lost control of their bowels. She looked at the one-handed man. Black-Asian, she guessed, about fifty. Wiry and strong, stone-faced under her gaze. Shock, part of that calm, but that was one with a hard soul. It would not do to underestimate them all; few of the Alliance peoples were natural warriors, but they could learn, and the Americans in particular had a damnable trader’s cunning that made them capable of all manner of surprises. I wish they hadn’t brought the picknins. She pushed the children’s sobbing below the surface of her mind. Now—
Cindy forced herself to take her eyes off the raw stump of Professor Takashi’s hand. She tried to imagine what that would feel like, failed, raised her eyes to his face. He was smiling; that was almost as shocking as the wound.
The Draka commander was removing her helmet. A woman, she saw without surprise. The face was huge-eyed, triangular, delicately feminine, haloed in short platinum-colored hair. Then the eyes met hers, and she shivered slightly.
“This one?” the Draka said, to the man holding Takashi.
“Cybernetic Systems Analysis,” the guard said.
“Lucky fo’ us you didn’t get killed,” the woman said genially.
The dark man shook his head, smiling more broadly. “Not so—ah!” he shook once, slumped. The guard cursed, felt for his pulse.
“Dead,” he spat. “Must’ve taken something.”
The commander turned back toward the prisoners. “Listen,” she said, and all fidgeting died away. The voice was deliberately pitched rather low, so that they would have to strain to hear it; it was soft, naturally light, Cindy thought.
“Yo will, starting at the right, go one by one to that table.” She pointed to one where a group of Draka were going through the identity documents of the passengers. “You will state you name and profession, and answer all other questions. Then go back to that end of the line. Understood, serfs?”