Freehold (69 page)

Finally, Marta stretched and turned. "You were faking," she said factually.

"I was very close. I'm glad you enjoyed it," Kendra replied.

"I did. I guess you've got a lot of things stressing you. I'm not imposing, am I?" Marta asked, fingers tracing down Kendra's ribs again.

"You can't impose, dear," Kendra assured her. "If you need me, I'm here."

"I know," Marta said, but she sounded reassured. "Thanks for faking."

Flushing, Kendra said, "I'm sorry—"

"Don't be!" Marta insisted. "Can you even guess how many times I faked it for someone else's pleasure? As long as you don't lie about it, there's nothing wrong with it."

They snuggled in close and drifted asleep. Kendra felt relaxed for the first time in weeks, and slept well.

She spoke to Dr. Wuu again the next day. She felt affronted as the counselor dragged information out of her about the battle in Delph'. It hurt more to discuss it than leave it lie, she thought, but she went along with the program.

"This isn't really what's bothering you, is it?" Wuu asked, sipping apple juice. She always looked utterly relaxed as she dissected someone's soul. "You keep trying to justify their actions as understandable, even acceptable. So tell me about your experiences generally, about why you feel responsible."

Kendra grimaced and growled. She was frustrated enough to want to scream. "It's just war. We murdered and crippled people daily," she said.

"And you feel that justifies them raping and torturing prisoners, just because of frustration? There are accepted rules of engagement, you know," Wuu replied.

"Goddammit, I know!" Kendra shouted. "But murder was a part of it, so why not rape and torture?" she panted, pulse throbbing. "I gapped a few people who were trying to surrender, because there was no way to drag them along. Technically, that was an atrocity. I shot people at several hundred meters, who had even less idea what was happening and had no chance to surrender, but that's legally okay. So is planting bombs. Roughing up prisoners for intel is wrong, leaving them shrieking in agony as you retreat is okay. Why is any of it considered acceptable? Where do we draw the line? Why is murder acceptable?"

" 'Murder' is a specific crime of wrongful killing. It legally and morally does not apply to self defense, defense of another or killing in battle. We must keep our terms precise. The semantics define how we think," Wuu said.

"
What I did
—" Kendra shouted, and stopped.

"Yes?" Wuu prodded.

Kendra said nothing, looking down at her hands. She felt a wall crumble inside. That wasn't what was bothering her. She knew what was and she could never, ever admit it.

"Did you like killing, Kendra? Is that why you think of it as murder?" Wuu asked.

No answer.

"Did you enjoy watching them die? Hearing them scream? Was it a thrill to shoot them, crush them, stab them?" she probed in a monotone.

No answer.

"Did it excite you?" she asked. Again no response. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she asked, "Did it make you wet?"

"Fuck. You. You. Bitch." The words ground out from between clenched teeth in a hoarse whisper. Kendra shook in a rage she'd never before felt.

In a light conversational tone, Wuu asked, "Is that why you try to defend them? As mortification of the flesh for your sins committed?"

Kendra stood, whirled and swung her arm hard enough to pull muscles. Her glass shattered in the fireplace, throwing shards for meters. She stood panting, wide-eyed.

Wuu said nothing, just sat and waited patiently. She gave no indication of distress from the outburst, nor when Kendra stormed into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle. Several gulps of liquor burned down her throat and set her stomach afire. She gripped the counter, knuckles white and stared with watering eyes at nothing. Finally sighing, she returned to the common room.

"I suppose you're going to tell me that's a natural reaction?" she said, tears and sarcasm dripping.

"You're a human being. Anything you do is natural. It may be rarer in some than others, depending on the reaction, but they are all natural," Wuu said.

"I enjoyed killing them," Kendra admitted. "It might be 'normal' if they were vicious animals or brutal thugs, but they were just here to do a job," she said.

"And it was your job to stop them. Were you good at it?" Wuu asked.

"Of course I was good. I'm alive, aren't I?" she retorted.

"Is that bad?"

"No . . . but . . . they . . ." Kendra began. She stopped.

"They were from your society," Wuu finished. Kendra nodded.

"Killing is a brutal, vicious, dangerous job," Wuu said. "Empathy for the enemy delays your reactions and gets you killed. It is
necessary
to think of them as nonhuman, as 'krauts,' 'gooks,' or 'aardvarks,' to enable you to shut off the civilized part of your brain and revert to the killer mentality. By thinking of your own culture as nonhuman, you degraded yourself. You took justifiable delight in being good at an almost impossible task, made tougher by your relationship to the enemy, and succeeding. By enjoying death, you violated your moral principles. By feeling the typical hormonal response that provokes the same reaction as sexual excitement, you felt dirty. This was reinforced by your religious training, which taught you that sex is a private, holy matter. Your church's cultural concept of penance makes you feel that you deserve a sexual punishment for a sexual sin. The odds of war brought one to you. You feel ashamed and violated by your attack, but also feel you deserved it, so you feel ashamed at feeling that shame. Intellectually, you realize a conflict, but cannot describe it," Wuu said. It was the longest speech she'd made.

She continued, "Warfare is hard to accept for many people. It is easier for those raised here, because we maintain a martial aspect to our culture that most do not. Can you name for me one act of yours that violated the Conventions?"

"I shot prisoners," she said.

"Prisoners you couldn't take charge of, whose release would have compromised your unit. Their deaths were tactically necessary to your mission. Was it against the Conventions? Yes. Was it murder? No, it was warfare. Did you allow or participate in any torture or rape? Deliberately harm civilians?"

"I smacked prisoners around for intel," Kendra said. "I needed to find out where they were based. We killed a lot we found doing . . . things. Then we started killing them whether they surrendered or not. And we smashed a few, outright murder just for belonging to the other side. And there were some I . . . hacked to pieces in frustration," she admitted, eyes closed in pain and shame.

"Most of that treatment of prisoners was to protect the civilians supporting your rebels, correct?" Wuu asked, and Kendra nodded. "Technically a crime, but you were protecting civilians, which they should have helped you to do. It gets very hazy in war as to who is combatant and who is not. The days of 'name, rank and service number' are gone, if they ever existed in real life. That's why troops are never told more than they need to know. You were gathering information to protect your home from invaders. As far as the outright killing, it happens in
every
war. About thirty percent of all combatants violate the conventions. Many of them enjoy it. They often feel guilty when they get home, because they are thrown back into polite company where theoretical ideals overcome practicality. Revenge is not legally recognized, but is very common and a very human emotion. I have some bad news for you, Kendra," Wuu said. Kendra looked up to meet her eyes.

"You're civilized."

The irony of it caused Kendra to laugh herself into more tears.

Wuu smiled back and said, "You applied your talents to being the best killer you could be, did it well, never let your feelings get in the way of that killing. You did attack some simply for being the enemy, but the provocation offered makes it understandable if not right. And you now feel remorse over your actions, indicating an intact moral sense. You had a bizarre environment to deal with and you did deal."

"So why do I feel so bad about it?" Kendra asked.

"I don't know. You tell me," Wuu said, reverting to her questioning self.

It was more anxious days before a conclusion was reached about Rob. Rostov called and she hurried in for a conference. He seemed relaxed when she rushed in and she took that as a good sign. "You have news?" she asked breathlessly.

"We do," he nodded. "There's a second tier effect to the nano that was not obvious at first. The hallucinations are deliberate damage by the first routine. The second routine is attacking his flight-control implant and generating images and inputs there, which are highly confusing, since they can't be referenced to a cockpit environment. Then, as the devices fail, they are attaching themselves to the module and creating control problems. The design on this bastard—" it was the first time Kendra had heard him be anything other than dispassionate "—is the work of a truly sick genius. This team is the best in the system, and it took us weeks to figure it out.

"Additionally, as our counter attacked the infection, it built up more plaque on the module and created more, but subtly different, hallucinations. And it is self-replicating. It degrades with time, of course, but it will keep regenerating toxic levels. And there's a standard biovirus that is symbiotic with it that keeps it fed with the enzymes it needs. We're trying to kill that first. It looks like they feed each other to perpetuate the effect and when they find a module they generate the second effect to disable that, too. It's worse for pilots and interface programmers than for anyone else. We can't prove that was a deliberate design, but I'll put money on it.

"Your efforts here may have saved not only Rob, but the seven others who either have no next of kin or whose we cannot contact and are harder to interact with. We owe you."

"No you don't. It's my duty as a soldier and as his friend." She wanted nothing to do with this disgusting weapon, even as part of the cure. She continued, "I'm guessing you have another counter-agent?"

Rostov ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, actually, no," he said. "The existing therapy is sound and the side effects of additional nano-loading would be very unpleasant. And this agent is
very
pervasive. We aren't likely to get it all, and the combined effect would manifest again. So the bad news is that he can never fly again, no matter what happens."

Kendra took that in in a cold shock. "That'll kill him," she said, trembling. "Do you know how important flying is to him?"

Rostov nodded. "From his spoken dreams and flight record, I can guess. But the damage is not repairable with current technology. I'm sorry." He seemed very embarrassed by the limits of his capabilities.

"Well, then," she sighed. "I guess you do what you have to."

Kendra sat waiting, impatient but still. Rob had come through the removal of his implant in fine shape. A created virus destroyed its structure and the residue of both flushed out in the bloodstream. He was kept lightly sedated as the counter-virus was readministered and then allowed to wake. He stirred and Kendra became alert. His eyes opened.

"Morning," she said simply.

"Hi," he replied. "Raging hangover."

"It will get worse," she assured him. "The counter-virus is working this time."

"Huh?" he muttered. "To counter what?"

"The hallucinogen you picked up at Braided Bluff," she explained. Rostov had said there might be minor confusion and memory damage. She held her breath for an answer.

"Oh. Right," he said. "It worked this time?" He suddenly sat up, leaned over and vomited hard. She stood and ran to help him.

"It's working," she said when he stopped. "But you will still be experiencing hallucinations as it flushes out."

He gagged again momentarily. "How bad?" he asked raggedly.

"Worse than before," she admitted. He sat and was still, staring into space. Then he chuckled.

"Well," he said, "I may as well enjoy the good bits while they last." He laughed out loud, pointing at something only he could see. He calmed again in a few moments. "This must be hard on you," he thought aloud.

"You have no idea," she said, feeling scared, nauseous, protective, disgusted. A spectrum of emotions tumbled through her and she tried hard to suppress them.

He interrupted her meditation. "How's Marta?"

"Better," she admitted. "She was scared, that's all."

"Why?" he asked.

"Just things that happened."

He gripped her wrist hard and gave her a stern look. "Don't lie to me. Being sick makes me neither stupid nor incompetent. What happened?"

She was in a panic as to whether it was safe to tell him or not. She decided to go ahead. "She was captured during a clandestine mission and tortured and gang-raped."

He nodded, brow furrowed in thought. "That's disgusting," he said. "Tell me all of it."

She spun the details out for him, all the way through Marta's reaction to him. He interrupted her several times to go through some severe reaction or another. He had another fit of vomiting a few segs later, then began scratching itches. They increased maddeningly until he dragged himself across the ground, trying to abrade his tortured nerves. After lucidly absorbing more details, he leapt across the room, snatching a blanket from the bed and hiding beneath it, quaking in terror. He was unable to eat lunch, and lay on the floor whimpering. Kendra attempted to help him up, but he gave every indication of more nausea so she helped him back down. He sucked water from a bottle, face pressed against the smooth polymer, dripping cold, stale sweat. "Cooler," he begged, and she ordered the floor coils down five degrees. Segs later, he began twitching again.

It took three more days of waiting, sleeplessness and pain. She watched tearfully as he thrashed, vomited, rolled around on the floor from nerves driven to distraction, held his ears against sounds only he could hear and couldn't shut out and clawed at his face.

Not all his visions were negative. At one point, he began seducing her, very tenderly. She was shy of the blatant cameras, but agreed to his advances. She soon forgot about the environment and enjoyed his attentions. His brain was still very much alive underneath and stayed in control through their mutual excitement. He collapsed shortly afterward, exhausted from all his activities. She tucked a blanket around him and napped in the chair.