Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (26 page)

“She’s not that badly injured, physically,” Doctor Choudhury said, twenty minutes later. She’d taken Ensign Gomez into an examination room, leaving me waiting outside pacing like an expectant father. It was all I could do to remain patient for two minutes. “There are some bruises on her thighs and neck, where he apparently held her, but she’ll recover from that quickly. There are no signs of internal damage, luckily. Mentally…”

Her face twisted bitterly. “Her confidence has been completely destroyed and…well, she’s not in a good state,” she added. “I’d prefer it if she were fighting back, frankly. We don’t have a proper team of psychologists here who could help her recover and…shipboard life is no place for anyone who has been raped like that. She thought the ship was safe.”

“I thought the ship was safe,” I said, bitterly. Rape was very common where I’d grown up, but I hadn’t thought much about it at the time. My sisters had never been raped – or had they been raped after I’d left. I remembered some of the bull sessions we’d had back as teenage men, talking about women and how sometimes you had to push them…had they led to rape? The bile welled up in my mouth and I had to swallow hard to prevent vomiting. “What are you going to do with her?”

Doctor Choudhury looked down at her terminal. “I’ve got her sedated right now,” she said. “I’ve taken samples from her skin and vaginal area and can prove that she definitely had sex with him, but it may come down to his word against hers.”

I stared. “And the screaming? The physical wounds?”

“There are two crewmen down in Engineering who inflict far worse on each other and love it,” Doctor Choudhury said. “I actually had to speak to one of them quite severely about how they were treating each other. I’m sure that some people get their thrills by being beaten with a rattan cane, but they were risking putting one of them here for longer than a day or two.”

“Ouch,” I said, wondering who the couple were, before returning to the important issue. “You can’t swear that she was raped?”

“I can swear that force was used,” Doctor Choudhury said. “I cannot prove that it was rape.”

“Shit,” I said. The last thing I wanted to see was Frank getting away with it. He might well get away with it. I couldn’t recall a single conviction for rape back home, despite thousands of complaints to the police. The police were more likely to dismiss the issue completely. They might even have their fun with the girl themselves. “Is there no proof you can offer?”

Her dark face was all the answer I needed. For a moment, I considered just walking into the brig and strangling Frank myself, but what would have been the point? I’d just have been charged with murder myself, perhaps even a war crime, which would have been ironic beyond belief.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “I’d better go report it to the Captain.”

The trial, such as it was, was a farce. I had forgotten how little power the Captain had over guests on his ship, particularly guests with political connections. The Political Officer served as the presiding judge and allowed Frank to conduct his own defence, facing Ensign Gomez herself. She wasn't allowed a lawyer of any kind, despite UNPF Regulations stipulating that anyone involved in a court martial of any kind needed a lawyer, and it was easy to cast doubt on her testimony. The Doctor had to admit that there was no direct proof that she had been raped and I…I was told, by the Captain, to keep myself out of it. The ending was inevitable. Frank Wong was declared innocent. The only upbeat news was a conversation I overhead between Frank and the Captain, where he warned Frank in no uncertain terms that another rape would mean his instant death. Frank came out of that meeting sporting a black eye.

And Ensign Gomez? She never recovered from her experience, despite all the help that we could give her. At the end of our deployment, she was transferred to a research centre in deep space, well away from anywhere else. I pitied her more than anyone else. She’d once been full of promise, until a bastard with too many political collections had got his hands on her.

***

The remainder of the deployment – two years, mostly spent in orbit around Heinlein – went slowly. I ended up remaining on the Devastator most of the time – Frank had apparently asked for my removal from the reporter-babying duty – handling the duties of three other Lieutenants. I also spent more time on two other starships, replacing officers who had managed to get themselves transferred, or killed in the line of duty. Actually, one of them had been killed in a local brothel, but it had been recorded as a combat death. Heinlein being Heinlein, it probably was.

I had the faintest glimmerings of a plan before we started to prepare to return to Earth, but even with Kitty’s help, it would have to wait until we had some shore leave to ourselves. We also knew that we might not be together for much longer. I suspected that the Captain would approve my transfer request and Kitty might not be able to go with me, even though she wanted a transfer as well. She was technically senior to me. She might well be sent to another starship. I studied the lists of opening posts and tried to make a good case for us to be sent as a couple, but there were few openings for two lieutenants. There were plenty of possible posts for a single officer – and, of course, they might have been filled before I returned to Earth. Roger even offered to put in a good word for me with the Admiral, but the last thing I wanted was a post on the battleship. It was just too large.

The only peace of good news came in a week before we departed for Earth, having been finally relieved by the Annihilator. Frank, who hadn’t set foot on the starship since someone – not me – had played merry hell with the stateroom’s life support systems, had been finally sent out of Lazarus to report on the countryside and the ‘Heinlein Improvement Project’s’ progress. The insurgents located his convoy and attacked it. No one survived. The infantrymen who finally reached the convoy’s remains reported that someone had cut off his penis and stuffed it up his ass. I couldn’t help, but laugh when I heard the news. Never let them give you to the women…

“Serve the bastard right,” I gloated to Kitty. Ensign Gomez had perked up a little when she heard the news. Anna had convinced the Captain to allow her one of the spare cabins for her bunk, just so she wouldn’t be surrounded by male Ensigns, but it hadn’t helped. We’d even looked for a Rape Trauma Specialist down on Heinlein, but found none. Heinlein seemed to believe that the only good rapist was a dead one. How could I disagree? “I wonder how that’s going to be reported.”

I should have known. The reports claimed that he had been killed after a heroic struggle that killed hundreds of insurgents. I doubted that there was anyone in the system who was impressed with the UN’s propaganda any longer, even the UNPF Generals. No matter what they said, it was always proved spectacularly wrong soon afterwards.

As the ship headed for home, I had to force myself to relax.

Back at Luna Base, the real work would begin.

Chapter Twenty-One

A Lieutenant has more choice of where he serves than an Ensign or newly-minted Lieutenant, but often the choices are very limited. A term of planet-side duty can kill a career as surely as having the wrong political opinions. The political interrogation is often stronger as an officer creeps closer to the ultimate goal – command of a starship, master under God – not that the UN believes in God, of course.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

“Well,” Ellen Nakamura said. “You’ve had an interesting couple of years, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, carefully. Ellen looked as hauntingly beautiful as ever, but I wasn't fooled. She had a razor-sharp mind and full knowledge of everything that had happened on the deployment. I wouldn’t forgive her for sacrificing Ensign Gomez on the alter of political expediency, but I wouldn’t underestimate her either. She could break my career. “I have learned a great deal.”

Ellen laughed gaily. “You definitely have,” she said. “You did well on your deployment to the ground and Captain Jones spoke highly of you during your deployment to his vessel. He actually wanted to offer you a post on his ship, but we decided that your services were still required here.”

That rankled, more than a little. The longer I stayed on the monitor, the greater the chance that I would have to launch or call in another fire mission, directed against the ground. God alone knew how many innocents had been killed on Heinlein, but I would have bet good money that it was well over a million. I hadn’t known that Captain Jones had wanted me – he was short of officers after the insurgent attack – and I would have transferred at once, if he had offered me the chance. Life on a cruiser would have been far more tolerable than life on a monitor. The people I would have killed, at least, would have been trying to kill me.

“But in any case all good things must come to an end,” she said, moving back to the more serious persona. “You are requesting permission to transfer to another starship? Don’t you like it on the Devastator?”

It was an innocent question that had a nasty sting in the tail. I didn’t have the Senior Chief briefing me this time, warning me of what I would face. Saying the wrong thing would wreck my career, but I honestly wasn't sure what I should say. If I confessed to disliking the starship’s purpose, it would get me marked down as a possible subversive, while if I claimed to love it…well, she’d probably know that I was lying.

“I want to get further experience of starship operations,” I explained, finally. It was even true. “The Devastator remains in one system and operates there. I want to serve on a starship that carries out patrols and maybe even explores new star systems.”

“Boldly going where no one has gone before,” Ellen agreed. It was the motto of the UN’s Survey Corps, which examined new planets for human settlement. One of the charges the UN had levelled against Heinlein’s Founding Fathers was that they hadn’t waited for the Survey Corps to clear the planet before settling. The Heinlein books had suggested that the Survey Corps would have delayed classifying the planet until they were bribed into agreement, or tried to place unacceptable conditions on the settlements. I had once thought about joining them, but I hadn’t made it through that section of the Academy. I hadn’t understood why under much later. “I admit that you have the qualifications – now – to try for a position on a survey ship, but you must realise that your experience mandates against it.”

I nodded. “Yes,” I said, slowly. “I was hoping to serve on a anti-piracy patrol vessel or another starship that would be operating along the edge of explored space. I can qualify for that.”

“Indeed you can,” Ellen agreed. She changed tack suddenly. “What did you think of the invasion of Heinlein?”

I shrugged, as artlessly as I could. “I think that they needed to be brought into the UN before their individualistic tendencies led to civil war,” I said. I knew the answer to that one, of course; Ellen lectured on it every fortnight. “Our presence in the system prevents them from turning their guns on one another.”

“Of course,” Ellen agreed. I reflected that they’d turned their guns on the infantry instead, but that proved nothing. It was possible that the UN was right, but if half of the Heinlein guidebooks were to be believed, Heinlein had a far lower level of violent crime than Earth. I suppose that the possibility of being shot dead while committing a crime did add a certain deterrent value. “Once we start settling proper citizens from Earth on the planet, we can drain their violence natures from them and reshape their world.”

“Of course,” I agreed, slowly. I doubted that it would be anything like as easy as she suggested. Heinlein’s system was very embedded into the planet and they were still resisting furiously. I’d heard rumours that the UN had even considered the use of biological or chemical weapons – it was a war crime to even suggest the use of such weapons – in hopes of bring the war to an end before it was too late. The settlers who were being prepared to land on the planet had been put off time and time again. Their transports were needed to supply more soldiers to the planet’s garrisons. “I’m sure that it will work perfectly.”

“But enough of that,” Ellen said, finally. “I have checked, as you know, with the Captain and Anna. The Captain was quite happy to endorse your transfer request, if you chose to make it, but Anna did point out that you would no longer be Junior Lieutenant after this cruise. Two Lieutenants are leaving the ship and their replacements would probably be junior to you. Do you want to risk returning – remaining – to a junior role?”

It actually didn’t matter. My two years as a Lieutenant (Command Line) would remain on my service record until I was either promoted or moved into another department, which would make the end of my career. It was possible that we would get two new green lieutenants, or that both of them would be senior to me. It wasn't as important as it was for the Ensigns, but it made little difference.

“I actually enjoyed my work as a Junior Lieutenant,” I confessed. Ellen hid a smile, not entirely successfully. No one enjoyed being the junior man on the totem pole, even if I did have the Ensigns and enlisted personnel below me. My position meant that I was the first in line for any new tasks the Captain felt like setting. It was why I had been sent down to Heinlein first, or entrusted with the reporters, in the first place. “I would not mind having to do it again.”