Whitestar 97

Chapter 7

Carla did not know how long she had been here. There were no windows in her cell. If they were giving her meals at the beginning and end of each day, and turning off the lights during Tifar's real night, as they had done at the military prison here on Tifar 17 years ago, then she had been here for two planetary days. But it would be easy for them to artificially stretch or compress time.

In any case, she had certainly been here long enough for her crew to do something. So why was she still here? Whatever Firuun had been planning when he said he would have "leverage" back at the ship, he must have failed.

For a moment she entertained a fantasy of her crew rescuing her, guns blazing. But she could not expect them to kill other Minbari. No, she was stuck here.

No one was coming for her.

She was alone.

Carla turned over on the stale-smelling human style mattress. She wondered if they had taken it from the formerly abandoned military base, and if she might have slept on it the first time she was on Tifar.

Then she thought about the activity she had seen at the military airfield when she set her ship down. Maybe that was what she was supposed to see and report. Maybe she should never have left her ship. Perhaps the locals were arming for some reason, and she should have ferreted it out.

Carla touched her pin. She wondered why they had allowed her to keep it; she could have stuck somebody with the pin back. Well, it was no better a weapon than her teeth and nails, and they had let her keep those.

Carla shivered at the thought.

She remembered a dream then, a nightmare she had had that night, in which she kept trying to get dressed and her uniform kept sagging under the weight of the pin. Her badge was too heavy.

"I am a Ranger," Carla whispered. "I walk in the dark places…" she trailed off. She could not live up to that code, not here.

She tried to picture herself in 'I stand on the bridge, and none shall pass' mode, Minbari Fighting Pike in hand. That was an image of defiance. There was no defiance in her now.

The guards here had not done anything to her. But just being in prison on Tifar was enough. Her spirit had fallen into the same state of obedience as it had when she was a prisoner on the pirate base, the same as it had when she was a prisoner on Tifar the first time.

This was the state of mind she had been in when they gave her the drug. She had been thoroughly broken by Comac and his minions before she was sent to Control to be loribonded. Before she was given the loritril, she had already reached a state in which she would lie down in the snow and kiss the guards' boots if they told her to.

Her cell door opened. Two boneheads came in, a guard and the prison doctor. Carla did not raise her eyes to their faces to see if she recognized the guard.

The doctor asked her, "Do you speak Minbari?" He was speaking the religious caste language, but Carla knew enough of it to know what he was asking.

She replied in the military caste language, "I speak the dark speech." The Minbari divided their languages like their castes; black armor and the black language for the warriors, white and gold robes and the white tongue for the religious, a rainbow of hues and the grey language for the workers. Since grey was an especially sacred color to the Minbari, that implied that in the deeps of Minbari prehistory the worker caste had been held in higher esteem than it had in historical times.

Carla's voice came out quiet and surprisingly steady, almost emotionless. All the fear, all the hate, all the self-loathing at her cooperativeness stayed underneath, leaving the surface smooth as a still pond.

The doctor asked, "How is your knee doing?"

"Better. No longer swollen. I wouldn't walk to try any serious landscaping projects, though."

The doctor laughed. Apparently he thought that was a joke. But Carla had been deadly serious. She was not ready for a work detail. Not even to see the sky.

In the prisoner of war camp, work details had been coveted like precious jewels. Whoever was out on a work detail was not going to be tortured that day. Carla had once seen a young lieutenant knife one of his own men to take his place on a work crew. That officer had only lasted 6 weeks before he was deemed broken enough to be taken to Control for loribonding.

The doctor said, "There are some medical students at the local university who would welcome the opportunity to study human anatomy. You may save the lives of your fellow humans someday if you permit it." He sounded like he was making a well rehearsed sales pitch.

"Do I have to stand up or is the guard going to carry me again?"

"Not right now," the doctor said. "Right now I'm just collecting names for Alien Day. That's what they call it. I'm glad to hear you will consent to help in this way."

"I am your prisoner. My consent is irrelevant." That could have been said with anger, but Carla said it with quiet calm. It was the calm of smashed buildings after a tsunami, the calm of a battlefield where nothing moves but drifting smoke and crows. The calm of wreckage.

The doctor hesitated, and his voice was softer now. "Not to me. Or to the students. Will you participate?"

He clearly wanted her to say yes, so she said "Yes." What was the difference between ordering her to do something, and ordering her to say yes first and then do it? None at all. Not to the compliant, the submissive, the broken.

And even without loribond commands, or any stated command at all, the desires of her captors were orders. She had learned the lesson of obedience well, the first time she was on Tifar. If she obeyed, she was still going to be tortured. But she was not going to be punished first and then tortured. There was less pain if she obeyed.

"Good," said the doctor. "Alien Day is in two days. A guard will bring you then." The two boneys left the cell. The heavy cell door closed with a metallic clang.

Carla curled up in a ball. She thought she might cry, but the tears did not come. She wondered what the boneheads were going to do to her on Alien Day. Probably examine her. Put their boney hands on her. And in her.

Carla went over to the far wall of the cell, and used the makeshift human style sanitary setup. It was not any worse than the usual jury-rigging of Minbari technology to accommodate humans, but she did not feel really clean when she was done.

She longed for the shower aboard her Whitestar. That felt like a dream now, though. Was there really a time when Minbari called her Captain and followed her orders? When she led Minbari in battle? It couldn't really be true, could it?

Carla touched her Anla'shok pin. She traced its contours with her fingertips. It was real. Her life on the Whitestar was real. She was not STILL on Tifar. She was on Tifar AGAIN. Her life in between had really happened.

At the end of the day, a guard brought food, then came around to collect the plate and shut off the lights. That was the routine here, now.

There had been a routine in the Tifar POW camp too. When it was not interrupted by work details, inspections, special projects, or escape attempts. Lights on. Breakfast. Torture. Playtime. Dinner. Lights out.

Playtime was not, of course, entertainment for the prisoners. That was when the guards, torturers, and anybody else in the base— soldiers, cooks, janitors, anybody, even the worker caste—got to have fun with the prisoners. At first that had been the worst part. But after a few months, every day, the torture was so bad she looked forward to the rape.

End of Chapter 7