Dalshon
Chapter 12
Carla woke up in a pile of bodies. Warm bodies, not dead ones. She groaned and tried to push her way out, but the people on top of the pile were too heavy. They were her crew, and they were not lying as if they had fallen that way when the stun grenade hit. They were piled up all facing the same way, as if someone had tossed them there.
Of course, someone must have dug out Lennier and rescued him, piling up the other unconscious people as they dug. Carla managed to move some black clad arms and legs and make a spyhole, through which she could see the backs of Untika security forces containing a surging mob. No, not containing, funneling: they were getting people away from the outer skin of Untika, and some people were passing children over their heads across the mass of people, to get them out sooner.
Carla was suffocating. She pushed out in a panic, and only succeeded in shifting the weight of someone on top of the pile over a bit and pinching her side. She tried to yell, but the crowd noise drowned her out.
She poked the anonymous armor on top of her. "Wake up. Get up." He did not move, but someone stirred in the middle of the pile. Someone's pointy head bones jabbed into her leg. "In Valen's name get me out of here!" Carla screeched.
Then the thundering horde was gone, and the Untika police started pulling bodies off the pile and carrying them out. At last Carla staggered to her feet. "What happened? Another bombing?"
"Somebody undocked part of the station," a policeman said. "Move along, ma'am, we have to get everyone out and get the pressure doors closed."
Carla allowed herself to be herded along toward the safe area. She found herself separated from her crew by a yellow-vested emergency worker who directed the flow of evacuees into racially segregated refuges. Carla found herself in a jam-packed cargo hold full of humans all yammering excitedly in various human languages. Her brain went on overload and she could not understand any of it. Everything felt unreal.
Someone handed her a paper. It was the Teeknab Shout, special extra edition. The front page, which looked hastily dashed off and had no pictures, screamed "Teeknab hull flies away!"
Carla could not concentrate enough in the press of bodies to make sense of the story, but when she turned the one-sheet over, the back had plenty of photos. She saw was looked like some kind of merchant vessel, with the distinctive black legs of a spiderdrive ship. The caption said the Whitestar had left Untika space in pursuit.
"Oh God. All junior crew, mostly the injured, less than half a full complement, going into combat with a twentyish ensign in command." For the first time in a long time, Carla felt like praying. She had prayed in the first few months on Tifar, and God had not answered. She had given it up.
"God help them," Carla whispered. And, just in case God was still not listening to her, she added, "Valen help them too."
Carla worked her way to the edge of the crowd, found a door and slipped out into a dark, quiet corridor. She relaxed away from the press of bodies. Carla stood under the one light in the hallway and looked at the rest of the onesheet.
The other photos on the back page had undoubtedly been intended for the next weekly edition, since they showed evidence of careful layout. The below the fold headline was "Rangers Shame Deserter." One picture was of her and her crew, and Lennier in the blue corset. It was captioned, "Ranger deserter Lennier is paraded through the streets of Untika." The other photo was a normal looking portrait of Lennier, some sort of file photo of him in normal clothes.
Carla dropped the paper on the ground and rubbed her face. She should have thought to cover him up with something before marching him off to the ship. She could only be glad Lennier had not seemed to understand the concept of gender humiliation. He had only stared blankly at her when she had tried her English language pun.
What had she thought she was doing? Yes, Lennier had gotten into that costume all by himself, and he had looked really funny in it. She could forgive herself for laughing when she saw him. But that English comment she had made? That had been intended as intimidation.
Gender humiliation as an interrogation method. Even Comac never stooped that low.
Of course, he might simply have never thought of it because it would not bother a Minbari. "Biology is destiny," Carla whispered. "Who said that? I forget."
Carla thought about the anatomy lecture from her last visit to Tifar. If biology was destiny, maybe anatomy was psychology, too. Of course Minbari males had no insecurity about gender. They had no performance issues.
That would explain why, when Control designed the loribond testing process, he ranked bending over for the Minbari at level three, below torturing oneself on command at level four and killing one of the other prisoners at level five. While the human prisoners, by the time they reached that point, generally had no problem with level five at all.
In fact, given that at least some of the Earth Force personnel captured in the Earth-Minbari war had previously served as shock troops in the Mars food riots, some of them may have killed other humans in combat. To a Minbari, killing one of their own was the worst thing imaginable, so they ranked that as the highest test.
Carla moved into the dark part of the corridor and sat down against a wall, propping herself up the way Minbari did. Sooner or later she would have to find her crew, but for now she was glad to be alone.
Her ship was out there, fighting who knew what. Maybe more Shadow vessels. Bases full of pirates. Space kraken. Out of the edges of the map, here be dragons.
Lennier had escaped, and those two facts might well be related. And if they were, it was probably her fault. She had provoked him into seeking allies.
She had embarrassed Entilza Delenn and Sheridan and the Alliance by holding a secret conversation in a public corridor, where someone recorded it and spread it all over the galaxy. Her fault, again. She should have stopped Firuun from speaking as soon as she realized he was telling her of confidential matters, until they could get back to the ship.
And when she found herself in a situation in which she could stand up for the moral treatment of prisoners, she had instead started acting like Inoja the pirate. She could only be glad Lennier showed no sign of understanding what she had tried to do to him. That was the one saving grace in this whole fiasco. What she had done probably bothered her more than it bothered him.
Suddenly she thought of Comac singing the Song of the Dalshon. Carla could smell the freshly dug ground and the flowers of Tifar. She wondered if sending level five test subjects to Control to be killed bothered him more than killing that faceless shivering man had bothered Carla.
She had blotted out his face in her memory. Dehumanized him, forgotten his name, watched him fall to the ground like a duffel bag being tossed out of a cargo hold.
Among all the things that had happened, she had never, ever felt guilty for that. She had not felt much of anything, really. Except the constant pain, from so many places that it generalized through her whole body, and for so long that it started to feel normal. So normal that after she was released, and was given painkillers in the Earth Force hospital, its absence made her cry.
Someone came along the corridor with a flashlight. "Ma'am? What are you doing out here in the dark?"
"I am a Ranger," Carla whispered. "I walk in the dark places, where no one else will go."
"Yes, well, ma'am, it's much safer inside. We have security in there. Someone dangerous could be lurking about."
"Someone dangerous is lurking about," Carla said, getting to her feet with a moan and a creak from her knee.
"This way, ma'am. The human area is over here."
"I am Anla'shok. I belong with the Minbari."
"Ma'am?"
"It's alright, kid. Take me to my crew."
The youth brought her to the Minbari area. There were quite a lot of them. Her black armored warriors, and Khunnier in his Ranger uniform, occupied one corner of the room, and the rest was full of civilians in bright, happy merchanter clothing. And one brown-robed middle-aged Minbari with a black eye. Comac.
End of Chapter 12
