“Yeah, well,” Lee said in her mind. “I don’t think I have anything to say to you.”
“Not even in exchange for our medical assistance?” Ste.-Jean said. “Look. I will be honest with you. We know all about your observation post at the Puller gas giant. And we know that you went through the stargate in that system to investigate a Xul base. Your government, it seems, has much to answer for … beginning with the arrogant breaking of solemn interstellar treaty, and with placing the security, even the very survival of all human worlds at grave risk. You needn’t worry, Lieutenant. We have brought no charges against you … at least, not yet. We recognize that you were simply doing what your superiors told you to do … and were caught in the middle, yes?”
“If you say so.”
“However, we do require your cooperation. We want to know exactly what you saw and experienced on the other side of the gate. And we want your cooperation in identifying Marine installations that we suspect are imbedded within other Stargate systems in sovereign PanRépublique space.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
That response elicited another long silence.
Lee managed to open her eyes, and this time she could keep them open. She was lying in what obviously was a hospital bed, her body completely enclosed in a plastic sheath that left only her face exposed. Unable to move, she couldn’t see much of the room, but it appeared to be sterile, white, and lacking in any amenities whatsoever. She couldn’t even see a door.
Presumably, they had her body hooked up with tubes for feeding, for medication, and for waste removal, though she couldn’t feel much of anything from her neck down save for that general, far-off-in-the-background sense of pain. Presumably, too, her bloodstream was now crawling with nano-agents—microscopic devices programmed to busily swarm through her circulatory system and repair the damage caused by her exposure to the Galactic Core’s radiation fields, but they might be programmed for other things as well.
The big question of the moment was how they’d managed to tap into her private internal communications channel. If they could manage that, then theoretically they should be able to download her entire on-board memory. They wouldn’t need to ask her questions or elicit her cooperation; all they’d need to do was pull a full memory dump.
Okay, girl, she thought. Think it through. But keep it low-channel, in case they’re listening in …
If they hadn’t pulled a memory dump, then they didn’t have access to her cerebral link hardware. Tentatively, she tried to connect with Terry, her personal software EA, but the AI resident in her hardware remained silent. She tried again, searching for Chesty or any of his iterations. Again, nothing.
Okay, that suggested they’d deliberately disabled Terry … or that he’d been fried by the Core radiation. Chesty was too large a program to reside within her personal hardware, so he might be off-line because of range. Had her cereblink been damaged on the other side of the Gate?
She ran a fast diagnostic, ignoring the fact that her captors—she thought of them in those terms, now—would be able to monitor what she was doing. There was damage, but her hardware appeared to be more or less complete. The software was running at about forty percent efficiency.
Her personal software might have been taken off-line in order to facilitate her treatment. More likely, her captors had tried to access the software directly while she was unconscious, and either botched it, or caused some physical damage in the retrieval process. If the former, questioning her would be the only alternative they had in order to get the information they wanted. If the latter, they might have a partial memory dump already in-hand, and simply wanted to confirm what they had, or to fill in some missing blanks.
Either way, Lee was in no mood to be helpful.
“That is … unfortunate,” the woman’s voice said, and Lee cursed to herself. Apparently, the PEs had managed to establish quite a deep communications link through her implants, enabling them to read most of her surface thoughts. If Terry or Chesty had been operational, they would have been able to block the intruding channel; hell, Terry would have not only been able to block the intrusion, he’d have been able to impersonate Lee so closely over an electronic net that her interrogators would never have been able to tell the difference. That, after all, was what personal AI secretaries did, among other things.
“We have quite a few different means of getting the information we want,” the woman’s voice went on, relentless. “And we will have it. If you choose to voluntarily cooperate, you will be permitted to return to your people within a few weeks, at most.
“If you refuse, the alternatives could be … distressful. Just think about it. We could vivisect you very slowly, peeling away your skin, your muscles, your tissue bit by bit, and with enough control of your nervous system that you would not be able to lose consciousness at any point in the procedure. And throughout it all, you would never know if what was happening was a virtual simulation being played into your brain … or a horrible and very bloody reality. That is the nature of direct mental feeds, you know. You have no way of knowing what is simulated, and what is real.
“The trouble is, such techniques also violate interstellar treaty, as you know well. Sooner or later you would break and beg us to let you tell us what we wanted to know … but either way, whether we’d tortured you only in your mind or actually cut your body to pieces, we could never allow you to return to your own people. Even a total mindwipe would not remove all of the emotional scarring from such torture.
“Or … consider this. We could fashion for you an elaborate simulated fantasy … one involving you being rescued by your comrades. You would be freed, be taken back to Earth, and there you would undergo a perfectly natural debriefing by your superiors. Again, how could you tell if what you experienced was real, or a simulation downloaded into your brain?
“And there are other alternatives as well. We have medinano that could suppress your own will and hijack your implants. We could rape your mind and your memory, take from you what we want by force. Unfortunately, I very much doubt that Lieutenant Tera Lee would have much of a personality left when we were done. And, again, that entity, that living shell, could not be permitted to return to Earth, ever. I imagine that shooting it would be a mercy.
“So, think about it, my dear. Imagine the possibilities. Cooperate voluntarily and you will see your home and family again. We might even see our way clear to recompense you generously. The alternatives, you must agree, are far more … unpleasant.”
And then Lee was alone in the hospital room, alone with her thoughts, and her fears.
Where were Major Tomanaga and the rest of the Marines stationed at Puller? Where was Fitzie?
And there was something else, something her interrogator had omitted … and it was suddenly vitally important that Lieutenant Lee not think about it, given that they might well be monitoring her thoughts. …
2411.1102
USMC Skybase
Dock 27, Earth Ring 7
0950 hrs GMT
“General?” Cara said within his mind. “I think the AI search has found something.”
Lieutenant General Martin Alexander