Profiteer

So, instead of summary execution it was, “Thank you, Captain Shane; drop your weapon, Captain Shane; do not move, Captain Shane; follow us, Captain Shane; remove the armor, Captain Shane; we’ll talk to you later, Captain Shane ...”

 

At which point the door slid shut on her, leaving her alone in this room wearing only her sweaty underwear. She had not seen or heard from her captors since. Since the room had its own food and water, they could keep her isolated here indefinitely.

 

Preferable to the brig on the Blood-Tide anyway.

 

Shane ran her hand over her head. The even nap of hair felt odd to her. She had been here long enough for her hair to grow back somewhat, and instead of shaving the Occisis stripes back, she decided to do her hair in an even crewcut. The transverse stripes were a symbol of the marines, and it seemed a bit disrespectful for her to maintain them in her situation.

 

Waiting for something to happen was getting on her nerves.

 

Hell, maybe they’ve forgotten about me.

 

Shane chuckled. More likely, since she had discovered the location of their hideout, they’d chucked her in here while they moved the body of GA&A’s personnel elsewhere. In which case she could be abandoned in an empty building being run by a computer, and eventually the food and water would give out. Perhaps a few years from now—

 

Oh, come on. If they ‘d do that, it would be much simpler to shoot me in the head to keep themselves safe.

 

The worst thing about this all was that she could see their point of view. She wouldn’t trust her in this situation. Defectors in any situation were terribly unreliable. In fact, she could see Colonel Dacham setting up this whole charade to find out where the GA&A personnel could be hiding. It was a TEC kind of trick. If she didn’t know better, she could easily picture herself as one of his agents.

 

As if that thought had triggered some sort of security alarm, the door decided just then to open for the first time in five days. Shane leaped off of the cot in surprise, taking a defensive stance across from the door as if it would do any good against a laser carbine. She stood there, naked except for a pair of Occisis-issue briefs, as the door whooshed fully open.

 

Standing there was the dark lithe form of Sergeant Mariah Zanzibar, the person who—as far as Shane could tell—was in charge of security for this place. Flanking her were a pair of guards in black monocast armor; each had a snub-nosed antipersonnel laser. Looked like Griffith Three-As from where she was. She didn’t get a closer look at them, because Zanzibar stepped through the door and it slid shut behind her.

 

Shane relaxed a little bit, but not much.

 

Zanzibar stood in front of the door, looking down at Shane. Probably couldn’t have found two more different-looking women in the Confederacy if you tried. Zanzibar was lean, tall, and built like a panther. The comparison made Shane look like a heavy-boned attack dog. Zanzibar was so dark and Shane so pale that the labels black and white were as accurate as they could be with any pair of humans. Where Shane was rounded, Zanzibar was flat. Where Shane was heavily muscled, Zanzibar was svelte. Where Shane looked like she could walk through an obstacle, Zanzibar looked like she’d flow around it.

 

Zanzibar, at the moment, was wearing the gray jumpsuit that seemed to be the uniform around this place, and she carried a small briefcase. She tossed the case on the bed and said, “Get dressed. Someone wants to meet you.”

 

“Who?” Shane asked.

 

Zanzibar said nothing.

 

For a moment, Shane considered refusing, but she thought better of it. After all, what was the point? They could come in and drag her wherever, clothes or no clothes. Shane picked up the case, looked at Zanzibar, and sighed when Zanzibar made no sign of leaving to give her some privacy. Shane opened the case and put on the clothes she found inside, another gray jumpsuit.

 

Once she was dressed, Zanzibar nodded. As if in response, the door slid open.

 

Zanzibar led, and the two guards followed. They walked her through an endless warren of corridors, many of them with open panels in the walls revealing pipes and sheaves of unconnected optical cable. Many of the lights weren’t working. It all felt as though it had just been taken out of the packing material after a long time in storage.

 

From what little she’d seen, the complex looked like just another of the self-sufficient communes that dotted the almost barren surface of Bakunin. Inside, under the complex—the route she and the prisoners had been ushered through—a shaft dug down to the water table, and another dug down to a shielded power plant. As far as she knew, none of the commune even broke the surface.

 

All in all, a nice little bolt-hole which Colonel Dacham, obviously, had no idea existed. If he did, it would’ve been a crater by now.