Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (64 page)

“Very well. This judgment is recorded and sustained by concurrence of this tribunal and the offending soldier’s commanding officer. Bailiff, escort Private Sung to the assembly hall,” Commodore St. Stephen ordered. “Captain, please accompany them. Your ship will be contacted and your crew escorted to the assembly hall to watch the administration of both assigned corporal punishments. Those who remain aboard will be instructed to watch the Battle Platform’s broadcast of the disciplining.”

Sung paled again. Ia didn’t have to ask why; she could guess easily enough that he had just realized
her
caning would be witnessed by the whole Company, too. She didn’t try to reassure him or change the situation. That, too, was a part of her double-indemnity clause.

“Commodore, yes, sir,” she said, saluting the trio at the desk. “My crew has been readied to view the caning by my first officer, sir.”

Sung quickly saluted, too, as best he could with his thumbs still locked together. The three JAG officers saluted back, and the commodore dismissed them with a flick of his fingers. There were other cases waiting to be judged. This wasn’t a case of repair materials or fueling needs, but Admiral-General Myang’s standing orders for priority handling had bumped Ia and her crew to the top of the day’s list.

Unlike Recruit Kaimong and Private Culpepper, Private Sung didn’t struggle or resist. He cooperated with the bailiffs in being draped facedown over the frame. Without a word, he let them bind his wrists and ankles in place, and endured the kidney pads being wrapped around his lower back.

The first few blows to his buttocks did make him gasp. By the sixth, he grunted with each stroke, the sound muffled by the biting gag placed in his mouth. On stroke twelve, tears could be easily seen dripping down his reddened, grimacing
face. When the cane was moved after the sixteenth, so was the frame, its angle lowered so that his upper back was placed at the same height his rump had been. Within three strokes, he cried out, the yell only half-muffled by the gag.

Stroke thirteen cut through his shirt, and the caning was paused while the cut was inspected. With only a little of the skin broken, the examining doctor informed the caner to strike from a different angle. Nodding, the sergeant moved to Sung’s other side, lifted the antiseptic-soaked rod to shoulder height, and continued with blow fourteen.

When it was through, Private Sung had to be lifted from the frame. He could not stand on his own. The
Hum-Vee
’s medical staff had provided a hovergurney; after settling him facedown on the cushions, he was examined one last time. Several blows had lacerated his skin as well as raised welts and caused bruises, but the doctor’s prognosis confirmed he would recover.

Commodore St. Stephen stepped back up to the podium, located to one side in order to focus the watching balconies of soldiers ringing the round, deep chamber. Bodies stirred around the room in preparation to depart, expecting him to deliver the usual warning of discipline needing to be maintained before their formal dismissal. His first sentence disabused them of that.

“Soldiers. You will remain in your seats and be respectful of what is about to take place,” he ordered the crowd.

Ia’s Company, the roughly 150 who had been free to leave the ship and attend, exchanged puzzled looks. So did the other nine hundred or so soldiers and specialists gathered in the hall.

“By order of Admiral-General Christine Myang, Ship’s Captain Ia of the 1st Company, 1st Legion, 1st, Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 9th Cordon Branch Special Forces is required to undergo an equal number of strokes of the cane for any and all corporal infractions incurred by the soldiers placed under her command,” he stated. His words caused a rustle of surprise and disbelief that echoed off the walls. That forced him to raise his voice slightly, letting the pickups adjust accordingly so that his next statement could be heard. “It is therefore the duty of this Judge Advocate General tribunal to order the following sentence be applied to Ship’s Captain Ia of the Special Forces:

“Sixteen strokes of the cane to her buttocks, for Fatality Thirteen: Friendly Fire, when the ship and crew under her command did willfully attack the ship and crew of the TUPSF
Hardberger
with one of her vessel’s Starstrike laser cannons, a lethal weapon. This punishment is to be followed by twenty strokes of the cane to her upper back for the crime of Fatality Five: Disobeying a Direct Order. At her request, Ship’s Captain Ia has asked for no leniency and has agreed of her own free will to undertake this punishment without hesitation or restraint. She is also under orders to restrain herself from using her innate biokinetic abilities for the next twenty-four hours.

“Sentence is to be carried out immediately.”

Someone started the sonopad drums. Ia rose from the seat provided for her behind the podium and walked across the stage to the frame, which was being raised back up to the more common striking height. She felt numb, looking at it. Just…numb. She had struggled hard to avoid this sort of possibility with every bit of cunning at her command, but now she felt nothing.

Unbuttoning her knee-length coat, she shrugged out of it as the doctor stepped up, using a hand scanner to check Ia’s vital signs. Ia focused on neatly folding her long jacket, reducing it to a neat if ribbon-lumped square.

Commodore St. Stephen joined her. He lifted his arms, palms up like a tray, and she gave him a slight nod of thanks. Placing her jacket on his hands, she added her Dress cap, and turned to the frame in her plain grey shirt and grey-striped black pants. The male caner stepped up to help secure her in place, making Ia shake her head.

“No, thank you. My orders are to use no restraints,” she said.

“Sir, the restraints are there for your protection, so you do not move,” he told her, glancing at the female sergeant who was to administer Ia’s caning.

“I know that, Sergeants,” Ia told both of them, “but I will do this without bindings or restraints. You have my word, I will not move.” She started to move toward the frame again, then pulled back and pointed at the table behind the frame, which held the case with its
rotan
switch soaking in antiseptic solution, and a selection of biting gags. “But I will take one of those, to protect my tongue and teeth. I may have agreed to do this, but I’m not
completely
stupid.”

Nodding silently, the female caner moved to select one of the gags. Ia took it from her when she returned, and fitted the slightly spongy plexi bar between her teeth. Stepping up to the frame, she lowered herself onto the slanted, padded surface and tucked her hands under her cheek. She wanted to show to everyone in the auditorium that she was there by her own free will.

I knew the very moment Myang first proposed this indemnity clause that I could turn it to my advantage,
Ia thought, feeling them strap the padding around her kidneys.
This will cement my reputation with the rest of the Fleet. Bloody Mary doesn’t just give a beating to the enemy, she can take a beating, too, and emerge all the stronger for—Holy
God!

The first blow had two layers to it: the initial, startlingly hard sting that burned on the surface, mostly on her right nether cheek; and the bruising ache that lingered even as the stinging burn started to fade. Her teeth bounced into the gag on the second blow, and clenched on the third. It hurt. It hurt it hurt it
hurt
…but…not as much as the shock, the
pain
of watching her life’s work shatter.

The strikes came at slow, measured intervals. Ten seconds between each, time enough to relax, recover, anticipate, and tense up again. Ten seconds felt like a long time between each painful smack of the antiseptic-soaked stick, a long time to endure the throbbing and the burn. Ten seconds made her upper back clench and seize up in anticipation of the suffering it, too, would soon endure.

But with each blow, the agony of it seemed to beat back a little bit more of the dust from the desert-scorched plains. Ten seconds was a small eternity, on the timeplains. Enough to watch tendrils of greenery seep slowly, patch by patch, back into her consciousness. Enough time to see the waters trickling back into their proper places at the fringes of her vision. Enough time to feel her broken mind healing itself, restoring her stroke by penitent stroke back into her rightful place.

The frame jolted and thrummed faintly, lowering itself. Ia tensed in anticipation, then forced herself to breathe deeply, to let the physical fear leach its way through her muscles and out of her body, helping her to let it go. This was where her back muscles, still dense and strong, would fail to provide the same level of cushioning as her gluteals, but she would endure.

Her teeth snapped hard into the spongy bit with the first strike. The hands under her cheek twisted and shifted free, fingers curling and clenching around each other atop the head cushion. There was more sting with these new attacks, and the dull bruise burned with upper notes. By the fifth or sixth stroke, it felt like each hard-thudding lash was being administered by a rasp.

At stroke eight, they paused. Someone plucked at her shirt. The subtle shift of the fabric felt like sandpaper on her wounds. Ia choked, breath caught somewhere between a hiss and a gasp. The pause took longer, and the next stroke fell from a different angle. New skin, new pain…and where one set of strokes crossed the other, nails were driven into her back. Old-fashioned, pencil-thick nails. Only a centimeter long, but long enough to force a grunt from her throat with each blow.

She couldn’t even hear the count anymore. All she could do was breathe and endure, breathe and endure. Seeing the infinities of the universe unfurling with each nerve-enflamed strike made her long for more. Not more of the pain, but more of the freedom, of the liberation of her abilities, of her very mind. A tiny corner of her memory realized this must have been what medieval monks had felt when scourging themselves, back on ancient Earth.

Again, they paused to pluck at her shirt, rubbing at the raw, too-sensitive flesh with a very light touch in their examinations. Ia ordered her mind to accept it like a thin, cold stream, then to set it aside. The next blow felt hard and unglamorous, but solid, a welcome relief from the pain of overstimulation.

Now the strikes crossed two lines of welts, more nails in the coffin of her back. With each blow driven home, another corner of her mind lifted free. Until she realized, after a few more strokes, the slow, steady rhythm had stopped.

Someone said something nearby. Struggling to focus, Ia opened her eyes. Everything was a golden, pastel blur. Images glowed in different hues, some stronger than others. Lines, blobs curves…they resolved themselves within two or three blinks as the doctor with her scanner, the edge of the platform, and the silently watching bodies of her crew.

Apparently the caning was through. Ia dragged in a deep breath through her nose and tensed to push herself upright. The pain at that dumb move emerged in a strangled, high-pitched whine. She cut it off, breathing in short, shallow sniffs through
her nose, and waited for the frame to be lifted back to the original angle.

Her teeth were lodged in the biting gag. Her whole jaw ached, but her incisors ached the most. With awareness came a hint of blood on her tongue, seeping from her abused gums. Tilting her head, she got the fingers of her right hand into place and slowly pried. The rubbery material gradually popped off her teeth, first upper, then lower. She rested a few moments as the frame hummed and jolted to a near-vertical stop, then tried to lever herself upright again.

It hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt, oh God how it hurt, but she managed it. Balancing carefully, Ia hissed between her teeth when she lowered her arms. The male caner took the gag from her hand, and the doctor touched her sleeve.

“Captain Ia, your back is bleeding in seven spots above, two spots below. There is a lot of blood compared to most canings,” the woman added, “but you won’t bleed to death. They’ll need to be coated with an antibiotic ointment. If you’ll lie on the gurney, we’ll see that you’re treated before you’re returned to your ship.”

Breathing shallowly, Ia shook her head. Then froze. That was a mistake, one that reignited the dull-stinging fires under her skin.
No shaking whatsoever. Got it.

“No,” she managed out loud. “No ointment. No gurney. I’ll walk out.”

“Sir, you have multiple contusions, several lacerations, and your adrenaline spikes have elevated your blood pressure,” the grey-uniformed woman asserted. “You need to lie down.”

“No. I will walk out under my own power.” She had to. She had to, for the sake of her stunned, stricken, watching crew.

“Captain,” the doctor started to argue.

“That is
Ship’s
Captain,” Ia corrected through aching teeth she was trying not to clench. “And unless you are Admiral John Genibes or the Admiral-General herself, you are
not
in my chain of command. I will
walk out
, thank you.”

With parade precision, toe tucked behind heel, she turned. The JAG commodore stood just a few meters away, still holding the weight of her jacket and cap in his hands, elbows braced at his sides and sober respect in his eyes.