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ong%20View%2001%20-%20Star%20Rebel%20v1.0.txt to tower above her. "Any
questions this time?" She shook her head. The captain took a step to face
Bran, then jerked his thumb back to Delange. "That one."
Then it was horror. Korbeith stood back, and two guards, the older one still
with his falsely-
kind smile, came to grab the young woman by her arms. Her knees buckled and
her head sagged back;
she made a keening sound, a mewling whimper that hurt Bran's ears. All
instinct said to \ihelp\i her, but he knew he couldn't. He could only
watch-and that, he couldn't avoid.
While a third guard opened the main air lock's inner door, the other two
dragged the woman toward it. Suddenly she stiffened, shaking almost loose from
one captor-but the man grabbed her again, one hand on her arm and the other
giving her left breast a vicious twist. Her eyes rolled up until only white
was showing; her scream shrilled echoes in the place, but still the two guards
pulled her along. Then all at once her body rejected whatever it could
manage-urine, feces, and vomit splattered everything and everyone within range
of her. Down along the line, Bran saw two other cadets throw up, and fought to
hold his own gorge.
Ignoring their soiled uniforms, the guards heaved Megan Delange into the air
lock chamber. The portal slammed shut.
Bran couldn't remember whether the thick plastic window fogged up with
entrance of air or evacuation. In this case it didn't matter. The outer door
opened, and Megan Delange went spinning, her balance not yet caught from the
rough throw into the chamber, out into the vacuum.
Until that moment the captains gravelly laugh had never paused. Now it did,
and with the silence that came while no one else seemed to draw breath, Bran
heard a harsh mumble. Maybe it was the chambers acoustics that brought the
words. But the voice was Arger Korbeith's. And as Megan
Delange plunged dead into space, Bran heard, "You go out there, not \ime.
You\i pay, not \ime.
Nobody can\i pay enough, but you'll never stop paying. And \iyou\i go out.
..."
\b80\b
Then other people began breathing and talking, and Bran lost track of the
Butcher's litany. If it were real. If \iany\i of this was.
\iAt least it's done,\i Bran thought; but he was wrong; Arger Korbeith had
more for them. Above the airlock door a viewscreen lit, and the harsh voice
said, "You will now observe the results." A
camera with a zoom lensing and a brilliant floodlight had followed Delange
into her experience of explosive decompression, so now the surviving cadets
were treated to a replay of young Megan's dying convulsions. The camera
operator was no expert; the lighting showed only her decompressed body against
blackness of sky, and the body grew and shrank as camera adjustments failed to
match the dying woman's rate of receding from the ship.
The colors were off, but purple was probably about right for the face.
Compared to what else happened to it, and especially the eyes, the rest didn't
matter.
Shocked to calmness of a sort, Bran stood through several repeated showings,
trying not to hear
Korbeith's chuckles. All around Bran, people were tossing their cookies, but
he held his down.
Until Korbeith graveled out a particularly lewd comment that in other context
Bran could have ignored; suddenly he spewed.
It wouldn't have made any difference; the entire cadet contingent spent the
next hour swabbing up the whole mess.
When Bran and Sally finally got back to quarters and showered up, they held
each other and that was all either wanted. Bran was shaking and couldn't stop
for a while. When he did steady, he said, "Harkness, I'm swearing an oath."
Her hug tightened. "Yes, Tregare?"
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Against her warm arms, his head thrashed. "I don't know how or when or where
or how long-but one day I will kill Arger Korbeith.
"If he doesn't kill me first."
Again she hugged harder. "Or if I don't. Him, I mean." Then Bran wanted her,
but even for surrogate sex, he was too pooped.
Tensed, unable to relax, Bran waited to see what Korbeith would do next. But
for days there were nothing but normal
81
duty assignments. Cat and mouse, yes. Mouse wasn't Bran's favorite role. But
he didn't exactly have a choice.
He tried to learn more, about what the Butcher's \ipattern\i might be, but it
was hard to figure who to ask. Ratings (and unrated) in the crew simply
clammed up to cadets, and it was about the same with First Officer Orrin Peale
and Second Officer Wendell Rheinhardt. The Engineering officers kept pretty
much to themselves-not much chance there.
So it came down to Eunice Parsons, the Third. She'd talked with Bran before,
but for a time the
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