Sitterson took something from his pocket—a miniature shock rod—and said to the boy in a caressing voice, “Now, which of this lot is Milius?”
“Go to—,” the boy began.
Sitterson flicked him across the navel with his shock rod. It gave a viper’s hiss and painted the midline hairs with blue sparks. The boy screamed and kicked. Sienkiewicz interposed her booted leg, and the security chief punched the prisoner in the groin with the rod.
“Sir!” Kowacs shouted as he grabbed Sitterson by the shoulder and jerked him back. “Sir! People are watching!” He tapped his rifle on the side of his helmet where a chip recorder filed every aspect of the operation for rear echelon review.
Sitterson was panting more heavily than his physical exertion justified. For a moment, Kowacs thought the commander was going to punch him—which wasn’t going to hurt nearly as much as would the effort of not blowing the bastard away for doing it.
Instead, the security chief relaxed with a shudder. “Nothing to worry about,” he muttered. “Not a problem at all. What’s your unit designator?”
“Huh?” Kowacs replied.
Sienkiewicz was spraying analgesic on the prisoner while the other marine stood between the boy and any possible resumption of Sitterson’s attack. Maybe they were worried about what their recorders would be saying at a courtmartial.
Maybe they didn’t like Sitterson any better than their CO did.
Sitterson stepped behind Kowacs, holding the marine officer steady when he started to turn to keep the security chief in sight. Kowacs froze, waiting for whatever was going to come, but there was no contact beyond Sitterson’s finger tracing the serial number imprinted in the back of the helmet rim.
“There,” he said as he let Kowacs face around again. “I’ll take care of it when we get back. I’ll have the file numbers of all the recorders in this company transferred to units in storage on Earth.”
Kowacs looked blank.
“That’s the way to do it,” Sitterson explained with an exasperated grimace. “Don’t try to wipe the data, just misfile it so nobody will ever be able to call it up.”
“Where’re those trucks?” Bradley demanded to break the sequence of words and events. The vehicles were arriving with their intakes unshrouded for efficiency, howling like demons and easy to hear even for ears deadened by rifle blasts.
Two Marines came out of the hut where the woman sprawled. One of them carried a sub-machine gun he’d found inside. The other held, of all things, an infant whose wails had been lost in the noise and confusion of the raid.
“Check it for bullet splinters,” Kowacs ordered with a black scowl, knowing that if the baby had taken a round squarely it would have bled out by now.
“It just needs changing, sir,” said Sienkiewicz unexpectedly.
“Then change it!” Kowacs snapped.
“All right,” said Sitterson. “I think you’re right. We’ll take them back to headquarters for interrogation.”
Marines faced outward toward the treeline with their weapons ready—just in case. The trucks bellowed in, brushing the upper limbs with thrust and their belly-plates.
Switching to the general unit push because he couldn’t trust his unaided voice to be heard as a truck settled in the clearing before him, Kowacs asked, “Bradley, how many we got all told?”
“Thirteen with the kid,” the sergeant replied, flashing Kowacs a double hand plus three fingers to reiterate his radio message. “That fits, right?”
Bradley frowned, then added, “Fourteen with the mother.”
“Yeah, they’ll need that too for identification,” Kowacs said with no more emotion than the static hiss of his radio. “But we’ll sling it to a cargo rail, all right?”
The draft from the truck exhausts stirred the burning hut into a mushroom of flame, then collapsed it in a gush of sparks spiraling into several of the huts downwind.
“Beta, Delta,” Kowacs ordered on the command channel. “Pack up and let’s split before it turns out there’s an explosives cache where the sensors missed but the fire doesn’t.”
“Come on, come on!” Bradley was demanding on the general frequency. “Three prisoners to a truck. And secure them to tie-downs, will you? They’re going to tell us things.”
Commander Sitterson had begun to sneeze. The vehicle exhausts were kicking up dust, smoke, and the smell of the corpse being dragged past him.