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"The governor directed us to a secret h-level parley aent ofto capture a handful of resistance leaders"

"But it was a trap," she remembered

The lieutenant-commander nodded "The walls of the canyon had been carefully prepared, natural iron deposits configured to baffle our intelligence shters appeared in force, it was as if they had an to recall the details of the Dhantu incident, which had consumed the media for months, especially on anti-Occupation Vasthold

"You weren&039;t actually with the landing force, were you, Laurent?"

"Correct The insertion force was strictly marines The trap closed quickly, with only a few shots fired Froh small-craft recon that our ht We ordered a stand-down"

He sighed

"But Private Anante Vargas had been killed in the first exchange of fire," he said

Nara nodded She re hinostics showed that he&039;d died cleanly, a chest wound If we could get the body up within forty minutes, he would take the syive hie"

Laurent&039;s eyes closed, and Nara felt a deep, anguished treled to pinpoint the emotion

"There was a confluence of interests," he explained "The resistance would get another living hostage; ould retrieve our dead But they demanded a command officer They asked for a member of the Apparatus, but there were no politicals aboard our ship They knew that ouldn&039;t give them the captain, but a lieutenant-commander would do"

"Were you ordered, Laurent?"

"No," he said, shaking his head slowly "The propaganda version is true I volunteered"

There was the anguish again, as clear as words If only it could have been soled with Laurent&039;s guilt at his own thoughts In Zai&039;s gray world, the honored dead were by any

"I inserted in an up-down pod Ballistic entry, with crude rockets to get it back up Not er than a coffin"

"You trusted them?"

"My captain had stated quite clearly that if they reneged on the deal, he&039;d collapse the whole canyon with a railgun strike, kill us all So I stepped out of the pod reasonably sure that they&039;d give up Vargas

"Two of the resistance fighters brought Vargas&039;s body over, and I helped thes We carried the lifeless ed his hands and feet in the jumpseat Prepared him for his journey

"Then we stepped back and I spoke to nited, carried hian the Warrior&039;s Prayer out of reflex The prayer is Vadan aboriginal, pre-Ihters didn&039;t hear it that way He struck me down from behind"

He shook his head, bewildered

"I had just handled the dead with these men"

Nara felt his horror in waves Laurent, poor gray hast that the Dhanti could have so little respect for ritual, for the Old Enemy, death That blow from behind had uished than having to walk into the trap of his own free will, sadder than watching his fellow captives die one by one Nara could hear the question inside Laurent: the two guerrillas had handled the dead with him, and they wouldn&039;t let him finish a simple prayer Were they utterly empty?

"Laurent," she offered, "they&039;d seen millions die on their world, without any hope of resurrection"

He nodded slowly, almost respectfully "Then they should know that death is beyond our political feuds"

Death is our political feud, Nara Oxha

The sunset had turned red Here in the unpolluted air of the deep south, the sunset lasted for two hours in summer Nara knelt to place s frorew its oood, a vanilla-scented cedar engineered for fast growth and slow burning But it took a long time to dry properly, and hissed and s those still heavy ater

"You&039;ve built a fire before," Nara said

He nodded "My fae, just above the snowline Entirely datablind It&039;s built of wood and mud, and its only heat comes from a fireplace about this size"

Nara smiled "My mother&039;s line has a dumb cabin, too Stone I spent ster&039;s work on Vasthold"

Laurent smiled distantly, at some more pleasant memory

"It develops a sense of balance and hierarchy," he said, or quoted

"Balance, yes," Nara said, leaning a slender log carefully against the central nites the kindling, which feeds the larger pieces"

She chuckled A typically Vadan interpretation, to see order and structure in the consu chaos that was a healthy blaze

"Well, at least it&039;s a bottom-up hierarchy," she coether "We ell treated at first, during the feeeks of negotiation Our captors made populist demands, such as medical aid for the tropics, which were in epideovernainst disaster, the resistance would issue de it seee-taking The resistance took credit for everything Finally, the Ianda He suspended all humanitarian aid"

Nara frowned She&039;d never thought of the Dhantu Occupation as a hu ar regimes ealthier than their victims Bribery followed naturally after conquest

"After the Ie thing was, our captors weren&039;t interested in pain Not when they first strapped us to the chairs"

Chairs, Nara thought Such a quotidian word A chill rose inside her, and Nara turned to catchfire

"The chairs were experimental medical equip when they removed my left hand"

Nara closed her eyes, a realization dawning in her Even without her quickening empathy, she would have heard in Laurent&039;s voice the searching cadence of an unrehearsed tale He hadn&039;t told this story before Perhaps there&039;d been a debriefing, with the dispassionate rendering of aof what had happened on Dhantu

No wonder the psychic scars felt so fresh

"Only twenty centimeters removal at first," he said "The prosthetic nervous tissue shone like gold wires I could even see the ers The blood transports were transparent, so I could see the beating ofin them"

"Laurent," Nara said softly It wasn&039;t a plea for hi She couldn&039;t leave this e silence of the polar waste

"Then they ers ached now, as if they were craust To seeso naturally, as if it were still connected I vowed not toBut I could feel it Only the strong pain was suppressed Not nor"

He looked deep into the fire "The Dhanti were always great physicians," he said without irony

So broke inside the fire, a pocket of water or air exploding with a muffled sound Sparks shot out at Nara and Laurent, and were repulsed by the firescreen Bright ingots of fla the position of the invisible barrier

"Of course, ere fully restrained in the chairs My fingers and toes were all I couldnot to an to itch, to throb and grow in my ers, and have to watch them respond at that rehest pitch Freed fro fro It had been so long since her ability had been fully open to another person; it stretched like a long-sleeping cat awakening She could see now, eht nodes in her optic nerve Spirals of revulsion wound through the loved hand clenched, as if trying to grasp the phantasms of his pain Maybe this was too private for her to look upon, she thought, and Nara&039;s fingersfor her apathy bracelet But it was gone, left on a doorside table

She closed her eyes, glad that easy relief was out of reach Someone should feel what this man had suffered

"They took us to pieces

"They pulled mented at wrist and elbow and shoulder, connected by those pulsing lines Then the legs, fused together, but a meter away My heart beat hard all day, puer circulatory syste officer, I was last in line for everything So they could learn from their mistakes, and not lose me to a sudden mishap I could see the other captives around s, with blood flowing froht; distributed, with the digestion clipped off in stoments to supply each removed limb separately; and utterly chaotic bodies, jurotesque, they stopped talking to us, or even to each other, dulled by their own butchery"

With that last word, the unavoidable moment came Her empathy became true telepathy Flashes struck now in Nara&039;se chairs, reclined like acceleration couches for sorotesque subspecies of humanity They sparkled with medical transport lines, soh to carry blood And on the chairsbodies

Her ht They were both terribly real and unbelievable Living but not whole Discorporate but breathing Nara could see their faces ht a nauseous shock, like the sudden movement of a duleamed, the lines efficient and clean, but ly randood, or one insane

But the prisoners were not creatures, Nara reminded herself They were huods, but hus

Whatever Laurent believed about death, nothing was beyond politics There were reasons for this butchery

Nara reached out to touch hiust struck out at her fro she&039;d ever felt: utter horror at hi but a machine that could be taken apart, like an insect&039;s by cruel children

There was nothing to do but hold him, a human presence in the face of inhuman memory But still she had to ask