Part 3 (1/2)
”The light?”
”The yellow system.” She gave him a twisted, sour smile. ”The pain system.”
Dax blinked. ”You were right. I don't understand.”
The smile, for the briefest instant, became a real one. In the moment before it faded, Dax caught himself starting to smile back instinctively.
”The collar isn't just worn...Captain.” She sounded as if she wasn't sure what to call him, but he waved her to continue. ”It's implanted. With probes directly into the brain.”
Dax winced at the thought. ”Probes to cause pain?”
”For control.”
He stared at her for a moment, nausea churning in his stomach at the evil simplicity of it. Her desperation, her fear made sense now, as did the sweat of pain on her face.
”The controller,” he said softly. She nodded. ”That's what you meant by your limit? Your distance from it?”
She nodded again. ”It has a range. It was set for the length of the prison wing.”
”That's why you had to take it with you.”
”Yes.”
”And why you can't go any farther now. Because it's on the bridge, in my cloak.”
She nodded.
”Can't you change the range?”
”No. It takes a special seal to activate that system. Only Coalition officials have them.”
”What are the other two systems? The red and the blue?”
”You don't know?” Her eyes widened in apprehension, as if she were afraid the question would anger him. ”I'm sorry, I didn't mean to question you, I”
Her fear irritated him. ”Stop looking like you think I'm going to beat you or something.”
”It is the usual punishment for a slave who questions the master.”
His stomach knotted at her words. ”I'm no one's master,” he ground out. ”I merely asked about the other crystals.”
”You truly do not know,” she said, and he wondered if that, too, would have been a question instead of an observation had she not been afraidor too well trained?to make it one.
”Forgive me for not being familiar with the details of Coalition enslavement,” he said, his repulsion at what had been done to her making his voice sharp. ”I've been gone a long time. Please explain.”
At his tone, the wariness, the fear, reappeared in her eyes. She hesitated, studying him. Suddenly, he understood. And his irritation faded away. ”Never mind. If I don't already know, you'd be a fool to tell me.”
She gaped at him, clearly startled once more. ”But if you order me to tell you, I must”
”It would give me a power no one has the right to have.” He tried to shrug off his distaste for what she had told him, and said lightly, ”I'm just sorry you didn't explain this before. You're lucky Rina didn't try to knock you out and drag you the rest of the way. You are a little... pungent.”
”If she had,” Califa said, her tone grim, ”it wouldn't have mattered. We'd all be dead.”
Dax stared at her. ”What?”
”I told you there's a set limit. When you reach it, the pain system activates. If you go past it...it blows up.”
Dax's gaze shot down to the collar. ”It's explosive?”
”Very. The core is photon propellant igniter.” Dax whistled, long and low. Califa's mouth twisted into that arid smile again. ”Yes. They call it permanent discipline.”
”Permanent is right,” Dax muttered. ”It would take your head off, along with the top of this s.h.i.+p.” His gaze lifted to her face. ”How long have you been...?”
”A slave?” She laughed, that harsh, humorless sound again. ”Nearly a year.”
He sucked in his breath. For her to have withstood this for a year and still have any spirit left at all, amazed him. She must have been a most amazing woman, before they began to try to break her. His gaze flicked to the collar once more.
”How do you get it off?”
”You don't. Unless you happen to have a good laser surgeon handy.”
Dax shook his head. ”Nelcar's good at what he does, but he's no surgeon.” He might have become one, once. But the Coalition had put an end to that dream.
”Captain,” she began hesitantly.
”Dax,” he corrected. ”Only Roxton calls me Captain, and only to irritate me.”
”Does it?”
He drew back a little, surprised by the question. She looked equally surprised that she'd asked it.
”Yes,” he said after a moment.
”I wonder why,” she said.
It was a rhetorical enough questionor another question safely phrased as an observationthat he didn't try to answer. That he didn't deserve that or any other t.i.tle was not something he wanted to discuss with this woman, a stranger. When he didn't speak after a long moment, she did.
”Dax... would you...”
She stopped, biting her lip, her eyes lowered. He wanted to snap at her, to tell her to show some of the spirit he'd seen before. But he restrained himself, and kept his voice even.
”Am I so frightening that you can't ask a simple question?”
As if unconsciously, her hand crept to her throat, to finger the gold band. Her eyes met his. ”It is...the first thing they train us in. A slave never questions, never looks, never thinks...”
Train. Not teach, but train, Dax thought. Like an animal. ”I am no one's master,” he repeated. ”Ask what you will.”