Planet of Pain Read Online Free Page B

a groan of pain was torn from her lips.
    â€˜Aha!’ the major said with satisfaction. ‘Finally… a response. I was beginning to think the pair of you had been struck dumb.’
    Yet again he moved to Bel, and Jo began to despair. He could keep this up for hours if he wished. He could beat them till their buttocks were raw meat. She knew there was a limit to how much she could take, and that eventually she must break. Tears were pricking her eyes, and before long she would be sobbing for mercy, all self-control gone.
    Jo’s turn came around once more. She hung there on the cables like a fly caught in a web, knowing she was shaking yet quite unable to control her limbs. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, waiting for the pain.
    The stroke was blisteringly hard and she cried out in desperation. Someone laughed: it sounded like the trooper who’d laughed before. The pause between the strokes seemed interminable, and she suspected Tucker had deliberately slowed down, knowing what she was going through. The man didn’t need to be a genius to guess how desperate she must be to have this over and done with.
    She counted off the strokes silently as the beating continued. It was very bad now. Her buttocks were dreadfully sore and each fierce stroke burned white-hot on her abused flesh. And the grim truth was, it wasn’t going to stop. The beating wouldn’t end until they had told these men what they wanted to know. Capitulation was their only way out.
    Bel must have realised this too, for after her own set of six she gasped, ‘You win. Tell Colonel Hendricks I want to talk to him.’
    â€˜Not so tough after all, then,’ Tucker said smugly. ‘I knew you’d break of course, just not this quickly. I was hoping to give you eighty or ninety each before you cracked.’
    â€˜Just get the colonel,’ Bel said.
    â€˜No need trouble our esteemed commander. You can say whatever you’ve got to say to me.’
    â€˜No I can’t. You don’t have clearance. I’ll talk to the colonel, and no one else.’
    Tucker stared at her, then finally he shrugged and dispatched one of the troopers to fetch the ship’s captain. The rest of them waited in silence, and some few minutes later Hendricks entered with the trooper in his wake.
    â€˜I understand you wish to speak to me,’ the colonel said.
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ Bel replied. ‘I’m prepared to answer your questions.’
    â€˜Wise decision, captain,’ Hendricks said. ‘A pity you didn’t come to your senses sooner, but better late than never. Please proceed.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ Bel said. ‘Firstly, Firefly ’s computer isn’t locked, it’s destroyed. I erased the core memory for security reasons, obviously. Secondly, the mission we were on was a routine patrol. Six sequential jumps, three out, three back, with a special instruction to log any navigation hazard at the transit points.’
    She fell silent. The colonel waited as though expecting more. When nothing came, he frowned. ‘That’s it? That’s what you wanted to tell me?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Hendricks turned to Major Tucker, clearly not pleased. ‘And you brought me down here for this ?’
    Tucker stiffened. ‘She insisted on speaking to you personally, sir. She implied she had classified information to divulge.’
    â€˜ Implied ?’ Hendricks snapped. ‘Just what sort of interrogation are you running here, major? You do know where this request originated, I take it?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Then you’ll understand the consequences of failure. I need the truth from these women, and sooner rather than later. I don’t relish using such methods, but we do what we must. I expect a report on my screen in the next two hours, is that understood?’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ Tucker said. ‘But what if… perhaps she is telling the