Jupiter's Halo Book One: The Lies

Chapter Five "The Watcher"

Natasha In’Tuen watched the body of Aitkin Cassini fall limply against the chair’s restraints through the viewing pane. Its surface made up an entire wall of her office. The floor to ceiling display of Aitkin’s torment made it appear as if she could reach out and touch him as he slumbered under the influence of the chemicals pumped into his veins.

Her view of the chamber was similar to that of the figure in the chair. The light illuminated him in great detail, but only him. She could adjust the angle of her viewing pane to rotate full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees either vertically or horizontally, but even with this, the remainder of the cell was locked in shadow as if the universe itself ended outside the light.

Shortly she knew Aitkin would be roused by a boost of stimulants to combat the anaesthesia that had put him to sleep. The practice of playing with a subject’s sleep patterns was an old but effective one. Although Aitkin had only been in the room for four hours, to him it would seem much longer; days if not weeks. The cycle employed by the Fathers was an efficient and effective one for keeping their subjects off balance and confused.

They followed a similar pattern to that employed by torturers throughout human history. First the questions and the pain. They would make the patient understand there was nothing within his or her control and they would establish the dynamic of question, answer, question, answer. Any behaviour that did not conform would be greeted with prolonged agony until the subject learned the rhythm.

Once this was done to their satisfaction they would move on to the next phase. The patient would be introduced to the auto-surgeon. The Father would explain at length its capabilities for mending flesh and knitting bones to ensure his captive understood there was no length or depth of suffering that could not be inflicted on a repeating cycle.

It was a powerful message. Natasha had seen subjects break as they simply imagined what could be done to them. It was a tool for destroying hope and she’d seen it work time and time again.

For most, the machine and its capabilities were already well known. The technology had developed on one of the Jovian colonies; Ganymede perhaps, or maybe Europa, Natasha couldn’t remember exactly. No matter its origin, the auto-surgeon was now as widely used throughout the factions of humankind as wavecasts or fusion cores. They were in the military, mining and even the better civilian medical facilities. It was a rare occurrence to find a patient who had never encountered one before. Those were the ones hit hardest by the message.

If the Father still had a viable patient to work on after this moment of education he would begin the work of building a relationship to leverage. The pain would become a third party, something the Father would keep at bay, but only with the cooperation of his subject. He didn’t want the pain to be in control, but without help, he would be powerless to keep it away.

It was a process they didn’t rush, but still it only took a matter of hours. Thanks to the cycle of sleeping and waking it would feel to the subject like it happened over days, but in reality, a session would rarely last as long as ten hours.

It was strange, she always felt, watching the transition of a subject from hating and fearing the Father to clinging to them in defence against the agony they themselves inflicted.

Natasha would watch it all as she always did. It was important.

She felt something close to sympathy for Aitkin as she watched him go through the Father’s process. The pain had paused again and his body was limp as the chemicals pumping into his veins clouded his mind and delivered him into unconsciousness. The light went out and her view became one of greens as the image flicked into night vision.

His suffering was great, horrendous even, but it was necessary. Nothing was more important than their cause. No single person, no single race.

She was used to seeing the moment when the subject’s will broke. It was when they put it all together; their suffering would be without end. There was no light, no hope, no rescue. If they held their tongue they would not die, at least in most cases, they would simply go on reliving their nightmare until their minds became nothing but a jumbled mess of terror dreams and fractured thought.

By that time the patients were often little more than a dribbling mess, but so open a Father could pull whatever information from them he wished.

That was something Natasha had never quite managed to adjust to; the Fathers referred to what she would call victims as ‘subjects’ or sometimes ‘patients’. It was odd. They spoke about them with reverence, as if what they did was some kind of service. What she saw happening through the viewing pane and what she’d watched so many times in the past was clearly torture. The word for someone undergoing torture, to her mind, was definitely ‘victim’.

“But no,” the Fathers said, “One can only be a victim if the trials they undergo are unjust. We are searching for the Truth and such a search cannot be deemed anything but necessary, nay obligatory. We are obliged to find the Truth and those who try to hide it from us are themselves unjust.”

They even had a terrible joke, as far as she knew it was as old as the Fatherhood itself. Worse than its poor taste, worse even than its general lack of actual mirth, was the solemn and serious way it was delivered, “We call them patients because that is what the search for Truth requires; patience.”

The ‘patients’ were never told of the wake/sleep cycle though. Once in the chair all a subject would know was the light, the pain and the questions a Father put to them. They would receive no sustenance, no water or food and no understanding of their surroundings. The cycle of sleeping and waking was an integral part of the breaking process. Aitkin himself had gone through it several times already and if he was able to think through the pain, by now he would believe he had gone without food or water for several days.

There were no indicators of time passing within the cell and he had no way of knowing that his periods of sleep lasted only a matter of minutes at a time. The power of the mind on the body is strong and even though he would be kept hydrated by the auto-surgeon, his mind would tell his body it was dying from dehydration. Natasha had seen men and women beg for water within an hour of their first waking. Aitkin was yet to beg for anything.

She cast an eye over the notes she had made to confirm his words so far. All he had given was his name and rank. He had given it over and over, nothing more, but Natasha knew the Father would break him eventually. When that happened Aitkin Cassini would tell them anything he was asked. They always did in the end.

On the viewing pane, the figure of Aitkin Cassini remained still. The auto-surgeon was already working to repair his damaged flesh while his mind floated in the blankness of anaesthesia. As she watched the machine finished its ministrations and retreated in silence into the blackness of the room’s far corners.

He was left to slumber for a few minutes. It was the first time his rest had not been interrupted by the work of the auto-surgeon, another way for the Father to inflict pain and send the message that there would be no respite.

This brief gap was the only one and its single purpose was to remind him what it felt like to go without pain, even for a moment, so he would yearn to return to this state all the more.

She watched as the dials on the pane showed a reset in the balance of drugs being pumped into Aitkin's system. The anaesthetic reduced as the stimulants increased.

Aitkin’s body lurched against his restraints and his eyes opened wide as he gasped into consciousness. To his eyes, the room would be pitch dark, but her viewing pane picked him out in perfect detail.

Natasha concentrated on the viewing pane as the Father stepped towards the chair, ready to continue his questions. She had watched many of these grisly interviews before. Too many not to have developed a certain level of desensitization, but still the detail of the images before her caused her to feel light-headed and more than a little nauseated.

Aitkin would soon be ready for the next stage.

He’d been through the pain. He’d answered the questions they all knew his loyalty permitted and now the Father would need to find the cracks his work had left in Aitkin’s psyche and begin the work of levering them open.

Natasha had heard enough times in her life that torture didn’t work. If you hurt someone enough they would tell you whatever you wanted to hear just to make the pain stop. The Fathers didn’t go in for that sort of torture. They had a very specific aim in mind; to break the barriers of the mind and lay it bare to be picked over at their leisure.

Aitkin had shown himself to be strong, surprisingly strong, but his trials were far from over.

Natasha had sat through the successful result of the father’s labours too many times to expect anything other than the same result again. When it happened the subject, their patient wouldn’t just say what they thought the Father wanted to hear. They would answer everything they were asked with total honesty. From their point of view, there was no reason not to.

Aitkin had remained stoic throughout his first four hours.  He’d been trained, conditioned to withstand, but no one who’d given that training had ever been a patient of the Fatherhood.

Natasha knew well enough the effectiveness of the Deorum marines. They were a superlative fighting force and the major reason for the Deorum’s continued strength in the solar system.

A member of their ranks was a challenge the Father’s relished and she had known to expect the session to be a long one. At least, longer than usual.

She could see his eyes, flicking around the room, searching for any glimmer of light, no matter how small. His fingers twitched, as did his feet. He was nervous and rightly so.

She fancied she could see his mind working. He was realising the reason for his brief respite, understanding the pain would come again soon and no doubt wishing the moment could be put off for as long as possible.

Strapped into the chair as he was, his body language was minimal. She had assumed he would believe he could outlast the torture. Beat them somehow, or even escape. Now as she watched him a different thought occurred. His lips were moving slightly as if he was reciting some litany or prayer. She adjusted to volume setting, bringing it up to maximum to try and make out the words he mumbled. They were low and uttered at pace, but before long she realised there was a pattern repeating within them.

She listened to another round and single words started to become clear. Natasha smiled as she finally understood what he was saying. She’d heard it before.

The Company Oath.

Now she looked at him with a fresh perspective it all became clear. The nervous movements, the pent-up energy she’d mistaken for impotent aggression. Aitkin didn’t believe he was going to make it through this ordeal. He was barely holding on.

For a moment she considered raising the Father through her comm to tell him what she’d discovered and then thought of how foolish she was being.

Of course, the Father knew. It was his job to know. She was just an observer. An experienced one maybe, but still just the audience. The Father was a professional.

In the widened perspective of the room, she saw him stir and knew Aitkin’s next trial was soon to begin. She readied herself to watch him learn, over the next few hours, exactly how skilled the Fatherhood could be.