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The Fury had thus far had no cause for the brig, and so it was blessedly empty.
The brig was a series of clear rooms, made of tough, transparent perspex. The last cell in the room stood in stark contrast to the rest. Its perspex screen was an opaque white, its privacy field activated.
Marcus, or perhaps Halastar, had dismissed the guards to ensure the secrecy of their guest. The room was quiet, and Justinius walked over to the guard station and checked the security feeds.
The prisoner was sitting in his cell, cross-legged on the cold steel floor. His left hand sat in his lap, and his eyes were closed. His right arm was truncated at the elbow, and a basic amputation field dressing had been placed over his limb’s stump to control blood loss. He wore only his trousers.
Justinius turned to Halastar, “Do you have a medic you can trust to keep his mouth shut?”
Halastar nodded. “I’ll bring up the ship surgeon, his name is Allistair. He knows how to keep a secret.”
Justinius turned to Marcus, “Go get some food from the galley, discreetly please.”
Marcus nodded and turned to leave.
In the Terran Companies, the capturing of prisoners of war was not seen as a primary objective of war. It was taught as an inferior alternative to killing the enemy outright, only to be conducted where an enemy surrendered - and that surrender did not jeopardize mission success - or in the case of extremely valuable intelligence targets.
Despite this, doctrine dictated that when prisoners of war were captured, they were to be treated well. This was ultimately a pragmatic decision. Prisoners of war, while a drain to resources, were useful sources of intelligence, and their gentle treatment was useful in maintaining relations between other species who also valued the moral considerations of taking prisoners.
There was also the fact that poor treatment of prisoners made extraction of intelligence more difficult. There were those species who believed that execution or torture of prisoners provided the best intelligence at the lowest resource cost. Terran thinking placed a low value on intelligence gathered under duress, and there were rare occasions where returning prisoners of war could contribute to strategic goals. Treat them well, question them, monitor them, and exploit their value.
That was the Terran way.
When Marcus and Halastar had returned, bringing with them food and the ship surgeon, Justinius approached the door and allowed his biometrics to be read. The door opened with a pressurized hiss, and he gestured the medic forward. Halastar and Marcus, he directed to the guard station. They would watch the proceedings unobserved.
The prisoner did not rise as Justinius and the doctor entered. His eyes however, ice-blue and wide, gave away his panic at the two men’s entrance. This reinforced to Justinius the idea that this man was not from Terra. Firstly, the humane treatment of prisoners had been widespread practice on Terra for nearly half a century, and so a man of his age should know that he had nothing to fear from Terran soldiers. Secondly, the blue eyes. It was a nearly extinct variation of eye-colour on Terra in the modern era, only possessed by approximately point-one percent of the population. The odds of their captive being blue-eyed by chance was infinitesimal.
Dr. Allistair knelt down by the captive man. The prisoner recoiled, shuffling backwards along the floor until his back met the wall of his cell. The doctor spoke in a quiet, reassuring tone.
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“My name is Allistair, I’m a doctor. What’s your name?”
The man shook his head, his eyes darting between Justinius and the medic, still wide with panic.
Allistair unshouldered his kitbag, and made a show of demonstrating that the kit contained no weapons. He held up the red-cross on his bag's exterior, and pointed to the twined serpent caduceus on his lapel. Nothing sufficed to calm the prisoner, until Allistair slowly retrieved his stethoscope from his bag. The medic held the chest-piece over his heart, and held the ear-pieces out to the man. Cautiously, the man listened to Allistair’s heart, and slowly realization dawned on him.
Allistair smiled warmly, and gestured to the man’s truncated arm.
“Can I have a look at that?”
The man pointed at Allistair, then at his wound, questioning.
The medic nodded, and extended his hands towards the stump. The prisoner shuffled himself to allow better access to the wound.
Allistair removed the field dressing and began to work on the arm. He applied anti-bacterial treatments, and clamped shut severed blood vessels with specialist micro-seals from his kit bag. Lastly, he sealed the wound in an inert spray foam, and covered the wound with a slip over dressing, which looped over the man's opposite shoulder.
The medic attempted to draw up an IV of fluid for the man, but the fearful expression returned, and the medic relented. He also gave the prisoner two pills of painkillers, which the man accepted into his palm, but did not swallow.
“He’s lost a lot of blood, but the wound was cut very cleanly. He needs to eat, drink and rest, and he should survive.” The surgeon remarked, “We’ll probably need to do surgery soon to replace the lower half of the arm, if we decide to take that route, elsewise I’ll need to trim back the bone and close the wound to allow him to fully recover.”
Justinius nodded, “Thank you doctor, please give us the room.”
Allistair simply walked out. The prisoner’s eyes tracked the medic’s back as he left, and when the door sealed shut behind him, the aspect of terror returned to the captive’s malachite eyes.
Justinius placed the tray of food down in front of the prisoner and crouched opposite him. It didn’t do much to bring them to an equal height. In his bulky power armour, Justinius could not sit comfortably on the floor. He loomed a foot taller than the captive, his form bulked out by his wargear’s armour plates.
Justinius gestured at the tray of food. The prisoner stared warily at the meal, but did not move. Justinius slowly took a small portion of each part of the meal and ate it, making sure to noticeably swallow and show his empty mouth afterwards. Lastly, he drank a sip from the aluminum flask of water on the tray.
His demonstration complete, Justinius gestured again at the food, and then at the prisoner. The man slowly started to eat. His nibbling quickly turned to feasting, and the man scoffed the food as if he hadn’t eaten in days. When the food was complete, the prisoner drained the cup of water, and looked up sheepishly at the bulky warrior in front of him, once again aware of Justinius’ presence.
Justinius mustered his best, warmest smile. He was pretty sure it wasn’t very convincing. He was never very charming or endearing. Justinius gestured at himself, and spoke a single word.
“Justinius.”
Then he gestured at the prisoner.
The man swallowed, and uttered his first word.
“Samir.”
Justinius nodded and repeated the word. “Samir.”
Samir nodded, and spoke another sentence in a language Justinius didn’t understand. It wasn’t any alien language he had studied, and even his wrist mounted translator was no help. It was not a language it had encountered either.
Changing tact, Justinius set his wrist mounted display to projection, and called up a galaxy map. He slowly shifted the view to zoom in on Terra. Samir’s eyes tracked the movements on the map.
Justinius pointed at the hololithic projection of Terra, pointed at himself, and said, “Terra”.
He zoomed the map out and pointed at Samir, and then the projection.
Samir hesitated, then slowly began pointing, as Justinius narrowed the field of the map down to follow.
When they were done, Terra was shown orbiting Sol.
Samir pointed at himself, then Terra, and said “Earth”.