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Chapter 22 - The Silent Black Ocean[]
Clan Cobra Interrogation Room
Idrmach Star System
Chainelane Isles, Deep Periphery
September, 3165
"Vanh, Christine Amanda, Chief Petty Officer Marine Branch, Kowloon Coast Guard Service number 525055801."
Name, rank, and service number. Point Three Dell Mannix was impressed. The young woman in the interrogation couch had suffered from carbon dioxide poisoning from a malfunctioning scrubber in her suit and five days on dwindling battery reserves. She was largely still in shock from losing a limb. The doped to the nines on expired drugs, and in every way should have little to no resistance under narco interrogation.
She had offered nothing except name, rank, and service number.
The scanning equipment showed little to no brain damage beyond some old scarring from what was presumably a childhood head injury.
She was deeply interesting however, because so few of these space-soldiers had survived to be recovered at all and because of the pendant on her Dogid.
A six pointed star and what was in her 'breadbag'-along with the detonators, was a copy of the Torah. Not in proper Star League English, but instead inscribed like some of the very old copies still brought out by the Loremaster of the Ka'an cloister for festivals.
Kowloon was known to be one of the havens that had large concentrations of Jews. Even reports from before the sundering of the Clans showed that the blood of Israel was a major factor in that world's resistance.
He tried Hebrew as a last resort, certain that the language was long dead in the corrupt inner sphere.
"What is the law?" she asked her prisoner.
The girl in her drugged stupor answered.
"I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
"You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord Your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."v
"You shall not take the name of the Lord Your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain."
"Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord Your God, in it you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy."v
"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord God gives you."
"You shall not murder."
"You shall not commit adultery."
"You shall not steal."
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s."
Dell's breath caught. Her accent was harsh, somehow more primal than the recitations by his cluster's chaplain.
More real, even in the fervor she recited it with.
Her voice segued to a sing-song.
"Hear o israel for our god is the one god, and his promise is true..."
On the imager, scenes of unimaginable beauty played out, unearthly and impossible images played out in colorless splendour. Her song went on for minutes, praising G-d, as if those were memories of seeing something completely alien.
"Listen to the chorus of the angelic host, praising HIM! Amen!!"
What the interrogation scanner was picking up and translating from her brain's electrochemical signals was incomprehensible, her tone in singing her little impromptu hymn was exultant, more joy than he had heard in his life...and completely impossible to justify given her condition and injuries.
"Where...is that?" he asked, forgetting to use the language.
"On the hull. during jumps." she whispered. "Hull surfing is the best."