"Things don't look good for you, Major... Ishikawa? Am I reading that right? Boy, you'd think after four years of fighting you guys I'd have gotten good at Japanese."
Major Ishikawa smiled with palpable contempt. "I do not expect barbarians to comprehend languages even a fraction more eloquent than their own," he said in almost fluent English. "And on the contrary, Mister Gaines, I would insist my position is more secure by the moment."
Gaines sat back in his chair and combed his fingers through his beard. "It's that good? Here inside this room at the heart of a Knight Errant command post, about three and a half kilometers from the nearest Protectorate position--that we know of, anyway--I'd have thought you'd be a little more nervous."
Ishikawa waved the fingers of his left hand dismissively, the chains binding his manacles to the table clinked together as he did so. "You may have destroyed my convoy and scattered my marines, Mister Gaines, but your corporate laws forbid you from harming prisoners. You are a man who values his career, are you not? A black mark upon your record would embarrass not just you but Ares as well. I do not need to tell you anything, for there is nothing you can do to convince me to."
Making a show of looking thoughtful, Gaines stroked his mustache using thumb and forefinger. "You are correct," he admitted, "I really don't want to have to resort to anything... unpleasant, Major. You know how soft and undisciplined us Americans are. Would it change your mind if I asked you nicely, one more time, if there's anything you want to share with me?"
The Major's smile twisted into an outright sneer. "The only way anything unpleasant could occur in this room is if my shackles were to come off," Ishikawa declared. "I am quite familiar with the corporate court's regulations of your so-called Knight Errant, Mister Gaines. Any imperial marine is worth ten of your number."
Gaines tapped the datapad on his side of the table a few times before pushing himself away and standing up, taking the pad with him. "Ten of me? Maybe so, Major. It's a real shame you aren't willing to cooperate."
Ishikawa watched carefully as Gaines made his way to the reinforced door leading back out into the hallway. The Major's imperious bearing was diminished somewhat by the poor state of his dress: the left sleeve of his uniform was torn, the bars of his rank had been scraped off in a brush with the concrete and his belt buckle was completely shattered. Still he watched the Knight Errant operations manager stop at the door, Ishikawa wearing an expression of disdain that only lifelong aristocrats could manage.
Gaines turned briefly to look back at Ishikawa. "Funny you should mention barbarians," the man said, unable to keep from curling one corner of his mouth. "I know someone who fits that description pretty well. And Major, I don't think she cares about her career at all."
Before he could elaborate any further the door's integrated bars shifted and the heavy steel barrier swung outward, admitting Gaines into the man trap beyond it before he shut the door and left the interrogation chamber. Major Ishikawa was left with nothing to listen to but the muted rattling of the steel chains keeping his wrists close to the table. He had nothing to look at except the intercom speaker in the corner opposite the door and the wide reflective window from where other Knight Errant personnel were doubtless observing him.
He settled back into the self-satisfied grin he'd been wearing almost perpetually since they'd apprehended him. "You will get nothing from me," he called out, not for the first time. This time though he added for good measure, "Except swift retribution." The Protectorate would come for him, of that he had no doubt. And although the course of history would come to prove him wrong, in this moment Major Aiko Ishikawa did genuinely believe this to be true.
Within a minute the sound of the bars inside of the steel door drew Ishikawa's attention. The person who emerged from the doorway had to turn slightly to one side to fit the span of her shoulders through it. When she was inside the room she stood up to her full height and seemed to loom over the seated Ishikawa from almost ten feet away. Straight black hair framed her face and rested on her neck and shoulders while sharp gray eyes peered at him coldly as if through the scope of a high-powered rifle.
Clad in a sleeveless sweat-soaked white shirt and black cotton shorts, the woman's body was like a sculpture come to life and could surely only be the product of constant physical conditioning. Flesh like stone, beaded with perspiration, glimmered in the low light of the interrogation room, completely free of any hint of chrome save for her boots where the leather had been worn away at the tips to reveal the metal below.
She pulled the door shut behind her and the sudden sound of the bars locking into place in the wall made Ishikawa flinch in his seat. Compelled by pride to cover his shame, Aiko spat the first insult he could summon to mind.
"I assume you are the brute that Knight Errant has tasked with intimidating me into cooperation. As I told your superior, you will get nothing from me."
The woman shrugged. "Not here to ask you any questions," she told him. She reached into the pockets of her shorts with both hands. "We're past that part." Her voice was calm but each word seemed to carry a kind of bristling anticipation of whatever was to come next. Her fists came up: in her left she held a small circular audio speaker. Her right opened to reveal a small straight object held in her palm.
"Got a gift for you," the woman called, tossing it through the air. Ishikawa leaned backwards in his seat as far as his manacles would allow. When the object landed on the table in front of his hands he saw it for what it was: a key.
"What is this?" the Major inquired suspiciously.
"I don't like when people can't fight back," the woman said, walking to the corner with the intercom and setting her small audio device on the wall below it.
Ishikawa scoffed. "Offering me a fool's hope to free myself, is that it?"
But she merely shook her head. "No, there's no chance of that. They'd fill you full of free samples the moment you stepped out of this room. There's only one way out of this place for you and that's in a box."
Sneering, Aiko took up the key in one of his hands and began to unlock his restraints. "You do not scare me, American. You will come to regret giving me my freedom of motion."
The woman spoke as if Ishikawa hadn't said anything. "I realize you've been sitting down for a little while so I'm going to give you the first three swings. I think that's more than fair." Then she tapped the device on the wall again and it began spewing music into the interrogation room.
"There's a reason... For the sun-shining sky... N' there's a reason, why I'm feelin' so high... Must be the season, when that love light shines... All around us..."
The Major began to say something but the woman dragged a finger across the rim of the small speaker, causing the volume to increase to the point where any words were drowned out. The manacles came off and Ishikawa stood up, rubbing at his wrists. The black-haired woman rolled her shoulders and waved him forward with her hands, the beginnings of a smirk forming on her face.
"So let that feelin' grab you deep inside, n' send you reelin' where your love can't hide!"
His face twisted in disgust, Aiko launched into a forward charge that saw him leaping onto the table and across the room, aiming a balled fist at the woman's face. She stepped casually to the right, causing his hand to strike the reinforced ballistic glass of the viewing window with a dull thump.
Stepping away by four paces, the woman held up the index finger of her right hand. That's one.
Lashing out with one leg in a kick towards her face took Aiko close to her again, but the woman was deceptively mobile for her size. She avoided his boot's heel by no more than a few millimeters by ducking to one side, her grin having grown only wider. Index and middle finger came up: That's two.
"'N then go stealin' through the moonlit nights, with your lover..."
Ishikawa put all of his strength into a blow aimed at the woman's throat, for even the most formidable of combatants could be rendered helpless if they could not breathe. But though his aim was adequate, his reach was not: the Knight Errant enforcer needed only to lean back far enough and let the differences in their height rob Aiko of his threatening potential.
