by Kal Spriggs
He set a pistol on the metal table in front of me.
I swallowed, “Sir, I assume that because I’m not dead yet and I’m talking to you, that my fate has not yet been decided?”
“Well, there is likely to be an official tribunal given the charges and certain parties wishing to make an example of you. But seeing as I did warn you about being ambitious, I might find you guilty of treason and therefore save everyone the time,” Dyer told me. “Let’s start off with a few simple yes or no questions. These are for posterity, Vars, so be certain to answer properly.”
He sat back, crossing his arms, leaving the pistol on the table in between us. I knew better than to make some kind of desperate lunge for it. Even if my hands hadn’t been cuffed behind my back, he most certainly would be expecting something like that. For that matter, the pistol might not even be loaded.
“Did you disregard a direct order from Daewa Tong to stick to a patrol route?”
Here goes… “Yes, sir.”
His eyes narrowed as I answered. Either he had expected me to lie and deny it, or to try and offer some kind of excuse. “Did you do so knowing that you were violating the Drakkus Imperial Space Korps code of conduct and that in doing so, you would face punishment?”
“Yes, sir,” I met his eyes as I spoke.
Institor Dyer uncrossed his arms, leaning forward over the table. His expression was interested now, clearly curious about where this was headed. “Did you assume you would be arrested and brought here to me, to face interrogation and possibly execution?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “I sort of counted on it.”
Dyer rose from his chair and circled around behind it, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is a most interesting admission, Vars. Believe me when I say I am most puzzled why a young man in your current situation would willfully disobey a direct order in a fashion designed to draw immediate and direct punishment in the form of an officer of Imperial Intelligence. It is either the play of an idiot or a fool, or possibly a genius intellect about to dazzle me with brilliance. Of the three, Vars, which do you suppose is most likely?”
“None of them, sir,” I answered. “I’m not particularly sharp, but I’m not an idiot and I’m not a fool. I simply saw no other way to get a face to face meeting with you without giving away that I had seen subversive behavior on the behalf of a commissioned officer.”
Institor Dyer looked up, his expression shifting, “You’re not talking about an entrant or even an initiate? You mean you witnessed some kind of treasonous activity by an officer, possibly one in your chain of command?” He took his seat again and rested his hands on the surface of the table, his right hand only centimeters away from his pistol, “That, Vars, is interesting. You’ve bought yourself the opportunity to explain more.”
I restrained my sigh of relief, knowing that any sign of weakness or hesitation would probably result in my death. I spoke calmly and slowly, careful to speak only the truth, since I was certain he had various lie-detectors focused on me. “When I reported for the patrol, I noticed Daewa Tong being very specific about patrol routes. Normally we have a bit more freedom in case routes are blocked or flooded or something.”
“Specific routes are sometimes selected if a patrol officer wants to verify reports,” Dyer noted. “But continue.”
“My patrol entered the lift and I noticed Daewa Tong taking extra time to brief Entrant Jerral’s group. At the time, Jerral was focused on my patrol, which made me suspect that he intended to attack or ambush us.”
“Again, not entirely uncommon, this does happen,” Dyer noted. “But his assignment was to follow your group and ensure you did your patrol route as Daewa Tong’s reports suggest you had not been following your routes.”
“I didn’t know that, sir, but I did notice them following us. Given the possible threat, I convinced Entrant Hayden and Entrant Drakkan that we should shake their pursuit.” That wasn’t entirely untrue. They’d wanted to kill Jerral, so it wasn’t a lie.
“Which led to Jerral reporting your group as not having gone the directed route,” Institor’s fingers on his right hand brushed against the butt of the pistol resting on the table there. “A story that might exonerate your fellows, but which is insufficient evidence for clemency in your case, Entrant Vars. Much less any sign of wrong-doing.”
“One thing, sir,” I told him. “On our return to the lift, I noticed, for a moment, that Entrant Jerral’s implant registered a different name and identity. It didn’t last very long and I barely had time to notice it.” That had been because I’d asked Shadow to hack his implant and insert the false identity she’d created for me and she’d then “flashed” that identity on his implant to confirm it had been uploaded.
“His implant cannot show a different identity, not unless it was hacked—” Dyer broke off as he realized what I meant. “Go on.”
“In theory, he could have been planning to use a fake identity to allow himself to get closer to us in the tunnels in order to follow us or ambush us,” I went on. “But that is a problematic approach seeing as we would be naturally suspicious of anyone we encountered. Therefore, it is more likely that a false identity would be more useful against something else. Like security systems he would be likely to encounter near the surface should he plan on desertion after assassinating a member of the Royal Family.”
“Interesting,” Dyer waved at me to continue. “But problematic evidence. You have nothing to suggest that Jerral or his companions went anywhere near the surface… if indeed, they planned on that course of action.”
“But I do, sir,” I noted. “I noticed when we returned to the lift that Jerral and his companions had been sprayed by a civet.”
“Hard to not notice that,” Dyer snorted. “The three of them reek of it.”
“Civets are nocturnal, but they’re surface dwellers, sir. They mostly eat what they can scavenge or steal from humans up on the surface, when they’re not on the rooftops and higher levels. I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think there’s much of a population of them in the Heart, either. But they do live in the Barrens and the spaceport areas. It seems unlikely that Jerral and his companions just happened to stumble across one in the lowest levels of the Underwarrens while they were supposed to be monitoring our patrol.” I swallowed. “Since Jerral has not shown any particular intelligence, I would think that hacking an implant would be outside of his knowledge. Also, he wouldn’t be smart enough to set up this ambush and coordinate his patrol with ours. He had to have outside help. A patron.”
“What are you suggesting, Vars?” Dyer’s eyes narrowed, staring right into mine. I knew now that I had to tread carefully. Since Jerral’s patron was Prince Ladon, the obvious response was that the Prince had orchestrated the murder of his cousin, the Princess. But I couldn’t suggest something like that, because a far more palatable truth was that I’d disobeyed Daewa Tong and spun up a story to cover myself. But Mikhail Dyer wants to find corruption and treason, so I can give it to him.
“It seems likely that Daewa Tong saw an opportunity, sir, to advance himself, perhaps by taking bribes to have Princess Kiyu assassinated. He had to know that Jerral would hesitate and wouldn’t be eager to come back and have to explain himself. Maybe he made Jerral a deal. He provided him with some kind of hacked identity and a way out, probably with the intention of having Jerral kill his companions. When we gave Jerral the slip, he panicked and tried to go to the spaceport to make use of his implant. But it didn’t work, either his companions realized they’d be left holding the bag or else they ran into the civet. They came back to the lift, Jerral tried to salvage the situation by saying we didn’t follow orders.” I finished the whole chain, feeling a bit breathless as I finished. It sounded far-fetched as I thought about it. But there were little breadcrumbs, things that I had pointed out that didn’t add up to a simple disregard for orders.
“Very interesting, Vars,” Institor Dyers stood up. After a moment he picked up his pistol off the table a
nd hefted it. My heart began to race and I felt my whole chest tense up. He didn’t buy it.
“I think I’ll hold off on any final decision until I confirm some details,” he told me, tucking his pistol into its holster. “You’ll wait right here, won’t you Vars?”
“I won’t move, sir,” I answered, fighting the urge to laugh nervously.
“Such a polite young man,” Dyer chuckled as he walked past me to the door. He paused, to pat me on the shoulder. “Clever, Vars. Very clever.”
I didn’t manage to draw a breath until I heard the door shut behind him.
***
He made me wait several hours. After just a few minutes, my arms started to go numb. I shifted in the chair a bit, shifting my shoulders around to try and get the blood moving. I didn’t’ dare stand up. For all I knew, he was watching the monitors, waiting for me to give him a reason to come back in and execute me.
After the first hour or so, my back really started hurting. You think this is really going to work? Shadow asked.
It’s the best idea I could think of, I answered. Even if there wasn’t enough evidence to go after Tong or Jerral, there was enough to muddy the situation. All I needed to do was cast enough doubt and hopefully any accusations from Tong would then evaporate.
Or they’ll decide to kill all of you just to make the situation go away, Shadow told me.
You’re really terrible at making me feel better, I thought back at her.
I’m not here to hold your hand, I’m your older sister--or at least a reasonable facsimile of her, Shadow’s voice in my head turned rather melancholy. I’ve been thinking about this… existence of mine a lot over the past few months. It really seems… unsatisfying.
Hey now, you may be visiting in my head, but I’m the one who has to live there! I protested.
Hah, Shadow thought back. I meant being a disembodied spirit watching the world and not able to really have any effect on it. It was one thing to be in the planetary network. Stuck in your implants, especially not able to really do anything, it feels so pointless.
Apparently even digital copies could get depressed. Hey, it’s not all bad, right? I probably wouldn’t have figured out the artifacts down there were made of quicksilver without you. And you noticed they had encrypted data on them, right?
True enough, Shadow answered. But little tricks like that aren’t what I would call living. Mostly I just watch you blunder from one disaster to another.
Gee… thanks.
Don’t get me wrong, I, that is, the real Jiden, did the same. For all that I’m smarter, wiser, and generally more liberated than her, I feel like that’s what I’m doing, too. Only as a purely digital being I have the ability to make bad decisions faster than humans. She had an edge of frustration to her voice. I keep thinking that I know better and then I go and do something dumb.
You’ve helped me pretty well so far, I told her.
I nearly got you killed when I helped that assassin get into the holding barracks. I wasn’t smart enough to help you avoid this whole situation. They have enough security aimed at us right now that I don’t dare try to connect to the network, which means I’m basically useless at the moment, Shadow finished. If I was flesh and blood, at least I could do something.
Well, I’m grateful for the company if nothing else. It wasn’t much, but it was true. Having my older sister to talk to, even “just” a digital copy that hid out inside my head, was more than a little bit of a relief. And I realized that I needed that relief, I needed someone I could trust. Because here on Drakkus, I didn’t even know if I could trust my friends.
And for all that, I’d risked my life by sticking around to help them.
***
The door opened behind me and a moment later, Institor Dyer walked past me. Two of his people caught me by the shoulders and lifted me to my feet. My chest went tight and I wondered if I was about to die.
“Well, Entrant Vars, you are either a very clever or very lucky young man,” he told me. He nodded at his people and one of them reached behind me to unlock the cuffs. They settled me back down to the chair and then let go of me. I looked back as they stepped back out the door and closed it behind them.
“Thank you, sir,” I looked back at Dyer.
“It’s an interesting story you spun,” he admitted. “I was able to confirm Jerral’s hacked implant. It was well done, definitely outside of young Jerral’s capabilities. Hidden, too, in a way that we wouldn’t find unless we’d searched. He seemed quite alarmed when we seized him.” Dyer shook his head, “Again, it wouldn’t have been enough, but for Daewa Tong’s response.”
“Sir?” I asked.
“I sent two of my people to question him,” Mikhail Dyer shook his head. “When they began to question him about his orders to Entrant Jerral, he drew a pistol out of his desk and shot himself in the head. Neither of my people had time to stop him. Most unfortunate as I am now exceedingly curious what he would have said.”
My mouth dropped open at that. I hadn’t expected that at all.
“Very suddenly, your story seems to be the only one that makes sense. Neither of your fellow Jade Flight entrants has said anything that doesn’t match, either,” he made a bit of a face, “not that I can question them very rigorously, without cause.”
He took a seat opposite me. “I must say, Vars, this whole business has worked out in your favor. But before we both get up and walk out that door, a bit of caution.”
“Sir?” I asked.
“You have come out of this very secure. Your rival, young Jerral, is likely to face extreme interrogation techniques and I very much doubt he will survive.” I couldn’t help but shiver at that. I didn’t want to think about what horrible things Dyer was going to do to Jerral. “You avoided an accusation which would have resulted in your execution, and by all appearances, you also avoided an ambush that would have resulted in not just your death, but the assassination of a member of the Imperial Family. Should Princess Kiyu take it that way, you will have gained her favor, possibly her trust.”
I swallowed. I hadn’t really thought of it in those terms. This wasn’t about getting her favor as a Princess. It had been about stopping House Mantis from doing whatever they’d been up to and about staying alive in the process. I certainly wasn’t stupid enough to say any of that out loud.
“This all might have gone somewhat easier on you, though, if you had given me Entrant Hayden as the culprit,” Dyer’s voice was soft. “She would have been a far better target for blame. She’s already distrusted by Imperial Intelligence. The Imperial family views her as a threat to their rule. Had you given me sufficient reason to investigate her, she would have made a far better scapegoat.”
“But she wasn’t—”
“Of course,” Dyer held up a hand. “But instead you pointed me at Entrant Jerral, who was sponsored by Prince Ladon. In the process, you’ve done him a slight, embarrassing him by having Imperial Intelligence arrest his man. You’ve made more of an enemy of Prince Ladon, who will not forget it.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. In fact, it almost sounded as if he were suggesting that he knew I’d fabricated the story, but that he went with it because it made the most sense and was the easiest explanation. If he suspects me, then why…
“I will tell you, the most likely result of this situation is that the Prince will message his father, Crown Prince Abrasax. He will have a pleasant conversation about his experiences thus far in the year. Along the conversation he will mention how unfortunate it is that Jade Flight, containing his dear cousin, has had such a rough time of things here at the Institute. How he doesn’t think they will do very well at all in the Second Screening.” Mikhail Dyer’s dark eyes boring into mine. “The result of that conversation is likely that your flight will face a very aggressive defense in Second Screening, which will result in the deaths of you, the Princess, Entrant Hayden, and everyone else in the Flight.”
I swallowed as I realized what he meant.
“Had you managed to avoid embarrassing the Prince in implicating someone else, almost anyone else, he might not follow that course of action. Unfortunate, not just for you, but for the others you’ve doomed,” Dyer gave me a slight, humorless smile. “So, Vars, tell me, are you still feeling so clever?”
My stomach sank and I couldn’t summon the will to respond.
***
Chapter 16: Sometimes I Really Don’t Know What To Say
They put the three of us right back into our flight. The others from Jade Flight clearly had questions, but Richardson didn’t give us any time to talk, he put us right into the next training iteration.
I hadn’t slept, my body ached, my head still hurt from hitting it on the ceiling of the tunnel and from Jonna clobbering me the previous day. Throw in the emotional impact of being told I was going to get everyone from the flight killed, and I didn’t have anything left. Moving right into training on top of that meant that I wasn’t exactly at my peak.
“Vars, I said move left—”
“Vars, get out of the way—”
“Vars, you’re going to get us killed—”
Just about every scenario we ran included those words. It got so bad that eventually they just positioned me out of the way while the rest of them did training. I went into a kind of vague, fuzzy disconnected place, where I did what I was told and coasted.
Sometime around evening, we paused to eat rations. I ate something that someone passed me. I couldn’t have said if it had taste or not. I didn’t really care. We trained some more, but everything became a disconnected jumble and then the next thing I knew, I was waking up, feeling awake and alert.
