by Laura Kaighn
Sighing resignedly, Vesarius hugged her back and kissed her flaming crown. “Coty will be here soon. Once on Vesar, I will attempt my best efforts to clear my name,” he insisted. “But I will not fight the judgment.”
“I will,” Dorinda assured and squeezed his ribs for emphasis. “I’ll fight it to my last breath and heartbeat.”
“My brave, beautiful Dorinda,” Vesarius mumbled into her hair. They embraced for long minutes before Vesarius had to rest his aching shoulder. Settling onto the hard bunk, the Vesar warrior scowled. The couple’s future was again uncertain.
Chapter 19: Culture Clash
Within the week, both the Vesar warbird Tealgŕess and the Pompeii were in orbit around Vesar Prime. This was the desert homeworld of Tankawankanyi’s people – the planet of his roots and Vwafar´ee – the origin of the Vesar culture.
Before that globe, Vesarius now stood. He stared solemnly from the Tealgress’s observation deck portal to overlook the arcing, sandblasted sphere below. His arms were again bound to his sides, his resigned body clothed in the common coveralls of a prisoner. Leaning forward to glance down at the spiraling world of his ancestors, Vesarius frowned. He had not thought to see his homeworld again.
Dorinda drew up behind him and slipped her arms gently about his waist. “How’s your shoulder today?” Her cheek was cool against his slumping spine.
“Still throbbing,” he answered absently. “The swelling is less this morning.”
“Michael called over to say the high chancellor’s ready to depart. Seems he likes the look of your planet. The chancellor had the impression Orthop invaders hadn’t left much for you fifty-three years ago.”
With a raised brow, Vesarius attested, “They did not. Only after joining the Alliance did we Vesar stop feuding long enough to reseed our depleted world. It is still mostly desert. But many reclaimed oases now dot the sands.” After another moment of contemplation he added, “Vesar Prime is starkly beautiful. Especially at sunset.”
“It’s still your home, isn’t it?” Dorinda asked. His far off voice had betrayed his regret.
“I was raised on a colony world,” he reminded her, then sighed. “My home floats there.” Vesarius nodded to the dragon-like ship orbiting beside the Tealgŕess. Beyond the warbird’s portal, the Pompeii seemed alive with its glittering viewports and the ionized exhaust from its cooling triple nacelles. Jonas’ enhanced ion drives had been hard pressed to regain the distance lost picking up the Orthop high chancellor from the insectoid’s homeworld. “That is where my family lives now.”
The pair stood for a few precious minutes together, Dorinda obviously entranced by the view. As she moved to stand beside him, Vesarius considered Dorinda’s borrowed clothes. The satiny, flowing blouse draped her bare shoulders like butterfly wings. The snug leather trousers accented her fine, long legs. Dorinda had not been born into these sights, but she was a part of his world, his family. Above Vesar Prime, the Pompeii orbited, a sleek jewel before a dazzling diamond world. These were his homes, present and past respectively.
“Come on, Iron Man,” Dorinda finally said with forced cheer. She dropped her arm from around his waist. “Domenazreli’s just hankering to punch your lights out. And I’m eager to disappoint him.”
With a skewed grin, Vesarius asked, “Punch my lights out? What is ‘hankering’?” Smiling at his ignorance, Dorinda said she’d explain as he followed her out of the transport holding area. The Tealgŕess shuttle awaited to whisk them planetside.
* * *
A visibly relieved Coty met them on the landing pad outside Vesar’s main government complex. To Dorinda, the half Lakota captain seemed drawn and worried in his snug Alliance fleet jacket and turtleneck shirt. He grinned easily, though, when she hopped up to kiss him on the cheek and ruffle Aztec’s cobalt crown.
“Glad to see you’re both still breathing,” their captain offered. He jerked his chin toward his first officer. “Yolonda’s been asking about the shoulder. How is it?”
With a stiff shrug, due mostly to his restraints, Vesarius admitted, “It will hold up to mild combat.” Dorinda watched him squint in the hot desert sun of his evolutionary home. “The day will proceed more pleasantly indoors.”
“We go, Grilcmzáe,” Domenazreli urged with a steel grip of his prisoner’s arm. He led his party toward the towering, white adobe-like building which was to serve as Vesarius’ courthouse. Dorinda hung back for a moment to wait with Coty and Aztec as the Orthop high chancellor extracted himself from the Pom-4’s cramped interior.
“Hello again, Little Creature,” the chancellor clicked. Dorinda noticed a small boxed unit dangling from the Orthop’s thick neck just below his massive mandibles. It was this device which had provided her with the English equivalent of the insectoid’s grinding speech. An Orthop translator!
“It’s good to see you again, High Chancellor. I trust you’ll be an objective judge today.”
“Storyteller must be defended. My rebel brothers were too perfect with their intentions. I have brought another control device as evidence ... and for a rather graphic experiment.”
Dorinda smiled broadly. “Ingenious! They’ll have to believe us now. Sarius’ inability to fight the programming will be irrefutable.”
“Let’s hope so,” Coty said soberly, then surveyed the open plaza around them. “We better get in there.” Dorinda, too, had noticed the curled lips of Vesar passersby. An Orthop among the general population, speaking in Alliance standard, was a volcano waiting to erupt. The three quickened their pace to catch up to the retreating Vesar entourage with their bound prisoner. Once in through the arching double doors, Coty led the way past the reception desk and its occupant staff.
Dorinda blinked, following. Vesar women were different, she noticed finally. There had been something bothering her since she had met briefly with Madame Tolianksalya a week ago. Now Dorinda saw two more female Vesar behind the desk and realized the gender differences. Since she had known Vesarius, his alien features had become familiar components of his broad shouldered frame. Now here was a pair of Vesar women each wearing a draping, flowing tunic that, like the one she had borrowed from the Tealgŕess, dipped to reveal their smooth mahogany cleavage. No crests! Vesar females had no chest ridges.
Down the hall to the courtroom, Dorinda swerved to avoid yet another female, one with a tunic draped over only one shoulder. In that instance, Dorinda noticed a second difference. While Vesarius’ shoulder crests were prominent and domed, a female’s crests were diminutive and more scalloped along the leading edge. Dorinda’s curiosity was piqued.
Funny. She had known her husband for over three months, slept with him twice, yet never asked the questions now popping into her head. And she was at a disadvantage to ask them now, perhaps ever. Dorinda stored her curiosity away for further research.
Vesarius was up ahead surrounded by his equally steady guards and the brooding Domenazreli, his damaged arm no longer in a sling. Sheathed in shiny metal, the man’s stump now sported a deadly-looking prosthetic hand. Dorinda was against killing, against violence, but the ambassador’s recorder had insisted on it. Now Dorinda wished the older warrior had remained handicapped. Vesarius would have been equally matched with his still tender shoulder.
Perhaps there was a way around this death fight. Perhaps, not. Vesar honor could not be disregarded that easily, Dorinda had come to know. Vesarius would just have to win.
Closing her eyes, Dorinda attempted to see the future, but her clairvoyance was not as yet on tap, and her future sense told her nothing. Opening her eyes again, she followed Coty and the high chancellor into a courtroom of white, bleached wood and black marble. Scrutinizing the stark furnishings, Dorinda’s eyes creased in irony. What she had understood of Vesar culture was dark and earthy, leather and rich mahogany, not this light on black contrast.
Then, as Coty motioned her to the front of the chamber, Dorinda’s straying thoughts were hooked by a powerful voice. An elderly Vesar stood before the j
udges’ bench addressing the assembled onlookers seated in rows of gallery pews. So, this was the famed Judge Daratowke´tyo, eldest of all magistrates, and a distant relation to Vesarius himself.
To his attentive audience, Daratowke´tyo was speaking a fluent Vesar tongue upon which Dorinda’s own wrist translator stumbled. She swallowed a sudden lump of panic. No. She didn’t want it to be this way. She wanted to understand every word, every stipulation, and especially the hearing’s verdict: not guilty.
In the week since his transfer to the Tealgŕess, Vesarius had explained the workings of a Vesar court. It was not unlike her own judiciary system, save that at all times, there was no jury. And three judges sat behind the bench, not one.
Now, bowing his respectful greeting, Daratowke´tyo motioned the Orthop high chancellor forward. The alien’s eyestalks almost brushed the ceiling as he lumbered over to take his place at the center seat behind the judge’s raised dais.
Then Vesarius was led forward flanked by his guards. Hair freshly braided and wearing the borrowed set of coveralls, Vesarius already seemed an inmate: groomed, subdued and conformant. He didn’t look like her Vesarius at all. Dorinda would always see him in his tanned leather sandsuit, bare-armed and glowing with power.
At Coty’s gesture, Dorinda settled onto a front seat to watch the proceedings. Aztec waddled across to perch upon her lap, and Dorinda absently stroked the macaw’s feathered back. Before them, Daratowke´tyo and another elder Vesar climbed behind the judge’s platform and sat to either side of the sprawling Orthop.
“Tankawankanyi,” Daratowke´tyo addressed, adjusting his silver and black woven sash draped over one shoulder. “Step forward, and state thy crime.”
Stiffly, Vesarius approached the judge’s bench to step into a spindled corral. He squared his shoulders and stated flatly, “I created a distraction which resulted in the immediate deaths of three of the Vesar delegates to Orthop, including Ambassador Tolianksalya.” Why did his voice sound as though he had already accepted defeat?
“How do you plead?” the other Vesar judge inquired sternly.
“Guilty, Your Honors, though I was under duress.”
The Orthop judge clicked out his inquiry, eyestalks twirling. “Who coerced you, Tankawankanyi?” The high chancellor’s translator necklace made the sounds legible.
From his witness stand, Vesarius answered the Orthop’s interpreted question. “I was programmed by the Orthop rebels to assist in the seizure of the Pompeii for use as transportation to Tanaker II. The rebels desired to colonize, to create a new warrior hive with their kidnapped queen.”
“Programmed, Commander?” Judge Daratowke´tyo challenged. He stroked a gray hair back from his weather-creased and angular face. “What exactly was your part in this plot?”
Dorinda watched Vesarius wriggle his mahogany arms within the constricting bindings. “I was pilot of the Pompeii and the transport which brought the rebel queenkeepers aboard.”
“And?” Daratowketyo pressed when the accused stalled his testimony.
Vesarius released a slow breath. “I ordered … Sir, I supervised the taking of my ship. The crew was misled to believe I was escorting the Orthop peace delegates. Non-essential crewmembers were locked in their quarters, under guard. Station keepers were monitored. Kinpanions were used as food.” From her viewpoint, Dorinda noticed her husband’s sneer of distaste at these grim details. He regretted every heinous moment now that he was free of the command chip’s control.
“You cooperated willingly?” the Orthop judge asked.
“I had no free choice, High Chancellor. I was controlled, as a puppet, my own will compromised.”
“How is it, then, that you failed?” the Orthop asked. Dorinda smiled slightly from her seat. The high chancellor was trying to illustrate Vesarius’ saving grace: his loyalty to his shipmates. Vesarius’ character and tenacity might be his redemption still.
“Judges,” her husband began. “The rebel Orthops must have known I would never cooperate with their programming had my captain and Ensign Jade been killed. My grief would have triggered the Fury, clouded all commands. Therefore, these two were spared in the initial attack. Coty on Orthop, Jade aboard the Pompeii. Yet their survival, in effect, guaranteed the rebel’s defeat. Gluctg and his compatriots underestimated the abilities of my human companions and our Kin.”
The second Vesar judge leaned forward to scowl down at the accused. “You say your mutiny would have been thwarted with the deaths of your two attending companions. Your Fury would have compromised the Orthops’ success? Yet you still allowed the deaths of the Alliance delegation to Orthop,” the Vesar berated. “Your will was too weak to prevent their murders. Tell me, Tankawankanyi. Did you purposely arrange for your companions and crew to survive, or was it mere coincidence?”
Vesarius lowered his stalwart chin to answer. “Truthfully, Your Honor, I cannot be sure. I believe it was a fortunate oversight of the Orthop rebels, themselves, not anything intentional on my account.”
“And while on Orthop,” Judge Daratowke´tyo asked, “did you fight this programming you say claimed you?”
“Again, Your Honor, I do not know.” Vesarius waggled his hanging head. “I look back now and see my behavior as irrational and traitorous, yet at the time it seemed … logical.”
The second Vesar magistrate cleared his gruff throat. “You plead guilty, Tankawankanyi. What, if any, is the evidence to substantiate otherwise?” Dorinda saw that this warrior’s dark eyes burned with a vindictive furor. His would be the decision to sway the final verdict. Could this judge come to see the futility in Vesarius’ case? The utter control the Orthop device wielded?
Dorinda blinked away from her apprehensive wanderings. Vesarius was answering the judiciary’s question. “The command device itself, Sir, was extracted from my spine and dissected by Dr. Arabbi Tjon onboard the Pompeii. We have another of the devices available for your inspection. If it pleases the judges, there is even a demonstration possible.”
“How do you propose a demonstration?” Daratowke´tyo asked. His heavy brows rose in simmering skepticism.
Vesarius exhaled again and began his rehearsed explanation. “The Orthop high chancellor can arrange for the device to be implanted in a small animal. The creature’s neurons can then be stimulated, programmed in such a way that the animal will even refuse food and water, its basic needs.”
“We must witness this,” the second Vesar judge rumbled. “For now, Commander, you are relieved. There will be a short recess.”
Stiffly Vesarius bowed; he was then escorted out to a holding cell. Jostling Aztec aside to the next empty seat, Dorinda stood to follow. Coty grabbed her arm. “No, Dori. We have work to do here.”
“What?” Dorinda asked, perplexed.
“Getting this read to the judges.” The captain slid from his jacket’s inner breast pocket the still sealed parchment.
Eyeing the paper from the now dead ambassador, Dorinda argued, “But Sarius should read it. It was Tolianksalya’s gift to us.”
“At the moment, Vesarius is in no position to be granted access to this evidence. And that’s exactly what it is – evidence.” Coty stood and straightened his navy turtleneck. “Come on. We’ll request a private meeting with the judges. We can at least request its inclusion in the trial.” Shrugging, he added, “We won’t know if it’ll help Vesarius’ case until it’s been read by someone who understands Gremsctok.”
Nodding in grudging agreement, Dorinda rubbed nervously at the silky short sleeves of her Vesar tunic. The leather trousers she wore were a supple reminder of the man to whom she was married, the man she may soon lose. “Right now, I’m willing to try anything.”
“You and me both,” Coty murmured. He left Aztec to observe from his seat and took Dorinda’s elbow. He led her to the front bench and the assembled judiciary in quiet discussion there. “Excuse us, Sirs,” Coty began as Dorinda swallowed and prayed they were not breaking some Vesar protocol. “Might we present another pi
ece of evidence to the commander’s case?” The captain held up the folded parchment.
The second Vesar judge raised a severe brow. “We were not informed of this additional proof.”
“Well, Sir,” Coty stammered. “We were never invited to submit it. I’m Captain Michael Bear Coty, the commander’s superior officer. I’m also his counsel.”
“Ah,” Daratowke´tyo drawled. “You are the one who will speak for Tankawankanyi. Very good. Domenazreli has neglected to keep us informed of your whereabouts. He said nothing of documentation, other than his recorded transcripts.”
“I believe Domenazreli’s heart is in his anticipated revenge, Your Honors,” Coty clarified, “not the proceedings of this hearing.”
With a slight bow, the second Vesar judge agreed, “You speak truth, Capt. Coty.” He laid open his palm. “I will take the document.”
For an instant it seemed as though Michael Coty would comply. Then Dorinda watched him withdrawal his arm from the bench, paper still clutched in his bronze fingers. “Wait, Sirs. This parchment was imprinted by Ambassador Tolianksalya’s own hand. I feel it’s too important to simply surrender.” Dorinda saw Coty swallow hard. “Might we be able to retain the original? A copy can be provided you as evidence.”
“If we can first read the document and verify its authenticity,” Daratowke´tyo contended, “we will allow it.”
Coty sighed. “Thank you, Sirs. I would feel more secure having you all witness the copying as well.”
“Of course,” Daratowke´tyo stated rising from his chair. “Follow me to our private chambers. The parchment can be reviewed there.”
“Excellent, Vesarius,” Coty chimed.
Dorinda waited with her captain for all three judges to step around the stand before following them from the room. Just down the hall, the magistrates turned in to a spartan office of gray marble and dark wood. Inside a huge desk crouched near the far wall. Behind it a glass portal shone, opening onto a succulent garden in full bloom. Before that window, the Orthop high chancellor squatted to observe the proceedings. For herself, Dorinda sidled to a vacant chair opposite the desk as Coty faced the older judge who sat behind it.
