by Piers Platt
“Okay,” he said. “Boss, give me about four hours and I could ground that entire ramshackle fleet of theirs if we wanted to. A few well-placed demolition charges, and the Federacy wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
“I’ll float the idea,” she promised him.
“We could try to get those people out of the camp, too,” he suggested.
She patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll tell them. Take care of the team. And stay safe.”
“Always,” he replied.
30
“You said you didn’t want to put me on the stand,” Rath pointed out.
“I did say that,” Mishel agreed.
“You said, ‘The minute we admit you’re guilty, we lose this case.’ ”
“Yes, I said that, too. And we might lose this case if we do it.” Mishel stood and paced the room, rubbing his forehead in consternation. “But Rath, if we don’t switch tactics, we will lose this case. You testifying is our only option left.”
“I don’t want to lie,” Rath reminded him.
“I know. You won’t have to.”
“You’re sure this is the only way?” Rath asked.
Mishel sighed and sat down again. “I’ve been reading juries for almost thirty years. I know when I’ve lost them. They’re ready to convict you.”
Rath drummed his fingers on the table. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m out of tricks. I can’t poke any more holes in her case, it’s just too solid. I tried, but Toira is too good, and the case is too strong.”
Rath chewed the inside of his lip for a moment. “It’s funny, I’ve been wanting to confess to all of this for so long. Maybe it will be a relief to finally do so.”
“Well, let’s concentrate on what you’re going to say, in order to win this case. The catharsis can come later.”
“Right,” Rath said. “So what do I have to say?”
* * *
Mishel pushed his way down the center aisle of the courtroom, and took his seat at the table next to Rath, setting his notes down. He glanced across the aisle at the district attorney, who nodded in greeting. Judge Aurmine entered via a side door a moment later, and sat down before surveying the courtroom. She called for silence.
“Buckle up, Toira,” Mishel whispered over to Anguile. “This is about to get interesting.” The district attorney frowned in response.
“Mr. Warran, seeing as the government has finished making their case, are you ready to present yours?” Judge Aurmine asked.
“Yes, your honor. Defense will only be calling one witness: Mr. Kaldirim.”
Across the aisle, the district attorney’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Rath stood and buttoned his suit coat, conscious of the fact that every eye in the suddenly hushed courtroom was now on him. He approached the witness stand, where the bailiff swore him in, and then he sat, clearing his throat. Rath glanced over the spectators in the courtroom, seeing Jaymy, and beyond her, Robald Delacourt. Rath met Robald’s eye for a second, and then looked away.
“Hi, Rath,” Mishel said, smiling at his client.
“Hi,” Rath said.
“Nervous?” Mishel asked.
“Yeah,” Rath said.
“Well, let’s get right to it, then. Would you please tell the court who your last employer was?”
“Up until recently, I was a contractor in the Janus Group. I was a guildsman.”
A murmur passed through the courtroom, and Rath saw Anguile furiously scribbling notes on her datascroll. Let’s hope we caught her wrong-footed.
When the noise had subsided under the harsh glare of the judge, Mishel continued. “And what were your responsibilities in that role?” Mishel asked.
“I was tasked with stalking and killing people.”
“How many people?” Mishel asked.
“Fifty. That’s what the contract was for. Fifty for fifty.”
This time, the noise in the courtroom was enough that Aurmine had to use her gavel. “Order!”
“You killed fifty people?” Mishel asked Rath, once order had been restored.
“I did,” Rath said.
“Including Arthin Delacourt, the victim?”
“Yes. I broke into the Suspensys facility by impersonating a prospective client. I assaulted the guards, and kidnapped Arthin Delacourt. Then I murdered him, by dropping his pod into a high-angle reentry over Scapa.”
“You killed him for the money,” Mishel pointed out.
“No,” Rath corrected him. “I killed him because I had no choice.”
“Are you saying you killed him in self-defense?” Mishel asked.
“Yes,” Rath said.
“Arthin Delacourt was in suspended animation – a decrepit, weak old man. How could he possibly have posed a threat to you?”
“I wasn’t defending myself from him, I was defending myself from the Guild.”
“How so?”
“My contract with the Guild made it clear that if I refused an assignment, they would kill me. If I didn’t kill Mr. Delacourt, I would have died.”
“Couldn’t they have been bluffing?”
“It wasn’t a bluff,” Rath told him.
“But how can you be sure?”
“I’m sure,” Rath replied. “They showed me several videos of guildsmen who had refused their assignments. The Guild tortured them, and then murdered them.”
“Couldn’t you have run away? They might not have caught you,” Mishel suggested.
“No,” Rath said. “I couldn’t run. They were monitoring my eye and ear implants at all times – they knew what I was doing, and where I was. And they had access to my hemobots, which they could use to disable me remotely. As long as they had access to those systems, they controlled me. It was impossible to run.”
“I’m sorry, but don’t you think this all seems somewhat far-fetched?”
“It’s not,” Rath told him. “I experienced it firsthand. When I completed my fifty kills, they accessed my hemobots and induced a seizure, and a team captured me soon afterwards, intending to kill me so that the Guild wouldn’t have to pay me. If I had refused to kill Mr. Delacourt, the same thing would have happened to me on Scapa.”
“You didn’t have a choice,” Mishel said, addressing the jury. “The Guild was watching your every move, and would have killed you the minute you stepped out of line. All they had to do was press a button.”
“Yes,” Rath agreed.
“Do you regret killing Mr. Delacourt?”
“I regret killing every single one of those fifty people,” Rath said quietly. “Every day.”
“What happened during your first kill, Mr. Kaldirim?”
“I was assigned to kill a mercenary who had stolen data from the client. I located him, and disabled him but … I had trouble going through with it,” Rath said. “I was ready to kill him, and then I hesitated.”
“In that moment, if the Guild hadn’t been holding a proverbial gun to your head, would you have killed him? If it was just for the money?”
“No,” Rath said. “Absolutely not. I would have let him go, and quit the Guild.”
“Fair to say you have no intention to kill again?”
“Not if I can help it. When Detective Beauceron and I took down the Guild, we didn’t kill anyone except guildsmen who were attacking us. That was no accident – we both agreed that no more innocent people should die, and we went to great lengths to keep it that way.”
“Did that put you at greater risk?” Mishel asked.
“I suppose,” Rath said. “I’ve caused enough pain and suffering. I know I haven’t paid my debt to society for what I’ve done, not by a long shot. But I don’t intend to add to that debt.”
“I believe you,” Mishel said. He turned back to the jury. “So Mr. Kaldirim was in mortal danger the entire time he was employed by the Guild. The law is fairly clear on this point: if someone’s life is in danger, they are permitted to take steps to protect themselves, up to and including the murder of anot
her human being. It doesn’t matter that Arthin Delacourt wasn’t the one threatening him – Mr. Kaldirim’s life was at stake, so he had no choice but to kill Mr. Delacourt.”
Mishel walked slowly along the front of the jury box, and then held a finger up in the air. “But there’s a problem in this case, as Ms. Anguile will no doubt point out when she cross-examines Mr. Kaldirim. Do you know what that problem is, Mr. Kaldirim?”
“The contract,” Rath said.
“Yes, indeed. You knew that your life was at stake when you agreed to join the Guild, you said so yourself. It was in the contract, in plain language.”
“That’s true,” Rath said.
“If that’s the case, you can hardly claim that all of those kills – including Mr. Delacourt’s – were done in self-defense. You knew what you were getting into.”
“I did.”
“And yet you chose to sign the contract anyway,” Mishel observed. “So your excuse of killing in self-defense wouldn’t hold water, Mr. Kaldirim.”
“I know,” Rath agreed.
“… unless you had to sign the contract in order to save your life, too,” Mishel said, cocking an eyebrow.
Rath stayed quiet. Mishel walked over and leaned against the witness stand.
“Do you know what happened to recruits who refused to sign the contract, Mr. Kaldirim?”
“Yes,” Rath said. “The Guild killed them.”
“How do you know that?”
“Detective Beauceron and I visited the planet where we were trained – Fusoria. One of the Guild employees we spoke with confessed that the Guild killed all recruits who failed Selection, or refused to sign the contract.”
“And a recent Interstellar Police investigation on Fusoria has confirmed that fact, uncovering hundreds of bodies that were disposed of just outside the Guild’s training facility.”
Mishel let that sink in for several seconds. “Let me try to summarize, then,” he said, striding back over to stand in front of the jury. He held up a hand, counting on his fingers. “Mr. Kaldirim was recruited by the Guild. He signed a contract stating that he would commit fifty murders on behalf of the Guild, and then he carried out that contract in full, despite his unwillingness to do so. But from the moment they put that contract in front of him to the moment he completed his last kill, Mr. Kaldirim’s life was at risk. He was recruited under the illusion that he had a choice, but the reality is that the minute he refused to do what the Guild wanted him to do – including signing that contract – they would have killed him. That’s a textbook definition of being under duress, which, again, is a situation in which someone can no longer be held responsible for their actions.”
Mishel pointed at Rath. “Mr. Kaldirim made a grave error when he expressed interest in joining the Guild. He was a street urchin, an orphan with no money, whose closest family had all been killed. He was still a minor, for goodness sake – not even eighteen. And from the moment he stepped onto the shuttle to go to Selection and Training, the only decision he made was not to die. He signed that contract, and then killed Mr. Delacourt because he had to, not because he wanted to. It was a mistake to step onto that shuttle in the first place. But it was a mistake that I think a lot of scared, lonely seventeen-year-olds would make in his shoes, desperate for a way out of their situation. Should we really hold that seventeen-year-old boy responsible for the mess he got himself into with that one, small mistake?”
The defense attorney let the question hang in the air unanswered, and then smiled at Rath, and walked back to his seat. The district attorney stood immediately, and Rath took a deep breath, watching her approach.
Here we go.
“Mr. Kaldirim, this is quite the revelation,” she said. “Earlier this week you and your attorney were making the case that I didn’t have enough evidence to prove you were on Suspensys, or that you were the one who pushed Arthin Delacourt’s pod out of that spaceship. Now you’re admitting everything?”
“Yes,” Rath said. “The jury deserves to hear the truth.”
“They do, indeed.” Anguile fixed him with a harsh gaze. “You’re also asking the jury to excuse the murder of fifty people, because not murdering them would have cost you your life, you claim. It must be a very important life, if it’s worth taking fifty others, Mr. Kaldirim.”
“I’m asking the jury to recognize that I made a mistake in joining the Guild, and that I didn’t have any other way out,” Rath told her.
“The balance sheet is still fifty lives against your own, Mr. Kaldirim.”
“Yes, it is. It’s a debt I feel every day. I just hope I can figure out a way to repay it.”
“That’s noble of you. But shouldn’t your debt be paid through the justice system? Through you serving a fair sentence for your crimes? You say you don’t intend to kill again, and you want to ‘repay your debt’ to society, but by your own admission, you are also a frequent liar. You maintained a massive set of lies in seducing your own girlfriend, the woman you loved. So I’m disinclined to believe you in this instance, I’m afraid. But perhaps I’m just a cynic.”
“I lied to Jaymy because I had to. It was the only way for me to survive.”
“Yes, I know. Just like you may be lying right now in order to avoid a death sentence.” She held up her hand, cutting off Rath’s protest. “I’m not interested in debating your honesty or intentions today, Mr. Kaldirim. But I do have one more question for you.”
“Okay,” Rath said.
“You maintain that the Guild would have killed you had you failed to murder Mr. Delacourt.”
“Yes,” Rath said. “They would have.”
“And you say that even refusing to sign the contract would have been a death sentence, which you learned from an employee you spoke to when you returned to the training planet.”
Mishel stirred in his seat – Rath caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. “That’s right,” Rath said.
“But if that’s the case,” Anguile continued, “then you didn’t learn the truth about the danger you were in until years after you signed the contract. You signed that contract of your own free will, because you didn’t actually know what would happen to you if you refused to do so.”
“I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice,” Rath hedged.
“Is that because the Guild was actively threatening you, or just because you had no better options for a career at that time? What did the Guild say would happen if you refused to sign?” Anguile pressed him.
“They implied I would be able to go home,” Rath said.
“Really? If someone told me I could either risk my life and be an assassin, or go home, I think that would be a rather simple choice,” Anguile observed.
“I didn’t trust the Guild, even at that early stage,” Rath told her.
“Why not?”
“They are – were – a criminal organization. And they had shown during Selection that they didn’t care if I lived or died. I nearly drowned on one occasion, and they didn’t intervene at all. I knew they didn’t value my life.”
“So you worried that you couldn’t trust them. But were you absolutely certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Guild would have killed you if you didn’t sign the contract?” Anguile demanded.
Rath opened his mouth, but Mishel was already on his feet. “Objection, your honor. Can my client really be expected to recall his level of certainty about another party’s intentions during an episode that happened more than twelve years ago?”
Aurmine stroked her chin absent-mindedly. “Sustained,” she decided, finally. “Try another question, Ms. Anguile.”
“I have no further questions,” the district attorney said. She strode back toward her seat.
“Mr. Kaldirim,” Mishel said, standing at his table. “One more time, for the benefit of the jury. Why did you kill Mr. Delacourt?”
“Because the Guild would have killed me if I hadn’t,” Rath said.
“And would the Guild have killed you if you hadn�
��t signed their contract in the first place?”
“Yes,” Rath said.
“Thank you,” Mishel said, letting a hint of exasperation creep into his voice.
Rath stepped down from the witness stand, and made his way back over to the chair next to Mishel. He could feel a light sheen of sweat on his brow, but he resisted wiping it, and kept his expression calm.
“Let’s take a fifteen minute recess,” the judge ordered, as he sat down.
Under the noise of the courtroom, Rath whispered to Mishel. “Did it work?”
The attorney gave him a tight smile. “You did good up there,” he replied.
“That’s not an answer, Mishel,” Rath said. “She beat us again, didn’t she?”
“She saw the weak point in our argument,” Mishel admitted.
“What now?”
“Now? Closing arguments. Jury deliberations. And then we find out who the jury believed more.”
31
A quartet of Senate Guards met Paisen and Vence at the entrance to the Senate conference center. The two contractors were shown to a security center, where they had their faces and fingerprints scanned, and temporary ID badges printed. Paisen suppressed a smile – it seemed ridiculous to be getting badges for their cover identities, when they could easily shift them in a matter of seconds. She wondered if the Senate Guards knew who they were escorting, but based on their calm demeanor and the fact that their heart rates all sounded normal to her enhanced ears, she guessed that they had not been fully briefed in.
That’s a good sign.
Badges complete, the two women followed the police officers through the bowels of the conference center, riding an elevator that took them several levels up in the great battle cruiser at the heart of Anchorpoint. Their path took them down several more corridors, until the guards swiped them through into a meeting room with neither windows nor cameras. The five committee members stood talking quietly at one end of the large table in the room, but they stopped when Paisen and Vence entered. Lask smiled, and walked up to Paisen.
“Team leader, I presume?” he asked, holding his hand out.
