by Jim Rudnick
He smiled. With the recent loss of the admiral—as Higgins had left the Barony Navy to join the new duke and the Duchy d’Avigdor Navy, someone had to replace him. And the Baroness had left it to the Captains Council to promote from within.
Four ballots it had taken, but the new admiral of the Barony Navy was Eleanor Vennamo. She would move up from being captain of the Gibraltar to now being in charge of the whole Barony Navy. That had made—or so the scuttlebutt had said—the Baroness very happy. He wondered how it might have been received on Tillion, but that was for another time and place.
He knew Vennamo; he’d been an ensign on the Gibraltar himself more than five years ago. He’d learned she was a fair but strict captain. She had been meager in her praise and expected all to perform at their best levels. He had tried but fallen short a few times and had heard about it in spades. Still, as admiral, she’d be the kind of boss who would make the captains toe the Barony line—that he did know. And that she’d kept the Gibraltar as her flagship came as no surprise either—that destroyer was home base for her. Sometimes, he did miss the ship.
He stretched and for the umpteenth time, he wondered who’d be coming in next and what kind of—
Klaxons screamed around him as a ship popped up right in front of the space station.
His eyes widened as he took in how enormous the ship was. Not from the RIM was his next thought. He yelled at the sergeant to kill the sirens around them, and the bridge lapsed into silence.
He was thankful for the silence. This ship did not carry the required ID of a RIM Confederacy ship in the Wilson’s database. Therefore, it was an intruder—and he began to bark out orders.
“Ansible, notify Commander Williams we’ve got company; Helm, turn her slightly to port so we can get a good look at her; notify Major Stal we’ve got a situation here as well ...” he said quickly, and as the space station turned to port about twenty degrees, he took a better look.
“She was big all right,” he said to himself. The ship looked to be more than a mile long and tubular in shape. Towers pointed out the top end and the bottom too, which meant there was no aft end with engines. How she flew, he had no quick guess. In the center of that mile-long tube, a round disk about seven hundred feet in height and at least two thousand feet in width was wrapped around the axis of the ship. He could see—if he was right—landing bays lit up and windows or portholes with light streaming out from the interior. He had no idea if his guesses were correct as he was using human standards.
He jammed his thumb down on the console beside him, forcing the Ansible into an EYES ONLY emergency request to speak to the Baroness. It was not accepted for whatever reason, but he got a secondary message through to the RIM Navy admiral. He reported what he could see and added that the ship had appeared only. It was doing nothing aggressive at all.
It sat there, a hundred miles above Ghayth, and was doing nothing. Captain McDonald watched the ship for any activity, and time slowly passed.
The captain sat up straighter when an odd light caught his eye. A beam—narrow and laser-like, the Wilson AI displayed in the view-screen sidebar, shot out at the station glowing in an ultra-bright teal shade. It touched the Wilson for a second or two and then went out.
“Maybe that’s their communications,” his Ansible sergeant said, “but I got nothing.”
He nodded at the sergeant who was looking back at him and said, “Yes, give them a hail.”
They waited as the view-screen showed in the sidebar that such a message had been sent.
There was no answer. The flashing message sent icon continued to flash.
He waited and thought about what to do next, but he knew he was to take no actions that in any way could be deemed as being aggressive at all.
“We sit and we wait,” he said.
The Ansible was busy as incoming messages were being received, and the next hour was spent in repeating over and over that there was no reason at this point to feel threatened. The alien ship just hung above the planet doing nothing.
“Can we perhaps probe inside the ship?” he asked his science officer who had just been found on the station and had hustled up to the bridge.
“Don’t know. Most of our scans that I see show no ship there at all. Every single one—thermal, particle, mass, photonic—not a single register on any of the scopes. They are not there, Captain.
“Course, the infrared can’t lie. There is a mass there that is radiating heat—it’s what the station scanner saw, and that prompted the klaxons to go off. Ships radiate heat into space, so yes, it’s a ship, but no, we can’t scan it for anything else, sir.”
He sounded as frustrated as the rest of them.
Captain McDonald grunted. “No matter that our eyes say there is a ship there, the station sees it as a mass since the ship doesn’t have a Confederacy ID ... so we can’t find out more. Great.” McDonald sighed. “Report that back to all parties too, Ansible,” he said, and they sat back to await whatever might come next.
#####
Helena looked over at him and her face was like a mask. Tanner couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and for the millionth time, he wished he could have been an Issian so he could read her mind and know what kind of answer to give.
In his office on the third floor of the duchy palace, he reached forward and picked up his drink. “Well, not really a drink per se—more of a liquid refreshment,” he said to himself.
Cured of his alcoholism years ago, via the Revia vaccine administered by his medical team on the Barony Hospital Ship, he could drink any alcoholic beverage without any effects. But he no longer liked the taste of scotch at all. Wine was okay; the taste, flavors, and bouquet were all fun to learn and to teach to his taste buds like all new wine drinkers knew.
This was different. This liqueur had come by his way at a state dinner just a few weeks back. They’d been celebrating the signing of a new trade deal between the Duchy d’Avigdor and Merilda, and the earl had been his guest at the dinner. From Merilda, he had brought a case of their own local signature libation—it was called Hanka, and it was made, the earl had said, from honey bees that had only used the flowers of a certain wildflower to make that honey. Mead he might have called it, but Hanka was its name. And he liked it.
He sipped a little from the tall straight-sided highball glass and knew he had to speak. “I want you to know that this was the toughest decision I’ve ever had to face,” he said to his wife.
Helena just nodded. No help there.
“I have made my decision known to the chief justice—and yes, some might call that ‘judicial interference,’ which is both correct—and irrelevant. It is my decision—”
Helena butted in. “No, darling—it is your decision. You were the one that was almost a victim, and two others at our wedding were not so lucky. So whatever you decide is more than fine with me. Allow me to watch with you, and I’ll learn like all the rest of the RIM will,” she said.
She had said it nicely. No real antagonism or put-down or bullying either in her voice. She meant it, and that made him love her even more.
He nodded and on the view-screen on the wall, suddenly they were watching the courtroom across the city and Gia’s trial was on the screen.
They’d been watching now for almost a week, with all of the jockeying of positions for the prosecution and the defense team before the trial even began. They’d watched as the defense had chosen a bench trial instead of a jury trial. That meant the judge, or the three judges as in this case, would be the finders of fact and the ruler on matters of law and procedure. The judges would decide the credibility of the evidence presented at trial; the judges would also decide what happened at the trial according to laws and rules of procedure. This was a good thing, Tanner knew, and he’d counted on it.
With the vids—many with different angles and full sound audio of the attack at the wedding and the murders of the Master Adept and Duke David d’Avigdor—seen now for more than a year, there was little chance of f
inding a jury pool that was un-tainted by those vids. Even today, they were playing out all over the airwaves, with shot-by-shot color commentary by announcers all over the RIM.
After the bench trial had been decided upon, the defense moved on to evidence and the whole question of the videos themselves was the first hurdle. The defense attorney had even asked the three superior court judges if they had seen same, and they had acknowledged that, like the rest of the RIM citizens, they had seen the videos.
Once that had been established, the defense filed their motion that the vids should not be allowed into evidence in Gia’s trial, as they were already an established prejudicial part of the case against her. That had been hard-fought by the prosecution; the arguments for and against had taken a whole morning. The defense had lost on that motion, and the vids were prominently displayed and run both in real speed and in slow motion.
Tanner had not watched that only yesterday, choosing to leave the office and to return when Helena had come to get him from the hallway outside.
Earlier today, the medical team from the Barony Hospital Ship who had been assigned to diagnose Gia had presented the medical evidence. Doctor Etter had taken the stand as the defendant’s psychiatrist. After his oath, he had sat, and Tanner had paid particular attention to the doctor’s testimony.
Gia’s attorney, Alpert, began with a run-through of the doctor’s credentials, which the prosecution immediately stood up to agree that the doctor was an expert in his field. With that out of the way, Alpert began to slowly go through the eleven months of Gia’s time up on the Barony Hospital Ship and what the doctor had reported as to his early, interim, and late diagnoses of her psyche.
Doctor Etter was, Tanner thought, a consummate doctor, and he presented with the correct and perfect blend of clinician and yet a human being too. Gia, he stated, had been what he would call ‘brainwashed’ into believing that her sister Nora had been killed by her brother, Duke Tanner Scott. That, the doctor went on to say, had been disproved by the tribunal that had tried the duke decades ago—he’d been found not guilty of that. But Gia’s mother had used every means available to imprint on Gia, her remaining daughter, that in fact it had been Tanner’s fault.
“That had put Gia squarely in the middle of a contest of loyalty, a contest which cannot possibly be won between her mother and her brother ...” Doctor Etter finished off.
“And what could that have done to lead to the wedding day attacks?” Alpert asked.
Doctor Etter nodded. “What that meant was that with the hatred for Tanner, built up daily by the growing up in the home and the daily attributions of Nora’s death laid at Tanner’s feet, Gia was delusional. That’s our official medical diagnosis, she was not of sound mind when the attacks occurred. And, it was that delusional indoctrination that we eventually were able to get Gia to see was untrue just recently. She is sane—now. And, yes, there will be consequences for her crimes, but all mitigated by her delusional state at the time. At least that’s our opinion.”
“Objection, Your Honor. This opinion is not medical evidence but, instead, judicial opinion,” the prosecution stood and said dryly.
“Objection sustained,” the head judge said.
The defense counsel said, “Your witness.”
The prosecution smiled at the doctor. “Just a few questions, Doctor. Was it not you who treated the brother—Tanner Scott—when he was sent to the Barony Hospital Ship a few years back for a ninety-day sanity test?”
“It was, and I can report that we found that patient sane and compos mentis, as you lawyers say,” Doctor Etter replied with syrup on his voice.
“Yes, thank you, Doctor. So you’re familiar with the brother—the current Duke d’Avigdor—and his own mental state, are you not, having been his own psychiatrist?” the prosecution went on.
“I am—but with full patient confidentiality, I cannot discuss that here,” Etter said smugly.
“Nonsense, Doctor. You and I and the court knows, that as you’ve opened the door by offering up medical diagnosis on Gia by using the duke and his innocence, you can no longer use that shield here. So I ask, Doctor—do you have any knowledge of the state of the duke’s own mind when it comes to the death of Nora?”
Etter looked over at the defense counsel, but Alpert sat immobile. He looked up at the judge next, but the judge said, “You will answer the question, Doctor, as asked.”
Doctor Etter shook his head but spoke anyways. “Yes, I do have that information.”
“Doctor, the judge directed you to answer the question,” the prosecution said.
Doctor Etter sighed. “The judge said to answer the question as it was asked. You asked if I had any knowledge of the state of the duke’s mind—“
“And would you share that knowledge here, please, as evidence?” the prosecutor asked.
Doctor Etter grimaced but did answer. “Tanner—the duke—was of the opinion that he was innocent of the murder of Nora. Yet, he had his doubts and said that it often was in his dreams ... that he had somehow killed her. But, and I repeat this as a medical fact, many, many patients have these kind of dreams with culpability issues—when in fact there were none. Again, he was found innocent in the tribunal ...”
“But perhaps not so innocent within his own mind?” the prosecution said as he left the lectern to return to his seat.
“Objection, Your Honor—assumes facts not in evidence!” Alpert just about shouted as he jumped to his feet.
“Sustained. Clerk, strike that from the record,” the judge said and the room was abuzz with mutterings out in the visitors’ gallery.
Tanner took another sip of the Hanka, wishing he could get a buzz that would help him stave off his growing headache. Still, he knew there would be more to come, and he looked over at Helena. She was watching from the big wing chair positioned at the side of his desk, and she’d turned the chair around to face the view-screen. She leaned over, patted him on the arm, and said, “Never mind, honey, doctors are removed from the rest of us,” and he smiled at that.
The trial, of course, went on. The defense, led by Alpert, was pretty good, he thought, and Alpert called more witnesses too. He called the clerk who’d issued the press credentials to Gia that showed she was an accredited member of the press, attending the wedding as a Gallipedia reporter.
Alpert used that to show Gia was impersonating a member of the press and taking advantage of her employment with Gallipedia. Even though Gia was a Gallipedia member, she was listed on her employment registry as being on sabbatical at the time of the wedding and not on any work-related assignments for Gallipedia.
Several press members spoke of her standoffish personality, which Alpert implied meant she was in some kind of state where she was not acting “normal.”
The prosecution objected profusely with each witness, and yet Alpert went on.
He called the head of the EliteGuards who was on duty that day. He testified that when they’d tackled Gia, she was acting crazy. She was crying but screaming that she just needed one more photo of her brother ... just one more, as she fought to keep her camera in her hands. The guard knew, as they all did, that the camera was also a weapon. He’d covered it with his torso as he dove on Gia and had wrestled it out of her hands almost immediately.
Again, the prosecution objected. This time, it was that the term “crazy” was a medical term, which was outside the guard’s realm of expertise. Alpert argued that as a guard for Royalty, they were all trained to recognize oddball behavior around their protected charges. The judge agreed and let that testimony stand.
Alpert finished calling his witnesses.
All in all the prosecution had presented only the videos. They had played and showed Gia shooting the Master Adept and Duke David d’Avigdor who had died as well as Tanner who had survived. Then they had rested.
The defense had presented the medical testimony as fact. The defense presented a handful of witnesses who had contact with the defendant just before the killings and co
uld testify that Gia’s behaviors and actions showed she was not of sound mind when the attack had occurred.
The prosecution had an easy time, Tanner saw, of making their closing statement. They simply, once again, played the video.
The defense lawyer, Alpert, rose. In his ten-minute summation and closing, he leaned on the fact that the best medical team that could be found in the Barony had diagnosed the defendant as being delusional—a product of her maternal brainwashing as to the establishment of blame for her sister’s death placed on her brother, Tanner.
And since that time more than a year ago, great strides had been made. The defendant no longer was non compos mentis—she knew that her mother had placed her in an indefensible position. But that had all changed.
“In closing, she is innocent now,” Alpert said, “no matter how guilty she was then ...” and he sat.
Tanner wondered about everything that had been presented and said, but as a non-legal type, he wasn’t quite sure as to what had been said in a legal sense.
The judges thanked the two teams of lawyers in front of them and remanded the court for their deliberations. As they rose to leave the room, the camera providing the feed for his viewing spun around to show the visitors standing as the judges left. In the front row stood Bram.
That was a surprise to Tanner and Helena, but she spoke up first. “Bram ... that’s Bram right there,” she said as she pointed.
Tanner grunted in reply at first.
“Wonder why he’d be there,” she asked.
Tanner shook his head. “No idea, but judging by the look on his face, it meant something to him,” he replied.
On Bram’s face was a look that Tanner had never seen before—one of wonder yet anxious wonder. Surely, he had looked around in the minds in the courtroom and found out all he’d need to know.
“Judging by what I just saw,” Helena said, “I think that she will be found guilty but with mitigating circumstances. Her sentence will likely be very lenient,” she said.
