by John Daulton
Asad’s crony finally rose after Orli swore to tell the truth and came to stand before her. “Ensign Pewter, thank you for being here today and cooperating with this investigation.” He did not wait for a reply. “I’d like to cut to the quick if possible, so let me start by asking simply: how much did you know about the intended attack on planet Earth?”
“I thought you guys already picked my brain while I was under?”
He repeated the question in a patient, patronizing voice.
“Nothing. There was never a plan to attack Earth. Ever.”
“It seems that’s not quite true, Ensign. I believe you are familiar with what is happening above our planet right now, are you not?”
She nodded.
“So, I’ll ask you again. What did you know about this attack?”
She repeated her answer. “Nothing.”
He turned to the judge seated nearby. “You can see how this is going to go.” The judge motioned for him to continue.
“Ensign Pewter, were you or were you not in a romantic relationship with the Prosperion called Altin Meade?”
“I was.”
“Do you still have feelings for him now?”
“I do.”
“And it was Altin Meade that you were attempting to help escape from the Aspect’s brig, was it not? And remember, we have sworn affidavits from three Marines on duty at the time, not to mention the testimony of the Prosperion, Annison, and, of course, video.”
“Yes. I was trying to get him out.” Orli’s attorney cringed visibly.
“Records indicate that Mr. Meade was taken from the Aspect at sixteen hundred twenty-eight hours on the day of October nineteenth, less than three days ago. The first of the Hostiles arrived exactly seven minutes and nineteen seconds afterward. Don’t you think that seems a remarkable bit of timing, Ensign Pewter?”
“Objection,” Angela said from her place at the defendant’s table. “Ensign Pewter’s opinion of the timing is irrelevant.”
“Withdrawn,” said the JAG officer before the judge even spoke. He put his hands on the railing at the front of the witness stand. “Ensign Pewter, you are reported to have also had some form of relationship with the leader of the Hostile world, an entity described in the reports as Blue Fire. Is this correct?”
“Yes.”
“What form of relationship would you say you had with her?”
“An honest one,” Orli replied.
“Ah, well that is always a good thing, isn’t it?”
Orli made a “no shit” face at him, which he ignored.
“So, Ensign Pewter, being honest, as we all want to be here, what can you tell us regarding this Blue Fire’s relationship with Mr. Meade.”
“I was unaware that he had a relationship with her.”
“But surely you were in communication with him, and with her. At some point one of them must have mentioned the other.”
“The last time I spoke to Altin about her, he didn’t believe she existed. I told him I could only speak to her in dreams, and he didn’t believe it.”
“And what about Blue Fire? Did she … did she believe in Altin?”
“Yes.”
“And you have never once had any communication about either from the other, no conversations about plans or cooperation between them?”
“No. Never.”
“And you expect we should simply trust you on that, Ensign?”
“Objection,” came the call from Angela.
“Sustained,” said the judge.
“Have you been in communication with Blue Fire since returning to Earth?”
“No.”
“She hasn’t contacted you to ask you for information about our defenses, looking for any aid or advice?”
“No.”
“How about Mr. Meade? Have you been in contact with him?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. I have no way to contact him.”
“What about him. Does he have a way of contacting you?”
“No. He doesn’t know where I am. He has to know where I am to communicate with me.”
“And would you tell us if he did have a way of doing so, Ensign?”
“Objection.”
“Overruled. Answer the question.”
“Probably not,” Orli said. “But he doesn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, I think he does,” said the prosecutor.
He went to a long table against the far wall and lifted a pair of sealed plastic bags, which he brought back and presented first to the judge, then to the court in general, and last to Orli. He brought them near enough for her to see, raising one up nearly to the level of her face. Orli’s intake of breath was audible for everyone to hear.
“I see you recognize this creature,” he said, referencing the spotted lizard in the bag. Its body was flattened near the head, and its front limbs were broken and bent akimbo from when it had obviously been crushed. “Can you explain to the court what it is?”
“It’s …,” she looked to Angela who sighed visibly, if not audibly, and nodded to indicate Orli had to answer. But still Orli couldn’t speak. Her eyes flicked to Roberto, whose response nearly mirrored Angela’s. She felt trapped and manipulated, anger burning in the pit of her stomach. She’d forgotten about the homing lizards. And why had they killed it? What was wrong with these barbarians? That poor wonderful thing of Prosperion, ruined by the boot of some brute. Seeing it there, so mangled in that bag, nearly set her off. She looked back to Roberto again, and he could see it in her face, the way her body tensed. He shook his head, his wide brown eyes silently pleading with her to keep her cool.
“Answer the question, Ensign,” said the judge sternly, obviously misreading her reluctance as a sign of guilt.
The smug look on Captain Asad’s face helped her find herself again, if only barely. She drew composure from her unwillingness to be beaten by that man. She gritted her teeth and answered. “It’s called a homing lizard. It’s a Prosperion communication device. Like a carrier pigeon that jumps across space.”
“Thank you, Ensign,” said Commander Adair. “That is an excellent analogy. So it will not surprise you then if I tell you that this note was tied to the animal?”
She didn’t look at the note. “No, it will not surprise me. That is what they do.”
“So who sent you this note, Ensign?”
That made her look. “I didn’t know the note was sent to me. What does it say?”
“It says: Where are you? I will come for you. That is translated into English of course. So who sent it?”
Orli started to answer, but her attorney cut her off once again. “Objection,” Angela called. “Conjecture. Ensign Pewter’s guess as to its origin is no more relevant than anyone else’s.”
“Your honor, Ensign Pewter may well be able to recognize the handwriting.”
“Your honor, my client has no training in the forensic analysis of documents,” countered the young defense attorney.
“Surely her opinion, were this handwriting to belong to her lover, would have some value in these proceedings,” said Commander Adair to that.
“I’ll allow it,” said the judge, “seeing as I’m deciding this thing anyway.” He looked impatient, though, or perhaps made a show of it for the cameras.
Asad’s old friend brought the second plastic envelope close enough for Orli to see the strip of parchment in it. She recognized the handwriting immediately and had to force herself not to show any expression that might make that recognition obvious.
“So, Ensign, do you recognize the handwriting on this note?” Commander Adair asked.
She glanced down at her lap for a moment. She didn’t want to look at her attorney, because her attorney was going give her that faith-in-truth face that Orli didn’t want to deal with right then. In her heart she knew this was a great place for perjury. She looked up at the JAG officer and gave her best vacant look, shaking her head. “No clue whose handw
riting that is,” she said.
“Ensign Pewter, please. You have already tried to tell us that Altin Meade had no way to contact you without knowing where you are, and in the next breath you admit to us that the Prosperions have these creatures called homing lizards. Surely you don’t expect us to believe this message came to you randomly from any other Prosperion than your lover, Altin Meade.”
“Objection.”
“The witness will answer the question.”
“I said I don’t recognize it.”
There followed a long silence as the prosecutor glared at her. He turned back to the judge. “Clearly the witness has no intention of being honest with us here today, your honor.”
“Objection,” put in Angela again.
“That will be for me to decide,” agreed the judge.
“I can prove that this is the handwriting of Altin Meade,” went on the commander.
“Please do,” said the judge.
The commander went back to the evidence table and brought forth several more plastic bags. In each of them was a strip of parchment, and upon all of them were written notes. “We found these in Ensign Pewter’s quarters, stored with her private things.” Once again he showed them to the court and to the judge and then to Orli. “Do you recognize these?” he asked her after she’d looked at them.
The way she winced when she saw them was obvious to everyone in the courtroom.
“Yes,” she said reluctantly. There was no way she could lie her way out of that. They were notes she’d exchanged with Altin during his convalescence two years ago, their romantic exchanges made via homing lizard while the Aspect and the other ships were first making their way to Prosperion.
“Can you tell the court what they are?”
“They are notes.”
“Yes, we can see that, Ensign. Notes exchanged between who and whom?”
She looked up at Angela who was shaking her head. Roberto clearly sighed again by the way his broad shoulders moved. “Between Altin and myself.”
He handed her the note they’d taken off the smashed homing lizard. “Now do you recognize the handwriting on this more recent note?”
“Objection,” tried Angela again.
“Overruled. Answer the question, Ensign.”
“No. I don’t recognize it.”
Commander Adair turned, rolling his head in an annoyed way, overly dramatic, and appealed to the judge impatiently. “Your honor. The defendant clearly has no interest in cooperating. I move that we end this now and carry out the sentencing before the Prosperion magicians have time to locate her and effect her escape or, worse, send some sort of device to her location that will further compromise this fort and the security of planet Earth.”
“Objection,” barked Angela, leaping from her seat. “I repeat that my client is not a handwriting specialist, and her inability to match two documents is in no way proof that my client is unwilling to cooperate, much less reason to convict.”
The judge looked past her, Orli couldn’t be sure if at the clock on the wall above the door or at the camera above the clock. “Sustained.” He set an irritated gaze down upon Commander Adair.
“I have a handwriting expert,” the commander said. “You have his sworn affidavit there in your files. He ran the file comparisons, and they came back a perfect match. Perfect.”
The judge thumbed through a few screens on a tablet set before him on his desk. He found the affidavit and saw that it was in order. He turned to Orli and shook his head. “Ensign Pewter, playing games with this court is not in your best interest.”
“Then what is in my best interest, your honor?” Anger smoldered in her icy blue eyes as she glared up at him. What had she ever done that hadn’t been in the best interest of planet Earth? “Is it in my best interest to sit here while these people, while you, all play games and do your stupid meticulous questioning, claiming the intent of finding truth, but not showing any real interest in it? If you want the truth, I’ll give it to you. The truth is that Blue Fire didn’t do it. None of it. Not the way you think. Not the way it sounds. Neither did the Prosperions. You have the facts but not the context. Without the context you won’t find truth.”
The judge slammed his gavel down repeatedly as she spoke. “Silence, Ensign. Outbursts like this will not be tolerated.”
“I don’t give a shit what will be tolerated. You are listening to that idiot over there,” she said, standing and pointing at Asad, “and you are ignoring everything that matters. You don’t have to tolerate me. What you have to do is stop letting the facts get in the way of the truth. The Prosperions aren’t the enemy. You need to look and think. This whole thing is stupid.”
“Ensign Pewter, I understand you are under a great deal of stress right now, but you will sit down and come to order, or I will leave your defense to your attorney in your absence, and you will have no say at all.”
“As if you’re going to listen anyway.” But she sat down. She at least had to try.
The judge looked back to Commander Adair. “Carry on.”
“I have nothing else, Your Honor. Further questioning would be pointless. She is obviously hostile and protecting the enemy. I move for verdict and sentencing. Every moment she breathes brings us closer to an inside attack by Altin Meade and the Prosperion War Queen. Possibly right here in this courtroom. Meade can strike at any moment.”
“That’s right, he can,” spat Orli. “But he’s not going to. If you’d stop trying to fucking railroad me here, I could explain why he is not your enemy.”
“Ensign, this is your last warning.”
“No. Fuck you and your warning. You need to listen. Stop this goddamn circus and listen. This is all a mistake. And you are going to make it worse.”
Commander Adair made a big showman’s sigh and looked impatiently to the judge. The judge for a moment looked relieved, as if he’d finally gotten an anticipated opportunity, but then he put his stern judge face back on.
“Take her away,” he said to the Marines stationed nearest the doors. Two of them came forward and grabbed her by the arms, dragging her up over the railing and yanking her out of the witness stand.
“Just listen to me, goddamn it,” she shouted at them as they dragged her toward the doors. She twisted and tried to yank herself free. “Let me go, you morons. I’m trying to save your lives too.”
Orli was still shouting as they dragged her out of the courtroom, her cries and profanities echoing down the corridor beyond the doors, heard dully through them by everyone in the room for a long, awkward half minute before the proceedings could finally carry on.
Angela did her best to defend Orli after that, trying to prove Orli’s innocence through various legal technicalities, but the result was inevitable. The best she could do was buy Orli time. All told, she went on for just over an hour, padding her closing arguments as best she could, but that was it, an hour and a few minutes more. And within moments after she closed her statements, Orli was pronounced guilty on all charges and sentenced to death by lethal injection, a sentence to be carried out “immediately,” which in legal parlance meant that there be no delays and that the reports and processing be expedited. When the judge gave the verdict and sentence, so clearly prepared in advance as it had been, so clearly in absence of consideration for anything Angela had said, all the young attorney could do was shake her head and leave. Her efforts had bought Orli nothing, though it came as no surprise.
When she returned to Orli’s cell, she was allowed only five minutes with her client. The guards wouldn’t even leave the room. One of them, a thick-necked fellow built like a six-foot stack of steel plates unfastened the ball gag and pulled it roughly out of her mouth. “Five minutes,” he repeated. “And if she says one word of magic, anything that might work to contact the enemy, she’s done.” He stepped back and watched, like his partner, gun level and trained on the prisoner.
Angela could not hide her frustration for what Orli had done. “Congratulations,” she said in h
er irritation. “You managed to get your time, our time, nearly cut in half. You just cussed away half your life.” Her jaw worked back and forth visibly as she paced the tiny room. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do now, not with so little time.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Orli said trying to keep fear at bay. “Altin will come for me.”
Apparently that was enough to get the ball gag jammed back into her mouth, for the moment she spoke Altin’s name, the burly Marine stepped into her and shoved it manfully back in place. He cinched the straps down so tightly they dug into her skin at the hinge of her jaw, and the buckles cut into the back of her head. When it was done, he turned back to the diminutive attorney who was staring wide-eyed at the rough treatment her client had just received.
“You need to leave now,” the Marine demanded.
“I’ll have you up on charges for this,” she said. “My client still has rights, you know.”
“Well, she won’t be needing them for long. Now get out, or you’ll get the same.”
The Marine pushed Angela out with the muzzle of his weapon, and the door closed on Orli’s protests, muffling them to nearly nothing in the lawyer’s ears. She listened anyway as the guards escorted her down the hall, trying to make out the words, reaching for them as one might reach for the hand of someone who has slipped and is falling forever away. She wished she could at least do Orli the last courtesy of listening to her, that one final bit of humanity, to hear what she had to say, even if most of it sounded like threats and profanity. She would have liked to have at least done that.
Chapter 10
Gromf watched the dark figures leaping and stomping before the fire and did not hide the curl of his upper lip. Let Warlord see the length of his tooth at this. These were the old ways, the ways taught by the old gods who had led the clans to shame. It was the old renewal dance, and they believed it a hopeful thing, hope for new beginnings. Youngling warriors reached for a first fistful of female flesh, the women all twice as old as the stupid youths, with their rigid eagerness jutting and apparent for all to see. The women mocked them, kicked dirt at them, leapt wildly about the fire in gleaming nudity, tormenting the younglings with the power of their jumps, the motion of their soft tissues with each cavort, jiggling taunts above golden light that glinted from skin stretched taut over powerful abdomens, broad backs and exquisitely muscled limbs. The light playing on such sumptuousness burned across the shadow spaces of the dance and sent fits of quivering into young and untried loins. And so the younglings groped and growled, spoke words of carnal intent and prowess that were laughable and naive. The ritual was primitive and old, and it made Gromf feel ashamed, for it seemed to him a ceremony of nothing but the lack of Discipline.
