by J. L. Doty
“Excellent,” Jewel said. “Let’s follow. Mr. Tac’tac’ah, set us up for transition.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Abraxa looked at the report in front of him, wondered what in god’s name Cinesstar was doing on Anachron IV. The information from their informant there was sketchy, but there was no doubt it had been Cinesstar. Whoever the fool was commanding her, he’d given away their position to everyone.
Abraxa brought a star chart up on one of his screens. Where would they go next? he wondered. The sector headquarters at Aagerbanne was the largest base near them, but the subsector headquarters at Sarasan was closer. Which one would they make for? It was imperative that he guess correctly.
And what were they up to, Edvard and Rochefort and Cassandra and Sylissa d’Hart? What little plot had their scheming hatched?
CHAPTER 19: ANOTHER CHOICE
Alsa Yan crawled out of her bunk in no mood to be awakened from a sound sleep. “Lights,” she said angrily, and the computer brought her cabin lights up. She threw on a robe, hit the door lock and opened it. A civilian stood in the corridor outside her cabin, a man she’d noticed about the ship a few times. “What do you want?” she growled before she noticed Sylissa d’Hart standing next to him. “Your Ladyship, I didn’t mean to . . .”
The noblewoman shook her head. “It’s we who should apologize. I know you’ve been working late with the wounded, but I felt this was important enough to wake you. May we come in?”
Alsa stepped back. “Certainly. What can I do for you?”
The man stepped aside, let the noblewoman precede him, followed her in and spoke. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Thomas Harshaw, late the imperial vice consul on Trinivan. At the moment, however, I’m acting as Lieutenant Ballin’s legal council.”
Alsa frowned. “Legal council. Why does he need legal council?”
“Commander Sierka has charged him with mutiny, gross insubordination, and a number of other serious crimes.”
“That’s bullshit!” Alsa snapped, then remembered Lady d’Hart. “Umm . . . sorry, but York would get us all killed before he’d commit mutiny.”
Lady d’Hart smiled. “Have you heard what happened on Hangar Deck?”
Alsa shook her head. “All I know is I got swamped with wounded, spent a day and a half cutting, then came here for some rest.”
Harshaw shrugged. “Apparently Mister Ballin threatened to kill Commander Sierka.”
Alsa laughed bitterly. “I don’t blame him. Sierka dumped him and his people.”
“Nevertheless,” Harshaw continued. “Commander Sierka intends to convene a court-martial tomorrow morning. I’ve been appointed to represent Lieutenant Ballin, and been given until then to prepare his case.”
Alsa ran her fingers through her hair. “What do you need me for?”
Harshaw shook his head. “I went down to see Lieutenant Ballin in the brig and I found him comatose and apparently quite ill. I tried to get him to tell me what was wrong, he mumbled something barely intelligible about a . . . breach wound, whatever that is. I asked the guards to summon medical help, but they refused and just laughed at me. I appealed to Lady d’Hart here, and she recommended we seek your help.”
Alsa nodded. It was just like the AI to refuse a prisoner medical aid. “Please wait out in the corridor while I put on some clothes.”
Harshaw and Lady d’Hart stepped out of her cabin. Alsa threw off the robe, pulled on a pair of medical coveralls, grabbed her bag and joined them.
Down in the brig the AI sergeant in charge refused to let her pass. “I’m the chief medical officer on this ship,” she said angrily, “and I have a report you have a seriously ill man in one of these cells. Now let me pass.”
The sergeant asked, “How did you get this report?”
Alsa said, “Mister Harshaw here—”
“He’s a lawyer type,” the sergeant interrupted her. “What’s he know about sick?”
They argued a bit longer, but finally Alsa gave up and tried a different tack. She called Sierka, but he refused to take her call. She tried to explain to Armbruster, but the old man was too frightened to act on the matter. Finally, she put in a call to Palevi, and the sergeant answered with a grin that bothered her.
“What can I do for you, ma’am?” he asked politely.
“You can help me get in to see your CO.”
Palevi shrugged. “Sorry ma’am. I got no authority there. The captain has him locked up and sealed away.”
“I know that,” Alsa said. “Sierka won’t let anyone in to see him but his legal council, Harshaw. And Mister Harshaw here informs me Lieutenant Ballin is suffering from a breach wound. Did you know about that, Sergeant?”
That got a reaction out of Palevi. “No, ma’am. Breach wound?”
“Well apparently he picked it up leaving that planet. And apparently he’s gone for almost two days now without treatment. And apparently he’s in pretty bad shape. And apparently those AI bastards aren’t going to let me in to treat him unless you can convince them to. So get your ass down here, Sergeant, with about two dozen of your best to back me up.”
Palevi nodded, and by the look on his face Alsa suddenly felt sorry for the AI guards. “Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.”
It was simple with Palevi’s help. He and his marines, all wearing sidearms, filed into the guard station down in the brig before the AI guards could react. The marines didn’t even need to draw their weapons. They just stood there with their hands resting on their guns while Alsa quoted chapter and verse of the regs concerning her right to examine the physical wellbeing of any person on board ship. And anything she wasn’t sure about, she made up.
She and Palevi and Harshaw and Sylissa d’Hart and two marines marched down the cellblock to York’s cell. While she stood outside the cell with Palevi barking orders into his com, what she saw of York was not good. He was laying up against the wall in a grav bunk, still wearing his armor, which had a large crack down the middle of the chest plate. He didn’t have his helmet on, and his face was white and pasty, with a greasy looking sheen of perspiration beading around a five-day growth of beard. There was an obvious cut in the middle of his forehead, and dried blood smeared over most of his face. His eyes were open, staring blankly, and they had a yellow, rheumy appearance. Alsa growled, “Get that god damned cell open!”
As the plast bars slid aside Alsa crossed the cell yanking her portable med console out of her kit. She knelt down beside York’s bunk, plugged it into the med tap on his suit and switched it on. It instantly started screaming a high-pitched whine. “Stand back all of you,” she shouted. “He’s hot. Fuck he’s hot!”
She herself didn’t back away, but the rest of them did. She tapped keys on her console, learned that she could put up with about an hour of exposure without having to go through anything more than mild chemotherapy. York, though, was going to have to go through one hell of a lot more than that.
His armor was a mess, had completely shut down, wasn’t even giving her vital signs. She finally managed to access his telemetry log, started scanning it. “Breach wound,” she announced, finding what she was looking for. “He had a left gauntlet breach before he left the planet’s surface.”
She turned around, barked at Palevi. “Contact sickbay. Tell them I want a grav stretcher down here on the double with a contamination shield. And I want a contamination team here for clean-up. And get in here and help me strip off this armor.”
While Palevi and two marines started popping York’s armor seals, Alsa brought out a power scalpel, dialed it up to maximum, started cutting away the plating of his left gauntlet. She pealed a section back and the stench that hit their noses made them all wince. “Shit,” one of the marines swore, “What the hell is that?”
Alsa nodded carefully. “Gangrene. By now his whole system’s septic. At a minimum he’s going to lose the arm. And he’s in no shape for cloning or a transplant.”
The grav stretcher arrived. They bundled York int
o it, sealed him behind the contamination shield. As they were about to leave Harshaw stopped Alsa. “Is it safe to say that my client is not physically capable of standing trial at this time?”
Alsa was getting tired of Harshaw. “What the hell does it matter? It’s safe to say your client may not live to stand trial.”
. . . Alsa looked sadly at her handiwork. All that remained of York was a bit of tissue, a piece of bone, a smear of blood.
The technician held out the open body bag. “I’ll scrape him into it.”
Alsa looked at what was left of York, shook her head. “That’s not him. There’s nothing left of him.” She reached out, scraped the bits of tissue into a pan, turned toward the disposal can . . .”
York slammed awake, sat up in his bunk, struggled for long seconds while mentally he flipped back and forth between the two realities: Anachron IV had been dream. No it wasn’t . . . yes it was . . . no it wasn’t . . . This time he wasn’t going to be fooled. Not by any of them. Anachron IV was real, the body bag dream was a dream, and the whole world swam around him as he examined his left arm carefully, found the seam where the real arm ended and the prosthetic began. He started crying with relief. It wasn’t a dream. They’d cut off his arm and it wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t insane. No, he was insane, but that was all right, as long as Anachron IV was real. He understood it all now, so he lay down again and slipped back into sleep.
For York his court-martial was an odd sort of dream, though through the whole thing he was less concerned with whether he was dreaming, and far more concerned with his ability to distinguish the dream parts from the real parts. If he could keep those two straight, he’d be satisfied.
Harshaw coached him rather extensively beforehand. “Sierka was going to hold a closed hearing and allow only those witnesses he wanted. But Her Majesty asked to be allowed to observe, and of course he dare not refuse her. So you keep your mouth shut. We don’t need your testimony, but we do need you to sit there quietly and look smart and disciplined and wounded and victimized.”
York didn’t understand. He couldn’t even remember where it was that he and Harshaw had had their conversation: the brig, his cabin, maybe sickbay? Nor could he remember how long the court-martial lasted. Sierka sat as chief jurist, with Soladin as his second and Armbruster as his third. They called in witnesses, questioned them, and the evidence was quite clear: York had threatened to kill Sierka and there was no denying it. There were also implications of excessive use of the suit’s combat drugs, and questions concerning York’s judgment and competence. In York’s defense Harshaw called only Alsa Yan.
“Doctor Yan,” Harshaw began. “When you first saw Lieutenant Ballin after he had returned from Anachron IV, what condition was he in, medically speaking?”
Alsa shrugged. “He was a wreck, close to death . . .” She went on to describe York’s condition in considerable detail.
“And how did he come to be in such shape, Doctor Yan?”
“It began with a breach in his left gauntlet down on the surface of the planet—”
Soladin objected at that point, claiming she couldn’t know the details of what had happened on the planet’s surface. Sierka sustained his objection, said he would allow no further discussion of events prior to the alleged mutiny attempt. But the empress asked if she could ask a question or two of her own. Of course Sierka granted her request, and she asked about marine armor.
Alsa went into considerable detail concerning the time-stamped telemetry and medical logs kept by a suit’s computer. From those she had been able to determine exactly when the breach had occurred, and exactly how long York’s hand had been under vacuum. She also knew the dosages and timing of all the drugs he’d taken. “Lieutenant Ballin was knocked unconscious no less than three times, resulting in a concussion and a certain amount of disorientation. He was suffering from an extended breach wound of the left hand, an excruciating injury at best. He had also been exposed to a lethal dose of hard radiation, which would certainly affect his ability to function, though since his suit alarms were damaged and inoperative, he was probably not aware of it. And yet he managed to save the lives of his people and return them to this ship. Certainly his capacity was diminished by his condition, and the drugs he’d taken in the line of duty.”
“The drugs,” Harshaw said, nodding thoughtfully. “In your professional opinion, doctor, how would you evaluate Mister Ballin’s judgment in self-administering combat drugs?”
“In my professional opinion, given the wounds he’d suffered, Lieutenant Ballin used the drugs effectively to remain conscious and sufficiently alert to save the lives of nearly sixty members of this ship’s crew. I believe his judgment was impeccable, and his reasoning sound.”
Harshaw was finished then. Sierka adjourned the court-martial and a couple of AI goons hustled York back to his cell. All he could do was wait while Sierka met with Armbruster and Soladin in closed session to decide how to execute him.
He pulled a chair out of a bulkhead, sat down under the weight of sheer exhaustion, raised his left arm and examined it carefully. Alsa had cut off his arm just below the elbow, done a neat job of attaching the prosthetic. He wiggled the fingers, and like the toes on his false foot he wouldn’t have known by feel that they were plast and circuits wrapped in skin from a clone culture. No, it wasn’t a dream!
He looked up at his bunk, wondered if he had the strength to climb into it, knew he’d need another twenty hours of sleep before he’d be rid of the side effects of Alsa’s speed heeling treatments . . .
Harshaw woke him sitting there. York had trouble bringing his mental processes up to any kind of reasonable speed, looked at his watch. He’d only been out an hour.
“You’ve been acquitted of all charges,” Harshaw said happily. He reached down, lifted York’s hand and shook it.
York looked at him and shook his head. “Sierka acquitted me? Just like that?”
Harshaw grinned. “Well, not just like that. Apparently the empress felt that closed session didn’t exclude her. I don’t know what went on in there, but you’ve been acquitted.”
York stood unsteadily. “Am I free to go?”
“Yes, you are.” Harshaw leaned close to him, whispered softly, “But Her Majesty would like to see you in her cabin.”
York looked at him carefully for a moment, couldn’t read anything in his face. The side effects of the speed heeling were still weighing on him heavily, and if there was some meaning hidden between Harshaw’s words he couldn’t fathom it. York turned away from him, walked out of the cell, called over his shoulder, “Later. After I get some sleep.”
“But . . .” Harshaw said. “But Lieutenant, she said now. You can’t . . .”
When York got back to his cabin the chime on his terminal was sounding steadily. He debated ignoring it but decided he might as well answer it.
He touched the receive switch on the terminal and a rather officious looking woman in the uniform of the royal guard appeared on the screen. “Ah!” the woman said, looking a bit perturbed. “Finally! Where have you been, Lieutenant?”
York blinked and shook his head. “In jail. I just got out.”
Her look shifted to impatience. “Well it’s about time. If you’d answered your terminal earlier you’d have more time now, but as it is you’ll just barely be able to make it up here.”
She was starting to irritate him, and he knew that too was a side effect of the treatments, as well as her attitude. “Up where?” he asked, trying not to sound angry.
“The empress suite, of course. You mustn’t keep her waiting. I’ll tell her five minutes—”
“The empress wants to see me?” York asked. All he wanted to do was go to sleep.
The woman could no longer contain her impatience. “Well what else would this be about?” she demanded.
“What for?” York asked.
She stopped short, frowned angrily. “Pardon me?”
“I asked what for.”
Her frown deepe
ned. “I’m sure Her Majesty will discuss that with you—”
“No. You discuss it with me now.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. You’ll—”
“Then find out. And when you know, call me back.” He hit the blank switch.
He leaned against the console, shook his head. He was a damn fool, he knew. But he was so tired, and all he wanted to do was sleep.
He folded a seat out of the bulkhead and sat down, almost too tired to make it to his bunk . . .
The chime on his terminal woke him again. He’d fallen asleep sitting up with his head cocked to one side. He checked the time, found he’d been out for about ten minutes.
The chime sounded again, so he stood, leaned over the terminal, touched the receive switch, and the officious looking guardswoman appeared again, though the expression on her face was quite different now. “Lieutenant Ballin,” she said. “I’m Major Dewar of Her Majesty’s Guard, and I would like to express my apologies for my rather abrupt behavior a few minutes ago. I was not aware that you had recently suffered some rather serious injuries, and Doctor Yan informs me you’re still in need of time to sleep off the effects of the speed healing medications. Again, my apologies, but this is an important matter that cannot wait.”
Someone had given her hell: be nice, if you have to, but get the idiot up here. She was still abrupt, but now she was at least polite, though York had to struggle to avoid biting her head off anyway. He closed his eyes, couldn’t think of any better way of calling a truce than to say, “Apology accepted. I was a bit short myself.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” the woman said. “Her Majesty cordially requests your presence, at your convenience, in her suite. May I convey your reply?”
Someone had really come down hard on this woman. “Certainly,” York said, trying to come up with something better than Ya, sure. “Tell her I would consider it an honor, though I need about twenty minutes to make myself presentable.”
