“Yes?”
“You were there for my conversation with Doctor Isaacs, so you remember the exposure to substances bit?”
“Yes?” Impatience billowed from Hettinger’s voice.
“I don’t know what that substance was, so I have no idea if there are lasting effects. There’s no way for me to tell you for certain that Mr. Friedrich won’t have any further issues stemming from that brain injury.”
“Issues like what? Worst case scenario.”
“Worst case? Well, by regulation and standard of care policy, I can’t guess.”
Hettinger harrumphed. “And if you were a guessing man?”
“Stroke, hemorrhage, death. I can’t say for certain, but given the areas we had spontaneous bleeds, I’d expect short term memory to be the most effected with the possibility of seizures. Rate of incidence may or may not coincide with stress level.”
Hettinger growled and barked orders out the doorway. With guards entering the exam room, Doctor Barnes leaned over and pulled Eric to a sitting position. The older man whispered in Eric’s ear as he did so.
The words meant nothing to him, but the doctor’s serious cast stilled Eric’s tongue as he was led from the room.
Nawgale huayheh? What does that mean?
Eric was still turning those two words over in his head when he noticed the guards were leading him through unfamiliar corridors. Crewmen in coveralls stared after him as they passed.
What, never seen a naked guy walking down the passageway before?
As they passed through a blast door at a security checkpoint, Eric realized how segmented the Shrike’s design was. Inside the detention areas, the hallways were bland, repetitive. Outside, where the medical facility had been, the halls were better lit and far more comfortable, less bland. By the time the guards stopped, he’d determined the cell blocks were nigh completely isolated from the rest of the ship. The average crewman on the Shrike had no clue what happened beyond the checkpoint’s blast shield and probably never would.
“After you, Mr. Friedrich.” Hettinger’s interruption jerked Eric back to reality. The man was waving him through another identical door. Entering the chilly interrogation room, Eric noticed one difference from the others he’d been in, a door on the opposite side of the cramped room.
“Eric,” Hettinger said and sighed. “I’m not going to pretend we’re friends. I could remind you of your responsibility as the son of Protectorate naval officers, but I won’t. I won’t beat around the bush: tell us what we want to know and this will go a lot easier on you. That might seem like old hat, but the rules have changed.” Eric heard the door behind him open and he observed a second man enter with his peripheral vision. Leaning casually against the wall just outside of arm’s reach, this new interloper appeared wholly uninterested in what was going on. His broad features, short haircut, crisply ironed coveralls, and demeanor lent the man a seriousness of purpose similar to Hettinger, though the grin gave a subtle hint of menace. “I have been explicitly authorized to take the kid gloves off, Eric. Have you met Ted?”
Eric glanced over at the second man.
“No? Well, Ted’s a specialist. You see, I’m an information person. Ted?”
Ted grinned as he drawled, “You might say I’m a bit more of a people person.” It came out more as “Ewe moight say oima bit moave ah peepol pehson.”
“Yes, a people person,” Hettinger echoed. “So while I’m here to look for information, Ted is here to help you remember that information.”
Ted snorted and pulled a pair of black gloves from a pocket as he eyed Eric. “Aye, motivation.”
“Like the average Protectorate citizen, I don’t care for hurting people, but Ted here is a bit more--”
“Ambivalent,” Ted finished.
“Ah yes, thanks Ted. He’s a bit more ambivalent on the topic. Ted, do you mind educating our friend here on the finer points of your job?”
“Awright, Mister Drew. See these gloves here?” Ted asked as he pulled them on. “If ya hit bare skin hard enough, it splits. Since we need you right and pretty for the trial, we can’t have that. That’s what these gloves are for. Helps to reduce friction.”
“Now Eric, does Ted look serious?”
Eric nodded. His head snapped to the side. Pinpricks of light danced across the room and his eyes stung.
“When Mister Drew asks you a question, you answer,” Ted said as he gripped Eric’s chin and pointedly directed Eric’s gaze back to Hettinger.
“Thanks, Ted. One more time, Eric. Does Ted look serious?”
Eric coughed before earnestly replying, “Yes, Ted looks pretty serious.”
His head snapped to the side again. Eric tasted blood. He’d bitten his tongue.
“You’ll have to excuse his eagerness to help you, Eric, but how can you say he looks serious? You didn’t even look at him. Now, look at Ted and tell me if he looks serious. Don’t make him hit you again. Also, don’t call him pretty. He doesn’t appreciate that.”
Eric stared up at Ted’s neutral expression. “Yeah, I’d say he’s serious.”
“Would you say he enjoys his job?” Hettinger asked.
“I would say--” Eric started to say yes, but caught a gleam in Ted’s eyes and paused. Now is not the time to be a smartass. He considered Hettinger’s earlier words. “I would say no?”
“Go on, I can hear there’s more,” Hettinger said with a smirk.
“He said he was ambivalent. That means he has mixed feelings about it.”
“Good, see Ted? I told you Eric was a bright kid. Now, do you think Ted’s mixed feelings means he won’t do his job to the best of his ability?”
“No, I’m pretty sure he wants to do the best job possible.”
“Do you hear that, Ted?”
“Aye, not every day you find someone who appreciates a job well done, Mister Drew.”
“No, it isn’t, Ted. No it isn’t, especially amongst pirates.” Ted flinched. “Oh, Ted, you didn’t know?”
“No,” the man growled as his expression darkened.
Hettinger caught the glimmer of fear that flitted across Eric’s face. “Ted’s family was killed by pirates, Eric. How did they kill your sister, Ted?”
“Rape.” Ted’s voice had gone almost as flat and emotionless as his eyes.
“Now, from what he’s told us already, Ted, his ship was almost civilized. Right, Eric?”
“Yes, almost civilized,” Eric stammered.
“Did you ever deal with pirates like that, Eric? The kind that would rape a young girl, barely fourteen, to death?”
“Just once. Captain Fox hated them.”
“Just once? Why? Why just once and why did Fox hate them?”
“The Fortune had taken some damage and the main drive hiccupped while we were transiting in-system. The engineers killed the reactors and couldn’t get them back up. They were the only other ship in system. If Fox hadn’t bargained with them, the Fortune would’ve been a cold tomb until we fell into a gravity well.”
“And Fox hated their type?”
“He saw them as animals, less than human.”
“There are ways of dealing with animals gone bad, Eric.”
“Sure, you shoot them, but we couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The Compact.”
Hettinger pulled out his tablet. “Go on.”
“About the Compact? I asked Fox the same thing about why we didn’t use them for target practice if they were such horrible people. He said the Pirate’s Compact prevented him from doing so. From what I could tell, it’s some old agreement amongst pirate groups that they would not prey on each other. Beyond that, I don’t really know, Fox didn’t talk about it at length.”
“Interesting. I would expect someone in your position to be a bit more cognizant on the topic.”
“That’s the only time it came up. Maybe Fox’s policy of no fighting in port was part of it? I don’t know. It’s possible.”
“Many things are possible, Eri
c. Some are not. As we discussed before, the Fortune had docked at Jenkin’s Station. While you were there, some two hundred containers of mixed machinery were sold by Fox to multiple buyers from the Confederation. These containers were last seen on the PCV Nadezheny en route to Bernard. What makes this interesting is that Fox also sold three cylinders of enriched uranium along with two experimental warp helixes stolen from a Protectorate research facility to a buyer we have been unable to identify. Given the distances between the sources and time frame involved, it is physically impossible for the Fortune to have obtained these goods on her own. Explain.”
“I can’t.”
Stars filled his vision as his head bounced off the desk.
“Ted, our friend here has a medical condition that makes continued blows to the head problematic.”
“Sorry, Mr. Drew.”
“No, entirely my fault, I should have let you know. No harm done so far that I can tell. There’s no shortage of other soft tissue, take your pick.”
Ted wrenched Eric’s chair back and glowered. Eric’s grunted at the hammer blow to the leg. The burning sensation from sudden cramping sucked the air from his lungs as his leg convulsed. He would have toppled from the chair had Ted not grabbed him.
“The quadriceps femoris,” Ted told him, “is the largest muscle group in your leg.”
“As you can tell, Ted is a fan of proper education, Eric. Now, unless you want him to continue sharing his education with you, you might want to consider sharing yours with me.”
Eric glanced between the two. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. How many times do I have to tell you I’m a dumbass kid before reality sinks in?”
Hettinger raised a hand as Ted drew back. “Not this time, Ted. We’ll pretend he’s telling the truth for now. We’ve got time to come back to this later.”
Eric suppressed a smirk.
Less than forty-eight hours and I’m home free, dick. I’m as good as out of here.
As the clock ticked away, Eric found himself buried under an endless avalanche of questions punctuated intermittently with bouts of pain and the inability to breathe. From generalities to specifics, the questions ranged wildly from the mundane to topics obviously important to the Protectorate. That they had access to petabytes of data, yet were grilling a relative nobody like him wasn’t lost on him, either. The Protectorate wanted more and what they were looking for wasn’t found in shipping manifests, banking transaction logs, or port listings. Try as he might, the only comment Eric could make based off the topics covered was that the Protectorate was intensely interested in the pirates operating in the reaches between the borders of Protectorate and Confed space. Not just Fox and the Fortune. All of them. Despite it all, Eric stuck to the story. The story was life.
As the questions, blows, and time came and went, his inability to figure out what they were after grated on him.
“So,” Eric spoke up in during one of the few brief pauses. Ted had stepped out some time ago. “I’ve answered more questions in, well, however long I’ve been in here, than I probably have the rest of my life. Do you think you can clarify one thing for me?” Hettinger glared up at him from the tablet. “I get you’re interested in the pirates, but I’m a nobody. You have to know that by now. I don’t know anything you don’t already know. Why grill me like this? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s a waste of time and money.”
Hettinger’s tablet chimed and he looked down. The man grimaced and reached for the coffee he’d brought in from his last break. Eric shivered. During every break Hettinger had taken, the temperature in the room plunged until the interrogators had returned. Eric had little doubt as to how close to hypothermia he had come during what little sleep he’d managed before Hettinger woke him at the end of the last break.
“That’s a fairly astute observation, Eric. I’d punish you for asking, but it appears our time together has come to a close, so I’ll humor you a bit. A large portion of intelligence gathering is not gathering new information but verifying what you already have. In that regard, you’ve been very valuable. On the new information front, you’ve given us much to think about. For what it’s worth, the executive board of Turing Interstellar and the families we could contact send their thanks for your information concerning the Vyzov.”
The door behind him cycled. Eric found himself face down against the table as strong hands pull his arms behind his back and fit a pair of manacles around his wrists. Ted stood him up and prodded him through the back door into a much larger chamber. Two of the walls in this room were glass. Several uniformed people stared around their computer monitors at him from behind the windows. A medical examination table and a myriad of surrounding medical devices dominated the center of the chamber.
Ted drug one of the ubiquitous simple metal chairs to the center of the room and pushed Eric into it. Another door opened and someone entered.
“Out. Everyone.” The anger in Doctor Isaacs’ voice was unmistakable. “I don’t care if you have a top secret clearance, get out. You too, Theodore.” Most of the observers got up to leave, but a handful stayed sitting.
“Ma’am?” Ted asked.
“This interrogation is Inner Party only, Ted. Unless any of you hiding an IP-Gamma clearance, lock your systems and get out. No? I have authorization to terminate any potential leaks, direct from the Secretariat and the First Citizen.” The last statement sparked hurried movement to vacate. Seconds later he was alone and listening to Dr. Isaacs’ footsteps approach from behind.
“Oh, Eric. Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? How much trouble you’ve created for me?” She asked as she sat on the exam table in front of him. Her hair was frazzled. She looked like she hadn’t slept in quite some time.
“No? Sorry? What do you mean by trouble?”
Dr. Isaacs pursed her lips with irritation. On any other woman, Eric would have thought this expression attractive. Instead, Eric broke out in a cold sweat.
“Eric, you can drop the innocent routine, I know better. You and I both know you’re a pirate and, citizen or not, you know that earns you an execution. You also know by now that there’s no way you’re escaping what you’ve earned. You have my respect for sticking to your script as admirably as you have. I can’t imagine that has been easy for you, but unfortunately the only decision left for you to make is how you choose to meet your end.”
Eric shivered at the slow smile that blossomed at his discomforted fidgets.
“Now that we have a mutual understanding, let me outline your options. You can keep quiet and play stupid and your death will be a long time in coming. Trying to lie your way out of it will only make me more… creative.” Eric stared at her. “Now, that would be the deal Hettinger would give you, but I’m not Hettinger.
“A little over a standard day ago, the Shrike transmitted your case information to the system capitol’s Provost on arrival, standard procedure. Today, I’m working on something critical when the Shrike’s communications officer orders me to meet him at the comm center. Imagine my surprise when I get there to find him and the Shrike’s captain waiting for me with an encrypted message neither of them are cleared to read. The Council is ordering me off the Shrike because of you, you know? Can’t have the Naval Provost suspecting I’m a bigger fish than I appear. All that time, all that work, probably wasted because it will be turned over to some incompetent.”
“Sorry?”
She sighed. “After dismissing the captain and the commander, do you know what I found in that message?”
“Not a clue.”
“A dx-level order from Central Intelligence demanding we debrief you specifically for the contents of the images from your suit camera.” She pulled a small handheld out of her lab coat and thumbed the screen. “Specifically these five emblems. I have been ordered to obtain that information at any cost. They were quite explicit that I was to ensure that information does not fall into unauthorized hands. We purged the technician who saw those images an hour ago.”
“Oh.”
“I hold a certain level of appreciation for Hettinger’s approach. It’s direct, it’s simple, and works well in most situations, so let’s use that as a starting point. That said, I may be able to sweeten the deal if you give me enough. You wouldn’t ever be a free man again, but the Provost may be persuaded to amend the current charges to something less lethal.”
“Go on.”
“Do you know what those five emblems are?”
“For sure? No.”
“What do you suspect?”
“I-I,” Eric stuttered, his mouth suddenly going dry. A deep burning sensation started in the muscles at the base of his skull, like he’d pulled them. “I believe they’re from Earth.”
“Where did you find them?” Eric stared as she came to stand in front of him. “I’ve checked the data forensics and the photo analysis myself. You were the one who took those pictures, but there are no timestamps on the images. I’m not buying the shared suit script, where did you see those emblems?”
They exchanged stares for several seconds before Doctor Isaacs shrugged out of her lab coat and settled onto his lap. This close, he could see the revulsion she was trying to hide in her eyes. The feeling was mutual, but the primitive parts of his brain didn’t care. Her eyes. They were a hue of blue he couldn’t place. Her pupils began to dilate. Eric’s stomach lurched with nausea. Coherent thoughts snarled together as thought and emotion wrestled through his head. She shook her head and stood up.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Eric blurted the first thing that came to mind, “Ferram’s Reach.”
“That’s where you saw the emblems?”
Eric squinted at her, confused and mentally dug for what made him say those words. The room seemed much brighter and he was sweating. He sputtered, “No, the star is a class B.”
Doctor Isaacs tilted her head. “What? What’s that have to do with this?”
“Your eyes, they’re the same color as Ferram’s Reach.”
Doctor Isaacs blinked. Blushing? Her eyes focused elsewhere for a moment. Her face contorted, clearly angry, and she spat, “Plan B, Hettinger.”
“Plan B?” Eric asked as a door cycled behind him. Boots approached with purpose and seconds later he was yanked from the chair. Ted grunted as he shoved and prodded Eric in the back with a sidearm toward the open doorway. Eric stumbled into the hall to find three Protectorate marines in armored suits waiting. Vac suits--Oh fuck no. No, no, no.
By Dawn's Early Light Page 10
