Prisoner of Conscience

by Susan R. Matthews

  The triage officer had already sent Erish on to Station Four. Their officer was at Station Four, though Robert couldn’t see him, Infirmary being crowded, and the officer short.

  One of the techs at the triage station cut open the fabric across Joslire’s thigh, and the triage officer — Doctor Bokomoro, Degenerative Bone and Muscle — raised her eyebrows at the wound. “Five eighths’ span of bulkhead, Joslire,” she said, sounding impressed. “How did that happen?”

  Like the rest of Infirmary staff, she called Joslire by his personal name. Joslire didn’t care to be reminded of the Curran Detention Facility, where Joslire had been Bonded and given his Fleet name. Robert didn’t care. He’d been assigned a name at random, like other Nurail bond-involuntaries, to destroy even so small a bit of information that they might have had about one another.

  “It must have been in food-stores three, as the doctor please. Because this troop can’t quite remember. With respect.”

  Still Joslire was formal with her. Formality was safety, for bond-involuntaries. It was all a part of their conditioning. Doctor Bokomoro palpated the ragged edges of the wound in Joslire’s thigh with delicate care, frowning a bit. “Well. You’ll do for Station Four when it clears. You’re the last of it, are you?”

  Her question was directed at Robert, who looked back over his shoulder down the length of the corridor, checking the triage line. They seemed to have hit a slack period.

  “There aren’t many in queue just now, Doctor, no, ma’am.” So she could afford to set them aside, and let the officer perform what triage he liked. There would be time.

  Doctor Bokomoro nodded. “Right. Take Joslire across, Robert, take these with you. Next?”

  “These” were Toska and Kaydence and Code, the rest of Security 5.4. All of them weary. None apparently injured. When Station Four cleared, Robert took the lead to their assigned slot, pushing Joslire on the mover before him.

  The officer was leaning on the treatment table with both arms braced stiff-elbowed to the surface, frowning in evident anxiety.

  “I am becoming bored with bleeding people,” his Excellency was saying, his frustration clear in his tenor voice. “When is the Captain going to get to it, and take this ship out of harm’s way?”

  Shaking off wordless offers of assistance, Joslire slid awkwardly from the end of the mover to sit on the edge of the treatment table, facing the officer. Koscuisko scowled thunderously when he saw the exposed gash in Joslire’s leg.

  Sarse Duro, the senior medical technician teamed with Chief Medical, took one look and broke open a fresh gross-lacerations pack. “Shouldn’t be too much longer now, sir. They said three eights to close.” Noticing Robert, Sarse shut up to concentrate on Joslire’s wound. It was out of respect for his feelings, Robert knew. He appreciated Sarse’s delicacy.

  Eild was Nurail.

  He was Nurail, though he was from Marleborne.

  “Erish is to be uncomfortable, but has not too seriously been injured. Joslire, you are bleeding, you had noticed.” His Excellency changed the subject without comment, putting a dose through at Joslire’s thigh. Joslire steadied himself against the surface of the table, and Koscuisko put one hand out to Joslire’s shoulder to help stop him from falling over. Muscle relaxant, maybe. Powerful pain medication, almost certainly.

  “Kaydence. You are not moving as beautifully as usually you do.” Their officer talked as he worked, Sarse Duro content to keep supplies coming. “I should make you all sit down, but then I would not be able to see you. Metal coming out, Joslire.”

  Along with a freshet of blood damped off almost immediately with a stop-cloth. “Talk to me, gentles all, how do you go? I have seen none of the others, at least so far.”

  Well, he didn’t have to answer this question, Robert told himself. He could just stand here and listen. That way he would find out before the almost-inevitable embroideries began. That could be useful for later.

  “Kaydence did it,” Joslire said, his head bent to watch Koscuisko clear the wound. “We were only there to wa — ouch.” Something seemed to twinge unpleasantly; Joslire raised his head to meet Koscuisko’s mirror-silver pale eyes, and Koscuisko smiled. Robert had always considered that Andrej Koscuisko had a very pretty smile, all those white teeth, and all of them in such an even line.

  “You are a very great liar, Joslire, if I may hope to be forgiven for saying it. And you should be ashamed.”

  Grin answered grin, now. Joslire had known the officer for even longer than Robert had, and they had known him longer than anyone else — since Fleet Orientation Station Medical, before they’d been assigned to Scylla. But that had been three years ago.

  And almost the first thing they had learned about Koscuisko was that they were clear to make jokes with him. Not that the others had been easy to convince that it was really safe; and that had depressed Robert at the time, because of what it indicated about the usual treatment bond-involuntaries expected to receive in Fleet.

  “But it’s true, your Excellency, I swear it by the officer’s chin-beard,” Joslire protested. There was no response from their officer to this impertinence; Andrej Koscuisko didn’t have a chin-beard, smooth-skinned as any unmarried man. Koscuisko concentrated on smoothing the edges of the wound in Joslire’s thigh flush with the layer of anaerobe that would protect the raw flesh while it healed.

  After a moment Joslire spoke on. “Kaydence’s shot was the only one that really mattered, when it comes to that. All the other ones do us no good if the last one doesn’t go in.” Serious now, Joslire was giving his report, which meant that the others were free to contribute.

  “But it was Jos’s idea to get through the waste-chute behind food-stores forward. Or we wouldn’t have gotten there in time.” Toska Bederico, apparently no more than bruised and tired, was leaning against the stores table that would normally back against a wall that was now braced up in the bulkhead. “Can you get Jos to admit it, though? There’s the question.”

  As a joke it was not a very fortunate one, in Robert’s mind. Andrej Koscuisko could make anybody admit to anything, once he but got them down into Secured Medical and got started. Toska was tired, or he wouldn’t have made so potentially ambiguous a remark. The officer didn’t seem to have noticed anything; Koscuisko was tired, too.

  Of course Koscuisko had been hard at work since the first casualties had started to trickle in. For Robert’s own self he considered that he had the better part of the contract, since he only had to fetch and carry. That wasn’t really work.

  “Was that my idea?” Joslire sounded genuinely startled. “I don’t remember it being my idea. I thought it was Erish. Are you sure? I’ll take full credit, of course, Robert, write that down.”

  Joslire would do no such thing, needless to say. Joslire was scrupulous about credit where credit was due, sometimes too much so.

  “Don’t think so,” Kaydence frowned. “I thought it was Toska. Whose idea was it? Because someone’s got to go clean that up.”

  “Light duty, ten days.” Their officer tagged Joslire’s trouser-leg closed with a few strips of closing-tape to spare his blushes till he could change his trousers. Joslire blushed differently from people Robert had grown up with; he didn’t pink from pale, he toasted from tan.

  Of course there was the fact that Joslire was simply the color of meal-cake to begin with. The officer put his hand to Joslire’s shoulder for emphasis. “And keep your weight off your leg, you may walk if you must but no further than two turnings at a time. Now you must go to rest.”

  Joslire was subdued enough to let himself be moved by Robert and Code in tandem. Off of the treatment table. Back onto the mover. Koscuisko raised his voice and called for Kaydence, who was doing what he could to disappear; but there weren’t any walls to hide behind just now.

  “Kaydence, you are next. The shins of your boots look as though you had been using scour-skin for bootblack.” Koscuisko’s desire to lighten the atmosphere a bit was clearly evident in his bantering to
ne; and it worked, too. Quite apart from the fact that Koscuisko was their officer, he was a personable man, whose determined cheerfulness communicated itself to his Bonds almost immediately. “Tell me about it.”

  Koscuisko was right, the front of Kaydence’s boots were scratched and abraded across the shins. Kaydence actually did blush, and since Kaydence was the same generally clay-colored sort as the rest of them, it made him go all feverish in the cheeks. Well, clay-colored like Robert, at least. Their officer was so pale he was nearly blue in the face. And Toska was a little butter-colored, but Salom hominids were supposed to be that shade of sun.

  “Sat down to make my shot, sir. Didn’t stop moving. Probably just bruised, though, your Excellency — don’t make me take off my boots, sir, please, there’s a hole in my boot-sock — ”

  As if Kay thought pleading would do him the least bit of good.

  Andrej Koscuisko merely tilted his head fractionally to one side with one of his most killing “Oh, but you know better than that” looks, and snapped his fingers.

  Toska and Robert knew what was expected, and moved in to implement their officer’s will and good pleasure.

  There was no standing between Koscuisko and the welfare of his Security assigned, and whether or not said Security would rather not have an un-mended undergarment exposed before all Infirmary had nothing to do with it whatever.

  It could be worse.

  Security Chief Warrant Officer Caleigh Samons could be here.

  Their officer was only interested in the well-being of the skin beneath the stocking, not the condition of the boot-stocking itself, but let Caleigh Samons once find out that the officer had seen one of her troops out of uniform and there would be the very Devil to pay.

  ###

  Command and Ship’s Primes, Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Scylla, never met more informally than this — and in the Captain’s office, rather than in meal-hall. There were allowances to be made for the state of exhaustion the officers shared with the rest of ship’s assigned resources, but Andrej Koscuisko was too tired to make them, and he wished that his fellow Primes — and Ship’s Command Branch officers, as well — would just go away and let him sleep.

  “ — carapace hull,” Ship’s Engineer was saying in between sips of hot shurla. “We lost most of the fiber-loads. Secured Medical as well. Significant damage to the maintenance hull, but the atmosphere hasn’t been compromised, we were lucky.”

  Wait, wasn’t that good news, about Secured Medical being stove in? Andrej almost thought that meant something. Surely it would be significant once his brain started to function again, after he had slept perhaps five shifts. No, that was only forty hours. Perhaps six shifts, then.

  Ship’s Intelligence paused on his way to his lounger to offer Andrej a flask of rhyti, talking as he went. “Prelims from the rest of the Doxtap Fleet indicate that we actually did comparatively well. We only lost three flyers in action, Fleet’s quite pleased. Goes without saying Eild is a little depressed about the whole thing.”

  Andrej accepted the flask of rhyti with a nod of thanks. Of course Eild was unhappy. The planetary population of Eild had lost its final bid to retain autonomy; and if recent history was anything to go by, they had only want, repression, and relocation to look forward to now. Relocation for selected portions of the population, at least, scattered, dispersed among sixty-four eights of Bench-integral worlds.

  Not as though there was much left of the population of Eild by this time, and it had been an outpost world to start out with — like most Nurail worlds, with typically a hundred and twenty-eight grazing animals to every Nurail soul.

  It was still a lot of people.

  Even after starvation, plague, and war, there were surely sixteens of eighties of Eild Nurail to be moved. To be removed. To be raped from their native soil and abandoned in alien worlds where nobody would even speak their language.

  “That’s as may be.” Captain Irshah Parmin’s voice was dry and uninflected, clear indication of how he felt about the use to which his Command had been put. Irshah Parmin was a professional Fleet Captain whom Andrej had grown to respect deeply over these three years of assignment to Scylla. Irshah Parmin never let feelings interfere with his duty.

  He didn’t make too great a secret about the fact that he had feelings, all the same. “There’s a relocation fleet standing off at Formiffer to take over. We’ll go to admin refit, ourselves. Chief Medical, your report?”

  The rhyti was very reviving; he was very tired. It didn’t usually have so strong a stimulating effect on him. “Apart from First Officer’s losses we have a mortality count of seventeen on wards, mostly due to the hit the carapace hull took at channel two. Of my other patients I list five as being in very uncertain condition, but upwards of ninety lacerations or wounds requiring bed-rest or light duty, while the number of bumps and scrapes cannot be calculated.”

  There were seven hundred and thirty-five souls assigned to Scylla, and total fatalities rested at a mere twenty-nine so far. Even should they lose the five on close watch, they had gotten through this one with little scathe: though naturally enough the dead might think differently.

  “Triage run the way you like it?”

  That was delicately done. That was the Captain’s way of asking whether Fleet had failed any of Scylla’s crew by failing to have the resources on site that would have saved their lives. Strictly speaking, triage was Medical’s business; but Andrej could best honor his Captain’s concern by answering the question.

  “By our Lady’s grace. Which is, I mean to say, yes, your Excellency, we have been fortunate. We have not lacked for the beds we needed when we needed them.”

  He was more tired than he’d realized, but his lapse into idiom had amused — and not offended — his peers. Not as though he really was their peer, except for the formality of his rank. Irshah Parmin had in the past honored him by asserting that he might develop into a really top-class battle surgeon, some year. In Andrej Koscuisko’s considered opinion he had quite a distance yet to go.

  “Good to hear, Doctor. Thank you. First Officer. About that Security five-point-four. Precedent?”

  What about Security 5.4? Andrej frowned. Security 5.4 were his people, bond-involuntaries, though 5.4 had been on Ship’s Security during the engagement, rather than flying a Wolnadi. Precedent for what?

  “I believe so, your Excellency. Bassin – ” the Intelligence Officer’s name was Bassin Emer – “has pulled the index cases. They call for evidence of innovative thinking in crisis making possible some success crucial to the survival of significant Fleet resources. Case is stronger the more significant the Fleet resources, and I think Scylla counts. I know Jik’s angry about the wall — ”

  Now the Ship’s Engineer, Jik Polis, grinned and nodded her long perfect oval head in confirmation; Andrej was more lost by the moment.

  “ — but I think we can document. That was clearheaded thinking under fire. It probably made the difference. And there’s no question about the performance under extreme circumstances. I will file the request for Revocation next shift.”

  “Does the officer of assignment know what we’re talking about?” Irshah Parmin asked with evident amusement in his voice, clearly having noticed what Andrej could only assume was the transparent befuddlement on his face. “Never mind for now. We all need a rest-shift. Engineer, cut to minimum, administrative status in effect. We’ll tell you all about it at staff first-shift, gentles, the usual time and place.”

  They were dismissed.

  But Andrej didn’t move.

  “Captain, with respect.” They were saying something about his people. He wanted to know what it was. “You were saying something about Security five-point-four.”

  First Officer Saligrep Linelly, rising to her feet, stretched to the full height of her sinewy body and yawned before she saluted to leave. The other officers followed as Sali left; they were alone. Captain Irshah Parmin stood from behind his desk-table in turn, grinning as he twitched his left sh
oulder. The captain had never been quite right in his left shoulder. Something to do with an implosion round and some shelving, Andrej understood.

  “What your people had to do to stop that sapper, Andrej. Those Nurail were so close to taking this entire ship out. First Officer thinks we have a case for revocation of Bond, if we can just get it through channels before they all die of old age.”

  Revocation of Bond?

  Freedom?

  Bond-involuntaries were slaves to Jurisdiction, condemned for crimes against the Judicial order to thirty years of dangerous duty in Security with a semi-organic artificial intelligence implanted in their brains to help guarantee their good behavior. Revocation of Bond would mean freedom here and now, retirement with honors and pension and accumulated pay as though they had somehow managed to live out the term of their servitude and seen “the Day” dawn at last.

  “Revocation of Bond can only be granted by the First Judge at Fontailloe Judiciary.” Andrej spoke slowly, thinking aloud. Trying to remember. “And endorsed by the majority of Judges Presiding on the Bench. That’s five. Getting five Judges to agree on anything — ”

  Still, it was an administrative matter when all was written and read in. Not a point of Law or Judicial precedent. There was a chance. Captain Irshah Parmin nodded solemnly, then spoiled the effect by yawning in his own turn.

  “Even so. That’s what we mean to try for. Needless to say, no word outside this room, premature release too painful if eventually refused, and all that.”

  He should get up, Andrej knew. He should leave. He was going to fall asleep in the chair. And it wasn’t even so comfortable a chair. “Of course, Captain. Anything I can do, naturally. It would be a great thing, if.”

  No, it was no good. He was hardly making sense even to himself. Captain Irshah Parmin waved off the incomprehensible jumble of words with an understanding gesture of his short square hand.