“It’s just a fact of life.” he shrugged, as he looked over at a green indicator that had appeared on the control panel. “Looks like we’re clear all the way to the bridge.” He turned to his two guests. “Alright, folks – time to meet the old man.”
Symbolic Value
Dactari Logistics Station, Oaxian Orbit
Harry stumbled into the control room, thanks to a perfectly timed shove from one of his guards. He’d noticed a senior officer standing in the center of the round room, surrounded by a circular collection of workstations. There were at least twenty operators working at the terminals, their chatter interrupted as they turned to see the prisoner.
Harry figured he was here for a lecture and so he ignored the officer, looking toward a large, floor-to-ceiling window that looked down on Oaxes. He strolled over, gazing down at a world that felt strangely like home, now that he’d experienced several lives on it.
It felt as though he’d had enough of life.
The Dactari officer behind him grunted in exasperation. He was being ignored in front of his staff. “Well, Captain Harrison Young of the United States Navy, your reluctance to talk’s been a waste of time, hasn’t it?” He had a disconcertingly perfect Texas accent. There must have been a few hundred humans run through the knowledge capsules over the last three years and their accents lived on in their enemies.
Harry turned from the window. He wasn’t bound. Perhaps they knew how numb he felt, or perhaps the personnel in the room were considered sufficient, should he attempt anything violent. He felt dead inside, too used up to even seek revenge for the deaths of loved ones that he’d never met. He looked around the room as though he were the only one in it.
“We know you came here to arrange a deal that effectively constitutes a smuggling contract.” The officer frowned slightly as he watched his prisoner. “We knew that you’d come here sooner or later. You can’t use all those new hulls without systems to operate them and there are precious few worlds that can supply what you need. We reckoned it’d be a back door deal like this. It contravenes the Law of Imperial Trade and Commerce. It’s a clear threat to the security of the state.”
Harry said nothing to this. He had a pretty clear idea of where this was going. They had wrung him dry and now they only had one use for him. He would die at the hands of the Oaxian courts, making diplomacy with the Alliance all but impossible.
The officer sighed. “You’ll be turned over to the authorities in Presh,” he said, indicating the planet outside the window. “They know how to deal with criminals.”
There it is, thought Harry dully. A quick show-trial followed by a slow show-death.
A technician entered through a door at the back of the room and headed for a bank of modules mounted beneath an inactive twenty-foot view screen. He knelt before a module with a blinking orange panel on it and slid it out.
“I hope you won’t bother with false hope, Captain,” the officer said quietly as he turned to look at the tech. “The court already knows the verdict – it’s simply a matter of standing you in front of the adjudicator and having her read it out.”
The tech slid the module back into the wall and a large screen above it came to life. Harry was looking at a stylized display of every system in the Republic, dotted with target reticules and text boxes. He was fluent in Dheema. Every officer in the fleet and at least half the enlisted personnel had been plugged into one of the capsules that had been captured after the Battle of Mars.
“Those are ships,” he said in perfect Court Dheema, the dialect of the Dactari ruling class. “Warships, if I’m not mistaken.” He turned to the bemused officer. “You can see every Republic warship from here, can’t you?”
“Goods flow as needed, Captain.” The Dactari officer gave the technician an angry nod toward the exit. “When a vessel needs products from this system, we know about it immediately and send out the required parts.”
“Wouldn’t it be wise to stockpile parts around the Republic, so repairs could be conducted even faster?” Harry was trying to steer the conversation away from the idea that was beginning to sizzle in his brain, though he doubted he would live to carry it out.
A shake of the head. “The processing cores only survive for a short time outside of a ship’s systems. They travel to the stricken ship aboard incubator vessels, but they can only keep them alive for a few months at most.” A sad smile. “And no, Captain, you will not have a chance to tell your superiors about the fleet telemetry system. You will be dead before dinner time.”
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The Dark Defiance Page 30
