by Linda Mooney
“Let me guess. You’re here to discuss the results of the reports,” the colonel remarked.
“In part. I’m here because of a new development.”
The other two officers gave him surprised looks. “Oh?” Williamsburg said.
“I just got the message. It should be on your screen,” the major noted.
Pfeiffer checked his terminal, found the unread message, and opened it. What he read made the hairs on his head stand on end. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Williamsburg sat up.
Baffrey snickered. “File it under ‘as if things couldn’t get more complicated’.”
“Lieutenant Chambliss claims she and the Por D’har are married. The term she uses is…Confirmed.”
Williamsburg jumped to his feet, going over to peer at the colonel’s monitor as Baffrey laughed.
“Yes, sir. The woman and the Seneecian tied the knot. I double-checked with a couple of the others, and they verified it.”
Pfeiffer ran his hand over his head again. “What the hell were they thinking?”
“Maybe they love each other,” Williamsburg suggested.
“Or maybe they couldn’t fuck each other without the ring,” Baffrey tossed out.
Pfeiffer saw the look of disgust the lieutenant colonel gave to the major and decided he needed to change the subject. “Willem and I were discussing granting clemency to both parties, based on the results of their interrogations under chemical restraints.”
“The Seneecian Tribunal isn’t going to like that decision,” Baffrey commented. “In fact, you’d be sitting on a powder keg if you refuse to turn over their people.”
“How long before the Seneecians arrive?” Williamsburg queried.
Pfeiffer checked. “Eight hours.”
“What if we sent them away? That way we wouldn’t be challenged,” the lieutenant colonel suggested. “The Seneecians haven’t requested that we hold them until their arrival, have they?”
“No,” Pfeiffer acknowledged. “All they’ve said was that D’har Kyber and his men were escaped convicts, and basically we needed to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” He tapped his fingertips on the desk. “All right. Let’s separate the wheat from the chaff. We know that Seneecians can’t be trusted. We have been lied to repeatedly in the past. But what if these Seneecians and the others have told us the truth?”
“Remember, the Por D’har said he believes they’re trying to keep knowledge of that neverwylde a secret. What if that’s the truth?” Williamsburg crossed his arms over his chest. “Want to know my two cents’ worth? I think this neverwylde is the key. Those Seneecians want us to kill on sight their fellow Seneecians. Why? Because they’re dangerous criminals? Whatever happened to extraditing them and taking them back to Seneecia to serve out their sentences? And don’t overlook the fact that they also want us to kill our fellow Terrans, without us giving them due process.”
Pfeiffer glanced over at the major. The man may be a hardass, but he also had a keen mind. “What say you, Charles? Agree or disagree?”
The man appeared to pick imaginary lint off his perfectly creased trousers. “I think there’s one very crucial element you’re both overlooking.”
“And that is?”
The man looked up at them. “That furry creature. I’ll bet my oak leaf those Seneecians who are chasing down our guests have no idea it came with them. And if they do, when they do, they’re going to shit furballs.”
Williamsburg scratched his chin. “You can tell by looking at them that they’ve been through hell. They’ve lost weight. Their uniforms, or what’s left of their uniforms, are hanging off of them. Their medical readouts are typical of soldiers who’ve been through extreme survival training over a long period of time. And have you seen how they act around each other? There isn’t an atom of animosity between them. I can only guess how cohesive they are as a defensive force. Probably more than the tightest and most highly trained unit we’ve got.”
“Okay. Let’s address the elephant in the room here,” Pfeiffer suggested. “Let’s say Neverwylde is the real reason behind this whole kerfuffle.” He allowed himself a lopsided grin. “Why not send a team of scientists and a military detachment to this…what did they call that wormhole?”
“A tegris,” Williamsburg offered. “It refers to a wormhole that remains stationary in a particular sector of space, but appears at irregular intervals.”
“Why don’t we find this tegris, go in, land on that half planet, and do a thorough investigation of it?” Pfeiffer studied the two men to get their initial reactions. To his satisfaction, both men appeared conducive to the idea.
“If we do that, it’ll have to be done quickly,” Baffrey remarked.
“Why?” Pfeiffer asked, curious. “Even if we give those Seneecians the impression we don’t believe anything our prisoners have said, what can they do? They can’t hide the planet.”
“Depends on where it is,” Williamsburg observed. “If it’s in Seneecian space…”
Pfeiffer sat up and checked his monitor. “Did they give us any coordinates?”
“No. Once they went through that tegris, their sensors went on the fritz.”
“What’s the location of that tegris?” Baffrey questioned. “Is it in Seneecian space?”
After a quick search, Pfeiffer shook his head. “It doesn’t say.” He rubbed his chin. After a few moments of deliberation, he came up with an idea and hit the comm button. “Security, bring Lieutenant Chambliss and Por D’har Kyber to my office.”
“What are you thinking?” Baffrey inquired. “What if they don’t know the exact location of that tegris?”
“I think they do, or at least have a vague idea. But I’m calling them in to let them know what we’ve found…among a couple of other things.”
Williamsburg scrutinized him. “Such as?”
Pfeiffer turned his attention to Baffrey. “Would you have any objections to me offering sanctuary to our…guests?” Again, he checked for first reactions, especially the major’s. The man was a lousy poker player because his face was more expressive than a four-credit pulp novel. Baffrey’s eyebrow went up in surprise, but there was no overt resentment. Not when the chemical interrogations had made it clear the crew of the outpost had nothing to fear from them.
“Charles?” Pfeiffer prodded.
“You’ll have to give the Seneecians diplomatic status. Or else you’re going to have a bunch of nervous and trigger-happy people keeping an eye out for them.”
It was a sound suggestion. “Okay. I like it.”
“Do you need us to go? Or stay?” Williamsburg questioned. Pfeiffer got the impression the lieutenant colonel wanted to remain. He gave a single nod.
“You two may stay. I may need to pick your brains again after I’m done.”
Now that he’d made a decision, it was time to come up with a plan of action, something he was looking forward to with great anticipation.
Sitting back in his chair, he waited for the two guests to be brought to him.
Chapter 16
Offer
If there was anything to be grateful about being a prisoner on a Terran military outpost, it was that the accommodations were slightly better than what the Seneecians had offered. The cell was still almost uncomfortably small, but there was a miniature yet usable toilet and sink in the corner of the room, and she had a thin pallet and a blanket for a bed.
Kelen sank onto the pallet. She’d guesstimated it would take maybe four or five days to have everyone questioned. Assuming she was being fed three meals a day—another big check mark in the plus column for this brig—she’d been escorted to the medical bay after two days. At that time she’d overheard her guard remark that she was the last one. She had no way of knowing whether she was the last Terran, or the last person overall. But clearly these people wanted to get to the bottom of this mess before the Seneecians arrived.
Getting back to her feet, she went over to the sink and drank two handfuls of wat
er from the spigot. Her stomach was giving her fits, and she still felt lightheaded from the effects of the serum they’d used on her. She had no recollection of what she’d told them, or even what questions they’d asked of her. It didn’t matter. She knew she had nothing to hide, so she wasn’t worried about accidentally revealing anything. None of them were keeping anything secret. However, sadly, there was no guarantee that their testimonies would result in a lighter sentence, or stop Colonel Pfeiffer from handing Kyber and the other Seneecians back over to their planet.
“Lieutenant Chambliss.”
She glanced over at where an armed guard stood in front of her cell door. The man slapped the controls on his side, and the door went from transparent to opaque before opening. The guard motioned with his free hand. “Come with me, please.”
“Where to, if I may ask?”
“The colonel wants to see you.”
Already?
Her mind raced. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours since she’d been returned to her cell. They hadn’t fed her breakfast that morning when she’d been awakened, telling her the chemicals would not sit well on a full stomach. Those compounds didn’t sit well on an empty stomach, either, even though she was hungry.
She was led through the maze of corridors to the elevators, which took them up several floors. When they arrived at the colonel’s office, she was surprised to see Kyber there, along with his guard and a couple of the officers from that time in the auditorium. He glanced up to see her coming through the door, and he appeared equally stunned to see her. The colonel motioned toward the only empty chair in the room.
“Have a seat, Lieutenant.”
She wanted to ask him why she and Kyber had been sent for. Had the others already been here? Did this have something to do with their chemical interrogations? Or was it something else?
Her stomach clenched with apprehension. Had the Seneecians already arrived to take Kyber and his men back to Seneecia?
Her common sense kicked in. If the Seneecians had arrived, then why was she called in?
What was the purpose of this meeting?
Pfeiffer leaned back in his seat. His eyes traveled from Kyber to Kelen, to Kyber again, to his men standing off to the side, and finally to Kelen.
“Lieutenant Chambliss, Por D’har Kyber, I’ve brought you two here for a couple of reasons. Well, actually, for four reasons. First off, we’ve read the results of your interrogations. It appears the others consider you two as their spokespersons.” The colonel gave Kelen a questioning stare. She could only answer with a shrug.
“I can’t vouch for my importance, but I also think of Kyber as our leader.”
Pfeiffer continued. “Reason number two is this, and I’m going ahead and getting this out in the open. It was revealed that you two committed yourselves to each other, correct?”
“We have,” Kyber immediately responded.
The colonel hesitated, as if he hadn’t expected Kyber’s answer. “Let me get this straight. Seneecians don’t have laws granting the absolution of marriages, do they? In other words, there’s no such thing as divorce in your culture, is there?”
“You are correct. A Confirmation is for life.”
“And yet you married a Terran?”
Kelen watched as one corner of her husband’s mouth quirked upward. “It was not something I or Kellen planned or expected to do while we were fighting for our lives, Colonel.”
“How do you think your people will take the news of your…what do you call it?”
“Kelen and I are Confirmed.”
“How do you think your people will take the news of your Confirmation?”
“Colonel, in all seriousness, I doubt I and my men will make it back to Seneecia alive, if at all, once we are handed over to whomever arrives to pick us up. So your question is a moot issue.”
Pfeiffer appeared to chew over Kyber’s response. “Very well. Point taken. My third reason for bringing you two here is because of the answers you and the others provided while sedated. I’m sure this will come as no surprise to either of you, but every comment given was verified as truthful. Everything each of you said was exactly the same, right down to the odd details and descriptions. I must admit, in all the years I’ve overseen this interrogation technique on more than one person, there’ve always been a few replies that simply didn’t jive. Know what I mean?”
Kelen gave a shake of her head. “No, sir.”
“What I’m saying is, when two or more people get together and concoct a story, repeating it over and over to the point where they can recite it in their sleep, at some point there’s going to be a slip-up, an error. A tiny detail missed or misspoken. But none of you slipped up. None of you contradicted each other. When we asked for elaboration on a particular detail, we got the same information no matter who we were asking. Do you know what that tells us?”
“That we were speaking the truth,” Kyber offered.
“You damn right,” Pfeiffer concluded. “What makes this more intriguing is this. The more people you try to get to recite the same story, the greater the chance someone will forget a detail. This didn’t happen with you and your fellow crewmembers. The doctors, scientists, and computers all agree that there wasn’t one iota of insincerity or misdirection in anything you told us. And the only way that can happen, the only way all eleven of you could have accomplished that, is because everything you’ve told us is the truth. The flat, unvarnished truth.”
Hearing the man’s admission lifted some of the burden weighing down her shoulders, but there remained so much the colonel had yet to address. Clasping her hands tightly in her lap, Kelen forced herself to remain silent and to listen.
“Which brings me to reason number four,” Pfeiffer announced. “Lieutenant Colonel Williamsburg, Major Baffrey, and I have decided that we were guilty in rushing to judgment on all of you. Unfortunately, according to our laws, we cannot take back our initial sentences. However, we can commute those sentences to time served. So, as of fourteen hundred hours today, all of you, including you and your men, Por D’har, are free men. Furthermore, we are extending to you this offer. Outpost Delta Six will be your sanctuary as long as you remain at this station, but I cannot guarantee that protection once you leave. I want you to understand that.”
Kelen couldn’t hold back her worry any longer. “What about the Seneecian ship that’s on its way here?”
“That is a matter for me to attend to,” Pfeiffer assured her.
“My men and I will not be handed over to them?” Kyber asked in partial disbelief.
“No. You have my word you may stay here for as long as you feel necessary, or until you decide your next plan of action.”
Kyber glanced over at her, and for the first time in a very long time she saw a glimmer of hope on his face. She quickly tore her gaze from his to look at the colonel.
“Thank you.” She barely managed to say the words before her throat closed up. Her face felt hot as she fought back the tears.
The colonel threw up his hands. “All right. I’ll send out word about my decision so that you and the others can roam this station without interference.” He paused to give Kyber a hard stare. “But if by some chance there is any sort of altercation…”
Kyber nodded. “My men know what to do, Colonel. You do not have anything to worry about.”
“I have your word on that?”
“Yes. You have my word.”
Pfeiffer flashed a quick smile that faded just as quickly. “All right. With that taken care of, I want to talk about a mission I’d like to plan.”
“Colonel?”
The man jerked his attention over to Kelen. She fingered the stained neckline of her jumpsuit.
“Sir, begging your pardon, but can we postpone this discussion for a little later? Give us a chance to take a decent bath and put on a clean uniform, and have a bite to eat first. It’s been weeks since—”
“I know. Forgive me,” Pfeiffer hurriedly replied. Hitting t
he communications button on his desk, he called for a couple more guards. After which he addressed the ones standing at the rear of the room. “Show these people to available accommodations on Level F.” He turned to Kyber. “The others in your party will be shown to rooms in the same area. Rest a little. Get cleaned up and have something to eat, and be back here by…” He checked the readout on his monitor. “Eighteen hundred hours. Will that give you enough time?”
“More than enough, Colonel,” Kyber answered. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Kelen added, getting to her feet.
As she turned to follow the guard out of the office, she mused over the miracle that had taken place within the past few minutes. And as they turned to continue down the hallway toward the elevators, she felt her husband place his hand on the small of her back as he liked to do whenever they walked together.
Feeling its warmth spreading through her, she smiled. And the tears that rose in her eyes were happy ones.
Chapter 17
Together
The guard escorted them down a corridor and stopped in front of a doorway. Above the panel to the right, a sign read F24. Kelen noticed the man had holstered his weapon while they were riding in the elevator. He now slapped the panel to open the door.
“These are your quarters. Will there be anything else?”
“Where will our crewmembers be bunking?” Kyber inquired.
The guard pointed down the hallway. “In twenty-seven, thirty-three, and forty-two.”
Kyber thanked him, and Kelen entered the room.
It was a typical stateroom meant to hold no more than two people. Those who lived and worked in space were not given luxurious quarters. They only required a place where they could clean up and sleep. All meals were taken in one of the many mess halls located throughout the space station.
She stared at the bed that would barely accommodate both her and Kyber’s huge frame. A short partition divided the sleeping area from the main cabin which was slightly larger. Out of view was the adjacent bathroom.
