by David Weber
They’d already taken the statements of Hundred Olderhan and Magister Gadrial, in addition to Chief Sword Threbuch’s. His brother officers shook their heads.
“No,” Githrak replied, “let’s get this over with. I want to hear their testimony before we break for lunch. We can call them back this afternoon for closer questioning if we need to, but I’d just as soon have a complete preliminary picture to mull over while we eat.”
“Agreed.” Brith Darma nodded. “Very well, gentlemen, which shall we question first? The Voice or the Mapper?”
He used the titles deliberately, just as he’d been thinking of them that way since reading the first report arrived. He didn’t want to humanize them prior to seeing or hearing them. Thinking about the Voice, in particular, as a frightened girl far from home would have led him to sympathize with her, rather than focus on the critical military aspects of what she was: a mind-reading communications specialist. One whose existence was a profound threat to Arcana’s ability to conduct military operations against the people who’d produced her.
“The Voice,” his fellow officers agreed unanimously.
“Let’s face it,” Githrak added, “she’s the one we’ve all been worried about since the reports arrived. Or at least if either of you hasn’t been worried about her, you’ve got no business on this board.”
Kordos just snorted rudely and Brith Darma’s lips twitched sardonic.
“I won’t say I’ve lost sleep over her,” he said, “but I’ve had some damned unpleasant nightmares.”
Githrak nodded. “Well put. I’ve got a much clearer idea, now, about what happened out there on our side—initially, at least. I still don’t have a godsdamned clue what mul Gurthak and Harshu have been up to since!” The Intelligence officer clearly didn’t like that admission, but he made it unflinchingly. “Having said that, though, I damned well want to know a hells of a lot more about these people and their mental weapons. And more about their physical weapons, as well. And frankly, I want to see these terror weapons in operation. Hundred Olderhan’s descriptions were brutal. Chief Sword Threbuch’s were ghastly. And I’m in awe of Magister Gadrial. A civilian, a woman, caught in the middle of that, with men whose wounds leave me queasy, just trying to picture them. But she was in there treating those wounds, damn near killing herself with exhaustion keeping those men alive. The woman deserves a medal.”
“Damned good idea,” Kordos agreed. “I’ll bring it up with the commander general. I’m scheduled to have dinner with him and his wife, tonight.”
Brith Darma nodded. “Yes, please discuss it with him. I’d like to see her get something more out of this than a disrupted life, days of questioning, and a brusque thank you while we rush out the door to prepare for battle.”
A brief silence fell as the officers contemplated the enormous task facing them. Gods, a war fought through multiple universes…
Brith Darma brought his attention back to the matter at hand.
“I’ve already made arrangements to have Hundred Olderhan demonstrate the enemy’s weapons this afternoon, at the officers’ firing range. He’s brought samples of their long weapons, their hand-held ones, and several other intriguing pieces of their gear, shipped with him the whole damned, long way.”
“That ought to be interesting,” Kordos muttered. “Try as I might, it’s hard to imagine building a civilization without magic.”
“Why,” Brith Darma gave the Fleet Third a sardonic smile, “do you think I’ve been having those damned nightmares?”
Githrak sat forward in his chair, pouring more water into his glass from the self-chilling carafe on the long table at which they sat. He sipped thoughtfully for a moment, then leaned back with a shrug.
“Right. Let’s see what this Voice has to say,” he said crisply. “I want to take her measure as a person, as well as a weapon. She claims she’s the first woman allowed to work with their point survey crews. I want to see what sort of woman our enemy considers qualified enough to do that tough a job.”
“Agreed. Particularly since we do that job with soldiers.” Fleet Third Kordos toyed with his stylus, his expression frankly worried. “That girl’s going to tell us a hell of a lot about these people, no matter what she says or does.”
Brith Darma glanced at their Master of the Sword, whose job it was to secure the door and usher those being questioned into and out of the room.
“Call the Voice, please, Master Sword.”
The noncom saluted and opened the door to the adjoining, sound-proofed chamber, a small room where witnesses awaited their turns for interrogation.
“The Board of Inquiry commands the presence of the Sharonian Voice. Enter the Inquiry Chamber, Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.”
Brith Darma expected several things. He expected a frightened civilian. Even Gadrial Kelbryan, who was merely a witness, with no personal consequences hanging over her testimony, had shown signs of stress and worry, so he fully expected to see signs of prolonged strain in this Voice. He also expected uncertainty and quite possibly a few legitimate tremors and tears.
The witness was in a terrifying situation, totally helpless, and fully aware of the hatred rampaging through Arcana’s populace as conflicting versions of events at the frontier were splashed across the journals and public message crystals. He even expected questions about what would become of her.
He did not expect what walked through the door.
The Voice was tiny. She was a slip of a girl, smaller even than Gadrial Kelbryan, who was a slender, petite Ransaran. Brith Darma didn’t like the instantaneous reaction he felt at first sight of her: a rush of chivalric protectiveness. She was so small…and so self-controlled and poised, it shocked him. She marched across the room in her rustling skirts as regally as any duchess and halted when the master of the sword told her to stop.
Then she stood there, hands folded neatly in front of her, her silence and her stance as solid as any soldier braced to attention. She met Brith Darma’s gaze with stunning power, neither flinching from his cold, deliberately hostile stare nor losing her composure when he ran his gaze rudely up and down her body. When he identified the emotion that simmered deep in her alien eyes, a shockwave ripped through him.
She was angry.
“State your name and occupation,” the master of the sword intoned.
“I am Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr, employed as a civilian exploratory survey crew Voice by the Chalgyn Consortium, a privately owned company engaged in the exploration and development of newly discovered universes. I hold a survey license from the Sharonian Portal Authority. My mother is an ambassador to the Kingdom of Shurkhal, where I was born, a nation that is more than three thousand years old. Who are you?”
That took Brith Darma aback. All of it did. Her command of the Andaran language was terrifying. Her grammar was perfect, her word choice flawless, and her accent less pronounced than most Mythalans and Ransarans he’d encountered. And she continued to hold his gaze, ignoring the other officers. Someone had told her he was the Board’s presiding officer. Either that, or she’d plucked the fact from his mind. His intellect was inclined to believe the former, with Magister Gadrial as the likeliest source.
But the deeper part of his mind shouted a warning of intense and incredible danger. She’s a living weapon! He drew down a deep, silent breath, taking care to breathe from the diaphragm so that his chest didn’t rise and fall, and narrowed his eyes, watching her closely even while he wrestled with his own mind. He’d vowed to conduct this proceeding with honor, and if he allowed irrational fear to rule him, he would learn nothing from her.
He decided to begin with something she might not be expecting him to ask.
“Why are you angry?”
He didn’t throw her off stride. Instead, her eyes sizzled even more ferociously. She looked like a dragon in the instant before it spat searing flame.
“Why am I angry?” she repeated softly, the question on a rising note of utter contempt. Then her voice went hard as flint, and
she spat out her answer like hailstones. “I was hunted down like a dog and nearly murdered. I watched my friends, my professional colleagues, slaughtered without pity. My crew leader was shot through the throat with a crossbow bolt. Why? For the crime of standing up without a weapon and saying in a calm and reasonable tone ‘That’s close enough.’ Have you ever watched a man choke to death on steel and blood? A man you’d spent months with, working together under exhausting, dangerous conditions? A man who’d saved your life at least three times? A scholar who taught young people how to build cities, who came to the frontier to find new places to build them? Your soldier murdered him! And you ask why I’m angry?”
He started to speak, but she wasn’t finished.
“My husband was burned alive. The only reason he didn’t die of those horrifying burns was the mercy and Gift of Magister Gadrial Kelbryan. Have you ever seen human skin touched by the fireballs your weapons produce? It cracks and turns black. You can see the flesh beneath it through those cracks. It blisters like paint on a skillet that’s been shoved into a campfire. Have you ever smelled what that unnatural fire does to human flesh? Some of your own soldiers vomited from it. From smelling the remains of young boys who’d just left school and wanted to build something wonderful for themselves and the families they hoped to start. And you can sit there and ask why I’m angry?”
She didn’t move a single step closer, didn’t even unclasp the hands folded before her, but he suddenly felt an irrational desire to back away from her as if she’d crossed the room, slammed her fists on the bench in front of him, and shouted in his face.
“My freedom is gone. A career I fought an entire world’s rules to establish has been ripped out of my hands and smashed to pieces. My family—my mother and my father—no doubt believe I’m dead; that I was savagely murdered by barbarians! I have nothing left. No money, no home, no possessions. I don’t even own the comb I used on my hair, this morning, or this dress.” She lifted her arms at last to display the well-made but admittedly plain gown. “And you have the gall to ask why I am angry?”
He swallowed down a throat gone terribly dry.
“You pompous, arrogant jackass! My husband and I lie awake each night wondering if you or someone in your government will override Jasak Olderhan’s authority over us. That you’ll seize us and use some ghastly form of questioning to learn what you want to know. We’ve read your journals. We’ve seen the lies in them. And we’ve seen the demands Mythal is making. I believe the term is ‘mind ripping’? Stripping every fact out of a victim’s mind, leaving behind nothing but a piece of meat that still breathes?
“What you would do to us is terrifying; what you would do to an unborn child I might carry if my husband lies with me—that goes beyond terror to nightmare. Yet you can sit there in your brave uniform, wearing your brave medals—decorations you earned for facing situations far less deadly than what your army did to me—and dare to ask me why I’m angry?”
He blanched whiter with every word.
“As if that weren’t enough,” she hurled those furious words at him, “someone in your government and your military is deliberately lying to the public. They’re lying about me, my husband, my people. They’re lying about the actions of your soldiers. Even the Governor of New Andara’s furious about it. Yet you sit there and ask me why I’m angry? Holy Triads preserve us, do you expect me to be happy?”
A dreadful silence crashed down across the interrogation chamber. Brith Darma was breathing hard, and he didn’t have to glance at the officers on either side of him to know they’d been hammered just as hard by her stinging accusations as he had. He could hear it in the way they were breathing. What was even worse was the lethal accuracy of those accusations. Someone—and he’d give his right arm to know who—was leaking systematic lies and distortions to the news services. And some of the more rabid, ultra-conservative shakira lords wouldn’t be above harming a child, unborn or otherwise.
But he dared not show her how badly she’d rattled him.
“Happy?” he echoed softly, forcing his voice to remain steady. “No. I don’t expect that.” Then he put a whiplash in his voice. “But I do expect prisoners of war to show respect to their captors!”
“Respect?” Her eyes went incandescent and her small hands clenched into fists that nearly shredded the skirt under them. “I gladly give my respect to those who earn it. Gadrial Kelbryan’s earned my respect for life. Jasak Olderhan did his damnedest to kill me, just as I did my damnedest to kill him; but he’s earned my respect again and again, for the way he handled the men of his command in combat, for the way he cared for his wounded, for the respect and the mercy he accorded me when my shock was so deep I could barely keep my sanity from disintegrating in my hands.
“I respect Otwal Threbuch for the incredibly difficult tasks he performed. He survived that first firefight, when we were shooting down every man we could center in our gun sights. He managed to reconnoiter our portal fort, survived the second battle, and slipped across to the Arcanan side of a guarded portal without being caught. Any man who can do that has my respect. But he deserves my respect far more for the way he broke the news of Halathyn vos Dulainah’s death to Gadrial.”
That surprised Brith Darma.
“Why?” he frowned.
“He had to tell her that a man she loved as a second father had been killed—by his own soldiers. I’ve seen a lot of soldiers. Every portal my crew passed through has a fort sitting in it. We stopped at every one of those forts, picking up supplies, replacing gear. I’ve seen a lot of men like Chief Sword Threbuch, the kind of men who find it difficult to talk to civilian women, to talk about anything emotional, whether happy or painful. Yet he broke that ghastly news to her gently, on his knees and with tears in his eyes. I profoundly respect a man like that.”
Then her voice went scathing, again.
“But you,” she raked him with her gaze just as rudely as he’d raked her, “haven’t even bothered to give me your bare name. I don’t know how things are done in your society, but in mine, gentlemen and soldiers—particularly officers—are neither deliberately arrogant, nor rude, nor cruel to women.”
The second silence was even worse than the first.
This woman was dangerous.
Brith Darma sat rigidly still, staring down at her through eyes trying to widen in shock and dismay. She might be a prisoner, but she was neither cowed nor frightened, and she was far, far from alone and broken. Despite every ordeal this woman had endured, despite facing a lifetime of house arrest, she retained enough spirit to spit in his eye and make him cringe in shame.
If a Sharonian civilian, a woman, displayed this magnitude of sheer guts, it was little wonder the men who wore the Sharonian uniform had smacked Hadrign Thalmayr into the mud like a swatted mosquito. These people were trouble. Brith Darma studied her in silence for a moment, mulling over possible responses. He decided to address her barbed and accurate accusation of rudeness with an attempt to judge her reaction to authority.
“You want to know who we are? Very well. Fleet Third Kordos is on this board as a representative of the Arcanan Navy. His rank is the third highest possible for a naval officer. Commander of Legions Githrak is the head of Army Intelligence. And I am Horvon Fosdark, Earl of Brith Darma and Commander of Wings for the Arcanan Air Force. My rank is the second highest in the Air Force.”
Her smile and formal curtsey shocked him. “Thank you, My Lord. I won’t say it’s any kind of pleasure to meet you, but it’s much nicer to at least know who is shouting at me.” She then folded her hands neatly in front of her once more and waited.
He sat blinking in consternation. She was too damned small to be this much trouble. He frowned down at her where she stood simply waiting for him to bring forth his next shout, and her attitude and accusations stung even deeper than she probably realized, since one of the tenets of the Andaran code of conduct was the importance it placed on how an officer and gentleman, particularly one born into the peerage,
treated ladies. Worse yet, the fact that she surprised him on a constant basis worried the hell out of him. If he couldn’t accurately predict the responses of a civilian prisoner of war, how poorly would he and his brother officers fare against her world’s officers?
“You said our soldiers hunted you down like a dog,” he said finally. “Explain.”
Her recitation was cool, detailed, and astonishingly clear, both in the sequence of events and thoughts and emotions she’d experienced at the time. She even repeated the shouts she and others nearby had traded, fighting off the attack from flanks and rear. He finally interrupted with a question.
“How is it you can give us such a detailed description weeks after an event that was emotionally and physically traumatic? None of the other witnesses recalled the kind of detail you’ve been so glibly repeating.”
She didn’t react angrily to what amounted to an accusation of lying—or more accurately, stretching the truth. Nothing she’d said had triggered the lie-detection spells, which would have caused an indicator light on the wall behind her to glow instantly. Given her earlier reactions, he expected her to spit in his face, again, for such a criticism, but she didn’t. She merely blinked in surprise.
