“I… I hope so,” I imagined Celeste putting her career on the bargaining table to vouch for me while I sat in a jail cell. The feeling was almost worse than the neural link sickness. I wasn’t sure if Harley could read my every thought since she was in my head, but judging by her expression, she understood. “What about the black ships?”
Stone went stone faced. “Chain of Command is working on getting all the info on that. That’s all I know. That incident is strictly classified content, which presents another problem for you.”
“Well, what’s one more at this point?” I said darkly.
“This one is big, Max. They can and will use it against you. You witnessed an event that was deemed highly classified—and not only that, you engaged with an unknown alien force without approval.”
“When you put it that way, it sounds a lot worse.”
“That is the way Unity sees it; and that conviction alone is grounds for imprisonment or Reprogramming. Derringer... you might have started a war with an unknown species.”
I broke a sweat. I had to stand, now pacing in a circle around my cell. “FUCK. OK. What are my options?!”
Harley had laid down once I stood up. She made the bare-stone slab look like a lavish couch, with her pretty face resting on her hand which was propped at the elbow, and her other arm resting on a bent knee. “Don’t you wish you'd taken me up on my offer earlier?”
“Come on, Harley! Now is not the time!”
She made a face. “Ugh. I know your thoughts, Max Derringer: don’t try to hide them from me. It's bad enough that you hide them from yourself.”
“None of that matters! I’m about to go to prison, or worse! Is that a joke to you?!”
“No,” Harley sighed, “No jokes. This is very serious, let’s get all emotional and panicky about it.”
Fair point. I would never panic in my Phantom, no matter the situation; what good would it do me to lose my composure now? I had to stay level headed. “You’re right. I am better than this. Fuck, Harley —”
“Yes, please.”
I stopped pacing, and looked at her. Her hungry blue eyes… I felt a release of chemicals and hormones and I had to grin. She was incredible, a master of her clandestine craft. Yet… this was my mind. I was in control. Almost insanely, in this strange moment with her, I imagined how she would look without her uniform on… and then just like that, it began peeling off of her, like it was just ink being washed away by an invisible wand.
“Yessss….” she cooed, rubbing herself, her prominent clavicles shining as the suit melted away, then exposing her full breasts, which she covered daintily wiher her gloved fingers. “Now you understand. You control… everything, Max Derringer… control it like… Clockwork...”
She slipped off of the cot, catlike, and padded over to me as more of the suit kept melting off, slowly revealing her slim hourglass figure. There we stood in the middle of the cell—me, physically. Her…
Her face was flawless… a golden twirl of hair framed her smooth forehead… that perfect smile, those ruby lips were moments from touching my own…
“No. I want you to have the real thing.” She willed her suit back on, apparently able to manipulate this vision herself.
... and then, as if she was satisfied that we had come to some kind of higher understanding, she cast her eyes down and betrayed her worry. “I am scared for you. I don’t know what else to tell you. I want to believe you will just find a way… you always do.”
Clockwork took his hand, and gently raised her chin. It was my turn to be strong.
“I’ll find a way.”
5
“Good morning, Lieutenant Derringer, please—sit down.” A brunette officer, also a lieutenant, motioned politely. I was stiff from passing out on my slab in the cell for the night, but I acquiesced.
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
I shuffled a few feet over… and then as I took my seat, the clanking of chains startled my lawyer from her information tablet. My hands and feet were shackled, like the prisoner I was. “Sorry about that, Ma’am.”
She was quick, though, and just smiled as if she saw people like me every day in her office. She probably did, was my next thought.
“It’s absolutely fine. Now, if you could just sign some paperwork for me which basically just allows me to give you confidential advice and says that you’ve accepted me as your appointed lawyer. Since we are on Isolation 11, the option of hiring a civilian attorney of your Tier is not available to you. Do you understand?”
“So you’re my only option?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“No, actually,” was the lieutenant’s response.
“No?”
She grinned at me, while handing over the information tablet, which displayed a hologram depiction of my legal papers. “No, Lieutenant Derringer. In fact, our legal team is comprised of representatives from every ship in the 9th Fleet, so there are quite a few of us. I was assigned to you, but if you don’t feel comfortable with me, we can try to find you a better option.”
“I see…”
“So, forgive me,” she continued, “I am Lieutenant Bergstrom, and I am your appointed legal representative. It is my job—my only job—to fight for you, and to fight for your career. I will do everything in my power to help you during this process. I understand that you are under a lot of stress, and and that with your case going to court martial, there is a lot at stake. You can tell me anything, everything, some things, or nothing, but just know that I will not lie for you, so if you tell me something here in private, I can’t contradict that in court. Do you understand?”
I was impressed. She made me feel like I had a teammate again. This is how the military was supposed to work. “Yes, Ma’am. I understand. Thank you, that… that all sounds good to me.”
I read through and signed all the papers, and from that point on Lieutenant Bergstrom was my lawyer. I extended my handcuffed wrists over her desk and she shook my right hand. Then we both took our seats and got to work on my case.
“Okay, Lieutenant, let me first just confirm your personal information. May you please give me your full name?
“Ted Lance Derringer.”
“Ok, thank you,” she muttered as she entered my name into the information tablet.“And your rank?”
“Lieutenant.”
A redundant question and answer, but necessary in legalese.
“Thank you, Lieutenant—date of birth?”
“First Contact 876.”
“F.C. 876, got it… and lastly, your Unity ID Number, please?”
“D9M9-877-42-9548.” I spoke each digit clearly as she entered my UID. It was asked of me by every military system I logged into, every time I went to medical, every time I took a test or got paid. I used it almost daily.
“...548. Perfect, thank you,” LT Bergstrom finished. “Now, before we get into what happened, let me ask if there are any witnesses that you would like to make a statement on your behalf, and also if you think they may be willing to testify to your side of events in court?”
Jackal. “Yes, Ma’am,” I answered. “Lieutenant Barrett Fujira. He’s my wingman. He was there, and would testify for me… I think.”
I thought of Celeste first, of course, but given her relation to the scenario, I doubted she would testify on my behalf in court. Also, I could not ask her to do any more than she already was. It was too much of a risk.
“You think? What do you mean by that?” she was typing away on her tablet.
“Well, to be honest…” I took a moment to before I spoke, but ultimately decided to trust my lawyer. “This whole thing seems weird to me. A lot of protocol has been broken. So I’m not sure if my chain of command will allow him to testify.”
“Well, you’re absolutely correct that these are extenuating circumstances—the 9th Fleet is not deploying as planned due to the events that transpired yesterday.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Not deploying?!? Are you serious?”
“Very se
rious, Lieutenant. Orders from Unity Headquarters on Earth. 9th Fleet will remain in the Isolation 11 system until further notice. The good news is that we will have more time to build your case, however, the prosecution will also have ample time. I wouldn’t plan on it being too long before your court martial, though. I’ll try to delay it as much as I can, but this is something the Admiral wants to nip in the bud so the focus can be turned completely to the current mission.”
“So what is your estimation? How long?”
“I would say, two days if we are lucky. They should give me a time this afternoon, but I’ll submit an extension request given the seriousness of the allegations against you. It’s likely to be approved.”
“Alright. Thank you, Ma’am.”
Sitting there thinking about being in court with my life in the balance made me anxious. I’d rather just get on with it. Ultimately I knew it was important to go at this with a plan, though, so I let LT Bergstrom do her job. “And let me worry about securing the witness, Lieutenant. All I need from you is your recommendation on whether or not he would be a strong witness for our case.”
“Yes,” I answered. “Absolutely.”
Fujira was a brother.
“Ok, I will need to speak with him today then… I’ll see if he is available...” she swiped and fingered the tablet until a hologram of LT Fujira appeared.
“Yes, Ma’am? This is Fujira.”
Jackal’s light voice filled the room. It was a godsend, hearing his voice.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. My name is LT Bergstrom, I am the legal representative for your squadron leader, LT Max Derringer. I am sitting with him now —”
“—YOU’RE WITH Max!? Hey Max, you there?!”
“Here, Jackal.”
“Yoooo, Clockwork what is going ON?! They have me locked down in my state room, no visits, —”
“Ok, LT Fujira —”
“—no fucking explanations, —”
“— LT Fujira, please, we don’t have much time with you and I just need to confirm a few things before we let you go.”
There was a pause. “Alright, Ma’am, I apologize. Please, continue.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. What I need from you right now is confirmation on whether or not you are willing to testify on behalf of Lieutenant Derringer.”
“Yes,” Jackal replied immediately. “Absolutely. We are brothers.”
“Excellent. I am sending over some papers for you to sign, and then I will contact you later today so we can talk about your statement and practice fielding possible questions from the prosecution. After that, I will decide if we will use you or not. It’s not personal—we just need to do what’s best for Lieutenant Derringer.”
“Yes Ma’am, I understand,” Barrett said. “I’ve signed the papers.”
“Yes, thank you, I’ve received them. I will contact you again for our meeting.”
“Aye, Lieutenant. Hey Max, you still there?”
“Still here.”
“Stay strong, my friend. We know the truth.”
Lieutenant Bergstrom gave the tablet another swipe, and Jackal’s face disappeared. What a fucking friend.
“So!” Bergstrom beamed at me from behind her desk, her honest brown eyes reflecting a glimmer of hope. “That is a good start. It’s definitely good to have someone who was there say that you are in the right. Hopefully we can use him.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” I was beginning to think I had a good lawyer.
“Now let’s get into it. I need you to tell me everything that happened, as you remember it. Then we will review how your story correlates to the physical evidence involved—i.e. flight recordings, long distance surveillance, that sort of thing. Then, we will talk about what the prosecution will probably come at you with and get you thinking about how to convince the Admiral that you were justified in your actions through your testimony. Does that sound good?”
“Sounds good to me.” Now we were getting somewhere.
“Alright. Why don’t you go ahead and start from the time you established your neural link at the beginning of the mission yesterday.”
We talked all morning. I told her everything. It was important, she said, that I specify my exact thoughts and feelings at every moment during the mission. She congratulated my quick reaction after Golden Boy was suddenly shot down—in fact, the exact amount of time from when Golden Boy’s Phantom got hit to when I started my dive was .17 milliseconds—practically instantaneous. That was how Unity pilots, Tier 1 pilots, were expected to respond in combat. Mission first.
The crux of my case, in Bergstrom’s mind, was the Arc. The fucking Arc.
“What is the Arc?” she’d asked me during our discussion.
At that point, I leaned back in my chair and exhaled a long whistle.
“The Arc,” I told her, “Is a very difficult combat maneuver. Difficult, and extremely dangerous. It involves vectoring directly toward your target—in this case from below, and flying in tight coordination so that all your squad creates a single scrambling frequency. This disrupts any enemy shields in a very small area, and it covers each spacefighter under a single Targeting System Disruptor Blanket—TSDB. I admit I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, because I didn’t have specs on the capabilities of those black ships. But considering the firepower that I quickly came to understand they possessed, I calculated that any and all scenarios that involved our direct retreat would result in complete failure. By turning onto the offensive, I believed we would catch the enemy off balance, which would in turn give us a chance. So, I initiated the maneuver as you can see here in the flight recordings…”
“Easy killer,” my cockpit holo-recording was being displayed on Bergstroms information tablet. So were Knight’s and Jackals. “Here’s the plan: you guys remember the Arc?”
I was in the moment again, no longer sitting in Bergstrom’s office...
“NO, Clock, NOT the arc. I do NOT remember the fucking Arc.”
Static whizzed around Jackal’s holographic head; the roaring of his engines was behind him.
“Fuck no. Not doing that.”
Knight’s face, his voice. I wondered where the fuck Knight was right now...
Bergstrom stopped the recordings, which had filled up the small, darkened office with luminous blue images of each of our cockpits. The automatic lighting slowly adjusted back to normal. I was full of thought, and so was she. “Why didn’t they want to do it?”
I looked her in the eye. “Because we almost got killed doing it once.”
“Yes, I picked up that they were familiar with ‘The Arc,’” she had already looked down again and was in her notes. “Can you tell me about the first time you used this move?”
“Yes, Ma’am. We had just gotten our wings and had all been accepted into the spacefighter program. It was actually the first day we all met—Jackal, Knight and I. Sorry, I mean LT Fujira and LT Roberts. Coincidence I guess. Anyway, we found out that we were assigned to the same squadron, and we were allowed some liberty before began our training…
“Lieutenant Roberts,” the lead prosecutor on behalf of Unity Fleet began his next line of questioning in the midst my court martial, “you just witnessed Lieutenant Fujira’s full testimony regarding your first night on Cantus 9 with both himself and the defendant, Lieutenant Derringer—more specifically, you heard his detailed description of ‘The Arc’ maneuver, which was initiated by Lieutenant Derringer, and the circumstances that surrounded your alleged misconduct on that specific occasion. By your recollection, is Lieutenant Fujira’s testimony the truth?”
I knew behind his hardened expression, Knight was reliving that night on Cantus 9, same as me. He stared hard at me from the witness stand, where he now was testifying against me. I didn’t flinch. Yes, it’s the fucking truth and you know it. Or, it was the truth that we had eventually all agreed on once the memories started to come back to us—once we had sobered and realized how close we had come to losing everything.
“Lieutena
nt Fujira’s recollection is accurate...” Knight stated under oath. He spoke with clarity and authenticity; his perfect dress uniform, his demeanor, his confidence all collectively conspired to portray Knight as the quintessential, disciplined Phantom pilot that Unity promoted. “... except for one thing.”
The presiding judicial magistrate of my court martial, Admiral Bradford, observed everything about Knight as he spoke… from the bench, the Commander of 9th Fleet had his hands folded, his brow furrowed, his posture leaning toward the witness. So far it seemed that the Admiral was convinced as to the validity of Knight’s account.
“What detail of Lieutenant Fujira’s testimony do you believe to be inaccurate, Lieutenant?” the prosecutor presented his next staged question. I should have been ready for Knight’s response.
Before Knight spoke, the faintest grin traced itself onto his lips. It was meant for me… “We’ll see,” Knight had said to me when we first shook hands. He had the same grin on his face back then, too. That was years ago, and over the course of our subsequent squadron-level training together, our wild night—our brothers’ bond we formed—had been replaced with suspicion, jealousy, and a bitter rivalry on both our parts. In fact, I eventually came to the conclusion that Knight purposely drugged us in the hopes that Jackal and would step out of line and get caught. Once we had ditched the civi ships on Cantus 9, sobered up and had arrived back on the tarmac exactly on time the next day, we each swore to never speak of what had happened… but I always believed that Knight was just waiting to use it against me. Now, his wait was over.
Knight continued his testimony. “Our night on Cantus 9—from the decision to depart the Martial on liberty together, to the shots of Askari Nectar, to the unauthorized piloting of civilian ships, the falsified check-in and finally to the reckless ‘Arc’ maneuver… all of that was Lieutenant Derringer’s doing. He convinced us to go along with him, and after we had eluded capture, Lieutenant Derringer threatened Lieutenant Fujira and myself, saying that if either of us ever were to report his actions to the chain of command… he would kill us. I imagine that Lieutenant Fujira’s testimony regarding our night on Cantus 9 is a reflection of his—no, our—real fear of Lieutenant Derringer and his intentions.”
Alpha Wing Page 5