Randoms

by David Liss

  “It does not violate our treaties if our ships attack nonaligned beings in neutral space. As for firing on your vessel, it was meant as a mere warning. Your shielding, as is well known, was more than adequate protection.”

  “The Ganari on board that shuttle may have been nonaligned, but the shuttle was Confederation property,” said the clownish Darth Maul.

  “Then I propose that you give us the war criminal in exchange for reparations for the lost equipment.” Vusio-om smirked at his own cleverness. “We can end this proceeding now.”

  “That is unlikely,” Junup said. “Perhaps, if you wish to make your case, you can begin to call your witnesses.”

  Vusio-om called Captain Qwlessl to the stand. I knew from Dr. Roop that she would be returning to the station for the hearing, but even so, seeing her was a huge relief. There was one more person in my corner, a starship captain, a respected person in the Confederation.

  She strode into the chamber, using the same side entrance from which the justices had emerged. She was a large and lumbering being, but her gait was steady and purposeful, with her huge eyes dead ahead, her trunk partially raised in a gesture of something, I was sure. She stood facing the council. She made a point of not looking at me, I suppose so it would not seem like we were in league, but I have to admit I felt better just seeing her there. Her eyes, briefly, flickered toward the pile of still-steaming Phandic puke on the floor. She was a trained professional, however, and did not pronounce it yucky.

  The captain explained in compelling detail how the Phandic vessel fired on the shuttle and then, as we fled, fired on the Dependable. In both instances, she made it clear, the Phandic ship attacked without cause or provocation. She detailed the loss of gravity that led to substantial injuries among the bridge crew, and finally how, in a moment of desperation, she called upon an untrained civilian to stand in as weapons officer in an effort to save the ship.

  “To save your ship from what?” inquired Vusio-om.

  “From destruction or capture,” answered the captain, her trunk held high.

  “Those are different things,” Vusio-om told her. “One involves loss of life, the other loss of pride.”

  “They are both undesirable, and we have the right to use force to prevent either.”

  “Perhaps even deadly force,” agreed Vusio-om. “But, by definition, there is never a cause for excessive force. And you cannot know that your ship or your lives were truly in danger. That is speculation.”

  “Perhaps so,” conceded the captain, “but given that the only way to find out was to let your vessel continue to fire on us, I was not prepared to make that discovery.”

  “You would rather destroy a ship than discover its intentions?” Vusio-om asked.

  “You are twisting my words,” the captain said. “My ship was being attacked with deadly force. I believe I sufficiently understood my adversary’s intentions.”

  “But the captain of the Phandic vessel, my brother Uio-om, told you if you surrendered, you would not be harmed. You had no cause to fear, let alone place a juvenile in charge of your ship’s deadly arsenal.”

  “Frankly, I had a difficult time believing the words of a captain who had already murdered innocent beings and fired upon my ship without provocation.”

  “If you presume someone is a liar, without just cause, then trust becomes impossible,” Vusio-om mused.

  “I consider the captain’s actions the most accurate indication of his intent. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.”

  “Defending yourself is, perhaps, understandable,” the Phand allowed. “But did it never occur to you to worry what an untested civilian might do when presented with the incredible destructive power of a Confederation starship?”

  “Certainly,” said the captain. “I knew that Mr. Reynolds had logged only a few hours with simulated systems, and I was indeed worried that he would not possess the skills to defend my ship and crew. Given that the assault of the Phandic ship had left most of my bridge officers incapacitated, I had no alternative.”

  Vusio-om snorted at this. “One final question,” he said. “Do you believe that ten dark-matter missiles, fired at a single Phandic vessel, is excessive?”

  “I do,” said the captain. “I also believe that Mr. Reynolds had no way of knowing that.”

  The captain was told to step down, and next the Phand called Urch, who came in through the side door with the same professional stride as the captain. I supposed they learned it in their starfleet academy, or wherever it was they trained. I had not seen any of Urch’s species on the station, and with his tusks and warthog face and long ropes of hair, he appeared a terrifying thing. He was my terrifying thing, however, and I was glad to see him.

  He stood before the council, made a genuflection that I imagined to be a gesture of respect, and then jutted his jaw forward, showing his teeth and tusks. Vusio-om asked a series of questions to bring out that Urch had been impressed with my weapons skills, and that he had trained with me the night before.

  “Did you consider the possibility that Ezekiel Reynolds had handled weapons before?”

  “He did not say that he had,” Urch answered.

  “Simulated weapons?”

  “He indicated that on his world there are games that simulate space combat.”

  “So, even if he had not trained specifically with Confederation weaponry, he had trained with simulated weaponry, and he had trained for simulated space combat.”

  “In the context of a game,” Urch said. “When youths from such worlds play these games, they do so understanding them to be fantasy.”

  “You speak from experience, I believe, coming from such a primitive world.”

  “Perhaps,” Urch suggested, “you would like to come visit. You would be well treated.”

  “Unable to confirm veracity of statement,” said the monitoring system.

  Urch showed his teeth again.

  “Yes, I see,” said the Phand. “These games you mentioned. Do they not desensitize a youth to the prospect of destroying real ships harboring living beings?”

  Urch hissed out a laugh. “Zeke did not strike me as being unable to distinguish reality from simulation. I find it absurd that you are attempting to turn his efforts to save the Dependable into a war crime. Your brother was a murderer, not a victim.”

  “That is quite enough, Mr. Urch,” said Junup.

  “We are not the ones who have violated the treaty,” Vusio-om told him. It was a mistake, as Urch had pointed out in the past, to read my own species body language onto another species, but the Phand gave every impression of shaking with anger.

  “The weak and the deceitful hide behind legal niceties,” Urch said. “If your [parasitic insect, known for its horrific odor] brother hadn’t launched his cowardly assault, then no one would have been harmed.”

  “This is an outrage!” cried the Phand. “I insist that this being be tortured at once!”

  “It is not our custom to respond quite so forcefully to rudeness,” Junup said, “but your point is well taken. Mr. Urch, please answer the questions, and no more.”

  Urch hissed, which might have been the equivalent of a nod. Or maybe it was just a hiss.

  Vusio-om appeared to regain control of himself. His huge hands relaxed and he folded them before himself on the table. “Let us return to your training session with Ezekiel Reynolds. Did you explain to him the destructive power of the dark-matter missile?”

  “Not using specific metrics,” he said.

  “But you made it clear they were powerful?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you advise him to fire multiple missiles at a target?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Did you advise him that it was policy to wait after firing a missile to assess damage before firing another?”

  “Yes,” said Urch, “but
—”

  “So when your captain claims that Mr. Reynolds could not know firing multiple missiles to be against your codes of conduct, she is either ignorant or deliberately deceiving us.”

  Urch hissed again, this time, I believe, in frustration. “You attempt to twist words, but although I had explained basic rules of engagement to Zeke, I do not believe that—”

  “Yes or no!” the Phand shouted.

  “You must answer,” Junup said after Urch remained silent for several painful seconds.

  “Yes,” he said at last.

  “Thank you, Mr. Urch. That will be all.”

  Then came the moment I’d been dreading. Vusio-om called me to stand before the council. I stepped in front of our table, moved all the way to the end of the row, and then headed forward to face the council.

  “You take a most circuitous route to stand before us,” Vusio-om said when I stood before the council. “Perhaps you do not wish to speak of what happened on the Confederation vessel.”

  “No,” I said. “I took the long way around to avoid the upchuck.”

  This earned me a glower, and so I considered it a job well done. Vusio-om then began his interrogation. “What was your state of mind when operating the weapons console?”

  I considered my words carefully, not wanting to be called out for a lie. “I was scared.”

  “For your life?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I was scared that I would make a mistake. Captain Qwlessl gave me a job to do, and I didn’t want to fail her.”

  “Were you concerned for the lives of the people on the Phandic ship?”

  “No,” I admitted. “I’d just watched them murder civilians, my peers, and they were in the process of trying to murder us.” Okay, no objection from the truth-o-meter. Maybe I could stop second-guessing myself.

  “So you claim to believe. Tell me, Ezekiel Reynolds. When you fired those missiles, were you trying to disable the Phandic ship so it could do no more harm? Or, rather, were you trying to destroy it? Did you hope it would explode in a big ball of fire?”

  “I did not think I had the skill to disable it, and I did not know how many more hits the Dependable could take before it was destroyed. It didn’t really seem like the time for nuance.”

  “Such as the nuance of allowing survivors to escape once the vessel was nonfunctional?”

  “Like I said, I did not think of that at the time.” I was doing a poor job of concealing my frustration, and I took a breath, trying to calm myself.

  “So it was your hope that you might kill everyone on board?”

  I paused to consider my answer. “I didn’t think about the people on board until it was all over. All I cared about was saving the Dependable. I believed it was us or them, and it wasn’t until the battle was done that I even thought of the Phandic ship as containing beings. Until then, the ship was an it that would destroy us if I didn’t stop it.”

  “Do you now wish you had considered the matter more thoughtfully?”

  “At the time, I did not have the knowledge or the skills to behave other than I did,” I told him. I’d practiced that line in my room. I thought it was pretty good.

  “Do you consider yourself a criminal?” Vusio-om asked.

  “No,” I told him.

  “Do you admire criminals or seek out their company?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I call your attention to these images.” He waved his hand, and several pictures of me with Steve and Tamret appeared on the screen. They had been taken in public places throughout the compound. I could only assume Junup had provided them. “Do you know these beings?”

  “Yes,” I said, my stomach sinking as I realized where he was going with this.

  “And do you know they have criminal records on their home worlds?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He waved his hand again. A picture appeared of me and Tamret. We sat at the table in the commons, and she held her hand in mine. It was all in stunning high definition. She looked really pretty, I thought. I looked like a total dork, but despite being on trial for my life, I took some pleasure in that that everyone could see that it was me sitting with that beautiful girl.

  “You are clearly associated with this being,” he said. “This touching of hands is a ritualistic expression of affection, is it not?”

  Yes, that was me turning beet red before my sworn enemy, the council, and, with the data collectors there, the billions of good beings across the Confederation watching this fiasco. “We’re friends.”

  “Did you know that this being was caught breaking into secure computer systems on this station?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Do you approve of her actions?”

  “I keep telling her that she should follow the rules.” No squawking from the computer.

  This seemed to surprise him. “But you were involved in a wager, were you not, that would have required her to break into the point-allocation system and redistribute points?”

  A bolt of anger shot through me. How did he know about that? Who was feeding information to the Phands? Charles? Nayana? Mi Sun? One of them had ratted us out, and not over some minor infraction. Tamret could get kicked off the station for this, and that would cause her whole delegation to fail. The future of an entire world, a species, was in the balance, and someone from my own world had completely betrayed everything that mattered. There was going to be a reckoning, I decided. Someone had tried to hurt Tamret, and when I found out who it was, I would hurt them back.

  “Ezekiel Reynolds?” the Phand said. “We are waiting.”

  “I was against that bet,” I said at last. “I said it was a mistake.”

  “So, to clarify,” the Phand said, “despite your wishes, your friend, this fur-covered creature, encouraged actions that could result in her exile from the Confederation?”

  I sat there, saying nothing, trying to think of an answer that would be both honest and help Tamret. Nothing came to mind.

  “Please answer,” Junup said.

  “The details are hazy,” I attempted.

  “Unable to verify veracity of response,” the computer said. I was not surprised.

  “We shall read your silence as affirmation of this creature’s guilt,” the Phand said, “as well as an indication of your unwillingness to tell us the truth. Now, as to this wager, you did not approve, but you did participate. Is that correct?”

  “I agreed to the contest, but no one did anything illegal. We talked about messing with the point system, but we didn’t do it. Tempers were flaring. Kids say all kinds of things.”

  “‘Kids say all kinds of things,’” he repeated. “And did you believe the ‘kid’ Tamret when she said she intended to hack the system and reallocate points?”

  I did not want to answer this. “I can’t know what she intended.”

  “What is your guess?”

  “My guess does not matter. She never broke the law.”

  “But you must have an opinion.”

  The clownish Darth Maul seemed to lose patience. “He does not wish to answer, and I don’t see that he should have to speculate regarding another being’s thoughts, nor, frankly, how their little competition has anything to do with the purpose of this hearing. Please move on, sir.”

  “Very well,” Vusio-om said. “Whether or not she broke the law on this occasion, she indicated a willingness to do so. And you choose to associate with her knowing that she has broken the law and speaks of doing so again. Is that not so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you associate with her?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? She’s an initiate, like I am. The selection committee chose her.”

  “No other reason?”

  I was not going to sell out Tamret, and I was not going to apologize for her, but I needed to put her
in context. The entire Confederation was watching, and I would not let them turn Tamret into some kind of criminal reprobate. “A being is the sum of many qualities, not simply the product of one action selected from a lifetime of actions. I choose to associate with her because I like and admire her.”

  “She is a random selection,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “As are you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And to the best of your knowledge, you have no particular skills that would qualify you to be here.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “Do you think you are worthy of being here with the rest of the delegates from your world? Do you believe yourself a strong representative of your planet?” Vusio-om asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Unable to confirm veracity of response.”

  “Those are all the questions I have for you.”

  • • •

  I turned to head back to my seat, but then shot back. In the confusion that had naturally sprung from my public humiliation, I’d almost forgotten about my ace in the hole. I had better use it now, before it was too late.

  “May I ask you a question?” I said to the Phand.

  “No,” answered Vusio-om. “I will not be made to answer anything put forth by my brother’s killer.”

  “Counterquestioning is permitted,” said the clownish Darth Maul.

  “I do not choose to permit it,” answered Vusio-om.

  “Chief Justice,” I said to Junup, “on my world, failure to grant the accused their rights disqualifies the findings of any judicial proceeding. How do you guys do things here?”

  “The applicant is correct,” said the quadruped to the Phand. “You must answer, or this hearing is not valid.”

  “That is an insult,” the Phand said in his low voice. Then he worked his jaw side to side for a moment and glared at me. “You may ask what you will.”

  I took a deep breath. I knew in my heart that I had saved the Dependable that day. If I had been better trained, perhaps I wouldn’t have destroyed the Phandic ship, but at the time I did the best I could with the little knowledge I had. I didn’t have a lot of great moments in my life, but that was one of them. Even so, I believed the hearing was not going my way. Vusio-om was doing a pretty good job of making my actions look rash and my character appear shady. I had one play remaining, and it was time I made it.