No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three

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No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 15

by Rhoads, Loren


  Raena kept her face blank, as if she hadn’t noticed she was barely hobbled. Where nerves had made her fluttery before, now she looked very, very still.

  It made Haoun think of a yaska, a fuzzy little prey animal from his home world that froze when it became aware you were hunting it. It let you think it was frightened, before it leapt up to bite at your eyes. They could burrow into your brain and kill you in the space of a breath.

  The guards formed up around her and marched her out the door. Haoun followed, but one directed him back to the visitors’ elevator. He hoped Raena wouldn’t kill the guards on the way to the courtroom.

  *

  Once Haoun had lumbered out of earshot, one of the guards—a twiggy tree creature—asked, “Who’s that?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  The guards burst into laughter. Raena just smiled to herself.

  “I think she’s serious,” the canine guard pointed out. He reminded her of Skyler, who had traveled on the Panacea with Kavanaugh, when they were young.

  “That’s just sick,” the frog-faced guard said. “You humans will throw yourselves on anything, won’t you?”

  Raena didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t made the first move. She also didn’t point out that the galaxy had done a pretty thorough job of spreading humans thin across space. No matter what she said, people like these would find a way to be disgusted.

  She just hoped that whatever magic Ariel was preparing, they could all get out of here soon.

  CHAPTER 9

  The jailers escorted Raena back down to the holding cell at the courthouse. She sat on the same rickety chair and again had to concentrate on not overloading the forcefield by accident.

  She worried whether her defender would arrive in time, or if someone would contrive an accident for him. If he wasn’t able to defend her, would the Deputy Consul step up again? Or Ariel? Her sister didn’t have any official legal training that Raena knew of, but Ariel learned her way around a binding contract at an early age.

  A bipedal lizard dressed in a flamboyant yellow and orange robe scurried over to her. He was slim and chisel-faced, with eyes that moved independently as if on turrets. He wore a translator on his chest like a flashy medallion. “I am Tomur Corvas. Ariel Shaad hired me to defend you in this matter. It’s my pleasure to meet you, Ms. Zacari, although I wish it had been under better circumstances.”

  His voice sounded like a series of hisses and sighs, but the translator changed it to a musical tenor.

  “Thank you for taking my case.”

  He waved that away with hands that had no fingers, only two opposable sides so that he could grasp things. “This area is not recorded for broadcast, but it is probably monitored, nonetheless. Let’s proceed as if everything we say here is on the record.”

  “Understood,” Raena said.

  “Ms. Shaad filled me in on your case. I have spoken to most of your crewmates from the Veracity. The information they’ve given me will form the basis of your defense. You are not required to address the court yourself, but you are welcome to, if you like. Also, we should talk about whether your trial will be allowed to be broadcast.”

  “I prefer not to make a galactic spectacle of my life.”

  “You are already a celebrity after the Messiah documentary.”

  “It was not my wish to appear in that.”

  He nodded, but said smoothly, “Captain Chen points out that the case before us references business practices that may have wide-ranging implications. He encourages you to reconsider.”

  That sounded like something Mykah would say. Raena asked, “What does Ariel suggest?”

  “I would prefer not to quote her, but she agrees with Captain Chen.”

  That didn’t surprise Raena, either. If there was a fight to be had, Ariel would be all for having it in public. “All right,” Raena said at last. “If it’s your recommendation that I allow it to be broadcast, I will.”

  Afterward, she would reconsider her stance against having her appearance permanently altered.

  Corvas pulled a handheld from his satchel and made a swipe across it, sending a message he had already loaded. “Yes,” he said, when he looked up again, “I would definitely recommend it. You’re much more likely to get a fair hearing if Kai feels that the galaxy is watching.”

  That was the first time anyone had offered a context she understood. Raena already appreciated having the lizard on her side.

  “I don’t know how the judicial system on Kai works,” she admitted.

  “The Business Council is the planetary government of Kai. For the most part, all serious cases are brought by the Business Council against tourists, although tourists, tour operators, and shopkeepers may sue each other as well. Broadcasting the Business Council’s trials started as an advertising ploy to demonstrate how colorful—and safe—Kai was. It has morphed into a moneymaking venture, particularly since the tesseract flaw’s impact on tourism. To generate more income, the Business Council also sells tickets to audience seats in the courtroom.”

  Raena nodded for him to continue.

  “Three judges will preside over your case. They will be drawn by lot to represent a variety of people. They will have to reach a consensus. Otherwise, they’ll declare a mistrial and we will have to go through this whole process again, presenting new evidence each time. The judges may be hostile to you, because that makes for better theater and draws more viewers.”

  “What are the odds of getting a human judge?”

  “Zero. There are no human judges on Kai.”

  Raena would have been surprised if there had been. “What are the odds of having a mistrial declared and needing to go through this ordeal again?”

  The lizard made a gargling sound that Raena realized was a chuckle. “Most trials on Kai do end in a mistrial the first time. Several have been dragging out for planetary years. That’s more lucrative for the players involved. However, I will do my best to see that you receive a definitive judgment the first time through.”

  “Thank you.”

  He inclined his head. “I’ve been on retainer for the Shaad Family Foundation for a decade. I know Ms. Shaad has no patience for wasting time.”

  To put it graciously, Raena thought.

  “So the judges will be introduced. The court clerk will read the charges. We can choose to deal with the charges in any order that we like. We ask to see the evidence they have against you, then we are required to prove your innocence. As you’ve noticed, you are presumed to be guilty and the burden is on us to demonstrate that you are not. It’s quite likely that additional charges will be brought during the course of the trial. We will deal with those as they arise.”

  “What outcome is Kai hoping for?” Raena asked.

  “This is all about money. Kai does not have a prison for long-term incarceration, so prisoners who cannot defend themselves against the charges are heavily fined. If they cannot pay the fines, they are transported to Farrington Prison at their own expense and incarcerated until their fines can be met.”

  Raena didn’t know that prison by name, but as she was not going back to any prison ever, it didn’t really matter. She would kill herself first.

  “Kai has very little in the way of violent crime—the lack of weapons and the general wealth of the visitor population limits the sorts of trouble that occur here.”

  “What about the workers?”

  Both the lizard’s eyes rotated to look at her.

  “When Captain Chen worked on Kai,” Raena said, “he was harassed by anti-human bullies. Did he have any recourse?”

  “No. In cases where violence is discovered amongst the workers, both parties are fined and exiled from Kai. Since they’ve allowed Captain Chen to return, it’s likely he never pressed charges.”

  No wonder Mykah had been so eager to get out of here when Raena initially offered him command of the Veracity.

  The courtroom guards marched toward Raena’s chair. “Ah, good,” Corvas said. “Time to ge
t started.”

  Both his eyes rotated back toward Raena. “Trust me,” he said. “I’ll get you out of this.”

  *

  The guards frogmarched Raena into the courtroom. This time they locked her shackles to the legs of the defendant’s chair so that she could stand when addressed by the judges, but she couldn’t roam.

  The courtroom Mistress of Ceremonies was a feline creature with overdeveloped feminine attributes that threatened to spill from her tiny tightly-laced dress. She introduced Raena as the former bodyguard of a Melisizei “businessman” and a ward of the humanitarian Shaad Family Foundation. The cameras buzzed over to close in on Ariel, who smiled at them and waved.

  The court clerk was a shiny black bird, maybe the same who’d attended the arraignment hearing. It read over the charges being brought by the Business Council and noted that Raena had requested a trial, as was her right.

  Two cameras buzzed over to get a closeup of Raena’s face. She ignored them, looking instead at her judges. As Corvas promised, there were three of them: a gray-skinned female with oversized blue eyes, a twiggy insect creature, and a rock creature similar to the one that attacked her in her cell. That couldn’t be good. For all that Raena could tell them apart, it might be the same rock creature. All three judges wore matching white robes that flowed to the ground. They sat on thrones facing the courtroom.

  “We can begin as soon as the defense is ready,” the gray female said.

  Corvas looked to Raena, who nodded.

  “The first of the charges against my client that we would like to challenge is that she stole an Imperial-era diplomatic transport.” The defender pressed a key on his desk to show the image of Raena’s wanted poster.

  The audience in the courtroom reacted to the sight of the little woman in a short parrot-blue sheath dress, her knee-high leather boots, and the Stinger pistol in her hand. Raena heard grumblings about the violent nature of humans, about making yourself feel bigger with a gun in your hand.

  “In the image, is your client carrying a weapon on Kai?” the rock judge asked.

  The defender turned to Raena, who spoke up: “Yes, sir, I was.”

  Corvas said smoothly, “She hasn’t been charged with that, your Honor.”

  “I’m sure the Business Council will rectify that,” the insect judge rasped.

  The defender glanced down at Raena, who shrugged. Corvas said, “We will not contest the charge.”

  Raena wondered how much the fine would be. Was there any chance it would equal time served without charges being filed?

  “Where are you in this image?” the rock judge demanded.

  “A docking slip at Kai City Spaceport,” Raena said.

  “What’s the designation of the ship visible behind you in the image?”

  “I’m not sure of its designation,” she answered. “The ship is called the Veracity. It’s been my honor to serve on it since I left Kai.”

  “The dockmaster of Kai City Spaceport claims this ship is in fact the Raptor.”

  Corvas asked, “The Raptor is also an Imperial-era diplomatic transport?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’m not familiar with the Raptor, your Honors,” Raena said.

  “It landed on Kai the same day as you left.”

  Raena looked to her defender, unsure how to respond to that. Corvas said, “I have not been able to find any evidence linking my client to the Raptor. Will the court show us the basis of the theft charge?”

  The clerk played the recording of an Imperial-era ship landing in a docking slip. After the engines had cooled, the Thallian crew disembarked. Raena got her first unguarded look at Revan Thallian, older brother of her nemesis.

  Oh, she’d seen Revan’s video log aboard the Veracity, after Coni had broken its encryption. In those recordings, made privately and intended to be viewed only by his younger brother, Revan had spoken as if to his commander. The video recorded on Kai left no doubt he could rise to command when needed.

  Revan was clean-shaven, where Jonan wore a spade-shaped beard. Revan held himself like a prince as he dealt with the dockmaster and ordered his hit squad around, but he didn’t have the air of complete disdain that his psychotic little brother used to affect. Raena wondered if she would have liked Revan if they’d ever had a chance to talk.

  The recording cut, then resumed when Jain Thallian raced into the docking slip on a jet bike. He parked his bike, hopped off of it, and scurried up the ramp to the ship’s lock.

  A moment later, Raena leapt down atop the hull of the ship. She appreciated her own three-point landing, with the stun staff held behind her at a precise angle. “Such a badass,” she heard Haoun say, somewhere in the gallery to her left. Raena kept her face blank, but she agreed with him.

  In the recording, she slipped over the edge of the ship’s hull and went after Jain. The camera was in the wrong place to see her stun him and drag him onto the ship.

  Not much time passed before she came back off the ship and shot out the surveillance camera in the docking slip. The screen filled with snow. The clerk turned the recording off.

  “Looks like the Business Council needs to charge you with carrying a stun stick, too,” the gray judge said.

  “We will not contest it,” Corvas said. Raena was glad. If he had wanted to challenge that charge, she would have to explain where the stun stick had come from—and she didn’t want to admit she’d taken it from a member of Planetary Security when she stole his jet bike to follow the boy. Better to defuse the whole explosion.

  Corvas seemed just as eager to get the trial back on track. “To clarify,” he said, “we have a recording of the Raptor landing on Kai. Has the court identified the men who stepped off of it?”

  The clerk consulted the dockmaster’s records and read a list of names. Before Raena could say anything, the defender spoke up for her. “Your Honors, my client would like to correctly identify the leader of this group.” He turned to Raena.

  “The man issuing the orders is Revan Thallian,” she said.

  Corvas swiped his crabbed hand across his handheld and put Jonan’s old War-era wanted poster up on the screen. “The court no doubt recognizes Jonan Thallian, architect of the genetic plague that annihilated the Templars.” He ignored the angry outbursts from the courtroom audience. Beside Jonan’s photo Corvas put up a still taken from the footage of Revan Thallian on the Templar tombworld. Finally, he added a still image of Revan taken from the recording they’d just watched. “This is Revan Thallian, as identified by my client and the documentaries about the looting of the Templar tombs. You can see the obvious resemblance to his infamous brother.”

  The insect judge said, “You’re telling us that one of the Thallians came to Kai.”

  Over the racket behind her, Raena said clearly, “Yes, your Honor. In fact, if his body has not been destroyed, it is lying unclaimed in Kai City’s morgue right now.”

  A roar of outrage greeted that remark.

  The judges exchanged a glance, then stood as one. The gray female said, “This court will adjourn for the rest of the morning or until we can establish the truth of this allegation.”

  The defender leaned over to tell Raena, “Nicely done.” Then he stepped back so that the bailiff could unlock the shackles that held Raena’s legs to her chair. The bailiff and a guard with a stun staff marched her out of the courtroom.

  *

  When the court came back in session after a lunch that rivaled one of Mykah’s pasta creations, Kai City’s coroner was called to the stand. He had run a hasty genetic scan of the unidentified human corpses in his freezer. To his horror, he found that one directly matched Jonan Thallian, the notorious mass murderer. He apologized profusely for not identifying Revan Thallian sooner. Shuddering with disgust, he asked permission to destroy the body.

  The court granted it.

  Corvas came to speak with Raena while the bailiff tried to calm the enraged audience in the courtroom.

  “Why did they keep his bod
y all this time?” Raena asked quietly.

  “Kai hoped that his family would identify and claim the corpse, at which point they would have been charged for six standard months’ cold storage. Now that Kai knows who he was, they are in a hurry to prevent any more Thallians from coming to the planet.”

  “They know all the Thallians are dead, right?” Raena asked.

  “Not all of them,” Corvas said enigmatically. Raena shivered.

  *

  Eilif stared at the video screen in Kavanaugh’s lounge, where they had been watching the broadcast of Raena’s trial. Eilif blinked, startled to find her eyes so dry. She had known Revan died on Kai. She had known that Raena killed him. Jain reported those things when he’d returned home. But to discover that Revan’s body still lingered, anonymous and unclaimed after all this time, was as painful as being stabbed.

  Eilif didn’t know what she had expected to have happened to Revan’s body: some kind of release from this world, at least. She’d vaguely supposed that he must have been unceremoniously dumped into a pauper’s grave or cremated and scattered to Kai’s desert winds—anything, other than trapped in this ignominious state of waiting.

  She wanted to claim him now. Unfortunately, even in the unlikely event that they let her have his body, she couldn’t take him home to lie with his brothers. Raena had obliterated the Thallians and burned the castle down. She hadn’t wanted to leave anything left to clone.

  Eilif’s eyes no longer registered the courtroom drama on the screen. The grief she had not allowed herself to feel before submerged her. Of all the Thallians, Revan had behaved gently with her. He laughed with her sometimes, told her stories. He treated her like a friend, rather than a family possession. Secretly in her heart, Eilif had loved him.

  She believed Revan had died without knowing that. Jonan would have killed her if he’d ever had any indication she was unfaithful, even in her thoughts. She wasn’t sure what Jonan would have done to his beloved older brother. To protect Revan even more than herself, Eilif had never breathed a word.

 

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