Her motion caught the attention of the nurse in the room, a cute brunette whose insignia labeled her as a Federation Space Navy Nurse-Lieutenant. She wasn’t familiar to Michelle, and she had a perfect heart-shaped face that sent a half-forgotten tremor through Michelle’s body.
“Lieutenant Williams,” the nurse spoke to her quietly. “You’re awake. How do you feel?”
“I hurt,” Michelle managed to croak, and the nurse nodded slowly, clearly checking something in her implants.
“We reduced your pain medication to bring you out of the induced coma,” she said softly, still keeping her voice low as if she knew about the headache slamming Michelle’s skull. Given the scanners available in a Navy medical facility, she possibly did.
“I’m going to fetch Dr. Pinochet,” the nurse continued. “Please, don’t move until she’s had a chance to check you over – you still have quite a bit of damage.”
Michelle barely had time to wonder what had happened to her and who ‘Dr. Pinochet’ was before a short, dumpy woman appeared, with close-cropped red hair and the two gold circles and snake staff collar insignia of a Fleet Surgeon-Commander.
The sight of a completely different doctor caused Michelle to try and push herself away, her breathing coming short and sharp as she tried.
“Please Lieutenant, calm down,” Pinochet said. Like the nurse she spoke quietly, but her tone was fierce. “I swear to you, upon the honor of the Navy, that you are safe.”
Michelle found herself shaking her head and pressed against the wall, but the Surgeon met her gaze and held it, with an intensity she couldn’t turn away from.
“You are in the main infirmary aboard Avalon,” Pinochet continued. She gestured towards the door out of the private room. “There are two armed military policewomen outside that door, who’ve been in this star system less than five weeks between them, with orders not to let anyone in this room without the explicit permission of myself or Wing Commander Roberts. At no point in the sixteen hours since you came aboard have there been less than three Space Force officers or senior non-coms sitting in the waiting room, glaring at anyone who even made too much noise near your room.
“No one, and I mean no one, is getting into this room to hurt you,” the Doctor finished. “Please, Michelle, we understand how badly we have failed you. We will protect you. I won’t ask to trust us, not yet – but please, relax.”
The sheer fierce protectiveness of this dumpy, motherly, doctor managed to break through Michelle’s defenses. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she was crying. Pinochet was there in a moment, holding her gently and getting her settled back into the bed.
“What happened?” Michelle finally managed to ask, cleaning her face as gently as she could with a tissue.
“What do you remember?” the Doctor asked.
“Liago grabbed me after yet another waste of time appointment with Donner,” she said fiercely. “Paralyzed me somehow – I knew he was going to throw me out an airlock.” Michelle shivered at the memory of the sheer helplessness. “Then, there were MPs, and he was shot. After that, nothing.”
Pinochet nodded briskly, pulling a chair up next to Michelle’s bed. As she spoke, she began going through the readouts of the bed and the scanners attached to it.
“Yesterday morning, Wing Commander Roberts arrested Randall for your attack,” she explained quietly. “The original medical reports, before the edits and deletions started sneaking in, have been forwarded to me. Liago apparently believed that killing you would help protect Randall.”
“Flight Commander Stanford somehow knew you were in danger though, so they put out an order for the MPs to take you into protective custody,” Pinochet continued. “They found you and Liago, and drew the correct conclusion.”
“When Liago died, however, his implant sent a garbled message that the nanites in your body had no idea how to translate. They went crazy and starting shutting down and overloading neural pathways at random.”
“The MPs rushed you to the New Amazon Station infirmary – where Doctor Donner apparently finally remembered how to be a damned doctor. He saved your life,” Avalon’s doctor told Michelle. “Then he called me and confessed everything. I ordered you transferred here immediately, in case anyone else on that damned station was insane.”
Michelle blinked slowly, trying to take all of this in.
“Dr. Donner told you?” she said softly. “That he kept telling me nothing was wrong?”
“Dr. Donner has a damned Euphoria chip habit,” Pinochet said flatly. “Larson held that over him to get him to ignore your condition, as it would end his career.
“Well, now Donner’s career is over, but Larson is dead – and he seems to think that’s a fair trade.”
“Larson’s dead?” Michelle asked, horrified.
The door behind Pinochet slid open before she could say more to reveal a large, red-haired man unfamiliar to Michelle. His collar bore two gold circles flanking a set of golden wings – a pilot-track Wing Commander, presumably the Roberts that Pinochet had mentioned.
“I suspect that’s a question I should field, Doctor,” he rumbled. “Is Flight Lieutenant Williams up to a conversation?”
“Yes. She’s not cleared for anything else, though,” the dumpy Surgeon-Commander made clear, glaring fiercely at the Wing Commander. “I’ll need a few more days of assessment before I can even begin to say when she’ll return to active duty.”
“That’s fair,” Roberts told her with a nod. “May I speak with her in private?”
“I’ll be watching her vitals from outside,” Pinochet warned. “I will cut you off if it’s starting to strain her – she is still in quite a lot of pain.”
The big Wing Commander nodded his acceptance and stood aside, allowing Pinochet to leave the room. When the door slid shut behind the doctor, he remained leaning against the wall and turned his gaze back to Michelle.
“I’m planning on staying against the wall over here,” he said quietly. “Seems that’s about as unthreatening as I can be.”
“I’m Wing Commander Roberts,” he continued. “Your new commanding officer – the paperwork to transfer you back to SFG-001 was processed last night. Welcome aboard Avalon.”
Michelle watched him carefully. Despite his imposing size and authority, Roberts didn’t scare her. Something about the way he stood and held himself suggested that anyone trying to hurt her was going to have to go through him – and they wouldn’t enjoy the attempt.
“I know Pinochet gave you some of the details, but here’s the high-level,” he continued. “I’ve arrested Randall for assaulting you. That’s an open-and-shut case. Liago tried to murder you and was killed resisting arrest. Based on his involvement and other evidence, we attempted to arrest Vice Commodore Larson. Someone else, currently unknown, murdered Larson to keep his other activities quiet.”
“What other activities?” she asked.
Roberts seemed to think for a moment, and then shrugged.
“This Station is missing about sixteen squadrons of modern starfighters,” he told her. “We think Larson sold them, but everyone we know is involved is dead – except Randall.”
Michelle didn’t like where this was going.
“I really, really, want to shoot the bastard,” Roberts continued. “I’m afraid he’s the only one who could break open a conspiracy running to the highest levels of the Joint Department of Logistics.”
He shifted a bit, holding Michelle’s gaze.
“He attacked an officer under his command,” the CAG said flatly. “If you say the word, there’s no deal, Lieutenant. We’ll sweat him, but we won’t offer clemency. I can make certain he faces the firing squad for what he did to you.”
Nothing in Michelle’s life had ever tempted her so much as to say ‘just shoot him,’ but she was also a soldier and a pilot. Sixteen squadrons of modern starfighters was a force that could conquer entire star systems given the right support and transport.
“The same conspiracy that let him cove
r up that attack,” she said quietly. “Without that conspiracy, he’d have hung months ago, wouldn’t he?”
Roberts simply nodded.
“He won’t walk free?”
“He’s had anagathics,” Roberts said quietly. “He might still be alive to walk out after sixty or seventy years.”
The image of Randall, the arrogant, dandified son of one of the Federation’s wealthiest families, in a Joint Department of Military Justice penitentiary for the rest of his life had a certain appeal. Especially once the other men and women in the prison learned who he was and what he’d done.
“Break him, Commander,” she told Roberts. “Rip open that conspiracy before they hurt anyone else.”
The Wing Commander nodded. He removed a datapad from inside his uniform jacket and laid it on the table beside him.
“So forget Randall,” he told her. “What are your plans?”
“My plans are the Force’s plans,” Michelle told him automatically. Even after being betrayed, jerked around and treated like shit for the last year, she was still an officer of the Castle Federation Space Force.
“The Space Force failed you,” her new CO said bluntly. “Doctor Pinochet is a brilliant doctor, and I have every confidence in her ability to restore you to active duty status. That said, given what has happened, she and I have the authority to sign off on an Article Seventeen discharge.”
An Article Seventeen discharge was an ‘honorable separation due to major injuries incurred in service of the Federation.’ She would receive the same pension she’d have got after twenty years’ service, and a courtesy promotion that would bring that pension up to roughly her active duty salary. The Navy would still cover her treatment, but she’d be away from the carrier where she’d been attacked.
“Sir, I refuse to be defined by what he did to me,” she said quietly, and continued more fiercely.
“I am a pilot and an officer of the Castle Federation Space Force,” Flight Lieutenant Michelle Williams told her CAG. “Give me a fighter and an enemy, and I will do my duty.”
New Amazon System, Castle Federation
10:30 July 7, 2735 ESMDT
DSC-001 Avalon – Brig
With Larson’s murder, the brig detail aboard Avalon was on high alert. As Kyle understood it, the entire Military Police detachment aboard the old carrier had been replaced when Blair had come aboard, which at least gave Khadem some men and women he could utterly rely on.
Two MPs were standing outside the brig, and checked Kyle’s implant ID before they allowed him in. Four more were standing guard in the waiting area, under the command of a hard-faced, shaven-headed woman with Staff Sergeant stripes and a shotgun Kyle suspected might be a portable gateway to hell.
“You’re clear, sir,” she said crisply after running his implant ID against her approved list. “We’ve got the brig locked down tight. No-one is getting at Randall unless we let them. Hell, we’ve even taken the brig onto independent life support.”
That was potentially extreme, in Kyle’s opinion, but given that someone had murdered the officer in charge of an entire Reserve Flotilla Station and its defending squadrons, he wasn’t prepared to tell Khadem’s people they were going too far.
“Where is he?”
“Cell Six,” the Sergeant replied, gesturing to one of the monitors showing the occupants of Avalon’s cells.
Kyle glanced at the monitor. James Randall was sitting on the bunk of his cell, a hardware book reader to hand but apparently being ignored as the disgraced Flight Commander stared at the wall. He seemed in shock.
“Have you had any problems?” Kyle asked.
“Not since he shot Stef,” the Sergeant replied. “Being shot with a stunner takes the fight out of most people.”
“Can you inform Marshal Khadem that I’m going in to speak with the prisoner?” Kyle requested. “He’s aware of it.”
“Yes, sir.” The woman paused for a moment, blinking aside in the familiar way of someone communicating through a neural implant. A few seconds passed, and then she returned her attention to Kyle. “He says ‘go ahead, but try not to break anything important,’ sir.”
“Thank you Sergeant,” Kyle told her, and headed for Cell Six.
As he entered, Randall looked up at him from the bed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Welcome to what appears to be my new quarters, sir,” he said calmly. “I’d offer you a seat, but I seem to have a shortage of amenities.”
Wordlessly, Kyle closed the door behind him and leaned against it. He could unlock it with his implant at any time, but for the moment, the room was sealed.
“It’s an impressive hole you’ve dug for yourself, Randall,” he finally said, his voice cheerful. “I think we might be up to three separate capital charges now.”
“Three?” the prisoner replied, sounding surprised. “I thought this was all over the ridiculous accusations that girl made?”
For a long moment, Kyle said nothing, simply holding Randall’s gaze. The other officer caved quickly, glancing aside and losing some of the stiffness in his posture.
“Suffice to say that I have plenty of proof of that one,” Kyle told Randall quietly. “Enough proof that were we at war, the Captain and I would have convened a summary court martial this morning – and a firing squad this afternoon.”
What little starch remained in Randall seemed to leak out of him in a long sigh, and he looked back up at Kyle with weary eyes.
“So what, you’re here to gloat? To laugh at seeing one of the Randalls dragged down into the dirt with the commoners?” he asked.
“No,” Kyle admitted. “I’m here because Larson and Liago are dead, and I think you know enough about what they were doing to tell me why.”
James Randall froze. One moment, he was slouching, weary, and the next he was an unmoving caricature of a man.
“Larson is dead,” he said flatly.
“Shot in the back of the head, then someone tried to make it look like a suicide,” Kyle confirmed. “That, along with a hundred-odd missing modern starfighters, doesn’t look good for anyone. You came here in command of a squadron of Cobras, Randall. What happened to them?”
Randall looked around the cell, his eyes darting like a caged animal.
“I refuse to say anything further without a JDMJ advocate present,” he said calmly. “I know my rights.”
“You have the right to a speedy and fair trial,” Kyle reminded him. “Given the proof of the assault on Lieutenant Williams and that we can prove there is no way you didn’t know when Larson sold your squadron out from underneath you, I think JDMJ will fast-pace it. Your best case is that they’ll execute you within six months. Might be as little as three.
“Plus, given Larson’s fate, I could just have Khadem cut the security on your cell back to normal,” he continued. “It would be an interesting experiment in the reach of this conspiracy, and might help us unlock more clues.”
Randall looked away, focusing on the wall at the far end of the cell.
“What are you offering?” he said finally. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a deal.”
“I can take the firing squad off the table, and guarantee you’ll live to see trial and have your story heard,” the Wing Commander said flatly. “More than that, I’m not sure you even deserve.”
The tiny cell was silent for a long minute.
“Fine,” Randall finally said. “Get Khadem in here – I’m only going to go through this mess once, and you’ll want it all on record.”
Khadem quickly relocated them to the brig’s solitary interrogation room, where the dark-haired MP fiddled with a recorder setup until he was satisfied.
The room was even more spartan than the rest of the ship. A single table was welded to the floor, and three flimsy plastic chairs that Kyle wasn’t even sure would hold under his weight were the only mobile pieces of furniture.
Unwilling to risk the chairs, Kyle remained standing by the door, watching Randall and Khadem face ea
ch other across the table.
“Everything is being recorded,” Khadem told the prisoner. “Please state for the record that this is of your own free will.”
“I’m doing this for clemency, not because I want to,” Randall told him with a rude gesture. “But yeah, you haven’t tortured me, I haven’t seen any truth drugs, whatever constitutional right you’re worried about hasn’t been violated.”
“All right,” the MP said with a pained glance back at Kyle. “Why don’t you start at the beginning? You came aboard the New Amazon Station three years ago in command of a squadron of Cobra type starfighters. How did Larson convince you to sell them?”
“Money,” Randall said with a shrug. “At first, it was just money. Later on, he came to rely on me to help scheme out how to sneak out the ships, but at the beginning he just put a pile of cash on the table and asked if I wanted it.
“The Space Force never did me any favors,” he continued. “My family’s influence barely balanced the jealousy the commoners always feel for the Federation’s First Families – and Larson was being paid a two billion stellar chunk of each sale. Put two hundred mil in front of either of you, see if you don’t think about it.”
“Where did the money come from?” Khadem asked.
“It turns out Excelsior Armaments gets a lot of quiet queries, asking if they can sell Class One or even front-line fighter models ‘under the table’ to folk we don’t normally sell birds to,” Randall told them. “Some of the offers are a lot more than the Federation pays for even a Falcon. It was enough money that even a giant interstellar corporation got tempted.”
Excelsior Armaments was one of the few companies authorized to sell Federation export military technology outside its borders. They were a big player in the Federation, one of the top suppliers of starfighter and aircraft munitions, but they’d never managed to field an acceptable starfighter prototype. They were, however, cleared to buy Space Force surplus starfighters and export them to approved trading partners.
Avalon Trilogy: Castle Federation Books 1-3: Includes Space Carrier Avalon, Stellar Fox, and Battle Group Avalon Page 7