For a moment Adrianna thought of the android she tried to help. More to the truth, it was the android that she used. The machine would be either onboard the Regalia, or she was left behind where they would deactivate her for her indenture’s death, if it had been discovered yet. Adrianna sought to ensure it would be difficult to. A missing body though would raise questions for any android suddenly enjoying their freedom.
Through it all she wished that she could still see Haden alive. It should’ve been a bad dream. She wanted to see him walking up to her. Yet there was no chance of that. Knowing his life was so close to hers again so briefly was numbing.
“Notify command that I am docked,” she said through the communicator to the AI in her ship. “I will converge with the new target within the hour.”
The communicator flashed green acknowledging the command. She pressed another command into the unit, and a holographic image of David Hirl and 356Q flashed in front of her. Adrianna glanced around to see if anyone had been watching. Her mind was too distracted to concentrate. She should’ve secured herself first. No one had been looking, but she couldn’t tell in either case.
The image disappeared again. She knew who she was after, but she knew little else. She had no choice now but to wait and see if they show up.
Oberon colony
ISS Regalia
Olaph returned after delivering the cargo. Olaph was exhausted after the ordeal. He was used to changing bosses, but there was something he liked in Haden despite the brevity of having worked for him. The man fought for something different than most people fought.
As Olaph closed the bay doors, he watched the hustle of Oberon’s main docks decrease into a sliver before disappearing entirely. It had all seemed like an arbitrary task taking Haden’s body to that place. They could have let the body drift into open space. That would have been easier. It would have been quicker than letting the man suffer.
A sense of fear came over Olaph as he began to ponder about the events that had just taken place. Who would need to go through so much effort to harm Haden? And what had harboring Haden gotten Olaph and the Regalia’s crew into? Assassinations and black ops were the last things that Olaph wanted to be involved in. What he knew of Haden’s intentions appeared to be straightforward. They were easy to understand. This was now a mess. But no matter what was going on around them all, he felt a need to continue on Haden’s task he wanted to help find Adrianna and now to discover what the Alliance was up to. It would be a frightening mission.
“Is it done?” Trike asked. His voice rang over the com in the loading bay.
He walked over to recheck that the door was secured. “Yes.”
“Ok, we’re going to launch then,” Trike responded. “We shouldn’t hang around here any longer.”
Olaph didn’t like Trike. He saw Trike as an opportunist who skirted any sense of responsibility. Though he was quite skilled with many different trades, Trike was just another selfish merchant not to be trusted. Trike loved keeping Olaph around though. Olaph surmised that it was the drastic difference in their size that amused Trike so.
He continued with his duties in silence to ensure that all of the cargo from the previous owner of the ship was secure. Nothing was supposed to be able to move. Sudden shifts of inertia from maneuvers would throw the cargo in allowed. Weight shifting during a turn didn’t work well in space either.
“How’s it going?” a pleasant voice asked behind him. It was Harriet. She was walking up to him.
“Taking a break from navigation?” he asked her with a wry smile.
“It’s a bit nerve racking up there,” she replied dryly. “Trike is… well let’s just say that he’s shy of a little guidance.”
The two chuckled together enjoying their mutual distrust of the minute man now controlling their employment. Although Harriet was much older, Olaph found a kinship in her that he wasn’t getting from the rest of the crew. Whenever they could they chose to spend their time together discussing the many memories in each other’s lives.
“Amazing how he is so much calmer when someone else is in charge,” Harriet observed.
Olaph smiled then suggested, “why don’t you take control?”
Harriet waved him off dismissively. “Haden knew how to pick us. None of us were ambitious enough to…” she paused thoughtfully. “Well take over I guess. So how is the organization coming along? Everything latched down?”
“Yep. We have the new stock over there,” he pointed to the other side of the bay. The ship rumbled from being released from the docking clamps, and a yellow light began to flash. Olaph’s attention was drawn to the seals on the bay doors. One had worn and now was releasing pressure. “A small leak,” he said. As he turned away from Harriet and walked towards it. “Nothing I can’t patch really quick.”
Harriet followed him careful not to get too close.
There was a small canister next to the hatch for such issues. Within it was a sealant that bonded to the malleable gaskets that made up the seal. With a quick swipe he sealed it, and then he returned to Harriet.
Unfortunately it was in the initial docking sequences that many ships were lost. In most cases, the seals were left unattended growing to a point that either suffocated all on board or blew out pulling crew members into space. Newer ships had heavier mechanical seals that failed substantially less often. The Regalia was not such a ship. Given Olaph’s duties in the cargo bays, monitoring the seals naturally fell to him.
He enjoyed the time to himself. Being a part of a small crew and being the strongest of them (not to mention his added height) the cargo bay was his station.
“So what are you here for?” Olaph asked again. “Just doesn’t seem like a visit just for visiting’s sake.”
Harriet looked around warily. “I don’t trust Trike.”
“Eh,” he shrugged. “He’s a survivor. Haden knew how to control him, how to keep him distracted. And with none of us being leaders he just took on the role.”
“I am just worried that now that Haden’s gone, he’ll run this ship right into… well he’ll get us killed.“
“I wouldn’t worry about that now,” Olaph cut in as he saw the short Trike enter the loading bay. “If anything,” he added trying to appear as though the topic were different, “we should finally be able to just work for a living instead of chasing that woman of his around.”
Harriet saw Trike and understood what Olaph was trying to do despite being confused by the turn for a moment.
“Maybe,” she shrugged.
Olaph smiled at her as though he knew something different. “Let’s just stay close to Oberon,” he mouthed to her.
She nodded to show that she got the message before Trike stepped over.
Oberon Colony
“Are you alright?” a voice brought David Hirl back through the fog. It was the same sterile voice he had been fighting with himself to not be troubled by.
As he opened his eyes, he was met by the half-tattooed beauty of the operative he had been charged under. 356Q was either pleased for him to be awake or she was just there. David wasn’t sure if he could ever tell. Nothing in her face gave him any indication as to if she was feeling anything. His stomach turned and he closed his eyes once more.
“Please be dreaming,” he whispered intending the words only for himself.
“You are not dreaming. You’re brain activity indicates that you are alive and quite conscious,” 356Q added.
David groaned as he rolled his eyes. “Where are we?”
“Oberon,” she replied. “I was able to get you back on the station. You’re in a small farm storage silo.”
“Why are we in a storage silo?” he bemoaned. He pressed his eyes closed and pinched the bridge on his nose. He was sure that nothing about what was about to be said would be welcomed information. He had to know what was going on so that he could assess the situation.
“There’s no safe place for you here. I can blend in, but you are certainly Alliance and are not
welcome here. I paid off the owner to allow me to hide here with unspecified cargo. You are that unspecified cargo.”
“The Yorktown?” he asked just to humor his own hope.
“Destroyed. I was unable to stop Haden Rachid from his plans. He used devices I knew nothing of.”
“The crew?”
“The specialized crew of the Yorktown was terminated in the explosion.”
David closed his eyes and sat up holding his hand over his face. He wanted to mourn for his crew, but he was too angry to allow for such emotions to surface. “Can’t you have any emotion behind any of that?” he complained. “Can’t you feel something?”
“I do not see any reason that I should have emotion. None of the crew that died was of any nature that I should attach feelings to their loss. They were expendable tools in the Alliance’s arsenal.”
David regretted asking. “You are the goddamn tool,” he snapped. “They are people!” He tried to steel himself against the images of those all whom he had personally selected to accompany him. He felt responsible for their deaths. Officers were in part expected to have some functional detachment from their subordinates. David never understood the reasoning as to why until that moment.
“Their designation of being people cannot be a measurable means of stemming my emotional response to their loss. I should be more impacted emotionally by the loss of the ship that I was charged with keeping safe as it directly reflects on my adherence to my objective. The crew had no bearing on my performance.”
“Stop,” David cut in. “Please just drop it. Ignore my questions. They’re rhetorical. I don’t need them answered.”
356Q obliged; although, she was confused by the Commander’s behavior. “Our superiors will no doubt be regretful of our status,” she said in reply.
“Let them be.” David swung his hand dismissively as though he were trying to swat her words out of the air before they reached his ears. Although he knew that she was accurate, he didn’t want to think about those issues at the moment. What he desired was to rid his mind from the many things that were planted in it. Not the least of which was a question as to why 356Q chose to save him over anyone else on the ship? Captain Martinez’s words regarding 356Q’s strange attraction to him kept repeating. It made him sick.
“Do we have support available?” he asked her grudgingly.
“There was another Alliance officer I saw here. I do not know why she was here,” explained 356Q. Taking a small canteen of water she had bartered for, she handed it to David who took it gratefully. “We can intercept her and bargain for her aid.”
“Get in touch with your operations control,” David instructed, ignoring her. “They’ll arrange the nearest ship to pick us up.”
She knew that this was untrue. 356Q had already sent a message to the Alliance, and they wouldn’t place additional effort into their recovery, but just as she was about to check her com unit, it flashed with a message.
As she read the message she then said, “We are to await a pickup from operative KΩ757.”
“That’s at least something,” bemoaned David.
356Q gazed at her unwilling companion. She was confused. He was not at all what she would expect from an officer of his rank. Accompanying her confusion was a strong desire to touch him. She had never felt about anything in the same manner.
It surprised her that her thoughts hadn’t centered on protecting the integrity of the Alliance, but rather she only worried about the safety of David. Only once they had settled themselves and she reviewed the events did she understand that it was how she acted. She should have simply allowed everyone to perish with the ship while she pursued her former instructor. He was far more valuable to her than this portly commander. Her command would not embrace such details about her decisions.
David sat quietly trying not to initiate any more talking. 356Q broke the silence. “What do you like about serving?”
He thought to himself that it was normally such an innocuous question, but coming from her was highly unusual. Timing was off as well. Not able to place how he should respond, he cautiously answered, “the structure. I like the structure.”
The single-answer response was followed by another question. “Why does structure appeal to you?”
David huffed. He wanted to laugh at how he felt. The interrogative sounding nature of her voice made him feel as though he were captured by pirates. Tattoos covering half of her face didn’t help the feeling either.
“I can’t deal with this,” he waved his arms around as though to mime the events surrounding them. “You operatives are too unpredictable, you follow no protocol, nothing. It just isn’t anything I wish to deal with.” Silence came between them once more. Finally David added: “my parents weren’t exactly providers of the most stable of environments to grow up in.”
“I am sorry for that.” It sounded unsure.
David laughed. How could this woman feel sorry? He was unsure that she was capable of feeling anything. Sorry? It felt exactly as a line rehearsed by a poor actor rather than a phrase of sincere emotion.
As he laughed, 356Q pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, only that she wanted to do it. As David looked away laughing, she moved closer to him.
Just then the communicator alerted 356Q again. Her mind snapped back to her mission. She reached down and activated it. “We have to start moving,” she instructed.
DASS Armed Branches Judiciary Center
New Philadelphia, Mars Capital
Constantine Manikas sat silently on his chair. To his right sat a court-appointed lawyer. The lawyer looked entirely ill-experienced as far as Constantine could gather, not that it mattered. They hadn’t spoken.
The lawyer looked uncomfortable. Gum popped as the young man chewed it with his mouth agape. He shuffled through papers and his computer with no real intention other than to distract himself.
It was a hopeless case. Both men knew it. It wasn’t so when the young was first assigned the case. He tried to find some manner to show Constantine’s innocence. He had hope. Every corner that was turned presented more evidence not to Constantine’s guilt, but rather the undeniable sense that he was being used to satisfy a means to an end. Eventually the lawyer took the approach of simply trying to get Constantine to sign an affidavit confessing his involvement with the smuggling of Alliance goods and the unprovoked assault on Alliance vessels. A confession just might have spared the man.
Constantine would have been impressed with the young man’s initial efforts if he had paid much attention.
Truth about the events had been erased from all of the public and confidential records. In its place was the story of a deranged pirate who had detonated explosives killing his crew while taking an escape pod in an attempt to flee. Further accounts tell of the heroics of an Alliance sergeant who had managed to contain the loss of life to only pirates.
Some hero, Constantine thought to himself. Of course he’d be written off in history. Few would ever know the true details. And of those that do, most of those bastards would tell it in the way that would shine their own stars. Why should anyone forgo their own fortunes to maintain the truth?
There was no mention of Gliphon and Delilah in the official records. Those two living were the only hope he had to silence the constant screams of the rest of his crew, his family. He prayed every moment that he could have some sign that they were alive and ok.
“When they walk in,” the lawyer instructed, “just rise and keep your mouth shut, not that it will be that hard.” Since his defendant wouldn’t sign any document, much less speak, he felt it better to just placate the judges to lessen the charges, if that was even possible. “I will do the talking,” he continued. “I can only hope that they don’t sentence you to death for this. I could’ve easily gotten you locked away instead were you to cooperated and signed the confession.”
Constantine wasn’t listening. He couldn’t remember the guy’s name, nor did he care to know. Upon the bridge of th
e Intrepid was the last moment of his life so much as he was concerned. He wished that they would have killed him on site and made him and his crew another statistic, another ship lost in the emptiness of space. It would have made it easier for everyone in that case.
Instead he was being forcibly kept alive. Even despite refusing to eat, the Alliance was able to force nutrients into his body through injections and feeding tubes. Constantine never protested. The result of his protest would only be met in the same manner defending himself before was.
The lawyer appeared as though he was going to say something again until someone else entered the room. It was a military guard, fully armed and emotionless. “All rise!” he announced. At first, Constantine didn’t move choosing instead to stare mindlessly at the texture of the table in front of him. His lawyer stood forgetting to ensure his client followed suit.
“Damn you, Manikas,” he cursed as he reached down and pulled Constantine up. Without much more effort, he complied. “You’re going to get me sent away too if you keep this up.”
Following the guard a few moments later, three military officers wearing judicial department designations entered the room moving towards a tall bench at the front of the room. Each took their time slowly getting comfortable.
It was a military tribunal set to decide only one of three options. Procedure dictated that any smuggler was to be treated equal to a terrorist. Terrorist were always tried by the military tribunal. Civilian courts were too messy, too swayed by public opinion.
In rare cases the trials were instead sent to the public courts when it best benefited swaying opinion.
“Don’t bother reading the charges,” the first of the judges stated. “We aren’t going to waste our time here. It appears that this case was slated already to be taken to public trial.”
The lawyer got visibly nervous. He didn’t want it to go to a public trial. He didn’t want it to stay as a tribunal case either. He just wanted it to be over. “Your Honor, may I object?” the lawyer said, his voice starting with a squeak.
The Movement of Pawns (Gravity Book 3) Page 3