by B. V. Larson
“I know him.”
“Then you should also know he doesn’t need a trial. He just needs to be dead. And he’s inside that building.” She pointed.
Straker considered. Insisting on a trial would hold a hard line for due process. It was important that the locals didn’t feel they had a license for vendetta, because once that line was crossed, it might never be redrawn. People had to believe in their chain of command and their government. If they lost faith, anarchy would follow.
On the other hand, forcing them to wait might be seen as an attempt to give the evildoers a pass. Straker needed the citizens on his side to help repair the habitat and get it moved through sidespace—or at least, not to interfere. If he was to be their leader, if they were to form the basis for his efforts to liberate humanity, justice would have to begin right here, right now.
Maybe he could split the difference.
“How about if we put him on trial immediately? If he’s found guilty of capital crimes, I’ll execute him myself.”
Weinberg began shivering, her eyes boring into Straker’s. “I want to do it.”
Slowly, Straker shook his head. “No. This can’t be personal, or it’s vengeance, not justice. And Mrs. Weinberg… have you ever killed anyone? Especially by your own hand?”
She shook her head.
“I have. Sometimes it has to be done, but any satisfaction you feel will be outweighed by the load of your actions. That’s a burden you shouldn’t carry alone.”
Weinberg straightened. “I’m their leader. Lord knows I didn’t ask to be, but that’s what they all say. So I’ll do it in the name of the citizens of Freiheit Station.”
“You still use that name—Freiheit?”
She shrugged. “It’s a good name. Means ‘freedom’ in some old language, I’m told.”
“Yes. Yes, it does… Freiheit Station it is.” Straker stepped closer so the hushed crowd couldn’t hear him. “All right. How should he be executed? What do they want?”
“Nobody can remember a capital crime ever happening, so all these folks know is from history books and vids. On Old Earth, they used to hang people by the neck until dead.” Weinberg raised her chin. “That’s what they want.”
Straker leaned even further in to whisper in Weinberg’s ear. “Then that’s what they’ll get, because he’s guilty as hell. But the witnesses have to testify. It has to be done by law.”
“What law?” she said, stepping back slightly.
“Breaker law,” he replied. “Freiheit law.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. I’m making it up as I go. But if you’re the mayor, and I’m the military commander, we both need the people to respect law and order or we’ll be no better than our enemies.”
Weinberg nodded slowly, and then she turned to raise her hands over her head. “We’re going to put the Butcher on trial, right here, right now.”
The people gave a wild cheer and crowded around Weinberg. Straker backed up and climbed half into his mechsuit, above the press. He waved at Aldrik Ritter as the noncom came trotting up with a dozen more soldiers. “Get these people back from my ’suit. Don’t hurt anyone, but get them back,” he called. “And make damn sure none of those Unmutuals escape.”
The Breakers began moving the crowd out of the way, and Straker used the loudspeakers to emphasize his wishes. Soon he had a well-lit area cleared, and tables and two chairs brought from the building.
After giving Aldrik further instructions, he escorted Weinberg to a seat, and then took the other. “Bring out Yates,” he said. “Line up the other prisoners and keep a close eye on them, too. I want them to see.”
The twenty or so prisoners were lined up against the wall of the building, with a good view of the trial area. Four men dragged a struggling Master Sergeant Yates out to stand in front of the impromptu judicial bench.
“Straker,” he said with a sneer. “And the Mayor’s bitch...”
The crowd jeered and some surged forward. Breakers held them back. Straker hefted his laser carbine and stood. “Silence!” he roared.
When calm was restored, Straker continued. “Might not want to antagonize these folks. They’re out for blood.”
“They’re a bunch of pussies.” Yates spat on the ground. “What do I care? You’re gonna kill me anyway.”
“Probably. But first, we’re going to establish your crimes against the military code.”
“You can’t establish anything, Straker. You’re not in my chain of command.”
Straker smiled, a wicked thing. “Actually, as far as I’ve been able to tell, General DeChang confirmed my rank and never revoked it. So consider this a summary court martial.” He turned to Weinberg, who waved up someone in the crowd.
A line of witnesses began to form. The details were grim. Yates claimed they were all lying, willing, or just out to get him. But the testimony was overwhelming.
Straker stood after an hour of it.
“It looks like there are more witnesses lined up, but I think we’ve heard enough. I’ll take the final word. I personally witnessed Yates and another man wrap me and my friends with fibertape and set a bomb to blow us up. That’s attempted murder. You’ve also heard a dozen people who personally witnessed this man raping, torturing, and murdering. That’s enough for me. Mayor Weinberg, is it enough for you?”
Weinberg nodded.
Straker banged the butt of his carbine on the table. “Then I pronounce Master Sergeant Yates, also known as the Butcher, guilty of capital crimes. Mrs. Weinberg, as the other presiding judge, sentencing is yours.”
Weinberg stood slowly, placing fingertips on the table before her to still their trembling. She stared at Yates with eyes gone stone dead.
“Hang him.”
The crowd cheered, and Yates had to be restrained again and clubbed to the ground by his captors. Nearly escaping notice, one prisoner kicked out a window and tried to run, only to be shot by a Breaker and dragged back to the brig.
Sergeant Aldrik Ritter tossed a line over the outstretched arm of the Foehammer, the only structure available that would serve as a gallows. Yates was hauled into place, and then Aldrik tied the rope around his neck in a sliding knot.
A detail of five men seized the other end of the line. Weinberg, with a nod to Straker, walked over to take hold of it as well.
Yates took a breath and yelled, “All you sheep can suck—”
Aldrik signaled his men, and they pulled—choking off Yates’s vulgar declaration. The detail held the line taut, facing away from the man dancing in the air. Weinberg, however, backed up and watched, her expression one of deep satisfaction.
Suddenly, like the sun coming out, the fiber optic coil in the center of the habitat brightened. Within thirty seconds the day broke again. With the light, the gruesome scene lost some of its macabre spirit and became merely ugly. Yates’s body hung still, and Straker heard someone retch into the dirt.
“That’s enough justice for today,” said Straker loudly. “We’ll put others on trial as we have time, but for now, I need you all to go back to your homes and your jobs and your schools, whatever you’d normally do today. If you think of a way to help your neighbors or your liberators, please do it. More of my people will be here soon. If anyone gets out of line, I want to know about it immediately. Nobody is above the law.”
He had to repeat these declarations several times, but eventually the citizenry dispersed. He had Yates’s body cut down and wrapped in a tarp. “Toss it out into space,” he told Aldrik.
He’d just climbed back into his mechsuit and gotten on the comlink when he heard, “Engels to Straker.”
“Straker here.”
“Derek, we have a problem.”
Chapter 38
Bayzos System, outskirts opposite Aynor.
Engels looked over at the readings on her displays, and then to those at the sensors station nearby.
“What’s the problem?” Straker asked over her comlink.
&nbs
p; She tweaked the Liberator’s heading to give her the best angle for the sensors. “One of two possibilities, both bad. Either a second frigate just jumped in, or the Carson performed an in-system transit and knocked ten hours off her travel time. I’m betting on the latter, based on the optimization of her new location. She emerged as close as she can possibly get to us, given the space-time curvature.”
“Why can’t you tell which?”
Engels rubbed her forehead. “Lightspeed delay, Derek. We’re still seeing the Carson near Bayzos, but she might have jumped past her own light. We won’t know for half an hour.”
“I thought you said Bayzos was a light-hour away.”
“Dammit, Derek,” Engels said. “This is my business. Trust a professional in her own domain.”
“I do,” he assured her, “but I want to understand. If I’m to command, I need all the info.”
“Only if you want to be overwhelmed with detail.”
“Just humor me.”
Engels let out a long sigh through her nose. “Okay, look. In rough terms, Carson jumps from Bayzos, a light-hour from us, to a position half a light-hour from us. We can’t see her immediately. When we do finally see her—right now, current time—the half hour has passed. In another thirty minutes, we can look at Bayzos and see if Carson transited away from there. We’re waiting to see if the original position was vacated. If not, this is a new, second ship.”
“Got it.”
“In either case, we’re in trouble. She can start firing on us in six hours. Revenge has to get going now to have any chance of making an interception.” Engels hated to accept the situation. She’d hoped they’d somehow be able to avoid destroying the Carson.
“Dammit,” said Straker. “Murdock needs Zaxby and his tech team to help repair the southern sidespace engine. I’ll have to command Revenge myself and hope the Ruxin crew’s Earthan is good enough. Heiser is injured, and I don’t want to leave Aldrik in sole command. He’s a good man, but he’s still pretty green.”
“I’ll take over on the ground,” said Loco. “Just sitting on my ass here anyway.”
“Good idea. Use the Foehammer to get around. Cockpit code is Unmutual123.”
“Woohoo! Back in a ’suit, a real one.”
“Yes, but I doubt you can get the brainlink working. Have fun. Carla, I’ll call you when I get aboard Revenge. Straker out.”
“I’ll get someone to drop me off in the gig,” said Loco as he departed.
Engels waved at him distractedly and chewed her lip, staring at the tactical problem as she lounged at the Liberator’s helm. Assuming that was Carson and not a second ship, Ellen Gray should still be in command. They’d spent some time together on Aynor, back when it had seemed their destiny lay with the Unmutuals. The woman was a by-the-book captain and had seemed to be a decent person. Would that translate into unswerving loyalty to DeChang and his organization, or could she be pried loose by Ramirez’s ugly misdeeds?
Derek would want to make the safe play using the ship’s most effective attack, which likely meant one or two thermonuclear float mines, properly placed. Given the three-body problem of Revenge, frigate, and warhead, she couldn’t blame him. One slight variation that caused a miss and their advantage of surprise would be blown.
Did Carson have underspace detection gear? Engels was betting that even if they had the tech, they didn’t have it active. If they were able to figure out what was attacking them, they might be quickly able to locate Revenge. At that point it could become a slugfest—and Ruxin Archers weren’t sluggers.
That would mean bringing Liberator into play. Doing so would even the odds, but Engels didn’t like even odds. No rational commander did. When she recalled the nineteen crewing her corvette, it strengthened her resolve. She hated to think about killing people she knew aboard Carson, but she’d be a rotten captain if she didn’t do her very best for her own.
Still… was there some way she could make this a win-win? If there was any way to appeal to Captain Gray’s decency… Her mind chewed on the problem until Straker called her.
“Straker to Engels. I’m aboard Revenge now.”
“Enjoying the water?”
“Not one bit. We need to plan our attack, and, as you said, you’re the pro. How do I do this?”
“Synchronize our displays on a tight beam. I have tactical up.”
“How do I do that?”
Engels hissed in exasperation. “Just tell someone to do it. Stop thinking like a mechsuiter and be the captain. Delegate.”
“Right. Somebody synchronize our main display with Liberator’s, tight beam.” A pause. “There we go. Okay, I see Carson, Freiheit Station, Revenge, you, and the star.”
“Those are the only things that matter to us right now. You see Freiheit’s outward spiral course projection?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s Carson’s optimum course inbound, which she’s already taking.”
“I see it.”
“Here’s your interception course. It meets Carson shortly before she’s likely to start firing, assuming she doesn’t deviate. The problem is, if you go into underspace for six hours, you won’t be able to see anything. One slight alteration in vector and you’ll miss by kilometers. Thousands of kilometers, actually.”
“So we pop up and adjust.”
“You risk being seen.”
“What are the odds of that if they have no underspace detection gear?”
“Wait one second...” Engels ran a couple of tests. “Higher than you might think. That’s because your best approach is head-on to their course, and they’ll be sweeping with active sensors.”
“What if we come in from the side?”
“The chances of detection are a lot lower, but she’s moving fast. A side intercept will be very tricky.”
“Can we slip in behind her and overtake? When do you think she’ll decelerate?”
“Not until an hour out. The question isn’t whether you can destroy her. It’s whether you can do it before she bombards Freiheit’s sidespace engines to scrap.”
Straker’s voice gained a note of irritation. “This would be a lot easier if Freiheit could make any kind of evasive maneuver.”
Incredulous, Engels answered, “Do you have any idea how big and underpowered that rock is?”
“I know. I was hoping one of us would come up with some clever trick to improve our odds.”
“There’s one possibility that has nothing to do with tactics.”
“Go on.”
“We get Carson to defect. I’m acquainted with Captain Gray. She might do it.”
Straker stayed silent for a moment. “Carla, are you getting cold feet? Because that’s a long shot. Two thousand people aboard Freiheit Station are depending on us for their freedom, maybe their lives. If we can’t get out of this star system…”
“Then it’s a stalemate, Derek, or maybe we’re actually ahead. Think about it.”
“Hmm... maybe you’re right!”
“Of course, I’m right. Are you foot-dragging because I caught on to something before you?” she demanded.
“Come on, Carla, it’s not like that.”
“I know you believe that as the commander you should think of everything,” she complained, “but you can’t do it all. It’s easy math—if we lose the sidespace engines but neutralize Carson, we still hold the balance of military power in this system. They won’t be able to recapture Freiheit, and unless they get reinforcements, we can attack Aynor any time. They’d have to evacuate or capitulate. That will buy us time.”
“Time to do what?”
“Find some new sidespace engines, maybe from the Ruxins? I don’t know. I’m simply saying it’s not an absolute catastrophe if we can’t fly this rock out of here on time.”
“Good point,” he said. “But I have to plan for the worst case. So how do we make the best, highest-probability attack on Carson?”
Engels studied her display for a moment. “There’s one asteroid n
ear Carson’s course. I’ve designated it M100. It won’t be making any maneuvers. If you pop up behind it relative to Carson, they’re not likely to spot you. You should be able to peek out and update your navcomp readings. The key is not to spook them. You’re blind when you’re under, so you’re operating entirely on predictive analysis at that point.”
“I know that. So, once we’ve updated, I’ll go under and move directly into their path, and drop float mines just before they arrive, timed to explode in their face. Afterward, I hightail it.”
Engels sighed. “Yes. It’s the only way to be sure.”
“I’m sorry I might be killing a friend of yours.”
“Not a friend, exactly. A fellow ship captain. Someone just doing her job, following orders.”
“That’s no defense,” Straker said. “Not if someone knows their leaders are committing atrocities.”
“Easy to say now, Derek, in your black-and-white world. What would you have done back before all this happened, if you knew the Hundred Worlds had massacred civilians? Would you have defected to the Hok? Or would you have made your protests but stayed loyal? How many atrocities would it have taken before you gave up hoping your own chain of command would clean house?”
That brought more silence from Straker. “Okay, I get it,” he said at last. “But that doesn’t change anything right here, right now. Being a commander means making the hard calls. The chrono’s rolling and I have to destroy the biggest threat to our people. Feel free to talk to Captain Gray, but don’t do anything to warn her about my attack.”
“Understood. Derek…?”
“Yes?” he asked, detecting a different note in her voice.
Engels swallowed. “Good luck and good hunting.”
“You too.”
As soon as Straker took Revenge into underspace to head out to M100, Engels glanced over at Chief Gurung, who stood at the door to the bridge, his usual position. He seemed to consider it the optimal spot on the small ship to watch both the goings-on of his officers on the bridge and the crew in the cramped spaces behind him, inevitably with a cup of caff in his hand.
“Chief, how’s everyone feeling?” Engels asked.