by Nic Plume
"I think," Salayla put in, smoothly cutting the sudden tension, "Tonee is using an expression he’s heard a few times himself." She eyed him.
Tonee chuckled. "Once or twice."
Kaydeen shook her head as Leer settled down. Leave it to Tonee to not miss an opportunity to rile an easy target.
"How will we find out the magistrate’s decision?" She brought the discussion back to their immediate problem. "I assume we won’t be able to enter the building without an ID scan." She looked at Mica.
"Don’t have to," he replied. "We can watch the hearing from here."
"Watch it from here?"
"Yes." Mica elaborated, "Since the magistrates are part of the public domain, the hearings are. too."
"And that helps us, how?"Tonee asked.
"Because anything in the public domain is accessible over the Net," Leer clarified.
"So, we can access it with your comms?"
"Yes," Leer dragged the word out, "that’s what that means."
Tonee looked at him for a moment before breaking into a grin. "Good one," he conceded with a nod.
Leer grinned in return and pulled out his comm. Nitus and Mica did the same.
Mica’s was the largest at twice the size of Nitus’. Its edges slid out to increase the screen another fifty percent and allow for comfortable two-handed use of the screen’s virtual keyboard. Leer’s was half the size of Nitus’, fitting comfortably into the palm of his hand, but could unfold twice to increase its screen to the size of Mica’s collapsed comm. Both Leer’s and Nitus’ comms had holographic keyboards that needed a flat surface to be used. In the team’s world, the gadgets would have been called datapads, but whenever the teammates had used the word, the boys had given them blank stares—that word wasn’t in their vocabulary.
Kaydeen watched over Nitus’ shoulder as he brought up the magistrate’s office on the public Net, then narrowed it to the Mannahe region, and finally to Tuscoony where Taylor was arrested. A few taps later, he had the list of upcoming hearings. Taylor’s had begun a few minutes ago. The screen quartered, showing an overlapping view of the room as seen from its four corners. It looked square with a door in the center of each wall and two rows of benches, separated by walkways, surrounding an open space with a large desk. A uniformed man sat behind the desk looking at Taylor standing in front of it. The two LEOs who had arrested him sat on the bench behind Taylor. Otherwise, the room was empty.
"…have planned to do with the blade?" the magistrate was asking as the sound cut in.
Taylor shrugged, his eyes flicking to one of the cameras.
Kaydeen did a double take. "Can you zoom in?" she asked Nitus as she squinted for a better look.
"No," Nitus shook his head. "Sorry."
"His left cheek looks bruised." Salayla squinted at Leer’s comm.
"You see it, too?" Kaydeen looked at Mica’s datapad, where Tonee was watching. His larger screen gave a better view. "Yup, that’s a contusion."
"You think he mouthed off?" Tonee asked.
"Taylor?" Salayla frowned at him.
"No way." Kaydeen replied at the same time.
"Did he look at us?" Mica asked. "I mean, I know he looked at the camera, but it seemed like he knew we’re watching."
"How would he know we’re watching?" Leer scrunched up his face.
"There, he did it again," Nitus agreed. "I think Mica is right."
"Do you know how stupid that sounds?" Leer shook his head. "They aren’t going to let him see the login screen."
Kaydeen looked up in alarm, as did Tonee and Salayla.
"Login screen?" She looked at Nitus. "They can tell who’s watching?"
"Well, yeah," Nitus knitted his brows, "but not by looking at the cameras. They don’t have screens to display that."
"But the system tracks who’s watching," Tonee clarified.
"Well, yeah," Leer mocked. "Public domain, remember?"
Tonee ignored Leer’s derisive tone. "Can they see us and where we are?"
Mica’s face brightened in understanding. "No," he shook his head, "and yes." He raised his hands at Tonee’s exasperated huff. "No, they cannot see where we are by looking at the room’s logins," he explained. "For that, they have to actually ping our location." He shook his head again. "And they can’t access our comms’ cameras without our approval. So, they can’t see who’s watching."
"If they attempted to, you would get a pop-up requesting permission?" Salayla clarified.
"Yes."
"But that could be bypassed?"
Mica shrugged. "Anything is hackable."
"Yes, sir." Taylor’s sharp reply drew their attention back to the screens.
The magistrate had been reprimanding him to pay attention, meet his gaze, and give audible answers. But the magistrate’s next words caught everybody off guard.
"No wonder your dad lost his temper." He raised his hand to forestall any argument Taylor might offer. "I don’t want to hear the ‘he’s my guardian not my dad’ BS, you seem to have successfully fed him. You might not be blood, but he took care of you, kept you safe, and he continues to sacrifice his time for you. He got you where you are today. In my book, that makes him your dad, and you owe him respect for that." He paused. "Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir." Taylor stood frozen at attention, his face a mask, not betraying an inkling of his thoughts about the magistrate’s words.
Kaydeen knew his posture well. She’d seen it—or whatever variation was called for at the time—often during training. Standing at full attention in the heat, carrying a rifle over your head while running in gale force strong winds, or holding the push-up ready position in bicep-deep surf. They had done it all, and Taylor had always been the one to last the longest, without fail, and without showing one emotion. He could shut out the world and keep going through sheer force of will.
The magistrate stood and walked around his desk, studying Taylor with narrowed eyes. Taylor’s eyes followed him, to hold the magistrate’s gaze as he had been ordered to.
"Shit." Tonee’s exclamation startled her.
She scanned the windows, then the door, before looking at him. His eyes were on Mica’s datapad, tied to the events playing out only a few klicks away but so untouchable they could be happening in another star system. Tonee looked as helpless as she felt.
"You’ve been to a military school?" The magistrate turned the statement into a question only at the last syllable.
Taylor’s posture tightened, the only visible sign of his reaction. Easily overlooked unless you knew him well enough to recognize the telltale signs, or you were watching him closely from a few steps away. The magistrate raised a finger as if to forestall an answer.
"No, you wouldn’t have." He answered his own question. "At least not in the last two years, and before that you would have been too young." He abruptly walked back around his desk and sat. "I’m going to defer my judgment." He moved his hands as if accessing a desktop terminal, but none of the cameras were angled to pick up the screen sunk into the desk’s surface. "You will report back to me in two weeks." He paused. "No, let’s make it one month. That gives you enough time to show a change in your behavior." His eyes flicked to the LEOs in the background before returning to Taylor. "Be forewarned, your warrant will stay active. I will make sure of that. I want to see you back here after all this is over and hear the rest of your story."
He held Taylor’s gaze a moment longer before dismissing him with a wave of his hand. Taylor turned and followed the LEOs out of the room. The magistrate continued to watch him with the same studious pinched gaze. A few moments after the door closed, his eyes flicked to the cameras, then back to the door, and then finally to his terminal. He leaned forward and punched commands.
"Shut it down." Salayla ordered. "Shut down the connection."
The boys looked at her but did as she instructed. An alert sounded on Mica’s datapad. A moment later, Nitus’ comm went off.
"How do you shut down the tracking?" To
nee asked. "Will powering them down work, or are they pingable while off?"
"Theirs are," Leer said. "Mine’s not."
"Destroy them."
"Why?"
"Because the magistrate wants to know who is watching," Kaydeen explained.
Tonee nodded. "And if we don’t answer, we’ll have LEOs breathing down our neck."
"Wouldn’t destroying the comms be more suspicious and send them out faster?" Nitus asked.
"Can they differentiate between the comm losing the signal and being destroyed?"
"Okay," Tonee conceded at Nitus’ nodded shrug. "What do you suggest we do, then?"
"I could answer it," Mica suggested. "They already know me, anyway."
"The moment you answer, he’ll know where you are," Leer said.
"Yeah, but he probably knows that already." Mica shrugged. "And why would I want to hide where I am, anyway? I mean, I simply want to know what’s going on with my friend." He grinned.
Kaydeen, Tonee, and Salayla looked at each other. None of them liked it, but it was the best option they had.
"Okay." Salayla nodded. "Verify that no one else is in camera view before you answer, give as little information as possible, and remember that he will be able to see you looking at us."
Tonee leaned forward. "So, don’t."
Mica nodded, drew a deep breath, and tapped his datapad.
The conversation was short and seemed innocent. The magistrate verified that Mica was all right, asked if he was waiting on his friend, and then elicited the promise that they would get home as quickly as possible, but it left a bad feeling in the bottom of Kaydeen’s gut. She wasn’t the only one.
Mica stared at the datapad, frozen in place. Seconds ticked by. Kaydeen slid forward, unsure if the comm was truly disconnected. The screen was blank. Tonee nudged it from behind, almost flipping it out of Mica’s hand, and breaking the spell on him. He looked up with a start.
“You okay, bud?” Tonee studied him.
“Yeah.” Mica nodded quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just—” He glanced at Leer and Nitus.
“You’ve never lied to an officer before, have you?” Tonee smirked.
Mica shook his head.
“Don’t worry.” Tonee grinned. “It don’t get easier. You just get better at hiding it.”
"I think," Salayla pulled the datapad out of Mica’s shaking hand, "we’re going to leave these here."
She motioned for Nitus and Leer to hand over their comms. Nitus did so, but Leer shook his head.
"They can’t track mine."
"Hand it over anyway."
"But —"
"As Mica said, anything is hackable." She grabbed it out of his hand.
They buried them under a pile of junk in the corner and then went to the edge of the tree line to await Taylor’s arrival.
He appeared a short time later, jogging across a fallow field and surreptitiously scanning his surroundings. Considering how quickly he appeared, he must have been running the whole way.
"You okay?" Kaydeen asked as they stepped out of the tree line to meet him.
"Yes," Taylor nodded as he slowed to a walk. He wasn’t even out of breath. "Let’s keep moving." He motioned in the direction of Mannahe.
"What happened?" Kaydeen indicated the welt on his cheek as she fell in beside him.
Taylor touched his cheek, his eyes losing focus. "A small altercation."
"With your dad?" Tonee asked, pulling his eyebrows up as he elongated the last word.
"You watched the hearing.” Taylor looked around again. He didn’t seem surprised to hear they’d accessed the cameras in the hearing room.
They crossed through the overgrown border of a manmade water channel to walk out of sight in the dry depression. It wouldn’t prevent scanning equipment using different wavelengths from detecting them, but it would make it harder for somebody using only the visual band. Plus, it gave them a sense of security, albeit a false one.
"So?" Tonee brought Taylor’s attention back to the subject. "Who is dad?"
Taylor stared into the distance with a frown. He scanned their surroundings one more time, breathed as if steeling himself, and then stopped to look at his friends.
"Juvak."
Juvak? Kaydeen looked at him in surprise. The opportunistic merc who preferred to make some quick cash over following orders? He’d been the last person she expected. From what Mica had told them, the merc’s greed had probably saved their lives, but that had been a lucky chance for them, not an intentional result on his part. Or had it?
"At least, that’s what my local ID says."
Taylor met her gaze, then Tonee’s and Salayla’s, whose minds were working, like hers—probably with a similar thought pattern.
Leer was also staring at him, but with narrowed eyes, more suspicious than surprised.
"Who is Juvak?" Nitus asked into the silence.
Innocent curiosity. That was closer to what Kaydeen would’ve expected from the teens. Or Mica’s intense scrutiny as he noted the teammates reaction to the name. Leer’s reaction didn’t fit.
And, it disappeared the moment the teen noticed her attention. He looked at her, not embarrassed or defiant, but self-assured and assertive. It was a glimpse of the man the boisterous youth would become—and the man was far more guarded.
Taylor watched her interaction with Leer and then turned to Nitus. "That’s a question I’d like to have answered, too." He looked around again, then indicated a depression in the water channel up ahead with the top of a culvert visible to its right. "Let’s find some cover, and I’ll fill you in."
The depression turned out to be a small basin where three water channels combined to drain into the culvert. A small stream of water coming from the channel to their left ran down its center into the culvert. Otherwise, it was dry. Tonee led the way and jumped the one-meter height difference into the basin to approach the pipe. It was slightly shorter than he, but wide enough to accommodate three people side-by-side—if the person in the center didn’t mind wet feet. The pipe’s surface was smooth, grayish-white, and unmarred, probably some kind of alloy or composite material to stand up to the water and debris.
Tonee ducked into the pipe and, after a short pause, proceeded into its shadows. Kaydeen waited for the others to precede her and then followed. Once her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, she saw Tonee had stopped a few meters in and was using a foot to prop himself against the tunnel’s arching sidewall. He was looking expectantly at Taylor, who crouched partially up the opposite arch, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands folded one over the other with his chin resting on his outstretched thumbs. Taylor, in turn, was studying the boys as if evaluating their presence. When Kaydeen joined them, he met and held her gaze for a moment and then proceeded to tell them about Juvak visiting him in the mine. He didn’t get very far when Tonee interrupted him.
"They fricking drugged you?"
Taylor shrugged. "Guess it was their pleasure of the week."
His answer sounded nonchalant. His expression and body language told a different story, and Tonee realized it. The rage bubbling into his eyes didn’t burst forth. Instead, Tonee’s gaze locked down, his attention as much internal as external.
Kaydeen had seen that expression before during ‘team bonding sessions’ when they had to reveal their most painful experiences. While his teammates had been allowed to choose their subjects, Tonee hadn’t been so lucky. With his whole life on record in Intergal files, the trainers had picked his subjects for him: feeling the bodies of his grandparents grow cold and stiff around him as rescuers dug them out of the rubble of their collapsed house when he was nine, and getting notified on his twelfth birthday that his parents had been killed in the line of duty, his mother during a mission and his father while returning to their home station with her body. That same rage of helplessness had surfaced during those retellings and been as quickly compartmentalized, although for a different reason. Back then, to protect himself, this time,
to protect his friend.
Taylor met Kaydeen’s gaze again and then told them how Juvak had emptied his stomach and forced the antidote down his throat.
Juvak’s actions had probably saved Taylor’s life, but that didn’t excuse him for putting them into that hole in the first place. She reprimanded herself. Juvak didn’t have to save Taylor, so he deserved her gratitude. She merely needed to decide if she would thank him before or after she killed him.
As Taylor continued and it became clear that his withdrawal had been a choice, not a psychological impairment, Tonee’s jaw tightened.
Taylor paused and looked at him, clearly not surprised by his reaction. Neither was Kaydeen. Tonee motioned for Taylor to continue.
Taylor met her gaze a third time and then relayed what happened at the magistrate’s.
All in all, they ended up with more questions than answers. Not good in the chaos of war. It added another complication to an already overcrowded set of headaches. She had thought Juvak out of the picture. But now he was not only back, but with the capacity to affect an unknown number of possibly random factors. Random, at least, until they could make sense of his actions, motives, and intentions.
Tonee was quiet for long moments, anger and pain vying for control of his face as he processed what Taylor had told them. Kaydeen knew he had agonized over Taylor’s behavior during the last weeks of their captivity. He hadn’t admitted it, though, and had tried to hide his downtrodden and depressive lapses into despair. Kaydeen and Salayla had seen through it, of course, but they hadn’t pressed him—humans could be funny when put on the spot like that—instead, they’d used their nightly sleeping arrangements to Share the burden and help balance individual low points. Tonee hadn’t been the only one to benefit from those Readings.
"Why did you leave us in the dark?" Tonee’s voice held more pain than anger when he finally spoke.
"You wouldn’t have believed me." Taylor replied with a minute shake to his head. "Not without a—"
He didn’t look at the three boys as he left the last word hanging but his intent was clear. While he was willing to divulge what happened between him and Juvak, he wasn’t so willing to reveal the presence of Din.