by Chloe Garner
“I’d love to hear what impolite sounds like,” he said.
“Impolite is what you get when they cut the morphine drip off entirely,” she said.
“You aren’t leaving me with a lot of options here,” he said. The first three or four answers to that were unlikely to accomplish anything, and the ones after that didn’t make any sense. She managed not to say them.
There was a pause and her mind wandered a bit more, then the general started to speak again. It took her a few words to catch up.
“… going to be other people who are willing to do a lot more to try to get information from you. You need to think about how far you’re willing to take this.”
“Sir, I can’t have this conversation right now,” she said. “I’m not tracking, and I’m not going to make any decisions like this.”
“I understand, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’ll have someone waiting for you when you’re discharged. Things could get ugly from here.”
She sighed, rolling her head away.
“I understand, sir.”
Four days later, Jesse and Troy came to get her as she checked out. She had a bunch of creams and physical therapy work she was supposed to follow up with, but she was off the painkillers, other than a couple of tablets every six hours, and she was getting range of motion back through her arms and back again. The surgeon told her there would be scarring, but Jesse’s treatment had probably prevented the worst of it, and they advised she avoid strenuous workouts for another week or so. Her joints were aching from lack of activity, so she had no intention of following that guidance.
The guard came with them to a military vehicle parked outside and Cassie frowned at Troy.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Things got bad while you were gone,” he said. “They didn’t get any better when you got back.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“They asked me what you told me about your jump,” he said. “They asked a lot of people. Someone is awfully interested in what happened while you were gone, and I think it goes above the general’s head.”
“What did you tell them?” Cassie asked. Jesse was listening, but not making a show of it.
“That you told me you couldn’t tell me anything,” he said. ‘That I asked, and you wouldn’t say anything.”
She nodded. The guard opened the door to the back of the car and she slid in, only vaguely noticing the slight tingle in the palms of her hands as they held her weight.
“So what’s happening now?” she asked.
“You’re going back to interrogation,” Troy said. “There are rumors about who’s going to be there, but I don’t trust any of them.”
“This has gone too far,” Jesse said. “I’ll cut off the agreement before I let them try to twist your arm like that.”
“Don’t you dare,” Cassie said. Both of them looked at her. The general, in his gruff way, had come to give her a warning. She had a decision to make. She could choose her silence or her career. It was a game of chicken, and she wasn’t going to be the one to blink. The guard was watching her and she made a dismissive motion with her hand.
“Turn around,” she said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Cassie, this is big,” Troy said.
“And if I ever want to go back to being an analyst, I’ll go along,” she agreed. She shook her head, absently working her thumb over the muscle in the other palm. “I don’t want to go along. They have no cause to arrest me for not talking. All they can do is discharge me, at which point I don’t have the security clearance to jump any more, and Jesse becomes a problem all over again. I don’t know how far they’re willing to take this, but…” she nodded, finding the truth of it was still there as she faced it up close, “I’m not going to go back to being an analyst. This is what I want to do, and they aren’t going to get to hold that over my head.”
“You’re sure?” Jesse asked. “They still need me. I’m not out of cards yet.”
Cassie nodded.
“They called me too old and too out of shape to be a jumper. I gave up on doing this once. I’m not letting them take it again.”
Armed guards met her at the door and walked her into the building, directly up to interrogation.
This time, there was no stalling tactic to prove dominance. A stranger walked into the room just after Cassie sat down and took his chair.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“Good afternoon,” she answered.
“I hope you’re feeling better,” he said.
“Some,” she answered. He nodded.
“The nature of your injuries were intriguing to many of us, as you might imagine,” he said.
“I might,” she said.
“Have anything you would like to share about them?” he asked.
“Not in particular,” she answered. He waited. She blinked.
“You understand why you’re here today?” he asked.
“I didn’t answer any of your questions last time, and then I took off. Now you have twice as many questions and still no answers,” she said.
“You are considered to be one of our top assets, at present,” he said. “Someone with an understanding of human culture and tactical training to understand the relevance of what you’ve seen to us, militarily as well as in other ways.”
“Seems like a reasonable assessment,” she said, looking at the glass behind him.
“Let’s talk about your first jump,” he said. She took a moment, looking him directly in the eyes and feeling strong for the first time since she’d gotten back.
“I understand the context of your next questions,” she said. He didn’t react.
“Please tell me the nature of the civilization you visited.”
“No comment.”
“You were gone for a number of weeks. Did you visit multiple locations, or stay in one?”
“No comment.”
“Lieutenant du Charme, these questions are considered high priority for international security. When I get to the end of the list, I’m instructed to begin again at the beginning. At the end of my shift, there is another person scheduled to take up where I left off. It is my understanding that you will not be allowed out of this room until you have answered each of these questions to the satisfaction of both myself or peer and the individuals who are observing the interviews.”
“It’s going to smell in here by the end,” she said. “When should I expect the reading of the charges?”
“Please explain the nature of the social structure in which you resided,” he said.
“We hold foreign terrestrials like this because they are a threat and because they have no legal rights under our laws,” she said. “Though I understand that won’t last forever. They’re supposed to meet later this year to expand the Geneva conventions at least partially to foreign terrestrials. Has that happened yet?”
“What was the nature of the political structure you observed?”
“At any rate, holding me without charges, as an American citizen, is illegal. I should be allowed council, and I should know what the charges against me are.”
“Please comment on the ecological structure of the planet you visited.”
“No comment.”
There was a loud thump behind the glass and Cassie sat up, her reflection looking back at her as she wondered what was going on in the observation room. The interrogator didn’t miss a beat, asking the next question as if nothing had happened.
The door opened and General Thompson entered, nodding to the interrogator.
“Take a break,” he said. There might have been the slightest twitch of annoyance as the man stood and left, but Cassie was impressed at his control. General Thompson sat down across from her.
“I am giving you a direct order,” he said, looking tired. “You are to sit in that chair until you have answered all of the questions anyone around here can think of to ask you. I am not ordering you to answer the questions. Do
you understand?”
She sighed.
“I do, sir,” she said. “If I get up, I have disobeyed a direct order and you can arrest me and charge me. But you can’t do this for forever. We both know that, sir. They may not,” she said, indicating the glass behind him, “but we do.” She gave him a smile that she was surprised contained actual sympathy. “We’re on a base. And I may not be popular, but I am considered interesting. People are going to start asking questions, and then people are going to start asking interesting questions, and then interesting people are going to start asking interesting questions.” It was like the answer unfolded even as she spoke. “We aren’t in a time of war, haven’t been in years. For all our discipline as a structure, and for all the respect the base has for you, sir, there are enough of them who are going to make things very difficult, first internally, and then externally.”
“Lieutenant,” the general warned. She gave him another smile.
“I’m sorry, sir. We both see it, but you don’t have any more plays. You have three ways out of this. First, I can crack and answer all of your questions, but you oversaw my training yourself. You know that isn’t going to happen. Second, you can create a story where I jumped again and something tragic happened. Or that I died in the hospital from complications. Or something else. You can create a coverup. There will be a lot of tangled loose ends to deal with, and you’ll lose some valuable assets. From the look of things, that’s worth it to whoever is forcing this, but you don’t play that game. It’s would take a lot more players and a lot of work to get a clean coverup. Third, you can charge me.”
She watched his face, seeing the tumblers fall into place as she spoke. He maintained his posture, but his face collapsed as she finished. A door slammed and they both turned to watch the door to the interrogation room. It flew open and a heavy-set man with blotchy red skin charged into the room.
“Treason,” he howled. “I’m charging you with treason.”
“Sir, you shouldn’t be in here,” General Thompson said.
“Either you make her talk, or you get out,” the man said.
“Sir,” Cassie said, “I can’t do that. I signed a contract.”
“Contracts be damned. We support this base and all of your astronomical costs, and I expect you to damned well do what I tell you to.”
“Senator, we wrote that contract. You know she’s right. You charge her with treason, you’ll lose.”
“Gross insubordination,” the man sputtered. “You make her talk. That’s your job. I don’t care how you do it.”
He stormed back out the door and Cassie and General Thompson stared at each other. Finally he nodded and stood.
“You have your orders, Lieutenant.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. He pressed his mouth and nodded, then left.
In the end, the standoff lasted twelve hours. Cassie’s head ached, her body was stiff and sore and she needed to put cream on her skin. She felt dehydrated, but it was better than having sat there with a full bladder all that time.
The interrogators swapped at the eight-hour mark, as promised, and the woman who came next was just as expressionless and dogged as the first man. There were more sounds of violence next door, but they were uninterrupted.
Frustratingly, the questions were interesting. She would have loved to write a report for each of them. Or to have someone to talk to about them. By the end, Cassie wondered what they would do to her if she just laid her head down on the table and went to sleep.
In the end, a woman with a clip board came in and the interrogator rose to speak with her quietly for a moment, then turned to face Cassie.
“You’re free to go,” she said.
“The general reversed his order?” Cassie asked, wary of a trap.
“The general’s orders are no longer relevant. He has been relieved of duty.”
The woman stood and watched Cassie as she stood and, feeling queasy, left. She wondered if she’d blown it out of proportion. It was just a bunch of stories. Her stories, at that. Jesse didn’t own her stories.
But she knew better. If she caved once, they’d keep coming at her, every jump, digging for information. And they would find out things he was right to want to keep away from them. Not about the Kenzi, probably, but about the Gana, certainly. About warfare and weapons and technology that could only be used against someone, some day. They weren’t ahead of the universe, like they thought, trying to get an edge against brutish invaders who would come by the sky. She wasn’t ready to make the decision on what they should and shouldn’t find out.
She called Troy without looking at the time. He answered on the first ring.
“Cass,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“They just let me out,” she said. “Will you come get me?”
“I’m here,” he said. “Where are you?”
She pulled the phone away from her ear to check the time.
“Troy, it’s the middle of the night.”
“Where are you?” he asked again.
“Just out of the interrogation hall. Heading toward the parking lot.”
“I’ll find you,” he said. She hung up, feeling odd.
He caught up to her just inside the building.
“Where’s Jesse?” she asked. He shook his head.
“He was a lightning rod,” he said. “I told him to go home at the end of the day, so they couldn’t change their minds and disappear him.”
Cassie was stunned.
“You think that was possible?”
“Someone took your clothes and samples of the stuff you had on your arms when you came back. We’ve been analyzing them since then. Eight o’clock tonight, someone I’ve never seen before came in with an order from a general I’ve never heard of before and took it all. Took a bunch of other stuff, too.”
“You get robbed?” she asked. He shook his head.
“I verified it up as high as I could. It’s real. General Thompson is gone. We’ve got a new general, some guy they brought in. Internet says he retired from the navy six years ago, but he’s still got an active rank. Never retired. The staff is going nuts trying to guess where he’s been all that time.”
“So where did they take your stuff?” Cassie asked, feeling strangely protective of the clues she had mistakenly brought back with her.
“Off base,” he said. “That’s all I know. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the only genetics lab with the tech to analyze DNA from other planets - you know that stuff was organic? - so I have no idea what they think they’re going to do that I couldn’t, but there are some private labs that can do most of the rest of the analysis.”
“Senator Crisp was here,” Cassie said. Troy cursed under his breath.
“Bastard tries to cut my budget every year. Not like the fact that we’re self-funding as a base ever gets in the way of a good sound byte about my lab’s spending.”
“Troy, what’s going on?”
“Hell if I know,” he said, unlocking the car.
“Why did they let me go?”
“You didn’t tell them anything?”
“No.”
“My guess, they blinked. You bring stuff back with you every trip, and you keep Jesse under control. They weren’t willing to throw it away just yet. But you need to be careful.”
“I need sleep,” she said. He nodded.
“Yeah. Let’s get you home. We’ll see what’s happened in the morning.”
She slept hard with mixed, muzzy dreams that bothered her when she woke up, even though she couldn’t remember them any more. Troy was sitting at his computer with a mug of something hot sitting next to him.
“I think I’m going to take today off,” she mumbled, pulling the blankets into a ball against her chest.
“Good thinking,” he said. “It’s Saturday.”
He stood and poured her a cup of coffee and brought it to her in bed.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like someone stripped all of my skin off
and then wouldn’t let me sleep for three days,” she said. Again, she marveled at how much she missed coffee.
“Where’s your stuff from the hospital?” he asked, getting up. She’d thought about doing something about it the night before, but she’d been too exhausted and just gone straight to sleep. Now, she took her bag from Troy and fished out the bottle of pills in the bottom, then sat up and swallowed them before she went back in after the skin cream.
“Do you want help?” Troy asked, watching. She shook her head. She could reach most everything on her own, and the rest of it would have required taking her shirt off. The salve left her skin cold and tingly; less irritated, but yet she was still more aware of it.
“He took good care of you?” Troy asked. She nodded.
“He did.”
“And it wasn’t his fault?”
She put away the can of white paste and leaned back on her hands.
“Do you want me to tell you what happened?”
He scratched his head and got up.
“No. You shouldn’t. Who knows what they’re going to do to try to wring information out of you, after this.”
“After what, exactly?” Cassie asked.
“Thompson is gone,” Troy said. “So is half his staff. They pulled in outsiders to fill the roles. Donovan isn’t the only ghost to turn up.”
“Ghost? You think they’re…”
“No one knows what they are. They’re all out on private media trying to figure out if anyone knows anything, and the rumors are turning… just stupid, Cass. Half the base is sure that Thompson is going to face a firing squad for something he was doing behind everyone’s backs. There are a few dozen of us who are certain it has to do with you, but we’re not really talking, right now. Let the rumor mill feed itself for a while. The people who need to know do.”
Cassie looked at the coffee pot again. It was half empty.
“How long have you been up?” she asked.
“I never went to bed,” he said. She started to argue, then realized she’d just thrown herself into his bed and fallen asleep. She hadn’t even noticed.