by Chloe Garner
“But you have a commission,” Gary said. Troy nodded.
“Apparently she does, too,” he said.
“In your opinion, has she taken that commission seriously enough?”
“I think that she’s in a situation unlike…”
“Just yes or no, please,” Gary said.
“I think she takes it very seriously,” Troy said after a pause.
“So if you were the Jalnian’s CO, you would have acted in the same fashion she has?”
“You ever have two COs who operated the same way?” Troy asked.
“Yes or no, please,” Gary said, glancing at the judge.
“No, I wouldn’t have done things exactly how she did,” Troy said.
“How would you have behaved differently?”
“I don’t know,” Troy said. “There’s a reason he picked her.”
“Mmm,” Gary said. “We’ll come back to that. You’ve held your commission for… six years, now? Your budget has grown every year, as has your staff.”
“Yes,” Troy said.
“And you expect me to believe that you haven’t thought at all about what you would have done differently, if it were yours to do?”
“You always compare your management style to the people around you,” Troy said.
“And what would you have done differently?”
Troy shrugged.
“I would have wanted to know what Jesse was doing for the other labs,” he said.
“Did the Lieutenant ever express any interest in the foreign terrestrial’s assignments?” Gary asked. Troy hesitated.
“Not to me,” he finally said. “I don’t know what she may have asked him.”
Grace made a note. Cassie didn’t look over.
“What else would you have done differently?” Gary asked. Troy spread his hands.
“All due respect, sir, that’s an absurd question. I would have done everything differently, because I’m me and she’s her. I would have brought people from the lab to lunch. I would have tried to integrate him into a team. I probably would have left him staying on base, with as often as he’s disappeared. I probably wouldn’t have signed the contract that Cassie did.”
“Other than signing the contract, it sounds like everything you would have done would have been designed to foster social engagement and improve the Jalnian’s chances of wanting to stay voluntarily, as well as improving oversight over his activities, in the event that his voluntary residence was not to be.”
“Those are examples,” Troy said.
“It sounds like you’re a very good CO,” Gary answered. “Do your subordinates like working for you?”
“I like to think so,” Troy said. “But working in the lab on cutting-edge science helps a lot.”
“I’m sure,” Gary said. “But all of the officers on the panel have held a commission. I’m sure they can hear in your description the signs of a good CO. Disciplined, but inclusive. Did you see any signs that Lieutenant du Charme attempted at all to improve the Jalnian’s performance or behavior?”
“It isn’t that simple,” Troy said after a long pause.
“I think it is,” Gary said. “Can I take that to mean no?”
“He isn’t human,” Troy said. “And he picked her for a reason. It’s entirely possible that…”
“You’ve said that a couple of times,” Gary interrupted. “Have you ever considered that maybe the Jalnian picked her because she wouldn’t interfere with him?”
Jesse snorted.
“If you think she isn’t going to interfere, you don’t know Cassie.”
“You said yourself, at least, you didn’t contradict, that she hasn’t done anything to improve his work performance or his attitudes and behaviors toward superior officers,” Gary said.
“She caught him in the first place,” Troy said. Gary nodded.
“No one is here contradicting her track record as an analyst. The problem is with her behavior as a commanding officer.”
“You’re judging her by the results,” Troy argued.
“Hardly,” Gary said. “You can’t offer any examples of her attempts to change his behavior.”
There was a pause, then Gary put his notes back down on the table.
“Can you?”
Troy took a moment, then folded his hands across his knee. Cassie knew that look.
“I don’t think I need to,” he finally said. “I never saw or heard about him doing anything illegal, nor any level of insubordination beyond what I would consider completely acceptable for a brilliant scientist.”
Gary stood to face him and nodded.
“Fortunately for all of us, that isn’t your decision to make. Are you sure that you have an unbiased opinion?”
“I gave my oath,” Troy said.
“So the fact that the defendant routinely stays at your apartment when she is on Earth has nothing to do with it?”
“I opened by saying that we were friends,” Troy said. “If you want to say that that friendship makes me see things in a favorable light, I wouldn’t say that you were completely wrong. But you asked my opinion.”
“And you see no reason that your sexual relationship with the Lieutenant would be a relevant portion of that bias?”
“If anything, it makes me less likely to show favoritism,” Troy said. “She rejected me from the beginning. She’s not that kind of girl.”
“Are you denying that she stays with you?”
“No.”
“And you expect the court to believe that the relationship is entirely platonic? That despite the common knowledge to the contrary, that you are… friends?”
Cassie gritted her teeth, feeling her blood pressure spike.
“I gave my oath,” Troy said again.
“You live in a world of carefully-shaded truths, Captain.”
“Sounds more like your world than mine,” Troy said. “I live in a world of science. Fact is fact, sir. Common knowledge be damned.”
Cassie had to fight sitting up straighter.
“You could see how we would be skeptical, though, given that you’re trying to protect your friend,” Gary said.
“Is this really relevant?” Grace asked, standing.
“I’m sorry you didn’t like the answer you got,” the judge said. “Move on.”
“I can provide evidence, sir,” Gary said. “We have witnesses.”
Grace sighed.
“So?”
The judge waved at both of them, and Grace stepped away. Cassie looked over at the panel. Two of them were watching her, a couple were looking at Troy, and the rest were watching the exchange between the judge and the lawyers with end-of-day levels of strained interest. She wondered what they thought of her.
She missed just being one of the agents. Just another jumper.
For a moment, she was angry with the general. General Thompson had considered it to be part of his job to keep his staff and the officers and soldiers who reported up through them under the radar, so long as they were doing their jobs, and doing them well. He had tried, hadn’t he, to shield her from the avalanche of pressure that had come down when Jesse had first shown an interest in a working relationship with the base?
Donovan was trying to lever her into doing something that she thought was not only wrong, but dangerous. General Thompson had probably lost his commission over it. She put her hands under the table so that the panel couldn’t see her fingers clench.
Were they really threatening to discharge her?
Was that really on the table here?
Or were they just hoping to scare her into doing what they wanted?
Not a chance.
She glanced at Troy, seeing a quiet reflection of her own anger there.
Not a chance in hell.
Grace and Gary returned to their seats and Grace sat down with an air of satisfaction.
“Do you have any further questions for this witness?” the judge asked.
“No, sir,” Gary said.
“Can you get through your questions this afternoon?” the judge asked Grace.
“I think so,” she said, standing.
The courtroom shifted as Grace organized her notes and glanced at Gary.
“I’d like to go back to something you said earlier,” she said, turning to Troy. Troy sat straighter.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You said that you would have asked Jesse about his work assignments in the labs on base,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Troy said, glancing at Gary, then looking back at Grace.
“Tell me a little about the lab that you run,” she said. He hesitated.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Gary said.
“I’m just looking for a description of the nature or the type of work that Captain Rutger and his staff do,” Grace said. “I’m not looking to go down an entire line of questions that have absolutely nothing to do with the work that Jesse was doing and that Lieutenant du Charme was, by extension, supervising.” Grace turned and stared at Gary, who made a tiny snorting noise.
“The nature and type of work that the captain does is clearly confidential,” he said. Grace turned again.
“I’m not looking for anything resembling that kind of detail. I just want to get a feel for what his work is.”
“Go ahead,” the judge said to Troy.
“I do advanced analysis of foreign terrestrial technology and environments, including genetics,” Troy said.
“How many people work for you?”
“Twelve full-time, two technicians,” Troy said.
“And what kind of contract do you expect your staff to sign before they begin work?”
Troy shrugged.
“It’s a pretty standard confidentiality and non-compete contract,” he said.
“Would you consider it appropriate for your staff to talk about specific details of work to, say, a parent?”
Troy’s nose wrinkled.
“Of course not,” he said. “We all have to explain what we do to family and friends in some way or another, but it’s absolutely not appropriate for them to discuss any specific work.”
“Would you say that Lieutenant du Charme’s quasi-custodial relationship with Jesse is dissimilar to a parental relationship?”
Troy thought about it for a moment, then snorted.
“Only if you promised never to tell Jesse,” he said. “Sure.”
“So it would be inappropriate for Jesse to discuss details of his work for you with the Lieutenant.”
Troy paused, then nodded.
“That’s probably accurate. Yeah.”
“And yet you would have asked him about it,” Grace pressed. Troy thought about it, then nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why is that?”
There was a twinkling of the merriment that had characterized Troy the entire time Cassie had known him.
“Scientific curiosity,” he said.
“But you would say that in refraining from asking Jesse about his work,” Grace said, holding up a hand behind her, “if indeed that’s what she did, Lieutenant du Charme may have been honoring the confidentiality of the work that was assigned to him?”
Troy paused and looked at Cassie.
“Agents are trained to have extreme respect for knowledge boundaries,” he said. “Even as an analyst, Cassie has stayed inside the parameters of the field of research she was assigned. I don’t know how she does it, and…” He looked back at Grace. “I don’t think she is actively restraining herself at all, but she has the most profound instinct and respect for the spirit and the theory of knowledge containment that I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Grace said, turning and walking across the floor to put her notes back on the desk. She slowly spun to face him again. “I have one more question.”
Troy straightened again.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Would you go with Jesse? If you could?”
The response was immediate.
“In a heartbeat.”
Grace nodded.
“Thank you, Captain. That’s all.”
Cassie felt a bit bemused as Troy stood and saluted the officers on the panel, then left. Grace had asked interesting questions, ones that had made Cassie look good, she thought, but she hadn’t gone after hardly any of the story that Gary had built. Cassie was still the distant, un-controlling supervisor who might have been having an inappropriate intimate relationship with one or both of Troy and Jesse. Troy made quick eye contact with her as he went by; there was something there, but it was still too elusive. She didn’t know what he was trying to tell her.
There was a paper-shuffling noise, and the judge stood up.
“We’ll start again in the morning, then.”
The next morning, Cassie sat in the dreary hallway outside the courtroom from before dawn until lunch. Someone brought her a tray with a selection of cream-colored mushy foods of vague provenance, and she picked at it, watching the door to the judge’s office down the hallway.
Twice, lawyers associated with her trial had gone through it, one a small-figured woman called Trina left and returned on a bathroom run, and the other Gary, accepting a package from a messenger.
Cauliflower. That bit was cauliflower.
Occasionally, Cassie could hear raised voices.
She handed the tray to the guard who sat with her so he could walk down the hallway and throw it out.
She tried not to fidget.
Various spots in her stomach itched, and any more she couldn’t be sure what was in her head and what was real. It made sitting still torturous, but she had years of discipline, there, to draw on.
She sat.
Finally, the door to the judge’s office opened and Grace, Gary, Trina, and the last lawyer, Elaine, emerged, walking in front of the judge down the hallway. Grace paused while the prosecution and the judge went into the courtroom behind her. She was positively vibrating.
“I will not let this stick,” she said, her throat tight.
“What’s going on?” Cassie asked.
“Just don’t react,” Grace said. “We need to talk, but we don’t have time, now.”
Cassie frowned at her, but Grace motioned that she should follow, and they went into the courtroom.
They sat and Gary stood.
“Prosecution calls Lieutenant Stanislav Peterson,” he said. Cassie frowned to herself, trying to keep the expression from reaching her eyes. What did Slav have to do with this?
Slav was a year older than her, a retired Jumper who worked in the analysts’ pit. He was smart and arrogant, and she didn’t think she’d ever had a civil conversation with him, though he was generally considered popular among both the jumpers and the analysts. He and Troy were great friends.
The tall officer entered - Cassie wondered where he’d been hiding in the hallway in order to make his grand entrance a surprise - and cast her a dismissive glance as he walked past, taking his seat next to the judge’s desk. They swore him in, and he folded his hands in his lap.
“Lieutenant Peterson, please explain the nature of your work with the portal program for the court,” Gary said, taking a step back. Slav’s elegant head turned to look at Cassie again, then he drew a breath and sighed, turning back to the jury of officers.
“I’ve had a similar career to Lieutenant du Charme,” he said. “I graduated a year ahead of her and joined the Jumpers. I made it another year after she aged out, then joined the analysts.”
“And what do analysts do?” Gary asked. The corner of Slav’s mouth turned up, a bit of a sneer.
“Anything we need to, to answer a question,” he said.
“Have you ever known Lieutenant du Charme to break rules as an analyst to answer a question?” Gary asked. Slav narrowed his eyes. Cassie had heard a rumor once that he was the illegitimate child of a Russian nationalist and an American diplomat. He had great bone structure, but even his bones seemed to know about it.
&nbs
p; “We all bend them to get at what we need,” Slav said. “With her level of success, there’s no way she does it without breaking a few.”
“Speculation,” Grace said without looking up from her notes.
“The question was have you ever known her to break rules,” the judge said. Cassie glowered at Slav. His eyes were impassive as he shrugged.
“She’s never told me about it,” he said.
“But it’s your opinion that she couldn’t do what she’s been able to do without violating regulations that are clearly applicable to you, as analysts?” Gary asked.
“Still speculation,” Grace said. Gary snorted.
“I’m not trying her for breaking analysts’ rules. This is a pattern of behavior, for her.”
“I’m sorry, were you expecting I’d just let you write the story any way you wanted to and save you the trouble of actually proving anything?” Grace asked.
“Enough,” the judge said.
“I’m asking his expert opinion,” Gary said. “Is it possible to have the level of success that Lieutenant du Charme has had in her career without breaking rules?”
“Expert or not, it’s not evidence,” Grace said.
“And you can make that clear in a minute,” the judge said. Slav glanced at Cassie, the corners of his mouth dipping in apparent humor.
“No, not without someone in the upper ranks pulling strings for her,” Slav said.
Cassie tipped her head to the side.
Really?
Jealous little wingnut.
She remembered Grace’s admonishment to not react and straightened her posture. She wasn’t going to let him get to her.
Gary glanced over his shoulder at Grace, marking the victory.
“They’re a matched set, aren’t they?” Cassie whispered to her lawyer.
“Quiet,” Grace answered.
“Do you think she had someone giving her unfair preference?” Gary asked.
“There was scuttlebutt, sir, but, no, I never believed it,” Slav said. His eyes found her again with that dark sense of victory. “They booted her when her time came, same as everyone else.” He paused, looking back at Gary. “I think she just cheated.”
“Your Honor,” Grace said, exasperated.