by Chloe Garner
“Objection,” Gary said. “He can’t testify.”
“But he can perform,” Grace answered. “I’d like to see just how well-controlled he is, outside of Lieutenant du Charme’s custody.”
Jesse settled awkwardly into the chair as Slav moved aside and the Sergeant looked at the judge.
“You don’t want me to take that off,” he said.
“Indeed I do,” the judge answered. The Sergeant pointed.
“He’s got a way with talking his way out of things,” he said. “Only way we got him this far is with it on.”
“We’ll watch him close, and the rest of it can stay,” the judge said. “Take it off.”
The Sergeant sighed and said something into his wrist. Another young man skirted his way into the room, glancing at both tables of lawyers as he went past, and handing a set of keys to the Sergeant.
“Surely this is a bit out of scale,” the judge said.
“He’s your problem now,” the Sergeant replied, shaking his head as he unbuckled the face mask. Jesse stretched his jaw.
“Nothing personal, Allen,” he said as the Sergeant walked away without turning. The bulky man dropped the keys in front of Gary, muttering some more. Jesse called after him. “Tell Lorissa I hope she feels better soon.”
There was a pause as the Sergeant left, then attention turned back to Jesse. He crossed his legs.
“Jesse, would you tell us where you’ve been for the last six weeks?” Grace asked.
“I’m afraid he isn’t a witness,” the judge said. “I’ll ask him a few questions, but none of his answers can be considered factual.”
“It is an interesting precedent you’re working with, here,” Jesse said. “Letting me enter into a legal agreement, but not considering me legally qualified to provide testimony where the terms of that legal agreement are relevant.”
“There wasn’t a question,” the judge said.
“Oh, I know,” Jesse said, shrugging and switching which leg was crossed. “As you have probably already ruled, I’m here to perform, not testify. So I can say anything I want, and it doesn’t change the outcome of the interview, other than establishing my character, which is,” he looked at the officers on the panel, “obviously quite difficult. You know that man is a deacon at his church?” He motioned after the Sergeant.
“Is that true?” the judge asked.
“No,” Jesse said. “He’s a sailor in the wrong uniform, but his wife… Best cook I’ve met on the planet.”
“Do you have a point?” the judge asked. Jesse scratched the back of his head.
“You don’t trust me. That’s fine. Really. But what you should know is that the basis of your entire trial is faulty.”
“That’s a self-assured thing to say,” the judge said. “Given you’ve been missing the whole time.”
“Not the whole time,” Jesse said, weaving his fingers behind his head and stretching in his seat. “But that’s not the point. The point is that you’re prosecuting Lieutenant du Charme for insubordination, and you don’t have the grounds.”
“We’ve seen compelling evidence,” the judge said. “And she is an airman in the US Air Force.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jesse said, holding up a finger. “If you refer to the contract she signed, combining section five-point-eight, subsection c, section eighteen-point-nine, subsection f, and… well, basically all of page sixty-eight, you’ll find that she’s part of an entirely new and different military that I made up, when we’re on jumps. Her insubordination doesn’t go up through your chain of command, therefore you don’t have grounds to try her. I could if I wanted to, but only on my home planet, which you may happen to know is currently a bit hostile.”
This set off a flurry of activity among the lawyers, and Jesse stretched further in his chair.
“As to the charge that Lieutenant du Charme isn’t working hard enough to keep me under her thumb?” he said as the prosecution lawyers muttered among each other. “I’ll let you decide that.”
Cassie looked at Grace, who was pouring through the pages of the contract.
“He’s right,” the woman whispered. Cassie looked up, making her one of the first to notice that Jesse was gone.
The stocky Scottish Sergeant was livid.
The prosecution were whispering among themselves frantically, passing notes back and forth.
“Seems to me that we told him that he was here at his own leisure,” the judge was saying.
“I held him on a lawful warrant,” the Sergeant answered. “He’s a fugitive.”
“Can have warrants, but not human enough to testify in a court hearing,” Grace murmured.
The panel of officer-jurists were still, quiet, waiting for something to happen. Cassie wasn’t sure what, but they were the ones who bothered her the most. Almost inhuman, their lack of reaction.
Cassie just watched, feeling like circumstances had lifted themselves well above her ability to control them.
“Move for dismissal,” Grace finally said, barely loud enough to be heard over the protests of the Sergeant.
“Again, councilor?” the judge said, putting his fingers behind his ear. The room went completely silent.
“Move for dismissal,” Grace said again. “There are no grounds for the insubordination charge, and anyone who says that the Lieutenant isn’t doing her job managing the Jalnian while they are here clearly slept through today’s proceedings.”
No one on the other side of the room spoke. The judge looked at them for a long moment, then nodded.
“I have to agree. Motion granted. We’re done here.”
There was a long held breath, as the room waited, and then Grace flipped her notebook shut and stood, letting her chair skid across the cheap tile at full volume.
“Lieutenant,” she said, holding a hand out to Cassie.
“Thank you,” Cassie said, standing to shake the woman’s hand. “What do I do now?”
“If you still want to put up with them, you go back to your CO and you keep doing what you were doing,” Grace said. Her voice was soft, and it dropped lower. “But I think you’ll always have a knife over your head. Is it worth it?”
Cassie nodded.
“Yeah.”
Grace nodded back, then squeezed Cassie’s hand again.
“Good luck to you, then.”
“What are you going to do?” Cassie asked. “Are you still done, here?”
Behind her, Gary cleared his throat.
“You know it was a career-ender for both of us,” he said. Grace turned and he shrugged. “You want to get dinner? We both need to talk this one through, and with the gags they’ve got coming down on us…”
Grace glanced at Cassie, then nodded.
“Good luck, Lieutenant,” Grace said. “I think more of us are rooting for you than you know.”
Gary’s eyes gave her a friendly twinkle, then he and Grace turned and left. Cassie was left by herself at the desk as the judge and the feisty Sergeant left behind the lawyers, still arguing. She found her hat and put it on, then straightened her uniform and made her way out of the courtroom and, slowly, out of the building. No one asked her where she thought she was going.
It was strange.
The door behind her hadn’t yet swung closed when Troy pulled up to the curb.
“Jesse said you’d be standing there, looking just like that,” he said.
“You know where he is?” Cassie asked. Troy leaned across the car and pushed the passenger-side door open.
“Get in.”
The feeling of unreality didn’t fade as the base rolled past her window. Troy didn’t talk much as he drove, not telling her where they were going or why, but she didn’t ask, either. She’d forgotten the smell of his car. The heater blew dry air at her; they’d gotten snow the previous week, but an early thaw had melted it a few days earlier and everything around them was the color of concrete or dead grass. She had somehow failed to see it, before. It was like she had just
gotten home.
Troy pulled into the parking lot of a hole-in-the-wall that they had frequented years earlier, as students, but that they had deemed themselves to be too grown up for, since. Cassie looked at the grimy entrance for a long time.
“So this is what it’s come to,” she said.
“It’s quiet,” Troy answered. “Believe me, we need quiet.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. There was a long draw of air as Troy considered. He took off his seatbelt and turned sideways in his seat, bracing his hand against the back of her seat, sighing again.
“Bases aren’t supposed to run with two sides,” he said.
“What does that mean, Troy?”
“There are us, and there are them,” he said, licking his lips and looking at the restaurant again. Cassie waited. “It’s hard to know who is who, most days.”
“But Slav is an us?” she asked. He laughed.
“Oh, yeah. He was.”
“Was?”
“They dropped him the minute he got out of that room, Cass. Shark isn’t running the analysts’ pit any more. They moved him to Texas. There’s a new guy, Captain Richard, and he’s one of Donovan’s guys. Slav got his papers on his desk before he even got back there.”
“How can they do that?” Cassie asked. Troy shrugged.
“Lot’s changed.”
“Slav, though?”
He laughed.
“He really is a good guy, Cass. I don’t know why you’ve never gotten along.” He sucked on his bottom lip for a moment, only just hiding a smile. “He felt the same way about you, though.”
“Why did he do it?”
“You have to draw a line. He’s basically been under cover on their side for the last month. Everyone knew he hated you; he was the obvious choice for their witness list out of the analysts.” He shifted, signaling that he was ready to get out of the car. “Hard for you to understand how much he really did for us. For you.”
She shifted, finding the door handle and letting herself out. She followed Troy to the door and then through the long, narrow restaurant to the small table at the very back. Jesse had his feet up on a spare chair and Slav was sitting upright, his hands folded on the table’s surface. Cassie felt her hackles raise involuntarily. He raised an eyebrow at her and she nearly stopped walking.
“Will you sit down already so he’ll start talking?” Slav asked.
“You got him to quit?” she answered despite herself. Jesse grinned.
“Your friends show a much healthier level of curiosity about me than you do,” he said, shifting and looking at his fingers. Cassie sighed as she sat.
“Maybe I’ve just figured out that the answers you cough up aren’t worth the effort they took to get.”
He snorted and Slav made an exasperated noise.
“You two fight like an old married couple,” he said.
“I know, right?” Troy said, sitting. “Why did you torch your apartment?”
“How did you torch your apartment?” Slav asked.
“Both very good questions,” Jesse said, picking up a glass of water from the table and taking a sip before pointedly putting it back down. Cassie snorted.
“This is what you were waiting on me for?” she asked.
“He said he was going to wait for you to get here before he talked about anything important,” Slav said.
“And he gets to decide what’s important,” she told him. “What’s been going on around here since I was in the hospital?”
“It goes back further than that, but it got worse when you guys got back,” Troy said.
“They sent Shark to the middle of nowhere for standing up for us,” Slav said. “New guy sucks.”
“List of guys who are gone is pointless,” Troy said. “Better to talk about who’s still here.”
“Who is still here?” Cassie asked. Slav shrugged and jerked his head at Troy.
“Only the ones they can’t replace,” he said. “Your boy there is golden because of the amount of stuff he’s got in his head.”
She looked at Troy.
“Takes a lot to run a lab like mine,” he said. “But I’m in the process of training my own replacement.”
Slav muttered something under his breath and Cassie stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Since when have you cared?” she asked.
“Since when haven’t I?” he answered. “They come in here and rip apart all of the working teams, just because we worked for General Thompson and worked the way he worked. It’s not right. You have to reorganize, sure, and everyone has to learn how to get along again, but they’re punishing good people for not having the right endgame, when no one will tell us what the endgame is.”
Cassie looked at Jesse.
“Power,” he said simply. “It’s a mistake most races make once. Controlling my people always means power.”
“How the hell do they expect to do that?” Slav asked. “You walk away from every cell they put you in.”
“Where have you been, by the way?” Troy asked.
“Here and not here,” Jesse said. “But I always come back.”
“Why?” Troy asked.
“Why?” Cassie echoed.
He looked into her eyes.
“I have a friend here.”
There was a long pause, then he wove his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
“I left no fewer than sixteen different ways for your lawyer to either clear you of charges or call me as a witness of some kind,” he said. “But reading the transcripts, she was a very good lawyer. I may have underestimated how far they were willing to go in trying to force you to talk to them.”
“Did you just say you might have been wrong?” Cassie asked.
“How did you do it?” Slav asked.
“He created a private military establishment that doesn’t have a chain of command here qualified to try me,” Cassie said. “Back to this whole you being wrong thing.”
“He what?” Troy asked.
“We should go,” Jesse said.
“Why did you torch your apartment?” Slav asked again.
“Apparently when I’m in the field, I’m part of a unique military establishment that can only be tried on Jalnia,” Cassie said.
“How did that happen?” Troy asked.
“Everyone underestimates page sixty-eight,” Jesse said. “We need a vacation, and I want to go do something fun.”
“How did you just burn your apartment?” Slav asked.
“We haven’t eaten,” Cassie said.
“One eats here?” Jessie asked.
“It obviously burnt hot,” Slav said.
“So you did break in,” Troy said. “I told you you had to see it for yourself.”
“Don’t be a snob,” Cassie said. “It’s not bad.”
“When they dismissed me,” Slav said.
“Glad you appreciated my work,” Jesse said.
“You broke in to his apartment?” Cassie asked.
“I did,” Slav said. “They marked it evidence, but screw them.”
“Trial was over anyway,” Troy said.
“How?” Slav asked.
“He isn’t going to tell you,” Cassie said.
“Why not?” Slav asked.
“A good magician,” Jesse said. “Eat, don’t eat, that’s fine, but I want to go. Soon.”
“Where are you going?” Slav asked.
“He doesn’t even tell me that,” Cassie said.
“I could give you exact coordinates and they wouldn’t mean anything,” Jesse said.
“Guys,” Troy said, jarring the conversation. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do about it.”
There was a long silence, then Cassie twisted her mouth to the side.
“About what, exactly?” she asked.
“Everything,” Jesse murmured. Slav nodded. Jesse sighed after a moment then bent over the table on his elbows, contemplating the gummy wood surface. He t
ook a breath.
“There’s a lot I can do,” he said finally. “But it all comes at a cost. The moment I intervene,” now he turned his head to look at Cassie, “is the moment that they’ll know they’ve won. They’re willing to burn down your lives, and they’re willing to burn down a lot of the culture that I know you care about on the way.” His eyes were haunted, sad. He shook his head, then looked up at Troy. “I’m not a soldier, Troy. I fight my battles the way I fight them, not through direct confrontation.”
“I’m not asking you to confront them,” Troy said. Cassie felt for the edge in his voice that betrayed bitterness or irony, but it wasn’t there. “We’re asking for your help.”
Jesse looked at Slav and Slav nodded agreement. Jesse nodded back then turned his attention back to Troy.
“Then I need you to trust me that that’s what I’m doing.”
There was silence around the table for several seconds.
“Hell, that’s great, but what are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Slav asked. Cassie frowned at him. That was awfully candid for him.
“I can’t tell you that,” Jesse said. “You have to get along as well as you can without me influencing you.”
“Because you haven’t influenced anything, so far,” Slav muttered. Cassie couldn’t help but smile at this. Jesse snorted.
“We should go,” he said abruptly, sitting up. “The longer we stay, the more time they have to come up with a new way to keep you.”
“I need a minute,” Cassie said.
“What?” Jesse asked.
“I need a minute,” Cassie said again. “I need to talk to the guys for a minute before we go.”
Jesse’s head jerked back a fraction.
“Are you asking me to leave?”
“Stay, go, whichever,” she said. “I need a minute.”
“I’ll be out in your car,” he said.
“Hey,” Troy said as Jesse stood. The Palta paused. “Take care of her.”
“Whatever,” Cassie said.
“I hear you,” Jesse answered, ignoring Cassie.
“Like hell you will,” she said, spinning to look at him as he left.
“Leave it, Cassie,” Jesse said. “He’s earned that much.”