Furious

53

“Would you please state your name and job for the record?” Mr. Kawaguchi said. He had waited a few moments for Kris to get comfortable on the witness stand; her heavily starched white pants and choker collar scratched her skin, and she needed the time to arrange herself.

“I am Her Royal Highness, Princess Kristine Anne Longknife. I am a lieutenant commander in the Royal United Society Navy. I presently command Fast Patrol Squadron 127, but I believe the court is most interested in my previous command of Patrol Squadron 10 and its voyage of discovery that circumnavigated the galaxy.”

“Hmm, yes we are,” her lawyer muttered absently, not looking at Kris but studying his notes.

“How long have you been in the Navy?” he said, as if coming to a momentous decision.

“A little more than five years, sir.”

Tsusumu scratched behind his ear. “Not very long, then.”

“At times it’s seemed much longer.” Kris’s quip drew soft chuckles from the watchers, but they halted at a glare from the Chief Justice.

“Yes, I imagine it has.” Again, Tsusumu seemed distracted as he studied his notes.

“I can’t help but notice that blue sash you are wearing. What is it?”

“It’s the Order of the Wounded Lion. Earth awards it,” Kris said.

“Is it easy to get? Are there a lot of them around?”

“I understand that the last ten people to receive it did so posthumously. I’m the first to earn it and live since the Iteeche War.”

“Oh,” Tsusumu’s eyes widened. “What did you do to earn it?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t answer that question, sir.”

“May I remind you that you are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The witnesses yesterday had been sworn in differently, but Kris, as a Christian, had gotten the whole treatment, Bible and all.

“I’m sorry, sir, but under the State Secrets Acts of both Wardhaven and the U.S. federal statutes, I am forbidden to answer your question.”

“You are sworn to this court,” the Chief Justice pointed out.

“Yes, Your Honor, but I am sworn to my king first.”

“Your Honor,” Kris’s lawyer said, “give me a moment to see if we can work our way around this.”

“Make it quick.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Commander, I have seen pictures of you in formal dress. You only began appearing with the blue sash after the Treaty of Paris was concluded.”

“Yes, sir. It arrived in the mail shortly after that. I checked that the address was correct and that it was addressed to me.”

“No citation.”

“None, sir.”

“So can we conclude that this honor has something to do with that meeting of humanity’s fleets in the Paris system?”

“I think I can answer yes to that, sir.”

“Objections,” the prosecutor said, jumping to his feet. “They are trying to make this award into something involving battle when it was awarded following a peaceful meeting of the fleets. Worse, during this time, the princess here was charged with mutiny.”

The word “mutiny” ran through the gallery as well as along the bench. The taste of it was sour.

“Do you have something to say before I rule on this objection?” the Chief Justice asked.

Tsusumu raised an eyebrow to Kris. She sighed.

“There have been rumors of my leading a mutiny at the Paris system since the fleets met there. It has been investigated, and no charges were ever filed. It is true that I relieved my commanding officer at that time.”

“And your rank was?” one of the justices asked.

“I was an ensign, sir. As low as you can get on the totem pole.”

“Interesting,” said the justice.

“Objection, whatever it was, is sustained. Kawaguchi, can we get on?” said the Chief Justice.

“Commander, I also see that you wear the Golden Starburst. I believe that is the highest award made by the Helvitican Confederacy. Can you tell us how you earned that?

“I am allowed to, but it also arrived in the mail with no citation. However, that was shortly after I assisted the independent planet Chance in resisting a forceful takeover. Chance then voted to join the Confederacy, and I think several people involved in that fight received these Starbursts. Lieutenant Lien-Pasley of my staff commanded a ship in that fight and received a Starburst.”

“Was it much of a fight?”

“It could have been a lot worse,” Kris admitted.

“That blue-and-gold cross thing around your neck,” Mr. Kawaguchi began.

“Objection, Your Honor. Where is Mr. Kawaguchi going with all this?”

“If the court will indulge me for a few more minutes, I believe that my intentions will become obvious to all.”

“You may have a very few more minutes,” the Chief Judge said. “Objection denied.”

“That award, Commander.”

“It’s the Pour la Mérite, the highest award of the new Greenfeld Empire. This one is awarded for combat, or that is what I am told the oak leaves denote.”

“Did that one also come in the mail?”

After a brief pause for the chuckles to run down, Kris answered. “No, it was personally delivered by Vice Admiral Krätz. However, he advised me that there was no citation included, and I was free to ascribe any one of several instances to it.”

“Any one of several instances?”

“I led the assault that put down a pirate lair that was raiding in Greenfeld space, sir. Another time, I saved the Greenfeld Emperor’s life.”

That drew comments all around, enough that the Chief Justice gaveled the room to silence.

“Very eclectic collection you have there. Now, I see among all those medals on your chest a small one, a red-and-gold ribbon with a simple bronze medallion hanging from it. What’s the name of that one?”

Kris glanced down and fingered that one reverently. “The Wardhaven Defense Medal, sir.”

“I understand you commanded the defense of Wardhaven, or at least the fast attack boats that did the defending.”

Kris took a slow breath. “I was in tactical command of the twelve small fast attack boats that destroyed most of the attacking battleships, sir.”

“Could you describe, no, compare these ‘boats’ and battleships for us?”

“The twelve fast attack boats were about a thousand tons of hope, each. The six battleships weighed in at over a hundred thousand tons.”

“A real David and Goliath matchup, huh?”

“We could never have done it alone, sir. A lot of people pitched in. By the time of the battle, we were throwing into the line merchant ships loaded with over-age and obsolete Army rockets and Coast Guard Auxiliary volunteers with system runabouts. In the last desperate moments, even fleet tugs were in the charge, doing anything to make a hole for the fast attacks to get in and make a hit.”

Kris took a deep breath. “It was a bare-knuckles fight for our planet’s survival.”

“Something like the attack on the alien base ship, huh?”

“Different in the way we went at them, but, yes, sir. Just as desperate and violent. And just as brutal in our losses. So, yes, I guess you could say they were kind of the same.”

Mr. Kawaguchi turned to the Chief Justice. “Your Honor, the commander here has been with the Royal U.S. Navy for a bit more than five years. But during that time she has fought in space and on land. She has battled pirates, invaders, battleships, and slavers. I have here a list I would like to enter into evidence of her official recognitions and her battle record. Ah, the record that is public.”

He paused to let that hit hard. “I also have here the official awards and career histories of the witnesses the prosecutor paraded by us yesterday. They are good men. Honorable men. But all of them have served Musashi during the long peace. Not one of them has ever heard a shot fired in anger. Not one has engaged an enemy intent on killing him or his command.”

Mr. Kawaguchi turned to the gallery. “Musashi has enjoyed a long peace. I’ve enjoyed it as much as anyone. But it does not put us in a very good position to judge the actions of this young woman. She has fought for the survival of her own planet and several others. She has experience making the hard calls when the devil is calling the tunes, and what she does next may result in her death and the deaths of hundreds, maybe millions of others.”

Her lawyer turned back to the bench. “You sit here in judgment of her. That is your duty and obligation. No one questions that. However, I ask as you decide her fate that you remember none of you have walked in her boots, faced the terrors she has faced.”

“Is that a closing statement?” the Chief Justice asked sourly.

“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I did get carried away. No, Your Honor, in the words of an ancient Navy captain, ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ Commander,” he said, turning back to Kris, “what was the purpose of your Fleet of Discovery?”

“I used Caesar’s ancient words, somewhat modified, ‘We go, we see, we run home fast and tell the story.’”

“And what were Admiral Kota’s orders?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, sir. Neither Rear Admiral Kota, Rear Admiral Channing, nor Vice Admiral Krätz shared their orders with me. After all, sir. I am just a lieutenant commander, and they were admirals.”

“You never saw their orders. Did they give you any hint at what they might be?”

“Objection! Calls for supposition.”

“Sustained.”

“Let me rephrase myself. Commander, did the actions of the admirals cause you to develop a working hypotheses as to why eight battleships were following in the wake of your Patrol Squadron 10?”

“Yes, sir. It appeared to me that all three admirals had orders to follow where I went and assure that their governments’ interests were considered.”

“And did they follow your squadron?”

“Yes, sir, with two exceptions. The short search where my squadron broke up into individual ships and scouted around the area where we were first attacked, and the long search when the squadron again broke up and did risky long jumps to take a sampling of what was out there.”

“And what did this risky long search find?”

“One plundered planet with its population murdered. One new civilization, and one alien base ship that gave all the appearance of heading for that new civilization with plunder and murder as their intent.”

“So you decided to go to war with that base ship?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I examined my options, sir. Obviously, if there was nothing I could do to help the targeted civilization, there was nothing I could do. When we departed on our voyage of discovery, we were hardly armed for a fight with something as huge as the alien base ship.”

“Did that change?”

“Oddly enough, it did. For no reason known to me then nor explained to me since, my king sent me three neutron torpedoes, we called them Hellburners.”

“Could you explain what that weapon is?”

“It is the most destructive weapon man has ever used. Possibly worse than the banned atomic weapons of old,” Kris said, then explained herself to a very quiet court.

“And having these weapons available gave you the confidence that you could stop the base ship from destroying its targeted civilization.”

“Objection, ascribes intent to the alien ship not in evidence.”

“I’ll withdraw my statement. Commander, your having this capability, did it change the attitude of the admirals you did not command?”

“Only Admiral Kota at first, then Channing, and finally Krätz. Yes, sir.”

“Objection, we have only her hearsay evidence that they did this, Your Honor.”

Tsusumu flashed Kris a brief grin, then sobered as he turned to the bench. “This War Council was recorded by several people. I am prepared to enter into evidence the recording of the council made by the commander.”

“It’s a digital file, Your Honor. They are notoriously easy to tamper with,” the prosecutor said.

“Point taken. Mr. Kawaguchi, we will need the original file and the computer it is on for analysis.”

“You will not have me,” Nelly snapped from Kris’s chest.

“Nelly, down,” Kris snapped right back.

The gavel came down. “The witness will control herself or face contempt.”

“Pardon us, Your Honor,” Tsusumu said, doing a poor job of suppressing a smile. “It is not my witness who objects, but her computer.”

“Her computer?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Kris said, turning to face the bench. “My personal computer seems to have achieved a certain measure of self-awareness.”

“Certain measure, my eye. I am fully self-aware.”

“Hmm,” said the Chief Justice.

“Hmm,” echoed most of the justices, though a couple were seen to smile openly.

“I must object, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor. “A self-aware computer that clearly feels close attachment to her master is definitely not a good source for data.”

The Chief Justice gnawed on that conundrum for a moment. “You say you have other recordings of the council.”

“Yes, Your Honor. The commander of the Marine detachment on the Wasp, the intelligence officer on Kris’s staff, as well as her maid, and, so it seems, a thirteen-year-old girl whose presence in the meeting was not observed.”

“A thirteen-year-old girl!” the Chief Justice said.

“It’s not as implausible as it may sound,” Kris pointed out. “She is my maid’s niece. The Wasp had several hundred civilian scientists aboard, and Cara was kind of adopted as the ship’s mascot.”

“This Council of War. I assume there was some security about it?” the Chief Justice asked.

Kris could see where this was headed. “Yes, Your Honor, we posted Marines at the only entrance to the room.”

“Yet this little girl got in, you say?”

“If she has a recording of the meeting,” Kris said, “then it would appear that the Marines did let her in. The Forward Lounge that we were using made a superb ice-cream sundae.”

“It seems that this so-called Fleet of Discovery’s command structure was weird not only up, but down,” observed one judge dryly.

“The Wasp, Your Honors, had been as much of a research ship as a warship for several years. The blending of those two missions made for some interesting outcomes,” Kris said, trying but failing not to grin.

“Moving right along,” the Chief Justice said, “Mr. Kawaguchi, do you intend to offer these other recordings in evidence?”

“I have them here, Your Honor,” Tsusumu said, turning toward the defense table.

“And the computers they came from.”

“Have a similar problem, Your Honor.”

“The computer has cloned itself!” the prosecution yelped.

“I did no such thing, Your Honor,” Nelly shot back.

The Chief Justice rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but will the computer please explain itself?”

“Herself,” Nelly corrected. “My personality is decidedly female though I lack any of the bodily functions to go with the attitude.”

“I’ll certainly agree on the attitude,” the Chief Justice was heard to mumble.

“However, my children are not simply clones of me. Each of them has developed a personality of his or her own. For example, Sal, who works with Captain Montoya of the USMC, is much more subordinate to him than I am to Kris. In my own defense, I would point out that Jack rarely gets himself into any mess as wild and crazy as Kris tends to get us in.”

“Thank you, thank you, I think I’ve heard enough,” the Chief Justice said. “I’m going to call a brief recess. I don’t know about anyone else in this room, but I need to recover my . . . something. We are in recess for fifteen minutes,” he said, and brought down the gavel.

The judges were observed to be in animated discussion as they left the bench.

Careful not to wrinkle her whites any more than was necessary, Kris removed herself from the witness stand.

“Do you need me?” she asked Tsusumu. “If not, I need to step out.”

“Go ahead. I think you and your Nelly have created quite a stir.” He glanced at where several clerks of the court were eyeing their own computers as if whatever Nelly had might be contagious. “Quite a stir.”

“Always glad to be of help,” Kris said, and was grateful when Jack and Penny served as blockers to make it through the milling crowd.

Jack halted at the ladies’-room door, but Penny followed Kris in.

“A fine mess you’ve got us in,” Kris muttered to Nelly as Kris did the necessary things.

“Would you have let them take me? Heavens knows what they would have done to me. Would I ever get back to you?”

“I know, Nelly. I know. But you could have let me handle it. I’m only human. I needed a few more seconds to respond.”

“I keep forgetting that, Kris. Sorry. In the future, I’ll try to hold my tongue for a few seconds to let you take the lead. Humans seem to like it when another human does.”

“Especially judges,” Kris observed.

Penny was waiting for Kris as she washed her hands. “You know, Kris, you filed a report with King Raymond before we launched out to battle. I can’t believe that the other admirals didn’t make similar reports to their governments. Have you heard anything about Kota’s report?”

“I’ve been looking for such a report since I first talked to the Mutsu’s skipper. I’ve also asked Tsusumu. So far nothing,” Kris said, and they hastened back to the courtroom. But Kris got no chance to say anything to her lawyer; he had his head together with several of his associates. Kris settled back into the witness box with not a word spoken.

The judges returned, some of them still chuckling, others of them most dire of face. The Chief Judge rapped his gavel. “We will accept as evidence, under objection,” he quickly added as the prosecutor started to jump to his feet, “the files submitted by the defense. They will be turned over to the court’s computer experts for review and analysis. The bailiff is charged to remind the technicians that these files are to be reviewed not only for inconsistencies, but also for too much consistency between them.”

One of Tsusumu’s assistants provided the bailiff with five separate storage devices, and a junior bailiff hustled off with them.

“Mr. Kawaguchi,” the Chief Justice drawled, “you will have witnesses to enter all five of those files into evidence, won’t you?”

“Ah, four of them are in court today,” Tsusumu said. Jack, Penny, and Abby had front-row seats. Cara had declined the invitation as threat of death by boredom. With a glance from Kris, Abby headed off, a woman on a mission.

“Ah, yes,” Tsusumu finished. “We will have all five for you, Your Honor.”

“May I ask a question?” Kris said.

“It is customary to leave that to the court officers,” the Chief Justice said.

“Yes, I know sir,” Kris said, ignoring the clear intent of his words, “but I filed a report to my king with the ships that were returning to human space before our battle fleet sortied. Didn’t Admiral Kota?”

“Objection,” came from the prosecution.

“That is a very good question,” Tsusumu muttered as he turned to the Chief Justice. “The defense has petitioned the government for just such a report. It seems that one was filed, Your Honor. There is even a receipt for it in the files.”

Tsusumu paused to eye the prosecutor. “Unfortunately, there is no report present in the file. Just the receipt for a hundred-megabyte report. But no report at all. I find that interesting.”

“So do I,” said one of the judges well down the bench.

“You’ve tried to get the report?” the Chief Judge asked.

“Several times and via several people. It seems that the report has vanished.”

“Or it was a defective file when it was sent,” the prosecution offered.

“Such a report would certainly explain Admiral Kota’s actions, but without it, we are left with only questions, aren’t we?” Kris’s lawyer observed with a shrug.

“Enough suppositions,” the Chief Justice rumbled. “Do you have any more questions for this witness, or can we get this trial moving?”

“I have one question,” a judge from well down the bench said. “I’m not sure if this is for the commander or her defense, but we are much bothered by the source of the files we have from the War Council. Certainly the good ship Wasp must have some recording of this exchange.”

“I can answer that question, Your Honor,” Tsusumu said. “The Wasp returned from its circumnavigation of the galaxy in little better shape than a wreck. It is officially reported that the ship is being broken up at the first space station it docked at.”

“But its logs and records must be on file somewhere?” the inquisitive judge insisted.

“Of course, Your Honor. It is normal for governments to maintain such official records. We have asked the U.S. government to provide them. We have petitioned. We’ve tried everything we know to do. Every query results in a reply that they can not find any such record in their archives.”

“So Musashi is not the only planet where things about this voyage of discovery are not discoverable anymore.”

The Chief Justice looked like he would dearly like to gavel his own associate to order, but didn’t. Instead, he glowered at Mr. Kawaguchi.

“I do have just one question left, Your Honor,” Kris’s lawyer said. “Commander, every one of the witnesses faulted you for the attack you made on the small mining site just one jump from the system where you fought the alien base ship. They fault the attack itself and your being so far forward. Would you care to inform this court just how it all came to take place?”

Kris couldn’t suppress a grin. She had so wanted to shout at each of those witnesses, never more than when they brought that up.

She took a deep breath. “It is true that we were unsure of how much time we had before the base ship would enter the next system, and we absolutely had to be in a position to ambush them before they got there.”

“So why did you attack the mining site?” the Chief Justice interrupted.

“I didn’t,” Kris spat out. “Admiral Krätz headed for the planet with the mine, insisting that his Marines would take it down and give us some aliens to talk to. The aliens had been decidedly unwilling to say a word to us, and none of us involved in the operation were very happy with repeating what happened to us and the Iteeche when we went to war with no idea of who the other side was or what they wanted.”

“So Admiral Krätz of Greenfeld took off with half your battleships, leaving you to do what?” Tsusumu asked.

“I could either try to carry out the ambush with half my battleships or follow him. I chose to follow him because I had doubts his Marines could handle the assault on the mine head. They’d been in a lot of shooting situations lately, but not so many with people who had guns and could shoot back. Admiral Kota happily agreed to have his Imperial Marines join my company. Mine were the most combat experienced in the fleet.”

“And you ended up being shot down?” Tsusumu said, raising an expressive eyebrow.

“All of you who question me being in a Ground Assault Craft buzzing the mine head should be happy to know that my chief of security, Captain Jack Montoya, said any and all of the things you would have told me.”

That brought a laugh from the gallery and several of the judges. Jack’s poker face devolved into a look of pure helpless disgust.

The Chief Justice reached for his gavel, and order was restored.

“I take it you did not agree with your security chief’s opinion,” Tsusumu said, a most scrutable smile on his face.

“No, sir. We were committing our Marines to a situation that, despite our best efforts, was still totally unknown to us. I borrowed a Ground Assault Craft from the Greenfeld fleet and proceeded to do my own recon. For what it is worth, the mining site only opened up with its huge firepower when I made a low pass over it. If they hadn’t opened up until our Marines were on final approach, it would have been a massacre. Even Jack has come to agree with me on that.”

In the front row, Jack sadly nodded.

The court was very silent.

“What happened next, after the aliens opened fire?” Tsusumu asked.

“My craft was damaged. I began exiting the area as fast as I could, applying all the evasive actions this girl has learned in her short life.” Chuckles from the courtroom were not enough to get the Chief Justice reaching for his gavel. “The aliens also launched rocket and laser attacks on the ships in orbit. They had more firepower hidden in that mining site than any of us would have guessed. They also began deploying several battalion-size ground-fighting units. Jack and I noticed all that as we were dodging more fire.”

Kris took a deep breath and tried to slow her heartbeat. She was flashing back.

“Somewhere in all this, Admiral Krätz decided to lase the mining site from his high orbit. My hog was barely holding together, and the blowback from lasers that close would very likely destroy it, so I pancaked into a marsh area, and Jack and I beat as quick a retreat as our injuries allowed. Fortunately, my Marines had left behind a small detachment that retrieved us before the aliens arrived. For a while there, it looked like I might get my chance to talk to them as their prisoner, rather than them as mine. Assuming they took prisoners. From the looks of things both before and after that action, I don’t think they do.”

“One final question. Commander, did you declare war on the aliens?”

Kris and Tsusumu had spent several long hours debating the fine points of international law before he had announced himself ready to ask Kris this question. Now Kris took a deep breath.

“As an individual, I cannot start a war. However, it’s true that as an individual I can take an action that results in two sovereign entities launching themselves into a war. It’s happened too many times in history to count. However, it takes two sovereigns to go to war. There have been situations where one sovereign chose war, and the other side didn’t get the word for a while. I believe that this is what I encountered.”

Kris risked taking a breath. Someone should have, likely, objected to her using the witness stand to philosophize.

No one did. Kris went on.

“It is my conclusion, from my contacts with these alien space raiders, that they are at war with all life in the universe that is not of their own gene pool. Had they stumbled upon Earth five hundred years ago, they would have plundered and murdered us before we got into space. Had they found the Iteeche two thousand years ago, they would have done the same. For some reason, they haven’t been out in this arm of the galaxy for a while.

“That’s changing. When the Wasp found itself bone-dry on fuel and in a minor system in the Iteeche Empire, our refueling was interrupted when an alien scout ship shot into the system. We tried to establish communications with them, and they shot up the message buoy. We destroyed them after that, recovering only two tiny infants that a couple had desperately tried to save. I imagine they’ve been misfiled by now, too.”

Surprisingly, the prosecution had no questions for Kris, and she soon found herself dismissed.

Jack and Penny were quickly run through the witness stand. They vouched that the recordings provided by their computers were as true and accurate as they could remember. Their computers followed their mother’s lead in refusing to submit to examination by the court’s experts, and one judge whispered that he doubted any of the court’s experts was up to examining the likes of these computers.

That did get him a rap of the gavel.

Abby returned in time to be quickly sworn and questioned. It was Cara who seemed to get the most questioning. By now, her record had been given an initial examination. At the critical part of the discussion between Kris and the admirals, Cara had been ordering a chocolate sundae with three cherries on top. She’d also been playing a game that covered over the recording, but not enough that the background could not be accessed perfectly.

Several of the judges seemed to find her disinterest in the history taking place around her a source of more verity than Kris’s direct recording.

“Why were you on the Wasp?” one judge asked as the questioning drew down.

“My auntie was there, and I liked the people on the Wasp,” Cara said, then seemed to deflate a bit. “And there’s nowhere else for me. My mom and gamma are dead. If Auntie Abby and Auntie Kris didn’t take me in, where would I go?”

The prosecutor did not cross-examine the girl.

“Is the defense prepared to rest?” the Chief Justice asked.

“Ah, just a moment, Your Honor.”

There was a flurry of activity at the courtroom’s doorway. One of the senior associates almost ran back to meet the young woman who had called Kris from the restroom the first day . . . and another young woman in a Navy uniform.

“The defense wishes to call one last witness. The one we advised the court we would call if we could. Will Ishii Yuko please come into court?”

The gavel came out as the room lost its hush, and people speculated on this surprise.

The woman was quickly sworn, and Mr. Kawaguchi asked the usual question. “Could you please state your name and position.”

“I am Ishii Yuko. I was a Petty Officer third class Communication Technician on His Imperial Majesty’s ship Haruna when she sailed on the voyage of discovery. I was the last to leave the ship.”

All silence fled as talk thundered through the room. The Chief Justice’s hammering gavel was ignored until he threatened to empty the gallery. Even then, it took a while for the room to quiet enough for Mr. Kawaguchi to continue.