Extremis (25 page)

“Yes. This returns us to the actual purpose of the inquest.”

“Wait—wasn’t it an inquiry into my bombings?”

“That’s how it started, but as I mentioned, Ms. Peitchkov’s—and the infant’s—survival have added a new dimension to our investigation.”

“Which is?”

“That we must reconsider the connection between your unauthorized bombings and the alien strike upon your house, which resulted in the death of your CO and the three most senior members of her command staff.”

McGee couldn’t see the connection between Jennifer, the baby, and Van Felsen’s death, but he certainly understood how the latter was his fault—all his fault. “Lieutenant Heide, allow me to save the inquest board some time. I do not in any way deny that my bombings must have attracted the Baldy attention that ultimately resulted in the deaths of Commander Van Felsen and her—”

“I am not finished, Sergeant. You are relieved of duty, effective immediately. Charges and specifications will be handed down pending resolution of an inquiry into both the degree of your insubordination during your bombing activities in Melantho, and into the now undeniable possibility that you have been suborned by the Baldy occupation forces and have become a willing and active collaborator—”

“
What
?”

“—who may have provided them with both the time and the place where they could ambush Force Commander Van Felsen and her research team.”

McGee leaped toward Heide; Jon Wismer’s lean—but very strong—fingers clamped down on Sandro’s arm, breaking his dive to get his own massive hands around Heide’s lying, supercilious neck.

Heide, to his credit, had not even flinched. “Is it your intent to add a multiply witnessed attack upon a senior officer to the list of charges under investigation?”

John tugged at McGee’s arm. “Sandro, this won’t help. It won’t help the Resistance, it won’t help you, and it certainly won’t help Jennifer. Now take your seat again.”

“Thank you for convincing Sergeant McGee to see reason, Corporal Wismer. However, I have the unfortunate duty to inform you that, while you are not being investigated for subornation and treason, your role in the unauthorized bombings is also under investigation. And yes, Sergeant McGee, we will add your perjury from earlier in this session—since you claimed to have acted alone in the bombings—to the charges and specifications currently being assessed. In your case, Corporal Wismer, since we have no reason to suspect your loyalty, you will continue your duties at your current rank, at least until further notice.”

“Yes, sir. But at the risk of trying the patience of the board, I can testify that Sergeant McGee had absolutely no interactions with the Baldies. Sir, he hated them—hated them so much that he couldn’t just sit by and do nothing. Sir.”

“I do not argue with the assertion that Sergeant McGee hates the aliens, Corporal. My concern is that they currently hold two persons who are desperately important to him, personally. It is only prudent to examine whether or not Sergeant McGee is merely guilty of operational ineptitude and disregarding orders—or whether he entered into collusion with the enemy in order to preserve the lives of his family. And Corporal, can you really testify—and I mean
testify
—to the claim that Sergeant McGee never had any contact with the Baldies? Did you have him under constant observation? Did you monitor all his communications?”

Wismer looked down at his hands.

“I didn’t think so. So it is needful that we conduct an investigation into the possibility that Sergeant McGee might have been blackmailed into betraying his superiors and fellow Marines.”

McGee tried to keep the hateful snarl out of his voice but knew that he had failed. “We were ordered to sit on our hands in Melantho while the Baldies drove fifty thousand men, women, and children out of the West Shore District. We kept sitting on our hands while they killed anyone who disobeyed, and even when they went into some hospices and nursing homes and…Damn it, Heide—you can’t know what it felt like to be a Marine and watch all that going on right under your nose. You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t there, Sergeant. But did I need to be? Would my having been there change the fact that it looks very much like you were complicit in the deaths of your fellow Marines? The invaders had your significant other and child in their custody. They looked for the Command staff at your house, less than an hour after Commander Van Felsen arrived there. Now, how would the aliens know to do that unless they had gotten to you?”

“No. The timing was a coincidence.”

“Was it? Then was it also a coincidence that you were the only person not in the house when the ambush occurred—an ambush that left no survivors who could ever depose against you, in the event they might have seen something during the attack, or in your house, which indicated your complicity? Was it also a coincidence that as soon as Ms. Peitchkov was taken, your bombings stopped?”

“The bombing stopped because the Baldies put me in the hospital. Then I went up to the training retreat in Upper Thessalaborea and Force Commander Van Felsen intimated that I had best stop the bombings. So I didn’t resume them when I returned to Melantho, a few days ahead of the commander and her team.”

“Possibly—although, except for your injuries, none of that can be substantiated, since all the involved parties are dead. Although—how was it you arrived at the hospital, again?”

McGee looked away: this was not possible, the way random facts seemed to now be gathering together to conspire against him. “I don’t remember. I was unconscious. But I’m told the Baldies brought me to the emergency room.”

“Which you claim you don’t remember. Perhaps. Or perhaps they went back to your house to tell you that unless you cooperated, your pregnant girlfriend would be killed—and then roughed you up to alleviate any suspicion that you were now their willing accomplice. And is that also why the pediatrician was collected as soon as he was requested? Is that just some more
quid pro quo
from your alien masters?”

McGee was almost on his feet again, when he saw Cap Peters staring at him. Staring hard, eyes pleading. Pleading that Sandro stay in his seat.

Heide seemed to interpret the silence and McGee’s sullen avoidance of his gaze as indicative of victory. “So, our inquest will proceed to examine if there are sufficient grounds to bring charges of both treason and insubordination against you, Sergeant McGee. Furthermore, I am bound by the express wishes of the late Elizabeth Van Felsen to inform you that, in the event of her untimely demise, she left instructions for you to be promoted back to the officer ranks when your work with her in Melantho was concluded. However, that work was never completed—indeed, it was never begun. Also, since you were absent during the Baldy ambush—”

“
Possible
ambush,” corrected Peters.

“—during the Baldy ambush,” persisted Heide, “and it is possible that you facilitated that attack, I cannot responsibly act upon Force Commander Van Felsen’s recommendation. You shall thus remain an NCO. Furthermore, until we have completed our investigation into your activities in the weeks leading up to the ambush, I am relieving you of active duty and am ordering that you be confined to quarters, and held incommunicado, until such time as we have gathered enough information to decide whether charges are warranted.”

Cap leaned forward. “Lieutenant Heide, this borders on the preposterous. Sergeant McGee—”

“Lieutenant Peters, as long as there remains any reasonable doubt that McGee has been suborned by the enemy through his personal concern for his family’s welfare, he cannot be safely allowed into the field—and he must be held incommunicado. Any other course of action could compromise this HQ, and our teams in the field, in precisely the same way that Commander Van Felsen and the command staff were compromised.”

“Again,
hypothetically
compromised.”

Heide again ignored Peters’s emendation. “Sergeant McGee, before you leave with the guards waiting outside, do you wish to say anything that you feel might assist in our investigation?”

“Yes. Find Rashid of
Rashid’s Sport and Tool
store in Melantho. He will be able to tell you why I was not at my house when Commander Van Felsen’s team arrived and will vouch that I was conducting activities vital to
minimizing
the possibility that our operations in Melantho might be compromised. Also, I—”

“Sergeant, since you seem to have a great deal to say, I suggest you write it down. I will see to it that the members of this board all receive a copy.”

Peters jerked erect in his seat. “Heide, that is a flagrant violation of inquest procedures. The party under investigation is entitled to speak directly to the—”

“Lieutenant Peters, your carping over insignificant procedural details is an affront to yourself, the board, and the dignity of all Marine officers.” Heide stood; for a moment McGee wondered if he was about to smirk. But the new CO only looked at Peters and said, “This board of inquiry stands in recess, pending receipt of further evidence. Dismissed.”

8

A Single Step to a Star

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
—Lao Tzu

To the stars, through adversities
—var.

In Geosynchronous Orbit over Novaya Petersburg,
Novaya Rodina

Novaya Rodina—altogether Earthlike save for a certain peach-colored tinge to the predominant blue common to almost all such worlds as viewed from space—rolled beneath Fleet Admiral Li Han, TRN, First Space Lord of the Terran Republic, as her shuttle approached the orbital construction dock.

The planet held no little significance for her. Partly it was personal, for this was the birthworld of her friend Magda Petrovna Windrider, godmother of her daughter. But beyond that, it was the site of the atrocity which had given the Fringe Insurrection its baptism of innocent blood and made it irreversible, setting in motion the Terran Republic’s eventful early history—quite a bit of which Li Han herself had made.

But she had no eyes for it, or for anything except the titanic shape that lay within the dock, nearing completion as the latest of the TRN’s devastators.

Over the centuries, reactionless drives and internal artificial-gravity and acceleration-compensation fields had caused spaceship design to assume a form which pre-spaceflight humans would have found oddly familiar: organized fore-and-aft, with the major components of the drive abaft where they produced the unavoidable “blind zone” that formed the basis of so much naval tactical doctrine. There were innumerable variations, of course—notably in the case of carriers, with their “outrigger” flight decks which enabled fighters to approach from astern for recovery despite that same blind zone. But by and large, the look was one not too unlike that which humans of Old Terra’s immediate pre-spaceflight era would have expected to see five or six centuries in their future.

The Devastator she saw under construction was no exception, despite her unprecedentedly titanic mass of two million metric tonnes. She still had the lines that had come to embody the transcendent combination of fleetness and destructive power wrapped within the hulls of the capital ships of space. To modern eyes, it meant what the blocky massiveness of a sailing ship-of-the-line must have meant to humans in the age of…
Oh, who was that wet-navy admiral Ian Trevayne has so often spoken of? Oh, yes, Nelson…

Her communicator beeped for attention; the voice of her chief of staff awoke in her earpiece. “Admiral,
Goethals
has arrived—with Admiral Desai as a passenger. You asked to be notified as soon as—”

“Yes, of course, Captain M’Zangwe. I will be rendezvousing directly.”

* * *

By the time Li Han’s shuttle approached the test station, TRNS
Goethals
lay alongside it, dwarfing it so completely as to reduce it to a tiny irrelevancy. Studying the new arrival’s configuration—which the unaided eye could do from a seemingly impossible distance—Li Han was struck by how completely it contradicted all her recent reflections on starship architecture.

The
Goethals
reminded her irresistibly of an épée, its “blade” a thin keel-shaft five kilometers long, with a seemingly tiny tip at the forward end and a disc-shaped shield at the other. Abaft of that was the massive “handle” holding the drive and power plant. On closer inspection, some of the illusion vanished, for the épée-thin shaft was encircled by a series of radiator ribs. And when the Kasugawa generator—currently retracted into a tight ring along the circumference of the shield—was activated almost two and a half years from now, it would expand and unfold into a wagon wheel–like assembly whose rim held secondary power plants and whose spokes were rectifying conduits.

Sonja Desai had already transferred to the test station—which, while fairly Spartan, was considerably more comfortable than the
Goethals
—and she was waiting when Li Han disembarked. A shuttle bay full of curious eyes watched as the two women who had taken it upon themselves to end the war of the Fringe Insurrection greeted each other.

“I hope the trip wasn’t too uncomfortable for you,” Li Han commiserated after the initial pleasantries. “What I’ve heard about
Goethals’s
accommodations—”

“—is not exaggerated,” Desai clipped. As was typical of her, it came out more abrasive than intended. Less typically, she then had the grace to look abashed. “But I shouldn’t say so in the presence of her captain, here.” She motioned forward a sturdy figure in TRN uniform, who saluted Li Han punctiliously.

“Ah, yes, Captain Cardones, I’m glad to make your acquaintance,” said Li Han, returning the salute and studying the man who was to takethe
Goethals
across two-and-a-fifth light-years of normal space. Like everyone else who was to make that crossing, he was a volunteer…and something more. It was—
embarrassing
wasn’t exactly the word—to talk to a man who had sworn an oath to destroy his ship and himself if necessary to prevent the Kasugawa generator from falling into the hands (tentacle clusters, really) of the Baldies. “I believe you still have a little time before you’ll need to return to your ship for the test. Is that correct, Captain M’Zangwe?”