Interview with a Dirtbag
Chapter 25 - Linnet (And the Ghosts That Bind Us)
When Linnet came into Michael’s office, he wasn’t sure how to behave. With everyone else so far, he’d had a fairly professional working relationship with his guests. Well, barring that night with Linnet and Bel’a, but that seems to have been a heat of the moment kind of thing. Things with Linnet were deeper.
Linnet had sought him out. In the big picture of things, he hadn’t been pursued by anyone else other than Jessica, but that was a whole different feeling as well. Jessica was set for Michael and she to be married. He didn’t get that same feeling from Linnet. Michael and Linnet were committed, emotionally, but he didn’t get the sense that she wanted to be official or married. There was a term that he felt was corny, but it was all that he had words for, Linnet didn’t even appear to want to “go steady”.
They just were.
And he was fine with that. Being together was enough. It was an unspoken bond that the two of them had mutually assumed.
So now, in his office, what was he supposed to do with her?
Michael noted her blonde pelt and ears, where Bel’a’s were large enough to have folded over her head, Linnet’s ears were perkier. They could curl down when she was completely relaxed, but here in the office, her ears were at attention. She gave him an embrace that was slightly longer than was required by pack culture. Then she’d sat down across from him. While he was busy trying to find appropriate words, she started the conversation for him.
“Here you are!” She smiled broadly at him.
Michael blushed slightly, “Yeah. Here I am.”
Linnet smirked at him, “On base, doing a job, which I hear you’re perfectly suited to by the way.”
He was almost ready to accept that as a compliment. “I’m doing what I can.” He shrugged.
“And that’s all we can ask.” She stared at him contently.
Michael tried to evade sitting in his own congratulations. “I think I have processed that you came looking for me because of my connection to Serca. And you,” he scratched his head, “Worked with Serca?”
“Ah yes. I did work with her.” Linnet seemed to search her memories, “It was an honor and a privilege to work with Serca and Elinsys.”
That name! It’s almost like the whole reason they were together in this room was this mysterious Elinsys.
“Elinsys, eh? Tell me more.” Michael settled in to listen.
“I assume you’ve talked to Staff Sergeant Remy,” Linnet assumed a salute and laughed, settling into her chair. “Yeah, those rebels fucked him up.” Her head nodded as she spoke, her eyes on the floor. She had tried to make a joke of Ssgt Remington’s all business behavior but it fell flat. Sometimes inside jokes are made as a coping mechanism, lest the truth of the joke destroy you; and when a new person is let in on those inside jokes they just don’t hit the same way. Linnet sat quietly, silenced by the awkward dissonance between the joke some of the Rakiri had had and the reality that Michael now knew.
Michael sat in the silence. He enjoyed the silence. He could stand silence. Most people can’t. He waited until Linnet was ready to talk.
Eventually she began again, “Fala wasn’t going to let that stand. What the rebels did to Remy, one of her people.” Her thousand yard stare continued until she shook her head, “But we took care of that.”
Michael didn’t say anything but he gave the head tilt that he’d learned from the Shil’vati meant for her to keep talking.
Linnet fumbled with the words she wanted but came out with, “I have to know that you know that they tortured him, Remy that is.”
Michael nodded silently.
“And that because of their actions, they deserved what they got, right?” Linnet emphasized clarity. “So you shouldn’t judge me for what we did. Because we only did it because of how they hurt Remy.”
Michael remained poker faced.
“The Imperium hasn’t judged me, per se, but your perception of me should not be changed by what I tell you.” Linnet again prefaced.
“Ok, this is a no judgment zone, tell your story!” Michael grumbled in faux impatience.
Linnet laughed, gathered her thoughts and her hands together and started her story.
“When Fala found out about what the rebels did to Remy-er-Staff Sergeant Remmington, she was furious. Though a princess among our people, the Imperium did not care, however, the rebels were enough of a bother to them that they took her as an informant. They had already sent Elinsys to take care of the rebels on the way station where Remy was stationed.
“Elinsys was a no nonsense leader. She accepted no nonsense from anyone, including her superiors. The fact was, people were dying from within the Imperium. The people in charge and more notably the Nobles, had taken notice that the usual infighting amongst themselves had come for the best.
“After Elinsys shut down the rebels on Remy’s waystation, I heard about her and wanted to do my part to help. She had gathered that they were organized from a few different urban centers within the Imperium. She’d said that Remy was lucky that she had been within range of the signal that had been sent out when he shifted the station to emergency power. She had heard whispers on the datanet about something going on in the vicinity and had decided to cruise around the system they were in when it happened. If not, who knows what would have been left by the time someone more official had arrived?
“Fala learned of the tragedy of the waystation, Elinsys’s actions to save Ssgt Remy and then sent me to her.”
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Michael interrupted Linnet’s narrative. “What relation do you have to Fala?”
“None really. I was available. Right place at the right time? Is that how your phrase goes?”
“It’s not mine per se, but I think I get it. You weren’t really uh,” Michael rotated his hand by his wrist in the air, as if he could summon the word he wanted. Finally he found it, “...you weren’t in some sort of royal retinue? Or a guard?”
“At the time, I had finished the Crucible and was waiting for placement. Fala made sure that a placement found me.” Linnet tilted her head back and seemed to smile wistfully. “I was sent to work with Elinsys.”
Linnet continued, “Elinsys said that Remy was also lucky because he was on a waystation, in isolated space; not in a heavy urban center, not where the rest of the rebels had nestled themselves. If she’d had a proper team, you know, more than myself, Bel’a and Harley, perhaps she could have been more methodical: sniped targets, poisoned individual apartment dwellings. However, that wasn’t the case. Eli had me to sniff them out and Bel’a and Harley to piece together and estimate where to place charges for maximum efficiency.”
“Estimate?” Michael was shocked. “Aren’t there blueprints for those buildings or a standard construction style?”
“Acquiring blueprints requires a stable local government,” Linnet laughed quietly, “And time. And fucks to give, which we were also short on.” She wiped a tear from her cheek. “We should have taken that time. We should have gotten more innocents out of those apartments.” She breathed shakily. “But those weren’t the orders. And that wasn’t what our anger at those bastards would permit.”
“You were vigilantes. Is that a word for you?” Seeing a slight disconnect for the term from Linnet, Michael continued, “If there was a more official form of policing the rebellion, it would have taken more time to get done than actually getting it done, so they gave you the keys to the squad car, let you do your thing while they looked away.”
“More or less, yes.” Linnet agreed. “And I think that was why Elinsys was our leader. She’d made it out of invasions and had more experience than younger Marines,” She looked up at Michael, “Like Serca.”
“Ah, so there’s the connection between you and Serca.”
“Few things will bring you together more than realizing your blind rage has consequences.” Linnet’s tears poured before she could start the next sentence. Tears of rage. Tears of hurt. Tears of regret. “I could smell the-the children who’d gotten crushed in the buildings we blew up in the name of revenge before we’d dug them out. Of course we’d gotten those gold-toothed bastards, but we had inadvertently killed so many others.” Michael came around his desk to hold Linnet as she cried more. “Nothing brings folks together tighter than the ghosts of their shared past.”
After some tissues were procured, Linnet continued, “And Serca cared. She wanted us to stop before we were done, but she knew that if these irrational measures weren’t taken then bureaucracy would delay things long enough that rational thinking let us know the rebels could escape, spread and lengthen their reign of terror.” She squeezed the handful of tissues before pressing them against her eyes again, “And that could not happen. Knowing that fed our fear, which fed our urgency to find the rebels and stop them.”
Michael took a deep breath, “Linnet, I need to tell you something.”
Linnet’s eyes returned to the present from the past.
Michael looked deeply into her eyes, “You asked me if Serca had told me anything before she,” he cut himself off and searched for something more appropriate than ‘she was killed in front of me’ came out of his mouth. “Before she was taken from us. You have been honest with me here so I have to be honest with you. Yes she spoke to me that morning, but I have no idea what she said.”
Linnet grasped him tightly by the shoulders, “What?”
“By the morning, I was sober enough to have lost my Shil’vati ears and tongue. I have no idea what she said.” Michael admitted.
Her eyes shimmered in realization. Then filled again with regret. “Oh no. No no no no no, this is not how someone’s final moments should be! She was on base. On Imperium property. She should have been safe goddammit!”
Michael tried to comfort Linnet. It didn’t go so well. Linnet recognized something more. “Serca was killed by rebels!”
A new voice appeared at Michael’s door, “Rebels. Again and again, tragedy from rebels. Why did rebellion plague the Imperium?” He looked up to see Joph’rena. She stood with her arms crossed, leaning on the frame of the office door. She was imposing despite her relaxed stance as she pretty well filled the open space. “Michael is no rebel, though, I can assure you, Linnet.”
“Why would I even question that about Michael. He didn’t kill Serca.” Linnet swished her head from Micheal, then Joph'rena, then again to Michael.
Joph'rena couldn’t keep the implication from her voice, “No, but he’s intimately familiar with the rebels.”
Linnet’s disappointment blossomed at the tone of ‘intimately’. “You fucked the woman who killed Serca?”
Michael looked away, not able to withstand her stare, “Pre-Invasion.” He glanced at Linnet to see her roll her eyes. “And not since then.” He reeled when he looked at Joph'rena, “Wait a second! How did you get into the office? What makes you think you can sit in on my interviews?”
Joph'rena retorted punchily, “What makes you think I can’t?”
Michael’s concerns about moving onto the base were realized.
“I thought I could have privacy considering the functions of this job.”
“What are the functions of your job?” Joph'rena inquired.
Now Michael was perplexed. “I don’t know. I don’t know that anyone has explicitly stated what my role is here. I’m just trying to get to know people to find out what kind of positive change I can make on base.”
“You think we don’t know our people?” Joph'rena somehow asked accusingly.
“Well, you may know, but if you know you must not care!” Michael accused right back.
“Hmm.” Joph'rena scoffed and walked back to the door. “If you don’t lock your door. If you don’t let your visitors wail so loud you don’t hear someone enter your office. Perhaps you care about the wrong things.”
Michael had prodded and counterprodded enough that he hadn’t noticed Linnet gathering herself and backing towards the door herself. “Michael, I've got to get out of here.”
“Sure, whatever you need, Linnet.” Michael barely said it before she’d pushed past Joph'rena to get out of the office.
Then there were two.
Joph’rena clucked at Michael, “What a wicked web we weave.”
“Are you the spider trying to get me tangled in your web?”
“Your name will be mud when Linnet gets back to the rest of ‘your pack’.”
Michael didn’t have anything clever to say after that. It wasn’t his fault that Linnet’s friend had been killed by a former girlfriend. That wasn’t his fault. That said, Linnet had laid bare her emotions about her past; Joph’rena presented a jarring fact associated with that past connecting more recent events. He had to hope that Linnet could separate the events and disconnect them from how she was feeling right now. If she didn’t Joph’rena may be right.
Michael admitted, “Wouldn’t be the first time.” He dug into a desk drawer and rattled out a canister of gum. He plopped a piece into his mouth and crunched. He hoped the scent would antagonize Joph’rena.
Joph’rena twisted her tusk happily and backed out of the office door, “Farewell Mikey.”
Michael grumbled as the door clicked shut. I can’t worry about that now. I can’t care what she’s doing. I just have to keep on keeping on for now. Hopefully I can patch things up with Linnet later. He proceeded to chew his gum uneasily as he packed himself up and left the office.