June 3, 2361 AIA
Supremacy Military Base 049478
Tennama and Harlan stared down at the mangled metal corpses of the bots they had sent.
“The base commander will have to be informed,” Tennama said. “He’ll want an explanation. I’m afraid we’ll have to come up with something convincing considering the amount of property damage.” He glanced at the silent figure beside him. Harlan was trembling with rage. “I’ll come up with something,” he said, turning back to the tech-carnage.
“How did this happen?” the colonel hissed. His voice was strained.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you certain, Major? What have you overlooked? Where did you fail me this time?”
Tennama felt his brow get hot, but he managed to calm himself. “Why is it my failing, Colonel? You were here as well. You had as much responsibility as I did.”
“You think this is my fault?”
“No, Colonel. I don’t. Nor do I think it’s my fault. I think it’s important to remember that we’re working with intelligent and capable opponents who are as driven to achieve their ends as we are to achieve ours.”
“We were so close!” Harlan paced back and forth, seething. “We had her! She knew. It would have only taken another day or two of work—”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Torture?” Tennama said. “You call it work, but I can’t tell if that’s because you don’t want to think about it or because you’re so indifferent to it you don’t think about it.”
“It doesn’t matter!”
It does. But then Tennama thought better of it. Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Days away!” Harlan shouted. He pressed his fingers to his forehead.
“We have time,” Tennama said. “We certainly have enough time to think. And we have enough time to wait until you’ve calmed down.”
“Enough time to degrade me?”
Tennama raised his voice for the first time: “Colonel Harlan, I’m here to help you.” Harlan stopped pacing. The major added in a quieter voice, “My comment was not supposed to be an insult, but rather, an observation. In your current emotional state, I doubt we’ll be able to get anything constructive done.”
Harlan took a few breaths, shook out his arms, and adjusted his cuffs. “All right, Major. What is it?”
“The best we can do now is try to figure out why this happened.”
“Don’t you mean how?”
Tennama nudged a bot’s leg with the toe of his boot. “No. I think how is self-evident, even if we don’t know all the details. They were somehow able to trace her. They came and rescued her. How is not the question. I’m far more interested in why.” He turned to Harlan. “Did they do this on purpose, or was it an accident? They obviously took some effort to ensure their method of tracing her was well hidden, which inclines me to believe that it was done on purpose. Does that sound like something Alix Reyer would have done?”
Harlan stood in thought for a while. “Yes” was the verdict. “She’s willingly gone into dangerous situations in the past.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons,” Harlan said. “To save people. To get information. To destroy things—”
“To get things done.” Tennama put a finger over his mouth for a moment. “Remarkable.” He dropped the hand away from his face. “And if she was willingly captured this time, what would it have been for?”
“To learn why we wanted her. And now she knows.”
Tennama smirked, then said, “Then this isn’t a total loss.”