Alex
“So you’re the fucker that caused this shit storm.”
Those words cut through me like a knife through some hot butter. Even if the forty-ton war machine wasn’t looking down at me on the desk like some particularly irritating mouse, it would still have been extremely intimidating. It took just about all of my willpower to not flee. I was going to die anyways, might as well make a show out of it. I looked over to Aeva, who gave me the slightest shake of her head. I gave a brief sigh before I looked back over to the two soldiers in their mechs and gave a shrug. “Yeah, there aren’t any other humans on this ship is there?”
One turned to the other. “Looks like we have a comedian on our hands here.”
“Oh yeah, it’s going to be real entertaining watching the funny guy crack during the trial,” said the other one, pulling a temporary holding cell and placing it in front of me on the table. “Get in.”
I looked back over to Aeva who looked just about ready to jump one of the soldiers. Instead, she gave me a small wave and said, “I’ll see you on the other side.”
“If this isn’t the end of the line for me, then I will be genuinely surprised,” I whispered as I stepped into the holding cell. It was a sparce thing, clearly made for temporary transportation of prisoners more than any kind of comfort at all. There were no windows, just a single harsh LED in the center of the ceiling, a metal chair bolted to the floor, and a small camera mounted in the back left corner of the cell. No sooner than I walked in it shut with a harsh metal squeal behind me. With nothing better to do, I walked over to the chair and sat down. It became necessary to hold onto the chair as the cell was roughly lifted off the table and into the air.
“What do you think will happen to him? What are Terran courts even like?” I heard Aeva ask worriedly.
“If he’s lucky, he’ll spend the rest of his life in a prison cell,” one of the soldiers.
“But personally,” supplied the other, “we’re hoping for the death penalty.”
This was going to be a long next few days.
---
Admiral Elin Chaplain
“Package secured, returning to ship.” There was a small amount of tension that left my body as I heard those words. I turned over to the projection of Admiral Villa. He was hunched over his own projection of what the former battlefield looked like. The debris of the last 45 minutes would take weeks to clear up, especially with how much wreckage the Yalayan ships had created in the battle.
I turned back to my own readouts. “Alex has been detained, and he’s on route back to us as we speak.” Admiral Villa gave me a curt nod at that. “Should have him in front of a council before the end of the day.”
“The Strength Through Diplomacy is in no state to move,” Villa explained, “and our long range comms are still out. If this is going to be with Terran high command, it’ll have to be on the Fuck Around and Find Out.”
I nodded, transfixed by the holographic display of one of the Yalayan’s ship’s reactors going critical. The explosion was only supplemented by the half dozen radioactivity warnings that popped up around the affected area. I watched as the rest of the fleet compensated to not get hit by the majority of the shrapnel that was once an enemy ship.
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“How long do you think it’ll be before she’s able to be back up and running?” I asked.
Admiral Villa gave a dry chuckle. “With all this readily available scrap to choose from? Two months at least. One if you can convince high command to send a large enough autofab.”
“That’s one to two months of the fleet not in the Sol system, I don’t like leaving it open like that. What if someone finds it?”
Admiral Villa gave me a look that I knew well. “You worry far too much, so long as you were following protocol Sol should be fine.”
I looked back over to the live readout that I was receiving from the Sol system. Everything looked green, but with no way to detect faster than light travel, it would be impossible to tell if an invasion fleet was headed for the Sol system.
“I’ll see what I can do to get an autofab out here, but I can’t make any promises,” I said, turning away from the readout. “And besides, since the prisoner is going to be brought here, I want to make sure that he gets a proper welcome.”
Admiral Villa gave me a look. “Take your time. Just remember, if he dies before a trial, there’s going to be a whole inquiry about what happened to him.”
I cracked a smile. “We’ll just have to make sure that he makes it then.”
---
Alex
The box I was in was rattling like a poorly tuned engine as I tried desperately to stop myself from tumbling from the chair. If I didn’t know any better, I would have bet money on those two soldiers shaking the holding cell just for the hell of it. If I hadn’t had extensive training getting my mech license I probably would have been a lot more motion sick than I was right now.
All of a sudden, the box stopped shaking, I must have been put down. Probably even on their ship, what did they call it? The Traitor’s Bane? Awfully appropriate, considering what kind of charges they were going to throw at me. I took a deep breath. Keep calm and this will all be over soon enough, one way or another.
I sat there, in silence for a space of time. It could have been minutes or hours, I couldn’t tell. Boredom was starting to creep in as I started to bounce my knee. It was growing incessantly, quickly evolving into me tapping out a beat onto the sides of the chair. The tapping evolved into pacing, which then evolved into me sitting in the corners of the rooms, the cold metal making it uncomfortable for me to sit for more than a few minutes. I occasionally looked over to the camera in the corner I knew I was being watched from.
“If this is your way of getting back at me before the trial, this is considered cruel and unusual, and my lawyer will be hearing about this!” I shouted to no one in particular.
I waited for some time before I finally gave up at getting a response, so I quickly went back to my pacing. I blinked in surprise as the wall that I had entered suddenly opened and there was an entire retinue of guards waiting for me to step out of the cell. Here we go again.
Admiral Elin Chaplain
---
The cacophony of noise was a welcome distraction from the last forty minutes of waiting for the prisoner to arrive on the ship. I looked around at the veritable beehive of activity in this massive hangar, from lowly techs scurrying about the place in search of something to repair or maintain, to the supply crates the size of large homes being pushed by even larger mechs. Every once in a while, one of the people going about their business noticed me and my security team and gave me a small salute. I would nod and give a small salute back, but that happened infrequently enough that it came as a bit of a surprise every single time.
Eventually, the lights surrounding one of the massive airlocks flashed, indicating that there was a ship docked, and passengers ready to disembark. As it cycled and the massive doors slid open, I saw a small retinue of soldiers, all stood in a circle formation, around a man in a garishly orange jumpsuit. The only one that was out of this formation, the captain of the Traitor’s Bane himself, one Captain Homme. He was a short man with a powerful build that commanded the respect and attention of those around him. His permanent scowl softened for a moment as he saw me and gave me a crisp salute.
“One prisoner, mostly unharmed, as requested sir,” he said swiftly.
I returned the salute. “Excellent job, we’ll take it from here.”
Captain Homme gave a curt nod and turned to walk back to the airlock. My security took this as a sign to surround the prisoner and corral him closer to me.
I gave my best sinister smile. “Welcome to The Fuck Around and Find Out. You fucked around, it’s time for you to find out.”