COLONEL BENETNASH’S PRIVATE OFFICE
0254 HOURS (WESTERN TIME)
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The General’s office had an austere, if modern, décor, very similar to the rest of the Empire’s buildings, gray walls, glass desks, and chairs with minimalist design. Today, it was immersed in darkness, illuminated only by the glare of two holographic screens suspended onto the mainboard.
The General did not receive him with the military salute as usual; he did it sitting in his chair and with his hands clasped on the desk.
Benetnash was a man with a little more than half a century of life and had more achievements in his military career than Rigel could ever have hoped to accomplish in a millennium. Nature had endowed him with a blessed body for hand-to-hand combat, and he had taken advantage of it, sculpting it over the years to instill fear and respect alike.
His past actions on the battlefield had made him a living legend among his admirers and detractors, two things he collected wherever he set foot. He was considered almost a living symbol of the Empire, with as much representative power as the scarlet shield with the winged white horse, or the armored Grenadiers.
No one had seen the General perturbed in any way, shape, or form, which increased his halo of a tough man. It was impossible to tell what his thoughts were by judging his expression; a problem Rigel was facing right now.
During the few seconds that they were both silent, Rigel made use of his knowledge of body language and tried to figure out what the General had in mind for him, but he couldn’t draw any conclusion based on the expression of the husky old man.
Benetnash’s face seemed to be made of stone. His mouth was turned into a wide downward curved line, and the dimples on the sides of it highlighted his bad mood; nothing out of the ordinary. What was scary were his eyes; those two blue icebergs glowed icy in front of the screens’ lights; they were crystalline pits for a lot of hypotheses.
Benetnash stood up and smoothed his impeccable uniform.
He wore a suit similar to Rigel’s, but crimson and beige instead of green. He wore a coat buttoned from his neck to his waist, where it flared at the sides to reach his ankles; epaulets with gold fringes on his shoulders, and about five different medal-shaped decorations hanging from his chest, next to the Army shield. Clipped to his belt hung a long, slim saber asleep in its scabbard. Although the blade was a symbolic element in the attire—no one used them anymore, everyone would rather use a laser gun over it—Rigel had heard Benetnash loved his saber and that he often unsheathed it, polished it out, and sharpened it.
Maybe he intends to use it today, the Detective Colonel thought.
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The sturdy general approached Rigel, touching the handle of his saber.
“You and I both know what happened in Bellatrix, Colonel Beta,” he said.
Rigel remained mute, with his eyes in front, thinking about how to escape if what he was fearing became true.
“And you and I know that this will happen again,” Benetnash continued.
Rigel cleared his throat. “What do you mean, General?”
Benetnash fixed his eyes on Rigel’s. “Don’t play stupid with me,” he said. He pressed a holographic button on the light screen of his desk, and a video started running.
Rigel went paled. His brown skin seemed to have lost its melanin completely, drained from the shock.
It was the missing sequence Stanton, the operator, was talking about. Stanton had shown him footage from surveillance camera number three, where the A60 was going toward Level 5. This must have been camera number five’s recording. The quality of the video was just as bad as the rest, but here a blonde woman was standing at the warehouse’s door, facing the Cyclops, and behind her, a young man dressed in an imperial soldier uniform.
Rigel stepped back. His little eyes were stuck on the image of the blonde girl. Malin. At least, that cleared up one of his doubts: Malin had joined Juzo.
“You still love her, don’t you?”
The General’s statement took Rigel by surprise.
In the few seconds since Benetnash had set the video running, a thousand things had gone through Rigel’s mind. From the idea that his career and life had come to an end—along with Stanton’s and so many others who would fall with him, accused of betraying the Empire—to the infiltration of Juzo and Malin into Bellatrix barracks, and the uncertainty of whether they had crossed into the other continent or died at the hands of that crazy android. But he had never, ever imagined hearing what he heard; let alone coming from the mouth of who it came from.
“Because of the way you look at her,” Benetnash added.
Rigel, mute.
Without changing his lapidary countenance, Benetnash withdrew his eyes from the Colonel and watched the video for a few seconds; then he paused it. The noisy image of Malin facing the android got frozen in front of him.
“Malin Marie Viveka,” the General said; and Rigel thought he detected in that rough, cold voice traces of pride and longing. “My only daughter, the Rowdy One.”
And for the briefest moment, in the countenance of that imposing man, the military title and the name that came with it crumbled, exposing who they hid beneath. In the blink of an eye, General Benetnash had returned to being Ulf Viveka, Malin Marie’s father. However, with another blink, as fast as the previous one, he returned to normal.
Benetnash turned toward him with a hand resting on his saber’s handle. “I should condemn you for what you’ve done,” he said. “Or perhaps I should kill you right here, now.”
Rigel didn’t move. His breathing speeded up. A cold sweat ran down his back. If he took a wrong step, the General could interpret it as a sign of hostility, and the last thing he wanted now was for the snake to jump on him. Damn it! The old man was a fighter and an incredible strategist; if that man decided to attack him, even when he was twenty years younger than him, and all that goes with it, he had little chance of getting out of the office alive. And of course, if he did, there were the two Grenadiers right outside to put an end to his misery.
“When you were my little Marie’s fiancé, I came to appreciate you as a son,” Benetnash said. Now there was contempt in his voice.