A Choice of Treasons (42 page)

It worked, probably because the mutiny had no leadership and had degenerated into just another riot. There was only one incident, on F deck. They’d cleared about half of it when a young woman jumped out into the middle of the corridor, and with a hysterical scream started swinging a small handgun wildly about, pulling the trigger. The marines dove for cover as bullets ricocheted up the corridor, and they started to bring their weapons to bear, but York screamed, “Hold your fire. As you were. That’s an order.”

Above all, the marines were disciplined. They let her stand in the corridor screaming and pulling the trigger on the gun. It was a small grav gun, with a magazine of non-explosive projectiles and a reactor pack in the grip. When she’d fired all the projectiles the gun shut down, though she remained there screaming and pulling the trigger. York stood, stepped into the corridor, and at sight of him her screams died, became a whimper, though she continued to pull the trigger on the now empty weapon. York walked slowly up the corridor, the only sound the click, click, click as she repeatedly pulled the trigger. He walked up to her until she could press the barrel of the gun against his chest at point-blank range, the trigger clicking into the silence around them. He raised his hands, cupped them around the gun and carefully pulled it out of her grip. She buried her face in her hands and broke into sobs.

York spoke into the hand com. “Get a medic here and sedate her.”

That set the tone for the cleanup operation, and the marines were careful to kill no one.

When it was over York reported to Soladin and his two AI goons. “Very good, Mister Ballin,” Soladin said. “Now. I have orders from Commander Sierka. You’re under arrest for attempted mutiny. These two men will escort you to the brig.”

York allowed the AI goons to escort him to a cell, noted with an oddly disconnected sense of reality that prisoners of one sort or another occupied many of the other cells. As they locked him in he said, “I need medical attention.”

The two goons looked at each other and grinned. “Sure you do,” one of them said.

“I need treatment,” York said. “Please have a marine medic or someone from Doctor Yan’s staff come here as soon as possible.”

Their grins broadened and they turned away without comment. York folded a seat out of the wall and sat down. His left hand was so badly swollen the gauntlet was rigid, with a steady stream of ooze drizzling out of the tear in the mesh. He tried to get his armor off, managed to pop the seals on his right shoulder, but either the armor was too badly damaged, or he was too exhausted to succeed. What he needed now was rest, so he flopped into the lowest of the grav bunks in his armor and had no difficulty passing out.

“Did you get it?” Jewel demanded.

Soe looked up from his screens, craned his neck to look past the fire control console with a big grin on his face. “We got him. I got his transition vector clean and precise. We won’t miss him this time.”

“Excellent,” Jewel said. “Let’s follow. Mr. Tac’tac’ah, set us up for transition.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Abraxa looked at the report in front of him, wondered what in god’s name
Cinesstar
was doing on Anachron IV. The information from their informant there was sketchy, but there was no doubt it had been
Cinesstar
. Whoever the fool was commanding her, he’d given away their position to everyone.

Abraxa brought a star chart up on one of his screens.
Where would they go next?
he wondered. The sector headquarters at Aagerbanne was the largest base near them, but the subsector headquarters at Sarasan was closer. Which one would they make for? It was imperative that he guess correctly.

And what were they up to, Edvard and Rochefort and Cassandra and Sylissa d’Hart? What little plot had their scheming hatched?

CHAPTER 19: ANOTHER CHOICE

Alsa Yan crawled out of her bunk in no mood to be awakened from a sound sleep. “Lights,” she said angrily, and the computer brought her cabin lights up. She threw on a robe, hit the door lock and opened it. A civilian stood in the corridor outside her cabin, a man she’d noticed about the ship a few times. “What do you want?” she growled before she noticed Sylissa d’Hart standing next to him. “Your Ladyship, I didn’t mean to . . .”

The noblewoman shook her head. “It’s we who should apologize. I know you’ve been working late with the wounded, but I felt this was important enough to wake you. May we come in?”

Alsa stepped back. “Certainly. What can I do for you?”

The man stepped aside, let the noblewoman precede him, followed her in and spoke. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Thomas Harshaw, late the imperial vice consul on Trinivan. At the moment, however, I’m acting as Lieutenant Ballin’s legal council.”

Alsa frowned. “Legal council. Why does he need legal council?”

“Commander Sierka has charged him with mutiny, gross insubordination, and a number of other serious crimes.”

“That’s bullshit!” Alsa snapped, then remembered Lady d’Hart. “Umm . . . sorry, but York would get us all killed before he’d commit mutiny.”

Lady d’Hart smiled. “Have you heard what happened on Hangar Deck?”

Alsa shook her head. “All I know is I got swamped with wounded, spent a day and a half cutting, then came here for some rest.”

Harshaw shrugged. “Apparently Mister Ballin threatened to kill Commander Sierka.”

Alsa laughed bitterly. “I don’t blame him. Sierka dumped him and his people.”

“Nevertheless,” Harshaw continued. “Commander Sierka intends to convene a court-martial tomorrow morning. I’ve been appointed to represent Lieutenant Ballin, and been given until then to prepare his case.”

Alsa ran her fingers through her hair. “What do you need me for?”

Harshaw shook his head. “I went down to see Lieutenant Ballin in the brig and I found him comatose and apparently quite ill. I tried to get him to tell me what was wrong, he mumbled something barely intelligible about a . . .
breach wound
, whatever that is. I asked the guards to summon medical help, but they refused and just laughed at me. I appealed to Lady d’Hart here, and she recommended we seek your help.”

Alsa nodded. It was just like the AI to refuse a prisoner medical aid. “Please wait out in the corridor while I put on some clothes.”

Harshaw and Lady d’Hart stepped out of her cabin. Alsa threw off the robe, pulled on a pair of medical coveralls, grabbed her bag and joined them.

Down in the brig the AI sergeant in charge refused to let her pass. “I’m the chief medical officer on this ship,” she said angrily, “and I have a report you have a seriously ill man in one of these cells. Now let me pass.”

The sergeant asked, “How did you get this report?”

Alsa said, “Mister Harshaw here—”

“He’s a lawyer type,” the sergeant interrupted her. “What’s he know about sick?”

They argued a bit longer, but finally Alsa gave up and tried a different tack. She called Sierka, but he refused to take her call. She tried to explain to Armbruster, but the old man was too frightened to act on the matter. Finally, she put in a call to Palevi, and the sergeant answered with a grin that bothered her.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” he asked politely.

“You can help me get in to see your CO.”

Palevi shrugged. “Sorry ma’am. I got no authority there. The captain has him locked up and sealed away.”

“I know that,” Alsa said. “Sierka won’t let anyone in to see him but his legal council, Harshaw. And Mister Harshaw here informs me Lieutenant Ballin is suffering from a breach wound. Did you know about that, Sergeant?”

That got a reaction out of Palevi. “No, ma’am. Breach wound?”

“Well apparently he picked it up leaving that planet. And apparently he’s gone for almost two days now without treatment. And apparently he’s in pretty bad shape. And apparently those AI bastards aren’t going to let me in to treat him unless you can convince them to. So get your ass down here, Sergeant, with about two dozen of your best to back me up.”

Palevi nodded, and by the look on his face Alsa suddenly felt sorry for the AI guards. “Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.”

It was simple with Palevi’s help. He and his marines, all wearing sidearms, filed into the guard station down in the brig before the AI guards could react. The marines didn’t even need to draw their weapons. They just stood there with their hands resting on their guns while Alsa quoted chapter and verse of the regs concerning her right to examine the physical wellbeing of any person on board ship. And anything she wasn’t sure about, she made up.

She and Palevi and Harshaw and Sylissa d’Hart and two marines marched down the cellblock to York’s cell. While she stood outside the cell with Palevi barking orders into his com, what she saw of York was not good. He was laying up against the wall in a grav bunk, still wearing his armor, which had a large crack down the middle of the chest plate. He didn’t have his helmet on, and his face was white and pasty, with a greasy looking sheen of perspiration beading around a five-day growth of beard. There was an obvious cut in the middle of his forehead, and dried blood smeared over most of his face. His eyes were open, staring blankly, and they had a yellow, rheumy appearance. Alsa growled, “Get that god damned cell open!”

As the plast bars slid aside Alsa crossed the cell yanking her portable med console out of her kit. She knelt down beside York’s bunk, plugged it into the med tap on his suit and switched it on. It instantly started screaming a high-pitched whine. “Stand back all of you,” she shouted. “He’s hot. Fuck he’s hot!”

She herself didn’t back away, but the rest of them did. She tapped keys on her console, learned that she could put up with about an hour of exposure without having to go through anything more than mild chemotherapy. York, though, was going to have to go through one hell of a lot more than that.

His armor was a mess, had completely shut down, wasn’t even giving her vital signs. She finally managed to access his telemetry log, started scanning it. “Breach wound,” she announced, finding what she was looking for. “He had a left gauntlet breach before he left the planet’s surface.”

She turned around, barked at Palevi. “Contact sickbay. Tell them I want a grav stretcher down here on the double with a contamination shield. And I want a contamination team here for clean-up. And get in here and help me strip off this armor.”

While Palevi and two marines started popping York’s armor seals, Alsa brought out a power scalpel, dialed it up to maximum, started cutting away the plating of his left gauntlet. She pealed a section back and the stench that hit their noses made them all wince. “Shit,” one of the marines swore, “What the hell is that?”

Alsa nodded carefully. “Gangrene. By now his whole system’s septic. At a minimum he’s going to lose the arm. And he’s in no shape for cloning or a transplant.”

The grav stretcher arrived. They bundled York into it, sealed him behind the contamination shield. As they were about to leave Harshaw stopped Alsa. “Is it safe to say that my client is not physically capable of standing trial at this time?”

Alsa was getting tired of Harshaw. “What the hell does it matter? It’s safe to say your client may not live to stand trial.”

. . . Alsa looked sadly at her handiwork. All that remained of York was a bit of tissue, a piece of bone, a smear of blood.

The technician held out the open body bag. “I’ll scrape him into it.”

Alsa looked at what was left of York, shook her head. “That’s not him. There’s nothing left of him.” She reached out, scraped the bits of tissue into a pan, turned toward the disposal can . . .”

York slammed awake, sat up in his bunk, struggled for long seconds while mentally he flipped back and forth between the two realities: Anachron IV had been dream. No it wasn’t . . . yes it was . . . no it wasn’t . . . This time he wasn’t going to be fooled. Not by any of them. Anachron IV was real, the body bag dream was a dream, and the whole world swam around him as he examined his left arm carefully, found the seam where the real arm ended and the prosthetic began. He started crying with relief. It wasn’t a dream. They’d cut off his arm and it wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t insane. No, he was insane, but that was all right, as long as Anachron IV was real. He understood it all now, so he lay down again and slipped back into sleep.

For York his court-martial was an odd sort of dream, though through the whole thing he was less concerned with whether he was dreaming, and far more concerned with his ability to distinguish the dream parts from the real parts. If he could keep those two straight, he’d be satisfied.

Harshaw coached him rather extensively beforehand. “Sierka was going to hold a closed hearing and allow only those witnesses he wanted. But Her Majesty asked to be allowed to observe, and of course he dare not refuse her. So you keep your mouth shut. We don’t need your testimony, but we do need you to sit there quietly and look smart and disciplined and wounded and victimized.”