Relentless (20 page)

“Understood, Colonel. Thank you.” Geary bent his head, trying to think. “How do we get answers, Tanya? Before something happens?”

She’d been concentrating, and now smiled briefly. “Perhaps you and I should have a private talk with Commander Fensin.”

“Fensin?” He remembered the look and the bearing of that officer. Eager, professional, and a tendency to speak his thoughts impulsively. “That might work if we have Rione along to help soften him up.”

“Must we? Oh, you’re probably right. She’s a lever we can use if he tries to clam up.”

“You sound like you already know what’s going on,” Geary suggested.

“No, sir. I fear I know what’s going on, and if Commander Fensin hesitates to speak, I may be able to prod him into admitting it.” She tapped her comm pad. “Bridge, locate Co-President Rione and Commander Fensin. They should be together, probably in sick bay for his medical screen. Captain Geary and I need to see them in the fleet conference room immediately.”

The watch-stander who answered spoke cautiously. “We’re supposed to order Co-President Rione to the conference room, Captain?”

Desjani gave Geary a sour look as she replied. “No. Inform her that Captain Geary urgently requests her presence there along with Commander Fensin. That should satisfy diplomatic niceties.”

 

 

COMMANDER Fensin was smiling as he took a seat in the conference room while Desjani sealed the hatch. Rione sat beside him, impassive but watching Desjani in particular very closely.

Geary didn’t waste time. “Commander Fensin, what’s the story with the three senior Alliance officers among the prisoners?”

The smile vanished, and a variety of emotions rippled across Fensin’s face before he managed to control himself. “Story?”

“We know there are problems. Why would they be afraid of the other former prisoners?”

“I’m not certain I understand.”

Desjani spoke. “Perhaps this word will be easy to understand. ‘Treason’?”

Fensin stopped moving. After a moment, his eyes went to Desjani. “How’d you find out?”

“I’m the commanding officer of a battle cruiser,” she replied. “What exactly did they do?”

“I took an oath—”

“You took an earlier oath to the Alliance, Commander,” Desjani said. “As your superior officer, I want a full report.”

She’d taken control of the interrogation, Geary realized, but Desjani was getting answers, so he didn’t protest.

Rione did. “I would like an explanation for this. Commander Fensin has not even been given the opportunity to complete his medical screening yet.”

Geary replied. “I believe you’ll get your explanation when Commander Fensin answers Captain Desjani.”

Fensin had been staring at Desjani and now slumped back, rubbing his face with both hands. “I never liked it anyway. If we somehow ever get out, everybody stay quiet until we get them. As if we were a criminal mob rather than members of the Alliance military. But as the years went by one by one endlessly, it seemed to make sense. We’d never be rescued, never be freed. We’d have to do what needed to be done if justice was ever to be served. And the rules didn’t change when we were rescued. We’d agreed to do it when we could.”

Rione reached and grasped Fensin’s other hand. “What happened?”

“What didn’t.” Fensin stared toward the far bulkhead, his eyes looking into the past. “They betrayed us, Vic. Those three.”

“How?” Geary demanded.

“There was a plan. Hijack one of the Syndic supply shuttles but keep it quiet. Get to the spaceport and grab a ship. Only twenty prisoners might make it out, but they could have taken a lot of information back to Alliance space. Who was in the camp, what we knew of the situation behind the border in Syndic space, that kind of thing.” Fensin shook his head. “Crazy, I guess. Only one chance in a million it might work. But against a lifetime as a prisoner of war, some people thought those odds were good enough. The three senior officers in the camp told us not to, but we pointed out the fleet’s standing orders for prisoners to resist where feasible. So they told the Syndics. The only way to stop the plan, they said. Because the retaliation against the remaining prisoners would be too severe, they said. Because they’d agreed to keep us in line for the Syndics in exchange for certain privileges for us. Privileges! Enough food, some medical care, the sort of things the Syndics were obligated by simple humanity to provide anyway.”

Fensin closed his eyes. “When the Syndics found out about the plan, they ran us through interrogations until they’d identified ten of the prisoners who were going to hijack the shuttle. Then they shot them.”

“Was this an isolated incident?” Geary asked. “Or a pattern of behavior?”

“A pattern, sir. I could talk all day. They did what the Syndics wanted and told us it was for us. Keep quiet, behave, and it would benefit us. Resist, and we’d get hammered by the Syndics.”

Desjani looked like she wanted to spit. “Those three focused on one aspect of their mission, the welfare of their fellow prisoners. They forgot every other aspect of their responsibilities.”

Fensin nodded. “That’s right, Captain. Sometimes I could almost understand. Among them they’d been prisoners of war for a combined total of more than a century.”

“A century isn’t long enough to forget important things,” Desjani replied, looking at Geary.

He rapped the table to draw Fensin’s attention, uncomfortable with Desjani’s observation despite (or perhaps because of) the truth in it. “What’s the objective of this conspiracy of silence? Why not tell us immediately what those three did?”

“We wanted to kill them ourselves,” Fensin answered in a matter-of-fact way. “We held emergency courts-martial, in secret of necessity, and reached verdicts of treason in all three cases. The penalty for treason in wartime is death. We wanted to make sure those sentences were carried out before any of those three managed to lawyer their way into being formally charged and tried on lesser offenses. And, in truth, we wanted revenge for ourselves, for those who died.” He looked around at the others. “You can’t know how it feels. I . . . Do we have access to imagery of the camp? Before you pulled us out?”

“Certainly.” Desjani entered some commands. Above the table appeared an overhead view of the POW camp on Heradao as it had looked before being smashed to bits during the fight to liberate the prisoners.

Commander Fensin, working the controls with the clumsiness of someone who’d not been allowed to use the like for years, zoomed the image in on one side of the camp. As the picture zoomed closer, Geary could see a large open field, and that the field was partially filled with neat rows of markers. “A cemetery.”

“Yes,” Fensin agreed. “That POW camp had been in existence for about eighty years. A generation of prisoners had aged and died there. There weren’t a lot of real elderly because of the harsh conditions and the limitations on medical care.” His eyes rested on the imagery of the grave markers. “All of the rest of us believed that eventually we’d end up in that field as well. There weren’t any prisoner exchanges, and why should we expect the war to ever end? After five or ten or twenty years, even the strongest beliefs faded into resignation. We’d never see our families again, we’d never go home again. All we had left was each other, and what dignity we could retain as members of the Alliance military.”

He focused on Rione, as if she were the one he most wanted to convince. “They betrayed that. They betrayed us. Those things were all we had left, and they betrayed those things. Of course we wanted to kill them.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Desjani gestured toward the image still hovering before them. “Did the Marines get records of those graves while they were on the ground? The names of those who rest there?”

“I doubt it.” Fensin tapped his head with one finger. “They didn’t have to. Every one of us had names to remember. I was one of those who had to remember all of the dead whose last names began with F. The list of the honored dead is in our memories. We couldn’t take them home because they’ve already gone to join their ancestors, but we will take their names to their families.”

For a moment Geary imagined that he could see them, the prisoners going painstakingly over the names of those who had died, checking their lists against each other, committing the names to the only form of record they had. Year by year, as the lists grew longer, never knowing if anyone in the Alliance would ever hear those lists, but keeping them in their memories just the same. It was all too easy to sense how the prisoners had felt in that POW camp, which they had every reason to believe would be their jail until they died. All too easy to understand their need for such rituals and their sense of betrayal. “All right.” Geary looked a question a Rione.

She looked down, then nodded. “I believe him.”

“So do I,” Desjani added without hesitation.

Geary tapped the comm controls. “Captain Tulev, get those three senior former prisoners onto a shuttle with Marine guards. Take them to . . .” He pondered his options. He needed a ship without former POWs from Heradao on board, but every warship had those.

Every warship.

“
Titan
. Take them to
Titan
with orders that they be confined under guard until further notice. All three are under arrest.”

Tulev nodded as if unsurprised. “The charges? We are obligated to provide them to those under arrest.”

“Treason and dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy. They told me they were preparing a report on their actions. Make sure they have the means to produce that report. I want to see it.” That wasn’t strictly true. The last thing he wanted to do was read through that document if what Commander Fensin had said was accurate. But he had an obligation to see what the three officers said in their own defense.

Once Tulev had signed off, Geary faced Fensin again. “Thank you, Commander. I think I can promise you that if what you told us is confirmed by your fellow former prisoners, then formal courts-martial back in Alliance territory will reach the same conclusions you did.”

“Do we have to wait?” Fensin asked with shocking calmness. “You could order them shot right now.”

“That’s not how I do business, Commander. If your statements are true, those three will condemn themselves with their own report, then no one will doubt the necessity of carrying out justice.”

“But Captain Gazin is so old,” Fensin argued. “She may not live until we reach Alliance space, and she’d escape the fate she deserves.”

Desjani answered him in her command voice. “If she dies, then the living stars will render judgment and justice, Commander. No one can escape that. You’re an officer in the Alliance fleet, Commander Fensin. You held to that as a prisoner. Don’t forget it now that you’re back with us.”

Rione’s expression hardened, but Fensin just stared at Desjani again for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, Captain. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Desjani assured him. “You’ve been through hell, and you did your duty by telling us the truth. Continue to do your duty, Commander. You were always part of the fleet, but now you are with it once more.”

“Yes, Captain,” Fensin repeated, sitting straighter.

Rione looked to Geary. “If there’s nothing else, I’d like to spend some time with Commander Fensin, then get his medical screening accomplished.”

“Of course.” Geary and Desjani stood together and left. He looked back as the hatch closed and saw Rione still holding Fensin’s hand, no words passing between them. “Damn,” he muttered to Desjani.

“Damn,” she agreed. “Are you sure we shouldn’t shoot them now?”

So Desjani had been tempted, too, but hadn’t argued with him in front of the others to avoid appearing to undermine his own position. “Sure? No. But it has to be done right. There can’t be any perception of mob justice. Good job getting Fensin to talk. How did you know to prod Fensin with a question about treason?”

She made a face. “Some of the conversations I had with Lieutenant Riva. He talked a few times about things like that. I didn’t really understand before, but I remembered how he’d get very angry when talking about anyone who he thought had been too compliant with the Syndics. Something about this made me recall that.” Desjani looked down the passageway, and added something in a bland voice. “It’s not like I think of Riva. Not at all, usually.”

“I see.” To Geary’s surprise, he realized he had felt a twinge of jealousy. He had to change the subject. “I wonder if I might not have ended up going down that same misguided road that those three did if I’d been captured.”

Desjani frowned at him. “No. You wouldn’t have. You care about the personnel under your command, but you also know the risks they have to run. You’ve always been able to balance those things.”

“I care about them enough to send them to their deaths,” Geary replied, hearing some bitterness creep into his tone.

“That’s exactly right. Too much callousness, and their lives are wasted. Too much concern, and they die anyway, with no result. I don’t pretend to understand why things are that way, but you know they are.”

“Yeah.” He felt the momentary depression lifting and smiled at her. “Thanks for being here, Tanya.”

“It’s not like I could be anywhere else.” Desjani smiled back, then her face went formal, and she saluted. “I need to see to my ship, sir.”

“By all means.” He returned the salute, then watched her walk away.

She had a ship to see to and he had to call
Titan
and let Commander Lommand know that a particularly unwelcome cargo would be arriving on his ship soon. The burdens of command varied, but burdens they always were.

 

 

BY the next morning he felt better. The third planet of Heradao was comfortably distant, the fleet had finished joining up with the units left behind in the area of the space battle, and the entire Alliance force was headed for the jump point for Padronis. Even the old Syndic ration bar he chose for breakfast didn’t seem to taste as bad as usual.