War Against the White Knights (2 page)

“You mean… I’m
not
a murderer?” Springer stared at him, as if struggling to believe her own words.

“No, you’re not,” said Xin, “and I’ll tell you something else. You’re not a Marine either. I don’t know what you are. A hero, yes, but no longer one of us.”

Xin half-turned to Arun and smiled.

Arun knew that smile was meant for him. His heart melted. He was a teenager once again, captivated by the glamor cast by this woman he used to dream about.

Xin had lied for him. She’d told Arun the truth of what happened at the Second Battle of Khallini, that Springer had come looking to murder her, only to discover she was caught in the same web of destiny that constantly tried to entrap Arun.

Xin had lied under oath because she loved him… and then stuck a barbed judgement into Springer to take her out of the picture. Arun might be the commander-in-chief, albeit only with Admiral Indiya’s political support, but Xin was the senior Marine commander, and hero of the Second Battle of Khallini. If she said Springer wasn’t fit to be a Marine, it would be next to impossible for him to contradict her.

Arun hated Xin. He adored her.

Some things would never change.

——

The two defendants stood side by side in the stand, awaiting their sentencing, surrounded by a sea of expectant faces that represented only a tiny proportion of those looking on from afar. The entire Legion would be watching this, Arun knew.

As a pair they looked ridiculous. Springer’s black fatigues bulged with strength and vitality, despite disfiguring scars down one side and the prosthetic leg that was out of sight but never out of Springer’s mind. Furn barely came up to her chest. Always thin, he had shrunken in on himself since his arrest. He felt betrayed too. Springer had turned him in.

As a man, Arun couldn’t care less what Furn felt. The pathetic ship rat had tried to murder his children in the name of the twisted love he felt for Springer.

As a commander, Arun thought this was a hellish waste. Here were two of his most valuable military assets. Wasted on some stupid impulse.

How could the Legion balance justice with the need to continue utilizing these assets? Only by ugly compromise. Judge Chan would pronounce sentence in a moment, but would he follow Arun’s suggestion? All Arun could do now was hope.

But before Chan pronounced sentence, Arun would have the chance to speak, and he intended to use the opportunity to set the tone, to encourage magnanimity and, hopefully, make the Legion more receptive to mercy.

Arun stood and felt the attention of many tens of thousands press upon him.

“The events of today cap of the first phase of the Human Legion story,” he said. “Storms have buffeted our very existence. But we have weathered them and prevailed, and now we are ready to expand our Human Empire.

“Tomorrow ‘K’ Fleet sets off on a campaign of conquest. ‘A’ Fleet and ‘L’ Fleets will follow within months. Our destination is the White Knight homeworld. Our objective, freedom. Not the freedom of outcasts beyond the law, but a solid, dependable and, above all, legal freedom. We proceed at the request of the White Knight Emperor besieged in its citadel, but we advance on our own terms. And when the Emperor emerges from his decades of long siege, it shall be to prostrate itself before the boots of a human army.”

Arun groaned inwardly. He’d vulleyed up again over the Emperor’s gender. Arun thought of the White Knight as an ‘it’, but the Emperor referred to itself as a ‘he’. Naturally, Pedro was fascinated by Arun’s continued gender confusion.

The awkward passage was over. Now.

He punched the air. “Freedom can be won!”

Cheers rang out through the room. This was what the crowd wanted. They echoed Arun vigorously.

Freedom can be won!

Freedom can be won!

Arun waited for the cheers to subside before thrusting both fists into the air and issuing a new battle cry.

“Freedom
shall
be won!”

The crowd was evidently taken by surprise, but after a split second pause, they erupted into even fiercer cheers and chanting.

Arun took his seat and Major Chan quietened the room with a downward wave of his outstretched hands. He cleared his throat. “Leading Spacer Furnace-Shield and Marine Phaedra Tremayne have played their vital roles in the history of the Human Legion, but it is clear to this tribunal that they cannot be trusted to serve in any of the two fleets.”

The court was silent now, the tension electrifying.

“In the case of Leading Spacer Furnace-Shield, this tribunal finds you guilty of multiple counts of attempted infanticide, a crime so heinous that you cannot be permitted to live among your own race. You shall be cast out of human society for the remainder of your life. You will remain a spacer in the Human Legion Navy and will carry out whatever duties the service sees fit to assign you from a deep-sea station built to house you in isolation. You will work with Littoranes and other aquatic members of the Legion, but of
Homo sapiens
and derivative species you are forbidden to come closer than one hundred meters. Forever.”

Furn offered no reaction, his face locked into a scowl of resentment.

“Marine Phaedra Tremayne,” began the judge. Arun’s heart fluttered. “In light of your previous good service, you will be discharged with honor, and reassigned a new role, that of deputy ambassador serving under Ambassador Sandure.”

The audience emitted low-level grumbles. Arun’s acute hearing picked out a few whispers of, “Shame!’”

“Silence!” bellowed Chan. “I have not finished pronouncing the defendant’s sentence.”

The audience quietened to an uneasy calm.

“It is my judgement, Tremayne, that you have confused culpability with guilt. Nonetheless it is our view that Spacer Furnace-Shield would not have attempted to murder your rival’s children if he didn’t feel he had your tacit approval. You should have been aware of this. You should never have allowed this situation to develop, but it did. This tribunal finds you guilty of conspiracy to commit multiple counts of infanticide.”

Arun couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t in the script.

“Your punishment is a harsh one,” continued Chan, “but is intended to send a message. It is not enough for Legion personnel to blindly ignore the actions of their comrades, any more than it is acceptable to commit atrocities and excuse ourselves by saying we were only following orders. The Legion must be better than that. We are all in this endeavor together and we are responsible for all of our actions collectively. Phaedra Tremayne, you are deemed unfit to be a mother. All rights and privileges with regard to your embryos are herewith denied you. If you ever see them again in their current state or having been born, it will not be in the capacity of a parent. Master-at-arms, take them away!”

Arun tried, but he couldn’t look at the defendants as they were marched away by Chief Petty Officer Coombes. He’d come into this trial desperate for a way to spare Springer her life. The offences were committed during the Second Battle of Khallini, and the clamor to punish anyone doing wrong under cover of the battle had been overwhelming. Only Xin’s testimony had saved Springer from a firing squad.

Finally, Arun managed to flick a glance Springer’s way. Given the slump he saw in her shoulders, maybe execution would have been more merciful.

Get a grip of yourself!
Arun cursed his weakness. In a few days, Springer would see things more evenly. She would find distractions, new courses to channel her considerable energies. She would bounce back. She always did eventually.
That’s where you got your name
, he told himself, but he wasn’t convinced it would hold true this time. Xin was, though.

Dammit! Xin was right. She always was. Arun was pining for a long-lost friendship. He sighed. He and Springer… that had been over years ago. Didn’t mean he no longer cared but he’d moved on. Arun knew his future lay with someone else, just as Springer had always said it would.

Xin commed him privately, her timing preternaturally accurate, as always.

“Look, Arun, I’m here if you need me, but I’m guessing you’d prefer to be left alone. I’m going down to Khallini-4 to inspect the zero-point batteries. I’ll be gone two to three days. You’ll be okay?”

“I guess,” he said, not really believing it. “Xin…”

When he didn’t finish, Xin prompted gently: “What is it?”

Arun bit his lip. “Thank you.”

COUNTERSTRIKE

Xin banished the star chart and instead requested a mirror, which took shape in the air before her. By rights she should be running through the battle plan one more time, but to hell with that – she’d helped to draw the frakking thing up and knew it by heart in any case.

She turned sideways on to the mirror – a maneuver which would once have taxed the fresh-faced and just out of training Xin when she had first set out from Tranquility, but not the zero-g veteran she had become. She examined herself critically. Was anything showing? She could see it. Even if Arun claimed not to and insisted that it was all in her imagination, she could see it: the slight suggestion of a bump, the faint contour that denoted new life stirring within her… Or not stirring in this instance, not anymore.

Time to suit up. She closed down the mirror, wondering fleetingly if anyone kept track of such things. She could imagine some grizzled quartermaster somewhere scratching the stubble of his chin and scowling at a display while muttering, “Merde! A fragging mirror again? How many times does one woman need to look at herself? Doesn’t she realize there’s a war on and the computer has more important things to do than keep showing her how gorgeous she looks?”

That image hadn’t entirely dissipated and she hadn’t quite stopped smiling when the door to her quarters burst open and General Arun McEwan sailed in, floating head first with more momentum than was wise given the compact nature of the cabin.

“
Arun
! What the frakk do you think you’re playing at?”

“Sorry, I just wanted to–”

“What, catch me in my under suit?”

“No! Well yes, that to, obviously, but… You don’t have to do this you know.” He said it in a hurry, a tumble of sounds, as if he had to force the words out all at once in case they turned and ran to cower at the back of his thoughts, never to emerge again.

“Yes I do.” She, on the other hand, was proud of the way she spoke calmly, concisely.

“You shouldn’t be out there, putting yourself in danger,” he went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “There are plenty of other roles you could undertake, just as important, just as meaningful.”

She softened for a moment, touched by his concern, and reached out to stroke his face; a display of tenderness that seemed to surprise him. “But I’m a Marine. This is what I’ve trained for all my life, what I’m best at – leading other Marines in battle.”

“I know, but given–”

“What, my condition? Is that what you were going to say?” The tenderness was gone, the caress withdrawn so suddenly it seemed to surprise him anew.

He nodded, unable to deny the truth. They both knew what he had meant.

“We’ve been over this a hundred times, Arun. I’m carrying our child, yes, but that doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes
everything
!”

“No, no it
doesn’t
. This isn’t an illness. I’m not infirm or disabled, I’m pregnant. That’s nothing but a physical condition, and one that I’m managing.”

Why couldn’t he see this? She’d explained it to him over and over. Why couldn’t he simply accept that she’d made a decision and was tired of having to constantly justify it to him? The pregnancy was in the early stages, the fetus no more than two months old, and she had arrested the process there, frozen its development so that it wouldn’t grow any more, not until she was ready. Her body could carry this tiny passenger suspended in time almost indefinitely, for years – decades if necessary – and they both knew how impractical it would be to give birth now.

“There’s a war to be won,” she reminded him.

“I know, and we’re winning it, and you’ve played an invaluable part in that, but we can finish the job without you taking such an active role from here on in.”

“Oh, so I’m redundant now, am I?”

“No, of course not. That’s not what I’m saying – stop trying to twist my words.”

She sighed, tiring of the same old arguments. “Look, Arun, I know you’re concerned.” For her, but for his baby most of all, and part of her rankled at that. He hadn’t shown any inclination to dissuade her from active combat before she fell pregnant, only now, when she was carrying
his
child. She knew it was unreasonable, ridiculous to be offended by that – to even notice it – but she was. “That’s sweet of you,” she said, “but nothing you say or do is going to change my mind. The only thing your fretting achieves is to make me angry. With you, and that’s not what either of us wants, is it?”

“Of course not.” He tried to reach for her then, awkwardly, but she failed to respond, too angry with him to do so.

“It’s not just the war…” she said, regretting the words immediately. Why had she said that? He knew her reasons,
all
her reasons, and there was nothing to be gained by airing them again.

“The Cull,” he said, and there it was, out in the open, refusing to be ignored.

“Yes,” she confirmed. No going back now. “We’re the first generation, the
only
generation as far as we know, in the whole history of the White Knight Empire to have escaped the Cull. The Human Legion is still beholden to the damned Knights… we’re on our way to rescue their Emperor for frakk’s sake, and we both know how entrenched the Cull is in their culture. I’m not bringing a baby into a universe where, if he or she doesn’t get killed in a bloody civil war, they’re just as likely to be killed by random selection for no sane reason.”

“I’d never let that happen,” he said. “Why won’t you believe me? The Cull is barbaric and senseless. I won’t permit the White Knights to impose it on us ever again, no matter what.”

“Then
say
as much,” she implored him, desperate that he should understand how important this was to her. “Not just to me, to everyone. Declare it publicly. Make the abolition of the Cull one of the tenets of the Human Legion, a rallying cry that people can flock to. They will, you know.”