Admiral's Trial (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 6

  Eye on the prize, he reminded himself. He had to keep his eye on the prize. The important thing was to survive the real Montagne threat—the new Commodore—and that meant getting the Morale Officer out of the way before that same Officer decided to do in Tremblay.

  He had valid orders from the Commodore, and his life was on the line. After he had settled with the Morale Officer, the Commodore would be the next target on his list.

  “Oh, and Mr. Tremblay,” Bethany drawled in that pleasant, royalist, way that implied all sorts of nice and comfortable things that you knew were just a lie.

  “Yes,” he asked politely.

  “How’s the wrist, Officer,” she smiled with just a hint of cruelty in her voice, almost like he imagined a snake would look if it had the right facial muscles, “that sure looks painful. One might almost wonder how it happened, if one was inclined to care?”

  Tremblay stiffened, “That’s none of your concern, Princess,” he growled.

  “If I’m to be your co-conspirator, then I at least have the right to know what happened, and if you’re about to keel over dead at any minute,” said the woman with patented false concern.

  “Thank you for your time, Lady Tilday, your concern is touching,” he said with cutting irony even as he stood up to go, dropping a communicator on the table.

  Bethany leaned over the table with a pleasant smile and grabbed his bandaged stump.

  “Don’t leave just yet, Lieutenant,” she purred in a sweet voice that belied the hard gleam in her eye, or the pressure of her grip as she squeezed.

  Suppressing a scream, Tremblay started to jerk back but the grip on his wounded arm tightened painfully and he stopped.

  “Go rot, your Highness,” he all but hissed the words as the air squeezed out of his lungs from the pain in his arm.

  “For a co-conspirator, you’ve shown a remarkable lack of concern for my wellbeing, Mr. Former First Officer,” Bethany said in a light voice, even as her face took on a grim cast.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Tremblay said his face twisting at the agony shooting up his arm.

  “I was left to cower in my cabin, like a bit of dirty laundry cast aside and forgotten, Former Chief of the Admiral’s Staff,” she said leaning forward and baring her teeth, “yet you not only survived, but also managed to parlay this handy little revolution into a new position of power onboard this ship.”

  “What’s your point,” Tremblay asked tightly, even as his single remaining hand crept toward the stunner tucked into the back of his waist band.

  “If being a Princess-Cadet means nothing to a Parliamentary type like yourself, then my being an Official Confederation Representative should fill you with terror,” Bethany hissed with fury, “yet you only come to look in on me when ‘you’ need something.”

  “Do what you’re going to do and let’s be done with this little charade; I have better things to do than pamper your royalist ego,” Tremblay grimaced as she squeezed his stump, but held grimly to his task, even as his hand crept around the hilt of his stunner.

  “I’ll help you in this thing because of the satisfaction it brings me, and the fact that I hate my cousin, your ‘Little Admiral, even more than Parliamentarian like you, Raphael Tremblay. But,” she sneered letting go of his stump, only to pull a chop stick out of her hair and press it to his neck before he could pull out the stunner, “if you ever presume to treat me like yesterday’s dirty laundry, and show up asking me to become your co-conspirator,” the needle-sharp stick dug almost painlessly into his neck, until he could feel a trickle of blood, “don’t expect to survive the experience. I am not some base born woman you cross and then can cast aside at will, expecting to return to the warmth of my affections later, just because you wish it to be so.”

  Tremblay gave a jerky nod, vowing to avoid this crazy woman like the plague in the future. It’s not like he had been doing anything since his last encounter with her up on the Bridge, except scrambling around in a desperate attempt to survive. Perhaps he could have looked in on her, but he had more important things to do than tie himself ever further to the Caprian Royals in the eyes of his new crewmates.

  “Oh, and Tremblay,” she said idly, as he slowly backed away towards the door and out of range of her lethal little hair sticks, “I haven’t asked what your real purpose is here, because I simply don’t care. Do not presume that I am so stupid that I don’t realize your pathetic attempts at trying to feed me some low-brow line. You can think of this as payment for past services rendered.”

  “Goodbye, milady Tilday,” he said, never taking his eyes off her as he waved a hand behind him to open the door and step outside her cabin.

  “If I don’t get those marines, I will seek you out, Mr. Tremblay,” Bethany said her eyes boring into his even as the door started to cycle shut. “I promise you won’t like the results of that particular encounter.”

  Breathing a sigh of pure and utter relief to have escaped being confined in the same room alone with that hellcat, he hurried down the corridor. He had other, more important things to line up, or else Bethany and all her little threats became irrelevant. It was pretty hard to kill a dead man after all, despite whatever her stuck up highness might think on the matter.

  Chapter 7: A Family Visit

  I’d been stuck in this room for what seemed like days with no choice but watch as the men and women who had believed in me were interrogated, tortured and then killed by Commander Suddian. His faithful assistant John Henry was at his side for every wretched moment of it.

  I expected to go numb from the constant stream of the ruthless, bloody-handed Morale Officer’s recordings, but it never happened. In fact, it seemed that each cry of agony, dashed hope, and cold-blooded murder got worse than the last.

  The door to my cell unexpectedly swished open without so much as a warning chime. I had to turn my whole body to see who it was, thanks to the full neck brace, and it took more than a moment for what I was seeing to register. When it did, I shrugged in resignation; there was nothing she could do to me that would compare to what the Morale Officer had already done.

  “Well-well,” said a gloating feminine voice, “I’m glad to see you’ve finally found your proper level in society.”

  “What do you want,” I demanded flatly. “Are you here to torment me, also?”

  “Oh, there’s no ‘just’ to it, Flat Nose,” my cousin, the Confederation Representative and Princess Bethany Tildy Vekna said, her voice almost serpentine in its satisfaction.

  “Do your worst, Cousin,” I sneered.

  “You owe me, Flat Nose; you held me a virtual prisoner in my quarters, intimidated me, and let your barbarian woman try to kill me,” she seethed with genuine anger in her voice.

  “Bah,” I turned away and stared at the holo-screen just in time to see a look of hope come across the face of the man Suddian was about to kill.

  A fist cracked into the back of my head, knocking me forward with enough force that I was barely able to keep my seat on the side of the rock hard metal bed.

  “By Holy Preceptor, you will pay attention to me when I’m in the room, you cross-breed son of a servant and a failed royal line,” she said coldly.

  I turned around and returned her cold look with one of my own, only I was deadly serious.

  “You’re alone in the room with a desperate man, Cousin. I’d be cautious—very cautious, if I were you,” I warned, standing to my feet.

  “You’re little better than an invalid,” she scoffed and snapped her fingers in my face.

  I knocked her arm away with a swipe of my own, causing her to retreat a pair of steps.

  Then the door swished open, and I knew why she’d snapped her fingers, and it wasn’t to rile me up even further.

  “Get him, boys,” she ordered, her voice the cry of a predator about to sink its teeth into her prey.

  A pair of muscle-bound guards came into the room and advanced on me. As there was little space in this box of a room, they were on me qu
ickly. Determined not to go down without a fight, I led with my fists.

  Taking my punch in the shoulder and then blocking my attack with an arm of his own, the first guard came over the top with a right hook straight to my nose.

  I went down like a tree that had just been cut. I’d like to say it was a lucky blow, or that I was just out of medical and therefore unfit for combat, but whatever excuse I would have come up with was irrelevant. It was just like being back on the playgrounds of my youth, with one of my cousins hiring a pair of thugs to knock me down.

  “I’ve always wanted to get some of my own back on a real…live…Montagne,” one of the guards growled as he raised his fist.

  “Not the face,” Bethany said quickly, “there’s no need to court an intervention by the good doctor.”

  I tried to rise, only to be knocked down once again. Then the fists and boots started coming fast and furiously, and as soon as it was obvious I was down for the count, my cousin joined in with a vengeance. She stomped for all she was worth, even going so far as to kick me right between the legs—something the other, male guards had at least refrained from doing.

  Curled up in a ball, the experiences of my youth became useful again; there was no point in being a hero when they had me down and out numbered with no way to either fight them off or escape. All I could do was grit my teeth and bear it. Oh, and of course, you had to try and protect the more vital bits of yourself. The rest of it can take it on the chin, so to speak. Although, in reality, the best places to take it were the arms, shoulders, and other large muscles of the body. When my assailants were all breathing heavily, my sweet cousin Bethany straightened up.

  “I need a moment with my Cousin,” she said between panting breaths.

  “Of course, Ma’am,” they replied, and stood back at ease.

  When the oafs failed to take the hint, she rolled her eyes. “Alone!” she barked imperiously,

  The guard scratched his head and then spat in my face. The other guard quickly followed suit.

  “It’s all recorded, ma’am; we’ll just watch it from the security station,” he said.

  “Out,” she repeated, with all the expectation of a Vekna Princess in her voice.

  It seemed to work and they quickly left.

  “You think I’m weak enough, now that your attack dogs have had a go at me, that you can finish up yourself,” I bit out, baring a bloody set of teeth at her before spitting at her feet. I missed her fashionable leather boots, but not for lack of trying.

  She leaned forward, grabbing my hair with one hand.

  “You were weak enough the moment I first walked into the cell,” she scoffed, twisting my head savagely with her handful of my patchy, still-recovering hair.

  I just watched her, biding my time. “Then what was point of it? Putting on a show for somebody?” I spat scornfully, and then worked up a good gob of spit.

  “Old times’ sake,” she said wistfully as she reached into her pocket. Something clicked and the air vibrated; I knew we were now surrounded by a privacy field, “And a little play for the cameras to reduce suspicion.”

  “Intend to do something you’re going to regret later,” I asked, with a clear warning in my eyes. She was going to pay, and in full measure. Anything more would just be added to the ledger.

  “You wish,” she scoffed. “Nope, this part is the price of admission, and it’s courtesy of a man who I happen to know—not just think, but know—hates your guts almost as much as I do. He’s assured me none of this will help in any way, so I’m actually going to go through with it.”

  “If you’re not going to beat on me some more, then get out of my room,” I growled, and this time my gob of spit flew all the way to her nice, shiny leather boot.

  “These are my dung kickers,” she pivoted her boot demonstrably. “They’re meant to get dirty, or I wouldn’t have used them on you, Jason” she purred maliciously, and then she slammed my face into the floor.

  “Get specked,” I retorted, mostly through my increasingly swollen nose.

  Bethany slipped something into my hand. I tried to drop it, but she forced my hands around it.

  “Take it,” she hissed, “as much as I’ve loved this little family reunion, fun time is over, and I have more important things to do.”

  Reluctantly, I wrapped my fingers around whatever it was. My brow furrowed when I realized it felt like a hand held com-unit.

  “Who is my hateful benefactor,” I asked scornfully.

  I could see she knew, but perhaps out of spite, or perhaps as a condition of getting some revenge, she wasn’t going to tell me.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she sneered. “No, my little mushroom Cousin, the only thing you need to know is that your chance to be a hero is close at hand.”

  “I’m not sticking my neck out for you, or whoever it is that hates me so much,” I snapped, matching her sneer for sneer.

  “This person thinks you will. He…or she,” Bethany smiled snidely, “believes that if given half a chance to put a stop to what you’ve been forced to see on the holo-screen for the past few days, that you’ll not only play the hero; you’ll literally throw yourself under the proverbial hover-bus to make it stop.”

  “Sit and spin,” I spat, but my heart was no longer in it. Whoever it was knew me pretty well. I actually was more likely than not to throw myself under the hover-bus for the crew. “What do I have to do?” I asked finally.

  “Just be the good little mushroom you always have been, and wait,” she said in that sickly, sweet tone I had come to hate as a child. “I’m told you’ll know it when you see it,” she finished, standing as she clicked off the privacy field.

  “I hate you. You know that, don’t you, Cousin,” I said, meaning it with every fiber of my being.

  “What you think, or feel, stopped being relevant at the point you lost control of this ship,” she sniffed.

  “We’ll see,” I countered weakly. I knew she was right, but I’d be blasted if I let her have the ‘last’ word!

  She leaned down and patted my cheek, and I immediately swatted her hand away, but not before she got in one good, patronizing pat.

  “You threatened me, Jason. Me—the Confederation Representative! Even these parliamentarian types have more respect for the power of the Assembly than you did,” she said, pulling out a hand mirror to check her hair. After tucking in a bit of flyaway, her image once again perfect, she strode over to the door.

  “I wouldn’t count me out so fast,” I blustered, hoping to inspire some fear, and maybe get some leverage for later.

  “Oh, poor Jason,” she cooed sarcastically. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re stuck in a cell on board your own ship.” The door swished open, and she paused to smirk at me, “You’re on your way to stand trial before the restored Confederation Assembly, where you’ll be found guilty and then executed. There’s nothing you, the few members of your crew who you didn’t get killed, or your very dead wife can do about it now.” With that, she stepped out into the corridor, and the door slid to a close behind her.

  “Just you wait and see,” I shouted at the closing door with mounting fury, “I’m not done with you yet! You hear me?! I’m not done with you yet, Cotton Mouth!”

  I stared at the door, and if the force of my anger could be turned into laser beams I could have burned a hole through the duralloy strength door.

  “Insufferable little twit! Always has to get the last word,” I shook my fist at the door impotently.

  I took a deep breath, and the droning of the holo-vid followed by screams and the thudding of fists made clear just how impotent I was. Anything I said or did was meaningless, unless my captors said otherwise.

  I slumped back onto the bed with a sigh and threw my arm over my eyes. The holo-vid was on a loop, and I had already seen this interrogation before. As such, I felt no moral obligation to watch it over and over again. There was a fine line between standing by your crew—even if you were the only one who knew you
were doing it—and masochistically watching your men get beaten and murdered just to make yourself feel bad.

  Determined, I pulled the thin sheet that was all I had for a blanket over my head. It didn’t quite drown out the noise from the holo-screen, but it was enough that in my recently bruised and battered condition, I could probably get some rest.

  Someone was plotting and scheming to help out my men, or so they would have me believe. There might be some leverage in it for me…but even if there wasn’t, I was willing to grasp at the slightest chance that I could put a stop to the creation of new holo-vids.

  You see, Mr. Eden had been kind enough to load a new holo-montage for me a few hours earlier, presumably after he and Commander Suddian had completed a fresh round of their bloody-handed work.

  Chapter 8: Tremblay has a proposition

  The guards had seen him enough not to question his presence in the detention area, so it wasn't a major issue to get to the observation room and lock out the selected room and hall from being monitored or recorded. He made his way to the cell he had singled out without incident. As he entered, he immediately turned on an anti-surveillance device just in case. Looking over at the lancer sprawled out on the floor, “You’re still alive, good,” a hint of satisfaction and relief in his voice.

  “Come any closer and I’ll kill you,” threatened the Tracto native, who rolled over to look at him.

  “I’m not foolish enough to get within reach of a Lancer looking to kill me,” Tremblay scoffed.

  “Gunner,” grunted the native.

  “What?” Confusion entered Tremblay's face as he tried to digest the native's response.

  “I transferred to Gunnery, so I am not a Lancer anymore,” he replied, as he gazed impassively at the former—and once again—Intelligence Officer.

  “But you trained as one, and are some kind of big warrior in your scab—I mean, in your culture,” Tremblay corrected stiffly.

  The native paused as if contemplating his words…before nodding in response.