3 Presumptions of Guilt
Smells of ozone, disinfectant, and medicine reached Dante Roussel. He slowed, then stopped, as though the smells blocked the corridor like an imaginary ‘force wall’ in one of those silly shows about the Space Navy. For several seconds Dante stood there, his left hand jammed into a pocket, fidgeting with the corrugated oval of a creolidyte adapter he’d carried off from the Comm Room by mistake. Visiting this section of the Vance always rubbed the scabs off old memories.
Beyond even that, though, he hated the reason for this visit. Unpleasant tasks were the essence of a policeman’s job, of course; he’d known that when he accepted the demotion to Military Discipline nine years ago. But the job kept getting harder, rather than easier.
Dante took a deep breath and assumed the erect posture he expected of himself. He stepped to the open door of the room.
There she was. Naked.
“Well, Tompa Lee,” he whispered, “we meet at last.”
She didn’t answer, of course. And if somehow she had tried, not even the loudest of screams would have escaped her casket.
“Hello?” A young med tech, her head cocked to one side, peered around a tall, tubular machine that made rhythmic burping sounds.
The smells, the sights, and the memories were too much: Dante’s mind went blank. He stared wordlessly at the med tech. The woman ran a hand over her hair, checking that it was tidy as she stepped from behind the machine.
Dante took a deep breath, pretending he was in control of himself, pretending he was the man he used to be. The woman’s name and rank were embroidered on the chest of her blue medical smock in floral, non-regulation curlicues. He stared, trying to make sense of the words.
The woman stood straighter and gave a flirtatious smile that grew wider when she noticed the golden ‘AVP’ insignia on his shoulder. “Hello, indeed.”
“Technician Dominguez.” There. He’d be okay now. “I’m Dante Roussel from Military Discipline. I’ve been placed in charge of Ship’s Ward Lee’s case.”
“I see.” Dominguez cast an appraising glance toward the medcasket in which Tompa lay. “So she was responsible for the explosion. People have been speculating about that ever since word got out about the effects of Shon-Wod-Zee wine.”
And, Dante suspected, this woman could hardly wait to spread the news of his visit. To him, it seemed absurd to assume Tompa Lee would have bombed the pub. Sure, she was street meat, and not a small-city imitation but the real thing from Manhattan. However, if the stereotypes contained any particle of truth—and in his experience, they usually contained several such particles masquerading as the whole truth—then she could take care of herself. She was probably more experienced than any woman on the ship at handling drunken passes. She wouldn’t need a bomb. “Tompa Lee is a crucial witness,” he said. “Nothing more.”
Dominguez dismissed his words with a fluttery wave of her hand. “I treated Jim Zhang after she went berserk. She’s a stick of dynamite who should never have been allowed on this ship. If you want my opinion—”
“I don’t, Technician.”
“But—”
“That’s enough, Technician.” Dante didn’t raise his voice, but he did harden it. The woman stopped with her mouth open. She probably wasn’t used to being given orders rather than ‘assignments.’ Discipline on the Vance was lax, with too much emphasis on ‘Commerce,’ not enough on ‘Navy,’ and the Medical Department downright prided itself on a glib attitude. “I’d like all of her past and future medical reports copied to my console.”
Unrepentant, Dominguez leaned slightly toward him and chuckled. “The reports are meaningless to non-specialists. I could help you interpret them after my shift is over, if you’d like. We could discuss the interesting effects of Shon-Wod-Zee wine, too.”
“I’m familiar with head injuries and brainwave abstracts. I should be able to understand the gist of the reports.” When Dominguez pulled back, her eyes wide, Dante realized his voice had grown harsh.
“If you insist,” she said.
“It’s my job, Technician.”
While Dominguez went to a chair on the far side of the room and spoke into her console, Dante steeled himself to turn and look at Tompa Lee again through the medcasket’s thick window. She probably wouldn’t have survived this long without the casket; it contained everything necessary to accelerate her body’s healing powers, from high-oxygen air laced with medicines, to injectradynes that monitored injuries and reinforced white-blood-cell strength. But despite their marvelous power, Dante hated the caskets. They reminded him of huge microwave ovens stacked three-high from floor to ceiling. Stick a thermometer in Tompa Lee’s mouth and wait till she’s done cooking. And don’t forget to make gravy . . .
Her face was turned toward him, not because she was aware of him, or anything else, for that matter, in her coma-like heal-sleep. The shattered left side of her head simply couldn’t bear any pressure. A greyish-pink, gelatinous mass covered her injuries like cheap makeup for an actor playing an alien in an old movie, from the days before real aliens contacted earth. Yellow fog swirled in time with her slow breathing.
So young. Twenty-three, a mere kid, and she looked nearly ten years younger. She met the Navy’s minimum height requirements with a millimeter to spare, and lying on her back, her breasts flattened almost to nothing. Aside from a jagged knife scar that disappeared under the towel across her hips, she looked devastatingly innocent—betrayed by fate and a certain Associate Vice President of Military Discipline who’d maneuvered her into McShallin’s group, with the best of intentions.
The left side of Dante’s head throbbed. Unable to stand any longer the sight of the gelatin quivering on her shattered skull, he turned away from the casket. “Will she live?”
Dominguez shrugged, then seemed to realize a more professional answer was expected. After speaking a few more words into her console, she came over and pressed the contact coins implanted in the back of her hand to a metal plate on the sill of Tompa’s casket. Her brow furrowed as data flowed into her nervous system. “Still tippy. Uh, that means she could go in several directions—total recovery of all mental functions, death, or somewhere in between.”
“I’m familiar with the jargon.” Doctors had used the same term about himself, nine years ago. “How much longer will she be in heal-sleep?”
“We’ll know in another couple of hours. In the best-case scenario, full recovery, I’d think she’ll snooze three more days.”
That didn’t sound good. He’d been in heal-sleep for four days, too, and look how he’d turned out. “Why so long?”
Dominguez furrowed her brow, as though she’d heard anxiety in his voice. “Nothing dire,” she reassured. “It’s just that for brain injuries we can’t use overdrive. We can heal a broken femur in a day on overdrive, but brains require subtleties a mere layman couldn’t begin to comprehend. If we accelerated her healing rate any more, she’d suffer a hangover big enough for a Chroogin’s head.” Dominguez chuckled. “No, make that two Chroogins.”
Dante grunted. The woman had obviously never met a Chroogin, to be making jokes about the fearsome, large-headed founders of the Galactic Trading Council. But then Dominguez was young, around Tompa Lee’s age, and probably on her maiden voyage out of the naval academies. Most sailors these days were baby-faced brats young enough to be his children, glum reminders that the Navy’s active-duty retirement age of forty-five loomed close.
Dante glanced toward the other caskets in the ward. Two male sailors, Remland and Lopez, had been alive on evacuation up to the Vance. Lopez had died within an hour, and now Remland’s casket, directly below Tompa’s, was empty, too. Dante pointed to it. “When did he die?”
“Two hours ago.”
So now Tompa Lee was the only human witness. This wasn’t good, because the Shons were jumping to the same conclusions as Dominguez. The explosion at the pub killed six humans, but over a hundred Shons. According to the frenzied reports on Shon television, T
ompa Lee—and by extension, all humanity—was obviously responsible. They wanted her turned over to them for trial.
Naval policy and trading treaties forbade surrendering sailors to aliens so they wouldn’t face prosecution for ‘crimes’ such as glancing at the third ear of a Harher mystic or wearing wrong-colored clothes in a Detchvilli airport. The crime in this case was real, of course, but the evidence was circumstantial. Shons might believe a human could produce a huge explosion at will, but any person with a brain knew better. Perhaps Tompa had motive, if you considered her mad enough to kill hundreds of Shons because some drunken sailors tried, unsuccessfully, to rape her. Perhaps she had opportunity, because the Shon guide reported following her outside where the explosion happened. Tompa, however, didn’t have the means to commit the crime.
A buzzing sensation in Dante’s elbow cut short his thoughts. He pressed the elbow against his side to activate his mumbler implant. “Roussel here,” he subvocalized. “Tell me.”
A lazy Alabama drawl sounded in his ear: Pradeep Singh, Assistant VP of Ship Operations and a friend of Dante’s from the days when he’d commanded this ship. “Company for tea, Dante. Two Kalikiniki dreadnoughts just popped into the jump zone and are assumed headed for orbit around Zee Shode. Thought you might want to help us break out the good china.”
A weight descended on Dante’s shoulders, accompanied by a spark of anticipation. Tompa Lee, his charge, might be central to any confrontation with the Klicks. For once, his job might be important.
The spark sputtered and died. Two dreadnoughts? That meant the Klicks were treating this incursion into their trading territory with deadly seriousness. The Vance’s mission was, strictly speaking, against the laws of intergalactic trade, so the Klicks had both might and right on their side. In its seventy-year history, the Navy had never lost a cruiser or even been involved in a battle in space, but there was always a first time. “You’re sure they’re both dreadnoughts?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Did President Van Tey say she wants me on the bridge for this?”
“You’re on the standing list for Code Thirteens. You know the drill, Dante.”
Yes, he knew, though he didn’t like it. The President included him in ship’s councils to acknowledge the unprecedented situation of commanding a former Ship’s President. Van Tey meant it as an honor, but he served no function other than to remind himself he wasn’t half the man he used to be. He should have told her long ago how he felt, but it was too late now. The honor had ossified into Tradition.
On his way out of the casket ward, Dante nearly collided with a willowy, black-haired woman with an austere air of authority. Carolyn Schneider, the Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Zee-Shode, touched his arm and stepped gracefully aside from the near-collision. She nodded at him as though acknowledging his apology. Except, of course, that he hadn’t apologized.
She was always doing things like that, collecting favors and obligations whether imaginary or not, playing politics with even the littlest matters. He didn’t remember her being like that when they first met fifteen years ago, but then he scarcely remembered her at all. For the last five months, Schneider had regaled Dante and other dinner mates with anecdotes about the first time she’d shipped into space as a Trading Advisor, with Dante as the ship’s President. She gave the impression they’d had a major flirtation.
It was possible. Maybe they’d even had sex, as she sometimes seemed to hint. Still, he felt that her anecdotes spoke more of power than passion. See how I’ve risen to command this entire mission, while you’ve sunk to the most menial Associate Vice Presidency on the Vance.
“There you are, Dante.” Carolyn made it sound as though he owed her something because he’d inconvenienced her. A tantalizing Chilean lilt graced her words. “Have you heard the news?”
“Yes. I’m on my way.”
“Good.”
Schneider went left. Dante went right.
They turned to look at each other.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“The bridge.” When she looked at him expectantly, he added, “Where else would I be going with Klick dreadnoughts approaching?”
“Dreadnoughts?” Carolyn went pale, and for a moment her perfect composure wavered. She was a Trader, her trembling lip reminded him, not Navy. Profit motivated her, rather than duty. “Why wasn’t I notified?” she snapped.
“Because they just now appeared at the jump point, and you don’t have a mumbler.” Only Navy personnel had mumblers. Traders, who owned the Navy, disdained what they saw as a loss of individuality—a silly reaction, in Dante’s view, to a simple piece of technology.
“The jump point? Then they won’t be close enough to do anything for—well, how long would you say, Dante?”
He shook his head. At one time he could have calculated a solid estimate in seconds, but now all he could do was guess. “Two or three days, perhaps. They’ll probably contact us now that they’re out of jump space, so we’d best continue our discussion on the way to the bridge.”
Using his mumbler, Dante called for an elevator. The ship’s elevators were more like taxis than elevators, darting through tubes lacing the ship’s vastness like blood vessels. By the time the two of them had walked sixty feet to the elevator bank, a chime sounded and doors opened onto the vehicle.
“Buckle yourself in,” Dante advised as he keyed priority codes into the elevator’s touchpad. “We’re going fast.” Schneider sat on the hard plastic seat closest to him. He punched a code that would override other calls for the elevator.
“So,” he asked, “why were you looking for me?”
“It deals with Ship’s Ward Lee.” The elevator accelerated fiercely. Schneider swayed against his arm, then stayed touching him even when the acceleration eased. “I got a report from the investigative team we sent down to help the Shons.” She took a deep breath. “Dante, it was a Navy grenade.”
He froze, then shook his head. “That can’t be.”
“The investigators checked and double checked. Manager Chang assures me the metal fragments and chemical traces are unmistakable.”
A Navy grenade? It would have to be an A-140, to do so much damage. But how could it possibly have been a Navy grenade? “Do the Shons know about this?”
“Of course.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it, Carolyn.”
“I gave Chang orders to be completely honest with the natives. Honesty is the only way to convince them that humans had nothing to do with the bombing. Or if they did, that it was a rogue human, working alone.”
The elevator whined and shook, changing direction on its four-mile path to the bridge. Tompa, obviously, was the perfect ‘rogue human.’ It sounded as though plans were already in place to cast her as the scapegoat. And with two Klick dreadnoughts approaching, the need for a scapegoat was blossoming into urgency.
“You’re thinking of handing her over to the Shons,” he accused.
Carolyn didn’t look at him as she answered. “It’s been difficult, but I’ve managed to keep the Shons focused so they haven’t exploded into hatred of humans in general. We still have a chance, small though it may be, of negotiating our trade agreement.”
“Oh.” The elevator shuddered as it shot through the turbulence from another elevator somewhere in the system. “You’re keeping them focused on what?”
She patted his knee. “It’s nothing for you worry to about, Dante.”
After a heavy silence, he asked, “How is a Ship’s Ward supposed to have gotten a grenade? And even if she did, how could she get it onto a light-ship without a dozen sensors discovering it?”
“Let me ask a better question. How could a Shon have gotten a Navy grenade? This is our first-ever contact with them, and until Lee and the other sailors went on leave”—she stared at him as though it were his fault she’d decided on shore leave—“only a handful of us with top security ratings had been onto their planet. So did a Shon walk up a ladder t
o our orbit, sneak in through an open airlock, and steal a grenade?”
“Ship’s Wards don’t have access to munitions any more than Shons do.”
“Nonetheless, Shon television demagogues are already saying words to the effect that Tompa Lee is a more likely burglar than any Shon.”
Dante grunted. Unbidden came the thought that, instead of being inured to barroom insults, the girl might be accustomed to dealing with such things savagely. Maybe her brutal response to Jim Zhang hadn’t been an aberration during a time of adjustment, but a hint of things to come. He wished the idea hadn’t occurred to him. Doubt, like panic, was contagious.
The elevator glided to a stop. The door opened onto the buzz of machinery and voices that characterized the bridge area, though the buzz was more intense than usual. He lingered as Carolyn preceded him off the elevator, then spoke into his mumbler. “Tasks,” he subvocalized. “Have Munitions run an inventory of A-140 grenades.” He didn’t really think Tompa could have gotten access to a grenade, but an inventory could settle the issue of her innocence.
If, of course, the Shons trusted the Navy not to lie.
When Dante entered the bridge, six pairs of eyes briefly drifted to him before returning to the instruments in their charge. The eyes belonged to the junior managers working liaison between their departments and the bridge. They sat around a hexagonal control panel of lights, screens, keyboards, and contact plates that filled half of the bridge. The other half of the bridge was an open area ringed with hard-backed chairs built into the walls, known as the decision room. It already held several vice presidents and assistant vice presidents, with more arriving from elevators and corridors.
“Have the Klicks made contact yet?” asked Roslina Van Tey, President of the Vance.
“Coming through now, sir,” said the junior manager of communications from one of the seats at the hex console. “There’s a five minute delay because of distance.”
No back-and-forth conversation, in other words. Klicks would speak and humans would listen. Dante sat in one of the chairs around the periphery of the decision room. Carolyn sat beside him.
“Group viewing,” President Van Tey said.
“The message is coming in via . . . holo.” The communications manager’s surprise was evident in his voice.
Carolyn leaned toward Dante. “What’s the significance of the Kalikinikis communicating via holographic presence? It seems commonplace enough.”
Dante stopped and thought. He knew it was significant and he kind of knew why, but before he could find words, Van Tey spoke. “There are no galactic technical standards for holo transmissions, Madame Ambassador, so it takes a human-built holo encoder to communicate with our equipment. Klick dreadnoughts wouldn’t carry a human encoder unless they knew before leaving home that they’d be dealing with humans. And their world is too far away for them to have learned that we were challenging their monopoly, located and installed a human holo transmitter, and gotten here this soon.”
Projectors built into the ceiling began humming. Dante watched as the center of the room began to swirl like electronic smoke. With the Klick ships five light-minutes away, the signal would take a minute or more to form completely.
“So,” Carolyn asked, “is the human holo the Klicks’ way of telling us our secret mission wasn’t as secret as we thought?”
Van Tey shook her head slowly. “Every communication we intercepted from their space station indicated we caught them by surprise. Klicks may be devious, but they’re lousy liars.”
Dante nodded. He remembered that about Klicks. He wondered, suddenly, why they didn’t maintain a dirtside outpost. The only explanation that came to mind was that Shons hated Klicks so much that the lizards’ presence would cause problems, but he wasn’t sure that was a reasonable guess.
“No,” Van Tey continued. “I’d guess these two ships simply happened to be in the neighborhood, though that doesn’t explain why they’d have human holo equipment. Any ideas, Dante?”
He jerked his head in surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time the president or anyone else had asked his opinion at a management council.
“Dante used to be an expert on Kalikiniki behavior and strategy,” Van Tey explained to Carolyn.
“I think . . .” Dante said. Everyone was watching him. He wished Van Tey hadn’t felt the need to apologize to the head of the mission about why she was asking him. “I think the Klicks are a lot more prepared to handle us than the other way around. For decades, each of their ships has had a resident expert on humans, ready for what they consider an inevitable confrontation.” Things were coming back now. It used to be a major complaint of his that the Navy wasn’t nearly as knowledgeable or prepared as the Klicks were. “It’s possible that they’ve extended their readiness by equipping ships with human holos, at least in the regions closest to earth.”
“That makes sense.” Van Tey gave him a smile that was reassuring and, perhaps, a bit relieved. “Thank you, Dante.”
She stepped back to her seat, out of the way of the holographic presence forming piecemeal in the middle of the room. Visible first was the plain black uniform of the commander of the Kalikiniki dreadnoughts; ‘admiral’ was the usual translation of the commander’s title, rather than COO, to imply martial overtones. Klick fleets weren’t owned and dominated by Traders trying to convince them they were a subsidiary rather than a military.
In the background two black uniforms appeared, their somberness enlivened with golden piping around the sleeves and lapels. The president’s question had nudged Dante’s memory, and he remembered that for Klicks, plainness rather than pomp indicated power. Since these two uniforms were tasteful rather than gaudy, they probably belonged to senior officers who were nonetheless subordinate to the plain-garbed admiral.
“Here they come,” Dante whispered.
Slowly, almost reluctantly, the Kalikinikis inside the uniforms materialized. Humans tended to describe them as lizards, and indeed if a huge gecko were to dart about on two legs, with its forward-thrusting head balanced by a whip-like tail, it would look like a Klick. In other ways, though, Klicks were nothing like any reptile of earth. Reptiles had scales; Kalikinikis had smooth, pinkish, greasy skin. Reptiles were smaller than humans; Klicks towered seven feet tall. Reptiles showed little expression; Klicks wore habitual smirks of disdain on their sharp-toothed snouts. Reptiles lacked hair; Klicks had stringy hair on their heads in the same places as humans, except that the hair wrapped all the way around their long necks.
And they didn’t hiss. Not much, anyway. Instead, their language was a harsh-sounding collection of snaps, clicks, and slurs. Dante put on the translator earphones that had lowered from the wall behind him.
The Kalikinki admiral was already speaking. The Klicks obviously weren’t familiar with the lag time of long-distance human holographics or they would have initiated the transmission, then waited several minutes for the link to solidify before speaking.
“. . . have already told the Galactic Trading Council of this unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion on our sphere of influence,” the admiral said. “Until the Council Inspector’s ship arrives, we shall protect our interests. Major Krizink will detail our demands.”
Dante winced at the way the translator jumbled old navy and army ranks together. No one else in the room seemed to care, though.
One of the Klicks with gold piping on his uniform took the admiral’s place. He looked around slowly, as though assessing his audience. Then he sneered. Although Dante knew that Krizink had actually done all this five minutes previously, long before he could see the humans, the slow scrutiny was nonetheless effective. Especially the sneer.
“Greetings, ladies and gentlemen,” Krizink said in such near-perfect English that Dante removed his translator. Krizink was obviously the ship’s resident expert on humans. “For those of you who do not know us, it is the Kalikiniki way to speak with what you might consider brutal directness. Forgive me, then, if I say simply that we hav
e heard since our arrival in real space of the loathsome and cowardly act of terrorism perpetrated by one of your pirate crew. Furthermore, our loyal Shon-Wod-Zee allies have told us that their demands for custody of the villain have fallen on deaf human ears.
“We have been sole trading partners of the Shon-Wod-Zee for over four hundred years. We cannot allow humans to vent their notoriously aggressive instincts against our dear brethren.”
Carolyn started to protest, then stopped. She finished her comments under her breath, apparently unable to resist arguing politics even when real-time conversation was impossible.
“We therefore demand that you release the miscreant, Ship’s Ward Tompa Lee, to Shon-Wod-Zee authorities for trial. Nothing less than a trial can possibly satisfy either us, or them. Their sense of justice is developed to a higher level than humans could hope to comprehend. If you fail to turn over the murderer by the time we reach Zee-Shode, we shall be forced against our own peaceful natures to—how can I phrase it delicately?—insist.”
Major Krizink paused. His tail twitched in circles, drawing attention to the retractable, dagger-sharp claw at the end. Swiveling his curved neck like a periscope, he swept his gaze in a semicircle. His eyes seemed to linger on Dante. With a defiant smile that reeked of secrets and plots, Krizink looked away.
Slowly, Krizink’s holographic image faded away until all that was left was the gold piping around his lapels.
In her medcasket, Tompa Lee stirred uneasily, her convalescent slumber wracked by the smell of bombs, the taste of fear, the sound of screams, and the pain of sundered limbs aimed at her skull like bullets.