CHAPTER 23
DEBRIEFING BY THE SYSTEM INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
The port on the United Planets’ battle cruiser Superb, the flagship of the Mars Fleet, afforded Midshipman Henry Gallant a splendid view. It revealed the red planet rotating majestically. He was conscious of the planet’s familiar, almost welcoming, appearance in contrast with his final view of Jupiter. Subconsciously, he was aware of the numerous fleet warships orbiting nearby, but they weren’t his immediate concern. He continued to stare straight ahead, lost in thought. By arriving early, Gallant had secured a few coveted minutes alone to reflect on recent events. It gave him no solace.
Reluctantly, he turned away from the mesmerizing imagery and paced the length of the compartment. It wasn’t the typical austere conference room found on most spaceships. This oversized chamber was reserved for dignitaries visiting the fleet’s flagship, and as such, its walls were decorated with depictions of historic figures accomplishing great feats. Gallant found the overall effect imposing and a little intimidating.
His mind ran through recent events and his pivotal choices, causing him to second-guess each decision. Despite his disquiet, he congratulated himself on remaining calm before what he expected to be a fierce grilling from the fleet’s System Intelligence Agency (SIA). He smiled to himself. He felt his mind functioning smoothly and efficiently. He even imagined he could hear meteorites pelting the Superb with a rat-a-tat, just as they did against his Eagle, but the armored hull made that impossible.
Pacing helped stretch his stiff back and leg muscles. He hated the thought of how his fit and toned body had been confined for so long in the Eagle.
He spent a few minutes fussing over his wounded left arm, not because of the pain, but because the bandage protruded visibly from under his jacket sleeve. Self-consciously, he pulled at the sleeve, trying to obscure its unsightly presence.
As the appointed hour for the meeting approached, he took his seat at the large ornate table with his back to the entrance. The memory chips containing the video, data, and logs from the Eagle were to his right. On his left was the Titan AI CPU unit he had captured. The objects were an open invitation for someone to join him and examine his offerings. He barely noticed the full-length viewport turning black when the door to the room opened and an officer entered.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” a voice asked from behind.
He looked over his shoulder and saw a woman in her early twenties. She was dressed in a sharply pressed uniform bearing lieutenant stripes. She looked as if she were beginning a big day rather than reaching the end of a long work period. Her blond hair was neatly trimmed above her shoulders. She carried an armful of documents and computer paraphernalia. He surmised she had an office close by. He was pleasantly surprised and couldn’t help glancing around one more time. Where was the interrogation team he was expecting?
"Do you mind?" she repeated. "I expect the senior officers to arrive soon, and I’ll move, I promise. All the seats are likely to be taken when everyone gets here, but I need to get some preliminary issues resolved. Then we can proceed with the debriefing. I’m Julie McCall, SIA," she said as she extended her hand.
“Henry Gallant,” he said automatically, shaking her hand.
"Yes, I know," she responded. "Would you like some coffee? It’s the real stuff," she said as she swiped her comm pin over the table’s automatic service dispenser and collected two cups of strongly brewed coffee.
"Cream and sugar?" she asked.
"Is that real too?" he asked. She nodded.
“Then, yes, to both.”
She tapped a couple of virtual buttons, and the dispenser delivered the beverages.
"Thank you," he said as he reached to take a sip of the steaming liquid. He continued holding it, enjoying the warmth in his hands against the ship’s dank reprocessed air. Thinking about what she said, he added, "You expect a crowd? I guess there must be a great deal of interest, but I already sent digital copies of everything. My report was as detailed as I could make it. I don’t know that I can really add much more to that data dump."
"True, but this information is so important that it’s absolutely necessary to get everything in the right context; every nuance is vital," she said, fussing with her equipment.
She gave him a broad, disarming smile as she said, "Besides, we may still glean a few more details out of you yet."
He studied her surreptitiously. She was tall and slender with a warm, inviting face. He surmised that she was good at getting people to reveal secrets. He wanted to appear confident and imperturbable in front of her. Admittedly, he did not feel his best in his newly requisitioned, but as-yet-untailored, service dress blue uniform. She instructed, "You need to tell your story openly, holding nothing back. Sometimes talking to a complete stranger is easiest. My people won’t be here for a while. While we wait for them, let me validate this data evidence and get your signature on your report and deposition. We can get into the narrative later."
He said, "The Jupiter battle, the asteroid-field events, and our escape—it’s nearly a continuous blur now." His mind flashed to how he had spent nearly every free minute in Kelsey’s hospital room. He shook the image off and concentrated on the issues before him.
"Let’s start with an inventory of these chips," she said. The validation of the chips and his report went quickly. Then he signed his report and deposition without reading either.
She said a few words quietly into her comm badge and pulled some material from her briefcase. She began asking a few general questions, followed by more pointed questions. They included details about the number of Titan ships and their characteristics. After about twenty minutes, she made a gesture toward one of the room’s view screens and Gallant suspected, for the first time, that their entire discourse was being monitored by others.
Gallant became aware of the steady stomping of approaching footsteps. As the senior officers began arriving, he rose and stood at attention.
"At ease," one officer said, but Gallant couldn’t identify the speaker.
Lifting his coffee mug, Gallant covered his mouth and watched them over the lip of the cup. He deliberately scanned the people filing into the room. None of them said anything to him as they took their places.
Gallant was conscious that his heart was beating more rapidly. Not for the first time, he wished he could get up and leave. But doing that made no sense, so he remained at the mercy of the debriefing officers. He lowered his cup as a senior captain approached him. The officer’s only comment was, "Interesting."
He pushed his coffee cup away and looked around the room at the several dozen men and women sitting attentively around the table.
All of them were fidgeting and staring back at him. He thought, Too bad. You’ll have to wait.
Gallant turned his attention to the captain taking the seat next to him. Nearby, one technician ran video while another replicated the data chips and a third spoke into a recording device.
Several debriefing specialists from SIA sat directly across from Gallant. A collection of a dozen senior officers from the fleet’s ships, in nearby orbit, filled the remaining seats. An additional dozen officers filed in along the far wall of the conference room, apparently wanting to witness the proceedings. It seemed their curiosity couldn’t be contained to merely reviewing the reports.
It was clear that they had already been thoroughly briefed and had seen the Eagle’s video and AI records. However, all this information was provided in bits and pieces. They wanted Gallant to stitch together the context from one image to the next. In addition, Gallant’s exceptional neural interface abilities during the encounter with the Titans gave him the best overall perspective of ships and fortresses. There was a myriad of details any intelligence officer would be dying to ask, and only Gallant could create a comprehensive tapestry of events. At Lieutenant McCall’s prompting, Gallant told them what he had learned about the Titan fleet while hiding in the asteroid belt. The various officers’ questions, at first, seemed demandin
g and badgering, as if they were dealing with an enemy combatant rather than a fellow officer.
Gallant was pleased with himself for remaining calm as he presented the material. In his mind’s eye, he called up each of the relevant memories required to relate his story. He was now painfully aware that his report had appeared limited.
One intelligence officer, Captain George Ellison, a large, powerfully built man with gray streaks in his hair, sat across from Gallant. Another SIA captain sat next to him. Admiral Collingsworth, commander of the Mars Fleet, sat off to one side. Gallant assumed that other senior officers were monitoring the proceedings from their ships.
Captain Samuel Wilcox was the erudite-looking SIA officer who sat next to Gallant. He had laid out the parameters for the debriefing process. He asked Gallant questions about his childhood, his family, his background on Mars, and his life at the academy. These questions frustrated Gallant. He wanted to get to the important information about the aliens rather than spending a lot of time talking about himself. But Wilcox would not be persuaded. He moved on methodically to learn as much as he could about Gallant to gauge his credibility and reliability. When Wilcox seemed satisfied, he nodded to Captain Ellison.
Ellison seemed to be an imaginative, quick thinker who liked to talk, and his questions overflowed from his mouth. He wanted to learn about Henry Gallant’s neural-interface image of the Titan force. He explained that they were anxious to learn everything they could about the Titan ships’ missile capabilities and the fortresses which Gallant had experienced firsthand in combat. The intelligence officers expected they could use Gallant's knowledge to make a more complete profile of the enemy than they could with recent information from the Jupiter Fleet.
Gallant answered the officer’s specific questions cautiously, in terse, precise statements.
Finally, Ellison said, "OK, Mr. Gallant, I think it’s time for a change in the process. We would like you to give a narrative of everything that happened in the asteroid belt, just as it happened, as best as you can remember.”
Gallant hesitated, uncertain how to begin.
"Tell us about the action," prompted Wilcox.
“Well...,” said Gallant, biting his lip.
Captain Bolder, a flag officers accompanying the admiral, said impatiently, "Speak up, man! Speak up!"
Gallant began by explaining the battle conditions. Everyone listened breathlessly. From time to time, someone asked a leading question, and a bit more of the story unfolded. Gallant struggled to speak cautiously, without arrogance, but he was surprised by his own outpouring of words. He thought that he was only offering facts, but somehow the story revealed a simple elegance to his experience. He told of the long struggle and the difficult choices he made. Occasionally, Lieutenant McCall played a video from his digital evidence on the display console that corresponded with his story. The explicit images enriched Gallant’s story and excited the listeners’ imaginations.
He tried to explain the effort, tension, and anguish that overcame him as he struggled to navigate through the maze of asteroids and past the aliens. Then he detailed his actions and maneuvers as he fought the many Titan ships and evaded their missiles and plasma bursts. He described how he made the Titans believe that his ship had been destroyed. Finally, he spoke poignantly about how he had treated and cared for Kelsey as he repressed the concern that clutched at his throat.
At one point he stopped, feeling self-conscious as he looked at the many historic figures looking down at him from the decorated walls. He blushed, recalling his own words—fearful that he had been indiscreet or even boastful.
He looked around the table, expecting to see judgment or scorn on the officers’ faces. To his relief, he saw approval and possible admiration. Gallant realized they might even envy such an extraordinary adventure. Each officer at the table was his senior, with vast experience in warships that had traveled from Earth to the outer reaches of the Jupiter frontier. Yet here they sat, captivated by his tale of a man and woman carrying out a mission against desperate odds. Gallant’s humble heroism seemed to reach each of them.
Finally, as he stammered out the last of his exploit, he felt disconcerted that he may have won their approval under false pretenses since he never revealed his many fears during the horror of the battle. He hadn’t included his haunted memories of his lost comrades on the Jupiter frontier, the many questionable choices he had made, or the endless nights of suffering they had endured. Gallant felt fresh anguish at the thought of more criticism, even now, but he checked himself. He knew that only misery lay in pursuing those thoughts of self-doubt.
The officers around the conference table began praising him for his single-handed attack on the alien vessel and for retrieving the critical AI CPU intelligence. They were excited and jubilant over his discovery of the hidden alien fleet. Gallant's fighter-pilot bravado had given them a spark of how to fight their opponent. They expressed lively pleasure at his safe return, but behind their fascination was a sense that they were still thirsty to know even more details. When it was finally clear that they had completely exhausted Gallant, they called a break. Gallant drank more coffee and used the time to rekindle his spirits.