"We all know what they were doing, and they're not getting away with it. But there are ways of dealing with situations like this where we don't all have to lose out."
"How?" Lawrence asked with deep suspicion.
"Okay, let's take it your way, clean and honest, all our dirty laundry out there in public. Morteth, Laforth and Kmyre stand trial. They're guilty, obviously, they get shipped home under guard and serve their fifteen years. Fair enough. But after the facts get read out in court, there's going to have to be an inquiry to find out why it happened."
"They're a bunch of drunken bastards. That's why it happened."
"Sure. But specifically, why didn't Lyaute have enough discipline over his men to prevent them even thinking about this? Why didn't Four-eight-two-NK-three's sergeant stop what was going on? It's the NCOs who take the immediate blame, you know that. How come the Skins on guard duty didn't see what was happening and step in?"
"They should have."
"I know, man. But things are damn slack around here. You've seen how everyone's been helping themselves to everything these poor old hillbillies have. Lyaute should have stepped in hard and fast right at the start. But he didn't, because he wanted a quiet life. So it just keeps getting worse until those three assholes pull a stunt like last night's and land all of us up shit creek. If this ever gets on an official report, half of the convoy is going to have a reprimand on our files."
Lawrence drank some tea, which was getting colder than he liked. "You mean if I do what's right and testify to the commander I'll screw everyone else?"
"Like I said, there are ways of dealing with this. Lyaute can operate through different channels, if you let him."
"What sort of channels?"
"Okay, I'll lay this on the line for you. Say nothing, and you'll come out of this campaign with a commendation on your report that's better than anything you could get for saving the general's ass in full combat and there'll be a stripe on your shoulder for sure. Morteth, Laforth and Kmyre will be quietly shitlisted once we get home. They'll be discharged or given latrine duty for the rest of their lives, and they certainly won't get any sort of campaign bonus, neither will they get any kind of reference from Z-B. Without that, no employer on the planet will touch them. It's the slammer without walls."
"And Lyaute gets himself out of this with a clean record."
"Yeah. Along with a whole bunch of other people who don't deserve a bad rap because he screwed up. And next time, he'll know how to run a command properly. That's got to be worth something, Lawrence. You and I know we've got damn few decent officers."
"Don't, Sarge. Don't try and sell this by telling me I'm going to be improving that useless asshole."
"Okay, man. You look at it any way you want to. But it's your call, and you've got to make it now. This can't be ducked. And if it helps any, I'd have done the same thing last night. It was the right thing."
"Something you haven't mentioned."
"Yeah, what?"
"The girl. Jacintha. What about Jacintha?"
"What about her?"
"Three of Z-B's finest tried to rape her."
"But they didn't rape her, did they? Thanks to the hero of the hour. She had a nasty shock, which is never going to be repeated, because we're never coming back. She can get on with her lotus-eating life again. Six months' time, we'll just be a bad memory fading away."
"That's it? She doesn't count?"
"This is politics, man. Her stake in this isn't as big as ours. So what's your decision?"
Lawrence grinned, even though the bruise on his lip hurt when he did it. At least the sarge was being diplomatic, pretending he even had a choice. He knew damn well if he carried this through and screwed Lyaute and the other sergeants he'd be the one who wound up shitlisted.
That was the way the companies worked. The way they'd always worked. The way they always would work.
He drank some more of his cold tea. "I guess I must have got these bruises falling downstairs last night."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The court-martial was held in the banqueting suite of the Barnsdale Hotel, which was barracks to eight of Z-B's platoons and half of the industrial technology corps. There was a dais at one end of the long room, normally used by a band. Today it had a single table with three chairs for the presiding officers, of which Ebrey Zhang was president of the court. Arranged below them, on the dance floor, were another two tables. One was occupied by the prosecution team, led by the Z-B attorney, who was being supported by the Memu Bay police magistrate, Heather Fernandes, and two more high-powered legal assistants. The defense table had two chairs, where Hal sat with Lieutenant Bralow.
Behind them, fifty plastic chairs had been arranged in rows to seat Z-B personnel, selected members of the public and a few media representatives. The first row was reserved for the mayor and whoever he chose to have with him—a couple of old friends, Margret Reece and Detective Galliani. Ten Skins were standing guard around the room, being pointedly ignored by the civilian audience. For once, the power supply was uninterrupted, allowing the lightcones to shine at full intensity.
When Lawrence arrived, escorting Hal, he was disgusted by the weighting. The kid had taken one look at the layout and virtually cringed.
"It's a fucking show trial," Lawrence growled at Bralow while Hal was distracted. The lieutenant answered with a slightly guilty shrug.
Lawrence took a chair from the audience section and brought it up to the defense table. He sat on it and gave Hal a solid, reassuring pat on the knee. The kid responded with a pathetically grateful smile.
Nobody remonstrated with Lawrence. He was wearing his full dress uniform, displaying more decorations than most of the officers in the room. If he wanted to stand by a squaddie under his command, none of the NCOs helping with the court arrangements were going to stop him. Bryant saw where he was and glared before sitting with the other officers.
The sergeant major called for silence. The presiding officers marched in and took their seats on the dais.
Lawrence couldn't fault the procedure. Prosecution made its case well. The details of the case were explained to the court. Selective sections of various police interviews with Hal were also played. Twenty minutes in, and already it looked bad.
Detective Galliani was called to the stand and told the court about Hal's alibi, which the kid had stuck to the whole time.
"Did you manage to trace the taxi that the defendant claims he took?" prosecution asked.
"No, sir," Galliani answered. "The traffic regulator AS has no log of any taxi being used on that street at that time of night. And Mr. Grabowski was most insistent on the time he left the barracks. In fact, we pulled the logs for every taxi in Memu Bay that day. None of them were unaccounted for at either of the times when Mr. Grabowski said he was traveling to and from the alleged brothel."
"Ah yes," prosecution said smugly. "The brothel the defendant says he visited. Does it exist, Detective?"
"No, sir. Mr. Grabowski himself identified Minster Avenue as the street where this alleged brothel was situated. We investigated every house. They are all private residences."
Lawrence had visited Minster Avenue himself two days ago. Not in Skin, he wore civilian clothes, a shirt with a high collar to cover his valves. Before he went, he trawled images of the street from the town hall planning department and showed them to Hal, who'd pointed unhesitatingly to number eighteen.
Standing outside the house Lawrence took his time looking around. There was the neat little front garden with its wrought-iron fence, just as Hal described. It guarded a squat white stone facade, with big windows, the paintwork clean and bright. Like all the others along the street, a home for the upper-middle classes. Lawrence activated his bracelet pearl and called up his Prime. A complex indigo image slid across his optronic membranes as the quasi-sentient program decompressed from its storage block. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed brighter than the bracelet pearl's standard icons.
H
e opened a link into Memu Bay's datapool and told the Prime to trawl the household AS and the local traffic logs. Information began to scroll up almost at once. Whatever software the KillBoy resistance group used to cover their tracks, it was excellent, which strengthened his suspicions that they had compromised e-alpha.
Number eighteen's household AS told him nothing, because it had been inactive for over a week. The system was still waiting repair. Smaller independent sections of the house's network were functioning on autonomous backup mode, but they didn't have memory logs. Strangest of all, the security system was also offline; its sensors weren't even drawing power.
Minster Avenue's road traffic logs confirmed there had been very few vehicles driving along the street during the night Hal claimed he'd visited. Certainly no taxi had pulled up outside number eighteen. But the Prime dug deeper into the local transport network. Between 1:48 and 2:10 the network dataflow had increased by a small percentage.
After Hal had left.
There was nothing in the logs to account for the increase.
"Shutting up shop," Lawrence muttered to himself. The minute data abnormality wouldn't convince a court that had Hal's DNA sample taken off the girl. He wasn't even sure if it would be admissible in court. But it was good enough for him: an electronic graffiti roughly equivalent to spraying KillBoy was here across the front of the house.
Lawrence walked over the road and rang the brass bell. It took a minute before the black front door swung open. A woman in an apron stood in the hallway, giving him a suspicious stare. "Yes?"
"Elena Melchett?"
"Yes? Who are you?"
"Lawrence Newton. I'm covering the alien rape case."
Elena Melchett didn't look as if she wanted to cooperate with the media. "So?"
"Ah, the alien suspect claims he was somewhere in this street when the incident happened. It's his alibi. I was wondering if you had seen anything?"
"Mr. Newton, that obscene crime took place at one o'clock in the morning. I was in bed asleep. I certainly didn't see any alien thug hanging around outside."
"I didn't think so, thank you. Er..." He fished around in his pockets while Elena Melchett grew increasingly impatient. He found his media card and activated a visual file. "Sorry to be such a pain, but do you recognize this man?" The card's screen showed a picture of Hal.
Elena Melchett studied it. "No."
"Really? That's odd."
"What do you mean?"
Lawrence told the card to switch to another file. "This is a blueprint of your hall, isn't it?" He peered past the woman at the big staircase that curved up to the second-floor landing.
This time Elena Melchett barely glanced at the image. "It's similar."
"I'd say it's identical. Even down to the marble tiling."
"What do you want, Mr. Newton?"
"That alien suspect, he put this image together with an architect program. How would he know what your hallway looked like if he'd never been here? You did say you didn't recognize him, didn't you?"
"Get out!" Elena Melchett ordered him in a strident voice. "Out, and don't come back. If I see you around here again, I'll call the police." The glossy door slammed shut.
The prosecution had got Hal up on the witness stand. Lawrence could finally appreciate the saying about someone being his own worst enemy. It wasn't going well. In fact it was excruciating just being in the same room.
The prosecution wanted to know why he'd jumped curfew.
Hal—good old honest fresh-from-the-farm Hal—said he did it because he was desperate for sex.
The prosecution wanted to know where he'd gone that night to hunt for sex.
Hal told them the brothel on Minster Avenue, doggedly sticking to his version of events. Lawrence presumed it was because his mother had always told him to tell the truth.
The prosecution tore that version of the fateful night to shreds, and there wasn't any evidence that Lieutenant Bra-low could produce to back Hal up. Then they went on to ask about the genetic samples. Hal claimed the girl was a whore, and that the rest of it—the rape allegation, the nonexistent brothel—was all a setup by KillBoy.
It didn't go down well. Francine Hazeldine's haunting statement had already been played back to the court. Lawrence had watched the presiding officers as her fragile voice had described what happened that night, detail by agonizing detail.
The more the farce carried on, the more Lawrence admired KillBoy's strategy and resourcefulness, and the more angry he became. Hal was just too easy. He wanted to stand up in the banqueting suite and face the locals, asking: "Why don't you try this one with me?" But then, the devastating effect that the trial would have on Z-B's morale was the final triumph of that elegant strategy.
He was also haunted by the terrible specter of responsibility. There should have been a trial very similar to this last time he was on Thallspring. The fact that it had never happened was in no small part due to him. Justice then had been circumvented rather than served. Now justice was coming back to strike them with a vengeance.
Lawrence spent most of the time wondering if the two could possibly be connected.
Only by a God with a very twisted sense of humor, he decided.
After five hours of testimony and witness examination, the presiding officers recessed the court so they might consider their verdict. They took ninety minutes, which Lawrence thought was a diplomatic enough length of time given that they'd already decided that verdict before the court-martial even began.
Hal stood in front of the dais facing the presiding officers, his shoulders squared, as Ebrey Zhang announced the findings.
On the charge of disobeying a direct order and breaking curfew: guilty.
On the charge of misleading the local police: guilty.
On the charge of assault and rape of a minor: guilty.
"No!" Hal yelled, incensed. "I'm not."
There was a sigh from the audience, not of jubilation, but a shared sense of justice and victory. Against all the odds, they'd been given the right outcome.
Hal sat down again while Lieutenant Bralow gave what Lawrence had to acknowledge was an eloquent plea for clemency. Then everyone stood for the sentence.
A very troubled-looking Ebrey Zhang said: "Halford Grabowski, given the grave nature of this abominable crime, we find we have no alternative but to impose the most severe sentence it is within this court's power to issue. You are hereby sentenced to death."
Hal Grabowski went berserk. He screamed obscenities at the presiding officers and started to run for the door. Anyone who got in his way was felled with powerful punches from his hulking frame. The audience scrambled for safety, also screaming.
It took two Skins to hold on to the enraged squaddie and administer a sedative. His unconscious body was dragged out of the banqueting suite.
Ebrey Zhang straightened his uniform and cleared his throat. "Sentence to be carried out at dawn the day after tomorrow. Leave to appeal is denied. Lieutenant Bralow, please inform your client of the outcome. This court is now concluded."
The presiding officers filed out. Lawrence didn't move.
Bralow turned to him and said: "I really am sorry. He didn't deserve this." As he didn't get an answer, he nodded nervously and hurried out. The audience was lining up at the doors at the rear to get out and back to their town and their lives. It wasn't long before everyone else had left.
Amersy and the remaining members of 435NK9 lined up in front of the defense counsel table. Lawrence looked at them one by one. "If anybody wants to stick with Zantiu-Braun, you'd better leave now."
A couple of them snorted in derision; the rest simply waited expectantly for their sarge to tell them what to do next.
"Okay," Lawrence said. "Time for us to start playing unfair."
* * *
This time Josep drove a car out to the spaceport. He arrived in the middle of the afternoon and passed through the main gate with the identity of Andyl Pyne, a junior manager with the catering company t
hat had the franchise for the administration block. The spaceport's general management AS assigned his car a slot in park 7. Because of Andyl Pyne's somewhat lowly status, he had a long walk back to the block itself.
He carried a slim briefcase with him, de rigueur for management of any level. Sunglasses were also obligatory, so he wore a cheap plastic pair. His light green one-piece coverall wasn't quite regular, but it had the catering company logo on its breast pocket. He had boots rather than shoes. All in all, his appearance was well inside the permissible norm.
Ahead of him, the afternoon sun shone on a five-sided structure with slightly convex walls of darkened glass. From where he was, the administration block resembled a closed-up tulip flower with a blunt tip. It stood by itself to one end of the terminal building, away from the much taller control tower. Although the building was only five stories high, the architect's plans that his Prime had trawled out of the data-pool showed a service level and another five floors below-ground.
When he reached the main entrance he had to repeat the whole security identification procedure, allowing the AS to check his palm and facial pattern. Security in general was a lot tighter in the administration block than the main terminal, thanks to all the Z-B staff that worked there now.
Inside, he ignored the reception desk and the two Skins standing beside it, walking directly to the bank of elevators in the central lobby. No one who came in on a regular basis would be intimidated or even concerned by them anymore. He took an elevator down to the first sublevel, where building maintenance had its offices, along with the canteen. So far everything matched the floor plan and security camera images they'd trawled.
Josep went into the toilets and claimed an empty cubicle. The AS logged him through a security camera. Coverage inside the administration block was almost universal, with only places like the toilet cubicles free of cameras. Not that their absence mattered: the AS followed everyone's position constantly, you couldn't trade places or switch with anybody else. It was Andyl Pyne who went into the cubicle; if anyone else came out the AS would sound the alarm.