“Sergeant, wait outside. I will speak with Corporal Riyahn myself.”
“Admiral—”
“Thank you, Sergeant.” Cosper gave a minute shrug and edged past her to the door.
“He’s your size, Admiral. I wouldn’t untie him if I were you.”
“No fear.” With Cosper out of the room, it seemed larger: the man had a talent for looming, seeming to take up more space than he actually did. She looked at Riyahn; he looked down.
“Y-you killed him and now you’re going to kill me.” Riyahn’s voice trembled. “And Sergeant Cosper hurt me and yelled at me. My hands hurt.”
“Did he hit you?” Ky pulled a pad of paper off the shelf, a stylus off the desk, and scribbled Riyahn and Cosper on it.
“N-no. He grabbed my arm too tight and twisted it behind me, and then he tied me too tight. My nose itches and I can’t scratch it.”
“You threatened an officer,” Ky said. “What did you think would happen?”
“I thought you were going to kill everybody. I was going to protect—”
“By snatching up an empty weapon and trying to kill me?”
“No—I mean—it was there, I thought I could—”
“Kill me with it.” Ky shook her head. “Marek tried to kill me and only managed to kill Commander Bentik.”
“No! He didn’t want to kill her; he wanted to kill—” Riyahn’s mouth fell open and stayed open a moment. “I mean—”
“You knew Marek wanted to kill me?” Ky nodded and noted that on paper. “And you did not report it?” She underlined what she’d written.
“Well… no… I couldn’t. He said you were a traitor to Slotter Key, and you had seen classified things and had to be stopped—”
“Killed, you mean.”
“I suppose. I didn’t want to—I tried to talk him out of it—What are you doing?” That last in a squeak, as Ky picked up Marek’s weapon.
“It’s evidence,” she said, tapping the barrel against her other hand. “I think you knew he had it, and possibly where he hid it. I’m going to lock it away safely—you will not know where—and then lock you up.”
“You’re not going to kill me?”
“Not… now.” She drew that out, watching him. “If I don’t find a reason to kill you, you will be remanded to Spaceforce Security to stand trial for attempted murder of a senior officer and conspiracy to commit murder of Spaceforce personnel. If I remember correctly—” The relevant passages from the Spaceforce Code came to mind, even though she had a different implant now. “—Section five, paragraphs 3.14 through 3.23 list the punishments for those and several other crimes I suspect you committed, and I imagine you will spend most, if not all, the rest of your life in a Spaceforce prison. I hope to see to it that you do.”
He said nothing, staring at her with the same terrified expression he’d had on the raft that first day and several times since.
“Now. Until a relief force arrives”—a relief force she suspected might be intent not on rescue but on cover-up—“you will be confined away from the others; you will obey the orders of those I assign to guard you, and if you disobey you will be killed. We do not have the resources to waste on you if you are not cooperative. So: will you be cooperative, or should we end this now?” She nudged Marek’s weapon. Would he realize that she could not use it, that he himself could not have used it?
“No—please! Don’t… I’ll do anything.”
“Excellent.” Ky reached back and opened the door. “Sergeant Cosper?”
“Admiral.”
“You will find a small room suitable for a cell and see that it’s cleared out, provided with a couple of blankets and whatever else a prisoner should have. When it’s ready, take this man to the head, give him a bottle of water, and lock him up.”
“His clothes, Admiral?”
“We don’t have any prison uniforms here that I know of, Sergeant. Make him secure, whatever that is, within human decency.”
“Right.”
“And I’m sure you realize we’ll need to have a guard on the door at all times.”
“Yes, sir—uh, Admiral. Right away.”
“I’ll be meeting with the others. Call if you need me. You will bring Riyahn to the general meeting later this evening.”
Ky detoured by her quarters to get her outdoor gear. When she got back to the armory, she found Staff Sergeant Gossin directing the cleanup. Marek’s and Jen’s bodies were already in bags, and two long backboards, bright red with EMERGENCY USE ONLY stenciled on them, stood by the wall.
“Found the bags on a bottom shelf in the back of Stores,” Gossin said. “We’d inventoried only the food and water supplies. Lundin gave us the boards.”
“Right. Glad you found them. Let’s get them up to the surface.”
It was already dark topside. Eerie blue-green light danced in the sky, and vague shapes moved beyond the huts. The deerlike things, she decided after a few moments, not predators. They lugged the bodies over to the nearer of the two huts, and Ky unlocked the door. Inside, it was as cold as outside, cold as any freezer.
“Where do we put them?”
“On the floor there. We’ll lock them in; the animals can’t get at them and they’ll keep.”
Once the bodies were down, Ky stooped to touch each one and let herself remember them as people she had known, then named them aloud. “Jenaaris Bentik. Ildan Marek. May you have rest.”
“Even though—” began Droshinski.
“Punishing the dead brings me no joy, whatever they did,” Ky said. Poor Marek, a decent man caught in someone else’s machinations. Poor Jen, dropped into a situation for which she was unqualified. “Yes, he tried to kill me; he conspired against me and possibly against us all, but—I cannot find it in me to hate him.”
Outside once more, the hut locked, they stood a few moments in the bitter cold, watching the play of light over the snow and the buildings. “Well,” Ky said finally. “The day’s not over yet. Let’s get back down and call everyone together.”
By the time she was back down the ramps, Sergeant Cosper had transferred Riyahn to a locked room. “I took out everything in it but blankets and a pillow for him, and he’s wearing only pajamas and socks. He’s been to the head; he’s got a bottle of water and a bar of concentrate. What about feeding him long-term?”
“We’re not going to starve him. He’ll get rations same as the rest. Right now we need him in the mess hall. Do you have a guard on his door?”
“It’s locked and I’m away just to report to you.”
“And he may be desperate. We can’t risk his escaping. Put a telltale on the door, with the alarm set to loud, when you take him back after this meeting.”
Gathered around one of the big tables in the mess hall, they seemed a much smaller group than the day before. Two dead. One injured, now in the medbox, one under guard. They looked tense, worried, and no wonder, Ky thought. They had much to worry about.
“You’ve had a shock,” Ky began. “I’m sure you’re wondering what happened, why Commander Bentik and I were in the armory, why Master Sergeant Marek had a firearm, and what exactly led up to what happened. Here’s what I know.” Ky outlined it all, everything she knew for certain. Everyone looked at Riyahn for a moment; he didn’t look up. “Some of you,” she said, “were told by Marek that I was a traitor, or unfit to command because of my age. Some of you probably believed him. He was an experienced senior NCO, and you didn’t know me. You may still wonder about me, distrust me. If enough of you believe I’m a danger to all of you, you can manage to overwhelm and kill me—I have to sleep and eat and use the facilities sometime, after all. But I’m convinced that your best chance of survival—of getting home—is if we all band together and I continue as your commander.”