Mr. Kawaguchi turned to the gallery. “Musashi has enjoyed a long peace. I’ve enjoyed it as much as anyone. But it does not put us in a very good position to judge the actions of this young woman. She has fought for the survival of her own planet and several others. She has experience making the hard calls when the devil is calling the tunes, and what she does next may result in her death and the deaths of hundreds, maybe millions of others.”
Her lawyer turned back to the bench. “You sit here in judgment of her. That is your duty and obligation. No one questions that. However, I ask as you decide her fate that you remember none of you have walked in her boots, faced the terrors she has faced.”
“Is that a closing statement?” the Chief Justice asked sourly.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor, I did get carried away. No, Your Honor, in the words of an ancient Navy captain, ‘I have not yet begun to fight.’ Commander,” he said, turning back to Kris, “what was the purpose of your Fleet of Discovery?”
“I used Caesar’s ancient words, somewhat modified, ‘We go, we see, we run home fast and tell the story.’”
“And what were Admiral Kota’s orders?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, sir. Neither Rear Admiral Kota, Rear Admiral Channing, nor Vice Admiral Krätz shared their orders with me. After all, sir. I am just a lieutenant commander, and they were admirals.”
“You never saw their orders. Did they give you any hint at what they might be?”
“Objection! Calls for supposition.”
“Sustained.”
“Let me rephrase myself. Commander, did the actions of the admirals cause you to develop a working hypotheses as to why eight battleships were following in the wake of your Patrol Squadron 10?”
“Yes, sir. It appeared to me that all three admirals had orders to follow where I went and assure that their governments’ interests were considered.”
“And did they follow your squadron?”
“Yes, sir, with two exceptions. The short search where my squadron broke up into individual ships and scouted around the area where we were first attacked, and the long search when the squadron again broke up and did risky long jumps to take a sampling of what was out there.”
“And what did this risky long search find?”
“One plundered planet with its population murdered. One new civilization, and one alien base ship that gave all the appearance of heading for that new civilization with plunder and murder as their intent.”
“So you decided to go to war with that base ship?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I examined my options, sir. Obviously, if there was nothing I could do to help the targeted civilization, there was nothing I could do. When we departed on our voyage of discovery, we were hardly armed for a fight with something as huge as the alien base ship.”
“Did that change?”
“Oddly enough, it did. For no reason known to me then nor explained to me since, my king sent me three neutron torpedoes, we called them Hellburners.”
“Could you explain what that weapon is?”
“It is the most destructive weapon man has ever used. Possibly worse than the banned atomic weapons of old,” Kris said, then explained herself to a very quiet court.
“And having these weapons available gave you the confidence that you could stop the base ship from destroying its targeted civilization.”
“Objection, ascribes intent to the alien ship not in evidence.”
“I’ll withdraw my statement. Commander, your having this capability, did it change the attitude of the admirals you did not command?”
“Only Admiral Kota at first, then Channing, and finally Krätz. Yes, sir.”
“Objection, we have only her hearsay evidence that they did this, Your Honor.”
Tsusumu flashed Kris a brief grin, then sobered as he turned to the bench. “This War Council was recorded by several people. I am prepared to enter into evidence the recording of the council made by the commander.”
“It’s a digital file, Your Honor. They are notoriously easy to tamper with,” the prosecutor said.
“Point taken. Mr. Kawaguchi, we will need the original file and the computer it is on for analysis.”
“You will not have me,” Nelly snapped from Kris’s chest.
“Nelly, down,” Kris snapped right back.
The gavel came down. “The witness will control herself or face contempt.”
“Pardon us, Your Honor,” Tsusumu said, doing a poor job of suppressing a smile. “It is not my witness who objects, but her computer.”
“Her computer?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Kris said, turning to face the bench. “My personal computer seems to have achieved a certain measure of self-awareness.”
“Certain measure, my eye. I am fully self-aware.”
“Hmm,” said the Chief Justice.
“Hmm,” echoed most of the justices, though a couple were seen to smile openly.
“I must object, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor. “A self-aware computer that clearly feels close attachment to her master is definitely not a good source for data.”
The Chief Justice gnawed on that conundrum for a moment. “You say you have other recordings of the council.”
“Yes, Your Honor. The commander of the Marine detachment on the Wasp, the intelligence officer on Kris’s staff, as well as her maid, and, so it seems, a thirteen-year-old girl whose presence in the meeting was not observed.”
“A thirteen-year-old girl!” the Chief Justice said.
“It’s not as implausible as it may sound,” Kris pointed out. “She is my maid’s niece. The Wasp had several hundred civilian scientists aboard, and Cara was kind of adopted as the ship’s mascot.”
“This Council of War. I assume there was some security about it?” the Chief Justice asked.
Kris could see where this was headed. “Yes, Your Honor, we posted Marines at the only entrance to the room.”
“Yet this little girl got in, you say?”
“If she has a recording of the meeting,” Kris said, “then it would appear that the Marines did let her in. The Forward Lounge that we were using made a superb ice-cream sundae.”
“It seems that this so-called Fleet of Discovery’s command structure was weird not only up, but down,” observed one judge dryly.
“The Wasp, Your Honors, had been as much of a research ship as a warship for several years. The blending of those two missions made for some interesting outcomes,” Kris said, trying but failing not to grin.
“Moving right along,” the Chief Justice said, “Mr. Kawaguchi, do you intend to offer these other recordings in evidence?”
“I have them here, Your Honor,” Tsusumu said, turning toward the defense table.
“And the computers they came from.”
“Have a similar problem, Your Honor.”
“The computer has cloned itself!” the prosecution yelped.
“I did no such thing, Your Honor,” Nelly shot back.
The Chief Justice rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but will the computer please explain itself?”
“Herself,” Nelly corrected. “My personality is decidedly female though I lack any of the bodily functions to go with the attitude.”
“I’ll certainly agree on the attitude,” the Chief Justice was heard to mumble.
“However, my children are not simply clones of me. Each of them has developed a personality of his or her own. For example, Sal, who works with Captain Montoya of the USMC, is much more subordinate to him than I am to Kris. In my own defense, I would point out that Jack rarely gets himself into any mess as wild and crazy as Kris tends to get us in.”
“Thank you, thank you, I think I’ve heard enough,” the Chief Justice said. “I’m going to call a brief recess. I don’t know about anyone else in this room, but I need to recover my . . . something. We are in recess for fifteen minutes,” he said, and brought down the gavel.