They have no idea what might be in store, she thought suddenly, realizing that whatever intelligence information the human fleet had come up with, it could not have told them very much more than where to go looking for trouble. And they don’t care, she thought. Coming from a planet and class of people that had been ravaged by humans for far longer and with much greater thoroughness than the Kreelans in their single attack, Enya had difficulty relating to the near-riot boiling around her. Even Braddock appeared to have been seduced by the president’s passionate speech.
“Yes, my friends,” Borge went on after the crowd regained its composure, “we shall seek out the enemy, wherever he is.” The stress on the pronoun was unmistakable, and with a sudden chill, Enya realized whom he meant. “Years ago there came among us a man, who had once been a boy of human blood, but who was no longer entirely human. Raised by the alien horde, he was used and corrupted, molded into a weapon more insidious than any we have ever known. This man fought his former hosts well and with courage, earning our trust and respect, getting us to open our hearts to him, making us vulnerable.” His eyes swept across the audience. “And then he betrayed us, all of us, by murdering in cold blood the one who had led humanity for so long and so well, a man most of you knew as the commander-in-chief, the president of the Confederation: Job Nathan.” He wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “He murdered the man who was my close friend for most of my adult life.
“But this alien prodigy was not alone in his treachery,” Borge went on, his voice tight with barely suppressed rage, a performance that would have been the envy of a Broadway star. “For he was aided and abetted by another of our own kind, a woman who betrayed her uniform and her race to help this murderer escape from justice.” He looked toward a group of Marines in dress uniforms carrying weapons that were anything but ceremonial. They were formed up next to the embarkation ramp of a newly arrived shuttle. “Bring out the prisoners,” he ordered.
The Marine officer-in-charge rendered a sharp salute before turning toward the shuttle. “Bring out the prisoners!” he repeated sharply.
The hangar deck was so quiet that Enya could hear her heart beating. Even the deep thrum from the ship’s drives seemed to have gone silent.
From the shuttle could be heard the sound of the chains that had been cuffed to the prisoners’ hands and feet. Each prisoner also wore a thin band of metal around the neck with a small electronic control box: high explosive collars.
There was a collective gasp as Jodi, Shera-Khan, and Reza appeared in the light of the bay. Tesh-Dar, too weak to walk by herself, leaned heavily upon her adopted son, all the while casting a baleful eye on the human animals all around her, trying to force their stench from her nostrils. She felt the cold metal of the human device around her son’s neck and her own, and instantly regretted consenting to having it put on; but the humans would have harmed Shera-Khan, and she knew that neither Reza nor herself could have kept the child from harm.
“There is no other way,” Reza had told her grimly as he accepted the lethal necklace himself. It had seemed to her for a moment that he was surrendering, but the flame in his eyes burned brightly still, she had seen. The Power was yet within him.
Shera-Khan also had his arm wrapped around Tesh-Dar’s waist to lend his slender body for her support. He was not afraid of the animals that peered at him with their strange pale faces, for he walked in the presence of a great warrior priest, his father, and Tesh-Dar, who was a living legend of the sword. He could not understand his father’s command that they obey the animals and submit to this spectacle, but he did not question it; Reza’s word was the word of the consort of the Empress, the only one among Her race permitted to kneel upon the pedestal of the throne. He was the most high of Her Children, the single warrior who had no peers.
Jodi, while cast in the same light as the other three, walked alone. The humiliation she felt at being paraded before these people and those who watched from all over the Confederation through the vid paled in comparison to the sadness in her heart at having had to deny Reza her help in his greatest hour of need. She had loved him dearly as a friend, and loved him still; but she could not help him. She knew that she would go to her death convicted of crimes she had never committed. But she could not betray her people.
She walked ahead of the others, her head upright, with her eyes fixed on the evil man who wore the robes of an angel. Borge.
Reza felt the crushing weight of the emotions of those around him. It was a burden so great it threatened to smother his spirit but for the cold flames that burned for vengeance against those who had betrayed not only him, but all of humanity. Tesh-Dar was an easy and welcome weight about his shoulders. Her musky scent, pleasant from memory, was reassuring, as was that of his newfound son. He tuned out the burning hatred of the thousands of souls around him and focused on the small comforts his physical senses provided him of his Kreelan family, wishing he could sense them in his spirit, as well. But he could not, even this close to them, any more than he had been able since the day he left the Empire.
It is strange, he had thought after speaking with Tesh-Dar, that their blood is cold and silent as the Empress sleeps, but my blood still sings its mournful solo as it had since that day long ago. His powers had not waned since the tragedy of the Ascension, and he was left to wonder at whatever miracle sustained him. He remembered the dream of the First Empress, as he lay dying from Esah-Zhurah’s sword, remembered the fire in his veins as he imagined Her blood mingling with his. Others might have thought it a dream, but he knew that it was not.
The prisoners slowly shuffled their way toward the dais, past the rows of sailors and Marines, legislators and judges, the men and women whom they had served and had served with for years. But now the prisoners weren’t friends or comrades, only criminals who had committed the gravest crime against humanity in all of history.
“In the name of God,” Enya whispered. It sounded like a shriek in the silence of the bay, and she said nothing more. Beside her, Braddock’s only reaction was a twitching muscle in his jaw.
Finally, there were no more steps for the prisoners to take; they had reached their destination. Standing before the dais, all of them glared upward at the leader of the Confederation.
Borge wasted no time. “It would take too much time to read all the crimes with which you have been charged, so the court has waived reading all but the most vitaclass="underline" murder and conspiracy to commit murder.” He turned his attention toward Reza. “Captain Gard, you are charged with the murders of Job Kahane Nathan, President of the Confederation, and Dr. Deliha Rabat. How do you plead?”
Reza said nothing. He knew he could kill Borge at this instant, but his son’s life likely would be forfeit, and any chances he might have of saving the Empire – and the Confederation – would be lost forever.
Borge frowned. “Silence is entered as a plea of guilty.” He turned to Jodi. “Commander Jodi Mackenzie, you are charged with conspiring with Captain Gard to murder Doctor Rabat and President Nathan; further, you are charged with the despicable murder of Tanya Buchet. How do you plead?”
“Go fuck yourself,” she spat.
Borge snorted in disgust, then turned to the new Chief Justice, another of his latest appointees, Anton Simoniak. “Your Honor, if you please.”
Simoniak stepped up to the podium. “Due to the barbaric nature of these crimes and the subsequent bloody escape of the accused, the court was compelled to conduct their trial in absentia,” the Chief Justice stated flatly, as if bored by the supposition that they could possibly be anything but guilty. “The call for justice was unanimous.” He looked down upon the condemned. “You have both been found guilty, as charged, on all counts.” Turning to Borge, he said, “The recommended sentence is death, Mr. President, to be carried out immediately.”