Geary replied. “I believe you’ll get your explanation when Commander Fensin answers Captain Desjani.”
Fensin had been staring at Desjani and now slumped back, rubbing his face with both hands. “I never liked it anyway. If we somehow ever get out, everybody stay quiet until we get them. As if we were a criminal mob rather than members of the Alliance military. But as the years went by one by one endlessly, it seemed to make sense. We’d never be rescued, never be freed. We’d have to do what needed to be done if justice was ever to be served. And the rules didn’t change when we were rescued. We’d agreed to do it when we could.”
Rione reached and grasped Fensin’s other hand. “What happened?”
“What didn’t.” Fensin stared toward the far bulkhead, his eyes looking into the past. “They betrayed us, Vic. Those three.”
“How?” Geary demanded.
“There was a plan. Hijack one of the Syndic supply shuttles but keep it quiet. Get to the spaceport and grab a ship. Only twenty prisoners might make it out, but they could have taken a lot of information back to Alliance space. Who was in the camp, what we knew of the situation behind the border in Syndic space, that kind of thing.” Fensin shook his head. “Crazy, I guess. Only one chance in a million it might work. But against a lifetime as a prisoner of war, some people thought those odds were good enough. The three senior officers in the camp told us not to, but we pointed out the fleet’s standing orders for prisoners to resist where feasible. So they told the Syndics. The only way to stop the plan, they said. Because the retaliation against the remaining prisoners would be too severe, they said. Because they’d agreed to keep us in line for the Syndics in exchange for certain privileges for us. Privileges! Enough food, some medical care, the sort of things the Syndics were obligated by simple humanity to provide anyway.”
Fensin closed his eyes. “When the Syndics found out about the plan, they ran us through interrogations until they’d identified ten of the prisoners who were going to hijack the shuttle. Then they shot them.”
“Was this an isolated incident?” Geary asked. “Or a pattern of behavior?”
“A pattern, sir. I could talk all day. They did what the Syndics wanted and told us it was for us. Keep quiet, behave, and it would benefit us. Resist, and we’d get hammered by the Syndics.”
Desjani looked like she wanted to spit. “Those three focused on one aspect of their mission, the welfare of their fellow prisoners. They forgot every other aspect of their responsibilities.”
Fensin nodded. “That’s right, Captain. Sometimes I could almost understand. Among them they’d been prisoners of war for a combined total of more than a century.”
“A century isn’t long enough to forget important things,” Desjani replied, looking at Geary. He rapped the table to draw Fensin’s attention, uncomfortable with Desjani’s observation despite (or perhaps because of) the truth in it. “What’s the objective of this conspiracy of silence? Why not tell us immediately what those three did?”
“We wanted to kill them ourselves,” Fensin answered in a matter-of-fact way. “We held emergency courts-martial, in secret of necessity, and reached verdicts of treason in all three cases. The penalty for treason in wartime is death. We wanted to make sure those sentences were carried out before any of those three managed to lawyer their way into being formally charged and tried on lesser offenses. And, in truth, we wanted revenge for ourselves, for those who died.” He looked around at the others. “You can’t know how it feels. I… Do we have access to imagery of the camp? Before you pulled us out?”
“Certainly.” Desjani entered some commands. Above the table appeared an overhead view of the POW camp on Heradao as it had looked before being smashed to bits during the fight to liberate the prisoners. Commander Fensin, working the controls with the clumsiness of someone who’d not been allowed to use the like for years, zoomed the image in on one side of the camp. As the picture zoomed closer, Geary could see a large open field, and that the field was partially filled with neat rows of markers. “A cemetery.”
“Yes,” Fensin agreed. “That POW camp had been in existence for about eighty years. A generation of prisoners had aged and died there. There weren’t a lot of real elderly because of the harsh conditions and the limitations on medical care.” His eyes rested on the imagery of the grave markers. “All of the rest of us believed that eventually we’d end up in that field as well. There weren’t any prisoner exchanges, and why should we expect the war to ever end? After five or ten or twenty years, even the strongest beliefs faded into resignation. We’d never see our families again, we’d never go home again. All we had left was each other, and what dignity we could retain as members of the Alliance military.”
He focused on Rione, as if she were the one he most wanted to convince. “They betrayed that. They betrayed us. Those things were all we had left, and they betrayed those things. Of course we wanted to kill them.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, then Desjani gestured toward the image still hovering before them.
“Did the Marines get records of those graves while they were on the ground? The names of those who rest there?”
“I doubt it.” Fensin tapped his head with one finger. “They didn’t have to. Every one of us had names to remember. I was one of those who had to remember all of the dead whose last names began with F. The list of the honored dead is in our memories. We couldn’t take them home because they’ve already gone to join their ancestors, but we will take their names to their families.”
For a moment Geary imagined that he could see them, the prisoners going painstakingly over the names of those who had died, checking their lists against each other, committing the names to the only form of record they had. Year by year, as the lists grew longer, never knowing if anyone in the Alliance would ever hear those lists, but keeping them in their memories just the same. It was all too easy to sense how the prisoners had felt in that POW camp, which they had every reason to believe would be their jail until they died. All too easy to understand their need for such rituals and their sense of betrayal. “All right.”
Geary looked a question a Rione.
She looked down, then nodded. “I believe him.”
“So do I,” Desjani added without hesitation.
Geary tapped the comm controls. “Captain Tulev, get those three senior former prisoners onto a shuttle with Marine guards. Take them to…” He pondered his options. He needed a ship without former POWs from Heradao on board, but every warship had those.
Every warship.
“Titan. Take them to Titan with orders that they be confined under guard until further notice. All three are under arrest.”
Tulev nodded as if unsurprised. “The charges? We are obligated to provide them to those under arrest.”
“Treason and dereliction of duty in the face of the enemy. They told me they were preparing a report on their actions. Make sure they have the means to produce that report. I want to see it.” That wasn’t strictly true. The last thing he wanted to do was read through that document if what Commander Fensin had said was accurate. But he had an obligation to see what the three officers said in their own defense. Once Tulev had signed off, Geary faced Fensin again. “Thank you, Commander. I think I can promise you that if what you told us is confirmed by your fellow former prisoners, then formal courts-martial back in Alliance territory will reach the same conclusions you did.”
“Do we have to wait?” Fensin asked with shocking calmness. “You could order them shot right now.”