A white government car pulled up beside us as we ate. A pasty-faced bureaucrat in a shiny gray suit climbed out of the car. He had perfectly coiffed hair. With his clothes and grooming, the man looked completely out of place among the trees. He scanned the platoon, picked out Sergeant Shannon, and joined us.
“Can I help you?” Sergeant Shannon asked, with a wolfish grin.
“Sergeant Shannon?” the man asked.
“I’m Shannon.”
The man held out an envelope with an SC Central Fleet seal. Handing his rations to another soldier, Shannon took the communiqué and opened it. “Harris,” he called.
I walked over. “Sergeant?”
“Looks like you get to skip our next hike,” Shannon said. “SC Command wants you to deliver your prisoner to the Kamehameha.” He handed me the communiqué. I scanned it quickly and saw that I was supposed to get cleaned up and dress in my greens.
I rode back to camp in that posh government car. No hard wooden seats in that ride. When we got back to camp, my bureaucratic escort gave me ten minutes to dress and shower.
“We’re on a tight schedule,” he told me. “You need to report to the Kamehameha by three.”
The Rising Sun police met us at the landing pad and turned Kline over to me in cuffs and manacles. I signed for him and walked him onto the transport. We had the kettle to ourselves, just Kline and me, alone, sitting near the back of the ship. His injured eye looked more infected than ever. The skin around it had turned purple, and yellow pus seeped out from under the closed eyelid.
He stared at me for a moment, then asked, “Harris?”
“Yes,” I said.
We both sat silently as the ramp closed and the AT took off. Not wanting to look at that ruined face, I stared straight ahead at the metal wall of the kettle and let my thoughts wander. Would there be war?
“They’re going to execute me,” Kline said, his calm voice cutting through my thoughts.
“I suspect they will get around to it, sooner or later,” I said.
“No,” Kline corrected me. “They are going to execute me tonight. They will hold a tribunal. I won’t even get a trial. You are delivering me to be executed.”
“You cannot possibly expect me to feel sorry for you. You came to Ezer Kri to shoot me.” I shook my head. “You should have stayed on Gobi. No one cared about you there.”
Despite what I said, I did feel sorry for Kline. In the time that I had known him, he had led a band of terrorists to kill my platoon and attempted to “azzazzinate” me. My universe would be safer once he was gone, but there was something pathetic about this inept, one-handed fool.
“You soldiers are all alike,” he said, probably not seeing the irony in his statement.
“I’m not a soldier,” I said. “I am a Marine.”
Kline shook his head but said nothing.
“I’m curious, Kline. Did Crowley put you up to this?” I asked.
“Did you read my final confession?” Kline asked.
They had interrogated Kline thoroughly over the last few days, but I had not seen the reports. “No,” I said.
“It was my idea,” Kline said. “I wanted to kill you. Crowley tried to talk me out of it.”
“Did he?” I asked. “Did he tell you I was on Ezer Kri?” We must have been approaching the Kamehameha; I could feel the transport rumble as the engines slowed.
“He told me where to find you,” Kline said, sounding a bit defiant.
“Did he arrange your trip?”
“Not himself. One of his lieutenants.”
“And he gave you the rifle and the scope?”
“Yes.”
“And he preset the scope to read my helmet signal?”
“Yes.”
For the first time since takeoff, I turned and looked directly at Kline. “And you think it was your idea? He played you.”
In the background, jets hissed as our ride glided up into the primary docking bay. The ship touched down on its landing gear, and the soft hum of the engines went silent. The rear of the ship opened, and a security detail of four MPs stomped up the ramp.
“Corporal Harris?” One of Admiral Klyber’s aides followed the MPs. “Corporal Harris, we’re on a very tight schedule.”
“Is this the prisoner?” one of the MPs asked.
I looked around the cabin, pretending to search for a third passenger. There are only two of us, I thought. I’m wearing a uniform, and he’s wearing cuffs. “This is the prisoner,” I said as I gave the guard Kline’s papers. The MPs formed a square around Kline and led him away.
“Corporal Harris,” the aide said in a nervous voice. He was a lieutenant, and I was just a corporal; but I was Klyber’s guest. This aide did not dare pull rank.
“Sorry, sir,” I said.
“They are waiting for you on the Command deck.”
“Yes,” I said, my thoughts following Kline.
The lieutenant led me down the same corridor that Vince Lee and I had explored on our first night on the Kamehameha. Vince was considerably better company. This man strode in silence, staring coldly at sailors moving around the deck. At least nobody turned me back for being a Marine.
A voice in the back of my head said that I was far out of my depth as we approached the admin area. That was the holy of holies on most ships, officer country, but we were headed for far more hallowed halls than mere officer country. At the far end of admin were the six elevators that led to the Scutum-Crux Command deck. The lieutenant approached one of these elevators and rolled the thumb, pointer, and middle finger of his right hand against a scanner pad. The elevator call button lit up.
“Ever been back here before, Corporal?”
“No, sir.”
The elevator door slid open, and we stepped in. I stood silent, watching numbers flash on a bar over the door, my mouth dry and my throat parched.
We stepped onto the twelfth floor. Staff members from every branch sat at desks. An Air Force major stood in front of a large glass map moving symbols. A colonel from the Army walked past us and ducked into a small office. No one seemed to notice us.
At first glance, SC Command looked very similar to the admin area at the base of the elevator, except that here you saw men in Air Force blue and Army green. The lieutenant led me past the cubicles and lesser offices, and the surroundings became much less familiar. Even the ceiling was higher on this part of the deck. We entered a large waiting room. The naval officer/receptionist glared at me. “Is this Corporal Harris?”
“In the flesh,” the lieutenant answered.
“He is in conference,” the receptionist said, “but he said for you to go in.”
“In conference?” I asked.
“That means we need to keep absolutely quiet,” the lieutenant whispered. We approached a convex wall with a double-paneled door. As the panels slid open, I heard Admiral Klyber speaking. The officer put up a hand, signaling me to stay outside as he peered into the circular room. A moment later, he turned back and signaled for me to follow.
Admiral Klyber and Vice Admiral Barry sat along the edge of a semicircular table facing a wall with several screens. I recognized the faces on the screens from stories I had seen in the news. Admiral Che Huang, the secretary of the Navy, a member of the Joint Chiefs, spoke on one screen. Generals from the Army and Air Force, also members of the Joint Chiefs, showed on other screens, along with a member of the Linear Committee.
“You said Ezer Kri would not pose a problem, Barry,” Huang said in an angry voice. His image glared down at Admiral Barry, his lips pulling back into a sneer.
“The planet has no standing military and no registered capital ships,” Barry said. Clearly shaken, the vice admiral wheezed and snorted as he spoke. Beads of sweat formed on his mostly bald scalp. “Those ships could not possibly have come from Ezer Kri.”