Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (63 page)

“You are not permitted to slack off or step down. You also owe Lieutenant Commander Helstead’s quick thinking for your continued life. I will be expecting you to be ready to serve this ship, her crew, her Captain, and her future within twenty-four hours after your caning.” She lifted her gaze to the rest, to her officers, her noncoms, and the enlisted men and women gathered before her. “I will expect
each
of you serving under my command to heed my orders and give me your best. I do not
ever
want to have to compile another list like this again. Is that clear?”

Uncomfortable silence met her words. That wasn’t good enough. Ia scowled.

“This is
not
a joke!” she snarled, one hand jabbing at the screen behind her, the other raised to her ear, fingers curled as if cupping to hear the screams of the dead, versus the silence of her crew.

Her commendations swayed on their colorful ribbons, tangible proof of just how hard she had strived to make the whole Space Force understand the importance of her work. Every single medal pinned in place should have made her seem like a mountebank, but these were not soft civilians she faced. They knew the kind of price she had paid for those medals, kilo for kilo in blood, sweat, and tears.

“Every name. Every person. Every severed
life
I can hear, every second,
screaming
in my head. Dead. Dead.
Dead.
You will
not
make me come up with another list like this again.
Is. That. Clear?
”

“Sir, yes, sir!”
Over one hundred bodies shot to their feet in unison, Spyder and Harper and Sung the foremost. The
loudest. The stragglers rose as well, some moving belatedly, but all rising to Attention.

“…Good.” Muscles tight to control the sickly ice still prickling at her nerves, Ia lowered her arms back to her sides. “
Good.
Remember. Your orders are to avoid discussing this with anyone else. Some of the last few hours have been spent in altering the onboard surveillance pickups, official and unofficial, to remove all traces of the trick that has been played. This death did
not
happen. The trick to cover it up does not exist. Don’t even discuss it among yourselves once you leave this room, today.

“To that end, I give you leave to stay here and discuss it for the next hour. Your conversations will not be recorded for that hour, so feel free to be candid. Once that hour is up, I expect you to obey without hesitation or discussion. In the meantime, N’Keth will be disembarked. Private Sung and I are due on the
Hum-Vee
in half an hour for his arraignment, which will become his tribunal
if
he is smart and does not protest. Lieutenant Spyder, escort him to the nearest head, then bring him to the airlock,” she instructed her friend. “I’ll escort the prisoner myself from that point. The rest of you, when your hour is up, begin repairs immediately and prepare to be summoned onto the
Hum-Vee
to witness the caning. Dismissed.”

She didn’t wait to see what her crew would do but instead turned to face Sung.

“…I can go with you if y’ like, sir. Figured I’d take it on meself t’ play MP,” Spyder murmured as he waited for Sung to rise. “We don’ exactly have a security detail f’r it on board, do we?”

“I never believed one would be needed,” Ia muttered back. Movement at her other side made her glance that way. Bennie lifted a hand toward her shoulder. Ia shook her head and shifted back, out of touching range. “I’ll be alright. Just don’t touch me right now. Lieutenant Commander Harper, you have command of the ship while I am gone. If everything goes according to what I have foreseen, you will need to assemble the Company, save for a skeleton crew, to head for the assembly hall. As per regulations, this entire crew will be expected to witness the canings.”

She heard Sung swallow. Turning back, she watched him lick his lips, then speak. “I’m sorry, Captain. I was just so…so caught up in the fight, and I couldn’t see the reason why I
shouldn’t
keep firing. I literally…couldn’t see the
Hardberger
on the other side.”

He lowered his gaze. Ia shook her head. “Most soldiers in a great war never see the whole of that war. They only ever see a tiny part of it. That is why orders are given by those who
do
see the bigger picture, in the expectation that each soldier will have faith in their leaders to give the right commands at the right time. They can and should contribute to the immediate battle plans, but when a target is denied to a soldier, it is
denied
to them.

“In my case, I see everything. If I give you an order to kill someone, it is because I have very carefully weighed the impact of that life’s existence against the needs of every other life, and deemed that the survival of the whole is too great to be ignored. If I give you an order to spare their life, it is for that exact same reason.”

He considered that for a moment, then looked up at her, frowning softly. “But what if you’re wrong? Aren’t you ever wrong?”

“Oh, I
have
been wrong,” she reminded him candidly, still angry with him. “Most recently, I expected you to obey. I
believed
you would obey. I was
wrong
, and all of those names on that list are the end result of it. More lives than you will ever know are
always
at stake whenever I give a command. Take him to the head, Lieutenant, and let him freshen up. I’ll meet you at the airlock.”

Nodding, Spyder took Sung by the elbow, escorting him out of the bow boardroom.

Colonel Avice looked up from the workstation screen embedded in the tribunal desk. A frown furrowed his dark brow. “Ship’s Captain Ia, I find myself puzzled by the Admiral-General’s standing order regarding yourself and your crew. I am not the only one, I’m sure. Are you aware that—”

“—Yes, sir, I am fully aware,” Ia stated, interrupting him before he could go into the tediousness of listing everything. “I stand fully prepared to execute my orders without restraint or hesitation, sir.”

Major Richildis and Commodore St. Stephen exchanged looks. The commodore, clad in Dress Blacks with blue stripes
down his sleeves, rested his elbows on the desk. “Even with the Admiral-General’s personal command code attached to this order, this is highly unusual. Unless the officer has also committed a crime, it is against Space Force regulation to punish the innocent. We are inclined to be more lenient in settling judgment upon Private Sung, as a result.”

“I would rather you did not, sirs,” Ia asserted. Hands clasped behind her back, standing in Parade Rest with her grey cap squared on her head, she met his gaze steadily.

Major Richildis narrowed her dark brown eyes. With her short-spiked brown hair, snub nose, and the brown stripes down her black sleeves, she looked like a bull terrier debating whether or not the current military case was a bone that needed to be chewed. “Explain yourself, Ship’s Captain.”

“The only leniency Private Sung deserves is twofold. One, I still need him as an otherwise damn fine gunner on my ship, so I request that he not be incarcerated,” Ia told them, not bothering to look at Sung. He sat on a chair to one side of the small courtroom, having answered “yes” to both charges under the quietly admitted reason that battle adrenaline had carried him well out of line. “And two, with the survival of Private N’Keth, the charge of Friendly Fire should be modified slightly to acknowledge that, in this case, the Friendly Fire in question wasn’t a literal fatality.”

“Only by the skin of your third-in-command’s psychic teeth,” the major pointed out.

“True, but his life was still saved, so there should be some small mercy granted for that,” Ia said. “Particularly in light of the modifiers. But beyond that, I expect no clemency for the soldiers placed under my command.”

“Yes, the modifiers,” Commodore St. Stephen agreed, sitting back in his seat and shifting his gaze to the accused. He was almost as large as Lieutenant Rico, though with pale, freckled skin and a braid of thinning white hair streaked with remnants of the original coppery red. Between that and the neatly trimmed full beard, he looked like he should have been dressed in a great kilt and wielding a claymore against his enemies. “Double the penalty for ignoring or acting contrary to the orders of a Space Force acknowledged precognitive when those willful actions result in an otherwise avoidable Fatality. Double the penalty again for a wartime crime.”

“The penalty for Disobeying a Direct Order is two strokes of the cane per order,” Richildis pointed out. She chewed the words through a not-smile. “According to the black box records which your CO has provided us, she ordered you to cease fire eight times. That’s sixteen strokes. Doubled from the precognitive backing, that’s thirty-two. Doubled from the fact that the disobedience took place in a war zone, that would be sixty-four strokes.”

Sung flinched, paling. He said nothing, though, just glanced at Ia in fear, then looked down at his hands.

“For the crime of Friendly Fire, that would be four strokes,” the major added. “Four times two is…?”

Richildis held her gaze on Sung until he spoke. “…Eight, sir.”

“And eight doubled again is?”

“Sixteen, sir.”

“For a total of how many strokes of the cane?” Major Richildis smiled. It was not a pleasant smile.

“Eighty, sir,” Private Sung whispered.

Colonel Avice shook his head. “That’s too many. Caning has a maximum number of strokes that can be applied, with the rest converted to a set proportion of years in jail. The Admiral-General herself has stated there shall be no incarceration time.” Resting his green-striped sleeves on the table, he glanced at his companions. “I move that the repetitions after the countdown reached zero be the only ones counted, since it was after that point that he started disobeying orders.”

“That would only be three counts. I would rather it was the five that came before, if we’re going to be lenient,” Richildis countered. She sat back and gestured at Ia. “He was apprised in advance that his commanding officer is a precognitive of immense skill. He had worked with her for several months, seeing that skill in action. She told everyone, including him, five times to cease fire at a specific time, and yet he still disobeyed.”

“Fifty-six strokes is still excessive,” Colonel Avice countered. “We could space it out to ten strokes every few weeks, but that does involve incarceration between canings.”

“Sirs, if I might suggest something?” Ia offered.

They looked at her. Commodore St. Stephen gestured at her to speak.

Ia nodded and drew in a deep breath. What she was about to offer would be applied to herself as well, after all. “There is an alternative. Deliver part of the caning to his upper back. The rules and regs permit the substitution of such blows at a ratio of two to one. I say, give him twenty blows to his back instead of forty, and sixteen to his buttocks, and do it in one session.

“That will leave him in sufficiently satisfactory condition to be returned to the
Hellfire
immediately afterward. I will need him at his post on my ship in the next few weeks. I cannot afford to have him wasting time in a brig, waiting for his backside to heal so that he can suffer the rest of his court-appointed strokes, and the Admiral-General knows this.”

They looked at each other. It was Major Richildis, the apparent bad cop of the panel, who frowned, and asked, “You do realize that
you
will have to undergo twenty to your back, and sixteen to your asteroid?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Ia agreed.

“No, sir!” Sung surged to his feet. The bailiff moved forward, but Sung didn’t go anywhere, just looked at Ia and the tribunal panel. “No. She shouldn’t have to suffer for my mistake, sirs. Please!”

Ia looked over her shoulder at him. “Then you
shouldn’t
have made it in the first place. I told you on the very first day that
any
corporal punishment my crew received, I would have to receive, too.
That
is the price I pay to be able to direct my ship whenever and wherever it needs to go, soldier. For the power that I wield, some prices
have
to be paid. I will even take on the full seventy-two blows in order to pay it, and do so willingly, if that is the judgment of this tribunal.”

“It is not,” the commodore stated. “In the light of the accused’s admission of guilt and acceptance of the charges against him, I recommend that we follow his captain’s advice. Sixteen blows to the buttocks, and twenty blows to the upper back, sentence to be carried out immediately. Colonel?”

Colonel Avice sighed, studying both Ia and Sung. Finally, he nodded. “I concur. It’s excessive, but the target of Fatality Thirteen
would
have died if it weren’t for the heroic psychic actions that saved him. Sixteen to the butt, and twenty to the back.”

“Agreed,” Richildis confirmed. “Sixteen to the buttocks and twenty to the upper back. Ship’s Captain Ia, given the indemnity
clause attached to your command, do
you
agree to this sentence?”

“Sixteen strokes to the butt and twenty to the back, I agree without restraint or hesitation,” she replied. “I am prepared to endure all thirty-six strokes immediately upon the completion of Private Sung’s corporal punishment.”