Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) (71 page)

“No, sir, I have not,” Ia stated calmly. She continued before the nine men and women around her could do more than sit back in shock at such a free admission. “However, my lack of an ethics examination is completely covered by two words, rendering said examination unnecessary.”

General Sranna of the TUPSF-Army tapped his finger on the surface of the long, curved desk. “I’m sorry, Captain, but ‘Vladistad,
salut
’ does
not
exempt you from being examined. In fact, it makes it all the more imperative that you
are
examined on a yearly basis.”

She almost replied flippantly. Almost, except at the last second, the timestreams turned cold in her mind. As cold as the dread she had experienced over the Friendly Fire incident. Her subconscious doused her veins with ice-cold warning. Squaring her shoulders, Ia answered plainly instead.

“No, sir, Vladistad,
salut
does not exempt me from examination, sir. Two other words did that, sir,” she stated, clasping her hands behind her back to hide their trembling. If she wasn’t careful in the next few minutes…“It’s good to see you again, General.”

“Which two words would those be, then?” the other Army general asked her, his brow lifted skeptically.

“
Carte blanche
, sir. Two words that have been backed by my scrupulous filing of daily reports.” She looked at Myang. “Everything I have done, everything I have shared with you, Admiral-General, I have conducted myself and guided my crew with the
strict scruples and ethics required by the Terran laws regarding psychics and their abilities.” Ia held her gaze for a moment more, then nodded at the information flickering on the screens. “Pick anything I have done and question me about it. I will give you the exact duty reports that cover each incident.”

“You’re a good enough electrokinetic, you could have tampered with those recordings at any point in time,” Mercea countered wryly.

“But I’m
not
a good enough telepath to have tampered with the reports of your spies,” Ia stated. She tipped her head to her right. “You’ve had plenty of reports from them corroborating everything I’ve officially sent. You’ve heard from me time and again in my reports explaining why
this
battle had to be fought instead of
that
battle. I’ve given you headcounts and ident files of the soldiers and citizens we’ve saved.

“My Company and I have filed more paperwork than a ship with nine times the crew complement, with our moves and our motives constantly displayed for you…and my crew has fought for you with so little free time in our schedule, we haven’t had more than six days’ worth of Leave in the last two years, sirs, because there
hasn’t
been time for anything else.” Ia shook her head. “What else
could
I do but keep fighting?”

“You were required to be examined anyway!” General Phong countered.

“If I had stopped to disembark long enough for an essentially redundant examination, sir, I would’ve risked thousands of lives being slaughtered because my crew wasn’t in the right place at the right time.” Ia looked at Myang. “Or should I have permitted unauthorized personnel on board my ship, sir, an act which by your own command would be considered an act of Grand High Treason? The only time I’ve had free that
was
long enough for an ethics review has been while my ship was in transit between battle zones—and the few times my ship
has
been in dock long enough for me to undergo an ethics review, I
still
had work to do.

“When would I have had time, without risking too many lives, sirs? My only recourse
is
to conduct my actions openly. Ethically and morally, openly. Word, thought, and deed are all one within me. How else can I prove myself to you yet still continue to save all these desperately needed lives?”

She surveyed each high-ranked officer in turn. None of them
looked away, but most didn’t look comfortable. Only Myang met her gaze without changing her expression. Then again, the Admiral-General was an expert at displaying that flatly neutral look.

“I serve—
I act
—because I am here to save lives to the best of my abilities. And I have done so,” Ia argued. “If you cannot see for yourselves the truth in my deeds, the
ethics
inherent in my actions, then unless you are a psychic yourself, and one strong enough to conduct a probe, then there is nothing I can do or say to convince you. So what
can
I do, given the constraints of my orders and of Time itself, that I have not already done?”

“Alright, I’ll bite,” one of the two Navy admirals stated, her voice as crisp as her blue-striped black uniform and her silvered crew-cut hair. “How about you explain to us how you can justify working for a foreign government? Your very first act was to haul
cargo
for some branch of the government back on your homeworld. Yes, by contract the military
can
deliver cargo to a colonyworld under our protection, such as I.C. Sanctuary, but those contracts must undergo military review for the best allocation of our limited freighting resources.

“And don’t give me any
shakk
about that cargo being ‘emergency military supplies,’” Admiral Nadine Nachoyev added dryly, slanting Ia a dark look. “We’ve received complaints from the Sanctuarian government that those supplies vanished the very day you left the planet, and that despite great efforts by said government, they have never been found in the two years subsequent. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that you were smuggling in supplies under the orders of subversive elements on your homeworld. That
you
were taking orders from a foreign power to do so. Fatalities Two and Six would therefore apply to
you
.”

“My actions were neither a case of Treason nor of Subversion, Admiral,” Ia returned calmly. This, she could handle. She had anticipated it among the possibilities of questions thrown at her in this session and come prepared with her answer. “Yes, I lied about the nature of those supposed military emergency supplies to the officials logging that complaint, but I
am
permitted to do so. That option exists under the rules and regulations stating that no Terran military officer may allow a foreign
power to confiscate cargo under our protection, whether or not that cargo is of a Space-Force-assigned nature.”

“So who did you transport the cargo to, if not to the government of Sanctuary?” General Sranna asked her, frowning softly.

“The Free World Colony, sir. It is its own, separate government from the Church-controlled elements currently running the rest of Sanctuary. They requested that the cargo be kept secret from those elements,” Ia stated quietly.

Admiral Wroughtman-Mankiller pounced on that. “Then you
did
take orders from a foreign government!”

“No, sir, I didn’t do that,” Ia replied, tucking her hands behind her back. She looked over at the Special Forces admiral. “You see, I am not taking orders from them, and I never have.”

That earned her several snorts. Freeing one hand, she snapped her fingers. Text appeared on the main screen behind her, with the top line enlarged so that the words were easily seen from all nine seats. The image zoomed to display the pertinent sections as Ia explained what they were now viewing.

“Before you is the Alliance-registered Charter for the Free World Colony of the Zenobian Empire…also known as the
other
half of Independent Colonyworld Sanctuary. As you can see for yourselves, Article I, Section A, paragraph 1—the very first law of the Free World Colony—clearly states:
The duly verified commands, precognitive missives, and orders of the Sanctuarian-born woman known as Ia, Prophet of a Thousand Years and soldier of the Terran Empire, supersede, supplant, and overrule all laws of the Free World Colony, its citizens, descendants, and successors, without exception to this rule,
save by her own command.

“
Legally
, meioas, they take their orders from
me
,” she stated, defending herself neatly. “Which means I am not violating Space Force law because I am not under the influence of any foreign power.”

“Yet you still are working for a foreign power,” Admiral Nachoyev argued. “Your own crew members claim that you have admitted to not only using technology borrowed from the future, but that you have refused to share the results of that technology with anyone outside your own ship and have forbidden them to share it as well.”

“
That
would be covered under Vladistad,
salut
, Admiral,” Ia told the older woman, returning her hands to the small of her back in modified Parade Rest. “By its very nature as precognitively extracted information, that information is protected by the
Johns and Mishka
statute sheltering all precognitives within the Terran Government, and by extension the Al-liance.

“Considering how much precognitively based information I
have
given to this military and its government, and the accuracy of all my various predictions, a court of law would rule that I do have the right to withhold that information, based on the fact that it would damage the future. And it would, sirs,” Ia told them.

“Enough.”
The solitary word silenced the others. Unclasping her hands, the Admiral-General studied Ia. “I think I am beginning to understand why your Priestess Leona used a modified format during your ethical scans. I suspect if we tried to dissect each and every one of your many actions over the last two-plus years, we’d be stuck in here for
ten
years at this rate.”

“We don’t have ten years, sir. I’m sorry,” Ia apologized. “Mars will be attacked in three more days. You’ll be busy with the system’s defense, and my ship will be needed in the defense of one of the Solarican heavyworld colonies approximately three hundred light-years from here.”

“
Thank
you for finally telling us about that,” Admiral Nachoyev muttered darkly. “You
could’ve
done it sooner.”

Ia tried to restrain her tongue. She knew she had to tread carefully, but Nachoyev’s antagonism was rubbing her sense of patience raw. “I knew it would come up in here, and that three days is plenty of time to prepare. When else should I have told you? Five years ago, when I was still a lance corporal in the Marines? You wouldn’t have paid attention to me back then. Three days is plenty of time to prepare.”

“Enough!” Lifting a hand to her forehead, Myang rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I will accept your constant stream—your
barrage
—of visual and written reports on all of your activities as your version of an ongoing ethical review. But understand this: if we
do
have doubts as to your actions, you will be called into a much more formal review, Captain. A tribunal review.”

“Yes, sir. I know that, sir. It’ll happen in a few more
years—but not for the reason you’re thinking,” Ia confessed. Myang blinked at her. “It will be instigated by the Alliance Council, not the Terran Space Force. As Admiral Viega will attest, I did warn the Salik that engaging in this war with us would lead to their destruction and advised them to abandon their ambitions.

“They chose to ignore my warning, and will eventually reap the seeds that they have sown. I already knew that I will be held accountable for that because I have not told anyone what those seeds are,” Ia told the men and women before her. “I have been very careful to make sure there is no way the Salik can use that information against
us
, which
would
be an extreme case of Fatality Thirty-Five: Sabotage.

“Having had a taste this last year of the corporal punishments administered for Fatalities Five and Thirteen, I have no intention of enduring any greater penalties,” she finished dryly. “Particularly not during a war when I myself as a precog could foresee and prevent them.”

“I am quite sure,” Myang murmured, studying her. “Ship’s Captain Ia, I find you to be arrogant, boastful, irritating, and borderline subordinate more times than I’d care to count. You are the single biggest headache in this war next to the Salik themselves. You are a
problem
for me.”

Her tone, mostly quiet and calm, now dripped with barely checked vehemence. Ia tried not to swallow visibly. She clung to her foresight-based faith that she would make it through this interview more or less intact, and waited stoically for the other boot to drop.

“Unfortunately, that borderline you tread is found within the edges of your
carte blanche
…and you have pulled off multiple miracles time and again despite your many abuses of it,” Admiral-General Myang allowed grimly. “You look and talk like a loose cannon on a seafaring ship, but
somehow
you have managed to be the
right
loose cannon every damn time.

“Don’t let the fact that we
do
still need you go to your head, though,” she warned Ia. “There are some edges to your
carte blanche
out there, and if you cross over them, you will fall a very,
very
long way. And you
will
hit bottom, soldier.”

“Whatever you may think of me, sir, arrogant or irreverent or…or mad with poetry and prophecy, as is your right, I do respect you and your authority,” Ia murmured, holding the older
woman’s gaze. “So far, you have given me what I need to save lives. I will not forget how much I owe you for that.”

Myang stared back for a long moment, then nodded slightly, blinking her dark brown eyes. “Alright. Before we move on to the subject you raised regarding Mercea’s supposed, inadvertent contamination by outside forces, is there anything
else
you’d like to share with the Command Staff? One of your infamous ‘one more thing’ moments?”

Nodding, Ia fished out the datachip stored in her pocket. She floated it off her palm telekinetically, rather than tossing it, and set it gently on the table in front of Myang. “There’s all the latest precognitive data I can give you for the next year—some of it becomes a little fuzzy on the Dabin question in half a year, but the rest of it’s good for other parts of known space. I’ll do whatever I personally can to help correct the Dabin issue. Is that all, sir?”