Should Triz wake Casne’s family? The thought nearly brought up the spicewine still churning in her stomach. She couldn’t go tell them what was happening when she had no idea herself. Instead, she spent most of the night lying awake on every flat surface in her rooms: her bed, the hard line of her cheap fold-down sofa, squeezed on the floor next to the toilet. Sleep fled from her. Every time she closed her eyes the image of Casne in a cell flooded her thoughts.
The Watch officers took Casne uphab, to Justice—the same place where the Ceebee leaders brought back from the fight at Golros were stashed. She’d be safe, wouldn’t she? Triz thought of Casne sharing a cell with none other than Rocan Melviq, the Unquenchable Scythe, and shivered. No. The Watch was Fleet, and they’d see to it Casne wasn’t thrown in with the same people she’d just helped capture. Triz pressed her fingers against the cold plastic of the bathroom floor and tried to make herself believe that.
Long before the full dayshift station lights came on, Triz made herself stand and pulled a clean worksuit from the drawer under her bed. She stared at her ghastly face in the mirror and dragged her fingers through her snarled hair a few times, but gave up before it could be honestly described as “combed.” The lights in her rooms switched off as she shut the door behind her, and her boots sounded too loud in the empty hallway between her place and Casne’s parents’.
Her wrist fob opened the door. Casne snuck her the passcode access years ago, back when Triz was still just a stupid teenager sneaking in to fool around with her girlfriend. And to enjoy being in a real quadhome—not that the Tolvian creche a few floors downhab was bad, but . . . a wallport you could watch whatever you wanted on? A food printer that would give you sugarpips if you asked, not just on holidays but whenever you asked? It had seemed like heaven to a wide-eyed creche brat.
It still seemed pretty nice, compared to Triz’s current quarters. Hers were big enough to share with Casne now, or Nantha, or Casne and Nantha, if they both got leave at the same time—but only just. When Triz had been old enough to ask for her own place from PubWel, they’d stationed her just a few rooms down in a pairhome on the same level. Tiny though the pairhome might be, it was still nice to be close to Casne’s family, though Triz was glad to have at least a few doors of distance right after Cas upturned the quadhome’s life by running off to enlist. Bad enough to drudge alongside Quelian all day in the ‘works those next weeks; worse still putting in overtime as a disappointing daughter-substitute at the family dinner table once a week.
Inside the quadhome, the lights were low, in tune with their residents’ biorhythms. When Triz settled onto the nest of floor cushions by the wallport, a local light obediently brightened that corner. She preferred to sit in the dark, but it didn’t matter. She raised her fob, then hesitated. It would be nice not to have to hear bad news alone. But it would be nicer to hear it and get herself in check before she had to explain everything to Casne’s quadparents. She turned on the wallport and slid the volume down.
The first few channels were playing, respectively, a documentary about the construction of Centerpoint Station, an old astronautics display featuring half a dozen retired XL-8 Starslicers and a lot of fireworks, and the latest Astral Noise concert from Croelo Hab.
Triz had just started to convince herself last night’s events had all been a bad dream—a dream, somehow, despite having not snatched a single scrap of sleep all night—when her fob finally scanned over to a newschannel.
“—responsible is reported to be Captain Casne Vivik Veling,” the newsreader was saying. The footage shook and wobbled: probably shot from a targeting camera in the belly of a Skimmer or some other starfighter. Explosions in red and gold lanced over the wallport screen. The blasts looked too much like the astronautics celebration, except instead of playing out against a background of black, they rippled over the cracked face of an Arcology, one of the little dome habitats that studded the surface of Hedgehome. Tiny dolls spilled from the wound in the plastisteel surface. Not dolls at all, though. Dying planet-siders. Triz’s fist ground against her lips as she swallowed hot bile.
The newsreader went on: “Previously hailed as one of the heroes of the battle at Golros, the captain is being held by Fleet Admiralty pending an investigation on charges of war crimes. On the line with us now, we have Mer Dustald-1 Alderly, CFS Vice Admiral, retired, who served with Strategy during the Cluster Campaigns, to discuss what this means for the Fleet. “
“Tactics like these do not represent the Fleet I served in.” Mer Alderly’s voice cracked, with age and with the strain of her agitation. “Maybe it’s a little easier to clear a defense installation in record time when you’re willing to weaken its base by destroying the friendly civilian habitation downlevel. Those people had suffered enough already at the hands of the Ceebees. The Fleet should have arrived as liberators. Instead this upstart captain made us murderers. And for what? A shot at an early promotion?”
“Vice Admiral, do you believe that when the charges are read tomorrow, we’ll learn wh—”
Triz slammed her wrist fob against the wallport and the screen went black and silent. She rested her forehead against the wallport for the space of a long, shuddering breath, and when she sat back, another light had gone on in the quadhome.
Quelian stood in the space between the portlounge and the galley. Already dressed for the workday, in a gray worksuit nearly the twin of Casne’s uniform, the rich undertones of his skin, the copper and bronze of exposed wires, had bled away; he looked like his own ghost. He’d always been a small man, practically a miniature next to his statuesque spouses and daughter, but now he’d all but shriveled away. “We ate with her last night,” he said. “She didn’t say anything about this.”
“It’s not true.” Triz’s fists balled in the soft fabric of her trousers. “Casne would never—she’d never. Someone’s doing this to, I don’t know, get back at her for Golros. Or something!”
Quelian shook his head. “Fleet service changes people. When you fire a Tactics array long enough, you start to forget what you’re firing at. Who you’re firing at.” His lips thinned and he looked away from Triz. “This quad builds and the Fleet destroys. We’ll be lucky if the whole family isn’t dragged down with that kind of reputation tagged to our name.”
“Your reputation?” Triz flung a pillow at him, but he raised a hand, and it bounced harmlessly to the floor. “That’s your daughter you’re talking about!”
Casne’s mother, Veling, peered out of the bedroom doorframe. Idha and Othine, Casne’s daddy and damu, were just behind her. “What’s going on?” she asked. “What’s this about Casne?”
Quelian stared at the ceiling just over his wife’s head. The vein in his forehead quivered as his jaw clenched. “Your daughter’s been arrested,” he said through his teeth. “War crimes, they’re saying, and by what I just saw, they’re not wrong.”
Othine gasped. Idha, forehead furrowed, put his hand on eir shoulder. They both looked to Veling to speak first, which was exactly what she did. “That’s absurd.” Veling resembled her daughter so strongly; the sudden tears tracing the lines of her face carved a fresh canyon of grief through Triz. “That’s Casne you’re talking about. No child of this quad would do such a thing, Quelian, you should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking—”
“I came here to see what we were going to do about it.” Triz pushed to a stand and stumbled on the uneven footing of the shifting cushions. “I didn’t think you were going to . . . Quelian, you’re a Justice tribune. Can’t you talk to the Fleet? To Admiral Savelian or the—the Interior Watch?”
“He can’t pull strings for her now.” Veling’s word rasped sandpaper-rough over Triz’s skin. “Even if those strings were attached to something worth unraveling, and Triz, I don’t know that they are. The Admiralty doesn’t, and shouldn’t, come running when a tribune snaps their fingers. You know that. How would it look if her father tried to use his influence like that?”
“I know.” The words broke out of Triz, a surrender she wasn’t ready to signal. “Do you—?” The question died unasked in her mouth, and she swallowed it, fetid and whole.
Unasked, but not unanswered. “No. I don’t believe Casne could ever do such a thing.” Her eyes cut sideways at Quelian. “Of course, people change. But what you’re talking about is more than just change. My daughter didn’t suddenly abdicate her entire sense of self after five years in the Fleet.”
“. . . Okay.” Triz’s hands had balled into fists in the fabric of her worksuit. She pressed her fingers flat instead, smoothing over the deep lines she’d creased in. “I just want to do something. I need to do something. What do I do?”
“Go to work,” Quelian said. “There’s a pile of Skimmers waiting for us in the wrenchworks and a Parallax moored outside that’s not going to spontaneously regenerate its lateral atmospheric stabilizer.”
“Quelian.” Veling’s voice lanced into her quadspouse like a well-cracked whip. Quelian flinched and looked away. “You will not take this out on Triz.” Veling pushed past him to take Triz’s hands in her own and cast a frown over her shoulder, which Quelian ignored. Veling and Quelian had always been the most diagonal in this quad, both doting on their single quadborn child in their own ways. Veling had always been especially kind to the guttergirl stray who had fallen into the family’s orbit.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Othine said, putting on a smile—for Triz’s sake, she thought. “The people of Vivik know you and trust your judgment. And they know and trust Casne, too.”
Veling nodded, squeezing Triz’s fingers. Her strong hands ground Triz’s finger-bones together but Triz welcomed the pressure. “Hells if you’re picking up a wrench today, my heart. Quelian can work himself senseless down there if he needs to, but you don’t have to.”
Triz squeezed Veling’s hands back, if not as hard. She didn’t know whether she wanted the mindless release of work or not, but she did know she wanted more than just that. “I need to do something,” she repeated softly.
“They’ll let us visit her, if she’s in holding in the Hab.” Veling released her grip and straightened the silk wrap that smoothed her hair for the night. A tear dripped off the tip of her chin, and she ignored it. “We can take shifts, keep her company, bring her—I don’t know. Bring her whatever she needs.”
“Nantha.” That single word sucked the air out of the room faster than a hull breach. Triz struggled for the air to say it again. Guilt filled her lungs instead. Why hadn’t she thought of that sooner? Visions exploded in front of her: a stone-faced Fleet clerical worker breaking the news through a brief port connection, or worse yet, a terse text missive delivered straight to Nantha’s fob. “I’ll call her,” Triz said. “Tell her what’s happening.”
“Thank you.” Veling folded her arms. With her chin lifted high, she looked more like Casne than ever. The space in the room shifted, Othine and Idha drawing closer together, standing behind Veling. Their positions made Quelian’s lone outpost by the far wall all the more conspicuous. “Now, we have some quad business to discuss amongst ourselves before Quelian goes anywhere. If you’ll excuse us, Triz.”
Nantha answered the call after the first ring. On the wallport in the wrenchworks, her face was porcelain-pale with dark smears under the eyes. “Triz?” Nantha asked, “Do you have any news?”
Triz stared up at Nantha’s bigger-than-life features on the oversized wallport surrounded by tools and parts hung on the walls. Veling told her not to go to work today, but a retreat to her own empty rooms was unthinkable. At least here the hulks of sleeping starfighters kept her company, and the dull throb of vacuums and cleaner modules filled the silence.
“Hi, Nantha,” Triz said. “Someone . . . already told you.” If only she could wish away the millions of miles between them and wrap Nantha up in her arms. If only she’d been the one to call Nan first—she shied away from that guilty thought. “Are you all right?”
“Not particularly.” Nantha looked away. Her dark hair was mussed, and so was her usually pristine uniform. By Fleet Standard Time, it was midmorning on Hask, the substation just outside Centerpoint where Nantha was billeted, but Triz suspected she’d woken Nan up. “I don’t think I’ll be all right until this all gets straightened out. Or I at least get to talk to her.” Nan folded over at the waist. Triz’s stomach churned as she watched Nan’s fingers twist through her close-cropped hair. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled by her knees. “They have footage, Triz! How can it be real?”
“I don’t know,” Triz said. She felt so useless. “I don’t know anything. I’m so sorry, Nan.” Triz gnawed the inside of her cheek. In the cozy picture she carried in her mind, Nantha was always laughing, always in the middle of some dreadful but cheery punchline. She found it hard to reconcile the woman in front of her with that image. But it wasn’t as hard as reconciling her conception of Casne with the woman hauled away in restraints the night before. “Did they call you last night after they brought her in?”
Nantha pushed out of her forward fold into a boneless slouch. “Kalo called,” Nan answered, her teeth digging into her chapped lower lip. “He wanted me to hear it from him before I got the Fleet’s official notice. Or saw it on the port. Have you been watching?”
“I’ve been trying not to. You shouldn’t, either.” Better not to pour pollution into her remaining reserves of strength. “They’ll tell us what we need to know.” Triz didn’t even know who they were. The Fleet? Justice?
“I hope so, because she didn’t. Even if it was an accident, a miscalculated firing sequence—why didn’t she just tell us?” Nantha’s voice broke and the edges were sharp. “Did she tell you?”
“No!” Triz pressed her hand to the wallport. It was faintly warm to the touch, and after a moment, Nantha mirrored the gesture. “Nan, did they take you off active duty?”
A rough laugh. “Of course. I can’t be plugged into Nav calculations right now. I’d probably accidentally point half the Fleet into the Cluster and chart a few courses straight through the heart of a neutron star.” Her voice steadied. “I know she couldn’t have told you anything, because there’s nothing to tell. I know Casne. It’s just all happening so fast and so far away—”
“I know.” Triz let her hand fall back into her lap. Nantha’s hand stayed on the port screen, a ghostly white afterimage left behind by Triz’s fingers. “I feel like I’m in shock, and I’m right here.” And whatever else might be between them, Triz wasn’t Casne’s wife. “I can’t imagine what it’s like, Nantha.”
“You are there, though.” Nantha’s fingers spasmed and she leaned closer to the wallport. “Be my eyes and ears. Keep an eye on her. And Triz, if you can get to the bottom of this—!” Her hand dropped away and she bent over her wrist fob. “I’m shooting you the names of some of the officers on the Dailos. People Casne knows, who know her. Maybe one of them can help you work through this.”
That sounded more like the Nantha Triz knew, but the sudden steel in her made Triz wilt. “If anyone’s going to get this straightened out, it’s whoever Justice assigns her as an Advocate. Not me. I’m just a wrenchworks jockey.”
“Advocates are Fleet officers.” Nantha’s blue eyes snapped down to the wallport inputs, then back up to Triz. “Can you promise me it’s not someone in the Fleet pinning this on Casne for some reason?”
“No, but . . . ” Triz hadn’t considered that possibility, and she didn’t like considering it now. But the Fleet was made up of people, and people could do ugly things. Turn an uncaring eye to the gutterkids scurrying beneath the decks of Rydoine Hab, for example. Or slice through their own flesh to turn themselves into Ceebees. “I’ll help however I can, Nan, but—”
“I know you will.” Nantha half-smiled and Triz’s doubt sublimated into ever-expanding resolve. “Go see her first. She’ll need a friendly face. Even more than I did.”
“Her parents were going to see her . . . ” Triz hesitated. Some of her parents were, at least.
Nantha read into that silence. “She’ll need all the strength they can lend her and all of yours too. Give her my love, Triz. Please.”
“I will.”
“And take care of yourself. You know we love you.” Nan managed an echo of a smile. Her hand finally fell away from the wallport screen as its light flickered out. Around her, the low hum of the machinery was a distant comfort. The ships, ringed around the airlock at the ‘works center, stood on their pedestals like statues of old friends. Triz put one hand on the ventral hatch of a DX-3 Nebula and leaned into it, taking strength from its vast weight. When her arm dropped back to her side, she was ready to lose herself in the monotony of work again.
When Quelian arrived in the wrenchworks, late in the morning, Triz was up to her shoulders in a Swarmer’s innards. She knew her way around a ship, at least, and she couldn’t make the damage any worse—which was a lot more than she could say about trying to solve Casne’s case. What did a stupid guttergirl know about the inner workings of Justice, or the Fleet? “Glad to see you’re keeping yourself together,” Quelian said, pressing his lips together.
Triz realized, with a flinch, that he was . . . proud of her? “Sure,” she said, not trusting her voice to go uncracked on more than one syllable.
“I’ve got some screenwork to catch up on before I join you out here.” There was a closed-down look to him today. There was always a closed-down look to Quelian, really, but now it was as if he’d added a rotary combination and a maglock into the mix. “I’ll be in the offices for now.”
Triz flashed him a sounds-good gesture and focused back on the ship in front of her. When the office door banged shut behind her, she let out a planetquake of a breath. While the repair job she was currently working on did require her to rip open this panel and get intimate with the ship’s computer systems, it did not require her to try to download those systems’ logs to her personal datablocks.
This was the third Swarmer she’d tried—surely one of them had captured vid that would prove Casne innocent—but every single one had been doubly locked down beneath Fleet access codes and Justice inquest screeners. Triz considered asking Lanniq or Saabe to log in under their own officer-level access codes (a wrenchworks account only got you so far, and she wasn’t exactly running diagnostics here). But you had to rank somewhere just shy of the Seventh God of Issam to merit access to this data. Triz wasn’t on speaking terms with any of the admiralty and/or Godhead.
What was she even doing here? She knew functionally nothing at all about Justice or Fleet actions or, really, anything beyond getting the engine of XR-2 to stop knocking under maximum thrust. Stupid to think she could do something useful. In the end, she was really just a hopped-up guttergirl with a little good socialization.
She could hear Casne’s weary retort to that. If you call yourself stupid again, Triz . . .
Fine. Not stupid, then. But very, very frustrated. Triz fobbed into the magistrate’s scheduling system to check on the appointment she’d requested with Casne. It had been bumped an hour later in the afternoon, but still lit up green—request accepted.
Another hour to kill.
Triz headed to the next workbay over and crawled underneath the imbalanced rear engine suite of a Gyrax 33. She finished repairs on the Gyrax, and one of the Skimmers that was only a cracked plastiglass panel the worse for the wear. Quelian would take them out for a spin later to make sure they were spaceworthy before handing them back to their usual pilots.
Triz hadn’t been out in the black since the trip over from Rydoine and didn’t plan on another such jaunt anytime soon.
Or any time.
The work absorbed her, filled her mind with joint seals and line reroutes. Triz felt like a different person when she worked, and sometimes she thought she liked this person better than the one she saw in the mirror every morning and night.
A few minutes before her scheduled slot uphab, Triz went to wash up in the wrenchworks sink. But as she splashed water on her stained hands, her wrist fob chirped. Her appointment had been bumped back another two hours. She gnawed her lip and went to find something leftover to eat in the ‘works coldcase. She indulged in a pair of dumplings from a tin marked with the name QUELIAN in bold hand on the lid—it had been there four days now, and if he wasn’t going to eat Casne’s daddy’s cooking, then he couldn’t complain if Triz cut his losses—then she started the necessary disassembly of Kalo’s fighter. When she hit a good stopping place, she stashed her tools. Quelian still hadn’t emerged from the office. That could be either good or bad. He didn’t like screenwork for screenwork’s sake, but if he had moved on from invoices and supply ordering to using the resources of Justice to help Casne out . . .
Wishful thinking. Triz washed up and hit the lift. Two floors up and her fob chirped again.
Another delay. Another four hours.
The lift wall kissed Triz’s forehead coldly where she rested it. Going back down to the wrenchworks now would be a retreat. Casne would never retreat—well, no, that was stupid, with Casne’s head for strategy she’d definitely retreat if she had to. But if Nantha were in trouble, or even Triz?
No way.
Triz queried the quadparents’ fobs too for schedule updates: only Veling had time marked off for an official visit time with Casne, and while Triz was looking, that too leaped half a day into the future. This time, Triz ordered her fob not to reschedule. Standing up, she crossed her arms and tried to look like someone who could stroll into Justice and demand access to one of its prisoners.
The stern set of her face didn’t last for long. Triz scanned her fob at the entrance to Justice and ducked through the open door. She froze. The queues in front of the long semicircular counter were jam-packed with petitioners who needed fines disputed, fobs registered and recycled, and any other manner of bureaucratic nonsense. All the color of the Arcade just below Triz’s feet bled away up here, leaving nothing but clean, functional lines and serious gray and beige. But the noise was still the same.
One of the lane operators popped out at her: Belas Vivik Fithe, a Justice clerk who lived down the hall from Casne’s quadhome. Triz queued up in the line under his number and tried not to fidget like a child with her jacket or her fob.
Belas greeted her warmly despite the circumstances and nodded when Triz showed him the two appointment delays on her fob. When she asked if she could see Casne anyway, as long as she was uphab, he squinted at the screen of his deskport.
“You know I shouldn’t do that.” He glanced at the clerks on either side of him and leaned in. “I shouldn’t tell you the Fleet is trying to isolate her while they press her to confess. Fleet hero, ugly business. They don’t want a messy, noisy trial to detract from parading around all the Cyberbionautics brass they’ve brought in.” He fiddled with his fob, and his lane number flickered in the air, then vanished. The queue behind Triz groaned. “I also shouldn’t ask you to come with me while I go on my break.” Belas stood. “So. I won’t ask. Follow me.”
Triz met him at a gap in the long, semicircular counter. He ushered her to the central ring room at the top of the Hab, where Justice made its home. The only thing farther uphab was the room where Justice held hearings, and she would just as soon not think about that place right now. “I happen to know Fleet Counsel is taking their lunch,” he murmured. “I’ll pop you in to see Casne for a few minutes.”
Triz followed. She wanted to embrace the plan wholeheartedly, but she knew Justice kept eyes on the whole station, and on itself most of all. Concern overwrote desire, and she grabbed Belas’ sleeve. “But won’t you get in trouble? Belas, I don’t want you to lose your job.”
He stopped so hard Triz ran into his side. “My niece is studying the alien intelligences on Golros. She and her outpost were there when the Ceebees launched their terraformers. If the Fleet hadn’t gotten there when they did, well . . . ” He waved one hand beside his head. “Makes my skin crawl having them locked up here till Quelian’s replacement can get here.” Triz didn’t know what that meant, but Belas was still talking. “If Justice started in with the hearings this morning like they’d planned, I might’ve been clear of the lot by eighteen-hundred hours. It’s not as if there’s a lot of uncertainty at play. Rocan has shown who he is in more ways than I’d care to count.”
He leaned in conspiratorially. “Now, I know their implants are disabled, but I don’t trust that lot as far as I can throw them under five G’s. The Ceebees have plans within plans. Even when they’re sleeping, they’re cooking up new ways to get what they want.” He gently tugged her hand free of his coat. “Well! Never you mind all that. As far as my job goes? Oh, silly Belas, didn’t check the schedule for permissions when a heartbroken wife came a-crying to him.”
Triz felt a flush of red heat color her cheeks. “Oh—we’re not married.”
Belas shrugged and smiled gently. “Silly Belas.” He reached to fob a door into another, smaller ring, but it opened first.
The person who hurried through, head down, was Lanniq, ashen-faced and mouth-pinched. Were Fleet friends not getting their visits turned aside the way civilians were? Or had he been called in for his testimony?
“Lanniq,” Triz called, and he jumped. She wanted to ask him what he knew about Casne’s case but found herself blurting instead: “Are you all right?”
“Sorry, Triz. Can’t talk right now.” He gave her a tight-lipped smile, not meeting her eyes, and kept walking. He was definitely not okay. Triz swallowed a polite goodbye. An even worse theory popped into Triz’s head: maybe Lanniq was one of the ones urging Casne to confess. She watched him go until Belas tugged her forward and into the centermost part of Justice.
The cells of Justice formed the inside ring of the Hab level, each cell a pie slice that narrowed nearly to a point in the middle. Belas dropped a chair in front of one cell, which made its occupant sit up on her cot. Triz tried not to look too hard at the other cells, but found herself staring anyway. In them, people sat or slept with missing eyes or limbs, with transparent gel wraps clinging to the empty space where a section of skull or skin should have been. The Ceebee prisoners were deprived of certain enhancements, the ones with offensive capabilities, as Belas had said. Justice fried their nanobots with a fixative pulse when they were captured.
“I’ll be down at the wallport if you need me,” Belas said, and Triz jerked her attention back to him. “Hurry. I don’t know how soon Counsel will get back.”
“Thank you.” Triz tried to put all her gratitude into those words, but they broke apart under the weight. She slid into the chair he left for her and looked up into Casne’s face. Only the barrier of the cell lay between them; it shimmered in the same shade of dismal gray as the floor, the cots, the walls; even, it seemed, the wan lighting. Weary lines carved their way between Casne’s brows and around the corners of her mouth. Triz wanted to reach through the barrier and smooth them out, to reshape Casne’s mask of exhaustion into one of quiet, tranquil slumber.
Triz swallowed hard. “Hi, Cas.”
“They told me I wasn’t allowed to see anyone.” Casne’s voice came out thick as day-old algae starter. But that wasn’t true, was it? Hadn’t Lanniq just been here? Who else would he have needed to speak to but Casne? But before Triz could press her on that, Casne went on the offensive. “What did you do to get in here, Triz?”
“Nothing!” Triz changed the subject before Casne could worm the lie out of her. “I wanted to see if you needed anything, or if you—if there was anything I could do.”
“I’m all right.” An instinctual response. Casne’s mouth tightened. “They won’t let me talk to Nantha, either.”
“I just spoke with her a little while ago. She’s all right.” A look of bleak understanding passed between them. “Your quad sends their love too.” That, at least, bought an unqualified smile from Casne. Too bad it wasn’t the unqualified truth. “Casne, what’s going on? Nothing I saw on the port makes any sense.”
The gates of Casne’s face slammed shut. Her expression might as well have been cut from steel for all the give in it. That wasn’t the Casne Triz knew, but that fit the pattern of the past day. “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you about that, Triz, not with an ongoing investigation. I don’t know what’s happening, but I know what I did at Golros and I stand by it. And that’s all I can say to you, really.”
“Sure. Fleet business. I understand.” Triz didn’t understand at all. “How long until your . . . trial?” Just saying the word out loud hurt.
“I have to face trifold Justice,” said Casne, a little tiredly. “A Fleet tribune, another from the Watch, and someone the civilian court at Centerpoint will send. They’ll take a week to get here, or so I’m told.”
“A civilian tribune?” Triz shook her head but didn’t manage to shake off her confusion. “Why wait? We have six of those here on Vivik.”
Casne’s shoulders dropped a few centimeters. “Only one with enough experience markers to hear a war crimes trial. And he had to recuse himself for reasons of partiality.”
“Oh. Oh.” Of course Quelian couldn’t hear Casne’s case. Triz’s arms wrapped around herself. It was good Quelian was required to recuse himself; less good that any concerns of partiality might not go the way Casne thought. Casne had been far away for most of the anger her departure had provoked, and Triz had never been entirely sure how much of Quelian’s disappointment bled through port calls and family messages. She’d be damned if Casne had to weather Quelian’s disdain now, with all the rest of the meteor shower currently pelting her. “Is there anything I can bring you? Or do?”
“Prove the evidence was faked, figure out who did it.” A humorless smile pinched Casne’s lips. “Maybe get me a promotion for my troubles?”
“Oh, is that all.” Triz’s throat dried up, and she forced a smile. Fleet rules be damned, Casne put her confidence and her trust in Triz. “Failing that, I could try to smuggle you in some of your damu’s biscuits. Belas likes me—by which I mean, he likes you. I bet he’d let me.”
“Just ask around. There were dozens of Swarmers attached to the Dailos alone, array techs on the other whales. Everyone’s got eyes.”
“Give me something to go on,” Triz begged. “Who you think is behind it! Or why it’s happening.”
“I can’t, Triz. Really. I already said that.”
Triz’s hands twisted in her lap. “You can’t tell me anything. But did you tell Lanniq while he was here?”
Casne’s stone-smooth expression creased into a frown. “What? When?”
“Ah! If it isn’t the Hero of Golros,” a new, sickly voice said.
Triz jumped. Casne looked past Triz’s shoulder and her eyes narrowed.
The man they both feared was being marched down the corridor between two guards. Triz felt her shoulders tense into iron knots. Rocan.
He felt for his cot, then took a seat and smiled at Triz, who blanched at the sight of him. She knew that face, even with both eyes replaced by hollow sockets. He’d ported a video when he put out his own eyes and replaced them with optimized electronic replacements. Unlike most of the rest of her creche class, Triz had never watched it and never wanted to. “Perhaps when they forge the medal of honor, they’ll weld a pair of restraints on directly, just to save some time and effort.”
Triz’s mouth worked soundlessly a few times. She managed to sputter: “What is—what is he doing here?” Of all the people Casne could be imprisoned with, why did it have to be Rocan Dustald-3 Melviq, the very man whose movement Casne and the Fleet had worked to annihilate over the past months? No one had more of a reason to punish Casne—and now, no one had a better chance of access to her. Triz’s hands flexed at her sides. “You shouldn’t be locked up in here with monsters like him. They couldn’t hold you on one of the whaleships instead?”
“Indeed! It’s frankly barbaric that a visiting head of state should have to suffer the company of a known war criminal.” The holes in Rocan’s face held Triz’s attention; even deprived of his implants, he seemed to be staring at her, boring holes through her to match his own. “Apparently, our settlement of clusterward space has been ill-received in the Confederated Worlds.”
The guards guided Rocan into a cell and sealed the barrier behind him. “Citizen,” said the senior officer, turning to Triz. “Casne Vivik Veling isn’t authorized for visitors at this time.”
“You destroyed two Habs and an Arcology to take Hedgehome!” Triz ignored the guard. Her lip curled in disdain. “You almost exterminated the native intelligence on Golros.”
“I think you’ll find we have recorded evidence to show that it was our friend the Captain here who demolished the Arcology on Hedgehome.” Rocan counted on his fingers. “And the Habs were given instructions to evacuate; their choices to the contrary don’t rest on my shoulders. That sets us at a tie, although I’m disinclined to measure Golros’ so-called alien . . . ‘intelligence’ against the actual human lives ended by Captain Casne. And what more do you suppose the Interior Watch will turn up if they start going through footage of the previous combat she’s seen?”
“Citizen—” The guard put his hand on Triz’s shoulder.
She shrugged it off, jumping away from him. He didn’t want to hurt her or overpower her, and she used his reluctance against him, dancing around a chair in the corridor to buy herself another moment. “You can’t leave her in here with him!”
“I didn’t kill those people.” Casne spoke to Rocan as if no one else were in the room. Her lips pressed bloodlessly together as she remembered the rules that compelled her not to talk about her case. She jerked her head side to side. “And your math doesn’t check out.”
“Casne is a hero,” Triz spat, putting herself between the two cells, “and you’re the human in a robot suit who thought he could get away with stealing two planets out from under the rest of the galaxy. Don’t you dare compare yourself to her.”
Rocan smiled. Unlike the wreckage of his eyes, his teeth were all too human, neatly lined up but faintly yellow for their years. “She’s more like me than she is like you, a grease stain someone forgot to wipe off the floor of the wrenchworks.”
This time the guard’s hands closed around both of Triz’s arms. “Say your goodbyes, citizen. It’s time to go.”
“Is that a Rydoine accent I detect in you as well?” Rocan pressed. “But not an upper Hab accent, I think. Was it the good captain who pulled you out of the recycling pits and raised you up to something like humanity? Or have you just attached yourself to her for the duration, like a watersys barnacle with delusions of grandeur?”
“Shut up,” Triz said in disgust. The same words cracked out of Casne with a force Triz couldn’t have matched on her best day. The pure acid of Casne’s tone surprised Triz. It occurred to her that she didn’t really know who Casne was, couldn’t swear that the woman who flew for the Fleet and the one who sat down at Remembrance dinners in the quadhome were one and the same. Sometimes it hurt to remember that distance, but right now, she reflected Casne’s incandescent anger like a tiny, angry moon. She didn’t believe, not for a second, that either of those women could’ve destroyed a living Hab. “Shut. Up.”
“I think we’re done here.” The guards steered Triz away from the cells, gently but firmly. She craned her neck, wanting one last image of her to leave with.
“It’s okay, Triz,” Casne called after her. Triz planted her feet, pulling the guards up short. “The Fleet will do the right thing by me.” Casne might even believe that. Triz, on the other hand . . . “Just . . . look after my folks. This must be awful for them.” She leaned toward Triz, her forehead glimmering faintly where it touched the barrier. “And for you. This was supposed to be a happy visit.”
“So we’ll have twice as much celebrating to do, once you’re out.” Triz put her full effort into a grin that quickly ran out of fuel. “Cas . . . if they do figure this out and let you off, is your career going to be okay?”
“The Fleet will do the right thing by me,” Casne repeated, which was not at all the same as “yes.”
When the door closed behind Triz and the guards, it felt like closing the recycling pit hatch on a burial.