It wasn’t a place he liked to visit. Too many bad memories. Too much risk of running into some of his old comrades, the few of them that weren’t dead or in prison. Of the rest, very few of them would ever recognize him, especially today.
But Vo Arlo had made a promise to himself.
That he would come to Anameleck Prime. To see who he had become.
It was a cool morning, late spring at mid-latitudes. The boulevard he was walking along was wide and straight, lined with big trees and small shops. The city known as Anameleck Core was the capital of the Republic’s industrial might, the center of finance and manufacturing, and existed in the shadow of some of the biggest shipyards in known space.
At the intersection, he paused, looking left down a street where things got…more interesting. Z’Shani was down that way, the slum where he had been born, lived until he was sixteen, had escaped from. A kilometer and a half walk would pass him through the Dragon Gates and into the old warren of cramped streets, tall buildings, and laundry hanging from lines strung between balconies.
Mankind could fly between stars, and yet there was still a core of rich folks who demanded that people be poor, just to give them someone to be superior to.
Vo caught himself grinding his teeth and stopped. He wasn’t here to be a cat burglar any more, not like the old days. And he wasn’t here to change the world down there, although he understood now what levers could be applied to do that.
And he knew who to talk to, about changing things, but she wasn’t here, and didn’t need this on her plate right now.
Maybe, when he got back to Ladaux. And maybe not. He had other options now.
Vo caught a reflection of himself in a glass storefront that made him pause. The weather had promised mist or rain later, so he had worn his third-best dress uniform today, the one for regular events. Auberon’s patch on his shoulder, as always. Tags for Security and Command on the right breast. The Big Four awards on the left. It was impressive for a simple Centurion, if he could be said to be one.
Vo wasn’t sure what he was anymore, except that he was a thirty-one-year-old, active-duty marine with a job to do. So he was here.
He crossed the street to the monumental edifice that took up the entire block, slate and tan stone rising fourteen stories into the gray sky like a semi-malevolent pyramid. An altar squatting angrily on the roadside, chewing up young lives and frequently not spitting them out until it was too late.
The Temple of Law.
He had escaped. Luck, timing, something. Being the right person on the right morning, perhaps. Vo figured he might never know, and that was okay.
Through the door, two middle-aged men in security uniforms looked up from their morning gossip. The day was early, so not many people had come to the Anameleck Courthouse yet. It would get crazy later, he knew.
The one on the left sat bolt upright as Vo approached. He rose suddenly and saluted smartly, staring intently at the ribbons on Vo’s chest. Not many people survived winning the Republic Cross. Almost none did it twice.
Vo returned the salute anyway, even though it was unnecessary for the man to have done it in the first place: indoors, and a civilian to boot, but the guard had obviously served his hitch.
“How can I direct you, Centurion?” the guard asked in a scratchy tenor.
“Judge Metharom’s chambers,” Vo replied simply.
It was nobody’s business but his, why he was here, in dress, unannounced.
“Fourth floor, sir,” the man said, turning to point. “Lifts are on your right.”
“Thank you,” and Vo was gone.
He ignored the murmured conversation the two guards struck up as he walked. Presumably, the one explaining the uniform and the medals to the other. Vo did catch the word hero being bandied about. He shrugged, but only internally.
The fourth floor was a long, quiet hallway with closed doors, frosted glass for the most part. Senior Judge Holman Metharom’s door was on the very end, down that protracted walk.
Vo took a breath and opened that door into a small office.
A woman sat behind a broad desk, looking up slowly as he closed the door behind him. She had a heavy-set kind of bulk to her. Not fat, but solid with an extra ten kilos about her. Gray hair with only traces of brown still in it. Crow’s feet and lines. Sharp eyes.
Vo would have guessed a rough mid-fifties. Anameleck Prime was not a soft place to live, unless you were one of the blessed.
Her eyes got an appraising cast as he approached her. Hard, but with a small grin tucked in. She reminded him of one of his teachers, back when he was ten, with that same knowing look.
Vo felt like a side of meat as she caressed his whole frame with her eyes. He still didn’t understand how an ugly grunt like him could have that effect on some women, but he did. He had learned to live with it and keep his opinions to himself.
“You were a lot skinnier, then,” she said by way of opening.
Vo blinked in surprise, but the woman did look familiar. Fourteen years ago, she probably would have been about forty and still a brunette. Skinnier, too, but never skinny.
And he had been skinnier, too. 198 centimeters tall and built like a pencil, but that was when he was climbing walls and breaking into buildings for a living. Or whatever you called the occupation of a cat burglar. No extra mass because there was never enough food for a sixteen-year-old from the wrong side of the Gates, and anything extra he got always went to his little sisters and his family.
Vo smiled with sudden memory. She had been the bailiff, that day. He remembered her now, a woman who looked tough enough to handle any punk who got hauled in by the gendarmes.
Like him.
“The Navy has treated me well,” Vo rumbled back at her.
Again, that appraising look. Meat, on a hook.
“Yes, it has, Centurion Arlo,” she replied. “What can I do for you?”
Or to me?
She had that look in her eyes, too.
“I was hoping to see the Judge, madam,” he said. “To let him know that things turned out well. Is he in?”
“No,” she said. “He only works two days a week now, as a Senior Judge, but I know where he should be today.”
She rose abruptly and stepped around the desk.
He remembered her well, now. 160cm tall and all business. Probably could have taken him then. Probably not today, but you never knew.
“Shall we?” she asked. “It’s a short walk.”
Vo nodded.
“Alda Greet,” she held out a hand. “We’ve never properly met.”
“Vojciech zu Arlo,” he replied. “Was I that bad that you remember me, fourteen years later?”
“Oh, no,” she laughed musically, opening the door to the hallway and gesturing for him to proceed. “I looked you up when the papers ran a story about you three years ago. Local boy made good. And then again after the trouble at the Imperial palace last year.”
Vo nodded and walked.
Local boy. Made good.
Wonders.
The place wasn’t sure if it wanted to be a bar, a restaurant, or a fraternal organization, judging by the way it was decorated. Probably a little of each, Vo decided as he followed Alda into the room. White tile floors, and rough concrete walls. Vaulted ceiling with exposed pipes. There were twenty tables scattered about, with a dozen or so people, usually alone, having breakfast, or just coffee, or a reading.
It was too quiet to be a restaurant or a bar, even mid-morning, and the clientele were all older folks, averaging somewhere north of sixty, at first glance, up to the wizened, little troll in the corner doing a crossword puzzle on paper as fast as he could write.
The judge wasn’t dressed as a judge, today, wearing nothing more than a semi-formal suit, perhaps the kind normally covered by robes.
And he hadn’t changed appreciably from Vo’s nightmares. Mostly bald then. Completely now. Wrinkled and hunched more.
That same sharp gleam in those eyes as they came to rest on Vo’s face.
Vo felt like a mouse hiding in the grass as a hawk suddenly appeared overhead.
“Holman, look who came to visit,” Alda said kindly as they approached. “Vo zu Arlo.”
The judge rose from his seat slowly, with the kind of care an elderly man took, unsure of his physicality. He held out a hand for Vo to shake.
“Welcome, Sri Arlo.”
The grip was that of a much younger man.
The judge powered off his reading tablet and gestured for them to join him at his small table.
Vo sat and let the silence descend around them. The Fleet Centurion had taught him the trick of using awkward pauses in conversation as a weapon.
“In my decades as a judge, I have sent more than two thousand young men and women into military service,” the judge said in a slow grind. “As an alternative to a life of poor decisions and dead ends. Those were the ones that had some glimmer about them. That they might make something of themselves, if given a blank slate upon which to write.”
Vo nodded. That just about described his life and his entry into the Republic of Aquitaine Navy. Everyone was equal in basic training. Nobody cared about your past, your education, or your future. They only wanted to know about your capabilities. Could you do the job handed to you? Could you learn to rise above yourself and become a leader of others?
“Most served out a three year hitch and were done,” the man continued. “Of those, I have a very low recidivism rate. Something like four percent ever ended up on the wrong side of the law again for anything more serious than a traffic ticket or a row in a bar.”
“What was it about me?” Vo asked in a compact voice.
That was the question that had haunted him, all these years. Had brought him back to this planet for the first time in…
Vo noted how both of them smiled at that. Obviously, he had been a topic of conversation, probably more than once.
Local boy, made good.
“Brains, young man,” Senior Judge Metharom smiled. “I had all your test results from school in front of me when you appeared. I always do. Crime is frequently a moment of bad luck, so I want to see the years that led up to it. The fleet doesn’t want to deal with a rotten apple any more than the justice system does. You had potential, if you could be put into a system that gave you purpose, structure.”
“I still got lucky,” Vo said. “Senior Security Centurion Crncevic, Navin the Black, was my first commander, back on the Cahllepp Frontier. Later, Jessica Keller.”
“And each recognized in you abilities you didn’t even know you had, Centurion,” the judge replied. “Both have written me letters in the last few years, letting me know how you had turned out. They wanted me to know that my system did work.”
Both of them? The Fleet Centurion had gone that deep into his files, his background, that she could write a letter to this man?
Yeah, he supposed so. Jessica was like that.
Vo could only imagine the level of background scrutiny he had been subject to when a letter from the Emperor of Fribourg had come with his name on it.
“So you knew?” Vo asked.
The judge’s eyes got shrewd all of a sudden.
“I knew that you had succeeded beyond even my wildest expectations, Centurion,” he said with a solemn smile. “Until you walked through the door just now, I had no idea what kind of man you turned out to be.”
Vo nodded.
Neither had he.