Chapter 18
Treason
They were eating when a guard approached them and asked if they would accompany him to the colonel’s office. Grabbing the dinner roll off her tray, Kelen joined her husband, and they followed the man through the maze of corridors to the bank of elevators.
“Do you ever get lost in this place?” she offhandedly asked.
The guard snorted and grinned. “I’ve been assigned here for thirty-nine months, and I still have to use the ship’s computers to map me a location.”
“Would you happen to have any word as to how our crewmembers are adapting?” Kyber inquired.
The man shook his head. “Sorry, but the colonel might.”
They had no further conversation, which allowed Kelen to reminisce over the past few hours. She’d spent nearly an hour in the bathing booth, alone, as it was too small to hold both her and Kyber. It had taken her almost half an hour to get her hair to where it felt clean again. While Kyber took his bath, she’d dialed up a fresh, new uniform. It didn’t have her insignia on it, or bear the markings of the Manta, which would let others know which ship she was stationed on, but it didn’t matter.
Afterwards, they had the monitor in the room show them the route to the nearest mess hall. Along the way, Kelen had kept close to him in the event anyone tried to challenge or attack him. They’d received curious stares, and more than one disgusted sneer. Clearly many resented having the Seneecians on board, but nobody tried to stop them or spoke a derogatory word where they could hear it.
Initially she thought they would gorge themselves on their favorite foods. For some odd reason, the food replicators were surprisingly adept at recreating Seneecian dishes. She was about to load up her tray with several dishes when Kyber stopped her and wisely remarked that maybe they should start off slow.
“If we are still hungry after our first course, we can always go back for another.”
His suggestion proved to be prophetic. She’d barely made it halfway through her plate of spaghetti when she realized her stomach had shrunk during their ordeal.
“I am going to finish that…at some point,” she’d promised, pointing to the bowl of peach cobbler she’d dialed up for dessert.
Kelen glanced behind her. Unfortunately she’d not gotten to that cobbler. Next time, she promised herself.
Colonel Pfeiffer was seated behind his desk, looking exactly the way they’d left him earlier. Seeing him there, Kelen wondered if the man had moved at all, or even gone to pee. As she and Kyber entered the room, the lieutenant colonel and major weren’t present. But as soon as they sat down, the two men arrived. Two additional chairs had been brought in during their absence, allowing for all of them to sit.
Pfeiffer gave Kelen and Kyber a good once-over. “May I remark, Lieutenant, that you clean up very well. You hardly resemble the person who sat in that chair not too long ago.”
Kelen gave him a quick smile. “Thank you, sir. It’s amazing what a scrub down and some decent chow will do to improve a person’s appearance, as well as their disposition.”
Pfeiffer chuckled and straightened. He made a few notations on his monitor. “Before I continue with our previous discussion, I need to let you know a couple of other things first. We’ve heard back from Central Command. They haven’t yet received our second transmission stating our revised sentencing, but they have requested you be kept in custody until they send a ship to retrieve you. I should be getting another answer within a few more hours. In addition, we’ve heard from the Seneecian ship.”
“Which one?” Kyber asked.
“The Den Tirim.”
Kelen glanced at her husband in time to see his grimace, as did the colonel.
“That is my brother’s ship,” Kyber explained before the officer could ask.
Pfeiffer gave a nod. “He identified himself as D’har Duruk.”
“How was he able to track us here?” Kelen remarked.
“I would say by way of the shuttle. But in doing so, he has left Seneecian space,” Kyber reminded her.
“Technically he’s in neutral space,” Pfeiffer informed them. “However, if he should accost another ship in what is perceived to be a threatening manner, or fire upon it, he’ll invalidate the Bakkite truce agreement. At that point, all bets are off, and he’ll be blown out of space.”
“I have a question,” Williamsburg said, then turned to Kyber. “You testified under chemical questioning that their shuttle bay was severely damaged, and that your men had triggered the automatic evacuation of all their lifepods.”
Kyber gave a nod. “That is true. We fired two aknite warheads into the ship, which blew out one of the main bay doors. It would force them to use spacesuits to reach the remaining shuttles until repairs are completed.”
“If you blew out the bay door, that’s major damage, isn’t it?”
“It is. With the lifepods also being ejected, the ship would be fighting to maintain balance with oxygen and gravity.”
“D’har Kyber, if that was your ship, what would you do? If you were facing the same set of circumstances, with a damaged ship and having a group of people escape, criminals you’d decreed as traitors, what would be your next course of action?” Major Baffrey questioned in a laconic manner.
“I would immediately head to the nearest repair dock. At the same time, I would send word to Seneecian High Command to tell them what had transpired, and request they direct their closest ship to follow the shuttle to wherever it was headed.”
“Which is exactly what I would have done,” Pfeiffer remarked. “So don’t you find it odd that D’har Duruk chose to come after you himself?”
“There has always been animosity between me and my brother,” Kyber acknowledged.
“Which, to me, make’s the man’s actions appear to be borderline vengeance.”
“Plus, he’s putting the lives of his crew in jeopardy, if the ship is as disabled as you believe it is,” Williamsburg noted.
“Oh, it is,” Kelen spoke up. “Those warheads also took out a huge chunk of the ship’s underbelly.”
“Vengeance is not beyond my brother’s ambitions,” Kyber added with obvious sarcasm.
“Okay. Then let’s assume with reasonable clarity that he’s on his way here in order to exact revenge on you. On what you’ve done to his ship, and to his reputation.” Pfeiffer pursed his lips for a moment. “What do you think the chances are he’s notified Seneecian Command of his intentions?”
Kelen glanced at her husband who had a surprised look on his face. “I see where you are taking this, Colonel. You believe Seneecian Command may not have been informed,” Kyber said.
“You think Duruk has gone rogue?” Kelen interjected. She glanced at the other three men, who appeared to be thinking the same thing.
“I thought it was required that every deviation to orders had to be reported and approved,” Baffrey remarked. “Otherwise, it would be construed as treason.”
“You are correct,” Kyber agreed. “You cannot change or deviate from direct orders without approval.”
“So how long would it take to get a new set of orders from Seneecian command?” Williamsburg queried.
“How far are we from Seneecian space?” Kyber asked. He turned to the colonel, who checked his monitor.
“I can’t tell you how far you were when your shuttle escaped the warship, but from this outpost…six days.”
Stunned, Kelen raised her hands. “Wait, wait! When I was called in for questioning, there were several Seneecians, including Duruk, in attendance. And there were three others there in the form of holos. I assumed those three holos were the Triumvirate.”
“They were,” Kyber acknowledged.
“But if we were six days from receiving any reciprocal information…”
“Did you notice the holos did not speak? Nor did they react in any way to the questioning, or to the answers given,” her husband pointed out.
“They were fake?”
“No, they were real. They just were not in real time.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “We know there are times when decisions must be made within minutes, sometimes seconds, rendering it impossible to receive approval or new orders. That is when an adjunct trial or meeting is called. It is held in the same manner as a real-time meeting, and the Triumvirate reviews it once it is finally received on-planet.”
“So, it’s possible Duruk could have convened an adjunct meeting to tell them of his decision to go after the shuttle, correct?” Baffrey wondered.
Kyber shook his head. “No. The Triumvirate is never called upon for a change of orders. Only for matters such as questioning prisoners, and for sentencing said prisoners, and other matters which directly involve other planetary species.”
Pfeiffer sat up straighter. “Then it appears your brother has gone rogue, and he’s entered neutral space without notifying Command. Or, on the off chance he has notified them, has gone ahead and come after you before receiving confirmation.”
“I agree with your assessment,” Kyber said.
“Which means, one way or another, Duruk has broken protocol,” Kelen pointed out.
“Yes,” her husband agreed. “By his actions, he has also committed treason, and is therefore subject to arrest the moment he re-enters Seneecian space.”
“Colonel.” Kelen leaned forward in her chair. “You didn’t bring us back here to discuss the arrival of the Seneecian ship.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. I have a proposal I wanted to bring to your attention, but D’har Duruk’s actions seem to back our original supposition we mentioned earlier.”
“That there’s something on Neverwylde the Seneecians don’t want discovered,” she reiterated.
“Which begs the question, what?” Pfeiffer looked directly at Kyber. “D’har, how would you feel about heading an expedition back to that half planet to find out what makes it so valuable, that your brother and fellow Seneecians are willing to risk being called treasonous to protect it?”