Ends, Means, Laws and an Angry Ship Read online

  After a long and uncomfortable silence, John sighed. “Fuck. You're not even denying it.” He seemed at a loss for words, but then he burst to his feet and paced. “What the hell happened? How the hell did we end up on opposite sides?” He held up a hand to stop Tyce before he could say anything. “No, don't answer that. I know why. How the hell did you become someone who could shoot your own men in the back?”

  Tyce shrugged and his shackles rattled. “In my defense, I only shot one in the back, and by the time that happened, I had fairly well committed to a course of action. Out of all of the men I killed, he deserved it the most.”

  John stared at him for a second, his mouth literally open. “You’re joking about it?”

  “Not joking.”

  “You fucking asshole. Try that at your trial. We'll see how a Command jury reacts to your suggestion that you had a right to shoot your own men.”

  “It's not like murder was my first stop. I didn't wake up one morning and decide, hey, I'm going to shoot my men today.” Tyce spat the words out. He had struggled with finding any path other than the one he took, and he would be damned if he would beg for forgiveness. He regretted the deaths, but even if he could go back in time, he would never change what he had done that day.

  John glanced toward the half open door and lowered his voice. “Really? Because I'm not seeing any circumstances under which you had a right to open fire on your own people.”

  “I'm pretty sure you told me that you would open fire if your soldiers tried to murder me.” Tyce hesitated for dramatic effect. “Again. Murder me again. Did I not hear that right? I mean, I know I'm still having auditory hallucinations from the first murder plot, but I thought that's what I heard.”

  “That's not the same,” he growled. “We are isolated and I will not condone murder, so if I have to kill in defense of self or others, that is justified under the regulations and you know it.”

  “Exactly! It is justified and that is exactly why I shot a dozen of my men.” Tyce jerked forward, but the shackles pulled him up and he nearly stumbled. He scramble-shuffled forward until he was almost in John's face.

  John frowned. “Are you saying your men tried to kill someone?”

  Anger threatened to erupt from his mouth, and Tyce took a few deep breaths and said in the calmest voice he could manage, “I'm saying my men already had killed several someones. I'm saying my men were monsters who raped and killed prisoners.”

  John jerked back like Tyce had slapped him. “Why didn't you report them?”

  Tyce shouted. “Of course I reported them. I wrote reports on it. I went to my commander. I screamed to the high heavens. I filed a request for official intervention. I filed reprimands to keep my unit out of the field.” With each passing second, John seemed more confused, as if he couldn’t conceive of his precious superiors ignoring the fact they were employing psychopaths.

  Tyce asked, “Do you know what Command told me? They told me these men had the highest success rate of any unit in the patrol area. And they were all men. Women transferred away within days of joining, and given how fast they had their transfers approved, I suspect at least a few of them were raped and they had medical documentation to force Command’s hand. But if these guys were raping and killing rebels, no one cared.

  “I was told that I had better not fuck up their stats. That's what they said. If a few dozen or a few hundred innocent people got raped or killed... well, that was the cost of war.” Tyce finished and looked away. He couldn’t meet John’s gaze, not when he wore a uniform that was the epitome of everything Tyce hated.

  For long seconds, the glopping, dripping sounds of the hair wall were the only sound . Eventually John asked, “Do you have any evidence of that?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “If you filed reports, there will be evidence.” John had a disturbingly hopeful expression, as if he could find some piece of paperwork that would erase the previous five years of Tyce’s life.

  “And two seconds after people found out I shot my own men, I'm sure those reports vanished,” Tyce said. Even in those seconds before he’d pulled the trigger, he could see the future laid out ahead of him. The Ribelians he was rescuing would kill him or Command would imprison him for life. Those had been his options, and he chose to act. Hell, he should consider himself fortunate. He’d gotten years of freedom before the inevitable had caught up with him. “Do you think they would have sworn out the arrest warrant without making sure their asses were covered? You can’t be that naïve. Where the hell have you spent the whole war, behind a desk?”

  “Yes! Yes, I have spent my entire career behind a desk because I reminded people of you. I have lived in your shadow—no—that’s not right. I’ve lived in the shadow of my own idiocy because I believed in a just universe. I believed that something must have forced you to turn on your men or faked the reports. I threw fits about the unfairness of a good man being convicted without being given a chance to defend himself, and I stuck to that story until even I had to face the truth. You’ve helped the Ribelians, and I’ve lived in the shadow of your treason.”

  “Oh, that’s so much more horrible of a fate than rape and death. Let me feel sorry for you.” Right now Tyce hated John. Loathed him.

  John narrowed his eyes. “You’re an ass.”

  “Yes, and if you get your way I'm going to spend the rest of my life behind bars, unless I die under mysterious circumstances. So, let me get right on feeling sorry for you and your damaged career.”

  “I never said...” John sighed heavily and closed his eyes for a second. When he spoke again, he had an artificial calm that did nothing to hide his frustration. “You should've come back immediately and told everyone your side of the story before Command convinced every newspaper and socnet that you were a traitor.”

  “Funny enough, I didn't plan on surviving my treason. When I opened fire, we were in the middle of a firefight with a crew that had landed their ship in the ass end of nowhere. I assumed the Ribelians would kill me for being part of a crew that had a reputation for raping fucking children.”

  “The Dragon,” John said. “But if, as you say, they weren’t rebels, why would you assume they would kill you?”

  Tyce glared. “Did you miss the part about raping children? You have no idea how intense Ama gets when kids are involved. She’s a fucking psychopath when someone threatens kids, but despite that, she didn’t kill me. She’s like you in some ways—patient and slow to make a decision before having all the information. When Command put my arrest warrant out on broad blast, she assumed that meant I was a good guy and not a rapist.”

  “You say that like Command condones rape.”

  Tyce said in his coldest voice, “They didn’t stop it.”

  “Things happen at the front. But if you had gotten word to the people back home, to the upper echelon, they would have stopped it.” John sounded so damn convinced. In his world, Command was good and fair. Tyce had lost that illusion.

  “Maybe. Maybe if the damn major had passed the report on, something would've changed. But maybe it wouldn't have. Maybe winning was more important to them than anything else. And in the meantime, how many more people would've died?”

  John threw his hands up in the air. “You're acting like the Ribelians are the victims and Command is some cartoonish villain. You know that's not the case. You know what the Ribelians did on Earth.”

  “You're right. I do know,” Tyce said. Like everyone else his age, he had those images burned into his nightmares. The soldiers who signed up later—they had sought to escape rationing or avoid getting drafted into infantry units where both sides threw bodies at one another and the side who had more soldiers still alive at the end of the day won. But Tyce had been like John—a true believer in the cause. Ribelian terrorists had taken a conflict over jurisdiction and taxation and had elevated it to a god damn war of attrition, which was evil and stupid. Earth had more resources, but with Earth armies busy fighting the Anla, they had as
sumed Ribelian determination would win.

  It hadn’t.

  “The terrorists who attacked are absolutely unforgivable,” Tyce said in a softer voice. “If they had complaints about Earth policies, they should have worked through the courts. They should have gone to the press. They should have done something other than attacking soft targets on Earth. I'm not saying that what they did is forgivable. I'm saying that if Command wants to cast itself as the good guy, they have an obligation to be better.”

  John shook his head. “You’re trying to judge all of Command based off the actions of one unit that was out of control.”

  “And you're trying to judge all Ribelians based off a group of angry young people who were too impatient to wait for the courts, and now we’ll never know what they might have said. I will never ask anyone on Earth to forgive Ribelo, but you can't ask anyone on Ribelo to forgive my old unit or the military that refused to stop them.”

  “So you think we’re all morally bankrupt, and you're the one that stands at the center as the moral judge?” John’s chuckle was cruel. “You’re no angel, Tyce.”

  “No, I’m not,” Tyce snapped. “I can be unforgivably selfish and ambitious. I should’ve walked away from my unit, and I wish I could say that I stayed because I wanted to prevent more violence, but the fact is that I didn't want my first command post to be a failure. I let them do things...” Tyce closed his eyes tightly. Each time when he’d failed to rein in their excesses, he’d convinced himself that he would find the right lever to control them next time. He’d failed too damn many people. “I thought trying to change them was better than admitting defeat, and that's on me. But don't you pass judgment. I lived my life and I know my sins. No one from Earth has any right to judge me.”

  “You don’t want to be judged?” John’s voice grew shrill. “That suicide tattoo emblazoned on your arm and chest begs for judgment. You're the one who loves logic, loves tactics. You tell me, how is getting a fucking suicide tattoo logical if you’re not interested in becoming another suicide attacker?”

  “Because I assumed the first Command personnel who saw me would kill me and it wouldn't matter,” Tyce said in a moment of brutal honesty. John lost most of the color from his face, and guilt made a return appearance in Tyce’s brain. Damn the man for still being able to inspire those emotions. “Ribelians know that this tattoo has nothing to do with suicide or violence or even being a soldier. I've seen grandparents and pacifists get them.”

  “Then what does it mean?”

  “To you, nothing,” Tyce said sharply enough to shut down that discussion. “Now, how are we going to deal with the potential counter-attack of aliens wanting to reclaim their big ass ship? How are you going to get the two crews together?”

  “We can't.” John shook his head and had such a look of horror that it was clear that he refused to even consider a crew merger.

  “Don't get stubborn now. We have bigger problems than whether Ribelian and Command soldiers hate each other.”

  John walked over to the door and glanced out before he came closer and said softly, “On that we absolutely agree. But if I make one move toward reconciliation with your crew, I will have a full scale rebellion on my hands. And I don’t know these people well enough to predict what sort of resources they might have.”

  “Are you telling me you can’t control your own people?”

  “Yes,” John said bluntly . “You were always better than me when it came to the big picture, the strategy that our military professors cared about. But I know people, and I'm telling you, this crew is seconds away from spacing me and hunting down every Ribelian on this ship.”

  “First, the Ribelians aren’t that easy to hunt,” Tyce said. “And second, we have potential alien enemies out there listening for the signals this ship is apparently putting out.

  “My crew is more worried about Ribelians and rebels in general than aliens. Aliens are a big question mark. The Anla appeared friendly enough until they tried to use children to blackmail us, but even then, they never struck fear in people the way the rebel colonies did. Anla inspired hate, not fear. And the Rownt... some people are turning the Rownt into folk heroes. They’re the tree-hugging environmentalists who have outrageously advanced technology and still maintain a home world with pristine ecosystems. You vanished before the Rownt showed up on Earth, but people are either terrified or ready to set up a church of Rownt on the nearest street corner. Either way, don’t expect the arrival of another alien ship to blunt the hatred of all things rebel.”

  “Your crew are idiots.”

  “They're not my crew, and there were good soldiers on the ship. There were levelheaded, intelligent, calm men and women who I would've trusted at my back in a heartbeat. They all died when the commander ordered a close-quarters assault of the ship. The ones I'm left with...” John grimaced. “If an alien does show up, we do not have good odds.”

  “The Dragon crew does. They're good fighters.”

  John scrubbed his face with one hand. “And I don't dare take advantage of that. Tactically, maybe there would be an upside, but I wouldn't live to see it. The second I take one step toward reconciliation, my crew would kill both of us. The best we can hope for is an uneasy truce with each of our crews on opposite ends of the ship.”

  “Until what?” Tyce asked. That sort of truce couldn’t hold, not for long.

  “I have no idea.” John sounded miserable.

  “If your men are that unstable, why are we having this conversation in private?”

  John gave Tyce a lop-sided grin. He had that same expression every time he broke a rule. “I might've implied that I wanted to pressure you into cooperating and that I didn't need an audience while I did so.”

  That made sense. They were anti-Tyce, so John positioned himself as the officer who would do anything to bring Tyce to heel. It was smart, at least in the short term. In the long term, these men would take another shot at Tyce if they believed the ranking officer tacitly supported the action. “Do I take it they were in favor of implied torture?”

  “Enthusiastically. You know, a year ago, I think I would have assumed you were lying about your crew going bad. Now, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything.”

  Tyce hated that he was chained. He wanted to catch John’s hand in his. He wanted to make some promise about how this would all work out and that good guys always won by the end of the story. He wanted to reshape the universe into a place that was fair. But he didn’t have that power. Amali would call him arrogant for even wishing for it. But chained as he was, he could only watch as John visibly tried to glue himself back together.

  “John,” Tyce said softly. He waited until John looked up at him before he continued. “If they believe you’re torturing me, you have to put some marks on me.”

  John began shaking his head and backing away.

  Tyce shuffled after him, catching at John’s uniform shirt. It was all he could reach. “Listen to me,” he said, “if you don’t, some of those soldiers are going to question your real motives. Do you think it was a coincidence that the first attempt on my life came right after we had a private conversation? They’re scared, John. You know people. You said it yourself: you’re better with reading people than I am. What will a scared crew do if they don’t have evidence that you’re on their side?”

  John clenched his teeth without responding.

  “The tattoo, the meaning is private, but I had to earn it. They carved it, John. They carved every line with an ink-stained blade, and I had to sit still. No numbing. No alcohol. Just me taking the pain. I did that because it was the right move. You’re never going to cause me even a fraction of that pain.”

  John shook his head again. “I can’t hurt you.”

  “Then you’re increasing the odds that I’ll be murdered, aren’t you?”

  John’s expression twisted with horror.

  “Hell, I deserve to get punched more than a few times.” Tyce doubted that he and John would agree on the
real sins Tyce carried on his soul, but they should be able to agree that he deserved more punishment than John would ever administer. “Make the marks count. Aim for my face.”

  “You bastard.” John shook his head, but he also clenched his fists, so he had a few mixed messages going.

  Tyce leaned close. “Do it.”

  John tried to turn away, but Tyce still had a hold on the hem of his uniform shirt. “You bastard!” Tyce shouted. “You fucking bastard!” A confused frown crossed John’s face, and Tyce looked toward the open door where Command guards waited in the other room. “Try hitting a man who isn’t tied you bastard!” Tyce shouted. Then he raised his eyebrows, silently challenging John to do what needed to be done. Time stilled. They stared at each other.

  Tyce hated that the universe had placed them, like two pawns, on opposite sides of the chess board. Amali would have told him that his soul was not old enough to challenge the universe, but sometimes she was wrong. This wasn’t some mysterious lesson the universe hoped to teach their souls. It was human stupidity that had done this. Tyce’s stupidity years ago and John’s in taking this mission. Their stupidity to volunteer for the war, their stupidity to get so damn close when the war wouldn’t let them have friendships.

  John’s first punch connected before Tyce saw it coming. Pain bloomed across his cheek and he stumbled. The chains dug into his ankles and wrists as he tried to catch his balance, but then the ship itself bucked. Tyce fell backward into the wall of slime and John dropped to one knee.

  The young soldier burst into the bathroom, out of breath from running across the outer room. “The engines are online, sir!” he blurted.

  Chapter Ten

  WHEN THE SHIP LURCHED to the side, Tyce slammed into the slime wall, and with his hands shackled, he couldn’t catch himself. He slid all the way down into the muck at the bottom. In the time since they’d come into the room, he’d grown somewhat used to the nauseating smell, but landing in it made the stench rise around him. Tyce couldn’t control his stomach. He vomited out what little he’d eaten in the previous day and bile followed until his throat stung. The good news was that the smell was already so horrific that his own bodily fluids improved the odor.