As the meeting broke up, Captain Lannister gestured across the room towards Fox. Fox approached him as the others filtered out. "Yes, sir?" he said, snapping a salute.
"At ease, Fox," Lannister replied. "I have an assignment for you Fox, an informal one."
"Sir?"
Lannister looked around, making sure they were mostly alone. "What I said earlier," he began. "Hornbeck. Hornbeck came to me two days ago. Some questions, no doubt he thought he was being circumspect. About a career in military intelligence."
Fox snorted. Lannister raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, sir. I know Hornbeck. Hard to see him in any career that contains the word intelligence."
Lannister nodded. "He's a good sailor though, a hard worker and I think, a true patriot. Those aren't traits to be looked down upon."
"No, sir. I didn't mean to imply any such thing, sir."
"Here's the deal, I don't want to get him in trouble. But I'm worried he's likely to get himself into some before this mission is over. I want you to look into it, see if you can guide him away from any serious infractions. Understand?"
Fox gulped. That wasn't going to be an easy assignment. "I'll try, sir."
"And Fox? I'd like this to be between you and I. Sutton's a good sailor, but..."
"A little too eager in this case," Fox finished.
Lannister nodded.
Fox saluted again, wondering how he was going to manage this. He turned towards the door and saw Nara standing there, waiting for him. Perhaps he at least had an ally. He made towards her.
#####
"What do you think a human life is worth?" Jensen asked as Dan joined him and Madsen for lunch.
"Sounds like a rhetorical question to me," Dan said.
"Maybe for us, the Consortium's got it down to a science though," Madsen said.
Dan's brows scrunched and he followed their gaze to the view screen and the news.
"It is a rhetorical question to us, too," a nearby healer corrected. "To legal, that's another deal."
The Consortium news was showing clips of a group of soldiers casually discussing the assassination. Then another clip of the men approaching the Assad's palace, an American soldier leveling his gun at the silhouette of a little girl moments before he was stunned. "So the trials have started?" he said.
The men nodded. "And almost over. Consortium justice is swift, you have to give them that."
"Over? In one morning?"
"Liu Xian's, too," Jensen said. "That was the quickest of all. They showed about five minutes of their surveillance video, where he ordered the missile fired. Then they asked the computer to confirm that the biological identification of the person standing trial was the same as the person in the video. Bam, proof of guilt."
"Lord. What'd they charge him with?"
"Murder, thirteen counts, one for each of our casualties," Jensen said.
"Amen," Madsen commented.
"Reckless endangerment causing bodily harm for the rest of our crew, and the Corealean's crew as well. Attempted murder, multiplied by something like eight million counts, for the attempted bombing of Taiwan. I forget how many counts of reckless endangerment got tacked on for the radioactive fallout on the coastal regions."
"A lot," Madsen said. "The reading of the charges took longer than the trial itself."
"Murder, eh? So what's a life a worth?" Dan asked.
"According to the legal bureau," the healer said, "life is approximately 36 billion liters of oxygen and 50 tons of biomass. That's how much biological resources a citizen consumes in their lifetime of breathing and eating."
"So Liu Xian will be sent to the penal colony on Mars, when it gets built. He was sentenced not in time," Jensen explained, "but in liters of oxygen and tons of biomass. He will serve on a terraforming plant until he's produced that much oxygen and biomass."
"How long will that take?" Dan wondered.
"He will never leave. Too many counts," the healer said. "And he deserves no less for what he did. Normally though, murder is prorated according to the details of the crime, if it was provoked or aggravated, or premeditated, whatever. If you work hard and behave you can maybe fill your quota in forty or fifty years and be free again."
The clip on the news had ended and Holi was back. He was talking about the other trial. The main CIA operatives had been tried and sentenced already. Now they were trying one of the soldiers. The young man wept and sobbed as he confessed to being part of the plan. He thought they had the go ahead for the coup. He also claimed that he'd prayed thanks when it turned out his personal target was one of the adult men. He hadn't wanted to see innocent people hurt.
Dan felt sorry for the kid, who couldn't have been more than twenty. It would have to have been an awful position to be in. The judge must have felt some sympathy as well, as he read off the verdict and sentence. The man would spend several years in a penal colony in Africa, building homes for refugees, but he would not be going to Mars with the others.
"What's the reaction back home?" Dan asked as the news went to commercial.
Jensen snorted. "Predictable. The conservatives are pissed because an American soldier has never been tried by a foreign power before. They are furious with the president for allowing it and threatening to impeach him."
"That's not true, though," Dan said. "Lots of soldiers have gotten into trouble on leave or breaking the laws of the host country when off base."
"Yeah, but that's different," Madsen said. "These men were acting in the line of duty."
"Maybe or maybe not," Dan said. "Did the president know, or specifically order this? Or were they acting on their own?"
"Liberals back home are asking the same thing," Jensen said. "And they're threatening to impeach as well, if there's any evidence that the president knew what was going on."
"Do you think it will come to that?" Dan asked.
"If both sides can agree on one crime to charge him with, they have the votes to do it. But so far, they don't agree," Madsen said. "Personally I don't care. Just as long as we can still get home when it's time."
"Amen," Dan and Jensen said together.
#####
Bankim stood with his back to Nara, staring out a porthole window. "I'm worried," he said.
"It's been a week with no serious problem," Nara commented.
Bankim blew out his breath. "The incident with the man who threatened a healer? That's not serious?"
"Captain Dowlings didn't think so," Sukira said at Nara's side. "Nor did the healers." It was only the three of them in the security office.
"What their captain said in the meeting?" Bankim mused. "Overstepping their bounds?"
"Some of them have been asking a lot of questions," Sukira said. "I agree with our captain, there's little sensitive information on board. Even with a full schematics, their people could only learn little."
"And we are at peace now," Nara said. "Surely this tech will be shared soon enough."
"I don't care," Bankim snapped. "Politics aren't my concern. The safety of this ship is. They start fiddling with things they shouldn't and we all face the consequences. What if they break into the drive room, demand that the pilots land the ship?"
"Why would they do that?" Sukira asked. "We will bring them home when their radiation sickness is treated. It would make no sense to want to flee before then anyway."
"I've heard snatches of their conversation," Bankim said. "They don't trust us. Don't think we'll send them back."
"After the trial of the assassins this morning," Sukira commented. "Some distrust is to be expected. Eventually they will see that we are being fair, and that we are not going to paint them with this same brush. Those actions were but a few of their men."
"Yes, but the potential is there, in all of them," Bankim insisted.
Nara thought of Fox. "I don't think so," she said.
"It is," he snapped. "And the captain refuses to see it. She won't. Not until it's too late, not until someone's done something." He turned back to the window and stroked his chin. "Done something," he muttered. "But what? Perhaps if there was an opportunity for the men to show their true colors, a situation we could control?" He turned and looked at the two of them. "What do you think?"
Sukira raised an eyebrow. "You are suggesting we create such a situation? You'd have to be very careful, sir. To not overstep yourself. Entrapment..."
"I am not suggesting any such thing, just if there was a way to catch one of them trying to spy, going into a place they shouldn't. Then Captain Dowlings would have to take my requests for more security seriously. That could prevent a worse problem later, yes?"
Seeing the look on Sukira's face, he dropped the issue. Later, after Sukira had dismissed herself for another assignment, Bankim approach Nara alone. "She is not thrilled with this idea," he commented. "And I don't need a negative review on my record, that's for sure. What of you? What is your stance?"
Knowing he was intent on this, and that she needed to know what he planned, Nara schooled her face to remain blank. "What do you have in mind, sir?"