Pirate's Bane; Black Star
Chapter 15; Acquittal

Alex waits silently in her cell, she knows what today is and she knows how long she has been in this same damned cell, she couldn’t not know with the implant in her brain ticking away the seconds and telling her what day it is whenever she wakes up and whenever she so much as blinks. She has a map of the corridors from her cell to the interrogation rooms, to the medical bay, and back to her cell, she has walked that circuit, or bypassed the interrogation room to go to the medical bay, almost every day over the past few months. At first an armed guard would always be with her, watching her to make sure she doesn’t kill Lerra or herself but she would never have hurt Lerra even a little, she loves her too much. After a while though Coreance came through with his promise and she was allowed to visit with Lerra without a chaperon, once her condition became apparent, but she is not going to see Lerra today.

Today she is going to court.

Her usual guards comes to her cell as she sits on the bed staring at her feet and watching her legs as they bounce as nervous energy rushes through her like raging bulls stampeding on her family farm. “Open ten.” The guard says to the controller in the central tower, she has been taken from maximum security to minimal security long ago and they had allowed her to have a privet cell given her condition, they did not want to entice any of the other prisoners to attempt to kill her or her children. The cell’s doors split on their seam, sliding up and down as designed and the guard waiting on the other side stands watchful in an unarmored uniform, but she still has a gun on her hip biometrically locked for her use only and a baton that could drop her with even a passing touch, but with no armor she looks far less imposing than the first set of guards she had to deal with, especially with the hit of a smile on her face.

So far none of the guards has ever even needed to threaten to use either of their weapons against her but she still knows what they could do to her if they had to.

“Come on,” the guard coaxes almost nicely, “it’s time.”

Mechanically Alex gets up from her bed and walks to the now open doorway, she takes a few steps forward and as her foot slides over the threshold of her cell the manacles on her wrists clank together and then bounce back, but only a few inches, since they were magnetically pulling on each other while they repulse each other as well, keeping them at a constant distance apart, too far away to disable them and too close together to allow her to fight decently. Her brain starts the count then, she takes one step forward then a ninety degree turn to the right, then twenty steps forward followed by a thirty degree turn to the left and five steps forward.

“Open the door for Perez.” The Guard calls up to the control tower. The guard in the control tower nods and the door buzzes a high pitched electronic buzz fallowed by a loud click as the nine bolts locking it tight slam home, four in the door slide back from half out to fully inside the door while the other five go back from fully in the door to completely into the wall. It slides open and Coreane stands just on the other side, waiting for her. He isn’t wearing his usual utilitarian uniform instead he wearing a more formal uniform of sharply pressed black pants and a crisply pressed black tunic like jacket, with spare sleeves for his extra arms, emblazoned with the insignia of the United Systems Alliance. A symbolist’s representation of the galaxy inside a pyramid set so the line cut through the center and two intersecting circles orbiting the pyramid, on the chest where a human’s heart would have been and no weapons on him at all.

“I’ll take it from here.” He says softly.

The guard puts a soft hand on her back and she looks at her though she does not really see her as she speaks. “It will be alright,” she says and though she doesn’t hear her words part of her recognizes them and believes her, “I’ll be pulling for you sweetie. Keep strong.”

Absently she nods but she doesn’t notice it as the guard turns back around and walks back to her post. Her mind though is so full of opposing thoughts and what ifs she feels as if they will burst out of her head from behind her eyes and her ears and drown her in a sea of questions that want to destroy her if she thinks on them for too long. What if something happens, what if the evidence is lost or corrupted, what if, what if, what if… “Come now Alex, it is almost time.”

Absently her mind begins the count again as she walks behind Coreance as he leads the way toward the showers. Fifteen steps forward, a ninety degree turn to the left, another twenty steps then a ninety degree turn to the right and five steps forward and a then a stop and a ninety degree turn to the right. The shackles stop their almost imperceptible vibrating and the magnets disengage and she can move her arms freely again. She hadn’t noticed Coreance holding a bag but he must have been since he hands it to her and without thinking she takes it and hugs it to her chest.

“Go on,” he says softly but he does not put his hands on her to force her, “get yourself cleaned up, I’ll be waiting for you here.” She nods again, still hugging the bag she made her way into the showers.

The room is usually full but it is empty now being the middle of the day and all the other prisoners are either in the yard or at recreation, maybe even in class or counseling of some sort. Out of habit, and with her body still being more or less on auto pilot, she takes the stale just left of center, its water being the easiest to adjust and the most consistence of all the showers. She stares blankly ahead of her as she unzips the jumpsuit the prisoners all wear as a uniform and feels the cloth slide down her back as she flexes her way out, this being the largest size so far. Her condition forcing her go up in size five times already and she has only stopped getting any bigger recently. She puts the bag down next to the door and her folded coverall on the bench on the other wall and walks into the stall and the shower turns on as the sensors in the wall read her body temp and adjusts the water to a few degrees hotter than her skin. She lets the water run over her body and fallows the trails it makes running down from her chest to her stomach. She is no longer flat and toned as she had stringently kept herself since her first days of basic, now her stomach protrudes a good six inches from where it had been and a dark line under her skin connecting her belly button to her groin. She runs her hands down from the underside of her breasts to her groin fallowing the line as if it extends up to her chest and feels the life growing within her.

The life Lerra and she had created, a life they had made together and if something happens this life will be born in a prison, or worse it will only get to see its “father” being kept alive by machines since the bullet its mother had put in her is killing her and not allowing her to heal since the doctors could not take it out of her pressed up against her nerve cluster as it is and too risky to move or remove even with lasers since a moment on to long would damage the nerve cluster, all they can do I place medical nano-bots in her and hope that in time they can chip away at the bullet without effect the nerve cluster.

“Hey,” she says to the baby she has yet to name, even though she has a name picked out, she isn’t going to name her until Lerra wakes up to learn their child’s name, “it’s me again, mommy. Are you okay in there?” As if to answer her she feels a kick under where she presses her hand and despite herself she smiles. “I’ll take that as a yes. I know you don’t know what’s going on or where your papa is but when you come out I promise I’ll take you to meet her and we’ll be all together. We’ll get a ship and fly through the stars, would you like that?” She waits a moment or two and as she almost gives up hope the baby kicks once again. “Alright, but first I need you to wish me luck, can you do that, wish your mommy luck so she and your papa can get out.”

She finishes washing in silence, her body going back to auto pilot, the joy of the short talk with her unborn child gone and her body returning to the lethargy of mental death. She dries herself the same way and walks back to the bag she had left on the bench and opens it and her mind rockets into awareness. She had not seen a uniform like that since her court martial and in a way she hoped to never again wear one but somehow Coreance had gotten it for her.

With trembling fingers she takes the tunic jacket from atop the pile and places it on the bench and then takes out the pants and puts them on top of the tunic and removes the underwear from the bottom of the pack and puts them on. She then thinks about putting back on her prison uniform instead of the Sol Alliance dress uniform, in the end she puts her prison uniform back in the bag and picks up the dress uniform that Coreance had gotten her. She pulls on the pants and feels up them from the flare at the hem to her waist before she does up the belt and traces the insignia of the Sol Alliance, a symbolist’s interruption of the sun circled by four equally spaced and intersecting orbiting circles with dotes representing the eight plants of the sol system at the apex of each circle, embossed on the oval of metal. She remembers every micron of that buckle but she has not seen it or felt it in many, many years as for the majority of that time it meant certain death for her to do so. She takes up the tunic jacket next and slowly, reverently slips one arm in the first sleeve and then a moment later she slips the other arm through the sleeve and pulls it closed, the left side running straight down between her breasts while the other side is longer overlapping her heart and breast. She buttons it up with reverence and runs her hand over the embossed Alliance insignia over her heart and then slides it over the patches on her arm, it should have been a compass to represent her position as a navigator and gold to show she is the chief navigator and then the bars of her rank under that and below that “Iowa” in red on a patch of black to contrast with the blue of her uniform and with its gold and white boarders and bands. That was what it had been but now it only has the patches of position and rank with a vertical line through both to represent her status as retired, there is no patch to represent the Iowa though the space remains.

Dressed she leaves the showers, her hair pulled back into a tight pony tail, in regulation at least in style, the length far too long, ending just below her shoulder blades. She looks at Coreance who looks her over as her drill sergeant had the first time she had put on a dress uniform all those years back. “Thank you.” She says weakly.

“It was the least I could do for a fellow soldier.” He says with the dignity of his rank and office though as a mere Lt he is a rank lower than she is.

“As the patches show,” she says rubbing her palm over them again, as she had rubbed her hand over her stomach, “I’m retired.”

“Of course,” He says with a soft bow of his head. “Let’s go, the Judicator will not wait for us to arrive.”

“Lead to the way.” She says as Coreance waves for her to start walking but when she tells him to start he does as he is told, leading her down halls she has never walked but that her mind still absently maps and records. He leads her to the judicator’s chambers and opens the door for her and allows her to enter first.

The judicator’s chamber is nothing like a courtroom in the Sol Alliance, there are no seats for witnesses only two equally raised daises with half circle benches framing podiums, all of which point toward a third higher dais with three thrones on it, the central throne made of stone, the left made of wood, or something like it, and the right of some sort of metal. All three thrones already seating a Trilon, a race where all the children are born in mentally bonded pairs or, more commonly, triplets, the bonding so complete they share each other’s thoughts and would live symbiotically but only one is able to reproduce and therefore dominate in the group thought though a twist of their mental structure they have the disturbing ability to tell if any species in the galaxy even hints at telling even a slight untruth. Usually their dress is subdued in shape but overall quite revealing but as judicators these Trilons are robed from head to toe in white to obscure them from any more than a passing glance at physical distinctiveness but the fabric is share enough to show their barely humanoid body shape.

“Honored judicators,” Coreance starts, “I have brought before you Alexandria Maxima Perez, Ret. Lt Commander of the Sol Systems Alliance, arrested under the charge of attempted murder and murder of the crew of the Black Star as well as destruction of property and evidence in its subsequent destruction.”

“Enter.” They said as one. “Take your seats upon the dais.”

They did as they had been commanded and take their seats around the left dais as they had been instructed. “Have you reviewed the case?” Coreance asks.

“We have.” Hearing them speak as one is disorienting, it makes Alex want to look at all of them when only one is dominant and in control of the others.

Coreance though seems unaffected by the strangeness of talking to three unseen figures at once. “What is your conclusion?”

“Based on all the evidence you have brought to us we believe that Alexandra and Lerra where the victims in this and as such are free of all criminal charges, as per the contract signed by Alexandra the insurance on the Black Star and its cargo will be paid to her in place of the ship, the total being seventy point five million credits to be credited to her account immediately. You are dismissed.”

Alex hasn’t thought to say anything until now but the dismissal jolts her into action, “What about Lerra?”

“She will be treated and released.” The judicators say flatly.

“She is the progenitor of my child.” Alex explains using the formal and proper term for what Lerra has done according to her people.

“That may be but she is still under our care until she is healed.” Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the FɪndNøvel.ɴᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

“Then I wish to stay with her until she is healed, I will even remain in my cell if I have to.”

“So be it.” They say without taking even a moment to think it through.

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