“I also want to know about the two Rraey I sent back.”
“They’re in our brig, and receiving medical attention, inasmuch as we can give it to them,” Wilson said. “Their injuries were substantial but thankfully not terribly complicated. Mostly broken bones, which we could set and tend. Which one of you did that, by the way?”
“That would be me,” Powell said.
“You’re fun,” Wilson said.
“You should see me on the second date.”
Wilson smiled at this and turned his attention back to me. “We received your instruction that they were not to be further harmed. That was not a problem because we had no intention of doing so. You do understand we will need to question them.”
“You can question them without harming them,” I said.
“Yes we can,” Wilson said. “I just want you to be clear that the questioning is likely to be aggressive, even if it’s not physical. Particularly of Commander Tvann, who is interesting to us for other reasons than just his involvement here.”
“Who’s going to do the questioning?”
“Well, here it’s going to be me.”
“Commander Tvann doesn’t seem very forthcoming.”
“Don’t worry, I think I can get him to talk without breaking anything else in his body. I’ve worked with Rraey before. Trust me.”
“All right. Thank you,” I said. I nodded in the direction of where Okada went. “What’s going to happen with him?”
“Him, I’m not going to make too many promises about,” Wilson said. “He’s managed to perform a neat little trick. Not only has he betrayed the Colonial Union, he’s also betrayed his own rebellion.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that there were ten Colonial Union planets that were supposed to announce their independence from the CU simultaneously, and that Khartoum was one of them. But Khartoum jumped the gun, announced early, and then lured the Tubingen into a trap.”
“Why would they do that?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Wilson said. “What he tells us is going to make a difference in how the Colonial Union as a whole deals with these rebellious planets.”
“Do you think he’ll talk?” Powell asked.
“By the time we get done with him, getting him to talk won’t be the problem. It’ll be getting him to shut up. Now, are you ready for the formal debriefing?”
“Actually, I would like to see my soldiers first,” I said.
“All right,” Wilson said.
* * *
I found Lambert waist high in a stack of dead bodies near the back of the mess cooler. Salcido I found two stacks over, closer to the floor. They did not bear close observation.
“Lambert was right, you know,” Powell said. She was with me in the cooler. Wilson had walked us to the cooler, opened it, and then waited outside. The cooler had been cleared of shelves and the contents they usually stored; the latter were either restocked in a different cooler or being fed to the survivors of the Tubingen, who were in the mess itself, unhappily crowded together.
At least they weren’t crowded together in here.
“What was he right about?” I asked.
“Root causes,” Powell said.
“You of all people,” I said, almost smiling.
“I didn’t ever say he was wrong. I said ‘who cares.’”
“But now you do care.”
“I care more than I used to. What are we doing here, Lieutenant? We’re running around putting out fires. And fine, we’re the fire brigade. Our job is putting out the fires. Not worrying about how they got started, just putting them out. But at some point even the fire brigade has to start asking who is starting all these fires, and why it’s being left to us to continually put them out.”
“Lambert would be laughing his head off to hear you say that.”
“If he were here to laugh his head off, I wouldn’t be saying it. He’d be saying it. Again.” Powell motioned to where Salcido was. “And Sau would be geeking out over some point of trivia. And I would be sniping at both of them, and you would be playing referee. And we would all be one happy family again, instead of the two of us looking at the two of them in a meat locker.”
“You’ve lost friends before,” I said.
“Of course I have,” Powell said. “And so have you. It doesn’t make it any easier when it happens.”
We were silent for a moment.
“I have a speech running through my head,” I finally said, to Powell.
“One you were going to make?” Powell asked.
“No. One someone else made, that I’ve been thinking a lot about the last few weeks, when we’ve been running around putting out fires.”
“Which one is it?”
“It’s the Gettysburg Address. Abraham Lincoln. You remember it?”
Powell smirked. “I lived in America and taught in a junior high. I remember it.”