“Well, the door is locked,” I said. “Which kind of puts a damper on your whole escape plan.”
Tvann did the Rraey equivalent of a laugh. “So you’re not afraid of me.”
“No,” I said. “But I don’t want you to be afraid of me, either.”
“I’m not,” Tvann said. “The rest of your species, I am afraid of. And of what might happen to me if I don’t speak to you now.”
“Commander, allow me to be as candid with you as you have been with me.”
“All right, Lieutenant.”
“You are a prisoner of the Colonial Defense Forces. You are, in point of fact, a prisoner of war. You were captured having taken up arms against us. You, either directly or by the orders you gave, killed many of our soldiers. I will not torture you, nor will I kill you, nor will you be tortured or killed while you are on this ship. But you have to know that the rest of your life is going to be spent with us,” I motioned around, “and in a room not much larger than this one.”
“You are not inspiring me to be forthcoming, Lieutenant.”
“I can understand that, but I’m not finished,” I said. “As I said, the rest of your life is very likely to be as our prisoner, in a room about this size. But there is another option.”
“Talk to you.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Talk to me. Tell me everything you know about Equilibrium and its plans. Tell me how you got ten human colonies to agree to rebel against the Colonial Union. Tell me what the endgame is for your organization. Tell me all of it, start to finish, and leave nothing out.”
“In return for what?”
“In return for your freedom.”
“Oh, Lieutenant,” Tvann said. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe it’s within your power to offer that.”
“It’s not. As you’ve implicitly noted, I’m just a lieutenant. But this offer doesn’t come from me. It comes from the highest levels of both the Colonial Defense Forces and the Colonial Union’s civilian government. Disclose everything, and when this is all over—whatever this is, whenever it’s over—you’ll be handed over to the Rraey government. What they do to you is another kettle of fish, assuming that they have something to do with Equilibrium at all. That said, if you’re especially forthcoming, we can make an effort to have it seem like we didn’t know what an excellent intelligence asset you were. That we thought you were just some common military commander.”
“But I am,” Tvann said. “The scope of my orders were limited, and focused on this mission.”
I nodded. “We were pretty sure you were going to try that,” I said. “And who could blame you? There’s no percentage for you letting on any more than you had to. But we know something you don’t think we know, Commander.”
“What is that, Lieutenant?”
“Commander, does this ship seem familiar to you in any way?”
“No,” Tvann said. “Why should it?”
“No reason,” I said. “Except for the small detail that you’ve been on it before.”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Oh, believe it,” I said, and then looked up toward the ceiling. “Rafe, have you been listening in?”
“You know I have,” said a new voice, from the speaker. A translation, in a slightly different voice to differentiate it from my translation, followed almost immediately afterward.
“Okay, good,” I said, and looked back to Tvann. “Commander Tvann, I would like to introduce you to Rafe Daquin, our pilot. Or more accurately, I would like to reintroduce you, as the two of you have met before.”
“I don’t understand,” Tvann said.
“You don’t remember me?” Daquin said. “I’m hurt, Commander. Because I remember you very well. I remember you threatening to blow my ship out of the sky. I remember you shooting my captain and first officer. I remember you talking with Secretary Ocampo about the best way to murder my entire crew. Yes, Commander. I have a whole heap of memories with you in them.”
Tvann said nothing to this.
“Ah,” I said. “See. Now you’re remembering after all. This is the Chandler, Commander. The ship you took. And the ship you lost. Well, maybe not you specifically, but Equilibrium. We know you were on it. And we know you’re not just some field commander. No, sir. You’re a key member of the Equilibrium military. And your presence on Khartoum, leading the forces that shot our people out of the sky, isn’t just luck of the assignment draw. You’re here for a reason.”
“How is it that you’re here?” Tvann asked me.
“How do you mean?”
“Your ship thwarted the attack on the CDF ship that responded to the Khartoum rebellion,” Tvann said. “How did you know? How did you get here to stop it?”
“We had inside intelligence.”
“From whom?”
“From whom do you think?” I said.