Butcher nodded, and signified the two other people seated at the table, before which I stood. “This inquiry has been impaneled in order to question you about your conversation with General Tarsem Gau of the Conclave,” Butcher said. “This is a formal inquiry, which means that you are required to answer any and all questions truthfully, directly and completely as possible. However, this is not a trial. You have not been charged with any crime. If at a future point you are charged with a crime, you will be tried through the Department of Colonization’s Court of Colonial Affairs. Do you understand?”
“I do,” I said. The DoC’s Colonial Affairs Courts were judge-only affairs, designed to let colony heads and their appointed judges make quick decisions so the colonists could get on with colonizing. A CA Court ruling had the force of law, although limited to that specific case only. A CA Court judge or colony head acting as judge could not circumvent Department of Colonization regulations and bylaws, but as the DoC recognized the wide range of colonial situations were not uniform in their regulatory needs, those regulations and bylaws were surprisingly few. Colonial Affairs Courts were also organizationally flat; there was no appealing a Colonial Affairs Court ruling. Essentially a CA Court judge could do whatever he or she wanted. It was not an optimal legal situation for a defendant.
“Fine,” Butcher said, and looked at her PDA. “Then let’s begin. When you were conversing with General Gau, you offered first to take his surrender, and then offered to allow him to leave Roanoke space without injury to himself or to his fleet.” She looked up at me over the PDA. “This is correct, Administrator?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“General Rybicki, whom we have already called”—this was news to me, and I was suddenly sure that Rybicki was now less than entirely pleased he ever suggested me for the colonial administrator position—“testified to us that your orders were to engage Gau in nonessential discussions only, until the fleet was destroyed, at which point you were to inform him that only his ship had survived the attack.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Very well,” Butcher said. “Then you may begin by explaining what you were thinking when you offered to accept Gau’s surrender, and then offered to let his fleet go unharmed.”
“I suppose I was hoping to avoid bloodshed,” I said.
“It’s not your place to make that call,” said Colonel Bryan Berkeley, who represented the Colonial Defense Forces at the inquiry.
“I disagree,” I said. “My colony was potentially under attack. I am the colony leader. My job is to keep my colony safe.”
“The attack wiped out the Conclave fleet,” Berkeley said. “Your colony was never in danger.”
“The attack could have failed,” I said. “No offense to the CDF or to the Special Forces, Colonel, but not every attack they plan succeeds. I was at Coral, where the CDF’s plans failed miserably and a hundred thousand of our people died.”
“Are you saying you expected us to fail?” Berkeley asked.
“I’m saying I have an appreciation for the fact that plans are plans,” I said. “And that I had an obligation to my colony.”
“Did you expect that General Gau would surrender to you?” asked the third questioner. I took a moment to take him in: General Laurence Szilard, head of the CDF Special Forces.
His presence on the panel made me extremely nervous. There was absolutely no reason why he of all people should be on it. He was several layers of bureaucracy more advanced than either Butcher or Berkeley; having him sitting placidly on the panel—and not even being the panel chairman—was like having your kid’s day care supervisor be Dean of the College at Harvard University. It didn’t make any sort of sense. If he decided that I needed to be squashed for messing up a mission the Special Forces supervised, it really wouldn’t matter what either of the other two panelists thought about anything; I’d be dead meat on a stick. The knowledge made me queasy.
That said, I was also deeply curious about the man. Here was the general whose neck my wife wished to wring because he altered her back into a Special Forces soldier without her permission and also, I suspected, without much remorse. Some part of me wondered if I shouldn’t attempt to wring his neck out of a sense of chivalry for my wife. Considering that as a Special Forces soldier he would probably have kicked my ass even when I was a genetically-enhanced soldier, I doubted I could do much against him now that I was once again a mere mortal. Jane probably wouldn’t appreciate me getting my own neck wrung.
Szilard waited for my answer, his expression placid.
“I had no reason to suspect he would surrender, no,” I said.
“But you asked him to anyway,” Szilard said. “Ostensibly to allow your colony to survive. I find it interesting that you asked for his surrender rather than begging for him to spare your colony. If you were simply looking to him to spare the colony and the lives of the colonists, wouldn’t that have been the more prudent course? The information the Colonial Union provided you about the general gave you no reason to believe surrender would be something he’d entertain.”