“In that case, Your Honor, may I raise a motion that these charges be dismissed?”
The judge nodded. He looked at the prosecution. “I do, however, instruct that the police investigate and appropriately charge the two detective inspectors who lied under oath. Much as I deplore Dr. Liepsich’s abusive manner, I cannot fault his conclusions. It is my opinion that the prosecutorial work done here was more than appallingly sloppy.” He struck the desk with his gavel. “Case dismissed.”
* * *
Walking out of the court, arm in arm with Van Klomp and his father, Fitz couldn’t help grinning. “Well. Now all I have to face is a charge for being AWOL. I’ll have to get back to camp as soon as possible.
Van Klomp cleared his throat. “As it happens, a major from the Attorney General’s office contacted me about that. Scariest man I’ve met for a long time. Fortunately, he seems to approve of you. He said if you have an affidavit from the judge, to the effect that you’d been illegally detained by civil authority, you’d get away with it. Give it to your commanding officer. The army looks with disfavor on civil authorities messing around with their own. Capra’s hopefully organizing it right now.”
* * *
The camp commandant looked at the affidavit. Shrugged. “Not my business anyway. You’ve been transferred to OCS instead. Someone higher up obviously decided that the Vats would murder a Shareholder, now that, thanks to the newspapers, everyone knows you are one. You’re due to report there tomorrow. So, it looks like I should give you another pass. Try and stay out of trouble on this one.”
5
“We need more loyalty. More courage. More military backbone.” Thus spoke the plump jellyfish of a general, Blutin, who was officially the head of HAR’s army.
“We had to resort to bribing them with drink. It’s the only thing we’ve found that actually motivates them,” said his 2IC, General Cartup-Kreutzler. “We’re forced to apply the harshest of military discipline, too. They desert with regularity. It’s only the grog ration that keeps them in the trenches at all. We need you to sort this out and to treble production.”
The colony’s chief biologist sighed. “You asked us for some animal that we could uplift with this Korozhet device that would be an efficient killer of the insectlike Magh’ invaders. We took one of the best naturally equipped species, that we could breed quite fast. Now . . . you’re telling us fast isn’t fast enough. You need more rats. Are they no good as Magh’ killers?”
The two generals looked at each other. Blutin might be the senior, but he always let Cartup-Kreutzler lead. “They do seem to be very good at killing Magh’,” admitted Cartup-Kreutzler.
“Then why are you experiencing such high mortalities?” she asked dourly. “I must tell you, gentlemen, that we simply cannot step up production. Our facilities were never meant to carry the load they are doing now. If anything, production is going to decline as certain irreplaceable equipment breaks down.”
“Er. Well, we’ve had to execute rather a lot in training,” said Blutin. “Slacking. And for military crimes. Insubordination. Desertion. Refusal to obey the orders of a senior officer. That’s why we want you to improve their attitude.”
Devi Sanjay laughed. There was no humor in that laugh. “Attitude? You want me to change their attitude in my cloning vats! I can’t change their nature. You will have to change their nurture.”
They looked blankly at her. “What do you mean, ma’am?” asked Cartup-Kreutzler, finally.
If there was one thing Devi hated it was being called “ma’am.”
“I mean you’ll have to change the way you train them.”
Blutin shook his head. “We can’t do that. It . . . it’s not the way it is done!”
Cartup-Kreutzler backed him up. “Yes, I must really insist that you leave military matters to us, Professor Sanjay. It’s not your field of expertise.”
Devi Sanjay looked at the two generals coldly. She refrained from saying “it’s not yours either.”
Mentally, she shrugged. She’d hit brick walls before. In the Shareholders’ current panic, they would give their support to these idiots and not to the voice of reason. Before this war, the HAR army had been a rather trivial out-of-the-way make-work place to dump well-connected incompetents. Now, with the Magh’ invasion, the army had assumed a central position in human society. Unfortunately, it had retained its idiots.