Walter Williams - Conventions of War

There were no heights to throw the condemned men from, but Michi managed an approximation.Illustrious was decelerating at one gravity, to swing around the blue giant Alekas and on to another wormhole, so she decided to eject the traitors from an airlock. Once free of the ship, the traitors would no longer be decelerating and would fall into the ship’s burning antimatter tail.

And they would be ejected without vac suits. “Damned if I’ll waste vac suits on them!” Michi snarled. The vacuum might well kill them before they were torn to atoms by the antimatter blast. Martinez didn’t know which death would be worse.

Gawbyan was stoic in the moments leading up to his execution. Francis was contemptuous, and Gulik, who had condemned himself and the others repeatedly during his interrogation, sagged in a kind of bewilderment. He seemed to suggest that it was unfair to execute him. He’d cooperated and freely confessed, and he didn’t understand why he didn’t get a prize from a grateful empire.

They died with ceremony. A party waited at the airlock, Martinez, Michi with her staff, and all the lieutenants except Corbigny, who was on watch. All glittered in full dress. There was a guard, witnesses from each of the prisoners’ departments, and the ship’s band, which played the low, mournful “Death Without Honor” as the prisoners shuffled from the brig in their coveralls.

Constable Garcia stripped from the condemned their badges of rank and seniority. Guards tied their ankles together with white mourning tape, and their arms were taped to their sides. They were then taken into the airlock and loaded onto an apparatus designed to eject the bodies of crew who had died in accident or as a result of enemy action. The apparatus hadn’t ever been used on live crew, so far as Martinez knew, but he imagined the principle remained the same.

The inner airlock door closed smoothly. Garcia stepped to the airlock controls. The band halted at the end of the phrase, and the drummer began a slow, throbbing pulse on the hourglass-shaped drum.

“Evacuate the airlock, Mr. Garcia,” Martinez said.

“Evacuate the airlock, my lord.” Garcia turned to the controls. If there was a sound, a hiss or the throb of pumps, it was covered by the sound of the drum.

If he were one of the condemned, Martinez thought, he’d try to hold his breath and hope to give himself a quick embolism.

Garcia turned back to him. “Airlock evacuated, my lord.”

“Open outer airlock doors, Mr. Garcia.”

The drum thudded on. Martinez was suddenly aware of a furious itch below his right shoulder blade.

“Outer doors opened, my lord.”

“Proceed, Mr. Garcia.”

Ejecting the condemned into space was the matter of pressing a keypad. Martinez hoped they were already dead. Garcia looked into the airlock through the little window, then turned back to Martinez.

“Airlock’s clear, my lord.”

“Close the outer door and repressurize. Lieutenant Mokgatle?”

Acting Lieutenant Mokgatle, who was blessed with an impressive reading voice, stepped forward from the ranks of the officers and read from the service from the dead.

“Life is brief, but the Praxis is eternal,” Mokgatle concluded. “Let us all take comfort and security in the wisdom that all that is important is known.”

He took a neat step back into ranks.

By now the condemned were stripped ions floating on the void. Martinez felt a moment of stillness building around him. The prisoners had been condemned according to law and executed with all the majesty that the traditions of the Fleet could provide. Their comrades had been present, either in person or mustered to observe by video from the mess or from duty stations in the ship. They were witnesses to the fact that the executions had been conducted properly, just as they’d been witnesses to the larceny that had begun the series of deaths.

Mute witnesses, in both cases. The recruits hadn’t been consulted when their own department heads had conspired to rob them, and they hadn’t been consulted when Martinez had proved their guilt and Michi ordered their executions.

Maybe it was time they were taken into their superiors’ calculations.

Lady Michi cleared her throat in a deliberate way, suggesting that she was tired of waiting for something to happen.

Martinez took a step forward and turned to look at the camera that was recording the ceremony.

“The three condemned,” he said, “and their partner Engineer Thuc, operated a gambling ring for months, preying openly on the crew ofIllustrious. There is no record that any notice was taken of this, or that anyone registered a complaint. Their activity led by degrees to theft, treason, and the murder of two officers, including the captain of this ship.”

He looked into the camera and tried to imagine the scene in the mess, the crew standing braced behind their tables, watching the proceedings on the video walls. The mess, where the gamblers had plundered their comrades every night.

“All the deaths could have been prevented,” Martinez said, “if a proper report of their activities had been made, and action taken. For some reason, everyone, even the victims, chose to keep silence.

“Perhaps the crew has not been properly encouraged to report wrongdoing to their officers. I would like to change that.”

He took a deep breath. “I want to assure the ship’s company that my door is now open to any reports the crew may wish to make. Any crew will be admitted to see their captain, on any matter they consider important.” He glanced at the line of officers behind and to one side of him. “I trust that my officers will be similarly receptive.” They shifted uneasily in their line.

He faced the camera again. “When Captain Fletcher executed Engineer Thuc, he said it was for the honor of the ship. He was right. Our ship’s honor was being daily dragged through the mud by a criminal gang.Illustrious ‘s honor is far from restored, but I’ll bedamned if I see it degraded any further.”

Martinez paused, wondering if he hadn’t said enough, or if he’d said too much.

He took his eyes off the camera, then looked at the crew standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the corridor outside the airlock.

“Dismissed,” he said.

The crew broke ranks and shuffled away as the band began a slow, dirgelike rendition of “Our Thoughts Are Ever Guided by the Praxis,” normally a brisk marching tune. Michi stepped up to him, drawing her gloves off her fingers.

“You’ve let yourself in for it,” she said.

“I hope not,” Martinez said.

“Every recruit coming to you with his problems. Every slacker on the ship asking you for money or time off.” She shook her head. “You’ll be buried in them.”

“Maybe, but I’ll share,” Martinez said, with another glance at his officers. Michi grinned and marched away. Chandra, standing behind her, began to follow, then hesitated and approached Martinez.

“You just made the ship yours,” she said. “Treat her well.”

At the words, Martinez felt, somewhere behind his breastbone, a slow unfolding of pride.

“Thank you.” He glanced around him, then leaned closer to Chandra. “I enjoyed your exercise in creative writing, by the way.”

She didn’t look the least embarrassed. “I thought I caught his style rather well.”

“Too many adverbs,” Martinez said. “I pruned them back.”

The night before, he’d looked at the prisoners’ personnel files and brought them up to date. While he had the files open, he’d decided to go into Chandra’s file and remove the poisonous fitness report that Fletcher had written for her.

In the end Martinez had decided the report simply wasn’t worthy of Fletcher. He didn’t want Fletcher’s last act to be the slagging of an officer against whom he’d had a grudge.