Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Destiny

Brace nodded. “A preliminary matter. The accused is a noncommissioned officer. As such he may elect to be tried before a panel of his noncommissioned peers or a panel of commissioned officers.”

Brumby turned to me, palms upturned, cheek jerking.

I had learned the military justice system’s practicalities the hard way. Majors and colonels didn’t pull extra duty. Crap like court-martial panelist fell to junior officers. Junior officers were inexperienced kids, soft and sympathetic. Noncommissioned officers — sergeants — worked their way up by following the book. Everybody knew that in courts-martial, crusty sergeants regularly threw the rule book at the accused. The choice was obvious.

I almost said “Commissioned” by reflex, then I caught movement at the corner of my eye. Ord had twitched. I noticed only because I knew him, knew that at parade rest he wouldn’t even twitch. I watched him. There it was again. A head shake.

Ord wanted Brumby judged by a hanging jury of grizzled sergeants, not squishy second lieutenants. That made no sense.

I hesitated. Ord was in our corner. Wasn’t he?

Brace drummed his fingers on the synwood tabletop. The victim shifted in his chair, his cheeks gauze-packed, so he looked more like a blowfish than a rat. That was a more appropriate image for the little squid, anyway.

Brace cocked his head at me. “Well?”

The light clicked on for me. “The accused chooses a panel of his noncommissioned peers.”

Brumby’s jaw dropped.

The JAG swabbie ran a hand across his face to camouflage a smile.

Brace raised his eyebrows, then nodded. He stood and clicked off the screens. “Very well. The matter will be set for trial. We stand adjourned.”

A minute later, Brumby and I headed aft to infantry country. He asked, brow furrowed, eyelids batting like windshield wipers in a downpour, “A noncom jury, sir? I hope you know what you’re doing.”

I turned to ask Ord to confirm that I had read him right when I had chosen Brumby’s fate.

But Ord had left us alone.

TEN

BRUMBY’S TRIAL STARTED A WEEK LATER, in the converted operating room that was being used to dissect Slug KIAs. It stunk of formaldehyde. I wondered whether Brace chose the venue to signal that Brumby was dead meat. No, Brace didn’t have a sense of humor enough for that.

A Space Policeman — the Space Force version of an MP — wearing a sidearm guarded the hatch, in case the accused made a run for vacuum, I supposed. Maybe he was there to quell outbreaks of infantry hooliganism, since both Brumby and I were present.

Eight panelists sat to the right, each wearing the Class-A sergeant’s uniform of his or her original unit, not UN gear. All wore three chevrons up and three down. By the service record files I had read, all were not only senior NCOs, they were as frivolous as bricks. The witness chair was left of the hearing officer, a light colonel from Third Division who wasn’t a lawyer but who had presided at courts-martial before. The JAG swabbie prosecutor sat at a Duralumin folding table facing the presiding officer. Brumby, his appointed counsel, and I sat at a table to the prosecutor’s left.

Brumby’s counsel was Army JAG, older than I was and a permanent captain. He hadn’t been pleased that I chose a noncom panel or, for that matter, with his assignment to defend a sure-loser case.

The presentation of evidence wasn’t contested since the incident was on surveillance holo. Over and over, in slow motion and at normal speed, a slightly translucent Brumby laid a beauty on a slightly flickering Rat-nose. The only trouble was Rat-nose’s provoking comment was drowned out by the string quartet.

Mimi Ozawa appeared and testified to what Rat-nose had said. She took the stand starched and stiff in pilot’s powder-blue. Of over eleven thousand people on this ship, only the twenty dropship pilots, twenty copilots, and a few spares were true astronauts. That, most soldiers aboard thought, made them more technocrats than warriors.

The JAG swabbie tapped a stylus on the top edge of his notescreen while he questioned her. “Major Ozawa, you testified that the alleged remarks directed toward Acting Sergeant Major Brumby provoked him.”

“Yes.” Ozawa nodded. She never seemed to make eye contact with Brace. Munchkin said the word was Ozawa and Brace had once been an item. That annoyed me. I suppose because the idea of Brace enjoying himself seemed so unrealistic.

It certainly couldn’t have been jealousy about Ozawa. She was arrogance and dispassion wrapped in a pretty package.

“Similarly provoked, would you have reacted similarly?”

It seemed to my nonlegal mind that it didn’t matter whether a petite female technocrat would have decked Brace’s little squid or not. Ozawa’s job required her to control her emotions, to be icy calm at every moment. The truth, I had to admit, was that Brumby’s job did, too. At least to the extent of not pounding the snot out of people during brunch. I leaned toward Brumby’s counsel and whispered, “Object! She’ll say she wouldn’t have hit him!” The lawyer just whispered notes.

Ozawa had probably never punched anything more animate than a seat-harness release button in her life. She shifted in her chair. “No.”

The JAG swabbie nodded and the corners of his mouth turned up.

She smiled at him like he had just asked her to the prom. “I would’ve broken the plate across his head.”

I snuck a glance at the panel foreman, a female Transportation Corps topkick. I thought she smiled.

I had to cover my grin with my hand. Across the hearing room, Brace’s knuckles whitened as he gripped a chairback in front of him.

Otherwise, our testimony lacked the, well, punch of watching Rat-nose’s teeth splash down in Brace’s teacup.

The mitigation phase consisted of me reading the recommendation I had written for Brumby’s DSC and Purple Heart with cluster. One member of the panel shed a tear on his Marine gunnery sergeant olive lapel. Otherwise, I read no sympathy.

The restitution phase was new to the military. It made sense. If convicted, a wrongdoer had to make the wrong-ee whole. For our side, we found a Space Force dentist who testified that Rat-nose would actually have sounder, prettier teeth after the “assault incident.” However, a prosecution shrink testified that the victim had been traumatized by the violence. Rat-nose’s life would be “permanently impacted.”

I leaned forward and tugged Brumby’s lawyer’s sleeve, “Ask him if Brumby might have been traumatized by having half his shoulder shot away! Ask him whether having friends die in your arms before they even got old enough to vote for President permanently impacts your life!”

The captain leaned back and covered his mouth with his hand. “Sir, Sergeant Major Brumby’s service record was covered in your mitigation-phase testimony. The victim did not cause Sergeant Major Brumby’s post-combat trauma.”

“The hell he didn’t! Brumby’s career will be over if he’s convicted. What kind of traumatized life do you think any combat soldier can have as a civilian?”

The presiding officer shot us a “pipe-down” look.

The captain refused my clever legal advice and the defense rested.

“Rest,” my ass. My heart rattled in my chest and I breathed like a thoroughbred after six furlongs.

When the presiding officer had charged the panel, the eight stood as one and marched out to deliberate, like the by-the-book sergeants they were. Brace, who had sat behind the prosecutor, arms folded, for the whole proceeding, left. So did the prosecutor.

The presiding officer packed his ’puter case.

Brumby’s JAG captain busied himself shuffling papers, distancing himself from a case he knew was lost before he ever got appointed.