Breakfast was just food, shoveled in, and I was finished before I realized I was in my own private dining room, alone.
“Message for you, Bud,” said the voice of Leanne.
“WHAT!” I demanded. I blinked a few times at the volume of that. “Sorry. Not sure where that came from. Who’s it from?”
“The head judges of the Democratic Union and Naranja.”
“What do they want?”
“To know if you’ve had time to review those other cases.”
“I haven’t.”
“They seemed insistent.”
“They called?”
“Yes. I told them I was your aide.”
“Should have told them not to call again.”
“I tried to. They were not listening.”
“That figures. Did they want anything else?”
“A meeting with you. Today if possible.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I said it was unlikely.”
“What did they say?”
“They expected you in an hour.”
“Did they now. When was that starting from?”
“About fifty minutes ago. I wasn’t going to interrupt you until you were about to officially start your day.”
“Fine. Find out exactly where they are. Use Hubaisha if you need to. I’ll be right up.”
I was holding my anger in check, and this was doing nothing for my dark mood. Walking to the bridge was done slowly and deliberately. I cast a look around, saw the two AIs in their seats, who both ignored me, and walked on to my ready room.
Leanne popped up on the desk.
“Found them. They’re both in a meeting with other judges. Seems to be very high level.”
“What are they talking about?”
“You.”
“In what context?”
“Making you a judge for both societies.”
I sighed.
“Show me where they are.”
A map of the capital city of the Democratic Union popped up. It zoomed in on their highest court building, and showed me a conference room with a dozen blue dots in it and two red ones. I moved the map into PC storage.
“I’ll be back shortly.”
I didn’t wait for a response, but merely thought of where I wanted to be, and was suddenly there. I shifted into dress uniform, concentrated on the map, and moved the two people represented by the red dots to a spot a few meters away from me.
Both of them had been sitting, and now fell over backwards into the hot sand. Two very basic chairs appeared next to them. They saw my face, closed their mouths, rose, and sat.
“How often did anyone tell Thorn to attend a meeting?” I asked them.
“Never,” squeaked the man on the left.
“So what makes you think you can tell me when to be somewhere?”
Neither of them answered, and both of them were now holding one hand above their eyes, trying to shield them from the harsh sun. Both were already sweating profusely. This was of course, the middle of a desert, on my penal planet world. My suit was keeping me quite cool.
Thorn had brought me to this place once. It was where he buried people deserving death. The original grave stones were long gone, but you could almost tell from the terrain where each of them was. He’d also told me he brought people here when they needed a damned good scare. Some part of me had obviously remembered that.
“Well?”
They still hesitated, so I placed truth magic on them both.
“We didn’t think,” said right, looking horrified he’d said it.
“Obviously. I gather you want me to be a judge like my uncle was?”
“Yes,” they both said.
“You do know I’m Imperium military?”
“Of course,” said left. “What a waste! Being a judge like Thorn was, is a higher rank than any you’ll ever attain in the military.”
“And rank matters?”
“Of course,” said right. “Even Thorn knew that.”
“You might be surprised to know that Thorn didn’t care about rank one little bit. In fact, a lot of graves over there were high ranked people.”
They looked, in spite of themselves, and right even shivered.
“That’s not what the records show,” said left.
“The records were obviously written by people who didn’t know Thorn.”
Both of them looked at each other, looking equally uncomfortable.
“Here’s how it is. I’m Imperium military. I will be Imperium military until I retire. I will not be a judge. I will not be at anyone’s beck and call. Do you understand that?”
My voice was low and hard.
“Yes,” they both whispered.
“As I’ve already said, I will look at cases where the judge was unable to legally overturn a conviction because of a lack of evidence where the conviction is obviously wrong. But I will look at them in my own time, of which I have very little. I’m not going to be a level of backstop for court systems incapable of delivering true justice. If the system is that broken, sending me those cases will just highlight the need for fixing the system. Do you get my meaning?”
“Yes.”
Left spluttered it, but right was still whispering.
“Anything you want from me will be on my timetable, and without a deadline. Anyone attempting to circumvent that will wish they hadn't.”
Both of them nodded.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m fighting a particularly nasty war. I had a really bad day yesterday. You picked a really bad time to piss me off. I’m not a grunt soldier, but an officer with significant responsibilities. You impinge on them at your peril. Make sure you tell people that.”
“It shall be done,” said left.
“I am not Thorn. I will never be Thorn. And until I’m a civilian again, no-one is going to drag me into civilian matters. Now go tell people that, and let’s forget this ever happened.”
They vanished. And not exactly back to where they’d come from either. I’d offset them enough they’d fall on their arses again.
I tracked Hubaisha down to where her avatar was that moment, and moved myself there. She was surprised to see me, but didn’t ask why. I told her what I’d just done, and she grinned. By the time I left ten minutes later, she was monitoring all court cases on the dockets throughout both societies, looking for anything needing my special attention. But only so I had advance warning, and a choice to deal with it or not. She also took full instructions for outfitting the new station, and to let me know when it was ready.
“Welcome back,” said the voice of Leanne, as I appeared back in my ready room.
“Thanks,” I muttered.
Strangely, I now felt better.
Thirty Three
I didn’t even get time to sit.
“Is there something you feel you need to tell me?” asked Jane, who’d popped up on the desk just as I got to it.
I ignored her until I was sitting. She frowned at me.
“Hint please?”
“Your home system?”
“What about it?”
“It has an extra few items in it that were not there this time yesterday.”
“You noticed.”