AN: Bit of a longer chapter this time, but that's because my original breaks changed when I updated the fic. The next chapter is likely to be a bit shorter than usual to compensate.
Warnings: Mention of a past suicide in this chapter, suicidal thoughts.
"Rise and shine, sweetheart. It's your big day."
The first thing Badri remembered when he woke up was going to sleep. It was rather disconcerting.
"Riaah, how long was I out?" he muttered, trying hard to ignore the stabbing, aching, and pretty much every other kind of pain coming from his head. He tried to focus on any other part of his body, but the pain was barely better in his arm, his leg, anywhere in his left side…
"Five days," Riaah said from somewhere above his head.
"But that's—" Badri started.
"They moved the court-martial back to today, at my request, so I could at least get the power source that fits inside your body. The shipment didn't come until last night," she growled. Badri turned on his vision processing and found her carefully removing restraints from his chest and arms.
"I'm pretty sure you're not going to thrash and reopen something, now," she explained without looking up. "Besides, you won't have to worry about pulling out wires anymore."
"You still don't want me to go," Badri said. It wasn't a question.
"Of course not," she said, "But there's nothing I can do to stop you, unfortunately. And believe me, I've tried. But now that you're lucid, I have no legal authority over you. So if you're absolutely certain that you're guilty, have fun testifying against me."
"What?" Badri asked suddenly.
"I have proof," Riaah said. "Proof that the other officers had been tampered with. And I think I've almost found out who did it. The program was rather ingenious, but it had to be installed at the same time as the base code, or at least while the base code was being updated. One of the Republic doctors has been working for the enemy."
"And it's not you," Badri added.
"It can't be me," Riaah said plainly. "I only worked on you and one of the others. There were several more incidents while you were out, and reports that indicated that there have been incidents on other planets. There is no way I worked on all of the cyborgs affected."
Badri stared at her, noticing the dark shadows under her eyes for the first time.
"Riaah, when was the last time you slept?"
"Not sure," she said, completely coherently. "Last week, maybe? I got almost five hours the morning before you were woken up the second time. That was the only reason that idiot managed to get in at all. Catch," she said, throwing a pile of clothes at him. "Get dressed. Sorry about the synthskin, but trust me, if you got me started on what happened with that now, you'd never get out on time."
Badri actually looked down at his body for the first time, and sure enough, large portions of synthskin were missing. The top layer over his chest was the metal that made the shape of his body, reaching up to his shoulder and down part of his arm, completely exposed. It made it almost painfully clear which parts had been completely replaced. He was wise enough not to ask.
"You have twenty minutes," Riaah said, stepping out to give him some semblance of privacy, not like it mattered. "Then, unfortunately, we have to go."
Throughout it all, it was easiest not to think. It was small, but the room seemed filled with officers. They sat like judges in front of him, leaving only Riaah and a small contingent of other witnesses behind him. Badri hadn't been paying attention beforehand, he was barely paying attention when he was called to the seat, but there he was. His shirt hung awkwardly over the uneven surface of his body. He felt itchy, uncomfortable, but he let it be. It was better than feeling nothing.
He sat at a table slightly lower than the long table in front of him. All five of the seats above him were filled with officers. "Please state your full name and rank for the record," was the first question from the man in the center left.
"Sergeant Badri Ravjanday Emras," Badri said without thinking. It seemed to be the right answer.
"And you are a cyborg, correct?" asked the same officer, who seemed to do most of the talking.
"Yes, sir," Badri replied.
"What circumstances were involved in your becoming a cyborg?"
"It was a medical necessity, sir," he said tersely. He was acutely aware of the pounding in his head, his shirt rubbing against bare plates, somehow more sensitive than skin… There was no other reason. There could be no other reason for this.
"Brought on by what?" the questioner asked. It occurred to Badri that he hadn't even been paying attention when the man was introduced. The uniform marked him as a Major, but that was all he knew.
"I was on a mission for the Republic military when our ship was shot down," he explained.
"I understand that you were the only survivor of your crew."
No, that wasn't right. Something was wrong.
(Welcome back, Corporal.)
"No, sir," Badri said, pushing memories as far down as he could manage.
"Pardon?" the Major asked.
"I am now the last remaining survivor of that crew," Badri clarified. "There were three other survivors of the initial crash. One died from injuries after being transported off-planet. One died completing the mission we were sent to do. And the other died after transport," he said evasively.
"Who was the one who died 'after transport'?"
(How are you feeling?)
He was determined to bring up those memories, wasn't he? "Sergeant Soen Carthers," Badri confirmed.
"And his cause of death was suicide?"
(Don't bother; I already know.)
"Yes, sir." Toneless. No emotion. What was the point?
"He was also fitted with cybernetics after the crash, correct?"
"Yes, sir," Badri repeated.
"And you were both unconscious and not consulted when the decision to use cybernetics to save your lives was made?" the Major asked.
"Yes, sir." It was becoming routine.
"Did the cybernetics have anything to do with Sergeant Carthers's suicide?"
A quick hush fell over the room, followed by an outbreak of noise. Several people protested, but none as loudly as the doctor behind him.
"This questioning has nothing to do with the trial at hand!" Riaah shouted.
"I'm afraid I have to agree," said the ranking officer—a general?—from the center of the long table. "This is out of line."
(What does all—all this mean? For us? For them?)
The arguing was still going on around him, but Badri was lost in his own thoughts. They swirled around him, fading back to black, to dark gray. Always back to death.
"Yes."
"What?" someone asked.
"What was that, Sergeant?" asked the Major.
"Yes," Badri repeated, this time slightly louder. "Carthers did kill himself because of the cybernetics."
"Did Sergeant Carthers—"
"I have already stopped this line of questioning, Major," the General said.
"Very well," conceded the Major. "We all know why we are here. Sergeant, would you care to describe what happened after you entered the house, in your own words?"
Badri couldn't help the laugh that escaped him.
"I'm curious as to why you find that funny," the Major asked.
"Not funny, sir, ironic," Badri explained rationally. "It was not clear at the time, but I realized afterwards that during most of the… the events, my language processing biocomputer was nonfunctional. In layman's terms, that means while I could hear what was going on and what was said, I could not understand or relate meaning to any spoken words." As much as he tried to keep neutral, the bitterness crept back into his voice.
"So you had no thoughts during this incident?" asked the Major skeptically.
"None that were coherent to speak aloud, no sir," Badri said. "My thoughts were in images, mostly, feelings, emotions…" he tried to describe, but found himself unsurprisingly at a loss for words. How did someone describe something that was inherently without words? "They were thoughts, but they were not in 'my own words,' so to speak," he finished, somewhat lamely.
Clearly becoming irritated, the Major asked, "Can you attempt to describe what your thoughts were, Sergeant?"
"Yes," Badri said, trying to translate his thoughts into words for later. "All of my systems were functioning when we first entered the house. I was suspicious because of how empty it was. In that area in Coruscant, if it's habitable there's at least going to be squatters. My first priority, however, was getting the girl to safety. When we found her, I ordered Private Yuo to take her out of the room, which was when the man showed up." He did his best to keep his voice free of emotion, free of judgment or sympathy. He would let them make their own decisions about his guilt, without his influence. "For some reason, he let the girl go, and the last thing I remember before… before things were… strange, I guess, was him hitting me on the head with something that sent an electric current through my body. The pain was… incredible. After that is when I lost language processing function."
"Was that the only cybernetic you lost the use of?"
"I—I'm not sure. Judging from the level of pain, the pain inhibitor chip was non-functional as well. Maybe a few other systems. I…" Badri quickly tried to come up with some way to explain the rush that went through his head, as the events happened so quickly he wasn't even sure if they were real. "The next thing that happened, I was moving. My body did not seem to respond to any of my conscious thoughts. But I could see, I could feel, I could hear, even if I couldn't understand what was being said. I was moving," he repeated, as if it would make anything clearer.
"And what happened then?" the Major asked, as if he didn't know the answer.
"I killed Rigil."
Another hush fell over the room. He had admitted the crime clearly, with no denial, which was a rare occurrence here.
"Why?" was the only question that followed.
"I don't know," Badri said firmly, trying desperately to keep all emotion out of his voice. It was becoming more difficult. "I do not honestly know, sir."
"You admit that you were the one to kill Corporal Iscom Rigil?" the Major confirmed.
"Yes."
"And were you the one who injured Private Chertan Brash?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," Badri repeated.
For a moment, the Major seemed to flail for a question, only coming up with, "What was in your mind at the time?"
"I… I wanted to die," Badri said clearly. "I had given Rigil an electromagnetic pulse generator earlier that morning, and the one thing I wanted was to get my hands on it and detonate it."
"Was this thought before or after you attacked the Corporal?"
Badri took a moment to run back through events, but he knew what had happened. "After, sir," he said. "There was no time to think before."
"So that did not influence the reason for his death?" he Major asked.
"Not to the best of my knowledge, sir."
"Did this… feeling change later?" he asked, still somewhat beached for questions.
"No," said Badri.
"What about directly before Private Yuo detonated the EMP?"
"I was…" Badri tried to think of the right word, but all he could come up with was, "Happy. And damn grateful."
"Did you have any regrets after the incident?" the Major asked.
(If any of you are going to regret this, don't bother coming. I can't have that kind of doubt on the team, not for a mission as reckless and dangerous as this. Private?)
"Sergeant?" the Major prompted.
(Sir, I was the one who suggested this lunacy. There's nothing I regret. Unless we plan to just stand around talking.)
"Regrets, sir?" Badri asked, pulling himself out of his thoughts. The memories were… unexpected. His old voice seemed to reverberate strangely in his mind.
"Are you proud of what you did?"
"No, sir," Badri answered, although there was no connection to regret in his mind. What did he regret?
"So you do regret what happened?" the Major asked.
"Only what I did, sir. Not what happened to me," Badri said, letting as little misery into his tone as possible.
The Major finally relented. "I have no more questions, sir."
"Sergeant Emras, you may return to your seat."
He stumbled more than walked back to his seat. He was still lost in thoughts of the past, so the events around him only floated through his head in bits and pieces, none of which were particularly important.
"Doctor Riaah Le'eth, MCD."
Riaah had been called up. She was going to tell them how it wasn't his fault, that he should be forgiven for what he had done, that he hadn't really been the one to do it.
"You have been working for the Republic Military…"
Lies, all lies. He had done it, it was his hands that had killed Iscom.
"…entire career…"
He was guilty of everything. He should have stopped himself. Since he didn't, there were two possibilities. Either he had done it, and he was guilty of the murder, and should be punished accordingly. Or he had not been in control of his body, as Riaah so claimed, and someone else had been controlling him from afar, in which case he was guilty as being the weapon of murder. In that case, how was he different from a droid, reprogrammed to do its master's bidding, used as a tool to point at a target and shoot on command? Nothing she tried to tell him made any sense.
"…Dantooine was my first post as a facility head."
The name of the accursed planet did cut through his thoughts. That was where it had all started, this pathetic, sorry excuse for a trooper had woken up for the first time with machines in his head…
"…Sergeant Carthers was under your care when he committed suicide?"
"Yes."
He was. He was there, in the room, talking to him. Soen was in the next room when he had…
"And did you not attempt to restrain or sedate him?"
There had been chaos, they had sedated Badri to keep him out of the loop, but he already knew, he had seen it in Soen's eyes earlier, he had already known.
"We tried, sir. We damn well tried, but I guess you train your men too well."
Too well. Well enough that they could only bring themselves down. Soen had. The EMP had been Badri's own plan, his device in case everything went wrong, and even Iscom couldn't pull it off. He had nearly beaten all three of them, he had come so close to murdering Brash, to murdering his entire team without even a blaster.
"…findings in the records of…"
Maybe they should think about that the next time they trained a cyborg. There was no one who had been able to match his physical strength on the team. If he hadn't set it up, all three of them would be dead. He would have murdered all of them. He could have.
Badri pushed back his chair and walked out.
