A Terran in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire

16 Terran Standard Years Ago, Fourth Quarter

Alan Chandrasekhar, once again, enjoyed the unpleasant experience of regaining consciousness when he wasn't aware he'd lost it in his first place. As was usually the case, he woke up in a medical bed. Less usual was his right hand—it was shaking at the wrist, some sort of tremor that extended up to his elbow. While staring at his shaking hand, he noticed he was handcuffed to the railing along the edge of the mattress.

Uh oh.

It took a while, but he deduced that almost two weeks had passed. The Battle of Liberty Bell was over; indeed, the whole war was over. The Terrans had lost Liberty Bell, and the Ctarl-Ctarl had taken something on the order of two million soldiers, sailors and officers prisoner. They'd divided the attacking force, with the mighty 181st Royal Taskforce taking the sub-ether lane into the Sol System. They were poised, as Alan feared, to march on Terra.

But then they didn't.

"I'm in trouble, aren't I?" he finally asked.

He certainly was. Instead of marching on Terra, the Ctarl-Ctarl had abruptly sued for peace. The reasons were not entirely clear, and certainly, they were none of his business. When the Ctarl-Ctarl left Liberty Bell, as per their agreement, they had left him behind in the hospital they'd taken him to after the attack.

What had happened was that Alan was the target, or among the targets, of a Terran suicide attack: a child had walked right up to a Ctarl-Ctarl tank, and blown herself up, along with about ten kilograms of military-grade high explosive hexogen. Dawid Clan-Clan had been indoors, unaffected. The Ctarl-Ctarl outside with him suffered mild to moderate burns, thanks to their combat armor and the distance the explosive had been detonated at. Alan was only kept alive by his personal light shield: he'd need thirty-three stiches across his body and some reconstructive surgery. He had also slept for 13 days.

Now he was a 'person of interest', not a prisoner-of-war. As a P.O.I., he was confined to his room, with a Space Forces sailor with a rifle at the door and a civilian official, a woman with a nice suit and a purse.

"Alan Chandrasekhar?"

He tried to nod from his bed. She didn't call him 'Captain'. Not a good sign.

She checked the monitoring equipment. "Get some more rest. Don't worry about this."

He stared at the woman, struggling to stay awake. "I knew you were Terran when I saw that," he said, pointing weakly.

"Saw what?"

He pointed at her bag. "C-C women don't carry purses. Not sure why, they just don't." Then he blacked out again.

When he was feeling better, his first wonder was why the war had ended. He'd learned how close the enemy came to Old Earth from overhearing conversations during his conscious hours, the same way he'd learned that the Ctarl-Ctarl had demanded the Terran states return to the negotiating table, or else.

This was not a vacation. When he was able to stand under his own power, he was dragged from the hospital in the cratered ruins of Jefferson City, on a sealed shuttle to Terra. There was no explanation given. He went directly to St. Petersburg, the seat of Pyotr Imperiya on Earth and home to the Terran Admiralty. Surrounded by men in suits and sunglasses, feeling quite like a criminal, he stared up classical yellow and white façade of the Russian Admiralty Building. The last time he'd been here, he was being briefed on his assignment in the Ctarl-Ctarl Empire. Now he was here for God knows what reason.

"Before my 'surprise' interrogations, please, could you have the decency to tell me how the war ended? Even if I'm not anymore, I was an officer," he pleaded. He could barely stand and walk under his own power, and was sure he looked extra pathetic.

Finally, his case officer from Liberty Bell told him: Zubayr Hashiyo Tovarl-Tovarl, the grandfather and prime minister of the Ctarl-Ctarl Empress, was sick. Very sick. In fact, he almost certainly had a brain tumor the size and density of a cricket ball behind his left eye. The Space Forces knew this because of undercover work by sleeper agents like Alan that had worked deep in home, before the whole program collapsed. Lord Zubayr had had it for decades, years before his granddaughter reached adulthood and ascended to the throne. In the same period, he'd served as the previous monarch as Home Secretary, Foreign Minister, Interior Minister, a member of parliament, and vice-primate of the Ctarl-Ctarl State Faith.

For not entirely clear reasons, the elder statesman had concealed his condition for decades. Years later, as a senior officer, Alan pieced together the event as best he could: when his secretary informed him of the fall of Liberty Bell, Zubayr, then posing for an updated portrait in full military garb, nodded and plainly told his aide, "I have a terrific headache." He collapsed; it'd taken thirty years, and he'd finally had his first stroke, a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

The charade was lifted. The prime minister was hospitalized against his objections, which took considerable effort to make since he also lost most ability to speak. His deputy assumed the office. It became apparent that Lord Zubayr had used his clout to mediate and postpone the effects of the coming Succession Crisis. With him gone, the issue rose to the surface, even past the successful war effort.

The Ctarl-Ctarl, or at least their government, were suddenly very, very afraid: an important civil and military leader was now an invalid. Indeed, the monist nature of Ctarl-Ctarl philosophy meant this past thirty years of his decisions were called into question. The Ctarl-Ctarl, unlike Terrans, did not assume binary separation between the physical and mental world, as Terrans took for granted. What was his doing, and what was the brain tumor? They forced the Empress to leave the frontline indefinitely and submit to a litany of medical tests. The opposition and the moderates in the ruling party came together and forced an abrupt policy change: offer the Terrans peace, with almost a complete return to pre-war borders, and very substantial war reparations. The Ctarl-Ctarl could probably consider the interest payments alone a windfall.

The Sol System was going to be lost in matter of days, or however long it took for the Ctarl-Ctarl to arrive in force. The unified legislature jumped on the opportunity. And thus, the war was over, with Alan's problems already beginning.

Among the Space Forces officers recalled to Earth, there were a few who knew their history, including Yamaguchi. An old colleague of his, Riker, by coincidence ran into Alan for a few minutes the day before the hearings began.

"They're doing this in secret. Or at least, they're trying to."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it sir?" Alan asked.

"I wouldn't say 'good'. More like Trotskyist Case Hearings than the Moscow Show Trials."

Alan didn't really understand, but it didn't sound good either way. He was sure Novikov would have known what Riker meant, but he was fairly certain the Red Guards officer was among the mountains of dead on Liberty Bell. Either way, he went before the committee.

"You are Captain Alan Shekar Chandrasekhar, former-commander of the Razor 7, a ship in the Ninth Expeditionary Fleet?" The committee consisted of a few members of the admiralty, the Space Forces military collegium, and some legislators. Alan was worried by how high-up his accusers seemed to be.

"Yes, yes I am, sirs."

The admiral questioning him surprised him. "Aren't your middle and surnames...?"

He felt a little relieved. "Well, Admiral, sir, my father has a very pervasive sense of humor."

There was a chuckle among the committee who got the joke, and for a second, Alan actually thought the hearing would end well. Hadn't the war ended, after all? Whatever concessions the Ctarl-Ctarl got, weren't they better the vanquishing of entire Terran Empires? They've already given back Liberty Bell. The damage, eventually, could be repaired, with a little hard work and perseverance.

Right?

Alan was wrong. And the abrupt tone change of the committee made sure he knew it. What surprised him was how indirect the prosecution was—they gave a long list of crimes and wrongdoings, but they never accused him personally of anything. It was always someone he knew, someone above, below, or next to him in the chain-of-commander, someone on his ship. The list itself was daunting:

Failing to organize a proper defense.
Failure to relieve the heroic planetary defense troops.
Failure to support forces making active headway against the enemy.
Failure to report the situation to the appropriate commands.
Failure to correctly judge the strength of arriving enemies.
Failure of over-reporting enemy assets.
Failure of underreporting enemy assets.
Failure to avoid collusion with the enemy.
Failure to meet the high standards and traditions of the United Space Forces.
Failure to take proper advantage of clearly evident enemy weaknesses.
Failure to assess enemy weaknesses in the first place.
Failure to regroup during a retreat.
Failure to make full and proper use of new tactical weapons.
Failure to make full and proper use of conventional weapons.
Failure in the sacred duty to resist.

These were things that Alan couldn't even defend himself with, much less any other officers. But they never accused him directly. At a certain point, it almost sounded like Alan was the last competent officer in the entire space forces, the only one who hadn't been a complete and miserable failure at the Battle of Liberty Bell.

Then they held up a document: a copy of the Instrument of Surrender, the same one he has signed in ceremony.

"Can you read the name forth from the top?" the prosecution asked. In a delirium, Alan was about to until he was cut off. "Never mind, that isn't necessary."

They recessed until the next day. Still in a daze, Alan met Yamaguchi while waiting for the hearing to begin: they were being prosecuted together, it seemed. The Minister of the Navy, the highest ranking government official, subordinate only to the legislature and the Terran monarchs, would be there personally.

Alan didn't want to think about it, it made him sick. He had a few brief minutes to deliberate with Yamaguchi, but he could barely think. He wasted his time instead explaining what Riker had told him.

"Very astute of him."

"What did it mean, though?" Alan asked.

Yamaguchi gave one of those wise, supremely-reasonable expressions, like the consigliore in a mobster movie. "You know son, when they prosecuted Tukhachevsky and the other Red Army commanders, they had a disastrous war ahead of them. It probably would have been disastrous either way though. The question became: was that much harder a war worth wiping out any traces of Fifth Column Fascism? It as one they couldn't answer."

He paused to think about it. "So now that the war is over, what purpose does that act serve now?"

Alan had no idea what that meant. He knew that Yamaguchi, before the war, had been on the list to be promoted to the rank of admiral. Was this the sort of thing you studied to get on that list? After this, he'd be lucky if he could be a commercial spacecraft pilot. And Alan, well, he'd be lucky to be employed at all.

The hearing began, led by the entire Admiralty board this time, joined by the Naval Minister. The Naval Minister had less of a flare for the dramatic than the admiral from the day before, and went ahead and began directly accusing them, starting with Yamaguchi. The old man stood there and took it, apparently unfazed.

After a solid five minutes of back-to-back accusations, he finished. "In the end, what I'd like to know—what this hearing has been convened for—is why?"

The Admiralty board stared at Yamaguchi. Suddenly, Alan found himself standing up painfully and clearing his throat as loudly as he could.

"It was me. It was my doing."

"Excuse me?" The Naval Minister asked.

"I did it. The surrender was my idea. I'll confess to everything. Where do I sign?" he said, actually looking around.

"And why would that be?"

An idea popped into Alan's head. "I'm a C-C sleeper agent. I was activated during the Battle of Liberty Bell."

"When?" the admiral from the day before asked.

"I was out of contact with the main force…dozens of times. During then."

"So, when were you recruited?" another asked. "During your time as P.O.W. on Victoria III?"

"Or maybe it was during his time as an occupational military administrator," another said, teasing.

"No, that's stupid. I was recruited when I was sent to the Imperial Homeworld to spy for the Space Forces. Obviously."

The two admirals stopped laughing, and immediately began digging through papers. He continued.

"It was all my idea. I framed Yamaguchi for it. Throw me in prison forever."

The Naval Minister shook his head, than began clapping slowly. "Well…done…Captain," he said, smiling at him. "Well done. Given your dossier, I wouldn't have expected an officer like yourself to be capable of such a selfless act for comrade you barely know. Really outstanding. Maybe living with the C-C for so many years has rubbed off on you," he added sarcastically.

"You don't believe me?"

"We're not stupid, Captain!" the Naval Minister snapped, slamming his fist against the table. Alan jumped, despite himself, as did members of the prosecution. "Incompetent, perhaps, doomed, certainly, but we're not stupid! You think we don't know the situation we're in? The Space Forces couldn't defeat a Corbanite Merchant Fleet right now! A quadrillion Wong worth of military hardware, lost. And forget being caught in bed with pirates, we're practically taking it up the…" the Naval Minister said before cutting himself off. Breathing deeply, he reached into his pocket and took out an inhaler that he used, before composing himself again.

"Your confession is dismissed, Captain," he muttered. "Why do all this?"

Alan shrugged in a very unbecoming manner.

"I'm ordering you…"

"Yamaguchi saved my life," Alan said, half-lying. He didn't know why he said it. "He saved…tens of thousands of lives. In direct conflict with his orders."

He sat back down. "And that's all I have to say," he said, looking at Yamaguchi and shrugging.

The hearing immediately recessed after that. The next few days, he was interrogated alone, thanks to his stunt. He said barely remembered any of it, mostly circular questions that he answered with whatever idea popped into his head. He'd abruptly been overwhelmed by apathy, even the thought of the gallows failed to stir alarm and panic. It'd be all right. So they'd execute him. Maybe they'd torture him a little first, that was a scary thought, but it seemed fairly unlikely. He was still a nobody. He'd already incriminated others, which he felt bad about, but not that bad about. He'd already confess to anything they wanted while sitting in a courtroom at the Admiralty, he couldn't imagine what he'd say if he was threatened with pain. He might go all the way around and start denying things.

It was strange: in a time of happiness of prosperity, he'd been so miserable. Now in an age of misery and suffering, he couldn't care less. He made out his Will, bad luck for any Space Forces man with a family. He left a little money to his parents, enough to bury him or whatever was left of him and settle his affairs, then everything else to his son. Trang Van Minh got his books and notes, assuming the Space Forces didn't seize all of them when he died for whatever reason. If his son really did become a sailor, it was best he didn't have those materials on hand until the right time anyway.

The hearings went on for a week. There was not a concluding hearing, instead, his case worker told him he was free to go. The Space Forces had some other problem, maybe to do with piracy, Alan had no idea. Still in their clean, dark blue uniforms, he and a few other officers, including Yamaguchi, exited to mob that hadn't been there when they arrived. His vision blurry from camera flashes, he crossed through the gap made by two lines of police officers cutting the off from the mostly-Russian speaking crowd of curious onlookers. It was thanks to that crowd that he was able to pick up someone shouting in a language he was more familiar with.

"Captain! Captain Chandrasekhar! Sir, can I speak with you?"

Instinctively, he covered his face with a sleeve and continued onwards. There was a young woman, still a girl really, in the crowd waving at him. "Captain! Please, Captain Chandrasekhar, my name is Raquel Tsukino! I need to speak with you about PARA•SOL!"

Now there was a name he hadn't heard in a while. He ignored her and continued onwards.

"It's about Boto Matsuo-Matsuo, sir!"

That got him to stop.