Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-One

Reasons to Believe In

General Malcolm Reed

I awaken gently to the sound of hushed voices.

Only Trip is actually in the room with me but he's carrying on a video conference with Miguel and Charlie, and it seems to have been going on for a little while. Presumably it's about me – I hardly think he'd be discussing anything else here, though I suppose some domestic Tucker emergency might have arisen while he was visiting – so I lie low and listen. Undoubtedly if he was beside me he'd see the readouts that indicate I'm back in the land of the living, but he's across the room, and so he misses the information that might otherwise have clued him in that I can hear every word he's saying. Yes, I realise it's not polite to eavesdrop, but find me a better way of finding out what people really think as opposed to what they tell you to your face. I didn't get to be Head of Imperial Security without listening in to other people's conversations, and quite a few times I discovered the participants had inconvenient intentions for me personally (mostly along the lines of 'come on, let's kill the little bastard'), so it was often worth the effort.

Besides, Miguel should be able to clearly see the readouts on the board above my head, and if he is inattentive or doesn't think it's worth mentioning, that's hardly my fault, is it?

Trip is sounding mildly impatient. "Look, Daddy, I'm not askin' for anything he's told you in confidence. I'm just tryin' to figure out where we stand now. Can you at least confirm for me that his problems started a long time ago and this stabbin' is just the most recent incident?"

Well, he should know that for himself, I think with a pang of annoyance. I may not have told him about the windflowers, but I suspect he's divined that I suffered something of that nature when I was very young based on things I have apparently said when I was 'out'. One of these days I may get around to telling him (and it's occurred to me that really, the sooner the better), but if I want him to know, I'll tell him.

Charlie, however, justifies the faith I've put in him. "Son, all I can tell you is this: Think about how you would want a complete stranger to treat Bert, or Sam, or Miguel, if they'd been through what you know Malcolm has experienced, an' do that."

"But that doesn't answer my question, Daddy."

"Too bad."

Thwarted, Trip turns to his brother-in-law for support. "Miguel, can you help me out here?"

The slight pause tells me Salazar is weighing the moral considerations and picking a way through the ethical minefield to come in on his side. "Look, Dad, nothing the general's said to you is protected under any kind of professional confidentiality – you're not a trained counselor – and what Trip's askin' for wouldn't necessarily be considered confidential anyway."

"No, I'm not a counselor, son, but I'm not counselin' him. Never tried it. I'm just listenin', an' as long as he sees fit to trust me, I guess the only qualification I need is the ability to hear what he says. An' by the way," his voice sharpens, "you should both be ashamed of yourselves for tryin' to get me to give up what he's told me just because I'm not a professional."

I know from our private conversations that Charlie has a great deal of respect for Ginny and what she has helped me accomplish, – more than once he has suggested I discuss something with her after talking it over with him – but the derisive tone he uses now tells me as plain as any words that he does not appreciate the value of his friendship being discounted by his lack of a degree.

"It seems to me your so-called professional ethics are designed with loopholes in mind, an' I can understand that. A patient tells you he plans to hurt or kill himself or someone else, you need to be able to disclose enough information to force him to get the help he needs an' to protect anyone he might be plannin' to hurt. But my personal ethics are absolute, an' so should yours be.

"Now, Trip, Malcolm shared a lot of secrets with me. I gave him my word that they would stay with me, an' that's how it's gonna be! As much as the two of you have been through in the past year or so, you should be able to talk to him about this and get all the answers you need."

Trip's been leaning forward in his chair, and now sits back with a look of frustration. "Daddy, if he's entertainin' any thoughts of revenge, he's just gonna tell me what I wanna hear," he argues.

"Then maybe you should ask Liz how she feels about it," Miguel suggests.

"She's in love with him! Of course she's gonna say she trusts him."

Charlie again: "Maybe that should tell you somethin'."

I hear a noise from Trip that might be profanity he doesn't dare speak to his father's face, even at this distance.

"Oh, she's so damned happy he's alive an' so guilty over what she's done she wouldn't think twice about believin' him if he says he's forgiven her," he dismisses the suggestion. "An' his relief at still findin' himself among the livin' is probably enough to hold his temper in check for a little while. So, it might be all bluebirds of happiness an' unicorns shittin' rainbows right now, but what happens in a few weeks, when he's back up an' about an' realizes she gutted him like a fish over a faked message that she didn't even give him the courtesy of askin' him about?

"Do I need to confine him to quarters an' put him under guard again?"

I'd like to see him bloody try! Now that I've been back in action, there are people who will come looking for me sooner rather than later, and my being confined will make me a target.

"Does Liz need a protective detail?" he continues. "How can I be sure he's really forgiven her an' isn't just too weak an' tired at the moment to build up enough steam to blow his stack?"

Oh, for fuck's sake. I've heard enough.

"Perhaps you should try asking me," I suggest.

If I didn't know how much it would hurt, I'd laugh at the very long, awkward pause.

"Well, I guess I ought to be goin'," Trip says. "I love you guys."

The other two take their turns saying goodbye to each other with several expressions of affection, and I'm touched – even despite my indignation with him – when Miguel warmly admonishes me, "Take care of yourself, General."

Finally, it's just Charlie on the other end. Trip swings the monitor so he can see both of us, and he's sitting back in the chair in his study with his arms crossed, as if sitting in judgement over some family dispute in the home.

"Trip, Malcolm, after all the obstacles the two of you have overcome, I'm sure you can work this out, so do it.

"Trip, you're bein' a little paranoid – not without reason, I'll grant you, but son, you have to start lettin' go of some of that fear. It's not fair of you to make Malcolm start back at square one every time he has reason to get mad. If you only trust him when it's smooth sailin', can you honestly say that you trust him at all?

"Malcolm, start out by acceptin' that Trip has reason to be paranoid about you. Then give him a little credit for tryin' to figure out where your head is at before he started puttin' restrictions on you or assignin' protection to Liz. He wants to give you the benefit of the doubt, but he has to work his way around a lot of history to do that.

"Now, the next time either one of you talks to me, I expect to hear how y'all have worked this out. Is that clear?"

Almost in unison, Trip and I reply, "Yes, sir."

"All right, then. I love you boys. Be kind to each other."

This isn't the first time since I've moved to the station that Charlie has signed off with an expression of affection, but to be included so naturally in such a statement as an equal to his own biological, first-born son hits me on an entirely different level. I can't believe he would have said that if he wasn't sincere. If he didn't mean it, he'd have expressed his love for his son and then offered me a polite goodbye or something similar.

This is another of those moments when it feels as if the entire world has shifted.

"Look, Malcolm, I..."

I put my hand up. "I need a minute," I say gruffly. Something else I've learned from Ginny. In emotionally volatile situations, it's all right to admit when I'm not ready to forge ahead, and to give myself time to sort my thoughts and feelings out before going any further. She framed it as making sure all my weapons are primed and ready and where they should be before I start a fire-fight, and that made sense; even if I'm not actually planning to fight, I'll be more effective in any situation if I'm settled and ready for it.

To his credit, Trip waits quietly.

Charlie really meant it all those months ago, just after I'd spewed out all the horror I'd been holding in for most of my life, when he'd offered me a place as an honorary Tucker. And when he'd agreed to foster me, to teach me and treat me as one of his own, he'd really meant that, too.

It's not that I'd disbelieved it. I did believe it. But there's an abyss of difference between accepting something as a mental construct and experiencing it as an established fact; it's the difference between believing that a thick sheet of Plexiglas suspended above a hundred-metre drop will bear your weight, and actually stepping onto it and finding it doesn't shatter under you.

It will take time for that discovery to establish itself as part of one of the few positive certainties of my world-view – it's got more than enough negatives – but in the meantime, I have to deal with Trip. And I think he already knows I'm justifiably pissed off with him, but it'll probably be better if I present the various grounds of my indignation in bullet points rather than a generalised and vitriolic tirade.

I grope for the bed control to cautiously raise the head end a bit. If I'm going to glare at him I don't want to be giving myself a neck-ache while I do it, and I reckon if I'm careful my middle will stand the pressure. Then, when I can see him without craning and I've arranged the bullet points neatly, I start.

"Firstly, stop using hyperbole to make a point! Liz stuck me, one time, but she did not slit me from neck to groin and 'gut me like a fish' as you so eloquently put it. I don't deny that what she did was a bad thing, and I think she tried to do a good job of it, but I will not have you making it worse with your poetic licence.

"Secondly," admit the counter-argument has validity, "your father is right, you have reason to be paranoid. I'm nothing if not a realist, so I can't hold that against you. You've no need to apologise."

"Thank you, Mal," he says quietly. "I appreciate that."

"Thirdly, I am, how did you put it? 'Too weak an' tarred at the moment'…" he chuckles at my impersonation "…to show you how hurt and angry I am, but not at Liz. I'm pissed off at you, Commodore,for going behind my back and getting Miguel to gang up with you on Charlie to pressure him to tell you about the things I've confided in him." Be honest about what you feel and why.

He hedges. "I never asked him for specifics."

"That doesn't matter," I reply, keeping my voice under control so he won't start listening to the tone rather than the words. "You asked for his judgment of me. From Day One, I have felt like I could tell him anything, and he wouldn't judge me for it or betray my confidence. Had you succeeded in getting him to tell you what you wanted to know, you would have damaged both my relationship with him and my relationship with you, irreparably; and if you don't already know it, I'll tell you now that you and I wouldn't have anything like the friendship we do if he hadn't been there for me."

He mulls over what I've said and eventually nods. "Yeah, I reckon you have a point there."

"Good." When you have communication going, clear out the grudges. Don't keep anything bottled up to build up more resentment. "Then finally, yes, I appreciate that trust is a two way street, but that doesn't mean you get to make a U-turn every time you're worried about how I might react to something." I'm doing my best to sound firm, but it's taking more effort than I expected; the hurt and anger want to get in on the act, and if I let them it will just force him to throw up defensive walls. "I didn't do all that work with Ginny, learning to communicate, learning to trust, learning to be honest about my feelings, learning to cope with them – exactly as I'm doing right now – just to have you go behind my back. You've had my trust, probably for longer than you might imagine, and you've said I have yours. So, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. If you want to know what's going on with me, you talk to me. Me, not anyone else!"

"All right then," he takes the invitation, "tell me how I can be sure you've forgiven Liz. You asked me this morning if you could see her. You said you'd forgiven her. How can I be one hundred percent certain you won't have second thoughts when you're feelin' better an' decide to get back at her?"

I consider his question, and realise I have to be completely honest with him. He may not like what I have to say, but I've told him to ask me and if he does what I've told him to, that puts a duty on me to tell it like it is, not like what he wants to hear.

"You'll never know with one hundred percent certainty," I shrug. "You're not inside my head, and I think we've established that you never will be. That's where trust comes in. Sooner or later, you're going to have to take me at my word. Would it help if I tried to explain why I forgave her?"

He nods slowly. "I reckon it would," he admits. "Though I never would have thought of askin' because I never would have dreamed you'd actually tell me, so you'll understand that I'm a bit skeptical that you'd offer."

"Fair enough," I concede. "I daresay I'd better make it good, then."

I have to think about it for a minute. Fortunately for him, I've already done a hell of a lot of thinking about this, so I only need to sort around a bit to decide what actually needs to be said.

There's so much I could tell him, about how in the aftermath of the day of the windflowers, I was so ashamed and humiliated that I'd felt unworthy and undeserving of love. Maybe if the truth had come out then and there, at least the process of law would have shown me I hadn't deserved what had been done to me, that it was wrong and other people cared. But Sallis's father had had enough clout to ensure the whole thing was hushed up, that my parents never knew what had happened, and the one teacher who'd taken my side was very shortly moved elsewhere so I was alone in a school where I was an object of ridicule and scorn. Even Christopher, my nearest equivalent to a friend, soon disappeared, and I was left to turn in on myself, groping for anything that would restore my shattered self-respect.

Baulked of love, baulked even of friendship, I'd convinced myself that revenge would be a satisfactory substitute. Other than the effort required to pass the exams necessary to fuel my ambitions for a career, I'd devoted all my energies to making everyone around me too afraid to even think of hurting me again. The girls in my school proved particularly productive in that respect: they were easy to terrify as well as delectable providers of sex. The more terrified they were the more thrilling I found them, because that was power, power I'd had none of when I'd been held face downwards on the turf. And so I learned that sex and fear were inextricably linked, a belief that followed me my entire career: when you could fuck someone you had power over them, and that power made them afraid. If the simple act of rape didn't make them frightened enough (and it was so common in the Fleet that many people pretty well accepted it as par for the course), I soon learned how to get into their heads as well as their bodies. Once I became powerful enough to be able to disregard small matters such as leaving evidence of my activities, I discovered the joys of erotic asphyxia – talk about combining business with pleasure! I became expert at it, so much so that the sensation of traumatising a victim was often actually more euphoric than ejaculating into them.

Later, when the Triad came into being, I thought Em and Alpha had loved me because I'd somehow earned it – by then, I don't think I was capable of framing the idea that I could deserve it. And even there, fear was an element. All three of us had power, and often our sexual encounters played at forcing each other to submit (a game played very cautiously indeed when Alpha was on the receiving end, but somehow that made it more exciting: like kissing a rattlesnake). That was what made the final denouement so utterly devastating for me on an emotional as well as a physical level; a lover's game had become brutal reality, and exposed the illusion behind my world for what it was.

Then I woke to find myself a mental, physical and emotional ruin in the hands of a man who wanted me for something and, robbed of the end I'd accepted and even welcomed, I had to look around at the wreckage of myself and try to assemble out of it some kind of identity that could allow me to go on. Somewhere in the middle of it I had to come to terms with the fact that I hadn't 'earned' love at all, and how devastating it was to find out I hadn't, because I couldn't, because love isn't something one earns; and on top of that, somehow I had to learn to believe that Liz loved me for absolutely no reason at all and in spite of some very good reasons to hate me. I certainly hadn't earned it; I definitely didn't deserve it. But despite my long cynicism, my determination to resist a fact for which I could find no basis in logic could only last for so long.

I had to deal with a lot of disruption to that belief when she stabbed me. But I've made a start. And somehow I've come through all the hurt with the belief intact, and it's something I can't let go of.

And I think that's an answer he'll believe.

"She loves me, Trip," I say at last, sighing. "I'll be damned if I know why, but she does. In the past, I gave her more than enough reasons to want to kill me, and she's had lots of opportunities to do so before now; but she didn't. She loved me instead.

"Now, if she can love me in spite of everything I did to her in the past, then I have to assume that whatever she was told must have been pretty fucking convincing to get her to attack me the way she did, so I can't blame her for being taken in. Then, when she did it, she offered me the knife in plenty of time for me to take her with me if I wanted. As angry and as hurt as she was, she didn't want to live without me, Trip. She still loved me.

"How do I shit all over a gift like that? How do I not forgive her?"

There's a long silence while he thinks things over. I feel no obligation to fill it. At this point, he either believes me or he doesn't; there's nothing more I can say to convince him. Strangely enough, I'm OK with that. If he needs to put me under guard or assign a protective detail to Liz for a while, so be it. Doubtless my equanimity has a lot to do with the fact that he's acting out of a concern for Liz's wellbeing, though I dare say, once I'm feeling stronger I will probably object strenuously to any excessive or obsessive precautions; but for now…whatever lets him sleep at night.

But in addition, being incarcerated here, so nearly the victim of an assassination attempt I didn't foresee, has given me time to think about how Trip would have coped if it had succeeded.

I'd like to think he'd have done well enough. But there's one major factor in the game he's not aware of, and although I've told my family, I've talked to Ginny and Charles about it (though the last was effectively involuntary), and I've even told Liz, I still haven't told him. And it's more than time I did.

I told him just after our meld that something had happened to me, that both Alpha and I were put through some cruel form of conditioning, though the outcome for each of us was different. But at the time my feelings were far too raw for me to go into the gory details. After I'd told everyone else, you'd think it would be easy by now. But it isn't. Even now it isn't.

I know he's not going to be happy, especially after he was so honest with me about the events of his past. But then again, though I know he went through some difficult times during his young life, the mental and emotional trauma of being turned into one of the Pack isn't quite on the same level. Once I'm through getting this off my chest, I'm not at all sure what he'll think of me - even apart from that I've been far less honest with him than I've claimed to be. As professional a front as Ginny kept up when I told her, I know exactly what she thought: she wondered if I was sane.

"I have something I need to tell you," I say levelly. "Take a seat. This is going to take a while."

He looks at me, but then swings a chair over to the bedside and sits down on it. It doesn't escape me that he crosses one leg high over the other - a slightly defensive posture.

"You've wondered what I talked to your father about, and why I've never been able to confide in you. At a guess, you wondered why I trusted him with confidential information when I'd never clapped eyes on him before, but after all the work we've done together, I wouldn't do the same for you."

He shifts a little uncomfortably, then nods. "I wasn't tryin' to be nosy for the sake of it, Mal. Like I said to Daddy just now, I just wanted to understand what made you tick."

"Understandable. Unfortunately, as you've probably noticed, I have … scars. Things that made me what I was, or at least set me on the road to it." I look down at my hands and watch them tighten. "I would never have confided in your father if I'd been in my right mind. Unfortunately, when I came to that evening in the Bunker, I was much more mentally vulnerable than you could have had any reason to suspect.

"The … incident … when your father confronted me essentially broke my mind. The defences I'd constructed broke apart. I … there were things inside me, things that were poisoning me. It was like a pustule being punctured; all the mess inside just came pouring out. I couldn't stop it, I couldn't even control it.

"I told him about Sallis."

"The guy you did that Lingchi thing on." Trip's face is immobile.

"Yes. When I was six years old, he and five of his mates found me alone, outside the school grounds. They took turns to rape me. They filmed everything, and shared the video around the school.

I see the penny drop - at a guess he's suspected something traumatic lay at the root of my hatred against the world - but I forge onward; I'm not asking for pity, it will simply delay my getting this off my chest, and now I've started I need to get it done.

"I didn't tell anyone what had happened. It only came out because I'd been internally injured. I passed out from shock the next morning, and to cut a long story short, when I woke up in the hospital I was coerced into keeping my mouth shut - to save my parents' humiliation. As well as the school's reputation, of course," I add with bitter irony. "They didn't actually say that, but I was quite bright enough to work it out for myself.

"Up to that point, I suppose you'd describe me as a bit of a nerd. Small, quiet, shy - good at the academic stuff. If you can believe it, I was bullied until I worked out how to run and hide. But after that, I was through running, though I got very good at hiding.

"Hiding gave me power. Power to find out things I could use against people. Power to sneak up on people. Power to make them afraid of me.

"Shortly before I left school, one of the six came back to give a lecture. I'm sure you can imagine what an opportunity that was for me."

"You killed him," he says steadily.

"My first murder. I'd already become a rapist and a blackmailer. I knifed him to death, I stabbed him over and over again, and I licked his blood off the blade."

I know this freaked him out when I did it to Kane. I watch him swallow. Part of me has fallen back into my Pack persona, and inwardly my lip curls; he wasn't there.

"Over time, I managed to track down four of the other five. I killed three of them. The fourth disobligingly killed himself before I could secure him, but I couldn't get hold of Sallis.

"During this time, I underwent the conditioning I told you about. It had … consequences. I've never told you about the details, but it made me part of a … a family. A family that's not fully human any more. We call ourselves Pack."

And then I explain, about the mind meld with V'Rel, about the meeting with Alpha, about the Triad. About how the Pack are distributed among the MACOs, and the core source of my control. About how we interact, how we rely on each other and compete with each other, and how the death of the other two members of the Triad left me at the apex of power in the Pack - the new Alpha.

He listens, mostly in silence, only interrupting when he wants to clarify something. His brow darkens when I mention being unfaithful to Liz, but he doesn't say anything - yet, at least.

"You had no idea what a risk you were taking when you impersonated me," I end, sighing. "A good proportion of the MACOs you were talking to were Pack officers. If they'd suspected anything, they'd have been in here like rats up a drainpipe, trying to kill me while I was weak."

"I must've done an even better job than I thought," he jokes, though it's clear he's hugely disturbed.

"Fortunately for both of us, you did." I lay my head back on the pillow; so much talking has exhausted me, but I feel oddly clean, as if the confession was something I needed more than I thought.

He's quiet for a while, mulling things over. "Are there any of these - Pack people - on board Jupiter Station?"

I open my eyes again. "Austin Burnell."

"Your deputy? And you say at the first sign of weakness he'll try to kill you?"

"At the first chance of achieving power, yes." I smile slightly. "There's a difference.

"Clearly, the first time we met he saw that I was physically reduced. He could easily have attacked me then and if he had he'd have killed me. But other factors made it preferable for him to hold off, and so far those factors continue to operate."

"So why hasn't he just walked in here and finished you off?" he demands.

"I think this might be a rather public place to do it," I reply with a grin. "It's no use disposing of me if he's marched straight off to trial for murdering the Head of Imperial Security. Even Pack can't get round that obstacle.

"If he gets his chance and everything lines up, he'll take it. Until then, I have to make sure at least one thing doesn't line up - and that he doesn't feel any overwhelming cause, or have any incontrovertible way, to take me down."

"Jeez, Mal!" He's staring at me. "You know he's behind you and you treat it like it's some kind of game?"

I look back at him and my grin has frozen into a rictus. "It's not a game, Trip. It's what all of us were turned into when they put us down there. I can't get away from it, he can't get away from it.

"I know it probably gives you the creeps, but trust me on this. I've played this 'game' for years and I'm still alive. The thing that came closest to taking me out wasn't a Pack attack at all, it was a Human woman, and that's why it nearly damn well worked."

He shakes his head. "I'm gonna have to think about this."

"I'd imagine," I say equably. "If you want to talk about it any more, well - I'm not going anywhere for a while."

He pauses a bit. Then, "Mal, there's something I think I need to get off my chest to you."

I wasn't expecting that, and I look at him warily. "Go on."

"When we played that recording, Liz wasn't the only one who believed it. I did too."

Ah. Yes, that's a bit painful. "For how long?"

"Till Austin suggested checkin' if it was genuine. I guess it was the shock, but I … I should've known better. I should've trusted you. I'm sorry."

I don't reply immediately. This too will have to be processed, and though I know I'll get around to forgiving him - perhaps knowing I will is the first step towards it - I have mental adjustments to make, and it will take time before the realisation no longer twinges. But at least his honesty is valuable, however painful; he could have painted himself as a gilded hero, but we're all flawed in the end. And if the spoof was good enough to roll Liz over, I suppose I can hardly blame him for being taken in; regardless of the work I've put into making him believe in me, how can I take offence when there was a real possibility that it was genuine, that I'd been stringing him along all this time like the bastard I've been up till now? It's the crucial difference between faith and knowledge. He has faith in what I've become, but all too much knowledge of what I was.

"Thank you for telling me that," I say at last. "I appreciate you being honest."

It takes a bit of an effort to fumble my hand out towards his, but he takes it and squeezes. What we've achieved is too important to chuck out on the strength of a few momentary doubts; that would be playing straight into Hernandez's grubby little claws, and I'm not handing her that victory.

There's another little silence, which ends with a soft grunt, and then he grumbles, "All right, you've made your point as regards Liz. I'm leavin' a guard on your door until you're fightin' fit again, for your own protection, but no extra security when you're with her."

I only realize I've begun to doze when my eyes pop open in surprise. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," he tells me. "An' about me pesterin' Daddy…"

I wave him off. "I'm too bloody tired to get into that right now. And chances are, by the time I feel up to yelling at you properly for it, I'll have got over it. So you might want to quit while you're ahead."

I hear a soft chuckle. It seems my eyes have drifted shut again.

"All right, I'll do that." I feel a gentle pat on my shoulder, and quietly the servomotors engage to take the top part of the bed back down to horizontal. "Sleep well."

I think the words thank you, but I'm not at all certain I manage to say them aloud. I never hear him leave my room.

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