Unravel (23 page)

“No, I don't think it's anything
like
okay,” she said to Lin, and her voice, like Lin's, was shaking.

“The course of justice doesn't depend on what you think is okay.” Elissa turned at the sound of Commander Dacre's words, to see her looking straight at her and Lin, her expression chilly. “Unfortunately for
your
sense of fairness, IPL adheres to a policy of innocent until proven guilty.”

“Oh it
so
does not!” The words came on a wave of heat that blazed through her, like flames bursting from the punctured hull of a spaceship. “IPL's treating
everyone
like they're guilty! You're treating
everyone
like they're criminals! You wouldn't even let Cadan bring the
Phoenix
here, although you can see how useful it would be. With your whole military law thing, it's probably
your
fault everything's gone so crazy! You're treating everyone like criminals so they're
behaving
like criminals, but when it comes to real criminals, people who did horrific things to the Spares, you're all ‘blah blah blah, innocent till proven guilty,' when it's
obvious
they're not innocent.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about,” said the commander. Her voice was as chilly as her expression, and now Elissa realized that everyone was staring at her, that everyone else had gone quiet.

“I can see what you've done to my planet!” she said, holding on to the flare of defiance that had allowed her to talk like that to an official, a
grown-up
. “I can see you're doing it all wrong. People on Sekoia—they
like
keeping the law, they
like
being law-abiding. They don't need curfews and rationing and military law. And those—those people from the facilities—they're not innocent. They're criminals. Not just potential criminals,
real
criminals. They don't deserve special treatment.”

“You'd advocate summary execution, maybe?” said Commander Dacre.

“No,” Elissa said, irritated. “I just don't see why they get
priority
. You could leave them here—like, lock them in the facilities or something—until the people in the most danger have been taken to safety.”

“People in the most danger?” For the first time, the commander laughed. Her eyes still lacked all warmth. “You don't know what happened to the staff they did that to, do you?”

Like I care?
“What?” said Elissa, folding her arms, glaring. The commander was wrong.
IPL
was wrong. If they could only
see
—

“It was one of the aboveground facilities,” said the commander. “We'd reached it, and we were extracting the Spares. We'd been extracting staff, too, up until that point, but as timing got tighter we made the decision to give the Spares priority. So this time—this time only—we left the staff there and locked the place down from outside.”

Her eyes flicked across Lin's face, then across Elissa's. “There was a security breach. A leak. People found out, both that the staff was there and that they couldn't get out. A mob took off from the nearest city.”

Her voice lost the last traces of expression. “The security cameras at the facility were still running, so the people inside saw the mob coming. They couldn't lock any of the doors—external or internal—from inside, but they managed to barricade themselves into the staff lounges. They held out for eighty-two minutes.”

Elissa wrapped her arms around herself. Something prickled up her back, onto her neck. If she could, she would have taken back what she'd said. Not because she hadn't meant it but
because it had led to this story—this story she was all at once 100 percent certain she didn't want to know.
If she's just going to tell me they were killed, I can cope, I don't care. But I don't think they were just killed. I think something worse happened to them, and I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear.

Across the room, Cadan's face was set. Markus was squinting, as if by doing so he could withdraw himself from what he was about to hear.

“The mob tore them to pieces,” said the commander. “Twenty-nine of them. They showed that on the newscasts, too—not the events themselves, but what the place looked like afterward.” Her eyes met Elissa's. “You don't like that IPL's instituted military law? We hadn't, until that point, until we saw what sort of things your
law-abiding
population is capable of. And we have no desire to allow criminals to escape justice. But what happened to the staff in that facility wasn't justice.”

Silence fell, heavy in the room. Elissa felt sick. Thoughts battered against the inside of her head.
But Sekoia
is
law-abiding. It
is.
Things like that don't happen here. People don't form mobs, don't
 . . . Automatically, her eyes squinched closed, as if by shutting them she could shut out the images in her head.

Cadan spoke into the silence, his voice tight with self-control. “Commander, the
Phoenix
is entirely at IPL's disposal to relocate anyone who needs it. But I have to request that IPL allows a crew of volunteers to return the same way. As you say, your forces are overstretched. I've been getting caught up since five this morning, and if you'll give me ten minutes I can explain what we can offer to aid IPL in—”

Commander Dacre turned cold eyes upon him. “Out of the question.”

Flushing, Cadan opened his mouth again, but she held up a hand, cutting him off as effectively as she'd done to Lin.

“Let me finish, please. Your . . . information source”—her eyes turned for a moment toward Cadan's father—“is correct. We are, as you say, overstretched. And if it were just you and your adult crew, we would find you extremely useful.”

She paused for no more than a few seconds. But even that short pause was enough to make Cadan look as if he'd been slapped, enough for Elissa to realize that the commander could have said nothing more angled to make Cadan feel terrible.
If he and the crew had come alone, if he'd refused to take me and Lin, he'd be able to help people now.

For a moment she felt the drag of guilt, familiar, unwelcome, then anger sparked through her.
She said that on purpose. She said that to make him feel bad. However much they disagree with what we've done, she didn't need to say that to him.

It seemed like Commander Dacre didn't mind turning the knife a little either. “If you'd wanted to help,” she said, her voice expressionless, “you should have left your extra passengers on Sanctuary and come back with an entirely adult crew. As it is, you've got two teenage girls—one of whom is still dealing with the aftereffects of a lifetime's imprisonment—and you're expecting us to use them in a situation that's scarcely suitable for untrained adults.”

Another little pause, as vicious as her words, as vicious as the twist of a knife, and the anger flared, bright and hot, within Elissa. “However, as you didn't leave them, IPL is permitting you to use your ship for one relocation journey. Your own family members and your crew, plus a number of already existing candidates for relocation, including the inhabitants of this apartment. Also, of course, your two underage
passengers. But you should understand that's all. Once you get them off this planet”—the merest flick of her eyes left Elissa in no doubt as to whom, specifically, she meant—“you will not be permitted to bring them back.”

Cadan's jaw was rigid. “Are there rules for where I can take my ship after leaving the passengers at Philomel, too?”

“Not as far as IPL is concerned, Captain. Our agreement with the Philomel authorities does ensure that there's a place for you there, should you wish to take advantage of it.” Her voice was still utterly indifferent. “The majority of the refugees have been taken there, of course, so if you still want to . . . help . . . by offering any particular understanding you have, to aid in their rehabilitation, you are all, of course, entirely at liberty to do so.”

Elissa supposed she should feel glad about that, feel that at least they were being given something. If they were condemned to being bundled back off Sekoia, to be the perpetually rootless refugees Lin had talked about, at least they could do one of the things they'd wanted. At least they could try helping the other Spares.

But if it had been meant to pacify them, it was too little, and too late. Commander Dacre had behaved as if she was nothing but contemptuous of Cadan, of the decisions he'd made, she'd spoken as if she blamed him for the decisions that had been made by Elissa and Lin, not by him at all. She'd ignored what they could do—what they could offer. She'd treated them like nothing but kids, out of place and in the way.

I might not have minded before all this happened. When all I knew was living at home, being looked after, being told what to do. But when you've had to do everything I've had to do over the last few
weeks, when you've faced pain and danger and death—no one should be treating you like a child anymore.

And I don't want to go to Philomel
. Already her stomach was clenching, like a spring being wound tighter. The people who'd worked in the facilities were on Philomel. They might be imprisoned, but all the same, sharing the same planet with them felt too close, as if it were a violation to be breathing the same atmosphere.

That's silly. We won't even necessarily be on the same continent.

I don't care. It's not silly.

Her eyes caught Cadan's, and she knew the plea showed in her face.
Don't let her dismiss us like that. Don't give up yet.

“Commander,” said Cadan. “With respect, I don't believe you've got all the details of what we're offering. When I arrived at IPL headquarters, I gave them a full rundown on exactly how we were able to escape from the SFI forces that were sent after us. If it hadn't been for Elissa and Lin and what they can do, my ship would have been blown to pieces before it ever reached Sanctuary. You do have that information, don't you? You do know what they did? And you must have a report from the base, from last night? Lin destroyed two flyers—she probably saved the entire base.”

“I'm aware of both those incidents, yes. However, IPL does not use teenagers as power sources. Or as weapons.” For an instant there was something other than chilly calm in her voice, a tone as if Cadan were forcing her into distasteful proximity with something slimy, stinking of decay.

“Yes, I understand that.” Cadan's voice was full of bitten-down frustration. “But why wouldn't IPL allow said teenagers to volunteer the power they control? No one's been
using
Lin. We're not talking child soldiers here—or Humane
Treatment Act violations. This is voluntary. All along, this has been voluntary.”

Except for me.
Elissa pushed the thought away. That was over. Lin had promised not to do it again. And that wasn't what Cadan was talking about, anyway.

The commander was looking at him as if it were he who was the stinking and decayed thing. “IPL isn't allowing it for the same reason IPL doesn't allow child soldiers, even when they are—supposedly—voluntary.” There was an edge to her voice now. “You're talking about a seventeen-year-old destroying two flyers—taking lives—as if that's acceptable. As if, as long as you were happy to let that happen, we should be too. IPL finds nothing acceptable, Captain Greythorn, in you permitting—
encouraging
—a teenager to kill.”

“Oh for God's sake,” snapped Cadan. “When did you start your combat training, then? Did IPL hold off training you till you turned twenty?”

“That will do! It's not your place to put personal questions to an IPL official—”

But Cadan hadn't finished. “Because I know
I
was in combat training when I was fourteen—just like I would have been if I'd joined the space force of half the planets in the star system.”

“Then you should also know you were being trained for
defense
—”

“And that's what
Lin was doing
! That's what
I
was doing. I killed people in those fights too. Is that okay just because I'm not a teenager anymore, or because I did it with my ship's firepower rather than with electrokinesis?”

“Captain Greythorn, I said that's
enough
. This is not a classroom debate. If you're frustrated by IPL's code of ethics,
perhaps I should remind you that maybe it's a little more stringent than the government you're used to.”

“Whoa,” said Samuel, sotto voce.
“Scorch.”

Sofia giggled, muffled but still audible. And something rippled through the room, an eddy of half-hidden rebellion that reminded Elissa of being back at school. No, not through the whole room—just through the nine twins and Spares.

The grown-ups, too, might be angry and frustrated, but in the glances they shot Samuel's way there was nothing but distracted irritation. Not the delighted, covert amusement that Elissa saw flicker across Lin's, Ady's, Cassiopeia's faces.

What happens if we say we won't go? If we really do rebel, if we force the commander to listen to us?
If the IPL forces were so overstretched, how could they stop them? And with a million more important things to focus on, how much effort were they going to put into trying? Mr. and Mrs. Greythorn might think they should leave—even Ivan and Markus and Felicia might, when they'd been told and
told
how dangerous it was for her and Lin to stay. Could they really
make
them leave, though? Did they have enough power to do that?