The Last Stand - Brad Ferguson [12]
There was a handrail there in front of him, designed to be gripped by the nervous and the afraid. The metal of the rail was polished at those two points where one’s hands were most likely to be placed. Nemtar ignored it. He stood easily, outwardly relaxed, his hands clasped behind him as if this proceeding were nothing more significant than a standard lecture on air purification.
Nemtar would probably meet his death today. There was nothing to be done about that, and he accepted the fact.
But he could still try to save his ship.
Presider Hek himself was chairing this board. That was a sure measure of how angry he was. “It was not hard to extrapolate the incoming course of the alien ship, once it was finally spotted by units stationed near the orbit of Ma’ak Unselbe,” he said, continuing his interrogation of Nemtar. “That ship traveled right through your watch area undetected. All six hundred uncloaked meters of it just slipped by you within seventy-two thousand kilometers of your position. Now just how did you and your people manage to miss a thing like that?”
“There was no indication of the presence of the alien ship in our watch sector, Presider,” Nemtar Ship Commander replied calmly. “The sudden appearance of the ship near Ma’ak Unselbe registered on our long-range detectors, as my report indicates. The instant it appeared on our sensor boards, I immediately issued a level-one advisory to the flagship—”
Hek interrupted him. “But by then, Nemtar, the alien ship was one hundred million kilometers sunward of the Fleet and heading straight for Nem Ma’ak Bratuna. Your alert was useless.”
“You have the full transcript of what occurred during that watch, Presider,” Nemtar responded. “Our equipment was operating flawlessly. My people were performing at optimum. As you will see from the transcript, the presence and condition of every single one of our own ships then operating in our watch sector was properly logged and updated throughout the watch.”
The Presider was growing impatient. “The question begs, Nemtar: Why did you and your fellow wizards of detection fail to detect the presence of the alien ship until it was too late?”
“I have no facts to offer, Presider.”
“I see,” Hek said from the darkness. There was silence for a long moment, and then he spoke again. “Return Nemtar Ship Commander to the … holding area.”
Three guards suddenly appeared out of the darkness, their hand weapons at the ready. Nemtar nodded to them almost pleasantly and followed them out of the light and into the surrounding darkness.
The others in the star chamber heard, briefly, the echo of several sets of footsteps in the dark. Then they listened as Nemtar walked on ahead of his guards with a sure and certain stride. They heard him stop and, a moment later, there came the heavy sound of a pressure-tight door shuffing itself closed. Those in the star chamber did not hear anything as the small room behind the door was opened to the hard vacuum of space.
“He was a brave man,” came a new voice. “A pity he had to be remaindered.”
“What do we do about his ship?” someone asked. “A Fleet enforcement scout is standing by.”
“We have found no evidence of procedural errors or system failures in the transcript,” a third voice observed. “Perhaps we need not go the full route this time.”
“I still think these spacings are wasteful,” one of them complained. “We lose nearly four cubic meters of air every time we remainder someone, not to mention the biological material and so forth.”
“Discipline must be maintained,” another