By now every guard in the room was looking at them—and they all seemed to be losing patience. Brook’s pulse quickened. There was never a good time to be arrested, but now—with the future of the IES depending on her—was especially bad. “Look,” Brook said, “this is extremely important—I can explain it to you later, but right now—”
Roth laid a hand on her shoulder. “You can explain it to a judge.”
Not in time to save the IES, she couldn’t. Brook’s muscles tensed at Roth’s touch—working for the IES, even as its captain, tended to keep one fit, and she could probably evade these guards, but for what? Ironically, they would track her down with the very security systems she had hoped to exploit, and then she would be charged with evading arrest on top of impersonating a public official.
Brook felt a trickle of defeat seeping into her body. She took a slow breath in and expelled that insidious emotion with her exhalation. The fight wasn’t done until the Emergency Service signed off on that dismantlement order, or she stopped fighting, and neither of those was happening right now—this arrest just added a few more variables to the problem.
Brook raised her arms. “Well then, let’s go.”
Brook was pacing up and down the small holding cell when the door opened. As she turned, her stomach hoped she would see a police officer with her morning meal—instead, she found an even more agreeable sight.
“JP!” Brook’s initial enthusiasm was dampened by his stoic expression. “They wouldn’t let me contact you; what’s going on out there?”
“Let’s go, Captain,” JP said.
Brook leaned out of the holding cell. No police officer accompanied him. “JP, are you breaking me out?”
“No.” He tossed her a skeptical look as he led her out of the cell. “I used a clause of the Emergency Service’s boilerplate employment contract to ensure your maximum sentence was commuted to a token fine, which enabled me to settle the case out of court for a small sum.”
“Oh,” Brook said. “Thanks.”
JP did not answer. They reached the front of the detention center in which Brook had been held and strode out the door into the Meltian sunlight.
Brook frowned. JP always chose his words carefully, but he was never recalcitrant. “What’s going on? What happened to the dismantlement order? Did you find another legal route?”
“The committee has drafted the dismantlement order. Meltian law requires it to be delivered by a Legislature representative, a process which is undoubtedly underway.”
So they did not have much time left. Brook was concerned by JP’s apparent lack of urgency. “And did you find a way to stop them?”
JP stopped in the middle of the brick street in front of the detention center. The bright sunlight glinted off his bald, midnight blue head. “It is difficult to open doors in the legal system when the leader of the organization one represents is in jail.”
Oh. Right. “Sorry about that. I guess we need to come up with a new plan.”
“Your plan, I should hope,” JP said, “is to refrain from repeating the recklessness that resulted in your arrest. My plan is to find new employment.”
JP turned and began to walk away. The defeat that Brook had deflected before now flooded back. She did not care what Charles Griffin or Representative Divar or even Roth the elevator guard thought of her choices. They had their own agendas. But JP had dedicated himself to restoring the IES, even when she made his job difficult. He had come back to help her out, despite the fact that she blatantly violated his code of ethics.
Wait. By “help her out,” she meant that he had sprung her from jail—whether he liked that terminology or not—a feat that she would not have thought possible until he did it. A feat that would have been impossible for her, whether she followed the law in the traditional manner or cast it aside, and which was only possible for JP because of his ability to manipulate that law to his advantage.
“JP, wait!” Brook smiled bitterly—how ironic that JP was the one to walk away when he was the one with the gift they needed to fix this mess. A gift that she only now recognized the value of.
JP stopped, then turned slowly. “If you wish to involve me in another illegal scheme—”
“No. I was wrong not to listen to you the first time.” That got his attention. “You got me out of jail despite the fact that I actually committed the offense. Surely we can find an... opportunity to thwart an order based on a bunch of lies.”
“The two situations are not identical,” JP said.
“I know, but...” All they had to do was obtain a starship—how hard could that be? The IES had acquired a wide variety of vehicles throughout its four-year life, though most of those had been temporarily commandeered to respond to a crisis, and either the vehicles themselves—or, occasionally, compensation for them—had to be returned afterward.
But who was going to bother them to return one of the hundreds of inactive vessels Arriet claimed were in orbit?
“JP,” Brook said. “The IES can legally commandeer ships, right?”
JP inclined his head. “In times of emergency, that is correct, yes.”
Brook flicked a look back toward the detention center. On the roof was a police transport shuttle. “I’d say the dismantlement of the IES is a pretty serious emergency.”
JP looked uncertain. Could he be warming up to the idea? “That is an... unusual, but plausible interpretation, Captain.” His gaze followed hers. “In any case, we would only be able to petition the Emergency Service to contest the order if we acquired a ship large enough to allow us to continue our interstellar operations.”
“Well,” Brook said, “I have it on good authority that there are ‘hundreds’ of those ships in orbit around Meltia. I could get there—if only I had someone to handle the paperwork.”
She spread her arms to indicate that she had nothing to hide. This plan was audacious—but ultimately completely legal. If JP was willing to rethink his departure.
“I believe,” JP said, “that such a task would fall under the purview of your political liaison officer.”
Brook grinned. “Then you’d better tell him that we don’t have all day.”
She dashed back to the glass doors of the detention center, throwing one open with her left hand while she grabbed her IES transceiver with her right.
“We’re with the IES,” she said to the nearest police officer as she sent a query to Arriet. “We’re going to need to borrow your ship.”
The officer gave her a confused look. “Didn’t you just—”
JP produced his IES identification. “Sir, under section one of the Emergency Services Act, personnel of the Meltian Republic Emergency Service, or any sub-organization thereof—”
“Okay, okay!” The officer raised his arms. “Follow me.”
The three of them stomped up a staircase to arrive on the roof of the detention center, where the officer unlocked the transit shuttle and beckoned them inside. He made a move to enter the cockpit of the vehicle, but Brook held up a hand. “We’ll take it from here.”
“Of course, Ma’am. Good luck.” The police officer departed.
At the same time, Arriet picked up Brook’s query, so she tossed the transceiver to JP as she strapped herself into the pilot’s seat. “Put it on the ship’s sound system.”
Brook was no pilot—her job was to give orders to the people who actually flew the Kindred Spirit—but the transport was designed for non-pilot police officers, with a standard throttle-and-stick setup, so she was quickly able to ease it off the ground.