"Strange?"
"You know." She stared at her hands. "Like… they don't…"
Paul felt like a lead weight was settling in his stomach. "They think she did it?"
"No! Uh, well, they're kind of… concerned."
"They think she did it."
Colleen looked up at him. "Sorry, Paul. Even I wondered for a second. But I know you. Better than I ever knew her. And I trust your judgment in this. But why'd they charge her with doing it? They must have a reason."
Paul heard his voice laughing bitterly. "The reason is that they don't have any other reasons. They can't explain it otherwise. So they're blaming Jen."
"Oh." Kilgary looked back down at her hands. "She ought to be able to beat it, then."
"Yeah." She ought to be able to beat it. If she can prove she didn't do it. Is that what this case comes down to? People assuming Jen was charged for good reason and demanding she prove her own innocence? But how can she do that? "Thanks for talking, Colleen. Please tell everyone that Jen is innocent."
"Sure. But like I said, that's about all I can do, because the Michaelson and the Maury have, uh, 'had' I guess, different engineering plant configurations."
"You said that you couldn't see any way it could happen.."
"No. I said I couldn't see any way it could happen on the Mike. Based on what I know, I'd be looking at any differences between the Mike and Maury for whatever might've caused it."
Paul nodded. "How many differences could there be?"
"Lots. Mostly little stuff. But it all adds up. Maury had that SEERS thing installed."
"I should look into SEERS?"
Colleen shrugged. "I would."
"Have you heard anything about it?"
"Just what you told me Jen told you. That and the fact that it was approved for introduction into the fleet."
Paul nodded, knowing that neither fact gave any indication SEERS posed a danger to the Maury. Quite the contrary, in the case of it being approved for installation on the Maury. He knew Colleen knew that as well, but was being kind enough not to say it out loud. It's a big difference, though. The biggest I know of. I need to look into it and hope it does some good. From what I know now, it won't. But I've got to try. I guess I need to go through Lieutenant Bashir to do that, though, and I can't do that until tomorrow. There's nothing else I can do tonight but worry.
He was sitting alone in Combat, the lights turned down, when a knock sounded on the hatch rim. "Mr. Sinclair?"
"Here, Sheriff."
Sharpe came walking into Combat. "Catch."
Paul snagged the beverage container he saw flying toward him and glanced at the label. "Hey, this isn't the cheap, generic stuff. This is real."
Sharpe popped his own and took a drink. "Yes, sir. But Senior Chief managed to snag a case and allowed certain individuals to score a tube or two."
Paul managed a smile. "I'm honored, Sheriff. To what do I owe this favor?"
Sharpe grimaced, leaning against a nearby watch console. "Sir, I think you know that. Sort of a very small attempt to cheer you up."
"Thanks." Paul took a drink himself. "It's good."
"How you doin', sir?"
"I've been better. A lot better."
"Ms. Shen?"
"She's… lot's of things. Baffled. Shocked. Outraged. Confused. Pick an emotion."
"I bet." Sharpe sighed. "Mr. Sinclair, my job means I do my best to bring people to justice. But that doesn't always make people happy."
"You don't think she's guilty, too, do you?"
"No, sir. I know Ms. Shen. Unless my ability to judge human nature is totally gone, she couldn't have done that. But…"
"Right now the entire Navy's trying to prove she's guilty, and I'm trying to prove she's innocent."
Sharpe actually smiled, his teeth looking unnaturally white in the darkened compartment. "You're not quite that alone, sir. But there ain't much I can do."
"I know. Can you do anything about how they're treating her in the brig?"
Another grimace. "They figure they got a mass murderer on their hands, sir."
"If they-"
"Sir." Sharpe held up a restraining hand. "I've guarded prisoners. There's all kinds of things you can do to a prisoner. Things that maybe ain't technically right but ain't technically wrong either. Little stuff. It doesn't leave any marks except on the inside of their brains. And ordering guards not to do that kind of stuff is like waving a red flag at a bull." He took another drink. "I always figured that was fair since the prisoners must've been guilty. Maybe I wasn't being so smart about it."
"Can't you tell the brig guards something? Anything?"
"I'll try, Mr. Sinclair. I've already talked to them before. But, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't see them listening this time any more than they did the last couple of times."
Paul drained his drink. "It's kind of like a nightmare, isn't it, Sheriff? Things just keep getting worse and nothing we try to do helps."
Sharpe nodded grimly. "That doesn't stop us from trying, sir."
"No. Nothing's going to stop me from trying. Thanks, Sheriff. Knowing you still believe in Jen, excuse me, Ms. Shen, means an awful lot."
"Sir, a good cop's gotta be tough, but he can't be blind. And he's gotta know who deserves his trust." Sharpe touched his brow. "Goodnight, Mr. Sinclair."
"'Night, Sheriff." Paul watched him leave the compartment. A nightmare. But you never think you're in a nightmare when you are. It all seems perfectly real. And you wake up from nightmares sooner or later. You never hit the ground at the end of your fall. Unless you're dying, and then urban legend says you hit the ground and die in your dreams and in reality. How is this nightmare going to end?
Preparations for the court-martial proceeded with all due haste. Paul found himself avoiding news sources. They all kept reporting the charges against Jen, going over her "crimes" again and again, showing highly amplified pictures of the battered Maury being towed gently back toward Franklin, showing high-ranking politicians trying to calm the storm of anger which had swept up against the South Asian Alliance and redirect it. At Jen, whose name the politicians never mentioned but which everyone knew.
Paul started getting a trickle of messages asking for interviews, then a flood. He deleted them all without reading, thankful that the news media couldn't get free run of Franklin to try to chase him down in person.
"What're they waiting for?" Kris Denaldo asked him one day as Paul was making a show of trying to work.
"They're waiting for the Maury to get back. They want some of her personnel at the court-martial."
"Why? I thought all the other engineers died."
"They did. It'll probably be about other stuff."
"Other stuff?"
"I don't know, Kris. I really don't know." Which was a lie. He knew. He just didn't want to talk about it at all, even to someone who knew Jen and he as well as Kris did. They wanted to ask the rest of the survivors of the Maury about Jen. About whether she'd been having an affair with anyone. About whether she hated anyone. About anything that might help build a case against her.
One night he went into Combat and called up a display with the estimated position of the Mahan on it. The estimated position didn't mean much. Captain Shen had authority to move his ship anywhere within a large volume of space. Keep the enemy guessing. Paul wondered if Captain Shen had heard what had happened to the Maury, and to his daughter. Jen still insisted he shouldn't send a message, though even if she allowed it there was no telling when the Mahan would reveal her location precisely enough to allow high-speed communications. Captain Shen might get back and discover everything that had happened, discover Jen convicted. Welcome back, captain. We hope you had a pleasant voyage, and we hope you weren't planning on your daughter meeting you at the dock. She's in a military jail cell back on Earth.