The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WMG Publishing

TWENTY

Long day. Arias and the Old Man returned to the office. It was dark, but that didn’t mean anything. Sometimes, an attorney shut off the lights just before settling on the couch.

Arias grabbed an extra tablet. Hers was starting to fritz. But she didn’t want to fix it until she had moved the rest of her case notes, holos, and information onto something new.

At this stage in a trial, she was paranoid. She didn’t want anyone else to see what she was doing, and she was afraid that the defense might send someone to steal a tablet and call the theft an accident.

Someone had hacked into the prosecution’s automated backups during one of her first major trials. The defense had always claimed they hadn’t done so, but that defense attorney had a lot of specialized information that seemed suspicious to Arias.

Ever since then, she had been too cautious, at least in the Old Man’s words. He had his personal notes on his tablet, but everything else for this case was on hers—not because she had taken over, but because the Old Man hated having her nag him.

The Old Man opened the door to his office, and tossed his tablet on the desk. He grabbed the suit jacket he’d worn two days before, and flung it over his arm.

Then he saw her glaring at him, and sighed.

“No one can understand my notes,” he said. “They’re in—.”

Then he stopped himself and sighed again.

“Never mind.” He grabbed the tablet, stuck it in a drawer, and punched the automated lock. “Satisfied?”

Not really. Those locks weren’t solid. But this was a small victory, and right now, as tired as she was, she’d take it.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but I think any alcohol would just put me to sleep.”

He chuckled. “I stopped drinking during trials years ago.”

She wasn’t sure she knew that. She adjusted the strap for her own bag on her shoulder, and then followed him out of his office. She didn’t even want to check hers.

They threaded their way through the maze of desks and old couches in the bullpen. Arias didn’t see anyone sleeping on any of the couches, but she wasn’t really looking. It wasn’t that far to her apartment, but it felt like she had a journey as long as the one the Renegat had taken.

“There you are!”

The voice, strident and unmistakable, belonged to Anyi Etamè, one of the junior prosecutors helping with the case. She weaved her way to through the tables, waving a closed fist.

“You have to see this!”

“Who does?” Arias asked. She was so tired. She didn’t want to see anything, and she hoped against hope that Etamè was talking to someone else.

“You both. Can we go to the office?” Without waiting for an answer Etamè walked around them and headed back to the Old Man’s office. He hadn’t locked the door.

Etamè flicked on a light as if the room was hers. She treated everything that way. Some of it was age:

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