order to make him a good soldier. I haven’t seen hard data on others like him, but I do know that if he set his mind to it, he’d be more than capable of the same destructive force that they have displayed. And when in Palasian System he did respond to a command language understood by the other clone warriors—”
Murnane held up a hand. “We will return to Palasian System in a moment,” he said. “First we’d like to hear how you met up with this Adoni Cane, and what you have observed about his behavior to date.”
She took a moment to organize her thoughts, then began to talk—describing succinctly how she and Cane had met on the Midnight, how they had escaped and crash-landed on the surface of Sciacca’s World, and their pursuit and eventual escape from the penal colony.
“He helped you escape?” The question was from another council member whose thick accent was unfamiliar to Roche; she had to concentrate to understand what he was saying. “From prison wardens corrupted by a rival government? Do you know why he did this?”
“No,” she said, with a shake of her head. “And I have to admit that it’s puzzled me.”
“Can you explain why his behavior is so different from the others?”
She shrugged lightly. “The best explanation I can come up with is that he’s a freak,” she said. “A mistake.”
“You mentioned genetic data, earlier,” said one of the previous speakers, the man with the fair complexion. “Will you give us access to this data?”
“Gladly,” she said. “If I may contact my ship...”
“Your lines of communication are not being interfered with in any way,” said Murnane.
she said, checking to see if this was true.
Kajic replied. <1 have all the info the Box compiled before it was destroyed. Do you want me to send it?>
he said.
She was about to turn back to Murnane when she remembered Maii’s suit standing immobile beside her. she asked via epsense.
came the reply.
<1 wouldn’t let them do that, Morgan,> the girl reassured her.
Murnane cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said. “We have received the data and will examine it later.” He folded his arms and took a couple of thoughtful paces around the font. “But I am curious. At the time Cane was examined on the Midnight, news had not yet reached your corner of the galaxy that there even was a problem he might be part of, otherwise his capsule would have been instantly identified. And on Sciacca’s World, your rebel friends had access to even more limited information about the outside world. Yet our sources in the Commonwealth of Empires reveal that in a very short space of time you determined precisely what was going on—bearing in mind the Sol Apotheosis Movement fallacy—and confronted your superiors with that knowledge. When was it that you managed to piece it all together?”
Roche opened her mouth to speak—then shut it again. If they had sources in the COE, chances were they already knew the answers to every question they had asked so far. So why go through the motions?
Then she reminded herself: trust no one. They could no more believe their sources than they could believe her—even if one corroborated the other.
She didn’t envy them their position.
“It wasn’t me so much who put it all together.” She half expected a nagging voice in her ear telling her to be careful what she said. “It was the Box.”
“What is this ‘Box’?” It was
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