Coulter followed the retreating 765th Platoon toward a giant Legion staging area south of the city. Rhodes didn’t even know which city it was or which planet he was on.

  It didn’t matter because they were all the same. Soldiers streamed in all directions. Dusters, Predators, and freighters came and went all over a massive field dotted with temporary buildings.

  A dozen Ravagers came down to take the platoons on board. It sure looked like the Legion was withdrawing from this planet.

  Coulter stumbled through the throng going….somewhere. Rhodes couldn’t think clearly enough to ask.

  “The command dome is over there,” Murphy pointed out. “We should go there if the brass is so keen to get us back. They’ll be able to send us back to the Ero.”

  “Forget the command dome,” Fisher countered. “The Strikers can come and get us here. Captain Rhodes needs medical attention. He can only get that on the Ero. The brass would only delay us.”

  “We can’t call the Strikers if we can’t interface with them,” Murphy returned. “You think you’re so smart, but you don’t think of a little detail like that. We need the brass to contact the Ero and the Ero would have to contact the Strikers. The Strikers probably don’t even know where we are.”

  “Which officers are at the command dome?” Fisher asked.

  “How should I know if I can’t interface with the Legion?” Murphy repeated.

  Coulter responded to their conversation by turning toward the command dome. He only made it a few dozen yards before a completely different group of officers came toward him and Rhodes. These officers didn’t come from the command dome.

  Rhodes didn’t recognize any of them—except Scofield. He was the only lieutenant in the group. Everyone else was a captain or above.

  Two colonels squared their shoulders in front of Rhodes and Coulter. “Captain Rhodes?” one of them snapped. “Captain Rhodes of Battalion 1?”

  Rhodes tried to answer, but his brain didn’t connect to his mouth. He sagged off Coulter’s shoulder. Just keeping his eyes open was as much as Rhodes could manage right now.

  The colonel waited for Rhodes to say something. When he didn’t, the colonel went through another convulsion of squaring his shoulders.

  “Captain Corban Rhodes, you’re under arrest for treason against the Treaty of Aemon Cluster.” The colonel glanced at Coulter. “You both are.” He waved to the men behind him. “Take them.”

  Scofield stood there staring while a bunch of armed Legion guards came forward and surrounded Rhodes and Coulter. They took Rhodes off Coulter’s hands.

  Rhodes wanted to tell Coulter not to resist, but he didn’t. He cooperated with everything and walked off with the soldiers guarding him.

  Rhodes stumbled when he lost Coulter’s support. The soldiers moved in to prop Rhodes up, but they didn’t get there in time. He collapsed on the ground and passed out.

  He woke up lying on a metal bench in a bare cell. Bars separated him from the next cell where Coulter sat on an identical bench.

  Coulter leaned against the wall and stared at Rhodes through the bars. Rhodes hauled himself upright. “Eddie….” Rhodes frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Coulter replied in his old nonchalant tone. “I went through the rest of my withdrawals. I’m okay now. Thank you for getting me out of there.”

  “Are we…..?” Rhodes furrowed his brow some more when he looked around.

  He didn’t see Fisher in the corner of The Grid, but Rhodes sensed that Fisher was there. He was making himself silent and invisible the way he often did when Rhodes first woke up from a conversion cycle.

  It took him a minute before he recognized where he was. He and Coulter were in the brig of a Legion Ravager.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “We’re on the Ero,” Coulter told him. “The brass didn’t know how to treat your injuries, so they sent us back here. Dr. Osborne has been in here a few dozen times taking care of you since we got arrested.”

  “Why are you under arrest? You were under my command ever since we got captured. If someone is holding me responsible for what we did, you should be clear.”

  Coulter shrugged. “I have no idea what’s going on out there. I can’t interface with anyone—but I can only assume you and I are the only ones under arrest. None of the rest of the battalion has gotten locked up in here.”

  Rhodes sank back against the wall. He still felt weak—as if he’d been in a long conversion cycle.

  He couldn’t have been in a conversion cycle, though, because he wasn’t in a capsule or one of the Masks’ standing conversion stations. He’d been lying on this bench until just now.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” he murmured. “I’m sorry about all of this.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry about,” Coulter countered. “You’re the one who’s been doing the most for all of us. We’re on the Ero now because of you.”

  “I just hate what I see happening to all of you. I hate what I see the Legion doing to all of us.”

  Coulter only shrugged again, but he didn’t look away. His eyes sparkled as clearly as ever. “None of that is your fault. I wish I could have been clearer while we were in The Grid. I wish I could have seen more clearly what was going on so I could be more help to you. It kills me that Dietz was the one who got to be that for you.” Coulter finally lowered his eyes. “I guess we all misjudged him.”

  “I don’t suppose you know what happened to him, do you? Did Dr. Osborne say anything?”

  “He said everyone in the battalion is fine. He says they all got out.”

  Rhodes wilted again. “Thank God! I don’t care if the brass locks me up as long as the rest of you are okay.”

  “Okay isn’t the word I would use to describe how we’re doing.”

  Rhodes didn’t open his eyes. He really, really needed to go through a conversion cycle—a real one.

  Everything that happened since the Masks captured him was starting to catch up with him—as if it already wasn’t catching up with him.

  He wished he could be stronger for Coulter right now, but Rhodes couldn’t summon the energy to be anything to anyone right now.

  If the Legion kept him locked up in the brig, then no one expected Rhodes to do anything or be anything. He just had to sit here—which was somehow so much worse than sitting around in the barracks at Coleridge Station.

  He was still sitting there with his eyes closed when Dr. Osborne returned. He brought four armed Legion soldiers with him.

  They were the ones who unlocked Rhodes’s cell so Dr. Osborne could come in and examine Rhodes. Then the soldiers locked Dr. Osborne into the cell while the soldiers stood guard outside.

  Dr. Osborne checked his device while he took readings on all of Rhodes’s systems. “You’re exhibiting a stress response from not having gone through a proper conversion cycle.”

  “I know,” Rhodes muttered. “I feel it.”

  “We’re working around the clock to get the brass to release you to the lab for medical treatment, but they don’t want to cooperate. They say you’re dangerous even when you’re inactive in a conversion cycle.”

  “Can’t you at least get Eddie released? Tell them I ordered him to do everything. I don’t care what you have to tell them. Just get him released.”

  “Colonel Kraft, Colonel Neff, and General Hyde are already doing all of that.”

  Rhodes’s head shot up. “They are? They’re here?”

  “They’ve been in non-stop negotiations with the Legion brass to get you sent back to Coleridge Station, but the brass is insisting that you at least face an inquiry into what happened.”

  “Don’t you have Grid readings from everything that happened to us? You should be able to download all of that from The Grid. You would be able to see everything from the minute we got captured.”

  “Yes, we have all that. That’s the evidence Kraft, Neff, and Hyde are using to explain your actions, but the brass doesn’t want to accept it. They think the Masks might have doctored it.”

  “Why would they doctor it to implicate themselves?”

  Osborne shrugged and bent over to stare closely at something on Rhodes’s facial implant. “You can’t make this shit up.” He touched Rhodes’s implant on his cheek. “Do you feel like you have normal sensation in your face? You took damage to your facial implants when you got shot.”

  “I feel fine now.”

  “Everything is reading as normal as it possibly can until you go through a conversion cycle. Just try to be patient. The brass is all hot to bring you to an inquiry, so I don’t think you’ll be stuck in here for much longer.”

  The soldiers let him out and then locked the cell with Rhodes inside. He shut his eyes, stretched out on the bench, and did his best to relax.

  It didn’t work out too well, though. He couldn’t sleep like a normal human being. The strain sapped his nerves and made him jittery.

  He lay there for ten minutes before Fisher expanded. “I won’t ask how you’re feeling this morning, Captain.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not going to be very good company for a while, pal. You might want to back into your cave until they fix me.”

  “I don’t have a cave, Captain.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Fisher didn’t go away. He stayed there staring at Rhodes exactly the way Coulter did.

  Rhodes kept his eyes shut, but he still saw Fisher even then. Fisher didn’t go away.

  Rhodes couldn’t decide whether to be happy about that or not. Fisher’s company had always been a blessing and a curse.

  On the one hand, Fisher saw Rhodes at his lowest point. On the other hand, Fisher occupied that low point along with Rhodes.

  Now Coulter was seeing Rhodes like that, too.

  Coulter held up better than Rhodes did. Rhodes didn’t understand why because Coulter couldn’t have gone through a conversion cycle in the brig, either.

  Coulter didn’t explain it and Rhodes didn’t ask. Coulter just sat there watching Rhodes with that mysterious intensity. What was Coulter thinking right now?

  End of Chapter 6.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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