Atlas Abandoned

Promotion (2 years since the crash)

"Order! Quiet down!" the gavel slammed down twice. The recruits in the front back half of the stands quieted their banter to whispers and the court hearing proceeded. "Now I'll remind you that you're under oath, young man, and give you another chance to tell us what happened." Pallas returned the judge's eye contact as he started his story again.

"Like I said, your Honor, I was at my station in transport."

"Which you requested," pointed out a military lawyer standing next to the seated Pallas.

"Yes, sir, I was at my station and I had to use the bathroom, so I asked Private Keller to sit at my desk since he was cleaning in the area at the time," Pallas lied.

"Why did you do that?"

"I figured that it would be better for someone to be there if somebody came by wanting access to any transport files...you know, manifests or approval forms or whatever, sir. If there was nobody there they might snoop around." The lawyer gave Pallas a skeptical look.

"Ignoring the fact that you were trained to lock your workstation and put up a sign, not get someone untrained to sit there, let's move on. You were in the bathroom for approximately 13 minutes because you had..."

"An upset stomach, sir."

"Right, and while you were in the bathroom Private Keller ran to the maintenance doors in hangar 6, let the group of scientists in, manually overrode the authorization protocol and allowed them to load all of their gear onto a cargo transfer ship. This all happened inconveniently while the sentry at the hangar was also in the bathroom with food poisoning."

"I don't know sir. If you're saying that's what happened, then I guess-" The young, inexperienced lawyer had figured this would be easy and got frustrated when Pallas seemed to have his story together.

"Private Keller THEN ran back to the desk, accessed and deleted all security footage- including the encrypted backup data, and operated the hangar doors so the scientists could flee to the surface. All of that in this 13 minute window."

"Well, sir, not entirely. See, I got back while he was still closing the hangar doors. That's why I confronted him," Pallas was starting to sweat, but kept on talking.

"Of course. You confronted him about what he was doing, and then what happened?"

"He attacked me, sir." The judge was watching the lawyer interrogate Pallas, but became distracted when several courier soldiers in black coats entered the courtroom.

"Private Keller attacked you and you killed him." The distracted whispers of the other young men in the room fell to silence. Of those that had heard the rumors already, some believed Pallas was innocent. Most knew he was not. They all either feared him, respected him, or both, though.

"In self-defense, sir. He was going to kill me." The prosecutor allowed a harsh silence to follow that statement, as if to allow everyone in the room their own chance to decide if they believed Pallas. "He told me I couldn't tell anyone," Pallas choked on his own words, "but I said I had to, and he came at me with a knife-"

"So you disarmed him and in the struggle his throat was slit? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" The lawyer interrupted. Pallas froze. "Pallas, do you know your sister was one of the scientists that illegally transported to the surface?"

"...We don't talk much, sir. I think the last time we did was...uhm," Pallas pretended to struggle in recalling their last conversation. He knew exactly when it was. 5 months and 1 week ago.

"It was just over 5 months ago, son. I would comment on the nature of your conversations, but, as I'm sure you know, projection booth logs are destroyed after 5 months. Would you like to remind this courtroom why you were forced to join The Mammoths in the first place?" The lawyer was making Pallas fidget in his seat. He couldn't explain himself out of his past. The lawyer was going to have some evidence Pallas never thought of. This wasn't going to work.