Sipping at her tea, she spends the next hour making notes. When she has finished her preliminary search of possible charges, she has five to lay against the rapists, singly or in combination:

Item: Article 120. Rape and Carnal Knowledge

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who commits an act of sexual intercourse with any person, whether male or female, by force and without consent, is guilty of rape and shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.

(b) Any person subject to this chapter who, under circumstances not amounting to rape, commits an act of sexual intercourse with a person not his or her spouse who has not attained the age of sixteen years, is guilty of carnal knowledge and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

(c) Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete either of these offenses.

Item: Article 128 Assault

(a) Any person subject to this chapter who attempts or offers with unlawful force or violence to do bodily harm to another person, whether or not the attempt or offer is consummated, is guilty of assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

(b) Any person subject to this chapter who—

(1) commits an assault with a dangerous weapon or other means or force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm; or

(2) commits an assault and intentionally inflicts grievous bodily harm with or without a weapon, is guilty of aggravated assault and shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

In the margin by Article 120, she scrawls: MAIN INDICTMENT, in forceful block letters. Assault will be a lesser included charge. Very carefully she underlines the penalty for rape: for three of the Rapid City men, she can cheerfully ask that they pay with their lives. The fourth— She frowns as she remembers Buxton’s abject shame, the guardhouse staff reports that he is sleeping little and eating less. Death might be a mercy for him.

Maggie is not at all sure she wants to be merciful. She makes a note to set him under a suicide watch. Then, reluctantly, finally giving a name to her own uneasiness about the man, she scribbles a reminder to herself to set up a second, less obvious, on Hart.

Briefly, she rises to check supper. Koda and Kirsten are not back, but the chicken is done. She sets it, covered, on the stove’s smooth cooking surface to await their return, then goes back to her newly-assigned lawyering.

Item: Article 104. Aiding the Enemy

Any person who—

(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money or other things; or

(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly; shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.

Item: Article 105: Misconduct as Prisoner

Any person subject to this chapter who, while in the hands of the enemy in time of war—

(1) for the purpose of securing favorable treatment by his or her captors acts without proper authority in a manner contrary to law, custom or regulation, to the detriment of others of whatever nationality held by the enemy as civilian or military prisoners; or

(2) while in a position of authority over such persons maltreat them without justifiable cause; shall be punished as a court-martial shall direct.

Maggie sets down her pen and glances out the window. The sky is beginning to fade, the blue leeching out of the east as the sun drops toward the horizon. The light still lingers on the crowns of the young pines in her yard, caught like diamonds in the fall of melted snow, drop by drop, from its branches. Winter is beginning to break; the wind that soughs among the long green needles sits in the south. It will be the first spring in centuries in which humans will not interfere appreciably with the natural cycle of life and death, slayer and slain, in this part of the world.

Possibly not in any part of the world.

For a moment her neat kitchen falls away, and she looks down from an immense height on a sun-drenched plain. From horizon to horizon, the herds fill her sight: impala and springbok, oryx and gazelle. Along the flanks, seen only in the sinuous ripple of tall grass, lion and leopard stalk their prey. It is this earth, molded into her very bones, that calls to her, even as she knows that the template of the Black Hills, layer upon layer of molten rock and sediment, is somehow laid down in the double spiral of Koda’s heritage.

It is a call she is not free to answer, not in this lifetime. She shakes her head slightly, bringing time and place into focus once again. But the sense of hovering on the imminent edge of a new world lingers, and with it the sense of multiple possibilities. Choose one path and pursue it to awaiting fate; choose another and alter the woven strands of karma.

Even the droids, it seems, intended to remake the world in the image of—what? Something that required breeding human beings, hence the preservation of women of childbearing age and a small number of men to sire young. Herd bulls. But nothing she had encountered so far explained why the droids set out to breed their human cattle or why young children had apparently been taken alive. Which was another question—where? Into slavery? Droids hardly needed slaves; they could always replicate themselves, or at least they had been able to until the destruction of the Minot facility. Food? Droids did not eat. Nor, as far as anyone could tell, was there any surviving market on earth for either slaves or long pig. She and Koda had gone fruitlessly around the subject, around and around again. Some piece of the puzzle was missing, something vital.

Damn. Her mind had begun to run in the same endless loop, again. Stop that.

Perhaps one of the prisoners would be able to supply the one fact that would make sense of all the rest. She was far from certain that they knew their own role, beyond the obvious, in the droids’ purposes. Still, they might not know what they knew. The questioning would have to be a careful process.

The immediate purpose at hand was to bring a handful of collaborators to justice. Collaborators who had viciously and willingly abused their fellow prisoners at the behest of their captors. It was not necessary to know what the droids had meant to achieve; only that the accused had co-operated with them.

Which brought her to the final charge:

Item: Article 81. Conspiracy.

Any person subject to this chapter who conspires with any other person to commit an offense under this chapter shall, if one or more of the conspirators does an act to effect the object of the conspiracy, be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Whether the droids could be counted as “persons” for the purposes of the statute was unclear, but it ought to be possible to show that the rapists had shared a common, explicit intent.

Rape, cooperating with the enemy, conspiracy to tie it all together and make it tidy. Justice would be done.

Satisfied, Maggie closes her clipboard and moves the books off the kitchen table. Making her way through the house, she switches on the CD player—a frivolity, perhaps, but one she feels she has earned—detouring to undress and hang up her uniform. In the bathroom, she runs the tub full of hot water, adds myrrh-scented bathsalts, and gently eases herself into the steaming comfort. As she drowses, the music comes to her, weaving sinuously in and out among her half-conscious thoughts. It is an old song, and a sweet one:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme.Give my regards to one who lives there.She once was a true love of mine.

She would take her pleasures where she found them, let them go when she must. Her regrets, if regrets she had, would never be for missed opportunities.

*

“Take the IV out as soon as he shows signs of coming around, then get him out of the kennel and try and walk him. We’ll see how the pins hold.”

“Will do, Doctor.”

“Thanks,” Koda replies to the young tech, smiling as she wipes her hands off on a towel. She has spent the past several hours putting the fractured pelvis of a young army dog back together. Rex, the dog in question, had been hit by an old, rattling truck driven by a newcomer. The surgery was grueling, but nothing that she hadn’t done before; several times, unfortunately. “And Keisha?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“It’s Dakota. Let the old-timers in the M*A*S*H tents stick to their titles if they want to okay?”

The young woman smiles shyly, charmed by this beautiful, if imposing, woman. She nods, taking the towel from Koda and tossing it into the hamper.

“Good. I’m gonna get some fresh air. Send someone to get me if he looks like he’s in trouble.”

“Will do.”

After a final check on the dog, who is still sleeping off his anaesthesia, Koda turns and leaves the small clinic, stepping into the bright sunshine. Despite the long hours in surgery, she feels refreshed, at peace with herself in a way that has eluded her since the battle. Perhaps it is because she has spent her time doing something known and loved. Perhaps it is because she has saved a life instead of taken one. Perhaps it is both of those things, and none of them. Whatever the reason, she welcomes the feeling as she starts down the walk toward the base proper, lunch the only thing on her mind.

Until, that is, she sees a flash of gold in the near distance, and without conscious thought, aims her steps in that direction.

Her subconscious suspicions are confirmed as Kirsten comes into full view, standing in the ‘picnic area’ and chatting with two people who could have come straight out of the Teutonic Bible. Long and lean, with cornsilk hair, pale blue eyes and pale skin, they are poster children for the Aryan race. The man has his arm around the woman’s waist, his hand gently cupping what she can see as the telltale bulge of a six-month pregnancy.

The man is the first to see her. His eyes widen, and a smile filled with awe curves his lips, displaying perfect, snow-white teeth. Reacting to the abrupt shift, Kirsten turns her head, then adds her own smile to the mix as she spies Dakota approaching.

“I saw you!” the man exclaims in lightly accented English. “Leading the charge on that bridge! It was…amazing!”

“It was needed,” is Koda’s curt reply as she nods to the group and comes to stand beside Kirsten. Asi, ever the pleasure hound, squeezes his massive body between them, and tucks his cold, wet snout beneath Koda’s hand in the universal signal for “Pet me and make it snappy.”

With a roll of her eyes, Dakota indulges the pushy canine while looking expectantly at Kirsten, who suddenly snaps out of the fog of attraction and remembers her manners. “Oh! Yes. Franz and Anna, this is Dakota Rivers. Dakota, this is Franz Dorfmann, and his wife Anna. They were part of the group that came over the ridge near the end of the battle.”

“Pleased to meet you both.”

“It’s a great pleasure to meet you,” Anna replies, taking Koda’s hand in a surprisingly strong grip. “You very likely saved our lives out there. A simple thank you seems less than adequate, somehow.”

“It was a group effort,” Koda replies. “But…you’re welcome. Glad I could help.”

Sensing Koda’s discomfort, Kirsten tactfully steers the conversation in another direction. “Franz and Anna were telling me an interesting story as you walked up. I think it’s one you should hear.”

Anna looks to her husband, who nods and returns his attention to Dakota. As he removes his arm from around his wife’s waist, Koda notices his hands are long-fingered, sensitive, like a those of a concert pianist. She can almost see him sitting behind the staid grains of a Steinway channeling Mozart well enough to make the very gods weep.

“I am…a software engineer,” he begins, folding his hands and looking down at them. “My company has a defense contract with your government’s military. All very classified, except, I guess, not so much anymore.” His smile is wry. “Two weeks ago—maybe three now, I seem to have lost track of time—we were in our hotel room when we were awakened by the sounds of screaming. And then gunfire. We thought, perhaps, a robbery. All those stories of American violence.” He eyes them both from beneath fair lashes, assuring them silently that his words are spoken in jest.

Looking back down at his clasped hands, he continues. “All at once, our door burst open and two heavily armed men came through.”

“Men?” Koda asks, surprised. “Not androids?”