“I want her to describe her impressions of me when we worked together.”
“That is not a question.”
Damn logical aliens. “Did I seem to know what I was doing with weapons? Better?” Max stomped down on his temper before he said something that would earn him a contempt charge in a human court.
The judge’s table began to rotate slowly again, and Max took his seat. Every court show he’d ever watched said that a lawyer should never ask a question he didn’t know the answer to, but these assholes would never believe a word out of his mouth. They had already dismissed him as an idiot. He needed a character witness, one that the rest of the universe thought was pretty. When the judge swiveled toward Xena, she stood.
For a time, she was silent, and bile pressed at the base of Max’s stomach. He couldn’t defend Rick from a prison cell. What would happen to him if the authorities took their ship? Rick and the kids would be stranded here, surrounded by people who hated them. If Xena didn’t tell the truth, Max didn’t know how to convince these guys that he was competent to take the blame for his own actions.
“Human Max adequately explained the function of two different modifications to energy weapons, both of which will increase lethality. He also adequately explained the function of defensive garments he offered to sell and he identified weaknesses in the security of our ship and helped to design remediation plans.” She sat so quickly that her hat flopped even though it was much smaller than Carrington’s. Hopefully her testimony didn’t create a problem with her boss, but Max couldn’t care about that right now. Before the judge could swing back around to face him, Kohei stood.
Max held his breath. Better Kohei than Rick, but this was still the stuff of nightmares.
“I saw Human Max Father testing many weapons. He worked often with Ugly Xander Sibling. He brought human theories of weapon design to designs in the archives of the ship of Ugly Rick Father.” He sat.
As much as Max knew that Kohei was playing it smart, Max hated hearing Kohei refer to family like that. They weren’t ugly. Not even a little. They were graceful and beautiful and annoying, but never ugly. Max clenched his teeth and wished the judge were facing him. Instead the table stopped. No one stood. No one spoke. But the judge faced the far side of the room and the table did not budge.
Was the judge ready to make a decision? This felt arbitrary. Max hadn’t gotten to say half the things he wanted to. But Rick and Kohei stayed seated. Max had to follow their lead because he had no idea what was going on.
He was going to research every fucking judicial process on every fucking planet when this was over. He hoped he wouldn’t be locked in a cell while he did it, but according to television, researching legal cases was standard fare for the unjustly condemned. And television never lied.
Aliens shifted on their benches, some scooting sideways to get out of the judge’s view. Ah. He was looking at the Hunters.
The larger one stood. “One ship of law-breakers reported that humans are irrational and dangerous when offspring are in danger.” It sat. The judge remained motionless. Alien spectators inched away. The Hunters sat. It was the world’s strangest standoff with silence being the major weapon. Max didn’t understand why the judge assumed these Hunters would know about a pirate ship of Hunters, but then again, the universe focused on certain assumptions, like people didn’t go to war against their own species. So maybe other species stuck together more than humans.
If so, the universe was in for a shock when humanity got this far, and they would. Max knew his people. As soon as they got their heads around the idea of aliens, they were going to build clunky, cramped spaceships so they could come up here and yell at them.
The Hunter stood, slower this time. “The human killed several Hunters and threatened death to Hunter Leader. He released Hunter Leader so Hunter Leader would take message back to all Hunters to avoid the ship with Ugly Offspring.”
“Damn right,” Max muttered even though no one could hear him. Several aliens did glance at him. The Hunter sat and the judge’s platform started to rotate again.
An enormous alien stood. “Human Max hit my tentacle,” he said before sitting. Damn. That was the guy who had tried to push past them on the boardwalk. Max had stepped on one of his tentacles. Okay, maybe it had been a stomp, but still. It seemed strange to come to court to tattle about something like that. Aliens were odd.
One of Bundy’s customers stood and testified about Max’s accuracy with weapons. Every time someone fell silent, the judge was facing away from Max, and he suspected that was intentional. People didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but Max had a right to speak his mind. Or he didn’t because this was an alien legal system and they had never heard of Miranda or the Constitution, but damn it, Max wanted to speak his mind.
He leaned forward, ready to leap from his seat, given the opportunity, but it never came. Instead alien after alien testified about Max’s threats to cut off limbs and his habit of stepping on tentacles and his proficiency with weapons. This was going sideways. Rick had a right to two lifetimes of I-told-you-so.
Squirming in his seat, Max watched another alien sit, and then Kohei shot up even though he wasn’t directly in front of the judge. However, no one said anything. Kohei waited until the judge had rotated the last degree or two before he told the story of Xander’s birth and how Rick and Max had to keep him moving. He described such weird details, like how Max would stand in the water until the oils had washed away from his skin and the water soaked into his cells so his skin wrinkled. Personally, Max considered wrinkled skin pretty damn normal. He liked baths.
However, more and more, aliens turned to study Max. He was starting to feel like a bug pinned on a board.
Kohei rotated his largest eye toward Max and waited until the judge was turned in Max’s direction before he sat.
Blessing Kohei’s insight and strategy, Max leapt up. If he was going to be condemned as a psychopath instead of a moron, he had a few things to say to these aliens. And they were damn well going to listen. Hopefully.
