Adam didn’t adopt every part of Keri’s suggested costume. He’s not sure about the scarf - wearing one reminds him of his younger days, which he still finds somehow embarrassing to think about. He’s not sure about the long coat, especially in space where there’s no real weather for a coat to help with. And he’s supposed to be representing the Concordance in this Tribunal, so he can’t really deviate too far from their standard look.
He settles for an aviator jacket over his normal Concord duds, along with the messenger bag. Sure, he can bubble stuff he intends to carry around, but it made his parents feel much better to pack food into a physical container. His father didn’t quite put a revolver in there as well, but Adam could feel the impulse of protection that the man radiated.
All too soon, Adam realizes it’s time. He takes a breath, says goodbye to his family, and heads for the stars.
Keri, Quinn, and others have helped Adam workshop the sales pitch for the Tribunal. He hates thinking of it in those terms, but that’s what it really is. It’s an advertisement, meant to get people to tune in and watch so he can expose the Concordance to the widest possible audience.
Now he opens an official channel and broadcasts the announcement. The gist of it is that Concordance shards have been stolen in the past, the culprits have been identified, and Adam is going to hold Tribunal for a suspect in a certain location.
The very idea that someone could stop the empowerment of a Concordance agent is a shot across the organization’s metaphorical bow. It pierces their pose of perfection, making them look vulnerable. Pairing this with “we got the guy” makes Adam look good and sounds like it solves the problem - at first. But did he? Tune in and find out.
The message is beamed outward, through affective broadcasts that get transformed into radio and hyperwave and electro-telepathy and a dozen other means of communication. Relays and rebroadcasters, sensing a story, share it with their own audiences. Beings outside the Concordance’s normal sphere share it with other interested parties. By the time Adam is ready to go, the story has spread across a noticeable chunk of the Milky Way galaxy.
The Dark Drifters have donated one of their habitats to act as a venue for the trial. Now it sits, in its own little bubble, in high orbit around Somber’s frozen home world. The glow of the Concordance barrier that keeps the planet frozen in time is visible in the background. Indeed, some of the habitat was deliberately removed to ensure a good view of the silent planet and its shield.
Adam formally begins the Tribunal. It’s just him and Quinn. The Dark Drifter is standing in a zone of compulsion, meant to elicit Truth from him. That will be unnecessary here, but it’s good for “optics” - how things look to the audience.
Who else could be here? Adam’s friends, the people who’ve traveled with him? All good people, but not members of the Concordance nor involved in its business. The Dark Drifters and other Champions of Night? They’re supposedly the perpetrators.
The universe is watching. He’s on the biggest Jumbotron ever.
“Quinnar Gentry–”
There’s the subtlest of coughs from his prisoner.
Really? This, now?
Fine.
Adam draws a breath, and tries again. “The Most Illustrious Supernova of the Universe, the Legendary Navigator of the Space-ways, the Right Honorable Quinnar Gentry…”
The other man responds with a bright beaming grin.
“… I charge you with the theft of Concordance shards, bound for future Agents, and have enacted this Tribunal in order for you to hear your case.”
Tribunal is not really something Adam knows a lot about. He studied up on it, and the gist of it seemed to be that “Tribunal” meant “Concordance Agents get to do whatever they want as long as it seems fair”. So he’s copying Earth customs, which he knows a lot about courtesy of his dad the police sergeant.
“Uh, how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty!” announces Quinn with a dazzling smile. He too knows the universe is watching it, and is going to milk this moment for all it’s worth.
Adam moves to speak, but the slightest of head shakes from Quinn makes him pause. He makes telepathic contact - What?
Let the audience ooh and ahh here! the Captain declares mentally. This is the first big turning point in the trial.
Adam frowns a little, but does as Quinn suggests. A few moments are enough. “Not guilty, eh? Then I shall present the evidence against you!”
The next part was both the most critical, and the most personally vexing to Adam. The Concordance had long ago mastered the conversion of emotion into other forms of energy and back again. He could literally broadcast Truth and have people experience it as such, if they were equipped to receive it. Not everybody in the audience would get it - people tuning in via conventional broadcast tech, for example - but enough would.
At the same time, he and Quinn had cooked up a cover story that wasn’t technically true. So Adam must navigate a verbal labyrinth of his own devising. Any slip here will give the game away to trillions of sentient beings.
No pressure, he told himself.
“When I was… selected… to join the Concordance, it almost didn’t happen.”
Adam relates his fateful first encounter with the alien Blockheads and their leader, Cracklesnap. At the time, they hadn’t been as powerful, but they were still strong enough to try and separate a newly-minted Agent from their Concordance Shard. The encounter had damaged the goal of their extraction attempt: Sol Gamma-2.
Adam wasn’t sure how much of that damage had affected his subsequent career as Concord. Maybe it had made him less powerful, or less in control of his power, than someone else. Or maybe it had somehow freed him of the Concordance’s influence in some way.
No matter what had happened, he still missed Sol.
“I escaped them, and went on to act as a hero on my home planet. But then I went into space again to chase after the Blockheads. And sure enough, I found the being who had tried to abduct me before, on the same ship he’d used.”
He points, to the Blockhead craft floating serenely in space. “That ship. We fought Cracklesnap aboard that ship, but then its engine took off randomly. We got out–”
This is the part where Adam’s Truth must falter. Quinn interrupts, with perfect timing. “My people also lost their sources of empowerment to these ‘Blockhead’ aliens, in ships like those. When a Blockhead ship like that one entered our space, of course we investigated.”
This much was True. Unsaid was that Adam and his team had brought that ship there, still posing as star racers in search of answers.
This meeting happened during “412 - Pursuit THrough the Pleiades” – Ed.
“And you admit you got hold of Cracklesnap’s ship?” Adam asks, trying his best to sound surprised. He’d brought the ship to Quinn himself.
“I did!” Quinn exclaims. He thrusts a hand out in a dramatic flourish, bows his head, and uses his other hand to pull down the brim of the extra-special hat he wore for just this occasion. “For after all, justice had to be done.”
This was True in the same way a thread could easily pass through the eye of a needle.
Adam changes his tone to curiosity, hoping to god he’s selling this effectively. He’s done his best to tune the emotional wavelengths of the broadcast to include only Truth, but if anything else is leaking out, he could be in real trouble here.
“And what is it about this place, where we are, that made it so ideal to hide a ship?”
Quinn’s feigned surprise would win him an Oscar on Earth.
“Why, surely you’ve noticed! We’re on a planet time-locked by the Concordance itself. Nobody else but they could get in here. Surely some disaster happened here, and I can’t imagine why they’d seal it away. Perhaps you know - you’re a Concordance Agent, and surely you all know how these things happen. But there is surely no more secure location than here to store such an important secret.”
We got 'em now, kid! exults Quinn over the mental link.
Adam wishes, briefly, that at least someone within the Concordance had his back right now. Anyone, really. He’s pretty sure this is where the fighting is going to start.
A conference of Concordance Coordinators has convened.
“Amnesty for prisoners on this list has been approved,” intones one. The list they share is made up of the dregs of space. Pirates, cutthroats, would-be warlords, and bloodthirsty fiends are all represented. The one thing they have in common is hate for the Concordance and all its Agents.
“Prisoners are to be deposited in a special administrative zone,” another indicates. The location is, of course, Somber’s sealed-off home planet.
“Prisoners will be granted fueled and armed craft in order to safely return to their respective homes,” adds a third.
“Yes. Mercy is indicated,” concludes the first.
“So what you’re saying, Quinnar Gentry–”
“The Right Honorable Quinnar Gentry, if you please.”
“The prisoner will not interrupt!” Adam declares loudly, with a flourish of his own hand.
You’re really getting into the spirit of this, Quinn enthuses mentally. Keep it up!
Adam resumes. “You’re saying that you have possession of this ship - which is evidence of a crime against the Concordance - because you were also harmed?”
“It is so!” Quinn calls out. “Examine it for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
Adam actually smirks. “I think that I will do just that.”
It doesn’t take long for Adam to access the ship. He and Quinn rehearsed this part a few times. And sure enough, Adam is able to summon up what he needs from the ship. A technical readout of the systems used to neutralize and corral Concordance Shards - detailed enough to be persuasive, not detailed enough so that the whole universe can replicate them. Evidence from the ship’s flight logs that they targeted newly minted Concordance Agents. And Cracklesnap’s own boasting, as he fought with Adam, that he had the capability described.
This is still a Tribunal. The matter in question must be resolved.
Adam rounds the final turn in his prepared speech. “Well. The Right Honorable Quinnar Gentry, you are worthy of that name in this one respect. You have told me the Truth, and delivered back to me evidence the Concordance wants. We have all seen that the Blockheads, not you, were responsible for the abduction of Shards. And I have evidence - which I cannot reveal on broadcast - of where those Shards went. Suffice it to say that it is within the authority of the Concordance to pursue. As administrator of this Tribunal, I retain that authority to myself.”
Adam knows he technically can’t do that, but it’d take the intervention of a Concordance Coordinator to stop him. And they’d have to come here. If they did, the jig would be up for them.
“I therefore find you… not guilty!”
Across a million star systems, the audience of the Tribunal reacts in a million ways. Conversations and machinations begin.
We did it! Adam exults. Quinn wants to grin back, but he can’t show his real emotions, not just yet.
In the space around the Tribunal’s ‘courthouse’ and the neighboring Blockhead craft, a dozen strange ships warp in. A hundred.
A thousand.
Ten thousand.