27a. At Harmony Lodge
The next three weeks went by both too quickly and too slowly for Cortin's taste. It took the Imperials only a couple of days to find a plague vaccine, but they were unable to find a cure; according to their medical people, it caused permanent physical changes. That was fine with Cortin. She'd put a lot of time and effort working for the social changes the plague had made necessary; she had no particular desire to have that work wasted, and she wanted even less for her Family and herself to go back to their pre-plague selves.
To Cortin's amusement, when Conley was introduced to the rest of the Family she developed an almost instant crush on Tony Degas, the most classically handsome of the Family men. That, since Degas enjoyed the attention, kept them both busy while Cortin was working, and often afterward.
There were only two untoward incidents during the three weeks before Medart's arrival. The first was the arrival of a prisoner for execution, which wasn't at all unusual in itself—but the interrogation report she got with him didn't feel right, and the prisoner had been muted, which, with the other, could mean someone didn't want her questioning him. She didn't normally do that with execution subjects—they'd been questioned and sentenced before coming to her—but she decided to delay executing this one until Medart arrived. Mike said the Empire had something called a mind-probe, and thought it likely a battle cruiser would have one, unlike a scout; with that, she should be able to question the prisoner and get responsive answers.
The other was an attack on half a dozen Imperials and two Strike Force troopers on the way back from town, by twice that many Brothers of Freedom. There were casualties on both sides, but to Cortin's unconcealed delight, no fatalities on either. She left interrogation of all but the leader to the Detention Center's staff of Inquisitors, since they were unlikely to be either knowledgeable or particularly difficult to break. Even the leader wasn't too promising, given the Brotherhood's secretiveness, but Cortin took him anyway; these Imperials were her responsibility, and she wanted to personally punish the one in charge of harming them.
And she did get some useful information from him. The Brotherhood's still-anonymous new leader was no fonder of the Empire than she was, but instead of bowing to the inevitable and making the best of it, he vowed to destroy all he could. Killing Imperials was to take priority even over killing Strike Force members, including Cortin the Bitch herself. When Cortin passed that information along and it reached the public, the general attitude toward the Imperials became more favorable; for most people, anything the Brotherhood wanted to destroy must have its good points.
Return to main storyline: [29. Arrival]