His was another matter entirely.

He'd been asked to come to the Central Command Post four days ago, and had immediately boarded a shuttle. Security officers had met him at the docking bay. They were armed, but in a fashion that suggested it had more to do with protocol than necessity. They accompanied Hale to the antechamber to the Judicial Council Room. There was no need to go anywhere else first; Hale brought no luggage, and had no business to attend to first.

Minerva Thoth was waiting on one of the benches. Her wrists showed marks from binders, though she wore none now. On either side of her stood armed guards, much more alert than those that were assigned to Hale. Apparently they considered this girl higher risk.

She heard footsteps approaching her direction from down the hall. She slowly raised her head to give the person a little bit of the “Insane Ex-Scorpion” look but was taken off guard by the sight of the man who approached her.

Hale.

Minerva’s jaw almost dropped but she quickly contained her surprise and just glared at him. Why was he here? Had he come to tell her she was through with the IF? All she knew is that she did not want that scum sitting next to her.

"Good morning, Ms. Thoth. Are you finding the final challenging, thus far?"

She stared at him for a moment, taking in his demeanor, his tone of voice. She looked at him, then to the guards who stood nearby, then back to Hale again. All worry, all of her anger floated away as she realized why he was here: He was under investigation also. Minerva could no longer contain it, and she let out a maniacal chuckle.

“Hale. What a surprise to see you here. Yes, I found the final difficult, but tolerable. I am interested in knowing, however, how you allowed a twenty-year old girl to escape from your command? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be older and wiser then us?” Minerva leaned in a little closer to Hale, staring straight into his eyes and speaking softly. “Boy, she sure fooled you.”

Minerva seemed rather smug, but that did not bother him; she had right to be, after spending two years in his program. Some instructors, though certainly hardliners, gained the grudging respect of their students by the end of the course. Hale didn't operate that way. Not a single student left his program, completed or not, with anything but antipathy for Hale.

He considered it a badge of honor.

But Minerva was no longer his student, and he was no longer required to make her miserable. There was nothing more for him to teach her.

"You needn't worry," he said. "They will find you not guilty. I've seen the evidence; they're only trying you as a formality. You'll be free and Earthside in two months."

Feeling that perhaps more should be said, he proceeded. "You were fooled by Kinoshita. So was I. Learn from it, and never forget. I should have been more watchful; I'm here today so that the Council can determine if this was preventable, and quite frankly, it was. I think you can be reasonably assured that you will be the final graduate of the Command School Special Operations AIT. Perhaps they will give you a plaque."

“Trust me, I’ve learned plenty from this event and I’ll handle it in my own way and in my own time. But the beauty of this Hale, is that I’ll be free to “fix” the problem. You won’t.” Minerva let a small chuckle escape her lips. She thought about stopping there, but could not contain herself. This may be her only chance to speak her mind to him.

“I hope I am the last graduate of this program. I hope no one else will have to go through that farce of a program. You think you taught us so much? I have learned nothing that will benefit me in life. The only thing you’ve installed in me is rage. And trust me, you have not seen the wraith of my rage yet. I fear you have done the IF a grave deed by furnishing me with such an emotion. Your lessons have already backfired on you with Riya…just pray they don’t backfire with me.”

"Really?" he said, in a tone that sounded almost sincere. "Well then. I can see that we needn't have put you in Scorpion at all. You already knew the trade of an agent of Legion. All those exercises, all those lessons, training your mind and your body to work at peak efficiency in the most stressful of situations; wasted on you, clearly. We had nothing to teach you. You were a cold-blooded killer from the start."

He checked his watch. Minerva would be called momentarily.

"It seems to me, Ms. Thoth, that you harbor some misconceptions about your own natural ability. You are what I made you. I instilled rage, but only because you are weak. A soldier does not need rage. Especially not one bound for Legion. In the real world you keep your cool no matter how much pressure is applied, or die. It is that simple. Hate is just fine; hate can be cold, can be contained, used to your own ends. But rage makes you stupid and it makes you predictable. Solenis and Gabriel hate me. Riya, if she is capable of such an emotion as hate, surely does also. But you, you cling to your rage. When this is over, and you are 'free', we'll see where that rage gets you. Because I will survive, Ms. Thoth, and I will be free again. If you are still alive when I get out, I shall be genuinely surprised. And I can gaurantee that if you are, it will be because you have learned this final lesson, possibly the most important of all. Hate; do not rage." He shrugged, and leaned back. "Or ignore my advice altogether. You are no longer my student; I don't have to care."

“Ms. Thoth. We are ready for you.”

Minerva got up slowly, eyeing the guards and the door down the hall once more. Maybe she should just run for it and get killed here and now. Freedom didn’t matter to her. But Hale was there…she would not give him the pleasure of seeing her demise. She began walking to the door, head high and shoulders broad. She stopped short before entering the chamber and looked at Hale once more.

“I’ll always be around Hale. I’ll never leave. And when you are released, my rage and my gun will show you who is the stronger of us.”

It was immediately clear that the matter was a formality; the prosecution stated the bare facts -- and they were few, and quite weak -- and the defense simply moved for dismissal upon grounds of lack of evidence, which the Arbiter accepted. Thoth was led away, free and officially reinstated, and placed on the passenger list of the next outgoing transport, arriving in three days.

Captain William Hale's trial was quite different.

Numerous Command School records, from holocam logs, official and otherwise, to feeler recordings, to biosensor scans, were presented as evidence. The defense attempted to have these items disallowed, but gave up after Hale interjected to stop his counsel for the third time.

They parade of evidence seemed endless. Conversations between Hale and Major Marcus Bryant, Command School's Headmaster. Reports made by Hale to the upper echelons of SOTF command concerning the progress of the students. Files from Hale's stand-alone terminal on Kinoshita, painting a very clear picture of her pre-Battleschool history. Psych evaluations of Kinoshita from Battle and Command Schools, expressly stating that she should be watched carefully.

The prosecution summed up by weaving it all to Hale. It presented the recommendation letter to the SOTF brass overseeing the SO AIT, stating that Kinoshita was a cold-blooded killer perfectly suited to Legion, signed by Hale himself. Hale's evaluations of Kinoshita, naming her as the most promising candidate of the group, even as they named her talents with subterfuge and deceit. And most devastatingly, a small library of reports concerning Hunter Gabriel and Rebecca Solenis, and Hale's suspicions concerning their loyalties.

Where were Gabriel and Solenis now? The prosecution told the Court Martial. Headed home to Earth on a transport vessel, having completed their final quite creatively, if recklessly.

The reports, one by one, strengthened the prosecution's case to the point of iron-clad. Hale's obsession with beating Gabriel and Solenis, the prosecution stated, had blinded him to the clear and present danger Kinoshita had presented long before she'd ever entered his program. He had taken what he'd known to be a murdering manipulator, and trained her in the art of the fader, of the shade, of the assassin. She had been a killer before; now she was a scourge. The chances of recovering her, dead or alive, were slim; and in addition to any deaths she might cause once she reached Earth, there was a disk with the plans for a multibillion dollar defense corvette that would very soon be in the hands of anyone who could meet Kinoshita's price.

All because of Captain William Hale.

The defense, when it finally got its turn, had little to use. Most of the avenues open to it had been expressly denied by Hale's guilty plea, and those few left were weak and unbelievable, and Hale reined in his counsel whenever any twist of the facts was attempted.

Hale was sentenced to twenty years in IF Maximum Security Detenion Center on Jupiter's moon Io, with his first parole hearing in ten, and additional hearings every two. Hale denied his defense permission to appeal.

Twelve days later, a freighter bound for Senty Station Omicron, in orbit around Jupiter, arrived at the IF Central Command Post, and William Hale, dishonorably discharged from the International Fleet, stripped of rank and position, was loaded aboard it. In another month and a half, he was on Io, in a subterranean prison compound.

It was very cold.

His first day, a man tried to kill him for his toothbrush and shoes. Hale broke nine of the man's bones, and landed himself in solitary confinement for a week. His first night, he lay in the dark metal box and dreamed of what he would do, when he got out.