Chapter 122 - 122: Mediations
"Captain Hawkins, is this that monster ship you told me about?" asked Mikaela, showing Edward a news article that had a picture of the Aristotle docked in Boston Harbour.
"Oh yeah that is it. Looks pretty mean right?" he said, looking at the picture over her shoulder.
"I think it looks kind of cool," said Mikaela, trying to enlarge the picture.
"Well, now that I'm not worried about it shooting at my ship, yeah, it looks pretty cool," chuckled Edward.
"You're supposed to be studying for your end of term tests. Not looking at warships," admonished Annette, entering Mikaela's bedroom with a tray of sandwiches and juice.
"I finished, Mom," said Mikaela, but she quickly closed the browser anyway to not make Annette angry.
"Has she?" asked Annette, looking at Edward.
"See for yourself," said Edward, handing Annette the practice workbooks that Mikaela had finished.
"Hmm, OK. Now finish your snacks, I'll go over these," said Annette, plopping down on the bed and looking through the workbooks.
"Captain Hawkins, what shall we play after this?" asked Mikaela as she finished a tofu sandwich, yet another change Annette had been forced to make after the school nurse had warned her that Mikaela was starting to become deficient in protein.
"Hmm, how about scrabble?" suggested Edward.
"OK," said Mikaela, rummaging for her scrabble game.
"Hold it," snapped Annette. She thrust a workbook accusingly at Mikaela.
"You've answered that the Pig roasters deserved what they got in your social awareness paper! Mikaela, how many times have I told you! Nobody deserves to be shot like that!" said Annette, her eyes wide.
"They killed two cops! An eye for an eye!" retorted Mikaela, folding her arms defiantly.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind!" snapped Annette, glaring at Mikaela.
"OK, time out you two. One by one, tell me about this pig roaster thing," said Edward, coming in between them.
Mikaela jumped in first.
"The pig roasters were a bunch of idiots who stole a truck and were making cops chase them around. They killed two cops when they rammed through a roadblock, and then they came right up this street. I saw it all from this window. An SZPD helicopter swooped down, and then bam-bam-bam, it shot the truck right in the front, making it stop just right there," she said excitedly, pointing at the spot on the street through the window.
"That SZPD chopper didn't issue any warnings, no Miranda rights, nothing! It just unloaded tungsten armor piercing rounds straight into the truck's front and windshield! The families of those kids only got jars of mush to bury! Even the Boston PD cops who came in were shocked!" retorted Annette.
"I... see," said Edward, feeling both Mikaela's blue eyes, and Annette's brown eyes boring into him.
"You ladies have more evidence? I need to get the bigger picture," he said, desperate to stall for time.
Mikaela immediately fired up her computer's browser and typed "pig roasters incident" into the search bar.
"There, see?" she said, pulling up a news article that showed the SZPD HellVortex helicopter, the wreckage of the armored truck, and had the names and photos of both the pig roasters and the police officers who died in the chase.
"Hmm... OK. I've got it. You're both right," said Edward after looking through the article.
"What?" exclaimed Annette and Mikaela in unison, to which he couldn't help but chuckle.
"Look. This thing is what happens when stuff spins out of control. Those pig roasters were riding around in an armored truck. How they got their hands on it, nobody seems to know, but when you've got something like that, it makes you feel like nothing can touch you. Like Mikaela said, they smashed right through a police roadblock, and they even taunted the cops about it. Now, Annette. Police have levels of threat and escalation. You speed, they pull you over and give you a ticket, you speed and then don't stop when they tell you to pull over, they chase you down and force you to stop. They can't stop you with their police cars? They try to set up road blocks and spike strips. If that doesn't work as well, they call in SWAT teams and air support. By then, you've been given multiple chances to surrender and end things peacefully. If you still think you can just evade then, that's when the big guns come out. So, does anybody deserve to be shot by 30mm tungsten rounds? No they don't. But if nothing else stops them from tearing up the streets, and putting people's lives in danger, then you don't have much of a choice but to use that kind of firepower," he explained.
"So... They got what was coming to them right?" asked Mikaela.
"Well, it's less eye for an eye but more play dangerous games, win dangerous prizes," said Edward.
"They should have gotten a trial, not an execution," grumbled Annette.
"You saw them come right up this street right? Would you have felt the same way if Mikaela was out there and that truck turned her into roadkill?" asked Edward rhetorically.
Annette covered her mouth in shock, and started to tremble.
Edward placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
"Wanting due process is one thing, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way," he told her gently.
She swatted his hand away.
"All right, you two have made your points, now no more military talk! OK?" she said, now shaking in anger.
"OK, OK, relax," said Edward, still not used to Annette's volatility.
"OK Mom, let's play scrabble," said Mikaela, attempting to bring things back to normal.
---
"Captain, we need to have a little chat," said Annette, standing in his doorway later that night.
"All right come on in," sighed Edward, knowing what this was going to be about.
Annette came into his living room, and stood toe to toe with him.
Edward didn't flinch, but silently appreciated that underneath her baggy hoodie and jeans, Annette was easily 180 cm tall.
"I believe you told me that you won't do anything to encourage Mikaela's interest in the military, so why is she looking at warships, and justifying lethal force on civilians?" asked Annette through gritted teeth.
Edward folded his arms.
"I told you that I won't, and I have kept my word to the best of my ability. If I was truly being insubordinate to your rules, I would have simply sided with Mikaela right away. Contrary to what you think Ms. Petra, I'm not some rabid warmonger or bloodthirsty military hard-ass. I loathe conflict and loss of life just as much as you do. I've seen my share of good people with families and children die needlessly because some idiot in Washington decides to poke America's nose in another region's affairs. Mikaela's curiosity right now is just that, innocent curiosity about cool looking things. She'll grow out of it. Most children do. So cool down," he said, steel entering his voice.
"Don't tell me to cool down! I already lost one child to that hateful ideology. I refuse to lose another! You are no longer welcome in my house, Captain!" said Annette fiercely, grabbing him by his hoodie.
"Would you like some wine? Ms Petra?" he asked, gently prying her hands off his hoodie, he had recognized Annette's wild eyed look.
Annette's trembling slowly subsided.
"Please," she said, sinking into his living room couch.
Edward filled two glasses of his finest Navy Port vintage, and handed one to her.
"Look, I'm working with too much of a vacuum here to know what lines not to cross and what buttons not to push. How about you tell me what's going on with you? This kind of back and forth ain't good for a kid, and frankly, it ain't good for me either. I came here to live a quiet life, not get into a family war zone," he said.
Annette chugged down the glass of wine, and held out the empty glass expectantly.
"I guess that's one piece of the puzzle," thought Edward wryly as he refilled her glass, and then went to get a cheaper vintage.
"I suppose I can tell you about my greatest shame, I'm past caring. My ex-husband is Ivan Zakhrov, and my first filthy spawn, Aaron Zakhrov is the evil dictator of Sirius Software," said Annette, draining her second glass of wine.
Edward gave a small chuckle.
"You look way too young to be Aaron Zakhrov's mom," he said.
"Flattery will get you nowhere. I'm 46," said Annette.
"Well, you look half that age," chuckled Edward.
"So I've been told. Anyway, Aaron was 12 when he started developing this obsession with patriarchal symbols like high heels, tailored suits, authoritarianism, violence towards women, all sorts of deviances. He even went so far as to influence one of the girls in his class into wearing corsets. I tried my best to educate him, but Ivan just enabled and encouraged him, undermining me at every turn. I had hoped that a little sister would soften him up, but then he did something unforgivable. The school discovered he was writing a violent and sexually explicit game when he was barely 14 and expelled him for it. That was the final straw for me. I feared for Mikaela whom I was carrying at the time, and disowned him completely. Ivan decided to stay for Mikaela, but his pattern of enabling Mikaela and undermining me continued. So, I divorced him. And now, you're doing the same. So, unless you stand with me, I don't want you around," said Annette, slightly slurring her words.
"That's... a lot to take in. However, I get your point. OK, I'll keep my interactions with Mikaela to a minimum. Will that suit you?" asked Edward.
"That will work I suppose," said Annette. She rose and staggered back to her house.
Edward picked up his phone, and sent a message.
"I'll get the other side of the story before I commit to anything further," he mused, before retiring for the night.