by Drew Avera
“Mr. Quin,” she said curtly. Her small nose was pointy in a way that was distracting, almost ending with a fine spike, he wondered if she could even breathe with that thing. It was a stupid question, but he was bored from too many hours or days in seclusion. Though she wasn’t unattractive, that flaw did take away some from the otherwise smooth lines of her face. She placed her hand above a sensor in the deck and a cylinder rose and allowed her to take a seat. There was no equivalent inside the cell, so Brendle stood, careful not to let any part of his body come into contact with the barrier force field between them. It would be embarrassing to get zapped and then piss your pants in front of the lady, he thought. It might scare her enough to make her piss her own pants too, he laughed in his head because there was no room for it here.
“Hey,” he said. It was a nervous greeting, partly because he was confined and about to be trialed for treason and partly because despite the tiny nose he thought she was relatively pretty in her own severe-bun sort of way. He cut a smile in her direction, hoping to break the ice in a civil manner. In a way that didn’t scream you’re in the brig for treason and this legal officer is about to see you thrown from the airlock. Despite his warm smile, the sentiment was not reciprocated.
Her nose twitched at the disregard of her rank and her shoulder insignia reflected the light of the room in an all-too-obvious fashion. Normally rank devices didn’t come quite so polished. It would be obvious to anyone that she was still new enough that rank still mattered to her. Yet another indication of how different Brendle was from the company he kept on the Telran. “My name is Lieutenant Prable. I am going to be your legal representative until the time of your placement off the Telran. I am here to make an offer on behalf of the Commanding Officer, Captain Elastra.” What she didn’t say was your placement off the ship will most likely be a death sentence as they toss your sorry ass into the dark. He could almost appreciate that willingness to not be so blunt. Still, not saying it didn’t make it any less true. He bet the words were just behind her teeth, ready to pour from her lips at a moment’s notice.
“And what would that be?” Brendle asked, the tension filling his voice as each word spilled from his dry, cracking lips.
A nervous smile curled her lips for a moment. It definitely wasn’t a happy smile. It was one where nervousness interrupted the words she didn’t want to speak, probably the ones about dying in vacuum, oxygen sucked from your lungs as your flesh began to ice. “Captain Elastra is willing to spare your life in return for a confession,” she said.
Surprised, Brendle eyed her, trying to figure out what the catch would be. Naval doctrine is pretty clear on matters of treason, he thought. If the captain was willing to spare his life, there must be a reason, maybe Captain Elastra didn’t believe the charges after all. He allowed himself to have a little hope. “What do you mean by spare my life? Do you mean I’ll be freed and the charges dropped?”
Lieutenant Prable stood and placed her file on the stool where she had been sitting. She stepped closer to the cell, but not too close. “Your confession, your admittance to guilt, will mean the ship will drop you on the first survivable body in this system. There’s a moon with a thin atmosphere a few days from here. If you confess, then he is willing to drop you and let the gods figure it out from there. Otherwise, you will be released from the airlock and guaranteed death as you watch the Telran leave you behind. I don’t imagine that is something you would look forward to, so I suggest you take his offer into consideration. It really is a good deal,” she finished. Her speech was well said, a little too rehearsed sounding, but life on a rock beat the hell out of death in the dark, at least until you starve to death.
To Brendle, the deal was lose-lose. “It’s the death you know and the death you don’t know,” he said. He wasn’t wrong. Like all things military related, this deal was a little too good to be true.
She wiped her hands on her pants before speaking. “Everyone on the Telran considers you a traitor. If you don’t confess, your death will be more severe because the crew will also consider you a liar. There’s no need to dishonor your family with two sins against our people. Why not take the easy death?” It was the first true thing to escape her lips. He would be forced to walk a gauntlet of punishment before succumbing to the airlock. At least with the admission of guilt he would be dropped off to fend for himself. It wasn’t an ideal outlook, but at least it was one he might have some control over. Either way, lose-lose.
Brendle inhaled deeply. “All right, please let Captain Elastra know I will confess in exchange for the deal.” The words felt like acid on his tongue. Was he giving in too quickly, a premature reaction to the unmistakable death he was about to be subject to? Everything was moving too fast for his mind to keep up, but he heard himself right, he just agreed to confess to something he was innocent of. Brendle fought the urge to vomit.
Lieutenant Prable nodded lightly. There was a sense of relief on her face and an increase of moisture around her eyes. She must have been fighting back tears the whole time she had been standing there. Apparently seeing a dead man was unsettling, Brendle thought. It’s not like his body was even growing cold yet. The thought made him uncomfortable. Maybe the internal mockery of his imminent demise wasn’t the best attitude to have while coming to terms with it.
Her voice cracked when she spoke again. “I will, and I will return later for your signature for the official declaration.” It was all she could say before turning to leave. Four words to help seal his fate.
Brendle watched as she left the brig, files in hand and the light clacking of her boots against the steel deck, looking like she was on a mission to administer justice in deep contrast with the truth everyone seemed blind to. Brendle was innocent and he had no way to prove it. It didn’t matter how many times he racked his brain, trying to find an answer to lessen the extent of his punishment, he kept coming up empty. He wished he had never sent the message home, but mostly he wished he had never joined the Greshian Navy. He could have lived a lifetime without needing all the things he thought the military had to offer. Now, a lifetime didn’t seem very long at all.
The stool lowered back into the deck as she stepped through the hatch and out of the brig. Once again he was left in isolation, the familiar loneliness of his own mind projecting the future based on new data. His imagination was in a rush to see how much longer he had to live, but his heart just wanted to pause for an eternity and pretend none of this was happening. Wanting to know how much longer he had to live burned through his mind along with thoughts of how he was going to die.
7
Anki
The steep incline of the loading ramp leading up to the umbilical burned Anki’s calves as she carried her belongings in a single heavy bag across her back. It was the kind of burn that rewarded effort, the kind that was more challenging for the mind than the muscles would make you want to believe. She pushed back the dull ache and continued her pace. The umbilical led to a bucket transport that would bring her to the Seratora within hours, but during that time she would be pressed against her seat, the blood threatening to escape her brain for relief in limp appendages. The suit she wore would inflate and dam the blood into her torso until the pressures alleviated. It would be damn uncomfortable, but discomfort was a prerequisite in the military. Dealing with it was a defining skill marking the kind of marine you would become.
For Anki, it was never a matter of not wanting to deploy, but as each moment flowed into the next she began to worry. What if I don’t make it back? The question of finality echoed in her mind with each step, with each thrum of her heart. She was a marine going to war. Of course she had a higher chance of dying than she did of returning to Luthia. To believe otherwise was naivety, or stupidity depending on who you asked. She kept her fears to herself as she climbed aboard the lift that would take her into upper atmosphere where the transport awaited. The lift was nothing more than a small box with a single window facing west towards the capitol of Luthia. She wished it co
uld face Surda. Even if she couldn’t see it through low-hanging clouds, it would have at least been nice to try.
Her thumb found the ascend button for the lift. Slowly the hydraulics powered up and the slow climb towards sub-orbit began. From her perch in the umbilical she could see everything, beginning with the swath of industrial complex that was Port Carreo. The Luthia navy used the port for many things and from her elevating vantage point she could pick apart the years of expansion as the landscape and building colors changed the further out Port Carreo crawled across the landscape. Everywhere the sea touched was owned by the Luthian Navy, and even parts more inland had been appropriated for the war effort. Like cogs in a machine, everything had a place and was used for the purpose of defiance. Hardly anyone said win anymore in relation to war, at least no one who knew better. Maybe that’s why I’m so afraid now, she thought. The propaganda was finally getting to her, professing the sort of truth that poisoned patriotism by making the patriots to afraid to rise. But the propaganda was perpetuated by the Luthian Government, why would they psyche out their sailors and marines before shipping them off to fight? Nothing seemed to make any sense to her anymore.
The window fogged with her breath. She wiped it clear with her hand and looked out at the vast lit network of Luthian cityscape. Beyond Port Carreo’s perimeter was a world ignorant of her upcoming tribulation. Perhaps it was better this way, to not know what was coming or going from the giant umbilical network of Port Carreo; each umbilical sending a son or daughter out, reaching for the stars. Soon her view would shift to nothingness beyond dense clouds. It came sooner than she expected, the ground she had grown up on disappearing in the span of a breath. Even in such a short period of time she struggled to remember what the grass smelled like, or the untainted seawater she smelled as a kid, the only time she and her father left Surda. Why she was remembering that moment now, she had no idea. Maybe it was because she never really wanted to leave Luthia in the first place; or maybe because now it was too late to change her mind.
Anki looked at the screen on the lift and saw she was only one-third of the way to her transport. Her knees ached, but not from the strain of exercise. Most likely the pain was from standing, her body poised in a tense way as she gawked out the window misremembering her purpose for being here. She knelt, moved her bag against the wall of the lift and sat on the luggage with her back against the wall. Through the steel construct she could feel the gentle climb and the rustling of gears grinding upon each other. It was a slow ascent, the lull of it comforting despite the terrifying heights she would reach. The air was thinner here, but she was adaptable. She felt the drowsiness coming over her like a warm blanket. With nothing better to occupy her time, she slept.
The jarring of the lift stopping stirred Anki awake. She didn’t know how long she had been sleeping, but the stiffness in her neck led her to believe it had been a decent amount of time. She stood up and grabbed her bag from the floor of the lift, slipping her arms through the shoulder straps and groaning under the weight. She took a look out the umbilical’s window and was met with relative darkness. The only light to be seen was from the other umbilicals and the transports tethered to them. Flashing anti-collision lights beamed a blinding white light and she turned away from it, blinking to overcome the temporary blindness. The airlock to the lift opened with a chime and she saw the transport awaiting her. It was a single-person transport, also used for evacuations when the crews needed to abandon ship. This was her first time seeing one up close, though.
Anki stepped into the transport, hunching over due to the low ceiling of the airlock, and strapped her bag behind the pilot’s seat. The cockpit glowed in a yellowish light, bright enough to make things out, but dull enough to not be overbearing. Once the bag was strapped down, Anki took her seat in the transport and strapped herself in. two shoulder straps joined together with lap-belts to hold her to the seat. The controls were fairly simple, but there was sign that read, “Emergency Controls Only: This ship is rigged with an auto-pilot feature which will fly occupants to designated locations. There is no need for pilot intervention unless in a state of emergency. Please do not touch the controls except in an emergency situation. Thank you.”
The sign is a little impersonal, Anki thought with a smile. She could only imagine how many would-be pilots had commandeered the small transports and attempted to fly them out into the dark. She doubted the flying part was all that hard, but landing on another ship under thrust was probably tricky. She decided to keep her hands to herself for the duration of the flight. She didn’t think enough of her piloting skills to want to test fate any more than she had to.
A voice prompt filled the cockpit, startling her. “Please state your name,” an electronic voice said.
“Anki Paro, marine combatant, Luthian Navy,” she answered.
“Acknowledged, Anki Paro, please ensure you are strapped in and your helmet is secured firmly in place. To confirm you are ready for launch, please depress the confirmation switch on the upper right-hand console.”
Anki turned to see the helmet placed on the left console and grabbed it. The hard white plastic enveloped her head and face and was augmented by a cold gel that formed around her where the helmet did not touch. If not for the nose piece, with hoses connected to the bulkhead for air, she might have felt like she was drowning. She reached for the confirmation switch and pressed it, noticing an immediate dimming of the console lighting when she released it. Her first instinct was to be concerned, but she realized the console lighting was unnecessary power loss if she wasn’t piloting the vessel. The helmet did much to drown out sound, but she could still hear the rumble of the engine through the clattering of the metal hull. The vibration caused by thrust chimed like a musical note, driving her forward; or at least relative to that direction. In a matter of moments the sound went away and all she noticed was the low vibration of the ship as it hurtled through the darkness. Experiencing flight in outer orbit was something she had never imagined. She knew that sound didn’t carry in vacuum and that the only reason she was breathing now was the helmet forcing breathable air into her nostrils.
What once felt like thrust was a quiet sway as the vessel seized its way towards the Seratora. Anki rested her eyes, letting the dim lighting remind her of night. Luthia was behind her; or below her depending on how she perceived it. She was off world, out in the dark abyss, in a place she never imagined she would be. She felt like an alien visiting an otherworldly sea, the depths rich with the things the Luthian cloudscape obscured from ground level. The dark was beautiful, the Luthians moons bouncing back the light of a near-absent star. It helped her understand why the light was in hiding this time of year, the star perched behind a gas planet between it and the Luthian sky. Only a sliver of it was noticeable from where she was oriented and with each moment that sliver grew smaller, the gas planet, Balceo growing larger, darker as the transport burned towards Seratora. She had a few hours of flight before the transport mated with the Seratora. With nothing else, but the dread of dying to occupy her mind she decided to sleep. With sleep came peace and with peace came the distraction from the horrible things her mind could conjure up.
A warning alarm sounded somewhere between normal sleep and momentary wakefulness. It was a buzzing in her ear; or helmet, she was too disoriented to tell at first, but it caused her to stir and then wake up. The console was illuminated, and the sound of static accompanied the buzzing noise in her helmet. Anki sat up, the cool movement of oxygen in the helmet helping her to be cognizant of what was happening. On the monitor was a large dark mass, the Seratora. It appeared to be sitting still, stoic in the darkness, but the instruments read that the ship was burning hard, faster than any vessel Anki had ever laid eyes on.
For a moment the static and buzzing went away. There was absolute quiet followed by a transmission. It was a woman’s voice speaking in Anki’s ear, but it had the cadence of a recorded message. “Marine Combatant Anki Paro, Luthian Navy, this is LNS Seratora. Your tr
ansport has entered our vicinity with a request to dock. I have approved your request and am sending instructions to your auto-pilot now. There is no need to do anything. The transport’s programming will maneuver you as needed. The Seratora and her crew look forward to accommodating you. Welcome aboard.”
The transport shifted, the view of the massive ship changing abruptly, but Anki only felt the sensation due to the swift movement of the monitor. If she had closed her eyes, chances were she wouldn’t have felt the disorienting effects of the maneuver. The monitor shifted again, this time the feed came from a different camera from the top of the transport she suspected. It looked as if the Seratora was drifting closer to her, descending on her transport like a leaf falling to the ground, but she knew it had to be the other way around. The transport was drawing closer to the massive ship, waiting to mate airlock to airlock. Then she would be home, or whatever you called it when you lived somewhere else for a semi-permanent temporary portion of your life. The screen went black and the transport shuddered, the rattling of the hull was strong enough Anki could feel it in her teeth. Her helmet deflated and she realized how uncomfortable she had been the whole time now that she could freely move her jaw. Dead silence followed, then every light on the transport illuminated.
The airlock opened as the vacuum pressure was relieved. Suddenly she felt all of her senses, as tangible as they had been on Luthia. There was no greeting party on the other side of the airlock, though. Just a sign that read “Check-ins this way” with an arrow pointing left. How very low-tech, she thought, grabbing her bag and leaving the transport for the vast spaciousness of the Seratora. She was heading towards a fight with the Greshians and there was no turning back now.
