by Michael Orr
“Commander Lansig is hereby reinstated to provisional duty during recovery from his injuries, at which time he may be posted to an equivalent command. This board looks forward to his continued excellence in service. Court adjourned.”
He wasn’t sure he dared believe it. Life had thrown him the worst of twists; could he have faith in it again?
The board seems t’think so, he told himself.
ODESSA EARTHFLEET BASE – MAR 5, 2371
“How d’they feel?”
Aldo twisted his wrists this way and that. Clenched his fists. Wiggled his fingers.
“Almost like nothin’ ever happened.” He had no intentions of telling his doctor about the insomnia; about waking in the wee hours with his heart pounding out of his chest; of spending long, dark minutes controlling his breath until his pulse calmed to relative normal, unable to fall back asleep until dawn for that one last doze.
He had alien warships on the brain. What survivor wouldn’t? That was no reason to scuttle a career.
“The microscans agree,” his doctor said. “Nerves regrowing at a good rate. Scar tissue’s receding. Inflammation’s nearly gone. s’Good enough for light duty from my end.”
Approved for provisional duty, Aldo made his way on foot across the Black Sea base, appreciating a blustery autumn day with the wind whipping up white caps like frosting off Odessa’s deserted beach. For just this brief moment he was free from the ghosts of his MIA crew and more than ready to get back to his career.
“I need you up in Refit.”
Aldo nodded at the news as his new boss, Captain Richt, made entries in a hovering holo. “Got a vacancy out on the belt. You’ll be overseein’ turnaround on incoming ships.” Richt looked up. “Give ya a glimpse’a what happens on our end.”
“When d’ya want me out there, sir?”
“s’Been vacant for a day now. I won’t rush ya up there right this minute, but tomorrow’s the latest.”
“Not a problem,” Aldo assured him. “I’ll get my things transferred this afternoon. I can be on site by evening chow.”
Richt looked him in the eye. “I’d appreciate that. Keep things movin’, Commander. They’re maybe two shifts away from a bottleneck.”
With Richt’s ok, Lansig signed out a shuttle and commandeered a private to help with his dunnage. Even with his new post on the opposite side of the sun from Earth, it was a quick trip up to the asteroid belt. Not three hours after being assigned, he was navigating a hoverjack piled with his belongings through the Refit station.
Completely unlike the nearby shipyards from a design standpoint, the equally enormous Refit station was anchored within eyeshot of them, offering striking views of their gigantic construction nests.
Refit’s core was a large command dome with concentric rings spreading out from its flat base. Each ring provided trams and service corridors to lesser domes housing localized offices, workshops, storage depots and more. The whole station sprawled over ten klicks and handled as many as twelve refits at a time.
Ships returning from patrol would dock with an assigned dome, where for the next six weeks they’d be robotically inspected, repaired, upgraded and provisioned for their next deployment.
It wasn’t the duty station Aldo had hoped for, but they’d be watching him closely for signs of PTSD and depression. The only way he’d get a new command was to treat this current situation like it was right where he wanted to be.
REFIT STATION – ASTEROID BELT – SEP 21, 2371
Months were passing and Aldo was wilting in his temp post at Refit. It was a soul-sucking job, made only somewhat palatable by the fact that he could attend classes at the war college. But he began to suspect the board’s promise was just lip service.
Maybe I fell between the cracks, he worried. And what crew’s willing t’serve under a skipper who lost his first command?
Suspicion after suspicion rolled through his mind like railway cars on a runaway train. He took every opportunity to meet this or that buddy at a bar, desperate for news of his missing men or recent Hwarak’mogk sightings.
Week upon week passed as ships came in for maintenance and went out again, each time with a man other than himself in the captain’s chair. It seemed more and more likely that he’d never see command again. He was no longer part of it...no longer a member of that exclusive club. He had become ancillary.
“Hey Al...” Commodore Tumos stopped by Aldo’s office after six months on S-8. “I heard you were headin’ up Refit these days.”
However glad Aldo was to see his old mentor again, he could wish for better circumstances.
“I’m told it’s temporary, sir, but you’d be hard-pressed t’believe it.”
He shook the commodore’s hand as Tumos took in the view of the spacedocks outside. “Ya know, your jones for a ship reaches all the way to Aldebaran.”
“I ’spect it goes farther still, sir. If ya felt like charting it.”
Tumos faced him. “Well, let it be known...I’m ’onna get you back.”
“Not a mercy command, sir.” Aldo winced, imagining himself on the bridge of some lumbering fleet tender. “I’d rather hang.”
“Mercy, hell!” Tumos puffed his chest a little. ”You show me a man more motivated t’get at the Hwarak’mogk and I’ll toss you overboard.”
“I’ll fight ’im for it, Commodore.”
Tumos went in for a splash of Lansig’s Irish. “Ya know, duels went outta style some time ago.”
“Duel?” Aldo growled. “You know me better’n that, sir. These’re good as new.” He brandished his healed hands. “I’ll crush ’is scrawny neck with ’em.”
“There’s the dawg.” Tumos downed his pour in a gulp and tabled the glass. “Whaddya think a’the Euphrates?”
Lansig searched his memory. “I refitted ’er about a month back. She’s solid, but that’s Daley’s boat.”
“And?” Tumos challenged. “She solid enough for a comeback?”
Aldo stared at Tumos in awe. Just like that, he was back! It had never been about the board’s promise, nor about how he handled his temp assignment. It was only about who he knew...and he knew a commodore.
STARBASE 8 – ALLIANCE SPACE – OCT 10, 2371
The irony wasn’t lost on Aldo that after months of refitting ships out on the belt for other COs, he’d get his own new command elsewhere.
Good as his word, Commodore Tumos field-promoted Commander Daley into a frigate, making way for Aldo to get his proper job back. And now, his heart was doing somersaults as a SkyRanger ferried him from one of S-8’s minor bays out to the loitering Euphrates.
Gawd damn it’s been a long time. Eight months since Kolkata. He forced the thoughts of that day out of his consciousness. Today was not that day. Today, he knew what to expect; knew how to handle what took him by surprise last time.
And this time, I know their fucking name.
He thought about the Hwarak’mogk intel that had come as a result of his battle...the loss of Kolkata. They had payback coming.
With an eye more practiced than ever from supervising ships’ repairs, he studied his new vette’s lines to make sure everything was right. Like the Kolkata, Euphrates belonged to the Nile class of corvettes, with a configuration so unlike the earlier Rage class that they might as well have come from a different race.
The old Rages struck Aldo as needlessly elongated and fragile, and he was glad to have missed that era in favor of today’s squat, flattened, cannon-like ships.
“Anything you wanna see out here before we board, sir?” asked his pilot and first-shift navigator.
“Just a once-around’s fine, Mister Alvarre. As long as everything’s shipshape, nothin’ new ta see.”
“Aye, sir.” The sublieutenant rolled into an unorthodox corkscrew that eeled their shuttle all around Euphrates, giving her new captain a chance to inspect instead of just ogle.
“Unique approach,” Aldo commented.
“Thought you’d like t’make sure she’s just t
he way you signed off on ’er, sir.”
“You guys see much action this time around?”
“A little. No real damage, though. Nothin’ S-Eight couldn’t handle. We’re ready t’go as far as I’m aware.”
“What deployment you on, son?”
“Number six, sir.” Alvarre moderated his pride.
“You’ll be up for a second full stripe pretty soon.”
“Hope you’re right, sir.”
Aldo waxed nostalgic for a moment. No matter what rank you wore, ya never got past anticipating the next. That was one of EarthFleet’s hooks — like belt colors in martial arts. Make ’em hungry for the next step and they stick with it.
The shuttle set down in Euphrates’s snug bay and Alvarre stepped up to get permission for their captain to board. The formal gesture took Aldo by surprise; but before he could comment, a trio of men approached from the pad’s edge.
“Welcome home, Captain.” The lead made a casual salute that expected no reply. “Ikamura. Your ‘first’. This’z Dawson...” He gestured to the lieutenant on his right, then to the other. “...and Prattipurti.”
“Purdy, sir,” the junior man corrected with a smile, leaning in to shake his new skipper’s hand.
“Gentlemen.” Aldo finished his round of introductions. “Looks like you’ve been taking good care of ’er.”
“No thanks t’the raiders out here, sir.” Ikamura wore his mirth with stoic reserve.
“Well, we’ll see what we can do about that.” Aldo made turns for the bay’s aft exit and noted how his new executive corps stepped lively to keep up.
Anxious about their new CO, he reasoned. It’d be lunacy to think he had nothing to prove. And they’ve got every right. I’d feel the same in their shoes. Hell, I feel the same in my own.
But...won’t take long, he assured himself. If this rash of life challenges had taught him anything, it was where he really belonged.
EPILOGUE
* * *
SOCAL MEGAPLEX – EARTH – FEB 20, 2371
“I dunno.” Trish avoided Renée’s eyes as they sat at a seaside coffee shop on an unseasonably warm winter Saturday. They’d been growing apart since her graduation, but there was no one else she trusted more, and the idea of disappointing the woman who for all intents and purposes was her mother...
"I dunno’s kinda weak, dontcha think?” Renée studied her prodigal with an abundance of grace, cradling her mocha before her mouth for convenience. Trish’s impetuous streak was part of the package. It was only right that there be a downside of some kind, considering what a deluxe package it was.
Sharp. Insightful. Aware. A dedicated performer. And she’d surpassed the beauty Renée saw in her so many years ago. Not just cute, Trish was stunning, with a figure that exploded into the double digits of hyperbole.
The short, feisty crop of black cherry hair finished off the girl’s creaminess like a topping on cheesecake, but right now all that pixie sparkle was eclipsed by an uncharacteristic pensiveness.
“Weak words, I guess,” Trish admitted, “but I know I can’t stay here. It’s just not my place anymore.”
“Then where?” Renée spread out her hands, masking the concerns in her heart. “SoCal’s like anywhere else. Better than most.”
Trish swallowed hard. This was it...
“It’s not about ‘here’. I need t’be out ‘there’.” She gestured toward space and Renée went stiff.
“You know what that means...”
“I know. I’m better than that. It’s jus–”
Renée shushed her. “I taught you to create art, not pretense. If you wanna work on a starliner, your art will go with you. But Space...” She bowed beneath the weighty concerns.
Trish was shocked. The great Madam Durra was okay with her prize pupil shipping out with the amateurs.
Renée saw the knot in Trish’s forehead. Knew the tempest behind that familiar tell.
“Oh, sweetheart...” She reached out a hand; took hold of the young strength waiting there. “You thought you were betraying me.”
Trish crumpled into a good old-fashioned cry. “I promised you I’d always be here...”
Renée shook her head. “And it’s not working.”
Trish only sniffed, eyes in her lap.
Lifelong affection softened Renée’s concerns. She thought about the danger that brought Trisha to SoCal. There’d been no trace of the jihad here in all the years since. Maybe it was safe at last.
And... she advised herself, there’ll be no holding her back now, even if it isn’t. Nothing stops her when she’s feeling called.
“Whaddas my Trisha need?”
“I haven’t been getting work.” The girl bludgeoned a stray tear into submission with a finger. “I just need enough t’get there.”
“Sydney,” Renée guessed. Earth’s capitol was HQ for Goddess Cruises, like it was for every major Conglomerate enterprise.
APPENDICES
* * *
APPENDIX A:
EID – EARTH ISOLATION DISORDER
The twenty-first century was a turning point for the human race in a number of ways, but perhaps the foremost was the discovery of our quarantine upon Earth — something which was revealed to us accidentally. We’re all familiar with the fact that early astronauts spending weeks or months in Earth orbit returned from those missions weakened, and in many cases unable to stand. It typically took days or even weeks for them to fully recover, and this was assumed to be the effect of long-term exposure to the micro-gravity of orbit. But events in the twenty-first century proved this assumption wrong.
Amidst the widespread terrorism of that era, often regarded collectively as a third world war, the human race made multiple efforts to expand beyond Earth and colonize the solar system, with varying degrees of success. It was when we ventured beyond the confines of our star’s system that a more serious problem arose.
From the mid-twenty second to early twenty-third centuries, every voyage into interstellar space beyond the influence of our sun ended in lethal crew decay.
After a great deal of testing and supposition, pains were taken to establish an earth-like environment onboard by maintaining each expedition ship’s energetic signature at a frequency of 7.83 hertz, the same frequency at which Earth naturally resonates. But while this did extend the period of survivability for expedition crews, it was insufficient to resolve the fundamental issue, and all crews unanimously succumbed to what was now called ‘space wasting’.
After this, research was expanded to include more abstract forms of investigation, and it was ultimately discovered that the Earth and our sun together emit an entire spectrum of previously unrecognized subtle energies that affect the human body on pre-physical levels. These energies, sometimes referred to incorrectly as orgone, are absorbed by the human body’s chakra system, well-known in Eastern medicine but rejected and dismissed by western allopathic practitioners.
The chakras convert these energies into the building blocks of our cells, which go on to create tissues, organs, bone, etc. Without access to the solar system’s complex fields of subtle energy, the chakra system has no energetic ingredients with which to maintain the solid, concrete physical body. The resulting decay begins at the organelle level of cells, slowly taking hold at greater and greater levels until the body’s tissues lose integrity.
While this decay is systemic, it first displays in mental cognition. Loss of concentration leads to mistakes and accidents which in turn weaken morale and the will to live, ultimately resulting in a catatonic state in which the sufferer remains only semi-lucid. If allowed to progress, this state overtakes the intellect, leaving the sufferer in a zombie-like condition while the body loses life-momentum and slows to a stop.
Unexpectedly, the rate of deterioration is more pronounced in females, and it was eventually realized that this is due not to some imagined weakness in the female constitution, but the opposite. The female’s connection to Earth’s life-giving energies is more dire
ct than the male’s; thus, the female is more rapidly impacted by their absence. The male appears to be mildly estranged from these energies and is therefore better able to withstand extended isolation from them.
The implications of all this are nothing less than paradigm-shifting. The human species is restricted to our home system, incapable of meaningful expansion. Therefore, we are a quarantined race and Earth is both home and prison.
Long-term research by Earth’s xenobiologists has since revealed an unexpected truth about life: that every inhabited planetary system shares these same subtle energies enjoyed by the human race in our home system. It appears that life in all its recognizable forms is restricted to planetary systems where these energies are superabundant. Such systems are, therefore, cosmic oases of life dotting the vast tracts of uninhabitable interstellar ‘badlands’ that separate them; and star travel means passing through regions where even properly-equipped and resonant vessels cannot maintain life for more than a few months at a time — the one exception being Alliance stations.
Anecdotally, the label ‘Earth Isolation Disorder’ was coined by deputy lead researcher Dr. Meeta Parih (M.D., PhD.), who considered the acronym ‘EID’ most apt, it being an anagram of ‘die’. (Return)
APPENDIX B:
FTL
Long the purview of science fiction, faster-than-light travel was found to be possible not so much through the development of new technology as through a seemingly unrelated shift in mathematical philosophy. To understand how this came about requires a brief glimpse into the status quo prior to the shift.
The early twentieth century saw the discovery of two new branches of physics: relativity and quantum mechanics. The first, attributed to Einstein, relates to the macro-scale universe — that is, activity at the cosmic level. Quantum mechanics, posited by Planck, Bohr and others, relates to the opposite scale — the micro-realm of atoms and subatomic phenomena.
