He and Yume had considered having him sign up for an extended active-duty stint in the ALS military. Active service offered much better colonization credit payments, but that option had always relied upon Yume being there to manage things. He was already a reserve first-class petty officer in the ALS Navy, with the occasional duty and deployments that had allowed them to start off better than most. Active service, however, offered so much more. He could advance to Chief or even to the officer ranks, plus he could pay off their debt, and with even more active time, build up the farm to the level of an aristo plantation.
With Yume gone, the need remained, but the opportunity seemed impossible. Benno had struggled along as a single dad and homesteader for a few months, simultaneously worrying about his prospects and enjoying watching Mio grow up. But the math, his limited skill as a farmer, and his lingering pain over Yume’s death made the “right” answer apparent soon enough. As soon as Mio seemed marginally recovered from the loss of her mother, he had taken the plunge and gone active. Partnered with the Rogers on the next plot over, Benno had shifted from a full-time farmer and occasional Navy tech to a full-time sailor and occasional, regretful homesteader and father.
Benno made rank, reaching Chief in two years, then making Chief Warrant Officer, while his little girl grew into a young lady under Mr. Rogers’ stern hand. The farm and Mio had grown, even as their debt shrank and vanished. He had almost reached the point of putting in his papers and going back to the reserves, the goal of retiring on the farm indefinitely in sight at last.
But Operation Executive Amber had come along, and all such retirement plans were tabled until its conclusion. The fleet had left ALS territory to thrust deep into Terran space, Benno and the Puller in tow. And while he was out here, fulfilling a job neither honor, patriotism, nor financial need made necessary, the enemy had snuck in and planted a dagger in their exposed back.
Memories and recrimination gave way to nightmarish fantasies of the present. He saw Mio dying over and over again, in a hundred different ways. Mio strolling through the farmer’s market in First Landing when the hammer of the orbital bombardment wiped the entire town off the face of the planet, her sweet, hopeful face vanishing in a flash of white light. Mio lined up with other women and children against a wall, forced to kneel, waiting as a Turd officer walked down the line, executing each of them with a single shot to the head. Mio ripped screaming out of the Rogers’ burning farmhouse and passed around the ravenous hordes of Terran marines, used as a party favor until at last, her eyes dead and her mind hollow, one of her abusers killed her. Mio, lost, starving, alone, on the run in the vast alien/Terran forest, finally giving up and taking her own life.
In each nightmare, she looked up just before the end and stared off into space. Each time she locked gazes with Benno—jailed and awaiting his own execution—and wondered where he was. Why hadn’t he been there for her? Why couldn’t he have worked his farm like Mr. Rogers? Why had he run away from her after her mother died and left her a virtual orphan? Why had he allowed the Terrans to kill her—and more importantly, why had he let their relationship die well before that?
A double high-low tone sounded once, twice, three times over the announcing circuit. Automatically, Benno reached out and grasped the side of the cot where he sat. Seconds later, the rumble of the engines and the force of gravity fell smoothly down to nothing.
The XO’s voice sounded in every space, “Warriors of the Puller, we have successfully repositioned to the interior of the system, close to the other damaged vessels, to facilitate repairs near the tenders serving our capital units. Given the deep damage we’ve suffered, we are going to hold off on reconfiguring the hull for spin-gravity until we can complete the heavy-lift portion of those repairs. The captain and chief engineer anticipate remaining at zero thrust and spin for at least 72 hours. Watch rotations and off-watch physical training should be adjusted to include at least one hour of resistance therapy each cycle. Everyone ensure your nanite infusions are set for microgravity maintenance. Work hard, work fast, and work smart, people. The ALS is counting on each of you!”
“Well,” Ortiz said from his cell, “each of you, but us two, anyway.”
Benno shook his head and let go of his cot. He reached up to his face and wiped his eyes. Tears had streamed down his cheeks as his mind dwelt on his plight and his daughter’s future. He was not ashamed to cry. His family had raised him to freely express his passions. Stoicism did not suit him. But now, in microgravity, the tears welled in his eyes, preventing him from seeing anything clearly.
Besides, tears would solve nothing.
Using controlled, practiced moves, Benno pushed up from his cot and thrust himself forward. He arrested his flight at the bars between his and Ortiz’s cell.
Ortiz looked up at him from his cot and peaked an eyebrow in question. “Yes, can I help you, Chief Warrant Officer Sanchez? Or are you just fucking Benjamin now, you traitorous piece of ass-kissing shit?”
Benno ignored the jibes. “What did they do after they brought you in? Have you seen the legal officer yet? Did they say anything about a court-martial? Or are they going to handle your case at Captain’s Mast?”
Ortiz chuckled and shook his head. “You really expect me to talk to you? To give you any assistance whatsoever, you little kiss-ass token pleb?”
“Damn it, Raoul, I can’t help the position you put yourself in! It was a betrayal of your shipmates, and you know it. I’m sorry I had to be the one to take you to task. But there are bigger issues in play now! As you’ve noticed, I’m not in a much better position. I can’t take back what either of us did, but what happens to us isn’t as important as what’s happening back home.”
“Sorry, Benno-Boyo, but I ain’t so worried about some bull at home when I’m worried about my own neck getting stretched.”
“Bull!? You might not hail from one of the six worlds hit, but not even you can just blow this off!”
Ortiz flexed off his cot and pushed over to the bars where Benno floated. If he wanted to reach out and strike at Benno in revenge, he could. Chief Dufresne looked up sharply from the files displayed on her desktop, but she made no move to intervene. Nor did Ortiz try to throttle Benno. Instead, he looked at his former boss warily. “What the hell are you talking about? What worlds were hit? When?”
Benno shook his head. It hadn’t occurred to him that Ortiz might not know yet. He had assumed when the CMC informed the crew about the Terran counter-assaults, word would have gotten to everyone. Benno looked over at the Master at Arms Chief. “The Master Chief never told him? You didn’t?”
Chief Dufresne grew red in apparent embarrassment. She could only shrug and say, “His personnel file says he wasn’t from one of the affected worlds. I guess I figured his chain of command would tell him…”
Benno chuckled without humor. “No, you just didn’t care.”
“Hey!” she responded, but at Benno’s answering glare, she backed down and turned her attention pointedly back to her desktop.
Benno turned back to Ortiz. “This is how it went…”
For the next half hour, Benno told Raoul Ortiz everything he had missed. He could not help his emotions as he spoke about the ALS Navy patrols being pulled into the established/aristo central worlds to protect infrastructure while they attacked the Terran Union. This move gave free access to the TU Navy, which was then able to attack six colony worlds in the rear, exposed areas of ALS space, with impunity. Then he went on, about how those colonies—those people—were going to be left with the Turds in control until after the operation, and how there would be no counter-attack against the incursion with the ships defending the aristo infrastructure or allowing their current operation to lose momentum.
While he spoke, the anger waxed and waned in Ortiz’s eyes. Ortiz gripped the bars as if he might be able to tear them free of their moorings. The contempt he showed toward Benno slid away, supplanted by a new rage with no clear target. And, unnoticed by either of them, Chief Du
fresne rose from her seat and pushed herself to a position just outside the cells, listening closely.
Benno felt his face grow hot as he described how the captain and the ops officer seemed not to care, about how the fate of their families’ lives seemed to be of no real importance to the mission. His voice broke as he relayed how their deaths might even be of benefit if they made room for fresh batches of colonists. “I just lost it. When that kiss-ass bastard Johnson called me a coward for wanting to go back and defend Adelaide, I…went red and kicked him in the balls. Between that and cursing out the CO, I pretty much damned myself. And that’s it. You’re all up to speed.”
Ortiz shook his head, starting when he noticed Dufresne close by. He looked back to Benno. “This is bullshit. They can’t abandon people like that! They shouldn’t have started this stupid Executive Amber mierda if they couldn’t keep the Turds out of our backyard.”
Benno pushed away from the bars. “It’s not as if I don’t recognize the combat calculus. Captain Palmer is an ass, but, damn it, he’s not wrong about the strategy. I understand the ‘why’ of what they’ve done, even if the ‘how’ is reprehensible. The TU was putting military and economic pressure on every single one of the worlds along our common border. Annexation and insurgency weren’t far off, and if you let one or two worlds go without answering the challenge, the next worlds in line will give up and switch sides with far less pressure. Executive Amber is a necessity for the Alliance. We had to respond to their pressure, to show them that even if the Union is twice as broad as the Alliance, we aren’t just some pushover conglomerate of breakaway worlds. We’re an empire in our own right, with our own principles and a common, unified identity, worthy of healthy fear and respect. Where it’s all gone wrong is abandoning our own worlds out of expediency, but that’s an ass-backward military decision. It doesn’t invalidate what the ALS is or what it means. It doesn’t imply we aren’t one people.”
Ortiz chuffed a derisive laugh. “One people. That crap may have been correct 80 friggin’ years ago, but it ain’t the way of things now. When the outer worlds of the Terran Union broke away and allied into the ALS, when our grandparents fought for freedom and a say in their own destiny, we may have been one people. Back then, there weren’t no aristos and plebs. There were just fighters and loyalists, farmers and industry types, workers and wasters. They had one thing in common, though, and that was they didn’t want to be told what to do or how much to give up every year by Earth no more. So, they banded together, the whole ‘we either hang together or we’ll surely all hang separately’ thing. And it worked. We got the Earthers to leave us the hell alone so we could go our own way. Made our own constitution, ‘fixing’ things so we wouldn’t just be a copy of the TU. But equality? One system from many worlds, all on the same level playing field? That crap ended the day we called ourselves the Alliance of Liberated Systems and laid down our guns.
“You say you understand the captain’s thinking? That we have to be patriotic and defend the Alliance? Well, I say bull! If they can do this and willingly sacrifice six worlds of their own people—that they made vulnerable by choice because they ain’t worth as much yet or don’t have enough of the ‘right’ kind of people on ‘em—then there ain’t no Alliance to defend! Look at things as they really are, Benno. The Turds might threaten from the outside, but we’re also under threat from our own damn people. The aristo worlds and their enclaves on each colony think they have the right to be in charge forever, all because they put in the money to pay for the original fleet. Yeah, well who bled the most for the Liberation? Who feeds the ALS and works the most to expand it? And who always gets stuck with the shit end of the stick, working their whole lives for an unfair system with bought-and-paid-for elections and cronyism they can never escape and never break into? We do—the goddamn plebeians—every time!
“You’re a patriot for a nation that doesn’t exist, Benno. And look how you’re repaid.”
Benno hated how accurate Ortiz’s version of reality sounded, even if it was likely self-serving. He’d like nothing better than to have his act of treason somehow validated. Well, perhaps he would rather escape his approaching death sentence—as would Benno himself—but it did not mean his barbs against the unity of the Alliance were not at least partly right. And Benno recognized their truth even more today than he would have willingly done before.
The cracks and flaws in the ALS were always there, but Benno had been distracted by duty and working his own plan. Now that duty and everything he had been working for were in direct conflict with one another, he could no longer ignore what Ortiz said, even if he didn’t agree 100%.
Benno nodded, gathering his thoughts. He looked back and forth between Ortiz and Chief Dufresne. “I’ve been foolish and willfully blind, but I’m no fool. You’re right, Raoul, there’s a lot wrong in the ALS. It’s not fair…but show me any society that’s ever truly been fair to all its people all the time, at any point in history. It’s like chaotic patterns in thermodynamics. Concentrated power shifts and moves and spreads out to rise again somewhere else even hotter and brighter, continuously. It’s an artifact of any system, and ‘fairness’ has little to do with it. Still, the aristos were born to power and influence, and they’ve zealously guarded that power and gathered still more…but that doesn’t mean the ideals of the Alliance are invalid, that we cannot achieve success ourselves. I don’t want to take what the aristos or their families have. I don’t deserve anything of theirs. All I need is a chance, an opportunity, to work hard and see my own path to success. I want to earn my place and know that I’ve done it honorably for an honorable nation. What’s happened now may well tarnish that honor, but it doesn’t mean the ALS is unjust or what we’ve worked for is worthless. It only means the people in charge of it have abandoned their values.”
He closed his eyes. Two paths lay before him. One involved staying in this cell and accepting what his superiors and fate decreed for him. Along that path, he would likely end up dead and vilified. Whatever chance Mio had for survival was up to random fate, the mercies of the enemy, and the slim possibility the ALS would eventually liberate Adelaide in time to save her. What would she think of him, his memory dishonored, all his time away from her for naught?
On the other path, he would still likely end up dead and vilified, and this time it would be for deliberate actions, not just the heated passion of a terrible moment. On that path, he would engage in a crime so uncharacteristic of him, so unconscionable to the very values he said he honored, it bordered upon heresy. The only value to this other path was that it permitted him a small chance of helping Mio. He wanted to look her in the eyes again, long enough to say he was sorry for all the time apart, sorry for running from her after her mother died, sorry he had chosen an investment in an organization that might not have been worthy of either of them. He still would most likely fail and be killed in the attempt, but was there really any choice?
Benno opened his eyes and looked at Ortiz. “The actions of our superiors, their decisions to gamble on a strategic ploy rather than save their own people, show they’re no longer worthy of our Alliance. They’re no longer worthy of me, my loyalty, or my oath.”
Benno touched off the floor of the cell at an angle, rebounded off the ceiling, and brought himself to rest at the cell’s bars, but not in front of Ortiz. This time, he directly faced Chief Dufresne. “I’m not insubordinate, whatever the captain says. I’m not a coward, no matter what OPS says. And I’m not a traitor…not to our ideals or our laws…not when I’m opposing an illegal and immoral order to continue this operation and abandon my home. I want to save my daughter and my planet and the ALS, even if that means saving it from its own worst choices. Chief, I’m willing to do whatever I must to accomplish that, even if I have to put my life and honor on the line, even if everyone else aboard this ship judges it to be a crime.”
Dufresne pushed herself closer to the bars, within arm’s reach, which was entirely against protocol. “Those worlds…I have a
brother on Morgan’s Rock. He, his wife…my two nieces…the CMC never said anything about there not being any rescue attempt. And he never mentioned the patrols being pulled out of their space to the central worlds either.”
Ortiz crawled along the bars and put his face out of the near corner of his cell as far as he could. “Listen to the warrant, Chief. You know he’s a straight shooter. Hell, I hate the man, but I don’t doubt him.”
Benno glared at him. “You’re helping less than you think, Raoul.” He turned back to Chief Dufresne. “I’m not asking you to believe me without proof. You have clearance, Chief. Look for the deployment orders leading up to Executive Amber. I’ll bet you’ll find the orders pulling the outer territory patrols and sending them inward, right as both prongs of the fleet were leaving. Heck, they probably didn’t even think of hiding it. To the aristos, this probably seemed like the sensible thing to do. And then wait and see. See if they prove me wrong. Goddamn, I’d love for this fleet to prove me wrong, to break off a task force and send it to rescue those planets. But you won’t see that. They’ll dodge questions, insist plans are in the works…and then they’ll start referring to those worlds in the past tense, martyred before their ends are even confirmed.”
Dufresne reached out and grasped the vertical bars just below Benno’s hands. “What are you getting at, Warrant? What are you proposing?”
Benno leaned in, pushing his face between the bars like Ortiz. “You know where I’m headed. You know what’s necessary. The answer is abhorrent. You wouldn’t be a patriot if the very thought of what we have to do now didn’t sicken you. But it has to be done, just the same. By their own actions, our leaders have made themselves unworthy of our Alliance, our oath, and our loyalty. Someone needs to take action for our people if the brass won’t. I want to take this ship home and rescue my daughter. I want to go and rescue each and every daughter and son we’ve lost, to rescue the dream of what the Alliance is supposed to be on every single blessed world the Turds took from us.”
The Mutineer's Daughter (In Revolution Born Book 1) Page 8
