Empty Space

by Alan Black

  York ignored all requests for interviews, eventually coding all their incoming calls as spam and blocked. Blocking their requests for information was a violation of the newsfeed’s freedom of the press rights. On the other hand, the newsfeed’s insistence on getting access to York was a violation of his rights to privacy. The argument hadn’t been resolved in hundreds of years and it wouldn’t be any benefit to him to become embroiled in it. He was slow to come to the realization that whatever he did, it’d be wrong. He wasn’t going to hide from trouble, but there wasn’t any reason to invite trouble in. The commandant hadn’t been so subtle. Her speech at the graduation ceremony had been replayed, rebroadcast, torn apart for sound bytes and reprinted on every social media site across the entire expanse of the netfeeds. She’d praised the military for their honor, commitment, and dedication to duty, conversely she’d blasted criticism at the politicians who ran it. Her last words had been a final ‘screw you all’. York had seen enough of the video replay to know the commandant surely pissed off more than one politician, but she was retired now and beyond their reach.

  He presented himself to an administrative technical rating. She scanned his QR code, took his retinal scan, DNA sample, and palm print without glancing up from her data terminal. She frowned at the data, pointing at a series of long lines snaking across the room. With little effort, he found the right line to stand in and slid into place at its back end. Junior and senior grade ensigns and junior grade lieutenants with last names beginning with S through Z snaked across the floor following a painted blue line. Mixed in were the lower three officer ranks of the army, most of the new army officers having graduated near the middle of his class.

  The yellow and green lines for junior officers were just as long. There were other colors and lines of various lengths for other officer ranks. A white line for admirals was just a two-foot dash on the floor in front of a commander’s desk. No one expected admirals to stand in line for any reason.

  Others in his cadet class stood in front of him. More experienced officers were near the front. A junior grade lieutenant with ship time hash marks on his sleeve bypassed York at the end of the line and walked to other jgs at the front of the line. A few quick checks, a quiet conversation, and he slid into line between two other jgs, causing the whole line to shuffle backwards about three feet.

  Someone tapped York on the shoulder. He looked down to see the cadet who graduated at the bottom of their class, now a junior grade ensign. He knew her name. They’d never spoken outside of official communications. She still didn’t speak, but pointed at the shoulder tab indicating her ranking. He nodded his acceptance and took a giant step backwards letting her slide into line in front of him. Balderano and his cronies walked past York, deigning only to give him a variety of sneers, snickers, and snorts of derision. They all knew their class ranking and with jovial pushing and shoving, they managed to take their place in the long line.

  York spent the rest of the day moving forward and backward. Forward as the front of the line was given assignments, shuffled off to remote and mysterious offices, or simply told to go away, take a seat, and come back when called. When they were called, they would move back into the line, again cutting in where their rank placed them, continuing to stand and wait until reaching the front … again. He moved backwards as other higher-ranking officers took their place in the line. By the end of the day, he hadn’t moved any farther than a dozen feet back and a dozen feet forward.

  A bored voice broadcast throughout the room, “End of day. Return tomorrow for assignment. Sign out in order to be credited for a day of duty.” A rush of bodies crushed every exit, each officer slapping his palm on the reader by the door, signing out for the day.

  York didn’t rush as he didn’t have anywhere to go. He did have an officer’s billet on base. His cabin was the size of a coffin, barely big enough for a bed and a locker with bathroom facilities down the hall. His room was only fractionally larger than his cadet quarters had been. There was a small low ranking officer’s dayroom he could enjoy, though the other officers using it shunned his company. The atmosphere in the dayroom hadn’t been a surprise, but the tension didn’t make the room conducive to relaxing. He’d used the dayrooms at the Yards, as socialization was required for cadets. Having graduated, he no longer had any requirement to spend time with people who didn’t want him around.

  A number of other officer’s weren’t rushing toward the BuPers doors. Most were putting away readers, dataports, or sim pods. Other small groups of officer’s were finishing conversations, laughing and preparing to make their way home, to restaurants, or to whatever entertainment they preferred.

  A junior grade commander walked slowly past York. He said, “Resign your commission. You are an embarrassment. The commandant deserved a better legacy than you.” He spoke so softly York doubted if the overhead security cameras picked up the words.

  He wondered what the man meant by the commandant deserving a better legacy. People got what they earned, it didn’t matter what they deserved. She wasn’t any different than other people, earning what she deserved. She’d been the commandant for years and surely the totality of her time was her legacy. He was about to leave when he saw her picture flash on a wall-mounted data port. York stood watching as it showed pictures of the fiery vehicle crash that had killed the commandant. Apparently, another driver had a massive heart attack, crashed over a guardrail, and slammed into her vehicle from high above, crushing the passenger compartment. The newsfeed spent more time calling for an investigation of guardrails than it did commiserating over the loss of a respected officer.

  A voice behind him said, “You killed her, budger.”

  York turned slowly. He wasn’t worried about such an accusation. No one could prove he’d killed her … directly. He did wonder what Brother Calvin thought when his vehicle’s autopilot took over, trapping him, disabling all communications, and moving at the perfect rate of speed to reach the required spot. A small charge caused an aneurism killing him before his vehicle crashed over the guardrail and into the commandant’s precisely and similarly timed vehicle on the road below.

  Balderano and his dog pack stood facing him in various poses of anger, aggression, and complete boredom.

  Rocky Telluride said, “She was killed by budgers because they were angry she wouldn’t reinstate you.”

  York nodded. He knew the dog pack arranged his current military status. His earned top spot was taken from him through a series of ill-disguised lies and the commandant had given in to those lies, even knowing they were false. The circumstances were enough to make anyone angry, budger or not. “The killing of the commandant by budgers is quite possible, Ensign Telluride. But, from what I have seen, it is just as possible she was killed by the upper class for not expelling me outright. Or, it could have been an accident.”

  Balderano snorted in derision, “An accident caused by a guaranteed accident proof guardrail? I doubt it, unless the budger at the factory deliberately sabotaged the build out.”

  York nodded, keeping his face calm, even though he could feel the small tic in his eye the Commandant had warned him about. “Ensign, I’ll accept your assessment that the crash was unlikely to be an accident since I believe your family owns the factory making those guardrails. I’m sure the investigation into the Commandant’s accident will look into your factory’s practices, just as I’m sure they’ll find the manufacturer of the guardrails to be completely non-complicit. However, the culprit could also be the individuals who set me up to be arrested by the police … whoever that may be.”

  There was a quick flash of eye contact among the dog pack. However Balderano spoke without hesitation, “Keep it that way, budger. Otherwise, there’s more than one way to get you out of the navy.”

  York turned his back on Balderano and continued to stare at the data feed, even though the news degenerated into a human interest story about a woman who birthed eight babies without the aid of drugs or doctors. He ignored further taunts
from the dog pack. He knew most people would be tempted to strike back or retort, but years of practice had made him immune to their juvenile insults and threats.

  He smiled to himself. He wasn’t at the Yards anymore and he could pound them with relative impunity, except ‘relative’ might mean some miscellaneous charges and more bruises than he wanted to collect. No matter how tough a person was, winning a fight against six people with similar training was beyond possible. He doubted the military would charge one man for assaulting half a dozen others at the same time. He’d learned not to trust security videos to prove his actions, the mistrust of non-human tools was a difficult lesson learned.

  Finally, the dog pack left him alone to wander off in search of entertainment and the doorways cleared to a mere trickle. He wanted entertainment of his own, yet he hadn’t received his first pay deposit even though he was now an officer. He took a quiet path towards the officer’s mess, lost in his own thoughts about the commandant’s death. He didn’t know her, but her loss was his loss and he was truly sorry she’d had to die. He was wondering if it would be appropriate to send a condolence card to her mother when a body blocked his path.

  Rocky said, “It took you long enough to leave BuPers, budger. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  York shook his head, “Ensign, we have nothing to say to each other. You and I both know what you did to me. It’s water under the bridge.”

  “We aren’t done until you are out of the navy or broken back to the enlisted ratings where you belong.”

  Balderano swung a fist aiming for York’s nose. York blocked the punch, ducked beneath Balderano’s fist, and turned to run. He didn’t like to run. Odds of six to one were too great to stand and fight. He didn’t get far.

  FIVE

  York wandered away from his place in the BuPers line to find an aspirin for his headache. He wasn’t worried about losing his place since he was perpetually in last and would be until next year’s graduation. He was beginning to see what the commandant meant about him spending his whole career waiting in personnel for a posting. Still, next year his records would show having graduated a year before any new junior grade ensigns. Though he was still unranked, he would have a lower class number and a year’s time in grade. He snorted realizing they would have a whole year to change the rules. In the meantime, he had a splitting headache. The pain was his own fault for letting his head get in the way of Telluride’s fist while two others held him.

  He chuckled when he got back to his place in line. He was still standing in last place, all within a very familiar small square on the floor. His quiet laugher got him a glare from the ensign in front of him. He smiled back, ignoring her glower. She was only about three feet better off than he was and from what the commandant said, she’d done it to herself.

  The line shuffled forward about three feet when word spread about Rocky Telluride slipping in the shower at his off base apartment and dying of a massive concussion. Again, there weren’t any witnesses and no one could explain how an ensign could even slip on a nonslip surface. There wasn’t any explanation as to why he was in the shower at such an odd time of the night, except for the note on his reader from an exceptionally attractive married officer seeking an assignation. It had only taken the investigators a moment to determine the woman hadn’t originated the note and its true origin was unrecoverable, still the note was enough of a motivation to show why Telluride had shut off his apartment’s recorders.

  York smiled again, knowing his small room in the junior officer’s barracks would verify he’d been home all night, whether he had been or not. Certainly, there wasn’t any reason for investigators to check on his whereabouts unless others in the dog pack reported they’d ganged up on him allowing the recently departed Telluride to repeatedly punch him without fear of a counter punch. Such a report didn’t seem likely as it would implicate them in a felonious assault against a fellow officer. He wondered why the Yards would teach a cadet how to bypass the security readouts on their cabins if they didn’t expect them to use the knowledge.

  Day after day and week after week, York crept forward as the line became shorter. He took to reading, not the required military books or the posted requirements for his rank, conversely he read the pulp literature of the day. He found he had a peculiar liking for sword and sorcery stories, imagining himself in situations where he could wave his magic wand and turn everyone in the room into toads, while heroically fighting orcs and trolls with daggers and dirks, searching for magical goblets, bracelets, and polished rune stones. There were brief periods of excitement swirling around him from time to time having nothing to do with his reading as the current war raged, waned, raged again, and finally signed a truce.

  The end of the war had little effect on his stance other than to back him up farther as officers began the draw down in a reduction of forces. There weren’t as many officers leaving the navy as he expected. Most were simply reporting to BuPers for extended leave, going home to family and civilian businesses, accepting a reduction in pay, and waiting until the war heated up again. War with someone always flared up eventually, making the navy a secure career.

  Only a few of his graduating class remained in line when he first caught sight of his ultimate destination. There was a desk ahead of him where an enlisted administrative technician sat, reviewing files, matching opening positions, and assigning junior officers to their next posting. She was a ravishing young woman, tall, willowy, with a perfect smile surrounded by a halo of red hair. Naturally, there was a regulation against fraternization between officers and enlisted. Nevertheless, he could look at her. She could have been a cover model for the fantasy books he was reading. In fact, she looked more like the hero’s girlfriend than most of the book covers he saw. All she needed was a long broadsword, a leather bustier, and knee-high boots. All he needed was enough magic to do more than blow his nose.

  He started to rate his days by how close or far he got to this vision of redheaded beauty. A good day was when he moved closer and a bad day was when he moved farther away. He even rated them by numbers, how many people stood between him and his girl. He’d never had a girl friend before and knew she couldn’t be one now. On the other hand, if he could dream about magic, then he could dream about her. Maybe she just needed a recommendation from an officer to apply to officer candidate school and go mustang. Obviously, she was underutilized pushing buttons and shuffling reports. She should be on recruiting posters.

  Then the amazing day came when the last cadet in front of him stepped away, reaching her goal, an assignment to a BuPers desk deep in the bowels of this very building. Standing before this vision of his fantasy novels he said, “Ensign Junior Grade York August Sixteen, reporting for assignment.”

  “Whaaa…?” the redhead stuttered, her vacuous eyes stared up at him with a blank expression.

  “I am here for assignment.”

  “Yassir, um… yeah. Whaaaa… ?”

  York sighed in frustration as his fantasies disappeared like chocolate-covered cream-filled donuts at a police convention. She may be a pretty package, but she was an empty container. He pointed at the QR patch on his shoulder, letting her scan it. She stared at her display screen until a small green light blipped on her dataport.

  York felt his reader vibrate and emit a small chime. He’d received his orders. He stepped to the side, although after all this time there wasn’t anyone behind him. The redhead sat staring open mouthed, waiting for the next person in line to interrupt her lack of thought. He watched her for a moment, already feeling a sense of remorse and grief for the loss of his dream girl. She ignored him, staring, waiting for someone to join her line. He wondered why they didn’t automate her job. She had less personality than the soda machine at the officer’s mess.

  York went into the waiting area and sat. He was nervous and excited at the same time to receive orders after all of this time. They’d popped up on the redhead’s reader so quickly they must have been pre-chosen for him and left waiting until
he could present himself. He wasn’t given a list of choices to review, nor a choice of career paths to follow. Here was his assignment and he was stuck with it. He didn’t care whether he got orders to be a supervisor of junior dishwashers or just to go back and stand in line again. He was a navy officer and they couldn’t change his status unless they killed him or caught him doing something so bad they could court martial him. He was determined death would come before a court martial.

  “What did you get, Ensign?” a nearby senior grade lieutenant called out. “I just got a posting on the Gambion as a navigation officer.”

  York popped up to attention as required by regulation when being spoken to by a ranking officer. “Sir.” He dropped the stance at a nod from the lieutenant and glanced through the orders on his dataport. “I’m assigned as a communications officer on space station Em.T-Sp8s.”

  The lieutenant shook his head, “Never heard of it. Em.T? That has to be back along the rim worlds border. There isn’t anything out that way except monsters and roanokes.”

  York was familiar with both expressions. Old sailing maps often had the legend ‘monsters be here’ for unexplored areas and the Lost Colony of Roanoke in the Americas on old Earth was still the standard for lost and missing colonies. He nodded his understanding. His dataport showed a star map putting Em.T-Sp8s at the far edge of human space. Man was still quickly expanding his range throughout the galaxy. Then again, there was a lot of galaxy for expansion.