by Rick Partlow
“My Wing Commander on the Implacable,” I told him, shrugging. “No one since then.”
Captain Osceola had come to see me then, probably against orders. She’d let me know that Ash was recovering and would be as good as new, eventually. I don’t know if Ash had tried to see me; if he had, they hadn’t informed me.
“No lawyer?” He asked, seeming surprised.
“No, sir.” Osceola had also promised to get me a JAG attorney, though that had yet to happen. “I guess no one figures I need a lawyer since they haven’t bothered to ask me a damned thing yet.”
“Well, the records from your cutter paint a pretty clear picture of what happened,” he allowed. “Would you like me to get you an attorney? I can have one here in an hour.”
I considered it for a moment, but shook my head.
“I’m fine with whatever punishment you decide is right,” I decided. “I deserve it.”
Maybe, I thought, they’d just stick me here until the war was over and forget any of it had ever happened. I was still hoping for a mindwipe, though. If they erased my memories, then maybe I wouldn’t keep seeing what was left of Conrad’s head every time I tried to shut my eyes.
“You could have been a Captain in a couple years,” Aviles lamented, his hands palms-up in an imploring gesture. “You could have had your own Group command. The way things stand now…” He sat back, sighing. “If Esparza hadn’t gotten himself killed, I might have been able to just get you transferred, make this all go away. But there’s been a death as the result of direct disobedience of orders, and there has to be an official inquiry.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked at me sharply. “We do have one thing we could use, Hollande. Esparza was your superior officer, even if he wasn’t in your chain of command…and he was in a relationship with you. If you’ll be willing to testify that the unauthorized rescue mission was his idea, that he pressured you into it, I might be able to sell that to the board of inquiry and get you back commanding a squadron in one of the other Groups.”
“Commander Esparza was a good man,” I said, fighting hard to keep my voice from breaking. “He died doing his job.”
And I wasn’t about to try to save my ass by dragging his name through the mud, which I hoped I was making clear. Aviles scowled at that, but didn’t argue it any further. Maybe even he was uncomfortable with the idea.
“In that case,” he concluded, “I’m afraid it’s going to be all I can do to keep you out of a military prison. Lt. Hollande, think this through: if this goes to a court-martial, you’ll lose your pilot rating, you’ll be busted to Technician Second Class and you’ll spend the rest of the war working in some storage depot out on some uninhabitable moon. Are you sure you don’t want a JAG attorney?”
“I’ll be better off there, sir” I said dully, not meeting his gaze. “I won’t get anyone else killed.”
Admiral Aviles sighed heavily and pushed up from the uncomfortable chair, heading for the door. He knocked on it twice before it opened, with Sgt. Conner still watching carefully, her hand on her holstered stunner. Aviles turned to someone behind Conner and spoke so softly I barely heard it.
“See if you can talk some sense into her,” he said.
Ash stepped past him into the room and the door slid shut again.
I felt like I was seeing a ghost. Even though I’d known on an intellectual level that he was fine, the last time I’d seen him, he’d been wounded and unconscious. Now…
“You look good.” It sounded inane, but it was the least inane thing I could come up with, and it was the truth; I hadn’t seen him in a dress uniform since the Academy.
His face was such a mixture of anguish and sorrow and longing that I wanted more than anything to hold him. I took a tentative step forward, unsure if I was allowed or if the guards would come in and separate us…
“Damn it, Sandi,” he moaned helplessly, pulling me into his arms and holding onto me with fierce strength. “Damn it, damn it, damn it, why did you do this? Why’d you come back for me?”
“Because I knew you’d have done it for me.”
I buried my face in his shoulder and shuddered with sobs. I hadn’t touched another person in months and the pent-up emotion flowed out of me with the tears. His hands gently brushed hair and teardrops out of my face and then he was leaning down and kissing my hair, my eyes, and finally covering my mouth with his. A warmth spread through me, but I pushed away, shaking my head.
“You can’t,” I insisted, punching my fist against his chest lightly, still crying. “We can’t. I’m no good for you, Ash.” The words wrenched their way out of me, and I bowed my forehead into his chest, clenching my teeth, feeling knives twisting inside me. “I drag everyone down with me.”
“That’s not true, Sandi,” he said, putting a hand under my chin and tilting my head up toward him. “It’s going to be okay. You can fight this. It won’t be easy, but we can make it through this. But you have to let Admiral Aviles and me help you.”
“Help me do what?” I demanded, pulling away from him. I realized my voice was beginning to sound shrill and out of control and I fought to rein myself in. “Help me try to tell everyone that Conrad used a younger officer he was sleeping with to pull off an unauthorized mission because he was a glory hound? Damn it, Ash, he gave his life to save yours! Do you really want me to do that to his memory?”
“That was the Admiral’s idea, not mine,” Ash assured me, holding up his hands. “I just want you to get someone at JAG to represent you. You don’t deserve to take the heat for this, you were just doing what was right…”
“NO. I. WASN’T!” I hadn’t realized I’d shouted the words at him until they were out, and I felt a warm flush in my cheeks from anger and frustration. “Damn it, Ash, you know that’s not true! I did exactly the wrong thing for the wrong reasons, the same way I always have! I went into the Academy because Mom was pressuring me and it was easier to do what she wanted than to go off on my own. I went the assault shuttle pilot track to piss her off, more than anything else, and because you were excited about it.”
I paced back and forth across the floor, wishing the prison fatigues had pockets to stick my hands into.
“I went against Keating’s orders because I was worried about my own ass, not because I was on some noble crusade to save the war effort. I went along with becoming a Squadron Leader because I was basically forced into it.”
I paused in front of him, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. “And I dragged you into bed because I was more afraid of being alone than I was of damaging our friendship.” I let my hand drop. “And then this.”
I shook my head. “I put people’s lives and careers at risk because I was afraid of losing you, Ash. That’s why I did it, you know. Not because it was the fucking right thing to do, not because I owed it to you for saving my life, not because you’re my friend, and not because I love you, or you love me. I did it because I was afraid of being alone.”
I felt the tears about to switch back on and I blocked them off with a flash of anger.
“I lost Dad, I lost Mom, I lost Chief Burke…you were all I had, the only person who gave a shit about me.”
“Commander Esparza…,” Ash began, but I cut him off.
“Conrad found me interesting,” I corrected him, “because we were both broken, only he knew it and accepted it. I kept blaming everything on other people. But it’s not about what anyone did to me, it’s what I’ve been doing to everyone else. Conrad’s dead, Captain Osceola might lose her command, and you…” I closed my eyes. “I hurt you, and I’m so sorry.”
I paced over to the wall and put a palm against it. It felt cold and hard and hopeless.
“What I did was wrong,” I declared again. “I took a huge risk, and it could have wound up with all three of us dead. I’m responsible for this, and I deserve whatever they do to me.”
“But Sandi,” Ash said quietly, in a small voice that broke my heart, “I don’t want to lose you.”
I didn’t look back at him, just stayed leaning tiredly against the wall.
“You have a great career ahead of you in the military,” I told him. “Everyone likes you, and you’re going to find someone who loves you. You don’t need me dragging you down.”
I think, maybe, that there was a small part of me that wanted him to fight me on it. No, it was time to be honest; I definitely wanted him to fight me on it. I wanted him to scream and yell and throw a fit, even though I knew I was finally doing the right thing.
But Ash was always smarter than me. He left the room without another word.
***
I stood in civilian clothes and watched the faces pass by on the memorial, one by one. They moved quickly, yet the hologram had been scrolling for long minutes with no break in sight. Each face told a story, in subtle shades of expression or in the set of the jaw, stories of doubt or resolve or happiness or grim determination.
Chief Burke’s had been an open book, a study in dedication and professionalism. When Conrad’s had passed by, I’d seen through the square-jawed recruiting poster to the off-kilter recklessness beneath the surface. What did my face show? What would it have looked like there, marching across the Memorial to the Fallen in Armstrong Plaza on a warm, summer night?
Acceptance, perhaps. Endurance. I’d learned them both the hard way, these past two years.
I’d been ready for their worst, yet they hadn’t given it to me. Perhaps it had been the Medal of Valor and the Bronze Star, or the dead hero Admiral mother. Or maybe it had been Admiral Aviles and Ash and Captain Osceola all pleading my case against my will. Either way, they hadn’t court-martialed me and they hadn’t busted me to a tech-2 and sent me to load pallets on an airless moon somewhere.
They had revoked my flight status and sat me at a desk on Hermes, and made sure I never got anywhere near the Attack Command for the rest of the war. It was over now, ended far away in grim, hand-to-hand struggles on remote colonies like Demeter and Canaan, and then finally in an all-out invasion of the Tahni homeworld.
Ash had been part of it, and I’d kept tabs on him from afar, watching as he’d been given his own Strike Wing to command and led them in the decisive battles that won the war for the Commonwealth. I’d left him alone, because I hadn’t been lying when I said he was better off without me.
And me, I’d kept my head down and filed my reports and done my job and nodded to my co-workers politely and never said a word to them once my shift had ended. And if I’d maybe drank a bit too much some nights, or had to take a pill or two to sleep through the nightmares, well, I’d never let it affect my work.
But the work was done now, and I’d been cut loose from my obligation to the service before the Tahni Emperor’s corpse had cooled to room temperature. I had enough money for a flight off of Hermes to anywhere I wanted to go, and I figured I’d start at Belial, the private space colony over in the Alpha Centauri asteroid belt. A lot of business got done there by all sorts of people, and most of them didn’t care if you’d been stripped of your military flight ratings as long as you had the jacks and knew how to pilot a starship. It seemed like a good place for a fresh start, somewhere no one knew my name or my face.
But first, I’d had to come here to the plaza, to the memorial. I’d avoided it the whole time I’d been stationed here because I hadn’t needed to see the faces on it; I saw them every night. If I was going to start fresh, though, I had to say goodbye.
And there she was. Helene Gannett. The face could have been mine, except for the devotion to duty that was set in every line, every angle, every atom of her being. Everything that made her different from me.
I didn’t salute her; I’d done that before. Instead, I said what I should have the last time I’d seen her alive.
“Goodbye Mom,” I whispered to her image. “I love you.”
Her image passed on and so did I.
Look for the further adventures of Sandi and Ash in the exciting space opera series Tales of the Acheron, coming soon from Rick Partlow!
For more epic military science fiction set in the backdrop of the War Against the Tahni, look for Rick Partlow’s best-selling novel Glory Boy, available on Amazon for Kindle, in paperback or as an audio book.
https://www.amazon.com/Glory-Boy-Rick-Partlow-ebook/dp/B01N6DXM8C
Following is an excerpt from Glory Boy:
Chapter One
I tossed her picture down on the desk next to my bunk and laid back, shutting my eyes again so I wouldn't just lie here looking at it instead of sleeping. But I didn't need the picture to see her. Her image was branded onto my soul: every curve of her face, every highlight of short, blond hair, every sparkling glint in her green eyes. The blood spattered across her face, the expression of horror as she gasped her last breath...
I shot upright in bed and swore softly. I'd drifted off for just a moment, just a half-second of sleep, and it had come back. I couldn't get rid of that memory, despite the drugs and the therapy and the best efforts of the most sophisticated implant computer ever made by humans. I woke up every night with her choking on her own blood, the Imperial Guard cyborg looming over her and heading for me, keeping me from getting to her in time...
You were rear-echelon Intelligence. You were the safe harbor I could always come back to, without worry, without risk.
Bullshit. We were all at risk in this damn war, every single one of us.
I checked the time on my headcomp and sighed. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep now, we'd be Transitioning in less than an hour. I swung my legs off the bunk and felt the cold deck plates under my bare feet. I didn't bother to turn the lights on; I didn't need them. I padded silently to the locker across from the bunk and pulled out my Reflex armor, its chameleon camo surface shifting colors in my hands to match its surroundings.
I slipped into the thin, cool material and felt it seal itself around me like it was alive---which it was. It was an electrically-active byomer culture developed in a genetics lab, its molecular structure infused with super-strength polymer, its surface inlaid with superconductive fibers linked to a control unit in the waist, which was also linked to my implant computer.
It felt like I wasn't wearing anything, but it tripled my natural strength, and the stuff could detect incoming projectiles and laser sights and selectively harden to give me as much protection as a suit of standard combat armor. It was expensive, developmental gear---almost as expensive as I was.
My gunbelt was stowed in a drawer below where the Reflex armor had hung. I had been keeping it close, ever since Hermes...ever since that thing had killed Jenna while I watched without a weapon in my hand. Not that the Tahni could infiltrate a starship in Transition space the way they had the military base there, but then again, I realized I wasn't being completely rational. I lifted it, its mass and substance comfortingly deadly.
Between the heavy Gauss pistol, spare magazines and the combat knife balancing out the left side, it weighed nearly ten kilos, but it felt feather-light to me. Even if the Reflex armor didn't selectively harden with my movements to act as an exoskeleton, the byomer tensor fibers that augmented my natural muscles made me several times as strong as any normal human. It was one of the little things I'd learned to live with over the past few years.
I buckled the gunbelt around my waist, letting it settle low on my hips, and fastened the holster to my right thigh with another catch to keep the heavy weapon from slapping around and making noise.
Stepping into my armored boots, I strapped them down and pulled on my gauntlets, flexing my fingers experimentally. One more weapon to test: the one I hated---the one that was my purpose, yet seemed to corrupt my being.
Making fists with both hands, I extended my arms and whispered softly with my thoughts into the superconductive artificial fibers that ran the length of my body. A pair of sixteen-centimeter alloy talons extended out of each wrist with a near-silent hiss, their edges honed to an ultrafine sharpness. There were two self-sealing holes in the byomer
armor of my gloves, and two synthskin flaps on the backs of my hands to allow the blades to extend. They were anchored in the byomer laminae wrapped around the bones of my forearm. Like everything else implanted into my body, they'd been absorbed by living tissue and wrapped with nerves---they were a permanent part of me.
I almost turned down this assignment when I found out about the talons. They always made me feel like I was some kind of monster. They made death a part of me; made me a part of the killing. I'd always hated them. Till Hermes. Now, I relished what I was about to do. Each death evened the scales for Jenna.
Leaving the cabin, I walked up to the cockpit. Deke was relaxing in the right-hand acceleration couch, flipping a vibroshiv through his fingers---not activated; Deke was crazy, not stupid. He was prepped and ready, pulse pistol holstered high on his left hip.
"You up for this, guy?" He asked softly, not turning around, facing the forward viewscreen.
"That," I replied, falling into the pilot's seat, "is a hell of a question."
The viewscreen wasn't activated---there's nothing to see in T-space---and I could see my reflection in the polished polymer. Just my head was visible; everything below that was swallowed up in the blackness of my combat suit. Sometimes, I felt like I was being swallowed up, too; losing my humanity to the augmentation, losing my conscience to the killing, losing my soul to the war. Losing Jenna.
Was that face still me? It didn't look much different from the farm boy who left home to be a war hero: ordinary and plain, broad and honest. My hair was the color of straw, and used to be a bit longer than the military buzz I wore now. I'd always been told that my eyes were my most prepossessing feature: they're an open blue-grey, reflecting the honest, easy-to-read impression of the rest of my face. But it was a mask, as much of a mask as the featureless hood that completed my combat suit. Maybe that was the real me.
