by Hugo Huesca
Pascari’s lips curled into a snarl at hearing this, but the man managed to pretend it was directed at Rehman and not at Clarke. It was a strange feeling for Clarke, knowing the man who put him in charge also hated his guts. They’d need to have a long chat after this. They’d postponed it for far too long.
“A former officer of the Defense Fleet, you say!” Rehman exclaimed. His lower lip trembled while he spoke, sending specks of saliva across the table. “That’s even worse; you could be a traitor! What do we know about you? You appear with Pascari, who claims Antonov’s dead…why, sure is suspicious to me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Pascari is behind Antonov’s demise, and he’s taking control of Sierra to betray us to Tal-Kader!”
In any other situation, Clarke would’ve thrown Rehman straight into a cell for insubordination. His words were edging just an inch away from mutiny. But as it was, the man had a point, and also, Clarke suspected it wouldn’t end well for the new commander to try to assert dominance of the old guard by removing one of theirs. Clarke wouldn’t be the first officer a crew threw out of an airlock and pretended it was a drunken accident or a suicide. It was easy to tamper with a ship’s security tapes while in deep space.
So he kept his mouth shut and thought of a diplomatic way to address Rehman’s concerns.
“Fuck it,” muttered Pascari, “someone call the marines and throw this old asshole into a—”
Here comes the airlock, thought Clarke.
“That makes no sense,” interrupted Alicante, speaking to Rehman. His expression was worn and tired, like he’d aged a decade in the last few minutes. Clarke pitied him. Not only was Alicante forced to step out of his cozy command position, he was also forced to defend the men who took it away. “They didn’t know Sierra would be nearby, they almost died in the middle of nowhere trying to reach us. A bit risky for a traitor, Rehman. And Clarke’s credentials, well, he’s not the only Defense Fleet officer that defects to us, is he? In fact, I believe many of us can identify with his situation.”
Many officers, both seating and standing, winced, as if Alicante’s words snapped at them like a whip. Clarke used the distraction to get Pascari’s attention and gesture discreetly at him to let Alicante handle it. Pascari looked away without acknowledging if he understood.
Rehman remained unfazed. “We had to earn the EIF’s trust before receiving our positions. We had to earn it, Alicante. What has this man done for the Edge? What makes you think he’ll remain firm when the going gets tough, that he won’t turn tail and run once people are dying all around him?”
A younger Clarke, the kid he had been during his time at the Academy, would’ve jumped at an accusation of cowardice. He had been anxious to prove himself, to show to everyone how brave he could be. Then he had been in battle. He had seen people die all around him.
Showing to everyone how brave he was suddenly lost the appeal it had had for him. About the same time he started to think of himself in his time at the Academy as “younger Clarke.” War had changed his values. Doing his duty, protecting the men and women under his command, to never expend their lives lightly, and to shoulder the weight of their deaths when they came. To always stand for what he believed in, even if it meant leaving the Defense Fleet when Tal-Kader took it over and made it into a hollow shell of its former self.
Even if it meant joining the EIF.
“My husband served at Asteria Station during the battle of Broken Sky,” Navathe suddenly said. Attention shifted to her. “Maybe some of you were there?”
She paused to see if someone said yes. She was clearly nervous and out of her element. She was a merchant captain, not a military one.
No one agreed. Clarke was the only veteran of Broken Sky in the room.
Where are you all? Clarke wondered. He had lost contact with the former sailors for so long now.
“Very well. You still saw the videos, same as I did,” Navathe went on. “My husband never spoke much about it, I had to piece it together from the fragments he did share. Asteria Station was a communications nexus for the different Asherah spaceports. It was a public station, not military. When the Mississippi arrived, it destroyed half the Defense Fleet orbitals before anyone figured out what was going on. The Star System lost decades’ worth of infrastructure, communications, and defenses, in one fell swoop. Jagal’s garrison was left in disarray before the battle even started.”
It was as if Clarke was still there, on Broken Sky, watching it all unfold.
Asherah Star System had a garrison of three battleships, five battle cruisers, eight cruisers, eleven destroyers, and a handful of auxiliaries and escorts. All the ships were dispersed in patrols across the entire system. Who would’ve expected an attack to come by surprise? Asherah was far into the Edge’s territory, anyone coming from Earth would’ve had to pass by a dozen well-defended Star Systems, same for the EIF hiding in the Backwater Systems.
The Mississippi’s hyperdrive technology had changed all that. The dreadnought appeared one light hour away from Jagal, at a spot where its sensors could see all space activity in the entire System.
One light hour away from the planet meant the Mississippi was invisible for that time, while the ship could easily see where every single defender of the system had been an hour ago. In a battle, all ships maneuvered in unpredictable patterns to avoid being shot by reinforcements they couldn’t see yet.
But no one knew they were in a battle except for the Mississippi. All patrols moved in predictable patterns. The Mississippi’s computers aimed cannons and torpedoes at the ships, railguns and turrets at the orbitals, kinetic bombardment at planetary defenses.
Many of Jagal’s defenders died before knowing they were under attack. It was a testament to how hard it was to wage war across the vast distance of space that there remained a garrison at all to fight back after that initial ambush.
When Jagal realized it was under attack, it ordered the civilian orbitals to take on the duties of the destroyed defenses. Asteria helped coordinate the garrison’s counter attack. Under the laws of war, that made Asteria an acceptable target for retaliation. And after it dealt with the patrols, the Mississippi came for Asteria.
All in all, the Mississippi’s main advantage was its rate of fire and its hyperdrive technology. Its weaponry and defenses were on par with anything the SA could muster, only scaled for size. The surviving forces of the garrison should have been able to deal with the dreadnought easily, had they had time to reunite in a battle formation.
But the Mississippi was on course for Jagal, and the Defense Fleet garrison was led by politicians…who lived in Jagal. Instead of reuniting the patrols, they had ordered them to face the Mississippi as soon as they could, to spare no loss to stop the ship from reaching the capital.
Commodore Terry, or whoever came up with the plan, had been a genius. The individual patrols had been no match for the firepower of the Mississippi and the auxiliaries it released from its hangars. Nothing had been able to even slow its direct course.
Clarke, serving on the Applegate, had seen entire patrols filled with sailors—his friends—disappear in seconds from the Applegate’s targeting computer.
Soon, it was his destroyer’s turn. He still remembered the expression of Captain Yin as she ordered her ship to strap in for battle. She knew what the result of facing the Mississippi without proper support would be.
She still did it, though. Because it was her duty. Because the population of Jagal depended on her. On everyone aboard the Applegate. Clarke had followed his captain right to the maws of hell, praying to all the gods that he’d be able to match Yin’s determination when his fate came.
Applegate’s direct engagement with Mississippi lasted for ten minutes. The dreadnought faced the destroyer as an afterthought, gutted it, and kept on its inexorable path toward victory and conquest.
Captain Yin died. Many other officers died, too, some of them in Clarke’s arms. But the debris and the bullets missed him, somehow, for some reason he still
didn’t understand.
He was left as the acting commander of a mortally wounded ship, surrounded by the floating corpses of his friends and heroes.
“There’s not much a civilian station can do to defend itself after a ship with kinetic bombardment rounds sets its sights upon it. The station can’t dodge, can’t deflect the round with one of its own, can’t do anything but strap in and pray for a miracle,” Navathe said. “Many other stations prayed for a miracle during Broken Sky, and none came. Mississippi blew them up while fighting other ships. Asteria station, like many others, came under fire. My husband was a lowly engineer, watching the screens, wondering if he’d live long enough to see the station come apart.”
Clarke’s brief command at the Applegate had been, for him, a blank memory. There was little he could remember about his actions besides watching all the death and destruction around him. He recalled how small he had felt, how insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Mississippi’s big engagements—the ones that people still talked about, the crucial ones—had come from the three surviving battleships who faced it at Jagal’s outer orbit. No one remembered all those lesser ships of the line, all those auxiliaries and escorts and orbitals filled with people.
Except their families. And the survivors.
Clarke had done what little he could. He sent all non-essential crew (what remained of it) to the escape capsules, and then, he had scanned the battlefield. Fighting the Mississippi was out of the question. The engines were too damaged to match the dreadnought’s velocity, and the Applegate’s weapons were all out of commission, anyway.
He realized as he watched his ships’ sensors that there was only one thing he could do. A tiny footnote in a battle that would shape the history of the Edge.
An action so insignificant that his superiors hadn’t even considered it—he could hear them scream at the surviving ships to ram the Mississippi if they couldn’t shoot at it. The idiots didn’t understand the basic physics of acceleration and velocity. Or perhaps they did, and didn’t care if thousands died torn apart by the brutal g’s needed to match the Mississippi’s velocity, if it meant a slightly better chance at their own survival.
“Just as the Mississippi’s targeting lasers caressed Asteria’s hull, a half-dead destroyer hailed the station as it limped in its direction. The commander, a man named Joseph Clarke, ordered Asteria to prepare for an emergency evacuation of all personnel. When Asteria’s director refused, Clarke ordered the station’s marines to depose the man. The Applegate had a skeleton crew by then, just Clarke, a handful of marines, corvette pilots, and a dozen sailors who had refused to evacuate the ship. With their help, Asteria’s entire crew embarked into the corvettes and left for Jagal’s surface. During the entire time the evacuation lasted, the Mississippi’s railguns blared against Asteria, but only few of the rounds hit it. Know why? Because Applegate was in the way. It covered Asteria’s evacuation by shielding it with its own body. Clarke was the last remaining officer in the bridge. That’s the kind of man that’ll lead your Task Force. You asked what he had done for the Edge, didn’t you? He saved my husband’s life. That may matter little to giants like Tal-Kader. But it matters to me. And if you truly are the men you aspire to be, it should matter to you too.”
Navathe talked about him as if he was a hero. Clarke disagreed. He remembered the invisible bullets tearing holes all across the bridge, turning dead bodies into chunky clouds of red salsa, destroying everything around him in perfect silence. He remembered how he had wondered when his pressure suit would puncture, or a bullet would reach him. Never in his entire life had he felt fear such as that. He would’ve given an arm and a leg to have the ship be anywhere else than in targeting range of the Mississippi. But what else could he do? By then, the Applegate was dead, and hadn’t exploded only by grace of the gods. Had he tried to move the ship, it would’ve fallen against Asteria Station, and then everyone would’ve died.
He did what he did because it was the only rational decision, the best way to minimize harm. The only thing he could do. He had regretted that choice while the Mississippi turned the Applegate into scrap metal, but by then he was already committed.
The room had fallen silent. Clarke looked up and realized that Navathe had finished her story, and everyone looked at him. Their expressions were unreadable. Or maybe he didn’t dare to look hard enough.
I need to say something, he thought, before Rehman regains his momentum.
But what could he say after Navathe’s tale? Anything he said would’ve sounded fake in comparison. The woman had spoken out of gratitude for her husband’s life. Clarke’s decade of regrets paled in comparison.
He decided to tell the truth. “I don’t doubt everyone here has a history with Tal-Kader. I can’t presume to know how much you’ve given up—how much you’ve sacrificed—in order to take the Edge away from people who would use our families and loved ones as machinery to enrich themselves. I only know that, if we manage to achieve Antonov’s mission, if we get Isabella Reiner away from Tal-Kader’s hands, it’ll be the closest the Edge has ever been to freedom since Isaac Reiner’s times.”
He looked everyone in the eyes while trying to keep his voice steady. “I’ll do it alone, if I have to.”
In the end, it wasn’t Navathe’s heartfelt speech, Alicante’s pleads, or Clarke’s promises that convinced the officers. Pascari set his feet down and announced that, the next officer to complain about his decision would go straight to a cell and have his ranks stripped. He even called the marines himself and had them on standby outside the door, rifles drawn, black visors masking their expressions and turning them into perfectly still machines of war.
There had been no further complaints.
Well, I’ll be damned…It worked, Clarke thought. He had been sure Task Force Sierra would’ve rather thrown him and Pascari out of an airlock than give command to them. He had been wrong. Those men had spent a comfortable career in a safe, boring assignment…Perhaps they’d grown so complacent they wouldn’t even fight for their own self-benefit.
Clarke hoped that idea was wrong. If Task Force Sierra refused to fight when it counted, it’d be a disaster in Dione.
They’re EIF, he told himself, even these men have spent a lifetime of fighting. It’ll come back to them.
As well as to him, he hoped.
The trip to Elus Star System would take three months. Sierra—and he—would need every minute of that time to get back into shape.
There was only one thing he needed to do first.
He found Pascari in the man’s provisional quarters, the ones he’d use until Alicante (who was still the Hawk’s commander) figured out where to put him as a Committee representative.
“Clarke,” Pascari grunted, upon seeing Clarke standing by the door frame. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk,” Clarke told the man.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Pascari said. “Congratulations on your new assignment, Captain. You can go do whatever captains do.”
“Captain?”
Pascari shrugged. “That’s the highest rank I can bestow on you. Don’t think I did it for you. Task Force Sierra will fight better if led by an EIF captain instead of a civilian, so you’re a captain. As far as I’m concerned, get us Isabella and I’ll make you an admiral. Just don’t expect a ceremony to go along with it, asshole.”
Clarke sighed. Any other time, he’d have found the situation hilarious. The EIF recruitment center could’ve made posters about how cheaply Pascari threw promotions around.
“Trust me. I know you don’t do it for me. That’s why I’m here. To make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Good,” said Pascari, “then let’s make things clear. I made you commander because those cowards—Alicante and Rehman and the others—were too scared of the prospect of fighting Tal-Kader. You saw that, didn’t you? They spent their careers hiding away from combat while the rest of the EIF, the rest of the Independent, fought and
died. They’d break the instant their ships came under fire.”
Clarke doubted that was exactly true. A ship’s backbone wasn’t its officers, but its sailors. And Clarke had yet to meet them. He wouldn’t dare make that judgment without knowing them. Hell, he wouldn’t think the officers were cowards until he had seen them in combat. Sometimes, people surprised you.
“Sierra will be ready when we reach Elus,” Clarke said.
“That’s your job,” Pascari said. “Don’t fuck it up.”
“To do my job best, I need to know why my new direct superior hates my guts,” Clarke said.
The two men glared at each other.
“That sob story Navathe told in the conference room,” said Pascari, “I have a different version of it.”
“The official one?”
“No, I’m not an idiot. My version comes from someone very close to me, someone I cared about deeply, who was stationed in Opal, fighting and dying while you and Applegate pranced away doing feel-good bullshit instead of your duty.”
Opal. One of the three battleships that faced Mississippi at Jagal’s outer orbit. Clarke winced.
So, that’s what Pascari has against me. Clarke couldn’t hold it against the man. Julia had been the second person close to Pascari that had died while being close to Clarke.
Hell, I’m surprised he hasn’t shot me yet.
“I’m sorry, Pascari. I did what I could. Applegate’s engines were dead. The weapons systems—”
“I don’t care what your reasons are, Clarke, God-fucking-damn-me,” Pascari said through clenched teeth. He made a visible effort to control himself. “Get us to Dione. Win the day. But I’ll be looking very closely at you. If at any time I see a hint of cowardice—fuck it, if you even make a single mistake—I’m putting a bullet in you, and damn the consequences. Do you understand?”
