by Mark Tufo
“No more fighting, then?” Tracy seemed dubious.
“Of course, we will defend ourselves if it becomes necessary, but we will not attack nor attempt a coup.”
“Forgive me for not believing you.”
“Your belief is not necessary for the truth to be valid and factual. Your being at the controls matters little in any case, as you can do nothing to alter this course and the outcome is the same. Once we reach my home world, you will be surrounded by dozens of warships and will be forced to yield.”
“That may or may not be true, but I would still rather be on the bridge. It’s a much more advantageous spot and it has the best view. If what you say is true, we will still come out with guns firing.”
Alken scoffed. “Do you believe this to be the first starship to have been overrun by the enemy? You will never have the opportunity to fire so much as one small weapon. This ship will come out of her buckle directly into an electronic force field which will render all of her controls inert. Everything that you do by choice or chance will lead you to the same point at the end of the road.”
“Perhaps. But we have a great say over who lives and dies on this ship until then. Get him out of here.”
“I might act as a liaison,” he told her.
“You yourself said all roads lead to the same spot. Why do I need you here for that?” She nodded as two guards pushed him out. “You’re free to go now, but if you come back I will consider it an act of hostility and my men will have orders to shoot.”
“It is no wonder that your own species wishes to eradicate itself.”
Despite Alken’s words, Tracy tightened security around the bridge and the crew area. That was a problem she was going to have to deal with soon, getting the crew gathered much closer. She did not like having her forces split. But right now, none of that mattered. BT had gone back to medical and was now on the line with her.
“How’s he doing?” Tracy had to hold back the sob that threatened to choke free from her.
“He seems fairly stable. I think he’s going to be pretty pissed off when he finds out he lost part of his leg.”
“He’s alive; that’s all that matters.” I’ll be down in a minute. When she arrived she first placed her hand against the glass and then her forehead.
“I came when I heard.” Drababan burst into the room. “It will take some time for him to deal psychologically with the loss, but Progerian prosthetic technology will make the transition much smoother for him.”
“He’s going to need you two, more than ever.” Tracy turned to look at Mike’s friends. “He might never say anything, but Paul’s death is going to affect him more than even he knows. And the leg? He will think he is no longer fit to command just when we are going to need him most. He will expect me to be supportive, but you two are the ones he will need to lean on.”
“Of course.” Drababan bowed his head slightly. “It will be an honor.”
“I don’t know about it being an honor, he’ll probably be more of a pain in the ass than ever. But, yeah, he’s got me.” BT replied.
Tracy was completely swallowed up in the hug that ensued.
“Michael always wondered how so much danger could be placed in such a tiny package,” Dee quipped, as he released her. “We will watch out for him and right his ship should he begin to list. For all his faults and quirks, he will always do what is necessary to protect those around him and that is what we will use against him to keep him safe from himself.”
“That’s hardcore, man. Brilliant, but hardcore. So, are you going to play the damsel in distress part?” BT asked Drababan.
“I would think you more fitting for that role,” Dee replied. “You seem more demure.”
Chapter 9
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 7
It was five days removed from the battle when I awoke, but, not really, as I’ll relate later. The bottom half of my left leg below the knee throbbed as if I’d smacked the shit out of it with a five-pound hammer on a cold day. Phantom pain is bullshit; how can something you no longer possess still hurt like a motherfucker? The Progs had me pretty drugged up, which I was fine with. Paul was gone, died saving me, they said. I don’t even know how I feel about it. It’s something I really haven’t been able to process correctly. The pain, the drugs, the scenario we found ourselves in, it was too much. The thought that I’d made the call to attack, the battle that had cost him his life, I couldn’t even think on it yet. I knew we’d broken free from the time hold and that Tracy had finished what I’d set out to do. No matter how much I tried, it was impossible not to think back on Paul and our early days together. I was in a hospital bed and the Progs apparently didn’t believe in putting even crappy old, thirteen-inch televisions that got seven shitty channels and were entirely too far away from you to even view the thing in their sick rooms.
The one thing they were good at was bothering me constantly, much like in human hospitals. Must be a care giver thing. That, and I had five guards in the room at all times. Talk about an uncomfortable situation. Tracy had stationed them there. They did their best not to disturb me, but it was six people in a fifteen by fifteen room; there was no avoiding them and Lance Corporal Carlson had apparently partaken of the bean burrito supper a few times too many. I ordered him out of the room after he let loose the tenth or eleventh squelch. The noise was distracting enough; the smell, well that was more than I could bear.
“The colonel is going to have my stripe.”
“I’m going to have your ass if you stay here. Scratch that. I don’t want it,” I yelled. The two women and men with me in the room began to laugh, just as Tracy walked in.
“What’s so fun…oh god…what is that?” Everyone pointed at Carlson. “You’re dismissed all of you. Send the next shift here in fifteen minutes.”
“Ma’am?” Sergeant Veelings asked.
“It’s okay Sergeant, I have a detail with me.”
“We’ll wait right outside,” the sergeant said.
“Thank you,” Tracy told her.
“How are you?” Tracy asked as she absently wiped my head.
“Besides Carlson trying to gas me out, I’m good. Lot of pain though, and I could use a good night's sleep. The Progs have been in here every hour poking and prodding the living shit out of me. They get anywhere near my anal cavity and I’ve ordered my guards to start shooting.”
Tracy smiled. It was a slightly melancholy thing that I knew from experience had more behind it than she was letting on.
“What gives?”
“Have the Progs told you anything about the prosthetic?”
“We don’t talk much. I’m still trying to figure out why they're helping.”
“I want you to realize this is ultimately for the best.”
“Ah,” I nodded. “I can’t tell you how much I love that qualifier. Just in case it wasn’t entirely clear, that was sarcasm.”
Tracy blew me off. “The reason they are in here so much is that they are preparing you for another operation.”
“Why? Wait. What more do they want to take from me?”
“Not take away, but rather add. They are inserting microcomputers onto your nerve endings and these will plug into sockets on your new leg.”
“Like a robot?”
“More sophisticated.”
“Like an android?” I figured that was next in line. She shook her head. “Cyborg?”
Her sigh made me squint at her and wait. “Maybe somewhere in between.”
“Like Luke’s hand?” I asked hopefully.
“Yeah,” she conceded. “More like that. There will be no living tissue in the leg, yet it will operate very much like it used to. I’m told that there is a very small adjustment period and then you’ll hardly even notice a difference.”
“How long am I going to be down?”
“That’s it?”
“My former best friend died saving me, Earth is still in the middle of a war, and this ship, with us on it, is still hurtling straight into the
fire. I’ll lament the loss of my leg later. If they’re going to hook me up with something that will get me on my feet and ready to go, I’m all for it.”
“A week. They told me about a week.”
“And how far out are we from Aradinia?”
“About a month.”
“Alken and his minions?”
“Nothing, not a peep.”
“Still don’t like it. If there was a way to round them up and push them out an air lock I’d do it.”
“Maybe wait until you get your new leg before you get rid of them all; that gives you a whole week to come up with something.”
“Smart. That’s why you’re the brains of this outfit.”
“Are you just now figuring that out?”
The Progs never did tell me shit. They came in the middle of what I assumed was night; my guards almost ended the transplant right then and there until they got the assurances they were looking for. Losing a limb is painful, but the aftermath is even worse, so it really wasn’t all that big of a shock that a reattachment of sorts would be the worst of it all. The aliens did their thing and my personal pharmacist did his. I was popping oxy or its equivalents like Tic Tacs. I had two days where I didn’t need a ship to go flying around. On the third day, I sucked it up and stayed straight. We were to bury Paul in space. I had an hour or two of rehab where they showed me how to work the leg, and then I had Tracy help me get dressed.
“How’s it feel?” she asked as she tied my shoe.
“If I don’t cry out like a hungry baby with an ass-chapping diaper rash, I’ll consider it a victory.”
“You want any more pain meds?”
“You have no idea. But no. I owe Paul at least this.”
It was on the tip of her tongue, I could see it, she wanted to tell me that I didn’t owe him anything. She was wrong.
All non-essential personnel were at the funeral. Which, given the current set of circumstances, was not many. I made sure that it was broadcast throughout the ship so those that wished to pay their last respects could do so.
“Faris is presiding over this?” I turned to my wife when I saw Petty Officer Keith Faris walk up onto the dais. At six foot, two-hundred and thirty pounds, he was a good-sized man with a larger than life personality. He’d been in South Carolina, Parris Island, to be specific, home of the Marine making base at the time the Progs had struck and struck hard. He’d been one of only a hundred or so that had survived that attack. He’d soon after got an angel tattooed on his back; figured he’d owed his guardian that. “I’ve seen some of the things that man has done. I’m surprised he hasn’t burst into flame just for standing up there.”
“Shut up, Talbot,” my wife told me. “If anyone was going to get a lightning strike on a dais on a spaceship, it would be you.” Hard to disagree with that. “He got ordained just for this event; he respected Paul and all he did to prevent the collapse of our planet.”
“When I first heard about General Ginson,” he started, his baritone steady. “I thought the man a myth, a fairy tale, a story to keep alive the hopes of mankind. I mean, what were the chances that some snot-nosed kid still in college could build a militia, could build a safe haven from which to launch counterattacks at the greatest threat mankind had ever known? What kind of man, with no experience whatsoever, could unite what was left of the Earth Forces into a viable fighting machine? When I got to Indian Hill, I got my answer. I was wounded, weary, and without hope. Within a week, I was nearly healed, well rested, and once again my life had purpose. He inspired those of us around him to do great things, to be better than we were. I would have blindly followed him into an active volcano if he’d but told me there was a good reason for it. We have lost a man that cannot easily be replaced.” I don’t know if he meant it as blame or not, but he was looking directly at me and held that point of reference for seconds longer than he should have. “I do not believe the General was a religious man, but this is as much about him as it is about we who must now mourn his passing.” He then proceeded to read a few psalms, the most famous being the Yea though I walk through the valley. When he was done, he looked to me again.
“Would you like to say a few words, General Talbot?” he asked.
The entire room swiveled to me expectantly. I’d imagine a bunch were wondering what route I would take with my words; it wasn’t any sort of secret that Paul and I had become adversarial the last few years. And still others would wonder if I could even make the small jaunt to the dais. Showing signs of weakness in even the best of times can be dangerous; in times of war it can be devastating to morale. In that short stint in rehab, the Progs had told me that I did not need to think about my leg but rather do as I normally would and it would respond. But of course, I immediately became extremely self-conscious to the fact that I needed to rise, on my own, stride confidently to that platform, stand tall, and deliver uplifting words to my crew about my lifelong friend who had just given me the ultimate sacrifice.
My leg took the brunt of that psychological pressure. It was frozen. It had been an imperceptible second, but it would soon become awkward when I did not move. Tracy placed her hand in mine. That reassuring gesture was exactly what I needed to stop thinking about moving my leg and just do it. Can you imagine if you constantly had to remind yourself to bend your knee, flex your calf, stretch your toes, have the heel make contact first and then roll up on the ball of your foot before pushing off? You’d never get anywhere, certainly not with any speed, and for sure you couldn’t deliver a decent eulogy. I stood; don’t think I wobbled. My knee threatened to lock again. I pushed through it and after one not-so-graceful stride, my shit fell into place and I walked up to the platform, dignity more or less intact. Dee looked like he was ready to launch and prop me up, should I falter. The pain was manageable, but what I wouldn’t have done for a little something to take the edge off and maybe help me to forget where I was and what I was doing there.
“Paul and I were as close as friends can be; we were brothers in every sense of the word.” I started. “Except we had different parents, or maybe we had four parents between us. When we met, I was a scared, lonely kid just into a new school. Sure, he got me suspended that first day…” That got some laughs. “But he more than made up for it with his friendship. We’ve had some ups and downs in our relationship like everybody does, but I think he always knew I was rooting for us. In the end, he proved where his heart was, and for that, I will always be grateful. Paul was our leader, our general, and more importantly, our friend. I will miss him until the day I am laid to rest.”
I nodded to Faris who opened the air lock door. Two men rolled the casket on a platform into the airlock and secured the platform to the floor before exiting. Petty Officer Faris closed the inner doors and when the light flashed green, signifying the door had sealed correctly, he opened the outer doors. Paul’s casket lifted slowly as if picked up by magic, moved towards the blackness, and drifted off into space. I’d been expecting it to be ripped free like a row of seats through a hole in a jetliner at forty-thousand feet. But this was nothing violent; it was like a gentle God had picked the casket up and was taking it home. I saluted, as did the rest of the men and women in the room. “I’ll miss you, brother,” I said softly. A tear rolled from my right eye.
I stayed at the dais as the men and women under my command began to filter out. Tracy, BT, and Dee stayed behind.
“Are the cameras off?” I asked, the words coming out barely above a hissed whisper.
“Yes,” Tracy checked and confirmed.
BT was closest. “Help me, man.” I put my arm out and almost fell over. He caught me well before that happened. My entire body immediately flushed with sweat. They rushed me back to the ship’s hospital. I was told something had been crossed, that I shouldn’t have even been able to walk. I thought perhaps it was some sort of subterfuge or sabotage on the Progs’ part, but when I saw the hundreds of connectors, that they’d only screwed up one was a feat. Took a couple of days until I felt �
�normal,” and my brain could work through the new rerouting before I even contemplated walking to the bridge and taking the helm. The thought crossed my mind more than once to just let the colonel do it. She was so much more qualified than I was, plus she wanted the job. I was the reluctant leader, though I did so at her urging.
“You’re the general, Mike. You’ve got to go up there. The crew is expecting you to be there. Every day that goes by without you, they begin to wonder if you still can.”
“Look at you pushing all those buttons.”
She smiled. “It’s what I do.”
“I just wish mine weren’t so easily displayed.”
“Wouldn’t matter. Women are pretty deft at finding them.”
“I’ll say.”
“We have a meeting with Beckert, Pender, and a few others in ten minutes. Then after that, you are going to the helm and I’m going to take the day off, maybe have a glass of Faris’ homemade wine and take an hour-long shower.”
“Who else is coming over?”
“What?”
“That all sounds very romantic, is what I’m implying.”
“Or relaxing.”
“I guess that, too.”
“Maybe if you’re a good general today the little general can give me a salute…later.”
“Well, since I’m the ranking officer, it should be you giving me the salute.”
“That would be a little awkward don’t you think?”
“Sorry, not much thinking going on right now.” I looked down.
Tracy laughed. You’d better put that thing away. Going to be a strange meeting if he pops in. She gave it a tender squeeze before turning to go make our meeting.
“Oh yeah, that’s going to fucking help, woman,” I said as I watched her sculpted ass sashay away. “I didn’t think camouflage fatigues were supposed to be flattering.” I did a little adjusting and followed after. Men know what I’m talking about, but those few hundred yards I had to walk, there was some undergarment to manhood friction going on that was wholly uncomfortable. Like teeth-gritting uncomfortable. Women know the pain of nipple chafe, yeah, same thing. Almost exquisitely painful. I mean if you’re into that kind of thing. Things had finally settled down, if you catch my drift, just as I walked into the engineering department.
