“It’ll be best if you just see for yourself, sir,” the other security officer said. He seemed a little more in control of himself than his companion, standing with the proper erect posture, holding his weapon in a firm, yet relaxed grip, and even snapping Nathan a quick salute as he spoke, which Nathan returned.
“Stay close, Jaelyn.” Nathan said, stepping around the two security officers and pushing into the room.
“Sir,” the calmer guard said, “maybe it might be best if he stays outside with one of us.”
“He stays with me.” Nathan didn’t slow as he replied to the guard over his shoulder.
The smell hit him first, before Nathan was even able to take in the sight before him. The mixed scent of viscera and blood, the smell of fear, rage, and pain. The smell of war. A hint of memory flickered through Nathan’s consciousness, but he pushed it back as he stepped deeper into the room.
Tables and chairs had been flung about or thrown into piles to act as barricades for those huddled behind. Various figures could be made out behind the barricades, peering out from gaps in the furniture. Blood stained the floor around bodies that, for a moment of distilled stillness and shock, Nathan thought were dead, until they moaned or stirred. Armed security personnel stood in the center of the room, weapons pointed outward at three such barriers. The musty smell of blood lay sharp and pungent in the air, like the perfume of the damned. Beside him, Jaelyn made a small sound that hovered halfway between a gasp and a cry of protest and then sucked in a sharp breath.
Memory flashed through Nathan’s mind, recollections of a day and time he’d rather have left forgotten, a time of battles, the cries of the wounded dying, just like those around him now. By reflex, Nathan reached for a weapon, something he could at least use to defend himself and the boy, then remembered where he was and stilled his hand.
How did this happen?
He knew, really, what had sparked it. The damnable Council had saddled Amara with their problems. They’d known this was a possibility. It was like handing a loaded gun to a toddler. Nathan suppressed his anger and put a hand on Jaelyn’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.
As they stepped forward, Nathan began to pick out raised voices coming from several different directions. Commander Chalmers noticed Nathan and Jaelyn as they approached and met them between two of the barricades, her concussion rifle steady. The large weapon looked unwieldy in her small hands, but it never wavered from its mark. Nathan did his best to shut out the low murmurs of pain and fear buzzing in the air around him.
“What happened?” Nathan let his voice be hard, though calm. He felt like shivering, like shutting his eyes and ears against the scene of carnage around him, the scene of a war he thought had been over. Or hoped had been over. Had it ever really been?
Commander Chalmers grimaced. “That damn transmission, sir. I’m not sure how it all started, exactly, but when I got here, they were all at each other’s throats. Literally, in some cases.”
“I can see that.”
Commander Chalmers glanced over at Jaelyn and then looked back at Nathan, the question clear in her eyes even if she didn’t say anything.
Nathan ignored the question. “Is medical on the way?”
“Called them the same time as yourself, sir. Three seriously injured, half a dozen minor wounds, who knows what else behind the barricades. Would’ve been much worse if not for her. She quieted ‘em down after things got violent.” Commander Chalmers nodded behind her.
Nathan looked in that direction, noticing a figure approaching.
“Dr. Martin?” Jaelyn said.
Nathan recognized the woman as she approached and berated himself for not recognizing her sooner. As the department head for the Sciences division, she was in most every bureaucratic meeting they had. She walked up to them now, looking far wearier and older than she ever had before. Her normally well-kept greying hair lay in a haphazard array about her face, which was itself covered in a thin layer of grime marked with blood from a cut above her eye. Her uniform, a simple one-piece jumpsuit affair that made it easier for her to work in the gardens below, was ripped along one sleeve and was bloodstained as well, though Nathan couldn’t tell if the blood was hers.
“What are you doing here, Jaelyn?” Nathan recognized the tone of her voice, the resignation. It was the same sound every soldier’s voice had held during the war.
“He’s with me,” Nathan said. “Can you tell me what happened here, Dr. Martin?”
Dr. Martin didn’t look away from Jaelyn for a long moment, but when she finally did, she met Nathan’s gaze and nodded slightly. Before she could speak, however, someone shouted out from one of the barricades.
“I can tell you what happened,” a male voice shouted, “those racist pigs over there claimed it was a good thing our Comandante got killed. Said it was a blessing.”
“You lying little ingrate,” another voice Nathan recognized as belonging to Sheawn Olliard yelled from another of the barricades. “Your people were the reason the war started in the first place. Juan Andrade was a butcher. I saw his handiwork personally during the war.”
“And James King wasn’t?” another voice, one Nathan also vaguely recognized but couldn’t place, yelled from the third barricade.
“You little—” Sheawn shouted back, though the rest of his sentence was cut off as more shouting exploded from the various groups, overlapping with one another to the extent that Nathan couldn’t tell what was even being said at all. Something flew out from one of the barriers, striking and bouncing off the closest one and narrowly missing one of the security officers in the open space between them. Nathan moved without thinking, leaping in front of Jaelyn and shielding him with his body. Dr. Martin stepped in close as well, mouth twisted into a snarl. A bit of metal—it could have been part of a bench at one point—clanged off the metal floor only a foot away. One end glistened with a red wetness. Behind Nathan, Jaelyn made retching noises.
Commander Chalmers snapped off a shot.
As with all concussion rifles, it didn’t make a sound from the shot itself since it was simply a high frequency pulse directed in a somewhat narrow field, but when it struck one of the metal tables, it rang with such force that Nathan had to fight the urge to cover his ears. The people hidden within that barricade cried out in obvious pain.
“Now, now, folks,” Commander Chalmers said, voice ringing in the sudden silence, “let’s not start all this up again. Don’t you think you’ve done enough fighting?”
Nathan moved before he’d fully formed the decision to do so. He stepped up and put a hand on Commander Chalmers’s shoulder and she fell silent. He walked to the center of the three barricades, motioning for the security officers to step away. Dr. Martin shifted closer to Jaelyn, putting an arm around the young man’s shoulder. Holly stayed close to them both.
“You all know who I am,” Nathan said, pitching his voice so it would carry. “I’m the executive officer of this ship, Commander Nathan Esquina, and one of the men who was killed was my father.”
Silence filled the room. Nathan took a deep breath, pushing down the emotions that welled up within him. A murmur rose up from one of the barricades, but was immediately quelled by a shout from one of the security officers. Despite his efforts to contain them, anger, frustration, and pain flooded Nathan, coloring his words with a somber and powerful timbre.
“I have more right than any of you to be upset, to be angry, to want to rain destruction down on those who killed my father. But I can’t. I won’t. No one who did that is here.” Nathan swallowed hard and balled his hands into fists. “I came on this trip knowing I would never see Earth again, knowing I may not even see our destination. What happened during the war has no place here. No one who did any of that is here.”
Nathan turned as he spoke, making sure he faced each of the barricades in turn. He distantly heard one of the side doors open behind him, but didn’t turn to see who was entering.
“I don’t care what started this, or wh
o started this. It ends now. There are wounded men here, your friends, your fellow colonists. Haven’t you seen enough bloodshed? Haven’t you watched enough of your friends, family, and countrymen dying before your eyes and been unable to do anything about it? Are you afraid to help them now, cowering there behind your walls?”
Nathan felt his expression harden and the trio of emotions within him merged into an iron-hard fury.
“Now, you’ll come out from behind those barricades and help the medical staff see to them, and anyone else that’s hurt, and then report to the brig, or I swear to God in Heaven I’ll have every last one of you jettisoned out the airlock.” Nathan bit off the last word, making it into a snarl.
It hung there in the air, defying the silence for a long, long time. Then, slowly, as if the people hidden within the barricades were somehow afraid to break the silence, tables shifted aside and men and women shuffled out, eyes downcast, moving immediately toward the fallen. Medical staff in white and blue uniforms appeared among them, directing the work.
“Holly,” Nathan said softly, not looking away from the working men and women, “If anything starts, stun them, and drag them to the brig.”
“Gladly, sir.” Commander Chalmers’s response was immediate.
Nathan nodded and turned on his heel, executing a perfect military about-face. He noticed Dr. Martin standing next to Jaelyn and was only mildly surprised to see Amara standing on the other side of her son, tall and perfectly austere in her pristine captain’s uniform. Her eyes followed him though. Behind her, almost two dozen security personnel stood with concussion rifles trained on the working groups.
“That was quite the threat, Commander,” Dr. Martin said, blandly.
Nathan kept his still shaking fists clenched at his sides.
“It wasn’t a threat,” Nathan said, then strode from the room without looking back.
“Well, that was surely a surprising day, to say the least,” Dr. Martin said, walking alongside Jaelyn in the direction of the gardens.
“That’s one way of describing it, I guess,” Jaelyn said. He suppressed a shiver as he walked, remembering the state of the mess hall and the smell of it all. Bile welled up in his throat and he had to swallow to keep it down. After Dr. Martin’s wounds had been seen to, they’d both been ushered out of the room, Jaelyn’s mother leaving him in Dr. Martin’s care.
“How would you describe it?” Dr. Martin asked, tone rueful.
“A nightmare rearing its head up from the depths of hell.”
Dr. Martin chuckled wearily. “Accurate. Fair enough, we’ll go with yours.”
“You sound tired.”
“Well, as you say, I just lived through ‘a nightmare rearing its head up from the depths of hell.’” Dr. Martin’s voice was wry, though the weariness remained. Medical staff had cleaned off the blood and put a bandage on the cut on her head, but she’d refused any other treatment.
“Fair enough. Your friend, Sheawn, was with one of the groups, wasn’t he? I think I saw him there.”
“The fool. A couple weeks in the brig will do him good.”
Jaelyn almost stumbled at the sudden harshness in her voice. He’d grown close to Dr. Martin over the last months, closer than he was to just about anyone else he’d ever known. She was usually so calm, so in control of her emotions. So much the rock upon which Jaelyn had come to rely when his mother’s stresses and frustrations with being captain spilled out into their daily life. A nightmare indeed.
“I…I…” Jaelyn paused and swallowed again, stopping in place to suppress a shiver. “What happened?”
Dr. Martin stopped and turned back to him, a look of concern on her grandmotherly features. She put a hand on his shoulder. They were alone in the corridor, though Dr. Martin still looked around rather ostensibly before leaning down so they were eye level with one another.
“Human nature happened, Jaelyn,” she said, putting one hand on each of his shoulders. “Human nature. Fear leads to outward expressions of anger, which is at the heart of fear. Even our stalwart executive officer lashed out in response to his own fear and grief. Granted, he channeled his rather well, but it’s the same thing. It’s like we talked about earlier, people cling to what they had before, even if they don’t have it anymore.”
Jaelyn felt himself starting to shake, but didn’t know how to stop it. He felt ill, nauseated, cold, and weak, all at the same time. His mind kept replaying images of the still forms on the ground and the spatters of blood throughout the room. They hadn’t bothered him initially. Why were they nagging him now?
“Hey, now, it’s ok. It’s settled now. They’ve got it all under control.” The concern in Dr. Martin’s voice was almost palpable. One of her hands lifted from his shoulder and briefly settled on his forehead, as if she were checking for fever.
All that blood.
She pulled him into a hug and Nathan welcomed the warmth and closeness of it. It felt safe. Secure. His tensions eased, troubled mind slipping into calmer thoughts as he returned the embrace.
“Come on,” Dr. Martin said, stepping back from the hug and straightening. “Let’s go down and plant those grape shoots we hybridized. How does that sound?”
Jaelyn swallowed hard and focused on the thought, blinking back tears that had welled in his eyes and clouded his vision.
“I’d like that.” He said with a wan little smile.
An hour or so later, Jaelyn looked up from his work as one of the doors slid open with a hiss. Dr. Martin had excused herself a few minutes earlier to deal with some minor issues in another section of the gardens. As usual, Jaelyn didn’t mind working by himself, but he had come to enjoy Dr. Martin’s stalwart presence, and especially after the day’s events, it had been a comfort to him. His thoughts lingered on the violence he’d witnessed earlier that day, the blood, and the death. It was – well, it was the most horrible thing he’d seen in his life so far. He wasn’t sure he’d soon forget any of it.
A young woman who looked like she was from the Asiatic Coalition strode into the room, walking along the catwalk a dozen meters or so above Jaelyn toward a particularly dense section of trees. Jaelyn frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t unusual for passengers to wander through the gardens. In fact, much of the garden area above the soil boxes had been built with benches set up every few meters specifically for the occasional visitor.
What was odd, however, was the hour. It was well after the time most passengers would be in bed, hours into their dreams. Jaelyn himself was beyond tired, bordering on exhaustion, but couldn’t bring himself to face the images that he knew would come to him in the darkness. And, it was a young woman alone. Jaelyn only vaguely recognized her, though couldn’t place either her name or where he’d seen her before.
The girl walked past where Jaelyn worked without looking down at him, walking to a bench near one of the only windows in the place. Setting her back to the window, the girl took a seat facing a stand of conifers that grew near the center of the room. Jaelyn watched her with absent interest for a few moments before returning to his work pruning some of the smaller shrubs.
“My dad says we’re going to end up turning around before we get to the new planet.” Jaelyn looked up at the sound of the voice. He looked toward the girl sitting on the bench above, his lips already forming a response, but then realized she wasn’t even looking in his direction. “I don’t suppose that would be too bad, would it? I mean, all my friends are there still.”
Jaelyn frowned. Was she talking to herself?
“I did say goodbye to them all, but it can be like a surprise, right? ‘Hey, you remember that time I said I was leaving all you behind to go to a new world because this one sucks? Yeah, I was just kidding.’ Sounds like a good plan to me.”
Jaelyn felt the corner of his mouth twitch toward a grin. That would be an interesting conversation. If it happened, which it wouldn’t. Would it? He wasn’t entirely sure anymore. The ship was teetering on the brink of something.
&nb
sp; “On the other hand,” the girl continued, gesturing at the trees before her. Was she talking to a tree? “Who wants to grow old inside the confines of this old ship? I mean, forty-something more years? Which is the worse nightmare?”
“They both sound pretty bad,” Jaelyn said before he realized he was even talking.
His gaze darted upward toward the catwalk. The girl peered down at him curiously, regarding him with almond-shaped eyes that looked a dark, dark blue or possibly black. Her ebony hair cascaded over her face as she looked down over one shoulder at him. Jaelyn licked his lips, oddly nervous. The girl smiled.
“You’re not wrong,” she said. “But I believe I asked which would be worse.”
Jaelyn gave her a slight bow in the form of an exaggerated nod. Her smile widened.
“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the girl continued, her voice lilting with an accent Jaelyn couldn’t quite place and which he hadn’t noticed before when her tone had been more musing than conversational. “Do you help out here often?”
“I’m the head apprentice to Dr. Martin,” Jaelyn said, “and I don’t really recall seeing you around here much, either.”
The girl frowned and got to her feet, then walked over to the catwalk’s railing and peered down over the edge at him. She squinted, revealing small dimples on her cheeks in her otherwise perfectly oval face.
“No, I definitely don’t recall seeing you here. The head apprentice, you say? I’m here most every night. I come talk to the trees. They remind me of home.”
Jaelyn smiled in sudden understanding. “That would explain it then. I generally don’t work any of the night shifts. Not that we can call it night, really. We’re in space, after all, and…” Jaelyn trailed off as the girl gave him a flat look which included both a raised eyebrow and a glare at the same time. Even looking at her, Jaelyn wasn’t sure how she’d accomplished it. Presently, she looked away, turning back to the tree.
Colonial Prime_Humanity Page 7
