He was only making it all worse.
Naero smiled sadly and cut him off, doing her best to let him off the hook.
“You’re a good man. An honorable man. I understand honor, Jeremiah. Believe me, I understand it as much as any Spacer. Don’t worry. I won’t tempt you anymore, now that I know the score.”
Hayden nodded and looked away, averting his eyes.
“Thanks. Boy, that is such a huge relief. I’ll just…go check on the guys. You should…maybe get dressed. Please get dressed.”
He left pretty quickly and did not look back.
Yeah, bopping around naked with a bunch of Marines. Probably not the best idea.
Clothes. Most likely a good thing.
But Naero still cursed her rotten luck with good looking guys she felt a spark for.
And even rarer–guys that she actually happened to like and respect.
It just wasn’t fair.
She could not catch a break to save her life.
She didn’t count Max Lii; that had been a unique case and remained so. How could she have possibly had an affair with such a high profile celeb–not to mention one of her junior officers–right out in the open for everyone to see? It was fortunate, in the end, that nothing had happened between them, either.
They fell out of jump ten minutes later.
Naero was dressed again by that time.
She checked their location in fear.
Thankfully, they came out in a rearward sector of the Alliance.
She immediately sent out coded may day calls for rescue.
The death of Admiral Sandusky and his loss to the Alliance quickly eclipsed any petty personal problems that Naero had.
The only good thing was that they had wiped out the assassin phaze squad, captured the dangerous phazing tek for Intel to study, and a few of the good guys even survived to tell the tale.
Just not certain embarrassing parts of the story, that no one needed to hear. Ever.
33
Naero recovered quickly. She and her people endured two more very intense engagements, and then her unit was forced to pull back. Strike Fleet Six was simply too beaten up once more, and had to come off the line.
Chaela had already entered their WebBall team into an open, single-elimination tournament that took place a day later.
Match-ups in the tourney would be chosen at random.
Saemar called in briefly and begged off from the match, saying she wasn’t feeling well.
Just their luck, a key team member short and they drew a contest with one of the top semi-pro teams.
They all wore tight, two-piece, Nytex WebBall uniforms, patterned in neon blue, black, and silver for their team. Shorts down to their knees, and shirts from their ribs on up, exposing their midriffs; that was just the current style. WebBall shoes were like padded slippers, designed for pushing off in zero-G.
Each of them had a number on their front and back.
Naero wore number six, her lucky number.
Even in her skimpy little WebBall uniform, big, buff Chaela still looked like a Viking war goddess. Especially so, with her two long golden braids.
She called the team together right before their match started.
“Guys, we’re up again a tough one. We know this other team is far more experienced and just plain better than us. They’re favored to win the whole tourney. We can play our usual game, or we can try one of our other strategies that we’ve been practicing.”
“Scoring denial and cancellation,” Naero guessed.
Chaela and several others nodded. “My exact thoughts as well, N. We don’t have to win, we just try not to let them win, by not letting them score, and by reversing as many of their goals as we can.”
“Interesting,” Enel said. “It sounds crazy enough. It just might work.”
“What have we got to lose?” Naero said. “We know they’d beat us straight on.”
All forty-nine of them spiraled up and slapped hands with each other in a spray of players, fanning out.
“Let’s…go for it!”
The could only have two dozen players in the playing field at one time. Substitutes could switch in and out between serves, side outs, and time outs.
The denial strategy was simple. They formed up around the goals and did their best to track them when they shifted.
They tried to score as much as they could when they had the serve. But when the other team was up, they did everything they could to reverse scores and deny the other team any points.
They ended up with a fast-paced, low scoring game, and only lost–in the end–17 to 13.
The other team captain even congratulated them.
“Great denial strategy. But for you to win, you guys have to get better at running up your own points.”
“Thanks,” Chaela said, shaking hands with the other team’s coach and captain. “We’ll get better. We haven’t been playing for very long.”
“You look like you have some great athletes. Is that little woman with the long black hair really Fleet Captain Naero Maeris?”
“It sure is.”
“She looks very different than in her fleet vids in uniform.”
Chae grinned and chuckled. “She’s chameleon all right.”
They tried to call Saemar to tell her about the match and check on her, but she wasn’t accepting any links.
*
Naero’s battered strike fleet remained in the rear areas, scheduled for almost a complete refit.
People tried to rest and relax, but the war still raged at the front, and they would rush back to it soon enough. Technically, this wasn’t a leave.
As usual, they prepared to hold wakes for their dead, and continued to care for their fresh batch of wounded, and the inevitable new group of replacements.
Everyone kept busy.
Then Naero received private distress calls from Chae, Tyber, Tarim, and finally Zhen. One right after the other.
All of them begged her to come down immediately to one of the flagship launching bays–one already prepped for funeral services.
Something was seriously wrong with Saemar.
That’s all they would tell her.
Naero raced down to that part of her flagship.
Tarim secured the door and would not let anyone else past that point but her.
She swept in. The lighting was subdued and down low.
She heard sounds of weeping and sobbing and went straight to them.
Her other friends stood gathered around the room, off to one side.
Ranks upon ranks of silver casket pods lay lined up in the the darkened launching bay, ready for the funeral ceremony the next day, after the wakes that night.
Tyber stood up, his face wet with tears and red from crying himself.
Naero drew closer and found Chae and Z, sitting on the floor, up against the hull.
They held Saemar between them. Their faces were red too, and they also wept. But their arms were wrapped tightly around their poor friend.
Saemar seemed to have completely broken down and lost it. She was in her normal uniform, hugging her knees up close to her tight, trembling face buried in her knees.
She sobbed and shuddered uncontrollably, like one completely shattered.
Naero had only seen Saemar like this once before.
Back when Saemar’s fiancé, Mitsubishi Hikaru, perished in a fierce starfighter battle–just before Saemar came of age. Hikaru died right before their wedding.
That had been a very bad time for Saemar.
She had never been the same since.
What could have happened to bring her that low again?
Naero got down on the floor and tried to help console her friend, checking her and trying to soothe her with gentle touches.
“Oh, Saemar…What is it…what happened?”
Her friend sobbed even louder, lunged forward suddenly, pulling away from Chae and Zhen. She nearly knocked Naero over onto her back.
Naero held her
protectively, using her greater strength to remain upright.
Saemar curled up desperately in her arms, like a very small, sobbing child. She shuddered and convulsed beyond control, still unable to speak.
All of them were at a loss.
Zhen and Chae closed in around them again, hugging them both between them. Naero stroked Saemar’s curly auburn hair, soaked with tears and sweat.
Naero looked to her friends, like them, completely at a loss. She whispered to them softly.
“How long has she been like this? Who found her? Does anyone know what happened?”
Everyone shook their heads.
They were all under a lot of stress, every day. Maybe Saemar just cracked and gave in to it. It could happen to anyone. Maybe she just needed to break down and have a good cry.
But this seemed much worse than that. Something had happened.
Like the time with Hiker’s death.
Naero looked around, rocking softly, and patted Saemar’s back.
She saw all the casketpods from their latest losses once more.
Why had Saemar come down here?
Hundreds of shiny, mirror-finished caskets.
Who were these dead?
Were some of them from Saemar’s unit?
Had someone died that Saemar cared about–much more than she had let on?
Naero held an index finger to her pursed lips, and then quietly called up a holo screen above them with the latest KIA figures.
She scrolled down by unit designation.
Then starfighter pilots.
Saemar commanded about a hundred fighter pilots in The 129th Tactical Starfighter Wave, with a total of five fighter squadrons of twenty, further divided into ten fighter wings of ten fighters each. She commanded the first wing personally.
Naero suddenly gasped slightly.
She saw the data flash across the holo screen, scrolled back, highlighted it–and pointed it out to their friends.
Their mouths fell open, almost all at once.
Saemar had lost twenty-seven of her one hundred pilots during the last heavy engagement.
Over one quarter of her unit, KIA.
That included all nine of the other fighter pilots in her own fighter wing.
Everyone in her wing had been killed but her. Every single one of her closest comrades–wiped out.
And knowing Saemar, most of the male pilots had been her lovers as well, at some point.
Seven of those nine pilots were male, with two females.
Saemar didn’t sleep with women.
Yet, when it came to her units, Saemar chose to fly directly with only the elite-of-the-elite.
Only the best pilots in her wave got to be in her direct wing, based strictly on merit, skill, and ability. Nothing else. Her wing had one of the top records in the Alliance.
And now, all of them had died in that last terrible battle.
All of them…except Saemar.
Their friend had lost her entire fighter wing, and over twenty-five percent of her entire unit, total.
All of them had been too busy to notice.
Naero swore at herself silently.
How could she have been too busy to notice something like that?
For Naero, it would have been the same as if twelve or thirteen of her complement of fifty command warships were all completely destroyed–lost within the course of the same engagement all at once.
No wonder Saemar was a wreck.
She had known every one of these people…intimately. They fought together, trained and lived together.
They were her closest family.
Saemar screamed and thrashed and tore herself out of their arms.
They released her.
She staggered toward the shining caskets in the subdued light of the silent hangar.
She stabbed absently at her wristcom.
Exactly twenty-seven of the caskets nearby lit up all around them, displaying their data screens and a holo image of the fallen Spacer pilot within.
Young, gallant pilots from all the Clans.
All gone now.
129th Tactical Starfighter Wave
2nd Squadron
1st Fighter Wing
1st Leftenant Teodor Donovan
129th Tactical Starfighter Wave
2nd Squadron
1st Fighter Wing
Commander Wendil Gordon
129th Tactical Starfighter Wave
2nd Squadron
1st Fighter Wing
Leftenant Commander Vaellani Lakota
Saemar went to each of the caskets for her people and stretched her arms across them, lying over them and placing her head down close. She sobbed and wept over each one. Then she whispered and muttered unintelligibly to each of them like a madwoman.
Her friends followed her from casket to casket, letting her vent, keeping their gentle hands on her. They tried to steady her.
When Saemar reach the last one–once she had said to them all whatever it was she mumbled to each of them–she collapsed to the floor like puppet with all its strings cut.
Naero dove and caught her, keeping her from smacking her head on the hard floor.
Saemar shrieked, struggled free, and scrabbled like a crab into a dark corner. She continued to sob and mourn. She curled up again, shaking violently, hugging her knees in tight.
Naero and her friends stayed right with her, trying to hold and touch her, to give her whatever solace and comfort they could. Tyber hovered over all of them protectively.
It was Zhen who finally tried to speak to her and bring her back.
“We love you, Saemar. Come back to us. Talk to us. We know you’re hurting very badly. It’s Zhen. Chae and N and Ty are all here too.”
“We’re here for you, Saemar,” Chaela added.
Saemar kept her head down, but her hands shot out like claws in front of her, fingers twisting, clawing, and curling repeatedly at the air.
They rested their hands lightly on her forearms.
Naero tried to hold one of her hands.
At first, Saemar clawed at her and fought her off again, while continuing to sob and gasp, like she couldn’t draw in enough breath.
Then she reached out frantically and grabbed Naero’s hand, and would not let go.
Saemar exploded into semi-incoherent babbling, strained and breathless.
“It’s…they. They killed them all. The bastards killed everyone…”
She couldn’t get any more words out for a long while. She was still having trouble breathing, gulping in air like she couldn’t get enough.
“Hikaru…just like Hikaru. Like losing him…all over again. Every one of my people. Over and over again. I watched them die. I listened to them all get killed.”
Saemar clawed at the air desperately with her free hand, helplessly straining and reaching out in vain.
“Tried…I tried to help them…tried to reach them. Bastards…They cut us off. We all got cut off…So many foes. We fought, and fought, and fought. We fought for each other. We fought and died to help each other. To save as many of us as we could and break out…First Wing. My beloved First Wing…they saved us, Chae…saved us all…First Wing fought…they fought like champions…fearless…like angels of heaven in their fury. In the end…miracle…that any of us came back.”
She kept gasping for air.
“I…led the rest of us back, N…we fought our way out of that hell…and we barely got out…Death trap. We lost so many…all of us…shot to pieces…Barely made it…back to our…our…”
Zhen pushed her way in.
“She’s hyperventilating!” Zhen pulled out a plastic respirator bag and placed it over Saemar’s red, gasping face. She forced Saemar to breath in and out of the expanding and contracting bag. Calming her all the while.
After several tense moments, Saemar finally started to relax and breathe easier.
Naero still held her hand.
Zhen stroked her hair and spoke to her softly.
&nb
sp; “Saemar. I want to have Chae carry you to sickbay. I want you on a medbed. We’ll all stay with you if you want. We’ll stay with you all night if you want us too. Or if you’d rather get some sleep, I can give you something to help you with that. One of us will always be in the room with you. Don’t worry. We aren’t going to leave you.”
Saemar nodded, still wincing and sobbing, shaking her head.
“You don’t get it. You just don’t understand, none of you.” She gasped again and put her head down.
They tried to be quiet and give her whatever time she needed to work through her pain and grief and get it all out.
She exploded again suddenly, blurting out a bunch of stuff.
“We fought and died for each other! To save each other. First Wing gave their lives for the rest of us. So that the rest of us could get out. I had to pull the others together and lead the break out, and first wing fell back without question. They held off the enemy, for barely a few seconds while we broke out. Then…they got swept away. They sacrificed themselves. Without any hesitation. And we let them do it. I let them do it. We left them behind. I left them behind…to die…for the rest us.”
Naero finished reading the crew report summaries, flashing across the floating holo screen before her eyes.
“Saemar, I know you’re hurting bad. Believe me, I understand. Every battle I lose people I know. Sometimes hundreds. Sometimes entire warships and their whole crews–all hands lost. Thousands at times. But you have not read your reports from the survivors of your last engagement. Without exception–every pilot of the 129th that came back alive–all seventy-two of them insist, for the record, that First Wing fought with the highest valor to the very end.”
Saemar bowed her head and slowly nodded.
“They did. That they did.”
“I’m not finished, Saemar. Not only that, but your pilots also concluded–unanimously–that only their commander, Wing Commander Saemar Maeris, could have kept the rest of them together, and led them back to safety out of that nightmare. And she did so, they said, at great risk and at constant threat of losing her own life, heedless of any damage to her own craft and herself.”
Naero put her hand on Saemar’s head, bent down, and kissed the top of her crown.
“Can’t you see, Saemar? All of you could have died in that deathtrap. Every one of you. You lost one quarter of your command. Your own wing sacrificed itself bravely, for the rest of you. But you were the only one with the knowledge and experience capable of saving the rest. You saved three quarters of your people. They are all alive and thankful today because of you, and clearly state that fact. For the record, I want you to know that I’m putting you and everyone in First Wing up for commendations and citations for bravery, valor, and courage, well beyond the call of duty.”
Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War Page 22
