by Drew Avera
Ilium smiled the same way he always did, something wicked and deceptive to everyone except Brendle. He had seen through Ilium’s shit from the moment they met. “I hope you enjoy your new quarters. At least as long as you’re allowed to live within them. The captain is sending up your charges to Central Command. It’s rather cut and dry. Once they review the evidence, you will be trialed for treason. I get the duty of tossing you out the airlock and into the dark, so things are looking up for me. You on the other hand…not so much.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Brendle said. He was ashamed at the sound of pleading in his voice. He swallowed hard and fought the urge to cry. It was hard to maintain composure when your life was hanging on the line.
“I don’t think I care,” Ilium replied.
Brendle stopped himself from stepping forward where the barrier gave the illusion of dancing before his eyes. His heart beat hard enough he was sure Ilium could hear it too. “You’re the law on this ship. Shouldn’t you care?” it was an accusation worded as delicately as possible.
Ilium shrugged, the smile never fading from his face as he turned away. He stopped at the hatch, the last barrier between the brig and the rest of the ship. Without turning he said, “Most prisoners are afforded a mattress to sleep, but since you were already sleeping we figured you were rested enough for the day. We’ll think about allowing you a mattress tomorrow night provided you cooperate in the morning.”
“Cooperate with what?” Brendle asked, the anxiety hanging heavy on his heart.
Ilium touched the pad next to the hatch and it opened before him. He canted his head slightly as he stepped through and looked back at Brendle. Their eyes bore into each other’s for a long moment, the silence more profound than any words either of them could ever say. Ilium had always struck Brendle as a smug bastard, but this was taking it to a whole new level. Brendle couldn’t help but think Ilium was enjoying himself a lot. After a long moment of silence Ilium spoke. “You’ll see,” he said as the hatch closed, leaving Brendle alone and wondering how he came to find himself in this situation.
5
Anki
Visiting home was like having the oxygen in the room sucked out. It was relatively comfortable until you realized you couldn’t breathe. That was how Anki felt as the transport landed, bringing her once again to the city she thought she had left behind. She had no ill will towards home, but neither did she feel like she belonged there anymore. The only thing she had in the rundown city of Surda was her father, and he made it clear that he wanted more for her than what little Surda had to offer. That was why joining the Luthian Navy had seemed so glamorous. She could leave her past behind and start a future for herself, or die protecting the only person in her life who was ever really there for her.
As she stepped off the transport, Anki could see what a couple of years of training had changed about her opinion of Surda. What once had been a bustling area was quickly turning into a slum. No one admitted that the economy was crashing in support of the Alorian Wars, but the truth was the government dumped all of their hope into a naval force and no one knew if it could even stand up to the Greshian oppressors. She didn’t like thinking of it that way, that the Luthians were fighting a losing war, but every time she saw the video feeds and the returning troops torn to pieces, a part of her spirit died. She would never turn her back on her world, but it was becoming clearer to her that she might not have a world by time the wars were over.
She side-stepped past a group of derelicts as she turned down a narrow alley leading her towards the heart of Surda. She never understood why they would put the transports on the outskirts of the city leaving the commuters to pass through the harshest parts of the region in order to do commerce. Anki wasn’t nervous about being a lonely woman in such a desolate area. The training she received could neutralize anything any aggressor could hope to use against her. If anything, they were the ones in danger by her presence. It didn’t make her feel any more love for what her home was becoming, though.
The alley opened into main streets leading closer to downtown where her father was. As the streets opened up, she could see how rundown everything had become. There was a closed shop for every three open ones as she made her way through the busy crowd. Surda had once been an epicenter for trade, but now it was dying, a visual indication of how Luthia was dying on the inside. Anki pushed the thought back. It seemed every time she put up walls to defend against that kind of thinking, something else would trigger in her mind and lay waste to her defenses. This was why it had been so long since she visited her father. The mental warfare of seeing how quickly her world was fading didn’t make the looming deployment an easier pill to swallow. If anything, it made it worse. Why couldn’t he have come to visit her in Port Carreo? It was a stupid question. She knew why.
The elder Paro’s home was just off the beaten path, its back turned to the downtown distractions. It was a tall rundown building that once knew glory days long before news spread of Greshian invasion. There was a time when the universe was too expansive to traverse. Technology meant to aid life was doing more to end it on a global scale than anyone wanted to admit. Now what should have taken several lifetimes took a number of days or weeks thanks to the slew of service stations populating the stars. The galaxy gained something in the way of information and convenience when the Ontorians developed the means to travel amongst the stars. History showed what they gave the combined Alorian citizens was a fate matched by their own when the Ontorians found Greshia. That was when the pendulum found a new direction to swing and history forever changed.
The front door was heavy, just as it always had been, but the memory of how it felt opening was different than the experience of actually opening it. It was funny how the memory changed things, or maybe it was just time slowly dropping away the details of how things really are. The hinges groaned as it eased open, the weight of it fighting with the misshaped frame, a souvenir from a war long since forgotten. Anki pressed her hand against the wall as she climbed the tight narrow stairwell, the scent of dust tickling her nose. Her fingers found the grooves of years wearing away at the paint. They were the same faint lines created when her mother did the same thing so many years ago. She hardly remembered her mother anymore; the opportunity to remember was often unsettling. She imitated the learned habit as her mother used to do it. This was her way of remembering without having to endure the pain of loss. How many years had it been since her mother left, or died? Fifteen or more? Her mother existed in remnants of collected thoughts and pictures. She was as absent as Anki’s memory allowed and she thought it was better that way.
The groan of old wood accompanied her steps as she ascended to the second floor. She could only imagine the thousands of footsteps she had made up and down these stars when she was growing up, ignorant of the world and even more so of the ever-enlarging universe. As a child there was no such thing as war, even when she knew that wasn’t true. But at least there was a part of the girl she had been that wasn’t aware of the finality of war. That girl had much to learn, Anki thought as she took the last step, stopping before her father’s apartment. She stared at the dull blue door that had been hers for so many years before she enlisted. Now it only seemed like a place she recognized, as impersonal as an acquaintance. She knew there was no need to do so, but she knocked anyway.
The sound of heavy footsteps emanated from behind the door, the floorboards creaking as her heartbeat began to rise. She had no idea why she was so nervous. It was her father, the only person in her life who cared about her. Then why was this so hard? Because I can’t fight the guilty feeling of leaving my father behind, of our intermittent messages to one another as I grew into an adult without him, or something like that.
The door opened in a way that made it appear much lighter than the one downstairs. There was no groaning of rusty hinges, just the slight movement of air as it brushed past the large frame of her father, Menegious Paro.
He looked at her for a moment before
recognition set in. Anki knew she looked different on the tiny screen of his com-unit. She had to fight to recognize him as well. Gone was the youthful gaze of the man he had been. That man had been replaced with another older, more broken version. He didn’t look broken on the outside, but Anki could hear it in his voice when he greeted her. “Hello, daughter,” he said, the light in his eyes brightening. His lips curled into a polite smile and he looked lost in thought for the briefest of moments. “I have missed you.”
“And I have missed you, Father,” she said as she opened her arms for an embrace.
He took her into his own arms where the warmth of his body reminded her of growing up. It seemed like so long ago, looking back, but that was perspective playing against her anxiety of shipping out for the war. She had wanted to enlist, to be a weapon for Luthia, but she couldn’t shake the dread building up in her heart and the just how deep the hurt cut deep down being home for the first time since joining the Luthian Navy. Anki buried her face in his shoulder and when she pulled away there were tear stains dampening the light gray fabric of his shirt. He didn’t seem to mind.
His smile was beaming now, their reunion seeming to have healed a wound he also buried deep down, but neither of them spoke of it. “Please, Anki, come in. There is no need to spend all your time in the hallway,” he chuckled. She sensed he was hiding behind the attempt of humor and trying not to let on that a sob was tickling at his own throat.
Anki led the way inside the home of her youth, the same walls and furnishings she remembered, unscathed by time. The apartment was never large, but it felt smaller now as adult, the maturity and expansion of her concept of the world and herself brought most things into perspective. As perspective changed, sometimes it affected how one saw the real world. She wondered how much of that perspective was fed by propaganda.
The reunion opened itself to something Anki did not expect. She felt like she did as a girl, her father larger than life because he was her life. It was hard for her to see him the same way being moved around the world with her duties in the Luthian Navy. But here and now, in his presence, she felt it and that was part of what drove her to tears.
“What’s wrong?” Menegious asked from his chair across from her. She was too distracted to notice he was fighting to contain his own tears.
“I’m sorry, Father. I just have a lot on my mind,” she answered, not eager to divulge that she was afraid. He might suspect she was afraid of dying, but what she was really afraid of was never seeing him again. That phantom guilt was only made worse as she thought of all the missed opportunities to visit that she neglected due to her “responsibilities” to the Navy. Those responsibilities made visiting home an inconvenience and she felt conflicted because of it. She wore shame like an invisible crown.
“I know you’re nervous about your deployment my love, but everything is in God’s hands. The Luthians will fight our aggressors and prevail just as we did before.” His words were calm and sure, practiced, but Luthia had never had to withstand a killer like they were up against now. Global extinction wasn’t just a phrase tossed about nonchalantly. It was the whispered words people discussed in hushed tones when they thought no one else was listening. Anki knew this because she had heard them on more than one occasion.
She looked at her father, the man in her life who had supported her decision to enlist at his own expense, and she wondered how he could have let her do this. It was too late now. She had been adamant, forceful in her way of making her own decision. She knew he had relented because she made it known that ‘no’ would not be taken as an answer. Anki had dug her own grave and it was pure irony that she was alive to see the last nail driven into the coffin. This reunion was a symbol of her dying whether her father would admit to it or not. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered. She hadn’t called him that in years and the utterance of the word drove her to memories of being a little girl. He fell to his knees and moved over closer to his daughter, the one he would have to say goodbye to, perhaps forever.
“You don’t need to apologize, Anki. I love you more than anyone should ever love another person. You are my pride and joy, my reason for living. You are my daughter and I will love you forever,” he said. His words were barely more than a whisper as he spoke. His words reflected the sorrow she felt in her heart. The realization was like being punched in the stomach, she was leaving him behind and she knew he was going to let it happen because it what she wanted. Between the two of them was a bond that could never be broken. It was forged in the fires of everything they had been through after her mother died, or left, whichever the truth was.
Anki blinked away her tears and held her father in her arms tight, not wanting to let him go. “I love you too,” she said. Her heart felt bigger, warmer just saying the words.
Menegious pulled away for a moment, taking Anki’s hands in his own like he used to do when she was little. Her hands were larger now, but still felt small in his hands to her. “I’m going to pray for your safety,” he said.
Anki smiled, only because she knew it would make her father feel better. “All right,” she said. It’s a waste of time because I don’t believe in the God you believe in was what she held back. She didn’t have the strength in her heart to hurt him further. It was best to let her leave without another way of letting her father down. He didn’t seem to be keeping track, but Anki was. She wanted him to at least believe she didn’t give up on everything before she died. It was mercy, at least in her eyes. Mercy, or the lie she was telling herself to keep from breaking down. She honestly had no idea.
6
Brendle
Confinement was a torturous form of isolation. The brig was nothing more than a room with cold walls and an impenetrable barrier that resembled a dusty window more than anything legitimately solid, much less sturdy enough to keep a prisoner within its boundaries. That was the point, though, to trick the mind into believing it could escape. The reward for such thoughts was paralysis, albeit a temporary strand, but it was enough to teach the lesson regardless of how dense the student was. Brendle didn’t require such lessons, but it didn’t make confinement to the brig any easier to cope with. Sometimes feeling alone was worse than the pain of shock.
It was funny, in a psychotic sort of way, how military institutions rewarded punishment. It almost sounded like punishment was something to strive for, but from Brendle’s perspective things weren’t looking very good for his foreseeable future. Maybe whoever institutionalized the military’s views on administering justice had a bit of a sadistic slant in their way of thinking, he thought. He hadn’t even been tried yet, but his confinement and subsequent punishment was a reward for misbehavior in the context of military law. It was a travesty and inhumane, but tradition had its talons sunk deep into the flesh of those whose compliance was a sign of servitude. Service was one thing, military service was another. Brendle never truly fit into the organization and despite impending death he was happy for it. He refused to be classified a monster for another’s gain, regardless of how deeply the word traitor stung.
As far as last meals were concerned, he was getting the best-case scenario of deep space cuisine. Mar was nothing more than an overcooked cracker, dehydrated to the point of crumbling into a suffocating powder if not eaten with water. It was hard not to think that was the point of such a meal, maybe it was easier to dump a body than to force an unrelenting man off a ship and into his death sentence. Brendle had no thoughts of fighting his way back onto the ship. The Telran wasn’t his home any more than any moon they might dump him on would be, and that was an unpleasant truth. Hell, it was hard to consider Greshia home anymore. For all he knew, the airlock would be the extent of his punishment, an embrace into the vacuum was chilling in more ways than one. Brendle sprinkled more of the mar into his open mouth and waited for his saliva to moisten the grainy tasteless texture a bit before swallowing. It wasn’t bad, but it surely wasn’t good either. It was sustenance and that was a reward in its own way.
A h
atch opened with the sound of clanging metal behind him and he turned to see his first visitor in what felt like a few days. It was hard to tell, he had slept off and on several times since being placed in the brig. For all Brendle knew, it could have only been one day, a tragic realization he hoped was not the case. But with nothing else to do, with no one else to talk to, sleep seemed like the best way to pass the time.
His visitor was a female officer; the crisp blue uniform of the legal department followed the curves of her body. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, the type that screamed no nonsense, but made men wonder what she might be like when her hair was down. It was the expression of a stoic disposition that made the biggest announcement about her; that upturned little nose and cold expression making her almost robotic. Brendle translated that into meaning she had no personality; or perhaps an inferior one at least. The woman eyed him warily, almost as if she were weighing how much of a threat he would be if he escaped. It was improbable, but showed she had no real idea how brigs were maintained, that if he made a move towards her in a threatening manner, he would be rendered incapacitated with more voltage than a man of his size could take. It was only a little funny to see how scared she was, confined within the same boundaries as the prisoner, the traitor they thought he was. The more he thought about it the less funny it was. Her cluelessness was concerning to him. A lack of knowledge was a weapon if used the right way. Unfortunately, Brendle would be on the receiving end of that weapon no matter what.