Not With A Whimper: Destroyers

by D. A. Boulter

  “Ach, so. The ship looks in splendid condition on the outside, Feldwebel. I congratulate you on a job well done. Let us inspect the interior.”

  The feldwebel opened the hatch, and the two men entered.

  “Do you think we will receive the long-promised, dedicated fighters anytime soon?” Hirsch asked.

  No, not slow at all.

  “Unknown. We will get them when we get them. Until then, we must rely on these old hybrids. We will carry no troops up, though we might take as many as ten. So, the six of us will have lots of room to relax as we go about our war, yes?” He gave a short laugh, which Hirsch joined, as he was supposed to.

  “Yes, immaculate. And all the provisions lockers full?”

  “Full complement, sir.”

  “For the six of us?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I fear that we might have a longer sojourn than headquarters has allowed for. Do I need to give a direct written order to top up supplies?”

  “No, sir. You have discretion.”

  “Excellent. And the rest of my flight as well, of course. It would not do to run out of provisions while the ship can still fight. It would not do at all.” He looked around and nodded, satisfied. Together, the two men left the shuttle-fighter. “As to our previous discussion on opportunity: one must remain ready should it arise, able to seize the day – carpe diem, I believe our Latin friends called it.”

  “This is true, Herr Major. Many have lost opportunities, needlessly let them slip away, when they had not prepared.”

  “I must return to my quarters, now. An interesting discussion. Perhaps we might continue it at a later time.”

  “As you command.”

  And that gave Müller what he needed to know. He had fully entered into Baumeister’s mad scheme – and now Hirsch had joined them … or so it seemed.

  * * *

  AZORES

  Tuesday, July 20

  Karl Müller walked the streets of the town, carefully avoiding the one street that he would have liked to go down. But, no, she had made the decision for the two of them, and he would not attempt to force her go against her convictions. She had laid it out spectacularly clearly. If he turned away from the uniform and all that it meant, she would welcome him. If he did not do so, she did not wish to see him.

  He wandered over to the confectionery, and saw Old Paulo at the table outside, leaning back, eyes closed as the sun warmed him. He smiled and walked over, ignoring the man across the street – the one who watched.

  “Karl,” the old man said without opening his eyes. “You’ve come back at last. I’ve missed our little talks.”

  “How did you know?”

  “The sound of your boots, the cadence of your steps.” He opened one eye, and then the other, squinting in the bright sunlight. “Sit down, or the sun will blind me.”

  Karl sat.

  “My granddaughter refuses to speak of you, Karl. What happened?”

  “I fear that you have infected her, my friend,” Karl answered, causing the old man’s forehead to wrinkle.

  “I?”

  “My uniform,” he said, as if it explained everything. The old man’s forehead cleared, so perhaps it did.

  “Ah, I see.” He sat in contemplation for a time. “There remains to you a solution.”

  Karl smiled sadly. “Alas, I cannot yet accept that solution.”

  “You would remain a destroyer?”

  “I would remain a protector.”

  The old man laughed. “I once thought the same. The years have stripped away the vanity of youth. If we protected anything, it was the profits of the industries that make the arms that we used to defend our way of life – thus ensuring that we would have to continue to make that defence, and they would continue to make money selling us the arms to do so.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Karl, don’t play the fool.” The old man lifted his water glass, and took a swallow. “Do you remember the Pasqui rebellion?”

  Karl laughed. “No, I’ve only read about it. The rebellion ended some years before I was born.”

  “It lasted twenty years. Portugal sent four thousand soldiers; Spain sent another five thousand when they first asked Europe for aid.”

  “I read about it in history classes, in tactics classes at the academy.” Karl wondered where the old man went with this.

  “We could never defeat them.”

  “Insurgencies are very difficult to defeat,” Karl said.

  Paulo laughed. “We could have defeated them very easily. Was it beyond the capability of the European Treaty Organization to send thirty thousand troops instead of nine?”

  “Politically, it might have been very difficult.” But that started Karl wondering. Why had they not sent overwhelming forces?

  “Politically it was impossible,” the old man replied, “but not for the reasons you might think.” Paulo seemed very lucid today – no flights of fancy.

  “Then what?”

  “If we had sent the thirty thousand with proper air support, we would have broken the back of the insurgency – for they were not well-loved. But then we would have had to return to our home countries, and Portugal and Spain would have had no leverage over their government – they would have needed us no longer. And the country had natural resources that we – we being the corporations – wanted. However, if we sent only the nine thousand and minimal air support, they would continue to need us for as long as we wanted to stay.”

  Karl stared at him. “That’s a grim way to look at it.”

  Paulo fixed his gaze on Karl, eyes hard. “I had it from a high authority – years later, when he was drunk and thought he spoke to a friend in confidence. Before, I believed as you do, as the history papers of the time portrayed it – as they still portray it.”

  Looking at him, Karl could not but believe. The intensity of the old man’s stare almost frightened him. And if that were true, Paulo and his men had fought for nothing. Thousands upon thousands on all sides, civilian and soldier alike, had died for nothing.

  “We could have finished them that first year, Karl. We drove them back until they were on the verge of collapse. Then we got orders to hold where we were. We allowed them to escape, to reform, to re-supply themselves and to recruit more cannon fodder. When they came back the next year, we – the Spanish and Portuguese, along with our local allies – were spread too thin, trying to guard everywhere and thus guarding nowhere adequately. They won a victory, and that drew more fighters to them. We retreated and it started all over again. By that time, we no longer had the full co-operation of our hosts. Many no longer trusted us – and for good reason. They wanted us gone, suspected why we had stopped. But they could not afford to send us away, so we stayed. We stayed for twenty years, and for twenty years the European Treaty Organization had what it wanted – influence. Influence for which we paid blood.” He laughed bitterly. “And the corporations acquired the natural resources they wanted – cheap.”

  Did the old man speak the truth? Or did he merely speak what he thought was the truth. Karl didn’t know, but, if true, this answered many questions.

  Paulo smiled.

  “You do not believe. No one would sacrifice thousands of soldiers’ lives, the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, simply for economic gain, you think.” He shook his head. “I once thought the same. Think again, Karl. Think again. And then throw away your uniform, and go see my granddaughter.”

  Paulo put his hands on the table and forced himself to his feet. He grinned as he obtained his objective. “I hope I do not live to where someone must push me about in a chair.”

  Karl, his thoughts in a jumble, nodded. “They have electric carts for that. You could have one even now. The government would gladly supply one.”

  “Pah! Once you sit in one, you never walk again. It’s giving up. I would be dead in six months.”

  Many, many people benefited from that support, accepted it as the necessity it had become, but Karl could see
Paulo’s point. A man like him would consider it giving up, even if no one else did. Paulo was one of the old breed. He would probably die from a stroke or heart attack on his way back up the hill one day – and not regret it in the least, having maintained his independence.

  “Go have your confection, young man,” Paulo said in parting. “Enjoy the days of youth. They do not come again.”

  When Karl exited the shop five minutes later, the old man had disappeared. Karl ate the ice cream at the outside table, and contemplated what Old Paulo had told him. Could it be true? He returned to base that night a troubled man. His thoughts would not allow him to sleep, and he humorously cursed Old Paulo for setting them on this path.

  SIXTEEN

  DENVER

  Wednesday, July 20th

  Christy Burnett let out a mild oath as she hit her side against the suit controller for the fourth time.

  “This will not do,” she said. “We’ll have to move it.” She glared at the offending equipment. “Colonel Westorn was right.”

  “Colonel Westorn appreciates the vote of confidence,” the colonel said, startling her.

  “I wish you’d quit sneaking up on me,” she grumbled.

  The colonel gave her a cold smile, one that did not reach his eyes – although, on thinking back, she decided that he had never given a real smile in all the times she had seen him.

  “You focus too entirely on what you are doing, making it simple for any to – as you put it – sneak up on you. A soldier must maintain an awareness of his or her surroundings.”

  Perhaps he was right, but Christy bristled at the derogatory tone as much as at the words.

  “I’m not a soldier, Colonel Westorn. You need me and people like me to focus on what we’re doing to the exclusion of all else.”

  Westorn raised an eyebrow, and considered her. “Perhaps so,” he granted, “I’ll take that under advisement.” He shrugged. “I just came by to let you know that time grows short.” He gave a nod. “So, focus.”

  “We’re just about finished here, Colonel,” Christy said. “Believe me, I want this to go as smoothly as you do.”

  Westorn tilted his head slightly to the side and gave her a look that made her feel like a bug under a magnifying glass.

  “Yes. Good. I’ll get out of your way.” He turned and walked out of the mock-up.

  And Christy shuddered inwardly. She had made a mistake. She should have just let him believe in the superiority of his position, left him with the impression that her ability to lose herself in her work, her situation, was a weakness he could exploit, not something he might have to watch out for.

  “Put the controller here, Private Macintosh,” she told one of the soldiers assisting her.

  The woman nodded, and motioned to one of her comrades. Together they placed the controller where Christy had indicated. Christy walked around it, tested it, and sighed. It would work, but she couldn’t escape the feeling that she had woken something in Westorn.

  “It works,” she said to those around her. “We’ll just do a quick simulation, try out all the pieces, and then we can take it all apart.”

  And then she would have to convince Arch to stay planet-bound. He would have no idea what he was getting into if he came. She couldn’t do that to him.

  * * *

  AZORES

  Saturday, July 24th

  Karl Müller wondered if Baumeister realized just what she was getting them into. If even the hint of this hit higher circles, they might both face a court-martial. Certainly, at a minimum, they would get transferred to other, less critical duties.

  The wind gusted in off the ocean, fresh and damp. He stood on the rocks and gazed out across the seemingly endless dark blue of the ocean to the lighter blue of the sky above. And far above that lurked the blackness of space, where he and the others would face death – if they made it that far.

  “I would rather not die at all.” Her voice sounded at his left shoulder, just behind him.

  Müller didn’t react, though it surprised him that she could get so close without a sound alerting him to her presence.

  “Frau Major,” he acknowledged, wishing that she had not come, wondering how she could so accurately ascertain his thoughts.

  “Come, Karl, you have no duty; you have the day to do with as you please. Why bring officiousness into it?”

  He didn’t turn, and she stepped forward to stand beside him. His peripheral vision caught the brown hair at his shoulder.

  “You have fourth shift?” he asked. Didn’t she know that others might watch and report?

  She shrugged. “Were we not to speak at all, we could draw more attention upon ourselves than otherwise.”

  Again she had guessed his very thoughts.

  “Should we then go the other way entirely, and become lovers?” he asked. Silence. It surprised him that she did not answer immediately and in the negative. He had thrown the question more to unsettle her, as she unsettled him, than for any other reason.

  “I think I might like that very much, Karl,” she finally replied.

  Müller stood motionless. She couldn’t know his thoughts now, for he found he couldn’t think at all. His left hand, down by his side, opened, and he felt the warmth of hers slip in it. He felt his heart start to beat faster.

  “Erika, what do you seek?” Would her thoughts echo his own in this? He wanted very much for that to be so. “If they disapprove, one of us will receive a transfer.”

  Her fingers squeezed his. “As I already have put in for one off-planet, it may aid me in this.”

  A great void opened up in his stomach. She merely used him? He had hoped for so much more.

  “Come, Karl,” she murmured, tugging on his hand. “Let us worry about that if it comes. For now, let us enjoy what we have.”

  Karl Müller, hopes and dreams crashing all around him, pulled up a smile. He nodded. Even if it should cause him a greater pain later, for now, he would take what he could get. She tugged on his hand, and he turned to walk with her.

  “Besides, they have already denied that transfer, so I doubt that this will have any effect. In fact, I doubt anything will have any effect. And I believe you feel the same. So, if we can gain for ourselves, perhaps, a little joy, why worry about the things we cannot control?”

  Müller nodded, mute. So, they had denied her, too. However, this time she did not seem to speak in riddles, words saying one thing, intent something quite different. This time he felt he understood her completely, correctly. Or did her words come about purely as happenstance?

  “Life is precious,” he replied, wondering if she would take that as a worthy answer. A squeeze on his hand let him know that she did.

  “Too much so to waste time waiting for the impossible.”

  Together they climbed the steps to the complex. Erika did not let go of his hand when an officer exited. His eyes went down to the clasp, then flicked away. Müller thought he saw a twitch of the lips. Did he approve? Did it matter?

  “Come,” she said, leading him down the hall toward her room. “I have a sleep-shift, now. Spend it with me. Let us aim for the possible.”

  * * *

  Erika had not known what to expect of Müller as a lover. As an officer he had appeared well enough, somewhat reserved as a commander must be, neither cold nor warm. His crew seemed content, and that spoke for the man. In conference, he rarely said much, but when he spoke others listened, for he brought up only the pertinent.

  As he closed the door to her room, she undid her hair, fearing that his outer being might reflect the inner man, cool and dispassionate.

  He turned, stepped forward before she could react, wrapped his arms around her, and buried his head in her hair.

  “Ah, Erika, Erika, I have dreamed, I have dreamed.”

  Startled by the intensity of the hug, she only belatedly put her arms around him to return it.

  “I, too, have dreamed, Karl.”

  “Have you?” He released her, placed his hands on her
shoulders, and moved back a half-pace so he could look her in the face. “Have you, indeed?”

  Her stomach jumped, for his face had turned soft, eyes bright with joy, and she understood that he held nothing back, that he looked upon a great reward, upon beauty – something she had never considered as belonging to herself.

  A sudden smile, gentle and sincere, bloomed on his face, as he canted his head slightly to the side. “But surely you suspected,” he said to what he must have seen as surprise on her own. “How anyone could look at you and not see it … I don’t know.”

  She gaped, for he had read her very thoughts.

  His hand came up and brushed away a tendril of hair, palm coming to rest on her cheek. Gott im Himmel! He looked utterly smitten. By her! She let out a soft moan, and relaxed into his hand.

  By the time she realized that his other hand had become busy with the buttons on her uniform jacket; only one of them remained to undo. She allowed him to peel the jacket from her, then stopped his hands as they reached for her shirt.

  “My turn.”

  Karl nodded his acquiescence, and she skillfully undid his jacket, watching his face and not what her hands did. As he shrugged out of his jacket, he grinned at her.

  “Shall we flip for who goes next?”

  “Your turn, I believe.”

  Karl slowly unbuttoned her shirt, then turned her around. From behind, he began slipping it off, kissing the bare skin of her shoulder as the lowering shirt exposed it. She sighed, and leaned back against him.

  “Can’t remove the shirt with it trapped between us,” he chuckled.

  “Just hold me for a moment.”

  He complied, arms around her, holding her close to him. The embrace felt so good that she didn’t want it to end. But if it didn’t end, they couldn’t progress. Regretfully, she straightened, and he released her to continue removing the shirt until it came off. He carefully placed it across the back of the chair.

  “My turn,” she said.

  “What about the bra?”