by E M Gale
I stalked over to the other map.
“What’s this coordinate?” I asked the map operator, pointing at the point in space where I knew the flagship was hiding.
“254-336,” he said, looking confused. “Uh, sir,” he added as an afterthought.
“And this trajectory?” I asked, tracing my fingers along the edge of the heliospheric current surface with my hands. That was the route the ship would follow to intercept us at the quickest possible speed and without crossing the heliospheric current surface. He told me the trajectory. I didn’t understand the format he used. I turned to the comms operator whose job was relaying my orders to the fleet.
“Order everyone to fire their long-range missiles at 254-336 along the trajectory.” Then I repeated the trajectory the map operator had given me.
The comms operator nodded and repeated the order.
I turned around. “Can we follow those missiles on screen?” I asked the captain.
“Yes, sir,” he said, giving the order to watch our missiles.
‘Wow, the missiles have television feeds on them.’
They were out of date though. The distance was such that it took about thirty seconds for the feed to catch up with the hyperspace information. The missiles exploded against something on the map whilst the viewscreen just showed space. The officers on the bridge were mumbling to each other. Then a huge heavily armoured spaceship appeared on the screen from the missile-cam.
“The flagship!” exclaimed someone.
“How did she know it was there?” asked someone else.
The map had updated a new position of where the missiles had exploded.
“This coordinate?” I asked, pointing at it.
“254-332, sir!” He sounded awestruck.
“Order another barrage of missiles against 254-332. Can I watch these ones too, Captain?”
“Yessir!” The flagship was pretty badly beaten up. After this barrage the ship ought to be destroyed. I guessed the Etrusian admiral or general would be on that ship.
‘Y’know, I think we might just need a third barrage of weapons. Just in case.’
“Have they surrendered yet?” I asked the room generally.
“No, sir! Lots of chatter, but none aimed at us,” said the comms operator whose job was monitoring the Etrusian fleet’s transmissions. I turned to the one who had the responsibility of giving out my orders.
“Order all pilots whose name begins with A-H to fire a third barrage against 254-329, all pilots whose name begins with I-P to fire against 254-331 and all pilots whose name begins with Q-Z to fire against 254-333.”
“Yes, sir!” said the operator. “First name or last name?”
‘Does it matter? I just want a spread of missiles, honestly!’
“Last name,” I said. He gave the order.
‘I guess that’ll get the opposing general.’
The final barrage of missiles hit a small heavily armoured ship and exploded it.
‘Why do I have a feeling that that was the heavily armoured interior of the flagship where my opponent was sitting giving orders? Great.’
“They surrendering yet?” I asked.
“No, sir. They seem panicked, sir.”
I walked back to the other map and started pushing the ships of my fleet forward towards the remains of the alien army. We were now roughly matched in number, but they had lost over two thirds of their number and their flagship. They had a planet behind them so they couldn’t retreat far and my fleet was doing the space equivalent of sabre-rattling. Psychologically, they were far unhappier than my fleet.
“Sir, do we have orders to engage the enemy fleet?” said the comms operator.
‘Our fleets are evenly matched, but that doesn’t mean we’ll automatically win or that the winning will be without losses; our aim is to scare them.’
“Not yet, just order them to move forward and look menacing.”
“Uh, what, Sir?”
“Just move forward. Don’t engage.”
“Sir, they want to talk to you,” said the comms operator whose job was answering the phone.
“Put them on.”
“General Clarke, we wish to discuss the terms of our surrender,” said a dispirited disembodied voice. The bridge staff punched the air and grinned, but were professional enough to be quiet about it so the aliens wouldn’t pick up their jubilation over the headset.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Second Admiral Silet.”
“Are you the highest-ranking commander left? Can you speak for all the Etrusian military?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know about terms, but you can pass this message on to your forces. Any ship that does not power down its weapons and come to a complete stop, any fighting unit that does not down its weapons and come out with its hands up, in fact any unit, military or otherwise, belonging to your forces and your allies, that does not immediately cease hostilities or shows any sign of resistance will be reduced to its component quarks.” I was somewhat pissed. “And if that is not enough, I will personally come down there and stamp on the damned remaining subatomic particles!” I took off the headset.
“Hang up on them,” I said. The comms operator just stared at me, and then pressed some buttons to do just that.
“General Clarke, the diplomats are supposed to do the negotiations. No military commander would accept those terms,” said my aide.
“Are you saying I’m not very diplomatic?” I asked darkly.
“We have an incoming message for you, sir,” said the comms operator.
“Play it.”
“We accept your terms and surrender unconditionally. We beg you, don’t drop an asteroid on our planet,” said Second Admiral Silet. Now the bridge staff whooped, yelled and cheered.
‘Goddammit, Rob, what the hell were you doing here?’
“Orders, sir?” asked the comms guy, once the bridge staff had quietened enough to realise that the war might be over but their shift was not.
“First… send out search parties to search the wreckage of… the Icarus,” I said, my voice breaking. “And let me know immediately if there are any survivors…”
No one said anything. They knew that there wouldn’t be as well as I did. There was nothing left of the Icarus but some rocks floating dismally amongst the wreckage of the alien fleet.
I broke the silence. Better to get this over and done with. “Put out the message to not engage the enemy unless the enemy shows any sign of resistance. If they do, blow them out of the sky, or into space or whatever. Round up their commanders and imprison them. Get the diplomats to sort this mess out. If there are any urgent messages from Earth, tell them to wait.”
The comms guy and my aide nodded. They looked like they knew what they were doing. So I turned on my heel and stormed out of the bridge and back to my quarters. Luckily my future self’s room wasn’t far or hard to find as I wasn’t paying any attention to anything.
I walked in and the door shut behind me. I was aware that my future self was in the room with me. She reformed.
“Oh, Florentina,” she said sympathetically. I opened my mouth to yell at her, but she held her hand up to her mouth in a shushing gesture. “Keep it down,” she said in vampirish.
‘Oh, great. Just great.’
“What the hell? You said you could save him!” I said, also in vampirish.
She held up her hands. “OK, calm down and listen. I did save him. The explosion was a fake. He’s safe.”
“What?”
“It was all fake. Rob’s alive. On the other side of the galaxy, mind you, but alive.”
I sat there, stunned, and the next thing I knew, I was crying. There was a knock at the door.
“Answer it,” she said with a scheming look on her face. Then she vanished. I couldn’t see her, but I still knew where she was. I wiped my eyes and opened the door and let my aide in.
“Uh… General,” said my aide. He paused and looked sympathetic. “Ther
e… there were no survivors from the Icarus. No life-pods were launched.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry.” He paused, looking at a loss, and then continued: “Robert Deegen was a great man.”
I stared at him, fresh tears running down my face.
‘Was? I guess the past tense is accurate.’
I couldn’t say anything, so I nodded.
“Well… I’ll, er… go.”
I nodded again and he left.
“Great!” said my future self, grinning as she reformed. “Truly great acting.”
“What? I wasn’t acting!”
“Look, he’s alive. You don’t have to grieve for that idiot yet. Believe me, you’ll find out about it soon.”
I sat down on the bed and stared. I felt utterly wrung out. I couldn’t believe that Rob was dead, but I’d seen it. I wanted to believe what my future self was saying, but somehow the hope didn’t quite paper over the despair.
“And you were supposed to hand the bridge back to me,” she commented. “I know you got the message.”
“I don’t take orders well. And I was pissed off,” I said, sniffing.
“Yeah, I could see that. But nevertheless, you did well. I’m not sure that there was much I could have done to improve on that.”
I stared at her.
She looked thoughtful. “Well, I would have known people’s names and the correct terms, and there are better ways to get a spread of missiles, but I hope people will just put that lack down to being grief-stricken.”
I just looked at her open-mouthed.
‘She doesn’t seem upset at Rob’s death. So maybe he is still alive.’
“Is he really OK?”
She smiled at me and nodded as she spoke. “Yes, he’s fine.”
I nodded, and collapsed to the bed, I felt utterly exhausted.
“Oh, don’t fall asleep! Get changed first.”
“What? Why?” I said, sitting up and frowning at her.
“Just do it.”
I slowly, achingly, got changed, then lay back on the bed.
‘Is he really alive?’
The Worst Day Of My Life… So Far
I woke up. I was upside down on my bed, which was to say that my feet were on the pillow and my shoulders were at the foot of the bed. I was fully dressed and had slept on top of the cover. My head was on my notepad and, ‘eeew,’ I had dribbled on it. I sat up and looked around. This was my room on the Silvered Cloud. There was no one else there, no future self. I looked around at everything. Nothing had been moved or looked like it had been touched.
‘What the hell? Was that a dream? It was so vivid. OK, I usually have vivid dreams when I remember them. But this was something else. It felt like reality.’
‘One weird thing though: no matter how outlandish my dreams, I’ve never realised they were dreams whilst I’m in them. Usually, I wake up and think the dreams were real until mid-morning when I realise that they weren’t.’
I looked around my room again anyway, just in case there was something odd like an UNSF uniform lying around the place.
‘Ah, this is silly. Stupid movie.’
I got up to have a shower. I reached up to tie my hair up to keep it out of the water and paused. My hair was already pinned up. I ran over to the mirror, which just confirmed what my fingers had told me.
‘I always unpin my hair for sleeping. She made me pin it up in ‘the dream’, but I never undid it.’
‘It wasn’t a dream.’
I crumpled: my head curled over onto the bed, my arm outstretched.
‘He does die then? I just saw Rob’s death. I can’t undo it, causality would be broken.’
I sobbed. And then threw myself up to my feet.
‘Causality be damned! I will find a way to save him.’
I paused for a moment.
‘She said she’d saved him, maybe she wasn’t lying, maybe he does survive…’
I sighed.
‘I will save him if I have to risk the universe to do so. I will save him. I will save everyone.’
I ran to my hidden weapons locker.
‘No more fucking around. I’m serious about this.’
I put on the knives in my wrist and ankle holsters, got dressed and then strapped one of the stolen swords across my back. It was against regulations, but I didn’t care. I would take on not just the universe, but the major as well.
I stared at the notepad on my desk.
‘I did intend to look up Anna, but I’m not sure I can handle any more grief right now. What if she dies in a horrible way too?’
‘Then again, I’ll just imagine something worse if I don’t look her up.’
I sighed.
‘She is one of my best friends, I’ve got to know what happens to her.’
I typed in: ‘Anna Grately’. There wasn’t much on her, just a page with her birth date and death date on it.
‘Well, she had a good innings… She outlives Rob.’
‘What’s this page then, eh?’
‘UK Government Legal Vampire List’.
‘What? Anna becomes a vampire? Hey, am I on this list? Yeah! And I don’t have a death date.’
‘Jane’s not on it, Mark’s not on it… Rob’s not on it. Well… he wouldn’t be.’
‘How does Anna become a vampire? Do I make her into one? I suppose I can make whoever I like into vampires, right? It’s not something I really fancy doing though. Wouldn’t they then follow me around for all eternity?’
‘Hold on, does that mean that Anna’s future self is also wandering around this galaxy somewhere? Weird. I wonder if she’s snuck onto the ship to speak to Anna like my future self did to me. Would Anna tell me if that had happened? How would I ask her? But then she doesn’t seem to like the idea of vampires, she referred to Price as a… rotting corpse. Huh. So she must not know about her fate, otherwise she’d be cool with vampires, surely?’
‘Yes, she must not know. But now, at least, I don’t have to worry about her having some sort of awful fate in store. I wonder what’s she’s doing now? What would Anna do with eternity?’
I had to stop thinking and run off for work if I didn’t want to be late. I did the lining-up thing. It was funny to line up after spending the whole night commanding armies. Cliff kept giving me apologetic looks, which I ignored. Stonewall even came up to me to tell me he’d listen if I wanted to talk about Rob’s death. I thanked him kindly for his offer, but it was too raw to talk about. I would much rather that none of the marines knew about me being upset by that stupid movie; the least they could do now was forget about it.
We were occupied, running around and shooting fake weapons at each other, when the alarm went off.
‘That seriously cannot be pirates again! I thought that befriending, or being befriended by, the notorious Kujjie, space pirate scourge of the galaxy, would mean that we would have fewer pirate attacks, not more.’
They had landed on the outside of the ship and opened an airlock somehow. They had parked their ship there. The airlock system ran, repressurising the airlock outside the pirates’ boarding craft.
‘Can’t we override that system? Of course if we don’t repressurise the airlock and the pirates force the doors open, the ship would depressurise. Only a bit, mind you, but it’d probably be rather unpleasant for anyone nearby, though not fatal, I think.’
I was standing by the Plexiglas airlock daydreaming about piratical tactics.
‘Clarke! Pay attention!’
The pressure outside their boarding craft was such that the pirates, a mixture of orcs and humans, poured out of their craft and started to do something to the inner airlock door. Since they weren’t wearing spacesuits, the chances were good that they didn’t intend to space our ship. Those who weren’t breaking our airlock door were leering through the plastic at us, probably trying to psych us out.
‘What they don’t know is that they are facing highly trained UESF soldiers, not ordinary smugglers.’
I was near the front so I decided to return the favour by grinning at them through the plastic.
The door whooshed open. I had the large sword in my hands this time. Connor had just shoved it at me, seemingly not noticing my stolen sword. The marines were behind me so I couldn’t retreat, and the sword was still too big to easily swing in a confined space.
‘Great.’
I stepped forward and swung the sword. I didn’t get any of the pirates but they had to scramble back to get out of the way. They fell back into the docking bay proper. It was quite a large airlock. Some on the ship were only large enough to take a few engineers on an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). This one was designed to take small, quick-launch ships and was thus, unfortunately, just the right size for the pirates’ small, quick-launch ship.
I advanced into the airlock so that I would have more room to swing the sword and the marines followed me, aiming their guns at the pirates. As it was rather dangerous to fire them this close to the hull, the marines had swords as well. Some drew them. A few pirates, also armed with swords, rushed at me. I swung my sword around, forcing the pirates back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see some definite swashbuckling between marine and pirate going on.
Then something very strange happened. I thought the orcs recognised me, as they all dropped their swords, shouting, “We surrender,” and similar things in orcish.
The human pirates looked disturbed. They still had their weapons up, but they pulled back to their ship and stopped attacking us, their attention divided between us and the orcs.
“What the hell are you doing?” one of the human pirates asked an orcish one.
“They look scared,” observed another.
“Don’t be stupid, orcs don’t get scared,” said the ringleader.
I smiled at the pirates.
“I might be damned but I ain’t that stupid,” said one of the orcs in orcish, whilst looking at me. Grom chuckled behind me.