Skipping his usual calisthenics, the disgraced Gun moves straight to his locker. Neglected armor hangs inside, muted with layers of soot and scorches. After pulling on an unwashed undersuit, he snatches his armor piece by piece from their pegs. In moments, he is fully dressed for duty and he turns to leave, but halts when he catches his reflection in the mirror. A shoddy, slouching figure stares back from his hygiene station. With a growl, he storms out of his cabin and heads toward the manufacturing facility.
When he arrives, Argo is already there, waiting outside the entrance. The Brick only looks slightly better, his armor having received at least a cursory wipe down from the last shift. Like Thompson's, Argo's eyes are dark and retreated from sleeplessness. Snapping a salute, he hails Thompson with a raspy voice.
“Good morning, Major. Brick Argo present for duty.”
Thompson returns a respectful salute with half the energy. “Morning, Lieutenant. As you were.”
Argo’s posture relaxes, and he asks, “You getting any sleep?”
“The usual. You?”
“Somewhat. After the trial, I…I can’t keep their screams out of my head. I—”
“I know, Argo. Me, too. Where’s Maiella?”
The big man looks at the floor. “Hasn’t reported yet.”
“Again?”
Argo looks up, nods reluctantly, and resumes his downward gaze.
Thompson's face curls with shortened temper. “Get started. I’ll haul her ass in shortly.”
“Aye, sir.”
Argo salutes then takes hold of the heavy entry door. When it opens, raging noise of heavy industry pours into the hallway. The Brick moves through then seals the door behind himself, ending the growls and clanks of fabrication.
Thompson breathes deeply, grits his teeth, and marches down the corridor to Maiella’s quarters.
Standing at her door, he firmly jabs the buzzer. There is no reply. He tries the latch. It is locked. With exasperation, he barks, “Voice recognize, Major Gun Thompson, lock override, execute!”
The lock disengages, and Thompson thrusts the door aside. He peers into an unusually dark room. “Maiella!”
There is no answer.
He strides into the darkness, seeking out the hygiene station to activate the lighting there, when something fragile crunches beneath his boots. He halts mid-step, understanding why the overhead lights are not on. Anger climbs his spine.
After an exasperated exhale, the Gun continues to the hygiene station and flicks on its lights. Turning around, he sees shiny bits of glass and plastic littering the floor, confirming what he already knew. Directly above, the illumination panel has been shattered with a fist-sized hole in the middle of it.
Thompson’s eyes drop to Maiella’s bunk, and he finds her lying on her back, still wearing her armor from the previous shift. Her eyes are open, staring an infinite path through the ceiling. He looks at her, vexed, but sighs deeply before addressing her.
“Are we going to do this every morning, Lieutenant?”
Her expression is unchanged, stoic. “Why not?” she asks gloomily.
“ON YOUR FEET, SOLDIER!”
Maiella ends her distant stare and rises from her bunk to stand at an exhausted attention. Thompson looks into her face, which is still sooty from her work in the foundry several hours ago. The grime is even except for a few cleaner tracks running down hollowed cheeks.
Thompson glares hard at her, trying to sound convincing despite his own battle with futility. “Our shift began two minutes ago, Lieutenant. We have work to do.”
“What’s the point, Thompson?” she asks softly.
Thompson struggles for an answer. “The point? We’re operators, Maiella. We're counted on.”
“For what? To drag big pieces of metal together and weld them? Drones do our work, Thompson. DRONES!”
Thompson’s face petrifies. “You’d prefer we were drones?”
Maiella blanches in horror and drops her face submissively. “No.”
He snatches a treated towel from her hygiene station and throws it at her. “Then get yourself together. These fits of yours are exhausting, Maiella. And it doesn’t matter what we do, we deserve our assignment, and we will perform it without question or hesitation. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” she answers sharply, rubbing the towel over her face and hands. The soot from her face and the flecks of blood from her knuckles disappear, leaving a much more presentable soldier behind. She steps around her superior to retrieve her helmet and gauntlets from the floor, then she stands before him.
“I’m ready.”
Thompson reviews her warily. “All right. Move out.”
Maiella hustles through her open door and waits outside for Thompson to join her.
“Disable lock override,” he orders plainly, and the door to her quarters glides shut behind them. Squaring their shoulders, the two march down to the manufacturing facility.
When they arrive, Argo is already hard at work swinging a thick lever, manually extruding long beams of hot metal. He sees the two and waves them over. He grunts with the exertion, trying to shout through gritted teeth.
“We have sixteen tons of corridor braces to form, but the metal press is down! If I have to keep pumping them out manually, we’ll only make two tons in our shift!”
“Maiella!” Thompson yells above the shrieking machinery, “Check out the logic controls and software for defects! Argo, get into the access corridor and check for mechanical obstructions or failures! I’ll take over here!”
Maiella and Argo nod and disappear on their missions. Thompson squints at the thick lever Argo was pumping, and he swings his arms to limber up. Taking the handle with both hands, the Gun plants one foot on the floor and one foot on a small flange jutting from the enormous, sweltering machine. Preparing, he retreats to that singularity of mind then heaves with all of his might to ratchet the metal press at nearly the same pace as Argo.
* * * * *
Colonel Shao-Lo stands at attention, her appearance spotless. “Download of the colony ship’s star charts is complete, and Major Ralla is heading the team of analysts. The colonist navigator, Sharon Jones, and several of her astronomers are assisting the process.”
“Good,” O’Kai says from his office chair. “Go on.”
“Cadre energy production has fallen five percent, but the deficit can easily be compensated by patching the Europa into our power grid. Munro estimates it could easily supply another hundred and fifty megawatts. More if necessary.”
O’Kai thinks aloud, “That would let us take the solar collectors off-line for overhaul.”
“They’ve needed it for some time, now.”
“Have Munro meet with me to plan the task. Next?”
“Food and water processing aboard the Europa can supplement another fifteen percent of our nutritive requirements, but only so long as the balance of her crew remains in cryo-stasis.”
The general leans on his elbows. “Then we’ll have to convince Keller to keep them frozen a while longer. Are the colony foodstuffs superior to ours?”
“Oh, Yes!” Shao-Lo straightens up, regaining her composure. “Ahem. Affirmative, General, both in nutritive content and in other ways.”
O’Kai reads between her words, easily surmising the colonist’s diet is much more palatable than tubes of amino proteins and fortified bars of carbohydrates.
“Very well. What else?”
Shao-Lo sucks in her cheeks. “Operator Team Spectre missed their sixteen-ton quota by eight tons due to a fault in the extrusion press. The fault was discovered to be a seizure from overheating caused by a missed lubrication interval. Team Spectre was able to complete the repair after ten hours but could not increase production to compensate.”
“And who was scheduled to perform the lubrication interval for the extrusion press?” O’Kai queries.
“Team Spectre.”
O’Kai smashes his fist into his desk. “We can’t afford these shortages!” He sits back i
n his chair, shaking his head. “What if the colony ship wasn’t here to cover our gaps in production, Shao-Lo?”
The colonel stands solemn and silent. O’Kai looks away and slides his chair closer to his desk, folding his hands. “I want your direct assessment, Colonel. Should they be reconstituted?”
Shao-Lo looks up from the floor remorsefully. “Yes, sir. I believe they should.”
O’Kai searches for the slightest uncertainty and finds none. “Thank you, Colonel. That will be all.”
Shao-Lo snaps a brisk salute and spins on her heel, marching out. Scarcely a moment passes, and the buzzer sounds at his door.
“Come!” the general shouts as he digs into his data terminal. “Did you wish to add something, Colonel?” He looks up, surprised to see the counselor standing before him. “Counselor? How may I assist you?”
The counselor steps forward reservedly. “General, I'd like to request some of your time.”
O’Kai checks his schedule in his terminal. “I have thirteen minutes until I inspect the ore processing facility. What’s on your mind?”
The counselor lifts his eyebrows. “Now? Well, okay then.” He selects a chair opposite the general and seats himself. “I understand Thompson, Argo, and Maiella have made another mistake, one which put your maintenance schedule behind.”
O’Kai's eyes narrow suspiciously. “I’m not sure how you heard about that, but yes, it’s true. They missed a critical maintenance interval that led to a breakdown.”
“It’s going to get worse.”
O’Kai continues his wary gaze at the counselor, surprised the man is not making excuses for the three operators. “I didn’t expect you to say so…but I think you’re right.”
The counselor’s expression shifts to concern. “What will become of them?”
“I’ve had two recommendations from my senior staff for reconstitution. It would be a terrible loss of abilities, but we cannot afford any more careless accidents. We’re only just hanging on as it is.”
The counselor nods in sad understanding. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a slim disk and passes it to the general.
“I know I have no authority in your internal affairs, General. But I've thought a lot about Argo, Maiella, and Thompson; and I’ve prepared a brief for you. I ask you to please read it before you make a final decision.”
O’Kai takes the disk and loads it into his terminal. The counselor looks on, pleased, as the general reads.
To: General O’Kai, Senior Council Member, Supreme Cadre Authority
From: Counselor, Soshiba Varicorp, Colony Ship Europa, PhD, PsyD, Scientist-Practitioner, Clinical, Experimental, Therapeutic Psychology and Psychobiology
Re: Analysis of underperforming subjects: Major Thompson, Lieutenant Argo, and Lieutenant Maiella
General O’Kai,
Given the structure of your society, I understand your frustrations with Thompson, Argo, and Maiella, especially since your experts can find nothing medically wrong with them. In the cadre, something either works or does not. If it does not work and cannot be repaired, it is scrapped. Here, it appears to you and to your officers that these three Operators are beyond your means of recovery and should be reconstituted into drones to recover, at the least, their physical labor potential.
Though you can find no defect in them to fix, I have discovered one, and these three can be salvaged. Despite their uninjured appearance, they are seriously wounded inside, and these wounds will not heal themselves. These injuries are wounds of the mind.
I realize this concept is strange to you, General, and I suspect you are tempted to dismiss it as foolish at best or weakness at its worst. However, I believe Maiella, Argo, and Thompson can be restored to their typical performance without cost to cadre resources or productivity. In the following pages, I will describe the nature of their condition, the reasons for it, and the recommended treatment.
Just like a muscle that is injured and fails to function well, the mind can also suffer an injury that causes it to falter. A wound of this sort is often difficult to detect and diagnose; yet in Team Spectre’s case, the symptoms are plain: reduced productivity, frequent errors, cessation of nutrition and sleep intervals. These symptoms all point to the same disease: guilt.
Guilt is usually defined as a feeling of remorse or shame for one’s wrongdoing, real or imagined. Frequently, guilt can be a powerful motivator for good where the person feeling guilt is compelled to correct the mistake, error, or accident to make things well again. In this case, Maiella, Argo, and Thompson have taken seventeen lives; and those lives cannot be restored. They cannot correct their mistake, and thus, the feeling of guilt remains.
When uncorrectable situations occur, an alternate method for canceling guilt exists, called punishment. Punishment is the cost to the offending person or group for their mistake, error, or accident and can include everything from infliction of bodily pain to loss of freedom to banishment to death and is frequently given in proportion to the crime. For example, in your cadre law, the punishment for killing a human is exile. This outlet was denied to Team Spectre when Captain Keller and I argued to prevent their exile. Again, the guilt remains in their conscious minds every day.
Let’s say that our minds are like a large workbench, and everything we think about and concentrate upon is spread out on the top of it. Now imagine that you have a giant black lump that sits right in the middle of that bench, and everything you want to work on has to be done around that lump. Naturally, the work would suffer, becoming slower, lower quality, and less efficient. Guilt is that black lump tying up all of that space, and these Operators are trying to work around it. So clearly, we have to find a way to remove this guilt from their minds.
With any physical injury, there is the danger of complications or supplemental injuries caused by the initial injury. For example, an untreated bullet wound could lead to infections, poisoning, gangrene, or worse. If we imagine a similar situation where guilt is that bullet wound, Maiella, Argo, and Thompson have been infected with the belief that they are utterly worthless. Because they hold the same values as the cadre, they know that they have committed the worst offense possible. They can’t correct it, nor have they been punished for it. In their own minds, they believe they no longer deserve to be a part of the cadre in any capacity. In fact, they no longer believe they deserve to be alive. Their self-perception, which seems entirely based on their value to the cadre, has changed radically. They see themselves not as providers, but as parasites—things that have no place among the honorable men and women of Cadre One. They have instinctively carried out their own kind of exile where they refuse the company of others, any kind of comfort, even their own nutrition intervals. Without knowing why, they are trying to inflict a punishment on themselves, but nothing they have done so far seems sufficient to relieve the guilt. Thus, it remains.
As noted before, the colonists who died cannot be restored to life, so the mistake cannot be corrected. The only alternative for us is to devise a sufficient punishment for them that will—in the minds of Maiella, Argo, and Thompson—equal their transgression. It should not merely be some impossible task merely for the sake of hardship; it should be a task of great importance, great risk, and great reward. It should be something vital to the future of the cadre and the colonists alike. It might be a mission with low survivability, because they could volunteer to sacrifice themselves rather than expose a fellow Operator to death. They will jump at the chance to truly serve again, and the enormity of their task will make them feel worthy again.
Because of the harsh nature of the mission requirements, it is unlikely they will survive; but during that mission, they will have their sharpest edge. Their guilt will become a potent motivator demanding they provide results. Their deaths will not be sufficient compensation for having committed what they believe is the most despicable crime. If they succeed in this mission, the cadre will benefit from their sacrifice; and in meaningful, honorable service, Thompson, Maiella, Argo can resu
me their places among their beloved brothers and sisters long gone.
END
O’Kai leans back in his chair. His swift mind cuts through the counselor’s lengthy descriptions, plainly seeing the recommendation that the three should be exiled after all. He smirks with the irony.
“I can’t tell you all of this makes sense to me,” the general begins, “but you have my attention.” He shifts comfortably in his seat. “It wasn’t long ago you were demanding we keep them here, sparing them this ‘punishment.’ What changed your mind?”
The counselor grimaces. “It isn’t that I’ve changed my mind, General, I simply see Maiella, Argo, and Thompson dying a little more each day; and…I can’t help them. When I heard they might be reconstituted, well… At least this way, they can be remembered for their many successes, not for their one failure. And who knows?” he adds with vigor. “They might come back.”
O’Kai looks into his terminal again, rereading the last few lines of the brief. “You have an idea for their mission?”
“I thought you might, General.”
O’Kai looks shrewdly at his guest. “You think I should send them to Earth.”
The counselor crosses a leg atop the other and raises a hand. “You did say it would have to be a manned mission, that no computer could be programmed with enough contingencies. We'd need Operators, who can think and act.”
O’Kai nods, recognizing his own words.
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