by Trevor Wyatt
After a thorough check, the CMO cleared him and told him he was perfectly healthy. He gave him some sleeping pills and told him to rest.
He was just stressed, the CMO said. Jeryl thought he was putting it lightly.
He took the pills, but still no respite.
This went way beyond stress; he was just afraid to admit it.
A little crack. This was what the enemy needed to win the war. Just a tiny little crack. He couldn’t allow for any cracks. He couldn’t second-guess himself. He couldn’t give in to doubt, even though it might wrap itself around his heart, squeezing it tight.
I can’t give in.
I won’t give in
He shut his eyes for a moment, allowing the darkness to swallow him whole.
There were a lot of people on this ship (not to mention all the others joining them at The Mariner Nebula), and they were all depending on him.
Shouldn’t that be the exact reason to allow doubt in? A small voice in the back of his head whispered.
He grit his teeth and, before he knew what he was doing, he had balled both hands into fists.
As a captain, he couldn’t stand the thought of making a mistake that would cost the lives of his crew. And it was that same thought that weighed him down—what if I made a mistake that didn’t cost him his crew, but cost the lives of…billions?
Maybe he could have prevented all this.
But then, he asked himself—would any other Captain handled things differently? If The Seeker hadn’t been the one assigned to that mission, would things have gone the way they did? Sometimes, he thought it all would’ve happened anyway, regardless of the mission assignment. But for others…
He had survived this long because of Ashley. She was the anchor that held him down; she was what kept him down. She was the reason he kept fighting. She was the light in the darkness. Whenever these doubts weighed him down, she was the one he turned to.
But he couldn’t stop his mind from spinning endlessly. Never. And he had tried.
What if he had been better prepared when he met the Sonali for the first time? He was ill prepared for it; he had always disregarded the possibility of alien life in the universe.
How about now? He asked himself. Now you are racing towards the Sonali to deal out a fatal blow to their species. Now you know ahead of time. There’s no excuse.
Realization hit him. Whatever actions he took, whatever happened here on out, he was fully responsible. There would be no excuses. History would judge him brutally. And with this realization came a tidal wave of fear crashing down on him.
Captain Jeryl leaped out of his chair. He needed to talk to someone. There was only one person he could think of and she was off duty.
“Contact Commander Gavin,” he said, activating the ship’s AI.
“Ashley here,” her voice filled his office, and he found himself sighing with relief. For a moment, the darkness of fear receded.
“Ash, where are you?” he asked her.
There was a pause. He never called her Ash except when they were alone. He did it now because he wanted her to know that he wasn’t looking for the First Officer. He was looking for his wife.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Do you want an honest answer?”
“Yeah.”
“No, everything’s not alright,” said Jeryl.
“I’m in our quarters.”
“I’ll be there in two.”
He cut the line and headed out of his quarters. He ordered his security detail to remain on the CNC, and even though they didn’t seem happy about it, they had no other choice but to do it. Jeryl was fully aware he was flagrantly disobeying Armada regulations, but so what? He wanted a moment of privacy with Ashley.
When he arrived to their quarters, he found her lying down on the bed. She sat up as he walked in.
He motioned for her to remain in bed, locking the door behind him. He slipped into the bed beside her, and she instinctively rested her head on his chest. It felt electric, being this close to her.
“Lights off,” he said, plunging the quarters into the state it had been when he walked in.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him after a moment of silence. Her soft voice woke him up as he realized he must have fallen asleep.
He checked for the struggle in his heart. It was still there, but now it seemed almost…insignificant. The fire blazing inside him for Ashley simply overpowered everything else. She had never been able to describe what he felt for her. He wasn’t a man of words, after all. But every cell in his being knew the truth: he loved her.
He really did.
“Remember how you’ve been having doubts about our commands?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said, her voice setting off a vibration in his chest. During all their officer’s meetings, Ashley never ceased to vocalize her misgivings about the current path that the Terran Union was following. Nevertheless, she was always quick to ensure that the mission was a success—her commitment never required a question mark.
“I think you may be right.”
He felt Ashley rolled over until she had her arms folded on his chest, her head facing Jeryl’s. He couldn’t see her, but he felt her looking at him.
“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.
“No. This mission doesn’t sit well with me,” he said. “I’m telling you this not as your captain now… but as your husband. This doesn’t feel right.”
She sighed and reverted back to her previous position, her head on his chest. Telling her he was afraid relieved some of the tension in his heart.
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about our mission,” she said.
“The Wolf Offensive. Before the war, people can say all sorts of things about the morality of what we do or don’t do. But right after the war, none of that seems to matter. Only the results. Say we win this. Nobody is going to realize that we may have contributed to wiping out an entire intelligent space faring species. All they will think about is that we won, and that we’re free. What is this war turning us into, Jeryl?”
He remained silent. He knew it wasn’t a rhetorical question, but that wasn’t why he was hesitating. He didn’t answer because he didn’t know how to answer.
“To think that all this started because of the destruction of The Mariner,” he said.
“We have looked through the records. We have read the transcripts of their communication with Edoris Station. From all the evidence we’ve been able to compile, there’s nothing that suggests that the Sonali were responsible for their destruction. It seems that they were being sincere, though rudely, when they told us it was their sector and that they didn’t know what had happened to The Mariner.”
“You’re saying that this entire war was based on an assumption that may have been false?” she asks, incredulity filtering into her voice.
“I don’t know what I’m saying,” he replied to her. “I don’t know, Ash. No matter what the case is, one thing is certain. We’re fucked.”
In tandem, as though their hearts beat as one, they drew in a deep breath and let it out softly out into the air. He shoved all the thoughts into the back of his mind and let himself relax in the comfort of nearness to his wife.
We’re fucked, yes, thought Jeryl. But at least we’re not alone.
Chapter 9
Ashley
It was 0800 hrs. Ashley met the tactical station on board The Seeker in CNC trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes. The fleet went toward its end goal today. And somehow, it seemed like a bad omen to go into combat without her morning cup of coffee.
Ashley scanned the readouts of the fleet that was forming in the system with the ships coming in and meeting at the rendezvous point roughly half a light year away from the station. She double and triple checked the readouts from engineering to make sure their FTL drives were fully aligned.
She checked the manifest in sick bay to ensure that everything the doctor requested had transferred over. She checked her
weapons complement to see if the upgrades went through. They had.
She even checked the energy banks that power the molecular resequensor. Not because she thought that they were going to want to have a meal in the middle of combat, but just because she didn’t know what else to check.
She had checked everything. The flurry of activity over the last 12 hours had been frantic. Everyone knew this was the Wolf Offensive. The single most important engagement to date in this war. An offensive that she could not find herself agreeing with, but one that she knew was necessary if they were to have a fighting chance to survive as a species.
“Everything okay?”
A voice asked and Ashley turned to see Jeryl standing next to her. She didn’t even realize he came by her side until he said something. She must had been engrossed in her readouts more than she realized.
“I’m fine, Captain,” said Ashley. “All systems appear to be in working order, the upgrades have gone through, weapons are online, FTL drives are working, sick bay is fully stocked with anything that we could ever need, and if you want you can even go get a cup of coffee and not tax the energy banks.“
“Well, it’s nice to know that I can get a cup of joe and then go kill one billion Sonali,” the Captain said with an air of morbid resignation mixed with a humor that was born out of hopelessness.
“We don’t have to go kill one billion Sonali,” she said. “There are other ways around how we can go about achieving victory. We’ve been pushing back on Sonali lines the last two months. It’s not inconceivable that we could target some of their main command-and-control stations. Push them back into their planetary bases. Take out their shipping lines. Create a war of attrition.”
She looked to the captain and saw him staring at her. He knew what she was saying was correct and he knew that what she was proposing would be a much longer, much costlier, much more brutal war. He knew this plan would never pass muster.
The Terran Union was never prepared for conflict. They went into it full of bluster. They didn’t analyze the consequences of prolonged years of warfare on their population.
Their democratic institutions would begin to crumble if they didn’t end this war. They’d need strong leadership—much stronger than what they had now. He was talking autocratic leaders who consolidate all the power among a few people. They’d need to direct fleets, move massive groups of men and material, dictate that the individual—all 44 billion within the Terran Union—dedicated their lives to the state.
They had seen that before in history, Ashley was sure of it. Nazi Germany. Soviet Union. The caliphate of the Middle East that arose in the mid-21st century right before the Third World War. The Asian Bloc. The Empire of Oceania. The Outer Colonies. They could go down that route, but they would had lost the war much, much before then.
The Captain knew this. He knew, Ashley knew it. He knew that they were probably 3 to 6 months away from open rebellion in the core worlds of the Union. They both realized that they were perhaps a year away from a breakdown in government where Earth wouldn’t be able to maintain clear lines of control and communication with the Armada.
And they both know that if they kept facing defeat or even stalemate, the situation would eventually wear down on them until there would be a collapse from the inside. And they would leave the Sonali to mop them up as they progressed further and further toward the cradle of humanity.
“This is the only way, Ash,” Jeryl said. “We gonna have a problem carrying out your mission?”
“I know my mission,” said Ashley.” You will have no problems from me, sir.”
“Good,” he said.
She sighed. What happened to the man who expressed his doubts and his fears about this mission just a few hours ago? She knew he was most probably burying that side of him right now. He couldn’t let it show. Not for her, not for anyone. He needed to present the picture of a leader in charge—a commander of the Terran Armada.
Any doubts, any misgivings, any sort of second thoughts would be detrimental to the morale of the crew. Once they knew what they were about to do they needed to see a strong and confident leader who was willing to go in and make the hard decisions and carry out the final orders.
And a billion Sonali lives would be the price that needed to be paid because of that composure.
“There’s something you should know about the ship and its upgrades,” said Ashley, trying to change her mood. “Our weapons have been upgraded, but our shielding has been upgraded with the latest technology that the Armada is putting into new starships. We’re able to last in a firefight much longer and that may come in handy if we need to be the ones to start the orbital bombardment of the Beta Hydra III planet. Preliminary readouts tell me that our weapons damage effectiveness have been increased by nearly 75%. Our shielding has been increased by close to 150%.”
“That’s impressive,” he told him raising his eyebrows. “How did we get such numbers?”
“Apparently, we’ve been busier than I thought capturing downed Sonali starships,” she said with a smile. “War may be the mother of all invention but you can never beat good old-fashioned stealing.”
She tried to give him a smile to cut the overhanging tension in the air caused by the mission. If she could lighten the mood for just one moment, distract him from his thoughts for just a second, it could mean the difference between life and death when they go into battle.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you by the way,” he said as he turned to face CNC from his tactical consul.
“Can you get me all of the data and telemetry that we collected from the debris of The Mariner?” Jeryl asked.
“Sure,” said Ashley. “You can have that in the next few minutes.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I also need all of the data that we have on that nebula, any sort of data that was sent back by The Mariner, and all data from first contact as well as any active and passive scans that the ship was running at that time.”
She nodded and started to input the commands that would get all of the information to the captain. She knew that any Armada starship normally ran passive scans in the background of the surrounding space. This was standard operating procedure. It allowed some of the routine scanning that needed to be done in order for course corrections and any sort of star charting for the navigator to engage in to be done without having to go through any sort of CNC officer approving and keeping track of it. The scans themselves were very low energy and not an intense power drain on the ship's energy sources so they ran continuously—even while in space dock.
“With that kind of data it’ll take at least 20 minutes to get it all compiled,” Ashley said. “You want it routed to your tablet?”
“No,” he said. “Send it to my workstation in my office. I plan to do some reading about the circumstances that started this conflict. We have at least a few more hours until we get to the nebula. I might as well start going through that information.”
Ashley’s ears perked up and her sixth sense started tingling.
“Jeryl,” she said slowly keeping her voice low. “What’s going on?”
Jeryl shrugged and looked away. It was like he was thinking of what to say.
“I’m not sure yet,” he said his voice lowering even more so that no one in CNC could hear them.
“But it’s something that’s been at the back of my head and I need to go over it. Something I thought of last night. Somethings not right about this. Something wasn’t right from the very single day that we met the Sonali. And if we have this time I’m going to actually finally use it after all these years to try and see what it could be.”
Ashley smiled and nodded. “You’ll have it shortly.”
Jeryl nodded and thanked her before turning and walking into his office.
She knew he was waiting for that report.
She knew there was something in it that he thought could help.
She smiled, because now, finally, she recognized the man again from last night. The man she mar
ried.
Chapter 10
Jeryl
The last update Jeryl received from the CNC told him they were a few hours away from the rendezvous in The Mariner Nebula. As the time approached, he felt more and more conflicted. He was haunted by the terror he was about to unleash upon a people whose only wrong may have been to meet them. He couldn’t help but wonder if this war was a huge mistake.
He knew that, as an officer, he had to ensure that all orders given were moral and appropriate based on the information he had at his disposal. But there was some level of fear that went with reviewing past orders, especially those that led to catastrophic ramifications.
Not to mention that this war had started because of him.
What if he was wrong? What would that mean for him? All the lives that had been lost, all the worlds that had been wiped out, they would all be on him. What would the Armada do to him? Would they court-martial him? Would they execute him?
If he found out the truth and sent a slipstream message back to Admiral Flynn, telling him that this war was nothing but a huge mistake and that the Sonali didn’t down The Mariner, what would Flynn think of him? What would the crew think of him?
Thankfully, most of the old crew remained with The Seeker. All the CNC crew were with him when it first happened. They had a lot more understanding of the context surrounding this war than most did. They would understand. At least, Jeryl thought so.
He exhaled softly. He had to decide on a course of action.
He began to consider the other side of the equation. Say the Sonali were innocent, that they didn’t destroy The Mariner…would they be innocent of all the lives that had been lost? But if they were innocent of the crimes the humans leveled against them, why did they respond with such an aggressive show of force?
For a time, during the beginning of the war, they were more interested in surviving than in winning. They were focused on living through to the next day and defending their planets than in destroying Sonali dreadnaughts. It took several ships, a miracle, sheer force of will, and stunning ingenuity to bring down a Sonali Cruiser. And then there were more.