MissionSRX: Ephemeral Solace

by Matthew D. White

  It would have been so easy. He had seen Commander Fox adjust his weapon the first time they met. After that, the hammer had been back every time he saw him, loaded with a bullet which was surely meant for his cranium.

  He certainly deserved it. He convinced a battleship to leave half a battalion on the ground of an alien planet to be slaughtered while he went running after a fool’s errand. How many body bags did it take for them to wind up here? Even worse, how many soldiers who still lived now regarded him as a hero?

  How could he call himself a hero, a leader, a soldier, or even a human? It all needed to end. A knock at the door wrenched him from the pit of self-deprecation.

  “Commander Grant, it’s Harris. You there?”

  “Yeah,” he managed, “the door’s open.” Grant sat himself upright

  Othello entered and dropped to the floor on the opposite wall and stared the commander down while he analyzed the situation.

  “What do you need?” Grant broke the silence.

  “We should all be dead.”

  “Excuse you?” The statement caught Grant off guard.

  “Back on Extortion—we never should have made it out of there alive.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Don’t tell him I told you, ‘cause I don’t think he’d want you to know, but Mister Ryan, the odd mechanic you picked up? It’s all his doing.” Grant sat motionless, so Othello continued, “He’s an incredibly resourceful guy—fearless too. He was right there with us during the landing, figured out how to work the aliens’ rockets, and took out a gunship by himself.”

  “I know, he went far beyond what I expected. I think he acts without thinking, but his heart has always been in the right place.”

  “Do you find it odd the Aquillians—or Phesrix, whatever—couldn’t mount a single successful attack once we got them separated? They could barely coordinate mortar fire.”

  “I guess. Enlighten me.”

  “After I got shot up, I was hanging back with the rest of my squad while you went ahead. Ryan went and pulled the armor apart of some of their soldiers. He was able to get into their communication system, make a few modifications, and jam them out.”

  “Are you telling me . . .?”

  “Yes, because of him they were in the dark for half the assault, and we walked all over them, relatively speaking. They couldn’t coordinate their way out of a paper gaddamn bag.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “We’re not alive by chance. At the very least, it’s providence.”

  “If you say so,” Grant brushed the comment off.

  “I didn’t have to be here. At one time I studied civil engineering. I could have spent a seventy-year career never stepping off Earth’s surface, calmly building targets for those alien bastards to shoot at and really not giving a flying leap what happened way out here. But that’s not who I am and it’s not who we are.”

  Grant shook his head. “I just didn’t realize it’d feel like this.”

  “Well, you don’t get to be Churchill on Saturday morning.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The people we look up to, our greatest leaders, they didn’t have it easy, despite what’s written in history books. Churchill, Lincoln, Washington, they gave up everything they had to fight for existential causes. If they failed, their ways of life would have been no more. You can’t convince me that they slept well at night. They faced the choice between sacrificing soldiers by the thousand or condemning their civilians to slavery by the million.”

  The commander had nothing to add. “Whatever we’re facing, we’ve been through worse as a civilization. We beat debilitating viruses. We survived suicide by nuclear winter. We colonized our solar system. We defeated enemies across the galaxy,” Othello continued, “so what’s one ship like ours in the big scheme?”

  “Since when did you become a philosopher? I never would have guessed.”

  “I’ve spent five years on Mars,” the miner laughed, “do you honestly think I didn’t have time to read a couple books?”

  “Touché. And since you asked, our one ship is very important in the big scheme of things.”

  “Now you might need to do the explaining.”

  “It’s a very long story.”

  Othello crossed his arms. “In that case, maybe you should tell the crew as a whole. They’ve got as much riding on this as I do, and they deserve to know what we’re fighting for or running from.”

  “I can do that,” Grant added. “Once we get cleaned up, I’ll have Commander Fox get them all together.”

  46

  It took over a day before Scott was well enough to walk again. The doctor said he had suffered multiple cracked ribs from the gunshots, as well as severe dehydration and exhaustion from his part in the battles. Apparently he didn’t know his own limits.

  Attired in service coveralls, he proudly wore the special operations emblem on his shoulder beneath the flag. Being counted among such people made the injuries seem insignificant. Now that he was walking, he toured through the battleship to get a better sense of the forces’ capabilities.

  Despite the sustained attacked, they had hardly touched their rations, and the main guns were still fully loaded. The commander’s fighter had survived the assault and landing, while several others hadn’t been as lucky: a quarter of the smaller ships and two of the shuttles required significant repairs if they ever hoped to fly again.

  Scott had an extended conversation with Chief Robins about the SR-X, Grant, and his ill-fated fighter squadron. While he found the fact that the pair had been on a first-name-basis with Dr. Doug Jacobs, a legend in his own right, the Crimson Elite were an enigma. The person the chief described did not fit that of the man he had run into on the Martian surface.

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Robins advised as the pair sat on some crates beneath the blood red ship, “when I first met him, I don’t think I had ever seen someone carry more raw pain in my life. It was his primary goal to die in the fire of battle and take as many as he could along for the trip.”

  “In that setting, I’d agree completely. He’s ruthless, brutal, and cunning, but he still went out of his way time and again to keep me alive. If he was as you say, I’d expect he’d rather leave me to die.”

  “True, but I’m sure it was part of the calculation. You just said yourself he was cunning.”

  “It’s amazing they’d give someone like that free reign of a squadron.”

  “Well, it was what they needed. I was in training with my fellow crews on the SR-2 and SR-X systems while they were still in development. Out of the blue, we got the call from headquarters to expect pilots. Jacobs worked day and night to get the last of the modifications completed on time. Days later when they showed up, we put our game faces on and they put the ships through their paces.

  “Holy hell, we were nervous!” the chief laughed. “If one of them crashed, malfunctioned, anything, it would’ve been our asses on the line! The first time we tore into the X, we were terrified that’d it have gotten all burned up.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t have you disable it after the war.”

  “They knew better. We’d all have resigned in protest before we’d do that to something so precious.”

  “How did you handle the loss of all the SR-2’s?”

  The chief sobered up quickly. “Not well. It was all the worst parts of losing half your friends and all your mentors in the span of a week. Commander Grant made it absolutely clear that it was his call, his responsibility, and his pain to bear. There’s not much consolation to that, but it was better than nothing.”

  The two men looked out past the experimental fighter and far down the line of standard-duty SR-1 fighters inhabiting the upper landing bay. Their light-gray skin stood out in stark contrast to that of their more advanced relations.

  “It still feels like a dream, like I’ll wake up and be back running freight around Sol.”

  The chief looked back and shook his head. �
�Hate to tell you, but this is as real as it gets.”

  The commander prime was seated at the desk chair behind the modest wooden desk in his quarters. He had been staring at the blank surface for nearly an hour, trying to run though in his head what he was going to tell the crew. Fox had done what he had promised and gotten them an audience.

  For all his fighting—the battles, the executions, the court appearances—his palms chose now to start sweating. Grant could guess at the reason: he was unsure of himself. For the first time, he didn’t trust his own judgment.

  Sitting alone on the desk’s surface was the small black box containing Grant’s Commander Prime rank. He stared at the bits of metal for a long while, coming to grips with the symbol’s significance. Lost in his thoughts, he poked at the filling and noticed the backing was loose.

  Pulling it free, he saw that obscured below was the badge given to him when he created the Crimson Elite Fighter Squadron. Custom milled from stainless steel, it was one of the only pieces of real evidence that his command had even existed. As much as he had brushed off their losses before, he could still see the faces of the men who never made it back. He was responsible for them, and in a way, he had failed them. Grant shook his head. They knew the risks, and the mission was accomplished.

  The time drew down, so he pushed the seat back and left the room behind him. With every step, he felt the lights above shining on his face and heard every echo bouncing off the wall, as if he was moving in slow motion. He had to snap out of it. His crew would be expecting something far more full of confidence than what he currently felt capable of providing. Grant focused in on what awaited every one of them in an effort to regain control.

  Grant saw the thousand rounds a minute leaping from his ship, cutting graves into the Martian surface. He felt the spray of the ocean air upon his face as he pulled civilians out of the Extortion stockade. He saw the fear in the eyes of those who followed him become transformed to determination as he led the way.

  He heard the shouts for rescue that would never be answered. He heard her voice. Grant’s eyes flickered and instantly caged on the far horizon, and he knew he was ready.

  The commander stepped out onto the upper flight deck before the whole of the crew. Chief Robins called the room to attention as Grant entered, his voice echoing off into the distance. Grant took what appeared to be center stage before the semicircular group and faced down the rows of soldiers, pilots, and civilians.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friends, I owe you the most sincere apologies,” he began. “I’ve been trying to decide how best to tell you all of this, but I don’t think there will be an easy way.

  “You’ve followed me blindly into what I would consider to be the most foolhardy of adventures at nothing more than my suggestion.” Grant looked out among the faces of the security forces, miners, and workers of the Mars colony. “Days ago, it was my duty to rescue you. There was nothing you needed to add to the effort, but at every turn you stepped up without hesitation.”

  Grant continued scanning the room, briefly landing on Scott, who stood beside his rescued fire team. “Without question, there are many people who are alive today because of your selfless actions.

  “To the crew of the Flagstaff, your service has been second to none. Without you, my work would have ended a hundred meters from where it began.”

  He paused and sighed to collect himself. “I wish I could tell you this was over and that we’d be able to return home, but I can do no such thing.” Grant continually looked the crew in the eye. “It will get worse—much worse. I can’t tell you how, but things are grim. I tell you this not so that you lose hope, but so that you know whatever comes next, humanity will have a better chance of survival through what we do.

  “While on our first mission to Mars, I found the remains of an ancient alien installation.” Grant caught Commander Fox’s gaze. “There’s no better way to say it: I was given a vision and I was given a message. I saw the siege of Earth as clearly as I’m seeing you right now. How or why, I’m not going to discuss nor debate. The Aquillians have drawn a new enemy to our doorstep, the likes of which we’ve never seen.

  “They will come for Earth, not for land and not for any military objective. This enemy exists to extinguish life wherever it can find it. It will come for our extinction. The defenders of Earth know this new enemy is coming, and our mission now is to give our fellow humans time to prepare a defense before the full might of the Phesrix comes to bear.

  “I have zero doubt the remnants of the Phesrix assault force are on our tail, and in twenty three hours we will leave hyperspace and need to deal with them. It is my aim to engage them and draw them farther from Earth. Understand that no matter what comes for us, I will stand in front of you, and I will carry on until my final breath. You deserve no less—and Earth deserves no less—than every shred of strength that remains.

  “This may be all for naught, but I’m not about to let us go quietly. We’re not checking out unless we’re taking every single one of them with us! Earth Corps!” he shouted with a raised fist.

  “HOOAH!” came the unified response from every soldier in the audience. The officer exchanged a final salute with the team and made his exit before becoming poetic. Commander Fox followed Grant from the room only a step behind.

  “I’m impressed,” the ship’s commander started, “you’re really nothing like how I remembered you from before.”

  “Do tell,” Grant replied without a glance.

  “The first time I met you, I didn’t think you had a soul left. You seemed completely engrossed in your own plan of revenge, even to the detriment of those around you who counted on you to make intelligent decisions.”

  “It’s not a safe universe. If safety is your goal, I think you checked into the wrong career.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it. I’d knowingly tell a soldier to give his life in defense of Earth the same as I’d give my own, but to not care at all is the mark of a psychopath. I wasn’t at all surprised when you led the entire Elite squadron to its destruction, but I was when you pulled this crew together over the last few weeks.”

  “Are you saying there’s a difference?”

  “All I’m saying is that the people back there,” he gestured behind them, “are ready and motivated to follow you to hell and back. If they didn’t have hope that you’d make the correct decisions, they would have gotten off the ship before we left Earth. If you can’t see the difference in their eyes, I’d say you still have some learning left to do.”

  The comment hit Grant harder than the rest. He stopped and faced the other officer. “If you’re the all-knowing one, what do you suggest we do next?”

  “We still haven’t done any sort of intelligence analysis on anything we’ve seen so far. I’d say we at least pull together some sort of report on lessons learned, maybe get perspectives from some of the others. They probably all saw things from different angles.”

  47

  Later in the day, the pair sat opposite each other in the briefing room behind the bridge. While waiting for the rest of the interested parties to arrive, they browsed through the volumes of security feeds that the miner, Othello, had recovered.

  Even though the landing had taken place in the dead of night, many of the angles were still useable. The entire station operated on a twenty-four-hour schedule, with much of the facility constantly illuminated. Grant leaned back while Fox scrolled through the files, pulling them up and quickly scanning them for anything interesting.

  As the others filtered in, they played through the more applicable files, to the obvious discomfort of some of the viewers. The attack was not sophisticated. Their gunships had synchronized a landing on every platform so they could incapacitate the workforce. Ships dropped on the main dormitory and the security facility by the south pad early as well to deal with potential defenders, who were completely unprepared for the onslaught.

  It went fast at the start. Before they knew w
hat was happening, the civilians were rounded up and pushed toward the collection point. Anyone who resisted was mercilessly beaten. Several were hacked at by the ones who carried the metal saws. If they slowed down, they were beaten or executed.

  Major Kael leaned back against the wall, content to let the others run the show. He’d give his perspective about the Mars mission once they finished the Extortion debrief. So far, his opinion of it was nothing short of a Grade-A-Plus Charlie Foxtrot.

  “Othello, you’ll want to see this,” Fox mentioned to the miner as he pulled up another feed.

  Othello leaned forward, seated between Scott, Allen, and a few of the other soldiers. “What do you have?”

  A feed from one of the bridges showed a team of Phesrix soldiers moving about thirty civilians in formation when one tried to make a break for it. He made it about four meters before taking a bullet to the ankle. Writhing in pain, they dragged him back in front of the rest of the prisoners.

  The leader of the alien column stood before the kneeling man and produced a small black device from a fold in his armor. “That’s the thing I found! Is that the same one?”

  “It could be. Keep watching,” Fox replied.

  The alien stabbed the probe on the front of the device into the gunshot wound on his leg. Even without sound, the procedure looked to be excruciating. Instantly, blood began to spill from the gash and the skin around it started to bubble and peel. The man continued to flail about even as his lower body melted.

  “They’re liquefying him,” Scott mouthed, nearly silent.

  “It’s what they did to themselves, but it’s happening much slower. Maybe their bodies are less resilient than ours?” the miner offered.

  “Maybe, or perhaps they can adjust it. This way would certainly be more painful and have greater impact on the others.”

  “We need to figure out how it works in case it shows up again,” Scott added. “Commander Fox, does the ship have an intel shop with access to a multi-spectral scanner?”