by Glen Zipper
As the captain’s son and senior-ranking cadet, he was under a spotlight, so at first I tried to convince myself it was just all the pressure and stress weighing on him. Eventually he’d adapt and return to center—but so far that wasn’t happening. He was actually getting worse.
I had tried to talk to him about it more than once, but he was always defensive. First I was imagining it all. Then I was insulting him. Finally he shut me down entirely, saying it was none of my business.
The thought of JD throwing up a wall sent my fingers dancing again.
“We’re still breathing,” I said, cutting off the voice in my head before it could give me the same advice.
I wasn’t getting angry for the sake of getting angry. At the rate things were escalating, JD being outrightly discharged from the program was quickly becoming a real possibility. That wasn’t going to fly with me. He wasn’t just risking his dream. He was risking mine. We were supposed to be doing it all together.
“Come on!” I heard Bix anxiously yell from outside the locker room. “Who are you talking to in there?”
The nagging voice in my head, Bix. That’s who.
I finished lacing my boots and hustled out.
Julian quickly scanned me from my boots up to my collar. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if he was admiring my uniform or seething with jealousy. “Good luck up there,” he said, offering me a quick kiss goodbye.
As JD, Bix, and I rushed out the door, I noticed him defeatedly sag against the wall.
Jealousy confirmed.
I didn’t resent it, though. How could I? If I were him, I would’ve been jealous too. He’d worked just as hard as the rest of us and had all the right qualifiers, so it made no sense when he didn’t make the cut as a cadet. The only possible explanation I could think of was the one thing I couldn’t know—the confidential results of his Psych Ops evaluation. Did they show he lacked a certain makeup the rest of us possessed? Or was it that he had something we didn’t? A quality that made him somehow less fit for duty.
If there was something mysterious lurking beneath Julian’s surface, it was probably the same thing that attracted me to him. I liked the fact he had layers, and if there was some less desirable part of him I might eventually stumble upon, I would cross that bridge then. I wasn’t thinking too far ahead. To me all that mattered was the right now. In the stress and monotony of the right now, he was one of the few things keeping me sane.
I looked down at my hands. They had finally stopped shaking.
A half second later, they were back at it again as my thoughts turned to the Blink Drill. I knew if JD handled it the same way he handled the last drill, it was almost guaranteed to get ugly.
Great.
Keep breathing, Nixon.
Our feet pounded heavily against the metal-plated floor as Bix and I jogged down the passageway toward the lift. JD lagged behind us as usual. Despite being late, he still wasn’t going to run. I couldn’t let it distract me. I needed to get my head straight before we got to the Blink Drill.
You only have one shot at the Blink. You have to get it right the first time. Every time. After three months of having that mantra drilled into my head, I could almost hear it in my sleep. Still, as tiresome as all the Blink Drills were getting, the prospect of actually Blinking was no joke.
The Blink Reactor was the brainchild of the brilliant but mercurial Alliance scientist Dr. Samuel Fuller. Repurposing his most important creation, the incomprehensibly powerful Generation One CPU, he had engineered a technology capable of transporting a ship far beyond the limits of conventional propulsion technology by folding the fabric of space-time.
In year seven of the war, Blink Reactors were installed aboard all fleet battleships, giving the Alliance a game-changing tactical advantage by allowing our vessels to instantly bug out to the other side of the sector—escaping any Kastazi attack in the blink of an eye. Fuller literally calling them Blink Reactors kinda felt like a bad dad joke to me, but if he built the contraption, it was only fair he got to name it.
Of course, like most sudden, giant leaps in technological advancement, Fuller’s invention had some “we’re still working on it” bugs. The most significant was its trajectory plotting, which might as well have been hooked up to a roulette wheel. Sure, the Blink would take you out of the frying pan, but it could just as easily drop you into the fire. Because of this dangerous fallibility the reactor’s postwar use was restricted to instances of extreme danger or unsalvageable calamity. The proverbial break glass in case of emergency option.
Tragically, Fuller’s creation ended up costing him his life. While attempting an unauthorized test of a second-generation Blink Reactor, one intended to take us farther and more safely into the beyond, something went terribly wrong. In an instant he was gone, never to be heard from again. The only clue left behind? His final transmission from aboard the UAS Tripoli.
It was, quite simply, “Oh shit.”
In the annals of “greatest last words,” Fuller’s were definitely up there.
As cadets, we were never going to initiate a Blink ourselves, but the drills were our best opportunity for ship-to-ship combat exercises. Which is why they were so important. Despite this fact, lately JD was sleepwalking his way through them.
A group of plain-clothed Explorers students rushed past us in the opposite direction—the sound of their marching adding to the already calamitous percussion of our boots on deck. I finished buttoning up my uniform and glanced back at JD. He was still five meters behind.
“Move it!”
Even from the distance between us, I could see him rolling his eyes.
Keep breathing.
Amid the chaos, one of the students knocked shoulders with him. I couldn’t remember her name. She was petite with bouncy blond hair. “Err, sorry . . . ah . . . Cadet Marshall. Just trying to get to my safety position,” I heard her stammer.
JD turned around, walking backward even slower than before. “What’s your name?”
“R-R-Rachel.”
“Well, Rachel, better get to that safety position.” Judging by the way R-R-Rachel blushed, I think he might’ve winked at her. It wasn’t flirtation. He was just looking for any excuse to drag his feet for a few seconds more. And get my goat. It was working.
Bix and I shared a glance while we waited for JD at the lift. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was. Our friend was definitely getting worse.
The lift doors slid open just as JD arrived, and we stepped inside together, once again pretending nothing was amiss. The usual butterflies came as we shot upward toward our destination, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was going to be the day JD finally crossed the line.
As soon as the doors slid open to the bridge, my eyes gravitated to an enormous Holoview displaying a three-dimensional hologram of brilliant stars sparkling across an endless canvas of black. Space.
All those sparkling giants in the distance took my breath away. They always did. The view was never going to get old.
The bridge was sacrosanct. The central nervous system of the Devastation-class battleship UAS California, only Alliance officers and cadets were allowed to set foot upon it. It was from this grand room that command controls were input, piloting maneuvers executed, communications broadcast, courses plotted, and crises tackled. It was from this grand room on this grand ship that JD’s father, Captain Philip Marshall, had led the decisive battle against the Kastazi on Titan Moon. And it was where my mother, Commander Merritt Nixon, had served right by his side as first officer.
Housed above Alpha Deck on its own structurally reinforced level, the bridge of the California measured eighty square meters and had two separate and secure entrances. Designed as a battleship command and control nest, it was deeply recessed from the hull to insulate it from attack. Consequently, there were no direct viewing portholes. Instead, the ship’s external environment was captured by an array of exterior cameras. Those images were then projected to the captain’s van
tage point via the Holoview.
The captain’s chair sat in the center of the bridge. Port side, the Pilot’s station was positioned slightly ahead of the captain’s chair, with the tabletop Navigation station forty-five degrees in front of it. The Analytics, Engineering, Communications, Medical, and Weapons stations shared the starboard side of the bridge, toward the bow. The Weapons station was typically vacant in peacetime, its empty chair a de facto reminder of how far we had come since the war.
By the time we entered the bridge, our friends and fellow cadets had already taken their posts. My roommate, Safi Diome, at Navigation. Iara “Ohno” Sousa at Engineering. Nicholas Smith at Communications. And Anatoly Kuzycz at Medical. They looked pissed. We were supposed to work as a team, and our being late reflected poorly on all of us.
JD made his way to the captain’s chair while Bix settled into Analytics and I took my position at Piloting. Ensigns Evan Gentry and Dominick Lewis looked on disapprovingly from the back of the bridge.
We’d been on the California for a total of three months. It took two months and seventeen days to get to Gallipoli Station, where we’d been in space dock for the last thirteen days. An outpost in the outer rim of the Raya Sector, it was our last opportunity to replenish supplies and undergo routine maintenance before embarking on the final six-month leg of our journey. It also gave the command staff and non-commissioned officers some much needed off-ship R & R.
Cadets and students, however, were not permitted to leave the ship’s confines. Not until we reached our final destination. Being stuck on the California for so long was starting to give me a serious case of “space burn.” That’s the name JD had bestowed upon our unique brand of cabin fever. My space burn had gotten to the point where I would’ve traded a month’s worth of Iso-Rec privileges for a day pass to Gallipoli.
With the command staff off-ship, Gentry and Lewis were the two ensigns assigned to supervise our training. Both recent cadet graduates, they were charged with carrying out a number of the ship’s ancillary duties. Being responsible for us was just one. Another big one was bridge prep. It was on them to make sure every last detail was in perfect order every time the captain walked onto the bridge.
I took a last look around and imagined the command staff at their usual stations. Captain Marshall front and center in the captain’s chair. My mother at Piloting. Lieutenant Pelfrey at Navigation. Lieutenant Costa at Analytics. Lieutenant Commander Baber at Engineering. Petty Officer Franklin at Coms. Lieutenant Chief Medical Officer Green at Medical.
It was an honor just to sit in their chairs, even though it was only for drills. The mere fact we were there meant something important. It meant they believed in us, and that we had a real chance to be part of the next generation of great people leading the Alliance into the future. That was all I could hope for. It was everything I’d ever wanted.
CHAPTER 3
JD
UNCOMFORTABLY ADJUSTING MY POSTURE IN THE CAPTAIN’S chair, I ignored Gentry’s angry gaze and wondered if I looked as apathetic as I felt. While I tried my best to muster up some focus, it continued to elude me.
Gentry lording over us wasn’t helping. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t take him seriously. Observing him go about his business, I saw nothing special. There was a baseline competence maybe, but he seemed to be the epitome of ordinary. When every ensign in the fleet wanted to be assigned to the California, ordinary shouldn’t have been good enough. His high-ranking rear admiral father probably got him his slot by pulling some strings. And that really pissed me off.
Anyway, apathetic, pissed off, or otherwise, it was time for me to get started.
“Status?” I asked Ohno.
The vibrant blue hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head and the few bio-reactive tattoos her sleeves couldn’t hide presented a striking contrast to the uniform. “Engaged by seven enemy cruisers. We’ve taken direct hits to primary engines, defense grids failing,” she reported. “I have to choke off the antimatter plasma relays to engine six or we’re gonna go pop.”
I’d known Ohno for a while, but it still amazed me how astounding her engineering skills were. She had taken over her father’s garage when he was killed in the war. She was only eleven at the time. From that point on, all by herself, she’d repaired hovercrafts, skeet jumpers, Interceptors . . . pretty much anything with an engine.
I heard Ohno’s grim report but didn’t react. I was too distracted. Out of the corner of my eye, I had stolen a quick glance at Viv at Piloting. Technically, everything she was doing was just about perfect, but—my pissy mood entering full bloom—I still managed to find fault.
“Stabilize your attitude control, Nixon!”
“How about you worry about those seven enemy cruisers,” she said, swiveling her chair to face me, “and I’ll worry about my attitude.”
“Children . . .” Gentry chided.
Children? I grimaced, and saw Viv do the same. No surprise, we both hated being reprimanded by the still wet-behind-the-ears ensign. I exhaled in frustration and pulled the next question from my internal checklist, just like I was trained to do. “Are they responding to coms?”
“No,” answered Nick. I could see his bright-green eyes from halfway across the bridge.
“Distress signal broadcast?”
“Not operational.”
I looked at Anatoly. “Casualties?”
“Thirty-two dead, Captain,” he reported with his very faint Ukrainian accent. “And serious injuries reported on all decks.”
I turned to Viv. “Can we evade?”
She scanned her console. “No go. Primary propulsion unresponsive.”
“High-Intensity Vectoring Engines?”
“HIVE thrusters offline too.”
There was only one option left on the checklist.
“Activate Blink Reactor.”
The lighting immediately dimmed as artificial engine noise began to ominously hum in the background for effect. I drummed my fingers on my armrest.
And then Viv shouted, “Incoming!”
In the moment, all our playacting felt absurd.
“Direct hit!” exclaimed Ohno.
Of course nothing happened. No explosion. No quake. Not even a slight bump. It was all just a simulation. “Okay. Here we go,” I said, trying not to sound as far away as I was. I turned back to Viv. “Commander, Blink Reactor ready to go?”
“Aye,” replied Viv, focused on her control panel.
“Commit to Blink.”
Viv punched a few buttons and pulled back on her throttle.
I immediately jumped up from the captain’s chair. I wanted to get off the bridge as quickly as I could.
“Congratulations,” Gentry said. “You just killed everyone.” I had only made it two steps toward the lift.
“I completed the simulation. We Blinked.”
“And under real conditions, you’d be dead. And so would everybody else under your command,” Gentry said. “In a real crisis, when everything is going wrong all at once and you only have fractions of a second to make decisions, how long do you think you’d last with that laissez-faire attitude of yours?”
“Permission to speak freely?”
“Granted.”
“Longer than you.”
A conspicuous silence followed as Gentry resisted whatever his natural urge was—probably to slap me across the face.
“Because you’ve lived through life and death already?” he finally answered.
“That’s right.”
“So you’ve got nothing left to learn? Is that it?”
“Not from a Blink Drill, no.”
Gentry turned away from me and pulled down on his uniform, straightening its creases. “Ensign Lewis, pull up shipwide vitals, please.”
Ensign Lewis walked to the dark glass panel that stretched floor to ceiling and ten meters across at the bridge’s port side edge. With a swipe of his hand, the panel lit up like a Christmas tree, revealing the vital signs of every person on th
e ship. Each set of vitals was enclosed within a glowing green border along with a name. The vitals belonging to Marshall, John Douglas were even and unremarkable. Exactly how I was feeling.
“One hundred eight heartbeats, Cadet Marshall,” said Gentry, nodding toward the mosaic of digital life signs. “When you’re in the captain’s chair, all of them are your responsibility. I don’t care what you survived, or how high your test scores were, or how many cadet candidates you had to beat out to get here. Until you understand what that means, you don’t belong on this bridge.”
I glanced at the vitals but revealed no emotion. The ship had felt almost unbearably empty to me until that very moment. But with the beating hearts of one hundred eight souls reflecting in my eyes? Suddenly I felt foolish for making it all about me.
Gentry leaned in close and grabbed my arm. “Set an example, cadet. Take this seriously.”
I shrugged off his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
My fellow cadets exchanged nervous glances.
“I don’t think I like your tone, cadet,” Gentry bristled.
“I wasn’t giving you a tone.”
“You’ll refer to me as ‘sir.’”
“Whatever you need to hear . . . sir.”
“JD . . .” Viv said with a warning in her voice.
“This isn’t your concern, Cadet Nixon,” Gentry barked, keeping his attention on me. “You know something, Marshall? Before you stepped foot on this ship, I heard a lot of stories about you. I’m starting to wonder if I should believe any of them.”
“And what stories would those be, sir?”
“Gosh,” he replied. “There seem to be quite a few tales. Saving your entire class at Farragut from a Kastazi assault when you were—what?—twelve? Or maybe the one where you completed the Maximus Trail by yourself in—”