Massoud (Massoud Chronicles Book 1)

  “I can understand that,” Massoud concurred.

  “I’ve heard you’re a people person, Massoud. That might be useful; I’m not exactly adept when it comes to that kind of thing.”

  “Believe me, I can deal with that in a captain.”

  “Yes, I’ve met your husband,” Van Berge said. He was not so insensitive that he failed to notice Massoud’s reaction to the reference to her husband, whom she had not seen in months and whom she missed very much. Van Berge changed the topic.

  “In the next few weeks, I want to gather the crew and run simulations on the new systems, not just to get everyone up to speed with the technology, but to get them working together. You are to report to the sim center tomorrow. Dean Amadan at the academy is being notified of your reassignment. I look forward to working with you, Massoud.”

  With that, Van Berge made his farewells, but Lightfoot motioned for Massoud to sit, which she did. He took a seat behind his desk and leaned forward on his elbows.

  “Massoud, I wanted to have a word with you. I think we left things in a bad way the last time we met. I can’t have my officers feeling like they can’t trust me.”

  Massoud shifted uncomfortably but made no response.

  “I have contacted Lt. Chrostowksi and apologized for my part in this stupid mess. I’d been putting the blame for what happened on her alone, but that wasn’t right. I’m a senior officer; she’s a junior officer. Most of the responsibility lay with me. And some of the things I said to her when I last saw her...well...they were just cruel. Surprisingly enough, I think she forgave me, and I think we left things on good terms.”

  “Chrostowski is one of the most forgiving and tolerant people I know. I try to emulate her.”

  “So, does that mean you’ve forgiven me for thinking of people as automatons—or was it that I’m an A Fleet jerk?” He seemed amused for once.

  Massoud nodded, embarrassed to hear her words repeated.

  The admiral leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Your orders will take you to the Delta Sector Unified Fleet. You’ll be able to take leave on Denison. You’ll be able to have real-time communications with your husband. It’s not perfect, but will it do?”

  “Yes of course. I didn’t expect even that much. But Admiral, what about other servicemembers with family in the fleet? Are they getting the same consideration?”

  “Yes. Between Admiral Sabika and the outspoken lieutenants in this sector, the policy has been changed. We’ll only send volunteers to the Beta Sector, unless things get really desperate. We’re not at that stage yet, and hopefully we won’t ever get there.” He leaned forward again and fixed her with a penetrating gaze. “So, do you think you can tolerate the senior staff, even if you can’t trust them yet?”

  Massoud nodded.

  “Well, I will count that as my success of the day. I got Commander Massoud to keep quiet and to tolerate me. Defeating the Xenos will be nothing compared to that.”

  19. Distance

  M assoud was the first officer of a warship. It was yet another diversion from the path she had chosen in life. The unknowable Xenos had had more influence on her existence than the whole of human society, and it was but one more reason to see them as enemies.

  But what is an enemy? Her enemies were not preoccupied with her existence, nor did they plot against her. To her enemies, she was a nonentity, except in that she was a barrier to what they needed. There was no malice in the Xenos actions towards humans. They were not vengeful. Their military invasion of human space was a pragmatic clearance of an obstruction. They had no empathy for the humans they obliterated, but also no enmity. Humans were as unknowable and as inexplicable to the Xenos, as the Xenos were to humans. It was inconceivable that peace could ever be forged between two divergent societies that could never, even in peacetime, find a framework for the simplest of communications.

  Whatever the feeling of the Xenos, if they possessed feelings, towards humankind, whatever the feelings of the humans towards Xenos, both were antagonists embraced in an existential struggle. Enmity was not necessary where survival called for violence.

  Massoud was fortunate in many ways. She had seen conflict in the opening stages of the Xeno invasion, but little more. The Delta Sector was relatively quiet compared to the true nexus of the war, the Beta Sector. D-SUF had engaged in only limited skirmishes since the Battle of Denison, usually with Xeno surveillance vessels.

  The main body of the Delta Sector Unified Fleet, which Massoud was to join, was on sentry duty, postured before the wormhole that gave access to Denison and the smaller human colonies that lay in its hinterland. Additional flotillas protected each populated planet. These flotillas were formed from the planetary defense forces of the nation-planet, supplemented by Alliance Fleet craft, as dictated by need and the availability of resources.

  Massoud’s heart ached as she sped away from the planet where her child lived and towards the fleet at Dennison Wormhole. For the first time, the massive distances in space weighed upon her instead of giving her a sense of liberty. She sought consolation in the notion that she was hurtling towards her husband, though it grated to know that she would not be able to hold him or be held by him.

  The main distraction from her own emotions was the hodgepodge crew of the Cobalt. She related easily to the experienced personnel, who playfully disparaged each other’s background. Her history as a science fleet officer was often the grist of ribald jesting. She understood the teasing was an ill-disguised test to see how she tolerated criticism. So, she took the verbal abuse and served some of her own in return, but always with a dollop of good humor.

  To those crewmembers who were new to space, she provided encouragement and coaching, but made it clear that she expected a higher level of respect and formality from them than she did from the veterans. Familiarity was a privilege to be earned. Her open manner counterbalanced Capt. Van Berge’s more reserved style. However, despite the two senior officers’ complementary approaches, they struggled to cohere the disparate personalities of the group into a crew.

  Of note among the crew were a handful of individuals who had been equipped with neurological interfaces. The purpose of these devices was to suppress and monitor the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. This was a departure from established policy which disallowed the use of embedded technology to treat mental health conditions. The old policy had prohibited technology with cognitive control functions or neurological connections. However, the desperate need for experienced personnel had overridden the prejudice against mental modification.

  One such individual, wearing the red tattooed dot on his forehead that denoted a cognitive technology implant, was a seasoned war veteran who had witnessed too much violence in the ravaged Beta Sector. His service record spoke of burying charred heaps of children and a period of entrapment with a comrade who screamed throughout her final agonizing hours of life. Jason Prince had the eyes of an old man in a young man’s face. When Massoud met him, she imagined his mother’s first reaction to the premature aging in her child’s countenance. Surely, she would have embraced her overgrown child and desperately tried to comfort him back to youth.

  Prince had seen and experienced more of war than any other member of the crew could bear to contemplate. Even the gung-ho new recruits, who foolishly longed for the fellowship and the bragging rights that combat brought, edged away from the taint that those same experiences had left on Prince. He was brooding, he was bitter, and he was broken.

  For reasons incomprehensible, Prince viewed Massoud as the embodiment of all that offended him. She was an officer, who had unwarranted authority over him. She was soft, a mother whose face lit up when she spoke of her little girl. She had hidden out at the academy while real spacefarers were risking all against the enemy. She knew nothing of loss, war, violence, and the ugliness that was the reality of his life. Only he was connected to the real; the rest of the crew—epitomized by Massoud—knew nothing of it.

  It was during one of those informal
gatherings in the mess, where the veterans lingered after eating their evening meal, that the conversation turned to war stories. A couple of rookies sat quietly among them, listening to the more established spacefarers, with nothing to offer other than a question or two. Prince had not spoken. If his peers had considered his needs, they would not have engaged in such an inflammatory discussion in his presence, but the silent man was overlooked and forgotten as he so often was. Massoud had gone into the mess to fetch some coffee but lingered to listen to, and understand more about, the people she commanded. She remained quietly in the background stirring her drink.

  Prince’s eyes stalked her while a surveillance officer finished his tale of a sensor system that failed and was repaired barely in time to discover a Xeno ship positioning for attack. Prince hardly waited for the story to end before he threw out a question heavy with disdain.

  “What about you, Commander? You seen action?”

  The mess silenced to accommodate his accusatory tone. Massoud felt watchful eyes upon her.

  “The Battle of Denison,” she said calmly.

  The established crew looked at her with interest; the newbies with respect.

  Prince sneered. “What you do? Man a logistics station on planet?”

  The listeners hunched over their plates, scraping their utensils around vacant dishes. Massoud sighed inwardly.

  “No. A weapons console,” she replied in an even tone.

  “Hit anything?”

  “You could say that.”

  “You get hit?”

  “We lost people.”

  “Anyone you actually knew?”

  “Yes. The man I sent to his death. Nearly a hundred people I’d personally trained, numerous academic colleagues, Admirals Biash and Williams, who had visited my home...and something of myself.” She let her voice drift with these last words.

  Prince’s face was still twisted with contempt and intolerance, when one of the new recruits piped up:

  “You were in the Training Fleet!”

  There was a hum of interest around the table, and it overcame the general discomfiture related to Prince’s interrogation.

  “The Massoud Maneuver. That was you?” someone asked.

  “Yes. I suppose so. I didn’t know it had a name.”

  “It certainly does,” said a veteran approvingly. Satisfied smiles spread around the table. The crew was pleased to have a commander who knew how to handle herself. It was the kind of thing that fed confidence in their own potential for survival. However, the warming of the crew to Massoud could only contrast to Prince’s darkening humor.

  “Aren’t you married to Teloc of Denison?” the second newbie asked. Massoud was disquieted. She disliked gaining purchase with the crew by virtue of her famous husband. She wanted to stand in her own right, but she could do nothing but acknowledge the connection.

  “Fucking superior Gnostian,” Prince hissed, not quite under his breath.

  Something snapped. Within an instant Massoud was at and almost on the table, reaching across and pulling the miserable mass of a man partially from his chair. She had yanked on his tunic with both hands. Only by taking him unawares had she been able to move him at all. Their faces were nearly touching, his shocked and hers incensed. She ignored her own surprise at her feat of strength. She had something important to say.

  “Don’t insult my husband! Don’t even go there. Do you understand that, Prince?” She jerked his tunic one more time before releasing him with a contemptuous curl of her lip.

  The onlookers expected aggressive behavior from many members of the crew, but not from their good natured first officer. Their eyes grew large as they watched Massoud draw herself up to her modest full height. She straightened her uniform, sweeping her eyes in warning from one person to the next. However, no one was planning to challenge her. The tattooed patch on Prince’s forehead flushed with heat as his embedded interface went into overdrive. She fixed her gaze on him.

  “This is done between us, Prince. No more sneers. No more disrespect, and absolutely no more half-baked insubordination. Understood?”

  He nodded sullenly.

  “Understood, Prince?” she all but yelled.

  “Understood,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Understood what?”

  “Understood, Commander.”

  She paused, fixing each crewmember with her gaze, one after the other. She was cloaked in magnificent indignation and mesmerizingly fierceness.

  “We are going to war. We will work together. There is no option. There will be no more exclusions. No us. No them. No snideness. No grumbling. No clinging to old loyalties. No keeping the newbies out of the loop. Not on this ship. You people are going to work together as a team. Understood?” She addressed the entire compartment.

  “Understood, Commander,” was the voluble and decisive reply.

  She scanned the crew, casting a final look over their faces. Their expressions told her what she needed to know. They were her subordinates. She was their superior. She had finally disentangled herself from those she commanded.

  Massoud reported this incident to Capt. Van Berge during their routine briefing. The captain looked up from the data he was reviewing and simply commented, “Interesting.” There was no further discussion of the matter between the senior officers, which was quite in contrast to the rest of the crew who reviewed and embellished the incident in the retelling. The ship’s crew began to gel. The cost was to Massoud, who encountered a chilled response when she interacted with her people.

  Notably, one of her onboard relationships did not cool. Contrarily, Prince warmed to her. She could not determine if Prince saw her as a mother figure, a leader, or if he had a needy crush on her. He volunteered ideas and personal stories, each mixed with slanted loyalty to her. She was disconcerted by Prince’s new habit of coming to her to tell of his flashbacks and nightmares, and to complain that the interface made him groggy. These discussions were better directed to the medical officer.

  She had not been truly offended by Prince; her reaction to his criticism of Teloc had been involuntary, springing from her innate need to protect her spouse. She saw Prince as someone damaged, as they all might be someday, by the demands of war, and sympathized with his loss of self. However, her experiences with Prince increased her wariness of neurological devices.

  The origins of the humanity’s distrust of neurological technology lay in events that occurred during the Last War—and that distrust was based on solid foundations. In an effort to improve the reflexes of helm and weapons operators, ship-to-personnel neurological interfaces had been established. However, psychoses proved common among the interfaced personnel, and jittery weapons officers had fired on Alliance ships while they were gripped with paranoia and dissociated from reality. What was worse, others with incipient problems of the same variety were pushed over the edge when they witnessed the friendly fire, and they too responded aggressively. In the most notorious incident, an entire squadron of old-type battleships was lost to friendly fire, without an enemy ship being within sensor range. Neurological interfaces were quickly banned, and the Alliance Fleet developed restrictive policies on the use of any kind of embedded tech.

  In the civilian world, the lack of military research slowed the development of, and greater adoption of, neurological interfaces. Nevertheless, in the realm of mental health, a number of developments had proven cognitive control devices to be useful in the treatment of specific disorders. Historically, when fleet personnel had needed such treatment, they had been given ground assignments. The current policy allowing such individuals to serve in space was a marked change. This new acceptance of neurological interfaces for cognitive control made Massoud wonder if the Alliance was pursuing new research into using the interfaces for ships’ control systems. She would wait and see.

  During her childhood education, the history of neurological interfaces had been used as a key example in her Technology Ethics class. History told of how technology had been adop
ted because it was available, rather than because it was safe, appropriate, or moral. Neurological interfaces were an intimate exploitation of the human psyche to achieve a military end and went beyond the normal exploitations of life and limb for the same purposes. No military need warranted the deliberate sacrifice of a person’s sanity and identity.

  So many mistakes had been made in the past when technology was adopted without ethical review. History taught how the ancient people of Earth had poisoned their atmosphere. They operated personally owned transports powered by combustion, instead of walking. They designed their cities with massive roadways to accommodate this peculiar choice and wasted much of their lives on these roads, damaging their health, the atmosphere, and their relationships. Then there was the epidemic of virtual reality addiction, so severe that a large fraction of the population became no better than drones, leaching off the productive and socially engaged members of society. These famous examples demonstrated a key ethical tenet: Just because something can be done, does not mean it should be done.

  As a result of an increased understanding of the harmful effects of poorly applied science, all jurisdictions in the Alliance had evolved restrictions on the development of technology. How those restrictions were implemented depended on the cultural, societal, and moral perspectives of each nation. Denison had carefully regulated its cities to minimize the need for mechanized transportation and to accommodate massive pedestrian flows. Mecca Six, being an agricultural colony, freely allowed non-polluting private transportation to accommodate the needs of a rural population. Both governments protected the welfare of their populations and planets’ ecosystems in a manner that was judged appropriate by their own people.