A military science fiction author, comes face to face with reality.
-----
“So you see, the NORC remains one of the most secure places in Fenspace.”
The author sat in his leather chair, marvelling at how normal and 'American' the base seemed, despite them being deep in the hollowed out core of asteroid, far out in the asteroid belt. The sense of security soothed after a long journey. Even aboard an armed shuttlecraft, openly travelling under the flag of the United States with fighter escort, tension had run high.
High enough that his short-statured wife had trouble sleeping at night.
She had already protested coming this far out, but writers block demanded a search for inspiration.
“Thank you for having me, Commander McHale,” he returned a heavy handshake, the Commander's lofty rank evidenced by the silver leaf and gold bars on his duty uniform.
“Well, I was always a fan of the series,” The Commander demurred. “Even if getting you this far out was something of a copper-plated bitch.”
The author looked to his wife, he looked just a little uneasy on her petite feet, trying the local gravity well on for size.
“Well, we got a lot of inspiration out on the way here,” he said, wearing a rueful smile. She gave him a dark look.
“Two security alerts!”
“The situation's getting worse,” McHale admitted, with no small amount of regret. “And there's not a damn thing we can do about it until they ask for our help.”
The three sat in his office, sharing the same thought. Why? It seemed like madness. An anarchy. Settlers without the cavalry to back them up.
The Commander's desk-phone rang, it's shrill warble drew a startle from all three present in the office. He picked it up, pressing it to his ear.
“Yes, what is it?”
The author had no trouble hearing the voice of a young ensign – the base George.
“Commander. There's a small craft approaching our security permimeter.”
“What type?”
“Open Boat. Small Rigid.” A pause. “Five aboard.” Another pause. “They're using a morse lamp to signal.”
“Morse lamp?”
Navy?
“Yessir.” confirmed the ensign. “SOS. Ship adrift. Two days journey. ”
Two days in open space. Using a Zodiac boat. To signal by morse lamp. There had to be a story behind this worth telling. Inspiration had just arrived.
–
As it had been the rule of the sea, so it became the rule of space. No-one left behind. Enemies. Friends. It didn't matter. It was the Naval way. No man left adrift to the ocean.
And what were the stars but a different kind of sea? Master and Commander, IN SPACE had been his meal-ticket for decades.
Stories were told of a Flying Dutchman, an old freighter from the early days that regularly ignored distress calls, until finally the wave itself turned against her and her crew, condemning to wander forever out in the black void away from civilisation. Divine punishment for shirking a duty to rescue.
He ran to the docking-bay to meet the new arrivals.
Five spacesuits, standing in a scorched, half-deflated slip of a RHIB, trailing smoke from one engine. It spun inside his mind. What had they done to get here? Was one of them actually carrying a sextant?
Already, he'd fit the moment into his latest novel.
The Grand-Admiral's ship destroyed. Only a few survivors. Crossing open space in the smallest of pinnaces arriving to the surprise of all when they had long been written off as lost. Sure, he'd used a similar device before, but it'd worked well enough. This had the weight of reality behind it – the chance to say 'That's based on a real event' when disbelief collapsed from suspension.
The travellers staggered off the RHIB, barely able to stand. Their suits bore the hallmarks of a fierce battle – burnt in places, scorched in others. The tallest of the five wore a spiderweb of cracks across the glass of his visor.
The author noted they'd patched themselves up with grey bands of Duck Tape.
The tallest helped the shortest off, extending a hand palm-uppermost towards the shorter suit. The weariest still feel to their knees, wheezing. Air Force medics rushed in, not waiting for the order.
The helmet came off the suit, revealing a bruised and battered face, dry scuffs of blood mingling with days-old stubble. Tiredness hung from his limbs as they felt the forgotten pull of gravity.
“Captain Raymond Garret. Space Ship Ciara.”
His voice grated, hoarse and thick.
“Commander McHale,” Commander McHale answered with military precision. “I'll forgo the usual welcome. What happened?”
Garret took a breath, staggered by the enormity of what he'd done, and the relief that it was now over and they were safe on a secure United States facility.
“We were attacked. They ran out of ammunition before we ran out of ship.”
I like that line, thought the author. He could use that.... His pen flicked over in his fingers, scratching it into his yellow-leafed notepad.
--
Four people sat in the guest lounge sinking into sumptuous pleather-foam chairs. Garret cleaned up better than expected, gratefully taking the offer of what the local sailors called a 'Poopy Suit' to replace his battered and torn jacket, with a Rambo blanket over his shoulders.
The story was shared in the lounge, the author adding the background detail his publisher would demand.
The push into the belt had strained the resources of the Great Justice fleets to their limits and beyond. Losses exceeded the replacement rate in men and material, the yards of Haephestus, Damogran, John Henry and Quatt Drives struggling to meet the demands
The then new Blackbird class had only begun to roll off the production lines at Haephestus. The high loss/replacement quotient of lighter fighters such as the too-easily-destroyed Zig had created major logisitical problems for mission planners as they were forced to carefully ration critical supplies of men and material to where they could be best expended for the greatest net effect.
The planners sat and studied specifications and reports, applying what they'd learned from their favourite fictional books to real life. They matched ships stats and estimated battleforce capabilities and pared back battleplans to their malthusian bones, fuelled by the belief that the enemy would be swatted aside with contemptuous ease if they made the numbers line up.
Hard men sometimes made hard decisions. Incompetent men made worse decisions.
Operation Haven One was one such decision.
An asteroid mine in the main belt – one of the earliest - had fallen to a Boskone fleet. Fuelled on the backs of prisoner labour, it fed the furnaces of an enemy yard called Shipwreck Island with high quality heavy-metal ores required for the Boskone 'Accelerator' drive cores. Supplies had to be cut off. A raid was planned.
With no fighters to spare, it fell to the capital ships to push the attack unsupported.
Only the Pirates of SSX could spare anyone. A single squadron. Three ships who turned up expecting a fleet to join them.
SS Argo. SS Asukamaru. And SS Ciara.
Of the three, SS Ciara could not carry enough fuel to make the return trip from the beleaguered asteroid settlement. Once past the halfway point, she could not turn back. A former Peacock-class patrol Corvette of the Royal Navy's Hong Kong squadron, she had passed through an economic crisis, sold off by a crippled socialist State to fund it's dolist masses, into the hands of a band of intrepid privateers to seek freedom amongst the stars.
When ship's Captain, Raymond Garret, received his orders, he summed them up succinctly.
“So, failure isn't an option then.”
When he shared the summation with the Commander the Author and his Wife, Failure had been the only option, the author thought.
The parallels to navel history where clear. Parallels could be drawn between the Ciara's battle and that of the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato's final mission. With barely enough fuel to reach her destination and naval determination, they departed SSX base.
With no fighter cover they were easy pickings for a determined attacker, swarming in waves, biting chunks out of the ship with canon and missile. Her big guns and point defense picked off few, before being picked off in turn. Swarms of radar guided missiles jinked through storms of shell and shot, cracking against armour or bursting through steel.
Ciara alone pushed on, condemned by her fuel tanks and cruel bureaucracy to a kamikaze run.
He still looked tired, head heavy,
The Commander sat there, still bright and fresh, pristine in his working uniform. Plenipotentiary procedures had to be followed.
“Now Captain, you understand, we can offer humanitarian assistance only,” said McHale. “As far as the United States government is concerned, you and your crew are civilian victims of crime.”
Official government policy. Garret stared at the ground in front of him, his expression set hard.
“We've despatched two tugs to tow your ship here for emergency repairs. Medical care will be provided to those who need it. You and your crew are welcome as our guests until such time as your ship can be made ready to leave under her own power."
A tired man trying to raise his head took more than a few seconds to wind up the words. “Thank you.” he ground out.
McHale seemed to understand what the man was actually saying. “If you need anything, Lieutenant Veder outside will see to it.”
McHale left Captain Garret alone with he enormity of what had happened.
His wife broke the silence. “Would you like some tea?”
Garret didn't answer.
The author found his voice, to ask the question that played on his mind.
“Would you like to tell me what happened?”
Garret didn't answer, his head dropped forward in contemplation. The author wondered at his mind, to go from certain death, to desperate risk, to salvation, to sitting and worrying about the crew he'd left behind in the security of the ship.
No Captain would leave his ship by choice.
He wondered if the man had even expected to make it, or had just left to allow the others a chance – a little more oxygen to go around, a better chance of being rescued if rescue bothered to find them.
Now the man had nothing left to do but sit and wait to find out if his worst.
“Is he OK?” the wife enquired.
A rumbling snore gave her an answer.
“He's asleep,” said the author.
“Well. Obviously.”
They both left, retiring to their quarters to give thanks they were alive in a passionate fashion.
--
They missed the retrieval, the docking and the joyous union. By the time they woke, Ciara's remaining crew had been sequestered into guest quarters, awaiting Navy medics. The ship, such as it was and what there was of it remaining, sat in the pressure-dock, awaiting repairs.
Curiousity demanded he go. His lips moistened at the prospect of seeing the aftermath a real space battle.
Ciara waited unguarded, empty. His body bristled as the hatch opened. His breath caught in his throat, a wave of nausea rising up his gorge.
First he met the bodies waiting in the hanger. Wrapped in white. No flags. No glory. No medals. No poppy-blossoms of red, only a torn black tag with a name on it. Vacuum dessicated all. Behind, their home waited, battered and scared, the desperate story of battle carved into the steel one savage wound at a time.
The bridge windows had been smashed in. Paint blistered on the bow where an ammunition fire had raged, black ash smeared in a streak down her flank where the magazine vents had ruptured. The radio mast had sheared at its base, likely taking her fire control with it. Her port point defense battery, a tangled ruin of metal.
Gloves still clung to trigger handle on one of the guns.
Below, the armour belt had buckled inwards, splitting open in three compartments. Dim red lights glowed inside. Her bottom carried at least a dozen puncture wounds. Her port wing had torn at the root. Dozens of scars gouged up the remains of her beltline and hull, showing where missiles hand glanced off.
They'd rolled the ship to angle her armour. Clever.
A ragged hole had been punched through her exhaust, right below the feet of the still-grinning Roadrunner cartoon.
The gangplank allowed him aboard. He thought about turning back. Compulsion drove him forward – he had to know. The two marines on guard didn't stop him. Another civilian. Another guest. The ship hadn't been specifically locked down. It earned no more security than someone's car on a base.
Fire, Oil, Smoke, Blood, Shrapnel, Shit; all waited for him across the threshold of the airlock. He saw where a gash to the hull had been patched with expanding foam bungs. Tools still lay on the deck where lifeless fingers had dropped them. Glass crunched underfoot. Broken pictures. Burned toys, shattered mementoes of life now lost forever, all scattered on the floor.
People had lived here, and made the ship their home. The mess-deck where they'd once eaten meals together had been used as an emergency sickbay. Nobody'd had the chance to clean it up yet.
Cables draped from the ceiling, ends fused and melted. An electrical panel had welded itself together into one solid mass of seared brass and copper, circuit-breakers permanently locked into the battleshort position.
The story fell apart in the chaos of destruction, the linear progression of attack and defence, offensive merged into panicked mess of violence. A thousand times a thousand words came to mind, dozens of battles in dozens of books shone vivid in his mind's eye. Such gleeful literary destruction seemed trivial when faced with the real thing.
Not a dry description on a tan paper page. Not on television, in living colour with a Fox news ticker and a blonde anchorwoman blaming the terrorists. Not even in his own imagination. Military masturbation met the stark reality of real combat between real ships in real space.
The engine room sat sealed off, a faint blue glow rising up from the liquid pooled on the deck. He peered in. One diesel engine lay shattered, gutted for spares with a gas-axe. The other looked to have been jury rigged in some strange way into the drinking water system, rough welded pipework strapped to the ceiling.
A moment of heroism, or self-sacrifice. A moment of desperation and a clever idea. He turned and climbed back up the gangway, through the smashed remnants of the crew's bunkroom, bedding scorched and tossed.
Spilled on the deck, he found one of his own books, stained pink by sprayed fire suppressant. Fourth in the series – The Unmitigated Bastards - his personal favourite. He recalled all the drafts he'd typed through, agonising over the death of the Admiral's husband, or whether the Cashiering scene needed to be shown or just told. The editor suggested leaving it out - but he insisted. It was Stellar's biggest hit series and he knew a good thing.
He picked it up, opening the cover to be met by his own handwriting.
“Happy Birthday, Sean Brady. Enjoy the book.”
His own signature confirmed it.
He remembered the signing. It'd been his only visit to the country. A face flickered through his memory, a red-headed student smiling with his girlfriend under his arm who'd bought the book as a birthday present.
His blood turned ice-cold,
A man known to many for using far to many words, could find only two.
“Oh. God.”
--
The Navy turned out in their dress whites for the funerals, Ciara's surviving crew given basic overalls from the base stores to replace their own, even the grey-furred Catgirl XO with those penetrating eyes, and the black engineer who hadn't been black a few days ago. There'd been murmurs about protocol and proper diplomacy, but the ancient and common traditions of the sea won out. They were all out there together.
Even in the depths of the Cold War, with the American Eagle and Soviet bear at each others throats, the same mutual respect had been granted without thought or hesitation hesitation. One of the little known details of the well known Azorian project to recover a sunken submarine was that the more than just the hardware of the submarine itself was raised to the surface.
The crew were buried at sea with full Soviet naval honors.
In the end, it was offered as an honor to fellow sailors lost in the dark rather than a military honor. No bugler. No flag. No firing party. Nothing but a gallery of chairs for the mourners who couldn't stand, and a podium for an altar. The living remaining, and the dead waiting in the airlock to receive their dues.
The Author's body crackled with tension as the base Chaplain conducted the ceremony. His suit chafed around the shoulders, sweat prickling across his brow.
His wife, dressed as properly for a funeral as she could manage with what shed brough leant over to whisper in his ear.“Is there something wrong with your seat, dear?”
“No honey. It's fine.”
He came for one reason, and that reason crushed him.
Only one name mattered
He had to know. The Chaplain invited Garret up to speak, a few words from the Captain who'd brought them out so far. Garret walked with a limp, favouring his left leg. His body hung with the weight of what he'd just done, bleary eyes struggling to focus.
“Thank you all for coming,” he said in his native lilt, his voice hoarse. “I... He paused for a breath.” When we came up here, we thought we were trying for a different sort of life. A better future. And when the call came forward, we decided to join the fight for that future. It was something worth fighting for.
I hope to God, it'll be something worth dying for.
They were our friends.
Michael Sullivan.
Sed
Tom Carrol
Megan Fitzpatrick
Sam Crean
Xhu Ling
Cammy Freeman
Sean Brady...”
The rest of the list blanked from his mind. The fantasy crashed down. On some tenuous level, he had a connection to that name, a face, a smile, a shared moment that pierced the media veil and made it all real. It became solid a thing in his mind, more than just images on a television screen.
Real people, not just words in a news report.
These things happened in the real world.
“For space is wide and good friends are too few.”
Of all the words Garret spoke those final ones were the ones that stuck with him. They resonated through the rest of the ceremony, weighing heavy on his mind. Commander McHale offered Garret the courtesy of giving the final order.
“Bury the dead.”
The base Chaplain ushered him to his seat with a gentle hand. Garrets fiancee, sitting beside him, clenched his hand, wiping tears from her eyes with the sling holding her other arm. The black-skinned engineer stared out into space with bloody red eyes. The grey-furred executive office couldn't lift her eyes from the deck.
A gentle change in gravity ushered the dead onto their final journey, the Chaplain giving the final prayer.
“We therefore commit these bodies to the deepest of the deep, looking for the resurrection of the body when the stars shall give up their dead.”
The bugler played, a hymn that could be shared by all.
Eternal Father, King of birth,
Who didst create the heaven and earth,
And bid the planets and the sun
Their own appointed orbits run;
O hear us when we seek thy grace
For those who soar through outer space.
--
There was something noble about the wounded ship, inspite of her injuries. He watched Ciara depart, backing away from the dock on one engine. Broken, battered, but still alive and given life by her crew.
What remained of them.
She slipped back, diesel-smoke coiling thick and black from her damaged exhaust, manoeuvring jets pulsing. A friendly escort awaited, just outside the vicinity zone.
She would be repaired and rebuilt, if she could be.
He watched from the public lounge as her pennant unfurled, the Roadrunner flying proudly from a hastily erected flagpole on her superstructure, just below the national colors. She crossed the threshold of the dock, leaving safe harbour for open space.
The radio in his hand crackled.
“SS Ciara, free and clear to navigate.” The ship spoke with a woman's voice he couldn't place. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It was our honor.” McHale answered.
Along the rails below, stood the base compliment.
He watched the doors close again. He stood and he stared, churning it through his mind. The book, and that face. That name. The look in Garret's eyes. Those white figures drifting into the dark.
The door to the room opened behind him, a cool draft carrying the familiar scent of his wife's perfume. She stepped up beside him.
“Honey, I think I know what my next book will be,” he said.
“Don't tell me. She's marooned after her ship is destroyed and has to navigate through open space using a traditional sextant she received and mastered as part of her membership in the Society.”
Not any more.
“No sweetie. I think. This one won't be fiction.”
There were more stories out here, worthy of being recorded. Of becoming history, rather than just memory.
---
Something that's been part of their story since Day 1. But I never found a way to tell it.
Note: What I know about funeral custom could be written on a torn fag packet. But, it's just an idea of a thing for now. This particular even has been a part of Ciara's story in one form or another since day 1..... I just never thought of a good way to tell it. So lets try this. Use an outsider's perspective.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
-----
“So you see, the NORC remains one of the most secure places in Fenspace.”
The author sat in his leather chair, marvelling at how normal and 'American' the base seemed, despite them being deep in the hollowed out core of asteroid, far out in the asteroid belt. The sense of security soothed after a long journey. Even aboard an armed shuttlecraft, openly travelling under the flag of the United States with fighter escort, tension had run high.
High enough that his short-statured wife had trouble sleeping at night.
She had already protested coming this far out, but writers block demanded a search for inspiration.
“Thank you for having me, Commander McHale,” he returned a heavy handshake, the Commander's lofty rank evidenced by the silver leaf and gold bars on his duty uniform.
“Well, I was always a fan of the series,” The Commander demurred. “Even if getting you this far out was something of a copper-plated bitch.”
The author looked to his wife, he looked just a little uneasy on her petite feet, trying the local gravity well on for size.
“Well, we got a lot of inspiration out on the way here,” he said, wearing a rueful smile. She gave him a dark look.
“Two security alerts!”
“The situation's getting worse,” McHale admitted, with no small amount of regret. “And there's not a damn thing we can do about it until they ask for our help.”
The three sat in his office, sharing the same thought. Why? It seemed like madness. An anarchy. Settlers without the cavalry to back them up.
The Commander's desk-phone rang, it's shrill warble drew a startle from all three present in the office. He picked it up, pressing it to his ear.
“Yes, what is it?”
The author had no trouble hearing the voice of a young ensign – the base George.
“Commander. There's a small craft approaching our security permimeter.”
“What type?”
“Open Boat. Small Rigid.” A pause. “Five aboard.” Another pause. “They're using a morse lamp to signal.”
“Morse lamp?”
Navy?
“Yessir.” confirmed the ensign. “SOS. Ship adrift. Two days journey. ”
Two days in open space. Using a Zodiac boat. To signal by morse lamp. There had to be a story behind this worth telling. Inspiration had just arrived.
–
As it had been the rule of the sea, so it became the rule of space. No-one left behind. Enemies. Friends. It didn't matter. It was the Naval way. No man left adrift to the ocean.
And what were the stars but a different kind of sea? Master and Commander, IN SPACE had been his meal-ticket for decades.
Stories were told of a Flying Dutchman, an old freighter from the early days that regularly ignored distress calls, until finally the wave itself turned against her and her crew, condemning to wander forever out in the black void away from civilisation. Divine punishment for shirking a duty to rescue.
He ran to the docking-bay to meet the new arrivals.
Five spacesuits, standing in a scorched, half-deflated slip of a RHIB, trailing smoke from one engine. It spun inside his mind. What had they done to get here? Was one of them actually carrying a sextant?
Already, he'd fit the moment into his latest novel.
The Grand-Admiral's ship destroyed. Only a few survivors. Crossing open space in the smallest of pinnaces arriving to the surprise of all when they had long been written off as lost. Sure, he'd used a similar device before, but it'd worked well enough. This had the weight of reality behind it – the chance to say 'That's based on a real event' when disbelief collapsed from suspension.
The travellers staggered off the RHIB, barely able to stand. Their suits bore the hallmarks of a fierce battle – burnt in places, scorched in others. The tallest of the five wore a spiderweb of cracks across the glass of his visor.
The author noted they'd patched themselves up with grey bands of Duck Tape.
The tallest helped the shortest off, extending a hand palm-uppermost towards the shorter suit. The weariest still feel to their knees, wheezing. Air Force medics rushed in, not waiting for the order.
The helmet came off the suit, revealing a bruised and battered face, dry scuffs of blood mingling with days-old stubble. Tiredness hung from his limbs as they felt the forgotten pull of gravity.
“Captain Raymond Garret. Space Ship Ciara.”
His voice grated, hoarse and thick.
“Commander McHale,” Commander McHale answered with military precision. “I'll forgo the usual welcome. What happened?”
Garret took a breath, staggered by the enormity of what he'd done, and the relief that it was now over and they were safe on a secure United States facility.
“We were attacked. They ran out of ammunition before we ran out of ship.”
I like that line, thought the author. He could use that.... His pen flicked over in his fingers, scratching it into his yellow-leafed notepad.
--
Four people sat in the guest lounge sinking into sumptuous pleather-foam chairs. Garret cleaned up better than expected, gratefully taking the offer of what the local sailors called a 'Poopy Suit' to replace his battered and torn jacket, with a Rambo blanket over his shoulders.
The story was shared in the lounge, the author adding the background detail his publisher would demand.
The push into the belt had strained the resources of the Great Justice fleets to their limits and beyond. Losses exceeded the replacement rate in men and material, the yards of Haephestus, Damogran, John Henry and Quatt Drives struggling to meet the demands
The then new Blackbird class had only begun to roll off the production lines at Haephestus. The high loss/replacement quotient of lighter fighters such as the too-easily-destroyed Zig had created major logisitical problems for mission planners as they were forced to carefully ration critical supplies of men and material to where they could be best expended for the greatest net effect.
The planners sat and studied specifications and reports, applying what they'd learned from their favourite fictional books to real life. They matched ships stats and estimated battleforce capabilities and pared back battleplans to their malthusian bones, fuelled by the belief that the enemy would be swatted aside with contemptuous ease if they made the numbers line up.
Hard men sometimes made hard decisions. Incompetent men made worse decisions.
Operation Haven One was one such decision.
An asteroid mine in the main belt – one of the earliest - had fallen to a Boskone fleet. Fuelled on the backs of prisoner labour, it fed the furnaces of an enemy yard called Shipwreck Island with high quality heavy-metal ores required for the Boskone 'Accelerator' drive cores. Supplies had to be cut off. A raid was planned.
With no fighters to spare, it fell to the capital ships to push the attack unsupported.
Only the Pirates of SSX could spare anyone. A single squadron. Three ships who turned up expecting a fleet to join them.
SS Argo. SS Asukamaru. And SS Ciara.
Of the three, SS Ciara could not carry enough fuel to make the return trip from the beleaguered asteroid settlement. Once past the halfway point, she could not turn back. A former Peacock-class patrol Corvette of the Royal Navy's Hong Kong squadron, she had passed through an economic crisis, sold off by a crippled socialist State to fund it's dolist masses, into the hands of a band of intrepid privateers to seek freedom amongst the stars.
When ship's Captain, Raymond Garret, received his orders, he summed them up succinctly.
“So, failure isn't an option then.”
When he shared the summation with the Commander the Author and his Wife, Failure had been the only option, the author thought.
The parallels to navel history where clear. Parallels could be drawn between the Ciara's battle and that of the legendary Japanese battleship Yamato's final mission. With barely enough fuel to reach her destination and naval determination, they departed SSX base.
With no fighter cover they were easy pickings for a determined attacker, swarming in waves, biting chunks out of the ship with canon and missile. Her big guns and point defense picked off few, before being picked off in turn. Swarms of radar guided missiles jinked through storms of shell and shot, cracking against armour or bursting through steel.
Ciara alone pushed on, condemned by her fuel tanks and cruel bureaucracy to a kamikaze run.
He still looked tired, head heavy,
The Commander sat there, still bright and fresh, pristine in his working uniform. Plenipotentiary procedures had to be followed.
“Now Captain, you understand, we can offer humanitarian assistance only,” said McHale. “As far as the United States government is concerned, you and your crew are civilian victims of crime.”
Official government policy. Garret stared at the ground in front of him, his expression set hard.
“We've despatched two tugs to tow your ship here for emergency repairs. Medical care will be provided to those who need it. You and your crew are welcome as our guests until such time as your ship can be made ready to leave under her own power."
A tired man trying to raise his head took more than a few seconds to wind up the words. “Thank you.” he ground out.
McHale seemed to understand what the man was actually saying. “If you need anything, Lieutenant Veder outside will see to it.”
McHale left Captain Garret alone with he enormity of what had happened.
His wife broke the silence. “Would you like some tea?”
Garret didn't answer.
The author found his voice, to ask the question that played on his mind.
“Would you like to tell me what happened?”
Garret didn't answer, his head dropped forward in contemplation. The author wondered at his mind, to go from certain death, to desperate risk, to salvation, to sitting and worrying about the crew he'd left behind in the security of the ship.
No Captain would leave his ship by choice.
He wondered if the man had even expected to make it, or had just left to allow the others a chance – a little more oxygen to go around, a better chance of being rescued if rescue bothered to find them.
Now the man had nothing left to do but sit and wait to find out if his worst.
“Is he OK?” the wife enquired.
A rumbling snore gave her an answer.
“He's asleep,” said the author.
“Well. Obviously.”
They both left, retiring to their quarters to give thanks they were alive in a passionate fashion.
--
They missed the retrieval, the docking and the joyous union. By the time they woke, Ciara's remaining crew had been sequestered into guest quarters, awaiting Navy medics. The ship, such as it was and what there was of it remaining, sat in the pressure-dock, awaiting repairs.
Curiousity demanded he go. His lips moistened at the prospect of seeing the aftermath a real space battle.
Ciara waited unguarded, empty. His body bristled as the hatch opened. His breath caught in his throat, a wave of nausea rising up his gorge.
First he met the bodies waiting in the hanger. Wrapped in white. No flags. No glory. No medals. No poppy-blossoms of red, only a torn black tag with a name on it. Vacuum dessicated all. Behind, their home waited, battered and scared, the desperate story of battle carved into the steel one savage wound at a time.
The bridge windows had been smashed in. Paint blistered on the bow where an ammunition fire had raged, black ash smeared in a streak down her flank where the magazine vents had ruptured. The radio mast had sheared at its base, likely taking her fire control with it. Her port point defense battery, a tangled ruin of metal.
Gloves still clung to trigger handle on one of the guns.
Below, the armour belt had buckled inwards, splitting open in three compartments. Dim red lights glowed inside. Her bottom carried at least a dozen puncture wounds. Her port wing had torn at the root. Dozens of scars gouged up the remains of her beltline and hull, showing where missiles hand glanced off.
They'd rolled the ship to angle her armour. Clever.
A ragged hole had been punched through her exhaust, right below the feet of the still-grinning Roadrunner cartoon.
The gangplank allowed him aboard. He thought about turning back. Compulsion drove him forward – he had to know. The two marines on guard didn't stop him. Another civilian. Another guest. The ship hadn't been specifically locked down. It earned no more security than someone's car on a base.
Fire, Oil, Smoke, Blood, Shrapnel, Shit; all waited for him across the threshold of the airlock. He saw where a gash to the hull had been patched with expanding foam bungs. Tools still lay on the deck where lifeless fingers had dropped them. Glass crunched underfoot. Broken pictures. Burned toys, shattered mementoes of life now lost forever, all scattered on the floor.
People had lived here, and made the ship their home. The mess-deck where they'd once eaten meals together had been used as an emergency sickbay. Nobody'd had the chance to clean it up yet.
Cables draped from the ceiling, ends fused and melted. An electrical panel had welded itself together into one solid mass of seared brass and copper, circuit-breakers permanently locked into the battleshort position.
The story fell apart in the chaos of destruction, the linear progression of attack and defence, offensive merged into panicked mess of violence. A thousand times a thousand words came to mind, dozens of battles in dozens of books shone vivid in his mind's eye. Such gleeful literary destruction seemed trivial when faced with the real thing.
Not a dry description on a tan paper page. Not on television, in living colour with a Fox news ticker and a blonde anchorwoman blaming the terrorists. Not even in his own imagination. Military masturbation met the stark reality of real combat between real ships in real space.
The engine room sat sealed off, a faint blue glow rising up from the liquid pooled on the deck. He peered in. One diesel engine lay shattered, gutted for spares with a gas-axe. The other looked to have been jury rigged in some strange way into the drinking water system, rough welded pipework strapped to the ceiling.
A moment of heroism, or self-sacrifice. A moment of desperation and a clever idea. He turned and climbed back up the gangway, through the smashed remnants of the crew's bunkroom, bedding scorched and tossed.
Spilled on the deck, he found one of his own books, stained pink by sprayed fire suppressant. Fourth in the series – The Unmitigated Bastards - his personal favourite. He recalled all the drafts he'd typed through, agonising over the death of the Admiral's husband, or whether the Cashiering scene needed to be shown or just told. The editor suggested leaving it out - but he insisted. It was Stellar's biggest hit series and he knew a good thing.
He picked it up, opening the cover to be met by his own handwriting.
“Happy Birthday, Sean Brady. Enjoy the book.”
His own signature confirmed it.
He remembered the signing. It'd been his only visit to the country. A face flickered through his memory, a red-headed student smiling with his girlfriend under his arm who'd bought the book as a birthday present.
His blood turned ice-cold,
A man known to many for using far to many words, could find only two.
“Oh. God.”
--
The Navy turned out in their dress whites for the funerals, Ciara's surviving crew given basic overalls from the base stores to replace their own, even the grey-furred Catgirl XO with those penetrating eyes, and the black engineer who hadn't been black a few days ago. There'd been murmurs about protocol and proper diplomacy, but the ancient and common traditions of the sea won out. They were all out there together.
Even in the depths of the Cold War, with the American Eagle and Soviet bear at each others throats, the same mutual respect had been granted without thought or hesitation hesitation. One of the little known details of the well known Azorian project to recover a sunken submarine was that the more than just the hardware of the submarine itself was raised to the surface.
The crew were buried at sea with full Soviet naval honors.
In the end, it was offered as an honor to fellow sailors lost in the dark rather than a military honor. No bugler. No flag. No firing party. Nothing but a gallery of chairs for the mourners who couldn't stand, and a podium for an altar. The living remaining, and the dead waiting in the airlock to receive their dues.
The Author's body crackled with tension as the base Chaplain conducted the ceremony. His suit chafed around the shoulders, sweat prickling across his brow.
His wife, dressed as properly for a funeral as she could manage with what shed brough leant over to whisper in his ear.“Is there something wrong with your seat, dear?”
“No honey. It's fine.”
He came for one reason, and that reason crushed him.
Only one name mattered
He had to know. The Chaplain invited Garret up to speak, a few words from the Captain who'd brought them out so far. Garret walked with a limp, favouring his left leg. His body hung with the weight of what he'd just done, bleary eyes struggling to focus.
“Thank you all for coming,” he said in his native lilt, his voice hoarse. “I... He paused for a breath.” When we came up here, we thought we were trying for a different sort of life. A better future. And when the call came forward, we decided to join the fight for that future. It was something worth fighting for.
I hope to God, it'll be something worth dying for.
They were our friends.
Michael Sullivan.
Sed
Tom Carrol
Megan Fitzpatrick
Sam Crean
Xhu Ling
Cammy Freeman
Sean Brady...”
The rest of the list blanked from his mind. The fantasy crashed down. On some tenuous level, he had a connection to that name, a face, a smile, a shared moment that pierced the media veil and made it all real. It became solid a thing in his mind, more than just images on a television screen.
Real people, not just words in a news report.
These things happened in the real world.
“For space is wide and good friends are too few.”
Of all the words Garret spoke those final ones were the ones that stuck with him. They resonated through the rest of the ceremony, weighing heavy on his mind. Commander McHale offered Garret the courtesy of giving the final order.
“Bury the dead.”
The base Chaplain ushered him to his seat with a gentle hand. Garrets fiancee, sitting beside him, clenched his hand, wiping tears from her eyes with the sling holding her other arm. The black-skinned engineer stared out into space with bloody red eyes. The grey-furred executive office couldn't lift her eyes from the deck.
A gentle change in gravity ushered the dead onto their final journey, the Chaplain giving the final prayer.
“We therefore commit these bodies to the deepest of the deep, looking for the resurrection of the body when the stars shall give up their dead.”
The bugler played, a hymn that could be shared by all.
Eternal Father, King of birth,
Who didst create the heaven and earth,
And bid the planets and the sun
Their own appointed orbits run;
O hear us when we seek thy grace
For those who soar through outer space.
--
There was something noble about the wounded ship, inspite of her injuries. He watched Ciara depart, backing away from the dock on one engine. Broken, battered, but still alive and given life by her crew.
What remained of them.
She slipped back, diesel-smoke coiling thick and black from her damaged exhaust, manoeuvring jets pulsing. A friendly escort awaited, just outside the vicinity zone.
She would be repaired and rebuilt, if she could be.
He watched from the public lounge as her pennant unfurled, the Roadrunner flying proudly from a hastily erected flagpole on her superstructure, just below the national colors. She crossed the threshold of the dock, leaving safe harbour for open space.
The radio in his hand crackled.
“SS Ciara, free and clear to navigate.” The ship spoke with a woman's voice he couldn't place. “Thank you. For everything.”
“It was our honor.” McHale answered.
Along the rails below, stood the base compliment.
He watched the doors close again. He stood and he stared, churning it through his mind. The book, and that face. That name. The look in Garret's eyes. Those white figures drifting into the dark.
The door to the room opened behind him, a cool draft carrying the familiar scent of his wife's perfume. She stepped up beside him.
“Honey, I think I know what my next book will be,” he said.
“Don't tell me. She's marooned after her ship is destroyed and has to navigate through open space using a traditional sextant she received and mastered as part of her membership in the Society.”
Not any more.
“No sweetie. I think. This one won't be fiction.”
There were more stories out here, worthy of being recorded. Of becoming history, rather than just memory.
---
Something that's been part of their story since Day 1. But I never found a way to tell it.
Note: What I know about funeral custom could be written on a torn fag packet. But, it's just an idea of a thing for now. This particular even has been a part of Ciara's story in one form or another since day 1..... I just never thought of a good way to tell it. So lets try this. Use an outsider's perspective.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
