Observer of the passing parade of life

Just how did we get along before the advent of ubiquitous laptops and cell phones? Can the connected generation imagine days without calling from the car or mall, or not checking email? No, no, this is not a rant on cell phones or how electrical devices are taking over our lives. To be a good observer, one should observe and, if so moved, comment, not rant. Rants are left to social commentators and complainers. I just had a weekend without the DSL working and it was painful to be out of touch, I have to admit it.

That's what made me begin thinking about this. What did I do before the days of email? Of course everything was different then too. None of us had email and we were used to living that way. Therefore, the possibility of service being out was not something we had to face and survive. But when one is out of touch with all those folks and services in cyberspace, then one is truly alone. Strange. How alone does one feel when there are still so many people about one? And yet this is the commonality I've heard when those around me have been unconnected for more time than it takes to walk from one wifi locale to another. It feels so alone not being about to reach out and touch people around the world with a quick note, or to call up any web site to slake the constant desire for information or contact...or to overcome boredom.

My very unscientific and hardly random poll of cell phone users reveals that the largest percent of calls are made because it's "something to do". It "passes the time". Particularly in cars, and the longer the drive, the longer the call.

Are we so bored with everyday life that we need to constantly entertained? Or is it that we need to be constantly stimulated? (See the blog entry for 21 March, "Ordinary Things".) If we need so many things to pass time, that indicts our time and what we do with it. (Me included. It's not an accusation. It's an observation.)

Are we so afraid of being alone that we need to be in continual contact with someone, even if it is just a blog that doesn't react or comment. (But may draw others who do.) So that begs the question is it really fear of aloneness or just intolerance of it? Or can it be that we each think many things we do are so significant that the world needs to be informed? Or that we are seeking (like any other "classic" addict) more and more sensation as we become jaded by what we've been doing the last couple of weeks. New contacts, new sites, new blogs, new Youtube videos, new chatrooms. The study of content of what people most often visit would help shed light on the questions. Perhaps another informal poll is needed. Or not. It wouldn't bring my life to a hideous end if I never figured this one out. Or maybe the people I know will tire of my questions and flame me. Or maybe they will just ignore me. And that would be the worst of all...to be disconnected, alone. Nah, not really. As long as I have my books and writing, I'm never alone, nor lack for entertainment.

"Ordinary" things

Been wondering recently about conversation.

It's hard not to hear people when you are in public places. I get accused of eavesdropping, but it's not that at all. I'm not going out of my way to strain for words through cracks or behind doors. I simply hear people all around me. It's difficult for me to just "shut it out" because of my above average hearing. I hear everything. It's actually frustrating that I can't shut it all out...because I've heard so many things I never wanted to hear.

However, I am digressing from the actual subject here. I hear a lot of people say into their ubiquitous cell phone, "Well, there's really nothing going on...just the same ol' stuff." Some emails filter into my inbox apologizing for taking so long to answer because "I just didn't have anything to say."

For a society that communicates incessantly (cell phones, text messages, email, IM, etc., etc.) so many people claim to have nothing to say. It's not the amount of communication that I'm going to rant on, or the unending use of cell phones. No, not any of that at all.

It's the ordinary, every day things that people consider unworthy of addressing in their communications.

The presence of continuous (24/7) television programming (how many younger people today ever heard of a TV station signing off for the night?) and instantaneous news (it happens, you know it immediately) have contributed their part to this. No, I'm not here to criticize television or the media either. It's simply observation.

People become so inundated with flashy television and spectacular media coverage of breaking news that they walk around in a hyper stimulated state most of the time. One result is that every day life becomes banal and tiresome. That is why the ordinary events of life (which when you think about it are the majority) seem so boring to talk about. Even when someone is reporting on the status of Aunt Tizzy or the nephew with measles, it's passed over quickly as if unworthy of attention. (Unless of course Aunt Tizzy had a spectacular car accident or Nephew Timmy had an extraordinary case of the measles.)

My grandmother used to sit on the porch or in chairs under trees and talk with her friends. That sounds like something guaranteed to bore a five year old to tears, right? That kid would rather be dashing around, going wild with friends. Well, true, at times I did choose that option. But there were many times when I enjoyed listening to them talk...about very ordinary things. Very ordinary. "Got a phone call from Lois the other day. Law...we ain't seen each other in years." "Really? How is she?" "She's just fine. She said she put up 30 jars of beans last week." "She must have a big garden." "They bought the lot next to them so they could have a good one." Quite ordinary.

So why is this of importance enough to me to mention? Observation. I'm a certified people observer. Love to look and listen. You learn so much of human behavior and the human condition. I think part of the joy of that was born in those conversations in the shade in the late summer afternoons. Those people knew how to converse, not talk. There really is an art to it, and they knew it because of the very lack of communication devices and means. They learned how to make time together count because it was more meaningful. Communication was scarcer and so passing on the ordinary events to friends and neighbors was the way to truly learn what was going on outside your sphere. And they were better story tellers too. Knowing how to turn a phrase, the timing of a tale, using the just-so-perfect inflection or small gesture. It added wealth and nuance to a story that is missing from many conversations now.

Certainly you can relate any incident to a friend in any way you choose. However, for fun and a challenge choose something very ordinary (buying a drink at the quick rip) and think about how you could make it into something more. Not by exaggerating or sensationalizing. That would be too easy. How else to dress it up? Aye, there's the rub...and the challenge.

ARESI J2-X USE FMEA-CIL PDR TIM W/ CSERP

Your morning meal, Alpha-Bits. Just add milk. And a $10 prize to whomever correctly identifies to what this refers, and it is a string of real acronyms. Good luck.

Do I have plans to finish what I posted yesterday? I didn't when I posted it. But after reading it over again, perhaps I shall. It would make a good brief story for submission. In the meantime, while I ponder that, here is another fragment that I discovered...

He was slowly aware of something beyond himself and Dathan realized he was asleep…but not quite. He was in the odd state between sleep and wakefulness. Dath tried to convince himself to go back to sleep. Not only for the rest, but also for the escape. He didn’t want to wake up yet. However, he lost the battle and began to become more perceptive. He was aware of the bed beneath him and the blanket over him and the air passing over the skin of his face, forced convection from the ventilation system. He was awake.

One other thing that Dathan was attentive to. His head was pounding. He groaned and rolled onto his back. Then he decided that was not a good idea. Even though he had not opened his eyes yet, the light over the bed penetrated his closed lids enough for Dath to know it would only aggravate his headache to see the bright light. The lanky man rolled to his right side again.

There were quiet sounds all around, hissing, beeps, clatter of activity and quiet talking. None of it was interesting enough to draw much of Dath’s attention. He recognized most of it and knew where he was. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed no one would bother him.

He was about to be disappointed though. The chief medical officer had seen his movements and heard the groan. He stopped what he was doing and came to the bedside.

“Dathan? Are you awake?”

The man didn’t answer. Go away! I’m not ready to face anyone yet. Leave me alone.

“Dath? Talk to me. You haven’t stirred this much since you’ve been here. I know you’re awake.” The doctor paused for a reaction. There was none. “I’m not going away. You may as well talk to me.”

Finally the grey eyes cracked open a bit…and then closed again.

“Only if you turn down that damned light,” Dath said hoarsely.

The doctor dimmed the light over the bed. Dathan slowly opened his eyes.

“My head is going to explode.”

The doctor turned and nodded to his aide who hurried to an adjacent room.

“How do you feel…aside from the headache?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m the chief medical officer. You are required to talk about it, mister.”

“Look, Doc…I’m fine except for the headache.”

“Physically that is.”

“That’s it.”

“Dath…”

But the man interrupted him. He came up on his elbows. “That’s it! I’m fine! Leave me alone!” Then he put a hand to his head and fell back on the bed.

The assistant hurried to Dr. Rhome’s side. He handed the man a pressurized spray syringe. The grey haired doctor pressed the syringe to Dathan’s arm, while holding it in place with his other hand.
“What is that?” Dathan tried to pull away.

“It’s a liquid analgesic. It’ll get into your system faster this way. Should help your headache.” Dr. Rhome looked down at the drawn face of Dathan Lennel. Dathan was one of the most stable and calm men he had ever known. But the doctor had heard the transmissions from his fighter craft when he was attacking. Rhome was surprised to find no obvious injuries to the man when he was pulled from his ship. But he had been in a deep sleep for just over a day…the sleep of exhaustion. Something out there had put Dath through hell. The grey haired doctor knew he would have to find out what happened, but not now. Let Dathan rest some more. He pulled the blanket back up over the still figure and turned to leave.

Dath had closed his eyes as soon as Rhome had answered his question. He didn’t want to face the questions. He didn’t want to face anyone right now. He just wanted to be left alone. But…but it was just as painful to be left with his thoughts as it was for someone to try to pull them from him.

The least he could have done is give me something that would make me sleep too…or at least make me not care.

“I thought the doc would never leave!”

Oh no! Not him. It was all Dathan could do not to groan aloud.

“Hey Dath! You’re a hero, man! You did it!” The wide, open and freckled face was grinning big. Rott’s red hair was a mess, as always. Curly and long, he said it was little use to try to do anything with it. So he didn’t. “You wiped out the Scards! The plague of this side of the galaxy. You destroyed the whole race of the murderous bastards. How did you do it? We’ve been fighting them for months. You go out and fire only a couple of times…and all the ships are gone. What was it? A mother ship of some kind? You got it and the rest self-destructed?”

Finally Dathan opened his eyes. He wanted to slap the happy face, but the poor ignorant bastard wouldn’t understand, and not understanding why he had received the blow, he probably would let it pass off him and not appreciate the true feelings behind it.

“Go away, Rott. I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

“You’ve been asleep for hours and hours. What is it with you? Did something happen to you out there?” Rott looked away, over his shoulder. He lowered his voice. “You know there’s been…rumors going around. Rumor that something did happen out there.” The man paused and licked his lips. “Some are saying…you lost it. That you…you know…went berserk out there.” He paused to see what his friend would say.

“Yeah?” Dathan replied. “Well, you know how rumors are.” Then he rolled over onto his left side, turning his back to Rott.

“You’re…not denying it,” the man said in a hoarse whisper.

“I never defend myself against rumors. You know that.”

“Hey…it’s me, Rott, your friend. I’m not one of the self-serving, butt-kissing gossips on the station. You don’t have to put on an act for me…I thought.”

“I don’t have to play these idiotic games either,” Dathan snapped and was sorry he did. Just when he thought the pounding in his head was lessening, he caused it to flare back up. He covered his face with both hands. “Go away.”

“Hey…if something’s wrong, you can tell me. I want to help…if I can.”

“No one can help me, Rott. I’ve damned myself and I alone have to pay the price and suffer with the knowledge of what I’ve done.”

“What you’ve done? Dath, you ended the war! You stopped it. Do you know how many lives you probably saved by stopping it finally? Do you know how many have died fighting those bastard Scards? You’ve done us a favor! What are you talking about?”

Suddenly Dathan rolled over and lunged. He grabbed Rott’s collar and pulled the man down until they were almost touching noses. Through clenched teeth he said, “I’ve done us a favor? I’ve saved lives? No, I took lives. I took lives. I killed a whole race!”

“But they started this,” Rott said quietly. “We did nothing to provoke their attacks. The Scards started the war. We have a right to defend ourselves.”

Dath sat up in the bed, not letting go of his friend. “You disgust me. Get out of here.” Then he shoved with all his might. “Get out of here!”

Rott fell backward and landed on his buttocks. He wasn’t angry. He was confused and just sat staring silently, the bewilderment showing on his face. Suddenly a door across the room slid open and Dr. Rhome hurried in.

“What are you doing in here? You know no one was allowed in except the captain and the medical staff. You must leave now!” His tone was stiff and annoyed.

Rott got to his feet wordlessly. He took one more look at his friend. Dathan was lying down again, on his back, arm over his face. Rott said nothing in defense of himself. He said nothing at all. The man just walked out slowly.

“Are you all right?” Rhome asked as he came to the bedside.

“Yes,” Dath answered without moving his arm.

“Headache any better at all?”

“No,” he said bitterly. What an idiotic question.

The doctor pressed a button and spoke into a speaker near the bed. “Cere, bring another syringe of analgesic, same dose.”

“Why don’t you give me something really useful?”

“You want me to put you back to sleep.” It was not a question.

“It’s the only way I’m going to be left alone.”

“You can’t hide forever, Dath. You’re going to have to talk sometime. You’re going to have to face whatever it is that you’re hiding.”

~*~

“I’ve tried to hold the captain off as long as I could,” Rhome said. He studied Dathan’s face. “You’re going to have to talk to him now. You’re going to have to tell him whatever went on out there.”

Dath pressed a button and raised the head of his bed. He looked pale and weary. All the rest he had gotten seemed to have done him no good at all. He said nothing.

Rhome walked over to the door. “Captain.”

Captain Jere Pertay walked in, dressed in his casual uniform. He was a medium height man with fair hair. He had his hands clasped behind his back. Slowly he walked to the bedside as he appraised the man waiting for his interrogation.

“You look like hell, Lennel.”

“Yes sir,” Dath answered quietly.

“I heard your transmissions during the fight. You sounded upset. Now you seem like a different man. The doctor says you are healthy…physically, but something else is wrong. I want to know what’s going on.”

Dathan took in a deep breath, slowly and evenly. He had to be in control or he’d never be able to say all he knew he had to without letting his anger and grief spill out.

“The Scards, sir.”

“What about them? You killed them. You’re a hero. I expect a medal and compensation and choice of duty after this.”

“No sir.”

“Excuse me?” the captain said sharply.

“I’m not a hero, sir. I am a murderer.”

“It’s not murder. It’s war.”

“No sir. It was not war.”

“What do you mean? We were attacked without provocation. Each time we have encountered the Scards they have killed every man that they were able to. And…we have never made an aggressive move. Always we are the ones attacked.”

“You don’t understand. I didn’t understand…until…”

“Go on.”

“Until…I…was…contacted by one of them.”

“Contacted? You mean it spoke to you?”

“It tried, sir. It was trying to when I killed it.”

Pertay looked confused. “Why did you try to kill it if it was talking to you? Did it threaten you?”

“No sir. I didn’t know that’s what was going on.”

“Lennel, you’re not making much sense.”

“I know, sir. This doesn’t make much sense. I was ready to fire on a ship. Just as I hit the fire button…that’s when I realized that the Scard was trying to talk to me.”

“Oh, I see. Well…that was an accident. You were already in motion, had already fired. You can’t count yourself a murderer for that.”

“No sir. Not for that. It’s worse. I’m guilty of destroying the whole race.”

“Okay, let’s try this once more, from the top.”

“The contact with the Scard…I don’t think they knew what they were doing to us. It’s not a voice contact. It was…” His voiced died off and he put a hand to his head.

“Another headache?” Rhome asked.

“No, no. I mean…he contacted me…here…somehow, but it was so painful. If I hadn’t killed him…”

“You mean to tell me…that you think that the contact with the Scard would have killed you?” Captain Pertay said.

Dathan looked at the doctor. “The men who have been killed by Scards…what exactly did they die of?”

“Massive bleeding in the brain.”

There was total quiet in the room as the doctor and captain put the pieces together.

Rhome said, “You could tell that the Scard was trying to talk to you?”

“Yes,” Dathan said quietly. “It said…don’t shoot.”

It was a minute before the captain spoke. “Don’t shoot?”

“Yes sir. I believe that they didn’t know that they were killing us with their way of communication. The reason they continued to ‘attack’ is that they were trying to break the barrier…to ask us not to kill them any more.”

“Is that why you broke off the attack?”

“After I killed a Scard that was begging me not to kill him…and I had the pain in my head too, I had to stop and think what was happening.”

“What was all the…yelling from your cockpit?”

“When I realized what was going on…I…allowed one of them to contact me again. I told him he was killing me with his thoughts.” Dath stopped. “Then…I had to kill him…because he wouldn’t pull away.”

“Why did you do that?” Rhome said in disbelief.

“I hoped I could get the message to a Scard…that their communication was dangerous to us. I hoped he would stop…and tell the others. I wanted to try to stop the killing…on both sides.”

“What happened?” Pertay asked.

“I…I’m not entirely sure. The last contact was from a Scard who said ‘We are sorry. We pay for our mistake now.’ And…in less than a minute…”

“The entire fleet self-destructed…”

“Yes,” Dath whispered.

“But…they didn’t know. Why did they kill themselves?” Rhome said quietly.

“All I know is the incredible guilt I felt with that last communication. Guilt…anguish so great that it was crushing.”

“I didn’t find anything physically wrong with you…and I did do a scan of your head.”

“I can’t explain it, Doc. Guess it takes a certain amount of time for it to be deadly. I guess that they could read the thoughts of the one who first contacted me…and they began to figure it out…like I did.”

It was quiet for a moment.

“But…why are we just now finding this out?” Pertay asked. “Why hasn’t any other pilot been able to figure it out? This war has been going on for months.”

“I don’t know, sir. As I said…I told one of them that he was killing me…and I still had to fire on his ship because he wasn’t pulling back. Maybe the other pilots either tried to talk and waited too long…or they didn’t realize it was a communication. I can’t say, sir, because I…can’t talk to the Scards or to the dead pilots.”

“You feel guilty for their deaths.”

“I can’t help it, sir. I just remember that great flood of anguish before… It’s hard to put it out of my mind that something I said caused that.”

“Sir,” Rhome interrupted.

“Yes?” Captain Pertay answered without looking away from Dath.

“It is in Dathan’s medical record that he has tested high in Psi powers. He could be more sensitive to the telepathic attempts because of that.”

“Look into it, Rhome. Find out for me how many of these other pilots tested high in Psi ability. If I have to go forward with this explanation…I want the holes plugged. I have to eliminate all the speculation that I can before I elevate my report.”

“At once, Captain.” The doctor turned to go.

“Dathan,” Pertay said quietly, becoming more informal, “you can’t blame yourself for this. I understand what you are saying about what you felt…but you can’t let that rule you.”

“I appreciate what you are trying to do, sir. But…I can’t forget that we’ve lost a race…an entire race. It’s gone from the galaxy. We never even had the chance to meet them…to know what their culture is like. We don’t know what they had to give to us or to the galaxy.”

“You don’t know that the entire race is gone. What about their home planet? We’ve only seen their ships…small ships. They were not moving to a new location. That was not all the Scards.”

“I want to agree with you, sir…but…I think I understand them.”

“Just from that little contact?”

“The time was brief…but what was exchanged was not. I think that’s why some of the men couldn’t handle it. It was too much for them. They thought they were losing their minds. I am speculating, of course.”

“You mean…you think some of the deaths were suicides?”

“I can’t and won’t say that. I just know what I felt and what happened to me. Sir, the guilt was so incredibly strong from inadvertently causing death…by a simple attempt to talk. They value life. It’s important to them.”

“Do you know where they came from?”

“They called their planet Sesha.”

The captain spun on his heel and walked out.

~*~


Dath went about his regular duties, trying to ignore the stares that accompanied his passage. He knew that Captain Pertay had ordered his statements about the Scards to be kept confidential. No one beyond the captain, Dr. Rhome, and Dathan himself knew of it. So Dath was uncertain if the whispers were about the rumors Rott had told him of or of his so called heroic action in destroying the Scards. However, it mattered little to him now. When he was first out of sickbay and still reeling a bit from all that happened, then it was hard to ignore the men and women pointing behind a hand and whispering. However, he had begun to focus on the Scards and their new mission…and the gossipers fell into the background.

The new mission was to send a ship from the space station to the world of Sesha to see if there were Scards left on the planet. The purpose was two-fold, to find evidence of survivors and to try to communicate with them first before they could harm anyone else with their still not understood means of communication.

Dath had volunteered for the mission. Captain Pertay was not sure that it

***

I dislike titles

I never title things before I write them. I always write first and then the title comes as I write. Rarely a title suggests itself right away. Much more common is for the right word or words to strike me as I write. The hardest part of blogging is titling. Faced with that blank line right away, I often sidestep it with some nonesensical or meaningless thing, as one may have noted.

What is profound this morning? I hope something is. My profundity has been lacking recently. My vision has been tunneled by recent events. I've lost perspective. It's easy to lose any time and hard to recover some times.

Consider:

She slips and trips along the strips down by the ships, as she dips chips into whips and clips the trip short to return the tips.

No, not profound. I just like to play with words.

Xylemious and lithic trajectiles possess the wherewithal to cleft my osseous tissue but compellations will interminably abide innoxious.

I found a story frag I began a couple or so years ago and never finished it...

“Look out!” I yelled, and caught myself ducking, for all the good it would have done. As the ship came over the top of us close…too damned close, it was instinct more than logic that drove me to try to dodge that which I could not dodge. “Helm, track him,” I said through clenched teeth. “He’s so close you can touch him. You’d better not let him get away.” Swinging around, I caught Gunny Wilson’s eye. “Take him out.” The words were uttered as three individual units, not a single sentence.

“Damn right, sir,” Gunny answered, and immediately was one with his weapons control panel.

Rorke snagged my sleeve and pulled hard. It was the way he always tried to ensure that he had my attention. Rorke was a good second-in-command, and a good second-guesser. Of course I gave him my full attention. At least for a few seconds. I couldn’t afford more than that.

“This is madness,” he hissed low, trying to make his comments as private as he could in the circumstance. “You should break off and leave with an intact ship. You know that he can outgun us and outrun us. What advantage do we have?”

That was it. All the time I could afford for Commander Rorke. I pulled away from him.

“Where the hell is he?” I demanded from anyone in the Command Center who could answer the question. Then I dropped my voice. “Noted and logged.”

“But ignored?” the commander pressed.

“There he is, sir,” someone called out as our ship made a turn that brought the intruder back onto our view screen.

“I want to see him at all times,” I insisted calmly, but in a hard voice. The tone I used to let any man know that to do other than I commanded might be the worst choice he’d ever made. One more glance for Rorke and then I had to put my full attention on the attack I hoped would cripple, if not destroy, the enemy. “Not ignored, but not a chance. I can’t let him get away.” Then allowing a tone of desperation to creep in, I added, “I have to do something to show them we tried. You know we’re expendable. They don’t care if we live or die. All they want is this thing stopped.”

“We’re closing the distance, sir,” Lee, the helmsman reported.

“We shouldn’t be able to,” Rorke amended. “He can outrun us. We know that.”

“He’s just drawing us in,” I nodded. “Letting us think we have a chance and then…” I trailed off.

Now my second came and stood directly before me. “And you’re going to walk into his trap? That’s suicide, sir, and it’s also grounds for me to relieve you if you don’t back off. Sir.”

All eyes in the center turned to see what would happen. Sure, I knew he was right. He was right in everything he’d said from his statement about this being madness to saying he had grounds to relieve me. But if I didn’t at least try, Command would have their own grounds to relieve me. It was the perfect no-win situation. But I couldn’t stand losing. I wanted to find the way I could win.

I looked past Rorke. “Continue closing. When we are in weapons range, put everything you have on him…and then run like hell after the opening salvo. Throw a few plasma charges in our retreat path too. Maybe they might confuse his instruments enough to buy us some time.”

“Aye, sir,” helm and weapons responded simultaneously.

“We may not be able to completely outrun, but if we can get the artificial moon between us, it might help our situation.”

“If we can get it there before he destroys us,” Rorke insisted.

“We’re going to try anyway,” I said mostly to the crew of the Command Center. Nearly all of them had gone back to their tasks as I had given orders. Yeah, they knew the score and wanted to help our chances all they could too. That’s why they lost quick interest in the showdown between Rorke and me. Thankfully. Commanding a fighter craft is hard enough without being outgunned, without having my exec questioning everything I did, and without the crew losing trust in me. That was the kicker to it. I didn’t care if Rorke questioned me or disagreed with me. But his extreme outburst in front of the crew was uncalled for. Perhaps justifiable, but still uncalled for. It was the best gift the crew could have ever given me that they’d let it go so easily.

“I know it’s a slim chance, Poul,” I said quietly to Rorke. “It’s the only one we have. We have to try. This bugger keeps coming back because he knows he can get away with it. You know someone’s going to have to take the fall because Command won’t admit their deficiencies.”

“And I’d like to go home and see my wife and kids after this mission,” he countered.

Well, I couldn’t damn him for that. I’m sure everyone on this ship wanted that. I’m sure everyone on the alien ship wanted that too. But we all couldn’t get what we wanted. I held my tongue and didn’t come back with the snide reply my mother always had for me when I was a kid…you’re old enough that your wants won’t hurt you if you don’t get them. Right, Mom. What I wanted most from you were the basic necessities of life. It did hurt when I didn’t get them.

I shook my head. That damned woman was not going to mess with my mind yet again, and especially not now.

“He’s slowing,” Lee told me.

“Okay, then we slow. Cut our speed in half.”

“But, sir, we won’t catch up to him…”

“I know,” I interrupted. “We won’t get our butts blown off of us so quickly either. You’ll get your turn. Don’t be so quick to die.”

“So you admit that is a real possibility?”

I ignored Rorke and moved around him and studied the alien ship on the view screen. Oh, she was a beauty…sleek and slim, just right for slicing through the vacuum of space. I grinned. Funny how we still held all those design ideas sacred. There was some small amount of friction…negligible. It wasn’t necessary to make a spacecraft aerodynamic, unless it operated in an atmosphere also. Still, the smooth, backswept lines were classic and beautiful to the engineer’s eye. She was dark too. Some scattered light from various stuff in orbit around our planet gleamed off the dark skin. No lights. The aliens took full advantage of all advantages.

“He’s stopped, sir.”

“Stop us.”

“Now what?” Rorke whispered behind me.

“We could talk to him.”

Poul laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“You have a better idea?”

“Yeah…blow him away where he sits.”

I turned. “We aren’t in firing range yet. We’d have to get closer. You were the one who didn’t want to do that. You wanted to retreat and let him go.”

“Look, Jim.” Oh, boy. When he used my first name, he was going to get philosophical, and I didn’t have time for a morals debate right now.

“Unless you have something practical and helpful, don’t start that,” I said quietly.

He drew himself up, looking very offended. “I was going to point out to you that if he isn’t going to just run this time, then we don’t have much choice but to fight. If he’s going to stick around a bit, we don’t know that he’s not taking intel while he’s messing with us. We can’t take the chance.”

“Mr. Lee, bring us on a parabolic path toward the alien. Half speed.”

“What are you doing?” Rorke asked.

“Playing a game. Since he is. Make him wonder what I’m up to. If I can keep him off balance enough until we get close enough to fire, maybe we might have that chance to blow him away.” Then to Lee, “But be ready to peel off and run at any second.”

“Yes, sir.”

Poul considered and then shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t have any better ideas though.”

I nodded once. No point in making a bigger deal of it than that. “Let’s go.”

The ship sat perfectly still as we moved in. Then it began to turn a bit as our craft executed its parabolic path…turning to watch us. What the hell was their commander thinking? I woulda given my left arm to know. I grinned. I could always get another left arm, just like I’d had my original one replaced after it was once damaged so badly that it couldn’t be repaired. Bionics were very advanced though and most people couldn’t tell it wasn’t my own arm.

“Jim…”

He never finished the sentence. He didn’t have to. I’d suddenly gotten a creepy feeling. The hair on the back of my neck stood out. That’s when Rorke had said my name. That’s when I saw the light being discharged from the alien craft.

“Hard to port! Full speed. Evasive maneuvers. Get us the hell out of here!”

It took little provocation on my part to get Lee to act. He had us going immediately. The change in direction and speed was so sudden that Rorke and I were thrown to the floor.

After that, I’m not entirely sure what happened next.

“You okay, Jim?”

Was I okay? I didn’t know. Something was not right. I felt pain. I was confused. However, I seemed to feel a sense of relief and then immediately wondered if that was appropriate or not.

“What happened?” I rasped out and then felt like I was in a bad drama holo.

“Take it easy,” Rorke said. “Don’t get up so fast. You look a little confused.” Then he was gone. I could hear his tight voice. “Random course changes, Lee. Keep going. He hasn’t hit us yet. Maybe we can get behind the moon after all.”

Yeah. That sounded right. Hide behind the moon. I remembered having that idea. I rubbed my head, trying to get myself back together.

“Doc’s on the way,” someone called out.

For me? My head was beginning to clear slowly. I still didn’t recall exactly what the hell was going on even though I felt a sense of urgency. That urgency drove me to pull myself up. I had to see what we were doing, and why.

Ouch! My head protested the idea of standing and it let me know it. Objects were moving in my field of view. Objects that shouldn’t be moving. Bulkheads aren’t mobile. If they weren’t moving, and they shouldn’t be, then I must be moving…right?

I felt hands grasping my arms and it was a good thing or I probably would have fallen.

“What…what’s happening?”

“Fenton, put him in his chair,” Rorke said and then I was moving, with assistance. However, I remembered enough to recall we’d been in trouble. I had no idea why, or with whom, or what kind of trouble.

“Poul…what’s happening?”

“Just sit here, sir.”

Hard to argue with that, especially when my rubbery knees wouldn’t support me, and two men were putting me into a chair.

“I think we’re going to make it, sir.”

“Just keep going, Lee. We’re almost there.”

Then everything went black.

~*~

“He’s waking up,” a voice whispered.

Yeah, I was. Was he talking about me? I could tell through my eyelids that the light was too bright. As soon as I cracked my eyes, they ached and teared and I closed them, putting a hand over my face. Then the light level changed.

“That better?”

I was able to get the eyes open this time. My slightly blurred vision cleared slowly.

“Doc?”

“Yeah, it’s me, sir. Your recall in that area seems all right.” Some little nerdy looking guy who’d been next to Doc moved back, and I guess he left.

Sickbay was never my favorite place to visit, especially when I found myself waking there. I hated the place so much that I never even
came to talk to Doc here. I always summoned him to my quarters or the Command Center. An ol’ soldier like me had seen the inside too many times, especially from my back. The first thing I began to do was take stock of myself, trying to figure out how bad, and how long the doctor was going to have me to torture.

“What happened?” I asked when I realized that my recall in that area wasn’t as good.

“Just take it easy, sir. You were lucky. The Command Center didn’t get hit badly.”

“We got hit?” I tried to sit up. Bad idea, and Doc knew it. He pressed me back down.

“Let that be a lesson to you. Now lie still and be a good boy and maybe you’ll knock a day or two off your hospital stay.”

“Hospital.”

That was a bad sign. Doc never referred to the sickbay as the hospital. Did that mean I was in a real one? I focused my eyes on the lined and pale face of our middle-aged flight surgeon. We were all pale. Comes from space duty. The most natural light we see is a couple week leave homeside two times a year. There’s the occasional planetfall and down time on an alien world and a handful of days leave at home spread out around our repair calls at home port. Pale didn’t necessarily mean sick. However, Doc Nedvac looked sick. He looked paler than ordinary.

“Doc,” I whispered. “What happened?”

He licked his lips and ran a hand through his chopped greying hair. “Do you remember the alien ship, sir?”

That connected. I did remember a large alien craft, just like all the others that had come in for hits on our planet and orbiting platforms recently. We still didn’t know who they were or why we were the object of their wrath. But we’d spotted one coming in and were going to, at least, chase it away, at best, blow the sucker up.

“Yeah.” I paused, searching the doc’s face. Too much worry there. “He got us.”

“Yes, sir. We nearly got away…but you know, they are faster than our ships.”

If I’d felt a little fluttery in the stomach when I woke, now I was sick as a dog. My stomach churned and I felt a nauseous wave break over me.

“Doc…how bad? What happened?” I picked my head up from the pillow and reached out a beseeching hand. I noticed it was wrapped in white. The left hand was gone. The left arm was gone. What the hell else had happened? What about my crew? Nedvac said the Command Center hadn’t been hit hard. If I was like this, what about the part of the ship that had been hit hard?

The doc stepped closer, ready to push me back down if I tried to sit up again. “Take it easy, Cap’n. You’re not going to help yourself any by hurting yourself more.”

Damn him. This delay tactic of his when he had bad news had always annoyed me, and I’d chewed his butt out about that more than once.

“If you want me to take it easy, start answering my questions, Mister, or I’m coming out of this bed and make you eat those glasses that never stay up…to start with.” Oh yeah, that was good. I always managed to sound the toughest when I was the weakest.

“The ship took a couple of hits. Lower side got it the worst. Engineering…” He shook his head. “Upper decks seem to be mostly just shaken up from the beating the lower decks got.”

“Shaken up?” I repeated as I held up the nub of the bit of left arm I still had.

“It’s okay, sir. You didn’t lose the arm. It was banged up enough that they had to remove it for repair or replace. Don’t know yet which it will be. Bionics is still assessing what they removed.”

Of course. I should have guessed that possibility also. I just wasn’t thinking straight, and how could I right now? I rubbed my face with the bandaged right hand, or tried to. It hurt enough that I stopped before Nedvac could reach over to stop me.

“Report,” I said firmly. “Status of my crew and ship.” Being firm was part of what you did as captain, especially when you needed information like I’d just demanded. It sure was hard as hell to do convincingly when your head hurt and you felt like you were about to puke all over yourself.

“Ship was towed to space port for assessment. After the two hits it took, the aliens decided to take off. Guess we scared them, huh?” But there was no humor on his face. “Crew…forty-seven dead.”

I closed my eyes. Yeah, I was gonna be sick for sure now. Forty-seven people had depended on me to make the right decisions and I didn’t. It wasn’t the first time I’d lost crew members, but it was never easy, and you never got used to it no matter what those old doddering, but famous, generals told you in the great lecture halls of the academy. They would give you the kind of inspiring lecture that a general was expected to give, and then when the awe and entourage was gone, the regular instructors would bring you back to reality…but even they couldn’t prepare you for a moment like this one.

“Thirty-four had serious injuries. The other sixty-two had minor or no injuries,” Doc went on dispassionately.

“Poul?”

“He’s serious, but he’s gonna be okay, Jim.”

Now I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The doc almost never used my first name unless he had really good news or really bad news.

“How bad?” I had to figure out what the doc really meant.

“He’s mostly just banged up. You know…getting thrown around when the ship takes a hit.” The man shook his head. “Is this some macho contest that you two have going…to see who can take it the most? Never did understand why you couldn’t sit in your command chair, strapped in, instead of…”

“Shut up,” I interrupted…but quietly. My headache wasn’t up for this rant. “What about you?”

Doc formed a quirky little wry grin. “I was lucky. I was in the lift coming to the Command Center. All I had to do was hit the deck and roll.” Then the smile was gone quickly and he put a hand to his back and rubbed. “Damned medical kit. I’ll be okay though. No sweat.”

I suddenly felt very tired, like the world was about to collapse on me. I heard myself exhale noisily.

“You need to rest,” Doc said. “I know you won’t though. But eating yourself up over what happened won’t bring anyone back. I’m going to order up a sedative.”

I uttered a quiet expletive. I hated those damned drugs. I always felt worse after a drugged sleep.

“I know, but it’s for the best, sir.”

~*~

I was just as curious to hear this as the Board of Inquiry was. I had gained back all the memory of the incident that I was going to. Curiously, Commander Poul Rorke had studiously avoided me not just at the hospital, but afterwards. And since we didn’t have another ship ready to outfit, our command was inadvertently helping him avoid me as we both had to work up our separate reports and other associated paperwork to finally lay all the men and women to rest, and get the survivors evaluated for fitness for duty, or possible re-assignment. It was personally gratifying that only a couple had to be re-assigned because of post-traumatic stress disorder. Since I didn’t have complete recall of the events, I feared the worst, including losing my crew. And my command.

I’d stayed awake late into many nights trying to reconstruct what had gone wrong, but it was a no-go. I remembered beginning to chase the alien craft…and after that there was little that was clear. Mostly I remembered images and feelings. The sight of bright light coming from the ship…what was that? Common sense suggested it must have been a weapon of some sort. My intuition agreed with that assessment. I remember feeling frustrated and angry, but about what exactly? Our apparent lack of ability to get away?

I unconsciously rubbed my forehead. It was a habit I’d adopted for some reason. With a laugh I’d told myself it was like trying to bring a genie from a lamp. It never made the memories appear though.

A tone sounded and the movement of the people around me woke me from my reverie. I was the last one on my feet as the board members came into the room and filed behind a long table at the front of the room.

Five aged and venerable men, extremely top ranking officers all. And one woman. She was significantly younger and in a uniform of sorts, the company issue dress coveralls from the contractor who’d built the ship. I’d never met her, but I’d heard a great deal about her. She was one of the designers of what we lovingly called our “hunk of junk”. But more, she didn’t just sit at a desk and put theory to simulation and feed the designs to builders. “Rita Wrench” liked to walk the shop floor and see how her ideas took form and see practically why they worked the way they did. Rita McCoy was well respected in the service and she’d earned the highest praise that a woman could among male engineer co-workers. She had balls. And she wore them well. Rita had escaped being labeled that other thing that most assertive women were tagged with…bitch.

All the proper and required preliminary stuff was read and announced and checked off and recorded by the order and regulation following officers, while Rita looked on carefully, not looking overly interested or overly bored.

And then finally they began.

~*~

“No, I don’t recall,” I told the chairman of the board as he pelted questions at me. “The last clear memory I have is spotting the ship on our scopes and giving the order to begin pursuit.” Absently I rubbed my forehead. “After that I have a gibberish of images…that I’m not even sure that I can put in chronological order.” I let my hand drop. “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s the best reconstruction of events that I can give you.” I paused. “Unless you want me to tell you the tidbits I do remember.”

The slim old man was toying with a stylus. If you let his wrinkled face and white hair fool you into thinking he was a doddering old man who needed to be retired, you were a fool indeed.

“Since those tidbits, as you call them, are not very complete and by your own admission, not necessarily chronological, we’ll pass on that at the moment. Perhaps later, as other facts come to light, you might be useful to us then.” He dropped the stylus on the table and leaned back. “You may step down.”

I nodded, picked up my hat, and stood. I’d never been in this situation before. I didn’t know if I should salute the board or not. If it weren’t for Rita, the answer would have been obvious, at least to me. Saluting civilians was just not done. However, there was more brass at that table than there had been in the skin of my ship. So I saluted and then returned to my seat.

~*~

“Well, I think the best indicator of our major actions is the log and the automatically recorded video signal from the cameras on the bridge, not to mention the data recordings from all the instruments in the Command Center,” Poul Rorke told the board.

“We have studied it,” General Corsair responded. The man at the left of the table looked sour to be told how to do his job by a mere commander, a man maybe half his age. “Of course, it does not provide answers to all our questions, Commander. That is why you are here.”

“I’m sorry, sir. It was not my intention to be insubordinate. In a tense situation, I confess that I might doubt my own recall. I merely wanted the board to have facts instead of panicked remembrances.”

“Panicked?” Rita spoke up. “You panicked, Commander?”

I knew Poul Rorke well. I could tell that he hated being nailed by that question, and by a woman. Not that I was a chauvinist, but Poul was. To him a woman was only good for a handful of things and questioning him was not one of them. He squirmed for a moment. Not much, but knowing him the way I do, it was so obvious to me.

“It’s hard not to become uncertain and fearful in such a situation, ma’am,” he said evenly.

“Of course, I understand that. But you said you panicked. Is that accurate or not, Commander?”

He toyed with his dress uniform hat for a moment, looking at it. “No ma’am. I might have been…very concerned, and surprised by some of the things that happened, but I believe I was in control of myself the entire time.”

“You believe so.” Then before Poul could try to alter the picture she’d just constructed of him, Rita said, “Please answer the general’s question.”

And so for the first time I got to hear Poul reconstruct the events of that day, that moment. I could tell he was reliving the moment. I saw it on his face.

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