"Groundless
prejudices and weaknesses of conscience, instead of tenderness, mislead too
many others, too many, otherwise good men."
Thomas Sprat.
New Zagreb, Planet
Arda III, Arda System
It was an early, warm and still morning—beautiful in every
respect with shimmering leaves reflecting the sunlight of a cloudless sky. Soren rolled in his bed and opened bleary
eyes towards the sounds of birds chirping beyond the slats in the small garden beyond
his bedroom window. Stretching an arm he reached for his wristwatch and checked
the time: 7:45 AM. With an exasperated sigh he flipped his legs off the side of
the bed and reached for his undershirt on the floor beside the nightstand. In
the automatic fashion of routine he worked his arms through its sleeves,
slipped his feet into a tired looking pair of sandals then stood to open the
wooden shutters in his bedroom to the garden beyond. Whereas the sun struggled through to the room before, Soren welcomed the rich kiss of its
warmth and the accompanied birdsong as the busy sounds of New Zagreb filled the
room behind him. The hint of a breeze tickled his face and he stretched his
arms out wide in a stretch as the last eddies of sleep slipped free from his
mind.
Slack-jawed he turned and looked at the disarray of his
bedroom, the result of weeks solely spent in the grind of 16 hour shifts, 7
days a week treating those in the armed services flooding into Grmek Memorial
Hospital.
“And weeks longer at this rate,” he mused out loud to
himself.
There was no estimate
on when the wounded from the offensive at Casamir would slow down. Grmek reached
capacity a week ago and even now the lesser medical facilities in New Zagreb and
across the rest of the sparsely settled planet were piling up with wounded from
the conflict dozens of light-years away on the front.
Soren brushed his sandal through some dirty laundry on the
floor and reached down to pick up a shirt and gave it a cautionary sniff before
sliding his arms through its wrinkled sleeves. Behind him and beyond the open window
his mind was only slightly cognizant as the sound of birdsong stopped and the
handful of birds in his garden’s young oak took to the sky in a throaty song of
haste. He raised an eyebrow at the change and glanced over his shoulder as he
struggled with the small buttons at his collar.
He threaded the last button with a push of a clumsy thumb
and paused as his body was unexpectedly silhouetted against the wall by a
nearby flash. It was as quick and fleeting as flash from a camera and Soren
looked back over his shoulder as if to check for a voyeur’s camera which might
had been candidly taking video of his morning routine. He stood quiet for a
moment and searched the cloudless blue depths of the sky—but no obvious answer
presented itself.
With a shrug of his shoulders he tugged down each sleeve
over his wrists and shook his watch free from beneath the cuff of his shirt to
check the time—but the display was blank. His face wrinkled with indignation at
the bothersome device and he turned around and strode to the window as he
unclasped the watch from his wrist and held the reset button underneath to
restart it. He flipped it back and forth in his hands watching for the telltale
sign it was rebooting but it offered no response. Frowning, he slid it in to his
shirt pocket and looked to the floor with an exasperated sigh in an effort to
purge his mind of the inconvenience and focus on his next pressing goal:
slacks.
Soren bent over to pick up pick up the previous day’s
still-passable pair of khaki’s but stopped mid-stoop as he felt the hairs on
his arm inexplicably begin to rise. He turned to look back out the window and
reeled back as a blazing pillar of light came into focus dead center of New
Zagreb’s Central Business District. It lasted but a second but at its zenith it
pulsed with a violent amethyst light, which upon reaching its point of contact
threw up geysers of dust, debris, and permacrete shards across the city.
The pulse had been akin to staring unprotected into the arc
of a commercial-grade torch a few inches away from the face upon ignition. He
fell backwards onto the floor and turned away from the window to dig with the
heels of his hands at his eyes in an attempt to rub away the violet line that
had burned down the middle his vision.
A split second later Soren’s room lit with another more pulses
of light followed by the snap-hiss and a crack of thunder which rocked his
apartment. Leaves, mulch and debris blew in from the open window and mixed
among dimly lit motes of dust which floated gently to the carpet. His nose
flooded with the smell of burnt ozone and he dropped his palms and blinked at
the hazy room of milky forms his vision could barely muster. Stumbling to his
feet and reaching out he clumsily grabbed the wooden slats to the window and
slammed them shut. His forehead against the slats, he allowed himself a moment
to try and blink away the tears and immense pain that began to well deep behind
his eyes.
Soren forced a deep breath and closed his eyes as his heart
sank to the pit of his stomach and his mind began to catch up on all the
possibilities. He stammered loud enough so he could hear himself over the gusts
of wind battering against the slats of the closed window, “Photokeratitis…son
of a bitch--what in the hell is…” and he paused-- the wind had stopped now and
was replaced by the sound of a city in calamity.
Alarms wailed from the shockwave that proceeded the two
subsequent blasts and joined the cacophony of ambient misery from the nearby
city blocks. Soren became aware of the moans and cries emanating from the open
windows in his apartment and he pushed himself away and stumbled through his suddenly
shadowy world towards the hallway and in to the living room. He spread himself
for balance in the doorway when his world lit in two more subsequent snaps of
searing amethyst light.
These blasts were much closer to the apartment—the second
round of a rolling barrage of incredible energy hell bent on leveling the city.
Soren’s knees buckled and sent him to the floor as his skin seemingly erupted with
fire across his body. He violently exhaled as pain tailored in exquisite detail
within the electromagnetic spectrum coursed through nervous system and
convulsed its way back out of his body. The two shockwaves that followed rocked
his apartment below as if he lay adrift on a boat at sea. He tore ineffectually
at his clothes, teeth clenched, as the electric pulse ebbed out of his body and
the fire prickling across his skin subsided.
The wind that followed died down seconds later and the
ringing in his ears subsided moments after that. The throes of a city in pain
where much closer now than before—the creaking groans of the city mixed with
the howls of pain from all around him. He
willed himself over on his back as his nervous system fought for control and,
after what felt like an eternity, he willed his lungs to fill with air once
again.
Soren lay in the eye of the storm with fleeting and
exasperated relief. His mind raced with the primal ecstasy of lungs full with
fresh air—of a burning in his blood which subsided with each subsequent breath. His mind flashed with thoughts of the
hospital downtown, of his coworkers and it’s patients. He flashed with the
memory of family, hot summer days, a love, and words left unsaid.
3,000 kilometers overhead magnetically suspended plasma encased
inside a polymer bottle locked into place. Batteries of lasers encircled around
a heat-stained barrel fired into the atmosphere of Planet Arda III directly in
orbit over the capitol of New Zagreb. In less than a second the lances of light
superheated the surrounding atmosphere into a kilometers long channel of plasma
while computer systems released enormous currents of electricity coursing from
capacitors deep inside the ship to the encapsulated plasma. Savage amethyst
energy blossomed and was cast through the vacuum of space and into the channel of
atmosphere which delivered its annihilation to the denizens of New Zagreb below.
In the blink of an eye Soren Georg, second of three sons,
resident surgeon of Grmek Memorial Hospital, boyfriend and mentor witnessed one
last flash then was aware no more.
RSN Katsbalger, in orbit
over Arda III.
Tymon Leszek blinked, folded his arms behind his back and
released a tightly controlled sigh as he peered out the large amorplas viewports.
Every thirty seconds the forward battery of the Katsbalger’s main armament
pulsed and cast violet pyres of plasma down over the city of New Zagreb below. A
second later in sequence the Flameberge, one of the Katsbalger’s sister ships,
did the same. With each subsequent pulse the armorplas glass tinted, automatically
adjusting its brightness based on the large amounts of ultraviolet radiation
that poured into space around the ship each time its forward battery was fired.
Within seconds the tinting would once
again return to normal so as to offer as true a picture as possible of the
space around the Katsbalger for those present on the bridge. Without such
protection each pulse of plasma would blind an unprotected eye.
To Tymon and to those on the bridge however, it created a
surreal rhythm as the bright sapphire and emerald of the planet’s reflected
light cast dark shadows against the bulkheads when either ship was recharging its
capacitors between shots.
How belittling, Tymon thought, that such an oddly relaxing
pattern held such utter ruin for those below. He pulled his eyes from the
spectacle playing out in low orbit and turned back to approach the holotank centered
up off the floor amid the middle of the bridge.
He was unaccustomed to all this, he thought-- this ship, the
bridge, and perhaps most importantly, the crew. The enlisted about him hummed
and moved with a buzz of energy he’d come to expect prior to a large fleet
action and not the small terror operation this had come to be.
“Sir.” Lieutenant Commander Carol Natalka interjected at his
side, “Rapier reports she in position
and no response has yet been detected from Charter Orbital Defense.”
Tymon shook his head to chase away the thoughts and nodded
to his executive officer, “Perfect—thank you Carol. Ask them to remain on
station as planned and report in as soon as the system defense forces wake up.”
Natalka responded with a curt nod which bounced a short
blonde natural curl beneath her officer’s cap then began to sweep back to her
communications console before she responded, “As you command, Captain.”
Tymon pursed his lips at the back of his executive officer’s
head and mused to himself, “I really need to work on her formali—“
“Something the matter, Captain?” Legate-Lieutenant Theodor
Gotthold quipped before Tymon could complete the thought. The shorter hawk-face
man spread his wrestler’s hands across the bevel of the holotank and leaned
into Tymon’s field of view.
Tymon paused in thought, turned and leaned against the
holotank in-turn, arms spread before him. He spoke just loud enough so that his
executive officer could hear as well, “I was just thinking to myself how nice it
would be to break Lieutenant Commander Natalka’s habit of using my formal title
in all occasions, Legate-Lieutenant Gotthold.”
Theodor Gotthold smiled insincerely and turned to look at
the woman giving orders in the communications bay, “Such informality does not
breed professionalism, Captain. I’m sure that Lieutenant Commander Natalka did
not graduate at the top of her class at Raven’s Citadel by omitting the respect
due to her superior officers.”
Tymon raised a corner of his mouth in a smile, “Her professionalism
in addressing an officer hardly matters in—“
Gotthold cut him off when he leaned a bit farther into the
holodisplay and projected his voice to Tymon alone, “No, but it does matter,
Captain! She’s an officer of your watch, and how she chooses to project herself
to the crew…”
Tymon raised a hand amidst the ethereal forms floating among
the holotank and silenced the Katsbagler’s liturgically-appointed commissioner,
“I know what you’re going to say Theodor, and let’s agree to disagree,
alright?”
Legate-Lieutenant Theodor Gotthold glowered at Tymon for use
of his first name and rocked back onto his heels to stretch himself out into a
taller stance, “This isn’t the Republic Navy, Captain-- and I’d urge you since
accepting this commission, among the other lapses of your judgment, to respect
the protocols of the Rense Naval Forces.”
Like he had much of a choice in the commission, Tymon
thought to himself—it’s not like those captains who rejected the offer for
Rense Naval Commission ever found themselves occupied with more than
garbage-hauling Merchant Marine after the fact. Then again, Tymon thought, that
might not have been a bad idea—at least a skipper among the Merchant Marine
didn’t have to worry about explaining every decision to his liturgically-commissioned
overseer. Tymon was a religious man, but the Church of the Dramos Angels took
an intensity to their appointed services in the Rense Naval Forces that seemed
borderline insane sometimes.
The ambient lighting of the bridge dimmed once more as the Katsbalger
hurled another amethyst pyre of plasma at the planet below. When the light
returned Tymon met Gotthold’s eyes but spoke over his shoulder to his executive
officer who was trying to do her best to ignore their exchange, “Carol—could
you remind us of today’s ops plan?
Natalka blinked and quickly shared a look between, her
eyebrows every slightly furrowed before responding, “Your plan for the
operation currently under way, sir?”
Tymon nodded and triggered a control which spun the tactical
view of the holotank away from the planet to a view of the local system. “Yes,
Carol. Keep it short and sweet.”
Natalka stood from her console and locked her hands behind
her back as she looked upon the display now focused on the local planetary
plane of the Arda system, “Sir. It was your operational plan which called for
Task Force 482 to enter beyond the heliophase of the Arda system and apply
thrust so that we could coast ballistic into the system to avoid immediate
detection by the enemy’s gravitic sensors.”
Tymon kept his eyes locked on Gotthold and nodded with the summarization
thus far.
Natalka continued, “With our passive stealth and ECM systems
and all unnecessary emissions to a minimum we were able to intercept Arda III
and enter orbit without being detected. The Rapier
was dispatched to high polar orbit to cover our own passive sensors blocked by the
planetary body of Arda III while the Katsbalger
and Flameberge began bombardment of
New Zagreb.”
Tymon reached out and spread his hands across the bevel of
the holotank again and turned to Carol Natalka as the lights around them once
again pulsed, “Succinctly put, Carol—and would you call this a standard
stratagem of sieging of an enemy asset in enemy controlled space?”
Carol furrowed her brows a bit at the question and shook her
head, the lone curl under her cap bobbing, “No, sir.”
Tymon raised his eyebrows and smiled coyly, “And have you
ever heard of such a maneuver like this before, Carol?”
Another shake, “No sir.”
Tymon turned around and faced Legate Gotthold once again, “This
was a trick I learned during my time with the Republic Navy—it’s not very well
known, a bit dangerous and very risky, but it works when you’re given insufficient
forces and very little intelligence for what otherwise amounts to a terror
action.”
He paused and looked between Natalka and Gotthold, surprised
he hadn’t yet been interrupted by the later. “So I guess what I’m trying to say
is commissioned Republic officers in the Church’s service have plenty to offer.
I’m sure you can hardly dispute your rewards, Theodor.” Tymon then extended a
hand out towards the armorplas viewports to Arda III suspended below. Obsidian
plumes of smoke and debris were visible from the planet, each of which
contributed to the dark clouds which now loomed over the capital of New Zagreb.
Tymon considered their response to his words and swallowed a growing knot in
his throat, “Well over 12 million dead or dying at what is indisputably one of
the Charter’s largest medical operations within twenty light years of the front.”
If Hell existed, Tymon knew he’d earned his ticket after
this operation, he quipped silently to himself. At least the Republic Navy
rarely wasted time on purely civilian targets. It never weighed heavy on his
mind until he was handed this operation—a venture solely to break the civilian
medical infrastructure of their enemy. I guess this is how the Rense Naval
Forces spend their time, he mentally offered.
Gotthold cleared his throat in barely suppressed vitriol and
brought Tymon’s attention back to focus, “Remember Dramos, Captain! We
certainly can’t question the efficiency
of your plan —but your words and manner has left much to be desired.”
Tymon smiled and wagged a finger at the Legate, “Now now,
Legate—we probably shouldn’t argue in front of the kids.”
A few on the bridge chortled as they tried to stifle a laugh
then immediately returned to attention at their stations as Theodor Gotthold
gave the deck a hawkish glare.
Before the Legate- Lieutenant could respond Carol Natalka
looked up from her display with a hint of dismay and tapped a few keys to synch
its information with the holotank between the two men. Angry, crimson glyphs, the
representation of enemy naval forces, began to appear on the far side of Arda
III. Natalka broke the brief silence, “Captain, Rapier’s gravitics report an
enemy task force has lit off their drives and are approaching off orbit from
the moon opposite our task group on the other side of Arda III.”
Tymon clapped his hands together loudly and suddenly enough
to make Gotthold jump in his skin. He turned away from Gotthold to look back
out towards the view of Arda III spinning gently beneath the Katsbalger, “It’s about time! I thought
they were moving a little slow. Strength?”
Carol double checked her plot, “Rapier reports drive strengths that match our records of Sentinel
class cruisers and Marshall class battlecruisers. A squadron each.”
Tymon nodded and turned back around to his executive
officer, “That’s it for today’s operation then. Call the Rapier back to formation and instruct the task force to begin
warming up Fold Space Drives. Let’s pull ourselves clear of Arda III's gravity well,
fire off an “au revior” to our Charter friends, and head home.”
Carol Natalka began typing furiously at her panel, “And the
target for the torpedos, sir?”
Tymon began but Gotthold quickly interjected, “Target a
spread among the remaining civilian infrastructure missed in the bombardment,
Lieutenant Commander.”
Tymon shook his head and moved his hand out in a cutting
motion, “Negate that order, Carol. They've had enough for one day.” Tymon looked
into the Legate’s eyes and noted the righteous fire of indignation coming
alight as he began to speak again, “I’m the Captain of this ship and have
operational authority over this task force until we return. We will not target
fire on additional civilian infrastructure. Target one of the cruisers
instead—surprise me on which one.”
Natalka sat mouth agape as she watched the now silent
exchange between her Captain and the Legate-Lieutenant. Her fingers began
working after the stretched eternity of a second and she looked sheepishly back down to her console, “Yes
sir—its been ordered, sir.”
Gotthold burst into motion around the holotank and stopped inches away, face to face with Tymon, “What IS your problem, Captain Leszek?”
Tymon upturned the corner of his mouth in a lopsided boyish smirk as he met Gotthold's gaze, “I have a persistent case of scruples, Legate-Lieutenant.”
