War Without Victory

WOUNDED WINGS

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” It was an old saying amongst naval officers of the Adrion Defense Fleet. A way to quell the superstitious. Technicians who worked within the confines of the ships’ engine bay, studied the star warp drive to make sure it ran smoothly without incident would often be found saying it to each other. It was their desire that by saying it, they were ensuring their success of not being blown apart. After all, a split second was all it took to let out a scream but by that point you were already in the vacuum.

It was something that the captain of the Crusader was thinking about as he stared at the images before him. The images of frozen screaming death. The images of the last battle in a horrible war.

The bloody, long, horrific civil war that stretched across the Terran Republic. Four years prior the Terran Republic had celebrated its eightieth year of independence from the deceased Ango-Sux Star Empire. Now, the unified states had splintered into the Republic and the Confederacy.

Member planets, once allies during the Colonial Wars, were now bitter rivals, the greatest being that of Earth and Valiant Prime. The Terran and Valiant animosity was the true spark of the conflict with Valiant Prime being the first planet to ever leave the Republic.

Now, the war was going to conclude with a Republic victory. It was already decided, the only matter still left to be determined was whether or not Richard Grey would live to see the end.

The final battle of the war was to siege and destroy the spatial defenses over Valiant Prime and force them to surrender. However, Valiant Prime was not giving up as easily as the Admirals of the Republic had told him. Instead, for every two ships that the Republic destroyed, one of theirs fell. It was a numbers game, a game that Grey did not want to be on the losing side of.

The young Adrion captain was sitting tightly compressed into his captain’s chair, the small, compact bridge ensnaring around him, all lit by the red hue of the ship’s warning lights.

Time was a factor to Grey and his crew. His ship was struck, life support barely clinging on, and all the ship had left was a few torpedoes with enough power to send one last volley with a round of cannon fire into the next engaged ship.

He was bleeding. He could feel the trickle of blood sliding down the side of his face from a wound at the top of his brow. He could smell the iron in the air and as he placed two fingers on the gash, a warm paste greeted his touch.

“Captain, incoming Confederate ship” declared his helms officer. Grey looked at the small, square viewscreen window, its visual representation of the approaching ship skewed by static.

“Status on it?” he ordered towards his sensor officer. The officer sat behind him at an array of several displays, some burnt out while others retained the valuable information needed for their crew to survive.

“Heavily damaged but still functioning much like us” came the necessary reply for Grey to give out his orders.

“Very well, ready torpedoes, prepare to fire last volley.”

“Aye, sir. Preparing to fire.”

The Confederate ship was small, probably once a freighter that had been retrofitted into a warship to amass a navy to repress the Republic’s superior naval strength. Though, the Confederacy liked to play tricks throughout these last four years. Quick attacks, slipping into territories and making raids. Spies scattered throughout the Republic that notified ship movement or even staging acts of terrorism upon Republic worlds. The Confederate ship in front of Grey reminded him of how this war had turned citizen into soldier, the homefront into the battlefront and finally that nothing anymore about the ideals of the Republic were sacred. The innocence days of the Republic were over, eclipsed by the cynicism that all Humanity was good for was finding ways to kill each other.

Grey gritted his teeth as his order turned into a somber tone, “Fire.” One last time.

The orange streaks of energized photonic torpedoes flew out of the salvos of Grey’s ship, Crusader, streaming across space and colliding with the freighter’s hull. Intense bits of flames streamed out into space before disappearing upon losing the required oxygen to continue the burn. Following suit, was a ring of intense energy that pulsated out of the large dual cannons attached to the sides of the Crusader, the blue energy coming in several bolts struck the incoming ship, meeting their target. The next visual that Grey watched was the ship detonating into a crescendo of an explosion.

Grey sighed with relief until there was a rocking of the bridge as more consoles around him and the crew burst as the electrical feedback of energy destroyed them. “Another ship coming from across our bow. Direct hit on Decks 4 and 5. We’re venting atmosphere.”

“Seal the decks” Grey ordered, “Helm, get us out of this fray.” Did they scream? Did anyone hear them scream before they were vented out into space?

“Working on it sir but engines are struggling.”

“Get me Engineering!” Grey ordered to his communication officer.

“Internal comms must have been hit. We’re getting nothing but static.”

Grey blinked back towards the viewscreen as his ship shuttered upon another impact. He reached down and unclipped the magnetic seatbelt he had been strapped into at the start of the conflict. “Switch from Red Status to Blue Status” Grey ordered, “Notify all crew to abandon ship and reach the nearest life pods.”

“Sir?” came Grey’s weapons officer. “We can’t abandon the Crusader.”

“I understand, I will maintain the ship to cover your escape. If we’re lucky you all will be picked up by a friendly. As for now, my order stands. Abandon ship.”

The various officers rose to their feet and proceeded to leave the bridge, leaving Richard Grey behind. Grey walked over to the deserted helm’s console and began to plot a course that would get the ship in view of their new attacker. Grey placed his hand on the console, glossing his hand lovingly against the protruding buttons. “You’ve been a good ship, Crusader. A good ship.” He plugged in the final coordinates before slowly returning to his captain’s chair. He sat in his chair flipping open the right arm’s cover unit revealing a series of switches and buttons. He pressed a series of them before he spoke, “Final audio recording, transfer to Black Box. This Captain Richard Grey of the ADFS Crusader. I’ve done my best to get as much of my crew off this ship. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to bring them all home to Adrion. The battle did not go well for us, for me. Please notify my family that I did all of this, of leaving Adrion and going to war for Earth to ensure their future. Daniel, listen to your mother. My darling, I’m sorry. I’m not coming home. End recording.”

A flick of a switch on his seat cemented his final decision. Grey strapped himself into his chair one last time and closed his eyes letting the darkness consume his mind and hoped for the sweet, quick embrace of death.

***

It was cold. That was the strange part. Grey had always imagined that the afterlife would be a warm, gentle place. He imagined his afterlife would be standing on the sandy shores of a beach. He would be looking out at the calm ocean, the warm breeze and salty air beckoning him back to his childish youth. Maybe, once again he had been wrong about his beliefs.

He had become a member of the Adrion Defense Fleet, believing in defending the homeland from pirates and raiders. Being an enforcer of peace and justice for the people of Adrion, his home planet. He had been taught to uphold the Republic’s Charter. Now though, the Secession War had blurred the lines. How can both sides claim that they were upholding the Republic’s founding document? How can they both claim to be right? How can they both want peace and justice when each side is willing to eliminate the other? And then, how do we walk it back when the war is over?

Grey felt his lip twitch into a strange smile thinking to himself that last thought would have to be answered by someone other than him. A rare thought struck him. Trenton, his father’s home, would it still be there at the end of this war. The smile dropped, having long suppressed the memories of his father. The man who abandoned him. The man he swore never to become. The man who taught him that old proverb. Father, when your time came did you scream into the void or were your cries muffled like all the rest? Sadly, he had left his children fatherless like he had been.

Strangely, the next sensation he had was he felt a warm touch resonate across his shoulder. The warm presence soon was jerking him around and as Grey’s senses ignited, opening his eyes; his ears becoming transfixed on a voice. Who was talking to him? Could you talk in the afterlife? Maybe, the cries of the dead could be heard in space.

He tentatively lifted his neck up to see the crumbled remains of his bridge, the room dark and lifeless with the only lights illuminating the space coming from the strange visitors who were carrying flashlights. “Grey? Dick? Dick! You alive?”

Blinking rapidly as his vision focused on the person in front of him, the origin of the warm touch upon his shoulder, Grey finally recognized the voice, “Church? Bob?”

“Ha!” came the jovial laugh of Grey’s friend, Captain Robert Church. “You gave us the scare when we saw the Crusader’s life pods jettison before this bucket of bolts tried to ram that foolish Rebel ship.”

“I missed?” Grey asked, his body starting to shiver. He felt like his bones were about to crack and break due to the intense cold of the bridge.

“Oh no, you hit that poor sucker. Your currently entangled with it” Church moved aside and shined a light at the puncture wound. Sticking out of the viewscreen of his ship was a jagged, sharp piece of metal. “Let’s just say, you’re lucky my friend. That shard of metal punctured and sealed in all the air. If not, you’d be dead and floating out in the void.”

Grey stared at the only thing that had saved his life. “Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” Maybe, there was something that could be said about old superstitions. Deciding to no longer dwell on the matter, Grey’s teeth began to chatter together, “I can see that.”

“Let’s get you out of here” Church lifted him up and out of his chair, slinging one arm around his shoulders. “Did we win?” Grey asked as Church gently led him away and towards the exit from the Crusader’s bridge.

“Yeah, we won. They surrendered an hour ago. We lived, pal. We lived.”

“Good, good” Grey whispered as he began to slip back into unconsciousness as Church dragged him away from the last battle zone of the Secession War. His last thoughts were that maybe he was going to see the answer to how does one live with oneself after the brutality of this latest war of human aggression.