GALAXY AT WAR: Three Space Opera Adventures for the Price of One! Read online

  “I know. I was just hoping this would be a short hop to the next station. I guess I have a lot on my mind,” Brendle said. He ran his hand through his brown hair and pulled it away with the feeling of sweat between his fingers. He wiped it away on his pants and looked at Arender. “I’m feeling a little homesick is all,” he said.

  Arender leaned forward and placed a friendly hand on Brendle’s leg, the warmth of it making Brendle a little uncomfortable. “If you’d like to talk about it, I’m always here.” There was an innuendo hidden behind the look that followed, but it was innocent enough to not rub Brendle the wrong way. Arender’s deep green eyes were locked onto Brendle’s own in an intense gaze, almost hungry. Brendle could only imagine what thoughts were pouring over his mind, but he wasn’t interested in the kind of companionship Arender was offering. For some, the yearning for companionship battled one’s ability to maintain a sense of sanity. For Brendle, he knew there was nothing to gain in empty relationships. There was the hope for something better once the Telran got back to Greshia. But he couldn’t help but wonder if he could hold out that long. Sometimes the days felt like an eternity and he wasn’t getting any younger.

  “Thanks, but I think it’s better if I just deal with it on my own.” He turned away from Arender, letting him down easy, not wanting to make a big deal out of the slight exchange. Brendle had nothing against the other man’s attraction to him, but it wasn’t something he could ever see himself reciprocating. There was something about the female form that worked his mind in a way male bonding never could. It was one of the reasons he missed home, whom he left behind, the potential life partner he had found in Saratia. He thought of her often, but last he’d heard she was married with a baby on the way. Her parents were traditional Greshians, a man and woman with only one child, no plural household or auxiliary companions. It only stood to reason they would force single marriage onto their only daughter in hopes of expanding their family with a grandchild. Brendle once thought it would be he who held her hand through life, her forever mate. But life forced him into another direction, one that led him to the Telran. He didn’t regret his decision, but he wasn’t fully aware of everything he would have to give up when he signed his life away either. If anything his life had become a kind of proxy-existence. It wasn’t horrible, but neither was it fulfilling. It just was.

  Arender cleared his throat and stood. “I understand. Maybe you could try calling home. It might do your heart some good to hear a familiar voice.” The coy smile hid a bit of hurt that still lingered in his eyes.

  “Maybe so,” Brendle said, returning the smile.

  “You mind if I take a break? I’ve been holding in a piss for the better part of an hour,” Arender said, a chuckle muffling the last few words. Brendle could tell he had hurt Arender’s feelings, but not enough to bruise his ego. He just hoped it didn’t make working with him awkward. Things were hard enough with a dark secret sitting on his chest, but he knew he couldn’t confide in Arender no matter how much they got along. There was too much at stake and Brendle didn’t even have a clear grasp of exactly how he felt. He just knew he didn’t like the idea of destroying entire worlds for the gain of a government he was hardly a part of.

  “Yeah, go ahead. I’ve got this.” Brendle distracted himself with his console, the screen reflecting green light off his pale face. He could make out his reflection and the tear daring to fall from the corner of his eye. Loneliness was a bitch.

  “Thanks,” Arender said, turning to leave. He closed the hatch behind him and left Brendle in the dark quant silence of the empty room.

  Brendle took a deep breath and released it slowly as he contemplated the murder of what he assumed were refugees of a war they didn’t want to fight. The room felt darker as he was alone in Combat Control. He stared at his screen, the illumination of it casting deep shadows in the otherwise darkened room. It was his job to help navigate the ship and to pull the trigger when the time came and he wished it was not. The navigation aspect of his job was the only one he deemed useful to preserving lives. Beyond that, he was nothing more than a heel to the throat of the enemy. His position had been forced on him by his superiors who said they saw potential in him. Brendle couldn’t help but agree, though the potential he saw was one where he refused to fire upon innocent people, which would result in his being spaced. It was a disheartening thought, especially considering he had seen one of the crew being spaced shortly after he checked onboard the Telran. The screens captured every moment of the sailor’s lungs collapsing as they strained to take in air. The frost covering the exposed flesh of the man’s face had been the moment Brendle finally looked away. It was a memory that haunted his dreams for weeks afterwards. War was hell and so was being assigned to the Telran.

  His time onboard was only a small fraction of what he was expected to commit. There were no short-termers in the ever expanding war of Greshian aggression. No one back home called it that, but it didn’t make it any less the truth. Brendle sat back, the cold fabric of his chair chilling the back of his bare neck, reminding him of where he was. In the dark there was no warmth except the artificial heat generated by the ship. If the ship were to die, the crew would be next in line. It was anyone’s guess which way they would go, anoxia or hypothermia. Neither was appealing to Brendle. The thoughts of dying were just as haunting as the repulsion he felt towards his purpose on the Telran, and of those who supported it without question. He would never admit to being obsessed with death, but perhaps pulling the trigger too many times had turned him sensitive to it. It was a thought and nothing more.

  Frustrated, Brendle opened his com and scrolled through the pictures of his family, which comprised solely his mother and sister now that his father had died. The Greshian Navy did not allow him to go home for the funeral and that was the catalyst for most of his resentment, but he was never fully onboard with the whole “take over the universe” mantra. It was a goal for empty-minded people, in Brendle’s opinion. Of course, his opinion amounted to space dust in the grand scheme of things. Still, he longed to be released from his duty and allowed to find a peaceful world to live in. That was, if the Greshians allowed any peaceful worlds to exist outside of their control. Somehow he doubted it.

  He unstrapped from his seat and floated towards the ceiling to stretch, the last mission still burning in his mind. The sensation of his finger pressing the launch command was a phantom feeling, even after so many cycles since their encounter with the rebellion force. The action of taking such a small, lightly armed ship was a miniscule thing. The memory afterward was a much heavier burden than he could ever have anticipated. Brendle’s fingers found his com-unit and he brought the light-weight piece of acrylic to eye level. His thumb swiped against the screen and scrolled over a short list of contacts finally resting on the sole person in his family who would still take his calls, his mother.

  With a delicate touch, Brendle tapped the icon to record a message. His image stared back at him for a moment before he finally drew the nerve to speak. “Hi, Mom, I know it’s been a long time and I’m sorry about that. I know it looks like I haven’t been eating, but I have. The tubes of food don’t compare to your cooking, though,” he tried to smile at the camera knowing his mother would benefit from it more than he would, but his attempt at a joke fell flat so he combed his fingers through his hair sheepishly before speaking again. “You might have heard about the battle between the Telran and a rebellion ship. I just want you to know I’m all right. The fighting didn’t last very long… I’m not really handling it very well, Mom.

  “I don’t want to be doing this anymore. I know I signed a contract and everyone back home told me not too, but I thought it was the best thing at the time. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so an enlistment looked attractive, but there’s nothing here but the potential for me to become a monster. They made me kill those rebels, but before I launched the torpedo there was a message about refugees being onboard. My captain said it was a ploy to entrap us,
but I’m not so sure… I killed those people, Mom. I’m sorry.”

  Brendle dropped the call and sent it without thinking about the fact that he was confessing to a potential war crime. In his heart he felt he was doing the right thing, but a sinking sensation flooded his mind soon after.

  His quarters were cramped in a way that threatened claustrophobia. Brendle didn’t worry too much about the tight spaces, but sometimes he found it hard to make his way around without stubbing a toe or striking his head against an overhang. He did his best to make his accommodations homely, but his heart yearned to be free from his relative prison cell and home on Greshia. He wanted nothing more than the comforts of home, the ability to spread out and stretch without contacting another surface or person. It was a nice thought, regardless of how unlikely it was that he would make it home any time soon. His enlistment had not been forced, but his followership thereafter was an expectation that threatened his livelihood and life in general. Taking orders was easy so long as you agreed with the person giving them, for Brendle, it was quickly growing into a chore he no longer wished to succumb to. Unfortunately, there was no reasonable chance of escape for the time being. As he drifted off to sleep, he thought about Greshia, and what his loved ones were doing. Isolation played on his depression, but it was a tool for making sure the memories of home never faded, even if they did change every time he remembered them.

  Chapter 3: Anki

  The sun rose as a sliver of golden light while Anki made her way to Dispatching. The prior evening’s training mission kept her up most of the night, but it was invigorating. The feel of a weapon in her hands, the cool steel against dark flesh, was what separated her from her prior civilian life. Her father had approved of this life, if for no other reason than because she wanted it. Enlisting because I wanted to be was enough of a reason, she thought. Anki walked sunward, the light causing her eyes to tear. It was a good sign to see the sun this time of day. It was a temporary day, but evidence that perpetual night was finally going into hiding for the year. The sun brought life, and with it a peace as new beginnings fell into step while the circle of life spun its way across the universe. Anki liked mornings, solar tears and all.

  Ships landed as she passed the landing area. Makeshift units were constructed for expedient life support as the wounded men and women found their way home to Luthia. Many of them were unconscious or dead when their bodies were carried off the war-torn transport vessels. Those who could move under their own power were the lucky ones, at least as far as life was concerned. Anki had seen enough desolation during her stay at Port Carreo to know she would rather return a corpse than endure the life some of these soldiers would lead with torn limbs and fractured minds. It was morbid curiosity that made her look out and witness the latest toll of war. She watched with expectancy in the back of her mind: this could be me, but not yet. She wondered if the thoughts were healthy or not, but it didn’t matter, all of this was inevitable one way or another. Every day ushered in the same scale of injuries, just different names to associate them with. The burden of war was carried by those lost and torn asunder, crippled by misfortune. Anki didn’t believe in God, but it didn’t stop her from saying a silent prayer as she moved past the landing area and closer to her call to deploy. She had learned to pray from her mother, too many years ago to recall. Praying was the thing she did when nothing else made sense. It would seem old habits were hard to break.

  She found her way to Dispatching and found it was crowded and smelled of body odor. It wasn’t bad enough to make her feel sick, but neither was it a comfortable place to wait around for orders. All around her were men and women like her, junior sailors and marines, fresh from various forms of training waiting for the call to arms, eager to set out across the expansive galaxy to a region where the Greshian Empire was spreading like a virus. If the newsfeed was any indication, the virus had spread into their sector, into the galactic reaches that brought a more realistic threat to Luthian society. Screens showed more of the devastation as the newsfeed regurgitated the same old news in a different sector of alien stars and how the latest attacks would affect the world in the coming days. It seemed that the threat of annihilation was growing and everyone was distracted by something else instead of looking that threat dead in the eye and resisting. Maybe the distractions were other people’s way of comforting themselves, to stave off the fear building beneath their skin and inside their hearts.

  Anki forced herself to look away. Instead, she fumbled with her com-unit, scrolling through her list of contacts until the screen stopped on her father. His face filled the screen with the prompt to contact him along the bottom. She looked at the image; the graying of his hair and the darkening around his eyes betrayed the memory she had of him when she was a child. For Anki, her father would always be the younger man of her youth, powerful and kind. Age didn’t affect her memories of him in any way. She wondered if other adult children looked at their parents through the same filter, the historical lens of how things were when they were children. Childhood wasn’t that great for Anki − she had endured the loss that a child should never have to suffer − but her father had brought her through it. Maybe that was why she remembered him the way she did. As she drifted into thoughts of him, her heart began to ache. She couldn’t help but regret not speaking with him more regularly. She knew he understood, but she also wondered if he felt the same pain from not hearing from her. That thought didn’t help ease the hurt of feeling like she was failing her father’s love.

  “Anki Paro,” a voice said behind her. It was a woman, but sounded more electronic than organic. Anki turned to see a dispatcher standing with a file in her hand, a vocal modulator protruding from her throat where bare skin would have been visible above the uniform’s collar. “If you could please come with me,” the woman said; her lips never moving.

  Anki stood and walked towards the woman, her breath caught in her throat as she struggled to take her eyes from the vocal modulator. She had seen injuries before, but this one affected her in a way she hadn’t quite expected. “Good morning,” she said as she approached the dispatcher.

  “Follow me,” the electronic voice said as the woman started walking. Anki followed her into the maze of corridors. An industrial glaze of beige paint made each wall look exactly like the last as they turned corners until they arrived at the dispatcher’s office. It was quant in the way four walls of a military facility could be, meaning not at all. Anki had a hard time figuring out how the other woman could bear to be confined within the tight room all day every day. The feeling of claustrophobia she was beginning to feel in the waiting room was exponentially worse in the office as she took a seat. Even the chair was restraining in a way that was uncomfortable. “You’re a Marine, recruited into the recon and infiltration division, you’re designator is that of a tactical assassin. You have also received training in welding and salvaging before enlisting. Do you have experience with the latter?”

  “Only a few months as a salvager. It was seasonal work to help with the finances.”

  The woman scribbled some notes on a tablet, the words transcribing from script to typeface seconds later. “We like to combine skills with our crews. Not many people have experience salvaging on the ships. Would you be willing to ship with a smaller crew to take part in residual missions as deemed fit by Luthian Naval Commanders? It might take you longer to reach the frontlines, but with so many lost vessels we need to salvage as much as we can in support of the war effort.” The dispatcher never looked up when she spoke. She merely scrolled her fingers across the screen.

  Anki took in a deep breath; salvaging was hazardous work, not that fighting in a war was not. Still, she expected to do what she had been trained to do, infiltrate and kill, not clamor around on a dead spacecraft and steal parts off it. “I suppose I can do that,” she said reluctantly. The words were bitter as they escaped her lips. “I was kind of hoping to ship straight to the frontlines, though.”

  “Very well, you will depart Port C
arreo in four days via umbilical conveyance to a personal transport carrier. You will muster aboard the Seratora which is in route to the latest disaster. Don’t worry, Anki Paro, you’ll get to the frontlines soon enough, and wish you hadn’t. Until then, I suggest you take some leave and visit family. You wouldn’t want the next time they see you to be with a handicap like a vocal modulator.” The dispatcher’s words cut like a knife. She hadn’t meant to stare, but she realized the other woman had noticed and was offended.

  “I’m sorry for staring,” Anki said. Her face grew red and she felt ashamed.

  The dispatcher, finally looking up at her, said, “Don’t be sorry, just don’t let this happen to you. No matter what people say, you’ll never be who you were before the Greshians destroy a part of you. They only took my voice and my dignity, but some days it feels like they took my life too. Keep your head up and don’t turn your back during a fight. Trust me on that one.” The dispatcher stood and Anki followed suit. There was an awkward pause and then the dispatcher spoke again, “Be safe out there, Anki Paro. Luthia would like for you to come back in one piece.”

  “Thank you,” Anki replied and turned to leave. As she made her way through the beige maze she could see others like herself, receiving orders to ship out and defend Luthia against an empire the entire galaxy was growing to hate. She noticed with each passing of an office, that there was a script the dispatchers used before sending their people out to war. “Luthia would like for you to come back in one piece.” It was a kind of condolence for someone who might not return, but it was cold to hear it pronounced so mechanically. Anki thought she might be reading too much into the phrase, surely it was meant to be harsh and cutting against the morale of a soldier set to ship out. That was the problem with interpretation, it was too easily molded into something it was not, and then remolded again.