SUN Gilgamesh
Meridian System, Hyades Star Cluster
Malachi Armeade threw back another glass of Leinonen whiskey. The scent clung to his nostrils like gasoline. Its taste was just as rank. His head swam with a familiar numbness. It made him comfortable; distracted him from the throbbing pain in his face. His nose was probably broken. He tapped it a few times with the tips of his fingers, and the burning feeling that followed confirmed his suspicions. That was fine. This wasn’t the first time his nose had been broken, and repairing damaged cartilage was trivial work for his internal medical augments. Nanomachines were already replacing the damaged blood vessels.
“Damn it, Mal,” Sean Brown slammed a palm against the countertop. Sean was the proud owner and bartender of this little hole in the wall, the Platinum Asteroid. He was also a Chief Mess Officer in the Sol Union Navy with twenty-some years of service under his belt. “Not again. Not in my bar!” The old man’s eyes burned with contempt as he looked between the young navy pilot sitting across from him and the marine sprawled across his floor. A heckling chorus filled the Platinum Asteroid as the other patrons cheered on the display. Three other uniformed marines ran forward to check on their friend.
Some people might wonder why a warship like the Gilgamesh had a dedicated bar. It actually had five, if you counted that rat-infested dive on deck twelve as a real bar. There were also many other decidedly non-military attractions such as restaurants, theaters, VRcades, and all manner of sports facilities from batting cages to basketball courts. The Gilgamesh wasn’t a typical warship, but a veritable city floating through space: it had a crew of over eight thousand, with another two and a half thousand civilian passengers including spouses and children of servicemen and women, colonists, researchers, documentarians and many, many others.
A rush of red filled Malachi’s cheeks. At least he was still self aware enough to feel shame. He lowered his eyes to his hands, where he found his knuckles split and bleeding. Those hands were worn like old leather; calloused, scarred. They looked strange attached to someone his age. Malachi paused. Drunk as he was, he had to think for a few moments to remember why he’d struck the man. Had he insulted Malachi? Bumped into him on his way to the counter? His shame deepened as he realized he didn’t know. Must’ve been more drunk than he thought.
“W-why’d I…” He turned, dumbfounded, to look up into Sean’s face in search of answers. He saw his anger, his confusion, mirrored in the old soldier. “What’d he do?”
“My own slaggin’ fault for not cuttin’ ya off,” Sean muttered, pinching his nose. “Jus keep yer shirt on ‘til the MPs get- look out!”
There was a dull thud as something heavy struck the back of Malachi’s head. Everything went dark for a blink, and he awoke with his head on the counter, covered in broken glass and liquor. “M-my drink. I was…n’t done with that.” He slurred. Someone was towering over him, their fists clutched together over their head, moments from slamming them down onto Malachi’s skull.
Pushing off the counter, Malachi slammed the back of his elbow into his attacker’s throat. There was a crunch, and the marine was gasping, panic in his eyes. Malachi hit him twice more.
Sean was shouting his throat raw trying to break up the fight with the sheer power of his voice. He was drowned out by the cheers and jeers of the crowd. The other two marines- friends of the unconscious fellow, more than likely- came at Malachi with a vengeance. The first bulrushes him, picking Malachi up off his feet and slamming him into a nearby table. It clattered to the floor, drinks and cards flying in the air as its occupants scattered to avoid the brawl. The second man followed behind them, delivering a series of kicks to Malachi’s center. Pain shot through his ribs. He kept his arms up over his face and gritted his teeth through the beating. Ears were ringing. Dark spots grew across his vision. A beep in the back of his head warned him of serious bodily harm, and his augments started flooding his system with pain killers and adrenaline. Malachi began to move. He struck faster than his addled mind could process; felt every blow instead of seeing them. His knuckles split against bone, his forehead shattered a nose.
Malachi stood in the middle of the room. One man lay at his feet, the remains of a broken stool scattered over his back. A second was trapped under a pair of fallen tables. A third was crawling off the bar countertop, head clutched in his hand. The fourth- the man who started all this- was finally sitting back up.
“You’re done,” the wounded man spat blood as he laughed. “Daddy’s not around to protect you any more.”
“Right. I remember now.” Malachi looked down at him. “That’s what you said.”
Then Malachi hit him again.
—
The cocktail of alcohol, painkillers and head trauma kept Malachi in a barely conscious haze. One moment he was in the Platinum Asteroid, and the next he was sitting in a too-comfortable chair in a wood-paneled office. Wood. Actual, grown-on-planet-earth wood. Malachi blinked in surprise, his head swiveling around to take in his environment for the first time since being escorted in. The desk in front of him was large and ornate. A pair of bookshelves covered the back walls. They were filled with leather-bound tomes with the same golden lettering and incomprehensible titles. Genuine paper books were as foreign on the UFS Gilgamesh as the mahogany furniture.
“Mr. Armeade?” A rich, professional voice broke Malachi out of his fugue state. He finally noticed that someone else was sitting across from him. An older, pale man with salt and pepper hair and eyes filled with a cool judgment. He was wrapped in the white and blue dress uniform of an officer. The pin on his chest showed a bronze eagle clutching a silver chain in its talons, the symbol of the Judge Advocate corps. His perfectly fitted suit and handsome face would’ve been just as at home on a Federation recruitment poster.
Comparing the two, Malachi couldn’t have been more different. Where the man was white as bone Malachi was a dusky brown. Where his officer’s uniform was finely fitted and freshly pressed, Malachi’s flight suit was rumpled, and stained with blood and alcohol. Mal was adorned with a bevy of bruises, cuts and half-healed abrasions, as well as a pair of handcuffs locked around his wrists. The lawyer’s smile told Mal he hadn’t seen a scrap since basic, if even then.
“Yeah, no, what?” Malachi cleared the phlegm from his throat. “Uh, sir.”
“Allow me to repeat myself: your guilt is not in question. We pulled the footage from your neurodeck. Lieutenant Commander Jacobson, Mess Chief Brown and ensigns Garland, De Felice, and Procházka are all corroborating witnesses.” The navy lawyer pushed a stack of papers across the desk. They were dense with legalese that Malachi couldn’t have parsed if he was stone cold sober. But the seal of the admiralty board was plain as day on the top of the first page, and that was all the proof he needed to see: his fate was sealed.
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Malachi shook his head slowly, so as to not disturb his throbbing head too much. “I don’t…hold on, he started this.”
“You assaulted a superior officer without cause.”
“He insulted my father.” Malachi mumbled halfheartedly. Truth be told he didn’t much care about that. He’d heard a thousand insults thrown his father’s way over the years, and he agreed with most of them.
Malachi’s father was Gideon Armeade. Admiral Gideon Armeade, to be precise- the head of Battlegroup Hyades and commander of the SUN Gilgamesh. He was among the senior members of the Admiral Board, the body responsible for administering the largest military force in human history, the Sol Union Navy. Few men had ever held as much power as Gideon Armeade. One doesn’t rise to such a position without earning a few enemies.
The lawyer nodded. “We are all grieving the passing of Admiral Armeade. I and the Admiralty Board understand what you’re going through, but this is no excuse for criminal violence. Given your history of past incidents, our investigation found that this was not an isolated incident. You have shown a pattern of anti-social, aggressive behavior and a flippant disregard for authority.”
“Okay, well, only two of those are true. I’m very social.” He snorted. “How much did you pay for all this, by the way?” He waved a hand around the room.
The edges of the lawyer’s mouth crept up his cheeks like a spider on its web. “You are being stripped of your rank of Second Lieutenant, Junior Grade, EOS-5, effective immediately. You’re facing up to ten years in the Ganymede Military Penitentiary unless you can pay the thirty-three million FSC fine for bodily damages.”
“Thirty-three million?” Malachi blinked. “You want thirteen million digits for a broken nose?”
Another piece of paper hit the top of the pile. This one had some grizzly photos attached. “If you want to go over the extensive injuries you caused to four of your fellow servicemen, we absolutely can.”
“They came at me!” He yelled. “After the first guy went down, I was done. It was their bright idea to hit me while my back was turned-”
“We aren’t re-litigating this case, Mr. Armeade. Your guilt is not in question.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“You waived your right to legal representation when you joined the armed forces. Union law does not require that we provide you with legal services beyond what I am carrying out today.” The man put down a third piece of paper, this one with Malachi’s sloppy signature at the bottom. It seemed like the suit was prepared for every eventuality.
“I don’t have those kinds of digits.” Malachi spread his hands in a shrug. “My aunt and uncle back on earth might, maybe. Or my mom, if you can find her and wring the money outta her.”
This time, it was a manilla folder that hit the growing pile. Malachi waited a few seconds for the lawyer to speak- he didn’t, this time- before opening it up. Inside he found a will written in Hindi in a familiar flowing script. The final wishes of Admiral Gideon Armeade, hero of the United Federation of Orion-Cygnus. Malachi wasn’t expecting much. His old man always wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. ‘Nepotism is the enemy of excellence,’ he insisted. Mal couldn’t remember a day, an hour or a moment where Gideon Armeade treated him as a son rather than a subordinate. The only difference between Malachi and the other recruits was that Admiral Armeade expected his progeny to outclass everyone else.
From the day he was old enough for the neurodeck installation surgery, Malachi was running piloting sims. Even a single misstep would land him on bulkhead scrubbing duty. He was drilling with the other spacers before he was even old enough to enlist. Most kids who grew up in the fleet went to school, hung out in arcades or played baseball- Malachi played soldier.
And no matter how hard he committed to the work, it was never enough. He was always two steps behind the admiral’s personal standards. The only time they talked about their family was when his father wanted to compare Malachi to his cousins back in Mumbai: they were doctors, politicians, engineers, investors. What was he? A slow-witted brute who’d never amount to anything.
‘…To Sitara, the brightest star in the sky, I leave my estate in New Jerusalem and all its accompanying lands and holdings. I hope your children and your children’s children play in the same woods I once did, discovering the love for exploration that took me away from you all sixty years ago. I will also be transferring my various accounts to your name to do with as you wish. You will never want for anything again, provided you follow one request: tell the children I will be waiting for them in the Lord’s embrace.’
Bitter bile filled the back of Mal’s throat as he read. Everything was being left to his aunt Sitara and her family. She and his father had always been close, he knew. It shouldn’t have been surprising to know she was getting the dragon’s hoard the admiral had been building back on earth throughout his career. Somehow the truth of it wasn’t real until it was made clear through ink on a page.
‘This final segment will be addressed to my only son, Malachi Gideon Armeade. I request that it be read to him alone, as I refuse to shame a man before his family. You have been trouble since the day I had you. I am aware you haven’t had the fairest of upbringings: my work kept me from dodding on you as some fathers might, and your mother wanted nothing to do with you after our separation. Perhaps I could have done things differently to keep you from this path you’ve gone down. Alas, I cannot change the past, and as I have told you many times, apologies without action are worthless.’
The heat of anger filled Malachi’s chest like fuel tossed onto a raging fire. Only on his deathbed could the old man even hint at culpability for everything that happened to them. His fingers tightened around the folder, moments from tearing it to shreds. A final, pathetic act of defiance. Then his eyes slid down to the final paragraph.
‘Thus, I leave to you my greatest possession: Bucephalus. Though I have not ridden it into battle in some time, my technicians have maintained its readiness wonderfully. My exoframe will serve you well in your future career, and I have done my best to prepare you for the hard road ahead. I know I was not an easy teacher, but easy does not equate to good: my own mentor was a veritable cattle driver. It was only through the crucible of his leadership that I became the warrior I was in life. I hope you continue your studies as rigorously as before my death. You have been slipping as of late. Avoid the bottle, stop picking fights with worthless trash, and pursue greatness. Etch your name into the heavens alongside mine, Malachi. I love you, son.’
“He left me the mech.” He mumbled, eyes glazing over.
The Judge Advocate across from him gave Malachi a smile that never reached his eyes. “Indeed he did. Admiral Armeade’s exoframe is a legendary piece of equipment, I must say. He won more duels in that machine than most pilots will even fight. The admiralty board was most disappointed when he chose to retain ownership of Bucephalus when he retired rather than allowing it to remain in service. The Union could’ve made use of such a valuable…symbol. It still can, actually.”
This time, the lawyer handed Malachi a tablet rather than physical paper. On it was a simple form permitting transfer of ownership of the Bucephalus, a modified FFO-101 ‘Guardian’ developed by Polyhedron Manufacturing.
“What are you going to do with it? Put it in commercials?” Malachi rankled, the edge returning to his voice.
The lawyer shrugged. “That’s for the navy to decide. You only need to concern yourself with its monetary value: namely, by selling it to us, you’ll more than be able to afford your fine. You’ll have enough money to live comfortably for…twenty some years without putting in a day’s work. It's really quite a generous offer.”
Malachi leaned forward. “Go to hell.”