S.S. Nelson
Hemera
Chase had been summoned to the captain’s quarters. With the old lights still put out a yellowish glow, a sharp contrast to the bright white of the modern fleet. Chase’s shadow stretched out down the corridor as he entered the Forecastle. He didn’t know why the section housing the officers’ quarters was called that, other than some old naval reference to the age of sail.
He couldn’t believe the Hemera mission had gone so badly wrong. Turning the corner, he passed Doctor Davis, the Nelson’s chief medical officer, heading the other way.
“Doc,” Chase said with a polite nod. Davis didn’t respond. He had a lot on dealing with the evacuees or was the crew actively avoiding him?
He thought he’d done the right thing on the surface and was prepared to stand by it, but if that was true, why was the captain wanting to speak to him alone?
Standing outside the metal door, he braced himself for the dressing down before hitting the door chime. The metallic door slid to the right with a groan of servos, and Chase stepped in.
The quarters were white spartan though there was some early twentieth-century modernist art on the walls, not something Chase would ever choose. It was never quite clear if it was something the captain had chosen or was simply issued with the ship.
Wessex indicated to his desk to the right of the doorway and Chase sat down with two glasses of whisky.
“I’ve got some bad news,” the captain cut in. “The deputy mayor of Hemera was a close friend of Admiral Weng who had pulled some strings to get him the assignment.” He looked Chase straight in the eye. “And you shot him dead,” he added bluntly. He set the whisky down on the desk, and Chase took a sip, not sure how to take this.
“I don’t care who his friends are. The man pulled a weapon during an emergency evacuation. The book clearly says…” began Chase.
“I know what the book says,” said the captain, helping himself to a glass, “and you did the right thing.”
“But it will probably cost me.”
The whiskey was a bottle Wessex had received two tours ago. Chase was pretty sure he’d been saving it for either retirement or promotion, whichever came first, so was pretty surprised the bottle with an outline of an Arctic explorer carved into the glass bottle was finally opened.
It was from one of the Earth distilleries named after an Edwardian explorer who had miraculously survived being shipwrecked near the South Pole. The company still claimed it was the same distillery as that the expedition had taken, but the various conglomerates it had passed through would make that a very difficult claim to prove.
“What do you think the committee will say, Chase?” asked Wessex. He’d clearly been thinking about this a lot. “I can’t call it,” he continued. “They might overlook it. You did things by the book, but it’s Weng. He’s more lenient than someone like Admiral Harris. I don’t think you’ll be charged for it, but the promotion you’ve been expecting is suddenly a lot less likely.”
Chase took a deep breath. He’d been the XO on the Nelson for several years and more than earned a shot at the big chair. He felt anger swell up within him, but tried to keep his cool.
“I could leave,” said Chase. “The Navy isn’t the only option now.”
“Don’t get too hasty,” said Wessex. “If what we’ve witnessed is anything to go by, war is coming, and that will mean there will be plenty of opportunity for promotion. For better or worse, we’ll need every good officer we can get. This will be forgotten in no time,” said Wessex.
Chase took another sip of the whisky. The captain wasn’t wrong. It could be that this was forgotten as quickly as it happened, or it could be that every human world in the cluster was gone just as quickly.
“They have no idea who we are up against. Please stay, Nathan,” Wessex asked him. “You’re a good officer. This will be at most a minor setback. Your father wouldn’t have wanted you to do that.”
Chase wasn’t so sure.
“And if anything, there’s no point making any decisions until we know for sure what the Board recommends,” said Wessex. “We are due into port in fifteen hours. Try to take it easy until then. I’ll be covering your watch.”
Chase looked up; this was news to him. “Are you relieving me from duty?” he asked.
Wessex considered this. “No, nothing so dramatic. You’ve been through a lot. You could use the rest. I know you’ve got a knot in your stomach over your future because of this,” said the captain, who wasn’t wrong.
Chase had been replaying the moment over and over in his mind, the look in the man’s eyes as he was holding the plasma grenade, aiming his rifle, and pulling the trigger in less time than he would take in making even a simple decision. The sound of the weapon’s discharge and the smell of the smoking corpse as he had verified the weapon was disarmed. He’d done his job. Usually, he would find himself questioning something like this, but he knew the regs, and he’d done everything right.
“Thank you for your advice, Captain,” he told the older man. “I think I’m going to call it a night.” Wessex nodded.
“You’re dismissed, Lieutenant Commander,” he said and shot a nod as he exited. The ship’s chronometer at the end of the hallway was just past 21:00 hours. It was an early night by any standards, but he needed to clear his head.
His own quarters were on the same deck at the far end of the forecastle; his thumbprint unlocked them, and the lights flickered into action as he crossed the threshold, only to find that Lieutenant Winter of security, the ship’s pilot, and half a dozen other crew were sitting around his quarters, shouting,
“Surprise!”
“The hell is going on?” asked Chase. “It’s not my birthday.”
“We know,” said Winter, “and apparently, they’re not promoting you either. But we planned a party, and we saw no reason for you to lose that as well.”
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“What makes you think they were gonna promote me?” asked Chase, hastily removing the novelty paper hat that someone had just placed on his head.
“You’ve spent the last six hours looking like you’re going to cry,” said Winter with a smirk.
“I have not,” said Chase defensively.
“The problem is,” said Chase, “it turns out that Admiral Weng knew that mayor.”
“You mean His Highness, the royal majesty of Hemera?” Winter asked, trying not to burst out laughing. Chase smiled at this; it had been a difficult time, and he was relieved to see his friends enjoying themselves, at least. “Yes, that’s the one,” he agreed, wondering how long they’d been in his quarters and how much of his whisky they’d drunk. Realising, in horror, that they had, in fact, not brought their own supply.
“So the captain seems to think that it’s unlikely you’ll get a promotion. Look,” said Winter, running her hand through her short black hair, “Fuck the Admiral. If they don’t want you to be captain, they weren’t there. They don’t know what was going down. They just read a report. You had to make a decision.”
Chase allowed himself a smile.
“That’s not quite how the Navy works, Winter.” She looked unimpressed at his use of rational thinking.
“They would be lucky to have you as a captain,” she told him.
“I’m considering the Merchant Navy.” Her eyes went wide.
“You what?” she said. “Merchant Navy? No, you’re military through and through. You’d never be able to handle those lax time-wasters in the Merch,” she told him.
“I’m used to you,” he said with a grin. She let it pass.
“The captain’s convinced there’ll be a war by Monday,” she said, “with whoever attacked the colony. Phillips, in science, reckons they could have been an exoplanet and that the missiles had been travelling for centuries and as motivated as we might be, we would never find an enemy to shoot at,” said Winter.
“Makes a lot of sense,” agreed Chase, looking for the open bottle and pouring himself another glass. “I guess we’ll find out sooner or later, but the captain’s thinking is if it were to happen, then we’ll be needing as many command-level officers to take command as we can find, as fast as we can.”
“Sounds like good news for you and me then,” agreed Winter dryly.
“It is equally possible that the entire Cluster could have been wiped out by Monday,” said Chase,
“You do know that being captain also involves keeping morale up,” said Winter, suddenly being serious.
“I do,” said Chase, forcing a smile. “It really depends on how this hearing goes.” Chase looked at Winter and drank.
“You’re damn good at what you do. Everyone here respects you. We don’t want to see you leave. Don’t make any rash decisions,” said Winter.
“Yeah, okay,” agreed Chase. They clinked their glasses.
###
The board of admirals sat around a semi-circular desk, half a dozen of them looking at Chase in the centre of the room with a witness gallery behind him. The formalities had been read, and no charges were being made. And had become informal information-gathering procedure to ascertain what happened on Hemera. Chase had just finished giving his pre-written statement.
“And you have no idea of the origin of the attack?” asked Admiral Weng.
“No, sir,” said Chase, not wanting to offer any speculation.
“I find it very difficult to believe that one of our quieter colonies could simply be annihilated like this,” the Admiral said. The two admirals to his immediate left were also nodding in agreement. “There has never been any concrete proof of extra-terrestrial intelligence in all the time humanity has been amongst the stars,” continued Weng.
“With respect, Admiral,” Chase interrupted, “neither myself nor anyone on the Nelson’s crew has made that claim.”
“Unprovoked attacks have happened throughout human history. This is no different, Mr Chase,” said Weng. “This should have been an orderly evacuation, and yet a man is dead.” Weng laid the accusation straight at him.
Chase smiled, meeting the moment head-on. “As you will see from my logs and from the mission footage, the man in question was threatening not only the civilians we were evacuating but naval personnel under my command as well,” said Chase. “And Admiral, I don’t care that he was your friend. My mission was to protect the people of Hemera, a world he was attempting to declare himself monarch of at the time. Yet, he did not have the slightest regard for its citizens’ safety.” Chase unflinchingly met Admiral Weng’s gaze.
The rest of the board sat stiffly, and suddenly he had a horrible notion that statement and not the mission would be the moment to cost him a captaincy.
“Your logs make your account of the situation very clear,” said Weng, non-committedly, “and we thank you for your time in attending this hearing.”
***
“You’ve been transferred and not promoted,” Captain Wessex said bluntly.
They were back on the Nelson in Chase’s quarters. Chase was relieved to be told straight, having the Band-Aid ripped off without pussyfooting around.
“There’s a team of military engineers trying to locate a ship called the Trafalgar.”
Chase had heard of it; he was trying to work out its significance. “Wasn’t it one of Earth’s first warships?” he asked.
Wessex nodded. “From about two hundred and fifty years back, It had an experimental drive, disappeared on its first flight. A couple of deep system probes have found what seems to match its description.”.
“Surely that’s not possible?”
“Well, you’re going to be the one to find out,” said Wessex. “You’re departing at 06:00 hours from Marengo station.” He handed Chase a slate with his new orders. “It’s been an honour serving with you. And remember what I said, Just hang in there, and you will make captain someday,”
“Thank you, sir,” said Chase, shaking his hand in a firm grip.