2073 - Space Corps Central Command Office
The snow eventually stopped, and that day came to an end, as all things must.
And so, following his promotion, the newly appointed General Harlow found himself transferred to another world. Rather than serving in the field, he now inhabited a place marked by bright lights, and clean suits, and formal dinners, and politics, and nuance, and discourse. There was no death here, nor unwashed uniforms, nor moldy rations, nor fear, nor want, nor uncertainty, nor any indication that anything was awry. The war may as well have been an abstraction to those he encountered here—a subject of discussion rather than a thing which lay smiling in the dark, waiting to consume them.
He’d even attended a party at headquarters, not long after he arrived. “To honor your promotion,” they’d said. But he soon realized its true purpose—it was simply an excuse to get drunk.
Officers in formal dress—most of whom had spent their entire careers away from the battlefield—were ordering wine by the bottle all around him, laughing, talking, and joking in voices that were entirely too loud.
He almost couldn’t fathom it.
He excused himself to a vacant room, then looked down at his glass and poured that liquor into a sink, back there where no one could see. After that he returned to the ballroom, bid them all goodbye, and went to bed that night stone-cold sober.
Those officers who’d come up during peacetime years had been consumed by the war; burned away like paper held to a flame. And in this trial by fire, the Space Corps was revealed for exactly what it was—a top-heavy bureaucracy which had fallen victim to systemic corruption, rewarding participation and adherence to process over competence and creativity. They’d created an environment which all but incentivized failing upward, and many had. The wise among them saw this gathering storm and got out early, while those who didn’t often came to regret it. But Harlow remained, so he was tasked with correcting the mistakes of his predecessors while simultaneously being blamed for them.
Despite his age, he was now one of the most senior and most decorated officers in the Corps, and as such, he’d been granted a seat on their governing Council. Here, he was expected to vote on matters of policy, codify bylaws, and discuss strategy.
But his had been a haphazard promotion—one based on urgency, and little else. His superiors didn’t want him there—not really—and he even suspected the same of his subordinates. Behind every “yes, Sir,” he saw the eyes of those who didn’t truly respect him. Beneath the smiles, he sensed the judgment.
The last officer to occupy this post had held the rank for less than a month, and the one before that barely two. He’d have been impressed if they could recall his name, at this point.
It all served as a harsh reminder of a warning he’d been given—wise words embedded deep within his memory, spoken on a near-forgotten evening many years ago. There was quite a bit no one ever told them about promotions, and true enough, after the celebrations had ended and he’d settled into his office, he found himself in a position of near-desperation—one in which he needed to learn the nuances of high command very quickly, and was left to do so almost entirely on his own. Whereas most senior officers had a mentor of some sort, he didn’t, yet he was still expected to lead with just as much proficiency as those who’d been doing it for decades.
Nothing could’ve prepared him for it. The conditions he’d endured in his youth paled in comparison to this, and Harlow realized there was no help for him, and never would be. He was expected to right a sinking ship—one which the previous leaders had co-opted for their own benefit, stripped bare, and abandoned, leaving the rest to drown.
And so it was that on a fairly unremarkable afternoon three weeks after his promotion, he stood in the Space Corp’s central command office, where he was now stationed, biding his time in the Atrium, his attention buried deep in a folder as he flipped through the loose pages. He’d come to a stop near the elevator, which he’d exited a moment prior, and was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t notice when someone walked up beside him.
“General Harlow,” they said.
He startled a bit. He wasn’t accustomed to the rank preceding his name, and it felt strange to hear it.
He looked up to see General Conrad—another member of the Council—standing there. At forty-three years old, he was considered a “younger” general as well, but the age gap between them was still striking, especially now as they stood next to each other.
Conrad had been training to be an officer while Harlow was still learning to walk.
He nearly moved to salute, before remembering they were the same rank now, and such deference was no longer necessary. He simply smiled and nodded, but it looked as awkward as it felt, he was sure.
Conrad nodded back as he stood there waiting for the elevator—a polite gesture that gave away none of his thoughts. But he didn’t make a secret of them for long, because his expression betrayed him. He glanced over as if he wanted to say more, but then decided against it. Instead, he merely smiled, shook his head, and looked away.
Harlow frowned. “Is everything alright?”
He almost referred to Conrad as ‘Sir,’ but caught himself again before he did it. There was no room for such errors—not if he wanted to maintain even a shred of credibility.
“It’s nothing,” Conrad said. Harlow knew this was a lie, but he also knew better than to press the matter further, so he simply nodded again. However, the silence between them grew oppressive until finally, Conrad sighed.
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“I still can’t get over your promotion.”
Harlow glanced in his direction. Conrad didn’t meet his eyes, though. Instead, he wore a patronizing smile as he looked down and studied his shoes—brightly polished boots that had never seen combat. “It’s nothing against you personally, of course, but the fact that you were even nominated is ridiculous. Someone your age should be a junior officer, not a general. Your presence here is a sad reflection on the state of the Corps, that’s all.”
Harlow inhaled sharply. “Well, the Council seems to disagree.”
“Yes, they do, and I hope for all our sakes they’ve made a wise choice.”
“General Conrad,” Harlow said tersely, “I understand your concern, but I assure you that I take this role very seriously, and I plan to do my job to the best of my ability.”
Conrad looked as if he was suppressing a laugh. “It’s hard to take anything about you seriously. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a cadet wearing a stolen uniform.”
Harlow stared at him. “Well, I’m not. I’m an Academy graduate, a former field commander, and one of your fellow Council members.”
“I’m aware of your history,” Conrad said, “including your criminal record. That’s not what I take issue with. No, what I find objectionable is your appointment to this rank with less than a decade of experience. It’s a slap in the face to those of us who worked very hard, for a very long time, to get where we are.”
Maybe you should’ve kept your officers from dying, then, Harlow thought, but his better judgment told him not to say it.
A tense silence settled over them, and after a while, Harlow frowned. “You know, it’s not often I see you alone—or any of our generals, for that matter. It’s rare to encounter a member of the Council without an entourage following them around, or at the very least, an aide or two. Did you come down here just to say these things to me?”
Conrad shrugged. “No, nothing of the sort. I like to take a walk every day after lunch; sometimes I even go down to the gym for a run. It’s a nice way to clear my head for the afternoon, although lately, it seems there’s far less time for such things.” He nodded at Harlow. “What about you, though? I could ask you the same.”
I’m always alone, Harlow nearly said, but he didn’t let the thought leave his mind. Instead, he shrugged too. “I was expecting some mail, so I came down here to check on it, but I keep getting interrupted. There’s far too much demanding my attention these days, and there seem to be distractions everywhere I turn.”
Conrad frowned. “Mail? Isn’t that something you’d send your aide for?”
Harlow sensed the all-too-familiar judgment behind this question, and exhaled slowly. “I’ve had a problem with that.”
Conrad glanced at him, and Harlow held up the folder. “That’s where I’m going next. These are applications. I’m interviewing candidates for the aide position in my office this afternoon.”
Conrad’s brow furrowed in confusion. “I thought you already had an aide.”
“Sort of. I had an interim assistant, with the key word being ‘had,’ because I fired her.”
“After just one week on the job?”
Harlow shrugged. “A week too long, if you ask me. She decided that an urgent request should take four hours and require several coffee breaks. I ended up having to do it myself. And given the amount of work this assignment has brought with it, I don’t have time for second chances.”
Conrad’s expression softened, and his voice took on a surprisingly sympathetic tone. “No, I’d imagine not. You were thrown right into the thick of it from the start, weren’t you?”
Harlow wasn’t sure what to say, and decided there was no harm in speaking the truth. “I don’t like admitting I need help, especially so soon after my promotion, but I’m drowning in there,” he said quietly.
“Well, good luck.” Conrad’s voice returned to its usual disaffected tone. “Where have they got you, again?”
“Thirty-Ninth Regional. All of those districts are a mess, but I’m focusing on the outer outposts. I’ve been trying to streamline operations out there, but you wouldn’t believe the state of it.”
“Oh, I think I would.”
Harlow shook his head. “I thought it would take a week to compile a State of the Region Report—maybe two at most—but I’m nearly a month in, and it’s still not done. No one can tell me anything, not even the base commanders, and to top it off, they’ve been rude and unprofessional about it. I’ve had to resort to combing through old records to get a better idea of what led to our current situation. It’s a nightmare, which has only been compounded by the lack of office staff. I need help soon, because we’ve got to settle this mess quickly.”
Conrad shrugged, then looked away as if he’d grown bored. “You’re doing more than your predecessors ever did.”
“I understand why they all quit.”
“Or offed themselves.”
Conrad’s tone was shockingly dismissive, and Harlow couldn’t help but shift at the bluntness of this statement.
“Yes, we’ve had problems with . . . attrition,” he stammered. Images of that snowy day flashed through his mind, and an involuntary shiver crept up his spine.
He glanced back at General Conrad, but the contrast between the two scenes was ripe with irony. The image of those men hanging at the end of a rope was seared into his mind, but now it seemed worlds away, and even more so when juxtaposed against Conrad, with his carefully combed hair and his gold-trimmed uniform, its fabric faintly infused with scents of cologne and cigar smoke.
Conrad might’ve been willing to give the order for that execution, but he’d never travel to witness it. That would require leaving the office, and Harlow knew the types of attitudes the Council fostered. This was the realm of those who believed field work was beneath them.
They’d never get their hands dirty.
“It’s the same everywhere,” Conrad shrugged again. Harlow jumped slightly at the sound of his voice, but Conrad continued, oblivious. “Staff turnover is astronomical right now, and no one seems to have the faintest clue what’s going on.”
Harlow collected himself and nodded. “That report’s going to be hundreds of pages long, I can already tell, and now, instead of working on it, I’ve got to set aside a whole afternoon looking for an aide who’s worth something.”
Conrad took a deep breath. “It’s hard to find qualified staff these days, isn’t it? And I’d imagine even more so for you, since I doubt many senior officers want to report to a twenty-six-year-old who outranks them.”
Harlow stared straight ahead without replying, and Conrad glanced at him.
“Excuse me if that sounds insensitive, but we all know it’s the truth,” he said. “Let’s not allow the negativity to get to us, though, shall we? You’ll find someone, I’m sure of it, even if you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.”
“Thanks, but I’m not convinced.”
“There’s got to be someone in that folder who’s competent, at the very least. How many applications did you get?”
“Seven,” Harlow said, running his fingers over the loose pages. “Or . . . eight? I must’ve miscounted.” He sighed. “My mind’s in a permanent state of chaos these days. I’m starting to make mistakes, which I can’t afford right now.”
The elevator doors opened in front of them, and Harlow let out a sigh of relief as Conrad gave a parting nod. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it. Maybe we can meet up in the officers’ lounge for drinks later.”
Harlow knew this gesture was made purely for politeness’ sake, and shrugged. “I appreciate the offer, but I doubt I’ll have time.”
“No problem,” Conrad said over his shoulder as he stepped inside. “And who knows—maybe you’ll get lucky.”