If you guys are enjoying the story so far, please consider leaving it a rating or a comment. All feedback is appreciated as I try and improve my writing.
----------------------------------------
Justinius and Samir sat idly on the bridge of their stolen frigate.
Jundal and a complement of his warriors busied themselves around the bridge deck. The soldiers manned the bridge stations, and Jundal himself assumed the station of interim shipmaster.
The burn out from Iunthor had taken a significant time, and by the time they arrived in communication range of the battle, the matter had already been resolved.
The surviving fleet had assembled around the battleship Gauntlet. Transports and maintenance skiffs swarmed the assembled vessels, patching damaged sections of hull, or conducting vital works on the drives.
All told, none of the Terran vessels had escaped significant damage, and several would need to be dry-docked for repairs for a long time before they embarked on their next mission. The Gauntlet in particular had taken a beating. The mighty vessel was scarred and pitted, dented and abused. Its hull resembled pictures Justinius had seen of ancient battlefields, so beaten by artillery they were nothing but black mud, cratered and holed.
They made contact with Halastar over the comm, and joined the fleet pack. Justinius transferred back to the Fury aboard a gunship, leaving Samir and Jundal to command and coordinate the liberated Iunthorian fleet.
Halastar was waiting for Justinius on the bridge.
“Tough fight?” Justinius asked, entering the bridge.
Halastar turned, and Justinius saw the fatigue writ plain on his face. It was the look he had seen many times before on the face of fleet officers and generals. The emotion and stress of combat had drained him as surely as physical exertion. The shipmaster looked ready to collapse. There was something else there, Justinius realized. Sadness and loss.
“We barely scraped through there.” The shipmaster reported, “It was not without loss.”
Justinius nodded, “Appraise me.”
“We lost two frigates, The Unbroken and The Vanguard. All hands. The Malign Intent isn’t much better. Massive loss of pressure and life support failure. The hull is still usable, but it lost most of its crew.”
Justinius paused before asking his next questions, “How many?”
Halastar rubbed wearily at his eyes, “Thousands? Tens of thousands potentially. We’re still making a detailed count, and there’s some we’ll never find but…”
The warrior crossed to the shipmaster and put his hand on his shoulder, “It wasn’t in vain.”
Halastar smiled weakly, “My turn. How many for you?”
Justinius took his hand away, “We raided both orbital facilities, took nearly fifty ships. We left a fair few of those behind to handle the evacuation, they’re aiming for the full two-hundred thousand. It should be well underway now.”
Halastar sighed, “Well at least there’s that. We’re doing essential repairs, but we should be able to move everyone by the time they join us.”
“And then?”
“We follow the plan, back to committee space. There’s a Terran resupply station not too far from here. We jump there, resupply with provisions for the refugees and then back to Terra.”
Justinius nodded, “Alright, send the word ahead to expect us. We don’t want them getting alarmed when we drop in accompanied by a conclave fleet.”
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Halastar laughed and turned to his comms officer, “Comms, send word ahead to Station Gamma. The prepared communique, please.”
Justinius looked Halastar up and down. “You should go get something to eat, Hal. Rest. I can handle the bridge. Nothings going to happen for the next few hours.”
The shipmaster nodded. “I will, thank you.”
It was twelve hours later when the rest of the Iunthorian fleet rejoined them. They had loaded their entire population into the holds of twelve ships. They were cramped and uncomfortable, but alive and secure. Shuttles zipped back and forth between the fleet's vessels, distributing these refuges amongst the many ships, where they could be more comfortably accommodated. Despite this reallocation, the trip back to committee space would not be free of hardship. To accommodate the refugees, harsh rationing would be required. Morbidly, the death of the crew of the Malign Intent gave them more capacity than expected, now that the vessel had been patched and repressurized.
Their fleet, initially twelve vessels, had swelled to nearly seventy ships. The assembled fleet components turned their noses towards committee space, and executed their jump to FTL. It would be two days before they arrived.
----------------------------------------
Marcus was waiting for Justinius in the arming hall when he entered.
The room was long and narrow, with a central bench table running the length of the room. To each side, fifty vestibules provided room for each warrior of the Terran first to maintain, don and doff their equipment and armour. Marcus and several members of the company were methodically emptying specific vestibules. They took suits of power armour, weapons and equipment, and constructed empty suits on metal stretchers laid out on the central table.
Justinius felt the somber atmosphere radiating from the men. He approached Marcus, and silently helped him assemble the armour he was working on. Above the vestibule they emptied, a name was stenciled in fluorescent yellow paint.
Staff Sergeant E. Valius.
They worked in silence for a time. They attached vambraces to the torso section, followed by gauntlets, then the upper legs, then finally the greaves and boots. They folded the hands of the empty armour across the hollow chest plate, placing a combat blade in the closed right gauntlet.
Nearly all the armour pieces were brand new and unblemished, excepting the chest plate, which showed damage consistent with small arms fire. The chest armour was dented and scraped, with streaks of silver where the paint had been stripped away. Valius had taken small arms fire to it during a boarding action some months previous, and had swapped the damaged plate out after the mission.
Every soldier of the Terran Companies carried a redundant set of equipment, kept aboard their vessel in case they needed spares or replacements. The extra armour, weapons and equipment was designed to ensure they never went into battle unprepared or ill equipped. In less than ideal situations, it was also the surrogate for their body.
Soldiers lost wholesale, or those that die without leaving remains, leave their armour and weapons behind as their last vestige. The codes of the Terran companies dictate that this armour is then treated with the same reverence as their corpse would have been. In life, the men considered their armour and weapons as extensions of their body, and in death their comrades maintained that stance out of respect for the fallen.
Marcus slowly lowered the helmet onto the assembled armour, sealing the suit. Their work complete he signaled two orderlies, and the men carried the stretcher out of the room, to be taken to the morgue for interment, and eventual shipment back to Luna. The suit would be buried amongst the honored dead in that graveyard world.
There was a lingering silence between the two men, as they stood regarding the other soldiers about their reverent work. Justinius broke first.
“Valius died well.” The commander said, “Xeras Prime cost us too many good men.”
Marcus just grunted.
“Did we lose any men on your boarding action at Iunthor?”
Marcus looked Justinius in the eye and shook his head, “No. We pulled that one off seamlessly. The other companies weren’t so lucky. The third and fifth took heavy losses.”
“I heard some of the enemy ships scuttled their vessels, rather than be captured.” Justinius remarked, “That’s unusual for them.”
Marcus laughed a bitter laugh, “Maybe our reputation is getting out of hand. They’d rather die than let us kill them.” He turned away from Justinius, and picked up a can of spray paint out of his toolkit.
With slow, reluctant hands, he raised his hands and covered the stenciled name above the vestibule with gray paint.
Justinius put his hand briefly on the man's shoulder, searching for words to say. They had both been soldiers for a long time. They’d lost many friends and comrades over the long years, but somehow it never got any easier. The anger. The bitterness. The guilt. He gave himself a moment to feel them, then he took a deep breath and pushed them from his mind.
He didn’t have to say anything.
He dropped his hand, and walked out from the macabre scene.