Collateral Damage

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Collateral Damage

 

Whether Arcturus had assassinated Consul General Yendis to start a war was immaterial. The deed was done, Arcturus was building ships of war, and the Federation's answer was an immediate, unequivocal assault on its closest shipyard by one of the Federation's most formidable, most destructive ships of the line. The USS Manticore, the Federation's premiere Covert Operations vessel was a mere 24 hours away, ready to erase every trace, even the very memory of the Arcturan shipyard and its population.

 

"Yes, Dr. Farrington. We do call it Black Ops, but think of it more as 'Covert' Ops." V. Admiral Sarachek had put the full party-line spin on Manticore's primary mission years ago when he had recruited Jami. She remembered his sincere tone, his commanding presence, and even the tenderness of his touch when he guided her gently to gaze out the viewport at the nearly-completed masterpiece - the first of its kind.

 

"The ship and its crew will be under the Consul General - answerable to no one else. When she's complete, she'll be a ship of war keeping the peace, saving countless worlds from predatory beings, ridding the quadrant of the dregs of society."

 

"And its commanding officer?"

 

"Captain Atragon-9. I believe you know him." His smile was genuine and more than a bit suggestive.

 

"I've met him, yes."

 

"He asked for you personally." Which she knew. "And you're imminently qualified for the position. Your medical degrees, your research in deep space medicine, your work.... " She'd already stopped listening to his recruiting spiel in favor of watching worker drones swarm over the ship. She had to admit, it was beautiful - its sleek lines masking both size and power, its hull glimmering in the light of the bay. She had every confidence in Atragon as a commanding officer... and she longed to be back in deep space.

Eleven years later Dr. Jami Farrington found herself a commander and the ship's second officer in charge of Operations. Yet, the memories remained fresh in her mind, especially her astonishment at the number of civilians in the shipyard when Manticore was being built. Every manufacturing center had its civilian population, and it was especially true of shipyards. The demands of working on a remote station, no matter what the purpose, dictated the presence of families and civilian support for them. War machine or not, the Arcturan shipyard had to have a sizable civilian population.

 

And now this ship of war to keep the peace was about to take out not only the ships and yard, but its civilian population.

 

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.

~Hiroshima, John Hersey, The New Yorker Magazine, August 31, 1946.