Winds of Space

[Wing-of-no-Wing 0]

On the bridge of the Exbar, Captain Trevor Hardly leaned back in his chair. A hint of smoke burnt his nostrils...even now, residual ion damage from their run-in with that damned Guild battlecruiser occasionally sent some of his ship's circuits into suicidal insanity. This entire month has been one run of bad luck after another. When we get back to port, it won't be a moment too soon, even without the hero's welcome we'd have earned for bringing back this alien cruiser. How does that saying go, about the best-laid plans of rats and H'tiss? Well, whatever it is, it's described this cruise more or less from the get-go.

 

Just then, the communication system crackled back to life, the glow of the screen interrupting the war between light and shadow being waged by lights operational and failed for control over the bridge. It was the aliens again. He had been talking on an off with one of their officers--perhaps the captain, someone high enough to make important decisions--for a few minutes now, trying to buy them some time until they could get their weapons back online. If he could keep the aliens from trying anything until his torpedoes came back up, the battle would be his. He'd go home and report his miserable failure at command to the admiralty. They might demote or even discharge him, but at least he'd be alive.

 

"If you have another idea, I'll be listening..."

 

Trevor sighed, letting go of his energy. The past few weeks had seen him to the edge and back; now he let it show. "What can we do? You have your duty, and I have mine."

 

"Shall we meet in person...discuss this face to face?"

 

Trevor suppressed a smile. If he could get the aliens to think he was going to negociate, it just might buy him the time he needed...

 

Then the feeling left him. They had one or more of his people prisoner. Trevor was fairly close to his crew; although that was ordinarily a good thing, for the sense of morale and group pride that it gave them, it could be dangerous now: whoever the aliens had would know him well enough to know that he was up to something. No...letting the aliens have a prisoner was unacceptable, and as much as it would be unthinkable under normal circumstances, Trevor's required course of action was clear. They may have been his friends, but death was part of war. The last few weeks had taught him that all too well. He had to get the aliens to kill their prisoners.

 

"Our transporters have been having technical issues. Can you take a shuttle over to my ship?" It was true...if it weren't for that fact, the surviving aliens would have been beamed into space long ago. Of course, the aliens wouldn't accept a deal that was so obviously a trap...

 

"I say we meet on my shuttle...neutral territory, so to speak. I will be alone."

 

Okay, where am I? My attempt at a trap has just been detected. This is the part in the story where the villain exposes his true inner twistedness... "Well, if you put it that way...I think perhaps too many lives have been shed today for us to be meeting face to face right away. Avenging our losses may not change anything, but it is what is expected of us...it is the only thing we know..." He let his voice trail off.

 

"If you return my crew, I will be willing to leave you, and there'll be no more blood shed."

 

Trevor thought back upon the last few weeks. He thought about his late helmsman, Lt. Barnes. Barnes got them out of the battle with that Guild battlecruiser...a truly brilliant piece of flying. That day, he proved himself to be a first-class asset to the H'tiss warfleet. The next day, attempts to fix a plasma conduit failed, and it exploded not three feet above his head. Oh yes, he'd proved himself all right...but for what? What did it matter when he died the next day? Trevor let himself dwell upon it.

 

"How can we make the lives of those who were lost mean anything, though? If we just part...what was this all for?"

 

"You tell me. What is it you wanted from us to begin with?"

 

"You destroyed one of our mining camps. We were told to be on the lookout for you, and you came along...what else could I do?" The 'tired soldier' routine fit him well, Trevor thought. Gods know I've got plenty to draw on for the part...

 

"You could have spoken to us, instead of attacking us!"

 

"That's not the way of enemies in war." Trevor cut the audio and turned to the officer at the engineering station on the side of his bridge. "How much longer on the torpedoes?" On the viewscreen, he saw the alien communicate with one of its crewmembers, probably getting estimates as to the status of their ship. Trevor noted that the aliens were very different-looking from one another. Different ethinc groups, or different species entirely? Perhaps diversity worked somewhat better for them than it did for us... Any H'tiss that visited the Homeworld had probably gone to the edge of H'svrika, the great wasteland left by nuclear weapons used in the Eugenics and Purification Wars. Trevor had gone a step further, and actually went to visit the dead city of Sendrakar. Even after five hundred years, the lack of life in the city had seemed so wrong, the stillness so eerie...Trevor felt a chill run up his back simply remembering it.

 

His engineering monitoring officer interrupted his remembrances, a disturbance that Trevor welcomed.

 

"Twenty minutes, sir."

 

Trevor restored the audio link to the alien ship. "I think I have an alternative for you."

 

"Speak!"

 

"You will immediately surrender. Lay down your weapons and walk away, or if that is not your custom, commit honorable suicide. Just stop fighting now." Judging by how they've fought, these aliens are warriors, or at least, proud enough not just to give in. But their reaction to this will be nothing compared to what they feel when they see just how far gone I am...

 

"And what would I get from this if I allowed you to take my vessel?"

 

"An end to the meaningless death. Our remaining prisoners would be eliminated, and then the executions would stop." Eliminated. Trevor congradulated himself on a singularly psychotic turn of phrase.

 

"Eliminated? You're going to kill the prisoners anyway?" Excellent.

 

"What does it matter? Alive, dead...we all get there in the end..." Trevor leaned back in his chair, letting his head rest against the back as he closed his eyes. "Just two weeks ago...as an example..." On the viewscreen, the alien commander crossed its arms, listening. "We were cruising off the Tiber system, when we ran into a Guild battlecruiser out on its shakedown cruise. We escaped, but not without losing half our crew...we served together for so long, that we would just expect each other to be there, you know? And then in the space of a few minutes, they weren't." Trevor let out a brief, ironic laugh. "All the precedent in the worlds, anything you want to work to set up...none of it means anything in the face of sudden annihilation, does it?" None of it means anything in the face of sudden annihilation, does it? Trevor thought for a moment on the fate of Lt. Barnes. Poor bastard...

 

"Why do you want our Ship?"

 

Trevor barely even registered the alien's question. His eyes still closed, he could almost see Barnes' legs, still lying in the corridor where they had fallen. He tried to re-focus his attention on the battle, but even the missile hit to the barracks that killed over thirty of his crew couldn't compare with the image of Barnes' legs lying there in the corridor. The walls were scorched but otherwise the corridor looked normal, and there were Barnes' legs...the legs were wrong, the way Sendrakar was wrong. Vurn had come along and covered the legs, but how could anyone fight against the inevitable? Now Vurn was either captured or dead...so so much for help. "You know, the rest of my crew...We figured we'd try to help each other out, try to get through it, try to understand..but then they went the same way, too, today...all the understanding did nothing in the end."

 

Trevor paused for a moment. Now for the climax... Yet now attempts at self-congradulation failed. "I mean, watch..."

 

Trevor opened his eyes, turning to his acting XO, Major Weiss, and smiled, wanting to laugh out loud at the wrongness of everything. "Kill another one."

 

Then he turned back to the screen. "No matter what that crewmember of yours is, does, or knows, they're going to end now. All that they've accumulated throughout their lives, everything out of which they've built their selves...it's about to be gone."

 

"Then it is not I that am killing my crew senselessly. It is you!"

 

"Don't you see, though? It's all senseless! The dead are just...gone. No matter how they went...the totality of their elimination is absolute." The alien interrupted him

 

"All I see is you killing off my officers...we have your crewmwn in our MRF, where we were going to treat them, but if this is your way...we shall begin the same as you. Killing for no reason...just to kill." I've done it. It didn't feel like a victory, though, and Trevor found himself pushing on.

 

"Would it mean anything to you if I said we weren't specifically ordered to deal with you by violence?"

 

"Then how were you suppoed to deal with us?"

 

"They didn't say, really. We were just supposed to keep an eye out." Trevor covertly snuck a glance at the status display that his engineering monitoring officer was now routing to his command chair, wanting to see how close the torpedoes were to being ready...he didn't know how much longer he could keep this up.

 

"It is up to you to stop the killing for no reason..we were protecting ourselves and our vessel."

 

"You don't understand! In the face of death, life itself is meaningless...so you might as well die! I've had plenty of time to come to grips with death lately..."

 

"Then meet with me and show me so I can understand." The alien was starting to look impatient. Good. Time for you to be relieved...a relief that I shall share. You're right, alien, I will stop the killing. I'll blast your accursed ship from the stars and fly through your ashes, scattering your graves across the winds of space, and then I'll go home and eat dinner, and that will be that. But for now, let us play the final act.

 

"Yes, let us meet. How is...half an hour from now?"

 

"Aye... I will bring my shuttle alongside your vessle. I will be alone."

 

"And I alone will come onto your shuttle."

 

"Agreed. KWalus out."

 

The viewscreen went black.

[Captain Huff 0]

OMG, a Qob log! It's been so long it took me this long to even scroll past our boards, and I just about fell out of my chair! And not only a Qob log, but a good one!

 

I *guess* we'll have to put off the Alternate Universe Pink Qob plot for each week there's another log... :blink: