The Beating Drum of the War Machine

[Cptn Neptune 0]

The last rays of light slipped behind the planet as Station EO-4 slid into the darkness of night. Aboard the station, all was relatively calm; business in the mess hall started to pick up as the crewmen shuffled through the buffet line for evening meal.

 

Ensign John Karmeckie was busy trying to score a date with a fellow Ensign, failing miserably; three seats over Lieutenant Gordie Jewel toyed with the latest analysis of the science teams attempt at real-time subspace communication with the Alpha Centauri colony. A few decks up, Kayla Howell leaned back into a long shower after a less than enthusing shift. Life as normal aboard EO-4.

 

The command center also radiated normalcy; Lt. Commander Justinian Qyoto stepped softly off the singular lift on the entire station and headed towards the Central Command and Operations console that served as the nerve center for the entire base.

 

I was late. I’d overslept—how you over sleep for an 1800 shift is beyond me, but I did it anyway. Of course, it didn’t really matter Commander Santos and Graeling had already descended below decks for their evening meal.

 

Being late for my shift had started to become a regular occurrence, but like I said, no one cared if you were a few minutes late. Why the hell would it matter? Not like anything happens on the edge of forever.

 

Let me qualify that—nothing had ever happened before. EO-4 was a communications relay station with some high-tech sensors packed into a dozen decks and dropped into orbit of a shrouded, barely M-class planet whose atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife.

 

When we first came on-line, the Vulcans swung by to check up on us pretty often, making sure we hadn’t gotten ourselves into any trouble; but since the shake up on their homeworld, their visits became less and less frequent. ‘n’fact I don’t think I’d seen one of those pointy-eared green-bloods in over three months.

 

Normally, I just sat at the CCO console reading the three week old news feeds from Earth. Like I said, being on the frontier was pretty boring; which is probably why it’s still so vivid of a memory.

 

Karmeckie had finally given up on wooing his prize and had moved on to sulking in the corner, playing with his food.

 

Funny the things that stand out the most. All I wanted was to have a nice date with her. God she was pretty. An Italian girl too, my mom would have loved her. Ensign Maria Perenilli. I think she was from down in Sicily somewhere—I’d made up my mind though, I wasn’t going to ask her out anymore, but when I came in, and saw her…I couldn’t help myself.

 

“Hey Maria,” I said. I was real smooth this time too, didn’t clam up like last time. But she still didn’t give me the time of day till I sat down right across from her.

 

“Why don’t you let me cook you a real meal, not this crap.” Everyone knows I am a damned fine cook—momma and nunny wouldn’t have it any other way—but she just rolled her eyes.

 

“How many times do I have to tell you Kar-Mac.” Kar-Mac, that’s what all the Engineers called me. “I don’t date grease monkeys like you.”

 

Grease monkey. What’s with those science types anyway? I mean, it’s not like you can be an idiot and know how to fix a serial bypass plasma inducer. Didn’t she know she was driving a stake through my heart? Just one date, that’s all I wanted.

 

So there I was, playing with my crappy food from the crappy mess hall cook. I don’t even know what it was supposed to be—some kind of chicken dish. Which was when I made up my mind: I didn’t care how pretty she was, if she would rather eat this slop than eat some fine homemade Italian food she wasn’t worth the trouble.

 

That was when something else caught my eye.

 

Looking over the headlines from the three week old news feeds Qyoto thought of Earth, and the comforts of home. The frontier life meant it took several weeks before any message from home or to home would arrive—hard on a newly married man.

 

I don’t know why I put the paper down. Useless as it was—the headline on the sports page about a fight between two Andorians was no less than two weeks old—it was still more entertaining than watching sensors beep.

 

In retrospect, it was a good thing I did put the paper down when I did—the long range sensor net had picked up something strange.

 

“I didn’t know we were due for a comet in this sector.”

 

“We’re not Kar-Mac,” Perenilli chided him as he she made her way over to the window.

 

“Then what’s that?”

 

I think, down deep, she really liked me and just didn’t want to admit it. I don’t know why though. Things would have been much easier if she’d just said something, instead of hiding her true feelings for me. I know she had to have them, why else would she go out of her way to make fun of me?

 

“Now that’s interesting,” Qyoto said aloud, looking over the sensor readings. “Tenal, see if you can match that with anything in the database.”

 

At first I wasn’t completely sure what the anomaly on the sensors was; it didn’t match anything the computer could identify, and it certainly didn’t have an ion trail so it wasn’t a ship. Well I didn’t think it was a ship anyway, not at first.

 

Perenilli positioned herself nearer the glass, squinting to see what Kar-Mac was pointing too. “That’s weird…”

 

“What?”

 

“Hey Jewel,” she looked over to the Lieutenant a few tables away. “Come take a look at this…”

 

Then there was Jewel. He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but he was also my main competition for Maria. He was tall, quite, geeky, handsome…everything I wasn’t...’cept maybe the handsome part. She just had to call him over, like it’d be the end of the world if I were right. No she just had to go and prove me wrong.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this before, sir.” Tenal said, blinking at his console.

 

My gut instinct was to get Santos and Graeling up there. It wasn’t long after I paged them that both Commanders joined me. What ever the anomaly was, it was moving towards us.

 

“What do you make of it,” Santos said looking to Graeling and Qyote. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it, myself.”

 

“It should be in visual range soon enough,” Graeling said tapping a console, bringing up some information. “Suggest yellow-alert.”

 

“Agreed,” Santos nodded, looking towards Qyote. “Yellow-Alert.”

 

Everything after that—it’s a big blur in my mind. The next thing I clearly remembered was hunkering down underneath a fallen bulkhead as the torpedoes slammed into the hull. Santos and Greaeling were long gone…I can’t remember much, probably lack of blood. I think my leg’s broken, and I am pretty sure I have a concussion, took a hard fall during the last attack. They seem to have moved on. I can’t move to well though…I think everyone else up here’s dead…

 

Why couldn’t it have just been a stray comet? I’ve asked myself that a dozen times. I guess Maria not going on a date with me is a little trivial now, but it’s the only thing I can think of really. God, I am laying here in a pool of my own blood, Maria and Jewel a few feet away from burned beyond recognition and all I can think of is how she wouldn’t go on a date with me. I hope if you’re reading this, you won’t…what’s that...it sounded like weapons fire.

 

If you’re reading this…I am dead. The attackers beamed over; checked for the dead. I don’t think they saw me. I didn’t get a good look at them; they had on some kind of helmet protecting their face. They shot the bodies they found, bastards. If you’re reading this, promise me you won’t let this…oh hell…they’re back…