Chapter 13

TRISTEN

“I hope it’s enough. There’s not much to go around and getting even this was hard,” she said. She decided that morning in the mess hall to smuggle out some food for the old man. She also brought him a couple changes of clothes from the market. At least she got to keep her salary with her current no-fly position. “You could also use a shower, no offence.”

“Could I ever,” he said.

“How’s the vision?” she asked. The interrogation methods of the Empire were barbaric, but the physical effects wore off over time.

“Better, but still not quite there. I can make out your short blonde hair, but still can’t make details of your pretty face.” He tried his best to get her to smile when she would visit. “And as for the food, it’s not like I need much. I don’t exactly have anywhere to move around.” He had a point. There was barely headspace to stand straight.

She enjoyed spending time there talking with him, hearing about all the wonders of the world her people destroyed. It reminded her of when her grandfather would visit from Kilendel and told her tales of Old Taiidan. It felt like a lifetime ago.

“So, you say you actually come from Hiigara? It’s hard to believe,” he said.

“Why so?”

“The word itself has been reduced to legends and fables over the millennia. You have to understand, our people have spent centuries moving towards understanding our origins without much progress. Our colony ship took sixty years to finish, and we had no way to know if it would even find anything when it got to its destination. It was our last effort to save ourselves; Kharak was dying long before your people arrived. And it was dying fast.”

“I see,” she said. Of course, it wasn’t dying as fast as her people managed to kill it. It still sickened her, what happened. The ship shuddered and she stumbled into the wall. “Dammit, those missiles really screwed us up.”

“What is that, anyway? Did we stop or something?”

“Every ten hours or so the hyperdrive needs to cool off and recharge. The rumbling is new, but don’t worry too much. The ship should stay in one piece.”

“Well. That’s reassuring, where’s it going?”

“I’m not quite sure, really, probably an asteroid field to restock our resources and start on major repairs. After that, who knows?”

“A planet, I’d hope. I don't think it’s wise to keep hiding forever.”

“Doubtful. I haven’t been on a planet since I took off from home. That was five years ago.”

“Tells me much, the planets probably have different orbits.”

“Right,” she said. It didn’t even occur to her, but it made sense that this would be the case. She knew Kharak’s star, LM-27, was both older than Hiigara’s sun and hotter.

Her fascination with astronomy went back to childhood. She once heard Old Taiidan had a year exactly as long as Hiigara’s and a star exactly the same type and age, something agreed to be almost impossible to be natural, many chalked it up to Sajuuk’s hand shaping the cosmos to perfection for life to thrive. She would have went on to become an astrohistorian were it not for the high restrictions on information under the Immortal Emperor and his predecessors.

In fact, her decision to continue into military was based on the potential to continue on into that later on, as it would open up more doors to her having served her time. However, she instead discovered she was a talented interceptor pilot, and not much has changed over the years because of this. She secretly hoped, despite her resentment about it, that being taken out of active duty would be a good thing. Time would tell.

She didn’t stay too long with him; she had other things to do. Mostly tasks she’d neglected for the past couple days. Her room was mid-sized, having paid for a better one than she started with over the years. She still had her flight suit piled in a corner where it would stay until she finally did a load of laundry, another thing she’d decided to forget about.

At her desk, she grabbed her tablet and opened up the file, reading aloud. “Pilot profiles, huh?” It was a list of the Gladiator’s pilots and how they compared to each other. Her name was in there, second in response time and third in leadership qualities. There were thirty-eight. Not quite a full outfit, but approaching that. They had lost eleven in their last mission, just over a squadron and a half’s worth.

Her job was to sign off on squadron reassignments and provide her input on what she thought the choices should be. The best reassignment plan would get chosen, and from what she was aware, there were only two other people making these decisions.

It could be seen by some that she was given a promotion, but she and the other pilots didn’t see it that way. It was essentially a no-confidence decision to get her out of the field to not risk her betraying the fleet, and therefore her family for the past five years. It hurt, but she understood that it wasn’t something she had a say in, so taking this position was better than nothing.

She noted that she thought it better that Jake be the new leader of her old squadron instead of Derek, even though Derek’s leadership qualities was three points above Jake’s. Jake, however, had a much faster response time and accuracy, which she thought made up for it. She also knew them both, and knew the other wingmen respected Jake’s say more than Derek’s, which she added to the notes as well. The new replacement was unfamiliar to her, but the chart said her accuracy was about the same as Derek’s, and her personality profile didn’t seem bothersome. She knew better than to trust numbers alone when judging someone’s ability, something the higher-ups did all the time without thinking twice.

Her own profile, for example, put her as highly confrontational, when personally she knew that was from disagreeing with orders that she felt unnecessary or dumb. She would also often correct people, not always in the nicest ways either. And yet, all this, and she is among the top five pilots in her carrier’s outfit. Something even the captain would not dispute.

Hers wasn’t the only squadron getting reassignments, though. They’d lost eleven fighters in total across multiple squadrons. Each average squadron had seven ships assigned to it. Some were easy assignments. One squadron had three remaining units, and they would add them to a squad who had lost three, deciding which squadron lead would remain as such based on skill level. Another squad lost their leader and one prime wingman, so the other units were separated into filling the remaining squadron holes. They now had five full squadrons and three others to form a new one.

As with what happened to her, replacements would need to be put into each skilled squadron as one of the final four of the squad wing. Meaning, one member of these four of each remaining squad needed to be swapped out. Since her former squad had a replacement already, it was exempt. She put the four taken out into a new squad as the final wing of the new seventh squadron, and judged which of them merited a promotion to prime wing. She then looked through all the other squads’ prime wing members and determined based on the last mission’s statistics who merited promotion to squadron leader.

Three candidates stuck out, Derek, which was a surprise, and Sonya, a member of Squad Three. They met before, but weren’t acquainted despite the abhorrently low male to female ratio, which apparently wasn’t surprising armada-wide. The last, Holland, was a member of Squad One. He had been offered promotion before but denied it, stating his squad worked best as one unit and didn’t want to leave it. Sadly, this wasn’t the place for feelings. He was clearly best suited to lead, and Sonya was too. Her own squad lost their leader when Yara was taken down last year which was hard on them, and now with herself out of it as well, it was exempt once again  for external leadership assignment saving Derek the trouble. She decided Sonya and Holland would become new leaders of their respective squadrons.

Squad Six had three remaining pilots, two of which were promoted from final wing to prime wing, and got three new recruits and Sonya as their leader, having shown to help out new recruits more often than the other candidate. Squad Seven had four trained pilots, two of which were now prime wing, and two new recruits with Holland as their leader. She wrote up a three page report on her thought process on her decisions to attach to the edited data sheet, signed her name, and submit it for review.

Her mailbox hadn’t been checked in a week and decided to catch up on anything she’d missed. Urgent notices were sent to her watch, but these were rare. She decided the hard work was over, and laid on her bed with the tablet to get away from the desk. She didn’t see anything new or important, it was mostly junk mail. Advertisements, not that she had use for them so far out in the periphery.

Jake left a message that simply read “Hope you’re alright, see you soon!” to keep up appearances, since their mailboxes were monitored. The ship’s cameras were rarely working being decades old and were mostly for show. That was her first bit of freedom, as she’d discovered, but also the reason she had much fear the first few years aboard. First off, the Empire couldn’t monitor her every move as they did on Hiigara, so she could finally have privacy. However, it also meant nobody else on the ship was monitored either, and these were a rough bunch. And she was a young, pretty girl on a primarily middle-aged male crewed carrier built thirty years ago as part of a hundred and forty such vessels to serve his majesty, the Immortal Emperor.

She got many looks the first day aboard, and after the first week it became apparent the halls would not be safe to wanter after shift change. Not unless she toughened up, anyway. The ship had a gym, and the outermost corridor could be used as a track. She wasn’t the only one doing this, which is where her and Jake first met. They’d been track buddies for months before either actually spoke. They’d seen each other at pilot briefings too, but it didn’t surprise her. It was an imperial carrier, after all. A hundred and fifteen of the three hundred or so crew were pilots, either corvette or fighter. Minimum crew redundancy of fifty percent was mandatory across the Empire.

The first attempt on her happened one year after her arrival on the ship, just after her third combat with a resisting world. A man no taller than her caught her off-guard.

“Out late, are we? Say, you wouldn’t happen to be one o’ those little minxes would ya?” He held onto her wrist tight. He smelled like booze and tobacco. The term referred to the few females who sold their bodies on the ship for a little extra spending cash. She hadn’t known much of it, only being sixteen at the time and only exploring that bodily activity the weekend prior to leaving with her former romantic partner who she had to break ties with.

“No, I’m just coming back from a workout, can’t you smell?”

“All I’m smelling is perfume from a late night wanderer,” he said pulling her closer. Luckily, she wasn’t unprepared for the encounter, and headbutted him in the nose, stepped on his toes, and punched as hard as she could with her free hand to try and wind him. He let go, and she ran off.

She didn’t yet know of the maintenance corridors she’d later put to heavy use, instead she ran to her room and took a bath, not knowing what else to do but concentrate on what happened. She thought it best she remembered the details before reporting it, so her case was stronger against him. Lucky for her, the idiot filed a violence complaint. He was sentenced to low-level maintenance service for three months, the standard punishment.

The second attempt was only a couple months later, but she was genuinely afraid that time. He was a very built man as well as tall. “Forget whatever man you’re off to tonight, minx, you’re mine.” He surprised her as she was passing a hallway.

“Get away! I’m no minx, you creep! I’m not even an adult yet.”

“Doesn’t matter to me, a pretty girl wandering around at night; you’re all fair game in my eyes. Not like you’d be the first.”

“You’re disgusting,” she shouted before he pulled her closer to him. She resisted, but he had more than twice her strength. One hand squeezed her throat after she tried to scream, and the other made its way up her left thigh.

“Hey!” came a shout from down the hall.

“Yeah, what of it, boy,” the man said. He continued, and she was crying at that point, either from him squeezing her throat to the point she could barely breathe, or her fear over what she knew was about to happen.

Suddenly, he let go and she dropped to the floor. The person who shouted was familiar. Her track partner, Jake. He stayed longer than her that day and must have only then been on his way back. She looked around but the man was gone, and her rescuer helped her to her feet as she regained focus. “Wha—

“My uncle’s chief of security. Nobody messes with me here,” he said. “So I guess nobody messes with you now, either.” He helped her to the trauma centre, and they both described the man. She was checked out by the doctor on duty and had minor bruising from strangulation, but would recover physically in a matter of days. He recommended she take an emotional evaluation, but she passed on it. She didn’t feel it would develop into anything severe, which ultimately it didn’t. Her face was out on the fleet news broadcast when the man was sentenced, which may have aided in dissuading others. Three months didn’t feel like enough that time, but it was standard. He was soon transferred out to another fleet, though, when other people reported issues with him. After he was off-ship for a few weeks, a rape victim who remained anonymous came forward. He was discharged and tried. Some satisfaction came of that, but she still felt more at ease when Jake walked back to the barracks with her.

“I don’t always need you to come with me, you know,” she told him one day.

“Oh no?” he said joking. “Who would run to your aid should a big scary man attack you?”

“Don’t be an asshat,” she said. “It was once, and the first time I beat the guy up. I could probably beat you up too, shrimp.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it!”

“Pilot boxing, this weekend. We’re doing this. Can’t back out now, pretty boy.” And sure enough, she beat him senseless. Senseless in the sense that he was ridiculous for not forfeiting before a knockout. The ref tried reasoning with him, but he refused. Some stupid idea about Traditionalist honour, where he wouldn’t back down until defeated. It wasn’t even the right interpretation, as his uncle later told him having watched the fight. So she gave him a knockout blow to avoid having to further embarrass him. “It was for your own good,” she later told him holding his icepack above the injured area in the infirmary.

Weekend pilot boxing was the ship’s pastime and became one she participated in frequently, both to make a title for herself and to get less sexist haggling from the other guys their age. At some point, over half of them had been “beaten by a girl”, as they’d say. She rose in boxing rank at roughly a similar rate she rose in pilot rankings, as a matter of fact. Her rematch with Jake went pretty similar to the first time, but this time he accepted defeat instead of being an idiot and requiring her to give him another concussion.

Once she got her position in Squad Four under Yara Gallanus, she requested Jake to be put in her squadron upon promotion as well, which of course he was thanks to his uncle pulling some strings. Generally, pilots who do well get what they ask if not inconvenient. They’re the ones who know who they work well together with and who they don’t. And swapping someone into another squad is much easier than attitude adjusting if it’s only a problem between two people.

Now, she wasn’t a pilot anymore. Not officially, at least. Assessments would happen at the next spaceport, and depending on her attitude then, she could be given a green slip to fly, or she could be removed from the fleet entirely and sent home on temporary leave. Which didn’t sound so bad to her either, considering how long it had been.

A news headline caught her eye: “Rebel Fleet Clashes with Empire after Controversial LM-27c Bombing” She immediately clicked on the link to watch the broadcast.

“LM-27 is an F-class star far in the outer-rim, beyond the Great Wastelands. The rebel fleet has claimed without evidence that the third planet of the system used in the test was in fact populated. The Emperor confirmed the incident as a test of a new weapon being developed called an Atmospheric Deprivation Device.

“The lead researchers of the project claimed that the planet was nearing the end of its lifespan, and that any life remaining would be simplistic in nature limited to plant species or possibly small animals, but nothing complex had been detected by scanners prior to testing. It had been looked at as one potential candidate among many, and was chosen due to its remote location as well as the age of the star in question. The advisory stated that any life on the surface would be doomed to a slow extinction over the next thousand years as the star heated up and pushed the ring of viability further outward in the system. The same process will happen to Hiigara’s own sun, but not for another million or so years.

“The rebellion’s unsubstantiated claims have been refuted, and once the fleet sent out returns to Hiigara, they will corroborate the story. Until then, we have our Emperor’s word against rebel claims.”

She dropped the tablet onto the sheets in awe, unable to process how the Empire planned to keep everyone in her fleet from speaking about the atrocities that happened upon their return, and then the thought came. And it disturbed her.

There was no return plan.