Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (42 page)

“Aye, sir. Huey out.”

OCTOBER 15, 2499 T.S.
SIC TRANSIT

Ia stared one last time at the list on the datapad in her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose. This was not going to be pleasant. Shifting her hand to the intercom button between her personal office and the Company office, she said,
“Ia to Sadneczek, please come into my office.”

It wasn’t exactly common for her to call him in to meet her when she could just get up, walk through the door, and speak to her Company clerk in person. But this was not a conversation she wanted shared with the other clerks. It took him a full minute to get into her office, but then she hadn’t specified time was of the essence, and the aging master sergeant was a methodical, tidy man.

When he entered, Ia realized that his salt-and-pepper hair had turned completely white at some point in the past few years. She searched his face for other signs of change, noting the heavy five o’clock shadow had also turned white on his jaw. Deep lines etched his face, many of them worry lines along his nose and his brow where he had frowned a lot . . . but there were also wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his lips from where he had also smiled.

He stood tall and proud in his plain gray slacks and button shirt, body still strong despite all the signs of age. She suspected some of that was helped by the fact the ship now ran at 1.51Gs Standard since they didn’t need to be quite as physical-combat-ready as before.
He’ll be retiring in two, maybe three more years,
she thought.
Thank God he’ll be able to.

“You wanted t’ see me, sir?” Grizzle asked her.

Ia held out the datapad in her left hand. “This is a list of various transfer forms, honorable-discharge papers, and related civilian-integration appointments. I want you to fill these out personally; don’t share the work with the other clerks, and don’t talk about them. I don’t want the crew to waste their time speculating. To that end, you will transmit and file them with the
Osceola
’s personnel department the moment we return from the commendation ceremony on the twenty-ninth. Got that?”

He gave her a wary look but accepted the datapad from her. “I got ’t, sir. Don’t understand, but that never . . .” His gaze dropped to the pad, and his white-tufted brows pinched together in a frown. His thumb scrolled through the list. Head snapping up, he scowled at her, lifting the pad. “This is
horseshit
!”

Yep, not a pleasant conversation.
Ia held her ground, her expression sober and firm. “These are your orders, Sergeant. You will carry them out to the letter. Is that clear?”

He drew in a breath to protest.

“You will not disobey my orders, Sergeant,” she warned him. “This is what I want done. You will comply, or I will lie to the Company about why you’re taking a nap in the brig.”

Grizzle glared at her but growled, “Still a load a’
horseshit
. Sir.”

Turning on his heel, he strode out of her office, still scowling at the datapad. Tense, Ia checked the timestreams and cursed under her breath. The tangle of possible reactions had turned into a gray spot, one that covered the next few days. The only good thing was that most every single path leading
out
of that undecided blankness had Henry Sadneczek dutifully—if begrudgingly—filling out every single form on that list. Neatly, properly, and fully.

It would be done, and she would be able to attend the commendation ceremony without any problems over it. That was all that mattered.

OCTOBER 17, 2499 T.S.
INTERSTITIAL SPACE

Something was wrong. Something was dreadfully wrong. Clawing her way out of badly needed sleep, Ia strained all six of her senses in an attempt to figure out what had gone wrong.

Her bedsheets were clean, warm wherever her body had rested, cool where it had not. The cabin was remarkably quiet, the only noises the faint hush of air coming through the ventilation duct, and the sound of her own breath. It was dark, save for the faint green emergency lighting strips on the floor and the red numerals on her bedside chronometer. There were no miscellaneous smells—her mouth had that early morning
bleh
to it, but otherwise taste wasn’t a matter for concern—and her precogni—

Eyes snapping wide, she stared at the chrono. There were no engine sounds. It was the middle of her allotted sleep cycle, and there
were no engines
. No
thrum
from the FTL panel, no
thrum
and faint rumble from hyperwarp. Alarmed, she tried to look into the timestreams, but everything was a thick fog, tainted with an odd bitterness. Ia strained her mind to the bridge, to see what the operations screens said . . . and froze breathless in shock.

No one was on the bridge.

Her mind swept over the ship, trying to find someone,
anyone
, wondering if this was some sort of horrific, realistic nightmare . . .

The comm chimed.
“Commander Harper to General Ia.”

She jumped at the noise, twitching under the covers as her heart pounded. Batting the sheet and blanket out of her way, she slapped the comm button under the chronometer.
“Ia here! Why the hell is the ship stopped, and why is
no one
on that bridge?”

“General, please dress and come to the boardroom, sir. Harper out.”

Of all the—!

Furious, she battled her way out of the bed and grabbed for the first set of clothes that came to hand. Then changed her mind and tossed the camouflage Grays back into their drawers unused. If Harper was in the boardroom, if
everyone
was in the boardroom, she was going to dress to
remind
them who she was! Only the habit of nearly ten years made her remember to press the button that would web the bed for safety’s sake, caging the rumpled fabrics against any abrupt vector or velocity changes.

Clad in the armor of her Dress Blacks—her short coat, the one with the bare minimum of glittery—she debated adding her cap to her head, then dismissed it. She didn’t need to be
that
formal when facing down this . . . this
insurrection
in her crew. Stalking out of her quarters, she headed for the boardroom, located down on Deck 19, directly beneath the—
empty
—bridge, on the other side of the Godstrike’s core.

It was a longer trip to access the side door to the platform, but she was not going to enter like an enlisted soldier. This was her ship, her boardroom, her crew . . . who were all gathered, she saw, the moment she strode onto the officer’s stage. Every single seat was filled, in the sense that all 160 crew members were on hand. Over half of them were standing and talking with each other, some arguing, some glowering, most of them visibly upset to some degree.

They also fell silent the moment she came into view. One and all, they turned to face her, wearing near-identical scowls. Ia did not let herself falter. She stopped only when she reached her first officer, facing him with a glare of her own. Meyun Harper. The one man whose moves and choices—even now!—she still couldn’t predict more than a quarter of the time.

“What the
hell
is going on here, Commander?” she demanded.

“Is the ship in danger?” he asked her bluntly.

“. . . What?” It was not the reply she had expected, though a corner of her mind was grateful he
had
considered that stopping in the middle of nowhere, even in the vastness of space, could not guarantee their safety. “No, it’s not, but we
should
be under way. This ship is to be manned at all times, save by my direct order.”

“What, like
these
orders?” he demanded, snatching a datapad out from under the clip edge of the table. Harper smacked it into her chest, forcing her to take it or let it drop. “And don’t tell me we’re falling behind schedule. We were traveling FTL, so we can easily make up the fuel cost at Battle Platform
Mosin
. In fact, I’ve already put in an order for extra fuel to be shipped out to meet us. So what the
hell
is going on with
those orders
?”

Ia glanced at the screen and the familiar list. She stepped to the side just far enough to glare at her Company clerk. “I ordered you to keep your mouth shut,
Sergeant
.”

“I did,” he replied, lifting his chin defiantly. “I didn’t say a word. I jes’
showed
’im what was on that pad.”

Sadneczek had showed . . . Harper. The one move which he, a canny noncom officer of far too many years,
knew
Ia would not be able to predict. The whole crew knew she couldn’t always predict Harper’s moves, and her Company clerk had chosen to use that knowledge against her.

Closing her eyes for a brief, headache-filled moment, Ia opened them, and asked,
“Why?”

“S’not right,” Grizzle told her, leveling a hard look at his CO. “After all these years, you know we’d choose t’ follow you int’ Hell, sir. But
those
orders ain’t givin’ us a right ta
choose
!”

A glance up at the men and women in the tiers showed that, by their expressions, they knew very well what was on the tablet in her hand. This was not good. Not good at all.

“That’s because they’re
not
orders to follow me into Hell!” she asserted, returning her gaze to her chief sergeant. “These are orders that assign some of you to new duty posts, but the rest of them are honorable-discharge papers! That is
not
the same as sending you into Hell!” Ia shifted so she could look at Harper again. “Meyun . . . this is tantamount to a
mutiny
—and over nothing!”

“Nothing?” he countered. “You think this is
nothing
?” He shifted position, too, so that he didn’t block the others’ view of her, and swept his hand out, indicating their crew. “You’re sending away every last one of us before the end of this month, and this is
nothing
? When you haven’t
once
told us when or where this war will end?”

“That’s because it’s going to end soon!” she told him, flinging up her hands. “I can’t believe you’re risking a Fatality Seven over this. Mutiny is a serious offense!”

He snatched the tablet from the left one and shook it at her. “All of these transfer orders take place within
three hours
of that commendation ceremony, which is barely enough time to pack and evacuate the ship. That’s not the end of a war, Ia. That’s a commander
getting rid of her crew
. Which makes
all
of us wonder
why
you’re getting rid of us, and doing it in a way that we will have no time to protest or try to sway or change your mind.”

Mishka spoke while Ia was still trying to figure out what to say that would defuse the tension in her crew. “In the event a junior officer—or even a noncom or an enlisted soldier—suspects a superior of undertaking a course of action that will be harmful, even detrimental, to the chain of command, the missions at stake, or the lives and well-being of a particular group, it is a requirement that such courses of action be queried before any harm can occur.” The doctor rose from her seat at the head table and folded her arms across her gray dress shirt. “
I
am questioning these orders. Sir. And I am questioning your sanity in making them.”

“I’m with her,” Helstead agreed, though she remained seated in her usual boots-on-the-table stance. “All I can see is that this is a steaming pile of
shova v’shakk
.”

“All
I
see is that she’s not givin’ us a
choice
,” Sadneczek argued. “I think we’ve
earned
a choice on what t’ do. We’ve followed you blindly, Ia, but we
deserve
th’ right to
choose
.”

“
I
think it’s bloody dangerous,” Spyder stated, rising to stand next to his wife, his own arms folded across his chest. He wore nothing but the camouflage tank shirt and shorts which he used to guide physical training sessions—a match to the outfits worn by several others, proof that Harper had called this meeting very abruptly.

“It is
not
dangerous,” Ia countered, wondering where and how she had lost control of her own damned—her own Damned crew. “It is the exact
opposite
of dangerous. Every assignment I’m giving you will lead you to happy, healthy,
safe
lives.”

“It
is
dangerous!” Spyder snapped, stepping up to her, muscles standing out on his lean, whipcord frame. “Don’t you lie t’
me
, Bloody Mary—this
is
bloody dangerous of you, and you’re endangerin’ everybody
because
yer doin’ it!”

“No, it is not! I am
trying
to get you
out of danger
!”

Ia stopped, shocked that she had revealed that much in her stress . . . but the words were out. They were out, they could not be unsaid, and the wide-eyed silence in the tiered levels of the boardroom let her know everyone knew.

“It’s a suicide mission.”

She turned to look at Harper. Meyun, her first officer, her confidant, and more. He stared back at her, pain and a need for unmet denial lost in his brown eyes. He repeated himself, pain winning over the denial.

“This is a
suicide
mission, and
that’s
why you’re getting rid of us.” He held her gaze, pain in his voice, in his words. “Why didn’t I ever
see
this? I’ve seen your death, my death,
their
deaths over the years, in the visions I saw in your head—but those were always accidents, or random battles, or moments in time that we’ve long since passed! Did you block this from me? Did you . . . did you
erase
it from my memory?”

Wincing from the finger he poked at her, Ia didn’t have a good answer. She had
an
answer, but not a good one. “I didn’t have to. You were never
in
my destiny.”

He flinched back from her.

“You two-fisting
bitch
.”

Ia paled and looked at her chaplain. Bennie tightened her mouth, hands fisting and thrusting downward in front of her, visual insult added to the verbal. She opened her mouth to say more—a lot more, and none of it meant to be pleasant, gauging by the red coloring the older woman’s face—but Harper cut her off.