Theirs Not to Reason Why 5: Damnation (44 page)

“Corporal D’ouw Deschamps,” she named next, closing her eyes briefly. “You will spend a year or two learning how to be a civilian again . . . and then you will join the Afaso, where you will train to your fullest extent, and work your way up the ranks of monks who guard my Vault of Prophecies. After the corporal . . . York and Clairmont. You both have to leave, so you can become the twenty-sixth century’s equivalent of Gilbert and Sullivan.”

The two men eyed each other, brows lifting and shoulders shrugging. Ia knew it was because both men had considered doing just that, turning their talent for music into a career, post-Service.

“And the last one . . . is Commander Christine Benjamin,” she finished, knowing that this one was going to get the strongest protest.

“Like hell I will,” the chaplain retorted. “I’m not leaving.”

“You
have
to leave ship, Commander,” Ia told her. She faced her longtime friend. “You are the one person who knows me best. You are the one person who knows my
motives
the best, and you will be tapped time and again to explain my decisions, to expound upon my directives, and to enforce my prophecies. You are as important to the future as Grandmaster Ssarra of the Afaso was to my initial assignment to the
Liu Ji
 . . . where I knew I would meet you, and that you would get to know me, and eventually be in a position to do
damage control
to everyone who will want to turn me into either a martyred saint or a sacrificed monster.

“You will advise the Command Staff, you will become a living military historian of my past, and you will do your job, the same as the other five. The rest of you . . . have already had your impact. There’d be some fame for a while as a surviving member of the Damned . . . but fame is fickle, and basking too much in the glory days of the past will lead many of you into soured lives. You’ll be better off either continuing to serve in the military until your careers end and you can retire with honor, or blending into civilian society, and getting on with your lives.”

“Well, that’s
still
not yer choice to make,” Grizzle pointed out to her.

“
You
could have happiness and peace, and that
is
the best choice to make,” she argued.

“Sir,” Rico said, finally speaking up. Quiet, thoughtful, analytical, he was well respected by the rest of the crew, and his question held their attention as well as hers. “Will it ruin the future if we
don’t
leave this ship? The crew members you didn’t name? Be honest, sir. Don’t lie.
Will
it ruin the future?”

Sighing, Ia knew the answer to that without having to do more than dabble her toes in the back of her mind. “. . . No. Not if Bennie goes willingly and steps up to her task. Not if Redrock and MacArroc, and Huey and Ng and Deschamps, Clairmont and York all step up and speak out from time to time, as the . . .” Her voice threatened to waver. She firmed her gut. “Not if they speak up from time to time as the surviving members of the Damned.”

“Then that’s settled,” Grizzle asserted, rubbing his hands together. Ia turned back to him, only to be given a shooing motion with a flip of his fingers. “Go back t’ bed, sir,” he told her. “Th’ eight you outlined’ll take yer orders on how their lives should turn out, an’ th’ rest of us’ll spend our time between now an’ that medal ceremony figurin’ out what we should do with our lives.”

“That’s not how this works! This
isn’t
a democracy,” Ia argued, frowning at him. “This is the military. And you will do as you’re told!”

“Oh, like
you
have?” Helstead quipped sarcastically. “Way to lead by example, sir.”

Ia wanted to keep arguing, but the fog had lifted from the streams. When she looked at her own efforts, at the path she was trying to carve, and not just at individual lives . . . the results were clear. The future wouldn’t be affected too badly if they voluntarily stayed . . . but it might be affected for the worse if she forced them to go. Very much for the worse.

Her vision wavered with more tears. Swiping at them, she glared at her crew and her cadre, then let out a hard sigh. “So be it. You will take the next eleven days to sort out what you want to do with your lives. I will even spend several hours I could’ve spent sleeping, just so I can write up a set of
tailored
pathways which each of you could choose—
with
multiple options, Sergeant,” she added, before Sadneczek could protest. “Things that you can select to do, instead of throwing away your lives. I will have them ready for each of you by the time the 2nd Platoon comes on duty later today, and each one of you will take the intervening days to consider what you will do.

“There will be
no
harassing of anyone who chooses a different path from the others.
No
pressure on any of you to choose one way or another . . . and you will
not
breathe one word to anyone about this conversation until one month
after
this ship and I are gone. Is that clear?”

One and all, they again snapped to Attention, even the normally laconic Helstead.
“Sir, yes, sir!”

Ia eyed each of her crew. She blinked to get the sting out of her eyes, and set her jaw. “I want this ship back on course, and gauged to be
on time
to reach the
Mosin
, as per the schedule I outlined before. The Wake planned for later today will take place on time and on schedule, and I do not want to hear a single
word
of this conversation within the Wake Zone, either in person or via the timestreams. Is
that
clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”
the Damned asserted in unison.

They were hers.

Castaways, nobodies, useless, forgotten souls, former wretched scutworkers with only a couple dozen among them of any value elsewhere in the universe. Stubborn as hellfire, tempered by hardships, and headed for damnation . . . and they were
hers
: the Damned, the Space Force’s finest crew.

It hurt, accepting that fact. Her chest hurt as if a hundred-meter leafer beast had decided to park on her sternum for a nap. Ia clenched her teeth and curled her fingers into fists for a long moment, struggling to breathe, just breathe, in the aching, awful, awe-filled glory of it. When she could speak again, she nodded curtly.

“. . . Good. Now, I am going to go back to my quarters to go back to sleep, but I will leave you with one more thing to carefully consider: I had to come to terms
long
ago with the fact that, in order to save the galaxy long after the normal Human life span of around a hundred years, I had to end mine before my twenty-eighth birthday. However you look at it, even a famous martyr like me is someone who will be
dead
. The rest of you have the right to live out your lives, and I never will . . . and that is what I want for each of you.

“I am not demanding you leave and abandon me because I am a selfish monster. I demanding you leave and
live
because I
care
about you.” The tears she had tried to stave off came back again. Ia ignored them as they trickled down her face and dripped onto her clothes. Salt water would wash out in the sonic cleaners. The stains on her conscience would never fade. “Now, get back to your posts and get us under way. We have far too much to do, and very little time left for doing it. Dismissed.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Carefully not looking at Harper—if she did, she knew on instinct her tears would only fall harder and faster—Ia made her way out the side door. With luck, she would never have to enter it again, nor be forced to feel this strange mix of pride, grief, and pain.

. . . How do I stay
sane
? What kind of a question is . . . ? No, of course I understand very well what
you
saw in all that footage from Sallha—you were on
my
ship, meioa. I know what you had access to. Yes, I understand that
you
finally realize I have been seeing those corpses ever since I was fifteen, and that you’ve realized I made the decision that I would have to aim at ending all of their lives, for all that I tried to find a way out of it. But you have to ask
me
how
I
stay sane?

How do
you
people stay sane?

When you walk down a street in your hometown or city, or along a corridor on whatever station you visit, how do you stay sane when you see a fellow sentient being who is homeless and hungry, and in need of sanitation and fresh clothes, food and a warm bed, things that
you
get to enjoy? How do you stay sane when you hear about your neighbor having lost their job, and they’re mired in debt, unable to pay their bills, when you have plenty to spare? How do
you
stay sane whenever you see an injured stray dog who needs a trip to the nearest vet, with no owner in sight and no one else but you aware of his pain and his plight?

How
, meioa, do you and your viewers stay sane when there are so many things you can
do
to make this universe a better place, day by day, step by step, kindness by kindness, instead of just sitting there complaining about its awful state? How can you and your viewers stay
sane
whenever you stay
silent
on matters of social injustice, oppression, and bigotry?

You ask me how do
I
stay sane? I stay sane because I
act
. Because I would rather be damned for something I
do,
rather than something I
can
do but don’t otherwise bother to try. And that, meioa, is the
only
difference between the vast majority of your viewers and someone like me. My precognition gives me an advantage, yes . . . but even without it, I would
still
be faced every single day with the choices to be kind, negligent, or cruel!

You get
one
guess
as to which I’d choose—and you
dare
to ask, how do
I
stay
sane
?

~Ia

OCTOBER 29, 2499 T.S.
BATTLE PLATFORM
OSCEOLA
HASKIN’S WORLD, GLIESE 505 SYSTEM

Standing in the wings of the stage that served the inhabitants of the
Osceola
for moments of commendation and corporal discipline alike, Ia waited patiently for the last of the presenters to arrive and the ceremony to begin. Almost every single member of her crew was waiting in the front rows of the audience, seated in front of dozens of Terran United Planets Councilors who had made the trip to this system, in part to attend this ceremony, but also as an official visit to the Joint Colonyworld the
Osceola
orbited.

The few who weren’t attending this ceremony consisted of a skeleton crew of the five bodies needed to man the bridge at all times, plus one life-support tech, one of the engineering leads, and Lieutenant Rico, who had volunteered to stand guard over the airlock attached to the
Osceola
. All of them were from the 1st Platoon. Helstead would be the first to receive her award, followed by a set of bridge crew, engineering, and life-support techs, who would all hurry out of the ceremony to take their crewmates’ places so that they, too, could attend and receive their awards, without the
Damnation
being left completely unmanned.

Ia was not seated with them; she was going to be one of the presenters, by special request. The medals she herself would receive—technically just one—would come at the end of the hours-long ceremony. All she had to do was wait for Helstead to be the first across the stage, to receive all her other commendations, and present her second officer with a very poignant choice.

“General Ia!”

She turned and mustered a smile for Admiral John Genibes, her former direct superior, and now her equal on the Command Staff . . . if one ignored she was still the General of the Alliance Armies. That title and rank would not end until the Second Grey War ended. Though the Greys weren’t going after any other race, they were still attempting to steal test subjects from the Terran worlds nearest their territory, and from the occasional Joint Colonyworld, which meant the V’Dan were involved in the war as well. The others were loaning what forces they could—mostly psis to project acidic kinetic energy at the invaders since their ships and weaponry were nearly useless—in solidarity as Alliance members, but this was still much more of a Terran war than the Salik one had been. The Terran generals and admirals present for this ceremony outnumbered the entire V’Dan delegation.

Since they were both wearing full formal Dress Blacks, replete with caps, the admiral saluted her as the technically junior officer to her senior position as the General of the Alliance Armies. But he grinned as he did so, since the formality of the occasion was not technically meant for both of them.

“I wasn’t completely sure if you’d make it, Admiral,” Ia told Genibes, clasping his hand. At the arch of his graying brow, she dipped her head. “Seventy-five percent sure, but not one hundred percent.”

He chuckled. “I’ve actually missed being interrupted in my meetings by you and your precognitive nitpickings. But I can live with it, given all the good you’ve done now that you’re my superior.”

“Equals, when we’re not actually navigating a battlefield,” she countered. “Like every other resource, I don’t use any more of my rank than I have to.”

“There you are, John. Welcome aboard the
Osceola
,” Myang stated, drifting over to join them. She was in a very good mood about Ia’s precognitive warning on when the war was ending. The head of the Space Force clasped the admiral’s hand with a warm smile, then gestured at Ia. “I overheard your comments about rank, and it reminded me of something: I am having a spot of trouble with our youngest Staff member, here.”

“Oh?” Admiral Genibes asked, glancing between the two women.

Ia bit her tongue and turned partially away, trying to hide her amusement. Unlike Myang’s genuine good mood, hers was a slightly desperate sense of mirth, one that was trying to cling to these last few pleasant moments. Instead of giving in, she looked over at the tables arrayed across the stage, especially the one laden with carefully arranged black boxes stamped in silver with the names of each crew member who had their final choice to make. The sight of that stack at the end of the tables sobered her sufficiently to steady her nerves.

“She refuses to call me by my first name,” the Admiral-General complained, while Ia focused on calming herself. “Even when she outranked
me
, it was ‘Admiral-General’ this, ‘Sir’ that, and almost never even so much as a simple, straightforward ‘Myang’—what do you think it’ll take for her to call me ‘Christine’?”

“That’s my chaplain’s name, sir,” Ia interjected. “I’d feel kind of awkward about calling you that.”

Myang favored her with a mock-stern look. “In a military over two billion strong, there are
hundreds of thousands
of meioas named Christine. Deal with it.”

“It wouldn’t be respectful. Sir. Deal with
that
,” she retorted lightly.

“She’s got you cornered, there,” Genibes chuckled. “Can’t fault a meioa for trying to be respectful.”

“I can try. So, Ia, what’s in all those boxes?” Myang prodded, gesturing at the endmost table. “I heard a rumor that they’re not anything that’s on the DoI’s commendations list. Everything else has been accounted for.”

“John, there you are—and Christine, and of course the meioa-e of the hour,” a familiar voice called out.

Grateful for General Sranna’s interruption, she turned to meet his smile with one of her own and clasped his hand. “General, it’s good to see you again. How’s Tumseh working out for you, on Dabin?”

“What, you don’t know?” he asked, raising his age-whitened brows. “I thought you knew everything.”

She shook her head. “I’ve been so busy with the Greys, I didn’t bother to check in on that. I only have so many hours and minutes in a day. I know he’s competent enough to have stayed with the Division, but that’s it.”

“Well, he’s done an outstanding job. One of his junior officers translated a tracking algorithm that can pinpoint all those damned not-cats with high-altitude drones salvaged from the Salik war machines, and he’s been using it to hunt down the damned things. Apparently, they wanted to keep track of their little pets.”

Wincing at the memory of the ground slamming into her back and of claws scrabbling over her half-armored chest, she shook her head. “I’d rather not think about that, sir. I came a little too close to being eaten by two of them.”

“Better that than the Salik, eh?” he offered.

“Back to what we were talking about,” Myang asserted. “Ia, about those boxes—”

“Thsstitch’h, Ia’n ssdh’dah, suweh neh mok’kathh stha tchiah.”

The Admiral-General flicked up her hands, eyes rolling in a silent bid for patience. Composing herself, she turned to watch Ia greet the Grandmaster of the Afaso.

“Mok’kathh suweh nehh khunnssswearahh,
Ssarra
,”
Ia replied, lips closed but curved in a smile and her arms opening wide. The batik-clad Tlassian curled up the corners of his broad, scaled lips and turned his green-clothed back to her. She wrapped her arms around his chest in friendly greeting, then turned her back to the saurian so that he could do the same . . . and bent over, lifting him off the ground with a chuckle at his hiss of surprise.

“
Nnghah, Ia!
Ssso you thinnk you are ssstrong?” he challenged her as she set him back down and turned to face him. She had to adjust her Dress cap, since the move had dislodged it a little. The Grandmaster held up his three-fingered hand, palm out and thumb up in the common Tlassian-Human gesture of forestalling extra comments. “I knnow you are
phhyssically
, my
mok’kathh
. Thisss is a philosssophical questionn.”

“I am now stronger than I have ever been,
mok’kathh
,” Ia replied, giving him a polite, respectful bow, hands interlaced Tlassian-style in front of her chest. “And the path I take next is the strongest of steps.”

The alien monk eyed her, his scaled expression not easy to read for Humans. This was the tail end of a conversation they had started a very long time ago, back at the Afaso Headquarters just a few days before she had left for Australia Province and a certain recruitment office. Bowing, he accepted her words. “Then I shall pray that you shall have everything you need when you finish your journey.”

“That’s rather cryptic,” Myang muttered, eyeing the Grandmaster. “Still, it is good to meet you again, Grandmaster. I believe we last met before the wars started, on Mars? You were overseeing an exhibition of Afaso skills, versus the best of the best at that Army base.”

“Yesss . . . it was a good commpetitionn, as I recalll. A pleassure to ssee you again, Admirrral-Genneral,” Ssarra agreed.

“Quite. Now, Ia, about those boxes,” Myang reasserted, turning back to her. “What’s in them, if it’s not on the DoI’s list of approved commendations?”

“It’s something private for my crew,” Ia demurred. General Sranna came to her rescue, as she knew he would.

“Something for your crew?
I
think I know what it is,” he said. At the blank, curious looks from Admiral Genibes and the Grandmaster, he dug into his pocket and pulled out a metal disc. “Challenge coins! They’re all over the Army. I was making a bet with that blue-haired fellow of yours, the one with the thick accent—Lieutenant Spyder?—on how many awards he’d get, and told him to haul out his challenge coin. That was when I heard you didn’t have any—Genibes, how could
you
, at least, not have heard of them?”

“He’s heard of them, but they’re almost never found in the Marines or the Navy,” Ia told him, answering for her former CO. “The Army is often stationed on a planet, save for when they’re traveling. Both the Marines and the Navy are almost always in space, and a coin is an unsecured projectile on a ship. Ferrar’s Fighters served entirely on board the
Liu Ji
, except for a few colonial-rescue missions. And when I was in the Navy, I was always on the Blockade, where such things are even more likely to get left out of shipboard life. Ever since then . . . I’ve been stuck on a ship in multiple high-speed combat zones, save for our brief tour on Dabin. I never bothered to issue any because it’d just be one more thing to keep track of and make sure it was Locked and Webbed in case of a sudden vector change.”

“That makes it sound like they’re not challenge coins, then,” Myang said, lifting her chin at the black boxes. “So what are they?”

“A little something I decided to issue as one of my last few official acts as General of the Alliance Armies,” Ia hedged mildly.

“Oh?” Genibes asked her. “You make it sound like you won’t be, for much longer.”

“Well, I don’t like abusing my power, so I rarely
use
it,” Ia pointed out. “That means my official acts as the General of the Alliance Armies are few and far between . . . but the Second Grey War
is
going to come to an end at some point, and that means I won’t be needed as said General of the Alliance Armies after a while. Call it a little indulgence, if you want—and it looks like they’re about to start the ceremony, so we need to take our places, meioas.”

Myang caught Ia’s elbow, holding her back for a moment. She murmured in the taller woman’s ear. “
Is
everything on schedule?”