David Michael Newstead's Blog, page 8
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July 23, 2024
A Moon Too Far, Part 1
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
The planet’s surface was littered with debris from previous battles. Looking out from the orbital viewing platform, Commander Patel mentally tallied the wreckage of entire fleets now smashed to oblivion below. There were rocket ships, flying saucers, and battle spheres or identifiable pieces of those things. It was like seeing the aftermath of a hurricane where one could roughly discern the trajectory of the storm. Waves of attack had crashed in one direction or the other, scarring the landscape forever after. Nuclear firestorms had burned the tops off of whole mountain ranges, while powerful laser cannons long ago punctured and cracked the small planet’s crust. Time after time, the war ravaged this place and reduced it to little more than a world-sized crater. This was ZY-6709.
“What are we doing on this rock?” asked Commander Weuther.
Commander Patel ignored the comment and continued to make notations on her electronic tablet. Yet, Weuther persisted in his attempts at conversation.
“Was it always this fucking ugly?” he said a minute later.
“I believe so,” she finally replied.
The computer displays showed that this had always been a lifeless desert. If not for its strategic location though, history might have overlooked this celestial body completely. That thought occupied Patel for some time as she imagined any nobler fate for the terrain below. It could have sat undisturbed for eternity.
“Has the High Command transmitted our new orders?” she looked up to ask Weuther.
Weuther’s face wore the deep, weary experience of far too many campaigns. What did it matter what High Command said, his eyes shouted.
“Not yet…” he told her, “We’re convening with the Admiralty in 30 hours. Maybe by then,” he added.
Of course, those orders would fill in the gaps, but the main outlines of their mission hardly needed to be explained. 300 years of war with no end in sight and this rock was destined for another thunderous, climactic engagement. Perhaps the planet would change hands again. Perhaps not. Maybe access to the nearby nebula would be cutoff, threatening energy supplies. Or in the near future, these two officers might be peering down at the charred remains of the enemy’s once feared armada.
To Weuther, the outcome was almost of no consequence whatsoever. For some time now, Commander Patel had detected this notable shift in her fellow officer’s demeanor. It was hidden behind certain facial expressions and the angle of his shoulders. She was secretly disgusted by people like him, because he so obviously did not believe in the war any longer. He failed to comprehend the path to victory. The man was adequate in his duties, in many ways an exemplary leader, but his heart wasn’t in the fight. In sharp contrast, her own mind, body, and soul were devoted to the cause. Yet, she possessed something more dangerous than fanaticism. Commander Patel’s calculating determination was the main feature that separated her from the violent, drug-fueled infantrymen on whom many fronts depended. Even the most battle hardened shock troops she’d met throughout her career would eventually become tired, demoralized, or even scared. Patel was simply on another plane of existence, another category.
Weuther considered the Commander to be cold and delusional and he often wondered if she was a sociopath. In a way, he realized, that might be advantageous to her profession. Unfortunately for him, there were only so many women on an Interstellar Carrier and Patel was one of them. Back in his cabin, Weuther’s journals charted his dismay with this neverending war. For years, he’d maintained the steadfast belief that their victory was imminent, that after the next offensive, the next dramatic maneuver, or grand plan they would finally succeed. Earth would prevail! Their alien foe would be defeated for all time. And Weuther’s imagination was filled to the brim with ideas of what his life could be like after that.
Gradually, harsh realities set-in. The horizon’s of Weuther’s life became narrower and narrower until the dark probabilities stared him in the face every night. His dreams for a happy life, he acknowledged, were a fantasy. The Commander doubted he would ever be able to return to Earth. So many of his friends and peers fought the good fight for their whole lives only to die on some nameless speck in the cosmos. At High Command, their maps changed here and there, but those sacrifices weren’t of any importance, he thought. Not really. Over decades and many generations, human society had contorted and rebuilt itself completely around the war effort. This was out of necessity. But Commander Joseph Weuther spent his free time reading about the centuries that preceded this conflict with deep fascination. It was so foreign to him. Life was once very different and that stirred a feeling in him that the man was hardly able to process.
Eventually, his chat with Commander Patel came to a close as awkwardly as it began. Weuther strolled around the ship’s promenade until he returned to his spartan quarters and pulled a book from the shelf. For ten minutes after opening it, he just stared out his window into the vastness of space. Would it ever end, he wondered.
Still at the viewing platform, Patel stood in place, listing her varied observations, and devising a strategy for the fight to come. Surveillance stations on the other side of the galaxy estimated another year before enemy forces arrived, while the presence of her own fleet was growing stronger every day. There was time, she thought. There was still time to plan, to reinforce their positions, amass enough soldiers and ships and supplies to repel those gray bastards. This, she firmly believed, could be the critical moment that helps turn the tide. She felt it in her bones.