Following Orders

10 minute flash fiction.

Prompt: All the starship crashes were her fault.

Image via Flickr by brownpau

All the starship crashes were her fault. Lieutenant Evelyn Marsh stared at the screen, at the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of red lights dissipating into static nothing, and felt tears prick her eyes. All those lives. All that training, and work, and dreams undone by a simple navigational hack.

Lt. Marsh clasped her sweaty hands behind her back and turned to face the cabin. “All targets neutralized.”

“Very good, Lieutenant,” Commander Thurston Bracks said, leaning back in his Captains chair. “And the damage to the planet’s surface?”

“Seems to be negligible, sir.”

“Excellent.” The commander paused. “You seem upset Lt. Do you regret what we’ve done?”

Lt. Marsh squared her shoulders and drew herself up to her full height. “It had to be done, sir. The attack ordered by the council was entirely unjustifiable, and our actions today have stopped, or at least delayed, a genocide.”

Thurston nodded and turned his attention back to the blue and green ball that filled the central screen.

“Still,” Lt. Marsh said, undeterred by her commander’s inattention. “I regret the loss of life. I knew many of the men and women on those ships personally. They were good people.”

“The worst atrocities in history of been committed by good men and women who were only following orders,” the commander said without looking around.

Evelyn Marsh’s nails bit into her palms as she turned back to her own, now blank, terminal screen.

“Yes, sir,” she whispered. “I suppose that’s true.”