Graham Paul: The battle of Devastation reef

But since when had the concerns of Fleet’s aspirants, ambitious and petty, self-centered and self-serving, ever been important? Surely only one thing mattered: defeating the Hammer of Kraa?

The dreadnoughts had to work. And when they did, they would be the only ships in the Fed order of battle capable of surviving an attack by Hammer missiles carrying antimatter warheads. If dreadnoughts worked, they would buy the Feds precious time, time to reverse engineer the antimatter weapons he and Adamant had captured from the Hammer ships McMullins and Providence Sound . With antimatter weapons the Feds could take the fight back to the Hammers, beat them on the field of battle, and bring down the most brutal, most repressive government in human history.

That was the dreadnoughts’ destiny.

His was to be the captain in command of Tufayl , the first dreadnought to enter service; the dreadnought’s destiny was his, too.

“Ah, Lieutenant. Please take a seat.”

Michael Helfort sat down, even if sitting in front of one of Fleet’s most senior psychiatrists was the last place he wanted to be.

Surgeon Captain Indra peered at him, much the way a researcher scrutinized a laboratory rat. “Right, Lieutenant,” she said. “Let me tell you why I’ve asked you to see me, and we’ll take it from there. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. To be blunt, you’re here because my staff thinks you are not as well as you pretend to be, and I have to say I agree with them.”

Michael nodded. Burying the ghosts of the past was easy; keeping them buried was not.

If he read her right, Indra was about to rip away the screen he had built with such care to conceal the fear and self-loathing that festered inside his brain. If she ruled him unfit for active service, the one thing that drove him on-the promise, driven by a cold-burning resolve, to make the Hammers pay for all the death and destruction they had inflicted-would vanish.

What would he do with his life then?

“Let me see,” Indra continued. “We graded you P-4 immediately after your escape from Commitment. No surprises there after what you’d been through. Now, … yes, we upgraded you to P-1 once you finished postcombat stress deprogramming.”

Michael nodded. “That’s right, sir. P-1, fit for active service. I have since been posted to Tufayl as captain in command.” Michael tried to keep any pleading out of his voice. He needed, he wanted, the Tufayl … badly.

“Ah, yes. Tufayl . First of the dreadnoughts, I think?” Indra said.

“Yes, sir. She is.”

“Interesting idea,” Indra said. She looked at Michael directly. “Let’s get to the point. You’ve not been straight with us, have you?”

Miserably, Michael shook his head. “Guess not, sir,” he said, tired of the lies all of a sudden. “The same nightmare. Every night. It’s bad.”

“Ah, yes,” Indra said. “We were pretty sure there was something there. Problem was, you were good at covering it up. Too good.”

“So how did you … you know, how di-”

“Did we work it out?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Lieutenant, but we’ve been watching you for a while. Admiral Jaruzelska was concerned; she asked us to have a good look at you. And when we did, it became clear to us after a while that whatever you are, you’re not P-1 … Show me your hands!” she snapped.

Startled, Michael did. Indra nodded. “It’s that obvious, Lieutenant. Once you know where to look,” she said, her voice soft, “it really is.”

Numbed by despair, Michael stared at his hands. They trembled, and no matter how hard he tried, they refused to stop. “Does this mean I’ll lose the Tufayl?”

“Not necessarily,” Indra replied with an emphatic shake of her head. “I know how badly Fleet needs you and the dreadnoughts. Admiral Jaruzelska was quite forceful in that regard, I have to say,” she added wryly, “so I’ll give you two options. You can be honest with us and work with us to get your postcombat stress under control. I can’t say it will ever disappear, and since neurowiping is not an option, I can’t make you forget what you’ve been through. But we can help you manage it. If you won’t cooperate, you can keep doing what you have been doing-covering the problem up-in which case we can’t really help you much, I’m afraid. One thing I can tell you for certain, though. If you won’t work with us, you’ll be downgraded to, let me see … yes, at best, P-2, more likely P-3. In fact, never mind ‘will.’ As of now, that’s what you have been graded.”

“P-3?”

“Yes, P-3, unfit for combat duties. You are not stable enough to take the stress of combat. You’d be risking the lives of your fellow spacers. But it does not have to be that way.”

“So there’s a chance I can be P-1 again?”

“Yes, most certainly … if you’re honest with us. I cannot guarantee it, of course, because in the end it’s up to you, but your exposure to stress after the loss of Ishaq , although extreme, was relatively short. You’re young, you’re strong, and you’re fit. So yes, you can be P-1 again. But if you’re not open with us, postcombat stress will continue to be a problem for you, and much as you might want to be the captain in command of Tufayl , it’ll never happen. We’ve analyzed the simulator exercises you’ve been doing for the admiral, and postcombat stress is affecting your performance. Transient episodes of indecision, loss of concentration, a lack of mental resilience, and more. Do I need to go on?”

Michael shook his head. “No, sir, you don’t. It has to be the first option. And I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to play games. I was sure I’d get over it. I really was.”

The concern on Indra’s face was obvious. “I know you were, Lieutenant, so there’s no need to apologize. Everyone thinks they’ll get over it. We see it all the time. Now,” she said, her tone brisk and businesslike, “we have a job to do. Your boss says the world won’t end if we keep you for the day. So unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather be?”-Michael shook his head-“No? Good. Let’s get started. What we will do first is …”

* * *

After a long day with Indra’s people, Michael walked slowly back to his quarters. His mind felt strangely empty, hollowed out, scoured by the postcombat stress team as they probed back to a time before the Hammers.

Not that Michael had forgotten anything. He remembered everything he had been through as if it had only just happened: DLS-387 fleeing for its life after the Battle of Hell’s Moons, Ishaq’s loss in a Hammer ambush, the dead, empty eyes of Doctrinal Security’s Colonel Hartspring as he ordered yet another savage beating, the escape from the Hammer prisoner-of-war camp, the look of terror on Detective Sergeant Kalkov’s face when he slipped the knife up into the man’s heart, the DocSec trooper whose throat he had cut so effortlessly, the death of Corporal Yazdi, Eridani’s short but brutal war, the catastrophic defeat of the Fed Fleet at Comdur. It was all so fresh, just thinking about what he had been through threw his heart into overdrive.

Today was just the start. Indra wanted him back to do it again and again. When all the emotional baggage he had picked along the way up had been identified, labeled, sorted, and analyzed, Indra’s team could start the painstaking business of training him to control all he had been through. He had no illusions. It was not going to be easy; worse, the nightmares would still be there-Indra said they came from a place so deep in his brain that they would never leave him-but at least she held out the promise that much of the soul-destroying load he had been carrying all these months would be lifted.