Phillip Peterson: The Dark Ship

Jeff looked out of the window at the endless darkness of hyperspace. He felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. He’d never thought of it like that. He’d committed himself to serving as an officer in the fleet because Nimitz University on Tau Ceti-4 was the holy grail for historians, and if wanted to study military history there, it would stand him in good stead if he’d served in the military. Even as a child he’d been fascinated by old maps and historical battles, and pored over books about long-ago wars. He had never regarded himself as a strategist, only as a historian. In fact, his dream had been to write an important book, which in future would become a standard work at universities. He wanted to create something for posterity. But Irons was right. Most books in the Imperial Military Library on Tau Ceti-4 were less than a hundred years old. And it wasn’t as if people before 2400 hadn’t been interested in history. It was just that the old works had become outdated.

Jeff could feel Iron’s hand on his shoulder and turned around to look at him.

“Some day you’ll return to your books and write about this war, because I’m assuming we’ll win. But until then, you’re in a much better position: you can help shape the present instead of just writing about the past. When the war is over, you yourself will be part of this history. Your name will appear in the records and documents and prove you were part of the mission we just successfully completed. Here and now you’ve made history, and you can be proud of that.”

Jeff looked at Irons wordlessly. He was right. On his first mission, he had actually become part of human history. He nodded tentatively and Irons pulled his hand back to his own armrest.

“And if you don’t mind me giving you some advice…” he continued.

Now what?

“Don’t write about this war!”

Jeff lifted his shoulders and let them slowly sink back down. “Why not?”

“By participating in this conflict, you’re biased. You will never be able to write neutrally and objectively about the battles of this war. Whether you like it or not, whether I like it or not, we have blood on our hands. Today we destroyed an entire planet and we have no idea how many Alliance soldiers and civilians were on that base on Acheron-4. And nobody knows how many lives we’ll wipe out with our bombs in the next few weeks and months.”

“I think I can preserve my objectivity,” Jeff replied, but he could hear the uncertainty in his own voice.

Irons laughed. “Would you yourself consider a mission a failure? Would you admit that you wiped out a planet and its inhabitants in vain? That you murdered, without—”

“Murdered? Hold on, we’re defending—”

Irons shook his head firmly. “No. We didn’t defend anything today. The mission against Acheron-4 is part of an offensive campaign.”

“That we had to carry out to win the war.”

Irons snapped his fingers. “To win the war. That’s right, we want to win the war and not just defend ourselves. You’re already whitewashing these missions, Captain Austin. And you will continue to do so—even more so when the war is over, as you’ll want to morally justify your actions. Forget it! Write your memoirs about your involvement in the war if you want to write about it, but don’t try and write an objective textbook. Focus your career on the Punic wars or the three World Wars, but not on…” He shrugged. “… whatever this war will be called in ten years’ time.”

Without even having to think about it, Jeff knew that Irons was right. He had already murdered people. He would never be able to write objectively about this conflict. But maybe writing his memoirs wasn’t such a bad idea. If he did it well, he could incorporate an overview of the conflict into an account of his own experiences. Fridtjof Nansen had done something similar in his book about his Arctic expedition. On the other hand, Jeff was just a small cog in the wheel of this war. Who would even buy his book?

Irons must have noticed he was lost in thought. “Don’t lose sleep over it. First you have to survive the war, you’ll still have plenty of time to think about it after.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the whining of a siren. A warning light immersed the bridge in a deep-red light. Even before he could look at the status message on his monitor, Jeff noticed something in front of the cockpit windows. Something that ought not to be there: stars. “We’ve left hyperspace.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Green stormed onto the bridge, brushing a hand over an ugly brown stain on the front of his combat suit. Joanne came up behind him looking concerned.

“Stop cursing and give me a sensible report,” Irons demanded calmly.

Jeff switched the system controls back to Green’s console.

“We’ve left hyperspace!” Green’s voice went up an octave with surprise.

“I can see that for myself,” Irons retorted. “But why?”

“That piece of shit has switched itself off,” Green said after several long seconds. “For safety reasons—the Casimir Converter couldn’t keep the horizon stable anymore.”

Another status message appeared on Jeff’s holoscreen in red letters: “The Penning trap!”

“I see that! Fuck!”

Irons spun on Green and gave him a withering look.

“Voltage is sinking again!” Green said.

“Send your people to look at it!”

“Yes, Sir!” Jeff could hear Green talking into his mic with the mechanics in the crew’s ready room.

“The damage appears to be worse than we thought,” Jeff said.

Irons frowned. “Yes, so it seems. Lieutenant Rutherford!”

“Sir?”

“Do we have enough antimatter to reach Sigma-7 if we eject the faulty cell?

“No. That won’t work.”

“Do we have another target we could fly to if we eject the cell?”

Joanne slowly exhaled. “Karim-6. There’s an advanced positioning station.”

“Without a maintenance base, I’m guessing?”

“Correct.”

Jeff rolled his eyes. Then the ship couldn’t even be patched up. They would have to wait for a tender, and at this stage of the war that might take several weeks. If they flew to Karim-6, they would be stuck there for a long time, sharing oxygen and food with a crew who would be far from thrilled to host them.

The major must have been having the same thought. “Lieutenant Green, have you had any feedback from your men?”

“Give me a moment, Sir.”

On the other hand, if the mechanics didn’t get the hyperdrive to work again, it wouldn’t make any difference whether they reached Karim-6 or not. Then they would have to spend years crawling back home at a snail’s pace.

“Sir, the Penning trap is beyond repair.” Jeff wondered how Green had managed to suppress an almighty curse.

“Then get rid of it!”

That meant Karim-6. Shit!

“Yes, Sir!”

On the other hand… as long as they were fixing the positioning system, they couldn’t be killed in another mission.

Another siren went off.

“We can’t eject the Penning trap.”

“Say that again?” Jeff was aghast.

“I said, we can’t eject the Penning trap. The damn thing must be totally shot. It’s a miracle it didn’t blow up in our faces in the Acheron System.

“Can’t you do it manually?” Irons asked. “There’s an emergency ejector.”

Green didn’t answer, but Jeff could hear the engineer talking to his men.

“Lieutenant Green?” the Major was getting impatient.

“The ejection system has been destroyed.”

Green’s words were followed by a lengthy silence. Jeff’s felt a knot in his stomach. Their antimatter store had turned into a ticking time bomb that they couldn’t get rid of. And the countdown had started . They would be blown up together with the ship. The old Agadir-class bombers didn’t have rescue capsules on board.