Battle Group Epsilon

Chapter 30

Chapter 30

May 18 2184, 18:24 Hours (Standard Solar Time)
Aboard USNI Destroyer Stalingrad En Route Saturn System

Grabowski had said it a hundred times but he never thought it would ever be true. He had grown to hate irony. "It could be the end of the world but we'd still have to wake up and do PT." It had been much funnier when it wasn't true. They worked out as a platoon now instead of squads. Something about unit cohesion. He hadn't been listening to Lieutenant Towers when he explained it. Grabowski wasn't the brains of the unit, just another body. Besides, in the end it meant the same thing; he had the privilege of waking up at some ungodly hour to do pushups while being yelled at. He was impressed however that Towers ran most of the PTs.
It was strange being in such a large ship. The Cyclops had been damaged during the battle. They had only just left the combat zone when the skipper told them they had to abandon ship. There had been some fierce ship to ship fighting as the survivors were scooped up by friendly ships. They demoed the ship and Grabowski had watched as it blew apart like a soda can filled with a firecracker.
He liked the Stalingrad. Unlike the Frigate and Carrier he had toured on before, every area of this ship had artificial gravity. The Cyclops had been too small for that luxury and the Carrier devoted most of its room to its fighter squadrons.
Though so much had happened, within the fleet it was business as usual. They kept to a strict schedule, conducted their battle drills, and went on as though nothing had happened. The general dip in moral was the only reminder that something had happened. Grabowski had heard scuttlebutt that there had even been several suicides. Another small irony. The Fist of Jupiter was doing all they could to kill them but there were those willing to do the job themselves.
Therapists and psychologists began cycling through the fleet. Every single person was required to attend counseling sessions. He hadn't even known the fleet had therapists. He had gone into his session determined to leave. He didn't need some goddamn paper-pushing prick to analyze his life. He had planned to tell him he had grown up on some colony far from. Unfortunately they had read his background.

"How are you dealing with your grief?" they asked him. The man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He watched Grabowski like a chemist watching a test-tube.
"I'm fine."
"You're family was in Manhattan at the time, weren't they?"
"Probably," he said.
"Were you not very close with your family?" he asked.
Grabowski believed in professional courtesy as much as the next guy but he had had it. "Do you have family?"
The therapist moved around in his chair. "I'm sorry?"
"Do you have family?"
The man cocked his head. "I don't see how-"
"Just answer the goddamn question. Do you have family?"
"Were they on Earth," Grabowski asked.
He pushed his glasses further up his nose and shook his head. "They live on a space col-"
"Then shut the f*** up," he shouted. "I don't need some pencil neck psychoanalyzing my life, I'm fine. My father was a bastard and he got what he had coming." He shook his head in anger. "Just sign whatever you need to and get me on my way. A waste of my goddamn time."
The man was comically startled. He scribbled a signature on several forms and told him he could leave now. If Grabowski wasn't so mad he might have laughed. He felt bad afterwards of course. He shouldn't have gone off at him but he didn't need to talk to anyone. Besides, even if he did want to talk, it wouldn't to some asshole that saw him as a checklist of possible disorders to cross off. He didn't feel guilty when he tried to imagine what the Sarge would have done to the guy. Grabowski decided he let him off easy.

Another sign that things were wrong was the mess hall. The fleet was having problems with food shortages. The ship made fresh vegetables and there were live fish in the biozone but they were only meant to supplement their food supply. After years of complaining how shitty the food was and now they complained because they weren't getting enough.
Grabowski didn't like going to the mess hall anyways. It had once been a place to go to escape. Now everyone was just too damned depressed. When he went to get chow he couldn't help but notice how oppressively quiet it was. Nearly everyone say alone and even those that sat in groups were silent. It reminded him of a library. He hated libraries.
They had a reason to be upset though he supposed. They were running out of food and fuel, avoiding attacks and cruising towards the ass end of no where because of some miscalculation by the Fleet Admiral. The Earth was gone and the rest of humanity was too chicken-shit to support them.
It was pretty bleak and he knew a thing or two about bad situations. He should have been miserable. Hell, he should have even been worried. He wasn't though. There was no one left to protect. There was no one left to worry about or try to impress. They were living for themselves because there was nothing else. In some strange and sardonic way, it was everything he'd ever wanted. He was almost happy.
Foster was the same way. She never spoke much about her family. Her father had died when she was young and she never spoke about her mother. He assumed they didn't get along. They found normalcy with each other against the darkness of what surrounded them. The standards of the crew's sleeping arrangements were no longer a matter of great concern. He spent most nights with her.

A few days after the incident with the Therapist, Lieutenant Towers called him for a meeting. Grabowski knew he would be berated for the manner he had dealt with the bastard. And he was briefly, but that was not the reason for the meeting. It was something else and in a way, he should have seen that coming too.
"You're being given a field promotion," Towers told him. "Congratulations Sergeant."
Grabowski looked down at the three stripes on the Lieutenant's desk. "Thank you, sir."
The Lieutenant cocked his head and smiled. "Is that all? The Major told me you might be less than appreciative of the news."
"I've ran a fire team," he said. "I can run a squad. Just one thing sir,"
"Just name it."
"If I'm being promoted than that means we're down a team leader. We're already short on personnel as is."
Towers nodded. "As I'm sure you can imagine, the whole battalion is undermanned. The Major is in the process of consolidating the platoons. You should get some new bodies by the end of the month. As far as a team leader goes, that's your job Sergeant." The Lieutenant smiled at him. "Find yourself a suitable replacement within your squad."
Grabowski saluted and said, "Yes, sir."

Freemen was a good soldier and his best friend. He had been in nearly as long as Grabowski and did not mind taking his spot as Alpha team leader. It was a perfect fit.
Being squad leader came with certain advantages. He worked directly with Lieutenant Towers and the rest of First platoon's squad leaders. He was no longer lost and left in the dark. The Lieutenant kept him informed and he began to learn how everything worked. The rest of Second squad looked up to him too. They were all still his friends but he was also their leader. They asked him questions. "How long until we get to Saturn?" Mac asked him after she returned from sickbay. There was a scar from the burn but she was tough as hell.
"Eight more weeks," Grabowski told her.
"Are we going to run out food?" Chavez asked. "If they make these rations any smaller I'll shit a brick, I swear I will."
"They've rationed them enough to last us a year," Grabowski told him.
"Why isn't the Fist of Jupiter still attacking?" Freemen asked.
"Skipper thinks we lost them," Grabowski explained. "We've been leaving a trail of Sensory Probes like bread crumbs and they haven't detected shit."
It was unusual being the man with the answers. He almost liked it. When he walked around the ship people greeted him. "Morning Sergeant." Or they would, "Good afternoon Sergeant." He was respected. It had been so long since he had been proud about anything, he'd forgotten what it felt like.

It was the cliché of time. Days passed by and those turned into weeks. Soon it was months. His replacements finally arrived from Third Platoon. They were green as grass and looked like uncertain boy scouts next to the rest of his men. Second squad had seen more action than any other squad in the battalion though. It was hard to find anyone else that could stack up. Lieutenant Towers had assured him they had promise though. Grabowski would decide that.
The worst part of it was the confinement. After ten weeks of being cooped up in the same damn ship he thought he was going lose his mind. He memorized every dented access panel, every paint chip missing from a warning sign, and every flickering light bulb. Every imperfection was catalogued in his consciousness. He hated the smell of the recycled air, the taste of the water that had been piss a few hours ago. He needed to get out. Like everything else in the military though, it was simply a matter of endurance. How much shit could you take before you finally lost it? Surly if he could spend ten weeks in this tin can, he could endure another two. But what happened then. How many more weeks would he sit there after that? He didn't think about that. In his mind there were just two weeks to go. It was like that last mile in a marathon run. But what would he find at the finish line?