Commitment to War Chap 1 and 2

Chapter 1:



The world hovering on the viewscreen was gorgeous. It was a typical earthlike world, blue oceans and swirling wisps of clouds covered the lush virgin forests that carpeted the continents. It would have been a prize for humanity hundreds of years ago but now it was just another colony, one of dozens that lined the edge of human space.

Captain Arthur Cardozo of the Terran Federation Destroyer Auburn, had never been to New Concordia before. The small colony didn’t have much in the way of civilization, just a single spaceport and one small city with small individual settlements spreading out in a web of roads. Small farmers and other settlers were considered daring to venture much beyond the city, the local fauna was known to be large, vicious and liked the taste of human blood. That didn’t make it much of an attraction for most of the Terran Federation’s citizens but it sure did attract the hunters and thrill seekers to the new colony. He was hoping his crew would have a chance to go check it out after this was all over, get them some downtime. He knew a few of them were hunters back on their own worlds.

They had been here for over a week doing deployment maneuvers with the 352nd fleet. The space was empty of civilian traffic and made for superior training for the small fleet of destroyers and cruisers. As far as he knew they were preparing for an assault on Ilian space in case the meeting with the Batavian Warlord didn’t go as planned.  Fleet units all across human space were on full alert; training and preparing for the worst, hoping it didn’t come. 

Cardozo made sure his crew was as ready as they could be. The Ilians were ruthless warriors and he did not look forward to any kind of assault in their territory. Who knew how hard they would fight once backed into a corner?  Hell, even now most of the Ilian ships and warriors fought to the last man and even the last one committed suicide rather than be captured.  It was a war of attrition that had gone on way too long. He was glad that Supreme Commander Douglas had the nerve to survive the losses and push the Ilian monsters back to the original border of human space. 

The outcome of the war was horrifying. Millions dead, billions vanished on worlds taken by the Ilians and the news coming out of the recaptured worlds was even worse. Whole populations were gone. The survivors of the invasions were either hardened guerillas consumed by the atrocities of war or…  or… he didn’t like to think about it. The views of human cattle farms and charred piles of bones was enough for him. He didn’t like to think about it. They were etched into his memory forever. All it did was bring back memories of his family - family that he would never see again.

New Concordia had reminded him all week of his homeworld; the small towns, the wide open spaces ready to be tamed, the new feel of everything around them, it was almost too much to bear at times. He was from Zaragoza, a relatively new colony on the edge of the Terran Federation, a so-called border world, rich in resources and growing quickly. He loved his home, a small pre-fabricated building home to his entire family; mom, dad, brother, sister, and their partners and kids. They lived a meager life, working hard to clear the land and build something they could be proud of. His childhood was full of hard work and adventure, love and affection, those glowing memories of no responsibility and all the time in the world.

Thinking about it brought up old memories of their last time together, years ago as he left for naval training. He hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye to them. It was more of a “see you later!” kind of moment. One of those you moments you cherish when you see how much your family loves you and how much they are going to miss you. He wasn’t going to be gone too long, just a year for training and then he would be back on military leave for a few weeks. The worst part was going to be after that when he had to leave for years, being stuck on a ship travelling the stars. That was what his wife hated the most.

The hugs lasted for minutes. His dad had even cried a little, his hug a little tighter than usual. His mom was bawling, unable to cope with the fact that her only son was about to leave for a long time. His brother was stony faced and obviously holding back. Only a quick hug from him. His wife was the last one. Her soft words of encouragement whispered in his ear meant the world to him. It was the last thing he remembered, the most vivid and meaningful of all the memories, something he has looked back on for years. It was a cheery goodbye, one that seemed so insignificant at the time.

         Weeks later the Ilians came. He never heard from them again. The bitter hatred still burned deep in his chest, he will never forget what they did to him.

A beeping sound brought him out of his reverie. On the main viewscreen in front of him an automated message popped up from the fleet AI.

“Bring it up ensign, time for the end to all of this.”

The viewscreen changed immediately to an older man with salt and pepper hair and a blood red uniform with gold piping on the screen.  He was making a speech. 



Chapter 2:



Mike was in shock when his link went dark.  It was so sudden…so … so violent.  He had never encountered an Ilian before, never had the unfortunate chance to see their brutality in full effect, their total lack of respect for life.  He had no idea what had really happened.

         After waiting a minute for the link to come back on the u-net went down altogether. Every now and then service would get interrupted, he attributed it to the number of people on the net. He opened his eyes and was immediately disgusted. His apartment was nauseating. It was why he hooked into the neural link immediately when he came home from work. It had been nearly a full day since he was off the u-net. He felt both tired and wired at the same time.

         He tried to access his biosystems but they were unbelievably not working. They were nothing sophisticated, just body sensors and basic medical enhancements. Everyone got those when they were born nowadays. Still it was disturbing. He relied on them more than he probably knew.

         Old takeout food and filthy clothes mixed to create a pungent odor that permeated the room.  He could see mold and mildew stains crowding the walls in his bathroom in the dim light. The cheap apartments that he was forced to rent didn’t get much better than this. Something struck him as being out of place and it took him a moment to realize what the nagging feeling was.

         Why was it so dim?

Getting up from his old recliner, he moved over to the window that had a surprisingly decent view of Selkirk far off in the distance, the capital city of his home planet of New Britain. The apartment towers and business buildings that dominated the immediate area were all dark. A yellowish light was flickering from the city below him. 

Normally there were all kinds of colors that flooded in through his window and it was yet another reason to stay hooked to the u-net. Advertising billboards floated with third tier traffic about fifty feet from his thirtieth floor window showering his apartment with their obnoxious neon light. Only now there was no obnoxious neon light. Now there was nothing; nothing but the fires that raged on the street below him. The hovering signs were dead. All of a sudden one fell, then another and he watched all of them in panic as they crashed to the street below. Alarm shot through him at that moment. Things were wrong, they were very wrong.

He tried to access the u-net again to report what was going on. Nothing pinged back. He couldn’t even access the city AI for a general question. This was weird.

There was no traffic flying past his window, and now that he thought about it, it was eerily quiet; like you could hear a pin drop quiet.  In fact he could hear the drip of his faucet in the background.  Straining more he could hear the rioting and screaming going on down below him. 

Getting scared he went over to his front door and opened it slowly.  He peered through the crack of the open door as he pushed it ever so slightly. 

The hallway was dark, even the emergency lights were not on. 

He could see the outline of someone walking down the hallway heavily, thumping into the walls every so often with light curses. His eyes were adjusting slowly to the little bit of light that was coming from the open doors up and down the hallway.  It was obviously someone trying to walk down a dark hall that couldn’t see.  He couldn’t make out if it was a man or woman though. 

He closed the door softly till he heard the person pass.  He was not about to run into strangers in the dark when he had no idea what was going on around him.

Slowly opening the door, he peered through the crack and tried to see anything else.  He saw nothing in the hallway. 

He carefully made his way through the hallway to the elevator. He pushed the button. Nothing happened; even the button didn’t light up. He laughed at himself mentally.  Of course the elevator was not going to work the power was out. 

But that never happened. Power never went out, there were multiple fusion reactors around the city, run by AIs to perfection. They even had multiple redundancies built into the system, so that if one reactor went down the grid would still be able feed the city. A feeling that disaster was about to strike started to sneak its way into the back of his mind; the link with the Supreme Commander cutting out; the horrible things the Ilian Warlord was saying. It all just didn’t make sense.

Or did it? Maybe that was the truly scary part. Maybe disaster had already struck and he wasn’t prepared for that. No one was.

He moved to the stairs, being careful the whole way not to alert anyone to his presence.  He did not live in the nicest area of town and his building was full of drug addicts, criminals, and general scumbags - not necessarily people he wanted to bump into in the dark.

         He wasn’t scum himself, just a little on the edge of society’s fringe.  He had lost his job a few months ago working only odd jobs and minimum wage since. This was the cheapest place he could find. His wife had left him once she found out what he did, taking his kids back to her homeworld of St. Michaels.  He had gotten into some financial trouble with some corrupt men who were now looking for him to get their money back. This was as far away as he could get without actually leaving the planet.  And he didn’t have the money for that. He missed his kids, but it had been so long now that it was almost a constant numbness that was always there. It was a wonder that he still felt the need to live.

Somehow he still woke up every day and went to his crappy job and came home and zoned out till the early morning hours. It was a terrible cycle that he wanted to get out of desperately but it was hard; hard to put in the effort when things were meaningless now, hard to realize that maybe this was his life and it was going to go on like this forever.

He could feel the depression coming back on now. He shook his head to clear it and kneeled down to look around the corner for the entrance to the stairs. Cold metal pressed against the back of his head as.  “Don’t move. Stand up slowly,” a gravelly voice said from behind him. 

He did as he was told, holding his hands out for the man to see.

“I don’t have the money man.  Your bosses knew that when they gave it to me.  I just needed the money bad.  Look, I don’t know what’s going on outside but I don’t think I could get it for you if I wanted to,” Mike pleaded to the voice behind him. 

“You think I don’t know that asshole?  I wasn’t sent here to collect the money.  You’re going back to the boss.  He has a new job for you.  Maybe you can work off your debt, or maybe not.  Either way I don’t really care.  I came here to get you.  And no matter what is going on outside you’re coming with me,” the voice replied without moving the large caliber handgun from the back of his skull, pressing the end of the barrel into the back of his head for emphasis.