THE
GENERAL
Krey was in bitterly depressed spirits as he
wandered down a crowded Unli corridor. He had talked to numerous
friends, as well as several business associates, and no-one was
willing to help him in his time of need. Bruni's words held true;
no one wanted anything to do with a man in cufflets. He was
beginning to think that he should take Bruni's advice and get laid
before the UN caught up with him, because, near as he could
assesshe was going to jail.
Krey was distracted from his thoughts when he
heard a stranger's feminine voice call his name from somewhere down
the corridor.
"Krey! Krey Altson!"
Krey stopped dead in his tracks, then anxiously
turned to search the faces of the crowd for the stranger. After
a moment or two, he spotted a lovely young woman making her way
through the crowded corridor at a hurried pace. As Krey watched
the beautiful woman approach, he casually, and prudently, held his
hands behind his back in an effort to hide his cuffletshe did not want to make a bad impression.
As the woman drew closer, Krey noticed that she
also wore cufflets. He studied her face as she approached in an
attempt to place her; who was this convict and how did she come to
know his name? Finally it hit him, she was in the UN courtroom
with him that morning.
Cassie offered an uneasy smile as she slowed to
a halt and introduced herself.
"Hi. I'm CassieI saw
you in court this morning."
Krey returned the smile and nodded, "Yeah,
I rememberyou were in the back. What did the
judge hit you with?"
"1292."
"Me too."
There was a short, awkward pause. Cassie's eyes
swept across the floor as she tried to think of the best way to
approach the subject. Krey's smile grew by a subtle measure as his
eyes ran down the length of her body. She was indeed a stunning
woman. At the moment, however, Krey was much more interested in
why she approached him, rather than her appearance.
Cassie's eyes came up from the floor and met
his, "Um... The sentencing took longer than I planed, and I
missed my flight to the frontier." She tried to appear as
convincing as possible. "I haven't been able to find a seat
on anything leaving during my grace period, and... well..."
She paused momentarily to let out an uneasy sigh, which was
strictly for effect. "You told the judge that you were
leaving in your own craft. I was wondering if I could get a ride
with you."
Krey's smile diminished somewhat; he would have
been more than willing to help the stranger if it would have been
possible. He sadly shook his head.
"I'm sorry. I don't have a fuel loadI can't launch my craft." He let out an uneasy
sigh. "I'd certainly help you if I could."
Krey offered Cassie his hand, "Come
on," He gestured down the corridor with a twist of the head,
"I'll buy you coffee."
Cassie accepted his hand, then the two convicts
started down the corridor; Cassie was already contemplating several
possibilities.
"What kind of fuel load do you need?"
she asked in a nonchalant voice.
Krey chuckled in a hopeless tone, "About
a half a million marks worth. You wouldn't happen to have that
kind of money, would you?"
Cassie shook her head, "No, but I might be
able to get my hands on some anti-matterI have
a friend that owes me a favor."
"It better be a good friendwe'd need thirty-five kilos."
"I think I can get that."
Krey stopped and studied Cassie's face; he could
see she was serious. He looked down at his watch, "I only
have an hour and ten minutes of grace period left, and preparations
will take an hour at best. Can you have this anti-matter ready in
ten minutes?"
Cassie nodded, "Maybe."
"We'll need a few other odds and ends as
well."
A look of suspicion came over Cassie, "What
kind of odds and ends?"
Krey squinted up at the ceiling as he counted
off each item on his fingers, "Six-hundred pounds of liquid
oxygen, twelve hundred pounds of liquid hydrogen, a hundred and
fifty gallons of hydraulic fluid, sixty gallons of water, a fully-
charged 800 ampere-hour nicad battery, and food for two people for,
say, at least two weeks. ...I'll buy the beer."
"Hmm..." Cassie thought about the
prospect. It was a very tall orderbut the
alternative was prison.
Krey knew that it was a ridiculous amount of
stores to gather in ten minuteseven if money
wasn't a problem. He was fully prepared for Cassie's disappointing
response, but when that disappointing response was not immediately
forthcoming, he began to hold out some hope. He decided to offer
some encouragement.
"Maybe we can cheat on preparations and
trim some time off the preflight. If you could possibly have this
stuff ready in, say twenty minutes, I'll let you pick the
destinationI'll take you anywhere you want to
go."
Cassie looked up at him and smiled. "It's
a deal! Meet me at the Common in twenty minutesby the statue of The General."
An overwhelming sense of euphoria had overtaken
Krey by the time he reached the statue of The General. In a matter
of minutes, his perspective of the future went from dismal to
delighted. With the problem of securing a fuel load out of the
way, his thoughts turned to the space flight, and the beautiful
stranger who made it all possible.
Krey seldom had the opportunity to meet a woman
as beautiful as Cassie, and was eagerly looking forward to spending
several long, isolated weeks together in the hull of RQ-733. It
almost seemed like something out of a romance novel; two young
strangers getting to know each other on an adventurous journey to
who-knows-where. In his mind's eye, he had already painted
pictures of himself and that lovely, sensual woman drifting half-
dressed beneath the breathtaking view of the observation port. He
could see it clearly; some zero-gravity canisters of wine floating
close at hand, soft music, view of the stars, intimate
conversation. Then, when the moment was right, they would hold
each other closely in the unrestricted bed of zero gravity and
share a gentle, passionate kiss. As the perpetual night wore on,
they would begin tantalizing each other's bodies with soft caresses
that daringly bordered the intimate, until, ultimately...
"Excuse me."
Krey was distracted from his overly-creative
imagination when a passer-by happened to bump into him. He looked
down at his watch; only five minutes had passed. There was still
a long, quarter of an hour to kill before the adventures of his
dreams would begin. He nervously looked around the Common for some
time, then casually turned his attention to the statue of The
General.
The copper statue depicted a young man in a
spacesuit, less the helmet, who was heavily burdened with World War
Five fighting gear. He was standing on a generic pedestal and
poised with a particle beam rifle pointed at an unseen adversary
somewhere across the Common. A laser rifle was slung over his
shoulder and several miniature, infrared-seeking missiles were
attached to his weapons belt. The pressure suit's life-pack was
mounted on his back and a .40 caliber, lead-projectile pistol was
strapped to one of his boots.
Krey read the plaque out of shear boredom:
Somewhere, across 47 light-years of empty void,
in the constellation of Auriga, was a warm, yellow star known for
millenniums as Capella. Capella was very similar to Earth's sun
as far as heat and color, though somewhat smaller in size. Like
the sun, Capella was not alone in space; it too nurtured a small,
modest collection of planets, which relentlessly circled the star
in their endless orbits. There were five planets in all, whose
surface temperatures ranged from searing heat to perpetual,
forbidding cold. There was, however, an oasis of life in that
remote, single-star system. The second planet out, Theti, had a
mean surface temperature of 98øF, and an oxygen/carbon dioxide
atmosphere capable of supporting human life.
Theti was, by far, the most remote of the four
frontier planets. It was adorned with vast, indigenous forests of
towering 400-foot hardwoods, though open fields and lakes were also
abundant. Water covered 38% of Theti's surface, most of which was
either gathered in a single ocean-sized fresh water lake, or hung
around in the atmosphere as stagnant, muggy humidity.
Theti was not tilted on its axis and, therefor,
had absolutely no seasons. The weather was generally hot and muggy
throughout the 298-day year, storms were rare and never of the
severity like those experienced on Earth. It was a haven for
vegetation, as well as a home to three and a half billion pioneers
from Earth, who settled there in hopes of forging new lives, and
new dreams.
One such pioneer was a long-forgotten hero,
whose deeds and courage had restored sanity to the once turbulent
human realm. General Fenton S. Raver sat quietly at a rustic desk
in his modest, semi-domed house, which was nested in a secluded
stand of giant, Thetean hardwoods.
Fenton's 124 year-old eyes gazed up through the
quarter-shell dome, which covered a small living area and a den.
A subtle, peaceful smile tugged at the many fine lines in his face
as he watched a monkey-like Krello climb a vine up one of the
massive Bao trees, which towered nearby.
"They want them nuts," he said in a
raspy, weathered voice.
Chellaina, who had been his wife for ninety-
six years, was never far away. She sat in a fluffy, padded chair
as she practiced the old, nearly forgotten art of crocheting. Her
feeble, 117 year-old hands stopped their slow, tedious task as she
looked up at the Krello.
She smiled as her caring voice softly echoed a
reply.
"They work so hard for thembring them down one at a time."
Fenton looked to Chellaina; her frail, 97-pound
frame was dwarfed by her fluffy pink chair like a kitten dwarfed
by a pillow. To Fenton, Chellaina was as lovely as the day they
met. She had a soft, timid personality and was ever so proud of
her husband, The General. Fenton smiled at his precious wife, then
returned to the countless pieces of World War Five memorabilia,
which covered his desk.
The General's shaking hands reached down for a
curled, weathered photograph of a massive military spacecraft,
which was riddled with laser burns and munitions holes. Several
areas of her hull were ripped open and exposed to the inhospitable
rigors of space, and smoke vented from one of her crippled
engines.
"We were something back thenback when we were young and spiky."
Chellaina pause to smile at her husband, though
Fenton did not notice. She knew how much that era of heroics meant
to him, and how much he loved to sift through those memories.
Chellaina quietly returned to her crocheting as Fenton studied the
aged, weathered photograph.
"So many people died that day." His
eyes ran from one edge of the picture to the other as they shifted
under a sagging brow. "But, we were something."
He set down the photograph, then picked up a
tattered scrap of paper, which was considered an antique at the
time, and gazed at the numbers scribbled down in ink. The paper
itself appeared to have been a blank page torn from a booka bound, paper book; the numbers were a series of
angles, distances, and times.
"I remember these coordinates." He
turned and held up the scrap for Chellaina to see. Chellaina
smiled and nodded, then returned to her craft. The General
returned to his desk, and his memories.
"We used them the day they dispatched us
to Menti. I got these coordinates during a communication with UN
headquarters. We had orders to protect a make-shift refugee colony
of seven billion; most of them were stored in prison canisters and
just warehoused on the surface of Menti. The UN said that military
ships loyal to the Fourth Order were moving against the
colony."
He paused for just a brief moment as a proud
smile came to his face, "I wrote the coordinates of the colony
down in my diary. We never wrote down coordinateswe let the computers take care of it because,
sometimes, people make mistakes when they write stuff down. But,
that day, for some reason, I wrote down the coordinates."
Chellaina continued with her craft as she
listened to The General. She had heard all his war stories before,
but she enjoyed listening to them never-the-less.
"We were heading to the front, us and the
other five Star Sabers, when two of us got orders to defend the
refugee camp at Menti. We turned our flight computers over to UN
control, then broke off from the formation. We were two days out
when I noticed that our position didn't agree with the coordinates
I wrote in my diary. I tore the page from my diary then took it
to one of the computer consoles to check the coordinates.
"We were already within Fourth Order's
jamming range when we discovered that our computers were sending
us to the wrong place. We couldn't confirm our destination with
UN headquarters, so I struggled with a decision. Finally, I
decided to order the two Star Sabers on a different courseto the coordinates from my diary. At the time I
wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing or not, but, after the
war was over, technicians discovered that the Fourth Order placed
a software implant in the UN computers, and it was that implant
that tried to send us to the wrong place."
Chellaina set her work down and turned her
attention to The General's story. "I'm so proud of you,
Fenny." The General still had the scrap of paper in his hand
as he turned to face his wife. "You saved so many helpless
people from that wicked crusade." She nodded in a caring,
convincing fashion. "It's not easy to trust the pen over the
computeryou did the right thing."
She could see by Fenton's expression that he was
pleased by her comment. After a moment or two, a less triumphant
look slowly crept across his face.
"It was such a bloody battleand so senseless. Our crew of 1,200; Christians,
Moslems, Jews, Buddhist... We all fought side by sideeach in the name of our own God. We constantly
argued about religion; who was right, who was wrongbut we all vowed to defend each other's religious
rights with our lives." He shook his head, "Not like the
Fourth Orderthey wanted to exterminate everyone
who didn't believe in their religion. They said death was the only
redemption for non-believers."
He turned to face his desk as he set down the
scrap of paper and began to rummage through the rest of his
collection.
"We made it there in timewe met their armada. Two Star Sabers against
thirty-five Boeing B-2732 fighter-bombers." He picked up a
picture of a smaller spacecraft, which is shown dropping bombs over
a distant, hostile planet. He turned, then his slow, shaking hands
offered the picture to Chellaina. Chellaina took the picture as
The General continued with his account of history.
"We'd go after the bombers and hit them
with the fixed laser cannons, while gunners in the turrets went
after the falling bombs with particle-beam guns. I don't know how
we did it; not one bomb made it to the surface of Menti. But, that
all changed when the front collapsed."
"I remember that day too," Chellaina
said as she handed the picture back to The General. "I was
so scared. When I heard that the Fourth Order took out the front
with antimatter weapons, I was sure the entire realm would
collapse. The only thing standing in their way was you and
Menti."
The General shook his head, "It wasn't just
me. Over two thousand God-fearing men lost their lives aboard
those Star Sabers." The General returned the picture to his
collection. "We spent two months in that bloody battle, there
above Menti; two crippled Star Sabers against the remnants of the
front. Every war machine in existence, every thing that could
still fly, converged on Menti. Two Star Sabers against an armada
of a hundred forty-three vessels."
He picked up the same, curled photograph that
started his war story. His eyes, just like so many times before,
carefully studied the all-too-familiar details of the photo.
"She was the last one left. The four at
the front were vaporized in an antimatter blast. The other one at
Menti burned through the atmosphere and crashed on the surface.
They fought for two days with no engines, shooting from a crippled,
disintegrating orbit. We'd do what we could to speed them up and
stabilize their orbit; the Fourth Order did what they could to slow
them down.
"I cried that daythe
day RQ-653 and her crew of 1,200 went down. She kept her laser
cannons firing every step of the wayeven when
she started to burn in that God-forsaken atmosphere. She held out
in the heat for quite some time before her hi-temp alloy finally
gave in. She was already burning like a meteor when she shot three
fighters off our tail. She hit the ground; scientists say part of
her is still buried 2,000 meters beneath her crater."
His weathered, shaking hand slowly passed the
picture to his wife. "When it was all over, we were the only
fighting machine left in the entire human realm. Our crew of
1,200, was cut down to six, but we finished the Fourth Order. They
refused to surrender; they fought to the very last man. The spoils
are still in orbit around Menti, like the giant rings of
Saturn."
Chellaina carefully took the photograph from The
General. She knew how fragile the photograph was, and how much it
meant to her husband, the hero. It was his only picture of RQ-
733, and the only memorabilia he had to remind his fading memory
of the Star Saber that made him a hero.
Slow, gentle tears began to run down Chellaina's
face as she looked at the photo. "I remember when I took this
picture." The strain of those distant memories marred her
voice somewhat, though the courage of a century gone by helped her
to continue.
"I saw it from my office viewport, aboard
the Mercy Star. I thought it was just war debris under tow."
She looked up at Fenton with an unsure smile, then returned her
attention to the photograph.
"I saw your ship come in, then someone told
me that I was needed immediately. They said they had a job that
needed an expert. II guess I was an expert
because they picked me."
She looked up at Fenton and smiled, "I'll
never forget when I met you. When I was scrubbing, my commanding
officer came in and told me that the greatest hero in history was
on my tablesave him. I passed through the
doors, then found you on my operating table. Somehow, I knew you
were a hero, I could just feel it."
She drew an uneasy breath as her tear-stained
eyes smiled at her husband, "Eighteen hours with a laser
scalpel, and I still wasn't sure if I would ever have the chance
to meet you."
She handed the picture back to Fenton.
The General carefully accepted the picture,
"Thank You, Chelly; for saving my lifeand
for taking this picture."
Again, he turned his attention to the picture,
"They should have made a monument out of her."
"What ever became of your ship,
Fenny?"
The General shook his head, "It went to
salvage. One of her laser cannons is mounted on a memorial on
Menti, but no one goes thereyou need a suit and
there aren't no facilities thereit's a dead
world. The rest of it, well, it's probably melted down into tool
steel by now."
"Why?"
"Because no-one wanted to remember the war.
Our Star Saber was the last war machine leftand
no-one wanted her lying around as a reminder." He looked back
down at the photo, "They haven't built a single war machine
since."
Once again, his frail eyes panned across the
photo as sights and sounds of the war echoed through his head. A
proud, subtle smile crept across his face.
"We were something back thenback when we were young and spiky."