Chapter 24
Klaise Xeran sat quietly at his table. He was just beginning his second meal of the day and felt oddly relieved. The mess hall around him was familiar. Its clean and rigid form had now blended in with the daily routine, and it no longer held the awe and excitement it had when the whole ship had assembled there a few weeks ago.
It was now just a time marker: it came into his life for three brief moments each day before disappearing back into the past and future. In the morning it gave him a reminder of the workday ahead and sharpened his mind so he could remember and focus on completing all the tasks at hand. At noon it gave his lungs a few breaths so he could regain his faltering strength. In the evening it let his broken pieces rest from the day’s troubles. He could sit and think of something—or nothing at all. He often enjoyed those times when he was master of himself. Although without energy, he could enjoy simply existing. He was not pressed to do anything, he had no responsibility for the moment, and he felt content.
He thought about the times when he had felt free, and then that feeling oddly crept to him. He knew that he still had part of his workday ahead of him, and that even afterwards he could be summoned at any time, but it didn’t feel that way. He knew that the Imperium’s task force would catch the Ameerian ship at its escape point in a matter of hours, but his head was clear. The artificial light overhead illuminated his bleak meal with a shine he suddenly appreciated. He picked up the single tomato slice he was permitted and examined it with keen interest.
The juice within was remarkably well kept, its bulbous, liquid form was still intact. He observed the arrangement of little yellow seeds within its depth, and his mind paralleled them to the stars in the sky. He noted the thick red crust that contained the center slice. Like a masterwork armor hauberk it kept the middle in its place.
He raised it above his head and watched the light dance off its surface; he felt intrigued and forgot the people around him. The seeds seemed so delicate to him, they were all so randomly yet orderly arranged within the slice. He knew that a single disturbance could destroy that entire micro-system. A part taken from the whole was no longer protected. It no longer had its think shell to surround it on all sides.
The seeds were at first the men and women who worked aboard the EFS Vigilante, and the strong shell was their ship’s hull, shielding them from the harsh death of space. A breach in the hull would send all the seeds to their death.
The seeds then became a fleet of ships, a collection of collections of people. They all worked as a many-limbed creature, flying together and working together. They were so majestic and strong and could strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. The fleet was only a slice, and fraction of what it needed to be. Its sides were undefended, it was outflanked. Its enemies took it from the sides and behind and closed themselves around it. The armada was hopelessly destroyed without its other parts and left its cold wreckages throughout that thin slice of red.
The many fleets came together, and then every seed was a star. A large galactic empire rose. It occupied its vast dominion in space. Its ships carried goods throughout its systems and patrolled the skies. Its rulers made the choices they had to make in order to send it rocketing into the future. The empire was then divided. Its jurisdiction was but a sliver of what the galaxy was. It was a thin line of disjoined solar systems, each groaning from pain. It was a loosely bound string of scrawny establishments, its bare bones picked clean by ruthless raiders from the outside. Without protection from all sides, it was but a failed rule that would never again see the light of glory. It all stood within the heart of the tomato.
No matter what overarching authority a thing possessed, without the proper defense and unity, it crumbled into nothingness.
“Now what might this little oddity be?” inquired a jocular and warm female voice.
Klaise snapped out of his thoughts and looked to his left to see Gussol taking the last step towards his table. Her bounce stopped, and she stood to his side. He realized he was still holding the tomato slice to the ceiling light, with a jerked arm bent awkwardly at the elbow. He looked as if he were inspecting a rare specimen of some sort. He was surprised and ripped out of his state of mind; it took him a second to gather his words.
“This, this is a tomato. I’ll bet you’ve never seen one,” he finally responded.
“Oh, I’ve seen a few, but I’ve never found them quite so absorbing.”
“Well, maybe you haven’t looked close enough.”
She offered a very slight nod and moved to sit down opposite him. He leaned backwards from the table in a gesture more used to display a respect for personal space than to actually facilitate the other person’s seating. She took her seat and sat down her tray. If the conditions of food in space were bad aboard massive stations, they were all the worse aboard small ships on long voyages.
The package consisted of one slightly rectangular light-brown block and a potato slice. Klaise was amused at the composition of the meal. The entirety of the nutritional value came from concentrated blocks or sludge, leaving only a small token of real food to give a little taste to the meal. She also had with her a drink that was a clear white. The drinks were manufactured to taste like a wide array of actual beverages, but their color was most often plain white.
“What do you have there?” Klaise asked while motioning to the cup.
“This,” she said as she hovered with high-spirited enunciation on the word, “is the finest of wines. Taken not from the cellars of Earth, Regred or Sihntar, but straight from the dunes of Veii.”
Klaise laughed a hearty laugh as he thought of the ridiculous statement. Wine aboard a spaceship was a ridiculous waste of space. Only pleasure cruisers ever carried it. The drink aboard the Vigilante was a highly nutritious mix that further supplemented one’s diet, in addition to providing the water one needed. Storage space was of the essence, and every square meter that could be filled was used because antimatter fuel was something costly and dangerous to produce. Gussol was in quite a gleeful mood, he thought to himself. Still smiling, he looked up and replied.
“And what is the finest drink known to man doing in your hands, aboard a starship? Last I heard we weren’t allowed alcohol, or any actual shipped freight, onboard.”
“Mmm,” she responded, looking with mock interest at the cup, which obviously contained some synthesized drink, “I had to go through a very secretive deal with a band of smugglers.”
“Oh my,” Klaise shook his head as he responded, “what if the captain got wind of this?”
“Then I’ll know who’s head needs to roll,” she answered with a bright smile.
After the charade came to an end, Klaise started eating his bleak, yet richly nutritious meal. Winter opened several topics of discussion and he began finding himself more and more immersed in them. His brief moment of respite had been interrupted, but he did not mind the company. She had a vibrant voice filled with vitality and good morale. He forgot the tight schedule on which the ship was operating and did not feel the time start to slip by.
Winter was likewise well entertained and deeply immersed in a debate on the long-range effectiveness of experimental disruption torpedoes when the ship’s public announcement began to sound.
-Five minutes to disengagement from hyperspace.-
Both of them got up quickly and put away their utensils. Because they both were senior officers on the ship, they quickly made their way out the door and towards the bridge. They moved through the thin halls quickly and made it to their posts with time to spare.
Darius Targen was already standing at the main command console, with a formation plan ready from Trein. The ships would fall into a tight tetrahedron, with the Defender IV at the top. The EFS Freelancer, being badly damaged, would be in the center of the figure, having three ships in front of it to move around and block it. The commanders took their stations, and the crew prepared themselves for the exit. All ships gave their final readiness, and at an arbitrary location in
the QAX-23 system they reversed their engines and disengaged from hyperspace.