“So, why'd you boys join the Navy, then?” Crew asked as they picked up the cards Enrique had dealt and scrutinised them.
“Well,” Dodds began, seeing the group's gaze fall on him. “I didn't want to do the whole nine to five thing, just didn't interest me. I wanted to get out there and see and do things, find a bit of adventure. Wanted to feel like I was a bit more than some cog in a big old machine, that could work just as well without me. So, at the end of the day it was either this or spend my life looking after apples.”
He watched their impassive expressions for a moment and then saw Ian's face split into a grin.
“Ahhhh,” Ian said, with a chuckle. “So, you wanted to join the Navy and become a hero!”
“No,” Dodds said, sitting back up.
“Yeah, you did,” Ian began to laugh. “You thought that if you joined the Navy, you'd get to blow stuff up, go on daring missions, earn tons of medals and get to sleep with lots of beautiful women.”
“No, I just wanted to do something different, you know – give something back to the Confederacy; be a part of something special,” Dodds said.
“See,” Crew interrupted. “You did want to be a hero.”
All four men were laughing at Dodds. He turned toward Enrique and Chaz, seeking support, but saw that they too were enjoying the roast; Enrique shaking his head, Chaz wearing a thin smile.
Sure, I did want to be a hero, once, Dodds thought to himself. But I'm back here for different reasons now.
“What about you?” Crew turned his attention to Enrique, who shielded his cards in case there was some ploy against him. Dodds looked around at his friend, curious as to how Enrique might answer the question. Few outside the Knights' small group were aware of Enrique's back story. Dodds was not even sure if Enrique had ever told Chaz.
When he was eight years old, Enrique and his family had been returning from celebrating his older brother's tenth birthday. They had been in a car travelling along a motorway, when his father had noticed a truck on the other side of the road driving erratically. Enrique's father had taken precautions, deciding to slow and switch lanes. Just as he had done so, the truck had swerved, crashing through the central reservation and tipping onto its side, careening towards them. The rear of the truck had clipped their car and sent it tumbling, at speed, up the roadside embankment. It came to rest back on the road, leaving a trail of broken and crumpled chassis parts and shattered glass behind it.
Emergency services had been quick to arrive at the scene. His mother, older brother and little sister were pulled from the wreckage of their car, but had been pronounced dead at the scene. Along with his father, Enrique had been air-lifted to the nearest hospital. Despite all the efforts of the emergency teams, his father had died en route, owing to massive internal bleeding. Enrique had survived with a broken arm.
He was raised by his grandfather, an ex-military and spiritual man, who never failed to impress upon him the fact that someone was looking out for him and that he had survived the crash for a reason. Enrique took the words to heart and, spurred on by his grandfather, had signed up for the Navy, in order to protect others and do his best to save lives and keep the peace.
It was not, however, a story that he would often tell.
“Figured the Navy was something I would enjoy,” Enrique said with a shrug. “And I was no good at anything else.”
“Sounds like that should have been your reason,” Ian said, laughing once again at Dodds.
“You?” Crew looked at Chaz. So did Dodds and Enrique, more intrigued than the man asking the questions.
“I used to fly interplanetary shuttles and landers,” Chaz said dismissively. “After nearly ten years of doing that, I wanted to see and do something more. The police force didn't interest me: too much corruption. So I applied to the Navy. So far, I've been stationed in more than ten different star systems over the past eight years and learned to fly over half a dozen different starfighters.”
“Oh, okay,” Crew said. There was no sarcasm from Ian or McLeod over the explanation; Chaz, for some reason, didn't seem to warrant it.
Chaz took a slow pull from his bottle, saying nothing else.
“Girlfriend, wife, kids?” McLeod said, rolling his hand around.
“None to speak of,” Chaz said after considerable pause.
“He's like your mate,” Enrique supplied, nodding at the fourth man of the group, who had contributed little to the conversation. “Man of few words.”
The other three went on to explain their reasons for joining up, how Crew's parents disagreed with his career choice because he was basically being granted a license to murder. He argued he was being trained to protect and that the need to take a life was a wholly real and necessary part of that duty. His parents had asked if he ever raised a thought for the people in the ships he gunned down. Ian chipped in and said that to him the enemy were faceless anyway, and may as well be robots. He commented that no-one thought about who they may have just killed when they destroyed their fighter. It didn't matter to them that it may have been someone's only child, a mother, a father of two, a brother or sister. At the end of the day, they were the enemy and that was all that mattered.
“Getting a bit deep,” Dodds said as the group lapsed into silence, a sombre bubble seeming to have enclosed the group. The cheerful mood was threatening to abandon them.
“I think I'm sobering up,” Enrique said.
“Yes, let's play,” McLeod pushed aside a couple of cards. “Deal me two more.”
Enrique leaned forward to the little table the deck rested on and, after making a bit of a mess of the pile, managed to hand the man two more cards.
“Hey, no really, do you know what I've been hearing lately?”
Dodds looked up from his cards for the source of the voice and realised it belonged to the man who had remained relatively quiet for most of the game; the one Enrique had called Shy Boy.
“I've been told that there's no Imperial civil war,” Shy said.
“What's that?” Dodds said as the others lowered their cards.
“There is no war,” Shy repeated, emphasising the statement a little more this time.
“You mean they're just making it up?” said Enrique.
“Not entirely, but they are definitely trying to cover something up. Something really bad's happened over there and they don't want people to find out about it.”
“You think they've been attacked by aliens?” asked Ian excitedly, as the others pondered the statement.
“No, not bloody aliens!” Shy said, turning to him with a look of utter disdain.
“You've got to admit, that'd be pretty cool,” Ian enthused, ignoring him, his eyes glazing over. “Think of the architecture and the tech and the culture; what they might look like and how they'd speak; all their history and what we could learn from them. Hey!”
McLeod had reached over and plucked the beer bottle from the man's hand. “Explorers have been up and down the galaxy for decades and haven't found anything more advanced than bacteria and a few tiny little microscopic plants,” he said. “So, can the fantasy; You won't be getting your fat fingers on any hot alien babes!”
“Not aliens, then?” Dodds asked of Shy.
“No, something else. But whatever it is, the Confederation's getting us all ready to defend ourselves against some great invasion. Apparently, the Imperium has been completely wiped out, except for a load of refugees.” From the look on his face, he was being completely serious.
“Who told you that?” McLeod asked, looking extremely sceptical. “And whoever it was, tell them to stop smoking so much crack and go get themselves a girlfriend.”
“No, really. And something else I heard was that the Navy's been pumping money into some new top secret project. Some powerful new weapon, apparently.”
Dodds forced himself not to meet Enrique's or Chaz's eyes, nor say anything, and instead concentrate on what the men were saying. He could see, out of the corners of his eyes, that the ot
her two were doing the same.
“What project?” Crew wanted to know.
“That's all I've been told, so it could be anything,” Shy said with a shrug. “All I know is that it's costing them an arm and a leg.”
“Think they're building another battleship to replace Dragon?”
Shy shook his head. “Don't know, but apparently it's the reason why the orbital ring here hasn't been finished. They've diverted all the funding that was meant to go here into that secret project.” He took a swig of his beer and then pointed his bottle at Crew. “And since you mention Dragon, that goes along with the whole thing, too.”
“How so?” Dodds asked, folding up his cards and putting them face down on the table.
“Well, Dragon's been stolen, right? How do you do that? You can't just walk on board and take the controls. You'd need a pretty big force to achieve something like that, and that's even before you get anywhere near it. You'd have to either be superhuman, or have someone on the inside.” He lowered his voice before continuing, leaning a little closer to the table so that the others could hear. “And Commodore Hawke, right, how'd he survive? I mean, it's not like the man would run off into the escape pods and leave his crew to defend Dragon, alone. I'm not exactly the guy's biggest fan, but a captain goes down with his ship; and you all know that he'd sooner die on his feet, than curled up in a ball in a pod.”
“Most likely he was wounded,” Crew said. “The crew chucked him into the pod and shot him towards the nearest jumpgate. They needed someone to get away, and top brass would be more likely to believe a warning coming from him, than some delirious petty officer.”
“That doesn't explain what really went on, though,” Dodds said, somewhat disappointed.
Shy shrugged. “No-one knows exactly what was going on, but from what I've heard, Dragon was out somewhere near the Imperial-Independent border. So whatever's going down is getting closer.”
“Look, can we stop with the stupid conspiracy theories, please?” McLeod growled, as though he was beginning to find his colleague's words offensive. “There's no secret project, no mass invasion. Seriously, who's telling you all this?”
“Hey, I'm not saying anything else,” Shy said, putting his hands up in submission. “I heard they killed the last guy who went around gossiping.”
“Really?” Enrique asked, flabbergasted.
“No, they didn't! Grow up, mate!” McLeod said, as Dodds picked up his beer. It was becoming obvious that McLeod was feeling the storyteller was now winding up his audience unnecessarily, and was starting to get bored with the yarn, seeing its facts being grounded in nothing more than rumour, speculation and hearsay.
“Yeah, they did,” Shy said. “They shot him when he tried to run away and buried him in an unmarked grave. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but they certainly made him disappear. I think his name was Bishop or Nurse or Dean or something like that...”
Dodds, in the middle of swigging from his bottle, suddenly choked and spat a mouthful of beer out onto the floor. He proceeded to cough for a good while, trying to clear his throat.
“You okay?” Enrique asked.
“Yeah, just went down the wrong way,” Dodds spluttered. Enrique gave him a few slaps on the back. He noticed how everyone was still giving him a strange look as he continued wiping his mouth and coughing. “Think that's true about the Imperium?” Dodds asked Enrique, once he had calmed down.
“No idea. What do you think, Chaz?” Enrique deflected the question to the man sat on the far right.
“I think you boys should stop worrying and have another drink,” Chaz said with clear amusement. Dodds became thoughtful. Whilst Shy had been right on one count, perhaps McLeod did have a point. Maybe the man was exaggerating to amuse himself. He returned to his cards.
“Excuse me?” a voice interrupted the group, as they prepared to continue their game once again. They looked up to see a man staring at Enrique, looking somewhat bemused. A short distance behind him a young woman hovered, watching the group and the man expectantly.
“Yeah?” Enrique asked.
“I er... I hear you're the guy to talk to about getting hold of spare mattresses..?”
* * *
Don't get stressed, just keep calm. They'll shut up in a minute.
Estelle attempted to convince herself that Dodds and Enrique would cease their whispering and drop off to sleep. It was not just that they were being loud that was annoying her, but also that they were doing it after lights out and everyone else was asleep and quiet. Anything bad that they did was ultimately a poor reflection on her. She tried to ignore it for a little longer.
The Officer's Club had been emptied sometime ago, everyone being shepherded back to their quarters for an immediate lights out. Estelle recalled seeing a couple of men being shouted at by a higher ranking officer. From what she had heard, whilst they had been out drinking and enjoying themselves, they had missed their transport and, as a result, their scheduled patrol. Though often a calm and pleasant man, Estelle knew that Meyers would not tolerate that kind of behaviour on the base and they would without doubt be feeling the heat from him when he returned. Estelle was not keen for the same fate to befall her or her team any time soon.
“Do you think tha guy wuz right?” Dodds asked, his speech slurring.
“Wig guy?” Enrique wanted to know, communicating with his long-term friend in the same tongue.
“The guyz that was talk'en about the Imperial civil war.”
“Naah. He's talking out ta his arse.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They both went quiet; Estelle relaxed more. A good minute or so passed. It sounded as though the conversation that had woken her had been concluded. Estelle turned over in her bed and rearranged her covers, to get more comfortable.
“Yeah... bu.. but, when yous thinks about it, its makes sssense,” Dodds tried again.
Estelle felt herself stiffen at the sound of resumed chatter.
“How?”
“Well for one there's.. there's that transmission we got t'other day. That bloke, right, he's was really sscared. I doubt a civil war could be that bad toos make someone as hysterical as that. He wuz running away from somethings pretty nasty, I's thinks,” Dodds managed, the volume of his voice rising as he spoke.
“Okay. Anythings else, like?” Enrique wanted to know, not sounding convinced.
Both men went quiet again. Even so, Estelle was feeling thoroughly wound up. She hated it when people would not shut up at night, and even if they did quieten down now, it could take her quite a while before she was settled and able to drift off.
* * *
Dodds paused to consider all the possibilities. Despite being drunk, he was not about to bring up the subject of the ATAFs and the redirection of revenue into support his argument. He realised, just as he had said it, that he should not really have mentioned the Dart pilot, either. No, it didn't matter. He was sure that no-one else was awake to hear him anyway. He considered telling Enrique about Dean. That was weird that his name had been brought up tonight. He then remembered the warnings given him by Admiral Turner and the officer who had come to retrieve the man's body, and thought better of it.
There was something there, though, in the back of his mind. Was there a connection with what he had heard tonight? Dean was doubtless a piece of the puzzle, but was there something else, too? Had Dean said something that, at the time, he had missed? The amount of alcohol he had consumed was inhibiting his ability to think straight.
* * *
“Well, then there's Hawke,” Estelle heard Dodds' voice offer, resuming after leading her into false promises that he and Enrique had fallen asleep.
“Yea, sho?” Enrique replied to the man in the bunk above him.
“I swears that since they pulled him out of that escape pod, he's become an even bigger arsehole...”
“Go to sleep, Dodds,” Estelle said. She'd had enough. The pair had clearly had too much to drink and
were now just spouting random nonsense. At the mention of a senior officer, and the insults that followed, she had decided that they had crossed the line. Should anyone come around to inspect their quarters and discovered them to be speaking after lights out, drunk and making derogatory remarks about the commodore, they would be disciplined; all three of them.
“Dids we wake yous up, Estelle?” Dodds asked.
“It's after lights out, Dodds.”
“Ssorrys, Estelle, couldn't sleep. And we's was jus' chattin',” Enrique muttered. “We ain't doin' anys harms, right?”
“You're drunk and you're being loud,” Estelle hissed back at them.
“Nos louder thans Kelly,” Enrique said. The woman was snoring ever so slightly.
“I remembers when tha' girl us' ta be able t'put it away,” Dodds said, regarding her from his top bunk. “Hmm, things shange...”
“Yeah, sshame she shill shnores likes a pig, though!”
Both men started laughing.
“I mean it, you two! Shut up and go to sleep!” Estelle raised her voice. Others around her stirred a little in their beds.
“Whatz the problems, Estelle? Wuz got a late patrol tomorrows,” Dodds said.
“Or maybe not evens one a'all, the way they muck the schedules 'bout,” Enrique added.
“Yeah, exactly; nothing to do tomorrow mornin'” Dodds moaned.
“If you don't shut up and go to sleep, then I will give you something to do in the morning, Lieutenant!”
“Jeez,” Dodds said.
“Sssherioushhly dude, I can't believe...” Enrique started.
“Final warning, Todd!” Estelle glowered.
She waited patiently for them both to settle down, feeling her heart thumping hard, her chest tight. She drifted off to sleep herself, once Dodds and Enrique had fallen silent.
* * *
Chaz Koonan lay on his back, arms folded across his chest, staring up at the ceiling. Unlike Estelle, Dodds and Enrique's conversation had not roused him, as he had not been asleep. He was thinking, his head filled with memories of the past and contemplations of the future. He thought of the Dart pilot; of the conversation in the Officers' Club; and of how Parks had not kept his word, had not let him go, had broken his promise.