Fight the Good Fight Page 5

  David turned over and tried to go sleep, but found no rest.

  The next few months passed quickly for David on board the Artemis. He’d returned to his duties and split time between damage control and backup helm operator. Focusing on his responsibilities and with a couple more sessions with Amy, he was able to work through the emotional toll of his first combat encounter. Over time, the nightmares faded, and he returned to some level of normalcy. The conversation he had with Major Pipes, however, refused to leave his mind. He lay awake many nights in his bunk, thinking over his choices in life.

  The ship’s alarm klaxon blared, jerking David out of his thoughts. “Attention, all hands, this is the commanding officer. Man your battle stations! I say again, man your battle stations!” The voice of Major Pipes rang out from the ship’s intercom.

  Jumping out of his bunk, David made his way to his assigned damage control station, where Rachel Munford already waited for him.

  “Ready to go, Munford?” David asked as he pulled the fireproof hood to his suit down and over his head.

  Munford nodded. “Yes, Corporal. Ready to go.” Munford’s wounds had healed, though David knew she was still greatly affected by Beckett’s death, even more so than David.

  The first few minutes of the engagement passed with nothing more than some shocks and rumbles. Both David and Munford were knocked off their feet when the ship took a sudden major hit. The intercom on David’s personal communicator chimed.

  “This is the bridge. We need damage control teams and medical staff immediately,” shouted a voice David didn’t recognize.

  David glanced at Munford. “We’re only one deck down. Let’s get up there and try to help.”

  She nodded in return. “Aye, aye, Corporal.”

  They both made their way to the bridge as fast as possible. The two sentries that normally stood watch were trying to open the hatch, but it was stuck hard. Using the specialized tools they carried, David and Munford pried the doors open and stepped through.

  Before him, David saw a perfect storm of destruction. The XO’s chair had a beam lying across it, pinning the woman it contained to the seat. Several stations were destroyed, and a fire crackled in one of the substation control units. He surveyed the situation methodically, as he had now done many times. “Munford, help me get this beam off of her.” he said, rushing to the XO.

  Grunting, they picked up the beam and lifted it off the chair, revealing the trauma sustained by the collapse. David knelt, feeling for a pulse, but they were too late. Looking at Munford, he shook his head. Performing the same duty on Major Pipes, he was relieved to find that while the major had been knocked unconscious, his pulse was strong and steady.

  David put his commlink to his mouth and spoke into it. “This is Corporal Cohen on the bridge. We still need medical personnel immediately and additional damage control teams. All bridge officers are incapacitated. We need someone to come take command here.”

  Looking back around the bridge, David heard a cry for help coming from the navigation and helm station. Making his way over, he saw the ship’s navigator, Second Lieutenant Naomi Caldwell, a woman that he had met several times before. She struggled to stand with a piece of shrapnel lodged in her chest.

  “Lieutenant, hold still,” David said.

  As David knelt beside her, Caldwell reached up and grabbed his arm. “Corporal, you have to get the ship to safety,” she said in her slight Afro-Caribbean accent, gasping for air.

  “Let me help you…” David said, frantically scanning the room for the emergency medical kit panel.

  “No! Forget me. Save this ship or we’ll all be dead,” she said as loud and as clear as she could. Just then, another round of weapon impacts underlined her point.

  “What do I do?” David asked with panic in his voice as he glanced back toward Caldwell, caught between wanting to run away and doing his duty. He didn’t want to see yet another person die in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he could handle that again.

  “The Lawrence drive is charged. You have to enter the coordinates and engage.”

  “Where should we go?”

  “Anywhere but here, Corporal,” Caldwell said. He took it as an attempt at gallows humor.

  David cleared the debris away from the navigation console and stared at it. He had basic training in how to use the helm and navigation consoles but had never actually executed a Lawrence drive jump. He picked a space station near their location that he hoped would have medical and engineering personnel, and entered the coordinates into the navigation system. When the drive was ready a few seconds later, he engaged it.. Through the transparent metal windows directly to the front of the bridge, he watched in fasciation as the multi-colored maw of the artificial wormhole opened. While he’d seen them before in books and videos, there was something different about seeing it in person, a few kilometers away. Even in the middle of all this death and destruction, the beauty of God’s creation is all around us. The frigate rocketed forward, speeding through the tunnel between points in space and thanks to his lack of piloting skills, the ride was extremely rough.

  Caldwell’s breaths became more labored as the ship exited the wormhole. “Are we safe, Corporal?” she whispered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Let me get help…”

  As David turned to get the woman help, her eyes closed as her breathing slowly came to a stop. David sprang up and rushed to the panel of emergency supplies, fumbling to get it open as the medical personnel rushed into the bridge.

  “The navigator is down...she needs medical treatment now!”

  One of the medical technicians knelt beside Caldwell, feeling for her pulse and examining the wound in her chest. He used a portable defibrillation wand on her chest without effect. After a few more minutes of trying to revive her, he looked up. “I’m sorry, but she’s gone. There’s no coming back from that kind of a wound, Corporal.”

  As the technician turned away to treat another member of the bridge crew who was still alive, David felt his knees go wobbly. He sat down on the chair next to the navigator’s body.

  I’ve got to keep it together he thought, looking down at her lifeless form. For the second time in six months, David found himself saying the traditional prayer for the dead. Quietly, and in Hebrew, he recited it from memory. “God, filled with mercy, dwelling in the heavens heights, bring proper rest beneath the wings of Your Angels, amid the ranks of the holy and the pure, illuminating like the brilliance of the skies the souls of our beloved and our blameless who went to their eternal place of rest.”

  Munford came up behind David, and said in a voice that was a whisper, “Corporal, are you okay?”

  Snapped out of his thoughts, he looked up at her with anguish written on his face. “No…but we have a job to do.” He stood and forced one foot in front of the other. “Let’s get back to it.”

  5

  That night, David took a long shower, also known as a Hollywood shower by those in the CDF. The term traced back hundreds of years; to where, David wasn’t quite sure. It referred to taking a long shower while in space, as opposed to a space shower, in which you turned the water on for thirty seconds, turned it off, lathered up, and finally turned it back on again to rinse. His bunk was thankfully quiet and empty due to the rest of the men assigned to that berthing compartment being absent, finally giving him time to think. The idea of being a part of something larger than himself embodied the motto of the CDF, which was “Semper Paratus” or “Always Ready.” If he was being honest with himself, it appealed to him.

  Lying in his bunk, he pondered over and over. What do I owe the Terran Coalition? Do I owe it anything? Does everyone have a duty to stand up for the freedoms we’ve received and fight against evil?

  Finding no solace, he decided to place a real-time comm call to a friend from boot camp, Sheila Thompson. It would cost his entire comm time ration for the next three months, but he had to talk to someone, and his mother wasn’t the right person to have this conversat
ion with. As he reached for his tablet his mind thought back to boot camp, where he met Sheila three days into the ten-week ordeal.

  David was in the middle of doing his laundry when a girl walked up to him as she washed her own clothes. He’d seen her a few times but hadn’t spoken to her.

  “David Cohen, right?” she asked.

  David stared at her. “Who’s asking?”

  “Look, I’ve seen you getting yelled at and PTed a lot the last few days. I thought you might want some advice.”

  David relaxed just a tad. “Well, I am tired of being yelled at. What’s your advice?”

  “The first thing is…lose the chip off your shoulder. It’s big enough that you’re visibly weighted down by it.”

  David’s shoulders went forward, and his face tightened into a snarl. “What are you talking about?”

  “See? That. You’re proving my point. I get it, your dad was the hero. You probably hate being reminded about it. But you can’t show it. Right now, you do just enough to stay on the drill instructor’s radar and he’s going to pound you into the ground until you quit pissing him off. There are plenty of people that are going to screw up far worse than you here…let them do it and lie low.”

  The girl’s words made sense to David. “How do you know all this? Is your dad a big shot in the CDF?”

  “My parents are lawyers. They don’t even want me here.”

  David raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting. What’s your name?”

  “Sheila. Sheila Thompson.”

  David extended his hand. “David Cohen, nice to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Sheila said as she took her dry clothes out of the dryer and began to fold them. “You don’t seem to be very excited to be here.”

  “I’m not. I want to be done with my enlistment, do my duty to the Terran Coalition, and then I’m going to go off and become a rabbi.”

  “A rabbi?” she asked, her nose scrunching up as she made a silly face.

  “You know, a teacher. A clergyman. Like a pastor for Christians or an imam for Muslims.”

  “I know what a rabbi is. I didn’t grow up under a rock. I don’t understand why you’d want to be one.”

  “Because I’ve no desire to kill people, Sheila. I’d rather try to teach them to be better.”

  “Sometimes evil has to be opposed. When we’re up against a group as evil as the League, the only way to do that is by force of arms,” she said with conviction.

  “I get that, but that person isn’t me. I’m going to do my duty; I owe the Terran Coalition a four-year stint. After that, I’m out. What about you?”

  “I’m making a career out of it.”

  “Why?” David asked.

  “I might change my mind later, I suppose, but it’s what I feel I need to do with my life. My parents want me to go to law school, but I am completely uninterested in doing that.”

  “You could be in the military and be a lawyer. That’s what the JAG Corps is, right?”

  Sheila rolled her eyes. “I’m not joining the military to be a lawyer. I want to be on the sharp tip of the spear. I tried out for the flight academy, but I didn’t score high enough on CVAB. I only got seventy-fifth percentile.”

  “Only.”

  Sheila laughed. “You’re not half bad once you crawl out of that shell, Mr. Cohen.”

  David smirked. “Do I look like an officer to you?”

  “No, but I will be in a couple of years,” Sheila said with a grin.

  “How’s that?”

  “I already have my degree. I did most of it in high school and finished up the last year while on draft deferment. I want to serve as an enlisted soldier for two years, and then go to officers’ candidate school. Eventually, I want to command a starship.”

  “I’d say you have it all planned out.”

  “I think I do. But I doubt my plans will survive first contact with life.”

  “So do you just sit around reading books about the military? Because I recognized that one. Some general once said that ‘no plan survives first contact with the enemy’.”

  Sheila rolled her eyes again. “As a matter of fact, yes. I’ve read many books about the military.”

  David cracked a grin. “It shows. We better get these clothes finished up before the DIs come back in here and make us do push-ups again.”

  “Look who’s suddenly being responsible and not trying to annoy the drill instructors.”

  “Hey, I know good advice when I hear it.”

  David smiled at the memory as he pulled out his tablet and went to the vidlink function, keying on Sheila’s name. Her icon showed active, much to his relief. He pressed the button to start a long-distance link, and a few seconds later, her face popped up.

  “David, is that you?” she asked with a huge smile on her face.

  “David Cohen, the man, the myth, the moron… at your service.”

  Sheila rolled her eyes. “I told you to quit making fun of yourself.”

  “Old habits die hard. Besides, if I make fun of myself, I’m less likely to be made fun of for my dad’s heroics or whatever it is I’m a target for being hazed on this week. When I was first assigned to the Artemis, I got sent around the ship for two hours looking for a cable stretcher.”

  “A cable stretcher? It took you two hours to figure out that was a prank?” Sheila said with a wry grin and an arched eyebrow.

  His cheeks turned bright red. “Well…for some reason, it made sense at the time.”

  “If it makes you feel better, they got me with hydraulic blinker fluid.”

  David laughed out loud. “That’s great.”

  “Watch it, Mr. Cohen.”

  “I’m still not an officer.”

  “Yeah, but somehow you got to Corporal before I did.”

  David shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m not sure why.”

  “Might have something to do with you going all John Wayne and taking out half a League combat brigade.”

  David gave her a hard look. “One…I was promoted before that. Two…I’m still not okay with killing those people.”

  “I know. What’s on your mind?”

  “We were in another battle today.”

  “You wiped out another League combat brigade?”

  David shook his head. “No…our XO was killed in action. Along with the navigator. She died right next to me after helping me to move the ship to safety. All she cared about was saving the rest of us…even with a metal bar going through her chest.”

  Sheila frowned, her lips pursing together. “I’m so sorry, David. I didn’t realize.”

  David shrugged his shoulders. “It’s war. I get it. It’s not going to be the last time I see someone die when I’m posted to the front lines.” He paused for a moment, wrinkling his forehead. “I’m beginning to think that maybe Major Pipes was right.”

  “You mean in asking you to go to OCS?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? When we talked about it last, you were really adamant that you wanted out of the CDF.”

  “I know…I’m just… I wonder if maybe I’m just running away. It’s easy to run away. It’s not easy to stand up and fight. My father used to say that there are three types of people: sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. He’d say that sheep are the majority of people, good and moral, without a capability to commit violence. Wolves, though, have a thirst for violence and prey on the sheep. Sheepdogs, on the other hand, have the ability to commit violence, but only do so to protect the sheep from the wolves. Dad… was a sheepdog. He ran toward danger, served for twenty years, and I don’t think he feared anyone or anything.”

  “So now you’re feeling that it might make sense to stay in?”

  “If Major Pipes is right and I do have what he calls natural leadership ability... maybe there’s a way I can help win the war. If we win, that stops the killing. Right?”

  “David, if you’re looking for absolution, I can’t give it to you. I can only tell you that I know a life of service in defe
nse of my country is what I need to do, at least today and for the foreseeable future. You’re the only one that can decide if it’s what you need to do.”

  “Good advice as always.”

  Sheila smiled. “I ought to charge you for it.”

  “We did promise to stay in touch…after spending boot camp looking out for one another. Especially that final exercise. That thing was brutal. Forced march throughout the night, live fire exercises… the League has nothing on our drill instructors.”

  Sheila laughed. “Yeah, I’ll give you that. Hey, no matter what you decide, David, you’ve got nothing to prove. It’s your life. Your choice. Okay?”

  David nodded. “I guess I’ve just got a big choice to make.”

  “It sounds like you do.”

  “Okay, I’m going to get off this thing before I burn up an entire year’s worth of communications credits.”

  “Take care, David. Be safe. Shalom.”

  David cracked a smile. “Shalom.” With the press of a button, her face disappeared.

  David put the tablet away and stared at the top of his bunk, repeatedly running through the decision he faced in his mind. I’ve got to do this. I don’t know exactly why, but I can’t turn away from it, he thought as he finally made a choice. He pulled up his personal pad and brought up the mail application. Quickly composing a message to the acting XO, he requested a follow-up meeting with Major Pipes. Then he turned over and went to sleep, rest finding him.

  The next day, David went about his normal duties, and as the day crept by, he wondered if he’d blown his chance with Major Pipes. Perhaps he had closed that door when he rejected him the first time, but as the end of the day neared, he was in the middle of his daily rounds checking on work orders when his personnel communicator buzzed. He looked down, opened it up, and saw that it was a message from Major Pipes, ordering him to the CO’s office posthaste.

  David raced back to his locker, depositing his tools inside. He walked to the gravlift and took it to deck one, which housed Major Pipes’ office and day cabin. Knocking on the closed hatch, he heard Pipes distinctive voice reply.