All is Fair Ch. 03

"What if it was?" A quivering voice of a woman at the back asked although he didn't see who it belonged to.

"Then we find out who is responsible, and we introduce them to the real meaning of the word 'agony.' Now, if any of you feel you were too close to Frank to be an impartial member of the investigation team, feel free to let me know. But if anyone wants to volunteer for this assignment, stand now."

The entire room, every single member of his division, stood as one. There wasn't a moment's hesitation from anyone, not even the people who were choking back the sobs and wiping away the streaming tears.

Adam nodded, a lump of his own getting in the way of the prideful swallow. "Frank would've been proud of all of you, as am I. I'll be forming a special unit, and let the members know their roles by the end of the day. Anyone not selected, please continue the work you are already doing; none of that becomes less important because of this. We honor Frank's memory by carrying on where he left off. Thank you, all of you. Take some time here to process."

With that, Adam turned and headed for the door.

"What about you, Sir?" Ben asked from his place against the far wall. The whole room turned to look at him.

"What about me?"

"Adam, you were as close to Frank as any of us. You need time to process, too." The drop in formalities was an intentional attempt to show the sincerity of his words. "Stay."

A ripple of nods washed over the people in the room. Adam smiled softly, looking down at the doorknob of the half-opened door in his hand. He pushed it closed again and moved to join his people.

********

Stevo. 17

Matthews walked silently beside him as he was escorted back to the holding area. Stevo, still processing the speed and the vehemence with which he had made his decision. He had thrown away a lifetime of loyalty and service in a heartbeat, but what shocked him more than that was the realization that he had meant it.

Every time he closed his eyes, he could still see the look on Dusky's face. The pain, the terror, and the stunned attempts to process what was happening to her in her eyes. All savagely cut off when that second plasma bomb blew her to pieces. Big G was dead, Rev was dead, Dusky was dead, Angel was wounded, and so was Ryan; his squad had been decimated. But that was combat! He couldn't hate - or even blame - the rebels for fighting back when his Marines were trying their utmost to wipe them out. There was a poetic sort of honor to be found in laying down your life in battle; it hurt, and the hole in the pit of his stomach was growing by the hour, but losses in combat came with the territory. No, what really pissed him off was that he and his people had been put in that position, betrayed, and then sent to their deaths, intentionally, by the very people he had served. The people who were supposed to have supported them and backed them up.

That was the deal! At least as far as he had always perceived it. The Marines would give them their honor, they would give the Imperium their lives in its defense if that was necessary, and in return, the Emperor would never ask of them a task that would tarnish their honor and would give the proper value to the lives being sacrificed in his name.

That deal hadn't just been broken; it had been smashed. And thousands upon thousands of his people, including close friends in his own squad, had been slaughtered for what he could only assume were the political motivations of some power-hungry cunt at the top of the metaphorical tree. The rebels had pulled the trigger, but they were fighting back; they were doing what they needed to do to survive an invasion launched against them, they were defending themselves against a force brought here specifically to kill every one of them, and there was no part of him that couldn't respect that.

Now, walking through those corridors and back toward his temporary cell, a sudden realization occurred to him. Even on the beach, even with the adrenaline of battle pumping through his veins, he had sworn vengeance against those responsible for the deaths of his men... and even then, he had known that wasn't the rebels.

Suddenly, the words screamed at him by his father all those years ago were starting to make sense. Perhaps the old bastard knew more than he let on. That was something else Stevo would have to find out eventually.

A ding sounded from the computer attached to Matthew's vambrace, and he slowed to look at it, forcing Stevo to drop his pace to match him. Both men still had their helmets off, so Stevo had a good view of the Corporal's face as his eyes scanned the text flowing over his display. Soon enough, though, a small smile crept onto his lips.

"The medical teams have updated the system," he said, looking back up at him. "Vasquez is out of surgery; she is still in a serious condition, but the docs think she is out of the woods."

The breath of relief that flowed out of Stevo's lungs was as profound as it was cathartic.

"Almark is doing well, too," Matthews went on, "She is in recovery, but the docs think she will be waking up soon. They are expecting a full recovery within a week or two. And your man, Ryan, has been accepted into processing. A few of the other names your people asked for have come back, too."

Stevo nodded, trying to control the quivering solace in his breath at the news. "Thank you, Corporal," he said, giving the man a pat on the shoulder. "That is amazing news. Please, if it's possible, pass my thanks on to the medical team."

"If I understand correctly, Si... Sergeant, you will be able to do that yourself soon enough,"

Stevo offered him a small grin and a soft nod, "Let's keep that to ourselves for now, Corporal, at least until the others have made their decision."

"If I may ask, then sergeant," Matthews said carefully. "If you have agreed to join us, why do you need an escort back to the barracks."

Stevo laughed, another odd feeling considering the thoughts on his mind. "That's very simple, my good man," he replied. "I don't know the way."

Mac, Jennings, Walker, Cameron, Wooly, Donavan, and all the others - both the Marines that had been here when he had been captured and the men and women recently taken from the beach - all rose to their feet as he was led into the cell, each of them looking at him with a mix of apprehension and relief.

"When you didn't come back..." Cameron softly said.

"Sorry, Sarge," Donavan offered. "We were separated so quickly after we got off the beach, I didn't know what to tell people when they asked where you were."

"It's okay, Private," Stevo smiled. "I'm fine. I just needed to have a chat with the garrison captain."

"All good, Sarge?" Mac asked in his strong Scottish accent.

"Yeah, everything's fine. Captain West wants to bring all the surviving Marines together soon to explain everything, so it's probably best if I leave the details up to her. But Matthews here has some news."

Every eye turned to the Corporal. He cleared his throat and then started repeating the names that he had been given by everyone in the room. Gasps of relief went up from most of the Marines as it was revealed that their comrades were alright and would be joining them when they were well enough until only Walker remained. Matthews turned to him. "Private Malcome Malone," he said, his face darkening as he spoke. "He was alive but unconscious when we found him. He seemed to have moved a fair distance away from where you were captured. The surgeons did their best, but I'm sorry to say the damage he suffered was too extensive. He died of his wounds about three hours ago. I'm sorry, Private."

Walker nodded and slumped mutely back onto his cot. Stevo didn't think he had been holding out much hope; in the same way, he hadn't held much out for Ryan, but not much hope was not the same as none at all, and to find out that a close friend was gone forever - that feeling of having the smallest shreds of hope extinguished - was still a soul-crushing experience. Cameron moved over and sat next to him, putting a comforting arm around him and resting it on his shoulder. There was no bravado here.There were no stiff upper lips or putting on of brave faces; everyone had lost people. Not a man or woman in the room considered themselves lucky not to be in Walker's position because all of them were in his position; it was just a matter of degrees. Walker's look of utter despondency was one that each of them would be matching soon enough.

"Wait..." Mac looked up as a thought suddenly occurred to him. "You said the Captain wants to gather all the Marines in one place," he looked at Stevo. "Isn't tha' tha people who are wounded and the people in this room? Or..." his eyes moved to Mathews, "...are there more survivors?"

Matthews shook his head. "I'm sorry, all of the Marines taken alive are either in this room or in medical. There is a holding cell there, too, but it is for the walking wounded who didn't need any further medical treatment, and that is where the rest of the captives will be released, too, once they are out of the hospital."

Stevo frowned, "Matthews, I believe the Private was asking how many people, in total, have survived from our Division."

"Oh," The Corporal looked flustered and then lifted the holo-display mounted on his wrist. "I'm not actually sure. Let me look." There was a hushed quietness in the room as the rebel corporal tapped on a few icons. "Okay, so there are thirty-one of you here, another twenty-five in the hospital's holding area, and two hundred and seventy-four still receiving treatment. So that's three hundred and twenty-six survivors."

The group of Marines looked around at each other. Like Stevo, they all seemed to have thought the division had been completely wiped out, with the exception of themselves and a handful being cared for by the doctors. The realization that there were more almost three companies worth of Marines still alive, assuming no more of them died of their wounds, was as much of a shock as the news about their friends. Soon, each of them, even Walker, was wearing something close to a relieved and hopeful smile.

"Oh, Mac," Stevo grinned, letting the short-lived euphoria of the news fill him to the core.

"Aye, Sarge?"

"Ryan made it. He was with this lot." He nodded to Donavan.

Mac blinked, looked at Donovan, then back to Stevo... and then burst out laughing. "Oh, tha' lucky ginger bast'rd! I'm gonna kill 'im!"

********

Histories and Lores.

To paraphrase a statement first written by the great and renowned Douglas Adams, space is big, really big! Space is incomprehensibly, mind-bogglingly vast. Even though those words were written centuries before man attained meaningful methods of interstellar travel, they are as true today as they always have been. The human mind, for the overwhelming majority of people, simply isn't capable of comprehending the sheer unimaginable scale of space, and that is before we factor in the reality that space extends for an infinite distance in every direction. To make this process simpler, we have developed the use of words like 'lightyears' as a newer measurement of distance. In reality, that isn't a measurement of distance at all, not in any quantifiable way; it is simply the distance something is able to travel in a year if traveling at exactly the speed of light, and even then, only the speed of certain spectrums of visible light.

The actual measurement doesn't make things any easier. A single light year is approximately six trillion miles. And there are four of them between the Sol system and the closest colonizable words in the Alpha Centauri system. Yet a trillion is still a number too large to really grasp unless it is put into terms people can relate to. For that, we use time. A million seconds is a little over eleven days, and a billion seconds is thirty-two years. Six trillion seconds ago, mankind was still drawing stick figures on the inside of cave walls, almost two hundred thousand years ago. And that is what is necessary to understand the distances involved in a single journey.

Methods of traversing these staggeringly massive distances are as complicated and intricate as you would imagine them to be, but essentially, they can be split into three distinct types. For the sake of avoiding a grotesquely detailed analysis of all types of engines, it will simply be said that there are many types of engines within each classification, and almost all of them work a little differently from each other.

The first, and possibly the most used - if least romantic - classification of engine, are the thrusters. Thrusters, as a general rule, redirect power away from the main engines to modules placed around the hull and allow the vessel, regardless of its size, to make controlled turns, rolls, and slides, and, perhaps most importantly, they are what allow a ship to slow itself down and eventually stop. With no resistance acting on the ship while in the vacuum of space, a ship, once at speed, would continue on its trajectory indefinitely without the ability to arrest its velocity. It would just keep going forever... or until it crashed into something. In the early days of spaceflight, this was achieved by venting controlled bursts of gas from ports at the front of the ship, but the development of superior engines made this process obsolete, replacing it with directed energy flow.

Thrusters are used in any type of movement the ship is required to perform that does not involve moving forward at speed. This would include docking maneuvers, maintaining port speeds, matching velocities of other vessels, and - in the case of smaller strike craft - massively increasing agility and precision flying capabilities. Thrusters are even used on larger classifications of warships to counteract the recoil of firing full broadsides of ballistic weaponry.

The second class of engine is most commonly grouped together under the classification of "sub-light or subluminal engines." There is an enormous amount of variety of engines within this classification, and each has its own unique set of advantages and disadvantages when compared to the others; in fact, it is generally possible to tell the age, the classification, and even the constructor-species of a ship by which type of engine it uses. Pulsed Ion Drives, Nuclear Fusion Drives, Plasma Drives, the list is huge, but, generally speaking, the huge glowing engines at the rear of almost all stellar craft are the sublight engines. They are the mechanisms by which a ship is accelerated and propelled forward. The speeds to which these engines can move a ship are, technically, only limited by the physical impossibility of accelerating to the speed of light, and cases of huge starships reaching 99% the speed of light are not only possible but commonplace. It is only the mass of the ship that has to be taken into account when calculating the rate of acceleration and - pursuant to the laws of the conservation of momentum - maneuvering. A Fleet carrier, for example, has the potential to be just as fast as a strike fighter; it would just take it much longer to reach that speed and be much more difficult to maneuver or slow down when it got there.

It is for this reason that almost every known spacefaring species has self-imposed speed restrictions on ships based on their mass. Some of stellar travel's most disastrous accidents, including the lunar collision of the Aurora Grey, came about when a sudden change of situation occurred before a large ship was capable of reacting to it. It was too big, and moving too fast to stop before hitting, or even maneuver away from, an unexpected obstruction. It is technically not a limitation in the thrusters to slow or alter the course of a ship that requires this speed restriction, but a limitation of scanners and navigational computers. Sensors simply don't have the detailed range to spot obstacles far enough in advance to allow some of the more massive ships to alter course before a collision.

The final and perhaps most romanticized classification of engines are the Hyperdrives, also known as FTL or super-luminal engines. There are literally thousands of different types of these devices, and none of them, by the most technical definitions, can be accurately called engines at all. Each of them, using various methods, alters the physical or dimensional properties of the ship and allows them to traverse the boundary into faster than light travel. The human variety, for example, surrounds the ship in an energy 'bubble' that temporarily allows it to ride the line between spatial dimensions and thus bypass the limitation on superluminal acceleration. The Maruvian FTL drives, on the other hand, bathe the vessel in tachyon particles that allow it to achieve the same thing, just on a vastly more energy-efficient level and without messing around with the complexities of trans-dimensional travel. It is these variations in energy efficiency that govern the velocities that these drives are capable of achieving.

These engines, however, are - almost without exception - subject to much more limitations than the other types. The main and most obvious of these limitations is the relativity between Hyperspace travel and astronomical gravitational bodies. Gravity wells, a phenomenon present in any stellar object of sufficient mass, have the potential to scramble the infinitely complex navigation calculations required to chart a course when traveling faster than light. At the very least - in human cases, at least - they can disrupt the hyperspace bubble and violently pull a ship out of FTL travel; the stress on the hull in this sort of incident is almost always catastrophic. In the cases of other species, it can cause a ship to veer wildly off course and, theoretically, end up anywhere.

To combat this, engine manufacturers have hard-wired fail safes into all of their drives to automatically - but safely - pull a ship out of hyperspace at the first sign of a gravity well in their paths. Incidentally, this is how military interdictions work. The creation of an artificial gravity well reading that forbids a ship from traveling close to it while in hyperspace. Interdiction beacons pull a ship out of hyperspace and prevent them from escaping again with anything other than their sub-light engines.

In more practical terms, the need to avoid gravity wells has resulted in two universally accepted truths of space travel. The first and most obvious is the inability to jump to or travel in hyperspace while within the confines of a star system. The planets and other stellar bodies, not to mention the star itself - each one forming its own gravity well - are simply too close for the nav computer to compensate for. The second, perhaps inevitable consequence of this has been the formation of official shipping lanes. These are set, predefined routes between the most heavily trafficked systems that have already been plotted to avoid all stellar gravity wells. There is - contrary to popular opinion - no real speed advantage to traveling along these lanes; instead, the advantage comes from being able to travel the full length of the shipping lane without having to leave hyperspace, as opposed to jumping from one gravity well to another, replotting a new course, and then jumping again.

For these reasons, all three engines are needed for effective space travel. The hyperdrive systems allow a ship to travel from the edge of one star system to the edge of the other at astonishing speeds. Those four lightyears between Alpha Centauri and Earth, for example, can now be navigated in as little as five hours. Once at the edge of the system, however, the hyperdrives are effectively useless, and a ship is forced to switch to its sublight engines, traveling toward its destination at hugely slower but vastly safer speeds. In many cases, this journey from the outer system to a colonized world close to its center can take longer than the dozens of light years already traveled. Once arriving at its destination, a ship would power down its engines and use its thrusters to slow itself down and maneuver itself either into orbit or into position to dock at a space station.