0849
05. 2505
Min's superiors had assigned him a glorified babysitting job as his new mission. He was responsible for these four idiots that at the moment seem to be suffering from the worst hangover known to man. He rolled his eyes at their sick expressions. He had warned them that they should not drink more than two pints of Namil' made alcohol, especially when they had to wake up early the next morning for duty. New sergeants were all the same. As soon as they were assigned their first mission in space, they thought they were invincible, and the more delusional and naïve ones believed they were god's gift to men. He wondered if he had ever been like them at the beginning of his service. He could not remember those first months after graduating with a double degree from the South Korean Military School and Seoul Med school, when he was supposed to feel on top of the world and ready for new adventures. He felt like everything, every memory, every first impression was overshadowed by the war. Every time he thought back to the first day when he met his superior; it was instantly replaced by the images of the same man getting shot in the head next to him in the middle of enemy fire. If he tried to think back to the time where he had saved his first life on the field, all the faces of the patients he had lost would come back to haunt him one by one. Every face made his heart clench for a millionth time in grief and regret. Therefore, seeing these boys carelessly drinking on a night before duty while not realizing all the consequences their unprofessional actions could have caused for them or for their co-workers, made him angry. Actually, it pissed him off.
He would later admit that his actions were slightly immature, but right now he just did not care. He purposefully dropped his fork to the ground, making them all cringe at the loudness of the metal object clinking against the cafeteria's white tiled floor. And he also made sure to speak his next orders with a loud voice to the sick looking men sitting around the table who were all soon holding their heads and moaning in pain.
"Lucio, Nott, go to Sergeant Meier's room, he's in room 14. And ask him for some pain medicine. The ones from Namil', they'll be more effective on your lot than the Earth ones I have." They both started standing up slowly from their chairs, but Min was not going to let them leave that easily. He held up a hand to signal them to wait a minute.
"Listen up, I understand that this is your first mission, and you want to celebrate. But there is a time and place for these kinds of things, and the night before morning duty is not one of them." He was not sure if they were looking down to avoid meeting his eyes or if they were trying not to be blinded by the strong white light coming from the large vintage looking lamps hanging just above their heads.
"This might seem like nothing major for you because on your planet, in your little military schools when you chose to drink, the worst thing that could happen was ending up in a stranger's bed or perhaps missing a morning class the next day." He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the table. He made sure to stare each of them down with the look he usually kept for his most irritating patients.
"Here, the consequences might be ten times worse. A small little drinking party is not worth it if it means you'll be waking up the next morning sick and inept while your teammates are counting on you to do a good job. Missing a stupid class in university is not the same as watching all your colleagues die during an attack because that morning you were not prepared. So, the next time I find out you drank four pints of Namil alcohol the night before your shift I will make you clean up the urinals and put you on puke duty at the medical bay for a week. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir." They chorused.
"Good, you two go get the painkillers."
After he watched them leave the cafeteria, he turned to the two others still sitting at his table. They seemed to be the worse looking ones in the group. Mason's face, a halfling from Earth and Xar, had taken on a weird pink color instead of its usual light purple and his dark feathers appeared to be more ruffled than usual by slightly standing up on his head instead of lying flat against his skull. He knew that these were some of the Xarlins' visible fever symptoms. While next to him Mikael, a young recruit from Greece, was looking pale and exhausted. They were both looking down shamefully at the table in front of them. They were probably expecting another lecture from him. Luckily for them, he had nothing more to add to his last little speech. Instead he chose to remind them which food they should keep away from during the next two meals. He also made sure to tell them that they were probably dehydrated. Namil's traditional liquor was powerful stuff; he advised them to stay away from it for a little while. They wisely did not complain.
He watched them reluctantly munching on the flavorless porridge he had recommended trying to stay professional and hide his satisfied smirk brought on by their visible miserable states. These kids needed to learn their lesson. So, if that meant he would need to feed them toast and disgusting watery porridge every morning after drinking nights then he would gladly do it. He drank silently his black americano while observing his men's pained expressions.
He could not help but reckon that the only thing that differentiated him from these two young men were his nine years of experience and his five-pointed small silver star insignia pinned near his heart instead of their shiny and polished bronze four-pointed ones. He had long ago given up on keeping his insignia spotless and polished like the first day he had worn it. Maybe unconsciously he had stopped polishing it when the pride of wearing it on his chest dimmed throughout his years of service which were mostly spent shooting at someone else's men, while his died one by one from the same death sentence. He hurriedly looked down and stared fixedly at the black surface of his drink. At that moment, he could not bear to see the same badges that he and his friends had used to wear with as much pride. Would these ones share the same fate? Will they be found in a similar way? Would it be during the aftermath of a battle completely soaked in the blood of their owners? He shuddered at the depressing thought. It seemed even a month after the peace declaration he still could not detangle himself from his darkest memories. And he would not be surprised if in twenty years, back in South Korea, managing his own medical practice and far away from anything related to GAIA, he would still find himself haunted by the faces of the dead.
But for now, he had a job to do. If he wanted to open that dream practice one day he needed to save up and while he was quite tired of GAIA and their pointless missions, they were one of the best paying employers for his profession. They were sending him on what looked like to be a final job position before retirement. They probably thought that he was not physically or more likely psychologically fit to fight on the front lines of another war. It appeared like they were disposing of him by sending him to work the rest of his career as the chief doctor of a small isolated scientific research space station. He would be far from everything, as far away as possible from the war zone where he had spent most of his nine years of service. Somewhere he could not possibly mess everything up; his superiors made sure of that. Someplace where he would spend his days bandaging up clumsy engineers and maybe he would also be training one or two first year recruits. In other words, he would be ending his career in the middle of nowhere while training his younger and unburdened future replacements. And in the end, the realization of the reason behind his promotion to Sergeant-Major had annihilated the very small piece of pride of being a GAIA soldier he still had left after everything he had been through.
He twirled the spoon in his probably now lukewarm coffee, while he opened his work tablet in front of him. He placed a small ear phone in his right ear so that he could listen to some of the voice messages he had received from the previous Chief Medical Officer while carefully browsing through the files of patients whose treatment he will be taking over as soon as he arrives. He looked through the most complicated cases with a critical and dissecting eye; he barely paid attention to the captain's announcement on the main screen behind him. He had heard the same speech a million times in his traveling career. While GAIA generally used its own ships to transfer their soldiers, during the past three years most of the GAIA-made ships had been mobilized for the war against Leph'. That left a few of the GAIA officers, mostly scientists or new recruits assigned to positions unrelated to the war, to use private transport companies like SYLPH which were usually largely occupied by civilians. The war might have ended a month ago, but the collateral damages GAIA had collected from the five year long battle was still quite important. Hence, he was not surprised when the newly assigned lieutenants and he had received booked tickets for a SYLPH flight a few weeks ago as their means of transport to the Galilee Station.
Since this was probably the fourth or fifth time that he had been on a SYLPH flight he strongly hoped that purposefully missing one arrival announcement would not bring upon them the end of the world. He rolled his eyes when he unfortunately overheard the whispered comments of the two officers in front of him on the "hotness" of the captain. Seemed like the boys were already starting to feel better. He swiped his fingers on the tactile screen of his thin tablet making the pages of the digital document turn at a quicker pace than how he would usually review documents. He was looking for the patient information file of a certain Sergeant Kyle Morris which Doctor Porter had warned him about a few times in his messages. He had told him that this person's information was dangerously incomplete, and that he would need to interrogate the patient and test him soon. When he finally stumbled on it, he had to agree with the retired doctor. This young officer seemed to be the poor victim of a glitch in the medical recording system. His most basic medical information had failed to be sent to them. Right now, even his blood type was marked as unknown.
However, as he was creating a new notification for himself to remind him tomorrow to make an appointment with Sergeant Morris, he noticed that the cafeteria had gone unusually silent. While the cafeteria was not completely full and noisy at this hour of the morning it was still usually filled by some small chatter between the few early risers. When he looked up, he suddenly understood that all the people's attention was focused on the screen behind him. He frowned in confusion at the sight of his officers' shocked expressions. From the pale color of Mikael's usual olive tone skin and Mason wide eyes, he guessed this had probably nothing to do with the captain's so-called hotness. As he was about to turn around and assess the situation, he felt the floor beneath move. All the cups and plates that had once been sitting peacefully on their table slid to the side and fell off the table in a symphony of crashing sounds. Min only had time to grab the edge of the table before he felt the ship plunge to the side a second time. Was the pilot out of his mind? Why had he not warned the passenger? He watched as some of the unlucky passengers that had been standing unprepared for this violent lurch, lost their balance and fell to the floor.
Fortunately, his two men had followed his lead and were holding on to the table or the chairs for dear life. He inspected the room around him when he had finally gotten used to the weird position of the floor. He made a quick note of all the passengers that were sprawled on the floor. Fourteen . Ten others were in the same position as him sitting at different tables spread throughout the cafeteria. In total he counted, including himself, that there were five Gaia soldiers. He was the highest-ranking officer in the room. The twenty two others seemed to be civilians. As he was trying to see from his position if anyone needed medical assistance, he finally saw the reason for all of this. Just before the navigational camera could completely move away from the object, in the distance he could clearly distinguish what looked like gigantic battleships. How? They were light years away from the war zone and even then, that war was supposed to have ended. Was this a surprise attack? Had Leph' change their mind? Were they betraying the Peace treaty? Was this another war declaration?
No matter, he could ask these questions later, now he needed to follow the protocol. He pressed the emergency communication button on his wrist computer. It was supposed to automatically connect him to the closest GAIA or Allied military base. But his heart dropped when he only heard static. Normally this area was supposed to be in reaching distance to a Gaia post. Then he looked up at the screen at the center of the cafeteria and swore out loud. He was an idiot. From here the only Gaia post in reach was Galilee. The enemy had probably damaged the station's antenna. They were alone in this. The second closest inhabited planet part of the Alliance was more than 80 billion miles away; unreachable. He punched the table in front of him in frustration. He needed to collect his thoughts. The boys in front of him, yes because they were just boys in his eyes, were awaiting his orders. They looked lost and scared. They were thrust in a type of situation that they were much too inexperienced to handle yet. It was up to him to keep his cool and make sure the people in this room survived.
He carefully stood up from his seat, while slightly leaning more of his weight on his left leg to keep his balance. He turned to his two men and the two other lieutenants that had been sitting a few tables away. He was sure they would have stood up in attention if the floor was not so uneven under their feet.
"Sergeants, help these people up and sit them in the seats closest to the exit. Notify me if there are any serious injuries." He gestured to Mason to come join him. The man circled the table and stopped in front of him standing as straight as possible in this situation ready to receive orders. "I need you to go near the bar. There should be an emergency medical kit behind it. Bring it to me. The young man hurried over to the other side of the room to do what he was told. While the men were going from passenger to passenger, helping them to a seat, asking questions and reassuring the panicked ones; Min made his way to the entrance door of the common room. On the side of it built into the wall was an intercom. The intercom was supposed to be there to get in contact with the staff during an emergency. He felt the situation warranted a call to the captain. With no contact with the outside world, and on a privately owned spaceship that was not part of GAIA's jurisdiction he knew that made the captain of the ship his direct superior. Next to the small speaker, all the areas of the ship were written in bold letters. He touched the Commanding room dial. A female voice picked up after four rings.
"This is Captain Martin, who am I speaking to?"
He could almost hear the irritation in her voice. He knew she was probably busy, but he was just doing his job.
"This is Sergeant Major Min, I'm currently reporting from the cafeteria room. I have with me four Gaia soldiers and twenty two civilians." He looked over his shoulder towards the rest of his men, one of them pointed at a young woman, his coworker was holding up helping her lay down on one of the couches. He showed his ankle and slid a finger on his temple. Min easily got the silent message. Broken ankle and cut to the temple. He knew all these men were trained in first aid. They could handle the few minutes it took for him to talk to the commander of the ship.
"We appear to have one person seriously injured, as the highest-ranking GAIA officer and only doctor on board I would like to be informed of the situation and what actions we should take." He acknowledged that he could have shown a bit more diplomacy in his way of phrasing his request. But they did not have time for trivial niceness. They needed to know what the captain was planning and what the full situation was.
However, he never heard her answer, because suddenly all the occupants in the room were knocked off their feet and into the closest furniture and wall. Min had fallen forward; his knees and elbows took most of the impact. The room was filled with clouds of plaster from the walls and ceiling. Screams could be heard all around him. He felt disoriented and lost; he was still on all fours trying not to inhale the white dust in the air. They had felt the whole ship shake around them. The few pieces of furniture that were not fixated to the floor were upturned. Two people had crashed into the wall next to them. While they had fallen back to the ground, he cringed at the sight of the holes that the impact of their body had left in the layer of plaster covering the wall. It took him a few seconds to regain his bearings, crucial time wasted. Time he could have used to check on the civilians' injuries. He pushed himself up. And ignored the headache that was making the world spin around him. He made his way towards the two bodies laying on the ground next to the opposite wall. One of them was one of the human sergeants that had been helping the injured lady earlier. His blond hair and pale forehead were covered in blood. Head injury. He was whimpering and mumbling. He barely noticed that Mason had joined his side. He was calling the young man's name and softly stroking the man's well shaven cheek.
"Patrick! Patrick? Hold on, okay? You'll be alright…"
He probably knew him well. They had probably trained together. And from the despair in his voice, his ruffled feathers, and the tears on his purple cheeks, they were close. But the blond boy had not been under his direct supervision. Probably one of Sergeant Major Renard's men. That reminded him that they still did not know the status of the other passengers outside of the cafeteria. From the direction of the shock, it had originated from the right side of the ship where the dormitory was located. Min tried not to think about it. He needed to get these men to safety first. They were for now his responsibility. Luckily, Mason was well-trained, and even in the middle of this hell he had still brought the emergency kit with him and promptly handed it to Min. After checking for other injuries, he instructed Mason on how to deal with the head injury. Asking him to tilt the head up and press the wound with a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding. While he was throwing orders to the young man and checking every minute his work, he made his way to the second body. A Namil civilian. But he swore out loud when he saw the position of her body. She had broken her neck during the collision against the wall. He checked her pulse to be sure. Nothing. One fatality. How many others would there be? He leaned forward and with two fingers closed gently her eyes. He looked one last time at her face, trying to memorize her high cheekbones, her thin lips and long forehead and natural baldness, a distinctive trait of Namil natives. Her eyes closed, and her peaceful expression made her look like she was sleeping.
He painfully looked away and headed towards the rest of the room's occupant. Mason was diligently wrapping gauze around his friend's head wound the way Min had told him to; all while whispering soft comforting words in the blond man's ear. Mikael and the other Gaia lieutenant who he did not know by name were helping up the other passengers. He was relieved to see that none of them were as severely injured as Patrick. All of them were able to stand up. Some had a bruise or two, but the boys were taking care of it. Mikael was helping a middle-aged lady and reassuring her that everything was going to be okay, but he looked up discreetly over the short woman's shoulder and glanced at him and then at the unmoving body of the woman still lying in the corner of the room. Min's heart hurt when he negatively shook his head in response to the young man's silent question. And he felt like his heart had imploded from chagrin when he saw the look of shock and fear in the young man's eyes. This was the young man's first fatality during a mission. It probably made things much more real for him. Maybe it had finally settled the idea in his head that this was no training exercise. People could die. And Min hated to be the one to teach him that lesson and be there to witness the change in his eyes. However, this was not the time to regret his life choices and curse his bad luck. He went to stand in the center of the room. As he was about to address a few words to the frightened people around him, the Captain beat him to it. Her voice could be heard clearly from all the speakers in the room.
"This is your Captain and Pilot speaking. The ship is being followed and attacked by an unknown hostile warship. Part of our ship has already been damaged from an attack and locked down to keep the pressure in the rest of the spacecraft at a normal level." His fist clenched at his side. His nails were piercing the skin of his palm. Did she say they had locked down part of the ship? Damaged by an attack? They were being followed and attacked by those unknown warships? So many thoughts were battling it out inside his head. But he needed to get these people out of here. He needed to control the situation before the civilians fully processed the captain's words and started panicking. The message continued.
"The warship is rapidly gaining on us. The right engine was hit by the first attack. It is improbable for us to outrun them. None of the station or planets around us can be reached. This is why as commanding officer of this ship I order the evacuation of all passengers. Please make your way in an orderly and fast manner to the level 0 of the ship. You will find 50 evacuation pods ready to be launched as soon as your safety belt and door is locked. The itinerary is automatically set to the nearest inhabitable planet to our current position."
While the passengers were shocked at the captain's words, he used this time to gesture to the lieutenants to join him. He had chosen to stand next to Patrick so that Mason and him could hear his orders without moving from their position on the floor.
"We need to keep them calm and lead them downstairs through the stairs. We don't need more people injured right now. Mason, you're in charge of Patrick." Mason nodded at his words. Min turned towards the two others. "I want you two to lead the way for the group. Make sure to stay calm. They'll panic if they sense you're not confident enough, got it?" He whispered to them, keeping an eye on the still frozen scared small crowd.
"What about you, Sir?" Mikael asked. If they had been in a different situation, he would have scolded the boy for questioning him.
"I'm going to stay a bit behind, make sure there are no other people that need help."
They nodded in understanding and quickly followed his instructions. Mason placed Patrick's arm around his shoulder. The man did not seem well enough to walk fast or straight. This was alarming but Min did not have the equipment nor the time to do a more thorough check up right now. Nonetheless, they would all be safer downstairs tucked in one of the escape pods ready to evacuate from this death trap.
It did not take long for his men to lead the group of now seven out of the cafeteria and into the hallway. Min glanced one last time at the body sprawled on the floor in the corner of the room. If he got out of here, he would try to find her identity and her family; they deserved to know what had happened. He walked out in the corridor. The last passengers of the group were already going through the doors and down the stairs. He watched their backs disappear one by one behind the gray door. But as he walked through the hallway his attention stopped at the two wide doors on his right that lead to the dormitory. He approached it but the door did not open automatically like it had done earlier this morning. Just this morning he had walked out of his single room to wake up the four lieutenants sleeping in double rooms on each side of his. And just half an hour ago, he had sent two of them to get medicine there. He banged his fists against the door in anger and frustration. He had sent his men to their death. The blast must have created a whole in the ship's side and the whole dorm area had been a victim of the cruelty of space and decompression. Now these steel locked doors were the only thing separating him from what was probably the corpses of all his new colleagues and subordinates. He pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the closed door. And whispered a final goodbye and I'm sorry to his lost colleagues; his lips almost touching the cool steal in front of them.
He reluctantly pushed himself back up and turned back to the task at hand. He had to go check for himself if there were any other passengers lost or injured on the other floors. He jogged his way up the stairs, he felt his GAIA standard gun in its holster knocking rhythmically against the side of his thigh in a comforting and familiar way. As he walked out on the third floor's landing, he looked carefully around. The door to the dorms on the third floor did not open either. More deaths. He opened the door to the gym. And popped his head inside. No one. He continued on his path. The second door led to the video and leisure room, but the room was empty too but since it was bigger and full of equipment, he made the decision to do a quick round inside. In case any terrified passenger was hiding in terror behind one of the desks. He slithered his way around this small maze of video controllers and virtual arcade games.
"Anyone here?" He called out letting his question echo against the four white walls around him. However instead of the type of answer he had expected like silence or a small, scared voice; he heard the sound of footsteps running down the corridor. He quickly took out his gun and held it at his side. The footsteps were getting closer to his location. Why would someone run in this direction in the middle of an evacuation? He waited nervously watching the opened door for the person to finally show themselves. But he had not been prepared for the sight that walked through the door and stopped in front of him. The blue skin and the familiar looking darker veins under their eyes and on their temple made him instantly jump into a defensive stance. In seconds, his gun was pointed on the newcomer. His eyes could not move away from their orange colored and feline eyes. His heartbeat was pumping erratically in his chest. His hands clenched around the gun in front of him. What were they doing here? He could not help but relive all the five years he spent facing the exact same eyes in battle; he had watched this exact same lithe blue body kill so many of his friends. And they were back. He gulped nervously and kept his eyes and his aim on the part of its body where he knew their vitals were located; he knew them well since he had to study them on the field for three years. Were they the ones behind the attack? But how did this one enter the ship? Were there others on the ship? But what really took him by surprise was their perfect English accent and the look of surprise on their face at the sight of the gun.
"Wow, wow. What are you doing? I'm not here to attack you! My name is Lorie Martin, I'm the Pilot of this ship. I work for Sylph."
He raised an incredulous eyebrow at her words.
"Show me some identification."
"Are you serious?" As soon as she blurted out those words, he was not sure why, but the girl seemed to realize something, because her face expression changed from confusion to a sort of cold glare. However, she stopped questioning his actions. She kept one hand in the air and with the other one pulled out from the front pocket of her shirt uniform her captain's identification card. And now that he paid closer attention to her clothes, he finally noticed that she was indeed dressed in the staff uniform. In the end, he reluctantly lowered his gun slightly. Worse case, he was still the only one holding a gun in this room; he had the advantage. He slowly let his body fall into a more relaxed position and took the opportunity that the girl was busy sliding her card back into her pocket to look at her in her entirety.
Now that he took in all the details, she did not look exactly like the Lephi soldiers he had encountered. The veins on a purebred Lephi were much more pronounced and present on their faces. The girl in front of him had a smaller number of them and they were distinctly lighter. And instead of the long straight black hair that they usually left to fall on their backs, this one had sandy blonde hair pulled back in a practical ponytail. He had never imagined that a halfling of a Lephi and a Human could exist; it felt wrong. How could species so different with such a bad history create life. They were bringing back bad memories that he had thought he had finally left behind him.
"So, are you done interrogating me and can we finally join the evacuation? I came here to inform you that these rooms are deserted and that we're the last one still not safely inside the level 0 room." She turned around and started walking back towards the stair's door. Was she just expecting him to follow her? He rolled his eyes at the halfling's attitude. But nonetheless, it appeared he had no choice but to follow since they were both heading in the same direction.