Duty

"When life seems hard, the courageous do not lie down and accept defeat; instead, they are all the more determined to struggle for a better future," - Queen Elizabeth the Second

                                                                                                     -Ship’s Motto of the UEG Retribution

--

RETRIBUTION
A ‘Borderworlds’ Story

“When I look around this room at all of you, I’m filled with pride. I know you, how you feel… I know some of you are afraid. This isn’t easy, but you’re here. You made it. That’s what matters. You are all here by choice. It may not have been an easy decision for some of you to make, but still you made the choice to stand here today, difficult or not.  I too once made a difficult choice. I knew from the very beginning that it would be the hardest decision I had ever made, but still I knew what I had to do. There comes a time for all of us, and I fear that time is coming soon, when we must choose between doing what is easy and doing what is right.”

--

Mistbrook Falls, Michigan
August 15th, 2530

“You ever wonder what’s up there?” Fifteen-year-old Jack Mitchell tilted his head to his left to look at his best friend Maya O’Brien where she lay in the grass next to him. This was a common pastime for the pair; laying out in the evening gazing up at the glittering star field above them. Jack lived a fair distance outside of the small Midwestern town he’d grown up in, where all of the light pollution faded, giving nearly unobstructed views of the Milky Way. He would always find it to be one of the most beautiful sights anywhere. Maya, meanwhile, never seemed to care all that much. The interest in astronomy and space exploration was never there for Maya. She humored Jack and spent time out there on their blanket simply because she enjoyed hanging out with him. 

Jack though, he wanted to go and see what was out there. Just looking from down here, that was boring. He wanted to go and see it for himself, up close and personal. Just like his dad. Of course, his father wasn’t off exploring the deep reaches of space either. He was the helmsman of one of the Navy’s fast attack cruisers, the UEG Grace Under Pressure. He was fighting the aliens to ensure the safety and freedom of every human in the galaxy. Jack couldn’t wait until his turned 18 and could join the Navy in his father’s footsteps. Maybe he could even get assigned to his father’s ship one day.

“I don’t know. Stars?” said Maya, glancing at Jack and heaving a sigh. “Space dust?”

“Are you really that disinterested?” Jack asked, propping himself up on his elbows as a warm summer breeze wafted over them. “C’mon Maya, just imagine! We’ve already encountered one alien species. What if there are others? There are over one hundred billion stars out there and we’ve explored so little of the galaxy that there could be countless other civilizations that we just haven’t met yet.”

“Maybe,” said Maya with a shrug. “As long as they aren’t all homicidal maniacs like the Volgm.”

“My dad says that’s just UEG propaganda,” Jack retorted. “He says humanity played as much a role in starting the war as the Volgm did, maybe even more. The Volgm aren’t our friends and we have to fight them, but we’re not innocent and they’re not maniacs.”

“At the end of the day, does it matter?” Maya wondered. “I mean, we’re still fighting them so… who cares who did what? You’re still going to run off and join the Navy in a few years and leave me here in this dead end town.”

“How many times do I have to tell you to come with me?” Jack insisted for what he knew must be the thousandth time. “You could get into Officer Candidate School no problems with grades like yours.”

“I said I’d think about it, didn’t I?” Maya reminded him. “I can’t deny that it would be nice to get out of this boring, backwater town, I just… the Navy? Fighting and dying in a war isn’t what I had in mind, you know?”

“You’re not going to die, Maya,” said Jack firmly. “And if you do, then we go together. We do everything together, you and me.”

“I didn’t realize that pinky promise we made when we were six extended to dying, but good to know,” said Maya dryly.

“We said everything, so that definitely includes…” But Jack trailed off as a small shuttle bearing UEG insignia roared over the nearby treetops and headed toward Jack’s home. It settled onto the ground in the front yard. The motion sensing lights outside the house clicked on and from their spot in the field two hundred yards away, Jack and Maya watched the two uniformed men step out of the shuttle and walk towards the front door.

“Jack…?” Maya said questioningly, but he ignored her. Instead, he turned and bolted for the house. He ran flat out, his heart pounding in his chest the whole way; both from exertion and fear. He knew, long before he ever reached the front porch of his home, he knew. He didn’t need to see his mother’s tears as he burst through the door and into the sitting room. He didn’t need to see the grim expressions on the two officers’ faces. He knew, from the moment that shuttle had flown overhead, what had happened. He knew that his mother had lost her husband, and he… he had lost his father.

--

“You joined our distinguished Navy for reasons that are entirely your own. Perhaps you wanted to be a hero. Maybe you wanted to do your part and fight for humanity. Maybe you just needed a job. Regardless, just by being here you’ve already made your choice. You chose to be part of something bigger than yourself. You believed that humanity was worth fighting for.

--

UEG Officer Candidate School,
Fort Aldrin, Luna       
March 23rd, 2534

“We get our ship assignments today,” said Maya tentatively, peering at Jack across the table in the mess hall where they had been sitting in relative quiet having breakfast. “What do you think we’ll get?

“I have no idea,” Jack replied quietly. It had been a long four years for Jack and Maya, but for Jack in particular. In the months following Jack’s father’s death, his previously simple but boring life had proven to be anything but. His mother had taken the loss her husband far worse than Jack had taken the loss of his father, which was an achievement to say the least. Jack’s dad had been his hero. To lose such an important and beloved figure so early in life was… difficult to say the least.

His mother had simply wasted away in the years since. She had spent every waking moment looking for the bottom of a bottle, and she always seemed to find one. She had passed away a month after Jack and Maya had enlisted in the Navy. Jack had been away at Basic when he’d gotten the news. He hadn’t spoken to her since he left and their parting conversation had not been pleasant. His mother had been furious with him for, as she put it, ‘throwing away his life and following his dad to the grave’.

Maybe he was. He didn’t know, not really. His father had believed in the job he had done. He had always been proud to serve, but the older Jack had gotten and the more of the UEG he saw… the less sure he was that he would be. The Navy had been the only career Jack had ever considered. It was the path he had to follow. But now, here he sat on what should have been an exciting day. It was the day he would learn which of the ships he would be assigned to, and yet Jack was not all that interested.

He would be sent off to fight a war he wasn’t at all sure he believed in anymore. His father had always talked about the UEG’s propaganda, but Jack was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t more than that. The UEG military was… he found it hard to find the right words to describe it. Perhaps cultish in a way. The people around him, especially those in power, seemed almost brainwashed. Unending, unyielding loyalty and devotion to the cause. That’s what was drilled into the recruits throughout their training, but Jack… it all seemed so strange to him.

“Well… what would you like to get?” Maya pressed, seemingly trying to get him talking. “Personally, I think we’re getting assigned to the Endeavour.”

Although he said nothing, Jack personally agreed with Maya’s assessment. The Endeavour was the current flagship of the UEG Seventh Fleet. The class-II carrier had taken a tremendous beating after being ambushed by a Volgm attack group six months earlier. In the ensuing battle, the ship had lost a third of her crew. After returning to spacedock for repairs, the carrier was due to sail again very soon. It made perfect sense that the current batch of fresh recruits would be assigned to the ship as it left Mars for the front lines.

“Jack, what’s wrong?” Maya asked at last. “Are you upset about your sister or…?”

“I haven’t spoken to Alyssa since Mom’s funeral,” Jack said stiffly. In truth, he’d never gotten on particularly well with his older sister. They had interacted very briefly on the day Jack had been given off of training to attend the funeral. Afterwards, Alyssa had returned home to Luna and he hadn’t heard from her since. Not that he was particularly upset about that. “So no, I’m not remotely upset about her. It’s just… this whole war, everything I… Does any of this feel right to you?” Maya hissed at him to be quiet.

“Really?” She whispered, furious. “Here? Now? We’ve talked about this and you can’t bring this shit up again. If people heard you asking those kinds of questions…”

“Yeah, I know,” Jack replied, rolling his eyes. “That’s my point. You can’t ask questions. If you ask the wrong one, it’s treason.”

“Right,” said Maya. “So stop asking, jackass. It’s just the way it is. It has been since the Republic collapsed and the UEG took over. The Volgm are the enemy. We’re soldiers. We kill the enemy. If you don’t agree… then you’re the enemy too.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” Jack asked his oldest friend. “Or does that sound as fucked up to you as it does to me?”

“Didn’t say I believed it,” Maya corrected him. “I said that’s the way it is. This is the UEG, Jackie. We are soldiers in the UEG Navy. We do our jobs and follow orders. We protect humanity… warts and all.”

“Just seems like there’s a lot of warts these days,” Jack muttered. “Listen, I’m not saying I’m not loyal, I just don’t think I buy into the UEG’s philosophy. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And you don’t have to,” said Maya with a heavy shrug. “Just keep it to yourself. I really don’t want to see you go up before a firing squad, okay? After all, what’s the deal we made?”

“We do everything together, you and me,” said Jack, repeating the motto they had shared since childhood.

“Exactly,” said Maya with a grin. “And since I don’t want to be shot I’d appreciate it if you kept your mouth shut and towed the party line. We put in our years and then we get out. We go back to civilian life and that’ll be that. It’s twelve years, that’s not so bad.”

Jack had little choice to do as Maya said. And indeed, that’s what he did from that day forward. Tow the party line. Do as he was told. Follow orders. Protect Earth. And yet as each day passed, he saw more and more of the UEG’s dark side. But it would be a while yet before he learned that while the UEG may be a symbol of peace and unity to its citizens, in reality it was anything but.

--

Olympus Mons Fleet Shipyard,
Geosynchronous Orbit of Mars,
July 28th, 2542

Twenty-seven-year-old Jack Mitchell, now a Lieutenant Commander, stood on the concourse of the UEG orbital shipyard in geosynchronous orbit above the Utopia Planitia megacity on Mars. The Olympus Mons Fleet Shipyard was the largest shipbuilding facility in the Sol System and indeed the entirety of the UEG. This shipyard and its sister, the Mariner Valley Fleet Yard, were responsible for the construction of the vast majority of the UEG navy. And it was there that humanity’s newest and most advanced class of destroyers were being built; the Reprisal-class.

The classification of destroyer was a bit of a misnomer. The UEG did not abide by 21st century naming conventions when it came to ships, but in truth the Reprisal-class were battleships. Armed with the latest in precision laser weaponry, high velocity ballistic and railgun technologies, as well as vast arrays of missile silos, the line of ships were to be the most powerful vessels ever constructed. Combined with the strongest shielding and armor, as well as a completely redesigned quantum drive making them the fastest ships in the fleet, there was nothing the Volgm could field that would rival the Reprisals.  

Jack stood at a wide window that looked out onto the starship construction berths. From his position, he could only see three of the berths although there were dozens more scattered throughout the massive orbital structure. The farthest, Berth 3, held the lead ship of the line; the UEG Reprisal. The middle berth held the second of the twelve planned ships; the UEG Vengeance. The nearest berth, Berth 1, held the third ship that would be completed; the UEG Retribution.

Each of the ships would be distinguished by a different colored stripe along her midline, separating their stark white upper hulls and their deep gray lower hulls. The Reprisal’s would be green. The Vengeance’s would be red and the Retribution’s would be painted a bright blue. There were to be nine more ships of the Reprisal-class, although only an additional five had received funding and only two, the Reckoning and Requital had begun having their keels laid. The Retaliator, Revenge, and Reciprocity would not sail for many years to come.

Even the Retribution was a full four years away from being completed. But even so, her crew had already been selected. Jack was one of 850 naval officers chosen to crew the new destroyer that would one day replace the aging carrier Endeavour as the flagship of the UEG Seventh Fleet. Jack hadn’t been stationed on the Endeavour in years, however. He and Maya had served aboard the carrier for a full five years, just as Maya had predicted, during which time they earned reputations as being exceptionally capable officers.

While Maya’s career path had led her down the Operations track, Jack had instead pursued Tactical. He had initially planned on following in his father’s footsteps as a helmsman, however he quickly found he had a knack for spaceborne weapon systems. Even with modern targeting computers and FTL sensors, hitting a rapidly moving target hundreds of kilometers away was still quite a challenge. It took a team of skilled crewmen working together to operate a capital ship’s many weapons, as well as coordinating with the helm as the ship maneuvered to ensure clear lines of fire.

And so by 2539 Jack had been reassigned to the Andromeda, a Valorant-class battlecruiser, as the Chief Tactical Officer. Maya would remain on the Endeavour for another six months before joining Jack aboard the Andromeda as the Flight Operations Officer in charge of controlling the battlecruiser’s fighter squadrons.

In the intervening years, Jack and Maya had been on the front lines of some of the fiercest fighting the war had yet seen. Strategically, the war had been in a stalemate for years. Whenever one side would make inroads, the other would manage to push them back. Neither side seemed able or willing to truly press their advantage.

For the UEG, Jack understood why. The Navy simply didn’t have enough ships. The UEG did not have thousands of heavily armed capital ships to toss against their enemies. Even at the height of their power, the UEG had only possessed around 900 ships and the vast majority had been frigates and light cruisers. Now, the fleet consisted of less than 600 ships and with a quarter of that number dedicated solely to the defense of the Sol System, it didn’t leave a lot in the way of tactical options. And try as they might, UEG shipyards simply couldn’t keep up with the losses. It was a war of attrition and it seemed the UEG was losing.

Of course, there were rumors within the UEG that Section 9, an incredibly secretive branch of the UEG, was working on a project somewhere on Luna that would lead to the development of a hyper-intelligent AI that would be able to operation the Sol Defense Grid. Assuming it worked, it would greatly reduce the number of independent starships that would need to remain in-system. Instead, the defense of the Sol System could be left to automated defense platforms. Jack wasn’t entirely convinced that the rumors were even true, but if they were he had to admit it gave him the creeps. He didn’t have a problem with AI, but the thought of a computer program having autonomous control of the entirety of Earth’s defensive weapons seemed… potentially very dangerous.

Not that he was in the Sol System long enough for it to make much of a difference to him anyway. In fact, he was only here now because the Andromeda had been reassigned to another battle group and had returned to Mars for repair and rearming before linking up with the 23rd Task Force in the Alpha Centauri system.

It would be his last tour before settling in at the Advanced Naval Combat School on Europa where he and the 850 other members of the Retribution’s crew would be trained. It was there that they would learn the skills they needed to command the next generation of UEG capital ships. The thought did not excite him.

Well, it did. He knew how proud his father would be if he had lived to see his son selected to serve on a ship like the Retribution. That thought still managed to make Jack smile, however the rest of what that entailed did not. The Reprisals could very well be the spark that would break the back of the Volgm resistance, and Jack was not convinced that would be a good thing. Jack had fought enough battles and seen enough war to know that the Volgm were not monsters. Their soldiers were people just like him and Maya, fighting for their homes and families.

Jack didn’t know what the Volgm would do if they won the war, but he felt strongly that he knew what the UEG would do. He heard it in every mess hall. He saw it on the faces of every fellow sailor. If the UEG got their way, the Volgm homeworld would burn as the UEG fleets rained fire down upon it. Jack didn’t want that, but he didn’t know how to stop it either.

Because loathe as he was to admit it, he didn’t know that the Volgm wouldn’t do the same thing. Maybe they would, and if so then he and his fellow soldiers were all that stood between humanity and annihilation. So what could he do? Nothing but his duty, of course. Just as Maya had told him years before: he would do his job and follow orders. He would protect humanity… warts and all.

--

“On the day of your enlistment, you were each issued a weapon. But neither that weapon, nor the vast batteries of artillery aboard your ship make you a soldier. What makes you a soldier is how you choose to use them.” 

--

UEG Retribution,
On Patrol near the Arcturus System
July 18th, 2547

But duty… duty can only take a man so far. Loyalty, duty… there has to be a line one does not cross, not even for duty’s sake. For years, Jack had followed orders. He had done his duty, just as his father had. Just as Maya had told him. He had pushed aside his worries and his questions. He had done as he had been told. But on this day, Jack Mitchell and indeed the entire crew of the Retribution would be faced with a choice; a choice between doing what is easy and doing what is right. The choice they make will split the crew in half, but it will lead to a spark of hope that, if nurtured, could burn into a flame of change. Time will tell.