If this mission fails, nothing will remain but to become a rogue captain. His crew is honor-bound to relieve him at that point, but he has peppered his command staff with similar political viewpoints. The Mokarran must be stopped. He will take the fall and the prison time if war commences. If Easter’s correct, and since she has laid all the cards on the table she bloody well better be, this scheme will force the Mokarran to sue for peace. Securing a new treaty with the UCP preventing any further military action will give Kantian a chance to display his military might and his negation skills. Plastering his image and credentials as a current and active war hero all over the ISN will send him a landslide of votes when Easter passes her deathbed endorsement and make him her honored replacement.
Great plan.
It has to work, or every chess move he’s made to obtain the captain’s chair of the UCP flagship will be replaced by a cold metal bunk in solitary confinement—if lucky.
The Mokarran could demand his head, and given their reputation, they might just eat it. Turn him over to forget this insurgency into their space. Easter would do it to salvage what’s left of her reputation. After all, she is the Outer Dimensional Coordinator, and she personally vouched for his appointment to the Deliverance.
Maxtin certainly would hang him out to dry, as will the other three VP admirals. They’ll follow Maxtin into their graves. The Zayar will bury them all. His species doesn’t have the same life expectancy as the other UCP founders who insisted on lifetime appointments for VP admirals thirty years ago.
Creating term limits has to come with an election after one of the original five VP admirals actually dies. It appears Easter will be the first if her story of having cancer holds true. Most Osirian cancers are cured with a few pills even if metastasized. Cellular repair is performed by most field medics. Whatever’s killing her must be too rare or completely degenerative. He has no idea. But even with godlike doctors, not everyone’s destined to live forever.
Especially the Mokarran.
They have sentenced themselves to their own destruction as they drive Federation citizens to despise their tyranny. When he invades Summersun, he expects many of the non-Mokarran soldiers to turncoat and help overthrow their oppressors. He’s counting on it to secure a victory, and then he will conveniently limit the credit those rebels deserve in order to achieve the status this victory will give him. He wants to be the savior of Summersun, not the spark. History rarely records the inception of revolution unless they fail and are hanged for the attempt. It certainly remembers who won. His victory must be absolute and without question his alone.
He has yet to break in the captain’s chair. It has the store-bought feel to his back as he eases into it. “Ensign, current ISN reports on Summersun?”
“Sketchy at best, Sir. The Mokarran destroyed some abandoned warehouses at the edge of Eastvold Province. Civilian migrant workers are rumored to have been sheltered there. No official reports on death numbers or even…”
“Confirm,” he orders. “If the Mokarran are murdering innocent people we need to report that back to UCP Command.”
“Right away, Sir.”
Kantian doubts Command will give him official orders to intercede, but reporting confirmed atrocities will only politically make him look better when he defies Command and rescues so many helpless victims. In fact, once he has evidence of brutality and casualty numbers, it could be leaked to the ISN news. Lack of action on UCP Command’s part will only strengthen his unordered intervention.
On the main view screen, two groups of Tri-Wing fighters dance the dance of warriors locked in battle. Plasma bolts strike a fighter, and instead of exploding, the fighter stalls and floats lifeless in space. The dog fight continues among the remaining craft.
“Do we have the next group of Tri-Wings ready for tactical maneuvers in this combat exercise?” Kantian ponders the battle.
A Tri-Wing flips the thrusters on his fighter, which spins his craft 180 degrees in the nongravity environment, allowing him to fire and “kill” his pursuers.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Have them launch.”
“Sir?”
“Launch the next group and have them engage,” Kantian orders.
His first officer slides next to the captain’s chair. “The first two squadrons have not completed their combat round.”
“I’m aware, Dar’Jeryd. They should engage both groups.”
“That’s not part of the contest rules, Sir.”
“I don’t care. There are no rules in combat. We’re on the cusp of a war, and there may be multiple sides. One side won’t wait for another to get done. It will be a free-for-all rumble melee, and I want my pilots ready. Launch fighters.”
The ensign does as commanded.
Images change on the view screens.
A blue haze glows over hanger doors on the Deliverance.
Hangar doors crack open.
The magnetic energy field prevents the pressurized atmosphere from flooding into the vacuum of space extinguishing all life inside the battle cruiser. The hangar doors grind to a halt, and Tri-Wing fighters scream forward, instantly silenced as they perforate the blue haze. The dull hum of plasma cannons remains absent without air to capture sound. These Tri-Wings have been outfitted with sensors to simulate weapons fire to prevent any destruction of pilots and property.
Kantian accepts the necessity of this exercise but questions the validity of war games. Pilots should act the same way they would in combat. Follow their training and behave exactly as they would under live fire with an enemy attempting to kill them, but the humanoid brain will always know a fatal blast only shuts down the fighter and not end existence. A pilot won’t fully feel the fear and knows how they will react as the death blow inches closer.
They will learn. They will be better equipped to face their fears when actual battle approaches. These pilots have one advantage over any ground troops engaging the Mokarran on the Summersun surface. They won’t have to actually stand face to face with the
