Waiting Place

They let us see the stars before we go under. Let us spend a few "days" wandering around in the grey, lifeless ship and look out at the universe. A few people always break a little, just a little.

We're trained for it before they ever send us off-world. So instead of the concept of everything they'd ever known sailing away from them, maybe forever, doing damage, it just caused tears. Right, proper, soldierly tears that the rest of us politely didn't notice.

It was always hardest among the levies. The youths who never wanted to join the army, let alone be sent into Central Service. But the action was seen mostly by the navy, little use for ground pounders out where the ground won't stay still long enough to pound.

As a matter of fact, one reason I'd joined the infantry rather than the navy after completing Standard Two, is simply that the Confederation was not at war. Nor was the Confederation likely to go to war. I am not a coward, but even pirates get lucky, and I would rather die under a sky than wrapped in a cold blanket of stars.

So, long after the rest of the officers had lost their lust for seeing the common, everyday sight of a whole human planet vanishing behind them as they soared through space, I stayed awake. Often, but not always, I was the last to 'slip under.' And on my first voyage, the lot of us had played a drunken game of dares and stayed awake long into the Echoes.

One of the greatest lessons a commander can learn is the relaxation of discipline in key circumstances. That voyage, we were not the only troopers awake, nor even the only ship's crew. And the commanders only mentioned a word about it because someone had been hurt.

Nights like that one, and I think of it as having happened at night, stay with you. People say Echoes can teach you thing about yourself and I don't doubt it. What I know is that after that night, I fought ever staying awake past critical velocity again.

I still play the game with myself, though. Every time, I stand by the biggest viewing port I can find and watch the stars until the last.

Sometimes, when the Confederation is at peace and the ship passes a point of cosmic interest, it would wake us up. "It" here meaning a Satan-spawned collection of the army, ship, God, a series of psychologists, and Confederation Congress that made decisions. Any or all of them could, at any point, be equally responsible for a circumstance I found myself in.

It made directional resentment very difficult. But it just so happened to align with showing me a new wonder.

And the nebula glowed a million shades of radiation. A churning, roiling mass of pure stuff. A star's grave and cocoon.

"You know the crazy thing?"

"What?"

"No one's ever seen this before."

"Don't pull that," I slapped her on the shoulder, "how many people were on this tub and awake before us? Not to mention every other load of dirt backs that come through this way."

"That's not what I mean," she leaned her head on my shoulder and pointed towards the colours beyond counting as they hung in emptiness. "Look at it, really look."

Not for the first time, I wished she had hair. Thanks to photos and the occasional bout of long-term leave, I knew she had beautiful red hair. It would cascade down her back, a waterfall frozen in copper against the black-rock outline of her muscles.

I smiled, and like she always did she noticed. How exactly she managed this, I never knew, considering that she stared at the stars, and couldn't see my face. "What is it?"

"Promise they're respectful thoughts. We're technically on duty."

"This has never been seen before and it will never be seen again. A million people might have a classic photo of this hanging on their mirror, but they've never seen it the way you do. I can't, and I can't share it with you. It's just for me. And it has never been seen before."

She completely ignored me, and it drew me to her. She was my loadstone, and I grinned, brushing one finger along her jaw.

"Not the only thing that could never happen before or again..."

"Stop that. Someone might come."

Being rather mature, I decided to leave that low hanging fruit as it was. But made certain she knew both what I was doing, and how loudly I was doing it. My reward was that particular kind of pinched not-quite-anger.

My arm tightened around her shoulders, and she burrowed closer into me. Even with the ever-present sterility of 'ship,' she smelled wonderful. And I missed her hair. God, never thought I'd be one of those girls. Hair of all things.

Home. That was the reason.

Free hand coming up to run itself back and forth over my closely shaved scalp, I thought about how I would grow it. This was our last tour, a couple more years jumping from intimidation to intimidation and Claire and I would be home.

"I don't want to wait," I said, shifting my weight so that her head came up, the catching her chin and pointing her eyes into mine. "But I know you do."

"I don't," she started but I cut her off.

"Not even remotely what I meant," and lowered my hand to pat her on the thigh. "I meant until we get there."

As were all of us who just woke up, I was still in nothing but my modesty wear for cryo. Another thing we're trained not to be all hot and bothered by, if less successfully. But that lack of clothing made the lingers emptiness at my side so much colder. So much darker.

It hung there, leeching the warmth from my skin and drawing my attention towards it like stars into a black hole. Inexorably, despite never taking my eyes from that beautiful marvel of creation, I could only feel the empty wrongness.

Could only feel the shrieking, empty nothing that used to house something precious. Not a black hole, more like the sudden and inexplicable absence of a star. Loss of its gravity flinging the planets off into space, killing them with storms and quakes and punishing, eternal cold.

But in the time between the knowing and the dying, eyes would look at where it had been. Drawn unceasingly towards the spot where the source of life should be and had simply vanished.

Despite the wonders of the universe displayed before me through the specially crafted view port, I was aware of nothing but the empty silence beside me. The silence and the horrible, cacophony of memories hiding behind its shadow.

So long as the void remained, I was safe from those echoes of memories and their ghosts. But the void could not remain forever, and even now it trembled.

Turning on my heel, I quick-stepped down three decks and climbed into my cryo-pod two full standard days early. No way to outrun the collapse of that mental void, or the absent thing that made perfection viewed with a survivor's eyes so hollow.

No way to outrun it. But a way to delay it all the same.

Feeling like a coward, I pressed the button and let loose. Trying to finish crying before the tank filled, and I went out of the now and into the waiting place where her ghost couldn’t haunt me.