Thrust Vector - Log 7: Frontline
The wind howls past the superstructure of the Decimator, a warm breeze ripping through the vessel as the breath of the world blasts across the warship.
Crew atop the deck shout as the movement of personnel and steel envelops every being, words lost to the flow of air. The body of the warship running in total, tactical control while underway towards war.
Anti air guns are cleaned with meticulous care from their operators, the massive main cannons mounted on turrets are dressed down with ancient techniques lost to time, and the ever so endless repairs on the vessel’s sensory systems continue even under speed. All an artificial system, like an evolved form of body in the functions of nature herself.
But there was one singular individual, one foreign entity within the microcosm of naval flesh and steel.
Alek Markov watches the movement of the Earth beneath the vessel from the topside deck, the slow crossing of ground turning as the Task Force burns towards the distant green haze.
Somehow, in the world of howling wind against the roar of massive engines, there was peace. Earth and Sky, the movement of the natural processes of the universe coming together within the mind of a warrior. Harmony in a place of total disjunction, humanity above its home six kilometers below.
For him, it was everything.
He takes a deep breath, taking in the thin air at high altitude. The silence of overwhelming noise bringing him towards the mindless nothingness of chaos.
An unfamiliar voice calls to him, muffled over the sharp tone of warm wind. “Lieutenant Alek Markov.”
Markov turns, leaning back as his body weight pulls taught the safety wire bridging him to the outer catch fence. With the awarded Consortium Star, Lieutenant Markov was beyond the traditional chain of respect within the military. Even Admirals, barring that they themselves didn’t have such an Award, were underneath those that did.
“Captain Ano.” Markov echoes as he slowly recognizes the face of the Decimator’s commanding officer.
The Captain smiles lightly as he stands a bit at attention. “Having a good afternoon?”
Markov stares at Captain Ano with a blank look, in his dark eyes nothing.
Ano continues. “Well, you must be having one since you’ve been out here for the past four hours.”
“It has been four hours?” Markov’s blank look turns into empty confusion.
“Time flies when you’re having fun I suppose.” Captain Ano shakes his head. “Or in this case staring out into the horizon.”
“Four hours…” Lieutenant Markov turns in his head.
In the great beyond, the sickly green haze of the Zone becomes ever thicker. Green consuming blue as they all slowly move towards the center of corruption.
“You got up here during the last watch change.” Ano explains. “Got all of us on the bridge a little freaked out.”
“Freaked out?”
Ano chuckles. “Well, it’s not everyday the Alek Markov comes topside.”
Markov lets the words settle, the unwanted fame bestowed upon him haunting in its permeability. “Is there something to discuss Captain?”
“Hmm?” Captain Ano blinks in confusion, then chuckles. “No, no, no. I just wanted to talk.”
Lieutenant Markov stops. “Talk?”
“I am a Captain.” Ano looks out into the horizon. “And a Captain’s duty is to his crew.”
“And does this duty involve talk?” Markov asks.
The Captain turns. “What good is a Captain if he does not know his crew? And what good is a crew if it does not know its Captain?” He pauses. “Does Colonel Perez do these kinds of things?”
“What kinds of things?”
“Talk. Off the record.” Captain Ano clarifies.
Markov lets out a small smile. “All we Pilots do is talk.”
Ano sighs, looking over the catch fence to the ground below. “You know, I’m quite jealous of you pilots on that part. Look at you: Gaea, less than a month in deployment and you’re already inseparable.”
“Is our relationship as a Vector Squadron different than those of a Naval Vessel?” Markov asks.
Captain Ano chuckles as he nods. “Of course. We’re all jealous of that sort of family relationship.” He stops as he remembers the line from the propaganda. “Forged in Fire, the unbreakable bonds of the Pilot.”
“I still do not see the difference between us and you.” Markov admits coldly.
“You ever hear of the Klouss theory of Military Order?” Captain Ano asks.
“No.” Markov shakes his head.
“It says a squad is a close family, the platoon is the extended relatives, the battalion is the tribe, and the entire branch is a state. Every level above close family has its tensions, and as each level grows its distance widens.”
Captain Ano lets the words settle. “It applies to the Navy especially. And as a leader of a tribe, I have to keep this thing from tearing itself apart.”
“That sounds more vicious than it should be.” Markov comments.
“Well I suppose so, but that’s beyond the point. You Pilots are family beyond even Fleets.”
“Yet this task force, of multiple fleets, functions.” Markov notes without emotion.
“As soldiers. Friends at the best.” Ano corrects. “But pilots, I can see it's a family. No matter how far the divide between fleets goes. That’s something we in the Navy will almost never experience.”
Markov loses himself in the distant sky, and he speaks without thought. “Our ties of metal go beyond those of blood. The blood determines those around us, but the metal connects us all beyond any lines drawn. Squadrons, Fleets, Consortium, Syndicate, they are of the blood. But the steel of the vector runs through all pilots.”
Captain Ano scoffs as he looks into the distance. “Careful Markov. Ministry of Truth might try and gun you down on that.”
“You believe that they would do such a thing?” Markov raises an eyebrow.
“Well, it almost happened to me so I don’t have to guess.” Ano chuckles to himself. “But, I won’t tell if you won’t.”
In front of them, the black shape of the distant Destroyer Utica draws back. The rotation of the destroyer screens surrounding the central fleet occurring with military precision. They watch it in silence, the ancient, spinally locked visual frame of the vessel trailing behind as another one replaces it.
“What do you see from here?” Captain Ano finally asks. “I mean, what makes you spend four hours staring off into that horizon.”
Markov looks into the sky for a minute before speaking. His words disjointed. “Our lives move too quickly. Sometimes, we need to slow it down.”
“You’re not even close to twenty one and you say life moves too fast?” Ano gives Markov a sly look. “Did you say that to Colonel Perez?”
“I don’t believe he would find the humor in it.” Markov smiles.
Captain Ano tries to keep his posture while laughing. Colonel Perez’s hatred of his growing age famous among the crew only a few months into the deployment.
Beneath them, the earth turns to darkness. An ancient abandoned city rolls beneath them, from above a design of manufactured chaos in the form of decaying roads and collapsing concrete towers barely tanagalbe. Instead, the urban sprawl of the lost world swallows minds, the infinitely complex megastructure beneath them nothing less than hypnotising.
Centuries ago, the roads, the buildings, and all in between were filled with the lives of countless millions. Those that were fortunate enough to survive within the mega structures of the world after the Earth War, yet unfortunate enough to never leave it in the Exodus.
In his mind Captain Ano imagines the panic spreading across the districts as the W-Virus takes hold. The blood and bodies burning on streets as useless containment measures were executed, the last cry before the universal acceptance of death coming upon the slowly dying.
Captain Ano looks down upon dead Earth, sighing as the notions begin again. “You know why people want to return to the ground?”
Markov grips the railing as he hears the words.
“It’s because they want normality. We want what we think is a normal life. Something free from the ration lines, from the markets. Humanity wants the things that they believe will gift them the normal. Isn’t it ironic?”
“What do you mean?” Markov coldly asks.
“Everything we do here tries to hold onto it. Every watch cycle, every day we do things because we’re scared that if we deviate, we will never get it back. We humans fear the unknown Markov. You can see it in the smallest parts of our lives, how we act, how we speak, all of it clutching the light of what we know. And yet, the ultimate desire is something that is abnormal. If we are able to return to the Ground, then the life that we lead will no longer be what we truly want.”
The words are processed carefully.
“It is the great lie of our time.”
Markov stares down into the city. In aetherial heaven, there was the blessing of retrospect. Arrogance, death, mortals, and gods, all swirling across the waves of the wind.
“When are we engaging the Covenant?” Markov asks from the sky’s blue.
Captain Ano almost jumps at the Lieutenant’s question. “How do you know that?”
From within his fatigues’ pockets, Lieutenant Markov takes out a transparent plastic tumbler. Within the vessel, a milky white substance that seemed to mediate the lines between liquid and solid.
Markov takes a conservative sip of the liquid, leaning on the rail as he looks into the sky. His words point towards the substance within his grasp. “This.”
“What is that?”
“It is a colloid glucose solution with protein, vitamins, minerals, and amino acids.”
“Survival ration right?” Ano nods. “But why are you drinking it?”
“The stupore mentis.” Markov coldly looks at Captain Ano. “The killing trance.”
Ano stops, the window to the alien world of the vector corps opening up for a single second. The light of another universe spilling out onto the ground of mortal men.
There was the notion for the vector pilot. Whispered underneath silent breaths, it was said that within the cockpit of the war machine there was no human. During combat, the minds and thoughts that created the person were utterly destroyed, replaced by the fibers of sheer instinct. Those ignorant to combat revered it. Those that were familiar to the tides of war knew only that within the veil, the pilots themselves were meshed within metal. The loss of the mind a necessity for the horrendous ascension into battlefield gods.
“So you Pilots have some weird… concoction you put into that ration or something?”
Markov stares at Captain Ano with amusement.
“What?”
The Lieutenant chuckles to himself. “No, no. I’m just messing with you.”
Ano stares in confusion, then in slight surprise. No Sailor in the right mind would dream of ever purposefully fooling their Commanding Officer. But the audacity of the Pilot was ever lasting, ever present.
“So what is it for then?”
Markov gives a sly, cold gaze. “Are you certain you want to know Captain?”
Ano nods, the Pilot’s life too engrossing to pass up.
The Lieutenant sighs with a smile. “It’s to prevent bowel movement in long sorties. After all, it is inconvenient to engage in combat in feces.”
Captain Ano looms in unsure acceptance. Within the gaze of Lieutenant Alek Markov the inability to determine truth. “You’re serious.” The Captain states.
“Of course.”
“Oh.” Ano nods in untold words.
Markov lets the Captain stand in silence before bringing up something else. “Are you not going to raise your previous question?”
“Which is?”
“How I have been able to acquire classified combat information.”
Markov had the Captain in a corner. In Ano’s previous secret keeping world of the First Fleet, unspoken words held the same, if not more power than those audibly stated.
In all his years within the Navy, Captain Ano had never met someone as unconsciously manipulative as the man he was speaking with. Somehow, Lieutenant Alek Markov could shape words without thought into straight lines of objectives, every conversational turn leading towards an unintended trap, one that always seemed to benefit him.
“When pilots are about to go to war, we are given this by our Squadron Leaders. Both to clear out our systems and as a warning.” Markov raises the plastic glass, answering Ano’s unvocalized question.
“Ah the so the Colonel…” Ano follows.
“Our kind hates not knowing our fate.” Lieutenant Markov stares at the dead city beneath them. “It is only traditional then that we are given a warning before the battle is met. So that we can make peace with ourselves. We pray towards whatever thing is in the beyond, and then we die.”
“But going into combat doesn’t guarantee death?” Captain Ano interrupts. “I mean, not everyone dies in vector combat. Gaea Team, you guys have gone through hell and back and look.”
“No.” Markov coldly replies. “In the Vector, we all accept the fact that we no longer live. Our existence bases itself only on fate, the everlasting collisions of luck and nothing more.”
Ano lets Markov watch the earth below. The words that the Captain speaks is nothing less than another’s, the praises and prayers of the Ministry of Truth a surrogate to the minds of their universe. “The Pilot does not need fate, for they are the embodiment of War. The battlefield is the Vector, and the Vector is the battlefield. The men and women at the frontlines are combat incarnate, and for them, the world is only action. No luck, only talent and skill.”
“The Propaganda is known to expand on things that are outside their scope of knowledge.” Markov humorlessly motions. “Vector combat in particular.”
“It is true, though.” Captain Ano insists. “Vector Combat is something… indescribable. Your war is fought on a level beyond ours.”
“Our War is that of an unknowing, unfeeling nature. It is within our ties that we can not live within combat, our humanity only hindering our chances of survival.” Markov turns. “So what is your War Captain?”
“What?”
“What is your War?”
Captain Ano thinks. No one else would one ask such a direct question to him, the commanding officer of them all. But somehow, Lieutenant Markov's tone was almost begging for an answer, and like the orphan child seeking enough kebs for a meal, Ano had to answer. “It is my duty as a Captain to complete the mission and to protect my crew. Everything else is secondary.”
“The battlefield is different for you.” Markov says as if he was talking to another person beyond the Captain. “Your targets are not human. Innocence to the reality of the world has left you blind and able to see everything as cold numbers.”
“Are you saying we in the navy are no longer empathetic?”
Markov shakes his head. “For you, every hostile vessel is an enemy, every vector a god that can crush you underfoot. Your perspective is what demands you to be as you are. But deep within, you still understand that within every vessel, upon every deck, within every cockpit, there is another human being. Us Pilots, we know that those within the vectors are all monsters. And that everytime we shoot one down, it is a Pilot who has already accepted that it is the end.”
The wind blasts the words out from the air. Just like that, the utterly young wisdom of the eyes of a hundred wars is lost to memory.
“That’s not all, is it?” Ano asks after an untold time.
“The ties of blood create a loose world of many, and the world that is created by the ties of metal is small yet closely knit. The vector Pilot is of a family, one that is tied beyond all. And when we lose one, we all lose.”
Ano realizes Markov was situated at the very precipice of the forbidden, one single slip of the tongue to the wrong ears could send the god tumbling towards the abyss of death itself.
The Lieutenant stops, the world shifting power of his words said as if in the presence of a sleeping child. “War is a terrible thing.”
In any other place, such a sentence could end lives. But between hero and god, no topic was forbidden.
“But war is now the normal.” Ano brings up. “Without a war there would be no Consortium, no Syndicate.”
“What do you mean?”
“You think your ties of blood are just there, unregulated and independent?” Ano scoffs. “The heart that pumps it all is fueled by conflict.”
Markov stares into the wind as Ano continues. “How does a Pilot from Sezuka come to talk with a Captain from Republica? How does a company from Templar make a fortune in technology development in La Parellia? And, on a much larger scale, how are City States with nothing more in common than the fact that they share this world come together to form a Consortium?”
Captain Ano speaks. “It is because we humans are at war. Not only with each other but with the world and ourselves. This fire that burns across us is not one just of destruction, but a light that forces us together in a place of darkness. Don’t you see it?”
“No.” Markov admits.
“We all have something in our lives, and we will all do something to protect it. Through conflict, we lock together because there is a chance that that we’ll lose what we all hold dear, and then, plummet into the unfamiliar world. We trade our normal with the abnormality of integration and war in order to save it. And ironically, we then lose the normal that we were all trying to keep.”
They all look out into the dead horizon.
Ano sighs. “In the end, all this world’s good at is taking the things that we want to protect.”
For a single second, Markov loses himself. In the swirling world of the living, death overtakes all. In horrifying unconsciousness, the primordial instincts of a era before humanity takes a hold of the Pilot’s mind. Like within the vector, there was nothing, no thought, no reality anymore, only pure and utter black.
The god pilot grips the railing with both hands impossibly tight. His breath, unstable and deep crash into his diaphragm. The universe spins upon his vision, and he feels bile retch up from within him.
“Markov you alright?!” Captain Ano draws the phone from his pocket, slender fingers already dialing the vessel’s medical team. “Markov!”
Breathe.
The heavy breathes of the pilot ease into slow recovery, then back to a resting pace. His hand gripping the icy cold railing relaxing as he feels warm blood stream back. The silence of the sky ever present in the howling wind.
Markov’s eyes lock with the surprised orbs of Captain Ano. Deep within the god pilot there was something alive, utterly separate from the life form that stood on the deck. The monster that lived within all humans personified in the unforgiving world of the Vector Corps, the necessity for survival on the battlefield given life through death.
“Off the record.” Markov echoes.
The Captain stares at the the frame of the creature.“Yes. Off the record.”
And the wind blows across the grand nothingness.
Comments
Post a Comment