Chapter 12: Terran’s Sorrow

José Rodriguez, the last living Terran, slowly opens his eyes.

A plain metal ceiling, covered in plexi-steel tiles, sits some twenty feet above his face. The Admiral lays motionless on his back, his arms and legs held limp in a straight pose. A strange sensation swallows him, akin to floating on a gently undulating ocean while riding atop a piece of plywood.

"Hello, Admiral," Umi beeps. "You slept for seventeen hours and fourteen minutes. How are you feeling?"

The Terran doesn’t reply.

He continues to stare at the ceiling while countless thoughts and emotions mix with the strange, lucid dreams he left behind only a minute before.

They’re all dead.

José closes his eyes.

Everyone I have ever known.

My friends. My comrades. My superiors. My enemies. Even the people I took for granted, those who merely ‘existed’ and caused me no grief.

Every last one of them is long gone. I can’t ever see them again.

Slowly, the Admiral turns his head to the left. The eleven-foot-long cot from his personal quarters, its bedding material as hard as a rock after 100,000,000 years of calcification, provides no comfort for the Admiral. His ‘pillow’ proves little more than a flat, half-inch-tall piece of rock. Were it not for his willpower and total exhaustion, merely laying on the bed would probably give him all manner of aches and pains.

As the Admiral looks around the room, a mixture of nostalgia and sadness glides throughout his veins. A second cot on the opposite side of the room, the bed his former bunkmate once used, Private Nicholai Azaram, sits empty and covered in a thick layer of dust. A pair of lockers sit against the wall, between both bunks. In José’s former life, he might have chatted with Nick when they woke up. They would shoot the shit, tease each other a bit, and yap about all the vague mundanities of life.

But no longer will that happen.

Never again…

José stares at his bunkmate’s empty bed. Unbidden, a memory floats to the top of his mind.

Yo, Jojo, now that you’ve knocked your lady up, are you gonna pop the question? Come on, man. I can go back without you. I’ll tell ’em you died during the mission. They won’t ever know!

I can’t do that, Nick. I swore a vow to Ramma.

Oh, bullshit. Don’t give me that crap. The war’s been raging for hundreds of thousands of years. One soldier disappearing won’t make a lick of difference. You saved an entire world! You deserve to retire.

Retire? This is my first major mission! I can’t just stop now, after all the work they put into training me. I still have thousands of years to give to the Divine Emperor. Sigh. You’re too flippant about your vows, Nick.

Evelyn loves you, man. If we leave her behind, she’ll be heartbroken. You can’t just leave her to raise a kid alone!

I’m not father material, Nick. You know that. She’ll be better off without me.

José…

The memory fades. José continues to stare at the other cot for several long seconds afterward.

"Admiral."

Umi’s voice beeps above, as she prods the Terran again.

"I know you are awake. I have observed your brainwaves shifting into the green spectrum."

Admiral Rodriguez sighs. "Just leave me alone for a few minutes."

"…Very well."

Umi falls silent, leaving José to his thoughts.

Slowly, the Admiral moves his left leg toward the edge of the bed. He gently lowers it to the floor, then follows with his right. After twenty or so seconds, he pushes himself into a sitting position and coughs. A small cloud of dust kicks up around him, but he ignores it.

José sits on the edge of his bed. He leans forward, face in hands, elbows on his knees.

I’m sorry, Evelyn.

Tears well up in the Terran’s eyes. The shock of the last two days creeps into the back of his mind as he finally takes some time to sit down and sort through his emotions.

I left you behind, and our child. I don’t even know if they were a boy or a girl.

José lifts his thin, gangly arm, and presses his fingers against his eyelids. After wiping away a few tears, he sniffles quietly.

What the hell am I supposed to do? Do I even have a reason to live?

His thoughts shift back to all the pointless mundanities he once pursued. Promotions. Killing. The envy of his peers. The respect of his benefactor, Queen Ramma.

José opens his eyes and glances at a small bedside dresser. With its former brown coloration lost to the passage of time, it now appears white as snow. The lone furniture piece on José’s side appears to be on its last legs, as if a gentle nudge would cause it to crumble into dust. Only the lack of oxygen in the room for millions of years has allowed it to remain standing for so long.

However, José’s eyes look toward the top of the dresser, where a broken picture frame rests. With its glass having long-since decayed into sandy particles along with the glue holding its wooden sides together, the portrait lies in a heap atop the dresser, apparently having fallen forward and broken at some point.

Slowly, José reaches over and nudges aside the frame’s wooden edges. He pulls out a brown piece of paper, its corners curled, upon which a person’s portrait used to rest.

Now, its faded coloration shows nothing.

José turns the piece of paper around in his hands, searching for any modicum of familiarity. Despite nothing being on its surface, his mind still fills in the image of a smiling, brown-haired woman’s face.

"Evelyn…"

The Admiral lowers his hand and drops the worthless scrap to the floor. His shoulders slump as he leans forward, even more broken than before.

Mulling on the immense physical pain he endured during the surgery, as well as the loss of everyone he ever cared about, José’s thoughts turn truly dark as he begins to imagine the barrel of a plasma carbine pressing against his skull.

It would be so easy. No more pain. No more worries. Maybe I could see her again and… apologize.

The Admiral’s stomach growls, reminding him that he hasn’t eaten even once in the last two days. Still, he doesn’t move.

"…Umi."

"Yes, Admiral? How are you feeling? I’m presently detecting large amount of negative emotions within your-"

"I don’t give a damn what you detect," José mutters. "Just shut up and answer some questions for me."

"Affirmative, Admiral," Umi replies without complaint. "Ask whatever you wish."

However, José hesitates. He closes his eyes and sighs.

"Do… do you have any… any audio logs? Video logs? Of the other crew, I mean. The deceased."

"Negative, Admiral. In the event of a gradual system collapse, my subsystems will automatically convert high-capacity files involving video and audio to text format to save space. I have already converted all available audio and video logs to text, as per my system’s parameters. If I did not perform those operations, I would have experienced a much larger amount of overall data loss."

"Oh. I see."

The Admiral’s body seemingly increases in weight. A creeping sense of isolation hits him, making him feel hopeless and lonely.

"Not even one person’s voice remains. All I have are my memories."

"Admiral? Are you… in pain?"

"Not physically."

Umi’s voice lowers. "You have endured an extreme amount of trauma, as of late. The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient. I would advise an immediate psychiatric evaluation, if possible, but…"

The synthmind trails off, making José nod.

"Who’s left for me to talk to? Nobody. Just a bunch of aliens. Strangers I barely know."

"I have undergone a high-level of degradation to my Emotion Cores," Umi says. "Therefore, I am unable to properly offer counsel on this matter. However, it seems logical to me that you should at least attempt to speak to one of the Kraktol about your concerns, Admiral."

"I can’t do that," José says. "Megla considers me her enemy. Soren is friendlier than her sister, but she’s still an unknown factor. If I reveal weakness in front of them, perhaps I won’t be able to keep them under control. Who knows what they might do when I turn my back?"

"Admiral. You seem to distrust the Kraktol conscripts. If so, why did you bring them aboard the Bloodbearer? This move seems… illogical."

"I’m human, Umi. I don’t operate logically. Even I don’t know why I let them come with me."

Shakily, José pushes himself off the bed and rises to his feet. His legs tremble visibly as he staggers toward the nearby wheelchair and plops into its embrace. His arms and legs appear slightly more muscular than when he first left the surgery room, but nevertheless, they’re far too weak to support his current weight.

"If the Kraktol wished you harm, they could have killed you immediately following the operation," Umi says. "You weren’t capable of defending yourself. The holo-crew would have posed little threat to the Kraktol, given their limited intelligence. Perhaps you should revise your opinion of Officers Soren and Megla."

"Perhaps," José answers, noncommittally. "For now… I can’t trust anyone. I don’t have a solid understanding of the political situation inside the Milky Way. I don’t know who any of the major powers are. I already have at least one major enemy, but no allies."

Umi starts to reply, but José cuts her off. "The Kessu don’t count. They’re primitives. I doubt they’ll be a major galactic power I can rely on for support and logistics."

"…Understood, Admiral," Umi replies, her voice low. "It seems that we must attempt to establish communication with the Kraktol’s enemies. According to the data I’ve recovered, the Mallali and Avaru are our best bet."

"I’ll worry about that later," the Admiral says. "Right now, repairing the Bloodbearer is my number one priority."

José reaches for his wheelchair’s controls. He starts to drive it outside, but pauses.

Slowly, the Admiral lowers his gaze to the faded, cracked piece of paper sitting on the floor.

The only image he ever had of Evelyn.

The Terran turns his gaze away. With a small shake of his head, he drives toward the doorway, leaving his room behind.

Too many painful memories here. Perhaps I should make Admiral Baruchen’s quarters mine after all.

…

José rolls forward on the wheeled machine in silence for five minutes. Eventually, he speaks to Umi.

"Where are Soren and Megla?"

"The two Kraktol woke up from their slumber five hours and six minutes ago, Admiral," Umi replies. "Since you stressed the importance of time and our limited resources, I took the initiative to guide them toward the engine ventilation system. Under my guidance, the two of them have cleaned out approximately 0.0054% of the accumulated debris and waste byproduct. The Bloodbearer will only reach low-operational-status once your crew clears out at least 20% of the oxidization clogging the engines."

"Mmm. Have those women meet up with me along the way."

"Orders received. Admiral, I must also mention a severe lack of resources for food production aboard the Bloodbearer. The biomatter storage is currently at 0% after I discarded all the hardened, rotted material. I was able to create some basic ration bars for the Kessu and Kraktol, but their nutritional value was negligible and every officer complained about the taste."

José groans. "No food. No engines. No allies. The whole ship is broken. Can’t I get some good news for once?"

"Affirmative," Umi beeps in response. "The Kessu and Kraktol did not engage in verbal warfare while you were asleep. According to my calculations, this represents an improvement in their relations of 7.5%."

"…Thanks, Umi." José says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "I don’t know what I would do without you."

Umi replies with a sugary-sweet tone. "According to my predictive matrix; you would die."

José’s only reply is a long, low groan.