Author’s Note: This short is part of a series and should be read in order. Check out the previous short stories here: Never, Never, The Test, Welcome to Neverland, Never Games, and Never Leave. These shorts have all came from Elegant Literature Magazine’s monthly challenges. In this case, the challenge was to address “Crossroads and Consequences” in 2000 words.
Commander James F. Hoogeveen seethed as his starship—the beautiful Celeste—foundered in the bay, three gaping holes in its hull where engines used to be. Were his hands not on the transport shuttle controls, they would be shaking.
He jammed the shuttle in reverse, careening into the shallows far from his embattled fort, far from the starship, far from the monstrous, impossible creatures that had disabled the Celeste. He dropped the hovering shuttle to the surface, and the gentle whirring of the antigravity engine died.
Silence reigned for brief moments, and he used the respite to re-center himself.
He was in charge, a decorated space commander of a mission involving 10,000 people, and some of them were on that listing starship.
The rest…
His gaze drifted from the Celeste, which now floated quietly in the bay alongside massive crocodilian company, to the fort. Smoke billowed from several locations inside the wooden walls, but he couldn’t see the carnage from this distance. Were all the residents dead? Were they still fighting the invading Lost Boys and their warrior allies? Again, his anger boiled, and he turned to the glowing pixie who danced carefree across the blinking shuttle console.
“Tink.”
“Yes, Jamesy?”
“I needed you to guard against every danger to my crew. Those warriors…”
The pixie did a little spin, ending with a low curtsy. She held the position as though waiting for applause. When she didn’t receive it, she straightened with a pout. “That’s not what you said.”
Jim thrust a finger at his anthropologist’s corpse, which still lay by the shuttle door. “Because of you, Mission Specialist Roark is dead, along with half my colonists.”
Tink raised her tiny chin and looked down her nose at the body, then shrugged. “I didn’t like her anyway. She was no fun at all.”
Jim clenched his jaw, striving to control his frustration and rage and sorrow. Janet Roark had been a damn good woman, a hard worker, knowledgeable and clever and empathetic. He gestured to his remaining crewmembers to clean up the mess, then took a deep breath inward. “Tink, whether you liked her or not, she was the only one who could supersede my decision on whether the life on this planet was worth preserving. She would probably have treasured the opportunity to study those warriors who attacked today, but instead, we’re going to annihilate them along with the Lost Boys. I don’t care whether they’re some relic from Earth’s past, genetically and culturally unique and able to give us insights to some of the ancient records on pre-globalized society. I’m going to kill them all for what they’ve done.”
Tink chimed a laugh. “Oh, Jamesy, you take everything so seriously.”
“My colonists are dead.” Jim glared at her.
But the pixie merely shrugged again. “They’re probably not all dead,” she said dramatically. “That would be a short, boring game.”
Jim stared. This Never-creature, this pixie or fairy or whatever he should call it, was a monster of her own kind. No compassion, no depth. Just tricks and shallow entertainment.
He felt a tug on his arm and looked down to see a bleary-eyed Trista Smith. Her fingers left a smear of red on his coat fabric.
She sniffled. “We wrapped Janet for burial, but there’s so much blood on the floor…” Her voice broke, and she caught herself with a deep, wavering breath. She met his eye again. “It would be easiest to open the bay door and mop it out, Commander. Is it safe to do so?”
Jim glanced at the exterior cams and nodded. “Proceed, Mission Specialist Smith. Put Roark in bay storage for now.” He pushed the comms button on his ear and hailed the Celeste. “Flight Specialist Daugherty, systems update.”
A trembling voice wavered through the airways. “Commander. Starship crew intact. Three engines gone; wings sealed; hull stable. We’re not sinking, sir, but…but we are grounded. We don’t have the parts to replace that many drives.”
We’re grounded. The statement reverberated through Jim’s mind. We’re stuck here. Nonetheless, his voice was even as he replied. “Ensure the hull repairs keep you floating, and keep the doors shut. We’ll find a way to get to you.”
“Yessir.”
Jim looked at Tink, who watched him expectantly. “You keep saying this is a game.”
She winked.
“If you don’t teach me how to play the game, I won’t give you or your friends any more dresses or liquor.”
Her flirty smile slowly turned down. “No more dresses?”
“No hats, no parasols, nothing. A real shame, my dear, because you looked stunning in that green silk.”
“But—”
“I can’t afford to make you pretty things, when I’m so busy dealing with this.” Jim waved out the shuttle window at the burning fort and the Celeste. “Do you understand?”
Tink leered at him, then smiled brightly. “You are better at the game than you think, Jamesy. I knew I liked you.”
Back on the Celeste, Jim paced the command deck. Half of his top officers were missing, including the chiefs of ag, engineering, technical, and steward departments. Like Daugherty, most deck officers had survived as they remained on the starship, and somehow the chief carpenter and gunner had made it to the shuttle with him. His chief anthropologist, Roark, was definitively dead, but his ecologist was alive. That small comfort helped him reign in his pounding heartrate. He paused to glance at Tris, who stood pondering Roark’s empty chair, her arms tightly crossed and her expression stone.
“Smith.”
Her lashes twitched, but she continued staring. Roark’s dashboard shone with an aerial map overlaid with notes. Disregarded notifications blinked in the corner.
“Smith,” Jim repeated. “Do you have any idea why those monsters attacked the Celeste?”
Her brows slowly rose, and she moved laboriously to her own station, where she tapped away pulling up datasets. She manipulated several, forming summary figures projected over the console. After a weighty silence, she leaned back and sighed. “I have a suspicion.”
He nodded for her to continue, and she took a deep, shaky breath.
“Based on data from the sondes we deployed in the bay, there may be a connection between engine operation and megafauna attraction. When Daugherty turned the engines on, the crocodilians we were tracking immediately changed velocities and headed toward the ship.”
“But why?”
Tris knotted her brow. “We have records from Earth saying fish and amphibians would respond erratically to certain frequencies, leaping into the air or swimming toward the source. We also have records from Beta showing violent and aggressive behavior from endemic insects based on phonotaxis.”
Jim rubbed his temple. “So no engines.”
“Possibly, sir. I really don’t know. They never attacked the transport shuttles, but those are different tech.” She glanced toward the chief engineer’s empty chair, and her face fell. She re-crossed her arms and scowled at her screens.
Jim surveyed his crestfallen officers and plodded to the command seat, then activated the comms. His voice resounded through the speakers, somewhat tinny but authoritative.
“This is Commander James Hoogeveen. Our colony was just attacked by the natives of this planet, and we sustained heavy losses. Many first-wave colonists are missing and may have been taken hostage. For those of you with loved ones on shore, please know that we will search for them. We will seek justice for them, and we will save them if we can. As you know, the Celeste was damaged, and I commend you for saving her from ultimate disaster. She is no longer space-worthy, but know this: I have faith in you, my crew. I approved every one of your applications to this mission. I know what you are capable of, and I know that you have what it takes to make this planet your home.”
He paused, glancing at Tris for strength, for verification that his course was right. She nodded back at him, jaw clenched, and he continued.
“What comes next will not be easy. The life on this planet is hostile, and we must prevail over it to make a place for ourselves. We must be innovative, stalwart, and resourceful. We must be steadfast and resilient. We must win, for the sake of those who died defending our town. We will conquer this strange land, so that one day, our children will know the peace and prosperity sought by the Gamma mission.”
“Peace through war.” Tris released a long sigh from her chair, where she punched buttons to derive a heat map of the fort.
“You doubt the plan, Mission Specialist?” Jim tore his gaze from Tris’s monitor, which revealed shades of blue and green except where the fires still flared. No red dots implying humans anywhere.
Tris shook her head. “It seems the only way. The Lost Boys were violent from the first, obviously territorial. Their allies—the warriors we saw—likely came from that village cluster to the north. The pixies seem to come from somewhere east, although we can’t tell because they don’t show heat signatures.”
“Your point?”
“All creatures need space, and all creatures will fight for the space they need, coming to an equilibrium with their neighbors. That equilibrium may be uneasy, and it may shift constantly, but it is unlikely to shift entirely in favor of one side.” She shrugged. “The scales of nature.”
Jim thrust a finger at the map. “Does that look like equilibrium to you, Smith? Not a single living soul—”
Tris’s expression hardened. “We know they took prisoners. Don’t give up hope. But my point goes beyond that. Extermination is highly unlikely, Commander. This planet is too big, too complex, and we ourselves too small. We can do some damage, sure, but the odds of killing every single one of the native Neverlanders are low, especially given their intelligence.”
Jim pounded a fist on the arm of his chair. Tris was always right, but she was also infuriating. He didn’t want to hear that his crew might lose this war.
“It’s not losing, Commander.” Tris eyed him. “It’s finding balance. If we can establish a foothold, we can make a space for ourselves, but we may have to accept co-habitation with other sentient species.”
Jim inhaled through his nose and leaned back, striving for calm and failing.
Since his announcement over the comms, his crew had divided. Many were with him, for the sake of their loved ones. Others were infected by pacifism. Since when had that won humanity anything? A few insubordinates had even dared to refute his plan, and he had been forced to remind them of chain of command.
“Mission Specialist Mullins, report on munitions, supply and range.” He ignored Tris, instead looking to the Chief Gunner, a powerfully built man with an exceptional knowledge of explosives and phaser technology.
Mullins turned to his console and muttered to himself, half his words seemingly intended for Jim and half not. He cracked his knuckles. “Brief report: phasers unlimited til our cells run out of recharge, but limited range of several hundred meters. Incendiary trajectiles can go up to a kilometer from the Celeste, but we only have 145 of them. Long-distance missiles, 20. We could hit damn near anything on this planet with one of those, sir.”
Jim thanked the man, then grimaced at the screen. “Smith, bring up Roark’s last mapping of likely settlements. Thank you. Calculate the radius of a day’s travel from the fort, plus 30% buffer. Our people couldn’t have been dragged further than that. Good. Retain only settlements beyond that distance.”
The only sound on deck was Tris’s tapping on the console. The crew awaited Jim’s command, tense.
Deep breath. “Mullins, launch one missile each at the ten largest settlements.”
Tris sucked in a breath, but subsided at Jim’s sharp look. “At least they’re not nuclear,” she murmured.
Mullins nodded obediently and entered the orders.
“Commander?” Daugherty’s voice trembled. “Are you sure this is right?”
Jim merely glared him to silence, then looked at Mullins.
“Fire.”