NOVEL NEXT 001 On the Clock
"We aren't going to make it sir. Not in time anyway." The voice belonged to a short man, not even reaching the hips of the man he was reporting to. He was round, but not fat. Bulky might be the best way to describe his body makeup, but it was by no means all muscle.
"That was expected. That's what we prepared for." The 'sir' the short man had addressed, responded with a mix of depression and disappointment. Despite his towering height in comparison to his subordinate, he looked thin enough to be lighter than him. "We can only hope that their contingency holds long enough."
His lustrous brown hair, clean white skin, and sky blue eyes would usually be enough to charm any who looked at him. At the moment though, his countenance is twisted into a strange combination of expressions.
Rage and regret filled his mind. The circumstances considered, the fault could not be blamed on him. Yet he could not believe that someone as experienced as himself had been caught off guard by a PROBE of all things.
Had fate forsaken him? He believed the lives of countless people were under his protection and he was going to lose them all because of a lifeless lump of metal.
"With all due respect sir, there is nothing anyone could have done. Not even our best scanners caught sight of it until it was far too late. How could you have detected it earlier?"
The voice was female, belonging to one of the other bodies on the elaborately decorated bridge of his ship. Her tone gave a ferocious feel, most of the time, but now she was trying to comfort her captain.
"The scanners are not everything! I could have prepared a faster ship! I could have stocked more fuel! I could have set up the outpost in a closer location! So many things I could have done that would have bought us precious time!" His rage subsided, perhaps realizing the futility of anger at this moment. "So many things that could have saved precious lives."
He collapsed in his chair, hand supporting his head, and looked out from the bridge to an endless sea of black and white. He watched on blankly for quite some time. Obviously, no matters needed his attention for the time being.
The command bridge was silent save for the shaking of the ship. He looked around at its extravagance, wondering the purpose of it all. A chair made of the most comfortable material available, luxurious carpet and ceiling furnishings, a painting above the entrance.
"How far behind are we going to arrive?" He raised the question to his staff, his normally strong and proud voice weak and ashamed.
"Current calculations estimate we will be arriving 57 hours after the critical point. As it stands we are 3132 hours away from arrival."
"Give it in months and days please. At this point it's all the same."
"We are going to be two and a half days late and arrive in four and a little months."
Great, he thought to himself, even after doing everything to gain just a little bit of speed these past ten years, we are going to fall only two days short of the goal.
Falling into despair and most importantly acceptance, his attention was once again drawn to his symbols of status. If he had spent the money he spent on the chairs and carpets on maintaining and improving the ship's movement capabilities instead, could this catastrophe have been prevented? What of the painting? If the painting and other such works of arts and symbols of status not been included on the ship but stored in a proper place, could he have gained enough speed?
What if he sold some of the less important ones and improved the quality of his ship? Could he have better trained his crew to achieve a higher speed?
No, his men and women were the best of the fleet. Even they knew what was at stake, they have done everything they can.
"As the commanding officer, the fault lies with me." He spoke to himself, steeling himself for what was to come.
Some of the crew aboard the ship wished to counter his claim, but they knew him well enough to understand they couldn't change his mind.
"If we pushed the engines to their burnout limit, how much time could we buy?"
"We can save ten hours of time with the engines on burnout, but that will cut our ability to make drastic maneuvers greatly in combat, sir." The same person as before responded.
"Only use nine. We need to save an hour to fight properly. If there is anything you can do to save even a second of time, do it. Though I trust you have done so already." He ordered.
At the moment, he had no time to worry about the condition of the engines. His only concern was that they could take him there, fight, and take him back. Engines could be replaced, lives couldn't, not as easily at least.
He got up to leave the bridge. The small man called out to him as he left. "Captain. Is there any chance that they could hold out long enough? You have lauded them as being quite brilliant. Are you sure there is nothing they can do?"
"As much as I wish they could, they simply do not have the time to prepare. You have to remember the nature of the threat here. This isn't exactly a fight they have a chance of winning. At best they could hold out for a day. That assumes the enemy is weaker than our projections, too."
As he continued to walk away, he could hear a faint 'I see' from his subordinate.
Perhaps that is the only thing that he could have said at that moment.
He had something more to say.
Something to tell to the ones he was charged to protect.
He had to tell them to prepare.
He had to tell them the nature of the danger.
He had to tell them how to fight.
He had to tell them how to protect themselves.
He had to tell them to run.
He had to tell Earth that he was sorry.
He had to tell them they were on the clock.
