Her Living Tribute

A Star Spawn Short Story
by Thomas Nevin Huber ©1994

    Captain Jules Ann Stollack didn’t like public appearances, and as a wounded veteran of a minor skirmish – at least, that’s how she considered it – she disliked them even more.
    But that wouldn’t and couldn’t stop her from visiting the Drac Hall of Space, where her family’s memories were forever entombed. She thought bitterly about her own fate as she rode the transitube toward her destination, her heavy war cloak covering her from public scrutiny.
    It started while she commanded the ADF Waken. An Intruder attack, and her fateful meeting with one of their race had left her without her right arm. Relieved of duty, she returned to Al-zed, where two attempts were made to give her a new arm. It practically killed her. For all the glories of modern medicine, they couldn’t give her back what she had lost.
    But that wasn’t all she’d lost. She discovered what her precious society thought about people like her. Never mind that she’d nearly given her life. Never mind that she’d lost the ability to do some things for herself. It didn’t matter that she’d been in the line of duty when it happened. Society didn’t care about any of that. To them, she was a cripple, someone they did not want around.
    She was shocked when she learned of Lake Charles and the Silent Bay colony. She’d always thought of it as a place where veterans went for recuperation. Now she knew better, and she knew that she had little time left before she, a PwD – a person with a disposability – would make a one-way trip to that awful place.
    That was where Drac society dumped its physically “incurable.” They wouldn’t perform euthanasia, but they would keep them out of the way. Drac society, it seemed, didn’t want to be exposed to someone different. They had done the same thing with The Pits – the place where the poor lived below the shining facade of Al-zed, buried forever in darkness, in a society separate from the rest of them.
    And now, she knew she would face Silent Bay, where anyone missing an appendage – whether it be arm or leg, hand or foot, toe, finger or eye – was sent to live out the rest of their lives. It was a prison worse than the worst prison, because no one cared about the inmates. They just dropped them off, and left them there on their own.
    Maybe they’d survive and maybe, if they were lucky, they would die an early death.
    And that would happen to her.
    The transitube pulled to a stop a short distance from the Hall of Space. The building was a magnificent tribute to those that had gone before – those that ventured into space in thin-skinned vessels that barely held a breathable atmosphere. Those that experimented with new forms of power and propulsion. And those that found their way to the stars powered by Clarisse’s power plant feeding massive Star Drive Engines with brute force.
    She walked slowly through the crowds. She couldn’t avoid them – not in a city of over 25 million. Someone bumped into her and recognized that she was somehow different. Whispers spread around her as people stopped and stared.
    She walked on, determined to reach the gates to the Hall, and a reprieve of sorts. Someone plucked at her cloak on her right side, but she ignored the vermin that violated her space.
    “She’s one of them,” someone else whispered.
    “A PwD,” another said in a distasteful tone.
    A big man stepped between her and her destination, now only a half- block away. He looked angry as he snarled, “What are you doing here?”
    She tried to step around him, but he blocked her way. Another person grabbed her by the shoulders. She thought on the matter – should she defend herself?
    “Lay off,” she warned. “I’m an active member of the ADF. Do not block my way.”
    The big man stepped to one side, but the hands didn’t release her. She turned on her tormentor.
“I said, lay off!” Her voice carried the weight of her command rank and she expected the man to release his grip.
    He did, but she wasn’t ready for his next move. “It’s hot, Captain,” he said with a sinister voice. “Let me help you off with your war cloak.”
    “No,” she started, but before she could pull away, he had unfastened its single latch and pulled it free.
    The sleeveless duty uniform revealed her stump to the crowd. They backed away, amidst cries of anguish – all of them – leaving her standing in an ever-widening circle of open pavement.
    “I’m not contagious,” she called after them as she realized what was happening. Society believed that she was carrying some terrible disease that made her the way she was.
    Old habits die hard as she gestured with both hands – or tried to. The crowd stared dumbfoundedly as she moved the stump. “To Ragnoruk with all of you,” she cursed and then retrieved her dropped cloak. The deadly prison planet wasn’t good enough for them.
    Awkwardly pulling on her cloak, she turned and advanced on the Hall. Cries of “cripple” and “PwD” assailed her ears, yet no one blocked her path. “Go live in Silent Bay.”
    “E-vil, e-vil,” someone started chanting. Damn, but she hated these people.
    By the time she reached the gates, her face was flushed with anger. The felt something hit her leg. It was a stone. She turned and eyed the crowd. People were milling a safe distance from her. Some were shaking their fits, others were yelling obscenities.
    “They always seem to congregate around here,” the guard at the gate said. He had a nasty-looking weapon in his hand. “Go in, Captain. You’ll be safe there.”
    She’d visited the Hall before, as a way of honoring her family. But it had never been like this. Raggie! She hadn’t been this way before, either. She found a bench and sat, looking back at the entrance. The guard was speaking into a comm set, possibly calling in the disturbance. Attacking an officer of the ADF was a severe offense.
    It was hot in her cloak. She couldn’t deny that. But if she took it off, what would people say? More of the same, even here?
    She looked around. That hall wasn’t deserted, but it wasn’t as crowded as the streets outside, either. She rubbed her eyes with her left hand and then stood. “Raggie!” she swore again, this time aloud, and headed for the amphitheater.
    At least it was dark and she could sit and watch without the cloak on. She shrugged it off, as best she could and then sat silently.
    The big projection area in the center was portraying one of her ancestor’s roles – it was her grandfather. His rugged features had been part of her life until about ten years earlier, when he and her father had lost their lives, fighting an unknown foe in space.
    Why couldn’t she have gone that way? Now she sat miserably, fighting off phantom pain, and closed her eyes.
    During the next several hours, she dozed in and out of dreamland. Her own past experiences mingled with those portrayed a few dozen yards in front of her. Someone sat next to her, but she didn’t turn.
    Crowd noises grew more intense. She opened her eyes a bit. It was the Demtris riots. Another period of “cleansing” when they wanted to wipe out social problems. The only way they knew how to do it was to permanently alter the offenders. And Demtris had fought back and won.
    If she could be like him. But how? He had violated state-mandated laws of treason. He had spoken in his own defense at his own trial. But she had no such avenue. She had broken no oath of allegiance. She wasn’t facing a death penalty for violating the state.
    The crowds were chanting “Demtris, Demtris.” She closed her eyes for a moment. The chants turned to “cripple, cripple.” She felt the crowd advancing, and a sweat broke out on her upper lip. She reached to wipe it away with her right hand, but failed.
    They’re coming for me, she thought in terror. They’re going to take me away. Tears ran from her closed eyes because she would never see this great hall again. The final resting place for her ancestors would be taken from her.
    Someone jostled her and she lashed out.
    “Whoa, Captain,” a strangely familiar voice spoke from nearby.
    She blinked her eyes open, and turned to stare at Admiral Scott, her commanding officer. “What?” she asked, confused.
    “You were having a bad dream, Captain.” The Demtris case was still playing out in the projection area.
    She blinked at Scott. “Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t know you visited here – during duty hours.”
    “I don’t, Captain, but they called me when they recognized you.”
    “You, you came for me?”
    “Yes. I have an assignment for you.”
    The words shook Stollack and she felt terrible. An empty pit opened up in her stomach. This was it – this was her final time among the Dracs that she knew and served. Now it would be a life in some remote spot somewhere on Al-zed. Silent Bay on Lake Charles, they called it. Silence, where the Dracs could not hear or see, or feel...
    “Captain,” Scott repeated a little louder. “Are you all right?”
    She nodded numbly.
    “Then, what is wrong?”
    “Wrong?” She woke up at the question. “What is wrong?”
    He nodded from his seat. “Yes, that is my question.”
    “How can you have the audacity to ask me that? Look at me? What do you see?”
    “I see a Captain of the line, Captain.” Scott’s voice didn’t waver.
    She swallowed, then her anger built again. “And what to you call this?” She waved her stump around in a circle. That was about all she could do with it.
    “Immaterial, Captain!”
    “What!?”
    “I said your stump is immaterial. You are what is important. And you will continue to serve the ADF, not at Silent Bay, or at Lake Charles, or any other isolation facility. Not ever!”
    She stared at him, hardly believing her ears. “I’m not being consigned to Silent Bay?”
    “No.”
    “But...” She swallowed again. “What about those that are? The ADF can isolate me while I serve on a ship...”
    “Or at a military base.”
    “Or at a military base,” she repeated, “but not all of them are military, sir.”
    Admiral Scott sighed and looked old for a moment. “I understand, Captain,” he said. “But now, there are the beginnings of a political movement to right that wrong. It will take time, and like your ancestors before you, you will prove to society that you can continue to perform your duties, despite the impossible odds.”
    “Society won’t change,” Stollack said bitterly.
    “No,” he said, drawing out the word in his deep, reverberating voice. “Not this society, but some future society will be different, Captain. Some society will look at you, sitting here – projected in down there,” he pointed down to the center of the theater, “and they will watch you and I have this little talk. And then they will see you, in space, serving their ancestors, as a proud warrior, not some broken cripple.”
    Stollack considered his words. Yes, it had been like that before, when Dracs had first dared cross an ocean to discover a new land and understood a little more about their world; when they had ventured beyond the speed of sound, and understood a little more about the nature of physics; and when they ventured into space and beyond the speed of light, and understood a little more about the nature of the universe.
    Yes, she could do that. It would be her way of bringing honor to those that went before. A living tribute to her ancestors and to the spirit of all veterans.

The success of “Bummers” led me to ask for another challenge. This one came in celebration of Veterans’ Day in November. By now, I was well into writing the second Star Spawn novel and had a character with yet another story to tell... The incident doesn’t appear, except as a dark reminder of the Drac society later in the novel (the actual incident takes place early in the story’s time frame).
    In researching material for my second novel, I explored problems faced by the disabled, particularly those that face a traumatic disability. What I found shocked me, and some of the social commentary contained in this story comes from my findings. I chose the theme of this story because we, in our society, are guilty of creating our own Silent Bays and Lake Charles...
    For the purpose of the story, and to drive the point home about our own ill treatment of the disabled, I’ve used the term PwD, with a slightly different meaning than the usual, “person with a disability.”
    Also, you’ll recognize the reference to Demtris, an element from the short story “Bradley” and part of the dark history of Dracus.
    The abrupt ending of the story is a problem, as it just stops. Stollack does go on a mission, just as the Admiral said. But the mission is one straight from Hell... (This story is repeated, in part in the second Star Spawn novel.)
    An added note: one of my later reviewers mentioned the “cheesey” pitch given Stollack by the Admiral. Anyone having sat through a “company” pep talk will recognize the “talk” for what it is… pr.
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