All My Sins Remembered (23 page)

The Black Wave
was recorded as destroyed, along with the
Guan Yu
.  Debris from the two ships were spread over several hundred kilometers, so violent was the meeting between the two ships.  Now Nathan and Hawke stood on the observation deck of the shipyards near the Jingashi Naval Station overlooking the
Heaven’s Gaze
, a massive carrier that Hawke, Nathan, and other friends had been having built over the past five years with the intention of exploration, something all four empires had all but abandoned.  Supply shuttles were entering and exiting its hangers, reminding Hawke of worker ants entering and exiting an ant mound.  The last of the supplies should be landing now.  It had taken three weeks in life pods to be rescued.  At some point, Hawke has regained consciousness, though his head had a very large bump on it where it had slammed against the unforgiving viewport of the ship, and he was quite sore.  Amazingly, he had no broken bones.

The crew of
The Black Wave
had narrowly survived the impacts of the broken pieces of the
Guan Yu
smashing into their ship, all but one.  In a feat of engineering rarely matched, Gordy somehow managed to maintain the power core's containment field for a full ten minutes as escape pods jetted away from the dying ship to safety.  He had even managed to reach an escape pod and launch himself, but was unable to get clear of the blast as the power core exploded with the brilliance of a sun.  When the Navy finally deigned to respond to the distress beacon and pick them all up, Hawke had received the news that pieces of Gordy's escape pod were positively identified in the debris field.  Nathan rested a heavy hand on Hawke’s shoulder.

“Gordy would have loved this.” Nathan said, as if reading Hawke’s thoughts.  Hawke felt a sudden lump rise in his throat as his eyes threatened to tear up.  Not trusting his own voice, he just nodded in agreement.  They stood there like that for a short time before Hawke roughly cleared his throat and took a deep breath.

"It's not fair, Nate.  He should be here."  Hawke said in a husky voice.  "He shouldn't have had to pay the price for my sins...for any of us."  Nathan sighed heavily, but could find no words of comfort, nor could he disagree.  The two friends were silent for awhile longer.

“Every day
, all of my sins are remembered.  I see them played out in documentaries on the public news and history channels, lauded as heroic, or condemned as dastardly deeds.  The problem is, they are right.  Whether heroic and laudable, villainous and condemnable, the toll my sins have taken from me remains the same.  My humanity, my ability to be shocked and to weep at the cost of war, or to be horrified by my own actions, as well as the actions of others, at the behest of some so-called higher ideal has faded with each contract.  Now the only weeping left is for me, and I find that I have forgotten how to weep.” Hawke said quietly.  Nathan squeezed Hawke’s shoulder, a sign of camaraderie bought with the high cost of shared experience.

“I wish I had an answer for you, my friend.” Nathan replied softly. “But this is one ti
me I have no words of comfort, or good advice.  Of all the talents or abilities to have, tactical genius is among the worst.  Yet it is to humanity’s demise if such talent and ability is needed, but cannot be found.”  After a moment of silence, Nathan added, “Who knows?  Maybe our redemption is out there somewhere, among the stars.  It just might be that somewhere out there, we – all of us – will regain what we lost.”  Hawke gave Nathan a sidelong look and smiled sadly.

“Maybe.” Hawke replied
.  As they stood there looking out of the station windows to enjoy the view of
The
Heaven’s Gaze
, they began to dream of what might be.

The End