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rinkhcTitle: Orders
Fandom: Original Fiction - Lizards ‘verse
Series: Kat’s Therapy Journal - 16th Penna, 5433
Prompt: Forced to Hurt Somebody
Medium: FIC
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 566
Summary: PsyCorps Recovered Files: 15th Vallos, 5400: Cardinal Flight successful mission, L’spi orbital base near Krangi destroyed. Casualty: Captain Myra Lei - see personnel record for details and commendations.
Content Notes: No standard notes apply
16th Penna, 5433
Subject: Giving Orders
Being in charge means sometimes making decisions that hurt. And sometimes hurt other people. And sometimes both at the same time. I’ve had to send soldiers to the deaths, it come with war and battle and being an officer. You can only hope that their lives were not thrown away recklessly, that the decisions made were the correct ones and that there was no other way to achieve the necessary goal.
That’s a lot of rhetoric, isn’t it?
We had a seek and destroy mission, to find a L’spi base that was mobile, operating in the Krangi system, and therefore a serious military threat to our people. Cardinal Flight was sent to destroy it. We were very good at blowing things up. Much better at making messes and shrapnel than at sneaking around.
It was not hard to locate the base. We found it and landed a small task force, four of us, on the surface, armed to the teeth and carrying enough explosives to destroy a small planet, which I suppose the orbital platform could be construed to be It was pretty damned big. We got a little turned around from the schematic and lost our way to the engine room which ate up valuable time.
I’ve mentioned our notorious bad luck? Struck again. We ran into a security patrol and had to fight our way from the engine room back to the surface. Not too bad; we were always prepared for a fight. But our triggering mechanism for the bombs we had planted got lost in the chaos of the fight.
There was only one way to set them off, and that was to manually set the timers. There were two sets of them in two different locations. And only two of us had the demolitions skills to manually rewire the charges, Myra Lei and myself. There wasn’t time for me to be heroic and go reset all the charges myself, the sequence would be off and the place wouldn’t be destroyed, merely damaged. Both of us had to go. I had to order Captain Lei to a task that would likely lead to her death. Sacrificing myself wasn’t a problem it was deciding that someone else had to die as well that hurt.
I sent Storm, the pilot for the operation and our tech, Wils, back to the ship. There was a chance that if either of us could make the run back up to the surface without interference or getting loss, we could make it out before the charges blew, but that was a longshot and Myra and I both knew it.
Before we parted ways, she leaned over and hugged me. “Has to be this way,” she whispered to me, both saying goodbye and absolving me of my guilt for giving the order, I think.
I made it to the top. Myra didn’t. We were running comms silent for security, so we’ll never know if she ran into some more L’spi, got lost or simply didn’t run fast enough. But she set her charges, the place blew completely. We waited until the last possible moment for her, Storm had to fight the concussive wave from the explosion to fly us out. We almost went up with the base.
So, that’s probably the most personal and painful order I had to give, one that directly resulted in the death of a teammate.
Fandom: Original Fiction - Lizards ‘verse
Series: Kat’s Therapy Journal - 16th Penna, 5433
Prompt: Forced to Hurt Somebody
Medium: FIC
Rating: Gen
Word Count: 566
Summary: PsyCorps Recovered Files: 15th Vallos, 5400: Cardinal Flight successful mission, L’spi orbital base near Krangi destroyed. Casualty: Captain Myra Lei - see personnel record for details and commendations.
Content Notes: No standard notes apply
16th Penna, 5433
Subject: Giving Orders
Being in charge means sometimes making decisions that hurt. And sometimes hurt other people. And sometimes both at the same time. I’ve had to send soldiers to the deaths, it come with war and battle and being an officer. You can only hope that their lives were not thrown away recklessly, that the decisions made were the correct ones and that there was no other way to achieve the necessary goal.
That’s a lot of rhetoric, isn’t it?
We had a seek and destroy mission, to find a L’spi base that was mobile, operating in the Krangi system, and therefore a serious military threat to our people. Cardinal Flight was sent to destroy it. We were very good at blowing things up. Much better at making messes and shrapnel than at sneaking around.
It was not hard to locate the base. We found it and landed a small task force, four of us, on the surface, armed to the teeth and carrying enough explosives to destroy a small planet, which I suppose the orbital platform could be construed to be It was pretty damned big. We got a little turned around from the schematic and lost our way to the engine room which ate up valuable time.
I’ve mentioned our notorious bad luck? Struck again. We ran into a security patrol and had to fight our way from the engine room back to the surface. Not too bad; we were always prepared for a fight. But our triggering mechanism for the bombs we had planted got lost in the chaos of the fight.
There was only one way to set them off, and that was to manually set the timers. There were two sets of them in two different locations. And only two of us had the demolitions skills to manually rewire the charges, Myra Lei and myself. There wasn’t time for me to be heroic and go reset all the charges myself, the sequence would be off and the place wouldn’t be destroyed, merely damaged. Both of us had to go. I had to order Captain Lei to a task that would likely lead to her death. Sacrificing myself wasn’t a problem it was deciding that someone else had to die as well that hurt.
I sent Storm, the pilot for the operation and our tech, Wils, back to the ship. There was a chance that if either of us could make the run back up to the surface without interference or getting loss, we could make it out before the charges blew, but that was a longshot and Myra and I both knew it.
Before we parted ways, she leaned over and hugged me. “Has to be this way,” she whispered to me, both saying goodbye and absolving me of my guilt for giving the order, I think.
I made it to the top. Myra didn’t. We were running comms silent for security, so we’ll never know if she ran into some more L’spi, got lost or simply didn’t run fast enough. But she set her charges, the place blew completely. We waited until the last possible moment for her, Storm had to fight the concussive wave from the explosion to fly us out. We almost went up with the base.
So, that’s probably the most personal and painful order I had to give, one that directly resulted in the death of a teammate.