Chapter 7

The construction paper displayed its various colors proudly to the fluttering South Florida breeze. Not so hot today as so many others, it was closing in on Christmas. Soon, Greg would be released from school for the holidays, but today was only another day, albeit closer to his favorite holiday of the year. The clouds were fast-moving today, but they were no competition to the deep blue hue of the wide-open sky, and the sun shone brightly even for what passed as winter here in the southern most portion of the USA. Greg heard the ding-ding-ding of the bells before he saw the warning arm lower itself across the road. As usual, he ignored the warning device and drew closer to the drawbridge itself.

Greg's sister had made it to the other side of the bridge before it began to split itself in half, looking like two great-big ramps rising into the sky. The bridge tender was in his tower, above her, and as usual he yelled at him to move further away from the operational part of the drawbridge.

As usual, Greg ignored him.

He looked off to his left and saw the cause of the bridge's activity. A forty-foot fishing boat slowly maneuvered toward the center of the drawbridge, its tuna-tower reaching further into the sky than it otherwise would have reached. Once the drawbridge was fully extended, the boat's engines roared, churning the maximum-allowable wake behind it and propelling it quickly beneath and clear of the bridge. Greg lifted his Christmas chain made of stapled construction paper loops into the air as a friendly gesture to the boater, though the skipper took no notice of the little boy.

The two sides of the drawbridges lurched into motion, and they began their slow descent toward each other, shrinking the ramps closer to the ground. Suddenly, a stiff breeze caught Greg's paper chain into the air, temporarily pulling it free from his grip. Greg reached out toward the chain to seize it from the air.

He gasped as the leading edge of the span lowering trapped his small arm between itself and the fixed portion of the guardrail, and Greg realized with horror that his arm was slowly being turned in-place and crushed by the overwhelming and unrelenting force of the massive bridge span as it maneuvered back into position.

Greg glanced quickly toward his sister on the other side of the bridge and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Stop the bridge! Stop the bridge! My arm is caught!"

Greg's sister looked up toward her brother over the nearly level spans and formed an "O" with her mouth. An instant later she screamed at the bridge tender above, pointing frantically at her brother across the way. The bridge tender looked first annoyed and then shocked as his gaze was drawn to Greg and his arm being relentlessly twisted and crushed by the bridge. He quickly maneuvered some controls, and the bridge lurched to a stop. He then pulled the appropriate levers to raise the bridge. Greg turned his body as the opposing guardrails slowly released his arm. He cradled the almost completely white arm with his right hand and noticed with shock that he felt nothing.

Greg awoke in a strange place. The room he was in served a basic function – the berthing of multiple military personnel. What made it strange was its basic design. It was clean and sterile, as a training barracks should be, but there were strange computer terminals in the walls, complete with a myriad of blinking lights here and there. It still took some getting used to for Greg, even after four weeks of continuous training.

The Empire didn't have weekends, at least as far as Greg and his cohorts were concerned. The bunk in which Greg was lying was of the make one might expect from a typical bunk, except the mattress reminded him somewhat of hard foam, rather than what he had been accustomed to. His wall locker was a bit larger than what he had known, and instead of being secured by a padlock, it was opened with a digital key that also passed as his identification. He and his cohorts had learned early that it wasn't a wise idea to misplace that digital key.

Greg looked up at the lights, which seemed to be embedded in the wall in offset intervals. They didn't emit the flicker he would have noticed with fluorescent lights, nor did he think they were incandescent lights. They provided sufficient light for the room all the same. They were brighter now, as Greg in his cohorts were supposed to be waking up and preparing for yet another day of training.

Greg began to sit up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Absently, he reached for his left arm. There, just above the elbow, his skin was a bit too tight against the bone. Muscle that had stretched beneath the skin had been torn away long ago, and the skin seemed to look concave in an odd location. You had to look directly at the area to even notice it anymore, and Greg had full use of his left arm. He smiled dryly as he recalled a doctor telling him so long ago that they might have to amputate the arm. Too much irreparable damage had been done by the drawbridge. The doctor had been wrong in his initial diagnosis, though he did not forewarn the boy of the insufferable teasing he would receive at school.

"Hey, you're the idiot who stuck his arm in a bridge, ain't ya!"

Greg remembered the teasing with a slight tinge of bitterness. He rubbed his fingers over the tight skin. He was here now, and his arm was still okay.

"Good morning, Yost," said someone to Greg's right.

He glanced that way and saw a young man with close-cropped light brown hair. His features looked somewhat European, and Greg might have marked him for a German. Greg knew that the young man was actually from a planet called Sullust, and he had never even heard of Earth, or the Sol system, as the Empire termed it, much less Germany.

The young man's family had long been under the employ of the SoroSuub Corporation, and the man had no idea where his family had originated. His name was Kip Bradon, and he had taken a keen interest in Greg and his home world. Greg was a bit older than Kip and most of the others undergoing training. Everyone had heard of Greg's planet, and many were brimming with questions about the strange world supposedly completely outside the known galaxy. Greg wasn't very helpful about how the Empire had located Sol, but he freely shared what he knew of the history of his planet.

Most were amazed that so many nations existed on a single planet, and they were equally amazed that it had experienced so much brutal warfare throughout its relatively short history. For an Empire that could trace back nearly thirty thousand years of space-faring civilization, a world like Greg's that could trace its entire history only a few thousand years back seemed odd.

"Good to see you, Kip," Greg answered in Basic.

Greg now did all of his speaking and most of his thinking in the language of the Empire. Every so often, a word in English would slip out while he was conversing, which would prompt strange glances from Greg's cohorts, but for the most part he kept all of his words in Basic. He was the only one from his planet at this installation, so far as he knew. The Star Destroyer Ash had made several stops at different star systems throughout the galaxy, dropping off Earth natives at different locations. Greg noticed that no two were ever dropped off at one location together.

As Greg and Kip enjoyed their breakfast, they chatted with each other and two cohorts who sat with them. As usual, conversation drifted to Greg's strange world.

"They say your planet had nothing but humans on it, Greg," announced a tan-skinned man with dark hair and dull grey eyes.

Greg gave Nallis a half-smile in answer to his statement. "Who is they?" retorted Greg, half-jokingly, "… and besides, Sol has a great many different animals."

"I do not know, and you know what I meant. I hear rumors. From what I have heard, the Sol system is not even in this galaxy. It would take even hyperdrive a very long time to reach the next closest galaxy, and yet it took you only a short time to reach here," said Nallis. His expression further illustrated his puzzlement.

"Look. When the Empire came to Sol, I was part of the US Army," said Greg.

The word, "US," came out in English, prompting puzzled looks from the others gathered at the table.

He quickly explained that it was one of the more powerful nations on the planet and then continued, "We had not had space travel for very long, and we had no knowledge of hyperspace or any kind of faster than light travel. We had barely sent probes to the outer edge of our own solar system. So far as we knew, we were the only intelligent beings in the entire universe."

Two of the men blurted out laughing at that comment, while Kip seemed to think about the statement with some seriousness. He said, "You really thought you were the only beings in the universe?"

"I didn't say that, Kip. I said we had no knowledge of any other beings in the universe, beside ourselves. Plenty of people on Sol believed there were others out there, and we sent out probes to try to locate them. The US government funded large planet-bound devices designed to scan space for life outside our world, but we never found any evidence, or if we did, I never knew of it."

The conversation drifted toward the space programs of Sol and then to the wars fought on the planet. Greg was just beginning to cover Adolf Hilter's rise to power in 1933, when Kip pointed out the time on his chronometer and the men rose to begin the day's training.

Greg was used to creating situational templates based off of enemy doctrine. He was accustomed to providing a commander with the best possible picture of what an enemy would be, know and do in order to allow the commander to get inside that enemy's decision-making cycle and disrupt it. He was still puzzled at the Empire's vision of intelligence and its seeming lack of a single focus. The instructors here seemed to be more focused on systems and background checks than on discerning and comprehending enemy systems and doctrine.

When Greg first brought up his concerns to an instructor two weeks prior, the NCO gave him a stony glance and told him to pay more attention to his training and spend less time poking holes in how the Empire chose to conduct intelligence operations. Greg decided to keep such opinions to himself from that point on, but he still couldn't help thinking of how lackluster his training was. Sure, he was learning Imperial military intelligence systems and procedures, but there was very little analytical thought involved, or so it seemed to him.

As Greg had studied the history of the Empire over the past month, he discovered that it had lacked a dedicated and determined enemy for the past twenty years. What he read on his monitor referred to a Clone War against an army of robots, but the history seemed to leave glaring gaps and questions within it. It spoke of a republic that had preceded the Empire, but that republic was depicted as hopelessly corrupt and mired in baseless accusatory politics and backstabbing among squabbling factions.

The Empire on the other hand was depicted as bringing order and balance to the chaos of the crumbling republic. Passing mention was made of a superstitious order of sorcerers who propped up the republic and helped spread its corruption among an unwilling population. These sorcerers had apparently nearly succeeded in murdering the Emperor, but their efforts had been heroically thwarted by someone called Darth Vader. It all seemed a bit confusing to Greg, and much of the story seemed untold.

The day was filled with the yellow light of the sun, though Greg knew it to be a star completely alien to that of his home world. The planet of Bordal had apparently been one of the separatist worlds during the Clone Wars of which Greg had read. The Empire now had a sizable garrison there, along with one of several intelligence training centers throughout the galaxy. It was on one such training center in which Greg now found himself, basking in the warm glow of the star at the center of the Taroon system.

Lieutenant Colonel Bertha had informed Greg that he would reach him when the time was right, but Greg began to wonder at the feasibility of such a statement, especially in light of the staggering size of the Empire. He looked down at his grey trousers, and then to the rest of his uniform. Not so long ago, he had considered those wearing such outfits to be enemy soldiers from an alien world. Now he wore that same uniform with a single silver patch of the Empire on his left sleeve. That he had to wear the oversized helmet when conducting daily duties added little to his enjoyment of this strange uniform.

Graduation from the school was but a week away, and the past seven weeks had filled Greg's head with Imperial naval intelligence systems and functions. He could quickly follow the orders of officers and NCOs, plugging data into terminals and routing requests with utmost speed and precision. Greg remembered almost as an afterthought that NCOs had been referred to as petty officers in the US Navy, but such distinctions appeared to be meaningless here. Today, the men were to learn of their next assignment, and some already had been informed.

"An Imperial star destroyer!" exclaimed Kip with great excitement. He had raced to greet Greg with the news upon finding out.

Greg had developed a friendship with the younger man, and he was truly pleased to learn that Kip was overjoyed about his assignment. Kip had explained that assignment aboard an imperial star destroyer was a big deal, because there were far fewer of those powerful warships than the smaller ones that comprised most of the fleet. Greg had congratulated the excited young man, who then raced off to tell his good news to others.

Greg walked down a path, studying the plants off to his right. The bush he was looking at somewhat reminded him of a holly bush he had seen in Orlando, but enough dissimilarities were there to inform him that this was indeed an alien plant. The plant seemed not to care on which planet it was, and its green leaves drank in the light of the planet's star readily enough.

Absently, Greg wondered what type of alien microbes constantly bombarded and invaded his body, and he wondered what kept him from getting violently ill or dead from such microbes. The Empire had apparently thought through such things, or quite dead he would be by now, not to mention the Imperial forces on Sol itself. Greg thought he spotted a small insect that reminded him of a walking stick, although this one was dark green in color and was shaped slightly differently. He thought about reaching out to let it crawl onto his finger as he had done with walking sticks on Sol, but then he thought better of it. The thing might bite him.

Greg sighed and turned to head back to his quarters. As he started walking that way, here came Kip running to meet him. He appeared out of breath, and his forehead was a bit moist from sweat.

"Th … the … you … you are on the …" panted Kip as he tried talking to Greg, "the Dominion. Ah … I should have … waited for you to find out, yourself. Sorry about that, Greg," said Kip with regret now mixed into his facial features.

Greg smiled at the young man, now composing himself and straitening his grey Imperial uniform. He did look a bit ridiculous with the cap starting to slide down his head. Unlike the first few weeks, the trainees were now allowed to wear the grey soft caps, and it was a far sight better than wearing those ridiculous oversized helmets he had so detested. Greg clapped the young man on the shoulder, who eagerly led him to the central bulletin board.

The central bulletin board wasn't so much a board, as it was a large monitor embedded into the wall. On the bulletin board, information constantly shifted and scrolled in various windows. Greg quickly isolated the window with the information he sought. He was indeed to be assigned to the Dominion, and he saw that it was a dreadnaught. Greg found himself visualizing the vessel. He had seen holo-images of a dreadnaught before. They were older vessels but formidable enough. They were bulky in appearance and they were not handsome. Even so, one of them would now become home for Greg.

A week later was the graduation commencement. Greg thought it to be a singularly unimpressive event, not comparable to what he had experienced graduating from advanced individual training as a young soldier on Sol. They received no paper certificate or adornment for their uniform, which remained almost entirely blank, save the Imperial patch on their shoulder. Instead, some long-winded officer gave a fine speech about service to the Empire, and he mentioned the ongoing fight against the Rebellion. The men had to stand at attention in formation while the officer droned on. Some things, it seemed, never changed, regardless of location in the universe.

Soon thereafter, the men were sent to the spaceport on shuttles, all at varying times and days. Greg was with one man he had seen in the dining facility once or twice but had never met, when his time for a shuttle to the spaceport came. The man had pinched features and liked to keep to himself. Fortunately, the shuttle ride was short in duration, and they boarded a transport. The transport ride was not terribly long, but Greg had time for a short nap and took it.

Greg awoke to a gruff-looking NCO glaring at him. He noted the three belt boxes on the man's uniform and stood up quickly.

"Now that we're all awake," the NCO said while glaring at Greg for the latter portion, "I would like to welcome you to the Dominion. This is the finest ship in the Imperial fleet, and you will find that the standard here is tough, and we are all held to it."

The NCO covered some basic rules and then led the two men to their berthing area. Greg stowed what little gear he had in his new wall locker, noted that the bunks were three high, and then he was escorted by the NCO to his station in the bridge pit. The controls at his station were familiar enough, and he began routing requests on his terminal.

Toward the end of his shift, Greg let his thoughts drift. He learned that the Dominion was on a patrol in space somewhat threatened by Rebel elements. Some suspect vessels had already been boarded, but they were false alarms. These Rebels apparently were not born stupid, and they steered clear of the Imperial warship. Greg had noticed a man with red hair looking at him throughout the day, and he was beginning to be annoyed when the man approached him.

"You're Greg, right?" said the man with a low voice.

"Yes, and you are?"

"I am Griff, but that is not important right now. I was told to look out for you."

"Look out for me? What do you mea…"

"Shhhh! Not here; not now. Do you play Sabaac?"

"I know of the game and the basic rules, but it isn't a favorite pastime for me," replied Greg, keeping his voice low.

Here in the pit, the two were not looked on with any suspicion for talking to each other, especially this close the end of their shift.

"Join me and some friends tonight, in recreation room seven."

"Okay," said Greg with some puzzlement, and he was ready to ask Griff some questions, but the man turned and left. A friendly game of sabaac it would be.