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Writer's pictureKendra Cassidy

The Road to the Stars - Chapter Fourteen

Fuck, this was hard.

Sorry about the language, but I hated this. Absolutely hated it.

I mentioned, a couple weeks ago, about my history with fighting.

It was always something I dealt with personally. Whatever repercussions there were, they were mine.

That's a lot easier than being the leader going into a fight.

And it's nothing compared to after the fight is over, and you have to tell all the surviving family members why their loved one isn't coming home.

Fuck.


Chapter Fourteen


Dear Mrs. Hogshead, I am writing to you to inform you of the circumstances of Chris’s death…

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Price, I am writing to inform you of the circumstances of Carl’s death…

Dear Mr. Horgan, I am writing to inform you of the circumstances of Michael’s death…

Dear Mr. Lewis, I am writing to inform you of the circumstances of Amanda’s death…

Dear Mrs. Kollar…

Dear Mr. & Mr. Cantillo…

Dear Ms. Chase…

Dear Mr. Fones…

Dear…

Dear…

Dear…

She had known, intellectually, that she might have to do this. She’d seen enough vids, read enough books, hell, she’d even acted in one that had a war theme. It didn’t prepare her.

Every one of these letters was going to break someone’s heart. Every single person was a son, daughter, wife, husband, parent, child. And she was going to deliver them in person, once she could. They hadn’t thought about this, hadn’t planned for it, didn’t have anything prepared. No plans. Just her, and her terminal, and her guilt.

She was the admiral. She put everything in motion. That meant she was responsible for everyone, and she hadn’t realized just how heavy that burden actually was. She’d get through this, and then deal with the Union, then drop into Cass’s arms once her wife came home. That might not make things better, but it would make it easier for her to cope. Until then, letters.

The door chime sounded, and Kendra looked up gratefully.

“Come.”

Mac came in, followed by Horst Pipher.

“Hey, Kendra, do you have a couple minutes, I was going over the comm logs with Horst and we may have found something interesting.”

“Sure, Mac, have a seat,” Kendra said, wearily. “Horst, sit down. I’m only the Admiral part-time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Pipher uncomfortably.

“What did you find, Mac?”

“Well, you wanted Harpo and I to check over the accounts of the crew, right, so we were doing that with Horst’s help, most people had really crappy security, would you believe that someone actually used Password as their password, I didn’t think things like that existed outside of books, anyways, most of them were pretty easy, there were a few that were tougher to get into, but we did, and that’s when we found it.”

Kendra had dealt with Mac for years. She waited.

“This one account, it belonged to a guy named Chris Knepper, it was really locked down tight, I mean multiple passwords, layers of encryption, really professional stuff, and it took us a while to get into it, by us I really mean Harpo, and by a while I mean about half a second, but that’s forever for him, and once he was in the system started to do a purge, we lost some of it but there was one really important piece we caught, most of it at least, and I’ve got a copy on my padd, and here you go.” She handed a tablet over to Kendra.

Installation of program complete. Defenses neutralized,” she read. “Shit.”

“It goes on,” said Pipher.

Airlock controls disabled per diagram. Did we get the diagram?”

“Yes, we already gave that to Diana, she’s run checks and purged all the garbage code from the airlocks, Kyran has another team checking all of them for physical tampering, but it looks like it was all electronic.”

“Why would they need the airlocks disabled? Unless he was going to blow them and decompress Diana?”