Star-Crossed Lovers Ch. 02

Pulling him closer, Maylene placed his head on her chest, so he could hear her heart beating. Its steady rhythm seemed to sooth him during the nightmares. She knew that buried deep within his subconscious, in the places where he tried to bury all of his pain and torment, his heart was breaking.

As it did on each of these nights, Maylene's heart broke along with his.

In the darkness, Maylene wept along with her sleeping husband. They shed tears for men and women she had never met and Eric almost never talked about. But she knew their faces haunted his dreams.

And in the morning, he would pretend everything was fine.

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Two months later.

"Sir, get down!" Master Chief McDaniel called. But it was too late.

The explosion hurled Burke across the room. The world seemed to stop for just a second. There was a flash of bright light, then complete and utter silence.

Things slowly came back into focus. His head spun. There was a ringing in his ears.

He tried to roll over, but couldn't. The power armour felt so heavy. A searing pain started in his gut.

"Holy fucking shit," he vaguely heard someone shout. "Corpsman up!"

Burke tried to speak, but only spat blood all over the inside of his faceplate.

"Hold on, sir," a voice said. A young woman—or was it a man? You never could tell in the armour—held his shoulders down.

Behind her, Burke could see people scurrying around frantically.

Don't worry about me!he wanted to say, but could not form the words.Plug the gap with second squad and kill those fuckers!

His arms groped around for something to hold on to. He tried to stand.

Raising his head, he saw his armoured legs. They were covered in blood. And on the other side of the command center.

A corpsman was in his face. Commander Burke could see his mouth moving, but couldn't comprehend what he was saying. The corpsman reached into his pack and pulled out a SCMU, scanned the gaping wound in Burke's gut, then ripped it open, releasing hundreds of miniature robots and medical nanobots. Their job was to stabilise him and keep him from bleeding to death.

Burke suddenly felt faint. Maybe it was because he knew he was dying. Or maybe it was the suit injecting him with sedatives to keep him from going into shock.

For a brief instant, there was a brief burning sensation in his stomach as the nanobots began cauterising and suturing his wounds shut. Then his entire body went numb.

He tried to give his final orders. But his body failed him.

Before the blackness claimed him, one thought ran through his mind.

Maylene is going to kill me.

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To be continued in part 3.

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Dramatis Personae

SOLAR Team 6, Alpha Platoon

Lieutenant Eric Burke – OIC
Sub-Lieutenant Ikuyo Kato – AOIC
Ensign Vincent Tran – Third Officer
Chief Sonya Hayes – Chief Petty Officer
HM1 Danielle Martin – Lead Petty Officer
CM2 Terry Brockelbank
GM2 Togo "Bunny" Easter
HT2 Chris "Crispy" Paymer
IS2 Anne Rhodes
TM2 Janine Traylor
DS3 Jedadiah "Wonder Boy" Gillispie
HM3 Joran "Ski" Walgroski
SM3 Herman "Zipper" Kitts
GM3 Andrea "Juggs" Stanley
SN Tatyana Kellerman
SN Alisha White

Fleet Admiral Bernadette von Luck – CO, Special Warfare Command, Sector 12
Lieutenant-General Aleksander Petrovich Kravchenko – Commanding General, VII MEF
Vice-Admiral Tobias N'Genge – CO, Task Force 114
Brigadier-General Khalid Ibrahim – Deputy Commanding General, VII MEF
Captain Thomas Harrison – CO, Naval Special Warfare Group One
Commander Maylene Torres – CO, VFVA-221 "Heaven's Fury"
Commander Chuck Stickle – CO, SOLAR Team 6
Master Chief Warren McDaniel – Command Master Chief, SOLAR Team 4

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Glossary of Terms

AD – Air Defense

AOIC – Assistant Officer in Charge

BDU – Battle Dress Uniform, the familiar camouflage uniform worn while on duty. Rendered largely ineffective in combat in the age of power armour and full body armour, but still worn as the uniform of the day.

CAG – CO for a Sky Wing; the acronym stands for Commander, Air Group, an anachronism from when a naval aircraft carrier supported an air group instead of an air wing

CO – Commanding Officer

fit rep – Fitness Report

HUD – Heads-Up Display

IKC – Interstellar Knights Cross, the Alliance's highest military award

LPO – Lead Petty Officer

LZ – Landing Zone

MEF – Marine Expeditionary Force

OIC – Officer in Charge

SCMU – Self-Contained Medical Unit

sit rep – Situation Report

Sky Wing – Fighter and tactical spacecraft detachment assigned to a deep space carrier

SOLAR – Space, Ocean, Land, AtmospheRe; special operations troopers, direct descendants of the Navy SEALs

third-O – Third officer; in a SOLAR team, this is often an officer on their first operational deployment who is third in command of a platoon, but is there primarily to learn the ropes of command

TSMC – Terran Space Marine Corps

TSN – Terran Space Navy

VFVA – Space navy squadron designation for a virtual reality attack/strike fighter squadron

XO – Executive officer

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A note on Navy Enlisted Rates and Ranks

Enlisted personnel in the Navy are assigned a rating which indicates their job specialty and a rate that indicates their rank. In Navy-speak, enlisted sailors are often addressed as a combination of their rating and their rank. For instance, GM2 refers to a Gunner's Mate, Second Class. Officers do not have a rating.

Non-commissioned officers in the Navy are called petty officers. They are the equivalent of sergeants in the Army, Marines or Air Force. The lowest ranking is the petty officer, third class. Next up are the petty officers second and first class. The senior NCOs are the chief petty officers which are no longer addressed by their rate, but simply as Chief, Senior Chief or Master Chief.

Some of the rates used in this story:

BM – Boatswain's Mate
CM – Construction Mechanic
DS – Data Systems
ET – Electronics Technician
GM – Gunner's Mate
HM – Hospital Corpsman
HT – Hull Technician
IS – Intelligence Specialist
SM – Signalman
TM – Torpedoman

Below the NCOs are enlisted sailors. These are usually new sailors and are assigned the following pay grades:

SN – Spaceman
SA – Spaceman Apprentice
SR – Spaceman Recruit

For the purposes of this story, the TSN uses a rank system similar to the US Navy for officers. From highest to lowest they are:

Grand Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Admiral
Vice-Admiral
Rear Admiral
Commodore
Captain
Commander
Subcommander
Lieutenant
Sub-Lieutenant
Ensign

Commodore and above are considered "flag" officers.