Convergence/Chapter 1

1
''Stuck again! ''The sliding greenish metal door refused to open despite his repeated slapping of the release button, leaving him stranded outside the prefab shelter in the baking desert sun. Scowling, Lieutenant Corian Gonnard knotted his right hand into a fist and was about to unload his frustrations on the hapless door panel when it slid open from the inside, revealing his superior, Captain Vanbarce. A fifteen-year career soldier, the captain was a tall, imposing woman with a husky voice and a no-nonsense attitude. Her uniform was clean, if a little rumpled, the drab olive green unsullied as of yet. She caught sight of his clenched fist and an eyebrow quirked up inquisitively.

“Problems, Lieutenant?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said quickly. “Kriffing door was stuck again.”

“Then have Maintenance fix it,” she told him. “I doubt percussive repair will get the job done properly.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded curtly and went on her way. Already annoyed, Corian stalked inside the prefab shelter, which was a sort-of barracks, mess hall, and work area all in one easily-erected package that the navy dropped on hundreds of worlds for camps that were more than a week or two but less than permanent occupation. Muttering imprecations under his breath, he found a datapad and wrote a terse maintenance work order, punching it into the system with more vehemence than necessary.

Then, having finally satisfied the obligations of his duty shift, he made his way over to the mess hall for a plate of hot food and his daily allocation of two beers, which he took back to his tiny quarters. The one nice thing about being an officer on this miserable hellhole was that he had single quarters, even if they were only slightly larger than a closet. Terrible beer, he mused as he took the first swallow—not cold enough, either. Given the distinct lack of alternatives, though, he found terrible beer a vast improvement over no beer. The beer was weak, tasted somewhat metallic from sitting in giant storage tanks, and left him just buzzed enough to reduce his lucidity but not enough to really lose his grasp of reality.

Corian drowsily reached for his datapad, then thumbed to the calendar. ''One-hundred and sixty-six more days on this miserable hellhole. Kriff. It’s barely been two weeks. ''Two weeks and he was already sick of this place. Not that there was much to be sick of. Yanibar was a geologically unstable desert world so far beyond the civilized reaches of the galaxy that he had often asked himself why anyone would give a scavenge rat’s ass about this particular dirtball, much less Corellians who lived half a galaxy away from it. That was not to say he didn’t know why he’d been sent here: the stated reason and the real one. The stated reason was that some archaeological group—with far more political influence than a bunch of people who grubbed in the dirt for a living deserved—had convinced someone in the Defense Ministry that they needed to  borrow a battalion of Corellian Naval Infantry to babysit them in half-a-year shifts. ''Half a year on this karking planet, and not a decent cantina in sight. ''They’d been hauled out here on an ancient bulk cruiser and unceremoniously dumped off after a two-week journey in the cramped hold. The troops they’d relieved looked almost frantic to board the dilapidated ship and scurry away from their motley compound of prefab’d buildings, supply depots, and duracrete wall ringed with sentry posts and laser turrets. Corian quickly understood their eagerness. There was nothing to do on Yanibar. The weather was erratic at best, going from scorching hot to freezing cold, and aside from the other naval infantry and archaeologists, uninhabited by sentient life.

Of course, that led to the real reason for sending out troops that could be used elsewhere: it was either a punishment or a kind of isolation ward for the troops sent here. Corian was pretty sure nobody in the military had it out for him—he hadn’t been commissioned long enough to make enemies. In fact, virtually everyone he’d talked to had been completely sympathetic and had offered to help in some way, shape, or form. When he’d listlessly shrugged and drifted aimlessly through assignments over the last six months, they’d seen fit to ship him out here as Captain Vanbarce’s XO. Somebody probably hoped that some time away from home would help him recover from the attack. He idly wondered if Captain Vanbarce had been sent out here for some “wilderness therapy” or if she’d pissed somebody off enough that they’d confined her to this miserable wasteland. As by-the-book as she seemed to be, that seemed unlikely.

He cycled the datapad over to another project: a series of tactics and doctrine for outnumbered small units. It had been written with fighting the Grasp in mind. That was the only thing that held his interest in his off-duty hours—besides beer. It gave him something to do and helped fuel his sense of vengeance against the Grasp. He couldn’t crush them on every battlefield, but if he was able to devise tactics against them that could be used across the service, then in a way, he’d take the fight to them everywhere. The fact that their droids were emotionless, pitiless automatons diminished his burning desire for revenge, but it would have to do. They’d taken everything from him. Maybe tonight he would finish that section on how to maneuver through tight urban spaces against the Grasp.

He was still thinking that when he fell asleep in his chair, almost-empty bottle of beer in one hand. And then he was back on the station. ''For a moment, the packed assembly hall bore memories of warmth and familiarity. The slender flute of rose-colored claret in his hand was cool to the touch. . . ''