Personal Log, Noemi Laporte

Entry Four

I feel a sudden and overwhelming need to write in this damn thing. I haven't touched it since the academy, but recent events are making it abundantly clear that I might not be around much longer. I want to leave something behind...something more tangible than the scraps Mom and Dad left when their time came.

We're hearing rumors that the 'raid' on Jupiter yesterday was something bigger. That the Tevs routed Calder's Third Fleet and landed on Ganymede, Callisto, and Io. It seems impossible. Calder is a rock, a titan. We thought he was unbreakable.

All the off-shift personnel are huddled around their feeds, waiting for updates, from the Elders, from Admiral Byrne, even from the Tevs. Someone in the Kingmakers' bunkroom is crying into his pillow. Half of me wants to go comfort him, and the other half just wants him to shut up.

The war felt so far away until now. I know it was real for the Jovians: eighteen months of bloody raids and frantic jumps as Third Fleet and the Tevs played subspace speed chess on the fringes of the system. But not two weeks ago Admiral Calder told us that the Tevs wanted a slow war of attrition, so they could capture our worlds with minimum loss of life. We all nodded and talked about how much sense it made, but I think we just wanted it to be true.

Admiral Byrne and the Elders want to keep First Fleet in Earth orbit as a 'strategic deterrent' but I think they'll have to deploy fighters to help the Jovian retreat. That means I'll see combat.

I guess I'm afraid. I keep flashing back to that damn coroner's report. The way Dad's lungs looked. Burnt tofu.

I was trained for this. Uncle Manuel and Kassim will keep me safe. And if I die, it'll be quick, and something will be waiting for me.

But what if I don't die? What if I go out there, and I kill a few Tevs, and then I go have a drink with Kassim and we laugh about it? 

I was raised with Ubuntu. I'm no steely frontier Jovian like Calder, nor a hot-blooded Martian - I'm an Earther, as soft as fish-belly and taught to value the life of every damn roach in the ship's laundry. In the academy they taught us to treat the enemy as an object, a piece of machinery. But every time I do that, I'm giving up a piece of my soul.

I've thought about going to the combat psych about all this, but I'm not going to risk it. Getting cleared for flight was hard enough. Between my parents, my low aggression profile, and that one long-standing issue we don't talk about...I'm really kind of a basket case. This could put me over the edge.

And so I wonder...if I come back in one piece, am I really going to be in one piece?