"Sir. Sir?"
For once in his admitedly short career, President William Shatner had a single moment of peace to himself. It was just too bad that said moment of peace took place within the ruins of a destroyed city, amidst the crackling of radiation counters and the distant sound of an approaching storm. Funny; a few years back, and his only visits to Earth were to complain to the United Nations, to threaten sanctions or to attend some high profile trial of international criminals. He had connected the industrialized world with a sense of discomfort, treating it as just some random planet he had to go to on occasion. Most people of his generation, the pure Jovians, they had never even stepped foot on the blue planet. For them, the governments of Earth were mostly competitors and buyers, source of trouble or income.
He had never imagined he would be standing on the planet like that, overcome by a feeling of despair.
Earth was gone, its blue oceans irreparably contaminated by the radioactive fallout, its forests destroyed by the toxicity of the air. Most survivors had already been evacuated to the fleet in orbit, and he wasn't even sure why he was down on the planet. He was supposed to attend a meeting aboard the International Space Station within the next hour, but for some reason had chosen to accompany one of the last environmental evaluation teams down to the planet. And there he was, standing near a destroyed Statue of Liberty, only its base remaining after the nuclear attack that had decimated New York City. The outline of the wreckage of a Battleship, of the spacefaring kind, was visible on the far edge of the visor of his hazmat exoskeleton; the radiation levels were still way above the safe maximum for human life. That was the HMS Queen Mother, one of the first victims of the Battle of Earth. It had been disabled while attempting to lower its orbit altitude, and instead ended up crashing onto Earth.
"Sir?" repeated the insistent voice behind him, and he let out a deep sigh.
"Yes, Major, what is it?"
"The pilot says there's a storm on the way, he's unsure if we'll be able to reach orbit with all the EM interference. He wants us to get going immediately."
Nodding behind the heavy exoskeleton, the President turned around and begun the slow, torturing walk towards the spacecraft. He had a long day ahead of him.
CNS Europa, Galilei-class Supercarrier
Command Ship, Jovian Fleet
Damn that coffee was cold.
For the past several hours, Admiral Elizabeth Maxson had argued with the rest of the fleet's commanders in the Operations Center, the gigantic chamber filled with maps, star charts, communications equipment, computers and annoying analysts. If the Combat Information Center was the nerve center of the carrier and the Europa Artificial Intelligence its brain, then the Operations Center was certainly its bowel, because all of the annoying shit ended up there. A bunch of old, stuck-up Admirals, Colonels, Commanders and Captains too bitter to admit that someone twenty years younger than them had been promoted to Chief of Staff of the Navy had been mixed in with National Intelligence Agency goons and Colonial Security agents, along with an (un)healthy dose of politicians. There was even a damn Senator in the room trying to argue about seemingly everything.
Many had blamed the short, muscular woman of being a power grabber, abusing her powers and exploiting the opportunity to assume command of the military fleet and put the civilian government on the path to a military dictatorship, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. For if Elizabeth Maxwell had a choice, she would have resigned immediately; it wasn't that she hadn't tried, anyway. The President had blatantly ripped the resignation form in two with his bare hands, blaming the Admiral of being selfish and a coward for trying to surrender the responsibility to someone else. The woman had never been meant to be a flag officer: she had spent most of her life as a Marine Aviator, flying F-33 interceptors, and had only been forced to take a desk job after a plane crash cost her an eye. She got it replaced with a cloned copy, but the regulations were clear: she couldn't fly fighters any more. So instead, she got restricted to flying a desk. After the war started, she was stationed aboard the Europa, and then-Commander Maxwell had been promoted to Rear Admiral after the death of the Europa's commanding officer.
On some days, she wanted to hit her past self in the head for sending out that message of hope. The fleet had lost a major battle over Ganymede, and with it its command structure, and she had almost impulsively assumed command; she hadn't been the highest ranking officer left, but she certainly had been the only one with the backbone to take some responsibility.
This was one of those days.
"I am telling you, the Russians are WAY too close for comfort. The damn Gorbachev has matched our orbit almost precisely, they are just two thousand kilometers away from this ship! The Saint Petersburg has been burning with its RCS thrusters for hours trying to match our orbits, thinking we wouldn't notice!"
"The Russians aren't the problem, they can bark all they want, but they don't have nowhere near enough firepower to pose a threat. It's the Mercurites I am worried about. Their dreadnought and the Callisto got in a stand off last week, and we all know that the Cally isn't nowhere near battle worthy. Sooner or later, we'll need to deal with this issue, and the solution might as well be a pre-emptive strike!"
"You think that's the only problem? Some of the civilian crews are getting restless, CPS had to quell a riot aboard one of the tanker ships yesterday. The food and water rationing isn't very popular with them!"
"OH JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!"
The sudden outburst silenced everyone in the room, even the analysts bantering in the far corner about unrelated topics, and forced their attention back on the Admiral. The red-haired officer wasn't exactly known for her tact or for her social skills, but they were used to that by then; they just hadn't heard her scream that loudly before. She pushed the cold coffee cup aside, pointing aggressively at the collection of people surrounding the main operations planning table. "Look at you! We barely survived one war and you are already looking to start another! You are acting like children!" she exclaimed, bringing her attention to the table. "You sit there talking about pre-emptive strikes, but you forget that we might as well be down to throwing rocks for ammo! We've got a few dozen nukes, and half of them need repairs before they can be used, and we've barely got enough aviation fuel to keep the CAPs running. Half of our ships are in need of repairs, we've got a supercarrier that wasn't even finished, one of our destroyers might have to be scuttled because it will fall apart if someone sneezes on it! Not to mention the fact that one of our dreadnoughts was a museum just a few weeks ago! And you want to go to war with the Russians or the Mercurites? Lets just make it easy and shoot ourselves while we're at it, end it with less suffering!"
Suddenly, the room fell in an uncomfortable silence; nobody spoke for at least a few minutes, just staring at the Admiral, or to each other, or to the suddenly very interesting metal floor. Jovian ships were built much like the submarines of the 20th century: cramped, ugly and metallic, but the officers and politicians in the room were so lost in their own world and the realization of just how bad the situation was that for once they didn't complain about the fact that there was barely enough room for them to fit in the chamber.
The silence was broken by the crackle of the intercom, sparing the need for someone to revitalize the conversation: "Ops, Combat. Marine One has just taken off from Earth, they are going to head straight to the ISS after an in-flight refueling. Major Reese is on his way with a fighter squadron to provide escort."
That was the last the people in the room saw of the Admiral for the moment, as she made a full u-turn and calmly left Operations.