“Captain, you really need to see this.” Marfal kept her eyes on her screen, but the way she kept moving her weight from one side of her seat to the other betrayed her nervousness.
“What is it?”
“You know Planet 352?”
“I know of it.”
“Well, I think they just knocked an asteroid off course.”
“They what?” Captain Luclen always tried not to betray her feelings to her subordinates, especially when she was startled or nervous, but this was so unexpected she didn’t have time to check herself.
“And now it’s headed straight for us.”
Captain Luclen let out a stream of curses (another thing she tried never to do in front of subordinates) before saying, “Show me.” She all but stomped up to Marfal’s screen to take a look.
Marfal backed up the recording so Luclen could see all the relevant footage. The captain swore again as she watched a missile launch from Planet 352 directly into an asteroid. “The asteroid wasn’t going anywhere near their planet. Why would they interfere with something that was not a direct threat?”
“They’re not very advanced. Judging from the surface-level media, it sounds like they did it just because they could,” Marfal said as she zoomed out until their own planet glowed at the edges of the screen. Sure enough, the asteroid’s new trajectory showed it heading straight for them.
Marfal watched the muscles in Captain Luclen’s jaw tighten and loosen repeatedly until she said, “I’ll be back.”
“Major Mordom,” said Captain Luclen, saluting as she entered his office. “We have a situation.”
Major Mordom waited for Captain Luclen to continue, and when she didn’t, he prompted, “And?”
“We need to ready the asteroid blaster.”
“The asteroid blaster? But we just used that last year.”
“I’m aware, sir. Planet 352 has been meddling in things they don’t understand, and they knocked an asteroid off its projected course. Now it’s headed straight for us.”
Major Mordom swore. Captain Luclen was shocked while simultaneously feeling somewhat vindicated for her own outburst. “How long do we have?”
Captain Luclen was silent as she realized she hadn’t asked Marfal to calculate how much time they had. She summoned her memory of the short footage she had seen and did some quick calculations before saying, “Three months? Maybe four.”
Major Mordom sighed. “All right. I’ll tell my superiors and they’ll do what needs to be done.”
“Do you think they’ll … talk to Planet 352?”
Major Mordom had been looking at the floor, but now he looked at Captain Luclen with intense focus. “Talk to them? Why would we talk to them?”
“They nearly caused a catastrophic event for no reason! Someone has to tell them that this is unacceptable.”
Major Mordom just shook his head. “You know we can’t do that, Captain. They don’t even know we’re out here.”
“What if we were to tell them we’re out here so they could see how destructive they’re being?”
“You know that we’ve already tried making contact, and you know that the diplomats who were sent on that mission never returned. Are you volunteering to go next?”
“Maybe it’s time to do away with diplomacy.” Captain Luclen’s words were harder than her voice, which she couldn’t manage to get above a mumble.
“What was that, Captain?”
“Nothing, sir,” though she knew he had heard her.
“That’s what I thought. You’re dismissed.”
Captain Luclen saluted and marched out of the Major’s office, thinking about all the things she would like to say to the in habitants of Planet 352.
The end.