The only thing that lowers morale more than being prohibited from practicing one’s religion is being forcibly exposed to other people practicing theirs. Therefore, Section 3 of the United Armed and Exploratory Force’s Code of Conduct allows for the practice and/or expression of religion only in private quarters during unassigned time, using resources that are the sole responsibility of the practitioner. No special considerations are given; no allowances are made. The Code expressly forbids all assemblies of a religious nature. Group prayer, proselytizing, and even robust religious discussions over dinner were all grounds for a level-2 reprimand... one step below a trip to the brig. If a crewman could not keep their God or gods to themselves, then their presence was neither wanted nor tolerated aboard any UAEF ship.

Of course, individual captains could loosen the rules and lighten the punishments at their judgment, but most captains know better than to apply that power to Section 3 of the Code. There are horror stories about what happens when they do.

Officially, this is not one of those stories.

Captain William Sung of the UAEF Pendleton ran a very strict ship. Like all ships, there were crewmen who belonged to various religions and denominations, but they kept their mouths shut and their beliefs hidden, per the Code of Conduct.

The Pendleton was on its way back into service after routine maintenance when they dropped off the FTL grid and went dark. No communications were received, no further FTL signatures were detected. Such an event wasn't exactly common, but it certainly wasn't the first (or last) time a ship went dark in deep space.

FTL engines were a lot more temperamental back then. They didn't bite often, but when they bit, they bit hard. A total cascade failure could turn a ship inside out or scatter its atoms to the darkest reaches of spacetime. That sort of misbehavior was usually accompanied by an aberrant FTL signature that could be detected for hundreds of light years... thus letting everyone know not to bother sending a rescue party. But since no such signature was detected, it was conceivable that the ship was still intact.

I was part of the skeleton crew dispatched from Proxima aboard the UAEF Covington. Our job was to salvage the Pendleton and, if possible, fly it back home. Naturally, we'd rescue the crew if they were still alive, but that wasn't our chief objective. In the UAEF, losing a crew was a tragedy. Losing a ship was a catastrophe.

Due to the vast distances involved in interstellar travel, any crew stranded in deep space can expect to go without rescue or outside contact for months. There are horror stories about what happened then, too, but if the crew survived whatever it was that caused the malfunction, then they might have a chance at a rescue. Fortunately, the Pendleton was only three weeks out when they dropped off the grid, well within the time that a stranded crew could be expected to keep their sanity.

The Covington dropped to sublight speed at the Pendleton's last reported position and found nothing but empty space. Instead, we picked her up on a long range scan burning its sublight engines at full speed and headed back the way we had just come. Proxima was about 7 light-years away, so at their max sustainable sublight speed, the Pendleton would be comfortably docked with her crew enjoying a fresh warm meal in about a hundred and seventy-six years.

Better than just sitting around waiting to die, I suppose.

We made another FTL jump to get in front of them... necessary because the Pendleton's sublights were a lot faster than ours... and intercepted. We ran a full scan as we approached. The Pendleton's FTL core had suffered a moderate hiccup, swallowing part of itself stranding the crew in deep space without any form of long-distance communication. Not a catastrophe and, judging from the fact the ship was still flying, not a tragedy either.

Why the crew wasn't responding to our short-range hails was a mystery we solved a little bit later.

We docked, and I lead a small team of technicians and emergency medical responders into the Pendleton.

Ten minutes later, we were back onboard the Covington.

We separated the ships, moved to standard engagement distance, and pelted the Pendleton with high-energy plasma shells until it was nothing more than a cloud of superheated fragments.

Officially, it was a catastrophe.

The official report starts off true: The damaged FTL core had leaked radioactive gas into the main ventilation system, and all hands were lost almost immediatly. But here’s where the report starts to deviate from actual events. Officially, the uncontrolled leak worsened until the entire ship was unapproachable, even with maximum precautions. Anything salvageable would have been damaged by the radiation, so the ship was scuttled in space. It wasn’t a decision that the higher-ups would be happy with, but it was one that could be defended.

Even if it didn’t actually happen that way.

Those who boarded the ship and saw who was flying it got together and discussed the matter afterward. We concluded that the single crewman who had survived the radiation leak did not act outside the Code of Conduct. Everyone else was dead, so he was, for all intents and purposes, alone on the ship. Therefore, there was no breach of Code when he performed a religious ceremony that would have been a clear violation had the crew been alive.

As for our own actions, we also see no violation of the Code. Officially, not only does the UAEF not recognize organized religions, but it is absolutely antagonistic toward the concept. Religion does not exist as far as the UAEF is concerned, therefore, a ship piloted by zombies" radioactive or not" has no place in the United Armed Exploratory Forces.

[END]
copyright 2008 by Dark Icon (Marc Washington)