Traveller Vignette 011

“Good morning, Lieutenant Commander Porsenna. How are you feeling today?”

I shrugged. “Better, thank you, sir. Keeping food down, for one thing.” I’d actually lost a lot of muscle in the long years of cryosleep, but there was no sense complaining right now. I’d been on a destroyer that got jumped by a Zho strike group in the first weeks of the war. We’d fought hard, but at those odds there was only going to be one outcome. With drives and power gone, the captain triggered the thermite charges that slagged the computer cores, surrendered the ship and the surviving crew went into the POW cage.

Except that nobody actually runs POW camps these days. There’s no sense in having to feed, clothe and house a bunch of enemy soldiers who’ll probably make trouble every chance they get, so they stuck me into a portable low berth, and that’s all I knew until I woke up here four years later, with the war apparently over for nine months.

I sat down across the desk, and he opened a file and took out a creamy sheet of real paper, heavy with embossed crests. I looked at it in shock. It was an honourable discharge, with my name on it.

“What the frak?” I asked without thinking

He sighed. “I'm sorry, Son. It isn't your fault, but you were in Zhodani hands for a long time, and given their capabilities in that area...” He left the end of the sentence hanging.

“But the Zhos didn't....” My mouth started to protest automatically, then my brain kicked in and I shut up. If they had messed with my mind, the one thing they'd definitely have removed was any memory of them messing with my mind.

“You don't have to accept it” he said gently “But if you do stay in, you'll never hold anything higher than a basic security clearance”. We both knew what that meant for an officer of my rank. I'd never be promoted, and I'd end up pulling a series of boring non-jobs on backwater worlds.

“Frak” I said again, mostly to myself. I'd had a career. I'd had dreams, for the emperor's sake.

Three hours later, I was officially a civilian again. I had the coveralls and shower thong sandals they'd given me when I was revived, a plastic bag holding a three-pack of disposable socks and underwear, and a pad of middle passage travel vouchers that'd take me home, if I wanted to go there. I wasn't sure I did, and the more I thought about it, the less it appealed.

I found the nearest bar, and when I did, there was a table with half a dozen guys staring morosely at their drinks, also wearing coveralls and shower thongs. One looked up. “You too, huh? Pull up a chair. We're just talking about what the frak we're all gonna do next....”

(Author's note - This is obviously a "campaign opener" that explains how the PC group might have come together, consisting of people from multiple services who have few initial possessions, little knowledge of the system they have been woken up in, and are at a loose end)