Our New Year

Goodbye year.

Hello year.

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (13)

We know that sometime within the first fifty years

on Witness

they gave up on guarding the planet 

against an enemy that wasn't ever going to show up

and simply joined the labor force.

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (12)

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (11)

Plumber/Pipe Fitter, Third Shift Maintenance at Erbestall Terminal

 

Witness, Kalizch Stars.
 

Sector 2-H, Windlass Cay.

Calendar approximate 004.8, M42.

Voyage of the Belknap, Year One Thirty-Three.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (10)

Propellant Foreman, Light Gas Refueling Crew

 

Witness, Kalizch Stars.
 

Central Hub, Orbital Dock. St. Pilsner's Gate.

Calendar approximate 005, M42.

Voyage of the Belknap, Year One Thirty-Four.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Christmas

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (9)

These

great-grandchildren. So you

struggle to understand.

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (8)

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (7)

At first, when they reached out to us

. . . these descendants

it wasn't clear where the conversation might begin.

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (6)

Tell me, would you turn from your own because their hearing changed? Or if they became sick in their lungs?

You wouldn't. You'd be compelled to offer assurances.

We find a way to accept.

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (5)

Infection? Perhaps.

Somehow this was also us.

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (Evolution)

A fork in the road.

It's not a decision, simply


you go one way or another.

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (3)

Roughly five generations have passed, but perhaps

more importantly

something has transpired.

Low Watt Beam Operator (Second Class); unknown industry (or labor?) battalion. Witness, Kalizch Stars.
Near the suborbital transportation hub at Port Mikkel. 

Calendar approximate 002, M42.

Voyage of the Belknap, Year One Thirty-One.

 

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic (2)

And then

in the first blush of the New Millennium

the descendants of the 68th were compelled to get in touch
with their families back home on Kalkovac

120 years after the regiment shipped out

for deployment to the Kalizch Stars.

  

The Fate of the 68th Kinetic

It wasn't a narrative that we wished to remember

 so we'd forgotten about them

and their misguided deployment.

That's how these things go.

 

Deployed to Witness (xii)

Deployed to Witness (xi)

Deployed to Witness (x)

This is where it gets weird.

 

Deployed to Witness (ix)

Nobody heard from the garrison

 nothing at all

 

 for a hundred and twenty years.

 

Deployed to Witness (viii)

So the 68th Kinetic landed on Witness, and went about their duties

 (whatever those were)

 and they were promptly forgotten. Just left there.

They didn't send for resupply or refit

no status reports

or briefings

(maybe they didn't know how)

they just stayed there on that planet and went to work.

The whole regiment.

Deployed to Witness (vii)

Out there it's nowhere

in the middle 

of nowhere.

 

Deployed to Witness (vi)

There was no threat to be had, perceived

or otherwise

for three thousand-thousand light years in any direction.
Three thousand millenia.

We're talking about the Udina Sector here, right?

Kalizch Stars, for Grom's sake.

Deployed to Witness (v)

Strange duty for an intelligence unit.

Or whatever they were.

 

Deployed to Witness (iv)

- by reasonable standards a dead-end world, in

a dead-end system

growing genetically modified staplegrains

for no one special.

Deployed to Witness (iii)

It isn't clear why they were assigned career duties

guarding grain storage and cultivators

on Witness

Deployed to Witness (ii)

Deployed to Witness

But deployment amongst the stars is haphazard,

 random

at least

for the regiments from backwater systems

such as

ours.

 

The 68th Kinetic (Witness)

So that by the time

they landed

on Witness

(Udina Sector, Kalizch Stars)

they were three years into their voyage

(somewhere around 874)

 and whatever they envisioned an Intelligence Unit to be

they trained rigorously to become

and had
become.

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

And find their own way they did

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

Spirited,

conciliatory.

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

Contentious

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

The 68th Kinetic

You might say 

they struggled to find their way.

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (21)

Not the 68th Kinetic. They designated themselves

 an Intelligence Unit.

Other ideas.

 

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (20)

In sixty-eight separate expeditions

over three hundred thirty-two years

the regiment from Kalkovac had always sailed as the

302nd Wasteland Reconnaissance

as it has in the 138 years  and twenty-six

expeditions since

 

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (19)

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (18)

They formed on the modified terms of a collective

and named the newly formed,

collective regiment 

the 68th Kinetic Cell

 

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (17)

But left to their own

organic

decision-making

they defied the traditional military model-

 

The Unexpected Sailing Of The Belknap (16)

All by themselves they worked it out.

Editor's Note: The astute reader will note that this entry is the one thousandth post on Guardsman-A-Day.

Thanks for sticking around and seeing this through with me.