Survivor Guilt

Posted on 30 Dec 2021 @ 11:00am by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kala Marika

630 words; about a 3 minute read

Personal logs have always been a boring way to explain what I did the last month, any new jobs, grumble about bosses, subordinates, that jazz. This time though, I don't know how to explain this.

The USS Trial has been my home almost since I left the fleet yards to go work in the field, they made me a senior engineer almost immediately because I knew ships like the Trial inside and out, how she was put together, from rivets (yes they still use those in a place or two) to welds to you name it, I helped design or install the damn things, supervised teams of engineers build them. Which is why I quickly found myself a shift supervisor.

But that's not really the point of this log entry, the point of this one, is what happened that day we were attacked, why I don't sleep well. Space is dangerous, there is no question, even in the relative safety of space dock it's dangerous, and we've lost people to accidents while working on ships. But in space under combat conditions, it's going to happen.

So we were under attack, things were not going well, the master display was lit up like a christmas tree and damage control teams were all over the ship fighting a dozen fires or hull breaches. Then the abandon ship order came over the horn. We've practiced the drill a dozen times, down the aft corridor, pick your closest side, thirty foot sprint and you are there. So when the order came through, I grabbed two officers who were with me and we booked it.

I've done the drill a million times, and I'm sure the two cadets with me had as well. Okay technically they weren't cadets but they were newly minted ensigns, first cruise, and still getting used to not calling me ma'am. So we were almost there, twenty feet if that. We're so close that I'm not thinking, they're behind me, we're seconds from safety, we can do this.

I hear and feel the explosion behind me, an EPS feed ruptured, blew out part of a bulkhead, showered my two young charges in debris. They're both injured, the young trill girl is helping her crewmate, an equally young caitian male. They're getting close, so close, almost there, you can make it. I turn to go back and help them...

The corridor erupts in flame, another EPS conduit ruptured, they were in the path of the flames, there was nothing I could do, EPS plasma burns at a temperature that will melt duranium, humanoid bodies don't fare well, at all. I don't recall much after that, I got to the escape pod, left the ship with the image of two young officers cut down in their prime, and the person assigned to shepherd and protect them, I get away without so much as a scratch.

I've been around this universe long enough to know that life deals us bad hands and we roll with them every single day, but this, this is not fucking fair. Two young officers, bright eyed and bushy tailed (in one case at least) die while me, the gnarled cyncical vet survives. Two steps, literally two steps more and they'd be alive. If I'd been behind them, pushing them, urging them, maybe they'd be alive, maybe that'd be me burning to death, maybe we'd all be dead, I don't know.

And that's the part that eats me the worst, what if? What if I was behind them? What if we'd gone to the other side pods? What if we'd been seconds faster, or seconds slower? A counsellor would argue I'm suffering survivor's guilt, and I probably am, but what I didn't do, could have done differently, eats at me.

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