This began as another Prompt Challenge I wrote for with the stated theme of Revolutionary! It had a word count limit of 2500 and a word bank that included: cripple, martyr, sanctify, turmoil, renegade, catharsis, anger, strike, brave and red- once again, I have no idea if I used four out of the ten words for the original prompt, but some of them should be in here somewhere.
I posted the original response to this over on r/HFY if you’re interested in comparing and contrasting— but after writing the first draft, it stuck in my head a little bit. I wanted to flesh it out a bit more, so I did some polishing up and added some things here and there, I am very happy to present When You Go Down To The Woods.
~~~
Admiral Emma Chenitz grimaced as she leaned back in the chair rubbed her tired eyes and began the arduous process of getting feeling back into her hands. The report was done. The Diplomatic Corps would just have to be happy with it because there was no way these hands of hers would be able to do anymore. Not until after lunch at least. She tried to massage away the pain in her hands, hoping that she would avoid another trip to the med bay, but knowing that she probably wouldn’t.
She turned her chair away from the desk, leaning back and stretching. She turned more until her eyes fell on her uniform jacket, festooned with medals and citations she had won over the years. The damn jacket weighed a ton with all the extra hardware she had all over it, but her diplomatic briefing for her last mission had been clear: the more medals and titles you had, the more the great Galactic Imperium would respect you. So, she had pinned every last one of them to her uniform jacket.
Five Star Admiral of the Fleet, Liberator of Daruja, Champion of Altair, Holder of the Harrington Key, Noble Companion of the Correlan Legion of Honor, Galactic Republic Order of Merit, Star of Deneb, Knight Commander of the Order of The Chilmax Berry- that last one was a favorite of hers at it had involved eating a pie after the ceremony was complete. But there were too many to count, too many to remember and what had it all been for? A preposterous-looking jacket? Tiresome diplomatic missions to the ass end of the galaxy?
“Face it, you’re just old,” she said aloud the empty cabin. Not for the first time, she wondered why she had volunteered for this mission. Go, they said, establish diplomatic relations with the great Galactic Imperium. Make sure they’re not, you know, swearing vengeance against the Republic for overthrowing their Imperial cousins of the Great Galactic Empire. Go, ha! If only it had been that simple: the fastest picket ship in the Republic fleet had taken two months to get to the wormhole nexus on the very edge of known space and after transiting through the wormhole, it had been the diplomatic dog and pony show for the better part of a year.
Emma sighed heavily. She was on her way home now. They had sent someone to fetch her, dropping off an Ambassador with credentials and all the trimming to inhabit the shiny new embassy they had secured on New Byzantium. She couldn’t help the nagging feeling that it was little more than busy work, jobs they could pawn off on the old lady. Pack her off to the back end of the galaxy for a while on a diplomatic mission. Send her somewhere where she won’t be any trouble and her opinions would require a fast picket and a lengthy transit time before they made it back to headqu-
An alarm began to blare and she glanced up in irritation. “Alert, alert,” a mechanical voice said. “All hands to stations, set condition yellow throughout the ship. Alert, alert,” the message began to repeat. Emma heaved herself to her feet, groaning at the pain in her knees. She grabbed the table for support for a moment before straightening herself up and walking over to the uniform jacket, which, with an effort, she slipped her arms into. She fastened it, grimacing at the weight of it before she grabbed her cane and made her way slowly to the door to her quarters.
The doors hissed open and she glanced out into the hallway, curious as to what would have tripped the condition yellow. People were walking briskly to their stations, but no one was rushing, there was no frantic energy in the air. “Maybe it’s a drill.” Emma thought to herself and stepped out into the hallway and made her way down the hallway to the bridge. The doors hissed open and-
“Charge our phaser banks and get torpedoes loaded in tubes one and two,” Captain Vanroek said crisply. “If this ship so much as twitches at me, I’m going to blow it straight to hell, do you understand? We can’t-”
“What’s going on?” Emma asked, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the cacophony of the bridge. The bosun shot to her feet, raising the whistle to announce her, but she waved her away. “At ease, sailor. No need for that. Captain?”
A flash of irritation passed over Vanroek’s face so quickly that Emma almost missed it and had to bite her tongue to keep from smiling. She had been where Vanroek was sitting a time or two over the years. Carting around Admirals was always a pain in the ass when you were a Captain. Running your ship was a hard enough job without some crust-bucket old fart of an Admiral second-guessing your every move. As a Captain, Emma had always hated it, but now she was an Admiral, and sometimes the rank came in handy.
“Admiral Chenitz, I didn’t know-”
“I’m two doors down from the bridge, Captain,” Emma replied, sounding amused. “I got curious when we went to condition yellow.”
“A new contact, coming out of hyperspace-”
“It’s closing fast,” the ops officer put in.
“Do you have a visual?” Emma asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Vanroek said and gestured to the ops officer, who nodded and pressed a series of buttons on his console. “I thought defensive measures would be at least prudent-”
“Belay that,” Emma replied, staring past her as the visual of the ship popped up on the viewscreen. She let out a long, low whistle. “It’s been ages since I’ve seen one of them.”
“Captain, tactical is reporting gunports are primed and ready to open-”
“No,” Emma said, sharply. “Keep them closed.”
“Admiral,” Vanroek said, urgently. “If they do have hostile-”
Emma stepped forward, leaning heavily on her cane until she was close enough so that only Vanroek could hear her. “Captain,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to bigfoot you on your bridge, so, please… stand down.”
Vanroek met her eyes for a long moment before she finally nodded. “Tell tactical to stand down,” she ordered. “And stand us down from condition yellow.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Emma said, raising her voice to a normal speaking level. “With your permission, I’d like a channel open. Audio only.”
“So ordered,” Vanroek said.
The Comms Officer turned. “Channel is open, Admiral.”
Emma took a deep breath and then spoke in a language that none of them recognized, taking care to enunciate each word and speak as clearly as possible. There was a long pause and then: “Privetstvuyu vas i vash klan, voin Chenitz.”
Emma smiled at that. “Bezopasnykh puteshestviy i udachnoy okhoty,” she replied.
Silence. Then, in heavily accented Galactic standard: “To you, as well.” Then, the channel cut off. There was a stunned silence on the bridge until Emma chuckled and, turning away from the viewscreen made her way back towards the bridge doors. “Well, that’s enough excitement for today.”
“Admiral…” Vanroek said, sinking back into her chair. “What… were they? And did they know your name?”
Emma turned a look of surprise on her face. “You mean you didn’t know? Ursus astra, that there, sailors,” she nodded toward the viewscreen, “was a genuine ship of the Star Bears of Poloskaya.”
“But the Star Bears are a myth!” The comms officer protested.
“You want to call them back and tell them that?” Emma grinned as the comms officer shook her head vigorously. “Didn’t think so.” She kept walking and was almost to the bridge doors when Vanroek asked again: “But, Admiral… you still haven’t told us how they knew your name?”
“Oh, that?” Emma didn’t turn around. “That’s a long story, Captain.”
“Our friends are moving off and we don’t have anything on our screens until we get to the next hyperspace nexus to jump home,” Vanroek replied, glancing at the ops officer, who nodded in confirmation.
“And Chief Engineer Hong will be running diagnostics on our engines for at least another two hours, Admiral,” the ops officer added, nodding towards the empty chair.
Emma grinned. “You sailors want a story, huh? Well,” she slowly made her way over to the engineering station, where she sat down with relief, leaning her cane against the console. “Once upon a time, in the deep woods, on a planet far, far away…”
~
When Emma Chenitz dreamed, it was often of Daruja on that final, bloody day. The Citadel of Daruja, ahead of her, where the Emeperor’s Viceroy ruled her planet with an iron fist. She came with fire in the sky, as their airships pounded the imperial positions from above. The Citadel’s ion defense shields were blazing with green light as they tried to absorb the power of their bombardment.
Her friends were behind her, it was nice to see them alive again. Ameera with her laser rifle (dead, thanks to a pulse grenade when they stormed the lines on New Berlin), XH-50 their battle droid, (torn apart by an Imperial mecha on the fifth moon of New Vega), and Luther in his red cloak, swinging his laser axe with deadly precision (dead all too soon at the hands of the Viceroy herself).
Emma’s eyes blazed with fire as she pointed up towards the Citadel. This was for her family, Mata, Papa, her sister Missy, and brother John, all dead at the hands of Imperial troopers. Revenge would be hers. Daruja would be free. And she would-
“Chenitz!” Her eyes snapped open and she started as she saw the grizzled face of Commander Denison above her.
“Up and at ‘em, soldier,” Denison growled. “You’ve got the first watch.”
“Yes, sir,” Emma said. Denison ducked out of the tent and she heard him start waking the others. Emma stretched to the left and the right and then, with a groan, placed her hands on her knees and pushed herself upright. Before she slipped her boots on, she smoothed out her uniform trousers and adjusted the jacket, lifting her arms to give an experimental sniff. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. It was time for a shower. Even a sonic one would do, but Denison had them all sleeping rough on this mission, whatever it was.
She slipped on her boots, tapping the boot heel onto the ground to activate the fasteners. With a sigh, she slung her rifle over her shoulder, pushed the tent flap open, and stepped out into the early morning mist.
“You’re not in Daruja anymore,” Emma whispered to herself.
The planet didn’t have a name, only a designation: AR-453212 on the rebel star charts. They were deep in a forest somewhere on its northernmost landmass. Their shuttle was a black monolith, squatting next to a river. Emma had no idea what they were doing here. Commander Denison wasn’t telling them much, in fact-
“Chenitz!” He bellowed and she jumped again, spinning around and straightening to a salute. Mazer and Knowles had emerged from their respect tents, looking as exhausted and unkempt as she felt.
Denison pointed upstream. “Get across the bridge and up to where that creek empties into the river. Mazer, you head that way-” he pointed in the opposite direction, “And find a place to keep watch. You two are our sentries.”
“What about us, Commander?” Knowles asked
“You and Mazer stay here at the bridge. You’ll take the second watch,” Denison said. “Let me know if anyone approaches to make contact. I’ll be on the shuttle.”
“Aye, Commander,” Emma replied. She slung her rifle over her back and strolled across the bridge to begin picking her way through the brush toward the creek. Another day of sentry duty on this miserable planet and Emma struggled to control her anger. The galaxy was in turmoil as Republican forces battled Imperial forces for control. They seemed to be losing one week and winning the next. A constant cycle of two steps forward, one step back and she was here on this backward planet instead of out there, fighting.
But that was the problem with fighting across an entire galaxy. She was the Liberator of Daruja and back on Daruja that meant a lot. When she left to join the fight against the Empire, she found that hadn’t meant much of anything at all. There were a lot of planets out there and plenty of them had liberators of their own. Back home, she had meant something. Out here, she was just one of many.
Reaching her destination, she found a spot near the edge of the creek and sat down in the short grass, rifle across her lap. It was the lack of color, Emma decided as she looked around. They hadn’t been on this planet long enough to figure out how the seasons worked, but it felt like they were heading towards winter. Slowly, with every passing day, color was draining out of the landscape. The grasses were becoming beige and then brown. The trees either looked like conifers that would keep their leaves or in the process of shedding them already.
“Maybe, I shouldn’t be here,” Emma whispered to the creek. She was shocked that she could say the words out loud, but it wasn’t that surprising. A uniform had never been part of her plan. And for all her frustrations with the Republic and its bureaucracy and being sent on seemingly useless missions, far away from the actual fighting, Daruja hadn’t been much better.
Her planet had been ripe for the picking, its internal politics toxic and petty ideological fights obscuring from the citizenry that the government wasn’t doing much of anything at all. The Empire’s conquest had been all too easy and even then, Emma hadn’t cared much. She had just wanted to be left alone, to make a life for herself as best she could. The Empire, however, had different plans. Emma had buried her mother, father, and two sisters. Then, she had braided, her long red hair, said a puja to the Gods, set her house alight, and turned away, vowing to never look back.
Looking back down the creek, she could see Knowles and Mazer on the bridge. Mazer was raising what looked like a fishing pole above his head and Emma had to smile. Mazerr was always talking about how much he loved to fish and now he was going to actually get to try his luck here. Whether there were any fish in the river was another question entirely, but Mazer didn’t care. All he wanted to do was fish.
A part of Emma envied him for that. She was tired. She didn’t have anything else in her, except for the struggle and even that seemed-
The sound of the stick breaking made her glance up and that’s when she saw the bear.
It was young, not much older than a cub, and as soon as it saw her, it froze as well, that’s when she saw the pack attached to its back, and then their eyes met and she was shocked when she saw intelligence staring back at her.
“P-p-please, two legs, will you help me?”
Emma scrambled upright, grip tightening on her rifle.
“Two legs,” the bear said in broken Galactic standard. “I mean you no harm. I am… posslanik… I bring… information,” the bear pronounced every syllable of the last word very carefully.
“Oh, you’re a messenger?” Emma asked.
“Yes, yes, two legs,” the bear replied. “That is the word.”
Emma turned and waved to attract Mazer’s attention. She grinned because Mazer was wrestling with his makeshift fishing pole, trying to reel something in. Knowles saw her though and she turned to point at the bear. She cupped her hands and called, “Let Commander Denison know and get me a medkit.”
Knowles nodded and began walking back towards the shuttle. Emma turned back to the bear. “How badly are you hurt?”
The bear, grimacing, held up a paw and she could see that it was mangled badly and still bleeding. She hissed in sympathy. “That looks nasty. What did it?”
“A trap,” the bear growled. Then, shockingly, it whimpered. “My mother, she… freed me before the hunters came.”
Emma couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for the bear. She slung her rifle across her back and moved down the creek a little bit to a point she thought was narrow enough to jump across. She eyed it for a moment, hoping she wasn’t misjudging the distance and then she jumped across. She landed awkwardly, nearly losing her balance, but recovered and scrambled up the opposite bank to reach the bear. She knelt beside it.
“I’m Emma,” she said. “Emma Chenitz. Can I…” she gestured at the injured paw. The bear held it up gingerly and she very gently took it into her hand and examined it. “There doesn’t look to be anything stuck in there. When my friend… gets here, we will be able to do more but now,” she reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled open the simple med kit she carried. “This might sting a little, but it should help clean it out some until we can get a bandage on it.”
“I am strong, two-legs,” the bear replied. “Do what you need to do.”
Emma took a deep breath and pulled out the packet of med powder. She tore the packet open and, taking the injured paw in her hand, sprinkled the powder liberally across the wounds. The bear flinched but held firm and met her eyes without blinking. “Thank you, voin Chenitz.My mother was a Clan Leader. You will be richly rewarded for helping me.”
~
“And you know what? I’ll be damned if that bear wasn’t telling the truth. His mother was a Clan Leader. Our mission was actually to make contact with the Star Bears and see if they would join the alliance. The Republic hadn’t committed a lot of effort to it, because all they were hearing were stories. Legends and tall tales about that sector of space. No piracy, because of the Star Bears. The Empire wouldn’t go near that sector, because of the Star Bears. They had a fleet of ships that could take on anybody and did so frequently, but the catch was,” Emma leaned forward. “No one had ever seen a Star Bear in person.”
“Until you met them?” Vanroek asked, breaking the respectful silence on the bridge.
Emma nodded. “I didn’t know who I was meeting or just how valuable they would be to The Republic of course. I just saw a bear, asking for help and I helped,” she shrugged. “You would think that bandaging up a paw wouldn’t be that monumental, but as it turned out, it was enough to get them to agree to help us.”
“And did they?” The ops officer asked.
“They sure did,” Emma grinned. “Anyone do Military History at the Academy? The seminar with Professor D’Taxa?”
Wincing, the comms officer raised her hand.
Emma straightened and pitched her voice to a high squawk. “What turned the tide in the final battle of Vega Prime?” She asked in a passable imitation of the infamous avian Professor. Chuckles ran around the bridge.
“A fleet of dreadnoughts,” the comms officer replied. “The Ghost Fleet, they’ve come to be called. No one knew where they came from or why, but they were decisive. They broke the back of the Imperial Fleet and let us break through the last line of defenses.”
“Ursus Astra,” Emma finished. “They came with the Republic needed them. So, remember sailors, if you find yourselves down in the woods one day and you meet a bear that needs help, help them. The Gods have a special providence for fools, drunkards, this Galactic Republic of ours, and people who are kind to bears.”