She was the best tactical officer I ever had. I say that, knowing I'm biased. But I truly think she was. What was so great about her? Well, her smile, her... oh, you meant the tactical officer part. She could identify the weak point in an enemy ship we'd never encountered before within fifteen seconds or so. She just had a knack for that. Now, I'm not going to say we had to shoot all of those weak spots, but I always trusted her gut on that, and the few times we did have to shoot, she didn't lead me wrong.
Jenna Starsmyth-Kennedy. Her name was a real mouthful. That was her birth name, mind you. When she married Kalani Iona, she didn't take his last name. I never had any indication he took that personally. Professionally, it wound up being a prudent move on Jenna's part. Everybody knew who Kalani was after the Vorchon Incident, but unless you knew much about his personal life, you'd never tie him to Jenna.
She was part of the first generation born out among the stars. Her mother changed her last name from "Smith" to "Starsmyth" because why not? You strike out into the galaxy, you're bound to have a little bit of ego about it. Her father was... well, he was a Kennedy, obviously. He didn't see any good reason to change that.
A tall blonde, I suppose you'd consider her a stereotype in terms of what I'm attracted to. I'm not going to describe her body in detail. These are modern times. She was an attractive lady, I'll just say that. Her name and file made her sound like a real ballbreaker, but when I first met her I realized she just meant business. She considered herself a professional and conducted herself like one. She wasn't big on personal connections on the job. This all must sound like I'm leading up to saying I had the hots for her, which I guess is true. I wasn't in love with her. I've only had that particular experience twice in my life. Besides, she was married. How was that gonna go? I'm not a homewrecker, even on my worst day. On top of that, I was her CO. I broke enough policies that I didn't need to add one more.
I never gave even the slightest hint how I felt, though. Believe it or not, I also know how to be a professional. I'm just trying to tell a story here.
I say I wasn't in love with her but I won't lie, it fucked me up when my ship was destroyed and I thought she was gone with it. I loved the rest of my crew but she was the one I found myself actually grieving for. Would I say that to the press after my court martial? Absolutely not. To you? Sure. Write it in your journal, post it on Reddit for all I care. What are they going to do, come back in time and lock me up? That other me might, but the Terran Alliance won't.
So, she survived the destruction of the Protector, as did most of my crew, thank God. Escape capsule and small support craft managed to get away from the ship before it went kaboom. The Oolians who'd been relocated from their cruiser quickly summoned another ship to help. They weren't nearly as mad as you would expect; for some reason they aren't prone to aggression. Hard to imagine, considering they were once supposedly enslaved and successfully mounted a revolt swept through the entire empire that oppressed them.
In any case, Jenna rode out the rest of the war behind a desk, and decided her last brush with death was simply one too many. She mustered out. Kalani tried to keep on keeping on, but his heart wasn't in the Diplomatic Corps anymore, either. The First Koraxian War was over, the dust had already settled from the Vorchon Incident, and the Terran Alliance set about rebuilding losses from the war.
Jenna and Kalani went back to Baltimore, where they kept a rowhouse that they almost never got to see up to that point. It would be reasonable to guess that they settled down and started having kids. You would be wrong. The two of them were restless, all right, but not for family. Kalani decided to return to his first love: Hawai'i.
I'm not a historian and I won't pretend to be one right now. I might pretend to be one later. What I do know is that very little of Hawai'i's association with the United States of America was particularly voluntary, especially early on. Lots of people say the islands were made a colony of the United States against their will, and certainly without the overall will of the indigenous residents. The islands were annexed in fact before they were claimed in law. What else can you say about a country that was forced to give American colonists voting rights over how it was run, up to the point where a US-backed coup overthrew the local government and swiftly moved to join the rapidly-growing USA?
Kalani knew his history and he was none too happy about it. Having lost the sense of purpose being a diplomat gave him, he returned to what I suppose were his roots as a young agitator. He and Jenna went to the islands when a fresh round of protests broke out. The Terran Alliance isn't the United States of America, mind you, and the USA didn't even exist at the time the Terran Alliance was formed, but the indigenous consensus was largely that the Terran Alliance was conceived as a successor state of the prior North Atlantic order, with Brazil and China added to the mix to make it seem more legitimate. The Alliance technically had jurisdiction over the whole planet, but not every country on Earth necessarily respected its authority. It was just that few had the means to fight the so-called "world government," and the injustices and oppressions that had led to this state of affairs in the first place were far from reconciled or removed.
This put Kalani in the odd position of protesting the government he'd once vociferously represented. I can't say he was wrong to do so. Jenna certainly went along with him, though I don't know for sure what her real thoughts were about it. What I do know is what happened next: the crackdown came, cops caved Kalani's skull in with a club, and he didn't do any protesting after that. Neither did much of anyone else, frankly. Justice would have to wait another hundred years or so.
I'm not overstating what happened to Kalani. The poor guy was wrecked pretty bad by that. He just wasn't the same. Lost a lot of his ability to speak, major mobility issues, memory problems, mood swings. There was a settlement that covered most of his needs, only because of his name recognition and I guess somebody, somewhere felt bad about the whole Vorchon deal.
Jenna couldn't take it, though. I only know that because she left.
What?? That's shitty.
People are shitty! People do shitty things all the time. I don't know what I would do in her situation and I don't feel qualified to judge. I've never been married, but I have to think that if I signed up to marry somebody, I'm doing it with certain expectations about what that will be like. The whole "in sickness and in health, 'til death do us part" business is so antiquated. It's a prison. People change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes it's not their fault. Sometimes you don't know what you can really handle until you're in the thick of it, and then you realize you just can't, and you need an exit. My brother told me that Kalani didn't seem all that bitter about it. He met a nice lady in Baltimore, another recovering Diplomatic Corps officer, and I hear they've been pretty happy.
As for Jenna, her next chapter was a lot stranger than I would've guessed. OK, "strange" is the wrong word. Not trying to stigmatize anybody here. It's not what I would have expected. And maybe I'm a little bit jealous, to be honest.
Oh, come on, spill it!
She married this woman and moved to Tennessee and now they have three kids and something like forty farm animals. I never would have pictured her bottle-feeding goats with her wife but life takes you to some weird places.
You really do sound jealous.
I don't think I'm jealous that someone else has her, if that's what you mean. Not to imply any possessiveness, either. Gloria is a lovely person, from what I've heard. She softens Jenna a bit. Probably what she needs after everything else. No, what I'm jealous of is that she got a happy ending. She figured out what she wanted in life and now she's got it, even if it took a few false starts to get there. I don't see how helping birth calves is more riveting than punching holes in Cranion battleships, but that's just me. Gloria is hot, though. I do get that part.
Has anyone ever told you you objectify women a lot?
Mostly women tell me that, yes. I'm sorry. The sensitivity training we got at the Academy didn't work on me, I suppose. I'm doubly a relic, too. Triply? I'm old as shit, for one thing. I played out my career 80 or so years from now. Now I'm in this era, feeling like I don't belong, either. It's funny to say that, knowing I've been in this time period almost half my life now. But what I see is this world changing from the world I grew accustomed to when I got here, into the world it will become that I'll be born into. There are good and bad things about that. I haven't decided where the balance lies.
You said she got a happy ending, but your story stops after she settles down. You don't know what happened after that?
If you're asking if I have the ability to find out how she died: yes. Have I done that? No. I like keeping her memory in stasis. She's living out her picturesque lesbian farm life and that's just fine. I don't need to know what happens after that. It would just upset me, I'm sure.
There's a recurring theme of you avoiding closure. Have you ever noticed that?
What, are you my therapist now? Go on back down to the coffee shop and see how much the customers there like your psychoanalysis. I've had enough for today.