Star Valor

The farmhouse was roughly 1,800 kilometers north of the base, nestled among the rugged hills of an Israeli town named Ibtin. The home had been in Caleb's family for three generations. The Waxmans took great pride in their little piece of Judaica, and Caleb was sure that he--or one of his brothers---would carry on the tradition. Save for the trio of mini satellite dishes that had been mounted on the roof twelve years earlier, the place had stayed the same for as long as he could remember. Sure, Dad would have the house painted now and then, change the flower beds, put the light-pink impatiens here and there, the darker pink begonias there, but he was a man who lived for stability and routine.

Presently, however, there were new additions to the house, ones that made Caleb hesitate at the foot of the driveway.

"Something wrong?" Laura asked, smoothing the wrinkles out of her green uniform.

He took another look at the yellow ribbons tied to the front porch. "I guess I was kinda hoping to tell them myself. They must've talked to Michael's father..."

They were but halfway up the drive when the porch's screen door flew open. Caleb's 14-year-old brother Avi ran across the porch, disregarded the steps and jumped onto the concrete, shouting, "Caleb! Caleb! Mom! Dad! It's Caleb!"

Caleb extended his arms to hug his brother, but he'd forgotten that Avi was at that age where hugs are just not acceptable manly behavior.

Grinning ear to ear, Avi grabbed his hand and gave him a thumbs-up shake. "I told everybody at school how you're gonna be a pilot up there," he said, tilting his head to the sky.

A figure appeared behind the screen door and lingered there. Though the person was mostly cast in shadow, Caleb knew it was Mom. Slowly, the door opened and she slid from behind it. She crossed to the edge of the porch and stood at the top of the steps, grabbing a round wooden column for support. She had likely just come from work, as she was still clad in office attire that accented her grace and sophistication. Yet now, Caleb had trouble picturing her as anything else but a pale mother sadly seeing her boy as a man for the first time.

He released Avi's hand and moved towards her. He climbed the steps, and before she could say anything, she pulled his head to her shoulder. She trembled, and he thought she might cry.

The screen door opened once again. Caleb looked up and saw his father. "Mom, Dad, Avi. This is my friend, Laura Levenberg."

Laura smiled. "It's a pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. Waxman."

Avi jogged back to Laura and gave her the once-over. "You're a pilot, too, right?"

"I am," said Laura.

"Dinner's almost ready," his mother said, and doing a poor job of disguising the fact that she was choked up, she turned from him and headed back into the house.

Caleb rose onto the porch, took his father's hand and shook it. "I was gonna give you a rock I pocketed on Mars, but it never got through quarantine."

Dad's lips came together. He'd never seen the man more doleful. "Why don't you come in."

He stood there, not following his father but thinking twice about complying. It was safe to guess that the entire visit was going to be a gloomy, depressing reminder of just how much his parents despised his decision to join the IDF. All his life Caleb had shunned conflicts. When his parents had fought, he had run into his room and hidden beneath his bed. He was too old for that now, figuratively and literally., but the same desire to flee persisted.

Caleb came onto the porch, and though he knew she could read the tension in his family, she didn't seem moved by it. She gestured with her head towards the door.

Before they could enter, Joop, Caleb's 17-year-old middle brother, came out with an expression of deep concern.

"Hey, Joop. Laura, this is my brother, Joop."

Joop put his back to the wooden door, blocking their entrance. "The TV said we're about to begin another battle," he uttered gravely.

Caleb exchanged a dire look with Laura. They went inside, heading swiftly for the television.

In the spacious living room, Laura, Caleb, and his brothers sat on the sofa before the 162-centimeter flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. A special news report was on. A female reporter stood before a hangar that was swarmed with activity. "I'm here at the U.N. Task Force H.Q at Jaffa, Israel, receiving the latest reports of the mobilization of the Russian Moskva starship carrier. They have joined the battle lines with the French carrier Talleyrand and the I.N.S. Agrof Halle.

Joop picked up the remote and thumbed down the sound. "I heard the alien fighters are made of an unknown metal. That we can't harm it."

"They only started reverse engineering the one we found. That's just a rumor," Caleb said, keeping his gaze on the screen. The picture switched between the too-pretty anchor in the studio and the reporter in the field, and for the moment Caleb was glad Joop had killed the sound; he could live without the banal questions posed by the anchor.

"Michael's brother told us...."

Caleb's glare cut off Joop's sentence at the roots. He rose and started out of the room, listening to their voices behind him.

"Don't worry," Laura told Joop. "This time we'll beat them."

"How do you know?" Avi asked.

"Because this time they're going up against the 238th, the Sharks. They'll knock the enemy into Andromeda."

But Laura didn't sound too sure of that herself.

Turning down an old, welcoming hall, Caleb found the bathroom and locked himself inside. He put his face close to the mirror, trying to see if his pain was visible. He looked all right. He remembered when he and Zara had stood before the same mirror. They had told each other how they were the perfect heights for each other, she slightly shorter than him. Yes, they'd been the perfect couple.

Only a spirit stood with him now.

He left the bathroom and went into the kitchen. Dad stood at the stove, stirring his lentil stew with a wooden spoon. Mom was at the cupboard, taking out glasses and placing them on the counter. Caleb went to the table and fell into a chair. "Any word?"

Dad didn't look back at him. "Zara's father was told it had been.....hard to......identify the bodies. They don't know, Caleb."

Out of the corner of his eye, Caleb thought he saw someone move into the dark dining room adjoining the kitchen. Probably Joop or Avi spying.

Mom took a plate from the cupboard. She brought it down towards the counter then suddenly smashed it to pieces. Collapsing onto her elbows she was fraught with more pain than Caleb had ever seen in her before. But she still held it inside. Dad went to her, slid his arm over her shoulders. She wrenched away from him.

Caleb's heart raced from guilt. He had to say something and blurted out, "There was nothing I could do!"

"Why didn't you consult us, Caleb?" Dad shot back.

"Because I knew what you would have said. And I didn't want to hear it. I enlisted because I was forced to."

Mom erupted, coming to him and beating her fist on the table. "No....No....Now you are forced to!"

Caleb closed his eyes and flinched but held his seat. He didn't have the guts to look at her. "As a colonist, you never would have seen me again---so I don't know what difference it makes."

"At least you'd be alive!"

"You don't know that!"

"Your mother means that as a colonist your life would have been about making life, not taking it," Dad explained, his tone a notch more composed than Mom's but still nowhere near normal.

With courage and the justification to back it up, Caleb opened his eyes and regarded father. "So, now it's about saving lives. Yours, Mom's, Zara's...."

"Son, you can't seriously believe she's still alive."

"I have to believe!"

He hated the moment almost as much as he did the aliens. Nowhere to run. He needed to run. Get away. Go. Leave this alone. Run. Run. Run.

Mom took a step away, as if he had some contagious disease. "You joined the military on a chance? You're willing to die for a possibility?"

Caleb was chilled by the coincidence of her choice of words. Was there some odd fate waving its hand over them? It was true that she likely knew him better than anyone, even Zara, but was that enough to account for what she had said?

He'd never know, but at least there was one certainty: he would--no matter what---cling to the chance that Zara might still be alive.

Somehow, he had to explain his reasoning to Mom. Somehow. "The tanks had thrown me off. The IDF was my only chance to get to her." Seeing their disapproving glares sent him bolting to his feet. His chair threatened to fall but didn't. "And if there's a chance that giving my life will get her back..."

"Caleb, you don't know that means; 'giving your life'," Dad interrupted. "It just a fancy way of saying you're willing to get yourself killed!"

"Dad, I've seen these things we're at war with...."

"No!"

He couldn't believe what he was hearing! Parental cliches! Rhetoric! He shouted, "These aliens massacred hundreds of...."

Mom grabbed the pocket of his shirt. "Nothing is worth dying for!"

About to scream back at his mother, Caleb froze as Laura materialized from the gloom of the dining room. She had trouble meeting anyone's gaze, likely feeling like an intruder.

"There's something I'd die for," she said, a hint of longing creeping into her voice. "I'd give my life for a chance to argue with my parents." She slipped back into the darkness, leaving behind a stunned Caleb.

As Mom and Dad hung limp in the silence she had created, Caleb moved to the counter, dropped to one knee, and started picking up pieces of the dish. He felt Mom's hand come to rest on the back of his head.

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After supper, Caleb and Laura went to see Zara's father, who lived a few kilometers away. Dad loaned him the YL-37, a new, sporty version of the old model family transport. Caleb still thought of the new model as a large, battery-wasting boat.

Despite the circumstances, Zara's dad greeted them warmly at the door and invited them in for a glass of wine. He seated them in his den and switched off the TV, saying, "We don't need any more bad news."

The man had changed. Notice of his daughter's possible death had leeched away the color in his cheeks, robbed him of the desire to shave, and had made his eyes seem as if they hadn't been closed for a week. He'd lost weight, too, the fat hanging down perhaps only as far as it used to. He scratched his chest through a heavily wrinkled shirt, then went off to fetch them some glasses and a bottle of California wine.

"We're not staying long," Caleb assured Laura.

"We can stay as long as you want, I won't mind," she said. "I know this is important to you."

He thought of her overhearing his fight with his parents. "I wish you hadn't...."

"Don't be embarrassed. And I owe you an apology. I feel like a jerk. I shouldn't have said anything."

Caleb summoned all of his sincerity. "I'm glad you did. And besides. Now we're even."

Her brow lowered and puzzlement.

"You know about my past and I know about yours that night you hit Berkson--"

"You were up?"

He nodded. And she understood.

Zara's dad returned, served them their wine, and lowered himself with a grown into an easy chair in which he now probably spent most of his time. He wasn't drinking, just repeatedly, staring at the remote in his hand as he ran an index finger over it. He just shut off the TV, yet it was obvious that the device was his only link to the knowledge of whether Zara had lived or died. Certainly, someone from the Tammuz complex would call him, but that call would most assuredly arrive after a list of the dead was already read on the news. Tammuz mission security and confidentiality would fail because too many people wanted to know. Corruption at Tammuz would be as bad as it was in Jerusalem.

"If you want the TV back on that fine," Caleb said.

Zara's dad looked relieved. "I'll keep the volume low.....so we can talk."

Caleb swallowed. "I really only have one thing to say, sir. I just....wish I had been with her when they'd attacked. I know it's not my fault, but I feel like I abandoned her. I tried to stow away, but they caught me. And so, she went alone. She was going to live our dream for both of us. And I was going to meet up with her....somehow."

"Do you remember when my wife died?" Zara's father asked Caleb.

"I guess I was about 17. That was about the time I met Zara."

"You two weren't married, but you felt something that a lot of married people don't feel. And that something was torn away from you, the same way it was when I lost my wife." He leaned forward, setting down the remote on the arm of his chair and bringing his hands together. "You don't get over it. And now---maybe---I've lost Zara, too."

Laura rose. "I need to..."

"Down the hall on your left," Zara's father said.

They watched Laura leave, then Caleb said solemnly, "I'll try to find her."

"You know what I want most from you?"

"No."

Zara's father got out of his chair, went down on his knees before Caleb, took both of Caleb's hands in his own and squeezed them until it hurt. He spoke slowly, and there was a sudden ferocity in his voice. "I want you to go out there and bring these vermin to their knees. Get them for getting her."

"We still don't know she's dead," Caleb insisted.

The old man let out a shivery sigh. "I'm beginning to give up hope. So now I'm going to put my hope in you, the hope that you'll kill as many of them as you can, until they've killed you."

Laura came from the hall and stopped, her eyes widening at the sight of Zara's father on his knees. She looked lost, not knowing whether or not she should enter the den. Then Zara's father saw her. Pretending nothing was wrong, he returned to his chair.

"Ready?" Caleb asked her.

"Yup."

They told Zara's father that they'd see themselves out. They left the broken man in his chair, his drawn face cast in the flickering glow of the TV.

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Star Valor

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