The Book that Went to War

Picture it.

Somewhere in Iraq as part of the coalition forces in the Gulf War.

It rained like hell the night before. Despite being covered, Humvees leak like the Titanic after hitting the iceberg. My map case, which contained maps, charting gear, pens, notebooks, and a couple of novels, is soaked.

I’d expected at least part of that to happen and had placed the novels and notepads in large Ziplock bags. The trouble was I’d opened and closed the bags so much, and grim had gotten into the seals, so it wasn’t exactly waterproof anymore.

I discovered that the next morning when I took out the map. It was soaked, and I had to spread it out on the hood of the Humvee to dry. The map was easy. With the heat from the engine and the sun, it dried quickly.

The novels weren’t so lucky.

Before we left Germany for the Gulf, I’d gone down to the bookstore and purchased several novels to read. One of them was the novel Vendetta-The Giant Novel. It was part of a series of novels that Peter David wrote and is based in the Star Trek-The Next Generation universe. I’d carefully put it along with other novels into a Ziplock bag to keep it dry.

And it bounced around in my map case. Been dropped, slung over shoulders, tossed into Humvees, and misused.

Here and there, I could get a chapter or two read, but it would be months before I could read it cover to cover. I really wanted to, but that’s the way it goes.

What I read intrigued me. Let’s flashback to the original series and one of the best episodes of all, The Doomsday Machine. If you’re not familiar with it, the story was dynamite. The Enterprise, while on patrol, finds star systems that have been devastated. The central star is fine, but any planets orbiting it are most times gone. All that remains of them is asteroidal rubble. During their investigation, they discover these devastated systems are more or less in a straight line from outside the galaxy.

They go in the direction it seems to be headed. Ultimately, they come onto a system where several planets are missing, but others are intact. Near where one of the missing planets should be, they encounter the U.S.S. Constellation, one of the Enterprise’s sister ships. She’s been in a horrible fight and mangled beyond belief.

Kirk and a landing party board the ship to find the only person aboard is her Captain, Matt Decker. He reveals an enemy that eats planets attacked them. Badly damaged, they abandoned ship, but the device that attacked them destroyed the planet the crew had beamed down to.

It’s a desperate battle, but the Enterprise crew destroys this device, which Kirk and Spock determine is the remains of a war between two forces. They called this “A Doomsday Machine,” a powerful weapon that could destroy both sides in a fight. They erroneously concluded that it was used, and both sides perished because of it.

They also think it might have come from another galaxy.

Flash forward to Picard at the Academy. He’s been assigned to study and report on the battle against the Doomsday Machine. An interesting side note was in the records he consulted, one of which was Captain Kirk’s logs, stating that it was Matt Decker that drove the Constellation into the machine and destroyed it. In the series, know it was Kirk who drove the Constellation in and was saved seconds before impact.

Conclusion, Kirk falsified his report, so Matt went down in history as a hero.

After giving his report, Picard has a revelation. He realizes the device couldn’t have come from another galaxy. It fed on planets, slicing them up with a force beam and then ingesting the rubble. Since there are no planets in intergalactic space, it would have run out of fuel long before it reached ours. So, it must have come from close by.

Personal note. I suspect there are tens of thousands of rogue planets in the space between galaxies. We see them wandering freely within our own galaxy, so why not outside of it? Don’t have a clue how they’d find them. Now that I threw the theory out there, I was a dollar for everyone they find.

But I’m losing track of the story here.

What Cadet Picard didn’t realize was someone was listening. And that someone had a bone to pick with Picard’s foe, the Borg.

She concluded the planet killer Kirk fought was a mere prototype launched in a desperate bid against the Borg. In Vendetta, she found the full on, finished battleship product.

I won’t give too much away except to say the book would have made one hell of a movie. Much of the book has been made obsolete in Star Trek canon, but it’s still an outstanding read.

But here I was, in the middle of Iraq, and trying to dry myself, my belongings, our Humvee, weapons, and everything in sight, out. As I spread out Vendetta, the cover came off. I picked it up and let it dry out. Later, I put it back on with Scotch tape. That kept things in place for about a week.

Here and there, the toll on the book showed. The flyleaf tore. The cover, now so badly damaged as to be almost unreadable, finally tore in half.

And I still hadn’t finished the book. It had come back from Iraq with me, beat up, but still in the battered plastic bag.

It was in sad shape.

Then I came home on leave.

Flying home commercially was out of the question. As a soldier, I didn’t make that kind of money.

So, I took a military hop. What this involves is traveling to an Air Force base, presenting your leave form and they give you a number. That number is your boarding number for an airplane. When your number comes up, it means there’s space on a transport wherever you’re going and you can ride it.

My platoon daddy forged a leave request for me so I could go sign in “Early.” When I went on leave, my number would be up, and I could get aboard easily.

The day my leave started, I went to the airbase and discovered I was still several numbers away from boarding. So, I figured it was only a matter of time.

When catching a military hop, there are some rules. The first rule is never, ever leave the terminal. There’s unexpected or announced flights always coming in, and you might luck out and get on one. So, this Air Force guy and I teamed up to keep an eye open. One could sleep while the other watched, and that way, we might both get on a flight.

There was a C-5 Galaxy sitting on the runway, and numbers were called. I was two away when they stopped calling numbers. About half an hour later, my number got called. I gave Air Force a copy of The Stand to help stay awake and boarded the Galaxy.

It was the first and only time I’ve ever flown on military transport. I’d paid a whopping ten dollars for the flight, and that entitled me to a box lunch. I’d purchased a couple of bottles of water, nuts, and jerky, and settled back in my seat for the flight. A few minutes later, I left Germany behind.

Flying a C-5 is interesting and in some ways is like flying commercial; in others, not at all.

First, I faced backwards in the plane. Second, there’s a distinct lack of in-flight movies, stewardesses and so on. The only window is a tiny porthole in the side door.

I fished into my ruck and took out the book I’d never finished in Iraq. So, while we flew over the Atlantic late at night, I soared with the Enterprise across the Galaxy and engaged the Borg. I finished just as we landed in the States.

I still have the book, and it’s been sitting on the shelf for years now. I took it down recently.

The years have not been kind to it. The pages have become brittle, and as I was reading it, several pages fell out.

It’s time for a new copy.

I’ll put the old one back in a bag. It’s one of the few things that I own that goes back to the Gulf War, and it would be a shame to toss it away.

I’ll let the kids do that when they clean out my stuff after I’m gone.