Story #289 - The Chair

The Chair

The chair was old and run-down, leather patches covering a third of its surface. Both arms were deeply warn, despite upholstery that had been replaced dozens of times. Where I had sat for years, an impression had developed in the center of the sturdy silver seat, one that fit me as no other could.

“It looks awful.” That was Cecilia, my wife. I loved her dearly, but that didn’t mean she understood what having this chair meant to me. It was no surprise she was less than thrilled with my decision to bring it home, no matter where in the house I put it. It was part of the reason I had been away so much, part of why she had been alone for the balance of twenty years. She had every reason to hate the chair, but it wasn’t the steel and leather that forced me out of her arms, it was what the simple piece of furniture represented.

“I know,” I said, running my eyes lovingly over the sharp angles of its shoulders and remembering the few times I’d almost lost it. I’d been insistent that the engineers find and fix my chair, no matter the cost, and earned a reputation as a bit of an eccentric. Fortunately, that was par for course in the Fleet, and no one had looked askance at another Captain with a grand sense of self-entitlement. “I’ll put it in my study, Cila, so you won’t have to look at it.”

She grunted. “But then you’ll be in there all the time, sitting in it, playing spaceships. You’re finally home now, and I don’t want to lose you to some stupid chair.”

Ten years ago I’d have snapped back, something about how what I did put food on the table and made it so she didn’t have to stand in the ration lines with everyone else. A world torn by alien war wasn’t exactly a wonderful place to live, and it was her marriage to me that had gotten her away from a life of mindless service to the military or a dead-end job in one of the factory conglomerates.

Instead, I held my tongue; seventeen years of marriage having finally taught me the lesson that discretion was the better part of valor. Burnished medals hanging on the uniform in my closet spoke to my ability to not only negotiate with hostile alien species, but have humanity come out the better for it. Interviewers from the Fleet’s press core who asked me about the honors assumed it was the military’s extensive training program that had given me the skills I needed to deal with angry aliens and rebelling colonists, but I had mastered the aspects of negotiation and compromise within the walls of my own home. Cecilia could be more aggressive than an enraged Thor’oth, and quicker to anger than a Mastonian Bull. There were several tricks I could use on her that didn’t work on screaming aliens, but the principal was the same.

“Are you sure we can’t just get rid of this thing?” She pressed. I’d been hoping Cila would leave well enough alone – I hated arguing for no purpose, and though she didn’t know it, she couldn’t have started a discussion that would have gone worse.


“No,” I said firmly. “I’ve kept almost nothing from my time in the Fleet, but I’m keeping this.” I moved forward and took my chair by its arms, intending to drag it into the house, but it took all I had not to sit down, not to sink into the leather and remember better days.

Gritting my teeth, I went to work, pulling the heavy steel frame inch by inch toward the front door. Cecilia crossed her arms under her breasts, then turned and stomped inside. I would pay for this transgression soon enough, but there were some things a Fleetman couldn’t back down from.

…

Images overlapped my vision; crisp memories of battles won and lost, of a shuddering ship underneath me, only my firm grip keeping me upright and in command.

“Jimmer,” I whispered, “fire the forward banks.”

In my mind, the young Lieutenant lit up the front phase-cannons, spraying our enemies with a burst of hot plasma. In reality, the body of a much older Jimmaron Yddo lay in the Heroes Cemetery above Planar V. It had taken all the strength I could find not to leave the fleet after his death – he’d served with me since his first posting, and I’d seen the callow young boy turn into a true officer of the fleet.

Losing myself in the rhythm of remembered war once again, I called to my first officer, telling him to open a communications channel. In my mind, it was the battle against the Jiridians, the war with Malcoths, and the skirmish I’d had above Fleet HQ all in one. Blasters fired and men died, my decisions saved lives and meant the end of those who would do wrong. Time slipped by uncounted as I lost myself, subsumed by the uniform I once wore.

“Lar!” Cila called, breaking through my clouded memory and scattering it to dust. “Dinner!”

It took all I had to stand, to leave behind the only place I’d ever felt at home. Cecilia was the love of my life, but she didn’t understand the comparison, couldn’t understand what the chair gave me that she couldn’t.

To her, it was just a piece of shaped steel, a place to sit and issue orders, tell men and women what I expected of them. To me, it was the center, the heart of a ship and command, and the only thing that had kept me sane over the years. Outside it, I was Lar Denman, citizen of the Republic. Inside its upholstered confines I was Captain Denman, hero and servant of the greater good. I was invincible, I was untouchable. I was never wrong.

Celcila would have to learn to live with the chair; I would hate to have to replace her.


- D