“None of my people are qualified to take over as Chief Engineer,” Tiberius said dubiously. “It would take at least three months to run any of them through the proper training and examinations—“
“Look around you, Lieutenant,” McKnight interrupted gently, but firmly, doing precisely as she had instructed him to do. The compartment’s oxidized alloys and haphazard geometry was a far cry from a proper captain’s office, and Tiberius took his CO’s meaning perfectly clearly as she said, “This entire mission is about improvising to the best of our abilities. I think you’ll find that the higher up you go on the ladder of command, the more the job becomes precisely that: improvisation. I’ve reviewed your department’s personnel files,” she added with another pointed glance at the data slate, which Tiberius knew represented the responsibility she was now asking him to accept, “and there are no fewer than three people on your team whose credentials would have given them a strong argument for serving as the Pride’s Chief Engineer. This ship is an even cleaner opportunity than the Pride was for a young officer to make her mark,” she added with a soft snicker, “since half of its systems have yet to be installed, and the other half still requires extensive modifications.”
Tiberius knew she was right, but he still felt like he should argue against throwing one of his people into the deep end—especially since he already knew who his first pick would be to replace him. His own first experiences with departmental command had been difficult, to say the least, and they had tested his friendships among his coworkers in ways he had never anticipated.
“I’ve already established a hypothetical command structure for my team,” he grumbled as he snatched up the data slate, “but I won’t just throw them in the deep end and hope they can swim.”
“I expected as much,” McKnight nodded. “We’ve still got three weeks until we reach Capital, during which time your people should finish up with the majority of the life support systems. I suggest you use that time to pass your responsibilities onto whoever you select, and I’ll support that selection without question. But remember,” she added severely, “once you transfer full-time to the post of XO, your primary duty is on the bridge. That doesn’t mean,” she held up a forestalling hand as he made to protest, “that you won’t be able to lend a hand from time to time, but I expect my Engineering department to stand on its own merits without constant assistance from the ship’s XO. If they can’t do the job without you, then you’ve failed in your first task as this ship’s second-in-command—and failure is not something we can accept on this mission.”
Tiberius stung at her bluntness, but he actually found his respect for the diminutive woman growing the longer the meeting went on. He had initially believed her to be nothing but another gung-ho, mindlessly patriotic alpha girl who thought first and foremost about her own career advancement—along with her new, perfectly-maintained, short hairdo of course. Her reputation throughout the fleet had supported those notions, but the woman who had just made him her XO was a far cry from the spoiled, selfish military brat he had thought her to be.
“Fine,” he said through briefly gritted teeth, “but I’ll conduct the interview process on my terms.”
“Again,” McKnight said with a hard look, “I only care about getting the job done. You’ll find I’m less concerned with the ‘how’ than I am with the simple fact that the people under my command can do what is needed of them when it is needed of them.”
Those were dangerous words to Tiberius’ mind, but he decided against digging into the matter just then.
After all, he had just become the second most influential person on the ship—which brought up an all-important point that he decided to address before the meeting concluded.
“We don’t have a proper name for this ship, Captain,” he said. “My people respected the superstitious reluctance to keep from naming it until it was fully ready for duty, but I think the time has come to christen the ship.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” McKnight laced her fingers together as she leaned across the rusty metal desk, “if you get life support online throughout this ship before we reach Capital then I’ll let you pick the name as a gesture of goodwill. After all, this ship will serve as home to more of the crew who came with you than those who came with me.”
“More of us than you? Not if you count your Lancers,” Tiberius couldn’t help but retort. His seventy eight people did outnumber her ‘crew’ by almost two to one, but there were sixty Lancers aboard the former Droid warship who pushed the total number firmly in McKnight’s favor—a point which had never been lost on Tiberius since his arrival aboard the vessel.
McKnight quirked a grin, but her eyes remained as hard as duralloy as she allowed, “I’ll grant you that.”
Tiberius knew he shouldn’t have mentioned the Lancers, but he had felt so abused for so long that responding in that fashion had become second nature. It was a difficult realization for him to grapple with, and he resolved to improve on his conduct and attitude in the future—if for no other reason than to set a better example for his people.
“And if we choose to get off?” Tiberius eventually asked.
“This mission is sensitive,” McKnight replied, clearly having expected this particular query, “so the usual at-will nature of crew involvement must, necessarily, be modified to some degree.”
Tiberius resisted the urge to roll his eyes, “I should have expected—“
“I’m not saying your people can’t get off if they so choose,” McKnight interrupted. “What I’m saying is that once they’ve agreed to take part in this mission, they might not have another chance to get off for quite some time since we’ll probably find ourselves behind enemy lines in short order. But I give you my word,” she added heavily, “that I will do everything in my power to enable every member of this crew to self-determine his or her own fate. But once we sail to war—which is where we’re going, make no mistake—the ship will need its crew to man her. As the captain, it is my responsibility to enforce military discipline and as the XO it is your job to support me in that endeavor. This would include the suppression of future…incidents of a type of which I understand you’re more than passingly aware.”
And there it was. Tiberius was being conscripted to the post of Executive Officer to decrease the chances of a future insurrection—like the one he had failed to enact back at the Battle of Elysium against Admiral Montagne’s people. That effort had been thwarted by a release of nonlethal gas into Engineering that had gone off at the exact wrong moment.
It was clear that McKnight knew the details of that failed rebellion—some would call it ‘mutiny,’ but Tiberius considered it a matter of conscientious objection—and was now putting him in the precarious position of accepting full responsibility for the conduct of his people.
In truth, he was just as impressed by the shrewd maneuver on McKnight’s part as he was infuriated by the difficult decision she had put before him.
“I’m prepared to continue to command this ship without an XO until we reach Capital,” McKnight reiterated, breaking his silent reverie. “Which means you’ll have three weeks to talk with the people who accompanied you on this mission. If any of them want to get off as soon as we reach Capital, we’ll provide some assistance in helping them immigrate to Capital under whatever mechanisms are available. But if they stay,” she added, fixing him with a hard look of her cold, blue eyes, “they become my crew, just like you’ll become my XO, and they’ll need to give their all to the mission’s success. Do we have an understanding?”
In truth, Tiberius saw little he could argue with in her assertion. The MSP was, at least ostensibly, an at-will organization and that status actually permitted members of contributing military organizations to withdraw from it if they so choose. That being the case, McKnight’s mission was clearly one which would require some unconventional thinking—evidenced quite clearly by her having been assigned a droid warship as her primary command, along with a gutted medium freighter according
to the scuttlebutt he had overheard.
“I’ll talk with my people,” he said slowly, suspecting he might regret the decision but seeing no superior alternative. The only fate worse than being exiled to die in the service of someone he despised was one which saw him, and his people, rot on some culturally regressive world like Capital. “And, assuming enough of them want to stay on under your command, I…” the word caught in his throat before he finally relented, “I’ll become your XO.”
“I look forward to working with you, Lieutenant,” McKnight stood and offered her hand across the rusty, metal desktop.
Tiberius hesitantly accepted her hand and returned her surprisingly firm grip, “Thank you…Captain.”
Chapter XVI: The Last Play
“All right,” the prime back, a tall and lanky man named Smithers said after the last of the stragglers had reached the huddle from the sideline, “we’re down eight with just three seconds left on the clock. This is the key to the playoffs,” he said in a thoroughly uninspiring attempt to rally his beleaguered and battered team, “if we lose here, we’re done for the season. Here’s the play,” he said, looking down at the playbook built into his left bracer, “Z-scrub twin, forty four break right, twist burn left. Z-scrub twin, forty four break right with a twist burn left. Ready? Break!”
Lu Bu nodded her acknowledgment as she drew long, heavy breaths into her lungs and took up her position. She had just ground up twelve brutal yards on a play which had brought them within just five yards of the end zone. Her arms ached and her legs burned, but she invited the familiar sensations as the long-lost friends they truly were.
And now, it seemed, the offensive coordinator was willing to put the ball in her hands for what might end up being the final play of the team’s season.
She couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying challenge, but for some reason she was less invigorated by playing the game than the last time she had put on the pads.
Drawing several more controlled, deep breaths, she prepared to execute a variant of her signature move: a VTOL jet sweep which, as far as she knew, was a play only she could execute. She lined up in the backfield and appraised the defensive alignment the opposing team had opted to employ, seeing that they were slightly over-shifted to the strong, right side where a trio of her receivers prepared to fake a bubble screen on her behalf. The defense was shifted enough to give her a relatively clear path to the end zone if her teammates successfully sold their diversion, but even if they failed she would still face no more than two dedicated defenders en route to the potentially game-tying score.
She assumed a crouch in front of the smashback behind her. In this alignment, she was ostensibly playing the role of lead blocker for the smashback but the real play call left her as the ball carrier without a single teammate to block her route to the end zone.
“White twenty one!” the prime back called out in his annoying, screeching, bird-like voice. “White twenty one!” he repeated, and Lu Bu saw the weak side pass rusher flinch fractionally before resuming his three point stance, which meant he would be crashing past her en route to the prime back. “Hike!” the prime back screeched in perfect timing to disrupt the pass rusher’s return to a fully ready stance.
Her teammates on the offensive line collapsed back into a V-shaped pocket as the trio of receivers on the right burst forward for several steps before one of them fell back. Lu Bu backpedaled slowly, watching for an opportunity to chip block an incoming player but finding none in the first second of the play. The same edge rusher who had failed to reset before the snap of the ball engaged the left tackle on Lu Bu’s team, and was quickly laid out by the massive lineman.
The flood of players moved right to contain the developing play by the three receivers, and the prime back pump-faked a pass to the dummy receiver who did his best to sell the fake play as legitimate.
But Lu Bu saw the centerbacker—who she had engaged on several previous occasions during the game—on the other team halt in his tracks even before the pump fake was complete, and she knew that she would be facing him in just a few seconds.
She planted her feet an instant before the prime back stuffed the ball into her gut, and with a burst of explosive speed which no one else on the field could hope to match, she burst to the largely empty left side of the field. The lone enemy player in a position to stop her, the centerbacker, churned his feet as he took the perfect angle to intercept her before she could cross the scoring line.
The ball began to drag her down as its weight increased to the maximum one hundred kilograms, but she surged forward at a speed which her fellow smashback—who was covering a strong side pursuer with a loud, violent impact that covered her rear—could have only bested with a fresh ball.
Her left tackle attempted to engage the centerbacker, but an admittedly impressive stutter step followed by an even more impressive leap saw the enemy player clear the left tackle’s grasp in a highlight reel evasion as she drove past the line of scrimmage.
She performed a snap calculation and saw that she would engage with him at the three yard line if she continued to run as she was. If she took a wider angle, he would tackle her from behind just inside the two yard line. She doubted that she could drive past him while carrying the now-heavy ball, so she did the only thing left to her: she gripped the ball, planted her feet, and swung it at her incoming adversary.
But instead of going high, or even for his torso—as proper form dictated—she went low and slammed the ball into his thigh just above the knee as he drove his shoulder into her own.
The impact of being hit by the two meter tall, hundred forty kilo defender was incredible and it occurred at precisely the same instant that the ball in her hands slammed into his leg.
She heard the sickening crunch of bones breaking, but she honestly didn’t know whose skeleton had surrendered to the violent collision. She lost her grip on the ball just as the game clock reached zero, and she staggered backward as she fought to keep her feet beneath her.
Thankfully the ball remained in the air long enough for her to plant her left foot and surge toward it, diving and collecting it before the smashball hit the artificial turf. Her forward momentum took her past an incoming defender who had somehow reached the area at the same time she did, but she managed to evade him as she cradled the ball against her chest and leapt forward across the scoring line.
A cheer unlike anything she had heard back on the world of her birth erupted from the crowd, and a quick check of the nearest official confirmed that she had indeed scored on the play.
Determined not to let her opponents see her vulnerability—or the fact that she was still unable to draw a breath after taking the crushing hit from the centerbacker—she rolled back to her feet and made her way back to the huddle as the goal line unit came one.
“We have to convert here,” the prime back declared before giving her a concerned look. “Can you pound it in, Lu?”
She tried to respond, but only managed in finally securing a fresh lung full of air in a loud, audible gasp which saw her shoulder flare in pain.
“Of course she can,” the left tackle, a pale-skinned man named Lars, scoffed and chucked her on the shoulder. “I’ve been playing against Winston for a decade, and that was the best smash I’ve seen that blaggart take, Lu. Without him out there, I’ll open a hole wide enough for your tutu to pass through unruffled on this next one!”
A chorus of approving laughter arose from the men in the huddle, and Lu Bu returned his chuck with a rough elbow to his chest that only saw the laughter intensify. She did not care for the mental image of herself in a tutu, though she knew it had been a friendly jest and far from demeaning. While her teammates laughed, she saw the medical crew bring a hover cart onto the field to where the centerbacker, Winston, was being tended to. She winced at the way he held his leg, and Lu Bu wanted to break from the huddle to check on him but her teammates needed her.
“I will take it,” she confirmed, knowing that the team’s entire s
eason rode on this next play.
“Ok,” the prime back nodded approvingly, “nothing fancy about this one: a goal line run off left tackle. Lars, this one’s on you.”
“This is my first chance—and probably my last chance—at the playoffs in my career,” Lars, the left tackle snorted, “I’ll crush it.”
Lu Bu drew several more breaths and tested her shoulder surreptitiously, finding that while there did not appear to be any broken bones she most certainly had some kind of muscle damage in the joint. Thankfully it did not appear as though it would hurt her chances on the coming play.
“Then let’s do this,” the prime back said. “Let’s march it in.”
The team waited for Winston to be carted off the field, and when he was on the sidelines Lu Bu and her teammates moved to their positions in the goal line package. Lu Bu took her place as the smashback, and the twin shield backs moved in front of her as the linemen entered their crouches and the referee blew his whistle to signal that the play clock had begun.
“White twenty one!” the prime back screeched only a few seconds after the referee had started the clock.
Lu Bu’s eyes move left and right across the wall of defenders standing between her and metaphorical pay dirt and she tensed her body in preparation for the most important play of her team’s season.
“White twenty one!” the prime back screeched again. “Hike!” he bellowed, receiving the handoff from the snapper and quickly turning to hand it to Lu Bu.
Lu Bu accepted the ball as her shield backs drove forward. The rightward shield back engaged with a deathbacker who had, improbably, hurdled the line of scrimmage entirely and penetrated into the backfield. The collision of shield back and deathbacker drained the entirety of their combined kinetic energy, causing them to stagger sideways as Lu Bu broke past them on the left.
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