At least the new uniform is comfortable, she thought, tugging a bit at the bottom of her tunic to smooth the fabric.
She still had her coveralls, of course, and the skinsuit for potentially hazardous areas, but as an officer, she represented the ship in dealing with other ship, stations, or planets, so something a little more formal was called for.
She’d ended up with several different uniforms, for different occasions, and she’d immediately gravitated towards the dress and leggings look, cut up top in a pseudo-military style with sleeves that ended just above the elbow. Below there was a loose skirt ending just below the knee, but that one sadly wasn’t appropriate for regular wear on a spaceship. For that, she had the tunic with trousers look. At least she could pretend the tunic was just a dangerously short skirt.
All of the designs had the same few markings and insignia in roughly the same places. There was a small patch on either shoulder, one the stylized TMH representing the merchant house, the other the formal abbreviation for the ship, S.T.E.V.5. Next was a brass nameplate above the right breast just to the left of the closure that ran down the right side of the top. Finally, there was a small pair of silver bars on either side of the collar for her rank. The tops were solid black, except for a single stripe on the end of either sleeve that matched her rank bars, the leggings, trousers, and undershirt were light grey, and the boots polished black leather. It looked good on her, Morgan thought, and Gertrude had agreed. Gertrude’s officer getup was just a fancier set of coveralls, but as an engineer she’d be expected to get her hands dirty just about every shift, so anything more elaborate didn’t make much sense.
A quiet cough came from behind her, just far enough away that it didn’t immediately trigger her old panic reflexes regarding being surprised.
“Not quite everything you were expecting, LT?” an equally quiet voice said once she’d turned to face him. Eck was looking more serious than normal, almost the proper image of a soldier even, but then he spoiled it with a cheeky grin.
She wasn’t sure how, but he had realized she was usually very attentive to people’s positions, and hated being surprised. Hence the cough to alert her. He apparently hadn’t considered – or hadn’t chosen at any rate – to simply move less quietly around her.
“Not really, because I don’t think I actually had any expectations,” Morgan replied, studiously keeping her voice pleasant and level. He could still be irritating, but either ignoring or accepting as honest compliments his flirtatious outpourings had smoothed out their interactions. Somewhat.
“Yes, well, at least that’s fewer wrong things you need to unlearn, then,” Eck said, nodding to something. Himself, perhaps. “Truthfully, though, command isn’t like the holos. There isn’t a commander out there who can do all the various jobs of the people immediately under them, let alone everyone else ultimately reporting to them. Your job is to tell them what to do, and make the hard choices, not tell them how to do it.”
“That seems easy enough.”
Eck laughed, keeping it quiet enough that it wouldn’t carry beyond the two of them.
“As written on the screen, sure. But the worthwhile things in life are simple, and the simple things are hard.” He pointed toward the captain with his chin. “Sure, you know and I know that he doesn’t know everything. All the techs and new hires and such? He has to act like he knows what he’s doing all the time, if nothing else so as not to panic them.”
“So, he doesn’t know, but has to pretend he does. How does he ask about what he doesn’t know, then?”
Eck spread his hands apart, throwing her another broad smile.
“Welcome to command, LT. There’s a reason I’m only a Sergeant. You couldn’t pay me to do the job of a Lieutenant, let alone anything above that. Certainly not with the paltry difference between what I make now and what an LT makes.”
The captain had started issuing commands again, getting the ship ready to slip into normal traffic for the gate, so Morgan turned away from Eck and resumed paying close attention to the flow of work around the bridge.
By the time they were through the gate and safely in subspace, where no maneuvers were desired or possible, Morgan’s legs were quite tired from just standing there. Even Eck, by his own admission used to such duties, had left an hour earlier, off to do some ill-defined bit of work that was probably just an excuse anyway.
No matter, it wasn’t Morgan’s problem if he was slacking off on the merc company’s time, as long as he did his duties for the ship well.
At last, the second shift crew arrived, and Morgan had to step back against the wall to stay out of the way of everyone coming and going. It was time for her to leave, too. She’d have to be back herself before too long, to oversee the third shift. Today, for her first time ‘in charge,’ Lieutenant Bill would stay late from second shift for three hours, and then Lieutenant Jacob would come in early three hours for his, so how much she was actually going to be in charge was up in the air.
Normally she’d have been in charge of fourth shift, in the dead of the ship’s night, but that would have meant the captain would have been the one to come in early, so for at least now she’d be taking over Jacob’s normal crew.
I hope they don’t get annoyed at me because of that. Jacob may sound gruff, but everything I’ve seen of him says he’s very laid back. What if they think I’m being too hard on them, that I’m lording my new position over them or something?
“Lieutenant Black, a word before you head down for some sleep?” the captain called out. In all the bustle she’d missed the fact he’d moved from the command chair over to the hatch to his small office next to the bridge, the day cabin, he’d called it.
“Of course, Captain,” she said, hastening to follow him into the room. He waited in the hatchway for her to enter, then shut it behind them.
She took a seat on the couch arrayed next to the hatch along the back wall, as he settled himself behind the desk.
“Are you nervous?” he asked, but evidently, he wasn’t looking for an answer, as he launched right into commentary before she had a chance to respond. “You finished the training courses in record time, but you’ve not met your staff, barely been on board the ship, and apart from training haven’t done any real work in, what three months?”
Now he paused, clearly waiting for her to respond.
“I was a bit, sir, but now I’m rather more worried than before.” Not exactly the kind of words designed to allay any fears I might have.
“You should be nervous. What you do about it will be what is important. I feel no shame admitting I was very nervous for my first watch, and every officer with a functioning brain between their ears will say the same.”
“At least I’m in good company then, sir.”
Rain nodded.
“The Lieutenants Brown will be right there at your side, of course. They won’t intervene unless you need it, but don’t worry if you do. The point is to help you learn, not let you fail.” He held up a small device, one that looked like an earpiece. “They will be talking with you through these, though. The crew doesn’t expect you to know everything either, but being too obvious with the help will hurt their confidence, like it or not.”
“That’s a good idea, sir,” Morgan said, fully meaning it. She had expected them to sit in the more reasonably sized advisor’s chair next to the command chair, within easy reach if – when – she screwed up.
“Quite.” Rain paused for a moment, before grunting and continuing. “That is everything official I wished to talk with you about, but there is one other matter I wanted to bring up.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I know you have a habit of exercising in the gravity levels you were accustomed to back on your homeworld. Sounds exhausting to me, but I imagine it is relaxing for you, a small taste of home.”
Morgan had no idea how he’d learned that, but he wasn’t wrong, so she just nodded.
“STEVE’s gym facilities have that same capability, but there is
one other thing that does, something most don’t know about.”
He paused again, probably to see if Morgan had any questions or comments, but she didn’t, and he continued after a few seconds.
“Anyway, STEVE was built in orbit around Earth, but his crew came from the whole of Sol. Are you familiar with the other inhabited planets and moons of Sol?”
“I barely know anything about Earth, unfortunately.”
“Understandable, but I do recommend you try and remedy that. There is so much of value to be learned, studying the cradle of humanity. Anyway, Mars was the first planet settled by mankind, even before they’d put anything major on Earth’s moon. Mars has, or had, I suppose, a lot going for it. The planet’s gravity was a problem, though, especially for people who had grown up there, but were traveling elsewhere.”
“That high?” Morgan asked, starting to see a bit of where he was going.
“Low, actually. They had a hard time working on Earth ships. It was exhausting just for them to move about all day on a ship, let alone get any work done. By the time they’d laid down the blueprints for the Triumph of Earth class they had some things in place to help with the problems, including gravity plating specific to each bunk that can be adjusted up or down.”
“So I could sleep under Hillman’s gravity?” Morgan asked. She’d never even considered something like that before. A year ago, she’d probably have decided against it, but given the nightmares she was still dealing with, perhaps that other reminder of home would help.
“Exactly. I don’t think they’ve been used in that way in decades – after we got out of Sol we could afford to be pickier about the planets we settled, for the most part – but the systems are still there.”
“Thank you for letting me know about that, Captain.”
“You are most welcome, Lieutenant. Now, I’ve taken up enough of your time, and my own for that matter. I need to finish up here and get some sleep, and you need to turn in even more than I do. For today, we’ll hold off on trainings, I want you well rested for your first watch.”
“Thank you, sir,” Morgan repeated, nodding as she rose from the couch.
“Yes, well, let’s call this a lesson on one of the aspects of command they don’t teach you in schools – a competent captain should always be looking out for the wellbeing of his subordinates.”
Chapter 08
Most of human history can be summed up as ‘got progressively more dangerous.’ As far as claws, teeth, and strength go, humans aren’t even middling. Our greatest weapon has always been our minds, and we’ve had millennia of practice building on our ancestor’s work in creating wonders both subtle and gross, grand and horrifying. That especially includes weapons tech, which is fitting as I’d lay money on the first tool humanity ever used being something like that rock Cain used to kill his brother.
- Master Sergeant Larry Browning, Albion Royal Marines, ret.
Sgt. Eck
THE RAILGUN mount spat out its solid slug projectile (and encasing sabot) faster than the eye could possibly follow. Max could, within a few short seconds, see that the railshot had continued on straight past the enemy vessel, since it should have impacted with the force of a small nuclear bomb.
“Congratulations, you just missed your target,” Max said with a heavy sigh as he projected the course of the errant projectile. As the weapon mount was an outer compartment of the ship, they were both wearing their skinsuits, though with the helmets retracted, which slowed down his typing. The blasted heat wasn’t helping either, as he had to pause and wipe some sweat from his forehead, a mostly empty gesture with the decidedly non-absorbent materials of his suit glove.
The silence was all the more pronounced by the random interruptions of the loud clicking of the oversized keys on the very outdated manual controls that operated this particular railgun. “You also killed a few million people,” Max finished, pointing to the big red icon that was now flashing on the screen’s representation of Albion.
“You made that up,” Morgan said, her grimace mostly hidden from his view by the hand that was massaging her forehead. For suddenly becoming a mass murderer, she was taking the news quite well, really.
Of course, this was just a test, one designed to make sure such a catastrophe never happened in reality.
“I wish. Look,” he replied, speeding up the simulation so she could follow the projectile’s path. “This is space, Morgan. Anything we launch will just keep going until it hits something, usually something big, but always something. In this case the projectile missed the pirate ship and kept going through the system until it was pulled in by Albion’s gravity. That’s actually unusual, in that most fights happen in orbit around a planet, since that’s where most ships are.”
“I get that,” Morgan said, her tone clearly conveying her annoyance with him. “I just have a hard time imagining this,” she waved about the railgun slug he’d handed her at the start of this exercise as easily if it had been an empty cup rather than a solid twenty-kilogram hunk of metal, “doing that much damage.”
“All comes down to physics. Twenty kilograms is only twenty kilograms, sure, but get it moving even one percent of the speed of light? That’s three thousand kilometers a second. Not an hour, not a minute, but every second.”
“STEVE can get up into the kilometers per second range,” Morgan pointed out, “Maybe not three thousand, but certainly above a hundred. I don’t see anyone freaking out about him like this.”
“That’s because STEVE can stop himself,” Max countered, running his hands through his hair and suppressing the urge to sigh again. “And that is also because people don’t stop and think about what would happen if a ship even half STEVE’s size were to plow into a city at full speed. Even at five percent of that slug’s velocity, STEVE could take out entire cities. Besides, most ships can’t get going anywhere near that fast. Hell, most ships would have trouble surviving entry into an atmosphere.
“The good news,” Max said with a little groan of annoyance, “is that the railshot in your hand is the biggest thing STEVE fires. Most are smaller, doing comparatively less damage, and designed such that they’d burn up in most planets’ atmospheres. Habitable ones, anyway.”
Morgan got very quiet.
Can this day get any drearier? Max thought to himself. Cute girl all to myself in the cramped railgun control room, and we’re dwelling on the deaths of millions. Just not fair.
“Look, let’s not worry about that. All we need to do is teach you these systems, so you don’t ever make a mistake like that, even in the very unlikely circumstance you actually need to fire the railguns.”
“Yeah,” Morgan said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
“Yeah,” Max said, putting as much certainty into the word as he could. “Besides, in a real fight you’ll have the computers doing most of the work for you.”
“Then why have me learn it at all?”
Max shrugged.
“In case the computers fail.”
“That would be just my luck, to have two incredibly unlikely events happen at the same time,” Morgan said, now having moved on to both hands massaging her temples.
She looks exhausted, Max thought. Almost as exhausted as I feel. How long have we been at this? Trying to be discreet, he checked the clock just above her head. Only three hours? Feels like five. Still, this isn’t the first thing we’ve gone over today. Standing up, he stretched, hearing a series of pops from his spine as it protested the awkward position in which he’d been sitting. “Come on, then. There isn’t any sense pushing it any farther today. We’ll pick it up again tomorrow.”
“I can get this,” Morgan insisted, before pulling up a hologram of her schedule on her uplink. “Besides, tomorrow I’m helping Gertrude with a rebuild of one of the environmental plants.”
Guess that explains the heat, he thought. “You say that like you’re looking forward to it,” Max said with a grunt of distaste. How much oil, gunk, and filth does one of those accumulate?
For just a moment his mind wandered, an idle fantasy of offering to help her clean up after. It was just a moment, banished as quickly as it had come, but it was enough that he missed what she said in reply. “I’m sorry, Cutie, I must be tired as well, what did you say?”
“I want to try again; I know I can get it right.”
“Of course you can,” Max agreed. “But I’m tired, you’re tired, and we’re still five months out from the asteroid belt. Even if the universe has decided to take a personal dislike of you, specifically, there is no way you’ll need to be competent with the guns before then.” He offered her his hand. “Come on then,” he repeated, “I’ll get you a coffee from the mess. I think I’ve figured out which of the dispensers makes the best cup.”
“No coffee for me, I need to sleep tonight,” Morgan said, standing without taking his offered hand.
“Okay, no problem, what do you like? I guarantee I’ve figured out where to get it. Old survival habit of mine.”
“Hot chocolate, then.”
“Done,” Max replied, giving her his best cocky grin.
“I’d say something brutally honest about the goofy grin, but right now I’d just about sell my lucky spanner for some good food.”
Max chuckled.
“Well, lucky for your lucky spanner all I can get you is enough food. Good, we left behind a month ago.”
This did manage to get a chuckle out of Morgan, but only a brief one. Still, it was a start.
While Max wasn’t one to pass up the opportunity to discreetly admire a figure such as Morgan’s in a skinsuit, his own discomfort after so long wearing his own compelled him to speak.
“Do you want to get changed first? Get something a bit more breathable on?”
Running Black Page 8
