“I see the Captain’s point,” Ihejirika said. “As Colonel Song noted, my chiefs and junior officers are well aware we didn’t even meet the UPSF standard for a readiness one scramble yesterday. They’re working on my people already.”
“My plan is for a minimum of one randomly scheduled battle station scramble per twenty-four hour period until we reach Resta,” Henry told them. “We did acceptably yesterday, against First Warlord Deearan. I want that to be clear to everyone as well: we took on and defeated six Kenmiri light warships in rogue Vesheron hands and we took zero damage.
“Some of that was luck. Some of that was O’Flannagain’s people nailing the first gunship right off the bat.” O’Flannagain was the notably absent member of his staff this morning. Tactical, Communications, Engineering, Navigation and GroundDiv were all present.
The FighterDiv Commander was still in medbay. Which meant that no one was acknowledging that she was missing or would ever call her out for missing the meeting. UPSF had a laundry list of flaws, but they grasped the idea that healthy spacers were effective spacers.
“So, give your people a ‘well done’ before we start tearing into them for where we, as a ship, came up short,” Henry ordered. “We’re going to work them to the bone for a week, because we should have been working them halfway to the bone since we left Procyon.
“Anyone bitches, point them at me,” he continued. “This one is my fault; I should have upped the drill schedule earlier. They want to burn me in effigy to make themselves feel better, well, the life-support team in Engineering will get to them long before I do!”
His team chuckled—though Song looked near-murderous at the thought of someone starting fires on her ship.
Captains, after all, only got to borrow Engineering’s starships.
“What about our problem here?” Iyotake asked. “We still have GroundDiv troops on the intact warships.”
“We’ve completed the search-and-rescue, right, Commander Thompson?” Henry said.
“We have,” the GroundDiv Commander confirmed. “We dropped them all off on the two intact ships. I still have teams holding the bridge and Engineering of both ships.”
“Colonel Song, how long for them to restart their reactors from cold?” the Captain asked with a momentarily mischievous grin.
“Minimum of an hour from when we initiate the full shutdown process, ser,” Song replied. “Systems will automatically drain weapon capacitors and so forth to keep gravity and life support running, so no one will be in any danger…”
“But they won’t be able to chase us or shoot at us. Are all of them back aboard?”
“Yes, ser,” Thompson confirmed. “I can pass that order and have everyone back aboard in thirty minutes. Reactor shutdown will take ten of those.”
“That gives us forty to get back on course at combat acceleration,” Henry concluded. “Sound workable, Commander Bazzoli?”
“We’ll still be in range if they decide to make trouble,” Bazzoli pointed out.
“I don’t really expect them to,” Henry said. “I just want to buy us some safety margin and make a point. We cut a deal with Captain Attallis—that doesn’t mean I trust her. And it definitely doesn’t mean I trust her people.”
“Then why did we cut a deal?” Iyotake asked. “Seems like we’re just leaving pirates behind, ser.”
“Because by the time we make it to the Gathering, she should have reported in at Trintar,” Henry said. “If she hasn’t, then we’ll give her a couple more days at most and then dump everything we know about her and her people to every Vesheron Faction in Apophis Province.
“Either she turns a new leaf and they become protectors of the people working with the new fleet out of Trintar, or that same fleet hunts her down,” he finished. “Either way, the situation is dealt with. Without us executing seven hundred and eighty-six people in cold blood.”
Seven hundred and eighty-six Ashall, at that. Not all of Attallis’s people were Drex, but all of them were from the Seeded Races. They all looked human enough to make mass executions a morale problem as well as a moral one.
“Especially since my people just spent twelve hours pulling two hundred of those people from wrecked ships,” Thompson added. “I’d rather not rescue people just to shoot them. Nuking the wreckage is faster and cleaner.”
“Fair enough,” Iyotake conceded. “Either way, you’re the Captain, Captain Wong. From the sounds of it, I think we’re done here.”
“We are,” Henry confirmed. Neither of them was really talking about the meeting. “Commander Bazzoli, get your course loaded back in. Commander Thompson, pass the order to shut down our ‘friend’s’ reactors and get your people back aboard Raven.
“This diversion has been fun, but we need to get back to our actual mission.”
And if the mission was a glorified taxi trip, well…it was still the mission.
Chapter Nineteen
Henry grunted as the skip drive decided to take this particular opportunity to knee him in the groin with a piece of his own reality. Exhaling against the unexpected impact, he glanced around the bridge to see if anyone else was looking unusually pained from this particular impact.
They were halfway through the ten-hour skip out of Apophis-Four, once again on their way. No pursuit, no trouble. One thorny problem dealt with and left behind to see if the situation resolved on its own.
Five skips after this one. He considered that with scant favor as he looked up how long it would be before the next bounce in this jump. It was more uncomfortable than most, but it would be two more hours until the next bounce.
He’d make sure to be in his office for that one. The crew didn’t need to see the Captain looking like he’d just been kicked in the balls.
Shaking off the last of the pain, he checked the status reports. Mid-skip was generally pretty safe, though there was always someone who ended up in medbay.
The skip drive wasn’t the best way to travel faster than light, just the only way. It was unusual for the injuries and adverse reactions to be serious, but it was a rare jump that saw only one person in the medbay.
On the topic of medbay, though, a new ping hit his network as he was checking the status. A meeting request from Commander O’Flannagain.
“Oh, this will be interesting,” he murmured. And it would get him off the bridge if their icosaspatial momentum decided to groin-shot him again. He sent a response ordering her to meet him in his office in fifteen minutes.
“Commander Ihejirika, you have the con,” he told his tactical officer. “I’ll be in my office.”
“The siren call of paperwork is making itself heard, ser?” the broad-shouldered Commander asked with a chuckle.
“Is that what we’re calling it?” Henry asked. “I mostly go for the crushing inevitability of paperwork, myself.”
“All of those things and more, Captain. Paperwork is a many-faceted beast that demands our worship.”
Henry shook his head at his tactical officer.
“Behave, Commander, or I’ll make you start an open-mic comedy night in the officers’ mess.”
That got an exaggerated shiver from Ihejirika as he acknowledged receipt of active command in the ship network.
In theory, Henry’s internal network could overlay a pretty decent simulacrum of the bridge onto his eyes and allow him to run the ship from anywhere aboard. In practice, enough efficiency was lost not having everyone physically in the same room that the virtual bridge was used only when they were in the acceleration tanks.
After all, once you were submerged in specially designed gel and breathing via a mask, it was rather hard to have a regular conversation.
O’Flannagain entered his office exactly on time, advanced to stand behind the chair across the desk from Henry and saluted with perfect precision.
He waited for her to sit down for several seconds, then sighed.
“Cut the mickey mouse,” he ordered. “Sit your ass down, Commander, and tell me what you wanted to
talk to me about.”
She obeyed.
“It’s not that I mind my regular check-ins with the ship’s doctor,” she finally said. “Always fun, those. I think I owe you an apology, ser. Rumor has it I took a swing at you.”
O’Flannagain flushed, very clear on her pale skin.
“I don’t actually remember.”
“Neither do I,” Henry said with a calm innocence. “If such a thing happened, it could potentially be ignored as a symptom of a mental health problem that you’re addressing with the doctor. Am I clear?”
“Ser,” she said flatly. “I also appear to have been cut off from all alcohol aboard the ship.”
“Official and unofficial,” the Captain confirmed. “Unless the chiefs want to have to deal with the stills…and they never do.”
O’Flannagain swallowed.
“I’m not an alcoholic, ser,” she noted. “You’re not the first Captain to send me to a ship’s doctor over that concern. After a fight, all I want is a long drink and a hard fuck, and the latter is hard to find when you’re the damn CAG.”
“Is that why you’re trying so damn hard to lose a bar, Commander?” he asked, letting his own profanity match hers. “The degree to which demotion records are sealed is rather fascinating, but it’s pretty clear to me you’ve lost that second steel bar at least once.”
The flush darkened.
“Three times, ser,” she admitted. “And that wasn’t…exactly the plan.”
“And frankly, Commander, I don’t care what the damn plan was,” Henry replied. “You’re not the best pilot I’ve seen in the last twenty years, not by a long shot, but you’re probably in the top twenty.
“But I’ve seen better officers pull dumber stunts,” he told her. “At war, you got docked a bar and everything got brushed under the rug. Reading between the lines, you missed out on more than a few medals and promotions due to getting drunk and starting fights.
“If there’s a problem, Commander, we have doctors and counselors and a hundred solutions,” he continued. “But if the answer is just that you want to be a whiny little bitch, there’s a beach waiting for you.
“A peacetime Space Force isn’t going to put up with this bullshit from even a top-tier pilot. You got drunk off your ass in public and ended up vomiting your guts out on the floor of the officers’ mess. That’s bad enough.
“You also managed to get a noncom with twelve years’ experience of running the bar in a ship’s mess concerned enough that she pinged the Captain for backup when she couldn’t find anyone else,” he concluded. “So, ask yourself, Commander O’Flannagain, was that really conduct becoming an officer?”
The room was silent.
“You’re going to beach me, aren’t you?” she said softly.
“Not yet,” Henry told her flatly. “Because as you so pithily noted while drunk off your ass, you and your people killed a damn gunship for me and I wasn’t expecting that.
“I don’t usually play three strikes, but you’ve blown two strikes already. Fuck up one more time, Commander, and you’re done. Your record already bleeds ‘problem child.’ I ask for a new CAG when this mission is over and you won’t get a new post.”
“I’m not even sure how I got this one,” O’Flannagain snapped. “I doubt it’s in my record anywhere, but I’m not supposed to end up as CAG. ‘Personality unsuited for independent squadron command’ was what Commodore Breslau said.”
“Well, Breslau is dead,” Henry pointed out. “She died in Golden Lancelot leading the combined fighter strike at Horus-One.”
That had been one of the last big starfighter strikes of the war. Two of the UPSF’s fleet carriers, backed up by the last of the old escort carriers and three battlecruisers. They’d launched almost four hundred starfighters in a long-range bombardment mission of the Kenmiri homeworld, under command of the only Red Wing still in FighterDiv…Commodore Sara Breslau.
Less than half of the birds had survived long enough to launch missiles, but they’d wiped out the largest concentration of Kenmorad breeding sects in the galaxy.
Seventeen starfighters had crawled back to the carriers. The escort carriers and two of the battlecruisers had been lost covering the retreat as well. Horus-One had been the single most expensive operation of the war, let alone of Golden Lancelot.
“But you’re here, Commander O’Flannagain, because Commodore Barrie sent you over,” he told his CAG. “Now I’m uninclined to speculate on your previous CO’s motivations, but I should probably note that Commodore Peter Barrie is my ex-husband.
“So, the question, I think, is whether my ex-husband sent you to me because he figured I could make you rise above your bullshit or because he expected you to drag me down with you.”
He smiled.
“Right now, I’m not thinking kind thoughts about my ex,” he noted. “But in general, Peter and I parted amicably. So, I think you can be what this ship needs. Whether you do it to keep flying, do it to spite Commodore Barrie, or do it because I asked you to…I don’t care.
“But there are seven pilots downstairs who are bound by law to follow you into hell if we order it. I think you owe it to them, if nothing else, to at least try. Am I clear?”
She was silent for at least twenty seconds, staring down at her hands.
“Commander O’Flannagain, I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’ve screwed it up before and people died.”
“And that, Commander, is what we’re supposed to see counselors for,” he told her gently. “Your strike against First Warlord Deearan’s gunship? That was perfect. That was exactly what was needed, maximizing impact and minimizing the risk to your people.
“I need the officer who plotted that attack. I need her with her head on her shoulders and her heart in the game. Am I clear?”
“Yes, ser.”
Henry shook his head.
“And for that matter, how the hell did you make it this long without all of this coming out with a damn counselor?”
“They’re not pilots, ser,” she said slowly. “They don’t always ask the right questions.”
“Well, take what you told me, Commander, and go tell it to the doctor. I will not let you self-sabotage yourself out of the cockpit; am I clear?”
“Yes, ser,” she conceded.
Iyotake was silent as he watched the recording, then sighed and shook his head.
“Rocket-jocks,” he swore with feeling. “Think she’ll get it sorted with Dr. Pham?”
“I hope so,” Henry replied. “I think she is a bit more aware of where she’s at than she was before, but I’m no counselor. I’m a starship Captain.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Iyotake promised. “I’m guessing the liquor ban stays, though.”
“Until she proves herself to me, yes,” Henry agreed. “I’m half-convinced Peter sent her to me to knock her head on straight, and half-convinced Peter sent her to me to get me killed.”
“I haven’t served with Commodore Barrie,” his XO said carefully. “I can’t speculate.”
“I can’t speculate and I was married to the man for six years,” Henry noted. “What else is going on aboard this ship that I need to know about?”
“We’ll be launching the first battle-stations drill thirty minutes before we complete the skip,” Iyotake told him. “You and I are the only ones who know the timeline, though Ihejirika and Song helped me set up the parameters.”
“This is a straight report-to-stations drill, right?” Henry asked, the thirty minutes before skip timeline bringing a thought to mind.
“Yes, ser.”
“Let’s hold them at stations once they’re there,” the Captain ordered. “In fact, add that to our announced schedule for the next skip. From now on, we complete our skips at battle stations. It won’t hurt anything, and it may just save our ass some day.”
“Apophis Province is effectively unclaimed space at this point. So’s Geb,” Iyotake said. “No Kenmiri. Not
even much in terms of Vesheron running around.”
Henry nodded.
“That’s part of why I’m worried,” he told his subordinate. “Each province was five hundred star systems, Iyotake. We barely managed to name all twenty of the provinces, and we certainly haven’t visited every Kenmiri star over the course of the war. I don’t think we’re over forty visited and labeled systems in any of the Kenmiri provinces.
“Even the Vesheron are barely aware of what’s in the stars around them. The Kenmiri were the only ones to really know their space, and they’ve written it all off. It’s going to be a chaotic hell for the next few decades as all of that gets sorted out.”
“Feels like we should be doing more to hold that together,” Iyotake said softly. “Never going to say the Kenmiri didn’t need to get their asses handed to them, but it can’t be a good thing that a state of ten thousand stars just shrank down to, what, four thousand?”
“Less,” Henry replied. “They’ve pulled back to eight provinces of twenty, but they’ve abandoned peripheral stars in those provinces. And even what they’re holding right now, they can’t sustain.
“Worker drones only have a fifteen-year average life expectancy. In twenty years, there won’t be any of them left.” He shivered at the thought, letting the inevitable mental claim of responsibility flash through his mind without engaging with it.
“There’ll still be billions of Warriors and Artisans, but they won’t need four thousand stars and they won’t be able to hold on to four thousand stars.”
“It’s going to be chaos,” Iyotake said. “How the hell is anyone going to keep order?”
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