by Jean Johnson
“You will see this duality stressed throughout your Company Bible,” Ia said, tapping her arm unit. “I need each one of you to be able to work independently for the betterment of this ship and our missions, to be able to offer suggestions and implement beneficial changes in procedures and tactics where needed, and I need you to obey me when I require it. However, I will only step in when something has to be done a specific way. For the rest of it, I need all of you to help me. You are the best people I can find for this job because you are flexible, innovative, and more than capable.
“So. Please double-check that your datachip matches your name before opening your manuals, as they are indeed tailored to each member of this crew. You will also be issued your Company flashpatches at this time. Wear your Company patch with pride, and strive hard to earn and uphold the high reputation it will come to represent. You are now free to organize yourselves and to get to know each other,” Ia concluded. “Dinner is scheduled on the dry-dock station in one hour for the enlisted and the noncoms; you may consider yourselves dismissed in half an hour, though you are welcome to stay for the full hour.”
A final flick of her mind replaced the ship schematics on the main screen with the image of their new flashpatch, a stylized logo of a snowflake surrounded by flames. The colors were subdued, with the snowflake stitched in a mild silvery shade with pale blue accents, centered on a striated, dull red and orange background. To either side, the Platoon sergeants stood and picked up one of the three small cases resting on the table; each one was lined with neatly slotted chips stamped with its rightful owner’s name.
Turning off her headset, Ia fished out several datachips from her pocket. She took a moment to sort them out, handing each one to its proper owner.
“Each of you has your own Company Bible to study as well. Lieutenants Rico, Spyder, and Helstead…once you’ve uploaded your manuals, please spend the next hour getting to know the individual members of your Platoons. After that hour is up, we will have an officers’ meeting in the officers’ mess over dinner here on board the Hellfire,” she warned them, passing chips to Grizzle and Bennie. “We’ll all still be berthed either in the dry-dock station’s guest facilities for most of the next two months, or out on maneuvers while everyone gets used to their mechsuits, but our first meal together will be on board the Hellfire. Thankfully, the station has graciously agreed to fix and ship us a meal for tonight.”
“I don’t get it, Captain. Why are we dining on the Hellfire?” Bennie asked, slotting her assigned chip into her arm unit. “Why not on board the station, where the food will be served a lot hotter and faster?”
It was a legitimate question. Ia had a legitimate answer for it, too. “Because I’m trying to abide by the letter of our standing orders,” she stated, handing Mishka and Harper their chips. “I’m going to be discussing the capabilities and requirements of the main weapon with the rest of you during dinner. That means I need to do so on board this ship, in a secured location, with no chance of eavesdroppers or comm equipment picking it up and broadcasting it. The officers’ mess in the fore section on Deck 4 is already finished, nowhere near the rest of the current round of construction, and fully soundproofed, so it is the ideal location for that discussion. Any other questions?”
“Yes,” Harper stated, still seated with his arms folded across his chest. He had only moved them long enough to accept his datachip and slot it into the military bracer clasped around his left wrist. “When can I have a private word with you, Captain?”
It figures. Sighing internally, Ia strove to keep her expression neutral. “After supper, Commander.” She used the shortened version of his rank. “Before then, I will not have time for a private chat.”
He arched his brow at that, his expression skeptical. “Will not have time, or will not make t—”
“Captain!” The strident female voice interrupted Harper’s retort. It came from an enlisted woman making her way down through the others clustering around their sergeants. She lifted her left wrist, waving her arm unit in anger.
Ia sighed and glanced at her old roommate. “As in will not be allowed to, Commander. See me in my office after supper. Yes, Private Davies?” she asked as the somewhat short woman approached, her chin-length black curls bouncing with each impatient step. “You have a question about your orders?”
“I have a complaint,” Davies countered, glaring at Ia. She added a belated, “Sir.”
“Request denied.” Ia’s mild statement rocked the shorter woman back on her newly issued bootheels. While Davies was still blinking, Ia explained her reasoning. “Your extreme reluctance to be paired with males may have been understandable earlier on in your career, given what you once suffered, but your lingering phobia is a weakness preventing you from achieving your fullest potential as a Space Force soldier…never mind as a former fellow Marine. Your intent to demand, coerce, cajole, or bribe your way out of having a male for both a teammate and a roommate is therefore denied.”
“But, sir!” Davies protested, blushing and frowning.
“Private First Grade Unger is the ideal partner for you, Private Second Class Davies,” Ia stated, keeping her expression pleasant but using an implacable tone. “He is an excellent engineer, a very good triage corpsman, and he is a touch-sensitive empath. There is no way that he could possibly assault you without himself getting an equally unpleasant amount of feedback from that assault. You, on the other hand, have the hands-on combat training he will need to learn.
“By sparring together as teammates, you will learn to trust men, and he will learn to defend himself properly against someone who sees him emotionally as a threat. I require your roommate to be fully functional in hand-to-hand combat, and I require you to be fully functional in an emergency. The Department of Innovations and its psychology personnel have agreed to this pairing. You therefore have zero grounds for objection, Private. With all of that carefully considered in advance,” Ia finished, “your intended demand for a female roommate is, as I said, denied.”
Davies stared at her for a few more seconds, then finally shut her sagging mouth. She blinked a couple of times, managed to pull herself back together enough for a brief glare, and marched off again without another word. Ia let her go. “Request denied” wasn’t exactly the same as “Dismissed,” but she wasn’t going to argue the matter. The enlisted woman would just have to come to terms with her new situation.
Harper started to resume his earlier words but was forestalled by the approach of two more soldiers, this time a man and a woman. The man nodded to her, introducing himself and his companion as soon as they reached the edge of the table. “Captain, I am Private First Class Bei Ninh, and this is my wife, Corporal Jana Bagha.”
“Ey! I know you!” Spyder exclaimed, interrupting the other man before he could say anything more. He grinned. “Choo’re th’ silver an’ bronze medalists from th’ Winter Olympics, Mass Biathlon two winters ago, ainchoo? Lookidat! Celebrities in our midst.”
Ninh blinked, nonplussed a little. Ia stepped into the breach, answering his unspoken request as well. “To answer your question in advance, Private Ninh, I have zero problems with the two of you continuing to be teamed together. In fact, I am counting on the close cooperation and camaraderie between the two of you to help pull off some very tricky Sharpshooting in the coming years,” she confessed. “That is why I pulled the pair of you out of that ridiculous athletic tour circuit and back into full active duty.
“As important as sporting events like the Olympics may be, demonstrating peaceful competition and the bonds of athletic brotherhood across the species of the Alliance, I will need the two of you ready to shoot at mobile targets that are going to be shooting back at you by the time we launch in two months,” Ia told both of them. “I will also need you to be far more accurate shots than your enemies will be while doing so. You two have always worked best together, and you have been lucky to have enjoyed tolerant commanders in your past. Serving under my command will be no different.
Dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Bei Ninh told her, giving her a thankful nod.
“Yes, sir; thank you,” Jana Bagha murmured, moving away with her husband.
Ia watched them go, then looked over the others. More would drift her way with questions or comments, or just under the urge to get a closer look at their new commanding officer.
Lieutenant Rico, who had been surveying the men and women receiving their chips a few meters away, turned his attention to Ia. “Tell me, Captain, what is your exact policy on fraternization?”
She shrugged. “I prefer to follow the relaxed rules most combat commanders use while on extended patrols. Mainly because we won’t have that many opportunities for off-ship Leave.”
“And that means…?” Doctor Mishka asked her, lifting one blonde brow.
“Between privates of either rank, it doesn’t matter, so long as it doesn’t affect their performance while on duty. If it’s privates versus corporals or yeomen, not within the same Squad. Between privates, corporals, and yeomen versus the sergeants, not within the same Platoon. Between officers and enlisted, or even among ourselves…sorry,” Ia apologized to her cadre. “Get used to being celibate for now.”
Helstead snorted. “Ha! As if I’ve been anything but, all my life.”
“If we never get any Leave or reprieve, some of us might end up asking for a transfer,” Harper muttered. “Since you implied we’d be acting like a deep-range scouting ship, with little chance to stop and mingle with others along the way.”
Ia didn’t have to be a telepath or a precognitive to guess why he said that. Parts of Meyun Harper’s future possibilities were still cloaked in misty grey; he could still mess up her plans if she let him affect her on a personal level, if either of them indulged in fraternization. In fact, one of those featureless nodes lay in the hour immediately after supper. Most of the paths leading out of that grey spot weren’t irretrievably bad—at least where her long-term goals were concerned—but Ia wanted to be cautious nonetheless. That included changing the subject right away.
“Rico, Helstead, Spyder, now would be a good time to go meet and greet your Platoon members,” Ia encouraged the others. “Doctor Mishka, I’m aware of your ongoing objections to your new duty post, but please understand that I selected you to serve on this ship because we will need a Triphid in charge of our health. If you prefer, you can go have fun overseeing the refitting of your state-of-the-art infirmary, though I’d appreciate it if you could bring yourself to get to know the others. Bennie and Harper, I suggest the two of you circulate as well. I’ll stay here at the table and handle any questions aimed my way. The crew can get to know me in the coming months. I already know them.
“Grizzle…you’ll have a lot of paperwork to start processing, now that I’ve officially assumed command,” Ia added, nodding politely to their Company sergeant. “I’ll see if I can snag you one of your clerks for a little preemptive strike on the ongoing pile, and give you some help with it myself. Remember, dinner in the officers’ mess in less than an hour—oh, and Grizzle,” she added, addressing Sergeant Sadneczek, “you’re included in tonight’s dinner invitation, since as our quartermaster, you’ll need to know about the main cannon as well, and why it requires so much hydrofuel.”
“Thank you, sir,” he acknowledged. “Will the other sergeants be included?”
“Not for this one since they don’t need to know at this time, though they may be included at later dates. Remember, gentlemeioas,” Ia cautioned the men and women clustered around her. “Do not discuss the capabilities of the main cannon with anyone of lesser rank than yourselves, and nowhere else but on board this ship, under secured circumstances. The fewer people who know about it, the fewer chances there are for the information to be leaked.
“In the meantime, these meioas will be your brothers and sisters for the foreseeable future. Have fun getting to know each other,” Ia warned her staff as she finally sat down. “Dismissed.”
CHAPTER 2
When it came to putting my crew and ship together, most of the important decisions were made behind the scenes. Things like minor design flaws and the few faulty components I could foresee were fixed or replaced before the Hellfire ever left dry dock. The wrinkles in the staff and crew would take a bit longer to smooth out, but the raw material was always good.
Some things could be fixed right away. Others took time, and some butting together of heads. Mishka, for example, did not like being pulled away from her single-patient cases, and her resentments lingered for quite some time. She was professional even at the beginning, don’t get me wrong, but I knew going into it that it would take me time to win her over. Others adapted more quickly…
…Harper? Yeah, of course Harper was there—look, I had less than a third of the crew normally needed to run a combat ship of that size, and only two months in which to cross-train everyone to cover all the missing stations. Even the married couples in my crew didn’t have the time to spare for that sort of thing, we were pushed that hard. Not to mention continuing to scout the future and write prophecies, plus the double-indemnity clause if any of my crew smacked into a Fatality—all of that weight on my shoulders, and you think I had time for a relationship? Have you not been paying attention in this interview?
~Ia
OCTOBER 25, 2495 T.S.
“You know, you never answered any of my mail? Vidletters, texts, nothing. No correspondence. Do you know how that made me feel?” Harper demanded the moment they were alone.
The only good thing about his accusation was how he waited just long enough for her office door to slide shut. Mindful of the pickups hidden in her office, pickups she knew about but didn’t want to tamper with for this first “private” meeting with Harper, Ia hoped a version of the truth would be palatable enough for both him and her two superiors.
“I can guess how you felt, but there really wasn’t much to say. We parted as friends, Meyun, and attended to our separate duties. Anything further at that point was physically impossible and logistically improbable, so what more could be said?”
He stared at her, then flung out his hands. “Maybe something like, ‘I missed you’? Or ‘Let me tell you about my crazy day’…? Okay, maybe not that one, given we both ended up on Blockade duty,” he allowed. Swiping his hands over his hair, Meyun sighed. “I just…You never replied.”
He wasn’t going to let it go. She couldn’t check this moment in time; Meyun Harper was too much of an anomaly point for a clear reading. But she could check the most likely outcomes of this meeting, in regards to Genibes and the Admiral-General. A quick skim of the waters took no more time than the amount it took her to blink twice and sigh.
“…Fatality Forty-Nine, Harper?” Ia reminded him gently. “I didn’t want either of our careers derailed by accusations of fraternization. And now that we’re serving together again, that’s not going to come into play, either.”
She could see the protests forming in his dark brown eyes. Moving closer, Ia picked up his hand in hers, cupping it in both palms. Verbally, she addressed him as she would have the Grandmaster of the Afaso Order, as a good friend but not a romantic interest. Underneath it, however, she sent a different message.
“Come on…where’s the roommate who put up with my awful study habits?” she asked out loud, then carefully sent, (Meyun, this room is bugged for audio and visual surveillance. The Admiral-General wants to make sure everything I do is aboveboard.) “The man who wanted me at his side during the zombie apocalypse, because I’d be the one running to nuke them all from orbit, like a sensible soldier should?”
He widened his eyes for a moment, then narrowed them in comprehension. Ia continued her dual conversation.
(I have five months left in my carte blanche to convince her to give me ongoing free rein in handling all of this.) “We had a brief fling, but it didn’t work out. Our real relationship, the lasting one, has always been a working one.” (Help me out here,) she cajoled. (Don’t mess it up. A year o
r two from now, if everything goes right…then we can talk about this.) “I’d like to get back to that.” (I’ll have the prophetic leverage for all sorts of things, if we play it straight and by the book, right now.)
Meyun looked down at the hands cradling his. He sighed and covered her fingers with his other hand. “You’re right. It’s just…Ah, your earlier comment, about the officers having to remain chaste…I can’t speak for the others, but I am a healthy Human male. Abstaining isn’t a pleasant thought.”
She offered him a wry smile. “Technically, it’s only in regards to the others. Whatever you do with yourself is your own business, you know. What I need is that brilliant mind of yours on my side.”
With their skin touching, she could sense some of his surface thoughts. Telepathy had never been her strongest gift, and he certainly wasn’t a telepath himself, but these were clearly formed thoughts, ones aimed her way. Ia nodded, confirming his unspoken question. She followed it with a subtle shake of her head. Yes, it was possible to alter the recordings being made, but no, she wasn’t going to do so at this time.
(I have to play it straight, Meyun. So do you.)
Meyun sighed. He gave her fingers a gentle pat. “Fine. Love me strictly for my brains if you must. Just don’t suck them out.”
“Of course not,” she scoffed, squeezing his fingers. “That would put an end to your genius.” (We’ll have a better chance to discuss all of this later. Just play it by the rules for now. Please.) Releasing his hand, she spread her arms slightly. “…Still friends? When we’re off duty, that is?”
“Still friends,” he agreed, opening his own arms. Stepping close, he hugged her.
She returned it. Breathing deep, Ia enjoyed for one moment the warmth of another Human being, the scent of a man whom she still missed sometimes. For a moment, her gifts lay quiet. She couldn’t risk touching him for much longer, given what had happened in the past, but she couldn’t give up this moment of comfort, either.
