Hero of the Republic: (The Parasite Initiative, Book 1)

by Britt Ringel

  Her smile was infectious and Twist felt himself returning the expression. He quickly stood and lifted both of his deployment bags. “That’s me, ma’am. Is it safe to come out?”

  The woman nodded. “More or less,” she answered vaguely before clarifying. “The exercise isn’t over but we’ve got at least another twenty minutes before we re-engage.” She waved at him to follow as she disappeared from the shuttle’s threshold.

  Lochaber’s shuttle bay was easily the largest compartment Twist had ever seen on a starship, extending over forty meters in length. Three other shuttles rested in a neat row along the far side of the bay with an empty spot obviously waiting for Twist’s craft. As he walked down the ramp, he noted that the lieutenant was waiting at the bottom. He also noticed that she was even taller than he was.

  She reached out to take one of Twist’s deployment bags when he reached the ramp’s end and began walking quickly toward a large set of double doors. Without turning, she asked, “Have you received your orders yet?”

  Twist increased the length of his stride to keep up. “Yeah, Haze-One, ma’am.” When there was no reply, he augmented, “I’m a weapons officer.” The statement filled him with pride.

  A smirk reappeared on the woman’s lips at Twist’s formality. “Yeah, me too,” she said. She shifted the deployment bag to her far hand and reached out with the empty one. “I’m Lucille Holt and you can call me Lucy when we’re alone. You’ll find ensigns and jay-gees are pretty casual when we’re by ourselves.”

  Twist shook her hand. “You’re a weapons officer too? What section?”

  Holt shifted the heavy bag back to her right hand. “Haze-Two. We’re teammates.”

  They were walking down a narrow corridor. Passersby largely ignored them. The lack of decorum seemed strange to Twist. What did you expect, Caden? If enlisted folks called the area to attention every time they saw an officer, they’d never get anything accomplished.

  “Lieutenant Chappell leads the heavy laser section. He wanted to greet you but he’s busy overseeing a lot of damage to my laser turrets.” She cast brown eyes down to her chest, nodding to the red sticker. “I’m dead so I was the obvious choice to retrieve you.”

  The revelation shook Twist slightly. “You’re dead? I thought our fire control compartments were deep inside the ship?”

  “Not ours,” she said simply. A sweat-soaked sliver of hair shook free and hung over her right eye. “We have to be close to our gunners to take care of any problems. All of us fire control officers are nearly as exposed as they are.” She blew a burst of air at the offending strands. “The only ‘safe’ spot is Lieutenant Commander Escobar’s WEPS position on the bridge. Our section commander will probably out-live us all.”

  Twist offered a nod of understanding. The vital command and control compartments were the best protected on most warships. In the 360-degree environment of space, that meant nestling such compartments as far inside the ship as possible, usually near its center. “How is Captain Kessler?”

  “He’s… busy,” Holt answered. “Good guy, I guess. I’ve only met him once. Speaking of, he probably won’t set up a meeting with you but Commander Escobar will. Remind me to show you how to get on his calendar tomorrow. I’ve been appointed your sponsor so it’s my job to help you get situated. You can ask me all your ‘stupid’ questions.” White teeth flashed once again behind her lips. “Don’t worry about asking them either. The operational navy is a lot different than OTS.”

  Twist felt a surge of relief. He had a hundred questions racing through his mind, the most pressing being what to do about the full lieutenant approaching them. “Uh, Lucy, do we need to brace to attention?” He pointed briefly at the man barreling their way.

  Holt followed the trajectory of Twist’s hand and rolled her eyes. “No, but you’re about to see some bracing Brevic stupidity,” she muttered.

  The lieutenant came to a stop in front of them with hand extended, palm out. Unlike everyone else Twist had seen on the ship, he was not wearing a shocksuit. Instead, he wore a duty uniform and an orange armband emblazoned with the letters SEET. “Hold it, Ensign,” he said while examining Twist with a curious eye. “She’s already dead,” the man said nonchalantly at Holt before returning his attention to Twist. “But, Ensign, why aren’t you in your shocksuit? The ship is at action stations.”

  Twist was relieved to hear a term he knew, “action stations.” It was the second highest level of alert, used when a ship was facing impending danger. Twist opened his mouth to stutter out a reply when Holt answered for him.

  “He’s brand new, sir. I have orders from Lieutenant Chappell to escort him directly from his shuttle to his quarters.”

  “You should have brought a shocksuit to his shuttle,” the lieutenant reprimanded. “Hollaran missiles won’t care if he’s fresh meat or not.”

  Holt winced slightly before pausing as if in internal debate. Finally, she replied, “Yes, sir. I didn’t know how much baggage he’d have and the suits are a bit cumbersome. I also didn’t want to freak him out.”

  The lieutenant merely clucked reproachfully and wrote on his datapad.

  “I hope you won’t take my poor judgment out on him, sir,” she stated. “After all, Lieutenant, maybe someday you might need an extra body to help out Sensors.”

  The man rapidly pecked at his datapad. When finished, he declared, “I won’t KIA him but I’m entering your decision not to bring him a shocksuit into my log. I can only turn so much of a blind eye, Lieutenant.” The man smiled wickedly. “I’m sure you understand.”

  Holt nodded and offered, “Yes, sir,” before stepping around the officer and continuing her way down the corridor.

  Twist, left alone in front of the man, mumbled, “Thank you, sir,” and made his escape.

  After walking in silence for nearly a minute, Twist asked, “Who was that?”

  “Just an ass in a ship stocked full of them,” Holt answered angrily. She sighed after her response and softened the cruel edge her voice had taken. “He’s just doing his job I suppose but Jonah O’Brian outranks me by about four months. We’ve been the same grade nearly the whole time we’ve known each other but now that he’s a full lieutenant, he’s acting like he’s God’s gift to the navy and us jay-gees are simple children.”

  “You could’ve brought me a shocksuit,” Twist said. “I didn’t mean to get you into trouble.”

  Holt snorted and her smile returned. “I’m not going to get into trouble. It was Chappell who said not to bother with a shocksuit.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the lieutenant that?” Twist asked incredulously.

  Holt stopped near a door and faced Twist. Her brown eyes locked onto his own. “Because we protect the men and women below us and above us, Caden. We don’t hang our people out to dry.” She placed a hand atop his shoulder. “Look, if I had said our boss told me not to get a shocksuit, that jerk would’ve made sure that fact came out in front of the captain during the SEET debriefing. That would make Chappell look bad. Instead, Lieutenant Chappell will be informed that Lieutenant, junior grade Holt chose to disregard regulations by not providing a fresh replacement a shocksuit during action stations and Chappell will take that information and promptly file it in his trash folder.”

  Holt wiped her forehead and swept her hair behind her ears. “Always take care of the folks over and under you and you can be sure they’ll take care of you.” She gestured toward the door. “We’re here. This is your quarters.” She stepped to the controls near the door and muttered as she entered a code, “three, five, three, five.”

  The portal slid open to reveal a small room, roughly two-thirds the size of Twist’s room in OTS.

  “Trevor, are you here? You decent? Did you die too?” Holt asked loudly as she stepped into the room. It was vacant. She sighed again at the emptiness. “Why am I the only one who gets killed during these things?” She dropped the deployment bag and pointed to the left side of the room. “That’s your side. Your roommate is
Trevor Kinnley. He’s another ensign so he’s a good person to ask questions. He’s also a sight-sprite and can tell you all about the evil man you encountered in the hall. Just stay in here until you hear a ship-wide announcement declaring endex.” She paused and then clarified, “End. Ex. That’s end of exercise.”

  Holt fished her datapad from a cargo pocket on her right leg. “I’m sending you my contact information. During routine ops, we’ll have different shifts but we’re exercising all this week so our schedules will be the same. I’ll flash you when I’m headed to chow if you want to join me. It’s better than sitting alone and I can introduce you to some of the people you’ll be working with, including your NCO, Gunnersmate First Class Falk. He’s totally the man, you lucky duck.”

  With that, the lanky weapons officer waved a goodbye and disappeared out the portal, leaving Twist alone still standing in the doorway. He jumped when a female voice announced over the ship’s main channel, “This is an exercise. Set for Condition One, S-one. We’ll be entering battle stations in roughly seven minutes. This is an exercise.”

  The woman’s words echoed down the hall. Twist quickly stepped away from the door and threw his deployment bags onto his bunk. The portal closed behind him and he stared at it. Less than seven hours ago, he had been lounging on a comfortable couch with his friend on a quiet passenger ship. Now, he was utterly alone and shaking nervously as announcements of war sounded.

  Twist quickly unpacked and moved to his desk, opening the Lochaber’s combat procedures manual on his datapad. Queued behind that tome was the Brevic Naval Instructions text regarding fire control protocol. He hung on every word of the directives, unsure of each sentence’s relative importance. A call to battle stations sounded before Twist was through the opening introduction to combat procedures. Lochaber’s foreign claxon punctuated the severity of the simulation. As measured but daunting announcements broadcast over the ship’s main channel throughout the exercise, Twist found himself reading with an increasing fervor, born from a desperate desire to understand the chaos unfolding around him.

  * * *

  The exercise outlasted Twist. After his fourth hour reading late into the night, he had succumbed to the hectic activity of the day. When he awoke five hours later, he found a large man sleeping with his feet poking off the bed on the other side of the room. Ensign Trevor Kinnley had not even bothered to remove his shocksuit before collapsing into his bunk.

  Twist rose and silently dressed in the standard blue duty uniform of Republic sailors. He exited the room with datapad in hand and scanned for new messages.

  During the early morning hours, Lieutenant Chappell had sent a greeting along with a request to meet with Twist in his office later this morning. Holt had also sent a note merely two hours ago explaining the exercise had lasted longer than anticipated and she would be skipping breakfast to sleep. The SEET had apparently selected her to play a casualty to drill Lochaber’s operations section. The last message was from Gunnersmate First Class William Falk. The message started with friendly congratulations but quickly evolved into an explanation of the Heavy Laser One section including a breakdown of personnel and their duties. The message was factual and informative, explaining the basic details of HAZ-1 without condescension. Falk had finished the message with a request to meet Twist at the ensign’s leisure along with a map showing how Twist could get to his duty station from his quarters. Twist took great heart in the message for it appeared that “his” NCO was indeed “totally the man.”

  With nowhere to go and nothing better to do, he followed the map to near the bow of the ship. As he passed by crewmembers, he was relieved to see that his choice of uniform appeared to be correct. An enlisted spaceman would offer the occasional greeting as he passed by but he was otherwise ignored. Several minutes later, Twist found himself nearing his duty station. Stenciling on the bulkheads at intersections denoted the turns to take for nearby sections. When Twist spotted the portal to the HAZ-1 compartment, he wiped his datapad screen blank and tried to walk casually through the door.

  He was unsure what to expect. Would a spaceman see him enter and call the room to attention? Perhaps several other spacemen would be performing maintenance on a Carbovan heavy laser turret under the supervision of the grizzled and crusty PO1 Falk, wiping his dirty hands with a rag.

  Instead, Twist entered a small and unoccupied room. “HAZ-1” consisted of just two control stations. The panels looked remarkably similar with controls and screens in the same positions on the consoles. The shockseats in front of each station were heavily reinforced with restraints crisscrossing the padded cushions. A hinged door was located on the back of each chair, with the nearest shockseat’s door open.

  Twist crossed the room in five steps and glanced inside the small storage compartment behind the shockseat. Hooks and supports were present but the shocksuit was missing. Probably still on Falk’s body, Twist thought, recalling the image of his roommate earlier this morning.

  Twist looked at Falk’s control console. The panel was immaculate though interlaced with a myriad of organized notes near individual sets of controls or screens. He turned to look at presumably his own control station and found it also positively sparkled with a cleanliness that might border on obsession. Absent though were notes of any kind.

  Both duty station consoles displayed all aspects relating to the HAZ-1 heavy lasers. A, D, E, M and N turrets were currently “nonfunctional” judging by the splash of red over their emplacement status bars. C-turret’s condensers were yellow but the remaining turrets appeared to be nominal. The translucent watermark “Exercise” appeared in the center of every panel but one, leading Twist to believe he was looking at the final results of the latest practice attack.

  He stepped around to his shockseat. He hit the Deploy button on it with the side of his fist and the back storage door opened eagerly. Resting inside was his shocksuit. Twist pulled the suit from the compartment and laid it on the deck. He fished his datapad from a pocket and opened a bookmarked section of combat procedures he had read last night. At least we learned how to perform a basic function test in OTS, Twist thought as he reviewed the procedure on his datapad.

  It took nearly twenty minutes for Twist to don the shocksuit and work his way through the basic functionality procedure. It passed each test and it was only after Twist had shrugged out of the shocksuit did he see a green inspection tag on the front seal that connected the suit to his helmet. He was carefully returning the shocksuit to its storage compartment when the portal door opened.

  Petty Officer First Class William Falk entered the room with a shocksuit neatly tucked under his left arm. He was of average height with dark brown hair cut short but not buzzed. When he saw Twist, a friendly smile spread over his face and he saluted smartly but informally with his free hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Ensign Twist. I’m Bill Falk.”

  Twist stopped what he was doing and quickly returned the salute. “Thank you. It’s nice to meet you too, Petty Officer Falk.” It seemed wrong to address the man by his first name even though protocol allowed it.

  “Looking at your shocksuit, sir?” Falk asked as he began to stow his own.

  “Yeah,” Twist replied, “I was giving it an inspection.”

  “I already did that, sir, after Lieutenant Jacoby left.”

  Twist hung his head slightly. “Yeah, I didn’t see the inspection tag until I’d gone over it.”

  Falk chuckled lightly. “Well, it’s no big deal and probably smart to check it yourself. After all, your life could depend on it.” He sealed his shockseat and glanced at the panels. “I’ll clear the boards once SEET gives us permission. They wanted us to keep things as they were after the exercise in case they needed to get more information.”

  “How’d we do?” Twist asked, secretly pleased with himself that he had asked an intelligent question.

  “We won the battle,” Falk said. “But then, we always win the battles.” He moved next to Twist and pointed at the screen containing e
ach turret’s status. “You can get a general feel for the condition the section’s in from that screen right there, sir. Green is good, yellow means danger and red means we’re in trouble. The exercise was the standard missile attack followed by a laser engagement.”

  Falk pointed at the right side of the screen, at the turrets labeled “M” and “N.” “Captain Kessler used our starboard side for the missile attack. Lochaber took a hit amidships which knocked out both of those turrets.”

  He moved his hand to the opposite side of the status board. “The captain flipped us as we closed to laser range to present our port broadside to the enemy. It was a brutal engagement—I’m not sure if he meant to close inside of five light-seconds or if it just worked out that way. At any rate, we got beat up pretty bad and lost A, D and E.”

  Falk frowned as he stabbed at the yellow status of turret-C. “That’s real world, sir. The laser engagement was with live shots and C-turret’s primary condenser burned out while firing.” He grimaced. “Sorry, sir, I know that’s not how you want to start your subsection command.” Falk moved to his shockseat and the man’s hands danced over the console. He muttered, “I told Don not to leave until it was fixed…” He trailed off as he read the repair log. Finally, he said, “Okay, okay. It’s fixed but hasn’t been certified by Operations yet. Certification is scheduled for eleven hundred hours. I can take care of that, sir, but if you want to be present, it would be good OJT.”

  Twist nodded. “Is it here?”