She smiled, recalling an incident from the Academy. One of her instructors, after catching George and a few of her friends watching the latest movie, had ordered them to work out a charge sheet for Stellar Star, assuming she was actually a real person. They’d concluded that she could be dishonourably discharged for everything from conduct unbecoming to an officer to theft and misuse of naval resources. And the instructor had added a dozen other charges without even trying.
But she couldn’t help noticing Felicity’s face fall at the gentle ribbing.
She’ll have to toughen up, she told herself, sternly. How did she pass four years at the Academy without a thick skin?
“Potter, Henderson, Wheeler, you are dismissed,” she said, firmly. “Potter; report to the tactical department at 0900 tomorrow, as stated in your timetable. Henderson, Wheeler; report to the Chief Engineer. Spurgeon, remain behind.”
George watched the three midshipmen leave, then turned to look at Paula. The older woman gazed back at her impassively, her face utterly unreadable. George couldn't help thinking that she might have been carved from ice, for all the expression she showed. And yet, there was something about Paula that bothered her on a very primal level. Nothing like Fraser, she thought, but something equally dangerous.
She pushed the unease out of her thoughts with an effort. “Spill,” she ordered.
Paula quirked an eyebrow. “Spill?”
“You were stripped of three years of seniority,” George said. She’d heard of midshipmen being retroactively beached all the time, but never for more than a couple of months. An offense so serious as to require more punishment surely deserved court martial ... unless, for some reason, Paula had decided not to contest the NJP. “Three years. What did you do to deserve that?”
“I believe, with the greatest respect,” Paula said, “that my former life is none of your business.”
“I’m the First Middy,” George said. She was damned if she was going to let Paula intimidate her. “And something that happened in your ... former life ... may cause problems for me.”
“If you had a need to know,” Paula told her coolly, “your superiors would have told you.”
She held up a hand before George could come up with a response. “Rest assured, it will not pose any problems for you,” she added. “And you can have my word on that, if that is enough for you.”
George met her eyes, refusing to look away. “What did you do?”
Paula sighed heavily. “If you insist on knowing ...”
“I do,” George said.
“I was caught in bed with a lieutenant,” Paula said. Her voice was very flat. “It was ... strongly suspected ... that he had been fiddling with my efficiency reports, in exchange for sex. He threw himself on his sword for me, insisting that he hadn't done anything to help my career. I believe he was dishonourably discharged from the navy.”
George winced. “What the hell were you thinking? What was he thinking?”
She looked at Paula and knew the answer. Cut from ice or not, Paula was beautiful in a way that made George feel decidedly frumpy. She could have worked at the resort on Mars without any plastic surgery at all. Yes, she could easily see some fool of a lieutenant inviting her into bed, despite the risk. Some men - and some women too - were too fond of allowing their smaller heads to do their thinking.
“I was told that I could go right back to the start,” Paula added, “or be discharged myself. I chose to remain in the navy, even though promotion seemed unlikely.”
George considered it for a long moment. There was something about the story that didn't quite add up. Paula didn't have a hope in hell of further promotion and she had to know it, not with her record ... unless she did something so heroic that the promotions board decided she’d paid for her sins. But there was a war on. Paula might just have a chance.
And if she was discharged, she’d find it hard to gain employment, George thought. A sealed record wouldn't look much better than a dirty one.
“I see,” she said, finally.
“I would be grateful if you didn’t share the story with anyone else,” Paula said. “I ... intend to focus on my career, rather than ...”
“Get into bed with senior officers,” George finished. She was sure Paula had learned her lesson. Hell, she’d been very lucky to be allowed to remain in the navy. And yet, there were still unanswered questions. “Might I suggest a chastity belt?”
Paula essayed a faint smile. “Do you wear one?”
George gave her an unpleasant look. That had hit a little bit too close to home. She’d been separated from Barton for just under two days and her body already missed him dreadfully. It wouldn’t be so bad, she was sure, once the ship finally got underway, but until then ... she shook her head, crossly. She was going to be very busy managing the middies as well as handling her own duties and bucking for promotion.
And Potter is eying my back for the knife, she thought, tiredly. A week of being beached would be enough to make him First Middy.
“No,” she said, sharply. She swallowed the urge to make a catty remark - or assign punishment duty. “I keep my panties on. And I expect you to do the same. Dismissed.”
Chapter Nine
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Captain,” Admiral Harper said. “I’m glad to hear that your government made your promotion permanent.”
“I believe I have you to thank for some of it,” Susan answered. She shook his hand, silently relieved that he hadn't taken the chance to ruin her career. He would have been more than human if he hadn't felt some annoyance over her brief assumption of command. “Your citation did my ego good.”
Harper smiled, cheerfully. “And it was all true too,” he noted. “It makes a pleasant change from the days we had to download whole dictionaries to find new ways to say ‘can walk on water and piss wine.’”
He nodded to a dark-skinned officer standing next to him. “Can I introduce you to Keith Glass, my flag captain?”
“Charmed,” Susan said. Glass could easily have passed for her elder brother or her uncle, although she'd only met her father’s side of the family a couple of times. “We must share notes on commanding battleships when we have the time.”
“Of course,” Glass said. He had a southern accent, although he’d lost some of the tenor during his service. “New York is an impressive ship, but she hasn't seen actual combat just yet.”
Susan frowned as an American yeoman pushed a glass into her hand. “She’ll have her chance,” she said, grimly. “Did you learn anything from our experience?”
“The yard dogs insisted on slapping more armour on the hull,” Glass told her. “Apparently, it’s good for our survival.”
“But lousy for our speed,” Susan said. “Getting here took longer than I had expected.”
She scowled at the thought, relieved that Admiral Harper hadn't made an issue of their late arrival. Vanguard had practically crawled to the RV point as the engineers tested and retested the drive. Her armour was supposed to be solid - stronger even than the legendary Ark Royal’s - but she paid one hell of a mass penalty. The aliens would have no trouble catching the ship, if they wanted to give chase, yet would they want to catch up? Anything strong enough to go toe-to-toe with Vanguard would have serious problems actually getting into weapons range.
Unless they aim themselves at a target they know we have to defend, she thought. Or force us to punch our way through them to reach the tramline.
Glass chatted to her as they circled the giant room, introducing her to the sixteen other commanding officers of Task Force Unity and the ground-force commanders. General Kershaw, USMC, explained that he had every confidence that his light infantry could make an impression on the aliens, although Susan had her doubts. If the task force controlled space, the aliens wouldn’t be able to land; if the task force was driven away from Unity, the aliens could drop KEWs on any human military force foolish enough to show itself. The ground-based weapons stowed away on the giant American fre
ighters might make a difference, but Susan wasn't convinced. If nothing else, the aliens could simply throw rocks from a safe distance and batter the planet into surrender.
“There is, of course, a very simple question,” Captain Boreyev Yegorovich said. The Russian officer leaned forward, his eyes glimmering with suppressed amusement. “Why did the unknowns open fire as soon as they saw us?”
“We don’t know,” Susan said, irked. The Russian had clearly had more than a few glasses of wine. “We may never know until we learn how to communicate with them.”
“Ah,” Yegorovich said. “But, you see, the Tadpoles opened fire without bothering to communicate - at least as far as we knew. We thought they’d just come out of nowhere and invaded our space. But there had been a prior encounter between humans and Tadpoles and we were the aggressor.”
“A problem that could have been resolved if they’d just talked to us,” Glass pointed out, tartly. Heinlein had technically been an independent colony, but there had been no hiding the fact that the vast majority of the settlers had come from America. “It isn't as if we would have risked war over a honest mistake.”
“You would certainly have been alone, if you had,” the Russian said. He finished his glass and placed it on the table. “Was there a prior encounter between the Tadpoles and the unknowns?”
“Not as far as we know,” Susan said. She sighed, wishing that Prince Henry had accompanied her to the dinner. “They hunted us - they stalked us - and then they opened fire.”
“We were trespassing on their territory,” Yegorovich pointed out. “How pleased would we be if someone sent a large fleet into the Terra Nova System?”
“Terra Nova, despite political problems, is a developed star system,” Captain Jeanette Pierre countered. The Frenchwoman smiled, rather dryly. “It would be obvious from the moment someone popped through the tramline that it was home to a spacefaring race. They’d have to be blind not to see the freighters moving around the system, or the cloudscoops, or even the lights on the planet’s surface. UXS-469 was - is - a completely empty star system. There was no trace of any technological presence until they dropped their cloaks and opened fire.”
She tapped her glass, meaningfully. “I’m sure we would have taken more precautions if we’d known we were being watched.”
“Yes,” Susan agreed. “And if a large fleet did happen to appear at Terra Nova, wouldn't we try to communicate with it?”
“Terra Nova isn't expendable,” Yegorovich said. “It’s practically the gateway to Earth.”
“The Tadpoles had no trouble sending their fleet through the system,” Glass said. “It wasn't as if they bothered to bombard the planet or occupy the surface.”
“They didn't have to,” Yegorovich said. “Terra Nova’s total industrial might is puny.”
So is yours, Susan thought. The Russians had taken a beating during the war and even now, ten years later, they had yet to recover completely. Sending a carrier to serve with the task force was one hell of a risk, even though they presumably wanted to re-establish themselves as serious players. And losing New Russia hurt you badly.
Admiral Harper cleared his throat. “I’m glad to hear that we are establishing a working relationship,” he said, cheerfully. “But for the moment, the cooks are serving the meal and they will be very disappointed if we don’t eat it.”
Susan nodded and followed the other officers into the giant dining compartment. The Americans had put out a long table, with Admiral Harper sitting at one end and his flag captain taking the other. She took her assigned seat - they seemed to be handed out at random - and smiled as the yeomen appeared, carrying trays of food. Being so close to Earth had its advantages. They could - and did - have real food shipped to the RV point, rather than being forced to eat reconstituted dinners.
Don’t get used to it, she told herself firmly. You’ll be eating recycled crap soon enough.
“It isn't that far from Thanksgiving,” Admiral Harper explained, as he started to carve a giant roast turkey. “And I thought I’d treat you all to a traditional American dinner.”
“How kind of you,” Yegorovich said. He was still drinking. “And will we require stomach pumps afterwards?”
“I dare say they can be provided,” Harper said. “But really, if you don’t want to eat the food, just say so. The junior officers will appreciate it.”
Susan nodded to herself as she took a plate of turkey, then piled it high with potatoes, vegetables and gravy. It didn't look that different from the dinners she’d eaten as a younger girl, although she knew the cooks would have worked hard to prepare it. The Americans were determined that their crews should have a proper Thanksgiving dinner - just as the Royal Navy tried hard to make sure that everyone had turkey for Christmas - but it wasn't easy. Keeping a few hundred turkeys in the freezer took up space that could be more efficiently used to store rations or pre-packaged meals.
The conversation at the dinner table, as they munched their way through the meal, was decidedly irrelevant to the war. Susan was surprised at just how many subjects were covered, ranging from football to chess, but she supposed it was a way to learn more about their fellow officers. Yegorovich explained, as the yeoman refilled his glass yet again, that Russia’s chances in the World Cup were extremely good - indeed, the Russians had spent a large fortune preparing the stadium in Moscow for the anticipated crowds. She couldn't help wondering if the war would interrupt their plans.
Glass had the same thought. “Do you think thousands of people will flock to Russia when there’s a war on?”
“There’s always a war on,” Yegorovich replied, bluntly. “It makes no difference.”
Susan supposed that was true, for him. Russia’s southern border was almost completely lawless, with criminals, bandits and terrorists running tiny kingdoms that lasted until a kill-team came to call. The chaos regularly threatened to move north into Russia and the Russians responded brutally, hammering villages from orbit and sending in commandos to finish off the survivors.
“This isn't yet another brushfire along the border,” Glass needled. “We’re staring down the barrel of another interstellar war.”
“Yes, but it is hundreds of light years away,” Yegorovich said. “The average man in the street has far more reason to worry about terrorism - and putting food on the table - than he does about the war. As far as he is concerned, we're heading off into the great unknown.”
“The entire world was bombarded, ten years ago,” Susan pointed out. “It is a little more serious than a random terrorist attack.”
“Yes, but it is less important to a man concerned with surviving,” Yegorovich said. “Just because something is important to us doesn't mean it’s important to everyone.”
“That’s true,” Jeanette said. “My government was reluctant to commit anything to the task force. The President had to argue hard to get authorisation to deploy my ship and crew to the front line.”
“And they sent a carrier, rather than a battleship,” Glass said. “Do they consider you more expendable?”
Jeanette shrugged. “There’s still room for a fleet carrier in this day and age,” she said. “Yes, we did take hideous losses in the Battle of New Russia. There’s no point in trying to argue that we didn't get our heads handed to us. And yes, all of our pre-war carriers might as well be giant floating targets in the modern age. But now ... we have more armour on our carriers and better weapons too. And our starfighters have enhanced range. Rest assured, we will more than pull our weight.”
“That’s right,” Yegorovich agreed. “My government would hardly have dispatched my ship if they didn't expect us to make a difference.”
And let’s just hope, Susan thought, that you don’t make it seventeen destroyed ships instead of sixteen.
It was odd, she had to admit. The Royal Navy had always deployed its interstellar carriers to the war zone, although that had led to a major disaster at New Russia. But now, there were two carriers in the task force and neith
er of them were British - or American. The Royal Navy had worked closely with the French - she had no doubt that Jeanette and her ship would fit smoothly into the task force - but she had no idea how well anyone would cope with the Russians. It had been ten years since the Russians had exercised with anyone, let alone sent a capital ship to a war zone.
“We have two months to work on our planning,” Harper said, answering her unspoken concerns. “I think that’s plenty of time to work out the kinks in our system.”
He motioned for them to rise and move back into the reception compartment, where more drinks and cigars were waiting. Susan politely declined the offer of a Cuban cigar, even though they were staggeringly rare after Cuba had been battered with monstrous tidal waves during the Bombardment of Earth. There might be vaccines against tobacco damage these days, but her father had always considered smoking a filthy habit. She’d never really understood why it was so popular.
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