“That, ma’am, is entirely your prerogative.”
Rubbing her hands together, she said, “We might manage to get some fun out of all of this chaos yet. I’ll see you in about half an hour, then.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, saluting. She returned the salute and hustled off to the elevator, still chuckling as he headed off to yell at the rest of the company’s officers. Cooper paused for a moment, making a mental note to take a look at her service record as soon as he had a chance. She reminded him a lot of Barbara, and for a second he smiled, before sighing. He should be enjoying his honeymoon now, not babysitting a bunch of doomed troopers.
Shaking his head, he tapped the door and walked in; this time the platoon snapped to attention more quickly. All of them had changed into their tracksuits, and by some miracle, their uniforms had been neatly folded and placed on their bunks.
“Getting better, Second Platoon,” he said. “Now, who’s up for a nice, relaxing jog? Sergeant Brownworth, you can lead. I’ll take the rear.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“Right. Second Platoon, move out!”
Chapter 4
Orlova rushed into the auditorium, struggling with her tie, finding a place among the crowd of students as near to the back as she could manage. She looked around the room, and already felt out of place; she was the youngest person there by at least five years, and a few Senior Lieutenants were sprinkled around the room. Twelve people in all, but a couple of empty chairs that suggested that she might not be the last to arrive.
As she settled into her seat, a few of the others glanced at her, their expressions obviously making them wonder why she was sitting here amongst them. She tried not to return their glances, instead focusing on the podium at the other end of the room. After less than a minute, a tall, bald figure wearing an immaculate uniform strode in, a pair of aides trailing behind him, and took his place at the front of the room.
Just before he was about to speak, another man raced into the room, sliding in to sit beside Orlova; she turned to see Frank Nelyubov looking up, red-faced, tugging at his uniform to pull it into position. By the looks of things, he’d got dressed in even more of a hurry than she had.
“Lieutenant Nelyubov,” the man at the front said. “Stand to attention!”
He looked around, sheepishly, then rose, snapping to and saluting.
“Are you usually this punctual, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“No excuse, sir.”
Looking up at him, Orlova stood, snapped to attention, and said, “I’ll give him one, sir. He was stationed on the same ship as me, and must have caught a later transport. I barely made it in time myself, sir, and given that he hadn’t received his orders when I left, he made it here as quickly as he could.”
“Name?”
“Orlova, Lieutenant Margaret, sir.”
Some of the same people in the crowd looked back at her, surprise on their faces, and the man at the front replied, “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you are looking out for one of your former subordinates, Lieutenant, but I believe he is capable of speaking for himself. Furthermore, regardless of your former postings, you are all equal here.” He glared around the room, picking out a few of the officers with a look, and continued, “Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the room chorused.
“Good.” He walked around the podium to stand in front of it, and looked around at the room. “I am Fleet Captain Matthew Tarrant, Senior Lecturer of this College. Here we’re going to teach you what you don’t learn in the Academy, for those of you who attended that august institution.” He looked at Orlova this time, and continued, “There you are trained to be a junior officer. Here we train you to be a senior officer. It’s a damn tough course, but if you pass – and based on our usual statistics, less than half of you will – then you will have the training and ability to command ships, stations or fleets.”
He paused, then said, “All of this is classroom based. We don’t cost the Triplanetary Fleet much. There are twelve of you and three of us, and hopefully by the time this is over, that distinction will no longer exist. We’re not going to teach you, but you are going to learn.” He looked around, and asked, “Any questions?”
“Sir,” one of the older officers, one of only two wearing Senior Lieutenant’s stripes, said. “Is this course going to be covering the Cabal? I think it a likely opponent in the near future.”
“Indeed it will, Mr. Olson. In addition to our usual studies on the United Nations and the Lunar Republic.”
Orlova glanced at Nelyubov, who managed a smile. She looked back and saw that Tarrant was looking at her, but he didn’t comment at her inattention.
“Classes begin right now,” Tarrant said. “I hope you all have datapads with you, because you are going to need them. Incidentally, we have now given you a list of required reading, that you will complete over the course of the next twelve weeks in addition to your course-load.”
“Sir?” another asked, “Why not give us that in advance so we can be prepared?”
With a smile, Tarrant replied, “Anyone want to answer that question for me? How about you, Lieutenant Orlova, you seem to have all the answers today.”
Standing up, she looked at the officer and said, “Life doesn’t always give you a warning.”
“Good answer. Perhaps a little short, but a good answer. Now, I have a theoretical question for all of you. In a crisis situation, who takes command of a starship in the middle of a battle if the Captain is killed.”
Olson replied, “The next-senior officer on the ship.”
“Perfect, and by the book, and there is a good chance that doing that will get you killed. Mr. Nelyubov, you try.”
“The next senior officer on the bridge.”
“Correct. According to the manual, Mr. Olson, you are quite correct, but field situations often mean that you have to throw at least part of that manual away. There is no time for an officer who might be out of position to assume command.”
“Then why have the rule in the manual?”
“The rulebooks, Mr. Olson, are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men. We’re going to teach you to be wise men. I hope. The rule is in the manual because most of the time, it is the correct thing to do. Under normal circumstances, there is time for an Executive Officer who might have been asleep to wake up, be briefed, and assume command. For the Operations Officer to make his way up from Auxiliary Control. Sometimes, though, in the middle of a battle, split second decisions count.”
He smiled, then said, “Here’s another one. Last question before I’ll let you go to your rooms and get settled, the real courses start this afternoon. You are the commander of a battlecruiser on a deep space patrol. You sent down a shuttle with two crewmen on it, and it has crashed in circumstances that make it only fifty/fifty that another could go down and rescue them. Raise your hands if you would make the attempt.”
More than half the room did so, including Orlova and Nelyubov; Olsen was one of the ones who didn’t, instead locking eyes with Tarrant as his expression rapidly soured. The Captain counted hands, looking at how each of the students had voted.
“Interesting. I’m not going to ask you to justify that decision, and I don’t think there is a right and a wrong choice. Think for a bit why someone might have voted the other way. Class dismissed, and I believe the mess opens in fifteen minutes. See you there.” The students rose, and he pointed at Orlova, saying, “Lieutenant, please remain. I need to discuss your status in this class.”
Olson looked at her with a smirk on his face as he walked out of the room, a couple of the others likewise; Nelyubov paused for a moment as if wondering whether he should stay, but she gestured with her eyes for him to go, and he reluctantly obeyed. In less than a moment, she was alone in the room with Tarrant.
“Well, Lieutenant, you are probably
the youngest student to come into this course since the War. Do you know why you are here?”
“Captain Marshall told me that he recommended me for this course, sir.”
Shaking his head, Tarrant replied, “That just made sure that you’d crept onto my radar. I’ve looked over your record, Lieutenant, and independent command of a capital ship as a Sub-Lieutenant is not something that happens every day, especially not for more than a month under circumstances that essentially amounted to war.”
She looked up at him, and replied, “I wasn’t ready, sir. People died.”
“People die in wars, Lieutenant. That’s why they are hateful things, but sometimes they are necessary. Though I do agree with you. You weren’t ready. That, however, is something we might be about to fix. You are here because I selected you.” Glancing around the empty room, he said, “I choose who comes here. Those were the conditions under which I agreed to take this damn job instead of a ship command. Are you familiar with my service record?”
“I’m afraid not, sir.”
With a smile, he said, “I see my fame has ebbed. When I was a Captain – Lieutenant, in this new fleet of ours - I commanded the Battlecruiser Theseus for three months. The Colonel got himself killed leading a boarding party, the damn fool, and the Major had headed off to command a prize ship. I had to bring that ship home, back through the lines.” Walking over to her, he said, “I know what you’ve been through. I’ve been there. And I know what comes next.”
“Sir?”
“You think it was rough before, it’s going to get a damn sight worse now. You’ll have commanders who think that you are there to steal their job, and will give you every lousy assignment they can find in an attempt to keep you down, and you’ll have others who think you are the reincarnation of Admiral Nelson and hope that you’ll run their ship for them. We aren’t saints, Lieutenant, and people are people. That’s why you are here.”
Taking a deep breath, he continued, “I and a lot of others think that we’re going to be at war with the Cabal within the next few months. It’s going to mean a mobilization that we haven’t seen since the last war, and maybe a bigger one than we mustered then. Lots of young officers are going to find themselves in command positions earlier than they should be.”
“And you think I’ll be one of them?”
“Think? I know. You’ll get a battlefield promotion, and either end up commanding one of those new scouts or riding as someone’s second-in-command on a capital ship. We can’t afford to waste talent in war, and they bred ship drivers young last time.” With a smile, he said, “The average age of a battlecruiser commander jumped by eight years within one year of the treaty.”
“Eight years?”
“Lots of people saying that we needed a real fleet. The point I’m trying to make is that big things are going to be expected of you, and we need to know whether you are up to them. This is a make or break for you. Succeed here, and you’re on the fast track to a command. Fail, and either you leave the fleet or you’ll be buried on some god-forsaken outpost in the middle of nowhere. For everyone’s safety, including your own.”
“The others…”
“The others can have a career after failure. We daren’t risk it with you. Too many Admirals know your name, know your record, and might think that you failed here because of a fluke.” Smiling, he said, “The Admirals think that they run the fleet, but really, it’s the Captains and Commodores that make sure everything keeps ticking over. Another little lesson for you to learn.”
“May I speak freely, sir?” Orlova asked.
“While you are here, Lieutenant, you can assume the answer to that question will always be yes.”
“I was planning to work as hard as I could before, sir. You didn’t need to give me this little lecture about duty. I know my shortcomings, and I know that my education before I became an officer was patchy, and I’m going to do everything I can to catch up.”
“You barely scraped through Tactical School.”
“And I still worked as hard as I could. Maybe that just isn’t good enough.”
Tarrant laughed, and said, “You should have seen Captain Malinsky’s face when he saw the Hercules logs. After what he put you through up at Phobos, for the graduate he’d written off to pull off some of the stuff you did.” Walking around the podium towards her, he said, “You struggled at Tactical because they treat that course as an extension of Academy training. Not a good idea in my opinion, but who listens to me. Here, you start from scratch.”
“That’s all I ask, sir.”
“I know there is a question you are burning to ask; I saw you and Nelyubov sharing a little smirk when I mentioned a certain element of the training program.”
“The Cabal, sir. Who have you got to teach that class? All the people I can think of are…”
“Off fighting the Cabal?” he continued. “That’s easy, Lieutenant. You will be teaching that class. That’s another reason you are here.”
“I, sir?”
“Yes, you, sir. Can you think of anyone more qualified than someone who has commanded a ship in battle against them? First class is in a week from now, so you’ve got time to prepare your notes. If you need some advice, you can come around to my office at any time for tips; after all, this isn’t meant to be a teacher training school.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, frowning. “I expect I will be a frequent visitor.”
“My door’s always open for any of my students, Lieutenant. That applies even after the course is complete; I like to keep tabs on the people I’ve taught. As to your grade, naturally I can’t examine you based on something you are teaching, so you will receive an average of the marks provided to the rest of the class. I’ve always thought that a fair test. Oddly enough, this has come up before.”
“When, sir?”
“I seem to remember one First Lieutenant Marshall taking the course in starfighter tactics a few years ago. One of us will be watching the classes to provide the grades, you won’t have to mark them. Not that I suspect you would do anything dishonorable, but because we’ve got the experience, and at present, you don’t. Though we will bring you in on the marking discussions for the class, naturally. You can have some input.”
“How do the grades work, sir?”
“We keep it dead simple here, Lieutenant. Pass or fail, that’s all we do. And if you fail any of the classes, you fail the entire course. We can’t afford to push through graduates who are deficient in any area.”
Her face dropped, and she said, “Sir, what if my course isn’t good enough?”
“When you are commanding a ship, what happens if you aren’t good enough? I’ve been saying for years that we ought to make teaching one of the courses a mandatory part of the training. You get to be my guinea pig. Not that it matters; this is my last year here anyway.” He looked down at his watch, and said, “You’ve got about an hour before the first class. Historical Naval Warfare, very interesting stuff. I’d go and get something to eat first.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, saluting.
“Dismissed.”
She turned on her heels and walked out of the room, slowly making her way down the corridor, trying to think. After a second, she paused, and realized that Tarrant was using her in the way he had warned her that some senior officers would; that had to be intentional, some sort of object lesson, and she smiled at the thought.
By the time she reached the mess, most of the class were already eating their lunch; she was surprised to see real food on the menu, not the usual ship-based concentrates, and she eagerly filled a plate with what looked like actual chicken and non-fabricated vegetables. Tasting a carrot, the crunch confirmed that the school was spending some real money on their students.
She walked over to the far side of the room to sit next to Nelyubov, and Olson looked across at her; he seemed to be holding court with a s
mall group of students on a table nearest the room’s only window.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” he said. “Are you sure you came to the right place?”
Turning with a smile, she replied, “I thought so until I saw you sitting there. For a moment I thought I’d ended up at Clown College.”
Several of the others laughed, but he replied, “I’ve looked at your record. All gung-ho and glory. That’s not what this fleet is really like. You’d better pay close attention during the courses, by damn. Even when you fail, you might get to see how it is really done.”
“I hope you’ll be paying attention as well, Olson. Especially in the class I’m teaching this year.”
Ignoring his wide-eyed glare, she moved over to sit next to Nelyubov, putting her plate carefully down on the table, making sure not to smell the gravy. Pulling a fork out of the dispenser, she stabbed down into the meat while he looked at her.
“The Cabal?”
“That’s right,” she said.
“God help us all,” he said with a smile. “I can’t wait for that class to start.”
“I can’t wait for it to be over,” she replied. Turning to look at him, she asked, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what the hell are you doing here? I mean, you’ve earned it, and I’m glad to see you, but…”
“I’m as surprised as you are. So was Captain Winter when the orders came through.”
She briefly smiled, then frowned, “What’s it got to do with him?”
“Haven’t you heard? He’s replaced Captain Marshall as commander of Alamo.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not, but maybe the Universe is.” He pointed at her plate, and said, “I’d eat that before it gets cold.”
Chapter 5
Logan stepped into sickbay, walking right up to the only occupant, Melissa Chambers. He looked down at her lying on the bed, then glanced up to look at her vital signs, running over the readings. Behind him, Alamo’s medical officer, Doctor Duquesne, walked out of her office and over to her side.
Battlecruiser Alamo: Take and Hold Page 4
