by David Tatum
Schubert frowned, watching his roommate toss and turn. Just as Rachel had suggested, it was fairly obvious that something was bothering him enough to interfere with his sleep. He vaguely wondered if sleeping like this should be considered rest at all, but what could he do to help?
The comm beeped. Schubert answered it automatically. “Cadet Schubert speaking.”
“This is Katz. I’m afraid you’ll have to wake Chris again.”
“What?” Schubert exclaimed, feeling betrayed.
“Not my choice. Captain Morrison is calling for us to see her, right away. And any officers I feel might be good in other areas – including navigation and piloting. I want you to be there, too.”
Schubert blinked. “What’s this all about?”
“Don’t know. Just wake him up, get him dressed, and get him down here.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Schubert snapped, then cut the comm. Glancing over at Chris, he sighed. Well, it would at least stop him from tossing and turning.
——————————
“Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” Captain Morrison greeted. “You’re undoubtedly wondering why I called you all here. This meeting is classified Top Secret. There will be no discussions about this briefing beyond this room. Now that the formalities are out of the way, let’s start by introducing ourselves. Just provide your name, rank, year, and specialty, please.”
It wasn’t a very large gathering, but all of the seats in the small office had been filled by the time Chris, Schubert, and Rachel had arrived. They recognized some of the other cadets, but not all of them.
“Hi,” the first of them said. “My name is Emily Mumford – junior year. You may know my grandfather, Admiral Pierre Mumford. I’m a Cadet Lieutenant Commander. One Admiral in the family is enough, though, so I’m majoring in communications and diplomatic studies instead of any of the command tracks.”
“Robert Orff. Junior. Cadet Commander. Tactics.”
“Lauren Weber. Navigator, friend to Emily, and Cadet Lieutenant. Oh, and I’m a junior.”
“Cadet Midshipman Yannis Langer. I’m kinda undecided about my major so far. Freshman, of course.”
“Cadet Lieutenant Commander Rachel Katz. Sophomore, majoring in tactics.”
“Jeff Cohen, sophomore, majoring in tactics. Cadet Ensign.”
“Christopher Desaix. Majoring in Engineering, though I’m reluctantly considering a second major in tactics. Freshman.”
“And your rank?” Mumford asked, curious.
“Cadet Lieutenant.”
Mumford squinted at him, as if trying to see something she’d missed. “And you’re a freshman?”
Chris sighed. He’d figured everyone knew by now. “Yes Ma’am.”
“Chris got special patronage from Admiral McCaffrey after winning a contest,” Schubert said, saving him from having to explain yet again. “I, by the way, am Cadet Lieutenant Wolfgang Schubert, navigation. This is my sophomore year.”
“And I, of course, am Captain Anne Morrison. I am assembling a list of people to crew a corvette in an upcoming war game, and I was hoping you cadets could help me. I have a captain and a chief engineer promised to me, and I’m told I don’t have to worry about the Marines, but all of the rest of the personnel responsibilities have fallen to me.” She smiled. “Mr. Orff, I intend on making you the ship’s Exec. Ms. Katz, you’ll be Chief Tactical Officer, with Mr. Cohen and Mr. Langer as your assistants. Mr. Desaix, you will be the Assistant Chief Engineer. Mr. Schubert, Ms. Weber, you’ll be in navigation. Ms. Mumford, Communications. I’ve selected you to be the command staff, but I will need your help in filling out the crew. Any recommendations would be helpful.”
Robert Orff sniffed. “Would I be wrong to assume that this is the Wargame, then, ma’am?”
“I can’t answer that as yet,” Morrison said, smiling. “But I think just saying that gives you your answer.”
Chris looked thoughtful. “We’re staffing a corvette, you say? Can I ask what the breakdown is for our crew, and any other information you can give us about the scenario, so far?”
Morrison nodded at him. “Good questions. I’ll give you each an encrypted file with all of the information I’m allowed to provide, but here’s the situation in a nutshell: The ship you’ll be assigned to a converted gunboat, perhaps the last of her kind to come from the failed policies of a century ago. Her name’s the Chihuahua.” This produced some chuckles in the room.” It’ll be your job to get her ready for action in just three weeks. And Admiral Mumford,” she nodded to Emily, “Has assured me that he’ll support any requests for personnel I make. He wants to see what we can do.”
“Ma’am,” Rachel began. “How long do we have to give you our lists?”
Morrison considered the question for a moment. “I need to give Admiral Mumford my list in ten days if I want to get my choices guaranteed. I want a little time to evaluate your proposals, too, so... get them to me as soon as possible, but no later than Thursday.” She paused. “If you want to work in groups of two or three, that would be all right, but I want enough independent lists to provide me with real alternatives.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the cadets all chorused.
“Okay, then, people. Get to work.”
——————————
Rachel followed Chris and Schubert into their quarters. By some unspoken agreement, they had decided to work together for this latest project. Schubert sat on a chair, Rachel took up position against a wall, and Chris collapsed into his bunk, pillowing his hands on his crossed forearms.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Chris sighed. “I barely know fifteen people in the Academy by name, much less two hundred and fifteen. And I wouldn’t even recommend everyone I know for shipboard duty! Take Wayne Evans and Eric Drake, for example. I imagine they’ll make great scientists, one day, but they’re too interested in theory to concern themselves with what’ll be needed to restore an antique corvette!”
Rachel turned. “An antique corvette? I hadn’t thought of it, that way... I suppose this’ll be right up your alley, won’t it, Mr. Desaix?”
“Well, maybe once we start working on the ship, itself,” Chris replied, grinning reluctantly.
“Actually,” Schubert interjected, thumbing through the files Captain Morrison had given them on his hand comp. “I think they both would be good choices. Wayne’s scientific interest is not particularly useful once the Wargame starts, but he’d probably be a pretty good choice to head the environmental engineering section. It’s only got nine people, and none of them are battle-critical – their main job will be working on environmental systems for the refit, which they’re ideal for. Plus, if we’re going to add in features to modernize the safety systems, it might be good to have a theorist aboard. I mean, Chihuahua doesn’t even have an antigrav system installed yet – just magnetic boot lockers and suspension chairs. Someone who understands the theory and specializes in environmental systems would be able to rig one up more efficiently than an engineering generalist like yourself.”
Antigrav, while sought after for centuries, was a relatively recent invention, having come into service roughly seventy years beforehand. It allowed people to remain standing on the deck, and compensated automatically for any amount of g-force strain a ship’s acceleration might cause. Prior to its invention, when magnetic boots were used to simulate ‘real’ gravity, any significant acceleration (and consequently, any combat action) had to be done after the crew had strapped themselves into the suspension chairs at their duty stations. These chairs were very good at deflecting the force of gravity away from the person seated in them, but had the very nasty habit of giving out at around one hundred and fifty times normal gravity, thereby limiting acceleration. Thanks to the invention of antigrav, however, ships were now able to accelerate to their top speed as fast as their engines would allow – which was extremely fast indeed in the case of the fusion drive, like Chihuahua had. The newer quantum wheels took longer to accelerate from a dead sto
p to full speed, but even their acceleration was significantly higher than what a shock chair could withstand.
“True, I suppose,” Chris agreed reluctantly. “And I guess it might be good to have someone like Eric in the Engineering room to help integrate the newer systems I might not be entirely familiar with. But I’ll probably need to actually use those Lieutenant’s bars of mine – someone will need to keep him from trying one of the engineering ‘experiments’ he’s devised based on the crackpot theories he follows.”
“Uh, do you know any enlisted people, by the way?” Schubert asked.
Chris gave him a wry grin. “Oh, well, I guess I know one. Petty Officer Trainee Jonathan Rosebaugh, working to be a weapons tech. But I don’t think he’s exactly the sort of person the Old Lady wants.”
“Well, we’ll list him, anyway. I don’t know many qualified weapons techs, and I doubt Rache does, either.”
Chris turned his eyes back on her, as if suddenly noticing that she’d gone quiet. “I suppose this means my off day is going to have to be spent hammering out a crew manifest with you rather than playing chess, right?”
Rachel frowned. Well, that’s what we should be doing... but I don’t like the look in his eyes, still. I’ve got to find out what’s been bothering him. And we do have a week.
“If you believe a little thing like this is going to keep me from beating the pants off of you at chess tomorrow, Mr. Cadet Lieutenant Christopher Desaix, you’ve got another thing coming!” she snapped, her face a comic parody of her usual stern expression as she sputtered out a little modification of his moniker for her. “I’ve got to get some sleep before we play, but at 0900 tomorrow you will report to me in my quarters for a best-of-five set of chess games, and that’s an order. Then, and only then, will we worry about scheduling times for us to get together and work on this project.”
Struggling to keep from laughing, Chris gave her a sloppy salute. “Aye, aye, Cadet Lieutenant Commander Rache, ma’am.”
Smiling at the officious use of her hated nickname, Rachel nodded. Some of his playful spirit was back, at least when it came to teasing her.
——————————
Schubert waited for Rachel to leave before turning to his bunkmate. This wasn’t exactly a conversation he wanted to keep secret from her, but he didn’t figure Chris would open up to him while she was around. He had to find out just what was wrong with the man.
The problem was, Schubert had no idea how to broach the subject.
“Seemed as if you and Rache weren’t fighting as much as usual, today,” he said.
Chris yawned, rolling slowly off his bed. “We’ve got a bit of a ‘truce’ in place. Just until we recover from the long hours we spent working on that last project... and, I suppose, from the hours we’ll spend working on this coming project, too.”
“Really?” Schubert answered, grinning. “And how long will it take you to recover, huh?”
Chris grabbed a pair of pajamas and headed into the bathroom. “I’ll let you know when I have. It depends on how many hours I have to put into repairing the Chihuahua,” he said over his shoulder.
“And how long do you think Rache will give you to recover?” Schubert said through the door.
“Until she gets bored of beating me at chess,” Chris replied, yawning audibly. “Which shouldn’t take too long, unless she’s even more vindictive than I give her credit for.”
“I have yet to understand why you like the game so much, considering how poorly you play it.”
Chris emerged from the bathroom, buttoning up his pajama shirt. “It’s a fun game, and it’s thousands of years old. Need I say more?”
Schubert rolled his eyes. “No, I suppose not.”
“Well, I gotta go to bed,” he said hesitantly. “I want to stand a chance tomorrow.”
Schubert noted the hesitation, and didn’t like it. Whatever was bothering Chris was making him reluctant to go to sleep, and it didn’t seem like he’d get a chance to talk with him about it.
Well, maybe Rachel will have a chance, tomorrow. I’ll have to let her know.
——————————
Rachel blinked, not quite believing what she just saw. “You’re opening with the Paris Defense? Are you trying to lose this game?”
The Paris Defense, sometimes known as the Paris Gambit, the Paris Opening, the Drunken Knight Opening, the Ammonia Opening, or even the AMAR (Absolutely Mad And Ridiculous) Opening, was a rather unique chess maneuver. Instead of pushing forward a pawn or moving a knight to a central position, the knights (starting with the King-side knight) were pushed to the edges of the board in the first two moves. It was rarely seen in chess play, however, as it seemed to have one extremely serious flaw: It was almost impossible to win using it.
“Well, Rache,” Chris replied. “This is our first game against each other, and you don’t know how I play. I certainly don’t know how you play, either, but in this case the advantage is more mine than yours, since I have a very hard time ‘reading’ what my opponent is going to do. I have to figure my best shot is putting forward something you haven’t seen before... and I doubt you’ve matched up against a Paris Defense very often, have you?”
“Well, no, never, but the move is suicide!” she answered, recovering enough to consider her moves carefully.
“I’m hardly likely to present much of a challenge to you unless I try the unexpected from time to time. I annihilated Jeff the first time we played using this opening. I figure I’ve got at least a shot of winning, this time.”
Rachel narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “I thought you weren’t any good at chess,” she accused, moving a pawn.
“I’m not,” he shot back, moving one of his rooks a step towards his king. “Or, to put a qualifier on it, I’m not when I’ve only got two dimensions to consider. What Jeff doesn’t know is that, if you add in a chess clock and include the losing condition of ‘out of time,’ I actually have a pretty decent record. But Jeff doesn’t have a chess clock, so he’s never had to deal with that factor. Since I usually win by stalling until my opponent runs out of time, my best chance without one is to take other players by surprise. Like I told him, though, my biggest problem with the game is that there are only two dimensions. The clock, however, adds a third.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t spent some of your time working on a chess clock, just for that reason.” Another chess piece, this a bishop, came into play.
“I will,” Chris noted. “But parts are hard to come by, and I only got the last of them a couple weeks ago. I haven’t been able to get started yet.” His own movement was swift and sure as his pawns started to come into play.
They traded their next few moves in silence, but Rachel wasn’t keeping her mind on the game. Schubert had secretly called her that morning, letting her know that Chris was still sleeping fitfully. He’d said he hadn’t been able to talk to Chris about it, though he’d tried. Rachel thanked him for the report, and immediately decided to confront Mr. Desaix that day.
After a brief flurry of moves in which both sides lost a number of pawns, Rachel finally came up with something to say. “How long would it take you to fix that chess clock of yours, now that you’ve got the parts?”
Chris considered things for a moment, quickly took her queen with the knight he had moved his first turn of the game, and shrugged. “Well, that’s very delicate work. The better part of a day, at least.”
Rachel couldn’t believe she’d made such a stupid mistake, but then he’d been right. She didn’t know how to deal with the tactics he was throwing at her and the game needed her full attention if she was going to win. Which, she realized now, she wasn’t – she’d been too absorbed in other things to realize what Chris was doing to her, and now it was too late to get out of his trap. She might escape this particular strike he’d set up, but she wouldn’t have the pieces left she needed to win. It was time to start looking for the draw.
“Uh, well,” she said, trying to remember
what she had been about to say. “How about you and I meet up with Schubert and work out those rosters for Captain Morrison after lunch? Then I’ll let you have tomorrow off to build that clock.” She started trying to punch a hole out for her king to escape through. “I’ve played chess against Jeff, myself, and he’s a monster. If you think you stand a real chance against him in a timed game, I’m all for the opportunity to humiliate him a little.”
“Good plan. And thanks – I’ve wanted to get that clock built since my second game with Jeff.” He studied the board and shook his head. “You know, tactically, you and Jeff have a lot in common. I saw that plan of his for the sim. It was a lot cruder than the proposal you’d put together, but it was similar. Very similar.” He made another move. “And you made the exact same mistake against my version of the Paris Defense that he did. Checkmate.”
Rachel gawked at the board. She’d just lost to the Paris Defense! She must have been even more out of it than she’d realized. Well, she couldn’t let that happen again. She had to try that one more time. “Another game. Now.”
Chris laughed. “Hmm, somehow I expected you to say that.”
He started to set up the board, and Rachel returned to thinking about how to make him open up about his problem. She started the game, but as much as she wanted to get revenge for her first defeat, her heart wasn’t in it.
“What’s on your mind?” Chris asked softly.
“Huh?” Rachel said, blinking up at him.
“Well,” he said, taking one of her bishops with a pawn. “It seems pretty obvious you’ve got something on your mind, and it sure isn’t chess. You were playing better last game – as good as you are, if you were paying any attention you should be wiping the floor with me. Are you worried about something? Is it the Wargame?”
Rachel paused. Well, this was as good an opportunity as any. “Yeah, I’m worried about something... but it isn’t the Wargame.”
Chris grinned. “Well, what is it? Maybe I can help.”
“Other way around,” she said, catching his eye. “What I’m worried about is you.”
