Rescue Branch (Kinsella Universe)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “To wit, Admiral, our ship designs aren’t sufficient. What we keep coming up with is the last generation -- or even two generations ago -- of designs. The Fleet must, it’s my thought, cast off those last vestiges of ossified thought. It is my belief that if I was transferred to head up BuShips, I could deal with that.”

  Stephanie smiled to herself when she saw his confusion. He’d been sure she was once again after a ship command. Why didn’t he understand that she understood as well as he did, why that was never going to happen again?

  “And BuScience?”

  “Has been running like a well-oiled machine during my absence on maternity leave,” she told him. “We’ve got a prototype FTL communicator in the works -- the range is relatively limited, but think about how great it would be to pick up the phone and talk without delay to someone on Jupiter?”

  The advances were well known in the Fleet, and everyone was talking about what a revolution in communications it would be.

  “Admiral Stephens currently heads BuShips,” Admiral Castleman admitted reluctantly. “He’s planning on retiring at the end of the year.”

  “We could do a leisurely knowledge transfer process; I’d be up to speed the day I came on deck,” Stephanie told him.

  Castleman laid his hand on the report she’d turned in on the Erfurt affair. It was easily six inches thick... and was just the executive summary and some of the supporting documents. The whole volume of data would fill a boxcar.

  “Give me some time to go over your final report on the Article XXIX incident, then I’ll think about it. I don’t envision any problems with you heading up BuShips.”

  Stephanie nodded, hiding a smile. The truth was, of course, he thought BuScience was a dead-end job and he thought BuShips was a dead-end job and was pleased as punch that she wanted nothing but dead-end jobs. What he really wanted was time to think about who was going to replace her at BuScience.

  “Sir, I know it’s presumptuous of me, but Captain Krista Jacobsen heads up the Benko-Chang branch of BuScience, and is about due for a promotion. She was a professor at the Naval Academy who joined the Ad Astra crew as the assistant to the Chief Engineer.

  “She flew the Ossetia rescue mission as the Executive Officer of the Dortmund before coming to BuScience where she has made significant progress on detecting vessels on High Fan.”

  Admiral Castleman was someone she’d like to play poker with. She saw the distaste on his face at the mention of the Dortmund and Ossetia.

  The Russian government had decreed that the colony would land at a certain place and start work. There were two problems with the location -- one readily apparent and one less so. The readily apparent problem was the site was shirtsleeve balmy, with glorious beaches, soft waves, and soil that was extraordinarily fertile. Productivity was adversely affected, as everyone wanted to hit the beach.

  The Russians had checked the site for predators, poisonous plants and animals, and, finding none, had happily set up the colony.

  The highest form of life on the planet consisted of algal mats -- although there were plenty of other microscopic critters, both animal and plant.

  The survey crew had been promised a bonus if they found a good planet -- and a larger bonus the better it was. The geologists were more interested in that bonus than actually looking things over, and neglected the fact the planet was undergoing what would have been the Pre-Cambrian period on Earth. They never really contemplated a planet that was as geologically active as a Mexican jumping bean.

  Three years and a half million colonists later, an earthquake struck about two thousand miles away... normally, not a big deal, but this was 9.8 on the Richter scale and they could feel it at the colony, although it wasn’t severe. Being morons, they patted themselves on the back and went on about their business.

  The next day a tidal wave hit the colony, killing about a third of the people and rendering 90% of the colony homeless -- and destroying almost the entire food supply.

  A week later a freighter stopped by, couldn’t contact the ground and eventually learned of the disaster. They had raced back to Earth and Dortmund and a supply ship had been sent to provide relief, and transport a good number of the survivors back to Earth.

  The two ships arrived within minutes of each other and found that, three months after the disaster, less than a third of the original population was still alive, and any of them would kill for a slice of bread... or if they met someone who looked healthy enough to eat.

  The captain of the Dortmund, in spite of SOP saying he wasn’t to leave the ship, went to greet survivors and wound up on the menu, along with everyone else in his party. Commander Jacobsen had landed a strong force of Marines about a hundred miles from the original colony, with plenty of supplies. They would advance a dozen miles, set up another camp and feed the people around them until their -- baser -- instincts were in check.

  It had taken months to rescue the few survivors -- in the end, less than a tenth of those who’d been alive before the tidal wave washed ashore went home. Commander Jacobsen hadn’t done them any favors -- they were forever known as the “cannibals of Ossetia” and shunned.

  Stephanie had been one of Commander Jacobsen’s fans before Ossetia, and nothing won her favor more than someone willing to take tough decisions after her CO stupidly killed himself. As far as Stephanie was concerned it was a major mark in the commander’s favor that she had never set foot on the planet. Others hadn’t seen it that way, but Stephanie was working to overcome that.

  Stephanie contemplated Charlie for a few minutes as she returned to her office. Charlie would never have approved of half the things she did -- although Charlie liked Krista Jacobsen as well.

  Not for the first time, she wished Charlie had accepted a commission -- as much as she liked Krista Jacobsen, she would have been far happier with Charlie in the slot.

  When she got home her babysitter grinned. “We are on our multiplication tables, Admiral.”

  Stephanie sighed. Her daughter looked to be between two and three years old, but her brain functioned as if she was six or seven. That evening Charlie came over as she did a couple of nights a week and read to her granddaughter from Wind in the Willows. Once Charlotte was asleep Charlie came out for a cup of tea.

  “She is going great guns,” Charlie said loyally.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  Charlie laughed. “What’s that?”

  “I started the story about Toad Hall, but you picked it up and read it more seriously than I did -- Charlotte seems to like that. So I started her on The Hobbit. I may have created a monster.”

  “How do you figure?” Charlie asked, more curious than angry.

  “It’s like in chapter two or three -- the dwarves visit Bilbo and after they eat him out of house and home, they then clean up. They sing a little ditty about smashing dishes as they work. Charlotte won’t hear of me starting to read the rest of the story, unless I read that first.”

  Charlie was silent for a few seconds before she spoke. “We’ve spent decades now, studying primate genomes. We know chimps have about ninety-eight percent of the genes that we do. We think we’ve identified most of the differences -- but what those mean in the great scheme of things we have only the dimmest of ideas.

  “Charlotte’s DNA is twenty percent unknown. Neither of us want to see her as a guinea pig, so we don’t let them test and prod. We know she has genes for accelerated development -- we think we even know what a couple of them are -- even if we aren’t sure what they do. We know there are genes for increased intelligence. But we have no idea, virtually none, of what’s involved.

  “There are doctors out there who want to take her apart, gene by gene. Destructive testing -- even if that’s what got a lot of people in trouble a year ago. It’s like they’ll never learn. You do realize that they want to do a full MRI scan, right?”

  “And I told them where to go. I was tempted to refuse a chest x-ray.”

  “You did good when you mad
e the others wards of the Federation Supreme Court. That’s stopped a lot of the stupid tests they want to run on all of them.”

  “It’s going to break down,” Stephanie said sadly. “Not right away, but in a few years. They’ll start offering inducements and some of the children will certainly agree. What I’m doing with the justices is insuring that the penalties for violating such agreements is draconian.”

  “What are we -- you and me -- going to do?”

  Stephanie grinned. “Like I said in the beginning. I will strive to be the best parent imaginable. You seemed to think that wouldn’t be much of a problem. I’ll admit it isn’t as hard as I thought -- but it’s not nearly as easy as you hinted.”

  Charlie sighed. “I owe you this. When I got back to Maunalua after Erfurt, John Gilly came to see me. He was pissed at me. I’ve never seen him pissed before... it was scary. He must have been hell-on-wheels when he commanded.”

  “What was he unhappy about?”

  “He said one of the things he thought about after his wife died was that you spent too much time at the planet where Dick died; that if you’d come straight home, you might have caught them before they could have done any damage.”

  “They must have come home at 92 or 93 percent of max power,” Stephanie said evenly. “We couldn’t have caught them without taking unacceptable risks.”

  Charlie laughed. “Like 90 percent isn’t? That’s the longest high-speed run anyone has ever attempted in the Fleet.

  “What he went on to say was when he finally had to look at it as if it wasn’t his wife and daughter who had died. What would he have done, if he commanded? When he realized that he’d have probably spent longer confirming the facts on the ground -- and would have considered rescuing his Marines. That was when he realized that it was time to retire. He told me to stop for a second and think. Pretend Dick hadn’t been down there; if the Marine CO had gone instead. What would I have done?”

  She got up and crossed the room and poured some tea into a glass. “Girl, you gotta drink something stronger. All this does is make me pee.”

  She swirled some ice cubes in the glass. “It was hard. I had too much self-pity wrapped up in what happened. But when I went through it step-by-step, I found myself in the same boat as John -- I’d have waited too long... and if it hadn’t been Dick down there, I’d have never contemplated recovering them, vaccine or no vaccine.

  “As for how you dealt with it... Good God! You had a choice? I don’t think so! What could I reasonably expect you to do, having to leave not only your husband, but the rest of those people behind? You made it clear the first time I met you that your first priority was keeping people safe.

  “I saw you after the Fore Trojan rescue... I saw how you reacted to that. I was stupid. I thought it was your dislike of Malcolm that controlled your attitude. You close up and shut down when you lose people. Who wouldn’t?

  “It’s what you do, Stephanie. You want to go in harm’s way. You need help, and you worry about all of those you put at risk. But your goal is too important to let that paralyze you... and when things go bad, as they inevitably do, you lift your chin, close off your emotions and pretend it’s no big. Not very many can pull that off successfully. You do it about as well as anyone can.

  “I put you through hell because I felt sorry for myself. Yeah, I lost my only son, just like I lost my husband. It’s unfair. It sucks! There are billions of people on this planet who owe you their lives. The only satisfaction I have these days is that most of them care only in the abstract. They owe you for their survival; they owe you for the survival of their families and friends. Not everyone was lucky -- but most.

  “I’m sorry, Steph. I’ll stop being an ass.”

  “Charlie, a long time ago... about the time we left that planet, I made my peace with myself. It wasn’t a very pleasant peace and Charlotte shook that. I forgave you then -- you don’t need to apologize now.”

  “Maybe not from your point of view, but I do from mine.”

  Stephanie tipped her head in acknowledgement of Charlie’s point.

  “So, you and me -- against the chowder heads who want to make Charlotte a guinea pig?” Charlie asked.

  “You, me, the Marines, the Fleet, the Federation Supreme Court and anybody else I can enlist,” Stephanie told her.

  Charlie toasted her. “If you need more, I’ll bring a few friends of my own to the party.”

  “There will never be too many,” Stephanie told her.

  “So... I understand you turned in the Erfurt report this afternoon.”

  “I did.”

  “So, are you really going to retire?”

  Stephanie blushed. “I don’t know.

  “When I was twelve, I thought of myself as an adult. I wanted to be a doctor of physics. I knew I could reach out and grab it with a little work.

  “I did. Then I realized it would be a lot of fun to be a professor of physics; I’d met a lot of professors by then and I was certain I was better than most of them.

  “One day I found myself behind two young men waiting in line to order pizza; they never got any that day, so far as I know.

  “From that point on, I was more sure than ever that I was an adult. It wasn’t about what I wanted for me, anymore -- it’s where I thought we should all be going.

  “I used every trick and wile that I knew. I got there. On the way, something unexpected happened. The clowns made me an admiral -- and never asked me first. I’d never had anyone reward me beyond my expectations before -- I’d had to work for what I wanted. I had to scheme and plot to get what I wanted.

  “I tell you true, Charlie, it went to my head. I was full of project plans to make things better; I could see that a lot of really stupid things were being decided. And there I was -- right in the middle, able to affect things. And for the first time, I hadn’t asked to be there... but I was.

  “Ad Astra was the peak of that phase of my life. When we got back I had Ad Astra do a full orbit around the planet. I stood on the bridge and looked at the cameras focused on the ground scrolling past and thought I was the king of the hill.

  “Everyone thought that orbit was to coordinate with the ground on welcoming ceremonies. What it was, was a victory lap. The barrel roll a new ace makes over his airfield coming off his latest victory.

  “But I couldn’t forget what I’d seen as we orbited. Earth. All of those people. And there was Dick.”

  Stephanie hesitated. “I saw him and said to myself ‘That man is going to be the father of my babies!’”

  “For you, you were pretty shameless,” Charlie agreed.

  “I know. I had my plan for the Federation; I’d written it as an exercise in something I didn’t really understand. I gave it to Howie to see how he’d react. By the time we got home after Ad Astra it had taken on a new importance to me. I applied everything I knew to see that it would come to fruition.

  “I know people are slow to change, and governments and societies even more so. But I thought space would provide a unique catalyst.”

  “You were right,” Charlie told her.

  Stephanie nodded. “For a couple of years after that I wanted to go out to explore, but as people pointed out -- including myself -- I couldn’t hog it. Still, back to my shameless phase in my life -- I worked really hard to get back out there.

  “Dick died; I know you don’t think it bothered me, but trust me, half of my world died with him. It’s one thing to be grandly noble -- but deliberately sacrificing other people’s lives is something else again. It’s much worse when it is someone close to you.

  “Then, in spite of the good we did, they beached me. I’m glad to say that I’d learned an important lesson from Anna Sanchez, long before... but hadn’t taken it to heart as well as I did on the way back from that awful planet.

  “When we were building Ad Astra, there were the inevitable glitches. The first time it flustered me -- I hadn’t expected any problems like that. Anna just laughed, ‘We fall back on Plan B, boss!
’ And she’d come up with an alternate strategy and the problem would be resolved.

  “’Always have a Plan B, boss!’ she told me. I was younger then, and not as aware just how often even good plans fail. So I had the BuScience thing ready, although I thought it would fall to someone else. I sort of ad-libbed that one.

  “Then along came Erfurt; I thought it was a good swan song. I could go out on a high note -- and I’d have a daughter that I could teach all manner of things to.

  “Charlie, when you cradle a little bundle of humanity in your arms, it changes you.” Stephanie snorted. “Even if some doubt the extent of the humanity. I know. She’s my daughter.”

  “Which brings us to today,” Charlie said levelly.

  “Not so long ago I thought retirement was the thing to do. Except I thought that while we aren’t exactly headed down the wrong path -- I wasn’t on the right path.

  “The Fleet bureaucracy is made up of people who simply don’t understand the big issues. I asked Castleman today to make me the head of BuShips, instead of retiring.”

  “I thought that was a dead end job.”

  Stephanie quirked a smile. “Ship design is how I got my start on the big stage, after all.”

  Charlie blinked. “I forgot. So it is.”

  “Castleman has forgotten. It’s clear to me that there are a few basic changes needed. All that is needed is someone with the clout to make people listen. I can do that.”

  “That you can!” Charlie said with certainty.

  “Then, I’m going to finish something we started; you and me started,” she told Charlie.

  Charlie raised an eyebrow. “What would that be?”

  “We have a certificate right now for what you need to know to go to space.

  “What we need now are specialty certificates. For every aspect of running a Fleet ship. Moreover, I was talking to that young fellow from the Aft Trojans a few weeks ago. Eagle is his nick on the Rim.”