XD:317 (Fourth Fleet Irregulars)

by S J MacDonald

  After lunch, they went back to action stations, required at any time the guns were being fired live, and got back to firing at asteroids. Rangi Tekawa was due to take over at gun station five. He was waiting nervously behind the gun station, warming up like an athlete before a big race, when Buzz went down to talk to him.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he told him, as Rangi was jogging on the spot, at the time. ‘You want your heartrate down, not up. This isn’t, or shouldn’t be, high adrenaline, dear boy. The calmer you are, the more focussed you will be, the more accurately you will fire. Go back to sickbay for a while, do one of your meditation sessions, visualise yourself being at one with the gun, calm and serene, shining out a light protecting that helpless little planet behind you, okay?’

  Unorthodox as this advice might be, it worked. Rangi came back half an hour later in one of his near-trance like states, worrying the crew somewhat since he had a tendency to walk into things and fall into zero gee ladderways when he was that preoccupied. Buzz told them to leave him be, though.

  ‘He’s in the zone,’ he told them, and he turned out to be right. Rangi’s current accuracy rating was 91.3% of 23 recorded live fire shots, barely enough to keep him qualified as a gunner at all. That meant that he would have to hit 940 out of the 977 shots he had to take to achieve senior rating. Whatever was going on in his head, it was clearly very different from his usual approach to gunnery – no white-knuckled grip on controls, no screwing his eyes up, no anxious yelping. Instead he took his place in the spherical control capsule with the air of a man entirely at peace.

  ‘You shall not pass,’ he said, to the oncoming storm, and with that, started to fire.

  Four hours later, he got up from the gun, rather startled to be tapped on the shoulder by his relief. His score at that point stood at 1183 shots fired; accuracy level 96.6%. He got a rapturous cheer from the crew, turning pink with pleasure when he realised that that was for him.

  By the time they ended the second session, standing down from action stations again, it was clear that every member of the crew except perhaps Pelli Gervaise would achieve their senior gunnery rating. Shion, of course, had aced hers, joining the three members of the crew with 100% accuracy.

  It was all on Pelli Gervaise, now. The eighteen year old would make all the difference between ‘every member of the crew’ and ‘nearly every member of the crew’. That would be an important distinction when it came to crowing rights over every other ship in the Fleet, as incredulous demands of ‘What, everyone?’ could be answered smugly with, ‘Yup, every single one.’ It wouldn’t have nearly the same effect if they had to qualify that with ‘except for one.’ Pelli was barely even allowed time to eat, though a petty officer did intervene to stop his mess-mates quizzing him about theory while he was trying to have his dinner. He took the test that evening, causing considerable concern because he only just scraped through with sufficient marks to progress to simulator training.

  They had him in a simulator within minutes, though, with two hours of intensive coaching before Hali Burdon told them to stop for the night.

  ‘And lay off the pressure, huh?’ she suggested, amicably. ‘He is only eighteen, remember. And which is more important, really? Crowing rights over other ships, or the welfare of one of our own?’

  The crew took the point, and encouraging Pelli became more supportive than pressuring. There was disappointment next morning, though, when it was learned that he had not fared any better in the morning’s simulator session than in the previous evening’s. He was scoring a consistent 92%, just enough to qualify as a gunner but not nearly enough to get that senior grade.

  When he went in for his live session that afternoon, everyone was willing him on, with calls of ‘Go Pelli!’ and ‘Get in there, my son!’ from the more sports-minded crew.

  Pelli, a slightly built youth with floppy hair and an air of aimless mooching that had infuriated many a superior, just got into the gun capsule as if he had all day. They’d made twelve orbits before he’d even fastened his safety harness, and another thirty two before he’d finished a leisurely survey of the controls. Then he took the targeting grips in both hands, settled himself comfortably, and waited for the port side to be rolled towards the target.

  For the next four hours, Pelli Gervaise was a machine. The crew were not expected to fire at every single pass, taking breaks as they needed to to ease cramped muscles and if necessary, swap out with their relief. Pelli, however, just sat there, perfectly relaxed, perfectly focussed, going through the same four second cycle again and again – acquire target, aim, lock, fire, acquire target, aim, lock, fire. The only time he showed any expression beyond that of calm concentration was when a shot buzzed red for a miss, instead of blipping green for a hit. A quick, irritated grimace crossed his face for that, but it was the one and only time that buzzer sounded. When he got up, it was with a score of 1100 shots at 99.9% accuracy.

  ‘Cosmos Warfare, majestic board,’ Pelli stated, obviously knowing that he was addressing the entire crew, watching through the PA, and taking a bow, ‘King of the ship!’

  As it dawned on them that Pelli had been winding them up with that pathetic 92% score on the simulator, the crew roared appreciatively. Cosmos Warfare was one of the most popular VR games in the League, and to have achieved a place on the majestic scoreboard, Pelli would have to be amongst the top rank of players.

  He would be known as ‘King’, now, for the rest of his time in the Fleet, long after the reason for the nickname had been forgotten. And he was, indeed, for this moment, king of the ship, not just a hero for coming through for them, but a hero with a sense of humour. He was pretty much carried around his mess deck, thumped on the back, punched on the shoulder and even kissed on the forehead.

  The firing had stopped, now. In fact, they had already achieved their objective a couple of hours into the afternoon session, but Alex had kept it going, giving Pelli and the other few crew who still had to make the thousand shots their chance at that by telling the computer to provide secondary targets. Once all of the crew had got the senior rating, Alex stood them down from action stations.

  There was, now, a rough hole running through the debris field, like a ragged tunnel, though still with a few hundred chunks of rock on odd, out-of-range courses. Within another hour, there wasn’t even that, as fighters launched and flitted back and forth through the tunnel, blasting all the remaining ‘red’ objects. Projections showed the debris would now pass harmlessly around Pellar, nothing coming closer to it than thirty thousand klicks. The ship was noisy that evening, with dual cause to celebrate, loud voices and laughter. A huge cheer went up when it was found that the skipper had authorised an issue of candy bars in honour of the occasion – real chocolate, a much valued treat.

  It was Denni, that evening, who was feted in the lab. She hadn’t just asked Alex to save the doomed planet, but had actually helped, too, working at the astrogation console during all four sessions. She had been monitoring progress, adding her eye and instinct to the automated targeting system, working every bit as hard as any of the gunners. She and Alex had shaken hands when the job was done, with thanks and happy grins both ways. Now Denni was in a state of wondering bliss, checking the projected course of the debris every now and again as if she needed to keep seeing it again to believe it.

  Even Mack McLaver and Perry Soames managed to be cheerful – Perry had been reassured early on that the Fleet would not attempt to charge Devast any kind of fee for this, and relieved to discover that it wasn’t costing anything, either, beyond the time and effort of the crew. Energy costs were never an issue on a starship. Superlight engines produced so much power that surplus often had to be vented into space as plasma. Firing cannon, even broadsides at full strength, barely even dented their energy capacity. Neither Perry nor Mack, if they were being honest, really cared either way whether the inner planet was preserved or not, but at least nobody was having a go at them for the failure of the missile test or the mess that it had made.
It would be churlish, too, to be gloomy when everyone else was celebrating, so they set their post-mortem of the Ignite firing aside for the evening and joined in the fun.

  By the next morning, they had left the system far behind. They were on a downwards diagonal route, now, that would take them across to join the Chartsey – Canelon shipping lane. They would be joining it about half way along, in just under five weeks, and spending another three weeks, then, on patrol duty for the rest of the run to ISiS Penrys.

  This, Alex knew, was going to be a difficult time. Once the excitement of the missile test had died down, as it would within a few days, there’d be nothing going on but shipboard routines. Their mission at Novamas was thrilling to look forward to, of course, but there was little more than they could do to prepare for it at this stage. It was at times like this that any starship crew could get a bit bored, and with too much time on their hands, there was a danger of petty arguments, cliques and irritability.

  The crew all knew that too, of course. There was no need to discuss it. They all understood that this was going to be dead time on the run, and how important it was to combat that. So there was a sudden upsurge in the crew organising events to occupy themselves – sports tournaments of every kind playable aboard ship, quiz and open-mic social evenings, general interest talks being given on topics as varied as the D9 Loop and the wildlife of Novamas.

  It was Kate Naos who gave the talk about the D9 Loop. The idea of Kate being able to deliver a lecture to the crew would have seemed ludicrous in her first few weeks aboard. Now, though, the days when she was so timid that she’d dive behind Gunny even if people smiled and said hi were long behind her. She had found her confidence amongst these people who did not treat her as a freak of nature. And she had made some decisions, too. She came to see Alex the day after she’d given her talk, asking to see him privately.

  ‘Would you, please, write me a letter of recommendation supporting my application to the Academy?’ she asked, and at Alex’s immediate wry look, hastened to assure him, ‘I’m not doing a Tass, here. This isn’t an impulsive decision, skipper, or some airy-fairy daydream about travelling the stars. I want to join the Fleet, to become an engineer. I’ll finish my doctorate first, of course, and honour all my commitments to the uni. But I will be applying for next year’s Academy entry.’

  ‘Giving up your academic career?’ Alex was dismayed at the idea of that, having seen how brilliant she was, and feeling that it would be a great loss to science for her to drop out of that academic world.

  ‘No, no,’ she grinned at that. ‘I can’t imagine giving up the math, that’s kind of where I live. But I can do theoretical math anywhere, and I’ve found that it’s actually better for me, far better, to combine that with other activity, real and practical work. And you know, I’d live in engineering if I could. I do believe that I could be a pretty good engineering officer, and still work on the math, publishing and having a hand in R&D. The Fleet would allow that, wouldn’t they?’

  Alex nodded. The Fleet would grab at Kate Naos with both hands – the Second would certainly try to grab her the moment she graduated, if not before.

  ‘Well, if you’re serious about this...’ he said, because he could see that she was.

  So, they talked about what would be involved in Academy training, Alex wanting to make sure she understood that even cadets of normal intellect found much of the work brain-numbingly dull.

  ‘It’s deliberate,’ he explained, ‘supposed to form officers who’ll cope with the tedium of routine shipboard duties and are compliant, solid team players. I have all kinds of issues with that, myself, not the least of which is that the most able recruits do tend to drop out of training because the deadly slow pace and low level delivery in classes drives them nuts. The first year is the worst. The Fleet requires all cadets to have college certificates in science and technology and then teaches the same courses all over again in first year cadet training. They will, in exceptional circumstances, allow very able recruits to skip the first year – there are assessments and you have to pass the first year exams, but at least it would save you that first year of brain numbing boredom.’

  Kate chuckled, shaking her head.

  ‘I don’t want to skip first year,’ she told him. ‘I know the classes are deadly, other people have told me about that. But it’s about far more than the classes, isn’t it? It’s about learning social skills, getting along with people, leadership, all that. And me, I am an infant when it comes to that stuff. I can always occupy myself in class, thinking about math.’

  Alex thought about how Fleet instructors would feel at having a cadet in the class so much more intelligent than they were that even her daydreams were about wave space physics beyond their comprehension. He laughed, shaking his head, too.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to at least look as if you’re paying attention,’ he told her. ‘And be prepared, Kate, fair warning, seniors hazing juniors is regarded as character forming at many Academies, and anyone who stands out as different is liable to be targeted, in that.’

  Kate gave him a look of rueful amusement.

  ‘I started university when I was nine,’ she pointed out. ‘I hit the news at eleven with footage of me cuddling a teddy, and then had to carry on with uni lectures with the other students. I don’t think there’s much you could teach me about standing out as different, skipper, or about being teased and hazed.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Alex conceded, with a smile. ‘And yes, of course, I’ll write you a letter of recommendation if you like, though I have to say that I honestly don’t think you’ll need any kind of support for your application.’

  Kate smiled. She knew very well, with no false modesty, that the Fleet would welcome her application. To go in with a letter of recommendation from Alex von Strada, however, would give her status amongst the other cadets far more important than her academic standing.

  ‘It would mean a lot to me, though,’ she told him, so Alex agreed.

  That did make it a bit awkward, though, when a rather ruffled Tass came to ask him to do the same for her. Alex could not, in all good conscience, recommend Tass for an Academy place. He felt very strongly that this was a passing infatuation and that the reality of Academy training and Fleet service would be a massive disappointment. Even if she got a place, Tass was unlikely to make it through her first semester as a cadet. And she was not, either, of the stuff that Fleet officers were made. That was nothing to do with her political views, but down to personality – she was far too volatile, argumentative, anti-authority and immature. If Alex gave her any kind of honest assessment of her potential as an officer, the Admissions panel wouldn’t even consider her.

  Alex being Alex, he told her that. He wasn’t unkind about it, but he felt he had to be honest with her, at which Tass demonstrated how right he was by calling him a pig and storming out of his daycabin. She’d calmed down and apologised by the following day, but still gave him brooding looks from time to time, that grudge set deep.

  Terese Machet became invaluable at this point. She could see what efforts the crew were making not only to occupy themselves but to distract the passengers. The Devast team, particularly, had nothing to do now but go over and over their data, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the missile. Chantal and Tass had finished all the work they’d come aboard to do, too, increasing the range of foods that the biovats were able to produce. Chantal, indeed, had asked if they could be put aboard any liner they might meet heading back to Chartsey. It would be a waste of time, she said, for them to go all the way to ISiS Penrys only to get on a liner heading for Chartsey anyway. Tass was disappointed, even angry, feeling that she was being cheated out of her expected visit to Penrys.

  At this point, though, she was successfully distracted by Terese revealing what was in the crates she’d brought aboard at Karadon. This did not come as any surprise to the crew – the contents of the crates were, of course, declared for the manifest, so they knew the Senator had brought qu
antities of food aboard. They’d thought at the time that that was for her own use, but the crates had remained in the hold, unopened.

  Now, Terese asked permission to hold a supper for the crew, recruiting the Second’s team to help her with it. They spent days planning it, and all day ahead of time decorating the gym, then setting out the food.

  It was a great success. The dress code specified civilian clothes to be worn, no uniforms. It was such a novelty even to see people in anything other than grey overalls that people were laughing and enjoying themselves even before they got to the food. And Terese had done them proud, in this. The catering was all, naturally, of the type that could be carried in storage for weeks, but it was the very highest quality, chef-prepared dishes, needing only to be unpacked and set out on their displays. A five star hotel groundside would not have been embarrassed to set out such a buffet. For people who’d seen the same menu choices coming around again and again for weeks, now, it was a delight.

  Alex held the watch, allowing all the officers to attend. Other crew on duty were relieved, mid-watch, to be able to go and enjoy the party too, but Alex remained at the conn. He did enjoy the tray of food that was sent up for him, but excused himself from attending the party itself. Partying with the crew, in civilian clothes, would cross the line that skippers were expected to maintain.