I wasn't deceived by his tone. He intended to put me though my paces…and it wouldn’t be easy. Captain Harriman wasn't known for sparing the rod when it came to drills; I’d be tested on everything, corrected firmly, and then tested again, and again. It had worked while I’d been an Ensign and would probably work again.
“Yes, sir,” I said, trying frantically to remember everything I would need to know. My mind seemed to have gone blank. I could barely even remember my name. “Tomorrow?”
“Get some rest,” the Captain ordered. He smiled suddenly, as if he had just thought of a joke. “Or catch up with old friends. I’ll see you on first watch.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and saluted, before leaving the Captain’s cabin. I wasn't surprised to see that the Senior Chief had gone, leaving an Ensign in his place. He would have hundreds of things requiring his attention before we departed…but it took me a moment to realise that I recognised the Ensign. “Sally?”
“John…ah, Lieutenant,” First Ensign Sally Brenham said. There was a bitter tone in her voice. I’d served with her on the last cruise – how was she still an Ensign? She should have made Lieutenant by now. “Welcome onboard the Jacques Delors.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The vast majority of UN Infantrymen, for various reasons, are not trained to the standards that the Marines or specialist Security Division units use. The net result is that most Infantry units are poorly led, poorly equipped and generally unsuitable for the type of war they are called upon to fight. While there are some capable and competent commanders in the UN Infantry, most of them find themselves marginalized. Their units are often asked to attempt the impossible.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
I had only been inside Lieutenant Hatchet’s cabin once, back when I’d been an Ensign. It had seem palatial to my young eyes, being almost large enough to swing a cat, with a large bunk and enough storage space for almost anything we could want. The Lieutenant in me wondered if there was enough space. I had picked up a few personal possessions along the way, as well as my dress uniform, ground-side uniform and various other items of clothing. I even had a bra that Kitty had given me as a joke, just before we parted and she went to her next posting. I missed her dreadfully already.
Sally hesitated on the outside of the cabin. “Come in,” I said, already feeling myself floundering. What did one say to a person who had once been your equal – and then First Ensign, making her my superior – and who was now a full rank-grade below? She clearly had the same problem. Technically, she should have saluted me, but I let it pass. There were no witnesses anyway. “Sally…why are you still here?”
The blunt question seemed to surprise her. I wasn't too surprised. I’d seen a handful of officers who’d spent too long in their grades ever to be promoted again and most people had tiptoed around them, afraid that failure would rub off on them and they’d be damned by association. Three years as an Ensign suggested that someone didn’t have a hope of advancement, but why? Sally hadn’t been incompetent, or stupid; Lieutenant Hatchet would never have allowed her to get away with it. She’d have been working off demerits for the entire voyage.
Her eyes, when she finally looked up at me, were raw and painful. “Just after you left,” she said, slowly. “Just after you left, we made the run to Albion again, carrying a new governor and his staff. The old one had suffered some kind of accident.”
I nodded. I could guess what form that accident had taken. Albion might not seethe with resistance, like Heinlein, but it was still unstable. The men and women who had been trying to escape the UN’s conscription program had probably escaped with the help of an underground resistance organisation, which might have started a new campaign of violence. Another world for the United Nations to occupy…if they could find the Infantry, after Heinlein.
“One of his staff was a Political Officer, but we didn’t know that,” Sally continued. “She seemed friendly and often engaged us on conversation and I shot my mouth off. She wanted my opinion of a few programs and…I told her just what I thought. I’d been assisting the Lieutenant with the logistics after you left and I knew enough to make a fool of myself. I thought it had gone well until I discovered that she’d entered a notation in my file forbidding further advancement.”
I winced. A Political Officer’s notation could be damning to a career. Nothing that Captain Harriman or his Political Officer could do would remove the blight from the file; whatever it said, it would prevent any further advancement. The only good thing about it was that it hadn’t seen her consigned to a deep-space fuelling station somewhere on the edge of the Beyond. Instead, she’d been left on a starship. I wasn't sure if that was kindness or an extra twist of the knife.
“And so, here I am,” Sally said. Her voice was bitter. “What’s the point of doing anything when there’s no hope of going any further?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I wanted to tell her about my plans, but I didn’t dare, not yet. This wasn't the Sally I had once known, but a stranger consumed with bitterness and hatred, raging helplessly against the universe. Even if the notation were somehow removed from her file, she’d still be tainted by it…and her new attitude. On the other hand, I could use her. “Sally…we’ll find a way out, all right? I promise.”
“You can’t keep that promise,” Sally pointed out, angrily. “Part of me just wants to tell them to shove it and quit. The other part doesn’t want to give up the starship and service on her. John…why the fuck do I even care?”
A dozen possible answers ran through my mind, but I abandoned them all. They wouldn’t have made the situation any easier. “There are always possibilities,” I said. It sounded trite and I knew it, but I couldn’t tell her anything else just yet. “Listen. We will find a solution, one way or the other. Now, tell me about the ship and its new crew.”
“I shouldn’t even be socialising with you,” Sally pointed out, suddenly. I was surprised by her sudden grasp of regulations, and her willingness to heed them. “You’ll just have your career dragged down by mine.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said, softly. “You should try serving on a monitor instead of this ship. That would give you a sense of perspective.”
I listened, carefully, as she talked about the other lieutenants, the ones I hadn’t met. They were all junior to me, having earned their promotions later, and had transferred in from other starships. The Captain had apparently decided that they all needed additional training and had run them through endless drills – I knew the procedure by now – until they improved. When Lieutenant Hatchet had left the ship, one of the new Lieutenants had served as First Lieutenant and succeeded in seriously annoying the Captain, enough for him to accept my transfer request. I hoped that that meant there wouldn’t be a second resentful officer onboard, but there was no way to know. If the Captain had been annoyed…it had to be bad.
“Oh, look at that,” I laughed suddenly. “She’s left me the horsewhip!”
Sally giggled, despite herself. Lieutenant Hatchet had decorated her cabin with a horsewhip she’d picked up from somewhere and she’d occasionally threatened to use it on us for a particularly disastrous failure, back when we’d been new and untrained Ensigns. No one had called her bluff and, as far as I knew, no one had ever been whipped. The Political Officer Sally had encountered sounded like an excellent choice for the first target.
“I think its her way of warning you not to fuck up her position,” Sally said. “Or perhaps its her way of telling you that she’ll be back. Take care of it, all right?”
I nodded. “I wouldn’t dare not take care of it,” I said. “She’d kill me.”
Sally finally left me to my cabin and I started to unpack my bags. I’d been impressed by the size of the cabin, but even so, my small number of possessions just seemed to rattle around in the compartment. Lieutenant Hatchet must have had hundreds of possessions, or – perhaps – she hadn’t been inclined to fill all her drawe
rs. I wished, just for a moment, that she were still onboard. I knew so little about what I had to do. I didn’t even know how to console Sally. Lieutenant Hatchet would have known what to say, of course, but I didn’t. I just felt so helpless.
I spent the first night rattling around in the bunk, wishing that Kitty had transferred with me, even though that would have made her First Lieutenant. The bunk was tiny, compared to the beds in the hotels on Luna City, but I’d been used to sharing with someone else. Now it just felt tiny, and alone. I could still message Kitty – her starship hadn’t jumped out of the system yet – but it wasn't the same. I entertained the absurd thought of leaving my new ship and going to find her, but…how could I do that? I needed the Jacques Delors for my plans.
The next morning was too long in coming. I breakfasted at the mess – as everyone, but the Captain was supposed to do – and ground my way through foodstuffs that had been reconstituted from waste, instead of having been sent up from Earth or one of the asteroid farms. The cook did the best he could, but it seemed that supplies got worse and worse every year. I didn’t understand what was going wrong with the farming back down on Earth, but it was clearly disastrous if they were starving starship crews. I would almost have preferred to starve. The food tasted like someone had fed it to a cow, which had vomited it up afterwards. There were probably laws against feeding dumb animals such crap.
“The Supply Department is having problems, or so I’m told,” the cook said, when I asked. “They’re warning us that supplies of anything, but Algae-grown foodstuffs might be limited over the next few years. It’s only temporary, or so we are assured.”
“I see,” I said, wondering if I should take it up with the Captain. He might know more about what was going on. “I’ll see what I can scrounge up for you.”
“There’s been a major accident in one of the main food producing areas on Earth,” the Captain said, when I asked him an hour later. We were alone on the bridge. Hardly anyone bothered to keep a proper watch in Earth orbit, even Captain Harriman. There was no point. Earth’s defences would provide plenty of warning if the system came under attack and the level of firepower surrounding the planet was utterly intimidating. I doubted that anyone would dare to launch an attack. “The UN Food Commission has had to reduce quotas for the year.”
I shuddered. I knew little about food producing systems – the farms and the vats where meat substitutes were grown – but if the UN had lost a major source of food, the entire population would have to tighten their belts, and probably starve anyway. The UN needed to feed us to keep us alive and working for them. What would they do with the population down on Earth? They might not bother to try to feed them at all?
They’d probably try to extort food from the colonies as well, but it would only be a drop in the ocean. Even if they assigned every jump-capable ship in existence to the task, they could only bring in a few million tons of food at most, barely a drop in the ocean compared to the requirement. It might also be disastrous. Some of the food we’d sourced from Heinlein had been contaminated in several different interesting ways. Food poisoning was not a pleasant way to go.
“Still,” the Captain said, “we can survive on what we get. Now…”
We went through an entire watch period, calling up simulations and responding to them. I don’t know if I impressed the Captain or not, but he wouldn’t have hesitated to chew me out if there had been a real problem. Eventually, he called up a set of tactical simulations and told me to keep practicing until told otherwise. I had manned tactical stations before, but this was different. The person commanding the ship had to keep everything in mind. I might not have had to fire the weapons personally, but I had to juggle our course, speed, interdiction field capabilities and weapons. There were some tactical simulations that simply didn’t have a solution. The more you progressed through the simulation, the worse the computer-generated opponents became…and, eventually, the ship was lost.
“You’re not meant to win,” the Captain said, when I complained. “The simulation is meant to force you to think quickly and survive as long as you can. There are people who turn it into a gambling game, but it’s really meant to push you right to the brink.”
He smiled, thinly. “And, of course, it’s cheaper than testing an entire starship to destruction,” he added. “How else could we find out what you’re made of?”
“There was no such test at the Academy,” I said, puzzled. “Why weren’t they included there?”
“Because the Academy is run by people who believe that failure stunts a child’s development,” the Captain explained, angrily. For a moment, I wondered if the Captain was a member of the Brotherhood. It was quite possible, apart from his family connections. “Instead of being taught how to deal with failure, in an environment where the worst thing that could happen was punishment duty, you were coddled and generally spared from experiences that would have taught you things you needed to know. Discipline was lax, almost non-existent, and accidents were common. Those accidents happened because you were not allowed to fail.”
His eyes darkened. “If you ask anyone what went wrong down on Earth, why we have to kidnap workers from Albion and a dozen other worlds, you’ll get a thousand answers,” he said. “I believe it happened because no one was allowed to fail. No child could be taught how to cope with failure, so they were never challenged or disciplined. It didn’t matter how well, or how badly, you did; you were always feted and rewarded for your accomplishments. You were never pushed to succeed, so you never really did – and you never understood that you were a failure.”
I nodded slowly. I would have liked to disagree with him, but he was right. I had been unprepared for the Academy and I’d been unprepared for life on a starship. It could have been worse – I’d seen children failing Remedial Sewing and Advanced Creative Writing – but even so, I’d been one of the lucky ones. There were people my age who’d never been taught to read, but spent most of their time mouthing slogans and trying to find a job that would pay them enough to buy enough drink to blot out the pain of their lives.
Two hours later, I met the Infantry Company as they boarded the starship. I hadn’t been impressed with the infantrymen I’d seen on Heinlein, but this company looked much neater, carrying their bags in a disciplined manner. They weren’t allowed to carry their weapons onboard ship – safety regulations again – but even so, they looked tough enough to take the ship off us with their bare hands. I wondered, briefly, how the Marines would get along with them. I just hoped there wouldn’t be blood on the bulkheads.
“Infantry Captain Andrew Nolte reporting, sir,” their leader said, as three Sergeants escorted the men off their transport boat. The sublight vessel was only capable of ferrying them between the Earth and the Moon. I’d already detailed several crewmen to escort them to their temporary barracks. The ship was going to be crammed to bursting when the Ensigns arrived. “Where do you want us?”
“Welcome onboard, Major,” I said. There could only ever be one Captain on the ship, so Andrew would receive a verbal promotion while he was onboard. “We’ve cleared out two of the crew wardrooms for you, along with one of the holds for your equipment. How many men do you have?”
“They didn’t tell you?” Andrew asked. I shook my head. They’d told me that it would be a Company, but I’d seen Infantry Companies that had everything from ten men to three hundred. “I’ve got seventy men and five sergeants. We should have more, but the Generals insisted that Botany was going to be a safe posting and I could spare a couple of platoons and two sergeants.”
“Typical,” I agreed. It had been clear from the start that Captain Harriman had too few officers and men. The Jacques Delors should have had more crew. As it was, if we ran into trouble, we might not be able to deal with it. The Engineer had been complaining about the shortage of crewmen trained to repair the ship for weeks, according to the reports the Captain had filed. “Are your men equipped for shipboard life?”
“Don’t worry,”
Andrew assured me. He understood my meaning, all right. Infantrymen had a certain reputation on starships. It was why they were normally entrusted to troop transports and stasis pods. “We won’t cause trouble. You won’t even know we’re here.”
I laughed. “I’ll take your word for it,” I said. “We’re supposed to be departing soon, but things being what they are, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were delayed.”
“Exactly,” Andrew said. I found myself liking him, despite his career. He would have made a good starship officer. “Hurry up and wait.”
I shrugged. “Why are they sending an infantry company to Botany anyway?” I asked. It seemed rather odd to me and the orders had no explanation attached. “It doesn’t strike me as the kind of place an infantry company would be needed.”
“Just rumours, apparently,” Andrew said. The final infantrymen passed our position and marched onwards into the ship. The crewmen would be able to help them unpack and run through basic safety procedures with them. Unlike the reporters on the Devastator, they would probably be smart enough to listen. “You know what the Generals are like. They hear a rumour and suddenly everything has to be dropped until the rumour has been checked out.”
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 24
