Starfarer's Dream (Kinsella Universe Book 4)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “That said, there are other issues, including why they need another engineer.”

  “Captain?”

  “Starfarer’s Dream is a Fleet heavy hauler -- a cargo ship. What they are going to do is detach our cargo and give it to them. Starfarer’s Dream is better prepared for that sort of thing than Guam. They will be about five percent of capacity and Admiral Greer is going to make up the difference by evacuating Fleet dependents and any women and children on the planet who want to go.

  “New Helgoland lost half her ships in the attack. Only one of their ships scored more than once. Starfarer’s Dream scored twice. That young woman did that. Twice, here and twice at Tannenbaum. Terry, at Tannenbaum they were the only ship to engage. They engaged with a laser installed by that young woman -- she did it in less than a week while aloft, with only Fleet Marines to help her.”

  “That’s the part about the engineering bulletin they were talking about? That was strange.”

  “Strange? She aligned the weapon in about twenty minutes. Tell me, Terry, how long does it normally take to align a laser?”

  “Days. I’ve never heard of it being done aloft in less than days.”

  “Yes, well, that’s because we don’t know how to align lasers. She does. She didn’t bother aligning it -- she just had the computer figure where it was actually aimed, then had the computer calculate the offsets to hit what they wanted to shoot at. Minutes, not days,” his captain told him.

  “It’s a little sobering to realize a technique that has been around since the beginning of space flight is all wrong. It makes me wonder what else we have wrong.

  “City of Manhattan told us that our enemies appear to be able to track ships on High Fan. It’s going to really bite if we find that that’s simple as well.”

  “How could it be?” Terry whispered to himself.

  “Anyway, if you thought the responsibility for a power reactor was onerous, wait until you find yourself the engineer responsible for the lives of fourteen thousand men, women and children.” Captain Gong laughed. “Oh wait! You are the second engineer! The CE has a lot of things on his plate! You will be responsible!”

  Terry grimaced. How bad could it be?

  163

  Starfarer’s Dream

  Chapter 9 -- Homecoming

  I

  Dennis Booth studied the young faces in front of him, and then cast a sidelong glance at the man standing next to him. Bill Travers must have been the same sort of officer as these, he thought, when he was young. Me? He’d been a cocky snot. He was still too cocky, which is why David Zinder had beaten him in the sim. He smiled inwardly. Well, one of the reasons that David had beaten him. Another of the reasons was that Zinder had surprised even him.

  Bob Shannon came in last and sat at the conference table, facing Dennis and Captain Travers. Vice Admiral Dennis Booth, Fleet Aloft, the Deputy for Training to the Chief of Fleet Operations. Captain William Travers, commanding the Fleet Auxiliary Starfarer’s Dream. The awards given to the captain and the young woman sitting across from him made them, by his calculation, the third and fourth most decorated officers in the current conflict, with Captain Travers number four.

  “Shall we get started?” he asked evenly, amused because there was no one present who could say no. But it was polite...

  “Included in the HDD information transmitted to New Helgoland from Earth, were the detail of the Fleet General Orders issued since the conflict commenced. I wasn’t surprised to see my name there, in a new billet, wartime only.

  “In the past training and operations was run by a full admiral who had a vice admiral deputy. The admiral ran operations himself and delegated training to his deputy. Now, I’m that admiral, and I have a counter-part, another vice admiral, who assists with operations.

  “It is clear that we either start to turn the tide of the war or go extinct as a race. We’ve started to win battles; we’ve kept real estate -- as I’m sure all of you know. So, with a great deal of care and not a little luck, we can start getting some of our own back now.

  “To do that, the Fleet, including Aloft, Port and the Marines, are going to have to expand, by my conservative estimate, by a factor of one hundred in the next few years. We’re talking two or three hundred million people, ladies and gentlemen, who have to learn how to do their tasks... and we have to teach them those tasks in the next few years.

  “It will be a Herculean undertaking; there can be no doubt about that.

  “The bright side of that is the Fleet has been taking new recruits, teaching them their jobs and putting them to work for hundreds of years. There is nothing mysterious about it; it’s not even particularly difficult. The scale of the training will change, but not its scope.

  “However, that’s the bright side. There is a far darker side, one where the outlook isn’t that rosy. Currently it takes three years of training to create a junior petty officer or a senior lieutenant. After that, we used to say that it took three to four years to make the next jump in grade, for each grade, enlisted or officer.

  “Fleet has never obsessed about that. Young officers who are clearly head and shoulders above the rest got their bumps early. Turbine Jensen, who did so spectacularly well at Gandalf and Fleet World, is barely thirty and now has a wavy stripe along with three rings on his sleeve; not the thirty-five to forty years old one would expect.

  “We will need a hundred times more middle-ranking enlisted men and command-grade officers than we have now. We can’t let those young men and women the training centers will be turning out go into space, into battle, without proper leadership.

  “We don’t have the luxury for the next few years, to spend ten or more years training a ship commander. We need to reduce that to five, at the most, six or seven for a larger ship. There has always been pressure to perform on command-track officers. Now it is going to become extreme.

  “And that is why you are all seated in the room, wondering what I’m going on about.

  “Every last one of you is younger than we like to see in the Fleet, or serving at a rank that should have taken far longer to achieve -- or both. Lieutenants Morrison and Wolf are prime examples, particularly Lieutenant Wolf. Ensigns Shannon, Zinder and Booth are also looking at bigger and better things -- once they have a chance to play a little catch-up.

  “There is, however, an issue that we have to deal with. Under normal circumstances, one doesn’t receive promotion to junior lieutenant unless one has at least one watchkeeping certificate. One doesn’t get promoted to senior lieutenant without several watchkeeping certificates -- and you don’t make lieutenant commander without the bridge watchkeeping certificate. Things are different for the Porties, of course, but no one in this room is destined to be a Portie.

  “I am positive that all of you could get at least a minimum score on the bridge watchkeeping certificate if tested today. But some things are never going to change in the Fleet and that certificate is one of them.

  “Normally I’d be concerned, because we all know Rim Runners do like to excel. I want you all to do the best you can do, and if you rush that exam, you won’t do that.

  “Fortunately, circumstances are going to come to my assistance. Bridge watchkeeping certificate exams include a verbal component, as well as a written exam. The examining board requires three to five officers of the rank of captain or higher, who’ve never supervised any of those taking the exam.

  “Since there only two officers aboard Starfarer’s Dream of the rank required, and we’ve both supervised some of those to be examined, it will not be possible to give that exam until we reach Earth.

  “On the other hand, we have sufficient examiners to give exams on general engineering watchkeeping, propulsion engineering watchkeeping, power watchkeeping, sensors, communications and navigation.

  “We’re four blessed weeks from Earth. You need to cram like you’ve never crammed before. I will see you examined on any watchkeeping certificate you wish -- except the big triple-X certificate. Don’t f
ail. Don’t mess up. Do the best you can.

  “There are other, occupational specialty certificates that you can test for, and some of those are prerequisites for the watchkeeping certificates. That is, unless you have a certificate in Benko-Chang physics, and Benko-Chang engineering -- don’t apply to take the propulsion engineering exam.

  “As I said, this usually takes years; some people never get more than one watchkeeping certificate. We need, however, men and women who can go beyond the minimum needed to fulfill their duties. People like you five young people. People who are quite capable of doing ten or a hundred times their duty.

  “So, I’ve talked with Captain Travers. The old fogies are taking over again from the kids. We’ll stand the watches, while you’ll hit the books. Call on any of us if you have questions. The only stupid question is one you think is too stupid to ask.

  “Get to work,” he said pleasantly. “Don’t let the door hit you in the bottom on the way out.”

  * * *

  Terry Morrison went straight to Jake Warren who he had gotten to know after a fashion and felt he could talk to. The engineer from the Starfarer’s Dream was phlegmatic, reminding Terry of Lieutenant Commander Douglas.

  For a change, Commander Warren was pleasant and helpful. “What you’ll want to do is get the simpler certificates out of the way; dynamics so you can pass the navigation watchkeeping exam, general electronics to pass sensors and communications, plus there’s the special signal instruction manual that’s not the most interesting piece of reading you’ll ever come across; you already have the ones you need for your engineering watchkeeping exam.” He smirked at that, something Terry had come to understand was associated with his having maxed the exam.

  “One of the things that makes the bridge certificate so difficult is that it assumes minimal competence in almost all of the basic skills of space flight. Do you have your basic flight certificate?”

  “Yes, sir, I do, and the one for remote operation of craft as well.”

  He nodded. “That’s something you need in engineering, for sure!” he laughed. “Once you take care of the lesser certificates, they’ll act as a review of the bridge certificate. I understand that you maxed the engineering and power certificates?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It is the stated goal of the Fleet that it is virtually impossible to max the bridge certificate. If all else fails, one of the board asks you some dumb, off-the-wall question that no one could possibly know the answer to, and they give you a tiny ding. It’s all supposed to be objective, of course -- and of course, it’s not.”

  Terry thanked him, but Jake shook his head. “Now I’m going to tell you something, something that you might not want to hear. I don’t know exactly what Booth told you young people earlier, but it’s clear the Fleet needs a lot of middle-range officers as fast as we can get them.

  “Do you understand that we can grab engineers by the handful from civilian shipping? Navigators are a dime a dozen; half the people who want to go into space fancy themselves as pilots. Electronics? Give me a break! Geek kids have known more about electronics than veteran engineers for five hundred years! Since the dawn of the age of electronics!

  “We are going to be able to find the people who can handle the technical jobs without as much trouble as one might think. The thought of having your race wiped out -- every man, woman, and child -- does rather motivate most people.

  “What we are going to need the most -- the ones who don’t grow on trees -- are command-track officers. I’m one of those people who loves engineering, loves my machines; I have an unbridled love affair that goes back as long as I can remember with my machines. Like most such people I knew I was never going to make captain, much less admiral, but I was content. I can lead a crew into a bad malf; don’t get me wrong. But the Fleet needs leaders who see the bigger picture, Lieutenant.

  “No matter what he told you about what they want you to do, they want you in a white shipsuit right after you get your bridge certificate. I’m living proof that there is life without that, but it’s not what the Fleet is going to need the most right now.

  “They are going to push you along to see how far and how fast you can go. You’ll want to make very sure that the hole they are trying to shove you into fits. We can’t afford the time any more of trying to fit round pegs in square holes or vice-versa. If it gets to be too much -- for heaven’s sakes! Speak up! There are ten thousand jobs for a good officer in the Fleet; you’ll be doing no one any favors if you crash and burn.”

  “Aye, aye, Commander. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, Lieutenant,” Jake told him dryly. “For the purposes of this exercise I’m your supervisor.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, I do believe you have a date with a few books, do you not?”

  “Aye, aye, sir!” Terry replied.

  David Zinder sat down wearily on the couch in the main room of his family's quarters, his head still buzzing with what Admiral Booth had told them. It was weird, really. They didn’t have watchkeeping certificates in Fleet Command. But it was no secret that the knowledge base required for advancement had a lot of similarities.

  His father came into the main room from his bedroom. “David, can we talk?”

  “Of course, Dad.”

  “What did Dennis Booth have to say this morning?”

  “He laid out a proposed course of instruction for the newly enlisted members of the Fleet,” David said dryly.

  “You understand that your mother is alternating between being furious at me for agreeing to let you enlist, and terrified that you are going to get killed. Now and then, she manages to hit both at once and... it’s pretty spectacular.”

  “There wasn’t anything else I could do,” David told him. “We’re at war. They need everyone they can get, particularly officers.”

  “Yes... but she does have a point about them needing all the able-bodied men and women they can get -- but she’s not at all sure you’re a man yet.”

  “I’m sure,” David said flatly.

  “I know -- it’s why I agreed to your enlistment. What does Dennis want you studying?”

  David laughed, his voice a little bitter. “Everything.”

  “He doesn’t want you to specialize? That’s not actually a bad idea, you know. No matter how adult you think you are, you don’t really have a lot of experience. And David, maturity and experience, while not the same, are related. A little experience would help you make a better choice with what you want to do with your life.”

  David blinked. How could his father not know what he wanted to do with his life? Hadn’t he said it a thousand times?

  “I want to command in the Fleet,” David told his father. “I wanted that yesterday, a month ago, a year ago -- ever since I can remember. And I’m going to want to do that tomorrow, next year -- for the rest of my life. You need a broad background in the basics to take the bridge watchkeeping exam; that certificate is the key that unlocks a career in the Fleet. Without it, you never get past first lieutenant, and after five years as a first lieutenant, they give you the boot. I don’t know what they’ll do now that there’s a war -- but it’ll be the equivalent of being fired.”

  “They also serve who stand and attend the ship’s coffee service,” his father quipped. “So, you want a ship command, is that it?”

  “Among other things. It’ll be a start.”

  His father laughed. “Ah, ambition! The worst vice of all! Turbine Jensen has survived more than one engagement with the enemy. Ito Saito, even the captain of Starfarer’s Dream has been in three or four battles, depending on how you count things.

  “There are maybe twenty ship captains who’ve fought our enemies and survived. Probably twenty or thirty times that many are dead. I hope, David, that you are as good as you think you are. Of course, I imagine it’ll be a while yet before you find out.”

  “Not as long as you think,” David said, feeling sad. “The first time any of the three ensigns
pass a watchkeeping certificate, Admiral Booth will make that person a junior lieutenant. Pass three and we’ll get another bump to first lieutenant, and when we get to Earth, he’ll see that we get a shot at the bridge watchkeeping certificate.”

  “We’re only four weeks from home,” his father mused. David just nodded.

  “For god’s sake, David! Don’t do anything stupid!”

  His father whirled and went back into the bedroom. David watched him go and then went to his own room and woke up the computer and started to study.

  Dennis Booth regarded his daughter, who was staring at picture of their family from happier days -- when two of them weren’t off to war. “Whatever I have to do,” Bethany said at last, turning to him. “I want to kill these bastards, again and again and again.”

  Her father nodded. “Just don’t let your emotions cloud your judgment. When I first heard what the aliens were doing -- I wanted to tear up my orders; mutiny if need be, so I could get out there and rend them limb from limb. Have you heard how many mutinies there have been in the Fleet since the war started?”

  “Mutinies?” Bethany asked cautiously.

  “Just that. Even Captain Travers essentially mutinied, taking over from a Fleet commander who thought he was in charge. I’ve been reading the other dispatches.

  “Oh, they’re not calling it mutiny, but that’s what it is. Ship Nihon, aground at Gandalf, lifted against the attack, second behind Hastings, ahead of Kosovo and Agrabat. Officially it is logged as the captain became ‘indisposed’ when the attack came, and his uncle, Rear Admiral Ito Saito, aboard on a visit to his nephew, took over and saw the action successfully fought. The captain, a man named Chin Park, shot himself sometime during the battle, in his stateroom.”

  Bethany looked at him, digesting that. “You’re saying someone held the gun for him?”