by Marko Kloos
“Surprise, surprise,” I murmur.
The ships docked at this fleet yard are all of the same class, ones I’ve never seen before, not even as a rumor or a schematic. They look vaguely like the basic design for Arkhangelsk, but they’re much bigger. Where the battleships look like elongated turtle shells, these new ships have long, flowing hulls with gentle curves, narrower and much longer than the remaining battleship.
“Ottawa flight ops, Dragonfly 505. I’m eighty klicks to the west, approaching from two hundred and sixty degrees, altitude thirty thousand. Request docking vectors and landing clearance,” Halley sends.
“Dragonfly 505, Ottawa. Come to heading one eighty and increase altitude to fifty thousand for AILS approach.”
“Dragonfly 505, turn to one eighty and climb to fifty thousand for AILS,” Halley confirms and turns the nose of the ship to the right.
“How long have you known about this?” I ask without taking my eyes off the installation we’re approaching.
“Two days,” she says. “The whole far side has been restricted space for years now, so I knew they were up to something. They even changed a main traffic lane for Gateway and Independence to route traffic away from line of sight. All to build these things in private.”
Built on the far side of the moon, this fleet yard is safe from direct observation because it never faces Earth, and the bulk of the moon blocks all radio signals that aren’t relayed on purpose by the comms satellites in lunar orbit. It’s the perfect spot for clandestine ship-building close to Earth.
As we get closer, the size of the ships really comes into perspective. The station has long docking outriggers, but only half the length of each ship fits onto the dock. They looked huge from a distance, but as we approach one of them from the stern end, it’s clear that they’re even larger than I had guessed. I’ve been around lots of capital ships, including the Fleet’s enormous supercarriers. These new ships make even a Navigator-class look dainty. They’re not any wider—I’m guessing they have a maximum dock width to conform to—but they are much longer, easily twice as long as a Navigator.
Halley lets the computer take over as soon as we hit the AILS landing-assist beam from the ship. We drop underneath the hull and approach the bottom of it, where I can see rows and rows of standard docking ports. It seems like the ship goes on forever. If I had to estimate, I’d guess it to be over a kilometer in length. The armor plating on the hull is painted in a bright titanium white, and the markings on the hull are orange and black. All the other ships in the Fleet have some form of camouflage paint, dull gray or black, to blend into space and be less obvious to optical reconnaissance. Whoever designed this ship and her sisters very clearly didn’t give the slightest fuck about low-observance camo. They look like starships out of a Network show, like something that civilians expect a starship to be, all shiny and streamlined. Something about their smooth and sleek shapes reminds me of Lanky seed ships.
“What do they call this class?” I ask Halley.
“Avenger,” she replies dramatically.
“That’s rather martial. Why not go all out? Terminator. Liquidator.”
“Destroyonator,” she continues with a grin.
“Destroyonator it is,” I say.
“I guess this will be the Destroyonator class in my head from here on out.” She points through the cockpit glass at the bottoms of the three other ships in turn.
“That’s Mexico City. Beijing. Washington. New Delhi. And . . .”
“Moskva,” I finish for her. “All the capitals of the SRA and NAC founding nations. Cute. Very United Nations.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Halley says. “It is very United Nations. I think almost a quarter of the commissioning crew is from Eurocorps. I hear they bankrolled most of this, so they get to have their people ride shotgun and learn the ropes of interstellar combat. They’ve got two more Avengers under construction for the Euros.”
I groan softly.
“You’ve got to be joking. Top-of-the-line warships . . . staffed with trainees. Foreign trainees from a different service.”
“All the department heads are seasoned,” she replies. “And three-quarters of the crew are Fleet. The Euros have to learn somehow. And honestly? It’s no different than having some fresh Fleet nugget right out of tech school.”
She lets out a low chuckle as the ship’s computer works the maneuvering thrusters of the drop ship to line us up with the docking clamp overhead. We slow down and come to a halt right underneath the orange-and-black outline of the docking port, piloted by the effortless accuracy of a silicon brain.
“Oh, and wait until you see the new uniforms. You’re going to love those.”
CHAPTER 7
THAT NEW SHIP SMELL
Back in the twenty-first century, before we were so many that we had to get squeezed into PRCs, the ’burbers used to go on ships for recreation. From what I’ve read about them, those ships were basically floating RecFacs for civilians. You didn’t go on them to get to a specific destination; you just spent a week or two on board to eat and drink and rot your brain with amusements, luxurious leisure for its own sake.
NACS Ottawa looks like I imagine those cruise ships to have looked like. Everything is clean and gleaming, and whoever designed this class paid attention to more than just military utility. I’m not used to aesthetic touches or cleanliness on a warship, so walking the passageways of my new command feels a little surreal. I never realized just how dimly lit most Fleet ships are until I set foot on Ottawa. All the passageways and compartments I pass through are illuminated from hidden light strips in the floor and ceiling. The ship looks like a set for a Network show, not a real commissioned warship.
Halley has already been on this ship for a few days, so I check in with the ship’s personnel office by myself while she goes off to wherever Pilot Country is located on this luxury barge. Then I report to the Officers’ Mess Office for my stateroom assignment.
“Captain Grayson,” I tell the sergeant on duty in the office and hand him my PDP to scan my orders. “I’m the new head of the special tactics team.”
“Yes, sir. Just one second.”
The sergeant cycles through a few screens on his terminal. The Fleet personnel on this ship are wearing a uniform I’ve never seen in the corps before. It’s a teal-colored tunic with a low stand-up collar and spidersilk weave spaulders attached to the shoulders. On my regular Fleet fatigues, the rank insignia are on fabric loops pulled over the shoulder epaulettes. On this new uniform, they are on the slightly bulky-looking spaulders, underneath small NAC flag patches. There’s a ratings badge on the left side of the sergeant’s tunic chest and a name tape on the right side. Just like everything else on this ship, that uniform looks like a prop from a civvie show about starships.
“I have your assignment, sir,” the sergeant says, oblivious to my curiosity at his uniform. “You’re in 5-150-5 Lima.”
“Is that a single stateroom or a JO jungle?” I ask, referring to the unpopular shared junior officer staterooms where three or more officers are stacked in bunks together. Due to my occupational specialty, I’ve had excellent luck avoiding roommates on my deployments, but every streak has to break eventually.
“It’s a single stateroom, sir. All the officer staterooms on this ship are.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, sir. It’s a really big ship.” He lowers his voice a little. “We have a running track, if you can believe that. Almost a kilometer long. It goes through half of Oscar deck. Makes a loop around the nuke silos.”
“A running track,” I repeat with a grin.
“Honestly, I’ve been on this ship for two months now and I still don’t know where everything is. Do you want me to call for a guide from the Ops Department to show you around once you’ve stowed your gear?”
“Thank you, Sergeant, but I think I can find my way around with the guide in the PDP. It’s all just counting frame and deck numbers, right?”
�
��Yes, sir. But I gotta warn you. This ship has a lot of frames and decks.”
I climb up to deck 5 and make my way forward to frame 150 through passageways that are entirely too well lit, clean, and clearly marked. Most of the Fleet personnel I see are wearing the new teal-colored uniform. There are some civvie dockworkers busy in almost every section of the ship. I’ve never been on a Fleet unit that has just rolled out of the building slip, and while it’s nice to know that nothing on Ottawa is worn out or beaten to shit, I also know that this is a brand-new and unproven design that has never seen battle.
My stateroom, compartment 5 at frame 150, unlocks with my biometrics. I haul my gear bag into the compartment, and the lighting comes on automatically, illuminating a small but well-appointed stateroom that would be good enough for a flag officer on some of the smaller ships I’ve served on. It has a bunk, a locker, and a small desk with a neural networks terminal, and the space between them is big enough to do push-ups or sort through gear without bumping into anything. It’s not as posh as my platoon-leader compartment in the living module aboard Portsmouth last year, where I had my own shower and head, but I’m so pleased with the continuation of my private living space streak that having to go to the communal head and washroom at the end of the passageway seems like a small gripe.
I toss my gear bag onto the bunk to unpack it. The locker next to the bunk already has some stuff in it—three sets of the new uniforms, neatly suspended on hangers in the vertical section of the locker. I take one out to look at it. It has captain’s rank insignia on the spaulders, and the name tape says “GRAYSON, A.”
Behind me, the terminal on the small desk chirps with an update. I put the uniform back and unlock the terminal. Whatever software this neural network runs, it looks much more advanced than the Fleet information-management screen I am used to. Luckily, the home screen has the same layout as the old systems, so I don’t have to consult a neural networks admin just to check the orders and my incoming messages. Because all our data is pulled from MilNet, all my information is exactly the way it was when I last checked my PDP, only on a much bigger screen.
There are a few color-coded updates on the screen. The green ones are general ship business with no actionable items. There is no red “urgent” but a yellow “attention required” message on top of the queue, and I open it.
TO: ALL OFFICERS ASSIGNED BCV-60
FROM: XO, BCV-60
RE: DAILY OPS BRIEFING
ALL NEWLY ARRIVED OFFICERS ASSIGNED TO BCV-60 WILL REPORT TO BRIEFING ROOM 7-100-7-Q AT 1100Z DAILY FOR MANDATORY ORIENTATION AND OPS BRIEFING BY XO OR DESIGNATED STAFF.
I check the system time, which shows that it’s 1023Z. Because I have to go up two decks and forward fifty frames on a ship I don’t know yet, I decide to err on the side of punctuality and put off sorting the contents of my bag into the locker until after the mandatory ops briefing.
I’m ten minutes early, but I’m not the first one in the room. Several Fleet and SI officers are already sitting in some of the chairs. I walk in and nod at the other officers—none of them are above me in rank—and sit next to a Fleet first lieutenant in the front row. He wears the maroon beret of a Spaceborne Rescueman, which makes him part of my team. The other officers are talking among themselves in low voices.
“Andrew Grayson,” I introduce myself to the Rescueman. “I’m the CO of the special tactics team. Or I will be.”
“Jordan Brown,” he says and shakes my hand. “That makes me your second-in-command. I’m your CRO.”
The CRO is the combat rescue officer, the guy in charge of the Spaceborne Rescuemen on my team. The special tactics teams are usually split evenly between combat controllers and Spaceborne Rescue, with a special tactics officer in charge of the whole team and a combat rescue officer as his assistant. I glance at Lieutenant Brown’s uniform, the same standard Fleet camo I’m wearing, and scan for indicators of his experience. He has a combat-drop badge in bronze, which means that he has done more than five drops but less than twenty. He’s not completely green, but not very experienced, either. Then again, there are few podheads left who are.
“How long have you been SR?” I ask.
“Since just before Mars,” he says. “I got out of PJ school just in time for the big event.”
“Oh yeah? What was your landing zone on Mars?”
“LZ Orange,” he says. It’s a test of sorts, and he passes it when I see a dark shadow flitting across his expression. I wince in sympathy. Orange Beach got hit hard by the Lankies, and Task Force Orange suffered some of the highest casualty counts that day.
“They sent armor to hit the Lankies on Orange in the rear,” I say. “I was part of the recon mission for the armor company. Didn’t end so well.”
“Well, that armor saved LZ Orange,” Lieutenant Brown says. “If you guys hadn’t showed up when you did, the Lankies would have overrun us, just like they did LZ Green.”
A SEAL captain in the row behind us reaches over the back of the seat in front of him and offers his hand.
“If you’re the new STO, we’ll be working together. I’m the CO of the SEAL platoon. Tom Rolson.”
The three of us shake hands. Something about Captain Rolson’s face triggers recognition, but I can’t quite remember where I met him last. The podhead community is small, so I’ve probably done at least a drop with every active-duty SEAL who has been in the service for longer than four years. But there’s a flavor of wariness that comes with recognizing Captain Rolson, and when I remember, it’s an unpleasant jolt.
“You were on the Arcadia mission,” I say. “On Major Masoud’s SEAL team.”
Captain Rolson nods.
“I was a first lieutenant back then,” he says. “I was in charge of one of the two fire teams.”
I try to keep a neutral expression. Major Masoud’s SEALs kept to themselves for the whole mission, both before and after we dropped onto the moon, so it’s not surprising that I didn’t recognize the captain immediately. I tell myself that it wouldn’t be fair to transfer my resentment of the now colonel Masoud to one of his former fire team leaders. And without the SEALs clandestinely setting nuclear charges on half the terraformers on that moon, we would have lost the battle and failed the mission. But part of me still wants to punch the captain in the face and out of his chair.
That was three years ago, I tell myself. Three years ago and 150 light-years away. Even though I can still name every member of my platoon who died on that mission. I carried their dog tags around with me for over a week—except for the one belonging to Corporal Morris, who took a cannon round to the upper body that obliterated everything from the waist up. But it wasn’t this guy who cooked up the mission and conned the SI platoons into playing bait.
Behind me, a staff officer steps through the hatch of the briefing room. Lieutenant Brown gets out of his seat and calls the room to attention, and we all turn toward the hatch.
“As you were,” the newcomer says. He’s a Fleet lieutenant colonel, and he’s wearing the new uniform, while everyone else in the room is in Fleet or SI cammies.
“Have a seat, gentlemen.”
We sit down again, and there’s some expectant rustling in the room as officers get out their PDPs for the briefing. The lieutenant colonel walks to the front of the room and puts his PDP down on the lectern. He turns on the briefing screen on the bulkhead behind him with a few taps on his PDP screen, and it activates soundlessly, displaying the ship’s seal and motto:
CVB-60 OTTAWA—ADVANCE—EN AVANT.
“Welcome to Ottawa. I am Lieutenant Colonel Barry, the XO of this ship.”
He taps his PDP again, and the screen behind him changes from the ship seal to a 3-D image of Ottawa. I don’t know the first thing about starship design, but even I can tell that this ship and her sisters represent a major leap in warship development. Her sleek, streamlined hull and sheer size make all other Fleet units seem ancient and obsolete.
“You will be part of the first crew of the most
advanced warship ever built,” the XO continues. “You will be using hardware that nobody in the Fleet has ever seen because it hasn’t existed until now. But before I get into the nuts and bolts of the Avenger-class battlecarrier, I have a few administrative directives.”
He tugs on the bottom of his teal uniform tunic to straighten it out, even though the material has no wrinkles in it.
“If you are Fleet, you have each been issued several sets of the new Fleet battle-dress uniform, tailored to your measurements. They are waiting for you in your stateroom lockers. After you’ve squared away your gear and settled in, you will change into the uniform of the day. On most days, that will be Fleet Battle Dress.”
I look down at the camouflage pattern of my until-now-standard BDUs. We’ve worn the same uniform in the same pattern for years now. Each service has its own digital camo pattern, something that makes the wearer visibly a member of their branch even from a distance. The new Fleet Battle Dress is all solid colors, and it looks as different from the old uniform as Ottawa does from all the other ships in the Fleet. When it comes to new tech, we’ve been mostly standing still except for the emergency warfighting tools—new rifles, the new battleships, the Orion missiles. After the weapons development, there was never much money left for other gear, so we’ve been soldiering on with the same uniform design for at least a decade now. I wonder what kind of treasure chest the Fleet found to be able to afford a top-to-bottom remake.
“If you carry a personal sidearm, your next stop after this briefing will be the armory on the flight deck level. You will turn in your weapon, to be reissued as required for combat ops. There will be no carrying of sidearms except for authorized security personnel.”
