Every Last Mother's Child

by William J. Carty, Jr

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  General Langtree was in his office going over reports from his subordinate officers. Although he was the Maintenance Group Commander for Fletcher Trena Militia Base, he was also the Chief of Maintenance for all of Trena’s Militia. Responsible for every piece of flying hardware the militia owned. He hated it. When he left the Imperial Marine Corps he had retired as a lieutenant colonel. When he arrived on Trena after a year of knocking around the galaxy, he started to work as a maintenance coordinator for Trena Spaceways. A small inter system freight and passenger service. He had gotten out of the Marine Corps when they were about to promote him to colonel and take him off the line. At Spaceways he was on the line every day and seldom got the grime and dirt out from under his fingernails. He was quite happy, and Spaceways was quite happy with him. The militia had heard about him and General Qoum had come to search him out.

  The general had offered him a maintenance group. He’d come in as a Major, and be responsible for all the flying hardware, and maintenance equipment to keep the third Militia wing flying. He had asked to be allowed to work beside his troops. The general had said he would have it no other way. He said that the real reason that Langtree was being hired was that they were having a safety of flight problem. They were losing birds at an unacceptable rate. It had been determined that it was a maintenance problem, not a pilot problem. The general said it was a two year commission, after that he was free to go. Langtree said cool, signed the papers and left Trena Spaceways. Trena Spaceways was no longer a challenge.

  His first day on the flight line had been interesting to say the least. He had asked the general not to announce his appointment. He had wanted to walk through the maintenance group area to see what was going on. He was dressed in plain fatigues with his major insignia subdued. His plan changed at muster. He walked into the hangar where maintenance squadron mustering. No one had seen him enter the hangar except for one of the noncoms who was about to announce him. He gestured to the NCO not to announce him. He wanted to see how the captain, his soon to be exec handled muster. He listened to his exec go through the muster list. Less than half the day watch was a no call no show. They would have to hold over the night watch to generate birds for the day’s activities. That was all he needed.

  “Captain,” Langtree had stood up in the back room, and said softly, “I am Major David Langtree. Before you ask who the hell I am. I am the new maintenance group commander. For those of you who need further encouragement. I am thy lord god commander and I own each and every one of you lovelies. Every name on that list is AWOL. You tell the provost martial and the MPs that they are to be pulled out what ever beds or bars they are in and thrown in the brig. You then issue a recall for every officer, and enlisted man assigned to my unit. Anyone who isn’t here within 90 minutes is on report, and charged with dereliction of duty.

  “In the mean time you lovelies we have birds to generate. Let’s get to work.” With that Langtree went out to his truck pulled it out onto the flight line. He got the flight generation list from the line chief and went out to the first bird on the list. “Chief we’ll treat this as a war alert. We’ll get every one of these birds ready as if the Kingdom was being attacked. We have cargo load outs. Let’s do it.”

  That day the flight line was the last place anyone wanted to be. Langtree was everywhere. When a fight broke out between a couple of line crews over tools Langtree wrote them up and told the supply officer to get a tool kit out to each and every one of revetments. They had to generate twenty landing craft to meet the days flying schedule. They had twenty five ready by noon. He had learned a lot.

  He had biopeople, thonians, and norms on his flight line crews. All had various degrees of experience. There were some communication problems because of the different races of people. One of his big headaches was that the biopeople knew more than his thonians and normal humans, when they generated a bird it was letter perfect. It was causing friction within his teams. The clones by their very nature did everything perfect. They were finicky, and often took extra time to get things right. While the humans and thonians who were just as experienced flight line hands would use short cuts to get the birds generated. He had to figure out a way to get them to work together, and to get the job done quickly, but correctly.

  At the end of the day when he had his full contingent in front of him, those that were not in the brig, he laid down the law. “Folks this maintenance group sucks. We are in the business of generating space craft for the Trena Militia. The birds that we put in the air are the first defense of our world against an enemy. If we fail, then those of us who have family here on Trena have failed our families, but not only them but our neighbors, and the people we are sworn to serve and protect. From this day forward there will be twenty landing craft ready to go. If the Wing King calls for ten cargo lifters we’ll have fifteen ready. At the very least we’ll be able to reconfigure our birds in one hour.”

  “Major this isn’t the Marines,” first lieutenant Stanford one of his watch commanders called, “we can’t...”

  “Lieutenant,” Langtree had spoken softly, “can’t will not be heard in this hangar again. If I am asking too much then we’ll work it out. But here’s the deal ladies and gents. This wing is not going to lose another vehicle due to our incompetence. Starting tomorrow all three shifts will report at 0400. We will work as a team to generate our birds. Once our birds have launched we will be back in here doing after action review No one goes home until the last bird lands and the flight has been debriefed. While we are waiting for the birds to come home we will be working on the hangar queens to get them flight ready or we will start generating tomorrow’s birds. We won’t run this outfit like a Marine unit because I think we can do better than that. If we have to we will rewrite our maintenance procedures and make sure we know our shit. If we lose another bird through our own incompetence you will think that it is the second coming and you have all landed in hell. We owe that to our pilots and crews who trust us to give them a flyable bird.”

  He let that sink in then said, “Crew chiefs, and officers meeting in one hour. Bring your gripe pads and note books. Tell your spouses I’m the ass hole who won’t let you come home tonight. But tell them also that you’ll be home by midnight. Promise!”

  When he left the hangar where he was meeting with his team, general Qoum was waiting for him in just outside the hangar. The general had received more than a couple calls from Langtree’s officers. Langtree came to attention and waited for the general to acknowledge him. “Stand easy major. You’ve pissed off half your officers.”

  “Gee I was hoping for more than that,” Langtree smiled, “General give me a month and you’ll stop losing vehicles to maintenance deficiencies. We have some that should be hangar queens, but others that are in good shape. You have a good crew out there it’s just they need someone who gives a damn about them, someone who can get the most out of them. The line chiefs know their shit. They usually do.”

  “Carry on Major,” the General left, as he passed by the open hangar the general said in a voice that could be over heard, “You have my complete support and let me know who you want to transfer out. It will happen by sun down.”

  “Thank you general,” Langtree said wincing, he thought that was too thick, “I’ll keep that in mind. No one is on the list...for today.”

  Within the month Langtree’s maintenance group had surpassed Langtree’s goal. They had one hundred and twenty space craft of all types to keep flyable. On any given day they were able to generate 80 vehicles. The entire Trena Militia was only able to generate about half their birds on a given day. The Langtree Legend had started to grow. Over the next few years a lot of the Trena Militia’s Maintenance personnel had passed through his hangars. His crews were the tops in all fields and they willingly passed on their knowledge. Langtree ended the language barrier by insisting that everyone learn everyone’s language. He had some officers resign, and others fight him every inch of the way. But his crew love
d him. When someone was getting married he made sure the newlyweds could have a honey moon. If someone’s spouse was in the hospital he made sure that he visited the family and made sure that the family was okay. He had a simple theory. If he took care of his people, they would take care of him. Eventually he was promoted to colonel, and then the month before last he was made brigadier general in charge of all maintenance operations of the Militia’s flying hardware. He didn’t think he would like the job. One of the reasons he got out of the marines, was that the desk job he was heading for wouldn’t be a challenge. General Qoum had known that and had seen to it that Langtree always had a challenge.

  A month after his promotion, Langtree was reading a report about a boot lieutenant just out of OCS who had screwed up big time. He was wondering if this type of challenge was going to drive him nuts. The lieutenant too in experienced to listen to his line chief who was twice his senior in age and twenty years his senior in keeping landing craft flying. It had gotten to the point that the lieutenant had filed charges, and he as appointing authority now had to do something about it. Both were sitting in his outer office as he reviewed the paper work. There was knock on his door.

  “Enter!” he barked.

  “Sir,” His aide and driver came in. “This just came in from the Palace. The courier is still outside.”

  He took it from sergeant Hoi’s hand, read it and said, “Tell the courier I’ll talk with him.”

  “Her sir,” Sergeant Hoi replied.

  “Oh hi Commander,” Langtree said seeing the thonian who had been on base when the Companions had landed. “Hoi had said courier I had no idea it was you.”

  “That’s okay general,” Mylea replied, Mylea handed him a sealed envelope. He opened it and ran his hand through his hair. It was a crown warrant. The last one he had seen was when he was promoted to brigadier and appointed to his current job..

  Mylea watch him trying to make up his mind finally asked. “What shall I tell the Marshall?”

  “He has a maintenance group commander.” Langtree replied. “I’ll report in, in the morning.”

  “You’re pretty sure about you getting the job.” Mylea replied.

  “He wouldn’t be asking if Qoum didn’t recommend me, and you wouldn’t be here unless he was going to offer me the job.” Langtree replied, “Besides there isn’t anyone on this world who can do what he needs me to do.”

  “Okay general,” Mylea replied, she nodded and left.

  He walked out into his outer office he looked at the two militia men and barked, “Both of you inside now!”

  With his door shut, so no one outside his office would hear his conversation. “I should ream both of you a new ass hole. Sarge, you know better. Your job is to take these young officers and help them grow up. So they can be promoted. LT you job is to listen to your NCOs and learn everything you can from them. That doesn’t mean you are not in charge, it only means that they have been doing this longer than you and you should listen to their advice and then make your decision. Both of you are not living up to my expectations.

  “Lieutenant,” General Langtree spoke softly, “I am not going to honor this request. This to me is a simple communication problem. Captain Dolly has entered into both of your records that he has counseled you. I am endorsing that action. In addition I am adding that I have also counseled you, stressing that you are both to work on developing the professional relationship that you both need to get your jobs done.”

  “Sir with all due respect,” the lieutenant started, “she showed gross insubordination and disrespect. I want charges…”

  “Lieutenant,” General Langtree said, “If I as appointing authority feel that this incident needs to go to a JAG Manual investigation, there is a good chance the sergeant will have a judicial statement in her file, and you will, should the investigation find that your charges are unwarranted could be asked to leave the service. From the reports I have received and the conversations I have had with your officers I am inclined to not go further. It’s your choice; but as of right now I can end this with the stroke of a pen. That is how I would prefer to handle this.”

  “But she showed disrespect to me….” The lieutenant repeated.

  “Sarge, leave us,” The general fully exasperated spoke to the sergeant, “But don’t leave the office.”

  When the sergeant left, Langtree turned to the young lieutenant and said softly, “LT you better find a way to respect yourself! You better get it into your head that that woman does respect you. You automatically earn her respect simply by getting through OCS and being put in charge of her unit. I find that many people who start yelling about disrespect, that others don’t respect them and that they want to take action against people who they don’t feel respect them often have a self-image problem, and self-worth issues. Now if you want I can continue with the charges you have filed, and let the chips fall where they may. But I can tell you right now, if your charges go forward and that sergeant is drummed out of the militia, or is demoted many of the enlisted men and women who you have to work with will not respect you and then you will have some serious issues to work out.”

  “But…” the lieutenant said and Langtree cut him off, “LT you know this is the toughest unit in the militia. You know that it took several recommendations to get into this unit. That many officers and enlisted personnel never make it into this unit. You made it on your first try. That means your instructors at OCS think you are hot shit. Your professors at Trena University think you are hot shit. You are a fine engineer. Now damn it, learn how to be an officer from the men and women who have been training officers since before you were born! Now get out of here before I get angry and write you up for behavior unbecoming!”

  “Yes sir,” the lieutenant left.

  “Sarge!” Langtree bellowed.

  The sergeant came back into his office.

  “I don’t care how you do it,” Langtree said, “I want you to find a way to work with that young officer. He is too good to let him get away from us. I hold you partially responsible for his problem.” She started to interrupt him; but Langtree cut her off, “We should not be having this discussion and you know it. Now I am not going to be in a position to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid like refilling against you. I am being reassigned. So it will be up to you to make that young officer into an outstanding officer. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir!” the woman said feeling lucky that the general had decided not to ream her out any more than he had. She might have deserved a more thorough ass chewing than she was getting. So she wasn’t about to chance getting it. She decided to take her reprimand and get on with the work she had to do.

  “Now get out of here so I can get my in basket empty before I transfer out.” The general said. The NCO left quietly.