“She isn’t giddy, she says, Steve. But she intends to kiss you the next time she sees you. She’s never kissed a man before.”
“She is a pilot. A beached pilot. I got her reinstated.”
“I won’t ask how, Steve.”
“Sure you can; Mad Hatter is still carried on the Fleet list as shuttle -- so no one has bothered to look at it. Admiral Merriweather relieved some of the people in her sensor department. Admiral Fletcher relieved everyone in the Earth Defense sensor department who was on duty when you left. No one ever looked at your ship. You said you were a shuttle, and that’s what they assumed. Admiral Cloud said that sensor officers aren’t paid to assume.”
“Admiral Cloud?” Yolie asked curiously. “I don’t remember her saying that.”
“Yolie, I can’t tell you why, but in two weeks I’ll be deployed back to Thebes for a while.”
She searched his face, then took his hand in hers. “How long?”
“Four to six months.”
“Oh! Steve! Do you have to?”
“I’m sorry, Yolie. This is because of that thing you know I can’t talk about.” He grinned and added, “They say it will give you time to catch up. We both know you will be ahead of me from here on out.”
Yolanda grinned. “I’ve been looking up the mandatory retirement rules for the Fleet. Just don’t go getting yourself killed, Steve. We have a couple of hundred years, at least, to discomfit a lot of dirty-feet.”
“And we need to learn the skills to make that happen!” he told her. She hugged him, and then kissed him.
Someone cleared his throat. Steve saw it was Cliff Maitland. “Displays of affection aren’t proper during duty hours,” he told the couple.
“Cliff, we are not on duty. Ensign Yolanda Ruiz, this is my roommate, Cadet Cliff Maitland.”
“Still, during duty hours...”
“Cliff, if you have a complaint, report us to our tactical officers. Mine is Admiral Thor Swenson, Yolanda’s is Admiral of the Fleet Trudy Swenson.”
“Still, it is improper behavior for officers to make out in public.”
“You would learn it in due course, Cliff. I deploy again to Thebes in two weeks, a deployment that will take months. I was just telling Yolie. Making an issue of this will get you a very nasty purple rocket.”
“Damned special interests!” Cliff spun on his heels and walked away.
Steve glanced at Yolanda. “This is like Jaime calling you a ‘damned Bing.’”
Steve chased after Cliff and stopped him. “Cliff! Stop and think! You tell anyone about this and the Fleet officers will think you’ll do better in the Port branch. Utter that comment about ‘special interests’ and you’ll be lucky not to be shot.
“I’ve served with officers like that. I’ve never met one who didn’t merit the special interest. The last four Admirals of the Fleet are okay with ‘Special Project Officers.’ A great many officers have been shot for interfering with the duty of a project officer, and a very great many are serving as inventory control officers at Yellowknife, or crossing guards on Pluto. It isn’t a joke and they won’t treat it as such.
“You are a dirty-foot, Cliff. If you want to have a successful career in Fleet Aloft, you have to put that behind you.”
“It grates, okay?”
“Of course. Does it grate that a brother -- or sister -- officer can run faster than you? I’ve served with Admiral Merriweather. She was the exec of Dragon in the Big Battle. They took a near-miss from a gigaton weapon. About a third of Dragon was shattered. Admiral Merriweather survived and the first people she dispatched to survey the damage were the ones she knew were the fastest runners available. They were going to be subject to considerable radiation.
“Pay attention to things that are important. Not two officers smooching when they have to part. This war is for all the marbles, Cliff. There are no guarantees in life except death.”
Cliff drew himself up. “Death and taxes,” he corrected.
Steve guffawed. “I have an uncle who is a wizard at avoiding taxes. He won’t have as much luck with death, although Yolanda can help there.”
Steve looked at Cliff. “Will it soften your opinion if I get you enrolled in the new classes? The Swenson’s classes?”
“I’m in the top third, just barely. They’d never let me take those classes.”
“Special interest, Cliff. You, too, can be the recipient of such largesse! When I was told I was such an officer, my first thought was the genius himself is the last to know. Now I understand better, but it is still a wonder to me.”
“And you think I’m a genius?”
“Good heavens, no! You are, however, competent. You can, with application, excel.
“The thesis is that the current education system is not providing enough qualified Fleet officers. You have better preparation than most. Competition with the top percent of your class will either motivate you or sink you without a trace.”
“How do you know so much?”
“You are not the only one with access to public records. It’s probably an oversight, but as a lieutenant I have access to your Fleet records as well. Say the word and you will start Monday with an entirely new syllabus.”
“Do you really have that much juice?”
“It’s like investment capital -- use it, or it’s meaningless.”
Chapter 13 -- Settling In
Yolanda glanced at her roommate as Yolanda was going through her uniform issue. Her roommate sat on her bed, watching and making no comment. Yolanda finished putting everything away, following the description and pictures in the Fleet Guide. When she sat down she looked at her roommate with a question.
“Did I do that right?”
“You obviously have practice,” her roommate said.
“I can remember anything I see or hear.”
“That’s handy,” her roommate said. “And my name is?”
“Susan Hightower.”
The roommate shrugged. “It’s not every day that a Fleet Admiral greets a new cadet. It’s downright memorable.”
“I need to tell you something, Susan. It’s not secret any more.”
“You have a Fleet five-star admiral as a rabbi. That’s all I need to know. Fleet admirals don’t grow on trees, and Trudy Swenson is one of the toughest to impress.”
“When I say ‘frankenvolk,’ what do you think?”
“A booger man from times past.”
“A boogey man?”
“Nope! A booger! What you get when you pick your nose.”
“That’s what I am, although the Union calls us ‘Bings.’ A human being with something missing.”
“You don’t look like you eat babies or old folks.”
“I don’t eat anyone; we feel the same about cannibals as you do.”
“Well, just so long as you promise not to make a midnight snack of me.”
“You are making fun of me!”
“I’m sorry, you are making it too easy.”
“It’s true.”
“Okay, what genes are modified?”
“There are a lot of them. I’m immune to most diseases, my growth was sped up, but it’s slowing down now. I remember nearly everything I read, see or hear.”
“Booger!” Susan said. “I planned on being first in my class.”
“I’m not in your class.”
“You are in the classes taught by the Swensons. Those are the hardest in the Academy, by a far, far margin. Every time they teach them, they add another level of difficulty. Fleet Admiral Trudy Swenson taught the class occasionally before the war. When the war started, she got serious about it. When we lost Corinth, her ex-husband joined her. And those first classes were a picnic. Now it’s two weeks of hell.”
“I am enrolled in classes for a different path through Fleet certificates. An experimental program. So is my fiancée.”
“You can’t get permission to marry as a student at the Academy.”
“Admiral Fletcher said we can mar
ry when Steve gets back. He deploys in two weeks, after he finishes the classes taught by the Swensons. Admiral Fletcher said he didn’t want to get between the Swensons and a possible student.”
“Fletcher? The current Fleet Admiral?” Susan queried.
“That’s him.”
“Cadets don’t usually deploy,” Yolanda’s roommate said cautiously.
“He’s a lieutenant.”
“Lieutenants aren’t cadets. For that matter, the only ensigns who are cadets are fighter pilots.”
“I really don’t understand how Fleet ranks work. Evidently admirals can promote as they please, regardless of the rules.”
“Now that’s the gospel truth! Rumor has it that some admirals got together and promoted a lieutenant commander to vice admiral. BuPers was paralyzed -- they have had too many officers shot for interfering with the duty of combat officers.”
“Admiral Fletcher said it was a joke. They wanted to promote Cindy Rhodes to captain -- the extra ranks were just to tease the bureaucrats,” Yolanda informed her roommate.
“And if a bureaucrat overreacts to being teased, he can get shot. They’ve shot women, too. That seems a little extreme to punish ‘teasing.’”
“Susan, I’ve been here my entire life; I’ve never been to the Union. I grew up with this war. I was eleven when the Big Battle happened; at first people thought it was a big fireworks display.
“Then they made us all get under cover. My mother and I went to the closest tube station. There were thousands of people down there.”
“Texas was on the day side. Still, they told everyone to stay indoors. I remember my father was angry that there was no warning -- and mother telling him that in a battle with gigaton weapons, one hole was as good as another.”
Susan looked sad. “My mother is an EMT, she went to help in upstate New York.
“I was already studying to be in the Fleet -- I played in Fleet Command and was a captain by then. Eventually I was an admiral.”
“I was forbidden to do that. The Union never tried to penetrate the Federation or the Fleet.”
Susan sighed. “I read about your mother. I’m sorry, Yolanda.”
“It was a risk we took, Susan. Mom saved my life -- she passed me a warning as her last act. I thought it was just a drill at first.”
“It was the brother of your best friend?”
Yolanda shook her head. “She was never my friend, and you are approaching a subject I will have to report.”
“You said something about new certificates,” Susan backtracked.
“I’ve looked at your public records too, Susan. Do you know Captain Cindy Rhodes?”
“Know her? No. Know of her, yes. The records of all holders of the Federation Star are considered fair game for upper classmen to quiz first-year cadets on. There are not many questions about Captain Rhodes, mostly on her rapid promotions. There is a great huge security seal on most of her record.”
There was a knock on the door that Susan answered. “Captain! Attention on Deck!” Susan called, stepping away from the door.
“Cadet,” Captain Shapiro said. “You will never again call a room to attention for me unless there is a panty-waist Portie in the room! Then call the room to attention and fart loudly.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Now, be a good girl. You are a good girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then I don’t need to read chapter and verse of the security warning to you. You may stay and listen, if that is your desire, or leave.”
“I’ll stay, sir!”
Captain Shapiro turned to Yolanda. “I have been ordered to survey your ‘shuttle.’” She made air quotes around the word.
“Yes, Captain.”
“It is your property; if I find it satisfactory for service with the Fleet, we would pay you a reasonable charter fee. When the emergency ends, if both you and it survive, it will be returned to you. If it is lost, the Federation would undertake to replace it.”
“Yes, sir. I believe it actually belongs to the Union.”
“You will be remain as the responsible officer. Tell me about it.”
“It’s not a shuttle, sir.”
Captain Shapiro turned to Susan Hightower. “From here on this is classified; leave, or be subject to the security rules.”
“I’ll stay, Captain, if I may.”
“Ensign Ruiz, describe your ship.”
“It is a tube, thirty meters in diameter and three hundred meters long. It is propelled by thirty-two special turbines, with special containment. It is very, very quiet. The sensor suite is thought to be superior to the Federation, although the communications will have to be upgraded.”
“I have a particular interest in the radiation screening.”
“The hull is specially coated; it blocks 99.9999999 percent of the radiation incident to the hull. There is an additional screen against only charged particles that is twelve more 9’s effective.
“The Union goes to great lengths to protect highly modified genomes, Captain. There haven’t been many mutations, but the ones that have surfaced have been uniformly bad. I talked with the Union rep at the Meet Point and I heard the same thing from my mother. Union geneticists pruned too much from the genome. What they pruned was a great deal of redundancy.
“Can I mention Odyssey?”
“You may, but first let me address your roommate.
“Once upon a time, Cindy Rhodes was my fighter squadron’s operations officer. I have the dubious distinction of rating her in that task as ‘adequate.’ Her service with Second Squadron, the First Fighter Wing was just that. Adequate.
“The next time I saw her she was a lieutenant commander -- and everyone from the Federation President down to Commodore Heisenberg, her rating officer, rated her as ‘exceptional.’
“She informed me that what she had been doing in the interim was ‘tippy-top secret’ -- to the tenth ‘tippy’.
“What we will discuss now is tippy-top secret -- to the hundredth. You will only talk about it in a secure meeting area where I am physically present and make it explicitly clear that you may. Four- and five-star admirals have the same privileges and responsibilities.”
“And our room... it’s secure?”
“It might look like the same room you left before lunch, but I assure you it’s not. Only I, or an admiral, can say you can talk about it among yourselves. You shall not, unless you get permission.
“Do you understand, Cadet Hightower?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Good! It would grieve me to shoot someone with as cute a butt as yours, Cadet. Proceed, Ensign Ruiz.”
Susan sputtered, and Yolanda did what she could. “Odyssey is a powered habitat that fled Grayhome prior to the attack that destroyed it. There shall be no discussion, at any time, regarding the journey of Odyssey to Union space. They left Grayhome, they arrived in Union space.
“It was filled with young people; I was told fifteen thousand. The government of the Union, when they arrived, fell within days.
“The reason it fell: the Odyssey represented immeasurable wealth in the Union. A few eggs from the overwhelming majority of females would set them up as independently wealthy. Sperm from the males -- an enormous treasure. Every one of those gametes contained copies of the unaltered genome.
“Then it was revealed that the then-government had ordered the deaths of all the Union deep cover agents in the Federation. There were more than fifty unaltered genomes, and about fifty of various degrees of alteration. The people of the Union were livid. When they learned that a habitat with a thousand people was included, it was all over.”
“Stop there, Ensign. Is there anything else about your shuttle?”
“With full tanks, it can go for three years without refueling. There is life support for more than that. The ship was designed to refuel at any handy gas giant and continue on without additional inputs for longer.
“There are some minor sensor tweaks, I’ve learned
that we didn’t know about.”
“Any fuel transfer capabilities?”
“It wasn’t a priority, sir. They are minimal.”
“But they exist?”
“Yes, sir, they exist.”
Captain Shapiro turned to Susan Hightower. “I’m told to keep personnel involvement in this to a minimum.
“Are you interested in a possible deployment of an uncertain duration to a classified place? It would be hazardous duty.”
“I didn’t volunteer for the Girl Scouts, sir.” Susan paused, “How would this affect my Academy classes?”
“Deploying on a classified Intelligence Branch mission is a feather in anyone’s cap. However, I-Branch has sticky fingers. You do well on an I-Branch deployment and they’ll want to keep you. On the other hand, you are an Academy cadet. Everyone from Admiral Fletcher on down will try to see to it that you get your choice. I-Branch can be very insistent. I’d tell you that your roommate might know something about that, but the security rules preclude that.”
“I’d like a deployment, sir. If it won’t hurt my career.”
“You are still young, Cadet. I’ve been a fighter squadron commander. More than once I’ve sortied to do battle with our enemies... to be the only one who came back. Twice I’ve led full squadrons where I was the only survivor.
“Ensign Ruiz’s ‘shuttle’ offers me a chance to deploy again. In the Big Battle, I got an LD-95 dose of radiation. So far, they’ve found no cancer, but I’m screened once a week.”
“Captain, see a Union medic soonest!” Yolanda interjected. “We can fix that!”
Captain Shapiro came stiffly to attention. “I understand that the Union is a year away.”
“There is a Union habitat sixty-five light years out. It’s the Shanghai Habitat, sir.”
“Get me back on flight status and I’ll give Yardley a run for his money,” Captain Shapiro promised.
“He has met you, sir. That’s not going to happen.”
Captain Shapiro grinned. “If you can get me back on the flight status, I’m going to kiss someone’s bootie!” She grinned at Susan. “Be warned, Ensign!” Then she left.
The two roommates were silent with their own thoughts for the next hour. Yolanda was the first to get ready for bed; she should have waited.
The Odyssey and the Iliad (Kinsella Universe Book 7) Page 26
