Childers

by Richard F. Weyand

  "So I'm hoping ATS won't be an anticlimax for you after having done so well over the past year. You're what we call a wild talent, Commander. Your untrained instincts are usually better than most trained people can do after considered reflection. I'm hoping ATS will sharpen those abilities, and not dull them."

  "I hope so, too, Sir. I'm looking forward to ATS, actually."

  "Good. After ATS, we're going to have to make you a senior tactical officer on a heavy warship. There's no path to heavy warship command that doesn't go through the STO position. I think I have just the berth coming up, but we can talk about that in a few months, after you finish ATS."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I think that's it for today, Commander. Unless you have any questions."

  "Just one, Sir. I've been working on the outline for a book on tactics. Do you think that's presumptuous? Or premature?"

  "Not at all, Commander. If you can get some of that wild talent down on paper, make it something we can use to develop some of those abilities in others, that would be tremendously helpful. That's one book I for one eagerly anticipate reading."

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  Advanced Tactics School, sometimes called Tac 2, was the make or break class for warship command in the Commonwealth Space Force. It separated the line officers from the staff officers with brutal disregard of its students' preferences. You either cut it, or you didn't.

  ATS was scored competitively, and it was cut-throat. Exercises were therefore always by simulation, to keep students from trying to spike each other's performance.

  As it was, Jan almost didn't make the cut out of ATS. The problems weren't scored by results, but rather by how well you followed the book on "this is how you do tactics." As near as Jan could tell, that book was fifty years old, and had nothing to do with the real tactical situations she had seen. She allowed as how her experience was limited, but even so. It was amazing CSF had gotten by if this was how it selected and trained its ship captains.

  After the first two months of the course, Jan stopped trying to achieve successful results and by rote followed the recommended tactical analysis process. Her scores went up, not down, for failures that were avoidable with innovative responses. The experience and frustration weren't wasted, though. She threw her energies into her own book, using the ineffectiveness of the course to spur her on.

  She put just enough energy into ATS to, barely, scrape by. And she made a mental note, were she ever in a position to do it, to gut ATS and start over.

  Senior Tactical Officer of the Heavy Cruiser

  CSS Nils Isacsson

  "I must say I'm disappointed with your ATS class rank, Commander," Rear Admiral Stepic said.

  "I'm sorry, Sir."

  "Oh, it's not you I'm disappointed in, Commander. I've been having misgivings about ATS for a while. We need to teach people how to think, not how to turn the crank or regurgitate dogma. When the most advanced class in tactics we have almost fails the most innovative tactician we've seen come along in a while, you know it's broken. Your ATS scores are wildly incongruent with someone who already wears the Combat Medal, and from such a mismatched engagement. Since reality is not amenable to amendment, that means the class has to change."

  "I'm glad to hear you say that, Sir."

  "What else could I say? I'd like you to do me a favor, Commander. I'd like you to take a moment to write up your impressions of ATS. For my eyes only. Don't pull any punches, because it's not going any further than me. I want your frank assessment. When someone says that, it's often a trap, but not this time. I need a view from the inside, and I would appreciate yours."

  "Certainly, Sir. I'd be happy to."

  "Good. On to happier things. I have that berth I mentioned to you, Commander. Senior Tactical Officer aboard a heavy cruiser, the CSS Nils Isacsson. She's just starting to work up, so you'll be involved in getting her all shipshape for deployment. Given that, this is a two-year assignment. STO on a heavy cruiser is a lieutenant commander's berth, and you were promoted out of the zone a year ago, so a solid two-year stint on a heavy is perfect right now," Rear Admiral Stepic said.

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  "Oh, and you might run into a friend or two aboard, Commander."

  The Gerald Ansen-class heavy cruisers of the CSF were named after the signers of the Charter of the Commonwealth of Free Planets. They mounted three heavy beam weapons, and had three crew cylinders to accommodate their complement of twelve hundred officers and crew. The three crew cylinders were each the same size as one of the six crew cylinders on a Cleopatra-class battleship like Jean d'Arc.

  With both half the crew complement and half the square footage of a battleship, the crew spaces on the Nils Isacsson were the same size as those on Jean d'Arc. As Senior Tactical Officer, Jan would have a cabin on the bridge deck, along with the captain and first officer, as well as workspace for her tactical office staff.

  When she looked up the crew complement of the Nils Isacsson, Jan burst into a grin. Well, Admiral Stepic said she 'might run into a friend or two aboard.'

  "Lieutenant Commander Childers reporting as ordered, Sir."

  "Ms. Childers. We meet again. Welcome aboard, Commander," said Captain Richard Murdock, commanding CSS Nils Isacsson.

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  "Please, be seated. Tell me what you've been up to. Not that your reputation hasn't preceded you."

  Jan sat at the indicated chair in the captain's ready room and relaxed. Bad chemistry with a captain could be very bad. Bad for one's career, in extreme cases bad for the service. Not likely here. Admiral Stepic was clearly looking out for her.

  "The last time I saw you, you were boarding a quadcopter for the Quito Elevator. Of course, that was, what, almost five years ago now?"

  "Yes, Sir. I'll be nineteen in three months. That will make five years since I took the Exam. And since you swore me into the service."

  "And here we are. You must have some amazing stories to tell. I want to hear them all, Commander. Every single one."

  "Criminy. Have you seen what they call a Senior Tac Officer these days? She don't look like she's old enough to plebe the Academy," Chief Petty Officer Rory Chin groused to no one in particular.

  "Ain't been around much, have you, Rory?" Chief Petty Officer Felipe Fukuda said.

  They were in the Goat Locker, along with another couple dozen of the sixty-plus chiefs and senior chiefs who would ultimately take berths aboard the Nils Isacsson.

  "Whaddya mean, Felipe? I been around plenty."

  "Not enough to notice her decorations?"

  "Pretty ribbons. So what."

  "Those two big medals are the Science Medal and the Combat Medal. Look close, 'cause you won't see anybody else got both of 'em. I done some checkin' aroun'. Sally Matsushita says Childers is the real deal. She volunteered to wash dishes and clip stores on the Aquitaine when Sally was there, rather than ferry ride to OCS, and she worked her ass off. Then she got the highest score ever recorded in Tac 1. Ever. She got the Science Medal for redoin' the mathematics on hyperspace, and usin' it aboard the Jean d'Arc to blow half a dozen Brunswick ships to hell in Valore. And she got the Combat Medal for punchin' out a Tenerife light cruiser with the Clermont in Parchman. The Clermont's a sensor tender, fer chrissake."

  "No shit."

  Others were listening in now.

  "Yeah, she suckered 'em right into the sights of a remote beamer she just happened to drag along. You know, just in case."

  "Ha! That's a good one. Betcha they were surprised."

  "Yeah, you could say that. She's smart, and she's sneaky as hell. We couldn't hope for a better Senior Tac. But it gets even better. She took UCS."

  "That little thing?"

  "Yeah. And you know how they always let the graduatin' students challenge the sensei at the end?"

  "Sure. Nobody ever beats him, though."

  "Boy, you are outta touch. Childers suckered Nokimuri, kicked him upside the head, and droppe
d his ass. Three-count hold, fair and square."

  "Jesus."

  "There's some other stories floatin' aroun', too. Like, there was a rapist runnin' aroun' University o' Jablonka a couple years back. Been terrorizin' the campus two, three years. Childers went there for the doct'rate in math'matics, workin' on that hyperspace stuff. End o' her first semester, lo and behold, they find this guy lyin' dead on the sidewalk one mornin'. Ruptured kidney, busted jaw, crushed windpipe, temple smashed in, broken neck. The works. Looked like a couple big guys got on him with ball bats and took their time. Ran his DNA, and he was the rapist. That was about four months after Childers dropped Nokimuri on his ass."

  "Damn. Sounds like he picked the wrong victim."

  "I'll say. And one more thing. D'you know Senior Chief Voipers?"

  "Yeah, sure. Everybody knows Max Viper."

  "Well, he was the senior non-com on both the Aquitaine and the Jean d'Arc when Childers was on 'em. Says she's below-decks through and through. They had a welcome-aboard party for her on the Jean d'Arc. In the Goat Locker. She shows up in an unmarked shipsuit, no medals or rank or nothin', and says 'Call me Jan.' She's one of our people, Rory. Topside she's got subordinates and superiors and all that shit, but below decks she's got family. They can promote her all they want, but she's one of us, and she always will be."

  "Commander, Lieutenant Commander Jan Childers. Lieutenant Commander, Commander Nathalie Rodriguez," Murdock said, introducing Jan to the incoming first officer of the Nils Isacsson.

  "Pleased to meet you, Commander."

  "And you, Ma'am."

  The three of them had a long meeting discussing the sort of tactical options Murdock wanted at his fingertips. These would be developed in full by Jan and her team as part of the Tac group's responsibilities aboard ship. Maneuvering plans, firing plans, navigation plans. In CSF tactical parlance it was called 'building book,' assembling a set of alternatives to be worked through and practiced in advance by the ship's crew. It was the first in what would be a long series of planning meetings.

  It got to be late in the afternoon when they finally broke.

  "Should we adjourn to the Officer's Mess?" Murdock asked.

  "Can I beg off, Sir? The chiefs have invited me to dinner with them in the Chief's Mess. Senior Chief Matsushita and I were on the Aquitaine together."

  "In the Goat Locker?"

  "Yes, Sir. I, uh, sort of volunteered below decks on the Aquitaine on the way to OCS. And the way they look at it, once below decks, always below decks. It's becoming something of a tradition."

  "Well, I won't stand in the way of that. I don't want Senior Chief Matsushita mad at me. It'd be cold cuts and leftovers in the Officer's Mess for months."

  Jan laughed. Matsushita ran the entire galley operation on board the Nils Isacsson.

  "Go ahead, Commander. Don't keep the senior chief waiting. Dismissed."

  At 18:00 hours, dressed in a plain midnight-blue shipsuit, Jan knocked on the door of the Chief's Mess. It was Senior Chief Matsushita who opened the door.

  "Come on in, Ma'am."

  "Hi, Sally. Long time no see. And call me Jan."

  As the days went by, more junior officers were reporting aboard. Jan had two assistant tac officers, lieutenants out of ATS, and two junior tac officers, ensigns out of BTS, reporting to her.

  Jan had a long talk with Lieutenants Beverly Bhatia and Ivan O'Connell about ATS, and their approach to tactical problems. Their attitude to ATS was not unlike her own.

  "Ultimately, it's just something you have to do, Ma'am. Some Navy training is helpful, and others it seems it's more 'checking the box' to go to the next level. ATS was sort of checking the box," O'Connell said.

  "I think I'm with Ivan on that one, Ma'am. Sort of disappointing, really," Bhatia agreed.

  "Good. I was worried you were bought into the ATS model, because we're throwing it out and starting over," Jan said.

  "Oh, good. Because here we really will be scored on results," Bhatia said.

  "Yeah, and we have a lot more vested interest in those results, Ma'am. It's not a difference of whether you go line or not. It's the difference of whether you go home or not," O'Connell said.

  Jan's first full meeting of the tactical section also included Ensigns Clyde Disho and Jose Miller. The five sat around the conference table while Jan spelled out what they were about.

  "What we want to do is to take the actual encounters CSF ships have been in during the last fifty years or so, and decide with full hindsight and our new hyper capabilities what the proper tactical response should be now, and derive from them maybe twenty standard tactical responses. We won't have a set of navigation plans and a set of firing plans and a set of this plans and a set of that plans. We will have a set of tactical plans. We'll code them with a color, followed by a numbers, like Blue-14. Navigation and weapons will both know what Blue-14 means. If there's some other information necessary, we will tag it on at the end.

  "I want to build a book for the captain that will allow him to specify, in a single sequence, the proper response for any encounter of the last fifty years. It will save time, add clarity, and have departments working together rather than separately.

  "So first is to dig through all the records for reasonable descriptions of all the conflicts. We'll start at the present and go back until we have two hundred. Then we'll sort them out into categories, and start working on best responses.

  "We all clear on what we'll be doing?"

  They were on their way to Saarestik to join Vice Admiral Bjorn Pande's forces there. Jan was updating Captain Murdock and Commander Rodriguez on their progress in building book for tactical.

  "It didn't work out the way you hoped, Commander?" Murdock asked.

  "No, Sir. I had hoped to have one set of tactical plans that would incorporate navigation plans, firing plans, and whatever else into a single order. When it came down to cases, there were just too many variables. There are a remarkable number of ways the outer colony navies have tried to attack us, and an even more remarkable number of situations those led to. To cover the space, I needed more degrees of freedom."

  "Basically, it becomes an 'm times n' problem, instead of an 'm plus n' problem. Is that right?" Rodriguez asked.

  "Yes, Ma'am. I had hoped enough of those combinations would not be useful, enough would fall out, we could get rid of the need for two commands. But that didn't happen. The tactical situations varied too much."

  "OK, I get that. But are you making progress on the analysis?" Murdock asked.

  "Yes, Sir. We've actually completed the analysis, and have been drawing up navigation plans using our new capability to maneuver within the published system periphery. Some are really clever and, if well executed, will give the enemy fits."

  "I like the sound of that. As for execution, we're going to have to drill until it's second nature. We can do that," Murdock said.

  "What about firing plans, Commander?" Rodriguez asked.

  "The standard set of firing plans is actually pretty good, Ma'am. There's only so many ways to target and fire at the enemy, as opposed to the variety of maneuvers, and the guns haven't changed the way our maneuver capabilities have."

  "Why don't you walk us through some of the navigation plans you've come up with, Commander? I really want to see those."

  When they arrived in orbit around Saarestik after three weeks in hyperspace, Murdock reported in to Rear Admiral Betty Cintra aboard the CSS Guadalupe Rivera. The Nils Isacsson would be joining her short squadron of heavy cruisers, bringing it up to its authorized strength of six.

  "Admiral Pande has Admiral Cintra's squadron forward deployed on the approaches to Saarestik. Each ship is independently cruising those approaches, to see if we can't engage small raids further from the planet and its infrastructure. Against an attack in force, we have the rest of Pande's forces in reserve in orbit about Saarestik," Murdock told Jan and Rodriguez once he was back aboard Nils Isacsson.

  "That's actually not a bad
plan, Sir," Rodriguez said.

  "Given our ability to use hyperspace within the envelope between the calculated system periphery and the published system periphery, I would think even more forward-deployed forces would be in order. We could muster up enough forces to defeat any attacking force by hypering them to the scene within that envelope," Jan said.

  "I like that term, 'envelope,'" Rodriguez said.

  "I do, too. Let's call it the system envelope from here out. Nice, compact term. Anyway, orders are orders. Cintra is putting her ships on a sixty-day rotation, with fifty days cruising followed by ten days back in orbit for restocking and R&R on Saarestik. That will keep five ships on the approaches at all times. Our arrival worked right into that schedule. The Guadalupe Rivera is on her way out today. So we have ten days to restock stores and rotate planet leave before we need to relieve the Sania Mehta."

  The Nils Isacsson's station was a pretty big chunk of space on the system periphery. In order to keep gravity in the crew quarters, the ship had to keep accelerating, so it was constantly moving about its patrol area. And as long as they had to keep moving, Murdock saw no reason why they shouldn't be drilling maneuvers. Nils Isacsson normally drilled every second or third day, to give the crew some time out, but once in a while Murdock drilled them on successive days, to keep everybody sharp.

  Senior Chief Matsushita's crew kept the zero-g nets handy in the galley. These were nets with 1/2" grid spacing that hooked on the edges of tables and work spaces. They were kept rolled up and hooked on one side of the galley work tables so they could be quickly thrown over the work space and hooked on the other side to keep things from flying about during zero-g. Matsushita's crew got very good at deploying the nets. The nets also had to be laundered after every use to keep dirty nets from causing food poisoning, but they had plenty of nets to use while others were in the laundry.