Well-Traveled Rhodes (Kinsella Universe Book 6)

by Gina Marie Wylie

  He waved in the direction of the bridge. “The last two ships I served on died today. Men and women I’ve shared chow, beer, good times and bad -- they are dead and gone. You don’t have a lock on loss, Ensign. I’ve known some of those people well for longer than you’ve been alive. Put a cork in your sorrow.”

  He went back to what he’d been reading, clearly dismissing her.

  She returned to her quarters and sat on her bed, cross-legged as seemed to be so popular with everyone else. She was still there when her phone alarm chirped that it was time to get ready for another duty day.

  She showered, donned her other shipsuit and went to the ready room. It was dark and deserted. She had no idea what she was supposed to do, but she at least found the switch for the lights.

  Twenty minutes later a woman entered, one that Cindy faintly remembered from the day she’d arrived. “I am, Ensign Rhodes, Master Chief Shinzu, supervisor of Second Squadron’s maintenance personnel, and Commander Shapiro’s crew chief.”

  “I remember you,” Cindy told her.

  “Commander Shapiro says she will be here at 1130 and that she wishes to see you present, ship bag in hand.”

  “She’s alive? Is there anyone else?”

  Chief Shinzu shrugged. “Mostly and no.” The woman looked at Cindy steadily.

  “You understand that yesterday there were more than fifty thousand gigaton weapons bursts inside the solar system?”

  Cindy grimaced. “I knew it was a lot,” she whispered.

  “More than a lot. Nearly twenty-two thousand civilians who were in craft that couldn’t return planet-side died yesterday, the vast majority from radiation exposure.”

  “Did any of their weapons hit Earth?”

  “No. However, Ensign, you have to understand that plans had been made to defend the planet from weapons launched close and that would be traveling at significant percentages of the speed of light. Where possible, weapons platforms engaged those missiles in such a fashion that the planet was not in the path of those defensive weapons.

  “One of our nuclear warheads impacted in the south Atlantic and resulted in no deaths or injuries. There were more than forty blue impacts against the planet. Computers guide the weapons, Ensign. As a result, only three of the weapons strikes were against land. Nearly a million people were killed when a weapon hit near Harbin, China. Another hundred thousand or so were killed in upstate New York. If they had failed, billions would have been killed.

  “We were extraordinarily lucky that the third weapon killed only a few hundred people in Australia, although they lost Ayres Rock. That’s the downside. The upside as that with all of those weapons strikes, we prevented all of the gigaton weapon strikes.

  “Ensign, Commander Shapiro received a heavy dose of radiation. She says it isn’t life threatening, but she’s been ordered to Earth for treatment. She will be here when the sick bay finally clears her status. She asks that you please be ready to travel.”

  Cindy nodded. “I’m being transferred?”

  “Ensign, that’s something you’ll have to take up with Commander Shapiro, but I think that’s a reasonable assumption since she’s asked that you be ready to leave with her.”

  The chief was a tall, raw-boned woman and now she drew herself up. “Now, I need to find something else to keep myself busy, Ensign, or I’ll be crying too.”

  She left and Cindy stood silent for a few seconds, then shrugged and went to her compartment. She’d never had a chance to get much in the way of personal possessions. A spare shipsuit, some underwear, some toiletries and that was it. It took only two minutes to pack.

  She debated waking Ensign Moon, but decided that he didn’t need to be woken to learn about something he either already knew about or would learn about soon enough.

  She went back to the ready room and plopped down on her seat. She looked around and for the millionth time wished she’d taken the Special Board. If she’d done that, now all of this would be moot, and she’d stop wasting the time of a lot of good people, better people that she was!

  The door opened and Cindy started to stand, ready to greet Commander Shapiro. Her words died in her throat and she continued to stand.

  “At ease, Ensign! For God sakes! Rest!” Admiral Kinney told her.

  “Admiral, sir.”

  “Commander Shapiro asked me for a personal favor last night when they were getting her out of her fighter. I just wanted you to pass on a message to her from me.”

  “Yes, Admiral!”

  “Tell her, Irina says, whatever Shapiro wants, Shapiro gets, it’s as simple as that. That, and Commodore Irina Heisenberg sends you, Ensign, her personal condolences in regards to the loss of Lieutenant Zodiac.” The admiral’s throat worked.

  “Zodiac, Ensign, saw the missile heading down for Dragon, and swerved in front of it, so it premied eight thousand kilometers short. That detonation killed Lieutenant Zodiac, as it killed the commodore’s sister. But, two thirds of Dragon’s crew survived, and for that she is ever so grateful in her sister’s name.”

  “I had nothing to do with it,” Cindy told her.

  “Perhaps. Lieutenant Zodiac was a true Ozark Marine, in spite of what many people thought. His last words were, and I quote, ‘Tell Ensign Rhodes she’s pretty nekkid!’”

  The admiral whirled and left the compartment, leaving Cindy standing slack-jawed.

  An hour and a half later Lynn Shapiro came in. She looked no different than the day before.

  “Admiral Kinney’s aide told me that admiral talked to you, before the doc finally caught up with her long enough to knock her out for a few hours.”

  “The admiral said to say that Commodore Irina Heisenberg says that whatever you want, you get.”

  “Ah! That’s something anyway! Are you ready to blow this place?”

  “Are you okay, Commander?”

  “Compared to what?” Commander Shapiro told her. “From now on I’ll likely be sterile and if I had a kid, it would have two heads and glow in the dark. On the other hand, the flight surgeon says it’ll be another forty-eight hours or so before I start experiencing symptoms. Come along, Ensign, I’ll let you push Master Start again.”

  “That was something I was proud of until I learned it was something five-year-olds did.”

  “Yeah, well, wake up and smell the roses. There aren’t any of us getting any younger. This is a medivac flight and we’re short on minutes.”

  They went quickly to one of Rome’s fighter bays, where a shuttle was being prepped. There was nothing but a salute from a crew chief, and then a ship’s medic saluted Commander Shapiro as well. “We need to make this quick, Commander.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Commander Shapiro told him. “Ensign Rhodes here is my copilot, make sure your passengers are secure and we’ll lift in three minutes.”

  They went into the shuttle that had been fitted as an ambulance ship. There were two dozen people in special stretchers, with nurses and medical techs working with them.

  Commander Shapiro pushed Cindy along until they got to the command deck, and then gestured to Cindy to get in the right hand seat.

  “Ensign, it is my understanding, that you received your basic flight certificate.”

  “Yes, Commander...”

  Before Cindy could say anything more, Commander Shapiro pointed to the Master Start button. “Get the show on the road, Ensign. We’re for Grissom Station. Tell the computer to compute a hot approach, inform Rome and Grissom of the fact. They’ll check the plot and if they agree, we go.”

  “Me?”

  “You. You are flight certified. This is an emergency, Ensign. I bullshitted the doctors about my health status. If I don’t take a nap here real soon, I’ll take one anyway.”

  Cindy swallowed. Still, this had all been covered in the basic flight certificate work. You simply told the computer where you wanted to go and it plotted the course. There were a number of emergency alternatives that she’d learned about including “hot approach.” That
was when you went much faster than normal flight rules permitted, with departure and arrival points much closer than was usually permitted.

  She put it in, checked with Rome and Grissom and got rapid assents. They were pushed back steadily in their seats, and then the shuttle went to High Fan.

  By the time Cindy had finished the half dozen checks she was supposed to make, Commander Shapiro was sleeping. Cindy was pretty sure the woman wasn’t faking it -- she snored.

  It was a four hour flight, most of which was spent at over two g’s as they sped up to match the velocity of Grissom station, a Fleet Base in very high orbit around the Earth. She shook Commander Shapiro awake twenty minutes before they were scheduled to dock, but all the commander did was check the readouts and then did nothing, going back to dozing.

  They docked and medical personal rushed aboard, and the patients were bundled up and removed. Commander Shapiro waited until the chief medical officer reported that the patients were secure before waving to Cindy. “Grab your ship bag and come with me.”

  Lynn Shapiro led Cindy through a kilometer-long series of corridors until she entered a large room, with a stage in front, and about a couple of thousand seats, now empty.

  “Come, Ensign,” the commander told her and Cindy followed her. Finally Commander Shapiro told Cindy, “Go down the next row until I tell you to stop.”

  Cindy did, and the commander paralleled a row back. When she commanded her to stop, Cindy did. “Face the stage, Ensign,” the commander told her.

  Cindy did so, more mystified than ever. “Two years ago, almost to the day, I stood where I’m standing now. There was a young woman standing where you are now. She was tall; she was cute, and pale and shaking like a leaf. Moreover, she had more scrapes and bruises than a prize fighter after a losing match.

  “She caught my attention, and it took me almost a day to learn that she was Hannah Sawyer. Those scrapes and bruises came from her presence on Waikiki Beach the day before -- she and her lover had been walking along the beach when Chalon Castle made an unscheduled landing eight kilometers offshore at 32 kilometers per second.

  “The wave from that crash was fifteen meters high when it hit the beach. No one knows how tall it was when it passed over Ensign Sawyer and her friend, but it was eight to ten meters at least.

  “Ensign Sawyer’s friend was killed instantly. All Hannah received were scrapes and bruises, even though they’d been holding hands when the tidal wave overtook them.

  “Ensign Sawyer was deposited ten meters high in a tree and spent the night there, before emergency services rescued her the next morning at 0930. She was released from the hospital at 1400 hundred hours Zulu, and transported here. At 2100 that evening she was in this compartment, where you are standing.

  “Hannah Sawyer was a dirty-foot, not much older than you are, barely eighteen. I had no idea who she was, you understand? She was cute, sexy and that’s all I cared about. I learned a lot about her in the next few days. Hannah had, during in-processing, punched Thor Swenson in the nose. Thor was a four-star admiral at the time.

  “He gave her exceedingly high marks. Admiral Swenson’s wife was Trudy Swenson, five stars, former Chief of Fleet of Operations, and she taught Hannah in a couple of courses during her quickie ensign training. She gave Hannah the highest marks of anyone in Hannah's class of two thousand.

  “The day after I saw her here, everyone was talking about her, because she’d set the best time for anyone on their initial EVA -- an experience you've gotten to bypass so far, as that’s part of the advanced flight certificate. Ulrike Huygeens had met her, asked Hannah where she got the bruises, and when Hannah told her, broke an arm picking Hannah as the cadet most likely to get the best EVA time.

  “I could go on and on about Hannah -- she was the top student in fighter transition, beyond a doubt. Captain Bachman hadn’t been around Hannah long enough and down-checked Hannah only on ‘leadership potential.’” Commander Shapiro laughed bitterly. “She personally wrote a correction to her original evaluation saying that she’d been distracted.

  “Me?” Commander Shapiro barked a nasty laugh. “I inveigled, I cheated, I snuck; I did all sorts of things. I got assigned into Second Squadron so I could get close to Hannah. It was the most humiliating thing in my life, Ensign.

  “Why? Because it took three months before she ever looked at me -- and then she promptly broke my shoulder.”

  “She broke your shoulder?” Cindy asked, turning to look at the commander.

  “Yep, as effective of a block as any linebacker in the NFL. A straight arm to the shoulder that barely slowed her down in her gallop. Humility, Ensign, is what you feel when Admiral Kinney comes to tell you, personally, that she’s sorry, but Hannah was fully justified and that she’d see I got a Purple Heart -- but Hannah was going up for the Legion of Merit, because she’d discovered two points of prior contact the Federation had had with our enemies -- contacts no one else had noticed before.

  “I openly chased her after that. I offered all sorts of blandishments; I put on a full court press. She mostly ignored me, except the first time when she told me about the woman she really did love.

  “And then, one day, she was dead and I was in the sick bay again. Did you know that only four officers in the Fleet have as many Purple Hearts as I have, and now I’m going to go one up on the rest of them! Me, a glory hound! I’d have bet that would never happen!”

  “Why are we here, Commander?” Cindy said, speaking up.

  The commander laughed. “You are here, Ensign, because you are not Hannah Sawyer. When I knew her, she was two years and a bit older than you are now -- but it was more like fifty years. She was bright, she had been exposed to the best schooling available in the Federation and had made the best use of it a person could. Not even we vaunted Rim Runners could beat her academically. She was literally, one in a hundred billion.

  “You, on the other hand, are not only younger than she was, you are the daughter of a slacker father and a mother who isn’t even that. You attended a school that seems to have been determined to prepare you as little as possible for life in the twenty-fifth century.

  “You are woefully ignorant of every least thing about the Fleet, the Federation and above all, this war.

  “So, I’ve decided to abuse my position and have implored people I know to abuse theirs as well in your regard. I’m going to do something to you that I was never able to do with Hannah. I’m going to fuck you over.”

  The word was unexpected. There were periods in the history of the Federation where profanity was common. Lately it was rare, in fact, almost unheard of.

  “I’m not like that,” Cindy told her with as much dignity as she could muster.

  Commander Shapiro evidently thought that was hilariously funny. “Ah, teenagers! I was a teenager once, I think. Being in command of a fighter squadron rather reduces you to your bare essentials. No, metaphorically, not literally, Ensign. Get your mind off sex, and apply it to your future! Right now, you aren’t fit to lead a honey bucket brigade! Is that what you want?”

  “No, of course not.” Cindy lifted her chin. “I don’t know what to do, Commander.”

  Commander Shapiro slapped her thigh. “That’s because you aren’t the dunce they tried to make you into!” She dipped into the pocket of her shipsuit and took out the two brass balls she carried there. “Here, hold out your hand.”

  Cindy shook her head vigorously “no.”

  “You have to ask yourself, right now, what you want, Ensign. Do you want to do something worthwhile in your life, or go back to being a slacker?”

  “I’m not fit to be much else,” Cindy reminded her.

  “And I told you I can do almost anything possible when it comes to duty assignments. I found one ideally suited for you.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sitting on your ass for weeks and months at a time. Punctuated with moments of sheer terror, of course. You know -- pretty much like what duty with Fleet Aloft is these days
.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. You’re young and ignorant. That’s the fault of your parents and teachers. I think you’re another genius, just like Hannah was -- Zodiac thought the same thing. He made me promise I wouldn’t let you stay with the squadron after the battle. It’s the least I can do for him.”

  “If I’m so ignorant, how can I be a genius?”

  “Ignorance is a condition like being hungry. Feed the hunger and you’re something else. I’m going to put you in a place where you can do something about curing the ignorance.”

  Another woman, older than Commander Shapiro, entered the auditorium. She walked up to them and instead of paying attention to Commander Shapiro; she looked Cindy up and down.

  “This is the officer you wish placed?” The woman was wearing a white shipsuit, with a wavy ring on her sleeves, and a single star higher on her sleeve. A commodore. Her hair was so blonde it was nearly white.

  “Yes, Commodore. Commodore Irina Heisenberg, Ensign Cindy Rhodes.”

  The commodore stared Cindy up and down once again, and then spoke, her voice as cold as a glacier. “If it was given to me, I’d have shot you for demonstrating, Ensign. Failing that, if I was your captain, I’d have shot you for abysmal ignorance.

  “However, there is the not insignificant fact that my sister would have treated you exactly like these other officers have. To this day, Ensign, I feel partly responsible for the failure to identify how to detect ships on High Fan.

  “Before the war, Sophie was convinced by her engineer to try to sync the drives of our two ships operating in formation. The first step was to see if it worked on low fan, and we had permission to see if we could try in on High Fan. We had just finished the modifications when the word from Fleet World reached Earth and we lifted together to defend against any threats.

  “We achieved drive sync, even though we were a kilometer apart, and that added about fourteen percent to our energy efficiency.

  “In a burst of ignorance that dwarfs anything you’ve been guilty of, I cancelled further tests due to the requirements we faced because of the war. In retrospect, we now know that the experiment would have worked on High Fan. And it was there in Commander Malley's test plan -- to see how apart the ships could go before the interference between fans was no longer detectable. Not just useful, but detectable. Someone, I’m positive, had those tests gone forward, would have made the logical deduction -- many days earlier that what actually happened.