Rumors of War

by Jake Elwood

  "And why do we need a show of force in the area?" Brady prompted.

  "Piracy," Tom said. He was no longer quoting the orders posted to the ship's internal data network. Now he was summarizing strategic discussions from the classrooms during Small Ship Training. "The systems in the Green Zone are isolated and politically fragmented. There is very little law enforcement between systems, which has led to small nations moving aggressively against their neighbors. There is also blatant piracy, purely for profit."

  Brady nodded. "We'll do our best to protect United Worlds shipping, and to discourage a general atmosphere of lawlessness." She took a bite of her rice, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and said, "We'll also deliver cargo. Tell me, what assets does the UW have in the Green Zone, besides the fleet and facilities at Garnet?"

  "There are outposts at Emerald, Argo, Jonqing, and at the mining station on Ribisi Four." Tom paused, concentrating. "Also, the UW maintains an embassy and a small military presence at Heller's Beach."

  "That's getting toward the far side of the Zone, almost in Dawn Alliance territory," Brady said. "We won't be going that far, not right away at least."

  Tom nodded, leaning forward. His food sat forgotten on the plate in front of him. "Do you know where we'll go first, Lieutenant?"

  "The captain will make that decision after we stop in Garnet. We'll have more intelligence then."

  "Right." He nodded and looked down at his plate, hoping the quiz was over.

  "Tell me, Mr. Thrush, why does the United Worlds take such an interest in Green Zone systems? They are awfully far from our core territories, after all."

  "Well, they're ours," Tom said, looking up from his plate. "We paid for the terraforming, after all."

  "Anywhere from two hundred to three hundred years ago," Brady pointed out. "There wasn't even a United Worlds back then. A lot of people feel we don't have any particular claim to such far-flung planets, just because our distant ancestors invested in some terraforming."

  Tom gaped at her. He knew there was a small, vocal minority in the UW that made the same claim. They were ultra-liberal extremists, though, people with no credibility in mainstream society. He knew that such opinions existed, but he hardly expected to hear them in the wardroom of a UW starship.

  "Oh, relax," Brady snapped. "It's not my opinion. But it's a very common sentiment in the Green Zone. You'll have to learn to hear it without making that face you're giving me right now."

  Tom, realizing his mouth was open, closed it.

  "That's better," Brady said. "Now, let me make one thing clear. I don't care what you think about the UW's ownership of terraformed worlds in the Green Zone. I don't want you opening your mouth on the subject, either. As naval officers we uphold the policies of our government and follow the orders of our superior officers. We don't discuss politics or religion with the locals. Or with the crew either. Understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am." Tom nodded.

  "It seems perfectly clear to the politicians back home," Brady said. "The people who made a massive investment in terraforming should naturally reap the eventual benefits." She gave him a stern look. "It seems perfectly clear to the squatters, though, too. Most of them have grandparents or great-grandparents from the UW. They don't entirely believe that your ancestors give you a greater claim to their planets than their ancestors do. Not when they've been building colonies for three or four generations."

  "But-"

  Brady held up a hand. "Don't bother persuading me. I already agree with you. But don't bother persuading any locals you meet, either. All you'll do is offend them."

  Tom nodded and speared a stalk of asparagus.

  "Ultimately, their opinions don't matter any more than yours or mine. We've got the Navy, and we'll be keeping those worlds. That's the main reason we'll be visiting every out-of-the-way base and station in the Zone. It's a show of strength. We'll remind them who's in charge. We'll keep them from getting any ideas."

  That sounded a lot less noble than fighting piracy and discouraging lawlessness. We'll still do those things, Tom reminded himself. And all those worlds really do belong to us. There's nothing wrong with reminding people.

  "The Greenies won't be a problem," Carstairs said confidently. "Excepting a few pirates, of course. There won't be a rebellion or anything like that. Even if they thought they could get away with it, they know the DA will just annex them." He shook his head. "No, they might complain – a lot – but they know what's good for them."

  Brady turned to look at him, and Tom resumed eating, grateful that she was distracted. The two officers started a lively discussion about the risk of war and the role the Garnet fleet would play while Tom finished his meal. The consensus they reached was the same as what he'd heard around mess hall tables and in classrooms during Basic. The Dawn Alliance wouldn't start a war, and if they did, it would end quickly. The fleet at Garnet was too strong, and the Alliance simply didn't have the industrial base to prosecute a long war. If they were foolish enough to poke the bear, they'd get mauled.

  The Dawn Alliance made a great bogeyman to keep the Green Zone worlds in line, too. They had made one expansion already, annexing the only world in the Green Zone not claimed by the United Worlds. The Star Republic of Stradivar, actually coreward of Earth, had nevertheless established a colony deep in the Green Zone. When Stradivar was engulfed in the spreading Galactic War, the Dawn Alliance saw its chance and invaded New Sheffield.

  Tales of atrocities and brutal oppression still trickled out of the conquered colony. The fate of the Strad military forces captured on New Sheffield was even worse. By all accounts the troops unlucky enough to survive the invasion were being worked to death in prisoner-of-war camps.

  At last Brady put her dishes in the sink at the back of the room. "Are you done yet?" She shook her head. "Of course you are. Carstairs was right."

  Carstairs nodded wisely and nibbled at a slice of carrot.

  "Come with me. We're going to the bridge."

  Tom followed her out of the wardroom and up one deck. A marine sentry stood frozen in front of the bridge hatch, ignoring them as they passed. Tom surreptitiously smoothed his uniform, then stepped across the threshold.

  The bridge windows caught his attention first. They ran from floor to ceiling, wrapping the bridge on three sides. Much of the ceiling was transparent as well.

  Beyond the glass, seventh-dimensional space seethed.

  Most people called it hyperspace, which was scientifically inaccurate but easier to say. The seventh dimension was much, much smaller than normal space. Ships got around the impossibility of faster-than-light travel by slipping into the seventh dimension and doing their traveling there.

  But the compression of an entire universe by a factor of several million meant that the seventh dimension was filled with energy. Endless storms raged and boiled through hyperspace, colliding and separating and crackling. The lavish bridge windows made it all more vivid than he'd ever seen it before.

  With an effort he wrenched his gaze from the windows. It was his first time on the bridge of the Kestrel, but he'd been on similar bridges via training simulators. Still, the reality was ... different. Seven or eight people manned stations around the bulkheads, their backs to the captain, who sat in the center. There was an air of relaxed calm that he hadn't expected. He supposed it made sense. They were six hours into a ten-day journey through well-mapped, friendly space. Still, he'd somehow expected tension, suppressed excitement.

  I have enough of that for everybody. He suppressed a grin as he walked beside Brady. She stopped in front of the captain, nodded, and said, "I thought I'd show the new kid what the big office is like."

  Captain Nishida looked Tom up and down with dark eyes that looked as if they'd seen every corner of the universe. She had black hair streaked with gray and cut even with her ears, and a stern face with crow's feet around her eyes and deep creases around her mouth. She was small, considerably shorter than Tom with delicate limbs, but she exuded a fierce charisma t
hat made his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. There was no question who was in charge on this bridge.

  "I expect we can manage him from here," Nishida said.

  Brady nodded and left the bridge, leaving Tom feeling suddenly lost.

  "Why don't you join SFC Rand at Nav Two, Mr. Thrush."

  Tom nodded. "Yes, Ma'am." He took a moment to mentally review what he knew of the bridge setup, then strode toward the forward bulkhead. Specialist First Class Rand, a middle-aged man in a blue jersey, rose from a chair and nodded a greeting. Tom paused, uncertain, until Rand gestured for him to sit.

  I have to be more assertive. I have to act like a leader. Lectures from Basic flooded into his mind. If I lose my credibility in front of the crew I'll never get it back.

  The navigation console was mostly blank. It would come to life at a touch if there was any need to make a course change. I should check our course and position. I should ask. No, I should project confidence. He reached a finger toward the screen.

  "Mr. Thrush!"

  Tom froze, his fingertip a few centimeters from the console, and looked over his shoulder at Nishida.

  "Don't touch anything!" she barked. "Rand."

  Rand looked at her and cocked an eyebrow.

  "Take Mr. Thrush through the basics. Don't let him do anything stupid."

  "Yes, Ma'am."

  Tom turned to look at the console. It allowed him to turn his back on most of the bridge, but he was all too aware of his audience. His cheeks burned.

  "Let me just wake up the console," Rand said softly. He tapped the screen to life, then touched an icon in one corner. A fat yellow border appeared around the active screen area. "That tells us we're in information mode. We would have to turn that off if we wanted to take control." He gestured at the console to his right. "Susan there has direct control from Nav One. She'll keep her console live."

  The spacer at the next console glanced over and nodded. If she held Tom in contempt she hid it well.

  "Okay, here's how we check our position ..."

  A day later – "day" being a relative term in deep space – Tom returned to Storage Two, where he resumed his work verifying inventory. He was alone this time. The mountain of cargo at the end of the room was gone, all of it stowed neatly. Tom's thankless job was to go through every bin and shelf, verifying that the inventory was accurate.

  He'd been working for most of an hour when the quiet hiss of the hatch made him turn. Brady came in. "How's it going, Lieutenant?"

  Tom straightened up, easing a kink in his back. "Fine, ma'am." He gestured at the forward starboard bulkhead. "I verified everything in this section." It was just under a quarter of the room, and he suppressed a weary sigh.

  "Excellent." Brady gave him a searching look. "How are you adjusting to shipboard life?"

  "Fine, ma'am. It's …"

  She gazed at him, waiting.

  "I don't have any real authority," he blurted. "I don't have any credibility. The captain completely undermines me when I'm on the bridge, and you give me assignments where I'm giving orders to crew who know more about the job than I do."

  A long moment of silence stretched out, and Tom, his heart thumping, wondered if he'd crossed a line.

  Brady, though, began to smile. "You're a half-bar," she said. "It's all right. You're not actually supposed to know what you're doing."

  Tom stared at her, nonplussed.

  "I know what they told you in Officer Training," she said. "They talked about leadership, about moral authority and setting an example and always presenting a confident face to the crew." She shook her head. "All of that is necessary, but it all comes later."

  "But-"

  "Nobody respects a sublieutenant," she said. "It would be nice if they did, but the problem is, the crew all know better." The corners of her mouth twitched, and her eyes grew distant. "I remember …" She shook her head. "Never mind."

  Tom waited, silent.

  "You're not here to be an officer," she said. "Not really. You're here to learn your trade. They still have the integrated officer school, right?"

  Tom nodded.

  "They couldn't teach you how to be a spacer," Brady said. "Not in a classroom full of flat-tops and rocket jocks." She held up a hand as he opened his mouth. "Oh, I know what they told you. You'll have to leave the ground with all rockets burning, you'll be pulling your weight from day one, on and on like that. But it's not quite realistic. They taught you how to be an officer. Now you have to learn to be a naval officer."

  "All right," said Tom.

  "Your role is not to lead," she said. "Not yet. Your role is to learn your trade." She tapped the rank bars on her chest. "That's what a full bar means. It means you know what you're doing. It means you're a real officer." She pointed at his chest. "That half bar means you're an officer in training."

  Tom drooped. Brady's words were a relief, shifting some of the impossible weight that had settled onto his shoulders. But it was also a bit deflating.

  "One step at a time," she said. "Promotion will come soon enough."

  He nodded.

  "There's one more thing." She frowned. "The New Haven Armed Forces had a long history. Ninety years of defending their nation. This ship used to be called the Steven Valentine. But the UW doesn't name ships after people. Causes too much confusion. So she's been re-named. Reclassified, too. In the New Haven Armed Forces, she was a cruiser." When his eyebrows rose she grinned. "They didn't run their navy on quite the same scale as ours.

  "The point is, the crew were proud of their ship. Proud of their uniforms. Proud of their captain, too. His name was Taggart, and he quit in protest when they told him he'd have to answer to foreigners." She folded her arms and leaned against a bulkhead. "Now the ship has a new captain. And a couple other new officers." She gestured to Tom, then to herself. "You and me. And now a new paint job and a new mission, which in the eyes of most of the crew has nothing to do with New Haven."

  Tom said, "But-"

  "Hush," she told him. "Now, not everyone on the ship has a chip on their shoulder. I don't think Carstairs really noticed there'd been a change in management." She smiled briefly. "The food is a bit better now, so he's happy as a marine with a three-day pass. Some of the crew genuinely don't care. Some are willing to give things a chance, wait and see what it's like. But some of them are pretty unhappy. Some of them are furious at the whole UW Navy, or the entire United Worlds. And they only have a few places to focus all that anger."

  It's not fair. There was no way to put the thought into words, not without sounding whiny. He nodded instead.

  "So in addition to learning how to be an officer, and learning your way around a new ship, you've got to try to unify a divided crew, and deal with the fact that quite a few of them resent you, and some of them actively hate you." Her lips curved in a wry grin. "It'll work out. Sheer inertia will solve most of our problems. One day they'll notice they’ve been wearing blue for a year, and it hasn’t been so bad. The worst of them won't reenlist. If we just wait long enough, most of the resentment will fade." Her grin vanished. "Be thankful we're at peace. And pray it lasts. God help us if war breaks out any time soon."

  Wow, that’s the worst pep talk I've ever had. The thought filled him with a mad urge to giggle. He suppressed it with an effort.

  Brady straightened up. "In the meantime, you need to learn all there is to know about ship's stores."

  And with that, she left the storage room and he returned to the endless task of verifying inventory.

  Chapter 11

  Tom was in the grip of a nightmare where he tapped frantically at a navigation console on the bridge as the ship drifted closer and closer to a star. He couldn't remember how the console worked, everything he did seemed to make things worse, and when the scream of an alarm jarred him awake he stared at the ceiling above his bunk with a sense of profound relief.

  A moment later his conditioning kicked in. He'd rarely gotten a full night's sleep during Basic, and things hadn't
improved much in Small Ships. If there wasn't a scheduled nighttime exercise, there was a drill. He was on his feet, fully dressed, and opening the hatch to the corridor before he even paused to think about where he was going.

  "Battle stations. All hands. Battle Stations."

  All right. Good. I know my station. He paused, fighting a moment of panic. Where the hell is my station?

  Operations. And that is … aft.

  The corridor outside his cabin was filled with running people, most of them officers. Tom took a couple of running steps, realized he was going forward, and whirled. He dashed aft, concentrating on his breathing because it kept his adrenaline under control. There had been lectures during Basic about keeping your head during a crisis. Panic and excitement had a way of chasing every thought out of your brain, but it was possible to recognize when it was happening, and there were specific tactics for dealing with it.

  It wasn't all theory, either. The student officers had had all too many opportunities to practice adrenaline management in one drill or another.

  So he counted his footsteps as he ran down the corridor. He made himself catalog what he saw and heard and felt. His ears hadn't popped, so the ship – or at least the corridor he was in – hadn't lost pressure. They were in deep space, but well within United Worlds territory. That made it a near certainty this was a drill and not an actual crisis.

  A squad of marines charged up the corridor toward him, thick packs slung across their backs. Their role during combat was damage control and fire suppression. Those packs probably weighed more than the men and women carrying them, and Tom pressed his back against the corridor, giving them plenty of room. They thundered past, and he resumed running.

  There's no smell of smoke. All the lights are on, and none of them are flickering. I don't feel unusually warm or cold, so we're not on fire or exposed to vacuum.