Katie Kincaid Space Cadet

by Andrew van Aardvark

Spilled milk. Katie could only move forward and do her best. “Yes, Corporal,” she replied.

  The Corporal handed Katie a small map. “Your task is simply to march your squad from here to the point marked on this map. You should be aware enemy forces have been spotted in the area. From this point on, I’m only an observer. You’re in charge, Cadet Kincaid.”

  “Squad stand easy,” Katie said loudly. “Orders group in five minutes. Cadets McGinnis and Fritzsen, please remain to advise me.”

  Katie huddled with Colleen and Susan over the small map the Corporal had given her. She showed it to the both of them. “Seems almost too simple if all they expect is us to march to this place here. It’s only a few hundreds of meters away,” Katie said.

  “Yes,” Susan agreed. “They’ll probably have a surprise waiting for us somewhere along the way.”

  Colleen nodded in agreement with that assessment.

  “Well, they’re not going to surprise me,” Katie said.

  “Probably best to keep it simple. Try not to be too clever,” Colleen said.

  This time it was Susan who nodded in agreement.

  Katie wasn’t sure what they were getting at. It seemed straightforward. “Not going to march, fat, happy and dumb straight right down the middle of this road like they probably expect,” she said. “We’ll deploy in properly spaced out lines in the bush on either side of the road, like the manual says. Trip any ambush without getting caught in it.”

  Colleen grimaced.

  Susan’s face was blank.

  “What?” Katie asked.

  “I’ve got a gut feeling you’re over thinking this,” Colleen said.

  “So what do you suggest?”

  “I’m not sure. It just doesn’t feel right. I think it might be better to do what they expect.”

  Katie bit her lip and thought about it. She was pretty sure she saw what they were trying to do, and she knew how to counter it. If you let yourself be ambushed, the battle was more than half over and not in your favor. Best not to be surprised. Time to think about it was running out. “I’ve got a plan,” she said.

  Katie gathered the cadets of her squad around her using the official hand signals and words of command and gave her orders.

  “The situation is,” Katie said, briefing her squad, “that we’re to march to this location,” she pointed to the location on her map. “It’s down that road there,” she said, pointing. “Only we can expect to encounter enemy forces on the way, so we’re not going to march formed up on the road. We’re going to proceed tactically in two lines on either side, spread out at a tactical interval of two meters between cadets. Understood so far?”

  That elicited a set of half-hearted nods.

  “Good,” Katie pressed on. “I’ll head up the right column. Cadet Fritzsen will lead the left one. Let’s go.”

  “Waste of a perfectly good road,” Andrew muttered just quietly enough that Katie could ignore him.

  Splitting the group up and getting them formed up in the bush to either side of the road went as efficiently and without fuss as Katie could have hoped. The cadets had been working together for over six months now. They’d got pretty good at it.

  Turned out, though, that walking through even scattered brush and widely spaced trees was much slower than marching along a road.

  Almost an hour later and they still hadn’t made it to their destination. They had also seen no sign of any enemy. Katie had begun to worry about that when she noticed Corporal Perry getting a message on his portable communicator, as the Space Force liked to call the phones they issued.

  Katie was stunned when the Corporal ghosted up beside her and quietly with a blank face announced the exercise was over.

  “Times up!” he said in a carrying voice. “Squad, gather on the road.”

  Katie looked at him, wondering exactly what was happening. Surely it hadn’t been that long? Where was the supposed enemy? How far was their destination? They had to be close now.

  The Corporal directed a quiet, harsh aside to her. “There’s a dozen of you and only three days of actual exercise time,” he said. “How much time did you think you had?

  Once they’d all gathered around him on the road, he elaborated. “Please note you’re each only going to get two hours or less to complete your task,” he declaimed. “That’s from the time it’s first given,” he went on. “Even on the BOTC course, you’ll only get four or five chances to be in command. To pass you need to earn a certain total of points overall from each task you’re given. If you do your task poorly, you may not get many points. If you fail to even get started on it, you’ll get exactly zero points. Fortunately for Cadet Kincaid, negative points are not awarded.”

  That earned the Corporal some snickers.

  “To be clear, while Cadet Kincaid was messing about trying to do everything by the book, the enemy force that was waiting for her got tired and went home. Since the whole point of this exercise was to assess her reaction to that ambush, the exercise was aborted at that point. I hope this serves as a lesson to all of you.”

  Katie stared past him into the woods, too embarrassed to look him or her fellow cadets in the eyes.

  * * *

  Katie hadn’t known that embarrassment was an emotion that could pool in a cold puddle in the pit of your stomach and form a lump of pure horror.

  She did now.

  Live and learn.

  Seemed a flippant response to a deathly serious thing. But maybe the best one. Indulging her true feelings right now, or even reacting rationally, were probably not the best ways to go. No, a little irrational and unjustifiably cheerful optimism was likely the way to go.

  Katie made herself crawl out of her pit of self-pity and listen to Corporal Perry pick his next victim and assign them their task. Couldn’t bring herself to care much about who or what. It was all she could do to keep her despair off her face. At least the Corporal seemed done with her. Katie’s fellow cadets didn’t seem inclined to rub her humiliation in. They seemed determined to ignore her.

  The long months of mindless training paid off for her now. When someone started shouting orders to form up and start marching, her body obeyed without much need of intervention from her brain.

  There was something to be said for being a mindless grunt that just took orders. All the orders and marching around aside, it was relatively relaxing. A bit down the road and after completing some simple tasks she was given Katie’s mind began to work again.

  Katie noticed her fellow cadets were keeping their heads down. There was no talking or joking or messing about. This could have been a nice walk in the woods, or a boisterous team building exercise, it was neither. The cadets were eager to not be seen to be messing up. They obeyed whatever direct orders they were given quietly and efficiently, but nobody was volunteering opinions or otherwise sticking their heads out. Katie wished she’d had as much sense.

  Katie also wished she could talk to someone, Susan, Colleen, or even Corporal Perry about where she’d gone astray. Only they all seemed focused on whatever the current task was. Moving some heavy gear a short ways and setting up a roadblock as it happened. Nobody wanted to be a distraction. Nobody was sure what the right thing to do was and failing that they seemed to figure not doing too much not too obviously was the way to go.

  It went against the grain for Katie.

  Katie wanted to size up the situation and tackle any problems directly, although with as much information as possible. She wanted to be proactive and helpful, but that would likely be seen as a form of insubordination. Besides the way it’d gone for her who’d want her “help”.

  So Katie kept her mouth shut and her head down and quietly did whatever was asked of her.

  As long as she wasn’t designated commander, she could see how that was the right thing to do.

  Didn’t sound like she was going to get a second chance at being in charge this time around.

  But this was supposed to have been their preparation for the BOTC course pro
per this summer. Katie knew she wasn’t going to excel academically the way she wanted to, but she figured she’d manage to scrape through. So, that BOTC course was the make or break point for her hopes of making it through the Academy.

  Katie hated having to settle for just making it through. She wanted to excel. She wanted to be outstanding. Right now, realistically, she needed to concentrate on not being flunked out.

  So, take her current pain and embarrassment as a learning experience. What were the lessons?

  One, she was out of her depth. Katie had been guilty of hubris. She was used to having an expert level of information regards the tasks she undertook. That wasn’t true here. Maybe if she worked a little harder, she could get to that point. Maybe if she’d paid more attention to the over all structure of the preparatory course, she’d have realized she was on a tight clock and prioritized speed over finesse. Probably not a good thing to bet on that. Katie needed to accept she wouldn’t know as much as she’d like about the challenges she’d be facing. She shouldn’t get carried away optimizing. She had to be more cautious.

  So, two, Susan and Colleen had hinted quite broadly if not explicitly in clear words that she was going off track and she’d blown them off. She had to be more open to listening to other people. She couldn’t assume she knew best. She had to be less arrogant. She needed to listen more, talk less.

  So, three, she’d started going off track as soon as she’d opened her mouth and responded to Corporal’s question about knowing the SFSOF. It’d seemed an innocent and honest answer to a straightforward question. But she’d made herself a target. Katie had come across as an arrogant know it all. She couldn’t let that happen again. She needed to keep her mouth shut unless it was clearly necessary to speak up.

  To sum up, she needed to be more cautious, quieter, and to, generally, keep her head down unless explicitly called upon.

  None of which were very Katie like. Which she guessed was the whole point.

  Live and learn.

  Learn and live.

  * * *

  Andrew wasn’t a big fan of the outdoors. Not usually.

  He was, however, enjoying the cool, crisp, fresh air as he marched along with the other cadets. Even the scenery, which could be characterized as dull, and maybe was in the summer, was a pleasant, subtle contrast of various browns and whites, accented with the long bluish shadows that persisted all day at this time of year. The sun would peek through on occasion to sparkle as it was reflected off of the ice crystals scattered about. Somehow it all hinted of Winter coming to an end and Spring about to begin. It felt good.

  It also felt good to have seen Katie Kincaid make a complete cock up of her first attempt at command during their BOTC prep. Andrew wasn’t proud of that emotion. He believed in being a good team player. That didn’t include enjoying the failures of one’s teammates.

  He told himself it reflected a concern for the greater good and what was right.

  There might be political pressures for seeing Kincaid got through the Academy, and he had to admit she did have her strengths, but it was quite obvious Kincaid didn’t have the character to be a good Space Force officer. She didn’t have the charisma or people skills to be a good leader. She wasn’t a good team player. As she had just proven, she wasn’t good at analyzing and solving problems either.

  Andrew hadn’t expected to see the last weakness. The girl was smart and determined. That usually went a long way to solving practical problems. Turned out, however, she was arrogant, prone to over analysis, and unwilling to listen to advice.

  Sadly, and Andrew’s disappointment was genuine, those flaws more than offset her strengths.

  Andrew liked to be right as much as the next person, but he could have handled being wrong about Katie Kincaid. If it had looked like her strengths were allowing her to overcome her flaws, he’d have been happy to accept that.

  Only it wasn’t so.

  Too bad.

  At least it didn’t look like he’d have to stick his neck out to solve the problem that Kincaid was. Looked like she was going to manage crashing and burning all on her own.

  If it looked necessary, he’d help the process along.

  Didn’t look necessary right now. Right now looked like Kincaid was failing all on her own.

  * * *

  Susan loved the outdoors. She preferred to be alone in them, but even the presence of her fellow cadets couldn’t stifle her enjoyment of Old Farm Military Reserve’s terrain on a sunny, very late winter’s day. Fresh air and sunlight were miracle cures for all that might ail one.

  One dark cloud was Katie’s having messed up at the leadership task she’d been assigned.

  Susan had grown quite fond of Katie. She hoped she’d work her problems out. She’d bet some of her political capital as a fledging proto officer in the Space Force on Katie. That was beginning to look like something of a mistake.

  It didn’t worry Susan much. Not really. Susan wasn’t extraordinarily ambitious, and she wasn’t worried about failing either. She knew she had what it took to have a middling career in the Space Force. Given that and the backing of family and friends, there wasn’t much downside for her. With a little luck and skill, she could hope to rise beyond merely mediocre. That’d be nice. It wasn’t something Susan’s ego required.

  She could afford to lose her wager on Katie.

  Didn’t mean she wanted to.

  Susan didn’t know what the future held, and she wasn’t inclined to being impressed by people who thought they did. She didn’t think anyone had a working crystal ball. As far as Susan was concerned, most people were altogether too emotionally invested in thinking they could understand and control the world around them.

  That didn’t mean she believed in being fatalistically inert.

  It was pretty obvious to anyone not indulging in wishful thinking that the Space Force had grown hidebound and fixed in its ways. Also that sooner or later full interstellar contact was going to occur and the Space Force wasn’t going to be prepared for it.

  The Space Force needed people like Katie to shake it up and lend it some flexibility.

  Pretty obvious too that it wasn’t eager to take the medicine. Katie was bound to have an uphill battle.

  Susan was willing to invest a little effort in helping her.

  It mightn’t be enough. If Katie didn’t manage to do better than she had today, it wouldn’t be enough.

  Unfortunate.

  Not a hill Susan was going to die on, though.

  8: Katie is Slobbered On

  Katie was finding she loved dogs. Given that they were slobbering all over her, shedding on her clothes in a way she’d be hours getting clean, and smelled, this was something of a surprise to her.

  But Tom and Jerry, her grandmother’s hounds, were a lot of fun. And now that they’d accepted her as family, they seemed to adore her as much as she loved them. All she had to do to earn that love was play with them and toss them the occasional treat.

  Katie had looked forward to learning more about pets, cats, and dogs, but she was enjoying a surprise to the upside. This was one thing about her experience here on Earth that was proving better than she’d expected.

  “They don’t get much rough and tumble anymore,” Katie’s grandmother commented from her armchair in one corner of her immense living room. “These old bones have got a lot stiffer in just the last couple of years.”

  “You don’t seem stiff to me,” Katie told Katrina Schlossberg, Admiral Schlossberg (ret’d), her grandmother. “I wish I could stay more than a couple of days.”

  Katie’s grandmother looked up from her book, an actual leather-bound, dead tree, hardcopy book, and snorted. “I try to stay fit and flexible,” she replied. “I try harder not to show it, but physical activity isn’t much fun anymore. Sadly, our family tends to be prone to arthritis still.”

  “Ouch,” Katie said.

  “Indeed,” her grandmother replied. “I don’t suppose your mother had your genetics completely sequ
enced for things like that, did she?”

  “No,” Katie answered. “They tend to be naturalists out in the Belt. They fix obvious problems when they pop up, but they don’t like people fiddling with nature’s basic template. Figure it’s asking for trouble.”

  Her grandmother made a contemplative sound.

  Katie looked up. Katrina Schlossberg was showing unusual signs of being uncertain. “What?” Katie asked.

  Her grandmother sighed. “Your mother was pregnant before she left Earth. I knew that, though she didn’t.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “We can discuss it at length some other time. In any case, I have a copy of your full sequence along with copious annotations. Another thing we can discuss at another time. However, you might want to avoid having anyone look at your genetics until we do.”

  Katie looked at her grandmother in astonishment. Tom whined at being suddenly ignored. Jerry licked her face in an apparent effort to console her. “Okay,” she said. Then unable to contain her irritation. “You know, it never seems to stop. Is it something I’m doing wrong or does the world just hate me?”

  Her grandmother smiled. Katie would never have guessed that a smile could be affectionate yet cold, but that was what she was seeing. “The world doesn’t give a damn about you, Katie Kincaid, one way or the other,” the Ex-admiral said.

  “Ouch, and ouch again,” Katie said. “So it’s not out to get me in particular. Guess that’s a relief if true.”

  “Get over yourself, girl.”

  “Okay, am I standing in its way somehow and just getting run over because of it?” Katie’s grandmother had been showing Katie clips from very early vids that had heroines tied to railroad tracks while trains rushed to crush them. Silly, but dramatic, and exactly how Katie was feeling a lot of the time recently.

  “Ahh, there’s a more useful way of looking at it.”

  “Great, how?”

  “To reiterate, just to be clear,” her grandmother said.

  “Yeah. I’ve seen enough of the Space Force teaching methods already. I know the routine. ‘Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them again with emphasis. And last, but not least, tell them what you just told them.’” Katie interjected in world weary tones. She’d not yet figured out the Academy, let alone the Space Force itself, but they were making their mark on her. Pretty soon she’d be having “Property of the Space Force” tattooed somewhere on her body.