Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY)

by Jean Johnson

  The lieutenant colonel snorted again. “And what would you like the DoI to do about him, as if we couldn’t guess?”

  She didn’t have to close her eyes, just unfocus them enough to pluck out the thread of Spyder’s future probabilities and compare them to the path she needed. She had already considered this possibility earlier, though she had set it aside with that less-than-likely one-third of a probability. “The DoI needs to approve him for full Field Honors once he’s out of the frying pan, then transfer and drop him into my 2nd Platoon as a Lieutenant Second Class, instead of selecting Lieutenant Arstoll. I know Glen Spyder can follow my battle plans and still think on his feet in the midst of chaos, so he’ll do just fine.”

  “He’ll need to go to an Academy, first,” Luu-Smith pointed out. “His intelligence charts suggest he’d be quick enough for a fast-track class, but you’ll still need a 2nd Platoon leader for the first year.”

  “I’d rather not delay his presence, sir. Just drop him into my Company as is. He can complete his officer’s training via on-the-job work and correspondence school where needed,” Ia countered. At their skeptical looks, she shook her head. “I don’t need him to advance up the ranks, meioas. I need him to help lead my troops into battle. He can do that right now, as is, so I’ll take him exactly as he is today. Or will be, in a few hours. The rest can be taught either on the job or via correspondence courses.

  “Now, let me get you the rest of the roster changes,” she said, closing her eyes once more. “I’ll need a couple more Troubleshooters, maybe a few Sharpshooters, as well as the extra psis—no one vital to the rest of the Space Force’s needs will be swapped in, I promise. My Prophetic Stamp on that.”

  “Your so-called Prophetic Stamp’s only worth the price of a ground-bound physical letter at this point, Captain,” Lieutenant Colonel Luu-Smith grunted. “A stamp I wouldn’t even bother to scan into the mailing system, right now.”

  “That’s fine. You don’t have to believe me, right now. You will learn the strength of my word in due time, meioas,” she murmured. Ia quickly double-checked the future paths of Lieutenants Rico and Helstead with Spyder dropped in their midst, then turned her attention to the noncommissioned officers and the enlisted in her crew. “Now, let’s see how many of the Damned I can salvage in this Meddler-made mess…”

  CHAPTER 1

  I think, by the end of this interview, I’m going to be very hoarse—thank you for your patience with me, by the way. I know this is a lot of material to cover, and I’m insisting on doing it more or less chronologically, but really there’s no better way to organize all the events that have happened so far. And yes, I know that statement is ironic, coming from me.

  Dabbling in Time as I do, I have had to juggle not just the needs of the present, but double- and triple-check them against the needs of the future. It’s like juggling many, many balls all at once. I think the known galactic record for juggling in Standard Gravity is…what…twenty-six balls by a Gatsugi? Of course, they get to cheat a little, having four arms. But that’s just juggling toys. If you drop one, it bounces across the floor. You do have to chase after it, but usually it doesn’t break, and usually it can be tossed back up into the air again. I’m juggling countless septillion lives, and sometimes a detail or two can slip past my fingers.

  Unfortunately for me, “dropping the ball” has an entirely different meaning and a very unpleasant outcome if I drop it badly. Every day, I tried my damnedest to get it right. But, to quote Dickens, “I am mortal, and liable to fall.” Or to use another quote, “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t,” which is one of the reasons why I nicknamed my Company what I did.

  ~Ia

  OCTOBER 24, 2495 T.S.

  TUPSF SECURED SHIPYARDS

  TRITON ORBIT, NEPTUNE, SOL SYSTEM

  Ia stopped in front of the door to the briefing boardroom. She paused a moment to draw two deep breaths, then squared her shoulders. I can do this…I can do it…I have done it, and done it well.

  The only problem is, the moment I stride across that stage, I’m spotlight center for everything that follows. Everything I say and do will be scrutinized by the Command Staff, the Department of Innovations, and most importantly, by my entire crew.

  It was a disturbingly large responsibility. Up until now, Ia’s task had been to take shelter behind the rules and regulations and break them only when no one was looking. Now everyone would be looking, and she had to start breaking a lot of those rules and regs. Not to mention, from here on out, I won’t have a true moment of peace. Not if I want to do everything I need to get done.

  Mindful of the weight of the medals pinned to her newly issued set of Dress Blacks, of the impression she would make in wearing all of them, Ia touched the main button on the controls. The panel slid open with a faint hiss of hydraulics. Noise escaped through the opening, the sounds of 160 men and women chatting quietly among themselves as they waited in idle boredom.

  She knew the layout of the briefing room, shaped like a lecture hall with projection screens on all the walls and tiers of padded chairs that could double as acceleration couches. Those chairs faced a curved table reserved for the six officers and four sergeants seated on either side of the empty chair waiting at the center.

  The Captain’s seat.

  Her seat.

  The door Ia used wasn’t one of the double-wide ones at the back of the hall, above the riser seats. Hers opened onto a short corridor leading to the platform holding that table. It gave her a good view of the ten Humans seated behind that table, though not of the rest of the room; she could hear the others occupying the hall, but that was it. The dim lighting of that little entry hall also hid her arrival from all but one of the sentients in the room. Specifically, the petite redhead who sat at the near end of the table, with her back to Ia’s door.

  The other woman’s eyes may have been occupied with the task of using a tiny stiletto to trim her nails, but her other senses were just as sharp and ready to be used. Between one breath and the next, the knife was shoved back into one of the sheaths doubling as hairpins that held her coronet of braids in place. The woman scrambled to her feet, standing on the seat of her chair so that everyone could see as well as hear her. All without even a single glance behind.

  “Officer on deck!” she snapped, her voice as much a command as a warning. With that said, she dropped to the platform floor and stood At Attention. Other bodies rose around the table at her call, some more quickly than others, and the rustling of dozens more could be heard from around the corner.

  Shoulders squared, chin level, Ia strode onto the platform hosting the table and the men and women now on their feet. As she came into view, first the officers and sergeants at the table lifted their hands to their brows, then the soldiers up into the tiers.

  Clad as she was in both Dress Blacks and her Dress cap, saluting was mandatory. Ia did not return any of them, however. Instead, she moved to the open chair at the center of the table, nudged the seat back on its track so that she could stand in front of it, and faced the bulk of her crew. Unbuttoning her left cuff, she flipped open the screen of her command bracer and brought the boardroom monitors to life.

  Official orders scrolled onto the main viewscreens positioned on the wall behind her, the two sidewalls, and suspended over the heads of the crew, so that wherever one looked, the topic being discussed could be seen. The right and left secondary screens remained blank for now, as did the long tertiary screen above them. Another touch activated the headset discreetly hooked over her ear. The thin wire alongside her cheek picked up her voice and projected it around the room just loud enough to be heard.

  “Acting under the direct orders of Admiral John Genibes of the Terran United Planets Space Force, Branch Special Forces, I, Ship’s Captain Ia, hereby take command of the 1st Company, 1st Legion, 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Division…9th Cordon,” she added, pausing slightly for emphasis, “and with it, take command of the Harasser-Class battleship TUPSF Hellfire, docked
at the TUPSF Secured Shipyards of Triton, Neptune, Sol System.”

  She pronounced the acronym tup-siff, keeping her words as crisp and distinct as she could manage, since these were official transfer orders, recorded for legality as well as posterity.

  “This action is now logged and filed as an official transfer of command, as of time stamp 22:45, October 24, 2495 Terran Standard time…mark,” Ia finished, watching the chrono built into her arm unit.

  The orders on the two main screens flashed, sealed with the indicated time. Only then did she lift her hand to her own temple, returning the crisp salute of the soldiers around her. As soon as she lowered her arm again, they lowered theirs. They continued to stand At Attention, however, awaiting orders.

  Satisfied she had their attention, Ia tapped in another code on her bracer. The orders detailing her acceptance of command over ship and crew were replaced with the TUPSF logo. The soothing, sapphire blue background and familiar, oval map-projection of the major continents of the Human Motherworld filled the screen; instead of the normal gold hues used by the other Branches, however, the map had been drawn with the pale silver of the Special Forces.

  Onto the two secondary screens flanking those mains, Ia posted the unclassified portions of her personnel file, including enlarged, rotating images of her face, with its Asian features, light tan, amber eyes, and chin-length, snow-white locks. Minus her Dress cap, of course.

  Matching reality to that image, Ia removed her cap and set it on the table. Then tucked her headset, which the cap had dislodged, back into place over her right ear. The headset was necessary to project her voice to the headsets of the 160 men and women around her, particularly the privates at the back of the hall. She kept her Dress jacket on, keeping some of the formality of the moment, but unbuttoned it for comfort.

  Somewhat for comfort, that was; with all of her medals pinned across the black gabardine, it was still quite heavy. It was a tangible reminder of the weight of her position.

  “At Ease, meioas, and sit down. We have a lot to get through, so please pay attention. Most of this you will learn in greater detail by studying your Company Bibles,” Ia stated, meaning the manual of procedures most combat officers gave to their soldiers.

  Much of it was standardized to the Space Force’s requirements, but they also often included little quirks and preferences tailored to each Company’s patrol or combat needs. Hers were tailored all the way down to the individual. They would see that for themselves, shortly.

  “For the moment, there are a few things I’d like to go over with you at the very start—please do be seated,” she added, as some hesitated. “I don’t do the nonsense that says the lower ranks have to remain standing if their CO hasn’t sat down first. I’m staying on my feet as a reminder to me to be as brief as I can, given how much I need to say.”

  Those few older soldiers who were still on their feet, including her fellow officers, settled into their chairs. Ia nodded.

  “Thank you. Most of you received your transfer orders with very little explanation as to why you were being transferred,” she said, acknowledging in her opening words the confusion she could see lurking in the expressions of the men and women studying her. “You may think you have been selected at random. You may be wondering why you are here, and not someone supposedly better qualified. I say to you that you are the right men and women for the jobs that lie ahead of us. I have painstakingly hand-selected each and every one of you, based upon the foreknowledge that each and every one of you can and will get your tasks done, and get them done right.

  “What those tasks are will have to wait for another day. Our ship is still in dry…” She paused as a rumbling noise transferred through the deckplates for a moment, then finished her sentence. “…in dry dock, undergoing the last of the interior fittings. We ourselves will be splitting our time between this ship, the dock station, and even some land-based maneuvers over the next two months as we give this crew a shakedown to get you used to your upcoming multiple responsibilities. Then we will be taking this ship out for its shakedown run as well.

  “But first, an introduction of your command staff, starting with myself. My name is Ia, pronounced EE-yah, not Eye-yah, or even Lah, and it is my first, last, and only name. You may therefore call me Captain, Captain Ia, or even just Ia in those moments when we are being informal. For those few of you already familiar with my military nickname, my first name is not ‘Mary’ and I will not respond to it on its own. You may, however, call me by my full nickname, Bloody Mary,” she allowed, meeting the gaze of a man here, a woman there, “but you will say it with respect. I have formed a very bad habit throughout my military career of flooding the deckplates in my enemies’ blood, and I have no intention of breaking that habit in the years to come.”

  A few bodies stirred in the crowd at that; not everyone in the room was comfortable with the thought of such violent combat. The green-and-brown-haired man at her side grinned openly at their discomfort; he had seen it before and wasn’t fazed by the thought. Ia nodded briefly at him and continued.

  “On a more personal note, I come from the heaviest inhabited world. That means I am roughly three times as strong and three times as fast as the majority of the Humans in this room. I am also a very strong psychic, stronger than any other Human you are likely to meet, because my mother is very much a Human…but my father was a Feyori.”

  She waited while that caused another stir. The fact that psychic abilities came from the Meddlers was a somewhat known but rarely discussed topic since it made most people uneasy. Admitting openly to her crew that she was a half-breed would make many of them uncomfortable around her. None would be openly hostile, but some would be wary. Ironically, some of the uncomfortable ones would be fellow psis; even more ironic, most hadn’t realized yet just how many psis had been gathered into her crew.

  “Make no mistake, meioas. I side with my fellow Humans and the other matter-based sentients. Beyond that, the main thing you need to know right now is that I am a massive precog. In fact, I am the Prophet of a Thousand Years, as prophesied by the Sh’nai faith of the V’Dan Empire.” That caused another, much larger stir in the crowd as waves of doubt spread across many of their faces. Only a handful believed in the main V’Dan religion; most were followers of Terran faiths, if they followed anything. Raising her hand briefly, she warded off that doubt. “Don’t worry if you don’t believe me right now. You’ll see the truth of it for yourself in the days ahead.

  “To my immediate left,” she stated, changing the subject by introducing the man with the black braid, who belatedly nodded, “is Lieutenant Commander Meyun Harper. He is a genius at applied mechanics and impromptu engineering. He also trained with me back in the Naval Academy, so he knows better than most what my command style will be.”

  She carefully did not mention the fact that Harper also knew many of her precognitive decisions. Ia didn’t want her mangled past with him to become a point of speculation for their crew. Particularly not with the DoI intent on watching both of them to see if they tripped over Fatality Forty-Nine in the next few months. She continued without hesitation, speaking crisply as her personnel file was replaced by his on the screens, giving everyone an enlarged view of his neatly uniformed head and shoulders.

  “Like most of us, Harper will hold several jobs on board this ship. Not only will he be my first officer, he will be in charge of logistics & supply, lifesupport, engineering, and he will get his hands dirty as our chief engineer. Harper, above all others, will be responsible for the continued maintenance and operation of this ship; if he asks you to fix something, you will fix it. To that end, he will also be training everyone on board this ship to be able to handle emergency repairs on the fly, for whatever repair is closest to you…so you will all become familiar with all aspects of shipboard maintenance…save only one system, which I will discuss later.”

  That earned her several curious looks from the sea of Grey-clad soldiers around her. Ia didn’t bother to explain. She ha
d too much to get through.

  “Next up is Lieutenant Commander Delia Helstead, who has served with distinction as a captain for the last three years,” Ia introduced next, indicating the petite redhead at the far left end of the table. Her image and public file appeared on the screens next, replacing Harper’s. “She has since been cross-ranked from Captain to Lieutenant Commander so that we will not confuse her rank with my rank on board this ship.

  “In other words, if you say ‘Captain’ and she starts to respond instead of me, that will be the reason why, until she gets used to it,” Ia allowed, smiling wryly. “As inconvenient as that may be for her, we all know whom to blame…thank you very much, TUPSF-Navy, for insisting upon clinging to your outdated maritime traditions.”

  A few members of the gathered crew chuckled. The stubbornness of the Navy’s various traditions had lingered long after the unification of all of the Terran empire’s various armed forces into two bodies, the civilian-based Peacekeepers and the military-based Space Force. Even Helstead smiled at the complaint, though she didn’t stop her task. The short, muscular woman had resumed the cleaning and trimming of her nails with one of the stiletto-pins pulled from her hair, one leg curled up underneath her on her seat, looking more like an enlisted grunt than an Academy-trained officer.

  “Lieutenant Commander Helstead comes to us as a former deputy director of field operations in the Knifemen Corps,” Ia stated, deliberately pronouncing the –se in the word as tradition also demanded, instead of the more familiar core, like the Marine Corps used. “She will be in charge of the 3rd Platoon, as well as be our tactical officer for all special-operations activities, our hand-to-hand combat training officer, our gunnery training officer, and our disciplinary officer, should you require disciplinary action above and beyond the Squad and Platoon levels—do not be fooled by her small size. She comes from the heavyworld Eiaven, and is therefore twice as strong and fast as she looks. She is also a fellow psi.