Of Treasons Born

by J. L. Doty

  “Yes, Chief, I did.”

  She looked again at the sidearm, then again at him. She entered something into her shipnet terminal, handed the gun back to him, and said, “Very good, sir. It’s registered.”

  York returned to his stateroom. He’d just finished stowing the gun when his implants informed him he was to report to the captain.

  He stopped outside the captain’s stateroom door, and announced through his implants. “Ensign Ballin reporting as ordered.”

  “Enter.”

  York stepped through the door. Seated opposite each other in the only two spaces at a small fold-down table were a man and a woman with mugs of caff in front of them. York had done his homework. Lieutenant Commander Hensen, the Horseman’s executive officer, had light brown hair and would have been handsome had his features not been so sharp and angular. The captain, Commander Hella Gunnerson, had bright blue eyes and prematurely gray-white hair. She was quite pretty.

  York announced himself with the traditional formula and saluted. Gunnerson returned the salute casually. “At ease, Ensign Ballin.”

  York spread his feet and put his hands behind his back.

  “We’ve been going over your record,” she said. “Most unusual. A lower-deck pod gunner must have had a hellish time at the academy.”

  Apparently, Martinson had modified his record only in the academy’s system. “It was difficult at times, ma’am, but I have some good memories, too.” He thought of Karin, Tony, and Muldoon.

  Henson said, “No doubt you requested something more interesting than a hunter-killer posting.”

  “Yes, sir, I did, though I knew from the beginning I wouldn’t get it.”

  Gunnerson said, “Graduated at the bottom of your class. Are you going to be any good to us?”

  York suspected he would face that question for the rest of his life. “I studied hard, ma’am, and learned everything I could.”

  “But still,” she said, “bottom of your class.”

  York chose his words carefully. “The scoring system at the academy doesn’t necessarily represent one’s abilities.”

  Hensen laughed. “That was diplomatically put.”

  Gunnerson looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, Ensign. No one on this ship but Commander Hensen and I know your past. I’m sure it’ll get out eventually, but you start here with a fresh slate. Make use of it.”

  She touched a switch on a small com plate. She could have vocalized into her implants, but York guessed she wanted him to hear her words. “Master Chief Vickers,” she said, and York knew what was coming.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the speaker said.

  “As you know, we have a brand-new ensign on board. He’ll be reporting to you immediately. Please start him at the bottom.”

  It was customary to put new ensigns through a bit of friendly hazing, assign them to a lower-deck pod crew so they could see the ship from the bottom of the crew roster. But Gunnerson knew York’s record and hadn’t told Vickers about it. York wondered if she was setting him up for something.

  “One more thing,” she said. “Commandant Martinson sent me a message, said that any time we put into furthering your training would not be wasted. Make sure you live up to that statement.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  She smiled and looked at Hensen. Without looking at York, she said, “Ensign Ballin, you’re dismissed. Report immediately to Chief Vickers. And obey his orders as if they were coming directly from me.”

  Vickers was waiting for York on the gunner deck with an unpleasant grin on his face. “Stand at attention,” he barked.

  York stiffened and threw his shoulders back.

  Several enlisted men and women gathered as Vickers walked slowly around York. It was not uncommon that new ensigns fresh out of the academy added non-regulation embellishments to their uniforms, like gold piping and decorative stitching. If Vickers found anything abnormal about York’s, he would tell York he was out of uniform, make him strip down then and there, and York would have to finish the watch in his underwear, all part of a little fun. But as a gunner, York had seen the custom enacted a number of times, and had made sure his uniform could be used as a textbook example of naval propriety.

  Vickers completed his inspection and stopped in front of York. “Hmmm,” he said. It was also customary that if the newbie’s uniform passed muster, there would be no special effort to trump up a reason for that little bit of humiliation.

  “Well,” Vickers said. “Let’s see how well you do in a pod.”

  Behind Vickers, York saw one of the enlisted men cover his mouth and snicker. York knew what was coming.

  Vickers showed him a pod hatch and introduced him to it much as Straight had done ten years ago. York didn’t want to blind-side Vickers, thought he should say something about his experience. “I already—”

  “Shut up,” Vickers snapped, saying it in front of a group of ratings and NCOs. “You don’t talk; you just listen.”

  York was careful to nod politely and listen. Vickers helped him get strapped into the pod, briefed him quickly on its controls, then said, “We’re going to run through a simulation now, throw a lot of stuff at you. Don’t worry if you don’t do well.”

  When Vickers closed the pod hatch, York sealed it, ran the pod through its boot sequence, and brought it online. Then he quickly checked all the settings, found that most of his controls had the gain set to either maximum or zero. If he tried to target on anything, the pod would swing about wildly. He corrected the settings.

  They started out by giving him two targets at once. He killed them both. They gave him four and he killed one and deflected the others. They gave him six. He killed two, deflected three, and one got through.

  “Hold on there,” Vickers voice said in his implants. “Ballin, get out here.”

  Vickers was waiting for York when he climbed out of the zero-G tube and out onto the pod deck. Vickers grabbed York’s left arm and slid the short sleeve of his service khakis upward, exposing twelve gunner’s chevrons there. One of the enlisted women said, “Shit, twelve of ’em.”

  York smiled at her and said, “The total is twenty-four and a half. It should be twenty-five and a half, but at Sirius Night Star they tanked me before I could attend my last gunner’s blood.”

  He looked Vickers in the eyes. “I tried to tell you, Chief.”

  Vickers sneered. “No one came back from Sirius Night Star.”

  York recalled Nathan Abraxa saying almost exactly that at the reception when Martinson had exposed his past. “A few of us did.”

  Vickers said, “Get out of here and go back to the captain.”

  Gunnerson was on the bridge running the ship through static drive tests, but Hensen intercepted York in the corridor outside. York snapped a crisp salute. “Sir.”

  Hensen said, “What the hell did you say to Vickers to piss him off?”

  “I don’t think it was what I said, sir. Perhaps more what I did.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I think he didn’t like that I did well in the pod.”

  Hensen shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it. I know you’re an ex-gunner, but . . .” One of Hensen’s eyebrows shot up. “How many gunner’s chevrons you got?”

  “Twenty-four and a half, sir, but it should be—”

  Hensen laughed and said, “Oh, that’s rich. Vickers is no longer the most senior gunner on the Horseman.”

  It was then that York realized Gunnerson had not set him up for a fall, she’d set Vickers up, let him make himself look bad in front of his people. York wondered if he would be the one to pay the price for that.

  Chapter 23:

  Space Trials

  Gunnerson assigned York to assist Lieutenant Kirkman and Chief Soletski in engineering. When they first met, Kirkman asked York, “You come up thro
ugh the ranks, huh?”

  Apparently, word had spread. “Basically,” York said. “Though it’s a little more complicated than that, sir.”

  “That’s pretty rare in this navy. But you started on the lower decks, right?”

  York wondered if that would be a problem with Kirkman. “When I was twelve, sir.”

  “Then you’ve got what, ten years’ seniority?”

  York had never thought of it that way. Officially, even the two years in the Vincent’s tanks counted as hazardous duty. “Yes, I guess I do, sir.”

  Kirkman slapped him on the back and grinned. “That means you’ve got more seniority than I do.”

  It took another twenty days for the Horseman’s crew to finish the refitting, then run static tests while still in dock. York spent the time wrench in hand, frequently on his back beside Soletski beneath a piece of heavy equipment. The most important test came when they fired up the ship’s systems and stopped drawing power from the station. The entire engineering crew watched nervously as Kirkman brought the power plant up to standby. Nothing went wrong, so they held it at standby for a few hours and ran more tests, then carefully brought it up to operational levels. They held it there for two days while they measured and checked everything possible.

  “So far, so good,” Soletski said. “Now let’s see if she’ll handle redline.”

  Since they weren’t using the power they’d be generating, Kirkman contacted Muirendan Prime’s engineering department and warned them the Horseman would be feeding power to the station for a couple of hours instead of taking from it, then Gunnerson put the ship on Watch Condition Yellow.

  Kirkman brought the power up in small increments. At each elevated level, he paused, York and the rest of the engineering crew ran a series of tests, then Kirkman went to the next level. At 70 percent of maximum, the sound coming from the core changed from a low, bass hum to an irritating whine. Soletski had warned York that using his implants to dampen his audio response would not be sufficient, so like everyone else, he wore ear protection and communicated exclusively through his implants. He now understood why implants were required to work in the engine room. When they brought the power back down to standby, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  The day before they were scheduled to depart, Gunnerson called York up to the bridge. “You’re going to work with me now, Mr. Ballin. You’re going to learn how to drive this boat.”

  She pointed to the captain’s console and said, “Take a seat, Mr. Ballin.”

  York’s stomach knotted with butterflies as he sat down on the most sacred acceleration couch on the ship. He strapped in and sat there waiting for Gunnerson to tell him what to do.

  She said, “We always wear headsets, York. They’re a good backup to your implants, and they filter out excess noise that your implants can’t scrub.”

  York pulled on a headset and adjusted the wire-thin pickup in front of his mouth. Again, he waited for Gunnerson.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, “when we depart, if you show me now that you learned anything at the academy, you’re going to be sitting in that couch in command of this ship when we go live. So show me now that you can take this ship through a full departure sequence. You’re now in command, so command.”

  York froze for a moment. He’d done this in bits and pieces, in simulations and on training cruises, and he realized he could do it now. He keyed his implants to allship. All hands, stand by to cast off.

  Gunnerson had set up the entire bridge as a large simulation, with the bridge crew supporting him in what amounted to a training exercise. The hours of practice and study kicked in, and York settled into a comfortable rhythm of issuing orders, though he was constantly in fear of doing something wrong, so the butterflies didn’t go away. It all went nicely until he backed the ship away from its mooring. In the simulation, the bow clipped the edge of the dock, causing considerable damage to both.

  York buried his face in his hands.

  “Not bad,” Gunnerson said. “I don’t like losing a couple of meters off the bow, but not bad for a first try. I like the way you asked for, and took, the advice of your crew. But don’t forget that you have to make the final decision and bear the responsibility for it.”

  York was surprised to learn that he hadn’t failed miserably. The next day, he again sat at the captain’s console, and took the ship through a real departure sequence. Gunnerson and Hensen were both there to correct or countermand any faulty order he gave, and the Horseman departed Muirendan Prime without incident.

  Gunnerson and Hensen didn’t stand a standard watch rotation, and since they took York’s training quite seriously, neither did he. On that first drive out-system from Muirendan, he spent every waking moment on the bridge or down in engineering. The captain or the executive officer would ask York what command he would give next. If he guessed right, they would give the command, then have York explain why he’d chosen that particular order. If he guessed wrong, they’d give the proper order, then explain to him why his choice had been incorrect, and the horrendous consequences that would have resulted. He guessed right most of the time, and it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t really guessing.

  Before they stressed any of the ship’s systems, they had to put it through space trials. They drove out-system for several hours on sublight drive at one G, a bare crawl for a ship capable of twenty thousand G’s. But while they’d stressed the ship’s power plant, they hadn’t yet tested its drive. After a little more than three hours, they’d put a million kilometers between them and the space station. York had spent a good portion of that time down in engineering helping Kirkman run tests. Satisfied that they weren’t going to turn into an enormous fireball, Kirkman gave the all-clear to Gunnerson.

  She ordered the sublight drive up to ten G’s. Kirkman ran tests for a half hour, then Gunnerson upped it to a hundred and they ran more tests. In that way, they cautiously pushed the sublight drive to its maximum rated acceleration, and by that time they were close to heliopause with a relativistic dilation factor well over two.

  They cautiously tested the transition drive in the same way, by up- and down-transiting several times and slowly pushing it to the limit. They ran crash-drive and crash-stop tests in which they started from a dead stop, accelerated at max drive in sublight until they could up-transit, then accelerated in transition as fast as they could up to three thousand lights. They coasted at that speed to run further tests, then reversed the process to get to down-transition in the shortest possible time. After they’d done that a few times and were confident the main ship’s systems were operating reliably, they settled a few light-years out from Muirendan. There they test-fired all the pods and the transition launchers, tested every system on the ship, ran through simulated damage-control exercises and every possible emergency Gunnerson and Hensen could come up with.

  York had previously qualified on the helm, but now he had to do so again while they practiced what they called a “hunter-killer approach,” an exercise in which they slowly decreased their transition velocity as far as possible while approaching a solar system. The combination of low transition velocity, and the nearby presence of a large gravitational mass, produced instabilities in the transition drive, and at a certain point the ship would spontaneously down-transit. York did rather well, held them in transition all the way down to ten lights, though young Petty Officer First Class McHenry held the record at close to nine.

  A tenday after departing Muirendan, Gunnerson declared the ship and crew ready for duty as an imperial ship-of-the-line, and they set course for Cathan, an intermediate stop on the way to the front lines.

  It took more than a month to get to Cathan, and during that time, Gunnerson drilled the crew relentlessly. She told York, “After more than a year on liberty, your crew loses its edge. And we’ve got new members to integrate and rookies to train.”

  During that month, York served in just about e
very function on ship, the notable exception being pod gunner since he already had plenty of experience there. He enjoyed the new experience of training with one of the transition launcher crews, regretted that he wouldn’t get the chance to train in a main transition battery since hunter-killers didn’t have any. He even worked with Lieutenant Paulson in supply and provisioning.

  One day, the two of them sat down in the wardroom for a mug of caff during a short break. “I envy you,” Paulson said.

  “Me?” York said. “Why me?”

  He seemed a little sad. “The captain and XO gave up trying to push me as hard as they’re pushing you long ago. I’m really not cut out for command, and I think they realized it before I did.”

  York had noticed that Paulson was rather timid, especially in the way he let Vickers push him around.

  “I might get promoted to full lieutenant on this tour, but I think the captain’s going to classify me as unfit to command. That means I’ll never go beyond that.”

  York asked him, “What will you do?”

  Paulson shrugged. “My enlistment contract is up in two years. I guess I’ll look for something else.”

  Vickers walked in at that moment, hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and said, “Paulson, I need you down in supply.”

  Kirkman walked in an instant behind Vickers and frowned, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing with anger. “Chief Vickers,” he said sharply. The NCO turned, clearly surprised Kirkman was there. “What did I just hear?” Kirkman demanded.

  Vickers said, “I just asked the lieutenant—”

  “No, you didn’t,” Kirkman said. He stepped forward and stood over Vickers. Kirkman and York were of similar height, which gave them several centimeters over the chief and allowed the engineer to tower over the man. “Stand at attention when I’m addressing you.”

  Vickers’s eyes turned to hard, cold slits. He slowly threw his shoulders back and said, “Sir.”

  “You issued an order to a superior officer,” Kirkman said. “And you did not address him properly. I believe you and Commander Hensen have talked about this before, so I’m putting you on report.”