"Yeah, right. You the admiral, and me the commander, which we both know is what I'll retire as."
"Look, Winston, we both know that if there's one system that's unfair, its Confed Fleet. How a bullhead like me got to be admiral is beyond me. You were always the brains and that's what I need now."
Turner chuckled and shook his head.
"For what?"
"Let's just say, a little exploratory work."
Again the arched eyebrow.
"I just got a little report from Speedwell I'd like you take a look at."
Turner sat up in his chair. "That's Intel stuff, Skip. I don't even know if I've got clearance for that kind of thing anymore."
"You did as of 0001 standard this morning. Grade three A."
For once he felt as if he had caught his friend off guard. Turner's remarkable ability to appear outwardly calm, even when surrounded by a dozen doped-out terrorists screaming that they were going to kill him, wavered for a second, his features paling.
"What the hell is going on here?" Turner finally asked. "Hell, you're talking inner circle stuff here. That's the type of space you might travel in, but I'm just an academic type, sitting out his last years at the Academy writing papers nobody reads."
"You were once the rising star in Special Ops," Skip said quietly, "and you will recall, my friend, you were damn good at it."
He nodded back towards the picture. Winston said nothing, it had all been gone over a hundred times before. He still blamed himself for the lose of Marine Six, even though an admiralty board had vindicated him and, beyond that, decorated him for saving an entire planet, which the terrorists were set to douse with Anthrax derivative C.
"So you became the academic type instead," Skip pressed. "But you've kept your ear to the wire, you know what's up and you have the mind to analyze it. I've read your papers, and there're a few others over at Fleet who pay attention to them as well. By the way, you might not know this yet but I slapped a classified on that last little tirade of yours. Your comparisons of current conditions to those from before our scrap with the Yan back in the twenty-fourth century and the Americans in the Pacific back in the twentieth were a little too close for comfort."
"So what the hell is going on?"
"We're moving towards a declaration of war with the Kilrathi."
His friend nodded. "Knew that, everyone does."
"That's the point. The government will declare war to silence the complaining from the border worlds, but we're stuck with Plan Orange Five."
Startled, Turner looked over at his friend.
"That's insane. It calls for limited action only, push them back slowly through the Facin Sector and hold elsewhere. Punitive response only to force them to cease their border harassment. Damn it all, Skip, the plan is predicated on the Kilrathi behaving like humans and not the predators that they are. Measured limited response simply won't work with them."
"Well, that's what we're ordered to do. It's Orange Five."
"Shit," Turner sighed. "Either all out or nothing with the Cats, this halfway war measure is nuts."
"Remember, old friend, it's election year. No one wants to go into it with the responsibility for having launched a full-scale war. It'll be limited strikes only."
"As if the damn kitties will then roll over and beg us to stop."
"That's what they think will happen. CIS claims their evaluations indicate the Kilrathi are being pressured from other directions. We slap them back and they stop. Punch too hard and they fight all-out."
"Confederation Intelligence Services have had their heads up the wrong place for years."
"Well, it's the branch the government's listening to."
"Because it's what More and his crowd want to hear," Turner snapped. "What about Fleet Intel?"
"That's why I'm pulling you in. Even Fleet Intel is rusty. I want a new perspective on it and that means you. I want you to look over Speedwell's report. He'll tell you right up front we're in the dark and, damn it all, we are."
"Any idiot can see that," Winston replied. "There's a wall there and they ain't letting us look over it, under it, or around it."
"But we sure as hell are letting them look over ours," Skip snarled.
"That's what's got me really steamed at More. Between us, Winston, I just got out of a hearing before coming over here that More and a few like him were sitting in on. We're not getting the new appropriation request for those three carriers and six battleships I wanted. We're told to make do. If there's a signal to the Cats that we're walking around with a 'kick me' sign strapped to our naked butts, that's it right there. More was actually so damn stupid as to say that building those ships would be a 'provocative signal.»
"You know, and I know, that will be on the news links by this evening and across the Confed within a month. They've got listening posts. Why is it we broadcast in the clear, but from their side of the fence we don't hear a damn peep? Nothing but static. Hell, that must tell us something right there. I want you to look that report over and get back to me by tomorrow."
Skip watched Turner's reaction as he tossed a memory cube onto his friend's desk and motioned for him to upload it into his system. As the several hundred pages of the report started to race across the holo field, Turner remained silent, pausing for a moment to scan a few lines, then scrolling forward.
He finally looked back at Skip.
"I take it my summer research leave is canceled," Winston finally said, and Skip smiled.
"Let's just say you're gonna do a little field work for me."
"Such as?"
"You'll walk out of the door here wearing the blue suit for starters. There are a couple of bases and such where I want you to do a personal look-see to get a feel for things. But from there? My first suggestion would be to go out and buy some civvies. Hate to tell you this but, while you're out there, we're officially going to put you on the inactive list."
Startled, Turner again was unable to conceal his surprise.
"Come on, Winston, we both know they're gonna gut this Academy. It's going to be downgraded over the next year to strictly a one-year program. More was here today to gloat. They've decided they'll simply recruit kids out of college, send them here for one year, then pack them off to the fleet."
"Damn it all, Skip, they're killing hundreds of years of tradition! Five years here conveys the traditions, the esprit of the fleet. Sure, the kids we get from other colleges are good, but it's the Academy that creates the spirit of the fleet."
"Well, More wanted that terraforming project for one of the moons around his planet, and he got it by taking our blood. It was the old guns or butter argument, and the butter is getting lathered onto his district."
"Damn it all, Skip, I wish a hundred years ago we'd built our main base on his world rather than over at McAuliffe. He'd be kissing our butts now if it was."
Winston sighed and looked around his office. Even though he might complain about being sidetracked in his career so that the pennant of admiral, or even a command of capital ship as captain was forever out of his reach, still, in his heart this was what he really wanted. After what he felt was the fiasco of losing Marine Six, the thought of putting yet more men and women in harm's way was unbearable. If he was ever to accept a captain's rank, or worse yet a flag pennant, that responsibility would again be on his shoulders. He realized that now more than ever.
"Anyhow, we'll work up a cover for you, a little archaeological work perhaps, maybe a little trading in rare artifacts."
"Like black market trading in out-of-the-way places?" Turner asked and Winston smiled.
"On occasion."
"Look, Skip, I think you're overrating me a bit here. I'm not the field intel type."
Skip looked at him with a jaundiced eye. "I thought you were the best. Remember, old friend, your prolific pen wrote more than one of the training manuals."
"Let's not talk about that yet again," Winston replied coldly. "Hell, I can't even remember the last time I held
a modern gun and did my qualification shooting."
"You still fire antique powder weapons every weekend."
"That's a hobby."
"The skill's the same."
"You're thinking about sending me through the lines, aren't you?"
"Look, Winston. We're ramming our heads against a blank wall here and getting absolutely nowhere. They got tabs on most of our Fleet Intel personnel. It's so bad Speedwell's convinced we've got a leak, and a bad one. So I'm going outside the loop. I want someone with some brains out there, and when I think of brains I think of you."
"Bull. And besides, you're talking hero stuff. That may might be my stock and trade, pitching it to wide eyed fleggies, but actually wandering around out there?"
Again Skip smiled and looked over at the print of Torpedo Eight going in to the attack at Midway.
"I think you've got some good blood in your veins."
Turner looked down into his empty glass and, reaching for the bottle, he refilled it. He gazed at the picture of his old comrades and then at the print of Torpedo Eight. So now the cards get called in, he realized. I've been pitching the line about duty, honor, sacrifice for so long and then this old SOB calls me on it. He almost wanted to laugh at the irony of it.
Refusal was not even an alternative.
"If I get killed, this will be your damn fault."
Skip smiled. "And Janet will make my life hell for the rest of my days."
Winston lowered his gaze. That was something that, after thirty years, he still did not like to talk about with his oldest friend. After all, both of them knew Janet wanted him first, but then settled on Skip when he had refused. Skip worshiped her, but in his heart he must have known that if the game had played out the way she had wanted, Janet would be married to a professor at the Academy rather than the Admiral of the Fleet.
Poor Janet, the loss of their two sons in the Miaquez incident five years ago was something she never had recovered from. He looked back up at Skip and realized that his old friend's pain was barely concealed as well. A case of mistaken identity, the Kilrathi claimed, and the apology was accepted, and Janet stayed locked away in mourning.
"I'll assign a couple of youngsters to you," Skip finally said, breaking the painful silence.
"Who?"
"I was thinking, Vance Richards."
"Good lad there," Turner said, nodding in agreement. "Top of his class when he graduated from here. Even taught basic flight here a couple of summers back. Hell of a pilot, just like his old man," and the two smiled at the memory of Quentin Richards, another comrade, lost somewhere out in the darkness. Fleet tradition was to take care of its own, and having young Richards along would be a pleasure.
"For your second, I was thinking of Robert Singh, to be your admin assistant."
Turner scanned back through his memory. Singh graduated about the same time as Richards, the brain type, well organized. But there had been something troubling him even before the conversation over this new assignment started, and now he saw an answer.
"Can I pass on Singh?"
"Why?"
"Well, I was just thinking. I know this newly-minted ensign who just destroyed his career today. You know, and I know, that no matter how much we admire what that kid did, More won't rest till he's fixed him, and will nail you for encouraging insubordination if you don't."
Skip smiled. "Okay. He's yours. Who is he?"
"Strange kid. Very upper-crust English family. Couple generations back one of them was a rear admiral. Old tradition type, serve in the Fleet for six years, then go on into the family business. Sharp, driven edge to him that might worry me a bit, but gutsy as hell and dedicated to the Fleet with a loyalty that borders on fanaticism. Top of his class, would have graduated number one if he hadn't opened his yap a couple of times to tell off someone who was being a fool, but was wearing one stripe more than him."
"Sounds familiar," Skip said with a grin, looking at his friend, whose outspokenness and brain that worked a little too quickly and sharply had most certainly cost him a captain's stripe. "All right. Pull his record, get it over to me tomorrow. I'll have to do some sort of public reaming on this boy. Its a shame, because he spoke for every man and woman in the fleet today. I only wish I had said it."
"Then it'd be you getting canned rather than him," Turner replied.
"Yeah, I know. Damn it all, I figured once I got to the top, I could open my big yap on occasion and say what I really feel. Instead I'm chasing votes, kissing butts, and praying that when the time comes we're ready. Anyhow, the kid's yours, take care of him."
"You'll like him, Skip. Might even get as far as you someday. His name is Geoffrey Tolwyn."
CHAPTER TWO
Confederation base McAuliffe.Date: 2634.120
"Lieutenant Richards?"
Ensign Geoffrey Tolwyn snapped off a sharp salute as the lieutenant climbed out of the pilot's seat of his Hurricane space-to-surface fighter escort, the ground crew scrambling past Geoff to chock the wheels and hook in the fuel vent lines.
Richards pulled his helmet off, his cool dark eyes scanning the young ensign's features.
Geoff had a recollection of meeting Richards once before, back in his second year, when Richards served as a summer flight instructor for basic subsonic atmospheric flight, though he had never gone through the reported torture of spending an afternoon with Richards in the right seat. Richards had a reputation for being a washout maker, an instructor eager to give the dreaded red check mark, in any of a hundred different areas, that would forever ground the dreams of another fleggie pilot. He seemed to have aged. Wrinkles already creased back from his eyes and his hair was going gray, even though he was only twenty-six. Geoff wondered if this was part of the price of flying and sensed that it was, especially when the planes were usually far older than the pilots, and prone to catastrophic failure.
Richards stared at Geoff for several seconds before returning the salute.
"I was ordered to report to you here, sir," Geoff announced.
Vance nodded, turning away for a second to look back at the ground crew.
"Make sure you're careful screwing on that fuel exhaust vent line, the threads on it are damn near stripped," he said, and turned to look back at Geoff. "Should have junked the whole damn thing years ago."
Geoff knew enough, at least in this case, to remain silent. He had a couple of dozen hours in the twin seat variant, and the registration plate on that craft had showed the old bucket was nearly twice his age. And yet, even being close to what still was considered to be a primary strike escort craft set his pulse beating. On the rung of fighter pilots, flying a Hurrie was considered more than a few steps down from a Wildcat pure space interceptor, or even a heavy Falcon fighter-bomber. The Hurrie was a hybrid design, and like most hybrids trying to combine two functions into one, it did neither of them very well. Its original intent was to serve as a space-to-surface escort for the old Gladiator bombers and Sheridan marine landing craft. If jumped by a Wildcat equivalent, it was dead meat, and, down in atmosphere, if it ran up against something like a Hawk it was dead as well. But as such things often developed in the realm of pilots, Hurrie jocks might be disdainful of the craft, but inwardly they took a fierce pride in the knowledge that they had to be the best if they were going to survive. No one wanted assignment to a Hurricane squadron, but once chosen, few of them asked for a transfer after mastering the craft and learning to squeeze the last bit of performance out of one.
Richards went up to the nose of the Hurricane and, opening up a cargo hatch, pulled out a duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. Turning to the crew chief he handed over his helmet, signed off on the craft, then after hesitating for a second he gave the plane an affectionate pat before turning back to Geoff and motioning for him to follow. "So you're the one who told Senator More off." Geoff looked over at Vance and nodded. "You're insane, kid, just screwed your career forever." Geoff had nothing to say. It had not even been planned. He was simply walking past t
he senator, heading to the refreshment table to get a drink for his parents when he overhead part of the interview. Before he had even realized it, he was talking. That had always been one of his strong suits. It seemed that when the pressure was on, he could talk his way out of damn near anything, but there were times when he talked himself straight into the hole as well, and this was one of them. And yet, if he had it all to do over again, he'd still strike the same blow. There were a lot of ways to serve the Fleet, and if need be get your ass blown off for doing it. It might not be how he had planned it, but his confrontation had hit all the major vid services and in the ensuing flap more than one of More's compatriots from the opposition party had used Geoff's accusations. Unfortunately none of those senators were around when he had been summoned to the august presence of CICCONFEDFLT himself, Admiral Spencer «Skip» Banbridge for one royal chewing out and banishment.
Chew outs from Banbridge were legendary, made even more frightening by his physical appearance. He was short, squat, built like a fireplug, with a mashed in nose picked up when he had once been the Fleet's middleweight boxing champion. His command of vocabulary from the lower decks was legendary as well, and Geoff was given the full ten minute treatment. The mere memory of being on the carpet was enough to make him wince. He could well imagine that the shouting could be heard in the next corridor, and the smirk on the face of one of More's aides, who was there to witness the reaming, was enraging.
"Anyhow, Tolwyn, do you know what the hell is going on?"
"Sir?"
Richards motioned for him to follow as the two headed across the tarmac. Overhead, the scorching red giant sun of McAuliffe seemed to fill half the sky. The light appeared to give everything a blood-drenched hue which Geoff found somehow disturbing. The second sun, a small yellow dwarf which orbited half a billion miles further out than the planet, was just beginning to rise in the east. Due to the orbital mechanics of it all, it'd be another forty years before anyone would actually see night again. Those assigned to the sprawling planet side bases of McAuliffe claimed that after six months on the planet you'd kill for the sight of a star.
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