Midshipman's Hope (The Seafort Saga Book 1)

by David Feintuch

  “Hibernia calling Orbit Station.”

  “This is approach control; go ahead, Hibernia.”

  I said, “Identify yourself, please: name, rank, and serial number.”

  “What?” The rating’s astonishment was evident.

  Pilot Haynes shot me a glance. After a moment the corner of his mouth turned up. He nodded grudgingly.

  “You heard me. Identify yourself.”

  “Communications Specialist First Class Thomas Leeman, U.N.A.F. 205-066-254.”

  “Darla, serial number check, please.”

  A moment’s pause. “Prefix 205 is interstellar rating; suffix 254 notates communications specialist. 066 within valid ID ranges.”

  “Who is your commanding officer, Mr. Leeman?”

  “General Due Twan Tho, sir.”

  “I’d like to speak to him.” I turned off the caller. “Darla, his file, please.”

  Another pause. Then, “General Tho here. What’s the problem?”

  “Visuals, please, General.” Once burned, twice shy.

  “What nonsense is this?” His glowering visage came onto my screen. “Are you satisfied?”

  He matched the picture Darla projected overhead. “Quite. Thank you. We’ll be docking shortly.”

  “You identify yourself too, Hibernia!” He was within his rights. My request appeared ridiculous, and he was returning the favor.

  “Captain Nicholas Seafort commanding, U.N.N.S. 205-387-0058.”

  After a moment he said warily, “I’d like to speak to Captain Haag.”

  “Captain Haag is dead of an accident. I am senior officer aboard.”

  “Visuals, please.”

  I switched on my video.

  “My God, how old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You were a lieutenant?”

  “No, a midshipman.” I let him chew on that awhile. There was no further communication.

  Pilot Haynes carefully edged the ship closer to the station until the airlocks gently made contact. “Stop all engines.”

  “Stop engines, aye aye, sir.”

  “Join capture latches, fore and aft.”

  “Forward latches engaged, sir.”

  “Aft latches engaged, sir.” Vax, from his station at the aft airlock.

  “Begin mooring, Lieutenant. Open inner locks.” Belowdecks, a suited rating pressed his coded transmitter to the lock control. As the thick transplex hatches opened, the indicator light on my screen flashed.

  “Inner lock ready aft, sir.”

  “Open outer lock. Secure mooring line. Pressurization check.”

  A pause, while the seaman labored under Vax’s watchful eye. “Line secured, sir. Pressure maintained one sea-level atmosphere.”

  “How does it look, Mr. Holser?”

  “Peaceful, sir.”

  “Very well, open inner lock.” I sagged. I’d given my last significant order. Though still nominally under my command, Hibernia was controlled now by the station commandant.

  I thumbed the caller. “Mr. Leeman, patch me to Admiralty groundside, please. And I’ll want transport as soon as possible.”

  “No problem, Captain,” growled General Tho. He’d stayed on the line. Well, our arrival had been unusual, to say the least.

  Clicks and beeps from the speaker. “Admiralty House.”

  “Commander U.N.S. Hibernia reporting. I’d like your senior duty officer, please.”

  Faint static swirled through the line. “That will be Captain Forbee, sir. One moment.” I waited, my tension growing. The ordeal I faced wouldn’t be pleasant.

  “Forbee.”

  “Captain Nicholas Seafort reporting, sir. U.N.S. Hibernia.”

  “Justin Haag was scheduled for this run, sir.”

  “Captain Haag died interstellar, sir. I’m senior officer.”

  “Can you come to Admiralty House or shall I come up?” Odd, coming from a groundside commander. An Admiral and his staff didn’t go visiting, they summoned.

  “I’ll be down as soon as the station gives me a shuttle, sir. I’ll bring the Log.”

  “Very good, Captain.” We broke the connection.

  I went back to my cabin. I debated dress whites and decided against them; they would impress no one. I rummaged in my duffel for my unused wallet, checked to see that it still held money. As I’d be going shoreside I pinned my length of service medals to my uniform front, made sure my shoes were well shined.

  On Level 2, passengers milled about the aft airlock for a look at the station, though they wouldn’t begin to disembark for hours. I went to the forward lock, where crews were already off-loading our cargo. Holovid in hand, I straightened my uniform and clambered through the lock.

  “This way, Captain Seafort.” An enlisted man led me through the unfamiliar wide gleaming corridors and hatches of Orbit Station to the Commandant’s office. The design of the station was much like our disk, though larger in all respects. Higher ceilings, wider corridors, larger compartments.”

  Hundreds of people worked and lived in this busy shipping center. Cargo for Detour, Miningcamp, and Earth was transshipped through Orbit Station. Passengers disembarked here, before boarding other vessels to travel onward. Small shuttles journeyed back and forth daily to the planet’s surface. A typical orbiting facility for our interstellar Naval liners.

  “I’m General Tho.” A small man, with a neat mustache above thin lips, and a receding hairline emphasized by wavy black hair. He eyed me dubiously. “You command Hibernia?”

  “Yes.” I matched his abruptness with my own.

  “Your shuttle will be ready in a few minutes.” After a moment he unbent perceptibly. “What happened to your officers?”

  I sighed. I’d have to repeat the tale often enough. I explained.

  When I was finished he shook his head. “Good Lord, man.”

  “Yes. That’s why I want to report to the Admiral right off.”

  His reply was cut short by the corporal who appeared in the doorway. “Shuttle is ready, sir.”

  He shrugged. “Better go, Captain. I put you ahead of the passenger buses.”

  “Thank you.” I followed the corporal down three levels, to a shuttle launch berth. It was similar in layout to Hibernia’s launch berth, though on a far larger scale. It was designed to receive the great airbuses that shuttled passengers to and from the surface.

  I grinned to myself; if I’d required Vax to polish this berth, he’d have marched right out the airlock. My grin faded; I recalled another man leaving an airlock, by my act. Sickened, I closed my eyes.

  The shuttle was a sporty little six-seater with retractable wings, its jet and vacuum engines sharing the available bow space. I ducked and climbed aboard.

  “Buckle up, Captain.” The pilot wore a casual jumpsuit and a removable helmet. He strapped himself in securely, more concerned with atmospheric turbulence than decompression. I followed his example. He flipped switches and checked instruments with the ease of long familiarity, waiting for the launch berth to depressurize.

  “Lots of traffic these days?” I asked, mostly to make conversation.

  “Some. More before the sickness.” He keyed his caller. “Departure control, Alpha Fox 309 ready to launch.”

  “Just a moment.” In a few moments the voice returned. “Cleared to launch, 309.” The shuttle bay’s huge hatches slid open. Hope Nation glistened through the abyss, green and inviting.

  Our propellant drummed against the berth’s protective shields as the shuttle glided out of the bay. Once clear of the dock the pilot throttled our engines to full. We shot ever faster from the station, approaching Hope Nation at an oblique angle until we encountered the outer wisps of atmosphere. The pilot hummed a tune I couldn’t recognize as he flipped levers, eyed his radars, swung the ship around with short bursts of his positioning jets to be ready to fire the retro rockets.

  I asked loudly, “What did you mean, before the sickness?” The first buffets of atmospheric turbulence rumbled the hul
l.

  The pilot spared me a glance. “Didn’t you hear? We had an epidemic a while back, but it’s under control now.” He set the automatic counter, his hand poised to fire the engines manually if the puter didn’t turn them on.

  “What kind of—”

  “Not now. Wait!” The pilot’s full attention was on the puter’s readout. The retro engines caught with a roar at the exact moment the counter hit zero. His hand relaxed. “You never know about these little shipboard jobs!” He had to shout over the increasing din. “Not reliable like the mainframes you joes travel with!”

  As we descended, Hope Nation lost its spherical shape. Ground features emerged through scattered layers of clouds. Here and there I could spot a checkerboard of cultivated fields, though most of the planet seemed lush and verdant.

  Though I’d expected something of the sort, still I marveled at the sight of a planet so many light-years from home, whose ecology was carbon-based like our own. Hope Nation’s trees and plants supplied no proteins or carbohydrates we could digest, but they grew side by side with our imported stock.

  No native animals, of course. No nonterrestrial animals had ever been found, other than the primitive boneless fish of Zeta Psi.

  “Sorry,” the pilot shouted over the engine noise. “What were you saying?”

  “What kind of epidemic did you have?”

  “Some sort of mutated virus. It killed a lot of people before we found a vaccine. I don’t know much about it, except everyone gets a shot when they put down at Centraltown.”

  “Is that where we’re landing?”

  “Of course. All arrivals from the station go there. Customs, quarantine, everything’s at Centraltown.”

  “Right. Of course.” I’d looked it up, but it was hard to digest a whole culture in an hour of holovid.

  “Say, how’d you get to be a Captain, anyway?”

  I sighed. It was going to be a long shore leave.

  A few minutes later he deftly flipped the shuttle into glide mode and rode her above the flat plain toward the seacoast skirting the sparkling waters ahead. The jet engines kicked in a moment after the flipabout, making us a jet-powered aircraft.

  Naturally, the pilot spotted the runway long before I did. After all it was his home turf. The shuttle’s stubby wings shifted into VTOL mode as we bled off speed. The pilot timed our arrival over the runway perfectly; we were almost stationary as he dropped us gently onto the tarmac, the shuttle’s underbelly jets cushioning our fall.

  “Welcome to Hope Nation, Navy!” He gave me a smile as he killed the engines. “And good luck.”

  “I’ll need it.” I opened the hatch and climbed down, straightening to take my first breath of air in another solar system. It smelled clean and fragrant, with a scent I couldn’t quite place, like fresh herbs in some exotic dish. The sun, a G2 type, shone brightly, perhaps a bit more yellow than our own.

  I gawked like a groundsider on his first Lunapolis vacation. My step was light and springy, a result of Hope Nation’s point nine two Earth gravity. The planet was actually twelve percent larger than Earth but considerably less dense.

  My Naval ID took me through customs with no fuss. The quarantine shed was a ramshackle structure just off the runway, between the ships and a cluster of buildings. The nurse was friendly and efficient; I bared my arm; he touched the inoculation gun to my forearm and it was done.

  I felt for my wallet. On this planet I was a greenhorn. I had no idea where I was going or how to get there but I assumed my U.N. currency would solve the problem. “How do I get to Admiralty House?”

  “Well ...” The nurse squinted into the bright afternoon sunlight. “You could walk over to that terminal building there, go through to the other side, and rent an electricar. If they have one left, that is, there’s only seven. Then you turn left at the end of the drive, go to the first light, and turn left again and go two blocks.”

  “Thanks.” I started to walk away.

  “Or you could walk across the runway to that building over there. That’s Admiralty House.” He gestured to a two-story building seventy yards away.

  “Oh.” I felt foolish. Then I grinned in appreciation; he must have perfected his routine on a lot of novices. “Thanks again.” I started across the runway, holovid in hand.

  Now I wished I’d chosen to wear my dress whites, but I realized I was being silly. Stevin Johanson, Admiral Commanding at Hope Nation Base, wasn’t about to be impressed by dress whites adorning a fumbling ex-midshipman.

  An iron fence surrounded the large cement block structure. I unlatched the gate; a well-worn path across the unmowed yard led me to the front of the building. The winged-anchor Naval emblem and the words “United Nations Naval Service / Admiralty House” greeted me from a brass plaque anchored to the porch post.

  Had the brass plate been smelted here, or had they shipped the sign across light-years of emptiness to add majesty to the facade of colonial Naval headquarters?

  At the tall wooden doors with glass inserts at the top of the porch steps, I tucked at the corners of my uniform and brushed my hands through my hair. I took a deep breath, and went in.

  A young man in shore whites was dictating into a puter at a console in the lobby. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Nicholas Seafort, Hibernia, reporting to Admiral Johanson.”

  “Oh, yes, we were expecting you; General Tho called ahead. Captain Forbee will see you now.” He led me up red-carpeted stairs, along a hall to an office with open windows overlooking the sunny field. “Captain Seafort, sir.”

  I came to attention. “Nicholas Seafort reporting, sir. Senior officer aboard Hibernia.”

  The young Captain behind the desk stood quickly and saluted. He squinted from weak, puzzled eyes. A youngish man, who’d started running to fat. “Shall we stand down, then?” It was an odd way to release me, but perhaps colonial customs were different. We relaxed. He indicated a seat.

  “Thank you. Will I be reporting to you or directly to Admiral Johanson?”

  He gave me a sad smile. “Admiral Johanson died in the epidemic.”

  “Died, sir?” I sat. So much death ...”

  “He caught the virus. One day he just dropped, like everyone else who had it.”

  “Good Lord!” I could think of nothing else to say.

  “Yes.” He looked unhappy. “So I’ve been running the Naval station. I sent word on the last ship out. It’ll be two years before his replacement arrives.”

  “Very well, sir. I’ll report to you. I’m sorry I’m not better organized, but most of it is in the Log.” Afraid he’d stop me before I could get the whole sordid tale off my chest, I let my words tumble, summarizing what had happened aboard Hibernia. I spared myself nothing, glad now to have it over with. “Captain Haag’s loss and the lieutenants’ deaths were an act of Lord God,” I finished. “But I take full responsibility for the deaths of Midshipman Wilsky, the seamen, and the passengers.”

  He was silent a long time. “Terrible,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you don’t know the half of it.” He stood and came around from behind the desk to where I sat, cap on my knee. He bent and peered at my length of service medals. As if to confirm my story, he asked, “When did you say your last lieutenant died?”

  “March 12, 2195, sir.”

  “That’s in the Log?”

  “Yes, sir.” I slipped the chip into my holovid, handed it across to him.

  He sat at his desk, flipped through the entries until he came to the month of March. He shook his head as he reached the relevant passages. “It wasn’t June, was it? You became Captain in March.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, puzzled.

  “That’s it, then.” Captain Forbee turned to look out the window. Facing away he said, “Hope Nation is still a small colony. We don’t have much of a Naval Station. No interstellar ships are based here; we’re not big enough to warrant it. Admiral Johanson was a caretaker with seniority in case it might someday be
needed, to resolve a dispute between two captains, for instance. Or to appoint a replacement in case a Captain died or was too ill to sail.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He had three Captains in system. One of them, Captain Grone—it’s an embarrassing incident, we did our best to hush it up—he went native almost a year ago. He and his fiancée stole a helicopter and flew to the Ventura Mountains. Disappeared. We’ve never been able to find them. An unstable type, a lot of us thought. The second is Captain Marceau, from Telstar. Sixteen years seniority.”

  Good. He or Forbee would replace me. My nightmare was over. “Where is he, sir?”

  “The bloody fool had to go cliff-climbing on his shore leave. Six months, and he’s still in coma. Admiral Johanson gave Telstar to Captain Eaton last spring. They sailed to Detour, then headed for Miningcamp and Earth.”

  “They never reached Miningcamp.”

  “Yes, your Log makes that clear.” He sighed. “Eaton’s a reliable man. If he bypassed Miningcamp, he must have a reason.”

  If that’s what he did, I thought silently. If Darla was glitched, how many other puters were, as well? I put aside the thought. “Sir, how many officers here are rated interstellar?”

  He shook his head gloomily. “I said you didn’t know the half of it. Nobody. We have interplanetary Captains, of course, but why would anyone rated interstellar stay in this backwater?”

  “You could go yourself, sir. Hibernia needs a real Captain.”

  “I told you we had no one, Mr. Seafort. You know how I came to Hope Nation? I shipped out as a lieutenant. My wife Margaret was among the passengers. I timed it so my hitch was up and I could resign my commission when we docked. I’ve been a civilian for seven years, but after Admiral Johanson sent Eaton with Telstar, he reenlisted me so there’d be someone on staff who’d been interstellar.”

  Did Forbee expect me to solve his problems for him? “You could appoint my lieutenant—I mean, my first lieutenant—as Captain, sir, and then relieve me.”

  He stood tiredly. “You still don’t understand. Admiral Johanson gave me Captain’s rank at my reenlistment. To be precise, on June 6, 2195. Sir.”

  “No!” I stumbled to my feet, overturning my chair. It was as if Seaman Tuak had shambled through the hatch, when at last I’d imagined myself safe.