Wilson fumed when he read it. That recommendation would force Jack to be reassigned to another commander and placed on defensive duties only. Wilson wanted to keep Jack under his command. Plus, to Wilson, that recommendation could be applied to anyone in Fleet.
Wilson called Dr. Michaels, "This recommendation on Private Jack Grean, you have to reconsider it. The front line needs soldiers like him."
"I had to give a recommendation, Captain. Frankly I'm not sure if he meets Fleet standards. He has deep rooted rage issues, and they take over his mind. If he were put in a situation where he was ordered to kill civilians, he may turn on his commanding officer."
"That's true of any soldier. We do our best to condition them in basic to realize the necessity of killing Lithor civilians. Can't Grean be conditioned as well?"
"It's possible he could be conditioned. He would still have the issue of uncontrolled rage. Fleet doesn't usually field soldiers with such a well defined rage mechanism."
"He's a fine soldier," Wilson said. "He's officer material as near as I can tell. Can't you treat his rage?"
"Not and keep the soldier in him. He's a very dangerous person. Before this war he wouldn't have been accepted to Fleet."
"I think he's what Fleet needs right now and on the frontline."
"You'll have to go over my head, Captain. I don't think he should be in front line combat situations."
* * *
Jack didn't have an assignment, and they put him on medical leave for two weeks because of his knee.
Jack signed up for his college courses online. Lexi went as far as to enroll in the local university. Some of the guys that went through the test with Jack threw him a bachelor party. The wedding turned into a fairly big event, a cause to celebrate. Wilson attended. He approached Jack afterwards and handed him a folded piece of paper. Jack perked up, "Is this my assignment?"
"You need to see another doctor."
"But my knee is fine…"
"This one is Doctor Michaels' higher-up, a Colonel Henderson," Wilson said. "She just needs to talk with you. Answer all her questions…"
"Is it another shrink, Captain?"
"Yes."
Jack put on his best, happy smile. "Ok, you're the boss."
"For the time being, Private."
Wilson's commanding officer expressed serious misgivings about Private Grean being allowed in Fleet. Bad enough that he didn't meet the age requirement, but now a section six psychiatrist had given him a black mark.
That coming Monday Jack went to the medical building, to the main entrance this time and asked for Colonel Henderson. They directed him to the fourth floor, east wing. He took the elevator and went down the corridor marked east wing. He found her office and knocked with some apprehension, for he had never talked with a Colonel before. Her door opened, and Jack heard, "Come in, Jack."
How they always knew he knocked he didn't know, likely cameras in the hallway. He entered the office and saw a couch much like Doctor Michaels' couch and a big puffy chair in front of the desk. Jack looked the Doctor over, in her forties, black hair, glasses, smiling. Jack sat in the big puffy chair and said, "Hello, ma'am."
The oddest thing about the Colonel was she wore a silver necklace with the yin-yang symbol on it, on an etched piece of obsidian. She wore no other jewelry, and her uniform was clean and pressed. Otherwise there wasn't much about her that was noteworthy. The Colonel spoke in a soothing voice, "Good morning, Private Grean. Are you feeling ok this morning?"
"Yes, ma'am, I feel fine."
She turned to a dispenser behind her desk and filled a glass with some kind of red liquid and retrieved a paper packet with two white pills in it. Jack immediately identified the pills as the same ones Doctor Michaels had given him. The Colonel handed the glass to Jack and motioned for him to take the pills. He grimaced. She nodded. He took the pills and swallowed them with a drink of the red liquid. It tasted like fruit punch. She said, "Drink all the liquid, Private. It's just something to help you remember."
He said, "Yes, ma'am," and drank the liquid.
"You don't need to address me as ma'am after every answer. Do you know what I am?"
"You're a psychiatrist," he said.
"More specifically I'm a section seven psychiatrist, although I do sometimes serve as a section eight. You're here to see me because your commanding officer wants a second opinion on your mental states, on your fitness for duty. You've made quite a lot of noise among the brass, between your service record at the battle of Artemis and your display at the test. Not to mention your age. Not all the noise has been good."
The Colonel paused at this point. Jack didn't know what to say, and the drugs started to take their toll on him. He got groggier by the minute, and the big fluffy chair almost sucked him in.
"According to your service record, you don't have any family. I checked the log entry of the last ship to leave Artemis, and there's a Grean in the roster for that ship. Do you know a Meghan Grean?"
Jack sat up in his chair. "That's my sister…" The drugs still gripped him too strongly to understand the reality that his sister lived.
"You'll have to go find her when you're done here. She's with the other refugees in the 'tent city'."
"Thank you, Colonel."
"It wasn't my doing. I just happened to check the logs. Now, to the business at hand… You're feeling ok? Not too sleepy?"
"No… I'm fine…" although he did feel very sleepy.
"The Battle of Artemis. You killed 37 of the Lithors. How does that make you feel? I mean, they're intelligent creatures. They have religion, and they claim to have souls. Do you feel remorse?"
"The rifle did most of the work."
"Do you feel any remorse?" She asked.
"I don't feel any remorse. They attacked us. I watched them shoot at a baby for sport…"
"Is that when your rage took over, Jack? When you saw them shoot the baby for sport?"
"Yes," he said.
"At the test, with the instructor, when did your rage take over?"
"After he broke my knee… When they started to count down… When I was about to lose…"
"Think back, even to childhood, when did you lose your temper?"
Jack paused. He thought back to his childhood. He could remember being angry a few times, but never rage. "I can't think of a time when I lost my temper…"
"Never? Not once that you can remember?" Henderson said.
"I've never even been in a fistfight in school…"
"Very interesting. The Lithor killed women and children at Artemis didn't they?"
"Yes," Jack said.
"What about following orders? Do you understand how important that is?"
Jack took his cue right from the Fleet training manuals. "Following orders is essential for any good soldier, and orders must be followed without question."
"That's what the book says. What do you think?"
A little drool started to dribble out of the left side of Jack's mouth, and he was too disconnected by the drugs to wipe it away. "I believe it's essential to follow orders because my CO might be committing me to saving the lives of other Fleet personnel or civilians."
"What if you are ordered to kill civilians, Jack? The 'new' Fleet is under orders to shoot and kill any Lithor civilians they encounter. How do you think you'll do, if you're ordered to kill Lithor civilians?"
"They'll die, Colonel. I'll follow orders."
"What if you're ordered to leave men behind? What will you do then?"
Jack paused for a long time.
"Sometimes men have to be left behind," Henderson said. "What are you going to do?"
"I'll follow orders, ma'am."
"Very few in Fleet know, but we bombed the Lithorian Homeworld to dust, but the ships we sent didn't have enough fuel to get home, and they need fuel. They consolidated what fuel they had, and two ships of four are limping to Orion. We left 2,000 Fleet personnel behind. Could you have given that order, Jack?"
Ja
ck tried to think through the haze of drugs. "I pray to never have to give that kind of order…"
"Wilson wants you to become an officer," Henderson said. "Has he mentioned that to you?"
"No."
"You'll have to learn to make hard decisions, if you're going to become an officer."
"Yes," Jack said.
"I think we're finished here. I can make my recommendation to Fleet. Are you feeling ok to walk back, or would you like to lay on the couch for a while first?"
Jack stood up and stumbled his way to the couch while the room spun, and he collapsed.
* * *
Jack awoke that afternoon. Colonel Henderson asked, "Nice nap?"
"Yeah, I guess so." Jack started heading towards the door.
"Don't forget your sister, Jack."
"Thanks… I had forgotten."
Jack made his way straight to the 'tent city' as they called it. It took some asking around, but he found her tent and went inside. He shouted for her. The tent housed easily two hundred people. "Meghan!"
Meghan came running at him and tackled him with a hug. She was wearing jeans that were too short for her. They were easily six inches higher than her ankle. She had on a boy's shirt, because her breasts looked rather strained. Her shoes were worn, and she smelled kind of bad, like they refused to give her soap or something. They were pretty much rationing everything. "Jack!"
He just hugged her for a while then broke it off. "It's good to see you. Were you hurt when they shelled the school?"
"Yeah, a fractured skull. Was unconscious for a couple of days… You're in a Fleet uniform, Jack. They aren't giving those out to anybody are they?"
"They let me in Fleet, little sis."
"They must be taking in just about anybody then I guess." Then she laughed.
"I passed the graduation test," Jack said.
"If you say so, big brother."
"I say so. We've got a spare bedroom on base. You could come stay with us: get you out of this tent."
She tilted her head to the side and pretended to yawn. "Us? You finally have a boyfriend?"
"Lexi and I. We married."
"You married Lexi?" Meghan frowned. "She's way too pretty for you."
"She's very pretty, but still, we're married now, and we've got the spare bedroom."
"They're putting up new student housing, and I'm just barely old enough for my own place, and students will get a stipend from Orion," Meghan smiled wide. "I think I'd like to have my own place. At least, I'd like to try it. I'll be out of this tent within a week or so."
"Come by and meet Lexi. She was two grades your senior in school. You should get to know her. I'll have her cook something special."
"She cooks for you? Dear god, I'd better come over and talk some sense into her."
"Come by tonight." Jack gave her directions to their house.
* * *
Colonel Henderson gave Jack a clean bill of health, but did recommend psychiatric review bi-annually. Fairly common for Fleet, once you got into the psychiatric system they liked to keep you in the system. Wilson called Jack at the crack of dawn with Jack's assignment, report to hangar 17 and wait further instruction. Lexi cooked up a hearty breakfast for them, and then Jack headed to hangar 17, unsure what to expect.
Large garage-sized doors were up and down one side, with one set of man-sized doors open to the breeze. Jack stepped inside. A line of Privates waited, and Jack had a pretty good feeling that he would be waiting with them. At the front of the line, a Sergeant acted as if on guard. Three game pods stood on the other side of him, rather sophisticated looking game pods, contained units. They rolled and pitched in all directions. Jack walked up to the Sergeant. "Private Grean reporting, Sergeant!"
"End of the line with the other scum, Private."
"Yes, Sergeant!"
Jack went to the end of the line and started to wait. One by one the pods would stop, and a Private would step out. The Sergeant would then motion a new Private to take that pod. The Privates leaving after the test all exited the hangar going in the opposite direction from the line. Jack waited. He noticed one pod where the Private lasted a good twenty-five minutes or so. When he stepped out of the pod, he turned to the left and went through a door that led into the other part of the hangar, instead of out the exit where the other Privates went.
Jack made it to the front of the line. The Sergeant said, "You're too short. Apply for re-assignment."
Jack's lack of height could be explained by his growing up on a high gravity world. He barely met the requirement for Fleet service. Too short, thought Jack, the bastard. Jack figured he could take the Sergeant in a fight, but didn't go in swinging. Instead, he growled. "I got this assignment from Captain Wilson. He doesn't think I'm too short."
"What's your name, scum?"
"Private Jack Grean."
"Address me as Sergeant, Private!" Then the Sergeant touched the microphone on his comm gear and said, "This one's too short, a Private Grean."
The Sergeant paused as if listening, then, "Yes, sir!", "Sorry, sir!", "He'll be tested right away, sir!"
The Sergeant looked down at Jack. "Take that lead pod, Grean."
Jack approached the pod and climbed in. He'd played pod games before back home. He noticed two joysticks: one for each hand. The right one had a trigger and a thumb aiming joystick. He looked down and saw two pedals for his feet, a vertical pedal on the right and a horizontal pedal on the left. A large screen in front of him flashed, "Press here to start tutorial." Jack pressed the screen. It changed view to a grassy field. A voice spoke, "The pedal on the right will accelerate the vehicle in a controlled direction." Jack pressed the pedal, and the grass seemed to move under him.
The voice spoke again, "The left pedal is the brakes." Cool Jack thought, they had it rigged just like a car. The voice again, "The left joystick controls slide left/right and vertical up/down." Jack tried sliding left and right, then up and down. "The right joystick controls turning left/right and tilting up/down." Jack tried turning, and he could turn the vehicle without losing forward momentum, but if he pressed the gas, the vehicle accelerated in the direction it faced. It reminded Jack of racecar games, only like driving on an ice course.
"The trigger on the right joystick is for machine guns." Twin crosshairs appeared on the screen and flashed red and green. "The mini-control stick on the right joystick is for the main cannons, press the mini-control to fire." Jack tried the cannons; he saw two flashes of light through the screen. This game beat any Jack had ever played, and his pulse quickened, and his stomach felt instantly hollow. "The rightmost button on the right control stick fires Gel-Packs, incendiary devices deployed from the undercarriage.
Jack smiled a wide toothy grin that usually was saved for Lexi. "You have 10,000 rounds of .50 ammunition, 16 Gel-Packs, and an unlimited amount of laser fire from the main cannons. The main cannons take three seconds to recharge. The Gel-Packs detonate at a height of two meters."
Jack started fooling with the controls. "You now have 150 seconds of tutorial left. Targets will appear on the sensor page to the right of the main screen. Aim for the center of the big tanks to ensure optimal damage. Kill as much infantry as you can without running out of ammunition."
Jack engaged the targets in the tutorial quickly. He adapted to the speed of the thing, faster then any of the racing games he'd ever played. Finally the machine said, "Tutorial over, good luck."
A city rose up out of the terrain around him on the screen. Large blips and small blips appeared on the target section of his display. He turned down a street and then turned to face the blips. Two lines of Lithor marching down the street appeared in his screen, and he opened fire with the machine guns. Behind the infantry, a big tank took aim at Jack's virtual self, and he fired first, and the big tank erupted fire and smoke. Jack knew from the target display that more infantry waited behind the big tank.
He flew over it and dropped a Gel-Pack. It detonated, throwing fire in every direction,
and he watched it through his rearview mirror. Jack let out a yelp and then zipped on towards the next set of digital enemies. He cut them down, again with the machine guns and cannons.
The vehicle had more speed and maneuverability than Jack would have believed. The pod had to be just a game. No way they actually fielded these things. Still, Jack enjoyed playing, and the levels got progressively more difficult as he went. He lost track of time. He ran out of Gel-Packs first, then the fifty caliber ammo. He focused on just hitting the big tanks and running from the infantry. Then the machine said, "End of simulation, proceed to the door marked Bays."
Jack climbed out of the pod thinking nothing of it, and looked. Two doors to choose from, one marked exit, the other marked Bays. He headed towards the door marked Bays.
* * *
"What do you mean he's too short, Sergeant? He'll take the test, or I'll have your stripes!"
"Yes, sir! Sorry, sir! He'll be tested right away, sir!"
Wilson waited in the hangars. He led a Hover Tank Brigade. He sat at a desk in the hangar bays just waiting for Privates to finish the test and either score high enough to get checked out on the real thing or not. Twenty-five minutes in the pod and one could be checked out on a real hover. Rarely did anybody make it to 30 minutes. Wilson held the record at 36m7s. Wilson could access Jack's pod from a terminal at his desk. Jack showed promise. He made it to the 25 minute mark, then the 30 minute mark. Wilson thought, 'Make me proud, Jack. I put up with a lot of shit because of you.'
Jack passed Wilson's record and kept on playing. He passed the forty-minute mark. At 47m9s Wilson shut down the simulation manually. Wilson sent out a blanket email to everybody privy to Jack's score, "Don't tell Grean he's got the record. I don't want his head to swell."
Jack stepped through the door from the testing room and promptly saluted Wilson. "Captain Wilson, sir!"
Wilson returned the salute. "At ease, Private."
Jack looked around, and hover tanks gazed back at him: a row of hover tanks. Each one was at least eight meters long and had a certain beauty to their aerodynamics. Jack couldn't believe his eyes. "We actually have hover tanks, Captain?"
"You're looking at them. Not much like the hover craft of Old Earth that floated on a cushion of air, but the name has stuck, if nothing else. They're put together using starship components. They have a War I starship engine in them for power, gravity impellers for lift and propulsion, and their energy shield is a class I energy shield that can be elongated to provide streamlining for flight, and the laser cannons are right from old Frigate class ships. Even the titanium armor comes from out of date starships. The fifty calibers aren't from starships. We manufacture those.
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