Runs In The Family

by Kevin Ikenberry

“I still gave you the damned order, Captain. Don’t you sit there and accuse me of shit I did or didn’t do!”

  Shields sat forward and raised a finger. “You tried, again, to kill my troopers with your incompetence, sir!”

  “That’s enough!” Talvio sat forward and pointed at Shields. “Never raise your voice at a superior officer, Shields. You heard the man say he tried to contact you, didn’t you?”

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  “A man’s word is his bond, Shields. That might be impossible for you to understand, you being a woman and all, but that’s the truth. If Bob Coffey says he tried, he tried. The fact you got nuked is sad, clearly, but things tend to happen in war.” He glared at Shields for a moment in a test of wills. Shields finally looked down. Defeated.

  “Now,” Talvio paused and looked around. Trevayne wanted to be sick at the grandstanding asshole ensuring that all eyes were on him. “Communications are vital in this division. Bob, I need you to communicate to me why you felt an emergency move of your regiment was necessary.”

  Coffey paused for a moment. “Sir, I believed that the Greys would target us because of the successful passage of lines. Rather than expend unnecessary casualties, I moved the battalion and called a nuclear strike on my position as a deterrent. If the Greys had attacked my position, they would’ve been shit out of luck, so to speak.”

  “Unnecessary casualties? Like your precious tanks over my troopers?” Shields spat.

  “I said that’s enough, Captain. Not another word, ya hear?” Talvio spat in his cup but never moved his eyes from her.

  “Clearly, sir.” Shields sat back in the chair but kept her bearing against the titters and chuckles around her.

  Looking at the pretty young woman and the bald gloating regimental commander he was bound to, Trevayne wondered idly just who should be leading the regiment.

  Talvio turned to his staff, and they changed the course of the conversation to another portion of the battle of Ashland. The Monday-morning quarterbacking, even in the days beyond football, was still a necessary evil of military action. Trevayne tuned him out but let his neurals record the conversation in case the commander asked him a question. He’d be able to read it and respond quickly. Old dogs could learn new tricks, it turned out.

  We moved because Coffey thought we’d be attacked, Trevayne thought. What? We jump away and let a nuke from orbit do the fighting? That kind of doctrinal approach was familiar. Vietnam. Lead from afar and let the troops die. Pawns on a chessboard were all they were, not souls worthy of protecting and nurturing, Trevayne thought. How long would it be before Coffey turned tail and ran? Or had the bright idea that he could better fight a battle from an aircraft? Better yet, how far would the man go to cover his ass?

  Trevayne leaned back against the comfortable chair and sighed quietly. He had to clear his throat several times and cough a bit to cover the burst of laughter as his imprinted mind spewed out a random thought that made perfect sense in the absurdity of the moment.

  Why in the fuck didn’t I join the Air Force?

  When the meeting broke, Trevayne moved quickly to the door following the slender cavalry commander. He caught her fifteen meters down the passageway. “Ma’am? Can I have a word with you?”

  She looked at him with narrowed eyes and clearly bit her tongue. “What can I do for you Sergeant Major?”

  Trevayne looked over his shoulder at the empty passageway. “Keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”

  She squinted. “What do you mean?”

  “What you know how to do. From that imprint, right?”

  She frowned. “Why should I do that?”

  Trevayne smiled. “Takes one to know one, I believe they say. So just keep doing what you’re doing, Captain.”

  “I’ll try, Sergeant Major.” She nodded, and a little color crept back into her face. “One of these days we’ll have to have a chat about these people, huh?”

  “Mark it on your calendar, ma’am.” Trevayne felt the smile die on his face. “If these assholes don’t kill us first.”

  * * * * *

  Forty-Eight

  Spaceflight tended to play hell with the circadian rhythm of a human being. All interstellar starcraft observed artificial night according to Greenwich Mean Time, or Universal Time. Most of the vessels ensured humans couldn’t effectively screw themselves by inadvertently triggering banks of artificial lights and jump-starting their neurological and physiological systems. Munsen lay in the darkness of the freighter’s hold, bathed in the artificial night and unable to cue any lights in his cabin. Nor could he activate his neural network. The only light in the cabin came from a small diode marking the location of the toilet. Sighing, he rolled up to perch on the edge of the bunk. Three hours of artificial night to go, he thought with a grunt. His mind was a jumble of thoughts, theories, and emotions, but no clarity. He pushed aside thoughts of his estranged ex-wife for the millionth time. Francesca would have listened and helped him find the reality in his situation. For moments of true clarity, he never minded waking up at zero three hundred. On nights where his mind wouldn’t stop babbling incoherently, he merely wanted to shut up the voices, clear his head and focus on something else for a bit. Meditation never worked, and yoga was for granola crunching hippies, as his grandfather would have said.

  Standing slowly, he stripped out of his shirt and shorts and stood in the cool room with his skin drawing up into gooseflesh under the forced air from the ductwork. He breathed deeply, cleansing breaths from the diaphragm, and then sat on the cold metal floor cross-legged. Reaching under his bunk, he withdrew the holster and his most trusted piece of equipment. Sliding the M1911X9 semiautomatic pistol from the holster, its weight reassuring in his hand, Munsen sat it down on the floor in front of him and closed his eyes against the faint light. Hands reaching, searching, cradling, he safed the weapon and cleared the empty chamber. Dropping the magazine and setting it down, his vision of where it lay and its orientation centered his thoughts. Field stripping the Colt came easy. The components were all there, resolute as designed and ready to perform. The weapon would not fail when called upon. Its purpose and intent were clear, as his should be.

  He would have a chance to talk to the prelate on Libretto. It might be only a few seconds, but he had to get the prelate’s attention. He could not fail. The Tueg would ruin everything given the chance. The Styrahi had apologized for their occupation of Tueg in the second council rule some five hundred years ago, but the Tueg were not shy about holding grudges. Their stance in the Legion of Planets was to ensure that other worlds were not occupied by a hostile force and entire cultures subverted to more “civilized” and “advanced” ones. Aboriginal hostility. Ask the Australians how that went, or maybe the Maoris. There was nothing the Tueg would like more than to see the Styrahi dealt an equal blow. Perhaps that was their motivation for entrance into the Legion once the Vemeh made first contact with Earth. Maybe they’d seen human voraciousness and realized that the Styrahi might be an appropriate target if they steered humans that way? Could they really grow a plan for revenge that long? Certainly not.

  The Tueg didn’t trust the Styrahi, which was easy to determine. The why? Well, whatever happened during that occupation sculpted the way this whole damned war was going to go down. The Styrah wanted a very close, interbreeding relationship with Earth. They wanted Earth to move forward and out into the galaxy as an explorational peer. Nothing to the contrary was ever a part of the picture! Unless...unless there was something that both the Tueg and Styrahi knew that they were keeping from Earth. Something about the Greys? Something about their own relationship beyond the “cold fish” receptions and stilted ideologies?

  There was too much he didn’t know. He couldn’t even be sure where his intelligence officer was. The last report he’d had from Conyers was nearly six weeks old. The Terran Defense Forces were a joke, and the only real strength Earth could project were the Fleet Battle Platforms and their defensive flotillas. Air assets also were prov
ing to be exceptional in this war, but the ground forces were simply stupid and blind. There were some promising reports from the Ticonderoga’s division of troops, but nothing extraordinary. This war would be won from the air. Or space, or whatever.

  Munsen placed the grip assembly on the floor among the components of the pistol and allowed himself a few breaths before he began to reassemble the pistol by feel. The effort cleared his mind, slowed his respiration, and allowed clarity. Clarity that something was completely amiss on Libretto. The Tueg want to show the Prelate something. Something they could only do on Libretto. But what? By treaty, the presence of Styrahi on Libretto was limited to the wardens and officials, and the rest of the Legion had a sizable presence across the planet. What could be so damned important?

  Munsen finished the assembly and performed the function check of the weapon. Weapon on safe, does not fire. Work the action, selector switch to fire, the trigger pull results in a click. Place the weapon on safe, load a magazine, but do not chamber a round. Holster the weapon. Munsen opened his eyes and slid the holster back into his luggage by feel before climbing back into the bunk with heavy eyes and a renewed mission. On Libretto, he’d have to get proof something was wrong. If he was wrong, well, this second career had been fun. Seconds chances were rarely fun. While there was much he could not change on Earth, he could still make a difference on the Outer Rim.

  The war certainly wouldn’t be decided, but the lines would be a little clearer. There might actually be an indication of whom he could trust. As a lifelong intelligence officer in now two lifetimes, trust was the one commodity he couldn’t spare to just anyone. And this time, where he placed his trust would be equally important.

  * * * * *

  Forty-Nine

  Fleet Captain Donovan Garrett wondered what this particular generation would have thought of something like the Challenger explosion or the attacks of September 11th. The loss of Eden appeared to hit all of the younger generations, those whose parents had explored the Outer Rim for the first time, in the gut. In all cases, the identification of the day’s events was indelibly written on each person’s memory at the time they’d heard the news. Garrett had been sitting in the Combat Information Center going over the latest movement reports of the Ticonderoga’s battle group when the flash message arrived. The coffee he’d poured went cold as they searched for more information. He’d poured out the coffee next to a sobbing lieutenant who’d lost his entire family on Eden. He’d tried to console the young man, but resorted to simply wrapping his arms around the emotional young officer. Eventually, the young man regained a sense of control and bearing, and walked away. Garrett hadn’t known his name and did not attempt to figure it out. For that moment, it was more important to be a human being than a military officer; a concept far beyond the grasp of so many officers in this day and age, to be sure. Whatever the reasoning, officers were tending to be more elitist and distant than Garrett was comfortable being. Had he been on any other vessel but the Ticonderoga under Admiral Nather’s watchful eye, he’d have been drummed out of the service instead of promoted to Commander Air Group. Actually knowing and caring about those people assigned to his command was regarded as a sign of weakness. Many commanders prided themselves on only knowing a scant few of their troops so as to not feel loss or remorse. There was simply no place in the Fleet for an officer who thought more about those under his command than himself.

  For the third night in a row since the fall of Eden, Garrett could not sleep. He wandered the dimly lit passageways of the Ticonderoga, convinced the current effort to fight the Greys was incoherent and unable to succeed. There had to be a better answer than resorting to Cold War doctrine. The Greys were stringently replicating every forecasted Russian attack on the Fulda Gap, only they were attacking the planets of the Outer Rim instead of West Germany. How in the hell did they learn to fight like this? Echeloned forces, one unit following immediately behind another, devoted to simply punching through defenses using their numbers and mass, without any effort to gain or retain the initiative on a battlefield. Slam against the enemy in the same spot, or hold a key sector of defensive terrain until death. Neither strategy made sense, and the current efforts of the Terran Defense Force and the Fleet were employed in an almost Napoleonic array of forces.

  Whatever the enemy can do, we can do better. Garrett pushed the thought aside and checked the time for a fifteenth time. Just past 0300. Giving up on the prospect of sleep, Garrett made his way forward to the Officer’s Informal Wardroom and expected to find no one there. All told there were five officers huddled over their individual cups of coffee. A couple of engineers in their dirty shirtsleeves sat in one corner, regarding him with raised eyebrows before resuming a muted discussion on whether tri-lithium could exist in real life. Two pilots just getting ready to go on Alert Fifteen status waved to him before gathering their trays and making their way to the Flight Deck.

  Sitting alone, staring into her own tall steaming cup of coffee, sat Mairin Shields. They’d spoken dozens of times over the radio, but never in person. Studying her file to see what made her different from the other TDF officers had given Garrett the recognition he needed. Her short brown hair touched the shoulders of her coveralls. Garrett looked at her face and saw she was as tired as he was. He poured a tall mug of coffee, added two sugars and a slosh of cream, and made his way to her table.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  She looked up and then started to stand. “Sir?”

  “Sit down, Mairin. I thought we should finally meet. I’m Captain Garrett, the Commander Air Group. You know me as Thunder Six.” Garrett slid onto the metal bench opposite her and sat down his coffee mug. “You want to tell me what you’re sitting here at 0300 thinking about so hard?”

  “Can’t sleep.” She looked down at her coffee and then back up to him. “I suppose I could ask you the same thing.”

  She didn’t say sir, or Captain, Garrett realized and hid a smile behind a long sip of coffee. Officers that sandwiched their conversations with “sir” or “ma’am” had no place in Garrett’s world. First names cut through the bullshit behind so much of military tradition and created respect, as well as opening up younger officers for mentoring while letting them feel as if they were being heard as a person and not a faceless soldier padding a commander’s rolls. “You could ask me the same thing, and you’d probably assume that I was thinking about Eden.”

  “I probably would. Did you know anyone on Eden, sir?”

  Garrett nodded. “A few colonists I’d met years ago. They’d tell me not to grieve. They knew the risks of colonization.” He watched the young woman nod and look at her coffee again. “Want to talk about it?”

  Mairin looked up and Garrett saw the beginnings of tears. “I graduated from the Eden Academy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Garrett said.

  “Don’t be, sir.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “I shouldn’t cry for any of them. They made my life miserable.”

  Garrett chuckled, and when Mairin’s eyes flashed anger, he held up a hand. “Academies are supposed to be colleges or universities, but we know what they really are, right? High school in any form is the closest thing to Hell we can face in life, Mairin. Don’t think you were the only one who had a bad experience in that environment. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t learned a few things.”

  Mairin shook her head. “All of this is imprinted, sir.”

  Confirmation of his suspicions didn’t bring any satisfaction. “I could say the same thing, Mairin.”

  Her mouth opened, then closed, and then opened again. “You were at least part of the Fleet before you were imprinted though, right?”

  “I was. It’s standard procedure.”

  Mairin snorted. “I was imprinted immediately after graduation from the Eden Academy, sir.”

  “What?” Garrett gaped. Who would ever think of imprinting someone so young, without any military experience whatsoever? Imprinting was supposed to provide subject matter experts w
ith better skillsets! Not take young girls and make them maneuver commanders! “You’re joking, right?”

  “No, sir. I met a Colonel Munsen who inbriefed me and then administered the imprint that day. I went immediately to Libretto for something he called walkabout.”

  Walkabout was supposed to take place on Earth. Just what in the hell was going on here? “You had no combat experience before Wolc?”

  “No, sir. I’d been an imprint a little more than a month when we dropped on Wolc.”

  Holy shit. Garrett shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. Your situation is obviously not within the normal bounds of the program. All two hundred imprints were supposed to be carefully considered based on experience. Having a young woman straight from high school take on the commission of a captain and lead combat operations is damned irregular. I’d like to talk to this Colonel Munsen—”

  “You and me both.” Mairin chuckled.

  “I’d like to find out why you’re here at all.”

  Mairin looked up at him. “Am I not doing what’s expected of me?”

  Garrett looked at her for moment before answering. Those wide blue eyes had already seen entirely too much. “No, you’re not doing what’s expected of you at all. You’re exceeding it by leaps and bounds.”

  “I don’t get that feeling from my superior officers, sir.”

  “They’re idiots,” he laughed. “That stays between us, understand?”

  Mairin grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  “No, you’re doing very well. Don’t let Coffey get to you. I doubt that guy could lead his regiment to a bake sale.”

  Mairin nodded. “The regimental sergeant major is an imprint.”

  “Really?” Garrett sipped from his mug. “I suppose that makes sense, except that he’s too quiet.”

  “I think beat down is more the description, sir,” Mairin said.

  His eyebrows rose in reply, but the more he thought about her response, the more it made sense. Coffey is a yes man. He wants to surround himself with yes men. The man already drummed every Styrahi warrior from his regiment and publicly decried the whole imprint concept, why wouldn’t his sergeant major stay quiet? Did Coffey even know, suspect, or realize that his own Sergeant Major was an imprint? “Does Coffey know his sergeant major is an imprint?”