“That would be suitable,” Commander Watson said. Her voice sounded warmer than he’d expected, for an officer who was being effectively demoted. “There is less for me to do in engineering, now the matrix is properly functional.”
John felt another twinge of embarrassment at her ready acceptance. He cursed her patron under his breath, knowing it would probably cause problems when Warspite returned to Earth. Commander Watson would probably be quite happy remaining as a boffin, tinkering with her designs and offering suggestions to the engineers, while she wouldn't have to handle the XO’s duties. And yet, he’d - technically - relieved an officer without due cause. There would an inquest when he returned home.
Of course there will be, he thought. Admiral bloody Soskice will make damn sure of it.
“You are free to remain in your quarters, of course,” he added. He’d have to write something in the log, preferably an explanation that didn’t implicate the First Space Lord. Admiral Soskice was going to ask a number of hard questions and the First Space Lord would have more leeway if he wasn't getting the blame. “And thank you.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Commander Watson said.
John watched her go, then called Richards and told him that he would be officially assuming the role of XO. If there were any problems, he added, they could be passed to him.
“Yes, sir,” Richards said. “But I don’t think there will be any I can't handle.”
“Good,” John said.
He rose and walked to the bridge. “Are we ready to depart?”
“Aye, sir,” Armstrong said. “The course is laid in.”
“Then take us out, Mr. Armstrong,” John ordered. He sat down in his chair and nodded to Richards, who had already taken the XO’s console. “And be ready to launch a pair of probes as soon as we cross the tramline.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Dear Penny,” Percy said. “It has been an interesting voyage.”
He paused the recorder while he considered what to say next. Penny wouldn't be interested in any of the finer details of training with his men. She’d once told him that her sole interest in the Royal Marines centred around the cheesecake calendar they produced each year for charity. Percy had refused to take part in the event ever since.
“We did some relief and recovery work on Cromwell,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “It was very like the work I did at home, only easier. The colonists were more used to taking care of themselves than British citizens. Now, we’re starting a search for missing women and children. The odds aren't good.”
Better not say anything more, he thought, as he paused the recorder again. Penny was a reporter, after all. She might take what he told her and use it to build a story, which would be embarrassing for the Royal Marines. Just ... move on to the next step.
“I hope you’re well and enjoying your job,” he concluded. “I’ll hope to see you for Christmas, but there are no guarantees of anything out here.”
He jumped as he heard the sound of clapping behind him. “Bravo,” Peerce said, as Percy spun around. “A letter worthy of Charles Dickens himself.”
“I could think of something else worthy of Dickens,” Percy snarled. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough,” Peerce said. He looked past Percy and out through the porthole, watching the unmoving stars. “It’s never easy to write a letter home, is it?”
“No,” Percy said. “What should I say? Dear Family, today was another boring day of training, exercises and drills. I had my arse kicked around the boxing ring three times in quick succession, then the boss beasted me for not turning in my paperwork on time?”
“I don't think that would go down well,” the Sergeant agreed, dryly. “Still, I didn't come to catch you committing the dreaded sin of letter-writing. Lieutenant Hadfield wants to see you in twenty minutes.”
Percy hesitated, trying to think if he’d done anything that would warrant a lecture from the commanding officer. But he couldn't think of anything. There hadn't been much time to do anything, beyond a handful of drills; they’d been tired after the deployment on Cromwell and the Lieutenant had decided to give the men some downtime. He certainly hadn't screwed up on Cromwell itself or he would have heard about it by now.
“I’m on my way, Sergeant,” he said.
He wanted to ask if the Sergeant knew why he’d been summoned, but somehow he managed to hold his tongue. Instead, he saved the message, then moved it to the ship’s outgoing message buffer. The messages would be relayed to Boston, whereupon they would be passed to the next British or American ship to be heading home. Eventually, probably in several months, Penny and Canella would get their letters.
The thought cost him a pang. They’d already been separated for two months - and he wasn't foolish enough to believe it would be less than another two months, at least, before he returned to Earth. Would Canella remain faithful or would she find someone else? They weren't married, they didn't even have a close relationship ... and yet the thought of her leaving him hurt. Maybe it was just because of the shortage of women onboard ship, he told himself, as he stood. Warspite’s crew was largely male and the handful of females were courted by almost all of the men.
But it wasn't something he wanted to talk about, not to the Sergeant. It was strange; normally, a corporal was not an officer, nor expected to act the part. But on Warspite, he had one peer - Corporal Thomas Hastings - and one superior ... and Peerce, who seemed to move between being his superior and subordinate, depending on the situation. Percy had been trained to be adaptable, but he honestly couldn't understand why the system was so lax. But then, Warspite had been lucky to get any Royal Marines.
He followed Peerce back to Marine Country, where a pair of Marines stood guard outside the hatch. They were from 1 Section, Percy knew, and must have done something stupid to be punished with guard duty. Warspite simply didn't have enough Marines to spare any of them for ceremonial duty. He returned their nods, then stepped through the hatch and into the compartment. Peerce paused long enough to chat briefly with the guards, then followed Percy. The hatch slammed shut with a loud bang.
“Percy,” Lieutenant Hadfield called, from his office. “Come in here, if you please.”
I wasn't aware I had a choice, Percy thought, coldly. Corporal Thomas Hastings was already there, sitting in a field-issue chair and looking disgustingly sure of himself. A mug of coffee rested on the table in front of him, while two more waited beside the coffee machine. Percy found himself relaxing, slightly, as Hadfield motioned to the dispenser. The CO wouldn't be offering coffee if he was in a bad mood, or intended to beast someone from one end of the ship to the other.
“So far, our scans of the system have turned up nothing,” Hadfield said, once Percy had poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down. Peerce stood behind him, leaning against the hatch. “I can't say I’m surprised.”
Percy nodded. Troyon was practically useless, at least for human settlement. There were no planets and only a handful of asteroids, floating near the local star. The only thing that held any interest was the presence of three tramlines, one leading to an unknown destination. It was unlikely it led anywhere interesting, Percy knew, but he couldn't help feeling a flicker of excitement when he considered the possibilities. Perhaps he should have gone into the Survey Service after all.
But you always wanted to defend, rather than just see what lay over the next hill, he reminded himself. And the Royal Marines made a man of you.
“We need to consider possibilities for searching Spire,” Hadfield continued. “There might well be a black settlement somewhere within the system.”
“Then they will be very well hidden,” Peerce said. “There may be only one planet, but ...”
He gave a surprisingly Gallic shrug. “Planets are big.”
Percy nodded. Spire I - the sole body of any size within the system - was roughly comparable to Mars. It wasn't as large as Earth, but on such a scale it hardly mattered. It would be impos
sible to search the entire world in anything resembling a reasonable length of time. An army consisting of every soldier and spacer in human service would have problems searching the entire world. Peerce was right. Planets were big.
“They will need some technological presence, if they are to survive there,” Hadfield pointed out. “Spire isn't a world where they can go back to nature.”
“True,” Hastings agreed. “But sir, they may have dug far below the surface. If they wanted to avoid attention from the Tadpoles, they’d need to establish their colony well underground.”
“I expect as much,” Hadfield said. “They may well have left signs on the ground for us to see, though.”
And we could be grasping at straws, Percy thought, grimly. There was no proof that Vesper had been anywhere near Spire, or that there was a hidden colony on the planet. But the odds of a hidden colony of survivalists were better than finding the ship, if something had happened to her in the depths of interstellar space. He honestly couldn't tell if his commander truly believed in a hidden colony or if he was just considering the most likely of a set of absurd possibilities.
He took a breath. “How long are we going to spend on the search, sir?”
“As long as the Captain says, Corporal,” Hadfield said. “We may turn up nothing. But at least we have to try.”
“Yes, sir,” Percy said.
Hadfield keyed a switch and a holographic image of the planet appeared in front of them. “I don't think there’s any point in deploying to the surface,” he said. “We’ll use drones and orbiting recon probes to sweep for any signs of intelligent life, then send scout teams down if necessary. There’s nothing else we can do with the manpower on hand.”
Percy nodded in agreement. There was no hope of searching the entire planet manually.
“If we don’t find anything, we may try tactics designed to draw a reaction,” Hadfield continued.
“Or there may be nothing there to find,” Hastings injected.
“There might well be nothing,” Hadfield said. “Do you have any counter-suggestions?”
Hastings considered it. “There’s a handful of asteroids in Troyon,” he said. “We could check them first. If I was building a survivalist colony, I’d want it in space, near the asteroids, so I could move if necessary.”
“It would be harder to hide,” Percy pointed out.
“But easier to move,” Hastings countered. “Let’s face it, Percy; if there's someone hiding on Spire and we find them, they’re dead. There’s nothing stopping us from dropping KEWs on their heads until they surrender or die. A handful of hits might even take out their life support, dooming them to an unpleasant death. That planet’s atmosphere isn't even as thick as pre-terraforming Mars.”
“Then it’s a strange place for a survivalist colony,” Percy said. “Why go there when they could have easily reached Cromwell? It was certainly listed on the pre-war starcharts and they could probably have landed without alerting the colonists.”
“Cromwell would also attract the Tadpoles,” Hastings said. “Even if the survivalists didn't know the Tadpoles liked to live underwater, they’d know a life-bearing world would attract attention. The Tadpoles would want it for themselves. They’d have to give up technology to avoid being killed ... and what sort of idiot would want to live like that?”
Percy nodded. Years ago, a planet had been claimed by a group of religious settlers who’d wanted to make a life without modern technology, which they considered the root of all evil. But when they’d landed, they’d discovered that settling a world without technology was almost impossible. The colony had run into trouble from the beginning and, after twenty years, there had been a revolution and the technology-hating elders had been overthrown. It hadn't happened fast enough, though, to save lives.
He shuddered. They didn't even have technology to make birthing easier, he thought. Too many of them died in childbirth, or caught something they couldn’t cure.
Hadfield tapped the table. “We are moving away from the issue at hand,” he said. “We need to plan our search.”
“Start with Troyon,” Hastings advised. “If we find nothing here, we can always double-back to Spire.”
***
“You wanted to see me?”
John looked up as Commander Watson entered his cabin. The younger women looked surprisingly relaxed for someone who had been effectively demoted, proving - if John had had any doubts - that she neither wanted nor asked for the rank. Something would have to be done about the shipyard crews, he told himself, as he motioned for her to take a seat in front of his desk. They had to be taught to listen to design crews, even ones who weren't in the formal chain of command.
It will be easier with the next ship, he thought. We worked most of the bugs out of this one.
“I did,” he confirmed. She still wasn't calling him ‘sir.’ From anyone else, he might have taken it as passive-aggressive resistance, but he had a feeling she simply didn’t understand why anyone would waste time on social niceties. “We need to discuss some matters.”
She rested her hands in her lap, then looked at him expectantly.
John found himself considering precisely what to say. She wasn't a crewwoman who had screwed up by the numbers and was in desperate need of a chewing out. Nor was she a villain, or truly responsible for the position she’d been placed in, when the ship left Earth. It wasn't easy to decide how best to approach the subject, not when he knew she wouldn't understand half of what he had to say. And chewing her out would have felt too much like bullying a helpless child.
“Commander,” he said, finally. “Would you allow someone inexperienced to work on your drive matrixes?”
“No,” Commander Watson said, in horror. “They wouldn't know what they were doing.”
“Of course not,” John agreed. Engineering had the longest training period in the Royal Navy, with good reason. The engineers had to understand what they were doing, rather than simply installing components they didn't have the slightest idea how to fix, if they went wrong. No one could be allowed to do anything by rote. “But you were placed in the same position when you were made my XO.”
He paused, wondering how she would react. He’d expected everything from angry denials to frank agreement. But all she did was tilt her head at him, owlishly, and wait for him to continue.
“An officer on the command track normally has at least ten years of experience in lower ranks before being promoted to Commander,” John continued. “You didn't have any experience in the lower ranks.”
He sighed, inwardly. The war had messed up the normal promotion schedules. John himself didn't have ten years of experience before being promoted to Captain, let alone Commander. Quite a few younger officers had stepped into dead men’s shoes as the war raged on, no doubt causing long-term problems for the future.
But Juliet Watson had spent most of her career in the NGW Program, either at Nelson Base or one of the hidden complexes dotted around the Solar System. She’d never served on a starship before Warspite, let alone issued orders outside her chosen field. There was no disputing the simple fact she was a genius, but she was also socially inept and unprepared to issue orders to the lower ranks. And she wasn't remotely ready to lead away teams or anything else that the average XO might be required to do.
“You weren't suited for the post,” John finished. “Do you understand it?”
“Yes,” Commander Watson said, slowly. “I think I do.”
Bet no one explained it to you like that before, John thought. It would have been hard for Philip to say that, and he’s normally no respecter of persons.
“You were a potential liability right from the start,” John said. “No, scratch that; you were a liability. It would have been awkward if I had been killed on Cromwell, leaving you in command of the ship. Matters would not have gone well. It would be like putting an unqualified midshipman in charge of recalibrating the drive matrix while the ship was under way.”
“I understa
nd,” Commander Watson said. “My position was technical, not command-ranked.”
“You will need to say that at the inquest,” John said. He had no doubt there would be an inquest, no matter what he said in his report. “In fact, you could explain why your XO duties took you away from your real duties.”
“I will,” Commander Watson said.
John concealed his amusement with an effort. Commander Watson was many things, but she wasn't a dissembler ... and she had no idea of the political firestorm surrounding her. But when she stood in front of the Board of Inquiry and explained, without any regard for the political niceties, just how awkward the whole issue had been, it might just end up buried before the explosion took out several careers.
“I will make a note in the log that you stepped down from your position voluntarily, as you no longer needed it,” John said. It would destroy any other officer in the command track, but Commander Watson wouldn't care. She had the experience - and proved expertise - to get people to listen to her and that was all that mattered. “You will need to counter-sign it, of course, but I dare say it shouldn't be a problem.”
[Ark Royal 04] - Warspite Page 24