Of Bravery and Bluster

by Scott Kelemen

  The computer agreed. Flashing one last warning beep, the hiss of escaping gas filled the area behind the shuttle.

  In the background, she heard the dull steps of Glen walking on the shuttle top. She even heard the careful thump as he jumped from one to the next, shifting his viewpoint. “What do you think? Think your friends will trade your life for a shuttle? Think they’ll let me fly away with you rather than let me kill you? Of course, she doesn’t know you’ll only live long enough for scientists to vivisect you trying to figure out how a creature like you could even exist! But if you are lucky, I’ll keep my word and not kill your friends when they show up to save you.”

  She heard it all, but dismissed it. He was trying to distract her, to play her. She didn’t let him. She had a plan, and that was all that mattered. He wasn’t going to win. Johanna snatched up a voltmeter from a discarded tool bag and tossed it a dozen steps to one side, raising a clatter against the deck that tracked in the opposite direction.

  Glen laughed. “Nice try! Now I know where you aren’t!” An old trick, one he wasn’t going to fall for. In fact, from where the noise had been, she had to have thrown it from right about there!

  The spark flashed, and the hydrogen gas in the air around it detonated right in his field of vision. Emergency shut-offs prevented the shuttle’s whole tank from exploding, but the resultant flare staggered Glen and forced his eyes to close in pain.

  Johanna had used her twenty seconds well. Whisper quiet, she dashed back to within only a few meters of Louisa. When the explosion rocked the bay, she bolted out from behind cover and jumped at the corner where the lieutenant had dropped the pistol.

  Glen’s vision returned just as he heard the impact of her desperate dive. He saw her sliding head-first into the corner and brought his rifle around in wide-eyed haste. ‘She actually made a run for it!’ Worse, her hand closed around the hilt of the pistol even as he came down on aim. Lips curling into a snarl, Glen squeezed the trigger and fired a RVN right at her center of mass, intending on stunning her with the impact.

  Johanna once again felt the focus of his weapon, seeing everything in that same crystal sharp trance. Just from the way he held his rifle, seeing it as if from a hundred different angles, she knew exactly where the shot would come. She couldn’t avoid it, not laying prone like this. But she managed to push her foot into the path of the vicious projectile. It hammered into her sole, breaking the bone there in at least two places even with the protection of her uniform’s shoe.

  Hissing in pain, she fired back from behind the shield of her foot. It was a snap shot from a weapon not meant for accuracy over that range. Instead, she aimed deliberately low, right at the shuttle’s roof that he was walking on. The shuttle was far tougher than the walkway, but the force lurched the craft enough to knock Sanders off his perch. Seeing him fall, she bit her lip against the pain and barrel-rolled out of the immediate line of fire.

  Glen took the fall badly. He banged off the edge of the shuttle, cracking ribs and feeling something inside get mashed unpleasantly. Spilling off the side, he sucked in a gasp as he plummeted almost three full meters before crashing into the deck. He tried to soften the fall, but still ended up striking his hand badly enough to break it on the durasteel plates.

  It took him perilous seconds to regain his breath. When he managed to suck in a full lungful, his chest went immediately cold. ‘That freak has a weapon loaded with lethal rounds!’ Snarling against his own pain, it was his turn to muscle through the agony and roll to his stomach, scanning quickly under the bulky shuttles, trying to see through the shadows to pick out Johanna moving among them.

  That wasn’t where she was. Johanna had moved fast, pulling herself up onto a maintenance ladder. Only two of her limbs could hold her weight, and each rung was a trial in a full gravity. But this is what she had trained herself for. This was exactly why she had put her light-gravity heritage through hour after hour of physical training and punishment. Gritting her teeth, she didn’t make a sound as she finally rolled onto the roof of the shuttle and lay out flat, gasping for relief. She tucked her arm in against her chest and tried to ease the pressure on her broken foot.

  Her clear mind was gone, fogged over with pain. She closed her eyes and mouth, trying to push back the onslaught of her senses. Her center was lost, and she needed time to regain it, or she’d be blinded by the torrent of smeared colors, fire-singed smells and the acrid tang of ozone.

  Out of that fog, she heard footsteps. Running footsteps. There was no way Sanders would be so careless!

  “What is going on here?”

  “Did something explode in here?”

  Pff-Hsss-THWACK! Pff-Hsss-THWACK! Pff-Hsss-THWACK! Pff-Hsss-THWACK!

  The baffled questions turned to a sputter of curses and tumbling bodies as Sanders gunned down two station crew who had appeared at the entrance. Trading accuracy for volume, he sent a small hail of RVN rounds crashing into them, pummeling them into unconsciousness before they even knew what was happening.

  Anger surged inside Johanna and gave her strength. She rolled to her stomach and crawled to the edge of the shuttle. She could barely see the door, but thought she could pick out the blue-on-blue uniforms choking the entrance way. From this far off, there was no way to tell if they were still alive, any more than she had been able to tell with Louisa. She hadn’t even seen where he had fired from!

  Frustration joined her anger, which was already layered over fear, worry for Louisa and her own jagged pain. Once again, the overwhelming storm hammered at her, and her mind launched into a whole different state with an instinctive reach for survival.

  The edges of her vision sharpened. The lights in the hangar deck swelled higher, chasing away shadows. Like echoes bouncing back to a sonar, Johanna caught the shadows of Sanders reflected in every metal surface and zeroed in on where he huddled behind a utility storage bin pushed up against a support column.

  She had him.

  She didn’t want to do this.

  “Glen, please. Think about this! We don’t have to -”

  Glen’s lips twisted into a fierce grin. She’d given herself away! He snapped up, snarling away the pain as he used his broken hand to guide the rifle up toward her –

  CRAAAAAACCCK-HSSSS-THWACKKK-BAAANNNG!

  Her shot tore the air with blistering, supersonic speed. It ended with the meaty crunch as it punched through his sternum and blew right back out his spine. Punching through a human body took away almost none of its kinetic force, and the CRO round thundered into the shuttle craft behind him. The resultant bang echoed back and forth across the hangar several times before it faded, as if Glen’s soul itself was determined to make one last grand howl before vanishing from the universe forever.

  Glen dropped. The rifle skittered away from him.

  Johanna stayed there, watching. Not believing it was over. Not for a long time. Not until the pain in her entire being refused to keep her upright even that much. An exhaustion unlike anything she had ever felt washed over her as she collapsed, the lights of the hangar fading back to almost nothing.

  ***

  “We did it!”

  A cheer went up around the engineering space as the tertiary thruster control system sputtered to life and started to feed power down into the lower relays that would send the energy into the actual drive assemblies. All around them, the main system and two other back-up fail-safes lay in pieces, ripped apart to give this one a chance at life.

  Garam raised his arms in triumph. Fortunately, he had not been left alone for long. More senior engineers had appeared to lead the way. The ramshackle team were not the experts on this gear. Many of them had been killed by the rogue officer who Makaio had killed before being led off to recover in private.

  Garam wasn’t certain if he needed time himself. He’d had a hand in killing the shooter. But there hadn’t been time. Not when he knew he could help.

  And help he had. That was the best revenge of all against the lunatic who had seemingly been t
rying to kill them all for reasons that no-one could understand. Jona had been a screw-up. Stories about him among the other engineers had floated about as they worked feverishly to undo the damage. But he had never been a traitor.

  Garam stood and hugged the nearest of the engineers. Cheering rang up and down the walkways, and he was certain it was going on throughout the station by now. Back slaps and high fives were traded all around.

  It wasn’t until minutes later that they remembered the bodies still strewn about, not all of them removed yet with the panicked work going on around them.

  The celebration faded into a somber silence.

  Chapter 30

  Johanna answered her summons two minutes ahead of the designated time for her debrief following the Final Exercise. For a junior officer, that was considered late. Johanna decided her excuse was acceptable, walking slowly and treating her recently nanite-regenerated foot bones with tender respect.

  Her sharp senses quickly informed her that Dianne was inside the briefing room ahead of her. Although the assessor’s office door was closed, the sound-proofing was not perfect and never meant to account for hearing acuity like Johanna’s. Although faint, the ripples of their peaceful conversation were calm and soothing, clearly meant as praise. The senior assessor was describing what she called natural leadership tendencies in the crisis, as well as a clear tendency toward bravery in the final stages, only confirmed in the real emergency that followed.

  Johanna smiled lightly, happy for her friend. The smile couldn’t quite chase away the grey shadow that cloaked her since ending Sanders’ life; that choice had distracted her for over two days now.

  The receptionist noticed her arrival, and waved her forward to take the waiting seat. The aide didn’t bother to ask her name, fully aware as to the order of the parade of debriefs. Not surprising, considering how well scripted and well prepared the training exercise had been. Every element of it had been staggeringly well orchestrated.

  That is, right up until the massive sabotage carried out by a rogue terrorist. Johanna had remembered more than once, ‘Their best guess is he was a friend of the Trinitians who had lost their careers during the Trip-E, and this was his chance to take a little revenge. Everyone knows it doesn’t totally fit, but nothing else does.’ As strange and dark as those thoughts were, revisiting them was a welcome distraction from Glen Sanders’ face.

  That distraction was itself interrupted as the door beside her opened. She stood reflexively, biting her lip softly as she came face to face with Dianne. It was the first time she had seen any of her friends since the incident. They’d tried, but Johanna feared what they were going to say. ‘Anger at my choices during the exercise. Sympathy for what happened with Sanders. I don’t need either. I need to find my center again. But it just won’t come. What is wrong with me?’

  None of that tainted her face as she stood still, anticipating Dianne’s first chance to say something. Anything.

  Dianne had been glowing ear to ear as she exited on the wings of her good evaluation. Her smile didn’t completely fade at the sight of Johanna, but certainly fell. She drifted to a stop, the normally brash young woman briefly at a loss for words. Then, trapped between disbelief at the stories she had heard and what might be annoyance at her friend, she asked, “Why, Jo? What were you doing? I don’t understand anything that’s happened with you! I don’t want to believe what Makaio is saying, but…” She faded off, shrugging her shoulders helplessly.

  The receptionist spoke firmly over them, “Miz Summer, go in please. We have many others to cycle through. No delays. Captain Tarran is waiting.”

  The interruption was more a relief than an irritation.

  Dianne was not blind to her relief. Sympathy and irritation both flickered across her face, wanting to support her friend. “Trust us, Jo. Trust us enough to come talk to us after. Please.” She touched Johanna’s arm in mute support, the best she could manage right then. Not waiting to be chased out by the receptionist, she walked for the door.

  Johanna fought for calm again, clawing down her surging emotions. Her Lauran tutors had taught her well, but it had never been this hard before. ‘Is Dianne right? Am I the one who isn’t letting them accept what I did?’

  The receptionist reiterated in a sharper tone. Not quite a reprimand, but verging on impatience. “Go in, young lady. Don’t keep the captain waiting.”

  Johanna whispered, “Yes, Senior Chief.” It had not quite been an order, since Senior Chiefs couldn’t order around the non-commissioned midshipmen of the fleet. But disobeying a Senior Chief’s strident direction carried its own sort of risk. Generally, it was the job of all chiefs to keep middies out of trouble, and you ignored them at your peril. She took hold of herself and approached the door.

  The interior office was professional, but was decorated tastefully with modern art mostly from Dacosi Prime’s favored artists. It was a personal sort of touch Navy officers could only indulge in when posted to stationary, non-combat units. Johanna was used to it, since the senior Academy officers all shared the same privilege. The familiarity didn’t make her walk across the carpet to stand in front of the captain’s desk any more comfortable.

  Captain Mary Tarran was a well-groomed woman in her late fifties, though her hair had yet to make any more than a token transition from its natural brown into the grey of age. She had not commanded in space for almost two decades, and those around her knew she had little to no hope of ever seeing flag rank. Her stalled career was more a choice, wishing to remain close to her family rather than galivanting about the stars any longer. She was an able administrator, if her organization of the Final Test had been any indication, and Johanna could see sharp intelligence and insight in her green eyes. She rose out of respect she gave to all officers who had passed through the Final Test, but her careful consideration of Johanna was laced with a sort of caution.

  Johanna was absolutely positive as to why. She came to a stop in front of the captain’s desk and snapped off a salute. Navy tradition generally didn’t require such formality, but this felt like the right moment to show her respect. “Ma’am.”

  Captain Tarran couldn’t return the salute without her hat, but answered with a deliberate nod of ritual respect. “Take a seat, Miz Summer. Off cap.” Tarran waited until her order was followed, then decided on an innocuous place to begin. “An unusual name for a Lauran, isn’t it?”

  Unsure of what to say, Johanna merely nodded, softly biting the corner of her lower lip in her nervous tell which she had never been able to eliminate.

  Uncertain about how to take the passive reply, Tarran paused to take in the unusual midshipman. Considering the stress Johanna had suffered, being subdued or even withdrawn was understandable enough. Having taken the junior officer’s measure, Tarran began again along a more direct path. “By now you know that most of the events that occurred on the auxiliary transport station two nights ago were part of a final evaluation sequence of events meant to test the mettle of your class when under extreme duress. The test was delayed until long after your departure from the Academy to safeguard its secrecy and maintain the element of surprise.”

  “Yes ma’am. I found the intricacy of it impressive.”

  “Indeed.” Captain Tarran’s eyebrow quirked in humor at the careful choice of words. “Do you know the Academy supervisors considered cancelling it following the rather chaotic events that occurred during your Trip-E? Some argued that those events were more than enough to prove what the Final Test is meant to show.”

  Johanna was grateful for the small little puzzle to take her mind off things. “It was too irregular, wasn’t it? Some nearly died, while others were not even interrupted. Some of the missions went exactly as planned.”

  Captain Tarran was impressed. “Well said. The Trip-E was never meant to put you in mortal danger. Though some were put in danger, the results were not even across the board, nor measured. It couldn’t guarantee every graduate was ready for the fleet.”

  “I th
ink I understand, Ma’am.”

  Growing thoughtful, Tarran mused, “When they first approached me to use one of the orbital stations under my purview, it was both an honor and not a little daunting. You understand of course that there was real risk? We tried to make it as safe as possible, but it is inherently part of the final evaluation to involve some minor potential for real harm.”

  “Aye, Ma’am. The debrief made that very clear. They mentioned no one was seriously hurt this time.”

  “This time,” The captain confirmed softly. “I can’t mention previous results to prove my point. Very few are given access to those files, even after you have passed through the challenge. I trust the direction is also clear that you are never to speak of the final evaluation with any civilian or Academy cadet, and that even discussion with other officers who did not partake in your specific test is discouraged?”

  “Very clear, Ma’am.”

  “Good. The penalties are purposefully immediate and severe for breaking that rule. That has allowed us to preserve the mystique surrounding the test and lets us properly surprise each new generation of junior officers.”

  “Completely understood.”

  Tarran gave a final nod of acknowledgement. “Good. Then, we can proceed to your individual assessment.” She permitted herself a wry, constrained smile. “You have thrown the assessors into an unusual level of confusion, young lady. We have no real way to predict any midshipman’s reactions. That’s why we make it so real. We need to see your honest reaction to a disaster scenario. We want you to face personal danger, hazard to your friends, and injury to strangers. Some of the best and brightest fail that test, while others who have never stepped forward before show bravery and initiative.” She added, “That you faced this in a whole different way during the attempt on your life in the shuttle bay is not lost on us. However much we try and simulate reality, that was reality, and you reflected great credit on yourself in stopping Sanders from hurting anyone else.” Her wry smile grew wider. “That doesn’t mean we don’t want to get to the bottom of the rest of your responses.”