Katja gripped the bunk frame even tighter.
“When you have as much time in rank as I do, we can discuss your attitude.”
“Don’t confuse your seniority with my authority.” Breeze turned and floated toward the door, indicating that the conversation was at an end. “I have to get back on watch.”
Then Katja was alone in the cabin.
She looked down at the dark coveralls plastered against her body, and felt a new wave of nausea wash over her. She swallowed hard, pushed into the heads, peeled her clothes off as quickly as she could, and climbed into the narrow wash stall. A hot sponge was ready, as always, and she scrubbed furiously.
A few moments later, she looked down at her pink skin. It was scrubbed raw. Tiny water droplets floated around her in a thin mist. A vision of her target’s body, exploding through the doorframe, filled her mind. Then the blood that splashed against her armored leg as she executed that man on the ground.
Her guts contracted in white pain as bile burned up her throat and shot across the wash stall. It splattered against the smooth surface and ricocheted around her head. She hunched down under her hands, pulling her legs up as high as she could. Her stomach heaved again, but she curled tightly into a ball and controlled herself, taking deep, gasping breaths.
She floated in her tight ball for a while, resting. She might have cried, but not consciously. When she uncurled, she saw that the wash stall was filled with puke, and she sighed as she reached for the vacuum. Designed to scoop up any stray water droplets, it worked just as well for bodily fluids.
Taking some deep, calming breaths, she grabbed a fresh sponge and quickly patted herself down again. She toweled off and grabbed a new set of clothes.
It took a few minutes to stow her armored suit so that it would be easily accessible for the next time. This routine activity was soothing and she took her time, putting on some music to help free her mind.
She hooked in at her desk, and randomly picked up the framed image she always carried with her. It had been taken just a few months ago, when the whole family had gathered in Santa Fe for Mom’s birthday. Her niece and nephew had probably already changed since then. Her two brothers and her sister looked as they always did, and Mom had looked especially pretty that day.
Father, of course, never changed. Even though he was smiling in the image, Katja could see his dark, penetrating stare. He always looked at her that way, with that same mixture of disgust and curiosity. And, she hoped, some hidden pride.
She wondered what Storm Banner Leader Emmes would think of his daughter’s first operational strike on foreign soil. She frowned, because she already knew. He would lecture her again, using one of the many examples from his long career in the Terran Army, on how important it was to think under pressure, and not react on instinct, as she was so prone to do.
She felt a tear well up and quickly brushed it away. No doubt he would side with Breeze, and tell Katja what a fuck-up she was.
She could see her own reflection in the framed glass and almost laughed for having thought that it was a war face. That wasn’t the expression of a warrior, she told herself. It was the face of a scared little girl who was in over her head.
She put the photo back and pressed her fists against her forehead, trying to stop the flood of tears that were welling up. Sergeant Chang’s expression had probably been his way of hiding the disgust he felt for his new officer—but at least he’d had the courtesy to say nothing. Katja could only imagine what the rest of her troopers thought.
And what did Lieutenant Commander Kane think? Their quick exchange had revealed little of him, other than that he too had more experience as a warrior than she did.
She wiped her eyes. Allowing herself to be weak was not the answer. She hadn’t endured so many years of training and hardship just to crumple after her first mission.
Her fists clenched, focusing her anger. Fuck them all.
7
Jack didn’t really understand why the line officers were always in such a foul mood. They outnumbered the other officers aboard Kristiansand, and had a complete monopoly on the chain of command. Fleet regulations required that everybody had to do what they said.
Nobody ever made movies about support officers—not that Jack blamed them. Supply and engineering really weren’t that sexy—and most of the Astral Force recruiting posters featured proud, noble line officers.
Jack just couldn’t figure out why they were so grouchy all the time.
As he lay in his rack in Club Sub, enjoying the last few moments of his rest period, he wondered if maybe they all just wished deep down that they were pilots. Everybody knew that pilot officer was the most difficult of the four trades to qualify for. Half the Astral Force were failed pilots, and the other half were wannabe-pilots.
At least that’s what he’d heard.
The soft hiss of the door caught his attention, and he heard one of his cabin mates step inside. Glancing at his chronometer, he realized that the morning watch was already over, and if he didn’t hurry he’d miss breakfast. Pushing aside his privacy panel, he slid off the rack and stepped down to the deck.
The air in the four-man cabin was stale—Club Sub, where the sublieutenants bunked down, wasn’t known for its high standard of cleanliness—and Jack wrinkled his nose slightly. The lights were still dim from the night routine, but as Jack reached for his washing kit, someone switched on the day lights, and he was blinded.
From behind his shielding hand, he shot a look at the other subbie who had just entered the cabin.
“A little warning, please,” he said.
“Oh, sorry, Jack,” came the sharp reply, “did I disturb your beauty sleep?” It was Ethan Kubrac.
“No, no. I was getting up anyway. It’s just easier on the eyes.”
Towel and wash kit in hand, Jack squinted in the harsh light. Ethan had seemed like a really nice guy at the start of the deployment, but like all line officers, he just seemed to get more pissy with each passing day.
Ethan sagged on his feet as he opened his locker, eyes heavy with dark bags. He didn’t even look at Jack, and started to go through the motions of slowly stripping off his gear. He looked terrible—Jack couldn’t remember seeing anyone look so bad since the mandatory summer of strike officer training he’d done after his first year at the College.
“Ethan, I gotta say—you look like crap.”
“Well, try standing a one-in-three watch routine for a few weeks, and see how you look, Jackass.” Ethan didn’t even look up as he spoke.
Jack frowned. He didn’t like that nickname. As he moved past Ethan and toward the heads and washplace, he recalled the expression he’d heard many times. Line officers eat their young. The few times he’d seen Ethan or Vijay being grilled on watch certainly backed up the expression.
As he turned on the water and climbed into the shower, Jack wondered if Ethan had come under particularly heavy fire from one of the senior line officers. As he showered and dressed, he thanked God that his aptitude tests hadn’t recommended him for the line. Suddenly, being ASW instead of a fighter pilot didn’t seem so bad.
* * *
The wardroom was a small but pleasant compartment forward in the ship. It was the social space for Kristiansand’s officers, with a conversational grouping of couches flanked by a dining table on one side and a bar on the other.
The bulkheads were dressed up with real wood paneling and both the bar and dining table sported a high polish, but there was only so much that could be done to disguise the fact that this was a spaceship compartment, when the deckhead was open to reveal cabling and piping. The furniture was comfortable but had that indefinable “government” look to it, and the carpet looked to be made from the same indestructible material that was used to coat stellar research probes.
Jack walked up to the galley window and peered in to where the cooks were serving up the last of breakfast. On the far bulkhead of the bright, clean space he could see the long window where the crew were
served their food, and just to his left was another window through which the chiefs and petty officers were served.
Considering Kristiansand had a total complement of eighty-five souls, it seemed overkill to have three separate social and eating areas. Four, when you considered that the captain always dined by herself. Apparently this practice was steeped in a thousand years of naval tradition, but Jack just didn’t see the sense of it.
He waved in a friendly way to catch the attention of one of the cooks.
“Morning, sir,” the man said. “Cutting it pretty close, even for you, this morning.”
Jack smiled. “I just want to make sure everyone’s properly fed before I chow down. You know how much I like to eat.”
“That I do. The usual, sir?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Within moments Jack was handed a plate piled high with bacon, sausage, eggs, and French toast dripping in syrup. His stomach grumbled as he took in the blissful aroma and made his way back to the dining table. Most of the officers had already finished, but he still had the supply officer for company.
Lieutenant Carmen Hathaway was one of the nicer people on board. Despite being a lot older than Jack—he guessed she was probably late thirties—they seemed to have a lot in common, particularly their amusement at the follies of line officers. She had spent most of her career in the Research division of Support, and had apparently been encouraged to cross-train into Logistics to help her career along.
Carmen didn’t strike Jack as a woman hell-bent on climbing the Astral ladder, but he admitted privately that maybe when he got to her age he might be hungry for a promotion, too.
She was a very slender woman, with small features and a pale complexion. Her graying, reddish-blonde hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail and her eyes were bright as she glanced up at the chronometer on the bulkhead.
“I think this is a new record, Jack. You know, I’m not going to keep my cooks on the line just to wait for you.”
He knew that her words were nothing more than gentle needling. It seemed to be how almost everyone on board spoke to him.
“I have it down to an exact science,” he protested. “They’ll never have to work an extra second on my behalf.”
“I’m more worried that, with the work day starting at 0800 and all, you might not have the chance to properly enjoy your morning feast.”
He shrugged. “I don’t have a patrol today. Stripes is going up at 1600, but otherwise we’re just on standby. Trust me, I’ve got plenty of time.”
The handset on the bulkhead buzzed, and as Carmen reached to answer it Jack tucked into his breakfast. He listened idly even as he shoveled food into his mouth.
“Wardroom, supply officer… And good morning to you.” Carmen’s eyes turned back to Jack. “Yes, as a matter of fact he’s right here.” A smile spread across her features. “We’ll be right there.”
She downed the last of her tea.
“I hope you don’t get spacesick with a stomach that full.”
He sighed, dropping his utensils to the plate.
“Are they turning off the gravity again?”
“No, but unless your Hawk has been fitted with AG, you’re in for quite a few hours of floating.”
“What do you mean? I don’t have a patrol today.”
“Well, we have a little mission for you.”
“What? What sort of mission?”
“We’ll just have to go to the bridge to find out.”
“When?” He took another mouthful.
“Now.” She glanced at his plate. “So you better inhale that pile, because I don’t want to see wastage.”
Jack took a gulp of water and shoveled the remainder of his eggs into his mouth. As he rose to clear his plate he took the sausages in hand, and chewed them down quickly as he followed Carmen into the passageway and forward.
He was still licking his fingers clean as they stepped through the door into Kristiansand’s command center.
The bridge never ceased to amaze him. A perfect sphere ten meters in diameter, its entire inner surface was an exact projection of the view of space outside the ship. The crew was stationed on a transparent platform that cut the sphere in half at the equator, their consoles small and dim so as not to impede the overall view. Stepping onto the bridge was like stepping into outer space, and if it was allowed Jack would have loved to spend hours just hanging out here.
He followed Carmen carefully through the dimly lit space, weaving past consoles dedicated to ASW, fighting the odd sensation of the abyss beneath him. The bridge team members were positioned at their consoles in a circular pattern around the central command chair, the personal 3-D displays casting a ghostly light on the intent faces of the operators.
Anti-vessel warfare, or AVW, and anti-attack warfare, AAW, each had their fiefdoms around the rest of the circle, and in the normal watch routine Kristiansand’s three warfare directors took the general duty of officer of the watch. The OOW usually sat in one of the two raised chairs at the center of the bridge, where he could tie the visual information on the sphere’s surface to the details being supplied by his three warfare teams.
Right now the OOW was Lieutenant Makatiani, who also happened to be the ASW director. He wasn’t seated in his chair, and although it was difficult to tell in the darkness, Jack thought he saw the commanding officer and the executive officer on the bridge, as well.
Jack forced himself to not stop at one of the ASW consoles to see how the tracking of his mystery ship was going. He stayed with Carmen as she greeted Makatiani, who greeted her with a nod, then stepped back to let her view the captain and XO.
Jack didn’t cross paths with Commander Kristine Avernell very often, but he knew to keep his mouth shut in her presence. She was a short, somewhat plump woman whom Jack had never seen lose her temper, but who carried herself with such an air of unshakeable authority that she never needed to. Her large eyes revealed a keen interest in everything around her, while her weathered face and graying brown hair hinted at years of experience in space.
He reckoned she was even older than his mom, and probably as strict. She was definitely an enigma, but as the master of this vessel a certain mystique seemed appropriate.
Lieutenant Sean Duncan, however, was no mystery at all. The XO was a charismatic figure fifteen years younger than the captain. Ethan had told Jack early in the deployment that Duncan was tipped to get his own ship soon, and was apparently one of the rising stars in the Fleet.
The captain spoke first.
“Morning, SupplyO. Morning, Mr. Mallory. We’ve had to change our plans a little. This mystery ship is proving tough to track, and I doubt we’d find her again if we broke off to rendezvous with Normandy, as scheduled.”
Jack was pleased that his mystery ship was such a high priority for Kristiansand, although he was a little disappointed that the captain didn’t give him credit for finding it.
“SupplyO,” Duncan said, “my understanding is that the medical supplies we’re delivering to Cerberus are fully contained in four standard, sealed crates.”
Carmen nodded. “That’s right. It’s all medicine, so it packs down well. I’d hoped to get some blankets and bandages from Normandy, but that’s extra to what was promised to the Cerberan government.”
“Four crates will fit into a single Hawk, won’t they?”
No one answered for a moment. Then Jack realized that the question had been directed at him. Four crates? He had no idea how big four crates were.
Carmen answered quickly. “Yes, they’ll fit. No problem.”
Avernell and Duncan exchanged a glance. The captain nodded.
“Mr. Mallory,” she said, “we’ll be going to launch stations in thirty minutes. You’ll fly the supply officer and the XO to Normandy. Lieutenant Hathaway will organize the loading of the humanitarian supplies, and the XO will report to EF Command via line-of-sight comms our tactical situation here. Officer of the watch…”
Makatiani responded to h
er quiet summons immediately. “Ma’am?”
“Inform Normandy that we are remaining on station, and that we are sending one of the Hawks to pick up the supplies and to deliver a full tactical report.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“XO, stress to Command that if we break our tracking of this contact, it will be lost. Either they have to put another ship on tracking duties, or have someone else deliver the supplies.” She revealed the glimmer of a smile. “I recommend someone else deliver the supplies.”
Duncan nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
Avernell cast her gaze over them all. “That’s all, thank you.”
Duncan immediately stepped down from his chair and headed for the door. Carmen gently brushed past Jack and headed after him. Jack stepped away so that he was no longer in the Captain’s gaze, and stopped.
What just happened? He had to fly to Normandy? In thirty minutes? For a long moment he stood in the darkness of the bridge, idly aware of the quiet activity around him.
“Jack.” A firm hand pressed down on his shoulder.
He looked up to see Makatiani next to him. The OOW led him to the nearest 3-D tactical display. It was zoomed out to show the majority of the inner Sirian solar system. He pointed at the display.
“We’re here, straddling the Cerberan orbit at Z-plus forty million. Normandy is here, inside the Argusan orbit at Z-plus two hundred million.”
Jack stared at the display. “That’s over a billion kilometers away!”
“And to make it there and back in time for us to make our scheduled delivery to Cerberus, you’ll be balls to the wall the entire way. So make sure your reserve tanks are full.”
“Yeah…” Jack was having real trouble focusing on what to do next—things were happening fast. “But, I still have to get the Hawk ready.”
“Then get your crew going—they know your bird is on standby right now.”
“But…”
Makatiani’s dark features hardened with impatience. “Jack, are you a qualified pilot or not?”
“Yes!”
“Then do your fucking job, and get your bird ready to fly. I don’t have time for this.” The OOW turned away abruptly.
Virtues of War Page 5