"Shuttle Bay 2. Lieutenant Hargrove."
"Lieutenant, this is Weatherby. I need an unscheduled shuttle to Bahay Fleet HQ for immediate departure. Can you accommodate that?"
"Yes, Sir, we have one hot right now."
"Excellent, Lieutenant. Get the crew started on launch procedures. Their passengers are on the way. Senior Chief Chin is in charge."
"Yes, Sir."
"Weatherby out."
Weatherby released the intercom and turned back to Chin.
"Sounds like a hell of a party, Senior Chief. Have a good time."
"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir."
"Oh, thank you, Senior Chief."
Senior Captain Jan Childers, in a plain midnight-blue shipsuit, staggered along the road from downtown Kabisera to Bahay Fleet HQ. It was about 3:00 AM local time. The road passed through what could be a pretty rough area at night, the warehouses around the fleet base all closed up for the night, but groups of spacers were usually safe in numbers.
Jan Childers, though, was alone.
She was also completely sober.
"Hey, good lookin'. Where ya goin'?"
There were four of them, leaning against a warehouse to one side of the road. Jan sped up her staggering walk, looking straight ahead and ignoring them.
"Now don't be in such a hurry. Don't you want to have a little fun?"
"Yeah, no need to be snooty. We can party."
Two moved out to block her path, while the other two moved in behind her.
Jan channeled her anger, and the "Oh, my God, I'm going to be raped again" terror reflex welling up from the animal level of her brain, to her own use, feeding her purpose. She stopped and looked around kind of blankly, as if confused, while she centered herself and cleared her mind. She felt the adrenaline flood into her system, felt its effects on her senses, her thinking, her strength, her speed. She found the reactive part of her, the automatic part of her, and surrendered control to her reflexes and her training. When one of them reached out to grab her, she responded without thinking. She moved as in a dream, as if she watched, in slow motion, from outside herself.
No practice bout this. Her strikes were full force, the killing blows carried through.
When one of the four men reached out to grab Jan, she exploded in violence, punching, spinning, kicking, deflecting their moves with casual ease. It was over in seconds, all four of them on the ground, dead or dying. One man groaned, and she casually stomped his throat and dispassionately watched him choke on the debris of his own trachea.
She was standing in the eye of the destruction when headlights gleamed out of the darkness and pulled up to the scene.
"Captain, what are you doing out here at this time of night. It's not safe," Chin said as he climbed out of the cab of the small troop truck and walked up to her.
A virtual wrecking crew of senior noncoms followed him.
"Yeah, look what happened to these guys, Ma'am. Somebody really did a number on 'em," Fukuda said.
"Imagine that. Four big guys, mugged on a public road. It's definitely not safe out here, Ma'am," Montague said.
"Come on, Captain, we'll give you a lift to base. We were just heading in that direction," Chin said, despite having just driven up from the direction of the base.
Jan shook herself, looked around as if seeing the four bodies on the ground for the first time as the fugue passed.
"Perhaps that's best," she said.
She allowed herself to be led back to the truck, and took a hand up into the cab to sit between Chin in the driver's seat and Montague riding shotgun. Chin did a three point turn and headed back to Bahay Fleet HQ.
Adrenaline reaction hit as they were on the way back, and Jan began to shake. Montague took off his jacket and draped it around her shoulders. It was huge on her, and she pulled it close about her as they drove.
Bill had only been on Bahay a bit over a week when he got an emergency message on his phone at 4:00 AM. He silenced the strident alarm and found the following message.
"ADMIRAL CAMPBELL: Captain Childers bound for home RIGHT NOW. Arrival FIFTEEN MINUTES. – FUKUDA"
Bill got out of bed and put on a shipsuit. Thinking about it, he also zippered on a pair of Navy work boots. He went to the door and waited in the open doorway.
Lights came down the road. It was a small troop truck, taking it slow. Bill reached over to the light switch and flicked the outside lights on and off a couple times, at which the truck sped up and came up to stop at the curb. Four big non-coms piled out of the back and lined up on either side of the short walk in what he recognized with a shock was a protective cordon.
The driver got out and walked around the front of the truck through the headlight beams. Bill recognized Senior Chief Chin, Boadicea's senior non-com. Another non-com got out on the passenger's side, and he and Chin helped Jan down out of the truck.
She looked ghastly. She was wearing a huge jacket draped over her shoulders, over an unmarked shipsuit. She was ashen and weak-legged, and half stumbled as she stepped down. Chin and the other non-com, who was built like a mountain, caught her and half guided and half carried her up the walk.
Halfway up the short walk, Jan looked up and saw Bill standing in the doorway. She strode up to him, shrugging the jacket from her shoulders, and threw her arms around him. He hugged her close. She was shaking.
The big non-com picked up the jacket as Senior Chief Chin came up to Bill and saluted.
"Beggin' the Admiral's pardon, Sir. Uh, well, one of our spacers, Palermo – did you meet her, Sir? – well, she was down on the planet, partyin', ya know, and a bunch o' guys jumped her. Gang-raped her and beat her half to death. They found her naked in a ditch. They don't know whether she'll live. The Captain decided to do something about that, Sir, and, uh, well, we found her on the road to Kabisera, standing in the middle of the road with four guys on the ground. They was all dead, Sir. Apparently they tried the same thing on the Captain as they did on Palermo, and it didn't go well for 'em. We figured we'd bring her here, Sir. She's not injured, far's we know. That's just the after-action shakes, ya know?"
"Thanks, Senior Chief," Bill said, then, raising his voice, "Thanks to all of you. I'm proud of you all."
"Wasn't nothin', Admiral. Boadicea takes care of her own, Sir."
With that, Chin saluted and turned toward the truck. He held up two fingers and twirled them in the air, and the entire retinue headed back to the truck.
Bill turned toward the door and helped Jan inside.
Bill took her directly to the bed, still warm, and lay her on it fully dressed, then pulled the covers over her. He went to the kitchen and got a bottle of water, because dehydration would be an issue with flushing the adrenaline out of her system.
Bill was the only one who knew Jan's whole story. The only person she had ever told the full, unedited version. He could well imagine her reaction to the news that one of her spacers had been raped and beaten. The rage. The feeling of failure. Of having failed one of her own. He could well imagine her state of mind when she set out for the planet, to set right the wrong that had been committed, to the extent that she could.
When he got back to the bedroom, she was lying on her side, facing him. Her eyes were open. He sat on the floor next to the bed. She wiggled toward the edge, and he put his left arm around her.
"I killed them. I could feel it," Jan said.
"I know."
"Bastards. I wish I could do it again."
Bill held the water bottle at the edge of the bed. She sucked on the straw.
"That won't help Palermo," Bill said.
"I know."
"And if you're going to go all super-hero on me, we need to get you a cape."
Jan got the giggles at that, and the tension in her started to dissolve.
"Honestly, what am I going to do with you," Bill asked.
"Just hold me. Like always."
Bill took a personal day the next day. When Jan finally got up, she took a shower and dress
ed in her full uniform, with all her decorations.
"Big party today?" Bill asked.
"No telling what the fallout could be from last night. But it will probably go a bit better in uniform than not."
"Ah. Probably so."
He looked out the front window.
"Speak of the devil. I think he's here now."
A staff car had pulled up at the curb, and a captain got out of the rear door and headed up the walk.
"Yeah. Looks like," Jan said.
"Just remember who you are. And don't take any crap."
"Full steam ahead?"
"Absolutely. If you betray who you are, you'll regret it forever."
"And if I'm sacked?"
"Is that the Navy you want to be in?"
Jan looked into his eyes for a long moment, then gave him a quick peck and headed toward the door as the doorbell rang a second time.
"Captain Childers?"
"Yes, Captain."
"If you could come with me, please, Ma'am. Admiral Ludkin would like to speak with you."
Jan turned to Bill.
"I'll stop back through before heading for the ship," she said.
He gave her a thumbs up, and she left.
"I know what happened out there last night, Childers. No bullet wounds, no knife wounds, no wasted blows. Killing hits, one after the other, from somebody very good at Enshin. Some of those guys were dead before they had a chance to fall down. Only half a dozen people on Bahay could have done that, and you're the only woman among them. In a long career in the Navy, you see a lot of stupid shit, but this is about the stupidest shit I have ever seen," Admiral Serge Ludkin said.
Jan stood at ease in front of his desk and watched him dispassionately while he stalked back and forth as he vented. She had not been invited to sit. She had come down to the planet in full uniform, and she was wearing it now.
"The local police have been here. The mayor of Kabisera called. I'll probably hear about it from the governor of the capital province. They want to know why our spacers killed four of their local citizens. And I don't have anything good to tell them about that."
He stopped and looked at her.
"You seem awfully unconcerned about all this, Childers."
"I don't care about it at all, actually, Sir," Jan answered.
"Well, you better start! You could be brought up on charges. Court martialed. Dishonorably discharged."
"Do it! Do it right now. Any navy that has a problem with a five-foot-tall woman killing her attempted rapists isn't a navy I would willingly serve in."
"You went out there looking for them!" Ludkin charged.
"No, they went out there looking for me. Or somebody like me. Somebody like Palermo," Jan said.
"Look, don't get me wrong. Everybody's upset about what happened to Palermo –"
"Bullshit! If people were really upset, they would be making sure it didn't happen again. You would be making sure it didn't happen again, instead of lecturing me for actually doing something about it. You've never been raped and beaten, but I have, and it won't happen to my spacers, on my watch. Not with impunity. So don't use the passive voice to me. 'What happened to Palermo.' What a crock. 'What they did to Palermo,' you mean. They did that. And they won't do it again. No thanks to you. Sir."
"That's dangerously close to insubordination, Childers."
"No, it's well over the line, and I don't give a good goddamn. Two nights after Palermo was raped and beaten, was there extra security on that road? No. Were there shuttles for spacers to and from the nightlife in town? No. Were any extra measures taken at all? Did anything change? No and no. If this Navy won't protect its own, it doesn't deserve the niceties of military courtesy, so you can take Sir this and Ma'am that, wrap it up in your insubordination charges until it's all sharp corners, and shove it up your self-righteous, four-star ass, Admiral."
Ludkin stared at her goggle-eyed, and then the starch went out of him. He seemed to age ten years in mere seconds. He sat down heavily in his chair.
"Oh, for God's sake, sit down, Captain."
Jan sat in the guest chair in front of his desk. Ludkin ran a hand through his hair. His gaze drifted to her decorations, hung there for a few seconds, and then moved back to her face.
"What am I supposed to do with you, Captain? You're the best ship's captain in Bahay, and everybody knows it. I do my homework. I could wallpaper hyperspace from here to Sigurdsen and back with your positive evaluations. It'd be my career if I brought you up on charges for anything less than blowing up the goddamn planet, and it would be like cutting off my right arm if the tactical situation here ever fell into the pot even if I could make the charges stick. And that doesn't count what Jeannie Xi would do to me if I sacked her flag captain. But I can't have people murdering locals because they're pissed off."
"You mean, you can't have locals raping your spacers because the police won't do anything about it, don't you, Sir?"
"Well, yes, that too. Or that instead, I guess." He ran his hand through his hair again, while he stared blankly down at his desk. After several seconds, he looked up at her. "Have you got any ideas, Captain? Other than nightly repeats of your recent adventures, I mean? Because I'm at something of a loss here."
"Actually, I do, Sir. Set up a party location on base, in an empty warehouse somewhere. Make it look permanent. Declare the town off-limits. Lock the gates."
"The locals would have a fit. Do you have any idea how much money our spacers spend partying in town, Captain?"
"Indeed I do, Sir, and so do the locals. That's the point. The local business community will holler bloody murder. You simply tell them, without proper policing, it's too dangerous for our people to be out and about in their town. If they want the business, they need to ensure our people will be safe. And if the cops can't or won't do it, they can hire private security, or hire drivers to bring our people back home safe. Run shuttle buses all night or something. But no security, no business. It's their problem, not ours."
"By God, that might work. This end of the city will turn into a ghost town if I declare it off limits permanently. The local police will have to respond to the business community. The mayor will jump down their throats if they balk. Captain, that is one of the best ideas I've heard in a very long time."
Ludkin looked at her for a long time, but his eyes were unfocused, his mind elsewhere. Finally he stood up and reached across his desk. Jan stood up and shook his hand.
"I think, for the good of the service, anything said by either of us before I asked you for ideas was the mere exchange of pleasantries before getting down to business, Captain."
"Works for me, Sir."
"Good. And now I need to get to work on the plans for Club Bahay. Dismissed, Captain."
When Jan returned home, she was in good spirits.
"So what happened?" Bill asked.
"Ludkin threatened to court martial me, so I dared him to do it. I told him if I could get court-martialed for defending myself against rapists, he could take his precious Navy courtesies and shove them up his self-righteous, four-star ass."
"You said it that way?"
"No. Actually, I was very polite. I said, 'You can shove them up your self-righteous, four-star ass, Admiral.' He really pissed me off."
"Oh, my."
Bill, after all, had seen Jan angry.
"What did he do when you said that?"
"All the steam went out of him. He said he was aware of my reputation, and that I was the best ship's captain on Bahay and everybody knew it. That if he sacked me it would kill his career. Then he actually turned productive, and asked if I had any suggestions."
"Really. And you said?"
"I told him to open a club on base and put the town off limits."
"Oh, that would raise a howl."
"It sure would. But then they would fix the problem."
"Yeah, you're right. I think they would. What did Ludkin say?"
"He liked the idea."
"
So how did you leave it with him?"
"He said 'for the good of the service' we should probably both just consider everything said before he asked for suggestions a pleasant exchange of courtesies."
Bill laughed.
"You really turned him around."
"I think he was just frustrated. He saw a situation spiraling out of control and didn't see a way out. Now he does."
"That makes sense. And you stuck to your guns."
"Yup. With a little encouragement on the home front."
"I try."
"I know you do."
Jan looked at her watch.
"Honey, I've got to get back to the ship. It'll be longer next time."
"Promises, promises. You spacers are all the same."
Weatherby watched on the ready room display as the captain's shuttle docked in Boadicea's Shuttle Bay 1. He was nervous. What had happened on the planet? Senior Chief Chin's crowd had returned hours ago, but had had little to say other than "It was a great party" and "We saw the captain out partying, too. She's one hell of a partier." Given their idea of a party, he could only imagine.
But scuttlebutt was she had been called in by Admiral Ludkin. How had that gone?
Jan's aide met her at the bottom of the shuttle bay stairs and took her overnight bag to her quarters. She went down to her ready room to take command of her vessel back from her XO.
When Jan entered the ready room, she could tell Weatherby was about to vibrate out of his skin.
"Relax, Don. Everything's fine."
"Well, there was some scuttlebutt about this and that, Ma'am. Some of it was troubling. A meeting with Admiral Ludkin, for example."
"That's the reason for my trip, XO." Though Weatherby's rank was Captain, no one ever referred to him as "Captain" aboard ship. There could only be one captain on a CSF ship. "I met with Admiral Ludkin to discuss measures to increase the safety of our people when they were off base."
"That's all?"
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