They dropped from High Fan, dropped another missile and started to accelerate. A few seconds later the active missile had hardly started to reorient when a new ship appeared on their plot.
“Probably firing a Blue,” Tin Tin said.
“Our missile is an anti-Blue mode,” Tam said. “The unknown ship has poor geometry to score a hit with a Blue. A missile would have been better.”
Their missile went to High Fan and belatedly, the second ship did as well. They sent their inactive missile a command, and it took off after the ship that had gone to High Fan.
They docked with a rock; not the same one as before.
Admiral Gull spoke on latch-frame. “Exercise complete, Commodore. You haven't detected Pixie; you have no idea where she is at all. She has launched another missile at you. Will you stipulate that you have to run?”
“I stipulate.”
“The usual suspects shall repair aboard Master's Game with all due expedition,” the admiral announced.
A few hours later Cindy and Captain Hall sat once again in Master's Game's conference room.
“I don't want anyone to speak,” Admiral Gull said as they had come in. I will be the sole person to speak until further notice.”
Cindy had to grin. Captain Drake promptly said, “Aye, aye, Admiral!”
“Colinda, not even you are immune from my wrath, do you understand?”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
Captain Hall snickered and Cindy practiced her poker face.
Commodore Heisenberg appeared a few moments later. “Would anyone care to tell me what that was you sent chasing us?”
“My XO suggested some improvements in seeker heads,” Captain Hall said quietly.
“I will say this one more time. I assure you, the next person to speak out of turn will be off someplace unpleasant for a very, very long time. Shut up,” Admiral Gull demanded.
Captain Drake ran a figurative zipper across her mouth.
“Did you ever hear of 'silent insubordination,' Captain?” the admiral asked.
Captain Drake nodded.
“Let it be a lesson to you.” He turned to the commodore. “You were beaten. Handily.”
“Aye, aye, Admiral.”
“I am downloading a file to you. Read it -- you too, Colinda. Contemplate just how bad you could have been beaten.”
Captain Drake spoke first. “You fired these on us in the workup, Captain Hall?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Poop!”
“You make this sound like a proven technique,” Commodore Heisenberg said. “I've never heard of the like.”
“IFF,” the admiral told her. “I could go on, but Irina you're on the bare edge of having lost my confidence. You either figure out what's going on here, or it will be Commodore Drake in charge of your squadron.”
It was something Cindy had never considered. From the expression on the commodore's face, it was not something she wanted to consider.
“I was beaten, fair and square. I understand that I saw things that none of you had seen before.”
“That's right,” Admiral Gull said. “Why would we want a crew like Pixie's to rest on their laurels?”
“To let the rest of us catch up,” Captain Drake said forthrightly. “I'm sorry, Admiral, but this is much my bailiwick as yours. Captain Hall, do you have any further surprises under your hat?”
“Hat, Captain?” Cindy said, lifting her chin.
Captain Drake laughed. “I understand you've learned about sim rankings. Tell me, Lieutenant, do you understand yours?”
“No, Captain,” Cindy told her. “Pixie explained it to me, but I don't understand why I'm ahead of everyone I've ever simmed against.”
Captain Drake turned to the admiral. “I'm crushed, sir! Positively crushed!”
Cindy realized she should learn Captain Drake's rank. At least that made sense: one hundred and five.
“I beat you once,” Cindy said, as if that explained things.
“Aye, you did, Lieutenant. Contemplate any names ahead of mine in the ratings. Ignore the ones with asterisks after their names: they're dead.”
David Zinder, a name she'd heard before, was number one. Dennis Booth -- with a start she realized she'd seen him at Grissom Station. Number three was Bethany Booth. After that were a lot of names she didn't recognize -- not until she saw Captain Drake's.
“I'm not a glory hound,” Cindy told them. “I've never sought to rise above my station.”
“With that, Lieutenant,” Admiral Gull told her, “I beg to differ. You've never sought to better your score except by bettering your score.”
He turned to the commodore. “Can you work with the universe you find yourself in?”
“I am intrigued by the bar fight example. Bar fights I know. I have to say, my desire to find myself hiding in the bushes appeals greatly to me.”
Admiral Gull turned to Captain Hall. “You can decide to leave on your first deployment today, tomorrow or the day after. No later. You will follow the cut plan you have proposed and I hereby accept. I can't tell you where you might find friends hiding in the bushes -- I can't even promise you that they will ever be there. When you egress, however, you won't be alone.”
Captain Hall didn't even look at Cindy. “We'll get underway as soon as we're done with the slop bucket.”
“It's there already,” the admiral told her. “By 2400?”
“Aye, aye, sir. I don't want you to get the wrong impression of Pixie's crew, but the sooner we get done with this, the sooner we get home.”
He nodded. “I understand, Captain. Good luck and God speed.”
Captain Drake spoke up. “I have a request from one of the commodore's Marines. I'd like to indulge him.”
“I was going to ask why he didn't ask me,” Commodore Heisenberg said, sounding sad. “I guess we know the reason for that, don't we?”
Not much later, Cindy and her captain were standing in a corridor, waiting for whatever surprise Captain Drake had for Cindy. “I never wanted any of this, Captain,” Cindy told her boss.
“Who among us does? When Dragon was hit, my first thought was survival; my second was taking it back to the bastards that had hurt us. It took days before I could deal with any of what really happened. When they were giving me gongs, I just stood there, not at all sure why it was me.”
A Marine appeared, saluting them. “Lieutenant Rhodes?”
Cindy nodded. Then her eyes lit on the name on his fatigues. She froze. Zodiac.
“Mongo Zodiac was my cousin. I heard how he died; I pulled every string in the Corps to get out here to talk to you.”
“You're talking,” Captain Hall said roughly.
“Z and I grew up together, from the very beginning. I could tell you such stories...”
Cindy saw tears in the corners of his eyes.
“We were hard-core Ozarks. On our first day of school, the school nurse had us both in and gave us our first pair of shoes... we'd never worn shoes before. We had three miles to walk home after school, and we had to pass a big pond. Z sat down and took his shoes off and tossed them into the pond. Those buggers hurt!”
He laughed, sadly. “If it wasn't Z getting me into trouble, it was me getting him into trouble. Those shoes? Mutual assured destruction!
“The next day our teacher ratted us out, and the school nurse ratted us out to Z's father. Now there is a hard man! None harder! He striped our butts! He made us climb into that dumb pond, find those damn shoes and then we had to shine them until he could see his face in them. Twice he whupped me -- I bitched to my old man, and got whupped again.
“Z was a strange duck -- he had no reason to be where he was. He was smarter than the rest of us put together. I was his best friend, but I could no more keep up with him than I could fly to the moon by flapping my arms.
“I went and joined the Marines after secondary; he laughed at me. 'I already did,' he told me. 'I'm off to college on a scholarship.'”
The man looke
d at Cindy. “They made him an officer because he could fly better than any bird there ever was. He could land an ammo carrier through any kind of crap they threw at him -- then he'd take off the wounded. Of course, we had no wars, and you sure don't get any medals for good scores on sims.
“When the war started, he was gone on the second day. 'Off to bigger and better things,' he told me. I'd have been there for him, but... that was First Rome and they didn't ship any but a handful of Marines for that. I tried to get aboard for Second Rome, but they wouldn't hear of assigning even one more Marine to a ship that, according to the Corps, was a ghost ship -- one who wasn't coming back.
“Now the stupid moron has gone and gotten himself killed, while me and the rest of his mates have to deal with the Marine crap each and every day.
“They told me he had your name on his lips when he died. I wanted to see you.”
It was like she'd been sitting on a mountain of lava. One second Cindy was listening; the next she had her arms around his shoulders, leaking huge numbers of tears.
Captain Hall broke it up. “Corporal, we have to go. We really have to go.”
“Can I come?”
Captain Hall sighed. “We already have a Marine -- and a Marine waiting list. You can ask -- but I doubt if you'll be quick enough.”
The corporal saluted Cindy. “Don't worry about the damp spots on my uniform, Lieutenant. No problem!”
A few minutes later Cindy and the captain were in the shuttle for Pixie.
Only as they left dock did Cindy realize that Zodiac's cousin was even taller than Zodiac had been. She might have gotten his chest wet with her tears; the ones that had been on his cheeks and had fallen in her hair had been his.
Chapter 13 -- Deployment
It was odd, Tam Farmer thought. Actual deployment was easier than the workup. She had no idea what had happened aboard the Master's Game that had caused them to repeat part of Pixie's approach to the system. She'd read the original reports, of course, and had admired the nice work Cindy had done on the approach. Tam wouldn't have figured that Master's Game would be in place first, either.
Cindy's second meeting aboard the flagship had left Tam's friend quiet and withdrawn for days. Tam had asked the captain if Cindy had gotten a purple rocket and the response had been weird. “You have it backwards, Lieutenant. She gave the commodore a purple rocket.”
They had planned on leaving within a short time, but at the last minute Lieutenant McVae had told them that additional modifications were going to be made to the ship and they would have to wait thirty-six hours. Again, the attitude of the captain and Cindy were odd -- they really wanted to get going. Tam wanted to go too, but like most everyone else was nervous and a little scared.
It was, Tam thought, clear that the ones who were nervous were the ones who hadn't been in combat before. She hoped that after the deployment she could be as calm and as collected as they were.
She didn't say anything to Cindy or ask what had happened. Instead, she set to her sims with a will and reached a fine edge. She was telling Cindy about her latest victory over Ian and that was the first crack in her friend's shell. “They tell me I'm a Sim Queen. I never even heard the term before someone used it to me. I didn't even know they ranked you.”
“They do,” Tam said with feeling. “You can get additional points on the promotion list if you do well enough. That's why I sim as often as I can. There's such a limited pool...”
Cindy snorted. “I thought everyone knew everything.”
“Pardon?”
“Captain Hall told me that everyone competes; you haven't looked at my ranking?”
Tam shook her head and asked. Then she started and asked Pixie again. “Good grief!”
“I beat Captain Drake; she's way up there. Now I've beaten a vice admiral and a commodore. Admiral Gull was way up there, too. Commodore Heisenberg isn't very good.”
Tam checked the scores; Colinda Drake was indeed way up there, and so was Admiral Gull. And Cindy was right about Commodore Heisenberg. Her scores were the lowest of all serving Fleet flag officers -- of course her loss to Cindy had contributed to a recent large dip in her rating.
Tam looked at Cindy carefully. “There are two kinds of sims -- ones we do for practice that don't count, and then the ones that count. You can't do more than three a year with someone better than you -- not and have them count. You have to be careful. I just spar with Ian; he's used up his shots.”
Tam smiled. “I wonder if there's a way I can figure out to get him to go up against you -- where he doesn't check your rating first. I'd surely like to get a dollar of his money! He wouldn't bet though if he saw the ratings.”
Tam grinned at Cindy. “Just a dollar... would you play along?”
“I won't lie.”
“Oh gosh no! Never that! There's an art to convincing people that they know what you mean, when you actually say something totally different. You've never actually been in a simulator, have you?”
“Not a combat simulator. Flight trainers and EVA suit trainers; that sort of thing.”
Tam grinned. “I bet a simulator would be something you’d like. They have these little fan gizmos -- they're very small and have a very small gravity well. Basically it grips your upper torso and simulates acceleration. It can be a little disconcerting at first, but it's fun. What's really cool -- if you puke, you have to clean it up.”
“That's your idea of cool?” Cindy said, paling slightly.
“Hey, on Gany I was the only girl from twelve to fourteen. I was the designated babysitter for two and a half blessed years. I've been barfed on, pissed on and dumped on by half the kids who grew up there. You have never lived until you've tried to diaper a baby with diarrhea in a low gravity environment!”
Cindy turned a pale shade of green. “I could have lived my entire life without hearing that.”
“It's just once you've decided it's not going to kill you, it gives you a big step up on those who aren't sure.” Tam smiled. “At the academy they had the sim modules on a centrifuge. By moving you closer to the center, they could simulate additional gravities. By rotating the whole thing, they could make it as realistic as could be. People like me would go in there and see if the acrobatics would throw the other person in the simulator off -- if they got sick, they weren't looking at their combat screens. Or couldn't see them for the puke.”
She saw Cindy's expression and relented. “Look, I'm telling you like it is. One day you're sure to have a turn, count on it. You really should get some experience on the machines aboard Pixie...” Tam thought for a second.
“That'll work if anything will work...” she mused aloud.
“What?”
“I'll take you down and introduce you to the simulators, when Ian is around. I'll tell him you've never done a machine sim before. I'll go easy on you; no repeated acceleration changes. You're dead cert going to beat me, no matter what the sim is and I'll just shake my head and say, 'beginner's luck.'”
“And that isn't lying?”
“You'd know it wasn't true, but really -- what do I know? You've been in some full combat exercises and those aren't the same thing as a machine sim. Trust me, Cindy; I have no intention of losing... I'm just thinking that your score is telling me that I will. I would never, ever go easy on you in training... and you better not do it to me!”
“No, I'll do my best.”
The next day they had time off-watch together and Tam showed Cindy how the sim machines worked, knowing that Ian and the others were there almost continually. Sure enough, Ian asked what Tam was doing. Tam curled her upper lip. Didn't the moron see that she was showing the XO how a sim machine worked?
“The XO has never used a simulator,” Tam told him, keeping her voice even. “I thought it would be a good idea if she learned how they work before we got to our patrol area.”
“That sounds like a plan!” Ian said sarcastically. Tam could see in his eyes he thought the notion of the XO never having been in a simulator
irritated him. Tam wondered how anyone could be so dense. Wasn't it clear who'd beat the heck out of Captain Drake the second time? Then the commodore?
The simulators were machines; Cindy had used Pixie, not a simulator. Conceptually, the machine tried to duplicate what Cindy had been doing; not the other way around.
Tam set up a simple fighter sim, with each fighter starting at an AU -- the radius of Earth's orbit -- apart.
Tam set off on a quartering course to close with Cindy's fighter. She promptly lost Cindy's fighter when its fans were shut down. Tam growled to herself. That wasn't good! She had wanted to make this short and sweet! Now she was going to have fly over there and find Cindy with her active scanners -- and that would take a couple of hours.
Still, even though it would add time to the mission, she kept on a quartering course, steadily varying her velocity and course, enough to cause a Blue to miss.
She'd been doing that for ten minutes when the “You're dead!” tone warbled in her ears.
“Pardon, Pixie? How did she hit me?”
“She postulated that her fighter would have the current state of the art missiles. She launched a millisecond jumper at you.”
“Good grief! How many fan transitions did it make?”
“About ninety a second. Sixteen minutes, eighty-six thousand and some odd transitions to intercept.”
“And the hardware handles it?”
“Yes, Lieutenant Farmer. Captain Drake was frustrated when her first test missile didn't break after a thousand transitions, so she sent it for ten thousand, and then a hundred thousand transitions. The machines don't break.”
“You mean there is a possibility that we can fire off Blue missiles against the aliens and they'll never detect them before they score?”
“That's the working assumption, Lieutenant,” Pixie told Tam. “Captain Drake and Admiral Gull are modifying missiles by the thousand. Every other priority has been dropped to zero, until the job is done. A series of couriers have been dispatched in the Paul Revere command set to spread the word to the rest of the Federation.”
Tam whistled to herself.
She stood up and exited the simulator. Ian was there grinning. “You're slipping Tam! I may want a rematch here. How many times did they tell us that with Blues, all you need to get is in the ballpark -- and they make it a really big ballpark?”
Well-Traveled Rhodes (Kinsella Universe Book 6) Page 29